WRT "for the children", what if we don't want our
society producing more children with unhealthy
hangups about sex and language? People who get
their dander raised about the use of the term
"damn" or any other "dirty word" are really kind
of sick, and I hate to hand them another tool for
the spreading of their prudishness.
This is the horrific result of what happens when
a society becomes so inhibited that it develops
specific tools to allow people to remain naive.
An entire family of people who have automatic
reactions to certain language. They're just words!
They're just combinations of sounds that, for some
odd historical reason, some religious freaks and
other prudes have somehow decided to focus on..
I'd bet that if there were a language without them,
these kind of people would be the ones to make them
up in order to be able to whine about people using
them:)
Remember, corporations are creations of the
state. Unlike humans, they don't have rights.
Therefore, dealing with them is a matter of
pragmatism, not commonsense morals/ethics.
I'd agree with you, but there are several other
languages out there that might be a better example
than Spanish. The benefit you point out is actually
not uncommon -- many languages have a regularized
pronunciation/spelling parallel. The disadvantage
that Spanish, German, and many other European
languages have is genders -- nouns all have one of
two (or 3, for German) genders tied to them, making
them harder to remember and also creating different
conjugation rules. The genderlessness of nouns in
English is a big plus. Instead of a European
language, I would like to suggest either Korean or
Japanese as admirable languages. The main thing
about Korean is it's alphabet, which is rather
well designed. The main thing about Japanese is
that it also is very regular, and pretty
position-independent (thanks to positional tags,
which Latin used, although Latin is far too
complex). Sadly, the Japanese writing system is
too complex (2 alphabets, one huge set of
chinese-derived glyphs) to be directly used. I
suppose the language I would choose for the world
would probably be Japanese, with its written form
simplified to purely hiragana (discarding katakana
and kanji).
I presume you're talking about American in some
sense other than the literal, as by the normal value
of the term, sentiments/viewpoints are not capable
of being citizens/people. What exactly do you
mean when you use the term in this way then? Is
this sense of "American" synonymous with
patriotism? Is it synonymous with freedom-loving?
Is it synonymous with hypocriticality? Define your
terms.. Anyhow, in case you mean patriotism, you're
naming an incredibly evil force throughout history,
with very few, if any, good aspects. If that's
what the term means to you, then in that sense,
I oppose Americanism, just as I oppose any other
kind of nationalism.
For the sake of liberty we must prevent and undo
intellectual property protections. It is simply
unacceptable that something that I may discover,
a thought I may have, data that I might collect
might be blocked or require a fee for my use.
I assert that any piece of data, any idea, any
thought that I might acquire or synthesize is
something that I may use as I see fit, with no
restrictions on that action as such, including
sharing it with others or using it for various
purposes.
Information and data cannot be owned -- they
lack scarcity, and to grant a monopoly on a single
idea is to steal from the potential of every
single person on the planet. The mere fact of
investment does not entail a responsibility for
returns. Or do you see competition as theft?
Essentially some wording that postures Linux as
an *alternative* to what the GNU project considers
it's 'main' thrust, Hurd? And this fellow didn't
manage to win over enough support within the
glibc project to stop a wording change?
Admittedly, RMS's obsession with this wordplay
seems to me to be unwise (it'd be better if he'd
focus on keeping the movement ideologically pure
rather than focusing on diction), but this fellow
doesn't strike me as being any more wise.
Posturing and replies to it are a waste of time --
where there are no actual effects on the way
things are run, it's better to just ignore such
things and spend that time coding, fighting
intellectual property, and other worthwhile causes.
Fall into two general categories..
1) Indoctrination so you'll be nice to corporate
interests
2) Review of different ethical systems and their
foundations
I suspect by your phrasing that you mean the
first. A code of ethics isn't something objective
that one can learn.. I recall, when I took a
course on ethics when I was an undergrad, we did
debates, and I managed to sway about a third of
the class to the position that intellectual
property is philosophically invalid. Fun.
The right solution, of course, is to make
ssh more *ahem* configurable, like sendmail is,
so that people write incredibly huge books
detailing how it can be configured, and then sell
an 'enchanced' version that has a nice GUI to the
configfile:)
Every right to luxury?
on
Eco-Terrorism
·
· Score: 2
You have every right to buy as much safety and/or luxury as you can afford, and I would encourage you to do so.
That might be fine if there wern't real costs to
the environment that are paid by us all. Should
factories be allowed to build as powerful (read:
polluting) chemical treatments as they want? What
happens to the planet when we permit such
atrocities?
The author of the linked article seems to think
that it's clear that users would prefer to have
no DVD player rather than a less-than-perfect one.
I don't understand that way of thinking -- would
really any sane person wait for perfection? If so,
maybe they shouldn't be using computers:)
I do find the article amusing, and I'm more on
SUN's side, but I am curious about where I might
get Jini appliances and software to control them.
If such devices exist, a reply with links to the
needed hardware and software to make it all work
would be appreciated..
It's more than just that though -- presumably,
it'll mean that those companies contribute
developers to the project, as it's in their best
interest to do so (e.g. ensure compatibility,
be familiar with the codebase, etc). It's good
for Eazel both because of the extra developers
and for possible support contracts and the like.
Finally, it's nice for nerds that need to work
with systems from the company -- they won't need
to cope with CDE or go through the pain of
installing it themselves.. (compiled GNOME
recently? Ugh.)
Slashdot Mirror
WRT "for the children", what if we don't want our
society producing more children with unhealthy
hangups about sex and language? People who get
their dander raised about the use of the term
"damn" or any other "dirty word" are really kind
of sick, and I hate to hand them another tool for
the spreading of their prudishness.
This is the horrific result of what happens when :)
a society becomes so inhibited that it develops
specific tools to allow people to remain naive.
An entire family of people who have automatic
reactions to certain language. They're just words!
They're just combinations of sounds that, for some
odd historical reason, some religious freaks and
other prudes have somehow decided to focus on..
I'd bet that if there were a language without them,
these kind of people would be the ones to make them
up in order to be able to whine about people using
them
They're treated as individuals in certain cases
for convenience, nothing more. Unlike a person,
they do not suffer coercion when messed with.
Remember, corporations are creations of the
state. Unlike humans, they don't have rights.
Therefore, dealing with them is a matter of
pragmatism, not commonsense morals/ethics.
I'd agree with you, but there are several other
languages out there that might be a better example
than Spanish. The benefit you point out is actually
not uncommon -- many languages have a regularized
pronunciation/spelling parallel. The disadvantage
that Spanish, German, and many other European
languages have is genders -- nouns all have one of
two (or 3, for German) genders tied to them, making
them harder to remember and also creating different
conjugation rules. The genderlessness of nouns in
English is a big plus. Instead of a European
language, I would like to suggest either Korean or
Japanese as admirable languages. The main thing
about Korean is it's alphabet, which is rather
well designed. The main thing about Japanese is
that it also is very regular, and pretty
position-independent (thanks to positional tags,
which Latin used, although Latin is far too
complex). Sadly, the Japanese writing system is
too complex (2 alphabets, one huge set of
chinese-derived glyphs) to be directly used. I
suppose the language I would choose for the world
would probably be Japanese, with its written form
simplified to purely hiragana (discarding katakana
and kanji).
I presume you're talking about American in some
sense other than the literal, as by the normal value
of the term, sentiments/viewpoints are not capable
of being citizens/people. What exactly do you
mean when you use the term in this way then? Is
this sense of "American" synonymous with
patriotism? Is it synonymous with freedom-loving?
Is it synonymous with hypocriticality? Define your
terms.. Anyhow, in case you mean patriotism, you're
naming an incredibly evil force throughout history,
with very few, if any, good aspects. If that's
what the term means to you, then in that sense,
I oppose Americanism, just as I oppose any other
kind of nationalism.
For the sake of liberty we must prevent and undo
intellectual property protections. It is simply
unacceptable that something that I may discover,
a thought I may have, data that I might collect
might be blocked or require a fee for my use.
I assert that any piece of data, any idea, any
thought that I might acquire or synthesize is
something that I may use as I see fit, with no
restrictions on that action as such, including
sharing it with others or using it for various
purposes.
I will not comprimise on this.
Information and data cannot be owned -- they
lack scarcity, and to grant a monopoly on a single
idea is to steal from the potential of every
single person on the planet. The mere fact of
investment does not entail a responsibility for
returns. Or do you see competition as theft?
Essentially some wording that postures Linux as
an *alternative* to what the GNU project considers
it's 'main' thrust, Hurd? And this fellow didn't
manage to win over enough support within the
glibc project to stop a wording change?
Admittedly, RMS's obsession with this wordplay
seems to me to be unwise (it'd be better if he'd
focus on keeping the movement ideologically pure
rather than focusing on diction), but this fellow
doesn't strike me as being any more wise.
Posturing and replies to it are a waste of time --
where there are no actual effects on the way
things are run, it's better to just ignore such
things and spend that time coding, fighting
intellectual property, and other worthwhile causes.
After all, a company is entitled to its profits,
and anything that stands in the way of that
is theft!
Fall into two general categories..
1) Indoctrination so you'll be nice to corporate
interests
2) Review of different ethical systems and their
foundations
I suspect by your phrasing that you mean the
first. A code of ethics isn't something objective
that one can learn.. I recall, when I took a
course on ethics when I was an undergrad, we did
debates, and I managed to sway about a third of
the class to the position that intellectual
property is philosophically invalid. Fun.
The right solution, of course, is to make :)
ssh more *ahem* configurable, like sendmail is,
so that people write incredibly huge books
detailing how it can be configured, and then sell
an 'enchanced' version that has a nice GUI to the
configfile
No need for payment.... *whistles*
How can I sign up to be a beta tester?
You have every right to buy as much safety and/or luxury as you can afford, and I would encourage you to do so.
That might be fine if there wern't real costs to
the environment that are paid by us all. Should
factories be allowed to build as powerful (read:
polluting) chemical treatments as they want? What
happens to the planet when we permit such
atrocities?
Information shall be free, and cannot be owned.
If you want to make money, you're free to try,
but we will ignore your claims of ownership.
Cope.
Hmm....
The author of the linked article seems to think :)
that it's clear that users would prefer to have
no DVD player rather than a less-than-perfect one.
I don't understand that way of thinking -- would
really any sane person wait for perfection? If so,
maybe they shouldn't be using computers
Make a false version of it for documents to trust,
and have it happily decrypt and not restrict?
Probably wouldn't be too hard..
Do you squack the squack? I was thinking about
:)
doing that, but I locked the lock on the rock,
and so now I'm just chalking the chalk.
Seriously, your phrases sound really stupid
Oracle is an SQL database....
Capturing every single CPU instruction would not
be low overhead. Not only that, but doing those
captures would be impossible on many CPUs.
Why do you think of it as being proprietary
and not 'truly open'? Are you confusing
ubitquousness for openness?
I do find the article amusing, and I'm more on
SUN's side, but I am curious about where I might
get Jini appliances and software to control them.
If such devices exist, a reply with links to the
needed hardware and software to make it all work
would be appreciated..
It's more than just that though -- presumably,
it'll mean that those companies contribute
developers to the project, as it's in their best
interest to do so (e.g. ensure compatibility,
be familiar with the codebase, etc). It's good
for Eazel both because of the extra developers
and for possible support contracts and the like.
Finally, it's nice for nerds that need to work
with systems from the company -- they won't need
to cope with CDE or go through the pain of
installing it themselves.. (compiled GNOME
recently? Ugh.)