Tell the story of Linux, as the "child of the internet", developed by thousands of volunteers. Tell the teacher that there has actually been sociology-studies on the field (people working for free), and show her a copy of "The cathedral and the bazaar" by Eric S. Raymond. This will especially work well if the teacher has some sociology background. Then some of the statistics for Linux. F.eks. being second most popular server-OS in sales, perhaps even THE most in actual use.
Present some of the reasons: -Open standards and development -Incredible peerreview -fast development cycles.
Lastly share the fact that Linux is increasing it's market share as a desktop-OS as well, and tell her about the availability of a good Office suite (Star Office) and productivity applications.
Do not, I repeat not bash Microsoft in the process. This will make you seem like an extremist. Be calm, and open. You can say that you and a lot of people prefer it to Windowsplatforms because of speed, reliability and flexibility, and that it is well worth a try.
The free speech people har mostly against most about all kinds of patents.
Those who want to profit from a specific invention is for very strict ownership-patents.
What about two kinds of patents for software/algorithms. With a valuation to decide which category a patent falls under. 1. Very innovate and amazing: Full patent-ownership for a year (or 1.5 year). Nobody else may use it without permission for this period. This creates an advantage, but it is release much earlier than say 25 years. 2. Innovative: Nobody else may profit from the innovation for 1 year.
Something as simple as an "idea" should never be patented. If I'm the first one creating a believable virtual reality, should I be able to patent the idea? What if someone takes a entirely different route, but nevertheless succeeds? IMHO they should also have the right to use it. At most, patents should cover implementation, not the general idea.
Why on earth should 3dfx release binary only drivers, when they have already given up all the "secret" information about their hardware by releasing opensource-drivers. This would be like CIA wen't out and published all of their secret codes, and then started to use them again.
If you're talking about the NEW 3dfx-cards, you could be correct, but I don't really beleive that either. ATI I know nothing about, but they have already released full specs, so it's no point for them either to release closed drivers, at least not for existing products
This sort of packaging and ease of use is essential if Linux is to succeed as a mainstream desktop-OS. Gnome is great, but installing source-packages or even RPMs is not for your average windowsuser. Helixcode as I understand is also a part of the gnome-development. The desktop looks very professional, very slick and very inviting. I'll try this
First of all: The use of GNU-compilers does not make your code GPL. The usage of the CODE behind the GNU-compilers will. You still complain? You realize that this is like saying: "hey! I can't steal this guys code without giving him or the community anything in return. What dumbasses".
If you use GPL-code, your work becomes GPL, because the GPL explicitly tries to make sure that the software is free just as the original developer intended. If you don't want to code for free, then don't, but don't complain about not being able to steal other peoples code.
Working on an opensourceproject is a bit like charity, in the way that it all benefits the users and the community.
You get paid by respect, just like when doing work for charity, except that doing opensource-work gives you a better chance of being respected as a skilled hacker/programmer, instead of being respected just for being "kind".
If you really are an expert in economics, you should have thought this through. Given your arguments, giving a concert in aid of a good cause is slave labour. This also means that U2, probably some of the richest guys in Ireland, is in fact slaves.
Slavery is only at term appropriate if you are _forced_ to do work for nothing. Opensource-developers aren't forced into anything. They just do what they feel like doing, hacking.. and why not make a contribution that millions of other people will respect you for?
If you don't want to code GPL-stuff, then don't. It is as simple as that.
I've posted about 5 stories, one of them got posted. I could have posted 20-30 stories and not complaining about them being posted.
When you look at the amount of stories ahead of you in the queue, it is given that the slashdot -people may not even have the time to read every one of them very carefully. I run my own Linuxssite, in norwegian http://www.linuxguiden.org, and I don't post every article submitted. If I really don't think it is interesting to the readers, I won't post it. It is as easy as that, and really the editors just has to make that choice.
That being said, I don't understand why this ranting was put under one of the regular news. Now I have written a comment to the ranting, that people reading the news, might not be interested in. It could be moderated down normally, but the ranting made this posting legit. Really...post all this ranting under different headlines than other postings.
Have people here still not realized that the next-generation Netscape is NOTHING like the last versions. It was written from scratch using "the opensource way", with paid help from Netscape engineers. This edition has an incredible bug-system, Bugzilla, an enormous amount of people looking at the code, trying to find bugs, and has really very little in common with other Netscape-products. If you hate Netscape 4.x, that's fair. I think it is a horrible and buggy program, that I'm forced to use as a Linuxuser, because of no viable alternatives. It is however very unfair to expect the same from this, as former Netscape releases. Netscape 6.0 is nothing more than, Mozilla, the opensourceproducts, with some proprietary addons, that Netscape cannot release. And to the question, why we don't hack IE. While I think IE is mostly a good browser, building a new, next-generation browser from scratch is actually a far less waste of resources. If someone thinks Mozilla will fail, think again. It is a small browser, that is already slated to be included in internet-TV-boxes, and other embedded products. It will also, unlike IE, be available for an enormous amount of platforms, it is written partly in XML, which makes it part of the internet-technology instead of just using it. Mozilla will be released, it will be good, it will be worked further on, and it will really rule. I have absolutely no doubt that the press will eat it's words when they finally see a browser that doesn't muck up open internet-protocols, but uses them well.
There is an enourmous difference concerning your analogy (the traffic-policy) and the question at hand. First of all. Controlling every car is not possible at all. Way to expensive. Installing webfilters, however is more like automatic traffic control (which, however, is much less effective). In addition, installing filters is a passive control. It is more like making sure that cars can't go faster, by installing speed-bumps. Nobody is being monitored or under surveillance. I agree about the point about it not working as well as it should, but Slashdot is making this to be a case of principals, and that makes that point rather irrelevant. If these filters shouldn't be applied in public libraries, it is because of pracicality.
I'm very pro free-speech. I'm for everybody doing whatever they like, as long as they don't impose something that might seem offensive on others.
Surfing porn in a public area may seem very offensive, and the library has the right to shut out that kind of content, just as an internet site has the right to delete unwanted and truly offensive comments on their discussion -board.
People should have the right to enjoy porn, but not wherever they choose, just as people shouldn't have sex in a public cafeteria. Keep it where you are sure that the people around you are interested.
Corel are incorporating the ability to give wine-programs the KDE look and feel, which also means, the same thing could be done for Gnome. But I give you one point. The availability of programs for Linux, that is obviously worse than the windows ones, because it doesn't integrate well with the desktop environment is actually bad for Linux. Because it slows down development of REAL applications for Linux, and creates the situation where people just say: "why use Linux, when all the applications work better with Windows".
I'm sorry but your posting shows nothing more than the traditional american fear of anything slightly resembling socialism. The nordic contries are examples of market economies influenced by socialist thought. Are these countries worse off?
I don't think so. The economy is great, crime is low, people are generally happy. I'm sorry, but stating that all economies influenced by socialism is worse off shows nothing but ignorance. Communism doesn't work, we all know that. It doesn't give people enough motivation to do their job well enough (Why work hard if I don't get paid more anyway?). But _Pure_ captitalist market economies, doesn't seem all that fantastic either. It breeds poverty, which in turn breeds crime. Perhaps it is time to throw off all the fear of not being able to become stinking rich (which most people with the dream, never will), for something in between. Taking care of people of all kinds of social-status, but still making it possible to achieve something IS possible.
If you don't like the patent infringment-stories. Turn them off:) After all, you decide what is shown on your personal Slashdot-page. This is what dynamic websites are all about
Please... the point about this was that Linux/Unix has a much (repeat MUCH) better handling of the command-line interface. This interface has been forgotten in Windows, and is very poor, and contains very little improvement from the old DOS-style. In addition, most of NT's configuration is stored in a large and unreadable "registry", which is a big pain trying to automate, if your specific task is not covered by the GUI. Shell-scripting lets you automate just about everything under Linux/Unix. While I agree that this means a higher learning curve, it also scales better with knowledge and work. You seriously can't compare text-interfaces in Unix and NT. NT's is a joke.
It is all in norwegian, and ment for Norwegian readers. I just hope the government i Norway will realize what a farse these trials are. The protest can be found at: http://linuxguiden.linpro.no
I was astonished by the lack of knowledge that oozes from this posting, and it seems as if you were in Microsoftmarketing. Were you?
You seem to have no knowledge of Linux whatsoever, which makes me think that you haven't monitored anything. First of all, Linux is not unstable. Why do you think it has a higher market share in webservers than Windows NT-server, but not in places that doesn't need that much stability? A well maintained Linuxbox can keep up for years without crashing, you can't say that about NT-server. You were amazed to find "no DirectX compatibility". Have you seen any platforms apart from windows using DirectX? No? That's because it is DirectX that is proprietary. It is Windows-only, and that is because Microsoft doesn't want to release it for any other platform. OpenGL however, is open, and ported to a great amount of platforms (Linux, Irix, Solaris, FreeBSD, BeOS, any other Unix..etc.).
Wizards is very possible, but there are plenty of areas that need attention before they come along. I give you one point here. Newbies like wizards.
But why on earth are you bringing the registry into this? The registry is a very poor idea implemented by Microsoft. It is cryptic, and is impossible to read and understand by human eyes. Linux however uses text-files for configuration. I agree that graphical-frontends are necessary (and partly there already), but putting everything in one big, enormous file, is not the way to go.
What happenes if a program screws up, and you can't repair the registry using a "wizard". (A wizard can only handly very typical situations). You can't possibly edit the registry by hand, it's to cryptic. If the information had been stored in a text-file, readable by humans, you could have just located the file, and fixed it.
My last point is about DirectX being better than OpenGL. You say that "many experts think that OpenGL is technically inferior to DirectX". You submit no proof whatsover. Submit a testimony, and the opposite can always be found. The truth is that the "experts" do not agree on this matter, and hopefully, the open solution will win. Your last remark: "without DirectX support, Linux is going nowhere, fast.". This of course translates into: "Linux is never going anywhere, period", because you will never see DirectX for Linux (you would have, but Microsoft cancelled all attemps at it being cross-plattform, when they bought it). Does this mean that Linux is screwed? Of course not. Linux is making progress both in usability and usermass very quickly. So I guess your argument must be wrong.
..it is not very possible to release a book without Sourcecode.:) I've always wondered why all the Linux-HOWTOs and other documentation comes in a much stricter license than GPL-software. I figured people like to get credit, but you can't combine full credit with the right of everyone to change the document, because it would be way to easy for someone to change the content, keeping you as author, and making you look like a moron. But then I thought about the GPL. If it doesn't require any credit given, why should all the documentation require it? Am I missing something here? Does documentation require far different handling than software? Is there really a difference between a book that contains tutorials, and one that contains GPL-code that can be scanned in, and used? People seem to think it's obvious you'd need a different license. Why?
Seeing never really has been proof enough.
on
Live or Memorex?
·
· Score: 3
We may not have had this kind of technology, but people doing propaganda has always been able to cheat in other ways than pure technological. Remember the Gulf-war? A lot of what was presented through CNN was in fact pure propaganda. A kuwaitian girl crying, saying that soldiers from IRAQ defiled an orphanage.. pure propaganda, not true. Of course, IRAQ did it to an even greater extend.
The same happend in Yugoslavia. People were shown all the monstrous acts by NATO. Of course there were some horrible things that happened. But when you only present the worst acts of war, on none of the more gentle, you have already fooled your people.
Of course.. this technology could leed to an even greater abuse of "reality". Seeing opposition do things they never really did. Scary...
In several countries, you have to be 21 to watch a porn-movie, but only 18 to participate. Personally I don't think other people should dictate what other people are allowed to, as long as it doesn't really affect them. In some European countries and social groups, porn, prostitution, etc.. is a social taboo, but not banned. "You can do what you want, but you have to accept people looking at you as a pervert." This might not be "better" in all respects than the US, but I find it a step in the right direction. In other societies porn is looked at as something private. It is totally ok to watch porn-movies as long as you don't push it on others. This is my favourite. But please don't generalize Europe in this debate. Each country has it's own unique laws. My country, Norway, is very strict. Denmark, our neighbours, whose culture is strongly related to ours, has very free and relaxed laws.
BSL -- yet more misunderstood critizism
on
Humpday Quickies
·
· Score: 1
The GPL is not made to protect the creator of the BPL, but the public, and the original authors.
Making sure you can never take someone elses code, and close it up is THE concern of creators of GPL-software, not to help you not having to give back modifications.
Critizism against the GPL is actually misunderstood. When someone complains about having to give out their hard work if using GPL-code, it is like saying: "damn it, your property right is stupid, I can't modify it the way I please". This can be easily countered by saying: "excactly!! That was the whole POINT behind my decision to use those property rights".
Use the license that suits you best, but don't complain about other peoples choices when it comes to licenses.
..not just people who has trouble with computers. UF is a strip by techies for techies, and therefor has lots of techie-humor, which at some point relegates into mocking stupid people, like every other kind of humour. There are sitcoms making fun of everything from nerds to christians. And not being able to tolerate them, is not being able to laugh at yourself. You are in other words taking yourself too seriously. People who try to cram 5 1/4" disks into 3.5" slots, by folding them, have to realize that someone finds this behaviour funny. Just as I have to realize that some people think I'm funny by acting really dorky when it comes to women (just like AJ). Besides, lots of the UF-strips makes fun of ourselves (techies). We laugh about that as well.
Slashdot Mirror
Could a virus listen for a "su" command by
a user, and then catch the root-password?
Tell the story of Linux,
as the "child of the internet", developed
by thousands of volunteers.
Tell the teacher that there has actually been
sociology-studies on the field (people
working for free), and show her
a copy of "The cathedral and the bazaar" by
Eric S. Raymond.
This will especially work well if the teacher has
some sociology background.
Then some of the statistics for Linux. F.eks.
being second most popular server-OS in sales,
perhaps even THE most in actual use.
Present some of the reasons:
-Open standards and development
-Incredible peerreview
-fast development cycles.
Lastly share the fact that Linux is increasing
it's market share as a desktop-OS as well, and
tell her about the availability of a good Office suite (Star Office) and productivity applications.
Do not, I repeat not bash Microsoft in the process. This will make you seem like an extremist. Be calm, and open.
You can say that you and a lot of people prefer
it to Windowsplatforms because of speed, reliability and flexibility, and that it is
well worth a try.
The free speech people har mostly against
most about all kinds of patents.
Those who want to profit from a specific invention
is for very strict ownership-patents.
What about two kinds of patents for software/algorithms. With a valuation to decide
which category a patent falls under.
1. Very innovate and amazing:
Full patent-ownership for a year (or 1.5 year).
Nobody else may use it without permission for
this period. This creates an advantage, but it is
release much earlier than say 25 years.
2. Innovative:
Nobody else may profit from the innovation for
1 year.
Something as simple as an "idea" should never
be patented. If I'm the first one creating
a believable virtual reality, should I be able
to patent the idea? What if someone takes a
entirely different route, but nevertheless succeeds? IMHO they should also have the right
to use it.
At most, patents should cover implementation,
not the general idea.
Why on earth should 3dfx release
binary only drivers, when they have already
given up all the "secret" information about
their hardware by releasing opensource-drivers.
This would be like CIA wen't out and published
all of their secret codes, and then started
to use them again.
If you're talking about the NEW 3dfx-cards, you
could be correct, but I don't really beleive
that either.
ATI I know nothing about, but they have already
released full specs, so it's no point for them
either to release closed drivers, at least
not for existing products
The helix-sites are swamped right now,
but there is a mirror of the distribution
at RPMfind:
ftp://rpmfind.net/linux/helix/distributions/
This sort of packaging and ease of use is
essential if Linux is to succeed as a mainstream
desktop-OS.
Gnome is great, but installing source-packages
or even RPMs is not for your average windowsuser.
Helixcode as I understand is also a part of
the gnome-development.
The desktop looks very professional, very slick
and very inviting.
I'll try this
First of all: The use of GNU-compilers does
not make your code GPL.
The usage of the CODE behind the GNU-compilers
will.
You still complain?
You realize that this is like saying:
"hey! I can't steal this guys code without giving him or the community anything in return. What dumbasses".
If you use GPL-code, your work becomes GPL, because the GPL explicitly tries to make sure that
the software is free just as the original developer intended.
If you don't want to code for free, then don't, but don't complain about not being able to steal
other peoples code.
Working on an opensourceproject is a bit like
charity, in the way that it all benefits the
users and the community.
You get paid by respect, just like when doing
work for charity, except that doing opensource-work gives you a better chance of
being respected as a skilled hacker/programmer,
instead of being respected just for being "kind".
If you really are an expert in economics, you
should have thought this through.
Given your arguments, giving a concert in aid
of a good cause is slave labour.
This also means that U2, probably some of the richest guys in Ireland, is in fact slaves.
Slavery is only at term appropriate if you are
_forced_ to do work for nothing.
Opensource-developers aren't forced into anything.
They just do what they feel like doing, hacking..
and why not make a contribution that millions
of other people will respect you for?
If you don't want to code GPL-stuff, then don't.
It is as simple as that.
I've posted about 5 stories, one of them got
posted. I could have posted 20-30 stories and
not complaining about them being posted.
When you look at the amount of stories ahead
of you in the queue, it is given that the slashdot
-people may not even have the time to read every
one of them very carefully.
I run my own Linuxssite, in norwegian http://www.linuxguiden.org, and I don't post
every article submitted.
If I really don't think it is interesting to
the readers, I won't post it. It is as easy as that, and really the editors just has to make that choice.
That being said, I don't understand why this
ranting was put under one of the regular news.
Now I have written a comment to the ranting, that
people reading the news, might not be interested
in. It could be moderated down normally, but
the ranting made this posting legit.
Really...post all this ranting under different
headlines than other postings.
Have people here still not realized that the next-generation Netscape is NOTHING like the last versions.
It was written from scratch using "the opensource way", with paid help from Netscape engineers.
This edition has an incredible bug-system, Bugzilla, an enormous amount of people looking at the code, trying to find bugs, and has really very little in common with other Netscape-products.
If you hate Netscape 4.x, that's fair. I think it is a horrible and buggy program, that I'm forced to use as a Linuxuser, because of no viable alternatives.
It is however very unfair to expect the same from this, as former Netscape releases.
Netscape 6.0 is nothing more than, Mozilla, the opensourceproducts, with some proprietary addons, that Netscape cannot release.
And to the question, why we don't hack IE. While I think IE is mostly a good browser, building a new, next-generation browser from scratch is actually a far less waste of resources.
If someone thinks Mozilla will fail, think again. It is a small browser, that is already slated to be included in internet-TV-boxes, and other embedded products.
It will also, unlike IE, be available for an enormous amount of platforms, it is written partly in XML, which makes it part of the internet-technology instead of just using it.
Mozilla will be released, it will be good, it will be worked further on, and it will really rule. I have absolutely no doubt that the press will eat it's words when they finally see a browser that doesn't muck up open internet-protocols, but uses them well.
There is an enourmous difference concerning your analogy (the traffic-policy) and the question at hand.
First of all. Controlling every car is not possible at all. Way to expensive. Installing webfilters, however is more like automatic traffic control (which, however, is much less effective).
In addition, installing filters is a passive control. It is more like making sure that cars can't go faster, by installing speed-bumps. Nobody is being monitored or under surveillance.
I agree about the point about it not working as well as it should, but Slashdot is making this to be a case of principals, and that makes that point rather irrelevant.
If these filters shouldn't be applied in public libraries, it is because of pracicality.
I'm very pro free-speech. I'm for everybody doing whatever they like, as long as they don't impose something that might seem offensive on others.
Surfing porn in a public area may seem very offensive, and the library has the right to shut out that kind of content, just as an internet site has the right to delete unwanted and truly offensive comments on their discussion -board.
People should have the right to enjoy porn, but not wherever they choose, just as people shouldn't have sex in a public cafeteria.
Keep it where you are sure that the people around you are interested.
Corel are incorporating the ability to
give wine-programs the KDE look and feel,
which also means, the same thing could be done for
Gnome.
But I give you one point.
The availability of programs for Linux, that
is obviously worse than the windows ones,
because it doesn't integrate well with the desktop
environment is actually bad for Linux.
Because it slows down development of REAL
applications for Linux, and creates the situation
where people just say:
"why use Linux, when all the applications work
better with Windows".
I'm sorry but your posting shows nothing more
than the traditional american fear of anything
slightly resembling socialism.
The nordic contries are examples of market
economies influenced by socialist thought.
Are these countries worse off?
I don't think so.
The economy is great, crime is low, people
are generally happy.
I'm sorry, but stating that all economies influenced by socialism is worse off shows
nothing but ignorance.
Communism doesn't work, we all know that.
It doesn't give people enough motivation to
do their job well enough (Why work hard if I don't
get paid more anyway?).
But _Pure_ captitalist market economies, doesn't
seem all that fantastic either.
It breeds poverty, which in turn breeds crime.
Perhaps it is time to throw off all the fear of
not being able to become stinking rich (which most people with the dream, never will), for
something in between.
Taking care of people of all kinds of social-status, but still making it possible to achieve
something IS possible.
Did people forget the incredible
"hitchikers guide to the galaxy" by Douglas
Adams?
If you don't like the patent infringment-stories. :)
Turn them off
After all, you decide what is shown on your
personal Slashdot-page.
This is what dynamic websites are all about
Please... the point about this was that
Linux/Unix has a much (repeat MUCH) better handling of the command-line interface.
This interface has been forgotten in Windows,
and is very poor, and contains very little
improvement from the old DOS-style.
In addition, most of NT's configuration is stored
in a large and unreadable "registry", which is
a big pain trying to automate, if your specific
task is not covered by the GUI.
Shell-scripting lets you automate just about
everything under Linux/Unix.
While I agree that this means a higher learning curve, it also scales better with knowledge
and work.
You seriously can't compare text-interfaces in
Unix and NT. NT's is a joke.
It is all in norwegian, and ment for Norwegian
readers. I just hope the government i Norway
will realize what a farse these trials are.
The protest can be found at:
http://linuxguiden.linpro.no
I was astonished by the lack of knowledge that
oozes from this posting, and it seems as if you
were in Microsoftmarketing. Were you?
You seem to have no knowledge of Linux whatsoever,
which makes me think that you haven't monitored
anything.
First of all, Linux is not unstable. Why do you
think it has a higher market share in webservers
than Windows NT-server, but not in places that doesn't need that much stability?
A well maintained Linuxbox can keep up for years without crashing, you can't say that about NT-server.
You were amazed to find "no DirectX compatibility". Have you seen any platforms apart
from windows using DirectX? No?
That's because it is DirectX that is proprietary.
It is Windows-only, and that is because Microsoft
doesn't want to release it for any other platform.
OpenGL however, is open, and ported to a great amount of platforms (Linux, Irix, Solaris, FreeBSD, BeOS, any other Unix..etc.).
Wizards is very possible, but there are plenty
of areas that need attention before they come along. I give you one point here. Newbies like wizards.
But why on earth are you bringing the registry into this? The registry is a very poor idea implemented by Microsoft. It is cryptic, and is impossible to read and understand by human eyes.
Linux however uses text-files for configuration.
I agree that graphical-frontends are necessary (and partly there already), but putting everything
in one big, enormous file, is not the way to go.
What happenes if a program screws up, and you can't repair the registry using a "wizard". (A wizard can only handly very typical situations).
You can't possibly edit the registry by hand, it's to cryptic. If the information had been stored in a text-file, readable by humans, you could have just located the file, and fixed it.
My last point is about DirectX being better than OpenGL. You say that "many experts think that OpenGL is technically inferior to DirectX".
You submit no proof whatsover. Submit a testimony,
and the opposite can always be found.
The truth is that the "experts" do not agree on
this matter, and hopefully, the open solution will win.
Your last remark: "without DirectX support, Linux is going nowhere, fast.". This of course translates into: "Linux is never going anywhere, period", because you will never see DirectX for Linux (you would have, but Microsoft cancelled all attemps at it being cross-plattform, when they bought it).
Does this mean that Linux is screwed?
Of course not. Linux is making progress both
in usability and usermass very quickly.
So I guess your argument must be wrong.
If all of you that own Sigma-cards could send
a polite mail to arthur_bao@sdesigns.com
asking for Linuxsupport for current products.
The polite part can't be stressed to much.
..it is not very possible to release a book without Sourcecode. :)
I've always wondered why all the Linux-HOWTOs and other documentation comes in a much stricter license than GPL-software.
I figured people like to get credit, but you can't combine full credit with the right of everyone to change the document, because it would be way to easy for someone to change the content, keeping you as author, and making you look like a moron.
But then I thought about the GPL. If it doesn't require any credit given, why should all the documentation require it? Am I missing something here? Does documentation require far different handling than software?
Is there really a difference between a book that contains tutorials, and one that contains GPL-code that can be scanned in, and used?
People seem to think it's obvious you'd need a different license. Why?
Remember the Gulf-war? A lot of what was presented through CNN was in fact pure propaganda.
A kuwaitian girl crying, saying that soldiers from IRAQ defiled an orphanage.. pure propaganda, not true.
Of course, IRAQ did it to an even greater extend.
The same happend in Yugoslavia. People were shown all the monstrous acts by NATO.
Of course there were some horrible things that happened. But when you only present the worst acts of war, on none of the more gentle, you have already fooled your people.
Of course.. this technology could leed to an even greater abuse of "reality". Seeing opposition do things they never really did. Scary...
In several countries, you have to be 21 to watch a porn-movie, but only 18 to participate.
Personally I don't think other people should dictate what other people are allowed to, as long as it doesn't really affect them.
In some European countries and social groups, porn, prostitution, etc.. is a social taboo, but not banned. "You can do what you want, but you have to accept people looking at you as a pervert." This might not be "better" in all respects than the US, but I find it a step in the right direction. In other societies porn is looked at as something private. It is totally ok to watch porn-movies as long as you don't push it on others. This is my favourite. But please don't generalize Europe in this debate. Each country has it's own unique laws. My country, Norway, is very strict. Denmark, our neighbours, whose culture is strongly related to ours, has very free and relaxed laws.
Making sure you can never take someone elses code, and close it up is THE concern of creators of GPL-software, not to help you not having to give back modifications.
Critizism against the GPL is actually misunderstood.
When someone complains about having to give out their hard work if using GPL-code, it is like saying: "damn it, your property right is stupid, I can't modify it the way I please". This can be easily countered by saying: "excactly!! That was the whole POINT behind my decision to use those property rights".
Use the license that suits you best, but don't complain about other peoples choices when it comes to licenses.
..not just people who has trouble with computers. UF is a strip by techies for techies, and therefor has lots of techie-humor, which at some point relegates into mocking stupid people, like every other kind of humour. There are sitcoms making fun of everything from nerds to christians. And not being able to tolerate them, is not being able to laugh at yourself. You are in other words taking yourself too seriously. People who try to cram 5 1/4" disks into 3.5" slots, by folding them, have to realize that someone finds this behaviour funny. Just as I have to realize that some people think I'm funny by acting really dorky when it comes to women (just like AJ). Besides, lots of the UF-strips makes fun of ourselves (techies). We laugh about that as well.