>Do you actually believe Microsoft's aims are the >same - or even close to - those of the Third Reich?
I believe Bill Gates' primary aim in founding Microsoft was to gain total dominance over the computing industry, and to create a singular, hegemonous computing environment. I also believe he intended to do this without giving a damn as to whether or not anyone else using or otherwise associated with computers desired his dictatorship. I also stick to my original assertion that the only reason why you or anyone else who claims to desire a computing monoculture does so for one of two reasons. a) To avoid having to use their brain, and b) because they've been taught to want it.
The money was a secondary priority, and was only truly important to him I believe insofar as it made it easier in many ways to persue his primary goal of domination.
I don't compare Microsoft to the Third Reich to that degree, no. But I do consider Bill Gates to be a megalomaniac, and to desire that the continued development of computing technology occurs only on his terms. That might not be the same form of tyranny that Hitler and other such people have persued...but it is a form of tyranny nonetheless.
Interesting. I write one post attempting to combat the use of mindless, rote groupthink, and the first reply to it contains yet another example of such.
Hitler *did* use that slogan, and his aims in using it were exactly the same as Microsoft's. The wikipedia text on Godwin's Law states that there are situations where comparisons with Hitler are appropriate and allowable, and I believe this qualifies.
I stick to my original point. Centralised unity/monoculture is the antithesis of free intellectual expression...which is precisely the reason why both Hitler and Microsoft have wanted it.
Diversity does not "hold open source back." It only does so in the minds (and I use the term "mind" rather loosely, here) of chimps like yourself, who've been brought up on Microsoft's "Eine Reich, Eine Volk, Eine OS," rhetoric. The thing that makes this worse, however is the fact that people don't advocate a monoculture because it's in any way a good thing...it most certainly isn't. They advocate it purely because they've been brainwashed by Microsoft to do so.
If diversity holds open source back in any manner, it does so only because those who desire a monoculture desire one precisely for the reason that a monoculture allows them to avoid having to think...which as we all know, is the one thing most human beings will do virtually anything in order to avoid having to do. A monoculture means that people who actually deliberately and consciously desire to be stupid lemmings are empowered to do so. If there's only one choice, you don't need to put any thought into making said choice. It is only those people that either have an active desire to avoid using their brains, or a fear of personal responsibility, who do not want choice. Unfortunately, I'm aware that that constitutes 98%-99% of the human population. You yourself however have a choice as to whether you also wish to be a lemming, and join the others in their journey over the cliff, or whether you choose to be self-determining. It's a case of the eternal red pill vs blue pill question again.
My answer to this hardware developer would be that Linux (or not just Linux - operating systems in general) primarily needs peripherals which talk to the rest of the hardware in a relatively straightfoward and sane way...unlike winmodems as probably the best example which slave off the CPU, and do so in an undiscoverable and intentionally proprietary/closed manner. Hardware shouldn't be designed to keep secrets...its purpose and means of performing its tasks should be as easily visible as possible. The more people who can figure out how the hardware works, or at the very least how to relatively easily adapt it for their particular operating system, the wider the potential adoption of said hardware will be, and the more unit sales and money you as a hardware developer will make.
It is gratifying to witness Slashdot occasionally returning to its autistic roots. Although in recent years the slogan of "News for Nerds," has become more and more undeserved, this particular story belongs squarely in the Nerd category.
Although this specific story is not one which I care about, it is in the general category shared by other stories which I very often definitely DO care about...and so it's good to know that/.'s editors are still willing to post this type of material. It's quintessential old-school Slashdot stuff.
>Pirates don't want any laws related to the >Internet: (what, so they aren't just not respecting >copyrights?) > >"They seek an Internet devoid of rules or law."
The thing that is monstrously hypocritical about this is that anybody who knows anything about Alberto Gonzales will know that the Bush government couldn't give a shit about the rule of law either...in fact they care about it less than most. They simply pretend to every so often when it suits their purposes.
It also doesn't matter whether the accused was or wasn't within America or American jurisdiction at the time whatever they're wanting to nail him for was committed. The bottom line in their minds is, "We want to nail him, we're going to nail him, and so the facts don't count."
Whether or not a person has committed a crime is completely irrelevant...in the minds of the Bush Geriatric Brigade, they have the right to do anything to anyone, up to and including killing them, if they simply decide they don't like someone.
Also, as far as the Australian government is concerned...Howard is a blatant and very visible quisling of Bush, and has been ever since either of them first took office. He IMHO needs to be tried for high treason just as much as Bush does. Howard is also a geriatric fascist after Bush's own heart.
That IMHO is the main problem...that the rest of us allow our governments to be subverted by a cabal of autocratic, senile old men. I've said before that these individuals belong in nursing homes...not the halls of government. It reminds me of when I found out about Charlton Heston being president of the NRA even after having been diagnosed (and very visibly afflicted with) Altzheimer's Disease. These are the sorts of people who rule our planet.
>I was branded a troll, and consigned to the >bit-bucket of everyone who mattered on the >lists. They told me, simply, "DIY or STFU."
Yep...that's why although I might worship them from a distance, I won't go within 20 miles of any of the BSD developers...ESPECIALLY Open, actually...what with what I've read about how prickly Theo is. That is the classic autistic UNIX mentality, however. Chronic elitism, and virtually a complete inability to relate to other human beings. They see themselves as the last bastion of human intelligence...the only problem is that on this last point, I tend to think that in believing that about themselves, the BSD people in particular are actually right.;-)
If OTOH the Gnome team genuinely are the group of general assholes that I seem to keep hearing they are, it's no great loss.;-) There are plenty of other window managers and desktop environments about, and I'm sure at least some of them have developers who have far more people skills and are more willing to listen to the requests of their users. My advice wouldn't be DIY, it'd be vote with your feet...if the Gnome peeps won't give you what you need, find another wm that has devs who will. The Gnome crew don't seem to care about becoming irrelevant...so let them.;) Gnome as a single project has probably always really been a solution in search of a problem anywayz...the world certainly won't stop turning if it dies.
>- the software support isn't there. No CATIA, no >ProE, no etc. Can't be an engineer using Linux >alone.
They sound like rather obscure/unusual applications. What is their function?
>it is still fucking slow. Hate to break it to >you, but as a long time xfce4 user, XP is still >faster.
Get a 2.6 series kernel, and compile it with the pre-emptible feature turned on, and SMTP support turned off if you've only got one processor. Make sure you also have a swap partition. In terms of distributions, this one might interest you.
In terms of window managers, if speed is important to you, don't use KDE. Compile a stripped down version of Enlightenment and use fbpanel in conjunction with it. I will be very surprised after you've done that if your RAM usage (before any other applications) is above 50 Mb. What hardware are you using?
>But it's slower for getting things done because >double-clicking an icon is easier than typing >/usr/share/baoeu/otehu/ -x -die. Pressing a >flurry of keys might feel faster, but it isn't >actually faster.
I strongly recommend that you familiarise yourself with the contents of this document, and also this one, if you have not already done so. You can download a version of make compatible with that tutorial from here. You may also be interested in downloading this program and learning about its use.
If after having a look at some of these tools and taking some time to learn/evaluate them, you still desire to remain GUI based, that's fine. Some people genuinely *are* more visually oriented, neurologically. But in order merely to set the record straight that use of the command line can indeed be remarkably powerful for those who are oriented towards it, I would invite you to as I said at least evaluate the above documents and tools. The command line takes some time and mental effort to become confident with, but once you are familiar with it, the levels of flexibility and automation it can offer you truly are unavailable anywhere else.
Lest anyone forget, Linux was originally written for the x86. To me that in itself means that if Linus is now moving away from x86, it's somewhat significant.
Linus makes it sound here as though his primary machine being a Mac is something of a coincidence, and it may be. But we could also possibly take it as a subtle (or not so subtle) hint that he believes that the x86 has had its time in the sun and is now in decline.
Anyway, even if you choose not to take this interpretation yourself, it's a reasonably safe bet that Intel themselves possibly will. Given the degree of reverence that a lot of people have for him, (I have a fairly high degree of respect for the man, naturally...but I don't worship him...partly because he's requested that people don't, and partly because as gifted as he might be, he quite simply *isn't* God) Linus is in a position to exert quite a lot of influence over said people's hardware choices if his become known. You can be sure that at least some Mac purchases are going to be made as a direct result of this article. Linus himself may very well not have meant for revealing his choice of primary hardware platform to be a product endorsement, but that is exactly what it will become. I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that it was actually Apple themselves who gave him his Mac...and if they did, from a marketing point of view it was a stroke of sheer genius.
The author draws a parallel to the earlier UNIX wars and the current variety of Linux distributions, and then claims that because of this, Microsoft are laughing all the way to the bank. I think he's wrong, and here's why.
1) Although it's true that there are a lot of Linux distributions, in practice at most five of them would be used by 99.5% of the Linux using population. Of those five, (Debian, Red Hat, SUSE, Mandrake, and a tie between Gentoo and Slack) three are RPM-based, which to a degree limits variation in their overall style, and also, many of the more popular "smaller" distributions are themselves derivatives of Debian or Slackware. Because of that, it's possible in practical terms to pare the core number of most popular distributions down even further, to just two: Debian and Red Hat's offerings/RPM based derivatives.
2) I myself haven't seen any of the division he talks about in the commercial space. From everything I can see, in the corporate world Red Hat is the undisputed king, as much as it pains me to admit it. Corporations won't buy anything unless a contract to feed them, burp them, and change their nappies goes along with it...and for that, Red Hat and IBM are the two primary sources.
3) Microsoft are doing anything but laughing these days. The author needs to go here and learn about the attitude Microsoft have developed towards Linux on their own, and it's not one of bravado. The stench of fear coming from Redmond over the past two years ago in particular has been palpable...Ballmer has been trying to hide it, but he is fairly obviously terrified of the progress Linux has been making, and with good reason. If Microsoft are so confident that Linux isn't going anywhere, then why has Darth Bill been making flying visits to different places lately, including Australia? Why did Ballmer personally try and prevent Munich's conversion to Linux, if it wasn't significant? I also notice that mention of Longhorn was conspicuous in its absence from the article...this is understandable, as it would not have aided the author's argument.
4) The UNIX wars were not on their own responsible for Microsoft's success. They didn't help, sure...but before Linux UNIX would not have achieved mainstream relevance regardless of what happened. The reason why I can say that with complete confidence is because UNIX as an operating system/s was written with the assumption that the human being at the keyboard actually enjoyed using his or her brain, when the truth is that around 95% of human beings do not. The main reason why Windows took over the world where computing is concerned is because it was written with the assumption that whether the person using it was intelligent or not, the one thing most human beings despise doing more than anything else is engaging in intellectual effort. The *only* reason why Linux has come out of the closet now is because of the effort that has been made towards user-friendliness for it. In the 140 IQ crowd, the BSDs are still almost entirely non-mainstream.
That said, open source UNIX is the future, and I believe it could possibly define computer use for the next several hundred years, assuming humanity lasts that long. The reason why is that OSX and Linux are proof of concept that although usability was not an issue that UNIX's initial userbase cared about, it is not a hurdle that the operating system is unable to overcome.
Gates was lucky. At the birth of anything new there is chaos, and for a while a number of different competing lifeforms exist. Eventually however, natural selection kicks in and standardisation takes place, as is gradually occuring now. Gates was able to take advantage of the primordial soup phase, and I begin to suspect that in the furthest recesses of his own soul, he has the necessary level of awareness to know that, as much as he may not want to accept it on a conscious level. Microsoft are indeed a dinosaur, and their extinction, albeit a slow process, is already at hand.
I will admit that I'm surprised that I haven't heard about certain bloggers being visited by the Men in Black for referring to Bush as the living, breathing personification of evil yet...especially when I consider the number of bloggers who do so. Although I suppose it's extremely possible that such visits have taken place, and we simply haven't heard about them. Still, I would have thought sites like this, would be the target of der neugeboren Fuhrer's jackboots even if no others were.
NOT a good idea. Has anyone else here heard of the term "conflict of interests" before?
The OSI IMHO should most certainly NOT be either directly commercial, or allow any commercial entity to use it in order to advance their own cause. I'm not sure how they're meant to avoid that happening if they start putting corporate staff in leadership positions.
>Also, Bruce Perens has numerous conflicts of >interest in the matter, so his opinions should >be read in context.
I will admit that one thing that has come to bother me about Debian is the amount of "Debian IS Linux!" groupthink that seems to have sprung up. It is the persistent attitude I see online that Debian and Red Hat's offerings (and maybe SUSE) are the only Linux distributions in existence worth mentioning. To put it bluntly, they're not.
Debian might have as many wonderful benefits as any other distribution in existence (and I don't doubt that it does) but to the lemmings guilty of the above attitude, (and I think you know who you are) you might want to consider the idea of downloading a recent Slackware or Gentoo release and seeing what other people are doing from time to time...if only to maintain your awareness of the fact that said other people are actually there.
>Public domain software is truly free - GPL and >other copyleft software still has restrictions.
That's true, but (*takes a deep breath over the idea of defending the GPL;)) copyleft is useful at times. Case in point...a while back I was trying to find a copy of The Science of Getting Rich online, which is supposed to be public domain. There's one main woman who is making money out of it, and a heap of others...but it was virtually impossible for me to find a copy of it that wasn't that woman's derived work. The only place I could was on Wikisource, where it was licensed under the GFDL. The point is that the few people who'd earlier been able to get hold of a copy of the original had then disallowed access to anything but their derivative work, in keeping with sound economic philosophy, but completely undermining the point of the book being in the public domain. The reason why copyleft can at times be useful is because it is exactly that practice that it is designed to protect against. That doesn't mean that I believe that everything on the planet should be copyrighted via the GPL...I consider RMS' vendetta against the BSD license to be particularly obnoxious, and I'm not one of the man's fans generally, as I've written about at times before, (check out my comments page if you're interested there) but as I said, the GPL does have its place for certain things...I just wish Stallman would accept the idea that other licenses have the right to exist as well.
>Today, that seems nonsensical - but in 100 >years, when we're all uploaded bits in the >Matrix, it may be the principle that protects >us!
My money says it's going to be a long, long time before we would see sentient artificial intelligence that is even remotely deserving of being described via that phrase...probably 200 years at least. Granted, they have silly things like that Alice chatterbot being given awards now, but if Alice is AI, then so is Google...and so, for that matter, is any db-driven website...since that is all Alice was...a textual db with pattern matching. That IMHO is not intelligent...it's not something that could even remotely be considered such. (Not outside the author's, judges, and media's willing imaginations, that is)
Direct neural VR is closer...I could believe that from a *purely technical* standpoint we could have something like the Matrix inside 50-100 years...other people might laugh at this, but I periodically read about researchers making leaps and bounds where DNI is concerned...it's coming along. The thing that would hold us back there though would be social, not technological. There might be a few of us fringe dwellers who'd leap at the opportunity to have DNI...but my guess is that Joe Six-pack is likely to have more than a few reservations about the idea...and religious communities will especially.
Understand also that it's entirely possible for a technology to have been invented without it being in widespread use...as a great example, UNIX has been with us since the 70s, but it's probably only in the last ten years or so that it's gained really prime time exposure...Linux is still considered at least partially fringe, and if BSD exists on the mainstream radar at all it's purely because of Linux.
I'm also almost schizophrenic enough to believe that a working means of time travel just might be sitting in somebody's basement out there...but you can bet money that if that ever does get invented, its inventor/s won't be talking...and for some very sound reasons.
>Your problem is that you pit FOSS licences and >their supporters against each other for no good >reason.
Er...I think that fight's already been started...and not by me. Stallman thinks everyone is entitled to his opinion, and his opinion only. That to me, by definition, is not freedom.
This might interest you as well...it talks about some of the other, more practical problems associated with the GPL...Stallman's megalomaniacal egotism notwithstanding.
Before you also accuse me of doing exactly the same thing he does here, realise that my interest would not be in seeing the GPL erradicated completely, at all...Rather what I want is for Stallman to stop telling people that the GPL is the *only* valid OSS license in existence, and that the others should not exist. They should be able to just as much as the GPL itself does, IMHO.
I can definitely understand having strong, rather passionate negative feelings towards certain individuals within US politics who *claim* to be Christian. I experience such feelings myself. (I won't name names, but I don't think I really need to...the individuals in question know who they are, and so do most of the rest of us)
However...if hatred of such "Christians" extends to hatred of Christ himself, it might interest you to know that Jesus most likely would actually share your feelings towards such people. One of the things which got him killed was a habit of several times becoming furious with the religious leaders of the day, reprimanding them and calling them hypocrites, among other things.
It always interests me when I see people (justifiably, IMHO) expressing anger/hatred/frustration towards Bush and his followers, but at the same time mistakenly extending that to Christ, because they make the assumption that Jesus and Bush are ideologically/attitudinally similar. What people would find out if they took the time to do some research on the matter however is that Christ and Bush are actually diametric opposites...In fact I can hardly think of two individuals who have less in common with each other.
My motivation in pointing this out is not that I'm in any way "turn or burn" fundamentalist, but that I'm someone who in a hopefully more moderate, historical perspective sees Christ as having been a worthwhile human being...Sufficiently so that at times it grieves me somewhat that he is in any way associated with the likes of Bush. I'm not saying that I'm angry with you here...Assuming that Bush and Jesus are similar is a mistake a lot of people make, primarily due to the claims Bush makes...but it is a mistake that is based on a lack of accurate information. I don't believe anyone's going to go to hell for having the wrong idea here...but having the historical record straight in virtually any instance is a good idea.
Look but don't touch that particular code, maybe...but how are they going to enforce/prove it if someone looks at their code and gets ideas from it...and doesn't use their exact syntax, or even copy their entire concept verbatim?
If Microsoft are serious here, they've got a couple of different options:-
1) Use a license like the APSL or Mozilla License, which from memory does have a few commercial stipulations.
2) Come up with their own version of something like the LGPL, in the sense that there are terms with regards to specifically where the source can and can't be used.
3) Use the loss leader approach. Find something they don't really care about losing too much, (most likely something in their dev department, since that's not their primary bread and butter) and put it under the BSD license. Bill has already been quoted at one of his keynotes as saying that he likes the BSD license, or at least prefers it to the GPL, and he could earn himself some major PR points if he decides to prove it in practical terms...and good PR is something that Microsoft needs as much of as it can get these days. This would also help a few other people. It could score some free PR for FreeBSD, and if Bill was really smart he could even ally with the FreeBSD Foundation and Apple with the goal of driving back the GPL somewhat...Something which I for one wouldn't necessarily see as a bad thing. Stallman gives himself far too much credit for FOSS in general...the man is in dire need of being put squarely back in his box, in my opinion. More promotion of the BSD and other licenses could go a long way towards demonstrating to him that the world does not in fact need him anywhere near as much as he likes to think. I'm aware the GPL zealots will now materialise howling out of the woodwork and mod me a troll, as they generally do when I express this kind of opinion...but they are welcome to mod me a troll as much as they like...it won't silence me.
Notice how the headline says "some developing countries." I've postulated for some time that the UN exists in practical terms as very little other than a promotional vehicle for the Third World, and articles like this should prove it to those of us who might still have lingering doubts.
Mind you, that's not to say that I necessarily consider the UN to be any more or less evil than any other group, relatively speaking. Pretty much everybody wants to take over the world these days...and because most of the countries the UN represents can't overcome domestic famine problems, let alone the rest of the planet, they have to band together and funnel their ambitions to do so into a collective body. As far as vehicles for pushing the global domination agenda are concerned, Israel has America, America has itself, Europe has the EU, and Africa/Asia has the UN.
Given that all of the above people more or less want the same thing, we then must ask...which of these particular megalomaniacal entities do we want presiding over ICANN? I think it's fairly safe to say that whoever else it is, it shouldn't be the UN. The Internet isn't a technology with which the archetypical UN member-state really has a lot of experience with...Concepts that they tend to be a lot more familiar with include fun things like armed neo-feudalism amid constant inter-ethnic geurilla warfare, a GDP primarily supported by small arms and drug trafficking, a phone network that might reach 10% of the population (if they're lucky, and if said phone network is able to survive random RPGs for any length of time) and Marxist or Mussolinist dictators.
That isn't to say that I in any way advocate the current US government either. Bush might not be a dictator himself yet, but by all accounts he's spending 25 hours a day working on it. I think my point here is that ICANN is run by (one hopes, anyway) and for the benefit of people who are an order of magnitude more intelligent, mature, and generally civilised than anybody you normally see working in politics. Because of this, it's vitally important that we keep any advisory or instrumental boards/groups associated with the Internet *out* of the hands of any and all political entities whatsoever. Groups like the IETF (and ICANN, to a degree) are customarily populated by, among others, computer programmers and scientists...ergo, people who again customarily have a brain in their heads. Governments, by contrast, are (at least in the contemporary sense) largely the domain of corrupt, completely emotive geriatric religious fanatics, to whom reason is altogether an alien concept. We need to keep our representative groups in the hands of those who actually do have the necessary neurological/cognitive capacity to govern effectively, rather than allowing them to fall under the perview of those who most assuredly do not.
The only operators they're going to be able to enforce this with will be the big fish like iiNet...although I doubt they will be able to do it even there...so most small-time sysadmins can rest easy. Laws like these are passed based on the assumption that governments can rule the Internet in the same way they govern things offline, simply because they want to. They do not seem to be able to get the fact that they are unable to do this into their utterly empty heads.
This is more of the same torch-and-pitchforks, hand over fist bungling facism that we've been seeing for years now, both here and in the US. Laws like these are written and passed by brainless, senile geriatrics who generally have only the faintest grasp of any form of technology invented since the 1970s or so.
The only law I'm in favour of passing is one that eternally bans anyone over the age of 45 from ever holding government office in any country on the planet, ever again...because there is abundant evidence that it is at about that age that a person's brain begins to decompose inside their head. We need to get the elderly *out* of the halls of government, and back into the convalescent homes/mental health system where they belong.
>analysed vulnerabilities and patching and were >forced to conclude that Windows Server 2003 is >more secure than Red Hat Linux.
From my experience, this I could actually quite easily believe...in terms of Dead Rat. Let them do a comparison with either hardened Debian or hardened Gentoo however...the results there would be radically different.
Dead Rat markets exactly the kind of predigested, homogenised slop that is demanded by the corporate mindset. (or lack thereof) The bottom line is, anything that is developed for sale to corporations is going to be inferior to anything which is NOT developed primarily for that purpose. But again of course, it's the brainless corporate sheep who more or less decide whether Linux gets mainstream adoption completely...so Dead Rat is all we've got manning the breach...definitely not cause for confidence. I suppose what I should be grateful for is the fact that they don't do these studies with Linux being represented by Mandrake...the results there would be even worse.
This is the sort of thing which absolutely enrages me...and there's nothing whatever that we can do about it.
I wonder how much Game group paid the judge. Is there anyone left on the planet who is sufficiently naive or insane as to believe that there is any validity whatsoever in the claim of equal treatment/representation under the law? The legal system is one of the main reasons why I hardly ever leave my bedroom...in my mind having virtually anything to do with offline society these days is suicidal.
>Eg. Linus doesn't even want that role, eventhough a >lot of programmers want him as a voice for F/OSS. >How does that make RMS egocentric?
But that's exactly the point. The entire reason why Linus doesn't want the limelight is because he's probably the only popular figure associated with Linux from what I've seen who *doesn't* have an ego problem.
Also, in terms of what I mean by RMS having his own agenda...He tries to directly tell other people to adopt his belief system. In the case of FreeBSD as a great example, I don't believe he should be specifically telling people not to use the BSD license...which he does. My main problem with him is that I don't believe that in his mind, people/groups who disagree with him should be allowed to exist...if he had/displayed the attitude that not everyone else is going to agree with every little detail of what he believes, and that that was acceptable, I wouldn't have a problem...but the thing is, he doesn't. He thinks everyone is entitled to his opinion, and from all indications is opposed to diversity of opinion if it doesn't conform to his own. In my mind, that is not freedom.
>and I realised: usenet was dead.... >but why ? really someone tell me why ?
a) The Internet became mainstream.
b) Because of a), the main group using Usenet shifted from programmers/scientists/intellectuals (ergo, people actually *worth* listening to) to brainsick war veterans, (whose primary reason for using it was the fact that they were deranged and antisocial to the point where nobody offline wanted anything to do with them) sociopathic college students, paedophiles/sexual deviants of various different stripes, and the truly hard-core mentally ill individuals who inhabit groups like alt.religion.scientology and alt.conspiracy.
c) Genre/group boundaries virtually aren't respected at all these days...certainly on the alt.* heirarchy anywayz. Crossposting is probably more the exception now than the rule, which means that unless you've got a killfile a mile long, having a coherent conversation is extremely difficult.
d) The protocol has become obsolete and redundant, and has been replaced by special-interest CMS driven Web sites which generally require passwords to join. Because such sites require passwords for posting access, the forums hosted by them do not experience casual, drive-by trolling by the sorts of idiots one generally encounters on Usenet.
e) Also because of a), Usenet began to be increasingly used as a supplement to the p2p filesharing networks, which also is an application that the protocol was never designed for. Hence, not only did this result in some of the text-related traffic dropping off, it meant ISPs were now being asked to carry an obscure, dying protocol with an increasing level of large binary traffic, free of charge.
f) Again because of a), Usenet has now also been inundated with a very high degree of spam. So this, taken in conjunction with the rest of the above, have together had the result of making the protocol largely unusable, and certainly undesirable when compared to the alternatives. Even its' destributed nature has been made obselete by such advances as Yahoo groups...traffic through those go to everyone who wants it, and nobody who doesn't. The groups are also generally moderated in order to ensure intelligent/sane discussion, and to filter out spam. In other words, the available alternatives to Usenet are superior in every possible respect.
Slashdot Mirror
>Do you actually believe Microsoft's aims are the
>same - or even close to - those of the Third Reich?
I believe Bill Gates' primary aim in founding Microsoft was to gain total dominance over the computing industry, and to create a singular, hegemonous computing environment. I also believe he intended to do this without giving a damn as to whether or not anyone else using or otherwise associated with computers desired his dictatorship. I also stick to my original assertion that the only reason why you or anyone else who claims to desire a computing monoculture does so for one of two reasons.
a) To avoid having to use their brain, and
b) because they've been taught to want it.
The money was a secondary priority, and was only truly important to him I believe insofar as it made it easier in many ways to persue his primary goal of domination.
I don't compare Microsoft to the Third Reich to that degree, no. But I do consider Bill Gates to be a megalomaniac, and to desire that the continued development of computing technology occurs only on his terms. That might not be the same form of tyranny that Hitler and other such people have persued...but it is a form of tyranny nonetheless.
Interesting. I write one post attempting to combat the use of mindless, rote groupthink, and the first reply to it contains yet another example of such.
Hitler *did* use that slogan, and his aims in using it were exactly the same as Microsoft's. The wikipedia text on Godwin's Law states that there are situations where comparisons with Hitler are appropriate and allowable, and I believe this qualifies.
I stick to my original point. Centralised unity/monoculture is the antithesis of free intellectual expression...which is precisely the reason why both Hitler and Microsoft have wanted it.
Diversity does not "hold open source back." It only does so in the minds (and I use the term "mind" rather loosely, here) of chimps like yourself, who've been brought up on Microsoft's "Eine Reich, Eine Volk, Eine OS," rhetoric. The thing that makes this worse, however is the fact that people don't advocate a monoculture because it's in any way a good thing...it most certainly isn't. They advocate it purely because they've been brainwashed by Microsoft to do so.
If diversity holds open source back in any manner, it does so only because those who desire a monoculture desire one precisely for the reason that a monoculture allows them to avoid having to think...which as we all know, is the one thing most human beings will do virtually anything in order to avoid having to do. A monoculture means that people who actually deliberately and consciously desire to be stupid lemmings are empowered to do so. If there's only one choice, you don't need to put any thought into making said choice. It is only those people that either have an active desire to avoid using their brains, or a fear of personal responsibility, who do not want choice. Unfortunately, I'm aware that that constitutes 98%-99% of the human population. You yourself however have a choice as to whether you also wish to be a lemming, and join the others in their journey over the cliff, or whether you choose to be self-determining. It's a case of the eternal red pill vs blue pill question again.
My answer to this hardware developer would be that Linux (or not just Linux - operating systems in general) primarily needs peripherals which talk to the rest of the hardware in a relatively straightfoward and sane way...unlike winmodems as probably the best example which slave off the CPU, and do so in an undiscoverable and intentionally proprietary/closed manner. Hardware shouldn't be designed to keep secrets...its purpose and means of performing its tasks should be as easily visible as possible. The more people who can figure out how the hardware works, or at the very least how to relatively easily adapt it for their particular operating system, the wider the potential adoption of said hardware will be, and the more unit sales and money you as a hardware developer will make.
It is gratifying to witness Slashdot occasionally returning to its autistic roots. Although in recent years the slogan of "News for Nerds," has become more and more undeserved, this particular story belongs squarely in the Nerd category.
/.'s editors are still willing to post this type of material. It's quintessential old-school Slashdot stuff.
Although this specific story is not one which I care about, it is in the general category shared by other stories which I very often definitely DO care about...and so it's good to know that
>Pirates don't want any laws related to the
>Internet: (what, so they aren't just not respecting
>copyrights?)
>
>"They seek an Internet devoid of rules or law."
The thing that is monstrously hypocritical about this is that anybody who knows anything about Alberto Gonzales will know that the Bush government couldn't give a shit about the rule of law either...in fact they care about it less than most. They simply pretend to every so often when it suits their purposes.
It also doesn't matter whether the accused was or wasn't within America or American jurisdiction at the time whatever they're wanting to nail him for was committed. The bottom line in their minds is, "We want to nail him, we're going to nail him, and so the facts don't count."
Whether or not a person has committed a crime is completely irrelevant...in the minds of the Bush Geriatric Brigade, they have the right to do anything to anyone, up to and including killing them, if they simply decide they don't like someone.
Also, as far as the Australian government is concerned...Howard is a blatant and very visible quisling of Bush, and has been ever since either of them first took office. He IMHO needs to be tried for high treason just as much as Bush does. Howard is also a geriatric fascist after Bush's own heart.
That IMHO is the main problem...that the rest of us allow our governments to be subverted by a cabal of autocratic, senile old men. I've said before that these individuals belong in nursing homes...not the halls of government. It reminds me of when I found out about Charlton Heston being president of the NRA even after having been diagnosed (and very visibly afflicted with) Altzheimer's Disease. These are the sorts of people who rule our planet.
>I was branded a troll, and consigned to the
;-)
;-) There are plenty of other window managers and desktop environments about, and I'm sure at least some of them have developers who have far more people skills and are more willing to listen to the requests of their users. My advice wouldn't be DIY, it'd be vote with your feet...if the Gnome peeps won't give you what you need, find another wm that has devs who will. The Gnome crew don't seem to care about becoming irrelevant...so let them. ;) Gnome as a single project has probably always really been a solution in search of a problem anywayz...the world certainly won't stop turning if it dies.
>bit-bucket of everyone who mattered on the
>lists. They told me, simply, "DIY or STFU."
Yep...that's why although I might worship them from a distance, I won't go within 20 miles of any of the BSD developers...ESPECIALLY Open, actually...what with what I've read about how prickly Theo is. That is the classic autistic UNIX mentality, however. Chronic elitism, and virtually a complete inability to relate to other human beings. They see themselves as the last bastion of human intelligence...the only problem is that on this last point, I tend to think that in believing that about themselves, the BSD people in particular are actually right.
If OTOH the Gnome team genuinely are the group of general assholes that I seem to keep hearing they are, it's no great loss.
>- the software support isn't there. No CATIA, no
>ProE, no etc. Can't be an engineer using Linux
>alone.
They sound like rather obscure/unusual applications. What is their function?
>it is still fucking slow. Hate to break it to
>you, but as a long time xfce4 user, XP is still
>faster.
Get a 2.6 series kernel, and compile it with the pre-emptible feature turned on, and SMTP support turned off if you've only got one processor. Make sure you also have a swap partition. In terms of distributions, this one might interest you.
In terms of window managers, if speed is important to you, don't use KDE. Compile a stripped down version of Enlightenment and use fbpanel in conjunction with it. I will be very surprised after you've done that if your RAM usage (before any other applications) is above 50 Mb. What hardware are you using?
>But it's slower for getting things done because
>double-clicking an icon is easier than typing
>/usr/share/baoeu/otehu/ -x -die. Pressing a
>flurry of keys might feel faster, but it isn't
>actually faster.
I strongly recommend that you familiarise yourself with the contents of this document, and also this one, if you have not already done so. You can download a version of make compatible with that tutorial from here.
You may also be interested in downloading this program and learning about its use.
If after having a look at some of these tools and taking some time to learn/evaluate them, you still desire to remain GUI based, that's fine. Some people genuinely *are* more visually oriented, neurologically. But in order merely to set the record straight that use of the command line can indeed be remarkably powerful for those who are oriented towards it, I would invite you to as I said at least evaluate the above documents and tools. The command line takes some time and mental effort to become confident with, but once you are familiar with it, the levels of flexibility and automation it can offer you truly are unavailable anywhere else.
Lest anyone forget, Linux was originally written for the x86. To me that in itself means that if Linus is now moving away from x86, it's somewhat significant.
Linus makes it sound here as though his primary machine being a Mac is something of a coincidence, and it may be. But we could also possibly take it as a subtle (or not so subtle) hint that he believes that the x86 has had its time in the sun and is now in decline.
Anyway, even if you choose not to take this interpretation yourself, it's a reasonably safe bet that Intel themselves possibly will. Given the degree of reverence that a lot of people have for him, (I have a fairly high degree of respect for the man, naturally...but I don't worship him...partly because he's requested that people don't, and partly because as gifted as he might be, he quite simply *isn't* God) Linus is in a position to exert quite a lot of influence over said people's hardware choices if his become known. You can be sure that at least some Mac purchases are going to be made as a direct result of this article. Linus himself may very well not have meant for revealing his choice of primary hardware platform to be a product endorsement, but that is exactly what it will become. I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that it was actually Apple themselves who gave him his Mac...and if they did, from a marketing point of view it was a stroke of sheer genius.
that was meant to be *sub* 140 IQ crowd. Oops. ;-)
The author draws a parallel to the earlier UNIX wars and the current variety of Linux distributions, and then claims that because of this, Microsoft are laughing all the way to the bank. I think he's wrong, and here's why.
1) Although it's true that there are a lot of Linux distributions, in practice at most five of them would be used by 99.5% of the Linux using population. Of those five, (Debian, Red Hat, SUSE, Mandrake, and a tie between Gentoo and Slack) three are RPM-based, which to a degree limits variation in their overall style, and also, many of the more popular "smaller" distributions are themselves derivatives of Debian or Slackware. Because of that, it's possible in practical terms to pare the core number of most popular distributions down even further, to just two: Debian and Red Hat's offerings/RPM based derivatives.
2) I myself haven't seen any of the division he talks about in the commercial space. From everything I can see, in the corporate world Red Hat is the undisputed king, as much as it pains me to admit it. Corporations won't buy anything unless a contract to feed them, burp them, and change their nappies goes along with it...and for that, Red Hat and IBM are the two primary sources.
3) Microsoft are doing anything but laughing these days. The author needs to go here and learn about the attitude Microsoft have developed towards Linux on their own, and it's not one of bravado. The stench of fear coming from Redmond over the past two years ago in particular has been palpable...Ballmer has been trying to hide it, but he is fairly obviously terrified of the progress Linux has been making, and with good reason. If Microsoft are so confident that Linux isn't going anywhere, then why has Darth Bill been making flying visits to different places lately, including Australia? Why did Ballmer personally try and prevent Munich's conversion to Linux, if it wasn't significant? I also notice that mention of Longhorn was conspicuous in its absence from the article...this is understandable, as it would not have aided the author's argument.
4) The UNIX wars were not on their own responsible for Microsoft's success. They didn't help, sure...but before Linux UNIX would not have achieved mainstream relevance regardless of what happened. The reason why I can say that with complete confidence is because UNIX as an operating system/s was written with the assumption that the human being at the keyboard actually enjoyed using his or her brain, when the truth is that around 95% of human beings do not. The main reason why Windows took over the world where computing is concerned is because it was written with the assumption that whether the person using it was intelligent or not, the one thing most human beings despise doing more than anything else is engaging in intellectual effort. The *only* reason why Linux has come out of the closet now is because of the effort that has been made towards user-friendliness for it. In the 140 IQ crowd, the BSDs are still almost entirely non-mainstream.
That said, open source UNIX is the future, and I believe it could possibly define computer use for the next several hundred years, assuming humanity lasts that long. The reason why is that OSX and Linux are proof of concept that although usability was not an issue that UNIX's initial userbase cared about, it is not a hurdle that the operating system is unable to overcome.
Gates was lucky. At the birth of anything new there is chaos, and for a while a number of different competing lifeforms exist. Eventually however, natural selection kicks in and standardisation takes place, as is gradually occuring now. Gates was able to take advantage of the primordial soup phase, and I begin to suspect that in the furthest recesses of his own soul, he has the necessary level of awareness to know that, as much as he may not want to accept it on a conscious level. Microsoft are indeed a dinosaur, and their extinction, albeit a slow process, is already at hand.
I will admit that I'm surprised that I haven't heard about certain bloggers being visited by the Men in Black for referring to Bush as the living, breathing personification of evil yet...especially when I consider the number of bloggers who do so. Although I suppose it's extremely possible that such visits have taken place, and we simply haven't heard about them. Still, I would have thought sites like this, would be the target of der neugeboren Fuhrer's jackboots even if no others were.
NOT a good idea. Has anyone else here heard of the term "conflict of interests" before?
The OSI IMHO should most certainly NOT be either directly commercial, or allow any commercial entity to use it in order to advance their own cause. I'm not sure how they're meant to avoid that happening if they start putting corporate staff in leadership positions.
>Slashdot really needs to cool off over this.
>Also, Bruce Perens has numerous conflicts of
>interest in the matter, so his opinions should
>be read in context.
I will admit that one thing that has come to bother me about Debian is the amount of "Debian IS Linux!" groupthink that seems to have sprung up. It is the persistent attitude I see online that Debian and Red Hat's offerings (and maybe SUSE) are the only Linux distributions in existence worth mentioning. To put it bluntly, they're not.
Debian might have as many wonderful benefits as any other distribution in existence (and I don't doubt that it does) but to the lemmings guilty of the above attitude, (and I think you know who you are) you might want to consider the idea of downloading a recent Slackware or Gentoo release and seeing what other people are doing from time to time...if only to maintain your awareness of the fact that said other people are actually there.
>Public domain software is truly free - GPL and
;)) copyleft is useful at times. Case in point...a while back I was trying to find a copy of The Science of Getting Rich online, which is supposed to be public domain. There's one main woman who is making money out of it, and a heap of others...but it was virtually impossible for me to find a copy of it that wasn't that woman's derived work. The only place I could was on Wikisource, where it was licensed under the GFDL. The point is that the few people who'd earlier been able to get hold of a copy of the original had then disallowed access to anything but their derivative work, in keeping with sound economic philosophy, but completely undermining the point of the book being in the public domain. The reason why copyleft can at times be useful is because it is exactly that practice that it is designed to protect against. That doesn't mean that I believe that everything on the planet should be copyrighted via the GPL...I consider RMS' vendetta against the BSD license to be particularly obnoxious, and I'm not one of the man's fans generally, as I've written about at times before, (check out my comments page if you're interested there) but as I said, the GPL does have its place for certain things...I just wish Stallman would accept the idea that other licenses have the right to exist as well.
>other copyleft software still has restrictions.
That's true, but (*takes a deep breath over the idea of defending the GPL
>Today, that seems nonsensical - but in 100
>years, when we're all uploaded bits in the
>Matrix, it may be the principle that protects
>us!
My money says it's going to be a long, long time before we would see sentient artificial intelligence that is even remotely deserving of being described via that phrase...probably 200 years at least. Granted, they have silly things like that Alice chatterbot being given awards now, but if Alice is AI, then so is Google...and so, for that matter, is any db-driven website...since that is all Alice was...a textual db with pattern matching. That IMHO is not intelligent...it's not something that could even remotely be considered such. (Not outside the author's, judges, and media's willing imaginations, that is)
Direct neural VR is closer...I could believe that from a *purely technical* standpoint we could have something like the Matrix inside 50-100 years...other people might laugh at this, but I periodically read about researchers making leaps and bounds where DNI is concerned...it's coming along. The thing that would hold us back there though would be social, not technological. There might be a few of us fringe dwellers who'd leap at the opportunity to have DNI...but my guess is that Joe Six-pack is likely to have more than a few reservations about the idea...and religious communities will especially.
Understand also that it's entirely possible for a technology to have been invented without it being in widespread use...as a great example, UNIX has been with us since the 70s, but it's probably only in the last ten years or so that it's gained really prime time exposure...Linux is still considered at least partially fringe, and if BSD exists on the mainstream radar at all it's purely because of Linux.
I'm also almost schizophrenic enough to believe that a working means of time travel just might be sitting in somebody's basement out there...but you can bet money that if that ever does get invented, its inventor/s won't be talking...and for some very sound reasons.
>Your problem is that you pit FOSS licences and
>their supporters against each other for no good
>reason.
Er...I think that fight's already been started...and not by me. Stallman thinks everyone is entitled to his opinion, and his opinion only. That to me, by definition, is not freedom.
This might interest you as well...it talks about some of the other, more practical problems associated with the GPL...Stallman's megalomaniacal egotism notwithstanding.
Before you also accuse me of doing exactly the same thing he does here, realise that my interest would not be in seeing the GPL erradicated completely, at all...Rather what I want is for Stallman to stop telling people that the GPL is the *only* valid OSS license in existence, and that the others should not exist. They should be able to just as much as the GPL itself does, IMHO.
I can definitely understand having strong, rather passionate negative feelings towards certain individuals within US politics who *claim* to be Christian. I experience such feelings myself. (I won't name names, but I don't think I really need to...the individuals in question know who they are, and so do most of the rest of us)
However...if hatred of such "Christians" extends to hatred of Christ himself, it might interest you to know that Jesus most likely would actually share your feelings towards such people. One of the things which got him killed was a habit of several times becoming furious with the religious leaders of the day, reprimanding them and calling them hypocrites, among other things.
It always interests me when I see people (justifiably, IMHO) expressing anger/hatred/frustration towards Bush and his followers, but at the same time mistakenly extending that to Christ, because they make the assumption that Jesus and Bush are ideologically/attitudinally similar. What people would find out if they took the time to do some research on the matter however is that Christ and Bush are actually diametric opposites...In fact I can hardly think of two individuals who have less in common with each other.
My motivation in pointing this out is not that I'm in any way "turn or burn" fundamentalist, but that I'm someone who in a hopefully more moderate, historical perspective sees Christ as having been a worthwhile human being...Sufficiently so that at times it grieves me somewhat that he is in any way associated with the likes of Bush. I'm not saying that I'm angry with you here...Assuming that Bush and Jesus are similar is a mistake a lot of people make, primarily due to the claims Bush makes...but it is a mistake that is based on a lack of accurate information. I don't believe anyone's going to go to hell for having the wrong idea here...but having the historical record straight in virtually any instance is a good idea.
Look but don't touch that particular code, maybe...but how are they going to enforce/prove it if someone looks at their code and gets ideas from it...and doesn't use their exact syntax, or even copy their entire concept verbatim?
If Microsoft are serious here, they've got a couple of different options:-
1) Use a license like the APSL or Mozilla License, which from memory does have a few commercial stipulations.
2) Come up with their own version of something like the LGPL, in the sense that there are terms with regards to specifically where the source can and can't be used.
3) Use the loss leader approach. Find something they don't really care about losing too much, (most likely something in their dev department, since that's not their primary bread and butter) and put it under the BSD license. Bill has already been quoted at one of his keynotes as saying that he likes the BSD license, or at least prefers it to the GPL, and he could earn himself some major PR points if he decides to prove it in practical terms...and good PR is something that Microsoft needs as much of as it can get these days. This would also help a few other people. It could score some free PR for FreeBSD, and if Bill was really smart he could even ally with the FreeBSD Foundation and Apple with the goal of driving back the GPL somewhat...Something which I for one wouldn't necessarily see as a bad thing. Stallman gives himself far too much credit for FOSS in general...the man is in dire need of being put squarely back in his box, in my opinion. More promotion of the BSD and other licenses could go a long way towards demonstrating to him that the world does not in fact need him anywhere near as much as he likes to think. I'm aware the GPL zealots will now materialise howling out of the woodwork and mod me a troll, as they generally do when I express this kind of opinion...but they are welcome to mod me a troll as much as they like...it won't silence me.
Notice how the headline says "some developing countries." I've postulated for some time that the UN exists in practical terms as very little other than a promotional vehicle for the Third World, and articles like this should prove it to those of us who might still have lingering doubts.
Mind you, that's not to say that I necessarily consider the UN to be any more or less evil than any other group, relatively speaking. Pretty much everybody wants to take over the world these days...and because most of the countries the UN represents can't overcome domestic famine problems, let alone the rest of the planet, they have to band together and funnel their ambitions to do so into a collective body. As far as vehicles for pushing the global domination agenda are concerned, Israel has America, America has itself, Europe has the EU, and Africa/Asia has the UN.
Given that all of the above people more or less want the same thing, we then must ask...which of these particular megalomaniacal entities do we want presiding over ICANN? I think it's fairly safe to say that whoever else it is, it shouldn't be the UN. The Internet isn't a technology with which the archetypical UN member-state really has a lot of experience with...Concepts that they tend to be a lot more familiar with include fun things like armed neo-feudalism amid constant inter-ethnic geurilla warfare, a GDP primarily supported by small arms and drug trafficking, a phone network that might reach 10% of the population (if they're lucky, and if said phone network is able to survive random RPGs for any length of time) and Marxist or Mussolinist dictators.
That isn't to say that I in any way advocate the current US government either. Bush might not be a dictator himself yet, but by all accounts he's spending 25 hours a day working on it. I think my point here is that ICANN is run by (one hopes, anyway) and for the benefit of people who are an order of magnitude more intelligent, mature, and generally civilised than anybody you normally see working in politics. Because of this, it's vitally important that we keep any advisory or instrumental boards/groups associated with the Internet *out* of the hands of any and all political entities whatsoever. Groups like the IETF (and ICANN, to a degree) are customarily populated by, among others, computer programmers and scientists...ergo, people who again customarily have a brain in their heads. Governments, by contrast, are (at least in the contemporary sense) largely the domain of corrupt, completely emotive geriatric religious fanatics, to whom reason is altogether an alien concept. We need to keep our representative groups in the hands of those who actually do have the necessary neurological/cognitive capacity to govern effectively, rather than allowing them to fall under the perview of those who most assuredly do not.
The only operators they're going to be able to enforce this with will be the big fish like iiNet...although I doubt they will be able to do it even there...so most small-time sysadmins can rest easy. Laws like these are passed based on the assumption that governments can rule the Internet in the same way they govern things offline, simply because they want to. They do not seem to be able to get the fact that they are unable to do this into their utterly empty heads.
This is more of the same torch-and-pitchforks, hand over fist bungling facism that we've been seeing for years now, both here and in the US. Laws like these are written and passed by brainless, senile geriatrics who generally have only the faintest grasp of any form of technology invented since the 1970s or so.
The only law I'm in favour of passing is one that eternally bans anyone over the age of 45 from ever holding government office in any country on the planet, ever again...because there is abundant evidence that it is at about that age that a person's brain begins to decompose inside their head. We need to get the elderly *out* of the halls of government, and back into the convalescent homes/mental health system where they belong.
...a case of "the dead being fed intravenously to the living," but an important milestone along the way. ;-)
Unusable? They're as usable or unusable as the Web itself.
>analysed vulnerabilities and patching and were
>forced to conclude that Windows Server 2003 is
>more secure than Red Hat Linux.
From my experience, this I could actually quite easily believe...in terms of Dead Rat. Let them do a comparison with either hardened Debian or hardened Gentoo however...the results there would be radically different.
Dead Rat markets exactly the kind of predigested, homogenised slop that is demanded by the corporate mindset. (or lack thereof) The bottom line is, anything that is developed for sale to corporations is going to be inferior to anything which is NOT developed primarily for that purpose. But again of course, it's the brainless corporate sheep who more or less decide whether Linux gets mainstream adoption completely...so Dead Rat is all we've got manning the breach...definitely not cause for confidence. I suppose what I should be grateful for is the fact that they don't do these studies with Linux being represented by Mandrake...the results there would be even worse.
This is the sort of thing which absolutely enrages me...and there's nothing whatever that we can do about it.
I wonder how much Game group paid the judge. Is there anyone left on the planet who is sufficiently naive or insane as to believe that there is any validity whatsoever in the claim of equal treatment/representation under the law? The legal system is one of the main reasons why I hardly ever leave my bedroom...in my mind having virtually anything to do with offline society these days is suicidal.
>Eg. Linus doesn't even want that role, eventhough a
>lot of programmers want him as a voice for F/OSS.
>How does that make RMS egocentric?
But that's exactly the point. The entire reason why Linus doesn't want the limelight is because he's probably the only popular figure associated with Linux from what I've seen who *doesn't* have an ego problem.
Also, in terms of what I mean by RMS having his own agenda...He tries to directly tell other people to adopt his belief system. In the case of FreeBSD as a great example, I don't believe he should be specifically telling people not to use the BSD license...which he does. My main problem with him is that I don't believe that in his mind, people/groups who disagree with him should be allowed to exist...if he had/displayed the attitude that not everyone else is going to agree with every little detail of what he believes, and that that was acceptable, I wouldn't have a problem...but the thing is, he doesn't. He thinks everyone is entitled to his opinion, and from all indications is opposed to diversity of opinion if it doesn't conform to his own. In my mind, that is not freedom.
>and I realised: usenet was dead ....
>but why ? really someone tell me why ?
a) The Internet became mainstream.
b) Because of a), the main group using Usenet shifted from programmers/scientists/intellectuals (ergo, people actually *worth* listening to) to brainsick war veterans, (whose primary reason for using it was the fact that they were deranged and antisocial to the point where nobody offline wanted anything to do with them) sociopathic college students, paedophiles/sexual deviants of various different stripes, and the truly hard-core mentally ill individuals who inhabit groups like alt.religion.scientology and alt.conspiracy.
c) Genre/group boundaries virtually aren't respected at all these days...certainly on the alt.* heirarchy anywayz. Crossposting is probably more the exception now than the rule, which means that unless you've got a killfile a mile long, having a coherent conversation is extremely difficult.
d) The protocol has become obsolete and redundant, and has been replaced by special-interest CMS driven Web sites which generally require passwords to join. Because such sites require passwords for posting access, the forums hosted by them do not experience casual, drive-by trolling by the sorts of idiots one generally encounters on Usenet.
e) Also because of a), Usenet began to be increasingly used as a supplement to the p2p filesharing networks, which also is an application that the protocol was never designed for. Hence, not only did this result in some of the text-related traffic dropping off, it meant ISPs were now being asked to carry an obscure, dying protocol with an increasing level of large binary traffic, free of charge.
f) Again because of a), Usenet has now also been inundated with a very high degree of spam. So this, taken in conjunction with the rest of the above, have together had the result of making the protocol largely unusable, and certainly undesirable when compared to the alternatives. Even its' destributed nature has been made obselete by such advances as Yahoo groups...traffic through those go to everyone who wants it, and nobody who doesn't. The groups are also generally moderated in order to ensure intelligent/sane discussion, and to filter out spam. In other words, the available alternatives to Usenet are superior in every possible respect.