When it comes to software with an inelastic demand, no one cares if it is open source or not. What businesses care about is whether it works and works well. If something was free but didn't work, or was a sub-standard product, no one would use it who could afford to do otherwise. A product that has a free price tag but hurts your productivity isn't exactly a good deal compared to a product with even a hefty price tag when that product helps you get your job done more efficiently. This is why companies like Oracle and SAS can charge as much as they do, the companies that buy their products SAVE or even MAKE money in the long run.
As for the political/religious free as in speech aspects of open source, you might as well be speaking swahili because most business brains won't understand what you're talking about and those few that do won't care.
If the idea behind this project is what I think it is, to make converts out of people so that they will shun commercial products in favor of free software irregardless of the quality of the latter, then the people behind this project are in for a nasty suprise: Non-hackers are indifferent to the open source movement. Some are going to be downright hostile in fact due to the way that some open source "advocates" behave.
What this project needs to do is promote the compilation based upon the quality of the software it provides, not on the basis that it is free. This will serve to educate the public that open source software can be just as good or better than commercial offerings. When this is accomplished open source will be able to compete with commercial offerings on an equal footing. It won't have a stigma attached to it and whether it is chosen or not will be entirely based upon quality and its suitability for a particular purpose.
I've been using Linux since 1995. I like the fact that it is free as in speech and in beer, but that isn't the reason I choose it over Windows. I use it because it is more powerful, more stable, and more flexible. If it were kludgey, flaky, or unstable then I'd do little more than play with it. I certainly wouldn't use it in a commercial setting where downtime equals dollars down the drain. This is the burden that all software must carry regardless of how much it costs or how accessible the source code for it is.
Yes, it is good that not everyone feels this way. If they did then I might have more competition when it comes to getting a good job. All those guys who are more interested in ideology than getting the job done are never going to take a job away from me, which is a comforting thought.
I'm not forgetting the advantages of open source, I'm just saying that a closed source solution that works beats an open source solution that doesn't hands down.
While it may be the job of the government to protect its citizens from harm, it is not the government's job to do this against the will of said citizens.
We have police and fire departments to protect us from real dangers, as well as a military and a coast guard and other agencies and groups. Video games are not a threat and those who play them aren't asking for protection from them. Third parties might demand that the government protect people from games, but then what they want isn't really relevant.
In all my years (30 this year) I've never seen anything that I felt would harm anyone of any age just from having seen it. The truth of the matter is that the so called "protection" that our society forces upon children and adult minors is nothing more than an attempt at mind control and an exerceise in the abuse of power. Attempts to censor the subject matter and ideas that the young have access to is not done out of any real need to protect them. Instead it is done due to mental pathology on the part of the "adults" doing it. Control what information and ideas someone has access to and you control what kinds of things they think about. Add in a little indoctrination and you've got the makings of a sheep factory. People aren't going through life not thinking for themelves by accident you know. They are like that because they have been taught to be that way by their parents and were weak minded enough to fall for it. Part of this sheep mentality includes the perpetuation of the wrong that was done to them when they were young. They do to their own kids the same things that were done to them. They do so without question and without thought. When asked why they do it no clear reason can be given and the excuses that are provided are awfully weak. Just like sexual abuse victims often later go on to abuse others, our culture's approach to raising children is an institutionalized cycle of abuse. That is why you have a multitude of hysterical morons ready to blame Quake and Doom for the actions of two young men in Colorado. Had those two been a few years older no one would seriously suggest that playing a video game or watching a "R" rated movie had anything to do with their actions. But because they were young they were considered to be "impressionable," which basically means that they were somehow at the mercy of the things they saw and heard. A monkey-see monkey-do state of being that is so far removed from the reality of what people that age are really like that I don't even know what to say about it. It boggles my mind every time I see someone young treated as if they were mentally incompetent. At one time I was convinced that the "adults" who were doing it knew better and were simply pretending otherwise to add insult to injury. Now I'm convinced that it is their own victimization that leads them to behave in such a manner and that they simply don't know any better. Sad, but true.
I for one would LOVE to see the age at which people can vote dropped to around 12. No other changes would need to be made. That single change alone would make the government directly answerable to the young and therefore less likely to pick on and victimize the young. It wouldn't do much to stem the tide of the Tipper Gore's among us, but at least it would help keep the government at bay. Politicians might be less eager to pass legislation that young people are not going to like if those same teenagers are going to be showing up at the ballot box on election day.
In the meantime I hope that the ACLU jumps on this and doesn't let go. If you're not supporting the ACLU, this is as good a time as any to start. http://www.aclu.org
In the meantime just remember that young doesn't automatically mean stupid or foolish. The next time you meet someone young try treating them the way you would anyone else. Expect them to be mentally competent and emotionally mature and you might just be suprised at what happens.
If BSD is dead or dying, why do you take the time and effort to write this repetitive rant about it? If you were to take out all the sentences that simply repeated "*BSD is dying" your post would be MUCH shorter. The form of persuasion you're attempting by saying the same thing over and over again fell out of favor among marketing experts during the Eisenhower administration.
Then there is the reason behind your post. Someone who was detached and objective would not bother to post something like this deep within a thread on a completely different subject. The fact that you have says that you're either selling something or at the very least that you have some sort of irrational bias against *BSD. Are you one of those people who actually thinks that it is a competitor to Linux? Linux and the BSDs are no more a competitior than Ford and Mercury are. Development work on any one of them helps all the others as well. A great deal of the code that you find in a standard Linux distribution comes straight from BSD, including portions of the kernel itself. Linux and *BSD are also very compatible on the source code level. Very few and far between are the open source apps that have been developed on linux and not ported to *BSD. Ultimately you can think of *BSD as simply another kernel on top of which your standard apps and utilities such as XFree86, Gnome, KDE, Mozilla, etc. all run. Because of this it doesn't need vast numbers of users to keep it going because it benefits equally from all the development done to create apps for Linux.
If you want to rant about something, find something worth ranting about. Attacking *BSD is about as senseless as the US invading Belgium, there is nothing to be gained and Belgium is not an enemy to begin with. Why not spend some time and energy PROMOTING something instead.
AIX is Unix BSDI is Unix HP-UX is Unix Solaris is Unix Sun-OS is unix Digital Unix...is Unix FreeBSD is Unix NetBSD is Unix OpenBSD is Unix A/UX is unix Xenix is unix Unixware is unix SCO Unix is Unix NextStep is unix Unicos is unix Irix is unix Ultrix is unix
and yes, Linux is Unix.
It may not be Unix(tm), but it certainly is unix, at least as much as any of the above operating systems are. Whether or not an OS has one line of code from Thompson and Ritchie or BSD is irrelevant. What matters is what kind of a system its code implements. The code for Linux, including all of the GNU components and other userland parts, implement an operating system that is at least as similar to any of the above mentioned OS's as they are to one another. I don't know just exactly how compliant Linux is with the various posix standards, but I have heard it referred to as posix compliant, and I know that NO version of unix is completely compliant.
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck....its a duck.
"Deutsche Bahn recently sent letters to all three U.S. search engine operators asking them to remove the hyperlinks to the online copies of two articles from the German-language left-wing extremist publication, Radikal, which has been outlawed in Germany."
Outlawed? I had no idea that an entire publication could be made illegal in that country. But then it is not too suprising considering the fact that they outlaw anything and everything to do with the Nazi era just like France does. Nevermind the fact that armbands with swastika's on them can't hurt anyone. I'm of the strong opinion that reminders of the Nazi era should be kept around and carefully studied so that the next time a similar group, such as Scientology, comes around the people will know it for what it is.
If you live in the US, be glad. Our country may not be perfect, but at least here attempts to silence political views have to be done quietly and covertly rather than through direct and obvious government action.
"Amendment II: A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."
Anyone who has to any degree studied the works of Jefferson, Hamilton, Washington, just to name a few, would clearly understand that the purpose behind the second amendment had as much to do with preserving liberty as it did with defining the role of militias. Washington called firearms "the people's liberty's teeth." The language of the second amendment itself is very clear. It states the the right of the PEOPLE to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Had it said something like "the right of militias to keep and bear arms..." then that would be something something different. In those days a militia was made up of volunteers from among the people who were expected to bring their own weapons. It was not today's paid professional army where the weapons are provided by the state. Militia's have not been seen in this country since the Civil war for the simple reason that we have not been threatened by a foreign invasion. If Canada were to invade you can bet that the armed citizens of the US would very vigorously defend their nation.
As for whether Australians want guns or not, that is not really for me to say. I will say however that here in America we have a choice as to whether we own a gun or not. If we want one, the state does not try to interfere. If we do not want one, no one can force us to have one. If you don't want a gun then that is your right and your choice to make. What isn't right is for the state to try and deprive you that right to choose.
The laws of the US are not what protect me from having you kick me in the balls. What protects me is your understanding that should you try, I will beat you within an inch of your life and most likely neuter you.....dude.
Microsoft likes the BSD license because it, unlike the GPL, allows them to hijack projects and/or code and create a closed, proprietary product. The BSD license can be subverted. The GPL cannot.
The true value of the GPL is that it keeps companies and people honest. Whenever a company begins abusing its position or customers the GPL ensures that alternative products can be safely created independent of market share or monopoly power. A company like Microsoft might be able to stomp all over other companies and pre-emptively purchase or squash startups that threaten its position. It can't do that to a loose collection of hackers (!crackers) and hobbyists that are sick of taking its crap. Microsoft hates the GPL because it is a direct and serious threat to Microsoft and only Microsoft. It is not because of any supposed threat it poses to the software industry as a whole. Where the software industry is concerned, the only thing Microsoft cares about is controlling and dominating it. To hear the evil empire crying foul play is about like the KKK accusing someone of racism.
As far as I'm concerned, if Microsoft hates something then it must be a good thing. The more they scream and the louder the volume, the more wonderful the subject of their complaint must be. If the devils says he doesn't like something, you can bet your sweet ass it must be touched by the divine.
Actually you do have the right to own a gun. That right is being suppressed and denied by your government, but that does not destroy it as a right. Here in the US our constitution lists a certain set of rights that are acknowledged to exist for free people. The right to own guns is one of those rights. The existance of this right is independant of whether it is acknowledged or not, its just that we're lucky enough that our constitution does list it. Our constitution is also not meant to be an exhaustive list of every right we have. The ninth amendment specifically states that. Many people in the US don't seem to understand this, which is sad.
What kind of a constitution Australia has I don't know. I know that in Britian what corresponds to a constitution there is made up of a whole series of charters and laws starting with the Magna Carta.
As for worrying about whether people can buy or own powerful weapons, just remember that the government can. This same government can use those weapons to enforce censorship or political correctness. Last time I checked a government that used force to suppress and eliminate political dissent was on its way towards facism.
I'm all in favor of gun control. When firing a gun it is very important that you have control over it. Otherwise it is difficult to consistently hit what you are shooting at whether it be a carjacker, a burglar, or a grunt within your government's gestapo.
What I'm not in favor of is legislation designed to curb access to firearms by honest citizens. Guns in the hands of your average honest american or australian keep people safe. Guns in the hands of criminals are what create danger. Laws that seek to limit or eliminate the right to keep and bear arms are only going to apply to honest citizens since criminals don't obey the laws anyway. So in the end you've got a situation where the enemy is armed and the rest of us become easy prey. Then there is the issue of tyrrany. Its rather hard for tyrrany to exist in a country where the citizens have real power in the form of firearms. When the sheep have claws and teeth the wolves keep their distance. I'm glad I live in a country where the socialists and closet communists haven't been able do dismantle one of our prime guarantees of justice and liberty.
I propose that Microsoft hire out of work Al-Queda terrorists to fly 747's into each of the buildings on their main campus.
Seriously though, I don't really see how this is an honest question. Its on par with asking what neo-nazis should do in order to get along wtih the jewish community yet still be neo-nazis. Microsoft's corporate personality is a direct reflection of the personality of Bill Gates- paranoid, greedy, and ruthless to the extent of being nearly sociopathic. Before Microsoft can peacefully co-exist with open source, or any other source of technology outside of itself, it would have to undergo a fundamental change. That isn't going to happen anytime soon. Not that I care all that much. Open source is nothing more than a natural response on the part of the market to a force that inhibits the freedom of that market. Without a Microsoft to stifle innovation and prevent other companies from flourishing there would be little reason for end users to embrace open source. It is the lack of choice created by Microsoft's near complete dominance that has led to things like Linux growing into a real OS as opposed to a curious toy. The more Microsoft tries to squash Open Source and maintain and expand their monopoly, the more the rest of the industry and world is going to attack and undermine them. Like Scientology, they are becoming their own worst enemy. I for one hope they never realize this and that the company eventually goes the way of Apple, a has-been pining for its long-gone days of glory.
With all of the censorship^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hanti-obscenity laws and legally enforced political correctness going on down there, I hardly see how this is anything but an exception to the rule. Don't even get me started on what has happened to the right to own guns down there.
Linus Torvalds has recently announced that he will begin producing, directing, and starring in his own series of adult movies. The first feature, said to be titled "I was a one balled bastard," will be filmed in Torvald's native Finland. Looking to streamline the masturbation process for his viewers, Torvalds is reportedly eliminating all evidence or suggestion of a plot from the film. In it Torvalds will repeatedly have sex with as many women as he can one after another until he either passes out or his genitals catch fire. Well known as the creator of the Linux Kernel, one of Torvalds' lesser known feats is being the first man to successfully drive a six inch nail into a block of wood with his penis without the use of viagra. This superhuman feat was accomplished before Torvalds married his lovely wife Tove. Whether or not the man with the carbon-steel cock can still drive it home now that he is getting regular shaggings from that hottie wife of his (as proven by their two children) is yet to be seen. His current lack of sexual frustration may inhibit his ability to maintain the die-cast erection that made history. Other future titles yet to be produced include "Return of the one balled bastard: LeRoy's revenge!" and "The one balled bastard in a turkish prison."
Not to be outdone by the dashing duke of open source, both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs will also be doing porn of their own. Gate's production company, Mine-mine-mine films, will begin principal photography in May on the film titled "Lolita II: the corruption of Mary Jane." Gates will play the title role of Mary Jane, a 13 year old girl who surrenders her virtue to lecherous old man Tanner who lives down the lane, to be played by William Shatner. Jobs' production company, fuck different inc., will produce an art house film in which Jobs, while tripping on a 12 person dose of LSD, is repeatedly sodomized by a train of burly men dressed as nuns while reciting the pledge of allegiance in Norwegian.
The Nazi party was a left wing institution. Even the name itself, National Socialism, is a dead giveaway. Sit down sometime and study what the party did in germany outside the war and outside the holocaust. What you'll find is... national socialism. From the autobahn to the volkswagen bug to significant changes in the social structure, the nazi party was a socialist regime.
Its great to hear that someone else out there knows what you know.
I can't tell you how sick I get of having to explain to people that our rights are not an indulgence on the part of the government. That the government is our servant and not our master. Unfortunately there are a whole big slew of loonies,who ironically call themselves "liberals", who are hard at work trying to instill the notion that we are at the mercy of the government and that it decides what is right and what privileges we are allowed to have. The reason they do this is because they are intent upon controlling the government. Take your average left winger and ask them if they would support a government run by republicans or libertarians. He or she would naturally be very much opposed to that. Yet at the same time this same "liberal" is generally very much in favor of things like socialism. Basically anytime a "liberal" is espousing the role of government as the solution to a particular problem, they are not thinking of a government of the people, by the people, for the people. They are instead imagining a government that is defined and controlled by left-wing ideology. We defeated a nation controlled by left-wing ideology in WWII and then spent the next 40 years in a cold war with another. I fail to see how the importation and implementation of such philosophies in this country are a good idea. That being said I must also say that I am not a right-winger either. I'm a libertarian for the most part, highly distrustful of power and authority of any kind. Authority that is not accountable and vulnerable to the will of the people is tyrrany.
This article says that DeCSS somehow gets around the copy protection embedded into DVD's. As I'm sure most of you know, this isn't technically true. The purpose of CSS is not copy protection but content control. CSS allows movie studios to decide when, where, and by whom the DVD is viewed. Lets say you're in Europe and you'd like to watch a DVD that has just been released in the states. Under the ordinary laws of commerce if you've got the money to buy that DVD then you get to watch it. Not so with CSS. Now movie studios have the ability to pick and choose which titles get released in which region at which price. Lets say there is a title that the powers that be in your country have banned because they don't like it. CSS gives the MPAA the perfect means by which to implement and support this oppression by foreign governments. None of this is right or just. The idea behind copyright is to give producers of works certain rights and protections to encourage the creation of art and knowledge. Unfortunately with things like the DMCA and CSS, non-producers such as the MPAA are perverting the concept of copyright. Where traditionally copyright has been used to define when, where, and by whom a particular work is COPIED, it is now being used to control where, when and by whom a particular work is viewed, read, seen, or otherwise utilized.
Imagine if there was CSS for books and in order to read a particular book you had to live in the right country, be of the correct race or social group, and pay a surcharge to the book cartel every time you wanted to read it. As it stands now books are independent entities. Once a publisher prints a book and sells it, that publisher has no control over what is done with that book other than a legal right to control whether it or portions of it are copied or used in other works. You can read this book, then give it to your friend to read. The publisher can't come have you and your friend arrested because he hadn't paid for the "right" to read that book. You can smuggle books that are unpopular with an oppressive regime into that country and the words will still be legible.
The problem with CSS is not that it is a copy protection scheme, but that it is a scheme to control who uses the DVD, which has nothing to do with copy protection or copyright.
If I remember right a group of video pirates were busted here not too long ago for copying DVD's. What I heard about that case is that they were copying the entire DVD bit-for-bit whether it employed CSS or not. The copied DVD's were still encoded using CSS. So what possible use is it as a copy control scheme? None of course, but its very useful for controlling which people get to watch the DVD.
Another group that is trying to pervert copyright into content control is the "church" of scientology. They employ copyright and trade secret law in order to try and prevent anyone from knowing the truth about their "religion." The truth is that scientology is nothing more than a highly successful scam that robs people of their money, enslaves many in the "Sea Org," and destroys families by forcing those in the cult to "disconnect" from relatives who are critical. Their abuse of the legal system is legendary. Their policy of filing suits for harassment value alone is such that I'm amazed their lawyers havent' been disbarred by now. The organization's sole purpose is to sucker people out of their money that is then passed "uplines" to the likes of David Miscavige. Their use of front groups and interlocking corporations to facilitate the laundering of this money would make John Gotti weep. If you want to find out more about this kriminal kult take a trip to www.xenu.net Be sure to pass this on to your friends too. The more people know the truth about this criminal organization, the fewer potential victims the cult will have to feed upon.
Lee
I actually created spyware myself once
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I work at a university where we have open-access computer labs. We were having problems with our student workers sitting at the help desk doing things like playing games, downloading goat-porn, etc. In moderation this was not a significant problem although we didn't like it. The thing was, it wasn't being done in moderation. It was interfering with them doing their job.
The solution was to modify VNCserver so that they could not tell where it was installed or when it was running. I modified it every which way I could think of to obscure its presence and operation. It worked. We have plenty of CS and CSE majors here working for us and I challenged them to try and find it, no one ever could.
After this software was installed we told everyone up front that it was there, and reminded them in case they forgot. I wasn't interested in spying on people and neither was anyone else. We were only interested in creating a deterrent whereby the student workers would KNOW that we COULD be watching, and therefore curb their inappropriate use of the systems on university time.
The fun thing about VNC is that you can remotely control the computer as the person is using it. So if the student was doing something they shouldn't, we could start moving the mouse around on the screen so they would know we were "watching" them. None of the students liked it of course, but neither were we being dishonest with them by spying on them in secret.
These products that are clearly designed to be installed in secret and used without the person being aware that they are there are, to me at least, just plain evil.
You're actually believing what the sales people tell you in an APPLE store? Since when were the floor monkeys at CompUSA and Fry's an authoritative source on the time of day, let alone what people are buying things for? An salesman will tell you that the product his is pushing will cure cancer if it will get you to buy.
Lee
Re:Grounds for divorce.
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If you're married then both you and your spouse should trust and respect one another.
The issue here isn't that you have something to hide, but that your spouse distrusts you and does not respect you.
Slashdot Mirror
When it comes to software with an inelastic demand, no one cares if it is open source or not. What businesses care about is whether it works and works well. If something was free but didn't work, or was a sub-standard product, no one would use it who could afford to do otherwise. A product that has a free price tag but hurts your productivity isn't exactly a good deal compared to a product with even a hefty price tag when that product helps you get your job done more efficiently. This is why companies like Oracle and SAS can charge as much as they do, the companies that buy their products SAVE or even MAKE money in the long run.
As for the political/religious free as in speech aspects of open source, you might as well be speaking swahili because most business brains won't understand what you're talking about and those few that do won't care.
If the idea behind this project is what I think it is, to make converts out of people so that they will shun commercial products in favor of free software irregardless of the quality of the latter, then the people behind this project are in for a nasty suprise: Non-hackers are indifferent to the open source movement. Some are going to be downright hostile in fact due to the way that some open source "advocates" behave.
What this project needs to do is promote the compilation based upon the quality of the software it provides, not on the basis that it is free. This will serve to educate the public that open source software can be just as good or better than commercial offerings. When this is accomplished open source will be able to compete with commercial offerings on an equal footing. It won't have a stigma attached to it and whether it is chosen or not will be entirely based upon quality and its suitability for a particular purpose.
I've been using Linux since 1995. I like the fact that it is free as in speech and in beer, but that isn't the reason I choose it over Windows. I use it because it is more powerful, more stable, and more flexible. If it were kludgey, flaky, or unstable then I'd do little more than play with it. I certainly wouldn't use it in a commercial setting where downtime equals dollars down the drain. This is the burden that all software must carry regardless of how much it costs or how accessible the source code for it is.
Lee
Yes, it is good that not everyone feels this way. If they did then I might have more competition when it comes to getting a good job. All those guys who are more interested in ideology than getting the job done are never going to take a job away from me, which is a comforting thought.
I'm not forgetting the advantages of open source, I'm just saying that a closed source solution that works beats an open source solution that doesn't hands down.
While it may be the job of the government to protect its citizens from harm, it is not the government's job to do this against the will of said citizens.
We have police and fire departments to protect us from real dangers, as well as a military and a coast guard and other agencies and groups. Video games are not a threat and those who play them aren't asking for protection from them. Third parties might demand that the government protect people from games, but then what they want isn't really relevant.
In all my years (30 this year) I've never seen anything that I felt would harm anyone of any age just from having seen it. The truth of the matter is that the so called "protection" that our society forces upon children and adult minors is nothing more than an attempt at mind control and an exerceise in the abuse of power. Attempts to censor the subject matter and ideas that the young have access to is not done out of any real need to protect them. Instead it is done due to mental pathology on the part of the "adults" doing it. Control what information and ideas someone has access to and you control what kinds of things they think about. Add in a little indoctrination and you've got the makings of a sheep factory. People aren't going through life not thinking for themelves by accident you know. They are like that because they have been taught to be that way by their parents and were weak minded enough to fall for it. Part of this sheep mentality includes the perpetuation of the wrong that was done to them when they were young. They do to their own kids the same things that were done to them. They do so without question and without thought. When asked why they do it no clear reason can be given and the excuses that are provided are awfully weak. Just like sexual abuse victims often later go on to abuse others, our culture's approach to raising children is an institutionalized cycle of abuse. That is why you have a multitude of hysterical morons ready to blame Quake and Doom for the actions of two young men in Colorado. Had those two been a few years older no one would seriously suggest that playing a video game or watching a "R" rated movie had anything to do with their actions. But because they were young they were considered to be "impressionable," which basically means that they were somehow at the mercy of the things they saw and heard. A monkey-see monkey-do state of being that is so far removed from the reality of what people that age are really like that I don't even know what to say about it. It boggles my mind every time I see someone young treated as if they were mentally incompetent. At one time I was convinced that the "adults" who were doing it knew better and were simply pretending otherwise to add insult to injury. Now I'm convinced that it is their own victimization that leads them to behave in such a manner and that they simply don't know any better. Sad, but true.
I for one would LOVE to see the age at which people can vote dropped to around 12. No other changes would need to be made. That single change alone would make the government directly answerable to the young and therefore less likely to pick on and victimize the young. It wouldn't do much to stem the tide of the Tipper Gore's among us, but at least it would help keep the government at bay. Politicians might be less eager to pass legislation that young people are not going to like if those same teenagers are going to be showing up at the ballot box on election day.
In the meantime I hope that the ACLU jumps on this and doesn't let go. If you're not supporting the ACLU, this is as good a time as any to start. http://www.aclu.org
In the meantime just remember that young doesn't automatically mean stupid or foolish. The next time you meet someone young try treating them the way you would anyone else. Expect them to be mentally competent and emotionally mature and you might just be suprised at what happens.
Lee
I'll take closed drivers that work over open ones that are non-functional or non-existent any day of the week and twice on Sundays.
If BSD is dead or dying, why do you take the time and effort to write this repetitive rant about it? If you were to take out all the sentences that simply repeated "*BSD is dying" your post would be MUCH shorter. The form of persuasion you're attempting by saying the same thing over and over again fell out of favor among marketing experts during the Eisenhower administration.
Then there is the reason behind your post. Someone who was detached and objective would not bother to post something like this deep within a thread on a completely different subject. The fact that you have says that you're either selling something or at the very least that you have some sort of irrational bias against *BSD. Are you one of those people who actually thinks that it is a competitor to Linux? Linux and the BSDs are no more a competitior than Ford and Mercury are. Development work on any one of them helps all the others as well. A great deal of the code that you find in a standard Linux distribution comes straight from BSD, including portions of the kernel itself. Linux and *BSD are also very compatible on the source code level. Very few and far between are the open source apps that have been developed on linux and not ported to *BSD. Ultimately you can think of *BSD as simply another kernel on top of which your standard apps and utilities such as XFree86, Gnome, KDE, Mozilla, etc. all run. Because of this it doesn't need vast numbers of users to keep it going because it benefits equally from all the development done to create apps for Linux.
If you want to rant about something, find something worth ranting about. Attacking *BSD is about as senseless as the US invading Belgium, there is nothing to be gained and Belgium is not an enemy to begin with. Why not spend some time and energy PROMOTING something instead.
Lee
If you ever figure out how to do that let us all know. Its been mulled over for several years now.
Lee
Tyrrany
AIX is Unix
BSDI is Unix
HP-UX is Unix
Solaris is Unix
Sun-OS is unix
Digital Unix...is Unix
FreeBSD is Unix
NetBSD is Unix
OpenBSD is Unix
A/UX is unix
Xenix is unix
Unixware is unix
SCO Unix is Unix
NextStep is unix
Unicos is unix
Irix is unix
Ultrix is unix
and yes, Linux is Unix.
It may not be Unix(tm), but it certainly is unix, at least as much as any of the above operating systems are. Whether or not an OS has one line of code from Thompson and Ritchie or BSD is irrelevant. What matters is what kind of a system its code implements. The code for Linux, including all of the GNU components and other userland parts, implement an operating system that is at least as similar to any of the above mentioned OS's as they are to one another. I don't know just exactly how compliant Linux is with the various posix standards, but I have heard it referred to as posix compliant, and I know that NO version of unix is completely compliant.
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck....its a duck.
Lee
"Deutsche Bahn recently sent letters to all three U.S. search engine operators asking them to remove the hyperlinks to the online copies of two articles from the German-language left-wing extremist publication, Radikal, which has been outlawed in Germany."
Outlawed? I had no idea that an entire publication could be made illegal in that country. But then it is not too suprising considering the fact that they outlaw anything and everything to do with the Nazi era just like France does. Nevermind the fact that armbands with swastika's on them can't hurt anyone. I'm of the strong opinion that reminders of the Nazi era should be kept around and carefully studied so that the next time a similar group, such as Scientology, comes around the people will know it for what it is.
If you live in the US, be glad. Our country may not be perfect, but at least here attempts to silence political views have to be done quietly and covertly rather than through direct and obvious government action.
"Amendment II: A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."
Anyone who has to any degree studied the works of Jefferson, Hamilton, Washington, just to name a few, would clearly understand that the purpose behind the second amendment had as much to do with preserving liberty as it did with defining the role of militias. Washington called firearms "the people's liberty's teeth." The language of the second amendment itself is very clear. It states the the right of the PEOPLE to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Had it said something like "the right of militias to keep and bear arms..." then that would be something something different. In those days a militia was made up of volunteers from among the people who were expected to bring their own weapons. It was not today's paid professional army where the weapons are provided by the state. Militia's have not been seen in this country since the Civil war for the simple reason that we have not been threatened by a foreign invasion. If Canada were to invade you can bet that the armed citizens of the US would very vigorously defend their nation.
As for whether Australians want guns or not, that is not really for me to say. I will say however that here in America we have a choice as to whether we own a gun or not. If we want one, the state does not try to interfere. If we do not want one, no one can force us to have one. If you don't want a gun then that is your right and your choice to make. What isn't right is for the state to try and deprive you that right to choose.
Lee
The laws of the US are not what protect me from having you kick me in the balls. What protects me is your understanding that should you try, I will beat you within an inch of your life and most likely neuter you.....dude.
Microsoft likes the BSD license because it, unlike the GPL, allows them to hijack projects and/or code and create a closed, proprietary product. The BSD license can be subverted. The GPL cannot.
The true value of the GPL is that it keeps companies and people honest. Whenever a company begins abusing its position or customers the GPL ensures that alternative products can be safely created independent of market share or monopoly power. A company like Microsoft might be able to stomp all over other companies and pre-emptively purchase or squash startups that threaten its position. It can't do that to a loose collection of hackers (!crackers) and hobbyists that are sick of taking its crap. Microsoft hates the GPL because it is a direct and serious threat to Microsoft and only Microsoft. It is not because of any supposed threat it poses to the software industry as a whole. Where the software industry is concerned, the only thing Microsoft cares about is controlling and dominating it. To hear the evil empire crying foul play is about like the KKK accusing someone of racism.
As far as I'm concerned, if Microsoft hates something then it must be a good thing. The more they scream and the louder the volume, the more wonderful the subject of their complaint must be. If the devils says he doesn't like something, you can bet your sweet ass it must be touched by the divine.
Lee
Actually you do have the right to own a gun. That right is being suppressed and denied by your government, but that does not destroy it as a right. Here in the US our constitution lists a certain set of rights that are acknowledged to exist for free people. The right to own guns is one of those rights. The existance of this right is independant of whether it is acknowledged or not, its just that we're lucky enough that our constitution does list it. Our constitution is also not meant to be an exhaustive list of every right we have. The ninth amendment specifically states that. Many people in the US don't seem to understand this, which is sad.
What kind of a constitution Australia has I don't know. I know that in Britian what corresponds to a constitution there is made up of a whole series of charters and laws starting with the Magna Carta.
As for worrying about whether people can buy or own powerful weapons, just remember that the government can. This same government can use those weapons to enforce censorship or political correctness. Last time I checked a government that used force to suppress and eliminate political dissent was on its way towards facism.
Lee
I'm all in favor of gun control. When firing a gun it is very important that you have control over it. Otherwise it is difficult to consistently hit what you are shooting at whether it be a carjacker, a burglar, or a grunt within your government's gestapo.
What I'm not in favor of is legislation designed to curb access to firearms by honest citizens. Guns in the hands of your average honest american or australian keep people safe. Guns in the hands of criminals are what create danger. Laws that seek to limit or eliminate the right to keep and bear arms are only going to apply to honest citizens since criminals don't obey the laws anyway. So in the end you've got a situation where the enemy is armed and the rest of us become easy prey. Then there is the issue of tyrrany. Its rather hard for tyrrany to exist in a country where the citizens have real power in the form of firearms. When the sheep have claws and teeth the wolves keep their distance. I'm glad I live in a country where the socialists and closet communists haven't been able do dismantle one of our prime guarantees of justice and liberty.
Lee
I propose that Microsoft hire out of work Al-Queda terrorists to fly 747's into each of the buildings on their main campus.
Seriously though, I don't really see how this is an honest question. Its on par with asking what neo-nazis should do in order to get along wtih the jewish community yet still be neo-nazis. Microsoft's corporate personality is a direct reflection of the personality of Bill Gates- paranoid, greedy, and ruthless to the extent of being nearly sociopathic. Before Microsoft can peacefully co-exist with open source, or any other source of technology outside of itself, it would have to undergo a fundamental change. That isn't going to happen anytime soon. Not that I care all that much. Open source is nothing more than a natural response on the part of the market to a force that inhibits the freedom of that market. Without a Microsoft to stifle innovation and prevent other companies from flourishing there would be little reason for end users to embrace open source. It is the lack of choice created by Microsoft's near complete dominance that has led to things like Linux growing into a real OS as opposed to a curious toy. The more Microsoft tries to squash Open Source and maintain and expand their monopoly, the more the rest of the industry and world is going to attack and undermine them. Like Scientology, they are becoming their own worst enemy. I for one hope they never realize this and that the company eventually goes the way of Apple, a has-been pining for its long-gone days of glory.
Lee
With all of the censorship^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hanti-obscenity laws and legally enforced political correctness going on down there, I hardly see how this is anything but an exception to the rule. Don't even get me started on what has happened to the right to own guns down there.
Lee
Linus Torvalds has recently announced that he will begin producing, directing, and starring in his own series of adult movies. The first feature, said to be titled "I was a one balled bastard," will be filmed in Torvald's native Finland. Looking to streamline the masturbation process for his viewers, Torvalds is reportedly eliminating all evidence or suggestion of a plot from the film. In it Torvalds will repeatedly have sex with as many women as he can one after another until he either passes out or his genitals catch fire. Well known as the creator of the Linux Kernel, one of Torvalds' lesser known feats is being the first man to successfully drive a six inch nail into a block of wood with his penis without the use of viagra. This superhuman feat was accomplished before Torvalds married his lovely wife Tove. Whether or not the man with the carbon-steel cock can still drive it home now that he is getting regular shaggings from that hottie wife of his (as proven by their two children) is yet to be seen. His current lack of sexual frustration may inhibit his ability to maintain the die-cast erection that made history. Other future titles yet to be produced include "Return of the one balled bastard: LeRoy's revenge!" and "The one balled bastard in a turkish prison."
Not to be outdone by the dashing duke of open source, both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs will also be doing porn of their own. Gate's production company, Mine-mine-mine films, will begin principal photography in May on the film titled "Lolita II: the corruption of Mary Jane." Gates will play the title role of Mary Jane, a 13 year old girl who surrenders her virtue to lecherous old man Tanner who lives down the lane, to be played by William Shatner. Jobs' production company, fuck different inc., will produce an art house film in which Jobs, while tripping on a 12 person dose of LSD, is repeatedly sodomized by a train of burly men dressed as nuns while reciting the pledge of allegiance in Norwegian.
The Nazi party was a left wing institution. Even the name itself, National Socialism, is a dead giveaway. Sit down sometime and study what the party did in germany outside the war and outside the holocaust. What you'll find is... national socialism. From the autobahn to the volkswagen bug to significant changes in the social structure, the nazi party was a socialist regime.
Lee
Its great to hear that someone else out there knows what you know.
:)
I can't tell you how sick I get of having to explain to people that our rights are not an indulgence on the part of the government. That the government is our servant and not our master. Unfortunately there are a whole big slew of loonies,who ironically call themselves "liberals", who are hard at work trying to instill the notion that we are at the mercy of the government and that it decides what is right and what privileges we are allowed to have. The reason they do this is because they are intent upon controlling the government. Take your average left winger and ask them if they would support a government run by republicans or libertarians. He or she would naturally be very much opposed to that. Yet at the same time this same "liberal" is generally very much in favor of things like socialism. Basically anytime a "liberal" is espousing the role of government as the solution to a particular problem, they are not thinking of a government of the people, by the people, for the people. They are instead imagining a government that is defined and controlled by left-wing ideology. We defeated a nation controlled by left-wing ideology in WWII and then spent the next 40 years in a cold war with another. I fail to see how the importation and implementation of such philosophies in this country are a good idea. That being said I must also say that I am not a right-winger either. I'm a libertarian for the most part, highly distrustful of power and authority of any kind. Authority that is not accountable and vulnerable to the will of the people is tyrrany.
Anyway I really liked your post
Lee
This article says that DeCSS somehow gets around the copy protection embedded into DVD's. As I'm sure most of you know, this isn't technically true. The purpose of CSS is not copy protection but content control. CSS allows movie studios to decide when, where, and by whom the DVD is viewed. Lets say you're in Europe and you'd like to watch a DVD that has just been released in the states. Under the ordinary laws of commerce if you've got the money to buy that DVD then you get to watch it. Not so with CSS. Now movie studios have the ability to pick and choose which titles get released in which region at which price. Lets say there is a title that the powers that be in your country have banned because they don't like it. CSS gives the MPAA the perfect means by which to implement and support this oppression by foreign governments. None of this is right or just. The idea behind copyright is to give producers of works certain rights and protections to encourage the creation of art and knowledge. Unfortunately with things like the DMCA and CSS, non-producers such as the MPAA are perverting the concept of copyright. Where traditionally copyright has been used to define when, where, and by whom a particular work is COPIED, it is now being used to control where, when and by whom a particular work is viewed, read, seen, or otherwise utilized.
Imagine if there was CSS for books and in order to read a particular book you had to live in the right country, be of the correct race or social group, and pay a surcharge to the book cartel every time you wanted to read it. As it stands now books are independent entities. Once a publisher prints a book and sells it, that publisher has no control over what is done with that book other than a legal right to control whether it or portions of it are copied or used in other works. You can read this book, then give it to your friend to read. The publisher can't come have you and your friend arrested because he hadn't paid for the "right" to read that book. You can smuggle books that are unpopular with an oppressive regime into that country and the words will still be legible.
The problem with CSS is not that it is a copy protection scheme, but that it is a scheme to control who uses the DVD, which has nothing to do with copy protection or copyright.
If I remember right a group of video pirates were busted here not too long ago for copying DVD's. What I heard about that case is that they were copying the entire DVD bit-for-bit whether it employed CSS or not. The copied DVD's were still encoded using CSS. So what possible use is it as a copy control scheme? None of course, but its very useful for controlling which people get to watch the DVD.
Another group that is trying to pervert copyright into content control is the "church" of scientology. They employ copyright and trade secret law in order to try and prevent anyone from knowing the truth about their "religion." The truth is that scientology is nothing more than a highly successful scam that robs people of their money, enslaves many in the "Sea Org," and destroys families by forcing those in the cult to "disconnect" from relatives who are critical. Their abuse of the legal system is legendary. Their policy of filing suits for harassment value alone is such that I'm amazed their lawyers havent' been disbarred by now. The organization's sole purpose is to sucker people out of their money that is then passed "uplines" to the likes of David Miscavige. Their use of front groups and interlocking corporations to facilitate the laundering of this money would make John Gotti weep. If you want to find out more about this kriminal kult take a trip to www.xenu.net Be sure to pass this on to your friends too. The more people know the truth about this criminal organization, the fewer potential victims the cult will have to feed upon.
Lee
I work at a university where we have open-access computer labs. We were having problems with our student workers sitting at the help desk doing things like playing games, downloading goat-porn, etc. In moderation this was not a significant problem although we didn't like it. The thing was, it wasn't being done in moderation. It was interfering with them doing their job.
The solution was to modify VNCserver so that they could not tell where it was installed or when it was running. I modified it every which way I could think of to obscure its presence and operation. It worked. We have plenty of CS and CSE majors here working for us and I challenged them to try and find it, no one ever could.
After this software was installed we told everyone up front that it was there, and reminded them in case they forgot. I wasn't interested in spying on people and neither was anyone else. We were only interested in creating a deterrent whereby the student workers would KNOW that we COULD be watching, and therefore curb their inappropriate use of the systems on university time.
The fun thing about VNC is that you can remotely control the computer as the person is using it. So if the student was doing something they shouldn't, we could start moving the mouse around on the screen so they would know we were "watching" them. None of the students liked it of course, but neither were we being dishonest with them by spying on them in secret.
These products that are clearly designed to be installed in secret and used without the person being aware that they are there are, to me at least, just plain evil.
Lee
You're actually believing what the sales people tell you in an APPLE store? Since when were the floor monkeys at CompUSA and Fry's an authoritative source on the time of day, let alone what people are buying things for? An salesman will tell you that the product his is pushing will cure cancer if it will get you to buy.
Lee
If you're married then both you and your spouse should trust and respect one another.
The issue here isn't that you have something to hide, but that your spouse distrusts you and does not respect you.
Lee
Go Arnie!!
Lee Reynolds