The harms to the freedom that Windows carries with it are basically freedoms that most of the 90% don't even care about.
...until they're taken away, at least. A couple of examples:
Windows has in the past been known to have activation bugs, where legitimate copies of windows will stop working because the activation failed in some way. Users don't think about this stuff when things are working, but when Windows' DRM goes haywire, suddenly the right to use your software for any purpose is a Big Deal (although they may not think about it in those precise words).
Also, earlier versions of windows were known to convert your (DRM-free).mp3 files into DRMed.wma files, preventing you from moving them to a different machine more than once or twice. A couple upgrades and your music files are now useless. Users care about their freedoms then, too.
In all honesty, I don't care that much. I find "GNU/Linux" kind of awkward, but I used it here since we're specifically referring to the FSF. Generally I just call it Linux.
It's amazing that adding GNU in front of Linux can invoke such frothing-at-the-mouth nerd rage.
I'm all in favor of the ACA. In fact, on the state level, they've done just fine (it's notable that the only reason the federal system is even necessary is because a number of states refused to do it).
On the other hand, how the fuck did we end up with this crap? You cannot roll out a project to millions of users this quickly and without adequate load testing. Also, why the hell aren't the contractors American? All this lip service the Democrats pay every election year to eliminating tax breaks for outsourcing and they can't bother to use American companies that will guarantee the work won't be subcontracted to some other company outside the US?
We actually have competent IT contracting firms in the US. They tend to be expensive, but they have enough experience that they can predict how long and how much it will cost to deliver working software. Ultimately, it ends up costing less in the long run to pay more up front, because the software actually does what you want it to do.
(Of course, this might not be a matter of corruption rather than cost, but my points still apply.)
The FSF was mixed about Steam for GNU/Linux. Since most of the issues remain the same with SteamOS, I'm guessing that their opinion on it will be similar.
For obvious reasons, they're never going to endorse anything that's partly proprietary, but it it moves people away from dependence on completely proprietary systems, in there view it's possible that there might be some benefit. The FSF isn't so hardline that they refuse to acknowledge the distinction between software that's mostly free versus software that's completely proprietary.
From the article I linked:
However, if you're going to use these games, you're better off using them on GNU/Linux rather than on Microsoft Windows. At least you avoid the harm to your freedom that Windows would do.
There wasn't room in the subject, but I should add "with stable APIs."
Things like Qt, GTK, OpenJDK, Apache, and PHP, to name a few. These are all so widely used that even if they were abandoned by their current maintainers, someone else would pick them up and at least patch them so that they continue to work. This someone wouldn't have to be you. And yes, I know everyone hates PHP, but the fact is, a lot of the old cruft is still there to ensure backwards compatibility, and much of it has been superseded by cleaner OO interfaces. Much like with Java, they're making a lot of effort to make sure that your old code will continue to work with at most minimal changes, and if you're looking for something that will work for you in the long term, this is really helpful.
Failing that, your best best bet are expensive proprietary frameworks that will contractually guarantee some term that the framework will be supported.
After that, big open source projects with less stable APIs (I'm looking at you, Drupal). Drupal is big at the moment, but their nasty habit of breaking everything every two or three years is likely to lead to a fractured community and eventual abandonment of the software unless they can get their APIs stabilized enough that modules will continue to work from release to release. It looks like maybe they're trying to do that, but the pattern thus far is that they haven't. Regardless, if you see a framework with a constantly changing API, you're probably taking more of a risk than you would be if you used a mature product, even if the userbase is large. On the other hand, a large userbase does provide a certain amount of protection against obsolescence. I'm not saying that Drupal is a particularly unsafe framework (I'm quite fond of it myself), just that their development process might lead to intractable problems down the line. Note that GTK and Qt make occasional major API changes, but these are infrequent, and there are so many users of the older versions that linux distros tend to keep the old code around just to make sure things will work.
After that, probably small open source projects. At least if those are abandoned you'll have access to the code. But before using an open source platform with a small userbase, make sure that you have the time and technical expertise to maintain it yourself if it's abandoned. Most likely, you don't. Also, large, complex open source projects with a small number of users tend (in my experience; I'm sure there are exceptions) to be buggy and poorly documented.
The worst offenders are free or cheap proprietary frameworks that don't come with any sort of guarantee, like Flex. In those cases, you're at the mercy of the whims of a commercial interest, and when the product you depend on becomes unprofitable, you're cut off with absolutely no recourse.
So, freedom-loving libertarian guy, you prefer the government tracking how many miles you drive and taxing you per mile? Because that sounds a hell of a lot more intrusive to me.
I'm guessing you're not actually a libertarian. You're a conservative who likes to use libertarian words.
Slashdot is a fairly technical audience. Some of the people here may actually know the answer to that question, so it's valid to ask it. You're also likely to get a better answer than you would from Microsoft, which is always some marketing-vetted non-answer bullshit.
Saying an iPhone is conscious (an important component of free will) just because it tries to run your life is silly pseudoscience meant for news articles and not real thought. An iPhone runs your life because Apple programmed it that way.
Legally, any of your documents can be read by anyone with a warrant, regardless of where you store them. The trouble is that on Microsoft's cloud, they can be read by anyone that Microsoft decides to allow to read them, which might not just be the NSA. It could also be the FBI, local law enforcement, or even someone who knows a Microsoft employee and is willing to pay them a bribe to get at your information. Also, if you compete with Microsoft in some way, you can bet they'll take a peek at those documents themselves.
Let's say I'm marketing a game to the general public. For the purpose of this argument, it doesn't matter whether or not the game is commercial or noncommercial, and it doesn't matter whether the game is libre or proprietary, because these things basically hold true regardless.
Linux is based on open standards. Generally speaking, if you write a game for Linux, porting it to Windows and Macintosh is relatively easy. If your plan is to *sell* your game, you probably want to offer it to as many potential customers as possible, which means that porting it is an obvious choice. If your game is open source, even if you don't port it yourself, if it's a "killer" game, someone will just port it for you.
The only exception would be the unusual case of a closed-source game being written specifically to be so awesome that it will encourage people to switch to Linux. But that case necessitates your software be non-libre, and deny people access to the code and a choice of operating system. While a lot of windows gamers may not care about that, you need buy-in from the existing user base in order to generate enough buzz for your game to take off, and in this case you'd be trying to convince people who (on average) feel very strongly about FOSS that keeping your game proprietary is a good thing.
As such, my needs and concerns are perhaps somewhat less immediate than someone who, say, doesn't have enough money to eat. However, this does affect me in the long run, since a lot of important agencies are functioning at a vastly reduced capacity:
* With the EPA not running, it's more likely that carcinogens and other dangerous pollutants will enter the air and ground water, which in the long run increase my chances of getting sick, including with life-threatening conditions such as many types of cancer.
* With the NIH currently unfunded, should I happen to come down with cancer or some other disease at a later time, research that might save my life might not be as far along.
* With the CDC currently unfunded, I have a greater chance of catching an infectious disease due to a lack of monitoring and control that might otherwise catch things before they become a problem.
* With the FDA unfunded, companies will be more likely to slip by with selling contaminated food, again increasing the risk of illness.
* With people not receiving food assistance, some people who can't afford to eat might become desperate and resort to crime. This could increase my chances of being a victim of mugging or robbery.
* My tax dollars for the duration of the shutdown are wasted, because it's unfair to *force* these federal employees to take time off without pay when, like the members of the house of representatives who are the cause of this shutdown, have mouths to feed and bills to pay.
Of course, the chances of being personally affected by any of these things are fairly low, provided the duration of the government shutdown is limited. If I *am* affected by these things, the chances of being able to *definitively* say it was due to the government shutdown are basically nil. On the other hand, these things do have a real effect on people, even people who believe themselves to be entirely self-made and independent. The trouble with these things is that in the short term they're easy to ignore, which people who believe that Government Is A Homogeneous Evil Fluid And There's No Such Thing As Good Government Only Bad Government seem to conflate with it being bad or unnecessary.
"Someone who wants rule of law deserves neither rule nor law. Also, warlords who come to your house, murder you, and take all your stuff are the same as the IRS."
Every manager I've had who's micromanaged me has believed that they were experts in the area. When they really knew what they were talking about, I didn't mind. My first boss was a software developer himself, and he's the guy who basically taught me how to program in the real world. He often did tell me how I should do my job, but since he was an expert on my job, he knew the right way for me to do my job.
I've had other managers who believed that their position in management made them experts on my work, when in fact they knew very little about it. By that time, I was more than competent enough to get a list of requirements and meet them without executive meddling, but I was constantly being told exactly how I should go about what I was doing, and it wasted a tremendous amount of my time.
Point is, both of these people believed that they were providing guidance, but in reality, one of them wasn't. Telling people it's okay to micromanage when they're experts is just going to encourage people validate bad micromanagers who wrongly believe that they're experts.
Considering that health care costs twice as much here per capita as it does anywhere else in the world, I have no idea how you came up with that number.
The parent post is trying very very hard to deflect away from the fact that many people who disapprove of "Obamacare" feel that way because of either misinformation or hatred of Obama, rather than, ya know, facts and logic and stuff.
Like which ones? Canada maybe, with their entire population being only ~34.8 million, compared to 38 million in California alone, or 313.9 million in the US?
I love this excuse. The US is large and has a big population, so therefore we can't even try to have universal health care.
Universal healthcare works in countries like Canada with a similar geographical area to the US, and in countries like Japan, which a similarly sized population. Furthermore, Canada's national government makes the individual provinces responsible for providing health care, which seems to work just fine for them. There's no reason we can't do it here, except for the fact that certain states are refusing to do it.
Note: The ACA is, of course, not universal healthcare, but it's at least a step in the right direction. Hopefully we can keep moving and expand Medicare to everyone.
Canada and Norway do not have constitutions like the US does nor do they have provisions in it guaranteeing the citizens will never have their right to keep and bear arms infringed by the government. But I do find it interesting that you would bring up a couple of other countries who have socialized medicine- calling them communist dictatorships in the process, and those countries have strict gun laws. It would seem they had to disarm their populations first before becoming that hell hole you likened them to.
Hmmm, where to start with this.
First off, I wasn't actually likening Canada and Norway to hellholes. That's called sarcasm, and I don't have a lot of time to go into detail about it here, so feel free to look it up yourself. Suffice it to say, the point of this sarcasm of mine is that Canada and Norway are actually very far from communist dictatorships.
As for the second amendment, I'd like to remind you that this is a discussion about health care, not gun rights. I actually quite like the second amendment. I think it's an excellent idea, and quite frankly, lack of access to health care kills a lot more people than private individuals with assault rifles do.
I do believe that government provided health care would be better than relying on private entities as the ACA does, but at this point the ACA is better than nothing. Hopefully we can change that some time in the future.
WAAAAHHHH! YOUR FREE CHOICE NOT TO BUY MY PRODUCT BASED ON MY BACKWARDS-ASS VIEWS IS MAKING ME SAD!!! STOP CENSORING MEEEEEE!!!!
Hey fuckwad. People can say whatever the fuck they want. People can *buy* whatever the fuck they want. That applies to assholes, and it also apples to people who don't like assholes. Nobody is stopping your dumb ass from saying whatever the fuck you want, but free speech doesn't entitle you to respect or freedom from criticism. If you can't take the criticism, keep your fucking mouth shut.
Oh by the way, go ahead and criticize what I'm saying. I can take it because I'm not a little fucking twat. Just remember that when you whine at me for speaking my mind that *you* would call that censorship.
Slashdot Mirror
Windows has in the past been known to have activation bugs, where legitimate copies of windows will stop working because the activation failed in some way. Users don't think about this stuff when things are working, but when Windows' DRM goes haywire, suddenly the right to use your software for any purpose is a Big Deal (although they may not think about it in those precise words).
Also, earlier versions of windows were known to convert your (DRM-free) .mp3 files into DRMed .wma files, preventing you from moving them to a different machine more than once or twice. A couple upgrades and your music files are now useless. Users care about their freedoms then, too.
Wow.
In all honesty, I don't care that much. I find "GNU/Linux" kind of awkward, but I used it here since we're specifically referring to the FSF. Generally I just call it Linux.
It's amazing that adding GNU in front of Linux can invoke such frothing-at-the-mouth nerd rage.
That's a good point.
And Microsoft couldn't plead the fifth on that even if they wanted to, since they'd be supplying someone else's data.
Wow.
Still pathetic. :)
I'm all in favor of the ACA. In fact, on the state level, they've done just fine (it's notable that the only reason the federal system is even necessary is because a number of states refused to do it).
On the other hand, how the fuck did we end up with this crap? You cannot roll out a project to millions of users this quickly and without adequate load testing. Also, why the hell aren't the contractors American? All this lip service the Democrats pay every election year to eliminating tax breaks for outsourcing and they can't bother to use American companies that will guarantee the work won't be subcontracted to some other company outside the US?
We actually have competent IT contracting firms in the US. They tend to be expensive, but they have enough experience that they can predict how long and how much it will cost to deliver working software. Ultimately, it ends up costing less in the long run to pay more up front, because the software actually does what you want it to do.
(Of course, this might not be a matter of corruption rather than cost, but my points still apply.)
The FSF was mixed about Steam for GNU/Linux. Since most of the issues remain the same with SteamOS, I'm guessing that their opinion on it will be similar.
For obvious reasons, they're never going to endorse anything that's partly proprietary, but it it moves people away from dependence on completely proprietary systems, in there view it's possible that there might be some benefit. The FSF isn't so hardline that they refuse to acknowledge the distinction between software that's mostly free versus software that's completely proprietary.
From the article I linked:
There wasn't room in the subject, but I should add "with stable APIs."
Things like Qt, GTK, OpenJDK, Apache, and PHP, to name a few. These are all so widely used that even if they were abandoned by their current maintainers, someone else would pick them up and at least patch them so that they continue to work. This someone wouldn't have to be you. And yes, I know everyone hates PHP, but the fact is, a lot of the old cruft is still there to ensure backwards compatibility, and much of it has been superseded by cleaner OO interfaces. Much like with Java, they're making a lot of effort to make sure that your old code will continue to work with at most minimal changes, and if you're looking for something that will work for you in the long term, this is really helpful.
Failing that, your best best bet are expensive proprietary frameworks that will contractually guarantee some term that the framework will be supported.
After that, big open source projects with less stable APIs (I'm looking at you, Drupal). Drupal is big at the moment, but their nasty habit of breaking everything every two or three years is likely to lead to a fractured community and eventual abandonment of the software unless they can get their APIs stabilized enough that modules will continue to work from release to release. It looks like maybe they're trying to do that, but the pattern thus far is that they haven't. Regardless, if you see a framework with a constantly changing API, you're probably taking more of a risk than you would be if you used a mature product, even if the userbase is large. On the other hand, a large userbase does provide a certain amount of protection against obsolescence. I'm not saying that Drupal is a particularly unsafe framework (I'm quite fond of it myself), just that their development process might lead to intractable problems down the line. Note that GTK and Qt make occasional major API changes, but these are infrequent, and there are so many users of the older versions that linux distros tend to keep the old code around just to make sure things will work.
After that, probably small open source projects. At least if those are abandoned you'll have access to the code. But before using an open source platform with a small userbase, make sure that you have the time and technical expertise to maintain it yourself if it's abandoned. Most likely, you don't. Also, large, complex open source projects with a small number of users tend (in my experience; I'm sure there are exceptions) to be buggy and poorly documented.
The worst offenders are free or cheap proprietary frameworks that don't come with any sort of guarantee, like Flex. In those cases, you're at the mercy of the whims of a commercial interest, and when the product you depend on becomes unprofitable, you're cut off with absolutely no recourse.
So, freedom-loving libertarian guy, you prefer the government tracking how many miles you drive and taxing you per mile? Because that sounds a hell of a lot more intrusive to me.
I'm guessing you're not actually a libertarian. You're a conservative who likes to use libertarian words.
Slashdot is a fairly technical audience. Some of the people here may actually know the answer to that question, so it's valid to ask it. You're also likely to get a better answer than you would from Microsoft, which is always some marketing-vetted non-answer bullshit.
Saying an iPhone is conscious (an important component of free will) just because it tries to run your life is silly pseudoscience meant for news articles and not real thought. An iPhone runs your life because Apple programmed it that way.
Technically speaking, he would have paid for it in taxes, but it would have cost half as much.
Legally, any of your documents can be read by anyone with a warrant, regardless of where you store them. The trouble is that on Microsoft's cloud, they can be read by anyone that Microsoft decides to allow to read them, which might not just be the NSA. It could also be the FBI, local law enforcement, or even someone who knows a Microsoft employee and is willing to pay them a bribe to get at your information. Also, if you compete with Microsoft in some way, you can bet they'll take a peek at those documents themselves.
Let's say I'm marketing a game to the general public. For the purpose of this argument, it doesn't matter whether or not the game is commercial or noncommercial, and it doesn't matter whether the game is libre or proprietary, because these things basically hold true regardless.
Linux is based on open standards. Generally speaking, if you write a game for Linux, porting it to Windows and Macintosh is relatively easy. If your plan is to *sell* your game, you probably want to offer it to as many potential customers as possible, which means that porting it is an obvious choice. If your game is open source, even if you don't port it yourself, if it's a "killer" game, someone will just port it for you.
The only exception would be the unusual case of a closed-source game being written specifically to be so awesome that it will encourage people to switch to Linux. But that case necessitates your software be non-libre, and deny people access to the code and a choice of operating system. While a lot of windows gamers may not care about that, you need buy-in from the existing user base in order to generate enough buzz for your game to take off, and in this case you'd be trying to convince people who (on average) feel very strongly about FOSS that keeping your game proprietary is a good thing.
As such, my needs and concerns are perhaps somewhat less immediate than someone who, say, doesn't have enough money to eat. However, this does affect me in the long run, since a lot of important agencies are functioning at a vastly reduced capacity:
* With the EPA not running, it's more likely that carcinogens and other dangerous pollutants will enter the air and ground water, which in the long run increase my chances of getting sick, including with life-threatening conditions such as many types of cancer.
* With the NIH currently unfunded, should I happen to come down with cancer or some other disease at a later time, research that might save my life might not be as far along.
* With the CDC currently unfunded, I have a greater chance of catching an infectious disease due to a lack of monitoring and control that might otherwise catch things before they become a problem.
* With the FDA unfunded, companies will be more likely to slip by with selling contaminated food, again increasing the risk of illness.
* With people not receiving food assistance, some people who can't afford to eat might become desperate and resort to crime. This could increase my chances of being a victim of mugging or robbery.
* My tax dollars for the duration of the shutdown are wasted, because it's unfair to *force* these federal employees to take time off without pay when, like the members of the house of representatives who are the cause of this shutdown, have mouths to feed and bills to pay.
Of course, the chances of being personally affected by any of these things are fairly low, provided the duration of the government shutdown is limited. If I *am* affected by these things, the chances of being able to *definitively* say it was due to the government shutdown are basically nil. On the other hand, these things do have a real effect on people, even people who believe themselves to be entirely self-made and independent. The trouble with these things is that in the short term they're easy to ignore, which people who believe that Government Is A Homogeneous Evil Fluid And There's No Such Thing As Good Government Only Bad Government seem to conflate with it being bad or unnecessary.
"Someone who wants rule of law deserves neither rule nor law. Also, warlords who come to your house, murder you, and take all your stuff are the same as the IRS."
- Benjamin Einstein Lincoln
So you're going to make the drones go away by adding more government?
So you're going to make the government go away by adding more government?
So you're governmenting to make the government go government by governmenting government government?
Government government government government government government government government government government government government government?
I'm an anarchocapitalist!
Every manager I've had who's micromanaged me has believed that they were experts in the area. When they really knew what they were talking about, I didn't mind. My first boss was a software developer himself, and he's the guy who basically taught me how to program in the real world. He often did tell me how I should do my job, but since he was an expert on my job, he knew the right way for me to do my job.
I've had other managers who believed that their position in management made them experts on my work, when in fact they knew very little about it. By that time, I was more than competent enough to get a list of requirements and meet them without executive meddling, but I was constantly being told exactly how I should go about what I was doing, and it wasted a tremendous amount of my time.
Point is, both of these people believed that they were providing guidance, but in reality, one of them wasn't. Telling people it's okay to micromanage when they're experts is just going to encourage people validate bad micromanagers who wrongly believe that they're experts.
Considering that health care costs twice as much here per capita as it does anywhere else in the world, I have no idea how you came up with that number.
The parent post is trying very very hard to deflect away from the fact that many people who disapprove of "Obamacare" feel that way because of either misinformation or hatred of Obama, rather than, ya know, facts and logic and stuff.
Another similarity to the ACA!
I love this excuse. The US is large and has a big population, so therefore we can't even try to have universal health care.
Universal healthcare works in countries like Canada with a similar geographical area to the US, and in countries like Japan, which a similarly sized population. Furthermore, Canada's national government makes the individual provinces responsible for providing health care, which seems to work just fine for them. There's no reason we can't do it here, except for the fact that certain states are refusing to do it.
Note: The ACA is, of course, not universal healthcare, but it's at least a step in the right direction. Hopefully we can keep moving and expand Medicare to everyone.
haha they do it badly because they're the government
Hmmm, where to start with this.
First off, I wasn't actually likening Canada and Norway to hellholes. That's called sarcasm, and I don't have a lot of time to go into detail about it here, so feel free to look it up yourself. Suffice it to say, the point of this sarcasm of mine is that Canada and Norway are actually very far from communist dictatorships.
As for the second amendment, I'd like to remind you that this is a discussion about health care, not gun rights. I actually quite like the second amendment. I think it's an excellent idea, and quite frankly, lack of access to health care kills a lot more people than private individuals with assault rifles do.
I do believe that government provided health care would be better than relying on private entities as the ACA does, but at this point the ACA is better than nothing. Hopefully we can change that some time in the future.
So, let me get this straight:
WAAAAHHHH! YOUR FREE CHOICE NOT TO BUY MY PRODUCT BASED ON MY BACKWARDS-ASS VIEWS IS MAKING ME SAD!!! STOP CENSORING MEEEEEE!!!!
Hey fuckwad. People can say whatever the fuck they want. People can *buy* whatever the fuck they want. That applies to assholes, and it also apples to people who don't like assholes. Nobody is stopping your dumb ass from saying whatever the fuck you want, but free speech doesn't entitle you to respect or freedom from criticism. If you can't take the criticism, keep your fucking mouth shut.
Oh by the way, go ahead and criticize what I'm saying. I can take it because I'm not a little fucking twat. Just remember that when you whine at me for speaking my mind that *you* would call that censorship.