I agree. I think that this over-defensiveness is still part of the backlash from the 80s "AD&D makes kids into satanists" idea. As silly as that idea was and as ridiculed as the people saying it were, I haven't come across any other issue that so galvanizes the gaming community.
Personally, I think people tend to be over-sensitive about society having negative opinions about their hobbies, but I tend not to care much about what society thinks.:)
"Linus isn't a Swede, he's a Swedish speaking Finn (as many others pointed out before me). Saying that Linus is Swedish is like saying that RMS is English."
Saying that he's "a Swede" is like saying that he is ethnically Swedish, which is true. I don't know what it's like where you are, but growing up in NE Wisconsin, USA we used to have "ethnicity competitions" of a sort - the person who was descended from the most different ethnic groups won. I had 4: I'm a quarter German, a quarter Finnish, a quarter mixed British (mostly English, I think) and a quarter French Canadian. I think there was a guy in my class who had 6, although I don't remember what they were.
So anyway, saying that Linus is a Swede is like saying that I'm a quarter German. It doesn't imply Swedish (or German) citizenship or anything like that. Likewise, if RMS is descended from predominantly English people, it can be said that he's English when referring to his ancestry.
You say: "Just a question...how many people have died as a result of Christianity??"
Blaming Christians and Christianity for atrocities and excesses committed in the name of Christianity is like blaming Linus, Linux and Linux users for the excesses committed by script kiddies or overzealous Linux evangelists.
You seem to advocate the idea that a person should not have an opinion about something that he/she has not experienced. Do you really believe this?
It's nonsense, of course.
For instance, I believe very strongly that the absence of civilization is bad and to be avoided, even though I have never experienced the absence of civilization and even though there are lots of movies that make the absence of civilization look appealing.
The beauty of the open source development model is that as long as people are interested in developing a piece of software, that software is destined to be better than its closed-source competitors.
Frankly, if MS ported Office to Linux, it would only serve to demonstrate the superiority of existing Linux office suites.
"Free speech" means that people have a right to say just about anything. It does not mean that others must be forced to listen to them.
In online communities, when the signal cannot be found due to the noise, the community disappears. This is bad. I don't want my favorite newsgroups or other online discussion sites to be like alt.2600.
Online filtering ("shut-up software"), used properly, is the equivalent of fast-forwarding through commercials.
Of course, just as I don't trust companies to fast-forward through commercials for me, I don't trust companies to do my filtering for me. That, however, is my decision, and other people have the right to decide to filter what they see according to the standards of others (ie, the standards of the companies that sell filtering software.)
I do choose to trust the/. moderators' filtering preferences. By setting my viewing threshold to 1 (or more, for articles with lots of comments), my/. experience becomes much more pleasurable.
You say: "The gift economy will never work because communism never worked. Do not mistake this with Russian or Chinese communism. In the communist manifesto, "People will give all they can and only take what they need". Sounds like the gift economy to me folks."
The key difference as I see it between communism/socialism/everybody-gets-along-ism and the OSS community/gift economy is that the latter is optional.
I don't believe that large-scale communism will ever be successful because it requires that everybody participate, and when people don't want to participate you have problems. That's an oversimplification, but the majority of what went wrong with the so-called "communist" countries can be blamed on the fact that not everybody on the planet wanted to be communist. For instance, the existence of hostile non-communist nations forced the creation of the security forces which were the source of many of the problems with the various implementations of "communism."
The OSS community does not need everybody to contribute to keep from collapsing because of the nature of software. If enough people refuse to work in the fields, then there isn't enough food to go around and somebody dies. If not everybody wants to code free software, then not as much free software gets coded, which in no way lessens the impact or value of the free software that does get coded. The only real problem would be if there were so few people coding free software that nothing ever got done, and that's clearly not the case.
"The trouble with this is that this time Milesovic has nothing to lose: he is going to lose Kosovo anyway - autonomy will lead to independence. It's better for him to lose it in a fight. Wars really hurt democratic leaders but they really help despotic ones tighten their grip. In this way NATO is helping him."
If Milosovic is going to lose anyway, I think it'd be better for him if he were to lose with his military intact than for him to lose with his military hurt by weeks of air bombardment. A despot does not need an excuse to tighten his grip; if his military were to be seriously hurt, it would decrease his power, not increase it.
I honestly don't know why he wants Kosovo - the amount of resources he's spending and losing because of his present course of action are surely not as great as the resources he'd gain from keeping the region. It would have been much smarter for him to cede the area to Albania or give it independence or whatever and let the people there consider themselves to be indebted to him.
Augmenting humans using implanted computers, that is. Using the ability to vastly increase human capabilities could be very bad because human beings will still make mistakes. As an illustration, if someday people are able to plug right into their cars and have super reflexes, etc., there will still be lousy drivers.
Essentially, I don't want anybody to have near-infinite knowledge without near-infinite wisdom, and nobody's perfected a way to prevent human beings from making bad decisions. When they do, I'll be the first in line to have my own abilities massively augmented.
Chas, I'm shocked that you of all people would be a Pro-Intel Chauvinist.
Anyway, it's just a matter of tradeoffs. At anything but fpu-intensive operations, the K6 competes favorable with P2s; in terms of price/performance, it wins hands-down. I don't really care if, by paying $300 more, I could get 10 more fps in Quake 2; since I don't have an extra $300 the K6 is my baby. (Or babies, since I've got 2.)
The way I see it, if I could afford a new Intel cpu I could also afford a not-quite-so-new Alpha. Or a BeBox. Or a G3.
Slashdot Mirror
Sigh. How can somebody who's 23 feel so old?
I agree. I think that this over-defensiveness is still part of the backlash from the 80s "AD&D makes kids into satanists" idea. As silly as that idea was and as ridiculed as the people saying it were, I haven't come across any other issue that so galvanizes the gaming community.
:)
Personally, I think people tend to be over-sensitive about society having negative opinions about their hobbies, but I tend not to care much about what society thinks.
"Linus isn't a Swede, he's a Swedish speaking Finn (as many others pointed out before me). Saying that Linus is Swedish is like saying that RMS is English."
Saying that he's "a Swede" is like saying that he is ethnically Swedish, which is true. I don't know what it's like where you are, but growing up in NE Wisconsin, USA we used to have "ethnicity competitions" of a sort - the person who was descended from the most different ethnic groups won. I had 4: I'm a quarter German, a quarter Finnish, a quarter mixed British (mostly English, I think) and a quarter French Canadian. I think there was a guy in my class who had 6, although I don't remember what they were.
So anyway, saying that Linus is a Swede is like saying that I'm a quarter German. It doesn't imply Swedish (or German) citizenship or anything like that. Likewise, if RMS is descended from predominantly English people, it can be said that he's English when referring to his ancestry.
"...have script kiddies ever killed anyone in the name of Linus?"
:)
If they ever do, it's not necessarily his fault.
As an Enlightened Authoritarian, I seek to tear the scales from the eyes of everyone so that they may see that my beliefs are correct.
You say: "Just a question...how many people have died as a result of Christianity??"
Blaming Christians and Christianity for atrocities and excesses committed in the name of Christianity is like blaming Linus, Linux and Linux users for the excesses committed by script kiddies or overzealous Linux evangelists.
You seem to advocate the idea that a person should not have an opinion about something that he/she has not experienced. Do you really believe this?
It's nonsense, of course.
For instance, I believe very strongly that the absence of civilization is bad and to be avoided, even though I have never experienced the absence of civilization and even though there are lots of movies that make the absence of civilization look appealing.
The beauty of the open source development model is that as long as people are interested in developing a piece of software, that software is destined to be better than its closed-source competitors.
Frankly, if MS ported Office to Linux, it would only serve to demonstrate the superiority of existing Linux office suites.
"Free speech" means that people have a right to say just about anything. It does not mean that others must be forced to listen to them.
/. moderators' filtering preferences. By setting my viewing threshold to 1 (or more, for articles with lots of comments), my /. experience becomes much more pleasurable.
In online communities, when the signal cannot be found due to the noise, the community disappears. This is bad. I don't want my favorite newsgroups or other online discussion sites to be like alt.2600.
Online filtering ("shut-up software"), used properly, is the equivalent of fast-forwarding through commercials.
Of course, just as I don't trust companies to fast-forward through commercials for me, I don't trust companies to do my filtering for me. That, however, is my decision, and other people have the right to decide to filter what they see according to the standards of others (ie, the standards of the companies that sell filtering software.)
I do choose to trust the
August 6-8? That's Gen Con weekend.
You say:
"The gift economy will never work because communism never worked. Do not mistake this with Russian or Chinese communism. In the communist manifesto, "People will give all they can and only take what they need". Sounds like the gift economy to me folks."
The key difference as I see it between communism/socialism/everybody-gets-along-ism and the OSS community/gift economy is that the latter is optional.
I don't believe that large-scale communism will ever be successful because it requires that everybody participate, and when people don't want to participate you have problems. That's an oversimplification, but the majority of what went wrong with the so-called "communist" countries can be blamed on the fact that not everybody on the planet wanted to be communist. For instance, the existence of hostile non-communist nations forced the creation of the security forces which were the source of many of the problems with the various implementations of "communism."
The OSS community does not need everybody to contribute to keep from collapsing because of the nature of software. If enough people refuse to work in the fields, then there isn't enough food to go around and somebody dies. If not everybody wants to code free software, then not as much free software gets coded, which in no way lessens the impact or value of the free software that does get coded. The only real problem would be if there were so few people coding free software that nothing ever got done, and that's clearly not the case.
Only one area where I really disagree with you...
"The trouble with this is that this time Milesovic has nothing to lose: he is going to lose Kosovo anyway - autonomy will lead to independence. It's better for him to lose it in a fight. Wars really hurt democratic leaders but they really help despotic ones tighten their grip. In this way NATO is helping him."
If Milosovic is going to lose anyway, I think it'd be better for him if he were to lose with his military intact than for him to lose with his military hurt by weeks of air bombardment. A despot does not need an excuse to tighten his grip; if his military were to be seriously hurt, it would decrease his power, not increase it.
I honestly don't know why he wants Kosovo - the amount of resources he's spending and losing because of his present course of action are surely not as great as the resources he'd gain from keeping the region. It would have been much smarter for him to cede the area to Albania or give it independence or whatever and let the people there consider themselves to be indebted to him.
Actually, it's evidence that age means a lot.
Augmenting humans using implanted computers, that is. Using the ability to vastly increase human capabilities could be very bad because human beings will still make mistakes. As an illustration, if someday people are able to plug right into their cars and have super reflexes, etc., there will still be lousy drivers.
Essentially, I don't want anybody to have near-infinite knowledge without near-infinite wisdom, and nobody's perfected a way to prevent human beings from making bad decisions. When they do, I'll be the first in line to have my own abilities massively augmented.
Chas, I'm shocked that you of all people would be a Pro-Intel Chauvinist.
Anyway, it's just a matter of tradeoffs. At anything but fpu-intensive operations, the K6 competes favorable with P2s; in terms of price/performance, it wins hands-down. I don't really care if, by paying $300 more, I could get 10 more fps in Quake 2; since I don't have an extra $300 the K6 is my baby. (Or babies, since I've got 2.)
The way I see it, if I could afford a new Intel cpu I could also afford a not-quite-so-new Alpha. Or a BeBox. Or a G3.
Peter