What stallman wants is to make sure all software is free for everybody. He created the GPL to achieve that end. If the GPL becomes onorous enough (which it is apparantly becoming to MS and you) then the world can get rid of it simply by denying RMS his right to release his code under the license of his choice. This is what puts you and bill gates between a rock and a hard place. You want to steal his code and use it for your own ends but you can't without releasing your changes to it.
He is hoping the world will say to him "you have no right to dictate how your code is used by others once you have written it it's not yours anymore". Nothing would make him happier.
The way to take away the power or the GPL is to destroy the IP laws as they exist today. Quite brilliant I think.
"Where it gets weird is that IIRC Stallman doesn't believe in legally defined intellectual property at all."
The genious of stallman was to turn the concept of intellectual property back on itself. He truly does believe that all software should be in the public domain and no soaftware should be hidden from anyone. He of course realized that this goal might take generations to achieve. In the mean time he invented the concept of a copyleft and the GPL. The purpose of the GPL is to make sure a huge codebase can never be hidden from the public and he put in the viral clause to make sure the this pool of software could grow. Until IP laws are abolished he has a tool to fight it. Once the IP laws are gone so is the utility of the GPL. Of course since the GPL is dependent on IP laws it will not disappear until IP does.
It's just freaking brilliant. He says in effect "Hi I have just planted this big ugly onorous anti-business GPL in your midst, I have made sure it will grow till it gets in your way, all you have to do to make it go away is to take away my right to own my own code". Of course once his right to own code goes away so does everybody elses.
Let me explain to you why microsoft is more evil then hitler or stalin.
Hitler and Stalin killed millions of people which was an henious act but only effected a small percentage of the people on this planet. Those people got killed but the rest of the world went on pretty much business as usual.
MS does not kill people instead what they kill is what makes us human. Here is what I mean.
What separates us from animals is the ability to transmit information not only between your peers but to your offspring and future generations. The ability to educate our young and accumulate knowledge throughout the millenia is why we are the dominant species on this planet. Without that ability you are just a monkey.
Microsoft is attacking your ability to own, transmit, receive or otherwise participate in the global exchange of information. Not software but information. They have taken the lead in developing ebooks which expire, music which can only be played on approved hardware and have claimed ownership of a HUGE amount of traffic that flows through their web properties. Not only that but they are poised to control all your private information as well with the upcoming.NET and Passport projects.
Hitler killed people Bill gates is trying to kill what makes us human in the first place.
In the end Hitler put a bullet in his own brain I hope Bill can do the same favor for humanity.
They know they are only going to be there for one term. They don't have to worry about re-election and that gives them the freedom to burn their bridges.
You may have been following the stories about right wing organizations "educating" judges by flying them to resorts and wining and dining them. These judges have been "educated" by the corporations already. You don't have enough money to "educate" judges and let's face it they are not going to pay their own airfares to your local coffee shop to listen to you talk not when they can be at pebble beach listening to the CATO institute.
Not to mention the fact that a tiny percentage of electricity generation is actually done with oil. Chaney and Bush both owe the oil companies their election. After taking all those bribes they have to let them do whatever they want. They are owned at theis point.
This is what always the lamers resort to. "Yea but the truth is different then what everybody says it is". Funny how the defenders of Microsoft seem to rely on the same arguments as defenders of McVeigh.
Somehow the the entire news media in every country of the world conspired to report lies about microsoft. Not one newspaper stood up and told the truth. All those court cases yea they were fraudulent too. All those lawsuits MS lost that was a conspiracy too. Those lawsuits that MS settled for hundreds of millions of dollars were because just got tired after several rounds of losing appeals.
Get a grip willya.
I would NEVER EVER work for an unethical company. I know that no matter how small your role if you work for an evil organization you are contributing to evil. The guy who cleans the toilets in the KKK headquarters has to share some burden of the moral responsibility for what the KKK does. I know people who used to work for MS and they tell me stories, I was offered a job there myself but I told them to go screw themselves (and got a higher paying job anyways).
Both George Bush and Dick Chaney are born again christians. As such they have two fundemental beliefs.
1) The earth was made for the consumption of man. God made all the animals and plants so that they could serve mankind. Nature has no value other then what benefit it can give to man.
2) There really is not a future to speak of. There is no need to conserve of preserve the earth because Jesus will come back. When he comes back he will kill and punish all people like me (a heathen) as well as all commies, fags, ragheads, kikes etc and will take all good christians like them to the promised land. The apocalypse is around the corner.
The idea of preserving nature is anthitetical to their religion. God said to use the animals and god said he will take care of them. They follow the will of God.
BTW. California used less energy this year then they did last year. How come they have less energy? Just exactly why is there a shortage this year when last year there was no problem? I'll give you a hint it has nothing to do with production.
I recall reading someplace that nuclear plants were not cost effective. Without Govt funding it would cost more to build and maintain then the money you made selling the electricity especially considering the fact that the waste has to be stored essentially forever. What would it cost to rent a nuclear waste storage facility for 500 years?
Like most businesses the nuclear plants are capitalists when they are making money and communist when they are losing it. They want to make profits from selling the electricity but don't want to pay for storage of their waste and want the taxpayers to foot the bill for that.
The store problem is very real and very political. the political situation can be solved very simply by simply storing the waste where the CEOs live. If they store the waste in the hamptons (or whatever high class neigborhood the CEOs live) then I don't think you'll see an outcry from the public at large. Simply bury the waste beneath the 18 hole golf course in the back yard and you wouln't hear a peep from the masses. No complaints and no costs to the taxpayer what could be more simple?
Microsoft is a giant corporation: Objective truth
Microsoft has billions of dollars: Objective Truth
Microsoft has tens of thousands of programmers: Objective Truth
Microsoft has millions of computers: Objective truth
Microsoft is unethical: Subjective (but true).
Saying Microsoft is unethical is much like saying Timothy McVeigh is unethical. You judge a corporation just like you'd judge an individual. You look at how they behave and speak and then form a conclusion. I have looked at how MS behaves and talks and have judged them to be unethical at best (downright evil at most). I believe that some people are evil and somehow the evil people in MS have risen up in the ranks. If these people were not billionaires they would be torturing cats and dogs in the backwoods (who know maybe they do that anyway).
I read it three times and it still does not make sense. You just sprout nonsensical phrases like "ends don't justify means". What the hell does that have anything to with anything. Either something is a crime and can be punished via the criminal system or it's not a crime and has to be settled in the civil courts. Which police is going to charge Exxon with what crime when there are no environmetal laws? When pollution is a civil matter cops won't get involved. When pollution happens in the middle of the ocean then nothing happens. A liberterian world is one ran by corporations and for corporations. Liberterianism is the means to that end. Either you are rich and rule or are poor and suffer. Nobody to protect you from the exxons of the world.
Huh? If I grab the soda the store does not have it anymore and can't sell it to anybody. that's stealing. If I go to the store and take picture of the soda, or videotape it or magically copy it and drink it then the store still has the same soda.
Yes it's not like they are some giant unethical technology company with billions in the bank, tens thousands of programmers and millions of computers on hand.
That's funny AOL had never impacted my life by forcing me to do something I did not want to but MS sure has. Maybe their voodoo mind control techniques only work on you.
I have never even installed AOL but I sure have been forced to install all kinds of software by MS and oddly enough a good percentage of them broke my currently running machine.
It's no probelm at all. Please check again. You install samba ("apt-get install samba" or rpmfind --install samba) and then run swat. Connect via your web browser and you can set up samba in a few minutes. You can also use webmin to set up samba. If you use a windows PDC samba can use that to authenticate if not it can generate a user list from/etc/passwd.
It's probably easier then windows if you use webmin or swat and you have much more control then windows sharing. You can block users by IP or set up different auth schemes in different shares for example.
Sure a typical brainless windows admin probably could not even log into the linux machine let alone configure it but a typical linux admin could do it in no time.
Besides once you set up (or payed someone to do it if you are shop full of idiots) then it works without any further tweaking. Like I said no support costs to speak of.
Unfortunately there HAS TO BE FORCE. No powerful organization s going to do what's right without some sort of force. Let's take your overly simplististic and totally useless example. Let's say that exxon just spilled a barrel of oil on my back yard. I have to take them court can I afford that?. Let's say I found a lawyer with a good heart who took on the thousand lawyers exxon has on staff and by some divine act of god actually won in court before he and I both were bankrupt and in our grave. Who is going to force exxon to clean up or reimburse me? That's right somebody has to eventually force exxon to do the right thing and that is the evil gubmit.
Now take a more realistic example. Exxon spills a billion gallons of oil 500 miles off the coast of california. Who is going to sue them? Whose property got ruined? That's right nobody!
As you say in a liberterian world all environmental disgressions are a matter of compensation and must be settled in civil court (which was my point as well). By reducing the scope of criminal law and legislation and by selling all public lands to the private sector you will shift the entire burden of grievences to the civil courts. If you can afford to fight the exxons of the world that's good news if you can't it sucks for you but it's great for exxon.
For the common man it will suck so much more to live in a liberterian world. At least you can attempt to lobby your legislator or organize but the CEO of exxon is not elected by you and does not give a flying fuck about you, your family, or the world you live in. He just wants more money.
Oh come on now. Are you really suggesting that all those people tried out every office product on the market and settled on ms-office? No like most morons they use it because it got pre-installed on their computer or they are forced to use it at work and were forced to learn it. People are stupid and obedient they will eat whatever pile of shit you deposit in front of them.
BTW IT managers are some of the biggest morons on the face of the planet. A monkey can pick better products then a typical IT manager. you typical IT manager chooses products by whoever has the biggest and the shiniest ad in PC magazine.
Yes because MS has such an impeccable record of acting ethically while AOL has screwed everyone it has ever partnered with.
After all who are going to trust people who commit perjury and evidence tamplering or people who just run a business without having been found guilty of crimes.
Why would you need to support samba? The client machines are not running it. You set up a samba server and you are done it requires no support. No bozo from sales is going to call you and say "my samba is broke"
What part of that was wrong? The part about the liberterians advocating less laws? The part about corporations being more profitable under laxer labor and environmental regulations? The part about having to settle disputes via civil courts because the there are fewer laws with smaller scope? The part about fighting even richer corporations in court being hard?
Go read the liberterian literature and point out to me where they advocate more regulation and sticter laws.
What stallman wants is to make sure all software is free for everybody. He created the GPL to achieve that end. If the GPL becomes onorous enough (which it is apparantly becoming to MS and you) then the world can get rid of it simply by denying RMS his right to release his code under the license of his choice. This is what puts you and bill gates between a rock and a hard place. You want to steal his code and use it for your own ends but you can't without releasing your changes to it.
He is hoping the world will say to him "you have no right to dictate how your code is used by others once you have written it it's not yours anymore". Nothing would make him happier.
The way to take away the power or the GPL is to destroy the IP laws as they exist today. Quite brilliant I think.
"Where it gets weird is that IIRC Stallman doesn't believe in legally defined intellectual property at all."
The genious of stallman was to turn the concept of intellectual property back on itself. He truly does believe that all software should be in the public domain and no soaftware should be hidden from anyone. He of course realized that this goal might take generations to achieve. In the mean time he invented the concept of a copyleft and the GPL. The purpose of the GPL is to make sure a huge codebase can never be hidden from the public and he put in the viral clause to make sure the this pool of software could grow. Until IP laws are abolished he has a tool to fight it. Once the IP laws are gone so is the utility of the GPL. Of course since the GPL is dependent on IP laws it will not disappear until IP does.
It's just freaking brilliant. He says in effect "Hi I have just planted this big ugly onorous anti-business GPL in your midst, I have made sure it will grow till it gets in your way, all you have to do to make it go away is to take away my right to own my own code". Of course once his right to own code goes away so does everybody elses.
Let me explain to you why microsoft is more evil then hitler or stalin.
.NET and Passport projects.
Hitler and Stalin killed millions of people which was an henious act but only effected a small percentage of the people on this planet. Those people got killed but the rest of the world went on pretty much business as usual.
MS does not kill people instead what they kill is what makes us human. Here is what I mean.
What separates us from animals is the ability to transmit information not only between your peers but to your offspring and future generations. The ability to educate our young and accumulate knowledge throughout the millenia is why we are the dominant species on this planet. Without that ability you are just a monkey.
Microsoft is attacking your ability to own, transmit, receive or otherwise participate in the global exchange of information. Not software but information. They have taken the lead in developing ebooks which expire, music which can only be played on approved hardware and have claimed ownership of a HUGE amount of traffic that flows through their web properties. Not only that but they are poised to control all your private information as well with the upcoming
Hitler killed people Bill gates is trying to kill what makes us human in the first place.
In the end Hitler put a bullet in his own brain I hope Bill can do the same favor for humanity.
They know they are only going to be there for one term. They don't have to worry about re-election and that gives them the freedom to burn their bridges.
Maybe it's not legal to benchmark NTFS.
You may have been following the stories about right wing organizations "educating" judges by flying them to resorts and wining and dining them. These judges have been "educated" by the corporations already. You don't have enough money to "educate" judges and let's face it they are not going to pay their own airfares to your local coffee shop to listen to you talk not when they can be at pebble beach listening to the CATO institute.
IF Rush Limbaugh and G. Gordon Liddy are journalists then Eric is one too.
Not to mention the fact that a tiny percentage of electricity generation is actually done with oil. Chaney and Bush both owe the oil companies their election. After taking all those bribes they have to let them do whatever they want. They are owned at theis point.
This is what always the lamers resort to. "Yea but the truth is different then what everybody says it is". Funny how the defenders of Microsoft seem to rely on the same arguments as defenders of McVeigh.
Somehow the the entire news media in every country of the world conspired to report lies about microsoft. Not one newspaper stood up and told the truth. All those court cases yea they were fraudulent too. All those lawsuits MS lost that was a conspiracy too. Those lawsuits that MS settled for hundreds of millions of dollars were because just got tired after several rounds of losing appeals.
Get a grip willya.
I would NEVER EVER work for an unethical company. I know that no matter how small your role if you work for an evil organization you are contributing to evil. The guy who cleans the toilets in the KKK headquarters has to share some burden of the moral responsibility for what the KKK does. I know people who used to work for MS and they tell me stories, I was offered a job there myself but I told them to go screw themselves (and got a higher paying job anyways).
Here is the other side of the story.
Both George Bush and Dick Chaney are born again christians. As such they have two fundemental beliefs.
1) The earth was made for the consumption of man. God made all the animals and plants so that they could serve mankind. Nature has no value other then what benefit it can give to man.
2) There really is not a future to speak of. There is no need to conserve of preserve the earth because Jesus will come back. When he comes back he will kill and punish all people like me (a heathen) as well as all commies, fags, ragheads, kikes etc and will take all good christians like them to the promised land. The apocalypse is around the corner.
The idea of preserving nature is anthitetical to their religion. God said to use the animals and god said he will take care of them. They follow the will of God.
BTW. California used less energy this year then they did last year. How come they have less energy? Just exactly why is there a shortage this year when last year there was no problem? I'll give you a hint it has nothing to do with production.
I recall reading someplace that nuclear plants were not cost effective. Without Govt funding it would cost more to build and maintain then the money you made selling the electricity especially considering the fact that the waste has to be stored essentially forever. What would it cost to rent a nuclear waste storage facility for 500 years?
Like most businesses the nuclear plants are capitalists when they are making money and communist when they are losing it. They want to make profits from selling the electricity but don't want to pay for storage of their waste and want the taxpayers to foot the bill for that.
The store problem is very real and very political. the political situation can be solved very simply by simply storing the waste where the CEOs live. If they store the waste in the hamptons (or whatever high class neigborhood the CEOs live) then I don't think you'll see an outcry from the public at large. Simply bury the waste beneath the 18 hole golf course in the back yard and you wouln't hear a peep from the masses. No complaints and no costs to the taxpayer what could be more simple?
Please provide links to where Al Gore cancelled them.
Let's see what I said.
Microsoft is a giant corporation: Objective truth
Microsoft has billions of dollars: Objective Truth
Microsoft has tens of thousands of programmers: Objective Truth
Microsoft has millions of computers: Objective truth
Microsoft is unethical: Subjective (but true).
Saying Microsoft is unethical is much like saying Timothy McVeigh is unethical. You judge a corporation just like you'd judge an individual. You look at how they behave and speak and then form a conclusion. I have looked at how MS behaves and talks and have judged them to be unethical at best (downright evil at most). I believe that some people are evil and somehow the evil people in MS have risen up in the ranks. If these people were not billionaires they would be torturing cats and dogs in the backwoods (who know maybe they do that anyway).
I read it three times and it still does not make sense. You just sprout nonsensical phrases like "ends don't justify means". What the hell does that have anything to with anything. Either something is a crime and can be punished via the criminal system or it's not a crime and has to be settled in the civil courts. Which police is going to charge Exxon with what crime when there are no environmetal laws? When pollution is a civil matter cops won't get involved. When pollution happens in the middle of the ocean then nothing happens. A liberterian world is one ran by corporations and for corporations. Liberterianism is the means to that end. Either you are rich and rule or are poor and suffer. Nobody to protect you from the exxons of the world.
Huh? If I grab the soda the store does not have it anymore and can't sell it to anybody. that's stealing. If I go to the store and take picture of the soda, or videotape it or magically copy it and drink it then the store still has the same soda.
IBM made more profit from OS/2 last year then RedHat had revenue. Red Hat would kill to have a product as profitable as OS/2.
"While this is true, I would point out that they still don't charge for internet explorer."
Fucking commies.
Yes it's not like they are some giant unethical technology company with billions in the bank, tens thousands of programmers and millions of computers on hand.
That's funny AOL had never impacted my life by forcing me to do something I did not want to but MS sure has. Maybe their voodoo mind control techniques only work on you.
I have never even installed AOL but I sure have been forced to install all kinds of software by MS and oddly enough a good percentage of them broke my currently running machine.
It's no probelm at all. Please check again. You install samba ("apt-get install samba" or rpmfind --install samba) and then run swat. Connect via your web browser and you can set up samba in a few minutes. You can also use webmin to set up samba. If you use a windows PDC samba can use that to authenticate if not it can generate a user list from /etc/passwd.
It's probably easier then windows if you use webmin or swat and you have much more control then windows sharing. You can block users by IP or set up different auth schemes in different shares for example.
Sure a typical brainless windows admin probably could not even log into the linux machine let alone configure it but a typical linux admin could do it in no time.
Besides once you set up (or payed someone to do it if you are shop full of idiots) then it works without any further tweaking. Like I said no support costs to speak of.
Unfortunately there HAS TO BE FORCE. No powerful organization s going to do what's right without some sort of force. Let's take your overly simplististic and totally useless example. Let's say that exxon just spilled a barrel of oil on my back yard. I have to take them court can I afford that?. Let's say I found a lawyer with a good heart who took on the thousand lawyers exxon has on staff and by some divine act of god actually won in court before he and I both were bankrupt and in our grave. Who is going to force exxon to clean up or reimburse me? That's right somebody has to eventually force exxon to do the right thing and that is the evil gubmit.
Now take a more realistic example. Exxon spills a billion gallons of oil 500 miles off the coast of california. Who is going to sue them? Whose property got ruined? That's right nobody!
As you say in a liberterian world all environmental disgressions are a matter of compensation and must be settled in civil court (which was my point as well). By reducing the scope of criminal law and legislation and by selling all public lands to the private sector you will shift the entire burden of grievences to the civil courts. If you can afford to fight the exxons of the world that's good news if you can't it sucks for you but it's great for exxon.
For the common man it will suck so much more to live in a liberterian world. At least you can attempt to lobby your legislator or organize but the CEO of exxon is not elected by you and does not give a flying fuck about you, your family, or the world you live in. He just wants more money.
Oh come on now. Are you really suggesting that all those people tried out every office product on the market and settled on ms-office? No like most morons they use it because it got pre-installed on their computer or they are forced to use it at work and were forced to learn it. People are stupid and obedient they will eat whatever pile of shit you deposit in front of them.
BTW IT managers are some of the biggest morons on the face of the planet. A monkey can pick better products then a typical IT manager. you typical IT manager chooses products by whoever has the biggest and the shiniest ad in PC magazine.
Yes because MS has such an impeccable record of acting ethically while AOL has screwed everyone it has ever partnered with.
After all who are going to trust people who commit perjury and evidence tamplering or people who just run a business without having been found guilty of crimes.
Why would you need to support samba? The client machines are not running it. You set up a samba server and you are done it requires no support. No bozo from sales is going to call you and say "my samba is broke"
What part of that was wrong? The part about the liberterians advocating less laws? The part about corporations being more profitable under laxer labor and environmental regulations? The part about having to settle disputes via civil courts because the there are fewer laws with smaller scope? The part about fighting even richer corporations in court being hard?
Go read the liberterian literature and point out to me where they advocate more regulation and sticter laws.