Groklaw is basically an attempt by a fundamentally autistic community to create some kind of understanding/interface into a neurotypically created legal system. Good luck with that, guys. What you don't seem to get is that the single biggest difference between the neurotypical population and you is that no matter how vitriolic or abusive you might be of someone, you come out and do it openly. A lot of autistic people I've known barely have the neurological capacity for lying...and lies are what the political and legal system both are built on.
I've also had it up to here with the paranoia and persecution complex being displayed by the FSF and its' various fanboys. They see deadly enemies under every rock and behind every curtain...and it's getting very, very old and tired. The other thing is that the definition of an enemy in the FSF's worldview is literally anyone who doesn't worship RMS as God and follow their party line to every microscopic degree...which basically means around 98% of the population.
In case any of Stallman's zombie army who usually posts on here feels like answering this and telling me that I'm not paranoid enough...Try realising for a change that it's *you* who are fucked in the head, not me. The world at large is not going to accept the kind of totalitarianism you believe Microsoft are trying to foist on people...I am NOT going to believe that the antritrust trial happened solely because of Stallman and his fellow Marxist freaks in the EFF. I'm also not going to believe that the FSF are the only group on the planet who care about the prevention of such...and it nauseates me that you try and feed people such utter shit. If nothing else, at least try and remember that BSD UNIX (yes, in open source form, no less) existed for more than ten years before the GNU project. For fuck's sake, go and read about the initial history of UNIX while it was first being developed, if you haven't already. Stallman had NOTHING to do with that while it was inside AT&T, and those developers had the idea of freely sharing source from the word go.
The FSF do NOT have a monopoly on the desire for freedom...that's another thing Stallman insists on taking credit for that doesn't belong to him...I've noticed he's really good at that. It's just one more thing that he and Microsoft themselves have in common.
We have a group at least partially led by a Stalinist fanatic who has tried to prove that economic incentive is actually detrimental to producing good work, and who has essentially declared war on capitalism in general. (At least as far as software is concerned, anyway)
As a direct outgrowth of their beloved Leader's stated beliefs, said group themselves verbally abuse, defame, and threaten without mercy any within their midst who would be suicidally foolish enough to attempt to openly generate revenue in association with open source. Said group are themselves typically grindingly poor, cubical-dwelling wage slaves whose primary objection to capitalist philosophy is a seething resentment over the idea that somebody *else* might get rich. (I find myself wondering how much abuse Mark Shuttleworth has had to weather over his own economic status, although he apparently had the good sense to become wealthy in another field before starting Ubuntu. He'd probably find himself nailed to a cross if he tried to generate revenue from that)
Then, moving forward, we suddenly find that businesses which trade in Linux, (or try to) apparently aren't doing so well.
just being socially toxic because you're starved for attention and at least then people will talk about you
I would bet money that this was the primary, if not sole reason why the kid did what he did. The other thing that displaying a slogan like "bong hits 4 jesus" tells me about a person is that they are someone who for whatever reason, feels a desperate need to visibly rebel against Christianity.
I've seen a lot of people who feel like that, and they desperately need to get over themselves. There is no law in existence anywhere which says you have to be Christian if you don't want to be, and one isn't likely to show up any time soon either, the wishes of fundamentalists or the fears of equally deranged whackjobs like Richard Dawkins notwithstanding.
My own final response to the slogan, "bong hits 4 jesus," would actually be to say to the kid in question, "In the time it took you to make that t shirt, come to school with it, and then walk around displaying it...Do you have any *idea* how much weed you could have smoked?";-)
That's what I used to say to people who came into #Christian on the Undernet in order to swear and otherwise be disruptive...that there were whole oceans of alcohol, controlled substances, and various forms of illicit sex that they could be consuming, all of which they would find infinitely more enjoyable than typing profanity in an IRC channel...and it'd have the added bonus of meaning that we wouldn't have to listen to them either.
Life is way too short to waste it protesting things you don't like...Focus on the things you *do* like instead.
...on a talk page there recently, Wikipedia is run by a legion of genuinely soulless pedants. It's also entirely safe to assume, as the Post says in TFA, that such people are completely devoid of lives. Wikipedians are the type of people who, when they do manage to find employment, it's invariably in such glorious fields as tax collection or accounting.
So, as I see it, the court is to decide whether or not the situation constitued a school function.
IANAL, but IMHO the focus needs to be taken off it being a freedom of speech issue, given what an emotional lightning rod freedom of speech is. If they want to nail the kid for anything, nail him for creating a public nuisance or disturbing the peace...whatever the equivalent charge is called in the US, since I'm sure they have one.
Don't question his right to display slogans; focus on the circumstances surrounding when and where he did it, and on him most likely being an antagonistic little shit who simply wanted to provoke people.
It's not going to be more than a misdemeanour charge, but it'll have him picking up rubbish for a while.
This is a huge corporate monolith, there's no doubt about that, but to think that the company is operating from an "us against them" perspective is fairly inaccurate.
I need to clarify. My point was a belief that EA's sole reason for existence (at least in the minds of its' upper management) was to literally generate more money than any individual member of said management could hope to spend in their lifetime. I only feel that they are in opposition to anyone to the extent that if they feel that creativity is in any way a hindrance to the accumulation of money, creativity will be thrown to the wayside for that reason. It's not so much that they are deliberately setting out to harm the rest of the industry; all they're focused on is the generation of cash. I don't feel that they perceive or care about any negative consequences that may arise from such singularity of focus.
As EA_Spouse said:- "That doesn't sound like challenging much of anything. That sounds like a money farm."
My point was that the single minded persuit of money without regard for anything else is doing tremendous harm to the gaming industry. EA aren't the only company of their kind operating; Vivendi and Activision are similar. What these companies tend to do is assimilate smaller, genuinely creatively focused operations. (like Maxis, Lionhead, Blizzard, and so forth) They then in some cases attempt to override the proposed projects of these more creative individuals if they feel that said projects are not, "financially sound," that is, in line with their all-encompassing goal of simply making money. While doing that, they also as you say focus on moving generic, white box units which do further damage by alienating gamers and creating an industry atmosphere of boredom and stagnation.
Publishing companies in general are the bane of the gaming industry, IMHO. EA are only one of them, but they are the largest, and so they perhaps more effectively highlight the damage that these companies do. They practice what I've tended to refer to as scorched-earth economics; focusing on making money today, without regard as to how their actions are destroying their potential to continue making money tomorrow.
So sure...you could perhaps argue that the companies themselves aren't evil as such...just single-minded and apathetic. It's the consequences such an attitude has that would be more correctly called evil, or at least massively damaging.
Electronic Arts have been the scourge of the gaming industry for years. Every single time I've seen an article on here talking about a "current slump," I've found myself thinking, "Look no further than EA for the reason why, guys."
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Art can not and must not be produced on an assembly line. EA's biggest fault is their attempting constantly to do this. Their other enormous problem is that the *only* thing they as a company (or at least the management) care about is money. This is transparently obvious, and anyone who knows anything about them also noticed it years ago. The management's blatant, all-consuming lust for cash is deeply repugnant to the rest of us...especially when it overwhelmingly trumps all other concerns, such as product quality or the welfare of their employees.
EA's other problem is that consumers have been exposed to game companies (many of them in fact) for whom money was *not* the overriding priority...people who made games because they loved being creative in and of itself...not purely because they wanted to become billionaires.
EA are an evil company, and their customers know that they are evil. When that happens, any such company is going to start sliding towards their demise.
It's entirely normal and predictable that an early adopter market would generate sales, not to mention people falling for media hype. However, once said early adopters realise how crippled the system is for both playing and sharing music, the existing units sold will go in the bin, and then word of mouth will prevent further sales from occurring.
The single main thing about the FSF's unreasoning, foetal position terror of DRM that has always irked me is that they don't give Joe Six-Pack enough credit. Yes, he might be a drooling imbecile, but the one redeeming characteristic that he *does* have is that he knows what he wants to be able to do. He wants to be able to both play and transfer mp3s in both directions, without encumberence, and without limits, and he ultimately isn't going to accept anything which doesn't allow him to do that.
If we want to talk about bullshit FUD, let's talk about Stallman's "Right to Read," story. He isn't a "visionary"...he is a moron. The assumption that a scenario like that is going to occur does not take *anyone* else's desires into account. I am sick to death of this idea that the rest of us have absolutely no clue and we need some enlightened saviour (read: cult leader) to lead us out of utter darkness.
Take some fucking self-responsibility...and allow others to do the same. Fear doesn't help anyone, and it is also in this case going to be proven to have been entirely unwarranted. Wait and see.
I've seen so many opensource products become a victim of the original Mozilla philosophy by trying to do too much.
Quote from Doug McIlroy, one of the men involved in the early development of UNIX:- "Do one thing well."
You might want to read The Art of UNIX Programming. After having read it, I suspect you'll realise that, just as (to quote the saying) GNU's not UNIX, Linux actually isn't either. I wouldn't know how many Linux related projects I've seen which totally violate the early UNIX philosophy...rpm is probably the single most egregious example, but there are others. Ports is the only package management system I've seen which (are we surprised?) doesn't violate that philosophy...and it doesn't because it consists of a *group* of small processes working together, rather than one big opaque, monolithic mess as in the case of rpm.
If Firefox was truly old school in terms of its' development model, a number of things would be true about it that are not true now:-
It would be a web browser. NOTHING ELSE.
The core HTML renderer would be released as a CLI program, and GUI front-ends for it would either be developed by a seperate group within the same project, or by someone else entirely. Said engine/GUI pair would communicate via sockets or something similar...in other words, a clean, transparent protocol. This would also mean that there could be multiple GUIs for it if necessary. Programs used to be developed this way in the early days of Linux...I'm assuming that has only stopped because of the vast influx of Windows refugees who've managed to infect Linux people with Microsoft's broken programming methodology. Monoculture is NOT a good thing...the only people who want it are again, the Windows refugees...and they only want it because it's all they know...not because they've actually thought about it.
Firefox would have a genuinely sane compilation routine, not the convoluted mess they've got now. The system is not designed to allow other people to be able to compile it easily...it's designed primarily to be compiled within the project by people already intimate with it, with precompiled binaries being the only thing used by the outside world.
The Firefox developers wouldn't be such abusive, bad tempered, elitist assholes. Contrary to popular belief, early UNIX development wasn't associated with the kind of elitism, self-righteousness, and relentless vitriol that has customarily sprung up since. It was developed communally, without "community" being the four letter word that Richard Stallman is primarily responsible for turning it into. I've mentioned the LFS project before...Go and sit on irc.linuxfromscratch.org for a while and observe how the people there relate to each other. It's very positive and laid back, for the most part.
I can only find one fault with this argument...that it was posted by someone who didn't themselves have enough faith in it to put their own name/nick to it.
So if you have that little faith in it, why should I have more?
Although Wikipedia has always had a hard core empiricist/scientistic bias of the kind that would make Richard Dawkins proud, its' insistence on practically enforcing said bias is only a relatively recent occurrence.
The site's operators have however always suffered from a persistent, gnawing insecurity about credibility...but the question that has never been definitively answered is which particular group they so desperately need credibility with. I suspect said group is, as I said, pseudoscientific atheistic fundamentalists like Dawkins.
I don't know much in the way of specific details, but what little I've seen from Firefox's Bugzilla have suggested to me a deeply insular, elitist, foul tempered group of people with a tendency to be rather abusive of newcomers.
Mind you, I didn't (and don't) support the Iceweasel fork, and I don't at all think that the Debian Project are in any way a better alternative. I've spent the last few days evaluating Ubuntu Dapper Drake. I have, however, never liked Debian as a distribution, its' "philosophy", or what I've seen of its' development group, so I'm not going to be keeping Ubuntu...when I get my other machine back up I'm going back to Linux From Scratch.
I will be honest when I say that I'm close to the limits of my tolerance with regards to the Linux userbase more or less in general...the LFS people are the only group I've been able to stand being around for any great length of time. They are genuinely humble, tolerant, and altruistic...they help people who arrive on their IRC server with no questions asked...and they run a very solid project.
I have a feeling that the LFS project's behaviour and atmosphere are what FOSS people in general have been *aiming* for...but that somehow it got lost when said people started developing an extremely over-inflated view of their own importance...the continually stoked, unreasoning terror of DRM also is not helping matters. As Linus Torvalds has said, nobody does good work from a basis of fear or hatred.
As I've written previously, I primarily blame the FSF and the Debian people for the current predominant foul attitude among Linux's userbase...I am going to go back to WoW for a while, and simply wait. I cannot help but suspect (or at least hope) that eventually the fear, insularity, and vitriol that the FSF generates will eventually starve it of new converts.
I am going to observe both the advice of the Tao Te Ching and a proverb that I have seen from Vampire: The Masquerade.
"The best way to overcome an enemy is to outlast them."
You are an old man, Richard Stallman, and I suspect that of the two of us, I have more years of life left. Despite the number of people ready to replace you when you go, rare is the cult that survives its' founder...the organisation in question is inevitably radically altered, if it does not fall completely.
I will wait. When you and yours have gone, I will come back.
The answer to that question is here, in Bradley Kuhn's own words. Namely, the authority to deny anyone the right to use any license other than the GPL itself...including more liberal licenses such as the BSD license.
I don't care whether you personally have swallowed Stallman's bullshit about *why* the GPL should be the only license in existence. That itself is irrelevant. The point is that the FSF's perspective is that they should be the ones to arbitrarily make the decision, and not programmers themselves. IMHO, there is no defense or justification for that...it's control, pure and simple. Microsoft on the one hand want to use DRM to control how you use applications...Stallman and the FSF want to control which licenses you can or can't use in order to write them. The only difference is the point at which said control is applied. The result is the same; namely that as either the author or user of a program, you're denied the right to decide how it is to be used. I consider the GPL itself to be a form of *legal* "digital rights management," as far as programmers themselves are concerned.
Perhaps you're sufficiently naive as to believe that that in itself is still justifiable. After all, the GPL itself gives people a lot of rights, even if the FSF has enshrined itself as the arbiter/definer of them, right?
The problem with that idea is that there also is no guarantee that the GPL itself would remain the same, either...GPL v3 proves that. Again, you're going to argue that in protesting DRM in the license, Stallman isn't doing anything wrong...but again, you would be missing the point.
The point is that it is the FSF or Stallman himself who is making moral and legal choices for vast numbers of other people. I don't care how desirable said choices themselves might seem to be...in wanting to make them, he is wanting to deny me a couple of extremely basic rights. The first is the right to choose my own moral/philosophical framework, at least as far as socioeconomics and computer software is concerned. The second is far worse...he seeks to deny people the right to determine how the product of their own minds is used, which includes denying people whose sole or primary skillset is programming related to earn a living (that is, basically the economic ability to feed themselves) through the use of their abilities. I'm not misguided on this last point, either. Go here.
In response to that, you're then going to say that if I don't use Linux, he can't actually deny me anything at all. To which I'd reply, Not yet. Although it's true that he doesn't have the legal framework to enforce the above yet, the link I just gave describes the scenario that would exist if/when he actually manages to get it. If it got to that point, it'd no longer be optional or consentual, or based on whether you were using Linux or something else. Nobody would be able to write software for any environment or any platform without being subjected to the legal manifestation of his will. If you want to know what I believe he wants, then that is it...More than anything else, he wants *everyone* who either uses or develops software in any form to be legally or morally answerable to him. Microsoft want and have wanted an economic monopoly on software; Stallman now wants a moral, ideological, and legal one.
Stallman and his camp have gone rogue. There are some of us who think he probably was to begin with, although I'm not necessarily one of them. I believe his original intent was quite probably to do genuine good. Unfortunately, human nature has been shown historically to be an extremely morally frail thing. You prob
What's that? Your morality isn't black and white? Too bad the laws are.
I have an uncle who was put away for a dozen years for what he did to his teenage niece, and said niece's dog. I was also quite naturally able to closely observe the damage that said acts caused to my cousin and the rest of her family.
I'm assuming you do not come from a background of similar experience. It gives a person a somewhat unique perspective on such things.
"So what if we infringe on patents? We're Open Source--you can't hurt us!"
The truly delicious irony is just how close this comes to the stereotypical anarcho-communist doctrine of using the system to destroy it.
"It doesn't matter how close we come to breaking the law, because we're RIGHT! We have morality on our side, and as you all know, the ends most certainly justify the means!"
And then FOSS zealots get deeply indignant and offended when observers refer to them as Communists.
"We're not Commies! How dare you?!"
Yeah...sure, guys. Just remember to brush your hair down over the hammer and sickle in the centre of that red headband you're wearing before you next go to look in the mirror.
Some might view internet pornography as morally wrong but I wouldn't think it to warrant a lifetime sentence."
What type of porn are we talking? For relatively vanilla stuff, I'd agree that life in jail is way off...in most countries generic smut peddling might be seen as unsavoury, but AFAIK it's not a crime.
However, if we're talking snuff, paedophilia, or beastiality, I don't have any objection myself to the idea of someone involved in such to go away for a long time. Maybe not life, but I wouldn't see 20 years as excessive. Kids who've been sexually abused never get parole from the hell they experience.
Sadly, the DRM overlords have probably already won -- they've beaten people like you by getting you to think of the issue in their terms, instead of your own. And you don't even realize it!
Yeah...as opposed to thinking of it in RMS' terms, which is just sooooo much better.
The entire situation with DRM is fucked all the way around...and not just because of Microsoft. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. DRM/Microsoft is to Richard Stallman what Osama bin Laden/Al Qaeda is to George W. Bush. Namely a bogeyman...a means of scaring the hell out of people to such an extent that they lose both the capacity for logic and any ability to stand up to corrupt individuals who want power over them.
Stallman IMHO has actually become *more* evil than Microsoft in my own mind for one simple reason:- Microsoft do not pretend to be anything other than what they are. Ballmer wears his sociopathy on his sleeve. That's called honesty, and while I don't respect amorality, I'm going to respect someone who is direct about what they are.
But sure...once Microsoft have been dealt with, enshrine Stallman in the position that he has long coveted. Then you will find out whether or not it is any more preferable to have him as your master.
"The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."
...would be Microsoft's filesystems...FAT, VFAT/FAT32, and NTFS.
It's very unlikely that Microsoft will actually want Linux to get rid of those, though...because if Linux no longer in fact *did* infringe on Microsoft's IP, Dr Evil would no longer be able to issue his veiled, Mafia-like threats.
After all...the ability to extort money from people is what they really want here. Heaven forbid that they try and earn revenue from actually making/selling a better operating system.
Just to prove my point, I noticed that the parent went up to +5 until the exact juveniles that I was referring to found it and modded it down. It demonstrates that they know exactly who they are.
"While Linux creator Linus Torvalds has previously stated that the Linux kernel will remain on the GPL v2 license, much of the code that makes up a complete Linux distribution is owned by the FSF..."
Translation:- "Novell, you haven't done what we want you to do. Therefore I'm going to try and scare you into getting back with the program. Fear is something which our friends in the FSF deal in rather a lot these days; our own fear of the dreaded bogeyman DRM, as well as the fear we try and instill in other people of the bad things that could happen if they don't do exactly as we say."
Go and crawl back under your rock, Bruce. Aside from anything else, there are at least 3 libc projects alone that I know of which either aren't under the GPL, or are, but aren't part of the GNU project and hence are not necessarily migrating to GPL v3. Novell can and I suspect will replace as much of their system as they need to; and I would recommend they do it as soon as possible, so that they no longer have to endure radical egomaniacs like you who somehow think that anybody who uses Linux is answerable to you by default. Another thing...fearmongering and making veiled, euphemistic threats really doesn't make you look good, in case you were wondering...that's the sort of behaviour I'd expect Steve Ballmer to engage in. Once again, with the FSF and the Debian Project's mujahideen, we see more evidence that the so-called cure is just as bad as the disease (Microsoft) itself, if not actually worse.
It's time for Linux to fork, IMHO...past time, in fact. Let Perens, Stallman, Kuhn, and all the other hard leftist whackjobs fork it and go and work on their own system. Meanwhile sane, mainstream society can retain the primary tree...as well as hopefully beginning work to replace the GNU project's applications as quickly as possible. Once that's done, FSF apologists will have no basis to continue screeching about how much we owe Stallman and how we have no right whatsoever to use Linux unless bow down and worship him and obey his (and his followers') every deranged decree. I've been accused in a recent post on here of having major problems with FOSS itself...I don't have problems with the software at all...I just really badly want and need to see some of the freaks get thrown over the side.
So, FSF...if you don't like what the rest of the world are doing, there's an easier alternative than trying to ram your own retrograde viewpoints down everyone else's throat, which IMHO would work a lot better for everyone. Fork off.
That way, those of us who want to can use Linux while at the same time being blissfully able to forget that you exist.
If you want to see comments that discuss how much they love MS and think vista is going to be super duper you are pobably in the wrong place.
No, I don't. I just don't want to see things modded Insightful when they're a trite, kneejerk response. To me anyway the definition of something being insightful is when some actual thought goes into the writing of it...the equivalent of five or so word, peanut gallery heckling doesn't qualify.
I saw the same thing with John Carmack's posts...in one reply he simply used the single word, "Yes," which got moderated +5 Interesting. I don't believe that that is something that excuses should be made for, either.
To try to be more mature than I was in my previous reply to the GP, my real problem with this perspective is that while you're describing what it is that *you* want, (which I don't have a problem with) it at least sounds like you're also saying that other people shouldn't be able to do/have what *they* want. (Which I most certainly *do* have major problems with) If Apple's software is what you want, that's fine. Don't, however, try and tell other people that they can't do their own thing...however customisable or skinnable that might be.
I think Apple are a disease, personally. This type of perspective is only one of a myriad of reasons why. Note, however, that this does not mean that I am trying to advocate that nobody else on the planet use their products...but it does mean that I've taken a very solemn vow that they are never going to see a single cent of my own money. That's the difference between our perspectives though...My perspective only means that *I* don't end up using Apple...it doesn't dictate (or try to dictate) what everybody else should or should not do.
This is the exactly the main problem I have with the FSF as well...in terms of Bradley Kuhn in particular holding the perspective that the GPL is the only license that should exist, and programmers should be forced to use it. It's wrong.
The parent is not Insightful, or anything close to it...it gets +5, Insightful for no other reason than that it conforms with the Slashdot groupthink.
The people running this place really need to come up with a new form of moderation...one which doesn't merely allow juvenile idiots to ensure that only their perspectives/belief system gets read or promoted. This is a problem which has existed for a long time...there are fairly clearly a number of people who get mod points who shouldn't.
That's basically all the current moderation system does...it measures how strongly the people with points agree/disagree with the post in question. Obviously that is abuse of the system...it isn't how it was intended to work. The problem however is that there is nothing to force people to be genuinely objective or honest.
Most damaging is the fact that if Novell, or anybody else, feel so bad about being associated with such a group of deranged cultists, the only thing they need to do is stop releasing their products under a license that involves the support of such "undesirable" people.
You conveniently ignore that my initial point was that my "tirade," was directed only towards a fairly specific subset of the Linux userbase. As I said then, so I repeat again now that I have spoken online with several people from Linux/FOSS related projects who I didn't consider cultic at all, but entirely reasonable.
I do not have a problem with FOSS in general...quite the contrary. What I have a problem with is radicalism which (I believe) in this case exists primarily due to neurological impairment within the people involved, rather than any *inherently* superior intellectual or moral position. That isn't necessarily meant as an attack, but what it is meant as is an observation that perhaps people who are disabled in such a manner should not be engaging in social/political activism. As well as Richard Stallman's self-diagnosis of autism, ESR has admitted to having Tourette's; it is thus not vindictive but merely honest to admit that the proverbial J. Random Hacker is *not* generally normal neurologically, and thus by definition is likely to experience considerable difficulty relating to people who are.
I am inclined to believe that Raymond's success in his outreach to the corporate world has been primarily due to the comparitive mildness of his own neurological abnormalities. Raymond's advantage is that his own case is sufficiently mild that he is able to have one foot in both worlds; while being able to relate to other technical people, he is also sufficiently capable of relating (at least to a large degree) to the neurotypical population as well.
Stallman, however, is largely the opposite. His autism is acute and debilitating, and is reflected by the rigidity and zealotry with which he holds his perspectives. The neurotypical population respect his perspectives in direct proportion to the degree that they can benefit from such. The primary difference between Raymond and Stallman from what I have seen is that Raymond is able to recognise that. Stallman's philosophy (and I see this continually reflected in his followers) is that people are inherently unaware of what is good for them, and must therefore be emotionally and intellectually manipulated into adopting his perspective. If after attempting that, the process fails, the people in question are dismissed as being contrary and worthless. We saw that also in some of the Debian people's attitude towards Mozilla with the Iceweasel issue. Don't agree with us, and aren't willing to capitulate completely? Fine. We'll get rid of you.
Do you have any idea how many wars have been fought because of this kind of attitude?
So that, fundamentally, is my problem. Not FOSS itself, but the idea that people and especially corporations are only of any value if they entirely capitulate to the program. It's wrong, it's exclusionary, and it's not the way forward, IMHO. You say people who believe strongly in FOSS shouldn't have to give up who they are; I'm fine with that. My point is that in my observation anywayz, Stallman/the FSF and the Debian project are only interested in other people if they are completely willing to give up who *they* are as well.
You're probably going to see this as crazy, but an analogy that I tend to draw between FOSS/Linux (due also to the autistic/neurologically diverse element) and its' adherents is the X-Men scenario...and ESR and Stallman with Xavier and Magneto, respectively. Stallman for a long time was also interested in outreach/converting people, but has increasingly (at least intellectually) gone on the warpath.
"We are the future, Charles. They no longer matter."
Slashdot Mirror
Groklaw is basically an attempt by a fundamentally autistic community to create some kind of understanding/interface into a neurotypically created legal system. Good luck with that, guys. What you don't seem to get is that the single biggest difference between the neurotypical population and you is that no matter how vitriolic or abusive you might be of someone, you come out and do it openly. A lot of autistic people I've known barely have the neurological capacity for lying...and lies are what the political and legal system both are built on.
I've also had it up to here with the paranoia and persecution complex being displayed by the FSF and its' various fanboys. They see deadly enemies under every rock and behind every curtain...and it's getting very, very old and tired. The other thing is that the definition of an enemy in the FSF's worldview is literally anyone who doesn't worship RMS as God and follow their party line to every microscopic degree...which basically means around 98% of the population.
In case any of Stallman's zombie army who usually posts on here feels like answering this and telling me that I'm not paranoid enough...Try realising for a change that it's *you* who are fucked in the head, not me. The world at large is not going to accept the kind of totalitarianism you believe Microsoft are trying to foist on people...I am NOT going to believe that the antritrust trial happened solely because of Stallman and his fellow Marxist freaks in the EFF. I'm also not going to believe that the FSF are the only group on the planet who care about the prevention of such...and it nauseates me that you try and feed people such utter shit. If nothing else, at least try and remember that BSD UNIX (yes, in open source form, no less) existed for more than ten years before the GNU project. For fuck's sake, go and read about the initial history of UNIX while it was first being developed, if you haven't already. Stallman had NOTHING to do with that while it was inside AT&T, and those developers had the idea of freely sharing source from the word go.
The FSF do NOT have a monopoly on the desire for freedom...that's another thing Stallman insists on taking credit for that doesn't belong to him...I've noticed he's really good at that. It's just one more thing that he and Microsoft themselves have in common.
Then, moving forward, we suddenly find that businesses which trade in Linux, (or try to) apparently aren't doing so well.
Gee...Wonder why?
just being socially toxic because you're starved for attention and at least then people will talk about you
;-)
I would bet money that this was the primary, if not sole reason why the kid did what he did. The other thing that displaying a slogan like "bong hits 4 jesus" tells me about a person is that they are someone who for whatever reason, feels a desperate need to visibly rebel against Christianity.
I've seen a lot of people who feel like that, and they desperately need to get over themselves. There is no law in existence anywhere which says you have to be Christian if you don't want to be, and one isn't likely to show up any time soon either, the wishes of fundamentalists or the fears of equally deranged whackjobs like Richard Dawkins notwithstanding.
My own final response to the slogan, "bong hits 4 jesus," would actually be to say to the kid in question, "In the time it took you to make that t shirt, come to school with it, and then walk around displaying it...Do you have any *idea* how much weed you could have smoked?"
That's what I used to say to people who came into #Christian on the Undernet in order to swear and otherwise be disruptive...that there were whole oceans of alcohol, controlled substances, and various forms of illicit sex that they could be consuming, all of which they would find infinitely more enjoyable than typing profanity in an IRC channel...and it'd have the added bonus of meaning that we wouldn't have to listen to them either.
Life is way too short to waste it protesting things you don't like...Focus on the things you *do* like instead.
...on a talk page there recently, Wikipedia is run by a legion of genuinely soulless pedants. It's also entirely safe to assume, as the Post says in TFA, that such people are completely devoid of lives. Wikipedians are the type of people who, when they do manage to find employment, it's invariably in such glorious fields as tax collection or accounting.
So, as I see it, the court is to decide whether or not the situation constitued a school function.
IANAL, but IMHO the focus needs to be taken off it being a freedom of speech issue, given what an emotional lightning rod freedom of speech is. If they want to nail the kid for anything, nail him for creating a public nuisance or disturbing the peace...whatever the equivalent charge is called in the US, since I'm sure they have one.
Don't question his right to display slogans; focus on the circumstances surrounding when and where he did it, and on him most likely being an antagonistic little shit who simply wanted to provoke people.
It's not going to be more than a misdemeanour charge, but it'll have him picking up rubbish for a while.
This is a huge corporate monolith, there's no doubt about that, but to think that the company is operating from an "us against them" perspective is fairly inaccurate.
I need to clarify. My point was a belief that EA's sole reason for existence (at least in the minds of its' upper management) was to literally generate more money than any individual member of said management could hope to spend in their lifetime. I only feel that they are in opposition to anyone to the extent that if they feel that creativity is in any way a hindrance to the accumulation of money, creativity will be thrown to the wayside for that reason. It's not so much that they are deliberately setting out to harm the rest of the industry; all they're focused on is the generation of cash. I don't feel that they perceive or care about any negative consequences that may arise from such singularity of focus.
As EA_Spouse said:-
"That doesn't sound like challenging much of anything. That sounds like a money farm."
My point was that the single minded persuit of money without regard for anything else is doing tremendous harm to the gaming industry. EA aren't the only company of their kind operating; Vivendi and Activision are similar. What these companies tend to do is assimilate smaller, genuinely creatively focused operations. (like Maxis, Lionhead, Blizzard, and so forth) They then in some cases attempt to override the proposed projects of these more creative individuals if they feel that said projects are not, "financially sound," that is, in line with their all-encompassing goal of simply making money. While doing that, they also as you say focus on moving generic, white box units which do further damage by alienating gamers and creating an industry atmosphere of boredom and stagnation.
Publishing companies in general are the bane of the gaming industry, IMHO. EA are only one of them, but they are the largest, and so they perhaps more effectively highlight the damage that these companies do. They practice what I've tended to refer to as scorched-earth economics; focusing on making money today, without regard as to how their actions are destroying their potential to continue making money tomorrow.
So sure...you could perhaps argue that the companies themselves aren't evil as such...just single-minded and apathetic. It's the consequences such an attitude has that would be more correctly called evil, or at least massively damaging.
Electronic Arts have been the scourge of the gaming industry for years. Every single time I've seen an article on here talking about a "current slump," I've found myself thinking, "Look no further than EA for the reason why, guys."
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Art can not and must not be produced on an assembly line. EA's biggest fault is their attempting constantly to do this. Their other enormous problem is that the *only* thing they as a company (or at least the management) care about is money. This is transparently obvious, and anyone who knows anything about them also noticed it years ago. The management's blatant, all-consuming lust for cash is deeply repugnant to the rest of us...especially when it overwhelmingly trumps all other concerns, such as product quality or the welfare of their employees.
EA's other problem is that consumers have been exposed to game companies (many of them in fact) for whom money was *not* the overriding priority...people who made games because they loved being creative in and of itself...not purely because they wanted to become billionaires.
EA are an evil company, and their customers know that they are evil. When that happens, any such company is going to start sliding towards their demise.
It's entirely normal and predictable that an early adopter market would generate sales, not to mention people falling for media hype. However, once said early adopters realise how crippled the system is for both playing and sharing music, the existing units sold will go in the bin, and then word of mouth will prevent further sales from occurring.
The single main thing about the FSF's unreasoning, foetal position terror of DRM that has always irked me is that they don't give Joe Six-Pack enough credit. Yes, he might be a drooling imbecile, but the one redeeming characteristic that he *does* have is that he knows what he wants to be able to do. He wants to be able to both play and transfer mp3s in both directions, without encumberence, and without limits, and he ultimately isn't going to accept anything which doesn't allow him to do that.
If we want to talk about bullshit FUD, let's talk about Stallman's "Right to Read," story. He isn't a "visionary"...he is a moron. The assumption that a scenario like that is going to occur does not take *anyone* else's desires into account. I am sick to death of this idea that the rest of us have absolutely no clue and we need some enlightened saviour (read: cult leader) to lead us out of utter darkness.
Take some fucking self-responsibility...and allow others to do the same. Fear doesn't help anyone, and it is also in this case going to be proven to have been entirely unwarranted. Wait and see.
Quote from Doug McIlroy, one of the men involved in the early development of UNIX:-
"Do one thing well."
You might want to read The Art of UNIX Programming. After having read it, I suspect you'll realise that, just as (to quote the saying) GNU's not UNIX, Linux actually isn't either. I wouldn't know how many Linux related projects I've seen which totally violate the early UNIX philosophy...rpm is probably the single most egregious example, but there are others. Ports is the only package management system I've seen which (are we surprised?) doesn't violate that philosophy...and it doesn't because it consists of a *group* of small processes working together, rather than one big opaque, monolithic mess as in the case of rpm.
If Firefox was truly old school in terms of its' development model, a number of things would be true about it that are not true now:-
Programs used to be developed this way in the early days of Linux...I'm assuming that has only stopped because of the vast influx of Windows refugees who've managed to infect Linux people with Microsoft's broken programming methodology. Monoculture is NOT a good thing...the only people who want it are again, the Windows refugees...and they only want it because it's all they know...not because they've actually thought about it.
I can only find one fault with this argument...that it was posted by someone who didn't themselves have enough faith in it to put their own name/nick to it.
So if you have that little faith in it, why should I have more?
Although Wikipedia has always had a hard core empiricist/scientistic bias of the kind that would make Richard Dawkins proud, its' insistence on practically enforcing said bias is only a relatively recent occurrence.
The site's operators have however always suffered from a persistent, gnawing insecurity about credibility...but the question that has never been definitively answered is which particular group they so desperately need credibility with. I suspect said group is, as I said, pseudoscientific atheistic fundamentalists like Dawkins.
I don't know much in the way of specific details, but what little I've seen from Firefox's Bugzilla have suggested to me a deeply insular, elitist, foul tempered group of people with a tendency to be rather abusive of newcomers.
Mind you, I didn't (and don't) support the Iceweasel fork, and I don't at all think that the Debian Project are in any way a better alternative. I've spent the last few days evaluating Ubuntu Dapper Drake. I have, however, never liked Debian as a distribution, its' "philosophy", or what I've seen of its' development group, so I'm not going to be keeping Ubuntu...when I get my other machine back up I'm going back to Linux From Scratch.
I will be honest when I say that I'm close to the limits of my tolerance with regards to the Linux userbase more or less in general...the LFS people are the only group I've been able to stand being around for any great length of time. They are genuinely humble, tolerant, and altruistic...they help people who arrive on their IRC server with no questions asked...and they run a very solid project.
I have a feeling that the LFS project's behaviour and atmosphere are what FOSS people in general have been *aiming* for...but that somehow it got lost when said people started developing an extremely over-inflated view of their own importance...the continually stoked, unreasoning terror of DRM also is not helping matters. As Linus Torvalds has said, nobody does good work from a basis of fear or hatred.
As I've written previously, I primarily blame the FSF and the Debian people for the current predominant foul attitude among Linux's userbase...I am going to go back to WoW for a while, and simply wait. I cannot help but suspect (or at least hope) that eventually the fear, insularity, and vitriol that the FSF generates will eventually starve it of new converts.
I am going to observe both the advice of the Tao Te Ching and a proverb that I have seen from Vampire: The Masquerade.
"The best way to overcome an enemy is to outlast them."
You are an old man, Richard Stallman, and I suspect that of the two of us, I have more years of life left. Despite the number of people ready to replace you when you go, rare is the cult that survives its' founder...the organisation in question is inevitably radically altered, if it does not fall completely.
I will wait. When you and yours have gone, I will come back.
What position has he "long coveted?"
http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/0 8/16/2056252
The answer to that question is here, in Bradley Kuhn's own words. Namely, the authority to deny anyone the right to use any license other than the GPL itself...including more liberal licenses such as the BSD license.
I don't care whether you personally have swallowed Stallman's bullshit about *why* the GPL should be the only license in existence. That itself is irrelevant. The point is that the FSF's perspective is that they should be the ones to arbitrarily make the decision, and not programmers themselves. IMHO, there is no defense or justification for that...it's control, pure and simple. Microsoft on the one hand want to use DRM to control how you use applications...Stallman and the FSF want to control which licenses you can or can't use in order to write them. The only difference is the point at which said control is applied. The result is the same; namely that as either the author or user of a program, you're denied the right to decide how it is to be used. I consider the GPL itself to be a form of *legal* "digital rights management," as far as programmers themselves are concerned.
Perhaps you're sufficiently naive as to believe that that in itself is still justifiable. After all, the GPL itself gives people a lot of rights, even if the FSF has enshrined itself as the arbiter/definer of them, right?
The problem with that idea is that there also is no guarantee that the GPL itself would remain the same, either...GPL v3 proves that. Again, you're going to argue that in protesting DRM in the license, Stallman isn't doing anything wrong...but again, you would be missing the point.
The point is that it is the FSF or Stallman himself who is making moral and legal choices for vast numbers of other people. I don't care how desirable said choices themselves might seem to be...in wanting to make them, he is wanting to deny me a couple of extremely basic rights. The first is the right to choose my own moral/philosophical framework, at least as far as socioeconomics and computer software is concerned. The second is far worse...he seeks to deny people the right to determine how the product of their own minds is used, which includes denying people whose sole or primary skillset is programming related to earn a living (that is, basically the economic ability to feed themselves) through the use of their abilities. I'm not misguided on this last point, either. Go here.
In response to that, you're then going to say that if I don't use Linux, he can't actually deny me anything at all. To which I'd reply, Not yet. Although it's true that he doesn't have the legal framework to enforce the above yet, the link I just gave describes the scenario that would exist if/when he actually manages to get it. If it got to that point, it'd no longer be optional or consentual, or based on whether you were using Linux or something else. Nobody would be able to write software for any environment or any platform without being subjected to the legal manifestation of his will. If you want to know what I believe he wants, then that is it...More than anything else, he wants *everyone* who either uses or develops software in any form to be legally or morally answerable to him. Microsoft want and have wanted an economic monopoly on software; Stallman now wants a moral, ideological, and legal one.
Stallman and his camp have gone rogue. There are some of us who think he probably was to begin with, although I'm not necessarily one of them. I believe his original intent was quite probably to do genuine good. Unfortunately, human nature has been shown historically to be an extremely morally frail thing. You prob
What's that? Your morality isn't black and white? Too bad the laws are.
I have an uncle who was put away for a dozen years for what he did to his teenage niece, and said niece's dog. I was also quite naturally able to closely observe the damage that said acts caused to my cousin and the rest of her family.
I'm assuming you do not come from a background of similar experience. It gives a person a somewhat unique perspective on such things.
"So what if we infringe on patents? We're Open Source--you can't hurt us!"
The truly delicious irony is just how close this comes to the stereotypical anarcho-communist doctrine of using the system to destroy it.
"It doesn't matter how close we come to breaking the law, because we're RIGHT! We have morality on our side, and as you all know, the ends most certainly justify the means!"
And then FOSS zealots get deeply indignant and offended when observers refer to them as Communists.
"We're not Commies! How dare you?!"
Yeah...sure, guys. Just remember to brush your hair down over the hammer and sickle in the centre of that red headband you're wearing before you next go to look in the mirror.
Some might view internet pornography as morally wrong but I wouldn't think it to warrant a lifetime sentence."
What type of porn are we talking? For relatively vanilla stuff, I'd agree that life in jail is way off...in most countries generic smut peddling might be seen as unsavoury, but AFAIK it's not a crime.
However, if we're talking snuff, paedophilia, or beastiality, I don't have any objection myself to the idea of someone involved in such to go away for a long time. Maybe not life, but I wouldn't see 20 years as excessive. Kids who've been sexually abused never get parole from the hell they experience.
Rather an emotive, sweeping generalisation there, comrade. ;)
Sadly, the DRM overlords have probably already won -- they've beaten people like you by getting you to think of the issue in their terms, instead of your own. And you don't even realize it!
Yeah...as opposed to thinking of it in RMS' terms, which is just sooooo much better.
The entire situation with DRM is fucked all the way around...and not just because of Microsoft. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. DRM/Microsoft is to Richard Stallman what Osama bin Laden/Al Qaeda is to George W. Bush. Namely a bogeyman...a means of scaring the hell out of people to such an extent that they lose both the capacity for logic and any ability to stand up to corrupt individuals who want power over them.
Stallman IMHO has actually become *more* evil than Microsoft in my own mind for one simple reason:- Microsoft do not pretend to be anything other than what they are. Ballmer wears his sociopathy on his sleeve. That's called honesty, and while I don't respect amorality, I'm going to respect someone who is direct about what they are.
But sure...once Microsoft have been dealt with, enshrine Stallman in the position that he has long coveted. Then you will find out whether or not it is any more preferable to have him as your master.
"The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."
...would be Microsoft's filesystems...FAT, VFAT/FAT32, and NTFS.
It's very unlikely that Microsoft will actually want Linux to get rid of those, though...because if Linux no longer in fact *did* infringe on Microsoft's IP, Dr Evil would no longer be able to issue his veiled, Mafia-like threats.
After all...the ability to extort money from people is what they really want here. Heaven forbid that they try and earn revenue from actually making/selling a better operating system.
Just to prove my point, I noticed that the parent went up to +5 until the exact juveniles that I was referring to found it and modded it down. It demonstrates that they know exactly who they are.
"While Linux creator Linus Torvalds has previously stated that the Linux kernel will remain on the GPL v2 license, much of the code that makes up a complete Linux distribution is owned by the FSF..."
Translation:- "Novell, you haven't done what we want you to do. Therefore I'm going to try and scare you into getting back with the program. Fear is something which our friends in the FSF deal in rather a lot these days; our own fear of the dreaded bogeyman DRM, as well as the fear we try and instill in other people of the bad things that could happen if they don't do exactly as we say."
Go and crawl back under your rock, Bruce. Aside from anything else, there are at least 3 libc projects alone that I know of which either aren't under the GPL, or are, but aren't part of the GNU project and hence are not necessarily migrating to GPL v3. Novell can and I suspect will replace as much of their system as they need to; and I would recommend they do it as soon as possible, so that they no longer have to endure radical egomaniacs like you who somehow think that anybody who uses Linux is answerable to you by default. Another thing...fearmongering and making veiled, euphemistic threats really doesn't make you look good, in case you were wondering...that's the sort of behaviour I'd expect Steve Ballmer to engage in. Once again, with the FSF and the Debian Project's mujahideen, we see more evidence that the so-called cure is just as bad as the disease (Microsoft) itself, if not actually worse.
It's time for Linux to fork, IMHO...past time, in fact. Let Perens, Stallman, Kuhn, and all the other hard leftist whackjobs fork it and go and work on their own system. Meanwhile sane, mainstream society can retain the primary tree...as well as hopefully beginning work to replace the GNU project's applications as quickly as possible. Once that's done, FSF apologists will have no basis to continue screeching about how much we owe Stallman and how we have no right whatsoever to use Linux unless bow down and worship him and obey his (and his followers') every deranged decree. I've been accused in a recent post on here of having major problems with FOSS itself...I don't have problems with the software at all...I just really badly want and need to see some of the freaks get thrown over the side.
So, FSF...if you don't like what the rest of the world are doing, there's an easier alternative than trying to ram your own retrograde viewpoints down everyone else's throat, which IMHO would work a lot better for everyone. Fork off.
That way, those of us who want to can use Linux while at the same time being blissfully able to forget that you exist.
If you want to see comments that discuss how much they love MS and think vista is going to be super duper you are pobably in the wrong place.
No, I don't. I just don't want to see things modded Insightful when they're a trite, kneejerk response. To me anyway the definition of something being insightful is when some actual thought goes into the writing of it...the equivalent of five or so word, peanut gallery heckling doesn't qualify.
I saw the same thing with John Carmack's posts...in one reply he simply used the single word, "Yes," which got moderated +5 Interesting. I don't believe that that is something that excuses should be made for, either.
To try to be more mature than I was in my previous reply to the GP, my real problem with this perspective is that while you're describing what it is that *you* want, (which I don't have a problem with) it at least sounds like you're also saying that other people shouldn't be able to do/have what *they* want. (Which I most certainly *do* have major problems with) If Apple's software is what you want, that's fine. Don't, however, try and tell other people that they can't do their own thing...however customisable or skinnable that might be.
I think Apple are a disease, personally. This type of perspective is only one of a myriad of reasons why. Note, however, that this does not mean that I am trying to advocate that nobody else on the planet use their products...but it does mean that I've taken a very solemn vow that they are never going to see a single cent of my own money. That's the difference between our perspectives though...My perspective only means that *I* don't end up using Apple...it doesn't dictate (or try to dictate) what everybody else should or should not do.
This is the exactly the main problem I have with the FSF as well...in terms of Bradley Kuhn in particular holding the perspective that the GPL is the only license that should exist, and programmers should be forced to use it. It's wrong.
The parent is not Insightful, or anything close to it...it gets +5, Insightful for no other reason than that it conforms with the Slashdot groupthink.
The people running this place really need to come up with a new form of moderation...one which doesn't merely allow juvenile idiots to ensure that only their perspectives/belief system gets read or promoted. This is a problem which has existed for a long time...there are fairly clearly a number of people who get mod points who shouldn't.
That's basically all the current moderation system does...it measures how strongly the people with points agree/disagree with the post in question. Obviously that is abuse of the system...it isn't how it was intended to work. The problem however is that there is nothing to force people to be genuinely objective or honest.
Most damaging is the fact that if Novell, or anybody else, feel so bad about being associated with such a group of deranged cultists, the only thing they need to do is stop releasing their products under a license that involves the support of such "undesirable" people.
You conveniently ignore that my initial point was that my "tirade," was directed only towards a fairly specific subset of the Linux userbase. As I said then, so I repeat again now that I have spoken online with several people from Linux/FOSS related projects who I didn't consider cultic at all, but entirely reasonable.
I do not have a problem with FOSS in general...quite the contrary. What I have a problem with is radicalism which (I believe) in this case exists primarily due to neurological impairment within the people involved, rather than any *inherently* superior intellectual or moral position. That isn't necessarily meant as an attack, but what it is meant as is an observation that perhaps people who are disabled in such a manner should not be engaging in social/political activism. As well as Richard Stallman's self-diagnosis of autism, ESR has admitted to having Tourette's; it is thus not vindictive but merely honest to admit that the proverbial J. Random Hacker is *not* generally normal neurologically, and thus by definition is likely to experience considerable difficulty relating to people who are.
I am inclined to believe that Raymond's success in his outreach to the corporate world has been primarily due to the comparitive mildness of his own neurological abnormalities. Raymond's advantage is that his own case is sufficiently mild that he is able to have one foot in both worlds; while being able to relate to other technical people, he is also sufficiently capable of relating (at least to a large degree) to the neurotypical population as well.
Stallman, however, is largely the opposite. His autism is acute and debilitating, and is reflected by the rigidity and zealotry with which he holds his perspectives. The neurotypical population respect his perspectives in direct proportion to the degree that they can benefit from such. The primary difference between Raymond and Stallman from what I have seen is that Raymond is able to recognise that. Stallman's philosophy (and I see this continually reflected in his followers) is that people are inherently unaware of what is good for them, and must therefore be emotionally and intellectually manipulated into adopting his perspective. If after attempting that, the process fails, the people in question are dismissed as being contrary and worthless. We saw that also in some of the Debian people's attitude towards Mozilla with the Iceweasel issue. Don't agree with us, and aren't willing to capitulate completely? Fine. We'll get rid of you.
Do you have any idea how many wars have been fought because of this kind of attitude?
So that, fundamentally, is my problem. Not FOSS itself, but the idea that people and especially corporations are only of any value if they entirely capitulate to the program. It's wrong, it's exclusionary, and it's not the way forward, IMHO. You say people who believe strongly in FOSS shouldn't have to give up who they are; I'm fine with that. My point is that in my observation anywayz, Stallman/the FSF and the Debian project are only interested in other people if they are completely willing to give up who *they* are as well.
You're probably going to see this as crazy, but an analogy that I tend to draw between FOSS/Linux (due also to the autistic/neurologically diverse element) and its' adherents is the X-Men scenario...and ESR and Stallman with Xavier and Magneto, respectively. Stallman for a long time was also interested in outreach/converting people, but has increasingly (at least intellectually) gone on the warpath.
"We are the future, Charles. They no longer matter."
Think about it.