How about: marginalized himself and free software with outrageous statements on software morality, pitted developers against each other (just look at lkml), tried to sabotage Linux in its infancy by encouraging developers to work on the HURD instead, and then tried to claim credit for Linux once it was obviously successful.
Still not the point. I don't want to hear the same self-serving, frenzied we-hate-SCO bullshit. I want to hear pro-SCO arguments to judge the truth for myself. Why isn't there any on Slashdot? I don't think it's because it doesn't exist.
For example, Perens himself conceded that a snippet of a memory allocation routine was improperly copied into one version of the Linux kernel. Perens (backed by Slashdot) loudly argued that it was irrelevant, but the fact exists -- there was (at least a tiny bit) of copying! I think that when the evidence is presented, there will be other skeletons in the closet, and however minor they are, they will be damaging. I don't want to bury my head in groklaw/Slashdot and pretend that everything is all right when it actually isn't. I don't care if the arguments are correct or not, I want to see them.
Are you a troll? Or are you actually comparing the moral courage that eliminated slavery, and triggered the bloodiest war in US history, to a particular method of software methodology?
Don't get me wrong, I think the GPL is a good idea. But what really turns me off about GNU is their casting of the GPL as some sort of ideological crusade between good and evil. Nobody is being oppressed or having their human rights violated by using proprietary software. The market should be allowed to decide which model should prevail (or if both should coexist), without being tainted by some sort of acquired "morality".
I believe future historians will judge RMS as having done about as much harm as good.
Please don't equate "groupthink" with being correct.
Ironically, it appears that you are the one making this mistake. Groupthink has nothing to do with being correct or incorrect. It involves the suppression of dissenting opinions through pressure to conform. Slashdot has this in spades through the moderation system. As another poster pointed out, you either conform or you don't get karma. You need karma to join the elite club of moderators, handing out the karma.
I don't have time to challenge all your points, but I will point one out:
IBM's legal team would agree entirely with/., coming up with nearly identical arguments against SCO, ditto for Groklaw. Again, it just seems that in this case,/. is mostly correct.
Like I said, it doesn't matter who is correct. There are an awful lot of smart people, including David Boies and several market analysts, who think SCO has a case. IBM, Groklaw, and slashdot all have the same biases against SCO. Bear in mind that cases are not tried in the media, and SCO is under no obligation to reveal its evidence. I think there are going to be some surprises here.
A visit to the doctor costs much more than $10, if you're abusing the system you'll just abuse it a little slower.
What's never mentioned in the debate over user fees is that Sweden has a fee for visiting the doctor's office. The fee is not intended to cover the cost of the visit (which could be $50 or more). It's set at a value, say $10, which is small enough that anyone could afford it, but large enough that people will think twice before going to the doctor. If you're truly destitute, I believe they waive the fee.
I think this is a great idea, and far from slowing down abuse, I think it will prevent it.
Re:Best examples of heresy I can think of
on
What You Can't Say
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· Score: 1
The Scottish Sunday Herald did a special investigative report on this: here.
It looks like fodder for future conspiracy theorists, sort of the Sept. 11 version of the grassy knoll. A bit of substance, but also a lot of conjecture.
Re:Proud to be a Heretic!
on
What You Can't Say
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Ironic that this should be slashdotted, since./ is more-or-less the last bastion of the kind of free-speech, open-debate that exists.
Since your uid is about half of mine, I guess I can't call you a n00b. However, this is pretty much the opposite of my experience with Slashdot.
There are all kinds of sacred cows here, that you criticize at your peril: the effectiveness of Linux, the evil of copyright in general and the recording industry in particular; the lack of merit to SCO's lawsuit... the list goes on. I am astonished as to the level of thought conformity that goes on here, under the guise of free speech.
Outside commentators (such as those from Forbes) have referred to Slashdot and like sites as "echo chambers", where the same ideas bounce around ad infinitum. For example, just look at any article critical of Linux and you will see that every response is basically the same, and that high moderation is given to anything that restores the proper groupthink. I wonder if this is because a certain type of person is attracted to Slashdot, or if Slashdot transforms people's opinions? Perhaps a little of both.
I think this is one of the ironies of internet communication -- in an environment which supposedly promotes universal communication, people only seem to communicate in enclaves of like minds, reinforcing each other's narrow world views.
I own one of those samsonite bags, and I seem to see them everywhere. They are well designed, plenty of pockets for mice, cables, PC cards, etc., and the internal structure is sturdy enough that I wouldn't be too worried if I dropped it (which I haven't done yet, thankfully). The shoulder strap is strong nylon (seat belt material, looks like) with metal clasps, not likely to come apart without severe abuse. Of course, they're not cheap, but it'll probably last forever, or at least until we replace laptops with brain implants.
Why does everybody hate the big dig? Honestly, this is probably the most visionary project that any government has undertaken in a generation. Yes, it was expensive, mistakes were made, and it ended up being a lot harder to do than anyone predicted. But in the end you have a beautiful city, which will stay beautiful for a century. Nobody is going to dare proposing a huge, ugly, elevated highway through Boston anytime soon.
I don't live in Boston, but I lived in Toronto for six years. The Gardiner Expressway is an ugly elevated highway that neatly isolates downtown from the waterfront. So because the waterfront is basically a separate region from the city, it's all ugly vacant lots, polluted dock land or steel-jungle condos, right up to the water. No parks, no public space, just a lot of nastiness. There has been talk of burying it (and the big dig is held out as an example), but city council can rarely agree on the day of the week, much less spending $10 billion. Besides, with the condos going up, the opportunity has already been lost.
I predict that in 100 years, the big dig will be considered a marvel of engineering -- the modern equivalent of a cathedral.
Look at the picture and ask yourself: Can you see this man as a CEO? Would you even buy a used car from this man?
Yes, yes, I know, the man is brilliant. But what I don't understand is: if geeks are so smart, why can't they realize that appearance counts in the business world?
Sorry to reply to my own post, but I just remembered that the Catholics have a whole doctrine on extraterrestrial life (can't find a link right now, sorry).
John 10:16: "I have other sheep, which are not of this fold;..."
Some suggest that this passage implies that there is intelligent life other than on Earth. It's a little thin, but other religious beliefs have sprung out of even more tenuous evidence. At the very least, if ET life is found, the Christians could point to this passage and say, "We knew all along...".
so this patch is pointless (cool that it can be done though)
Ah, but my good Mr. Coward, far from being pointless, the patch puts Microsoft in a delicious conundrum! Either accept and distribute an open source patch (thereby publicly validating the open source model), or ignore the patch and get sued by customers, because a patch existed that they did not publicize.
ps. Are you related to Noel Coward? Send my regards.
It might be a dream for some, but getting my ass handed to me over and over and over, for twelve hours a day, by some fifteen year old nerd whose nick is "H3lld0g_69", is pretty much my worst nightmare. The only move I have ever been able to perform successfully in any game is "mash all the buttons at once".
Define time travel as the ability to travel from the future to today, or any day before today. There is absolutely no evidence that even one person, object, or piece of information from the future has successfully done so. Thus, we are left with the following four possibilities:
- Time travellers have come and gone, leaving no evidence. - Time travel is possible, but nobody does it. - Time travel is possible, but the human race never develops the technology. - Time travel is impossible.
Given past experience with humanity, we are extremely bad at cleaning up after ourselves, and not shy at all about trying new things, so I find the first two options extremely unlikely.
I would suggest that the available evidence is insufficient to distinguish between the final two options. In fact, if in the future it is discovered that time travel is both possible and feasible, I would head for the hills, for it would seem that the human race would be about to come to an abrupt end! (i.e., the world would most probably end before anybody could try this time-travel technology)
Note that my definition of time travel does not include the type in the article, where time travel is only possible back to the invention of the first time machine (because that day is currently in the future).
I assume you have heard of Occam's Razor, which (roughly speaking) means that the simplest explanation is probably the best. The simplest explanation for no tourists from the future is that time machines are impossible (or at least, time machines for travelling backward to an arbitrary time in the past).
Slashdot Mirror
What harm has he done?
How about: marginalized himself and free software with outrageous statements on software morality, pitted developers against each other (just look at lkml), tried to sabotage Linux in its infancy by encouraging developers to work on the HURD instead, and then tried to claim credit for Linux once it was obviously successful.
Still not the point. I don't want to hear the same self-serving, frenzied we-hate-SCO bullshit. I want to hear pro-SCO arguments to judge the truth for myself. Why isn't there any on Slashdot? I don't think it's because it doesn't exist.
For example, Perens himself conceded that a snippet of a memory allocation routine was improperly copied into one version of the Linux kernel. Perens (backed by Slashdot) loudly argued that it was irrelevant, but the fact exists -- there was (at least a tiny bit) of copying! I think that when the evidence is presented, there will be other skeletons in the closet, and however minor they are, they will be damaging. I don't want to bury my head in groklaw/Slashdot and pretend that everything is all right when it actually isn't. I don't care if the arguments are correct or not, I want to see them.
Are you a troll? Or are you actually comparing the moral courage that eliminated slavery, and triggered the bloodiest war in US history, to a particular method of software methodology?
Don't get me wrong, I think the GPL is a good idea. But what really turns me off about GNU is their casting of the GPL as some sort of ideological crusade between good and evil. Nobody is being oppressed or having their human rights violated by using proprietary software. The market should be allowed to decide which model should prevail (or if both should coexist), without being tainted by some sort of acquired "morality".
I believe future historians will judge RMS as having done about as much harm as good.
whoops, sorry about the runaway bold
Please don't equate "groupthink" with being correct.
/., coming up with nearly identical arguments against SCO, ditto for Groklaw. Again, it just seems that in this case, /. is mostly correct.
Ironically, it appears that you are the one making this mistake. Groupthink has nothing to do with being correct or incorrect. It involves the suppression of dissenting opinions through pressure to conform. Slashdot has this in spades through the moderation system. As another poster pointed out, you either conform or you don't get karma. You need karma to join the elite club of moderators, handing out the karma.
I don't have time to challenge all your points, but I will point one out:
IBM's legal team would agree entirely with
Like I said, it doesn't matter who is correct. There are an awful lot of smart people, including David Boies and several market analysts, who think SCO has a case. IBM, Groklaw, and slashdot all have the same biases against SCO. Bear in mind that cases are not tried in the media, and SCO is under no obligation to reveal its evidence. I think there are going to be some surprises here.
A visit to the doctor costs much more than $10, if you're abusing the system you'll just abuse it a little slower.
What's never mentioned in the debate over user fees is that Sweden has a fee for visiting the doctor's office. The fee is not intended to cover the cost of the visit (which could be $50 or more). It's set at a value, say $10, which is small enough that anyone could afford it, but large enough that people will think twice before going to the doctor. If you're truly destitute, I believe they waive the fee.
I think this is a great idea, and far from slowing down abuse, I think it will prevent it.
The Scottish Sunday Herald did a special investigative report on this: here.
It looks like fodder for future conspiracy theorists, sort of the Sept. 11 version of the grassy knoll. A bit of substance, but also a lot of conjecture.
Ironic that this should be slashdotted, since ./ is more-or-less the last bastion of the kind of free-speech, open-debate that exists.
... the list goes on. I am astonished as to the level of thought conformity that goes on here, under the guise of free speech.
Since your uid is about half of mine, I guess I can't call you a n00b. However, this is pretty much the opposite of my experience with Slashdot.
There are all kinds of sacred cows here, that you criticize at your peril: the effectiveness of Linux, the evil of copyright in general and the recording industry in particular; the lack of merit to SCO's lawsuit
Outside commentators (such as those from Forbes) have referred to Slashdot and like sites as "echo chambers", where the same ideas bounce around ad infinitum. For example, just look at any article critical of Linux and you will see that every response is basically the same, and that high moderation is given to anything that restores the proper groupthink. I wonder if this is because a certain type of person is attracted to Slashdot, or if Slashdot transforms people's opinions? Perhaps a little of both.
I think this is one of the ironies of internet communication -- in an environment which supposedly promotes universal communication, people only seem to communicate in enclaves of like minds, reinforcing each other's narrow world views.
For all the Canucks in the house, here's something that's true but you can't say:
Two-tier, user-fee health care is the way of the future.
There, I said it.
The Republican candidate or the Democrat candidate will win the Presidential election?
Don't look at me, I voted for Kodos.
I own one of those samsonite bags, and I seem to see them everywhere. They are well designed, plenty of pockets for mice, cables, PC cards, etc., and the internal structure is sturdy enough that I wouldn't be too worried if I dropped it (which I haven't done yet, thankfully). The shoulder strap is strong nylon (seat belt material, looks like) with metal clasps, not likely to come apart without severe abuse. Of course, they're not cheap, but it'll probably last forever, or at least until we replace laptops with brain implants.
Why does everybody hate the big dig? Honestly, this is probably the most visionary project that any government has undertaken in a generation. Yes, it was expensive, mistakes were made, and it ended up being a lot harder to do than anyone predicted. But in the end you have a beautiful city, which will stay beautiful for a century. Nobody is going to dare proposing a huge, ugly, elevated highway through Boston anytime soon.
I don't live in Boston, but I lived in Toronto for six years. The Gardiner Expressway is an ugly elevated highway that neatly isolates downtown from the waterfront. So because the waterfront is basically a separate region from the city, it's all ugly vacant lots, polluted dock land or steel-jungle condos, right up to the water. No parks, no public space, just a lot of nastiness. There has been talk of burying it (and the big dig is held out as an example), but city council can rarely agree on the day of the week, much less spending $10 billion. Besides, with the condos going up, the opportunity has already been lost.
I predict that in 100 years, the big dig will be considered a marvel of engineering -- the modern equivalent of a cathedral.
Look at the picture and ask yourself: Can you see this man as a CEO? Would you even buy a used car from this man?
Yes, yes, I know, the man is brilliant. But what I don't understand is: if geeks are so smart, why can't they realize that appearance counts in the business world?
Sorry to reply to my own post, but I just remembered that the Catholics have a whole doctrine on extraterrestrial life (can't find a link right now, sorry).
One Vatican astronomer says the possibility that humanity is alone in the universe is madness. Weirdly, the Jesuit order maintains observatories for the Vatican, some of which do important astrophysical research!
John 10:16: "I have other sheep, which are not of this fold; ..."
...".
Some suggest that this passage implies that there is intelligent life other than on Earth. It's a little thin, but other religious beliefs have sprung out of even more tenuous evidence. At the very least, if ET life is found, the Christians could point to this passage and say, "We knew all along
so this patch is pointless
(cool that it can be done though)
Ah, but my good Mr. Coward, far from being pointless, the patch puts Microsoft in a delicious conundrum! Either accept and distribute an open source patch (thereby publicly validating the open source model), or ignore the patch and get sued by customers, because a patch existed that they did not publicize.
ps. Are you related to Noel Coward? Send my regards.
So I wonder if the X-prize is really meaningful in the scale of realistic space flight?
Well, what about other applications, like suborbital rocket courier from the West Coast to Japan?
USPS Rocket Priority: When it absolutely, positively, has to be there in an hour. Only $100/lb.
Openoffice.org: Keeping Austin weird since 2003.
It might be a dream for some, but getting my ass handed to me over and over and over, for twelve hours a day, by some fifteen year old nerd whose nick is "H3lld0g_69", is pretty much my worst nightmare. The only move I have ever been able to perform successfully in any game is "mash all the buttons at once".
In fact, there is an irony to being modded as flamebait That's the most insightful thing I've read all day.
SCO UnixWare sucks because it's from SCO.
Can I have my karma now?
I'm not sure I agree completely in this case.
Define time travel as the ability to travel from the future to today, or any day before today. There is absolutely no evidence that even one person, object, or piece of information from the future has successfully done so. Thus, we are left with the following four possibilities:
- Time travellers have come and gone, leaving no evidence.
- Time travel is possible, but nobody does it.
- Time travel is possible, but the human race never develops the technology.
- Time travel is impossible.
Given past experience with humanity, we are extremely bad at cleaning up after ourselves, and not shy at all about trying new things, so I find the first two options extremely unlikely.
I would suggest that the available evidence is insufficient to distinguish between the final two options. In fact, if in the future it is discovered that time travel is both possible and feasible, I would head for the hills, for it would seem that the human race would be about to come to an abrupt end! (i.e., the world would most probably end before anybody could try this time-travel technology)
Note that my definition of time travel does not include the type in the article, where time travel is only possible back to the invention of the first time machine (because that day is currently in the future).
I assume you have heard of Occam's Razor, which (roughly speaking) means that the simplest explanation is probably the best. The simplest explanation for no tourists from the future is that time machines are impossible (or at least, time machines for travelling backward to an arbitrary time in the past).
The future probably does not hold any technology that is perpetually 20 years off. Thus, in the future, we will not have:
- Practical fusion energy
- Human-capable artificial intelligence
- Flying cars
- Space tourism
- The end of Moore's Law
So if time travel is possible, where are all the tourists from the future?