I hope Microsoft utterly dominates the gaming market and finally finds its niche. People often run Windows for the game support anyway, so let's just have all the proprietary nonsense in the world devoted to gaming platforms. Games are just games and I would be very satisfied and content to let Microsoft have that market from now until eternity. In fact, I might even start supporting them again if they showed that they were committed to being just a game company where their competitiveness would be welcome and maybe desirable. Free source can dominate everywhere else where it really matters.
I must not be making my point clear, but if you thought about the original post you would recognize it as ON TOPIC. It relates directly to freedom, responsibility, and government.
Look, I want to help pay for the roads. Further, I would volunteer my time to help pave them for free! I recognize this as part of my personal/civic/community responsibility and I wish to fulfill it. However, I resent the methodology employed by the government to secure my participation. Firstly, I am forced by the invisible "majority" into the monoplistic rule by the government. Secondly, I am forced to be tracked to ensure that I am a good citizen. How would you feel if the police forced you to help pave the roads in a form of community service? That's the same as forcing me to pay taxes.
People are essentially being controlled by the people running the government through money and material posessions. As long as you are pleading to the government, every right that you demand is only a reflection of those that have been taken away. Enumerating every stinking right under the sun, the right to drink clean water, the right to read a book, the right to good health, the right to breathe clean air, the right to speak, the right to love, is a complete and total waste of time. You wouldn't have had those problems in the first place if the rights hadn't been threatened by the enormous power of a government. As long as a government is a thing unto itself, the same way a corporation is, it will not reflect the will of the people. People don't want that anyway. They want a government to take responsibility for them.
Oh, so the responsibility associated with driving is paying your fees/taxes? That's not quite what I had in mind. Ever heard of safety? That must be why we have insurance. Just like they teach you in economics--it's all quantifiable.
"There won't be nothing you can't measure any more. The blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold and it's overturned the order of the soul. When they say, repent, repent, I wonder what they meant. I've seen the future, brother, and it's murder."
-Leanard Cohen
I have a different take on this. The computer is an extension of the mind in the same way that the hammer is an extension of the hand. If it develops in a way that restricts people, this means that it is restricting our collective thought. When governments and/or companies go around policing "functional" speech that exists in source code form, this is, in essence, policing thought. In our current state of consciousness, we may feel we need such policing, but it nevertheless is what it is.
IMO, this is what was meant by the theme that overcoming the Matrix will help to free humanity. For me, the Matrix represents technology not considered in the context of social or spiritual benefit to humans. For example, when people create technology to enhance their own profits regardless of the effect it has on other people, this gives form to the Matrix. By seeing computer technology from the perspective of a reflection of the mental thought and constructs accrued over thousands of years of evolution, we can start to overcome fears and doubts that have enslaved us thus far.
Furthermore, networking of computers can provide many useful reflections on the networking of people. If a computer is isolated human thought, the internet is social collective consciousness. If something either goes wrong, or causes harm to another group or individual, it's possible to see from where that impulse originated and try to integrate and transcend it.
So, software as a product can be a little more significant than diapers or toothpaste. It may not matter as much in those cases how you exercise your choice, but don't necessarily assume that software is a product like all others. If anything, the availability of the source code has heightened the awareness about the true nature of computer software. It is, after all, the source that counts.;)
Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our minds.
Slashdot Mirror
I hope Microsoft utterly dominates the gaming market and finally finds its niche. People often run Windows for the game support anyway, so let's just have all the proprietary nonsense in the world devoted to gaming platforms. Games are just games and I would be very satisfied and content to let Microsoft have that market from now until eternity. In fact, I might even start supporting them again if they showed that they were committed to being just a game company where their competitiveness would be welcome and maybe desirable. Free source can dominate everywhere else where it really matters.
I must not be making my point clear, but if you thought about the original post you would recognize it as ON TOPIC. It relates directly to freedom, responsibility, and government.
Look, I want to help pay for the roads. Further, I would volunteer my time to help pave them for free! I recognize this as part of my personal/civic/community responsibility and I wish to fulfill it. However, I resent the methodology employed by the government to secure my participation. Firstly, I am forced by the invisible "majority" into the monoplistic rule by the government. Secondly, I am forced to be tracked to ensure that I am a good citizen. How would you feel if the police forced you to help pave the roads in a form of community service? That's the same as forcing me to pay taxes.
People are essentially being controlled by the people running the government through money and material posessions. As long as you are pleading to the government, every right that you demand is only a reflection of those that have been taken away. Enumerating every stinking right under the sun, the right to drink clean water, the right to read a book, the right to good health, the right to breathe clean air, the right to speak, the right to love, is a complete and total waste of time. You wouldn't have had those problems in the first place if the rights hadn't been threatened by the enormous power of a government. As long as a government is a thing unto itself, the same way a corporation is, it will not reflect the will of the people. People don't want that anyway. They want a government to take responsibility for them.
Oh, so the responsibility associated with driving is paying your fees/taxes? That's not quite what I had in mind. Ever heard of safety? That must be why we have insurance. Just like they teach you in economics--it's all quantifiable. "There won't be nothing you can't measure any more. The blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold and it's overturned the order of the soul. When they say, repent, repent, I wonder what they meant. I've seen the future, brother, and it's murder." -Leanard Cohen
I have a different take on this. The computer is an extension of the mind in the same way that the hammer is an extension of the hand. If it develops in a way that restricts people, this means that it is restricting our collective thought. When governments and/or companies go around policing "functional" speech that exists in source code form, this is, in essence, policing thought. In our current state of consciousness, we may feel we need such policing, but it nevertheless is what it is.
;)
IMO, this is what was meant by the theme that overcoming the Matrix will help to free humanity. For me, the Matrix represents technology not considered in the context of social or spiritual benefit to humans. For example, when people create technology to enhance their own profits regardless of the effect it has on other people, this gives form to the Matrix. By seeing computer technology from the perspective of a reflection of the mental thought and constructs accrued over thousands of years of evolution, we can start to overcome fears and doubts that have enslaved us thus far.
Furthermore, networking of computers can provide many useful reflections on the networking of people. If a computer is isolated human thought, the internet is social collective consciousness. If something either goes wrong, or causes harm to another group or individual, it's possible to see from where that impulse originated and try to integrate and transcend it.
So, software as a product can be a little more significant than diapers or toothpaste. It may not matter as much in those cases how you exercise your choice, but don't necessarily assume that software is a product like all others. If anything, the availability of the source code has heightened the awareness about the true nature of computer software. It is, after all, the source that counts.
Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our minds.
-Bob Marley