RMS is just a little bit smarter than the average slashdot poster. As a result, he thinks he has to stick to the ideas that he has (because they are good).
What he has in common with a "seriously demenented nutcase" is that he is following a single strategy - not behaving like a butterfly or a puppy.
Now to get down to some details: Software does not behave like your average commodity. A commodity in the sense I use here is something that may be produced by several producers (maybe after some patent runs out) and is then traded on a free market.
Due to the fact that software is built like a shell, with one layer covering the next, rights of a software company to its works practically never run out, unlike normal copyright.
In addition, it costs practically nothing to copy and distribute the information. Which is why it is economically wrong to carry over to the software market the standard business and market model, which is associated with material goods and time-constrained services.
This leads to overpriced software. In practice unlicensed use of software is what has created a mass market of computer users.
Technically, the software industry so far has been selling software at a low "dumping" price - since a lot of software was multiplied to non-paying customers (see I can talk PC, too).
This means that in the past, what software companies really did was to sell you the software, and the right to copy and distribute the software - this is what they did, even if your contract said otherwise.
In other areas, like when distributing copyrighted works like books and music, you already pay a fee everytime you use that media.
Calling it a tax is bad marketing by RMS.
Actually your argument that programmers would go impoverished without companies running the business is bullshit - a big, old software company will eat all profits and the programmers will get what they need for a living.
I think the link to the big source archive should not be in the article, since few people will actually want to use the source right now, and this will waste bandwidth:-)
All the links at the site pointed to require registration. I think it is not a good idea to link to something that it not much different from a porn pusher or marketing fraud, leading to nothing but a multitude of links that require registration.
In a way you are outsourcing the evaluation of ways to secure your network to the security services company, so investing a lot of time here is kind of paradox.
You first could check how extensive their defenses are, how good their service is when you need a port opened, whether they do virus scanning, and whether they are confident enough to offer insurance against break-ins with their product.
You also might ask why they use the firewall they do instead of another product. Maybe also check their company background.
IMHO, emacs as an OS has worse docs than WinDoze
on
David Korn Tells All
·
· Score: 1
I especially hate info pages, because using them kind of never did get as obvious to install and use as man pages.
But maybe that is just me.
Another thing for x/emacs are keymaps compatible to vi, windows and e/xmacs users.
The last time I looked the configuration had improved though. But still not as easy as configuring keys in, say, a game
The article argues against giving all the rights to privacy to the user; but then, in order to give the user something to trade away, they first must have privacy rights.
Also, to find an hot analogy, what kind of free market does the author think would give a fair deal to slaves ? This is not really just a troll, at some times and in some places people who had debts would actually do that for a limited time.
And today we sign working contracts - but we have the right not to work and to choose the employer.
If they use the same annoying business model as mobile phones for 1$ and you have to sign a contract with the company, flat-rate offers (in europe), to name it, low entry level fees, it is their problem.
Company can't rely on customers using their contracts they way they intend it, unless they put it in the contract.
Text escaping and unescaping functions would be nice. They should pair i.e. it should be a simple function call to reverse the escaping. They would be based on having an escape character, whitespace characters which collapse, disallowed input and output, and just maybe a quoting like mechanism. A dictionary might hold stuff like \t & (special escape sequences).
It think this is important. Security people are aware of string buffer overflows now, so escapement hacks will be the next wave.
A test facility should be included.
Weylin Piegorsch, turn yourself in ..
on
The Unblinking Eye
·
· Score: 2
Weylin Piegorsch, turn yourself in immediately to the next law prevention unit.
At 20010202-07:48 authorities have noticed a deviation from your normal behavior.
Namely, you took a different path between your apartement and your office as usual.
By authority of the law prevention act (4, 321a, LPA-20010914), we are authorized to take appropriate measure unless you turn yourself in to the next law prevention unit.
To protect and to serve, yours truly
LPU Central
This means the Glasgow is already lost ..
on
The Unblinking Eye
·
· Score: 1
.. letting yourself get completely hooked up like that really means you guys deserve to be slaves.
If someone would define a C with decent string handling, and a few decent parsing tools,
that would be a much better solution.
Also, the program stack should be divided among several stacks as far as possible.
For one, the Vatican has said officially that when intelligent life should be found outside of earth, them would be eligible to be christians.
(maybe the wording was even more careful.)
In addition, you can argument around any scientific facts by saying that "God made the universe such that man/intelligent life can exist."
If you think that, if proven that life can emerge without divine intervention, this defats christianity, you already have halfway fallen to the fanatics who want to make you take the bible literally - ( note that there not even exists such a thing as "one bible" ) - and to believe that earth and man was created 5,000 years ago.
That belief simply is a kind of test that you have to pass to be a fundamentalist christian - to be either dumb enough, desperate enough or enough of a liar to believe in that.
And I really like how christianity weeds out the stupid by inviting them to a monastery, and forbidding reproduction. This is most ingenious.
Make a backup before you rewrite(as in partially rewrite), and if you can't make a backup because the system is split over several modules and machines, you'll just have to kludge-fix it, and later ask management for resources to do a rewrite.
Fight code ownership rules that keep you from doing the right thing (TM), unless you really can place the blame on the programmers of other modules.
It can easily happen that you will discover that this doesn't work because the old thing really did a lot more. Then try to find out which features are really needed and rewrite only that.
Or write a 20 line script in perl which does the same job:-P
Privacy laws in Europe bring certain requirements onto european companies, and US companies that do business with europeans too.
In a compromise, Europe asked US Companies to voluntarily conform to "Safe Habor" policies, i.e. voluntary compliance. So far, only a few US companies have accepted them, and that will mean that Europe might soon impose a ban on electronic trade with the USA.
That is an argument against the study.
On the other hand, maybe privacy laws really are just ignored inside Europe ?
(My account may be slightly inaccurate in the details.)
Developers are kind of expected to be able to download and install their own linux sources.
So, I think the problem is not exactly that distros ship like that, but that distros are preferred at all over downloading the newest kernel and sources. I guess it saves time and bandwidth;-)
What I find strange is that, in old SuSe distros, that if you installed other basic kernel packages than SuSe, you would get a conflict warning. This seems strange. Seems that has been solved in the new Distro ?
I think distros should spent more attention space on telling people how to swop their kernels.
That page says that it is bad that the TransRapid doesn't mix with the normal trains.
However I'm not sure this is true.
Faster trains inside Germany often suffer from the problem that passengers want a fast point-to-point connection, but that the connection is slowed down by stops in other cities that are in between, and by long-winding paths into the city, like in Frankfurt, where the trains practically spiral into the city.
Well, but I don't know whether that is enough arguments to build a new rail system.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, obviously to a series of presidents named "Bush".
suggested naming scheme:
g. bush 5.1 thru 5.20
-nt
Now, the doctor gets the funs.
-nb
RMS is just a little bit smarter than the average slashdot poster. As a result, he thinks he has to stick to the ideas that he has (because they are good).
What he has in common with a "seriously demenented nutcase" is that he is following a single strategy - not behaving like a butterfly or a puppy.
Now to get down to some details: Software does not behave like your average commodity. A commodity in the sense I use here is something that may be produced by several producers (maybe after some patent runs out) and is then traded on a free market.
Due to the fact that software is built like a shell, with one layer covering the next, rights of a software company to its works practically never run out, unlike normal copyright.
In addition, it costs practically nothing to copy and distribute the information. Which is why it is economically wrong to carry over to the software market the standard business and market model, which is associated with material goods and time-constrained services.
This leads to overpriced software. In practice unlicensed use of software is what has created a mass market of computer users.
Technically, the software industry so far has been selling software at a low "dumping" price - since a lot of software was multiplied to non-paying customers (see I can talk PC, too).
This means that in the past, what software companies really did was to sell you the software, and the right to copy and distribute the software - this is what they did, even if your contract said otherwise.
In other areas, like when distributing copyrighted works like books and music, you already pay a fee everytime you use that media. Calling it a tax is bad marketing by RMS.
Actually your argument that programmers would go impoverished without companies running the business is bullshit - a big, old software company will eat all profits and the programmers will get what they need for a living.
Polluting the environment ? *bang* there go corporate profits of a year.
Killing people ? *bang* no more company, money goes to state.
I would imagine this would improve corporate morals.
I think the link to the big source archive should not be in the article, since few people will actually want to use the source right now, and this will waste bandwidth :-)
All the links at the site pointed to require registration. I think it is not a good idea to link to something that it not much different from a porn pusher or marketing fraud, leading to nothing but a multitude of links that require registration.
.. or whatever.
While we spent 8 hours a day sequencing slashcode
You first could check how extensive their defenses are, how good their service is when you need a port opened, whether they do virus scanning, and whether they are confident enough to offer insurance against break-ins with their product.
You also might ask why they use the firewall they do instead of another product. Maybe also check their company background.
--wise man morris
-nt
But maybe that is just me.
Another thing for x/emacs are keymaps compatible to vi, windows and e/xmacs users.
The last time I looked the configuration had improved though. But still not as easy as configuring keys in, say, a game
Also, to find an hot analogy, what kind of free market does the author think would give a fair deal to slaves ? This is not really just a troll, at some times and in some places people who had debts would actually do that for a limited time. And today we sign working contracts - but we have the right not to work and to choose the employer.
If they use the same annoying business model as mobile phones for 1$ and you have to sign a contract with the company, flat-rate offers (in europe), to name it, low entry level fees, it is their problem.
Company can't rely on customers using their contracts they way they intend it, unless they put it in the contract.
It think this is important. Security people are aware of string buffer overflows now, so escapement hacks will be the next wave.
A test facility should be included.
At 20010202-07:48 authorities have noticed a deviation from your normal behavior.
Namely, you took a different path between your apartement and your office as usual.
By authority of the law prevention act (4, 321a, LPA-20010914), we are authorized to take appropriate measure unless you turn yourself in to the next law prevention unit.
To protect and to serve, yours truly
LPU Central
.. letting yourself get completely hooked up like that really means you guys deserve to be slaves.
If someone would define a C with decent string handling, and a few decent parsing tools, that would be a much better solution.
Also, the program stack should be divided among several stacks as far as possible.
(maybe the wording was even more careful.)
In addition, you can argument around any scientific facts by saying that "God made the universe such that man/intelligent life can exist."
If you think that, if proven that life can emerge without divine intervention, this defats christianity, you already have halfway fallen to the fanatics who want to make you take the bible literally - ( note that there not even exists such a thing as "one bible" ) - and to believe that earth and man was created 5,000 years ago.
That belief simply is a kind of test that you have to pass to be a fundamentalist christian - to be either dumb enough, desperate enough or enough of a liar to believe in that.
And I really like how christianity weeds out the stupid by inviting them to a monastery, and forbidding reproduction. This is most ingenious.
and most misunderstood code is not well documented ..
Fight code ownership rules that keep you from doing the right thing (TM), unless you really can place the blame on the programmers of other modules.
It can easily happen that you will discover that this doesn't work because the old thing really did a lot more. Then try to find out which features are really needed and rewrite only that.
Or write a 20 line script in perl which does the same job :-P
Trying to play wise man, hope it helps someone.
In a compromise, Europe asked US Companies to voluntarily conform to "Safe Habor" policies, i.e. voluntary compliance. So far, only a few US companies have accepted them, and that will mean that Europe might soon impose a ban on electronic trade with the USA.
That is an argument against the study. On the other hand, maybe privacy laws really are just ignored inside Europe ?
(My account may be slightly inaccurate in the details.)
So, I think the problem is not exactly that distros ship like that, but that distros are preferred at all over downloading the newest kernel and sources. I guess it saves time and bandwidth ;-)
What I find strange is that, in old SuSe distros, that if you installed other basic kernel packages than SuSe, you would get a conflict warning. This seems strange. Seems that has been solved in the new Distro ?
I think distros should spent more attention space on telling people how to swop their kernels.
Faster trains inside Germany often suffer from the problem that passengers want a fast point-to-point connection, but that the connection is slowed down by stops in other cities that are in between, and by long-winding paths into the city, like in Frankfurt, where the trains practically spiral into the city.
Well, but I don't know whether that is enough arguments to build a new rail system.