Since when was it necessary to consult freeloaders? Seriously. Ubuntu is provided gratis and the people who aren't paying its bills think they get to dictate to the people who are?
If I were Shuttleworth I'd probably respond with "I'll pretend to care about your opinion as long as you pretend to pay me."
I don't give a rat's ass about anyone's overblown pseudo-religious bullshit when it comes to computers or the software they run.
The only thing I care about is that the software works and that the agreed upon terms for using that software are not changed to my detriment.
Displaying a license to users when Firefox is launched is not a detrimental change, so I don't give a damn.
Informing PHB's that their computers are insecure in such a way that you can be identified is foolish.
Not only are they not going to understand anything you're saying (wah-wah-wah-wah-wah ala Charlie Brown) but they're going to panic and immediately try to shoot the messenger.
This guy should have either kept his mouth shut, or submitted his findings in such a way that he would not have been identified.
Expecting people whose ignorance is only surpassed by their fear of what they do not understand to be rational is a fools errand.
Georgia is going to have to "take one for the team" so to speak, though in the long run they will be better off than they were before. Russia has traded its dreams of future empire for a small region within a small country in the Caucasus. Congratulations Vlad, you got the boobie prize.
What will happen is that other nations that Russia wants under its thumb will move closer to us, just as Poland has done. I expect to hear any day now that the Ukraine has entered into a similar treaty to the one we have with Poland. Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia are kissing our ass like there is no tomorrow. Belarus isn't, but then it is a dictatorship ruled by a tyrant beholden to Putin.
Russia has a very long history of making its own worst fears come true through its own behavior. This is no different.
Russia is not a modern nation. This is something that most people don't understand. It is not a democracy and never has been. It is an oligarchy. As such it is ruled by men whose lives are defined by their craving for power and influence.
They have dreams of empire and see the US as attempting to prevent their designs from coming to fruition. The truth is that we're not nearly as concerned about them as we are about nations like Iran. When Putin started rattling his saber, our first response was "You're still here? The cold wars is over....go home." Like an old girlfriend who has been spurned for a new lover, Russia is jealous of our new enemies and wants to be our main adversary again. Like I said, it is not a modern nation. Nor is it run by sane individuals.
They see the things that we've been doing as strategic moves against themselves, and are responding to that misapprehension, thereby creating the very situation that they most fear: former client states cozying up to us instead of kow towing to them.
My attitude is that if they want a war, we can certainly give them one. When Russian armed, trained, and advised forces went up against us in 1991, we cleaned their clocks so fast that the war was over almost before it began. Twelve years later we overran a Russian trained, advised, and armed force that had vast numerical superiority in just a few weeks. If Russia thinks it can go toe to toe with us then bring it on.
Had the the 2000 presidential election turned out differently and had Gore invaded Iraq instead of Bush, the lefties and Dhimmicrats (but I repeat myself) would be falling all over each other to declare him a liberator and a bringer of peace, etc, etc.
But because it was a Republican who did it, the lefties will chant till the end of time that it was a crime, based upon lies, an example of American imperialism, blood for oil, etc, etc, etc. They sound just like the sheep in Animal Farm, and are equally dimwitted.
What do traffic tickets have to do with the color of someone's skin or with one's political affiliation? Are democrats more likely to double park? Are blacks or other "minorities" more likely to make an illegal left-hand turn?
Proof of citizenship should be required to vote.
I live in Arizona where citizens are required to present both their voter registration card and a state-issued ID card when they go to the polls. Arizona is a state where ballot initiatives are common, and that is how this particular regulation was passed.
After it was passed, leftists came out of the woodwork filing lawsuits over it. The excuses that were used for opposing this regulation were absurd. The public were told, and expected to believe, that requiring state issued ID somehow excluded poor people from voting. This of course was complete hogwash. A state issued ID card is cheap. It is also a necessity for everyday life, not to mention a requirement to sign up for welfare benefits.
The real reason why the lefties didn't want the identities and citizenship status of potential voters to be vetted is because it would prevent illegal aliens from illegally voting in US elections, and end the long-time Democratic tactic of having party operatives vote in multiple districts under the identities of dead people. The lefties want illegals to vote because they see them as a group that they can designate as a "victim" class and mobilize to bring about their fabled and long dreamt of "revolution." Its Gramscian Marxism 101.
So don't whine at me about republicans supposedly trying to prevent people from voting, because it just doesn't wash. Requiring proof of citizenship to vote is a no-brainer, and parking tickets aren't passed out based on party affiliation.
Ever wonder why so much scientific computing is still done in Fortran, often in F77?
It is because the compilers for Fortran, and for F77 in particular, have been subjected to decades of refinement and optimization. This is why researchers still use it for code that is going to be running for days on end.
What does this have to do with the efficiency of JIT'd code vs interpreted code? Nothing, I just think it fits in nicely with what you had to say.
There are an awful lot of people who drink vendor Kool Aide, or who are fanboys for this language or that one. People need to remember that at least half of anything you hear from a vendor is an outright lie, and the other half an exaggeration.
Fanboy is just a polite term for jackass, regardless of what it is that someone is a fanboy about.
If all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
While the theft of the term "liberal" by leftist anti-liberals did take place many decades ago, it is still a term that does not apply to them and should not be used to describe them.
A liberal is someone who believes in liberty and who pursues policies that create, expand, and protect liberty. A leftist is someone who believes in tyranny, and who pursues policies that create, expand and entrench tyranny.
When you allow the left to choose the terminology by which they will be described, you are hand them a victory. You don't call a child molester a "boy lover." You don't call a rapist a "persistent suitor." You don't call a terrorist a "freedom fighter." And you sure as hell don't call a leftist a "liberal." To do so tarnishes the good name of the men and women who have fought and died to bring the light of freedom into the world.
Do you mean dead people whose skin was a shade not unlike your own?
Crying about the crimes of the long departed and allowing LOSERS and CRYBABIES to trick you into feeling personal guilt and responsibility for those crimes out of superficial resemblance to the perpetrators is RETARDED.
The notion of group responsibility is a leftist canard. You are responsible for your own actions, not for the actions of others, and certainly not for the actions of people who were dead and buried many decades before you were ever born.
You are not guilty on account of your race. You are not responsible on account of your skin color. In the saga that was the colonization of North America, the guilty and the innocent are all long dead and buried. If you prefer to curse the memory of the guilty then don't let me stop you, but don't let yourself be fooled into thinking that their guilt bloodies your hands, or that the descendants of the victims from that era have inherited that victimhood and are therefore deserving of appeasement and propitiation. My ancestors were enslaved and murdered by the English for centuries. The British people don't owe me any apologies and they don't owe me a dime. I would be insulted and disgusted if either were offered.
And please, stop quoting Chomsky, it just makes you look gullible.
Well you're obviously ill informed and ideologically inebriated.
I think you're simply someone who has drank the leftist kool-aide and is operating off of emotion rather than reason.
When you choose to believe something solely because of how it makes you feel, you sacrifice your ability to be objective. When that happens, the comfort and validation you gain from the things you choose to believe creates a vicious cycle of self deception that can lead to genuine delusions of a psychiatric nature.
You'd do well to test your conclusions against reality and to seek out things that challenge those conclusions.
The truth is the truth. That which is, is, regardless of your feelings on the matter.
This is precisely why I've never had any respect whatsoever for the law. Now I'm no criminal, I try harder than many to avoid doing things that are wrong. However, if the only argument against something is that it is illegal then I don't consider that to be an argument at all. The tyranny of the majority not a moral principle. It is simply one of the inherent flaws of democratic rule.
What gets me the most is how people my age (35) and a little older will almost have a conniption about their kids doing the very same things that they (and I) did when we were that age. I drank, sometimes to excess but not often. I had sex, as did most of my peers. I didn't mess with drugs but I knew many who did. This is what is known as High School.
Very few of the things I did at that age were wrong, though many were forbidden because of my age. But I'll be damned if I'm going to apologize for any of it. I responded with puzzlement to the bizarre histrionics that older people would emote over the things I and others my age did. If it was ok for them to do it, then as far as I was concerned it was ok for me too. I stand by that to this very day. For the longest time I believed that the antics of the older generations were a put on, an act, a contrivance of melodrama and theatrics intended to fool me and others of that age into believing absurdities through which we could be controlled. In other words, a scam, a con. I didn't believe that the adults in my life actually believed the things they were saying, because grown people couldn't possibly be that stupid...or so I though. As I've grown older I've come to realize that yes, people can be that stupid, a life-long ailment for which there is no cure.
I honestly think that most people simply don't remember their teenage years in sufficient detail to understand what it means to be a teenager. They claim to understand, but their actions and attitudes speak otherwise.
Today the things I endured in high school are now being perpetrated upon college students, who by any sane definition are supposed to be adults. Colleges and Universities are there to provide an education to their students, not to act in loco parentis. If someone isn't grown by the time they reach college, then it means their parents didn't do their job. It doesn't mean that the university should be stuck picking up the slack.
It is sad and sick that grown men and women would be so fearful that their adult (or nearly adult) children might drink beer that they would launch a grass-roots movement against a video game for merely featuring the beverage.
These people have too much time on their hands if this is what they consider to be a pressing concern.
Having to work with people for whom the Peter principle has reached its end state is exasperating at best.
Then you have the emotionally unstable, the delusional, the political operators, the empire builders, the saboteurs, the goldbrickers, and of course the fearful.
Is there some reason why I would WANT to work with this motley crew of idiots, assholes, nutjobs, and losers?
Success isn't about a paycheck. Past a certain pay grade the money ceases to be a factor. I'd much rather get an adequate paycheck to work in an environment that is conducive to success than be paid generously to work someplace that sucks.
I honestly don't believe that he was advocating forcing anyone to do anything.
Had he said "Drivers should be open source, and the kernel developers should break compatibility with any closed source drivers to ensure that this happens." then you'd have a point and I'd be beating on him myself.
At the end of the day it all comes down to what each individual user chooses to install on their system. I use closed source ATI and Nvidia drivers because they work (most of the time) and because there are no alternatives. Even if there were open source alternatives, I'd still choose the product that performed the best.
I'm not so much concerned about something being open source as I am with how much grief I have to go through to get it installed on my system. Open source drivers are included in the kernel. Closed source drivers (usually) require me to beat on the system and drag in packages from 3rd party repositories that may or may not work. This is a pain in the ass, therefore I like open source drivers better.
If Nvidia and ATI drivers shipped with my preferred distro and were installed automatically and always worked, I wouldn't give a rat's ass and neither would most people. Wireless drivers are another issue altogether (shudders)
The real problem is that there are so many people who believe that other people should make the same choices that they themselves have made, and are willing to bitch and whine about it when they discover people who won't go along with their prescriptions.
A few are even willing to resort to coercion and force to ensure that others do what they want.
This is commonly known as tyranny, and it doesn't matter whether it is Microsoft doing it, Apple doing it, or smelly long haired bearded Unix freaks doing it.
Which is precisely why they'll never do business with that company again.
Screwing over customers is the quickest way to go out of business there is.
You can mess with them a little bit, as Microsoft has done, but you can't screw them. The moment they feel they've been screwed is the moment your company ceases to be a going concern.
It is like I tell my friend who is always whining about this product or that company: DON'T BUY IT.
Don't like the BS that company X pulls with their products? Don't buy them.
This isn't food and water we're talking about here. These aren't necessities for which there are no alternatives.
The only people who care about whether a piece of software is free as in speech, open source, free as in beer, yada yada yada are developers and those whose for whom ideological concerns transcend practical necessities.
Expecting the average user to CARE AT ALL is pretty damned arrogant if you ask me.
The average user wants their computer to work, end of story. The software that runs on their computer is not a political or religious issue to them. If the computer works well, then they are happy. If it does not work well, then they are unhappy. They only care about licensing to the extent that a license requires payment for the software to be used.
I for one am kind of sick of having to beat Fedora and Redhat into shape using 3rd party repositories and my own hacks because the developers are too snooty to include Nvidia or ATI drivers, MP3 support, mplayer, etc, etc, etc.
I do care whether something is open source, but not because I have some axe to grind against commercial software. I care because open source code tends to have fewer bugs because there are many, many more eyes that can look at it.
That being said, if a free as in beer piece of code works, I'm going to use it, and I'll be damned if I'm going to apologize to some self appointed moralists for doing so.
I like the GPL because it prevents someone from taking code that is open source and making it closed source. It prevents someone form pulling an IPF. But that being said, issues such as that are a distant second behind "does the code work?"
If you're worried about Nvidia or skype or whoever suddenly dropping support for linux, then don't use their stuff. Worrying about what OTHER people will do or not do is called being a busybody and people like that are universally despised.
He's playing the "Ooooh ooooh look at MEEEE!! I'm stopping those evil kiddy porn traders from hurting kids! I'm going to huff and puff and blow their house down!!!" game.
Of course nothing he is doing is having any sort of an effect whatsoever, but then that isn't the point. The point is that the average dimwitted (but I repeat myself) person doesn't knows very little about computers and absolutely nothing about usenet. But they sure do vote! So when Cuomo shakes his stick and growls at imaginary hobgoblins, the voters think well of him, and remember that good impression come election day.
Unfortunately the only real way to stop someone like him is to give him REAL problems to deal with and REAL bad guys to chase after.
This is what happens when you get rid of the mob, people like Cuomo have too much time on their hands.
Looks like the media should rethink its use of blue and red in elections.
They chose red for Republican and blue for Democrat because of the psychological meanings inherent in each color, specifically that red=danger or even "stop." Blue on the other hand, where it is used as a symbol or signal, is always neutral or or even positive.
Of course the MSM didn't realize that painting republicans/conservatives/libertarians as red gave them an advantage.
Looks like they need to rethink this approach if they want to continue working as the propaganda arm of the Democratic/communist/leftist political machine.
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When do Free Software / Open Source companies succeed?
A) When they heed the desires of a bunch of Asperger's victims whose ideological zeal is only matched by their naivete.
B) When they respond to economic demand and seek to provide products and services to their customers that fulfill that demand.
Ubuntu is a success because it follows plan B. It stands in stark contrast to Debian, which is a poster child for plan A.
Beggars cannot be choosers, and the people who are going to get pissy about an EULA are definitely beggars.
Since when was it necessary to consult freeloaders? Seriously. Ubuntu is provided gratis and the people who aren't paying its bills think they get to dictate to the people who are?
If I were Shuttleworth I'd probably respond with "I'll pretend to care about your opinion as long as you pretend to pay me."
I don't give a rat's ass about anyone's overblown pseudo-religious bullshit when it comes to computers or the software they run.
The only thing I care about is that the software works and that the agreed upon terms for using that software are not changed to my detriment.
Displaying a license to users when Firefox is launched is not a detrimental change, so I don't give a damn.
Informing PHB's that their computers are insecure in such a way that you can be identified is foolish.
Not only are they not going to understand anything you're saying (wah-wah-wah-wah-wah ala Charlie Brown) but they're going to panic and immediately try to shoot the messenger.
This guy should have either kept his mouth shut, or submitted his findings in such a way that he would not have been identified.
Expecting people whose ignorance is only surpassed by their fear of what they do not understand to be rational is a fools errand.
Exactly.
Freedom of religion doesn't mean freedom to enslave, freedom to defraud, or freedom to deliberately destroy people's lives.
Scientology is EVIL. That's isn't an ad hominem attack or an exaggeration either, but a cold hard fact of life.
It isn't the largest or most powerful example of evil in the world, but it is definitely among the most heavily concentrated.
The current administration is a Lame Duck.
Georgia is going to have to "take one for the team" so to speak, though in the long run they will be better off than they were before. Russia has traded its dreams of future empire for a small region within a small country in the Caucasus. Congratulations Vlad, you got the boobie prize.
What will happen is that other nations that Russia wants under its thumb will move closer to us, just as Poland has done. I expect to hear any day now that the Ukraine has entered into a similar treaty to the one we have with Poland. Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia are kissing our ass like there is no tomorrow. Belarus isn't, but then it is a dictatorship ruled by a tyrant beholden to Putin.
Russia has a very long history of making its own worst fears come true through its own behavior. This is no different.
Russia is not a modern nation. This is something that most people don't understand. It is not a democracy and never has been. It is an oligarchy. As such it is ruled by men whose lives are defined by their craving for power and influence.
They have dreams of empire and see the US as attempting to prevent their designs from coming to fruition. The truth is that we're not nearly as concerned about them as we are about nations like Iran. When Putin started rattling his saber, our first response was "You're still here? The cold wars is over....go home." Like an old girlfriend who has been spurned for a new lover, Russia is jealous of our new enemies and wants to be our main adversary again. Like I said, it is not a modern nation. Nor is it run by sane individuals.
They see the things that we've been doing as strategic moves against themselves, and are responding to that misapprehension, thereby creating the very situation that they most fear: former client states cozying up to us instead of kow towing to them.
My attitude is that if they want a war, we can certainly give them one. When Russian armed, trained, and advised forces went up against us in 1991, we cleaned their clocks so fast that the war was over almost before it began. Twelve years later we overran a Russian trained, advised, and armed force that had vast numerical superiority in just a few weeks. If Russia thinks it can go toe to toe with us then bring it on.
Maybe this is like that scene in Pulp Fiction where Vincent accidentally shoots Marvin in the face?
You never know, it could have happened that way, especially since in Russia there is no real difference between the police and organized crime.
I for one see no reason to condemn the US.
Had the the 2000 presidential election turned out differently and had Gore invaded Iraq instead of Bush, the lefties and Dhimmicrats (but I repeat myself) would be falling all over each other to declare him a liberator and a bringer of peace, etc, etc.
But because it was a Republican who did it, the lefties will chant till the end of time that it was a crime, based upon lies, an example of American imperialism, blood for oil, etc, etc, etc. They sound just like the sheep in Animal Farm, and are equally dimwitted.
I know what you mean.
If Obama gets elected, getting shot by the police will almost be the least of our problems.
What do traffic tickets have to do with the color of someone's skin or with one's political affiliation? Are democrats more likely to double park? Are blacks or other "minorities" more likely to make an illegal left-hand turn?
Proof of citizenship should be required to vote.
I live in Arizona where citizens are required to present both their voter registration card and a state-issued ID card when they go to the polls. Arizona is a state where ballot initiatives are common, and that is how this particular regulation was passed.
After it was passed, leftists came out of the woodwork filing lawsuits over it. The excuses that were used for opposing this regulation were absurd. The public were told, and expected to believe, that requiring state issued ID somehow excluded poor people from voting. This of course was complete hogwash. A state issued ID card is cheap. It is also a necessity for everyday life, not to mention a requirement to sign up for welfare benefits.
The real reason why the lefties didn't want the identities and citizenship status of potential voters to be vetted is because it would prevent illegal aliens from illegally voting in US elections, and end the long-time Democratic tactic of having party operatives vote in multiple districts under the identities of dead people. The lefties want illegals to vote because they see them as a group that they can designate as a "victim" class and mobilize to bring about their fabled and long dreamt of "revolution." Its Gramscian Marxism 101.
So don't whine at me about republicans supposedly trying to prevent people from voting, because it just doesn't wash. Requiring proof of citizenship to vote is a no-brainer, and parking tickets aren't passed out based on party affiliation.
Then of course you have Fortran.
Ever wonder why so much scientific computing is still done in Fortran, often in F77?
It is because the compilers for Fortran, and for F77 in particular, have been subjected to decades of refinement and optimization. This is why researchers still use it for code that is going to be running for days on end.
What does this have to do with the efficiency of JIT'd code vs interpreted code? Nothing, I just think it fits in nicely with what you had to say.
There are an awful lot of people who drink vendor Kool Aide, or who are fanboys for this language or that one. People need to remember that at least half of anything you hear from a vendor is an outright lie, and the other half an exaggeration.
Fanboy is just a polite term for jackass, regardless of what it is that someone is a fanboy about.
If all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
Google is run by leftists.
Whether they qualify as human or not is debatable.
While the theft of the term "liberal" by leftist anti-liberals did take place many decades ago, it is still a term that does not apply to them and should not be used to describe them.
A liberal is someone who believes in liberty and who pursues policies that create, expand, and protect liberty. A leftist is someone who believes in tyranny, and who pursues policies that create, expand and entrench tyranny.
When you allow the left to choose the terminology by which they will be described, you are hand them a victory. You don't call a child molester a "boy lover." You don't call a rapist a "persistent suitor." You don't call a terrorist a "freedom fighter." And you sure as hell don't call a leftist a "liberal." To do so tarnishes the good name of the men and women who have fought and died to bring the light of freedom into the world.
Who is "We" white man?
Do you mean dead people whose skin was a shade not unlike your own?
Crying about the crimes of the long departed and allowing LOSERS and CRYBABIES to trick you into feeling personal guilt and responsibility for those crimes out of superficial resemblance to the perpetrators is RETARDED.
The notion of group responsibility is a leftist canard. You are responsible for your own actions, not for the actions of others, and certainly not for the actions of people who were dead and buried many decades before you were ever born.
You are not guilty on account of your race. You are not responsible on account of your skin color. In the saga that was the colonization of North America, the guilty and the innocent are all long dead and buried. If you prefer to curse the memory of the guilty then don't let me stop you, but don't let yourself be fooled into thinking that their guilt bloodies your hands, or that the descendants of the victims from that era have inherited that victimhood and are therefore deserving of appeasement and propitiation. My ancestors were enslaved and murdered by the English for centuries. The British people don't owe me any apologies and they don't owe me a dime. I would be insulted and disgusted if either were offered.
And please, stop quoting Chomsky, it just makes you look gullible.
This is what is known as Stockholm Syndrome.
Well you're obviously ill informed and ideologically inebriated.
I think you're simply someone who has drank the leftist kool-aide and is operating off of emotion rather than reason.
When you choose to believe something solely because of how it makes you feel, you sacrifice your ability to be objective. When that happens, the comfort and validation you gain from the things you choose to believe creates a vicious cycle of self deception that can lead to genuine delusions of a psychiatric nature.
You'd do well to test your conclusions against reality and to seek out things that challenge those conclusions.
The truth is the truth. That which is, is, regardless of your feelings on the matter.
This is precisely why I've never had any respect whatsoever for the law. Now I'm no criminal, I try harder than many to avoid doing things that are wrong. However, if the only argument against something is that it is illegal then I don't consider that to be an argument at all. The tyranny of the majority not a moral principle. It is simply one of the inherent flaws of democratic rule.
What gets me the most is how people my age (35) and a little older will almost have a conniption about their kids doing the very same things that they (and I) did when we were that age. I drank, sometimes to excess but not often. I had sex, as did most of my peers. I didn't mess with drugs but I knew many who did. This is what is known as High School.
Very few of the things I did at that age were wrong, though many were forbidden because of my age. But I'll be damned if I'm going to apologize for any of it. I responded with puzzlement to the bizarre histrionics that older people would emote over the things I and others my age did. If it was ok for them to do it, then as far as I was concerned it was ok for me too. I stand by that to this very day. For the longest time I believed that the antics of the older generations were a put on, an act, a contrivance of melodrama and theatrics intended to fool me and others of that age into believing absurdities through which we could be controlled. In other words, a scam, a con. I didn't believe that the adults in my life actually believed the things they were saying, because grown people couldn't possibly be that stupid...or so I though. As I've grown older I've come to realize that yes, people can be that stupid, a life-long ailment for which there is no cure.
I honestly think that most people simply don't remember their teenage years in sufficient detail to understand what it means to be a teenager. They claim to understand, but their actions and attitudes speak otherwise.
Today the things I endured in high school are now being perpetrated upon college students, who by any sane definition are supposed to be adults. Colleges and Universities are there to provide an education to their students, not to act in loco parentis. If someone isn't grown by the time they reach college, then it means their parents didn't do their job. It doesn't mean that the university should be stuck picking up the slack.
It is sad and sick that grown men and women would be so fearful that their adult (or nearly adult) children might drink beer that they would launch a grass-roots movement against a video game for merely featuring the beverage.
These people have too much time on their hands if this is what they consider to be a pressing concern.
Giving China the Olympic games will go down as either an unconscionable endorsement of their prison state, or as an indictment of the same.
Anything and everything that can be done to undermine and destroy the police state that rules China should be done.
Hell is other people.
Having to work with people for whom the Peter principle has reached its end state is exasperating at best.
Then you have the emotionally unstable, the delusional, the political operators, the empire builders, the saboteurs, the goldbrickers, and of course the fearful.
Is there some reason why I would WANT to work with this motley crew of idiots, assholes, nutjobs, and losers?
Success isn't about a paycheck. Past a certain pay grade the money ceases to be a factor. I'd much rather get an adequate paycheck to work in an environment that is conducive to success than be paid generously to work someplace that sucks.
I honestly don't believe that he was advocating forcing anyone to do anything.
Had he said "Drivers should be open source, and the kernel developers should break compatibility with any closed source drivers to ensure that this happens." then you'd have a point and I'd be beating on him myself.
At the end of the day it all comes down to what each individual user chooses to install on their system. I use closed source ATI and Nvidia drivers because they work (most of the time) and because there are no alternatives. Even if there were open source alternatives, I'd still choose the product that performed the best.
I'm not so much concerned about something being open source as I am with how much grief I have to go through to get it installed on my system. Open source drivers are included in the kernel. Closed source drivers (usually) require me to beat on the system and drag in packages from 3rd party repositories that may or may not work. This is a pain in the ass, therefore I like open source drivers better.
If Nvidia and ATI drivers shipped with my preferred distro and were installed automatically and always worked, I wouldn't give a rat's ass and neither would most people. Wireless drivers are another issue altogether (shudders)
The real problem is that there are so many people who believe that other people should make the same choices that they themselves have made, and are willing to bitch and whine about it when they discover people who won't go along with their prescriptions.
A few are even willing to resort to coercion and force to ensure that others do what they want.
This is commonly known as tyranny, and it doesn't matter whether it is Microsoft doing it, Apple doing it, or smelly long haired bearded Unix freaks doing it.
Which is precisely why they'll never do business with that company again.
Screwing over customers is the quickest way to go out of business there is.
You can mess with them a little bit, as Microsoft has done, but you can't screw them. The moment they feel they've been screwed is the moment your company ceases to be a going concern.
It is like I tell my friend who is always whining about this product or that company: DON'T BUY IT.
Don't like the BS that company X pulls with their products? Don't buy them.
This isn't food and water we're talking about here. These aren't necessities for which there are no alternatives.
The only people who care about whether a piece of software is free as in speech, open source, free as in beer, yada yada yada are developers and those whose for whom ideological concerns transcend practical necessities.
Expecting the average user to CARE AT ALL is pretty damned arrogant if you ask me.
The average user wants their computer to work, end of story. The software that runs on their computer is not a political or religious issue to them. If the computer works well, then they are happy. If it does not work well, then they are unhappy. They only care about licensing to the extent that a license requires payment for the software to be used.
I for one am kind of sick of having to beat Fedora and Redhat into shape using 3rd party repositories and my own hacks because the developers are too snooty to include Nvidia or ATI drivers, MP3 support, mplayer, etc, etc, etc.
I do care whether something is open source, but not because I have some axe to grind against commercial software. I care because open source code tends to have fewer bugs because there are many, many more eyes that can look at it.
That being said, if a free as in beer piece of code works, I'm going to use it, and I'll be damned if I'm going to apologize to some self appointed moralists for doing so.
I like the GPL because it prevents someone from taking code that is open source and making it closed source. It prevents someone form pulling an IPF. But that being said, issues such as that are a distant second behind "does the code work?"
If you're worried about Nvidia or skype or whoever suddenly dropping support for linux, then don't use their stuff. Worrying about what OTHER people will do or not do is called being a busybody and people like that are universally despised.
So in other words seasoned developers somehow didn't know what an X.0 release signified?
BULLSHIT.
Cuomo isn't an attorney, he's a politician.
He's playing the "Ooooh ooooh look at MEEEE!! I'm stopping those evil kiddy porn traders from hurting kids! I'm going to huff and puff and blow their house down!!!" game.
Of course nothing he is doing is having any sort of an effect whatsoever, but then that isn't the point. The point is that the average dimwitted (but I repeat myself) person doesn't knows very little about computers and absolutely nothing about usenet. But they sure do vote! So when Cuomo shakes his stick and growls at imaginary hobgoblins, the voters think well of him, and remember that good impression come election day.
Unfortunately the only real way to stop someone like him is to give him REAL problems to deal with and REAL bad guys to chase after.
This is what happens when you get rid of the mob, people like Cuomo have too much time on their hands.
Looks like the media should rethink its use of blue and red in elections.
They chose red for Republican and blue for Democrat because of the psychological meanings inherent in each color, specifically that red=danger or even "stop." Blue on the other hand, where it is used as a symbol or signal, is always neutral or or even positive.
Of course the MSM didn't realize that painting republicans/conservatives/libertarians as red gave them an advantage.
Looks like they need to rethink this approach if they want to continue working as the propaganda arm of the Democratic/communist/leftist political machine.