There is a definition of authoritarianism which is logically consistant with its usage. This is not necessarily the definition you will find in a dictionary.
Aha!
Words have no meaning. Please read Bertrand Russell, especially the essay where he talks about the phrase "The King of France is dead."
Words only have the meaning ascribed to them by human beings. That's why private definitions are not useful. If you wish to claim that, fundamentally, activists ("people who care about a cause") and authoritarians ("people willing to use force to maintain their control") are coextensive groups, you need to prove it either by showing a large number of examples of people belonging to both groups, or by some form of logic.
Your logic skills are a bit weak, though. Go read some Russell. He's good for that too:)
Usually though with fanatics, the reason they don't want to be In Charge is because they only care about one aspect of how things are done. In RMS' case, he cares about a specific kind of community of programmers which he wants to foster.
He doesn't want to make decisions about good code/bad code and all the other things that come along with being In Charge.
I say this mostly because I've met RMS and I'd never describe him as lazy.:)
I guess that would make Tom Paine an authoritarian too.
Yes.
Zounds, you have a funky definition of authoritarian then. My definition of authoritarian is somebody who uses force to force individuals to toe the line. I think I'm closer to the O.E.D. than you are.;)
Well, I read the reactions to RMS on the GNOME list. Most of them could be summarized as "no, RMS is wrong, keep on doing it like you're doing it." None of them were "RMS is The Definition of All Evil, fear him," which is more like what I'm seeing on/.:)
IMO the fact that he's running for the board is by definition respecting the democratic process. Even if he's only doing it because of this rather minor issue, then - if he wins - it'll be a validation of his viewpoint, to some extent.
And remember: There are a bunch of board members. RMS is not running for Potentate.
Secondly, control freaks just don't engage in this kind of activity. RMS doesn't want to be In Charge: he wants people to do it His Way. It's a fine line but the difference is clear. If he really was a control freak, he would have been running for the board for some time now. He's presumably running because for some reason there's a bee under his bonnet and he sees some Injustice he can fix if he gets on the board.
Control freaks, on the other hand, like to be in charge all the time. You see them constantly campaigning. No, RMS is more the missionary than the bishop type.
As for the GPL: The GPL was designed to solve a problem that RMS had on a few occasions. I doubt he thought through in detail all of its implications then, and I doubt he has has thought it through all that well now. He's taken it up, and since he's a fanatic... well.:)
And finally, I guess I disagree on one major point. Not everybody is equal in the OSS world. Some people have made greater contributions than others. For example, if Torvalds says something, a lot of people pay attention. Note the firestorm about Cox's DMCA protest of a week or so ago.
RMS is one of those people. He's not an equal to an ordinary OSS developer. He's made extremely significant contributions, even if you only count emacs.
Can't say I know much about Zappa, except as a musician. Also, I can't say I know much about Hoffer (as in, never heard of.:)
Marx, though? There... I've actually read a lot of Marx's stuff. He's not an authoritarian. The man's an anarchist. It's true that some of his ideas were used by authoritarians such as Stalin, but that doesn't make him an authoritarian any more than it makes Nietzsche an anti-Semite because some of his writings were used by the Nazis.
In any case, your argument seems to be that anyone who cares about the world is an authoritarian. I guess that would make Tom Paine an authoritarian too.
RMS is complaining about non-free software being mentioned in the GNOME summaries.
I don't agree with him, but he has a point: the GNOME summaries are news about GNOME. It's arguable that talking about things like StarOffice is off-topic.
RMS is not trying to say that you should never discuss StarOffice, just not on this particular mailing list. Now, I still don't agree with him, but it's not because he's trying to act as a petty, McCarthy-esque censor (to avoid the Communist/Nazi reference): I think what he's trying to say is that you should promote free software by talking about how great it is, not about how well it interoperates with non-free software.
I disagree because I think that talking about interoperability helps people focus on one of the major strengths of OSS. But it's a reasonable argument to make.
And, FWIW, RMS is not a control freak: he's a fanatic. Control freaks do not come up with things like the GPL, something designed to reduce central control. He's an extremely skilled programmer and, given his pretty significant contribution not only to OSS but to computing at large, should at least be allowed to run.
Dunno if I'd vote for him. I don't use GNOME though, so I can't say I'll lose sleep over it either way.:)
This is probably too much for your mind to handle, but I'll try anyway.
The Romans built the first British road system. Today, many of these roads are still in use, even by people who - horror of horrors - are not descended from people who were ever Roman citizens.
The Italians do not complain that the British use 'their' roads. The Romans got pretty good usage out of them for a significant time, and now the peopo live near them use them as infrastructure.
Similarly, the telephone companies. The phone companies were granted monopolies for a limited time to encourage them to build the networks in the first place.
They've now reaped their reward pretty well. It is time to thank them, let them keep all the cash that they have accumulated, and open up the networks.
At least, this is the approach we're taking in Canada. We now have the lowest Internet connection costs of any country in the world. I'd say it's working.
I live in Canada. Some of this may not apply to your jurisdiction.
My bank uses a PIN which is a minimum of 4 digits long. I believe the maximum is 12. This solves the length problem. I have a 4-digit PIN, but that's mainly because I'm a grad student, and anybody who steals my bank card and gives me money has my thanks. Unfortunately, no luck yet.:)
We have Interac cops. Interac is the Canadian banking network; the ATMs you see in malls in Canada are usually run by chartered banks, and when they're not, they're run by somebody on the Interac network. These devices get policed, and they have some pretty serious security measures on them.
There's still the basic vulnerability of the encryption scheme to consider, of course. But the other concerns you bring up can be dealt with.
It's true that Microsoft was one of the early microcomputer developers: AFAIK their first contract was for Altair BASIC.
However, it wasn't M$ that created consumer mass demand for PCs: It was Woz and Jobs, with their little Apple ][. That was the first consumer computer, not the PC.
M$ does have a lot to do with the triumph of Intel. But those of us who remember the 4004 are not certain this is a good thing.
Ah yes, I heard about that Oshawa-area experiment.
Look Communications is a satellite TV provider, competitive with StarChoice and Bell ExpressVu. They were running an experimental satellite broadband service but discontinued it, basically because demand overran supply of bandwidth. They continue to keep their original subscribers hooked up, though, and have a Contact Me When It's Back email on the page above. UltraFast 2 (the original used a modem upstream) gives 3Mbps downstream, 200Kbps upstream, and costs CAN$39.95 a month.
Look merged with Interlog, btw: the Internet side of the biz is basically Interlog's old setup.
If I'm still in Ontario when it becomes available again (no guarantees there:) I'll probably sign up.
For the foreigners: Telus is a merged company. There used to be two different telcos in Alberta and BC.
During my time in BC, I thought Telus was wonderful. However, I only dealt with them as a telco, as I was electronically deprived then. (My computers were in New Brunswick. Long story.:)
But it's also possible that the Alberta/BC Telus is a split. I know this happened with Aliant, which is the merged company of the four Atlantic province telcos. New Brunswick, which historically had a great telco (NBTel), still gets better service from Aliant than Nova Scotia customers.
Nova Scotia used to be served by MT&T, before the Aliant merger and subsequent Bell buyout. You want bad phone service, move to Halifax. Glack.
I used to lose my _dialtone_ for an hour or two, at least once every month and sometimes three or four times a week.
This is not New Technology. Dialtones have been around for a while. MT&T never quite got the knack of delivering them consistently.
It did get better when I moved out of the south end. But it didn't get completely better, ever. Haligonians still lose their dial tones sometimes. Unless they switch to getting their telephone service from the local cable co, which is what my mother did.:) (I moved to New Brunswick before this became possible.) However, in New Brunswick, the story is still very different: everybody I know there loves their telco, even though it's legally the same company.
Now, in Ontario (where I am now), the situation is deeply strange. Bell's a deranged bureaucracy: it loses things. In many ways the technology side of Bell is pretty good; they usually make things work pretty well. But in customer service and billing... hah. they're nuts.
It's not that they're unfriendly. They'll generally be nice enough to you but they mess up processing absolutely everything. Sometimes they'll process it correctly, sometimes they'll lose the billing, sometimes they'll overbill. It's very random.
I believe region coding is actually illegal in New Zealand. The Kiwis have a law against using artificial means to prevent people from importing goods; maybe they're free-trade nuts, I dunno.
but the upshot is that Kiwi DVD players will all play back all regions.
Bell is the dominant player in DSL in Ontario and Quebec. It doesn't provide DSL to the rest of Canada.
Also, there are several competitive DSL providers in Ontario and Quebec, especially in the larger urban areas. They tend to focus on business service, though.
Bell is huge. I believe that with the recent Nortel layoffs it has become the single largest private employer in Canada. And it does have its fingers in a lot of other telcos, especially in the four (small) maritime provinces, where it owns the parent company of the local providers. However, it's inaccurate to portray it as a Canadian monopoly, because Bell doesn't even provide local phone service to the majority of Canadians. The major competitor is Telus, which is the main provider of local phone service to Alberta and British Columbia. Telus has begun to provide local phone service to businesses in Bell's areas; IMO it's only a matter of time before it starts selling DSL competitively.
Note: Telus and Bell hate each other. Passionately.:)
You're in a Bell area? Bell Canada's DSL is $40 Canadian.
If you're thinking of Look, the satellite broadband people, they haven't filed for bankruptcy: they've stopped selling the broadband service and retreated to TV only.
I also wonder where you are. Here in London, a small city with the princely sum of ~300,000 people, we have competitive DSL: London Webmasters sell it. AFAIK they use Bell's lines, though, and have even tighter availability than Bell does. Still, they're there. In Toronto, there are several providers; I assume Ottawa and possibly Windsor as well. You're probably in the country, I'm guessing.
Please don't use the word criminal or conviction in this case.
Microsoft was found liable.
Antitrust is a civil matter. You might as well be found guilty of a contract breach; sure, breaking contracts is against the law, but (generally, except for fraud) it's not criminal.
... or, in my case, find the other fifteen things that light you up and do them.
Since I quit CS, I've done philosophy, gotten a law degree, and am about to grad from library school. never mind the oodles of other stuff I've done, that's just the academic.:)
I was never this happy when I wanted to code for a living.
And I still love to code... unlike all of the guys I know who got their CS degrees.
Slashdot Mirror
Aha!
Words have no meaning. Please read Bertrand Russell, especially the essay where he talks about the phrase "The King of France is dead."
Words only have the meaning ascribed to them by human beings. That's why private definitions are not useful. If you wish to claim that, fundamentally, activists ("people who care about a cause") and authoritarians ("people willing to use force to maintain their control") are coextensive groups, you need to prove it either by showing a large number of examples of people belonging to both groups, or by some form of logic.
Your logic skills are a bit weak, though. Go read some Russell. He's good for that too :)
Mod this up! Moderators, you've modded me up twice on this thread. Why can't I give my spare karma to this poster?
It's not like I'm using it, karmacap boy that I am :)
This is Insightful, Informative and funny. ;)
Well, that's one interpretation.
Usually though with fanatics, the reason they don't want to be In Charge is because they only care about one aspect of how things are done. In RMS' case, he cares about a specific kind of community of programmers which he wants to foster.
He doesn't want to make decisions about good code/bad code and all the other things that come along with being In Charge.
I say this mostly because I've met RMS and I'd never describe him as lazy. :)
One can be more than one -ist at a time. For example, capitalist and fascist, an overlapping category through much of the 1930s.
Zounds, you have a funky definition of authoritarian then. My definition of authoritarian is somebody who uses force to force individuals to toe the line. I think I'm closer to the O.E.D. than you are. ;)
Well, I read the reactions to RMS on the GNOME list. Most of them could be summarized as "no, RMS is wrong, keep on doing it like you're doing it." None of them were "RMS is The Definition of All Evil, fear him," which is more like what I'm seeing on /. :)
IMO the fact that he's running for the board is by definition respecting the democratic process. Even if he's only doing it because of this rather minor issue, then - if he wins - it'll be a validation of his viewpoint, to some extent.
And remember: There are a bunch of board members. RMS is not running for Potentate.
Secondly, control freaks just don't engage in this kind of activity. RMS doesn't want to be In Charge: he wants people to do it His Way. It's a fine line but the difference is clear. If he really was a control freak, he would have been running for the board for some time now. He's presumably running because for some reason there's a bee under his bonnet and he sees some Injustice he can fix if he gets on the board.
Control freaks, on the other hand, like to be in charge all the time. You see them constantly campaigning. No, RMS is more the missionary than the bishop type.
As for the GPL: The GPL was designed to solve a problem that RMS had on a few occasions. I doubt he thought through in detail all of its implications then, and I doubt he has has thought it through all that well now. He's taken it up, and since he's a fanatic... well. :)
And finally, I guess I disagree on one major point. Not everybody is equal in the OSS world. Some people have made greater contributions than others. For example, if Torvalds says something, a lot of people pay attention. Note the firestorm about Cox's DMCA protest of a week or so ago.
RMS is one of those people. He's not an equal to an ordinary OSS developer. He's made extremely significant contributions, even if you only count emacs.
Can't say I know much about Zappa, except as a musician. Also, I can't say I know much about Hoffer (as in, never heard of. :)
Marx, though? There... I've actually read a lot of Marx's stuff. He's not an authoritarian. The man's an anarchist. It's true that some of his ideas were used by authoritarians such as Stalin, but that doesn't make him an authoritarian any more than it makes Nietzsche an anti-Semite because some of his writings were used by the Nazis.
In any case, your argument seems to be that anyone who cares about the world is an authoritarian. I guess that would make Tom Paine an authoritarian too.
RMS is complaining about non-free software being mentioned in the GNOME summaries.
I don't agree with him, but he has a point: the GNOME summaries are news about GNOME. It's arguable that talking about things like StarOffice is off-topic.
RMS is not trying to say that you should never discuss StarOffice, just not on this particular mailing list. Now, I still don't agree with him, but it's not because he's trying to act as a petty, McCarthy-esque censor (to avoid the Communist/Nazi reference): I think what he's trying to say is that you should promote free software by talking about how great it is, not about how well it interoperates with non-free software.
I disagree because I think that talking about interoperability helps people focus on one of the major strengths of OSS. But it's a reasonable argument to make.
And, FWIW, RMS is not a control freak: he's a fanatic. Control freaks do not come up with things like the GPL, something designed to reduce central control. He's an extremely skilled programmer and, given his pretty significant contribution not only to OSS but to computing at large, should at least be allowed to run.
Dunno if I'd vote for him. I don't use GNOME though, so I can't say I'll lose sleep over it either way. :)
This is probably too much for your mind to handle, but I'll try anyway.
The Romans built the first British road system. Today, many of these roads are still in use, even by people who - horror of horrors - are not descended from people who were ever Roman citizens.
The Italians do not complain that the British use 'their' roads. The Romans got pretty good usage out of them for a significant time, and now the peopo live near them use them as infrastructure.
Similarly, the telephone companies. The phone companies were granted monopolies for a limited time to encourage them to build the networks in the first place.
They've now reaped their reward pretty well. It is time to thank them, let them keep all the cash that they have accumulated, and open up the networks.
At least, this is the approach we're taking in Canada. We now have the lowest Internet connection costs of any country in the world. I'd say it's working.
I live in Canada. Some of this may not apply to your jurisdiction.
My bank uses a PIN which is a minimum of 4 digits long. I believe the maximum is 12. This solves the length problem. I have a 4-digit PIN, but that's mainly because I'm a grad student, and anybody who steals my bank card and gives me money has my thanks. Unfortunately, no luck yet. :)
We have Interac cops. Interac is the Canadian banking network; the ATMs you see in malls in Canada are usually run by chartered banks, and when they're not, they're run by somebody on the Interac network. These devices get policed, and they have some pretty serious security measures on them.
There's still the basic vulnerability of the encryption scheme to consider, of course. But the other concerns you bring up can be dealt with.
Dimwit. Read the post.
The person was complaining that he/she/it couldn't get Bell's DSL because of being too far away from the CO.
There ain't nobody in Vancouver getting DSL from Bell. :)
(For what it's worth, most of the Canadians I know on DSL are getting their service from Vibe. I suspect you've never even heard of it. :)
It's true that Microsoft was one of the early microcomputer developers: AFAIK their first contract was for Altair BASIC.
However, it wasn't M$ that created consumer mass demand for PCs: It was Woz and Jobs, with their little Apple ][. That was the first consumer computer, not the PC.
M$ does have a lot to do with the triumph of Intel. But those of us who remember the 4004 are not certain this is a good thing.
Ah yes, I heard about that Oshawa-area experiment.
Look Communications is a satellite TV provider, competitive with StarChoice and Bell ExpressVu. They were running an experimental satellite broadband service but discontinued it, basically because demand overran supply of bandwidth. They continue to keep their original subscribers hooked up, though, and have a Contact Me When It's Back email on the page above. UltraFast 2 (the original used a modem upstream) gives 3Mbps downstream, 200Kbps upstream, and costs CAN$39.95 a month.
Look merged with Interlog, btw: the Internet side of the biz is basically Interlog's old setup.
If I'm still in Ontario when it becomes available again (no guarantees there :) I'll probably sign up.
For the foreigners: Telus is a merged company. There used to be two different telcos in Alberta and BC.
During my time in BC, I thought Telus was wonderful. However, I only dealt with them as a telco, as I was electronically deprived then. (My computers were in New Brunswick. Long story. :)
But it's also possible that the Alberta/BC Telus is a split. I know this happened with Aliant, which is the merged company of the four Atlantic province telcos. New Brunswick, which historically had a great telco (NBTel), still gets better service from Aliant than Nova Scotia customers.
Nova Scotia used to be served by MT&T, before the Aliant merger and subsequent Bell buyout. You want bad phone service, move to Halifax. Glack.
I used to lose my _dialtone_ for an hour or two, at least once every month and sometimes three or four times a week.
This is not New Technology. Dialtones have been around for a while. MT&T never quite got the knack of delivering them consistently.
It did get better when I moved out of the south end. But it didn't get completely better, ever. Haligonians still lose their dial tones sometimes. Unless they switch to getting their telephone service from the local cable co, which is what my mother did. :) (I moved to New Brunswick before this became possible.) However, in New Brunswick, the story is still very different: everybody I know there loves their telco, even though it's legally the same company.
Now, in Ontario (where I am now), the situation is deeply strange. Bell's a deranged bureaucracy: it loses things. In many ways the technology side of Bell is pretty good; they usually make things work pretty well. But in customer service and billing... hah. they're nuts.
It's not that they're unfriendly. They'll generally be nice enough to you but they mess up processing absolutely everything. Sometimes they'll process it correctly, sometimes they'll lose the billing, sometimes they'll overbill. It's very random.
That's still likely going to hit DMCA trouble, but it's much easier to distribute: just put an iso on an ftp site someplace.
It doesn't have the liberating implications for consumers in general of a black box though.
Releasing an integrated MP3 box: you're going to get prosecuted under the DMCA for putting out a circumvention device. There is no doubt.
You're right in a sense, though, and maybe some kind Europeans will do it.
I believe region coding is actually illegal in New Zealand. The Kiwis have a law against using artificial means to prevent people from importing goods; maybe they're free-trade nuts, I dunno.
but the upshot is that Kiwi DVD players will all play back all regions.
Apple's CD Burner program can't burn bootable CDs.
I believe that Toast Platinum will, however I haven't used it.
Norton 6 wouldn't boot your iBook? Curious. Why do you need 9.1? AFAIK it was mostly a bug-fix release.
I have Norton 5, which has 9.0.3 installed. It boots my iMac 400 just fine.
Wil probably just meant all of Asimov's SF.
Asimov actually wrote somewhere over 400 books, I forget the exact number. That's original books.
Most of them are nonfiction; however, Asimov wrote several dozen SF books, plus some miscellaneous other books, including:
he did write hundreds of stories too, which also got assembled into large numbers of books. in particular, the robot stories.
all of the robot stories can be acquired by buying two books, incidentally: Robot Dreams and Robot Visions.
Bell is the dominant player in DSL in Ontario and Quebec. It doesn't provide DSL to the rest of Canada.
Also, there are several competitive DSL providers in Ontario and Quebec, especially in the larger urban areas. They tend to focus on business service, though.
Bell is huge. I believe that with the recent Nortel layoffs it has become the single largest private employer in Canada. And it does have its fingers in a lot of other telcos, especially in the four (small) maritime provinces, where it owns the parent company of the local providers. However, it's inaccurate to portray it as a Canadian monopoly, because Bell doesn't even provide local phone service to the majority of Canadians. The major competitor is Telus, which is the main provider of local phone service to Alberta and British Columbia. Telus has begun to provide local phone service to businesses in Bell's areas; IMO it's only a matter of time before it starts selling DSL competitively.
Note: Telus and Bell hate each other. Passionately. :)
You're in a Bell area? Bell Canada's DSL is $40 Canadian.
If you're thinking of Look, the satellite broadband people, they haven't filed for bankruptcy: they've stopped selling the broadband service and retreated to TV only.
I also wonder where you are. Here in London, a small city with the princely sum of ~300,000 people, we have competitive DSL: London Webmasters sell it. AFAIK they use Bell's lines, though, and have even tighter availability than Bell does. Still, they're there. In Toronto, there are several providers; I assume Ottawa and possibly Windsor as well. You're probably in the country, I'm guessing.
Please don't use the word criminal or conviction in this case.
Microsoft was found liable.
Antitrust is a civil matter. You might as well be found guilty of a contract breach; sure, breaking contracts is against the law, but (generally, except for fraud) it's not criminal.
Right and wrong.
The US antitrust laws are pieces of federal legislation.
However, they allow other parties besides the federal government to bring suit.
Even private companies can sue under the Sherman Act, IIRC.
... or, in my case, find the other fifteen things that light you up and do them.
Since I quit CS, I've done philosophy, gotten a law degree, and am about to grad from library school. never mind the oodles of other stuff I've done, that's just the academic. :)
I was never this happy when I wanted to code for a living.
And I still love to code... unlike all of the guys I know who got their CS degrees.
Apple hasn't stopped using Akamai. Go to the Apple homepage, all the images are on Akamai.
My guess is that the Akamai charge was a little too much for Apple to absorb, given that many of these trailers are remarkably large.