....if we legalized drug use we'd have a lot more users/addicts who would eventually become desperate enough to commit those very crimes so they could afford their new habits.
So as result we'd have a rise in those types of crimes you think are currently being ignored.
Yay, more lame justifications for illegal piracy/theft* of goods.
*To all you morally challenged individuals who will try to espouse on the differences between piracy and theft, save it. Theft is theft is theft. Downloading music you did not buy is theft period.
Television is life. Life is television. All hail the mighty transfer resistor, the TRANSISTOR! All hail the mighty Cathode Ray Tube! All hail popular culture brought to us via MTV and HBO!
People who do not watch television engage in TERRA and WILL get a visit from Baron Jon von Ashcroft, Lord of the House of DOJ.
That whole publicly owned airwaves stuff was only important when there were like 4 channels on the airwaves. In case you hadn't noticed, CABLE WIRES aren't publicly owned resources. They are the resources of the companies who paid to lay the cable. In such a case, there is no "civic" obligation to the public.
This post...............needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures!!!!!! Oh yeah, some shots of the trains would help. And some pictures. K PLZ THX!!
Lets keep raw technology and social causes....
on
Ogg/Vorbis on Palm OS
·
· Score: 2
...separate.
I don't see how stating your opinion on the Iraq situation requires the freedom to view source code. You can scream from the rooftops all you want and no one will stop you.
The reason why its hard to get media attention for ethical causes is because most people don't care about them contrary to what you think. I have a lot of friends who use computers. They are not however as computer literate as the people here on Slashdot. I've told some of them about the spyware on their computers and none of them care one bit about their info being collected or their surfing habits being monitored. Not a one. And I didn't just ask 5 people about it.
I am not saying Free Software will go extinct. It will continue to exist. However it will remain confined to corporate back end use, ironically helping a lot of the very corporations you probably rail against, academia, poorer nations/households and young individuals going thru their rebellious/counter-culture phases and of course political activists. All of those combined will result in Windows still maintaining a 97% marketshare.
Free Software, in the GPL on the desktop sense, will never go mainstream. If you cannot get the mass public to leave MTV to support local musicians instead, what makes you think you can get them to use OSS? If you cannot get Americans to drive small dinky vehicles instead of their mighty masculine SUV's or downsize their households from their massive McMansions what makes you think they'll use OSS?
I am well versed in the FSF's politics. I live in Boston where the FSF is headquartered. I've even seen the hairy beast himself a few times. (Stallman). I simply reject their policies. I use the software that works best when I need it. I make no distinctions between OSS or proprietary. There is no one on this planet who will look after me better than myself. My immediate concerns are pretty much my only concerns. Those sweatshop workers, who would not have a job or means to buy food without our companies giving them work, must fend for themselves. We did it once, so can they. As for the environmental movement, I care about the environment too. I just don't believe all of the science environmentalists use is fully sound. Saying bad things will happen without adequate, peer reviewed facts, is not the same as it being true.
If a piece of proprietary software does something I don't want it to do, then I'll just stop using it and begin using a competing product. Competition provides us with choices within the proprietary world itself, not just between proprietary and open source. Given enough proprietary choices one will not be forced to resort to the "Free amatuer" products that best describe so many OSS projects.
If I want politics, I'll turn on CNN or MSNBC. When I want a tech product to do the job, I'll choose the best in concerns to practicality and not in concerns to some social agenda led by the FSF.
The moderator was spot on. Life is short. Pretty soon AI's will emerge and computer usage will be completely changed forever. I don't want to waste what time we have left with the present PC paradigm waiting for open source applications to catch up to the features and quality that proprietary software has TODAY. I also don't want to get caught up in some quasi-legitimate political movement.
Couldn't geeks have found something better to support than "Free Software"? What was wrong with good old environmentalism or fighting against sweatshops in 3rd world countries? But now. Here in the rich west we have to fight for "Software Freedom". Something very few people care about now, and very few people will care about in the future. Its not like someday a statute to Richard Stallman is going to be erected in the future praising him for saving our rights to be programmers. MOST PEOPLE ARE NOT NOR EVER WANT TO BE PROGRAMMERS. Even if copy protection were to become successfully difficult to circumvent and become vastly wide-spread the overwhelming majority of people's lives would continue as they do today. No one is going to di if they can't copy a piece of software, a song, a video or a book. LIFE WILL GO ON, and it won't be bad. Except for the geeks that is. The whiny people who make up about one half of.005% of the world's population. Boo freaking hoo.
Do you know everything your car is doing? Everything your stereo is doing? Your TV? Your computer hardware? You don't have the schematics to all of those things either. So what makes software so different?
When you talk about the "dangers of secrecy" in concerns to software, specifically a tiny MP3 Player you do not come across as anything but a crazy paranoid person who is sure everyone out there is out to get them and would were it not for your trusty tin foil hat. Software Freedom is NOT a legitimate movement. Its a game. Its not real. There are REAL causes out there. IMPORTANT ones. It really annoys me to see that this open source and free software contingent is the legacy of the hippies who began all this kind of thinking back in the Woodstock days.
A unified worldwide union would never work. Even if I were to join one union, say a Real Estate union, what would I have in common with a worker from a janitors union? We don't make the same pay, socialize in the same groups, or live in the same neighborhoods. (I don't have any kids but lets just pretend) He sends his kids to public school, I would send mine to private, because I went there myself and because I can....etc.
There are too many diverse occupations to be represented by the same union. Furthermore, why in God's name would some poor bastard in India who has the chance to quadruple his earnings by working for a US company decide not to just to show "solidarity" with his US brethren? Something like that will never happen. Individual human selfishness and greed is simply too powerful to overcome. Ironically its also the driving force of the American economy. I guess its not such a bad virtue afterall.
About Sweeden, so there's no independent contractors for any industry in the entire nation? No self-employed people? Jesus that has to suck for the brilliant few.
The collapse won't happen overnight. But with both Japan and Europe's declining fertility and population it is inevitable. The social security systems of ANY country (including the US), are dependant on two things. Constant economic expansion and increasing populations.
Your direct job doesn't have to be lost to outsourcing. It may simply take time for your clients to realize they can get it done cheaper in another country. Over time you'll get less and less business until you're completely out of business. How exactly will the union prevent that?
... but the "right" to screw with another company's hard work, sweat and tears, i.e. their "software, intellectual property..etc" is one right I am absolutely sure I am not going to miss.
MMORPGS are set to become an extremely large segment of the video game industry. That means a lot of jobs, not only from the company that makes the game but from all the mom and pop companies that will pop up to sell guides, start web forums supporting the game, merchandise...etc. It would really be sad to have all of that put in jepordy for some little teenaged pissant who wants to mess with the "code" and be able to play for free, or with unfair abilities that turns others off to the game and causes the company and the MMORPG industry as a whole to lose money.
And about rights, you really demean the value of the word when you use it on stuff as triffling as this. Rights are things like the freedom to speak, the freedom to assmble peaceably, to be free from random searches and seizures, the right to a speedy trial. The "right" to screw with a company's products pales in comparison.
Don't assume IT workers have the same leverage as Dock workers. You can't "move" dock work overseas and have it outsourced. Thats their power. They can shut down the ports and thus most of the US economy. IT workers don't have that kind of clout. I'm sure they could arrange to simultaneously hack a bunch of critical computer systems, but thats illegal and they'd wind up in prison instead of on the picket line. So nice try.
And dockworkers aren't doing too well either. There used to be over 100,000 of them. Now there's about 10,000. Those who remain are well paid, but its still a dying industry.
Look there are numerous examples of CEO's without experience in the field their companies are in who were very successful. Lou Gerstner at IBM. Terry Semel at Yahoo. Steve Jobs at Pixar. You absolutely do NOT need nuts and bolts knowledge of the business to be a good leader, make the company grow, and increase profits. Its simply not a requirement.
You're not giving your employer your life. You are trading your labor for money. You don't "give" anything. If you don't like the current terms, then quit and find a better place to work. If you don't want to spend the rest of your life in this situation then you need to take matters into your own hands, start your own business and quit bitching from the sidelines.
The job of the CEO isn't to know how to do your job and the job of every subordinate under him. Its to lead the company. That means knowing how to delegate tasks to those trained to do them best and making sure the company heads and stays in a direction that is beneficial to all employees. With a bit of maturity you might have realized that a while ago instead of playing the childish game of asking if the CEO could do your specific job.
You actually think a bunch of people care where the products are made? Have you not been on Earth for the past 15 years? You do know how much marketshare foreign automakers have been gaining don't you? And ALL computer manufacturers employ foreign labor. Know of any companies that produce PC's domestically?
People want the products they want for the lowest price they can get. I'm not going to spend more to support someone I don't even know.
Communities form due to necessities of convience. When they are no longer necessary they dissolve. I.E. gentrification...etc.
As for coming together, well you can give an IT union a good try but its futile in the end. IT work is simply to easily exportable with the exception of onsight system administration. When you job can be exported to another country you don't have the leverage most other unions do.
IT is a unique industry. Not only can most forms of IT work be outsourced to other cities and other states, but also to other countries. A union is worthless in IT. You have no leverage as long as the work is so mobile.
Doctors and lawyers don't have to deal with new technologies coming down the pipe every 3-6 months. If we go ahead with licensing we'll be slowing down the development of the tech industry. I'm not sure the rest of the country or society wants to suffer thru slowed innovation for the benefit of a relatively small population of IT professionals.
If you're entire dept is about to be outsourced then what good would an IT union do you? How would they stop the jobs from leaving? Going on strike would only speed up the company's plans. They simply don't want you anymore. Its not like they just want to deny you a pay raise.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't understand why the logging companies just don't call in the police to remove these tree sitters. Why hasn't this been done yet?
This coming from someone on a Linux fanatic site
....if we legalized drug use we'd have a lot more users/addicts who would eventually become desperate enough to commit those very crimes so they could afford their new habits.
So as result we'd have a rise in those types of crimes you think are currently being ignored.
Yay, more lame justifications for illegal piracy/theft* of goods.
*To all you morally challenged individuals who will try to espouse on the differences between piracy and theft, save it. Theft is theft is theft. Downloading music you did not buy is theft period.
Television is life. Life is television. All hail the mighty transfer resistor, the TRANSISTOR! All hail the mighty Cathode Ray Tube! All hail popular culture brought to us via MTV and HBO!
People who do not watch television engage in TERRA and WILL get a visit from Baron Jon von Ashcroft, Lord of the House of DOJ.
That whole publicly owned airwaves stuff was only important when there were like 4 channels on the airwaves. In case you hadn't noticed, CABLE WIRES aren't publicly owned resources. They are the resources of the companies who paid to lay the cable. In such a case, there is no "civic" obligation to the public.
lol
Yeah and all of it sucked. Public domain music sucks butt0x0r.
This post ........ .......needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures needs pictures!!!!!!
Oh yeah, some shots of the trains would help.
And some pictures. K PLZ THX!!
...separate.
I don't see how stating your opinion on the Iraq situation requires the freedom to view source code. You can scream from the rooftops all you want and no one will stop you.
The reason why its hard to get media attention for ethical causes is because most people don't care about them contrary to what you think. I have a lot of friends who use computers. They are not however as computer literate as the people here on Slashdot. I've told some of them about the spyware on their computers and none of them care one bit about their info being collected or their surfing habits being monitored. Not a one. And I didn't just ask 5 people about it.
I am not saying Free Software will go extinct. It will continue to exist. However it will remain confined to corporate back end use, ironically helping a lot of the very corporations you probably rail against, academia, poorer nations/households and young individuals going thru their rebellious/counter-culture phases and of course political activists. All of those combined will result in Windows still maintaining a 97% marketshare.
Free Software, in the GPL on the desktop sense, will never go mainstream.
If you cannot get the mass public to leave MTV to support local musicians instead, what makes you think you can get them to use OSS?
If you cannot get Americans to drive small dinky vehicles instead of their mighty masculine SUV's or downsize their households from their massive McMansions what makes you think they'll use OSS?
I am well versed in the FSF's politics. I live in Boston where the FSF is headquartered. I've even seen the hairy beast himself a few times. (Stallman). I simply reject their policies. I use the software that works best when I need it. I make no distinctions between OSS or proprietary. There is no one on this planet who will look after me better than myself. My immediate concerns are pretty much my only concerns. Those sweatshop workers, who would not have a job or means to buy food without our companies giving them work, must fend for themselves. We did it once, so can they. As for the environmental movement, I care about the environment too. I just don't believe all of the science environmentalists use is fully sound. Saying bad things will happen without adequate, peer reviewed facts, is not the same as it being true.
If a piece of proprietary software does something I don't want it to do, then I'll just stop using it and begin using a competing product. Competition provides us with choices within the proprietary world itself, not just between proprietary and open source. Given enough proprietary choices one will not be forced to resort to the "Free amatuer" products that best describe so many OSS projects.
If I want politics, I'll turn on CNN or MSNBC. When I want a tech product to do the job, I'll choose the best in concerns to practicality and not in concerns to some social agenda led by the FSF.
The moderator was spot on. Life is short. Pretty soon AI's will emerge and computer usage will be completely changed forever. I don't want to waste what time we have left with the present PC paradigm waiting for open source applications to catch up to the features and quality that proprietary software has TODAY. I also don't want to get caught up in some quasi-legitimate political movement.
.005% of the world's population. Boo freaking hoo.
Couldn't geeks have found something better to support than "Free Software"? What was wrong with good old environmentalism or fighting against sweatshops in 3rd world countries? But now. Here in the rich west we have to fight for "Software Freedom". Something very few people care about now, and very few people will care about in the future. Its not like someday a statute to Richard Stallman is going to be erected in the future praising him for saving our rights to be programmers. MOST PEOPLE ARE NOT NOR EVER WANT TO BE PROGRAMMERS. Even if copy protection were to become successfully difficult to circumvent and become vastly wide-spread the overwhelming majority of people's lives would continue as they do today. No one is going to di if they can't copy a piece of software, a song, a video or a book. LIFE WILL GO ON, and it won't be bad. Except for the geeks that is. The whiny people who make up about one half of
Do you know everything your car is doing? Everything your stereo is doing? Your TV? Your computer hardware? You don't have the schematics to all of those things either. So what makes software so different?
When you talk about the "dangers of secrecy" in concerns to software, specifically a tiny MP3 Player you do not come across as anything but a crazy paranoid person who is sure everyone out there is out to get them and would were it not for your trusty tin foil hat. Software Freedom is NOT a legitimate movement. Its a game. Its not real. There are REAL causes out there. IMPORTANT ones. It really annoys me to see that this open source and free software contingent is the legacy of the hippies who began all this kind of thinking back in the Woodstock days.
A unified worldwide union would never work. Even if I were to join one union, say a Real Estate union, what would I have in common with a worker from a janitors union? We don't make the same pay, socialize in the same groups, or live in the same neighborhoods. (I don't have any kids but lets just pretend) He sends his kids to public school, I would send mine to private, because I went there myself and because I can....etc.
There are too many diverse occupations to be represented by the same union. Furthermore, why in God's name would some poor bastard in India who has the chance to quadruple his earnings by working for a US company decide not to just to show "solidarity" with his US brethren? Something like that will never happen. Individual human selfishness and greed is simply too powerful to overcome. Ironically its also the driving force of the American economy. I guess its not such a bad virtue afterall.
About Sweeden, so there's no independent contractors for any industry in the entire nation? No self-employed people? Jesus that has to suck for the brilliant few.
The collapse won't happen overnight. But with both Japan and Europe's declining fertility and population it is inevitable. The social security systems of ANY country (including the US), are dependant on two things. Constant economic expansion and increasing populations.
Your direct job doesn't have to be lost to outsourcing. It may simply take time for your clients to realize they can get it done cheaper in another country. Over time you'll get less and less business until you're completely out of business. How exactly will the union prevent that?
... but the "right" to screw with another company's hard work, sweat and tears, i.e. their "software, intellectual property..etc" is one right I am absolutely sure I am not going to miss.
MMORPGS are set to become an extremely large segment of the video game industry. That means a lot of jobs, not only from the company that makes the game but from all the mom and pop companies that will pop up to sell guides, start web forums supporting the game, merchandise...etc. It would really be sad to have all of that put in jepordy for some little teenaged pissant who wants to mess with the "code" and be able to play for free, or with unfair abilities that turns others off to the game and causes the company and the MMORPG industry as a whole to lose money.
And about rights, you really demean the value of the word when you use it on stuff as triffling as this. Rights are things like the freedom to speak, the freedom to assmble peaceably, to be free from random searches and seizures, the right to a speedy trial. The "right" to screw with a company's products pales in comparison.
Don't assume IT workers have the same leverage as Dock workers. You can't "move" dock work overseas and have it outsourced. Thats their power. They can shut down the ports and thus most of the US economy. IT workers don't have that kind of clout. I'm sure they could arrange to simultaneously hack a bunch of critical computer systems, but thats illegal and they'd wind up in prison instead of on the picket line. So nice try.
And dockworkers aren't doing too well either. There used to be over 100,000 of them. Now there's about 10,000. Those who remain are well paid, but its still a dying industry.
Look there are numerous examples of CEO's without experience in the field their companies are in who were very successful. Lou Gerstner at IBM. Terry Semel at Yahoo. Steve Jobs at Pixar. You absolutely do NOT need nuts and bolts knowledge of the business to be a good leader, make the company grow, and increase profits. Its simply not a requirement.
You're not giving your employer your life. You are trading your labor for money. You don't "give" anything. If you don't like the current terms, then quit and find a better place to work. If you don't want to spend the rest of your life in this situation then you need to take matters into your own hands, start your own business and quit bitching from the sidelines.
The job of the CEO isn't to know how to do your job and the job of every subordinate under him. Its to lead the company. That means knowing how to delegate tasks to those trained to do them best and making sure the company heads and stays in a direction that is beneficial to all employees. With a bit of maturity you might have realized that a while ago instead of playing the childish game of asking if the CEO could do your specific job.
You actually think a bunch of people care where the products are made? Have you not been on Earth for the past 15 years? You do know how much marketshare foreign automakers have been gaining don't you? And ALL computer manufacturers employ foreign labor. Know of any companies that produce PC's domestically?
People want the products they want for the lowest price they can get. I'm not going to spend more to support someone I don't even know.
Communities form due to necessities of convience. When they are no longer necessary they dissolve. I.E. gentrification...etc.
As for coming together, well you can give an IT union a good try but its futile in the end. IT work is simply to easily exportable with the exception of onsight system administration. When you job can be exported to another country you don't have the leverage most other unions do.
IT is a unique industry. Not only can most forms of IT work be outsourced to other cities and other states, but also to other countries. A union is worthless in IT. You have no leverage as long as the work is so mobile.
Doctors and lawyers don't have to deal with new technologies coming down the pipe every 3-6 months. If we go ahead with licensing we'll be slowing down the development of the tech industry. I'm not sure the rest of the country or society wants to suffer thru slowed innovation for the benefit of a relatively small population of IT professionals.
If you're entire dept is about to be outsourced then what good would an IT union do you? How would they stop the jobs from leaving? Going on strike would only speed up the company's plans. They simply don't want you anymore. Its not like they just want to deny you a pay raise.