Are we going to just accept a list posted on the Internet that someone claims is from Anonymous? Are they suggesting they have any proof, or just a list?
The Zetas are behind fully automatic AK-47s, armored plating, and millions of dollars. I would say Anonymous is fucked.
And those AK-47s, armored plating, and millions of bucks is useless against a target you can't even target who threatens to out all your crooked connections, like the identities of the cops and politicians on your payroll.
First, you can be sure that they're smart enough to have a policy of "spill everything you know because we're going to assume it's been compromised anyway", same as the CIA and the military.
Second, most such groups are organized around cells of 2-3 members. You might know the other one or two, but you don't know anyone else. Your cell-mate knows you're gone, and has already gone down the rabbit-hole. They are assumed to be burned as well as the one who is missing. The druggies won't get anything useful.
You missed the point - anonymous isn't trying to end the drug cartels - they want the release of a certain person or they'll expose all the cartels "partners" - the crooked cops, politicians, newswriters, etc., who are enablers.
Then the other cartels go after that cartels partners-in-crime - either by co-opting them, or eliminating them if they don't play ball. The problem with co-opting them is they're not all that useful once it's known they're crooked.
Another side effect is that's one cartel less to worry about.
So anonymous takes out kiddie porn rings, exposes crooked politicians and cops and drug dealers... someone want to remind me of how they're supposed to be the bad guys here when they're doing the jobs that the cops and politicians won't touch?
That would depend on how skilled a programmer he is. If he is skilled, that should not happen.
I know it's a shocking thing to do, but I actually read the article. He only wrote about managed languages. If all you ever learned was managed languages that didn't need you to deal with memory allocation, pointers, etc., good luck.
Really is amazing to watch just how far and wide the military/state is invading citizens lives.
No, what's REALLY amazing is that the DHS is giving grants of $300,000 per unit for these toys (that's basically what they are - 50 pound toy helicopters). That's $375 an ounce. Forget selling crack - there's more profit in selling overpriced toys in the name of security.
(Quick sidenote: You can absolutely ignore outsourcing as a career threat if you read the rest of this guide.) Nobody ever outsources Profit Centers.
Profit centers are outsourced all the time. "We're making $X by producing it locally, but we can make $5X by outsourcing."
Or this:
In the real world, picking up a new language takes a few weeks of effort and after 6 to 12 months nobody will ever notice you havenâ(TM)t been doing that one for your entire career.
Obviously the type of guy who would say "C? No problem. Memory leaks? No problem." Then leak all over the place.
Unless you're licensed as an engineer, you cannot call yourself a software engineer, not even in Texas. See section 1001.004.c.2.c
Only a person licensed under this chapter may make any professional use of the term "Engineer"
Many states have similar provisions. If you see someone calling themselves a "software engineer", but they aren't licensed by the state as an engineer, report them, they are engaging in fraud. Microsoft got nailed and had to change their courses from MCSE for exactly this reason.
Or do like any smart person would do - have infra-red lamps to project a pattern of heat sources that look like, gee, I don't know... suspicious dead bodies that suddenly warm up and move around? Footprints... including real-time "walking around and even up walls like Spiderman", and the occasional high-energy heat burst to overload the camera. A few automated-tracking laser pointers as well couldn't hurt.
Throw in a few home-made barrage balloons (don't use helium in those converted weather balloons - hydrogen gives both a bigger payload and a MUCH bigger bang for the buck!), lots of high-test fishing line blowing in the breeze to foul the rotors (the whole thing only weights 50 pounds), maybe a few fighting kites with string coated in broken glass, same as regular kite fighting, or better yet, hooks.
At 50 pounds, a few potato guns - or even paintball gun rounds or snowballs or a slingshot - can take one out.
The best way, of course, if one is floating 20 feet above you is to puncture one of the hydrogen-filled balloons at ground level. The hydrogen floats upward while dispersing, until it is ignited on contact with the UAV as a very nice fuel-air bomb. (You can test this on a small scale using hydrogen in a test tube - it really works, and dispersed fuel-air explosives are very efficient).
You could probably even take it down with a decent fishing rod - just snag the rotor and let it foul itself, then reel it in.
In other news, hackers have released a new version of the BackShadowHawk trojan, capable of taking control of both the ShadowHawk UAV and its' controller's computer. The most impressive feature is the ability to use Amazon's EC2 platform to generate false real-time images that let the controller think they've just bean-bagged a perp when they've really blown up a police car.
Also just in, the Boy Scouts of America have successfully detonated their first nuclear device. "Be prepared" is now taking on a whole new meaning. They don't anticipate any regulatory issues, not only because of their recent victory with extending their "right to bear arms" to include 40 watt plasma rifles or anyone over the age of 8, but because, as one troop master put it "we CAN nuke them - and we're working on the 'from orbit' part."
[ADVERTISEMENT] Target is having a sale on reactive personal armor. The MC Hammer "Can't touch this" 200kva jacket is now 70% off when you buy two or more. Fries muggers and panhandlers to a crisp. Avoids those inconvenient legal complications from "oops, wrong person" moments by not leaving any usble DNA. Batteries not included.
Breaking news: The current president of the United States of Western America has been executed. This makes 17 presidents in 4 years. When he was initially picked by random lottery, he had said that he would not serve, and he has made good on that threat. His last words were "f*ck you all, you're totally ape-sh*t anyway." A new president is being drafted from the ranks of the homeless. In the meantime, the vice-president, who has advanced ALS, drooled when informed that she is now the acting president of the USWA. Residents are being reminded to stay indoors to avoid the draft, because in a true democracy, ANYONE can be president - and this includes YOU!
In related news, citizens refused to remove the "Mandatory Responsible Government Balanced Budget Amendment" from the USWA constitution. Under that amendment, the President is responsible for balancing the budget within 3 months of attaining office, or be executed. "We demand responsible gobbement. And they damn well better not touch my benefits." said one voter.
The country of Texas has announced that it will no longer inter refugees from either the Eastern Confederacy or the USWA - they will be tried and executed by mobile courts hearing cases in the back of a 45' trailer, same as the Free State of Arizona has been doing with Mexicans since before Deconstruction.
[PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT] Relax, citizen. Everything is under control under control under control under control under...
Re:It's not just what you say, but how
on
The RMS Tour Rider
·
· Score: 2
First, like I said, Stallman doesn't get to control the definition of "open source". And he's welcome to try to "bite my head off" - except that he's afraid of dogs that are too big to kill with one good kick, and mine are big enough to bite *his* head off.
The GPL removes the financial incentives, and that's why we've never had a year of the linux desktop, and never will.
And that's why Red Hat is broke. Oh, wait, they aren't.
I guess you forgot that RedHat got out of the consumer desktop market years ago They make (some of) their money selling a support package with their "enterprise desktop", but most of it is support contracts for servers and middleware. So thanks for proving my point that even the #1 player in linux can't figure out how to make money selling GPL software all by itsself, and especially not linux desktops.
Linux on the desktop is dead. Even the holdouts (I've been using it since slackware 3.1 or 3.2 - 12 floppies) are facing the fact that it's a dead end on the consumer front because of the hundreds of forks and the constant breakage and the poor licensing scheme.
Or you really think the average person would find it difficult to read their emails in Ubuntu?
The "average person" wants to do more than read emails. For that, and surfing the web, they have their iPhone and iPad. The vast majority of people still using desktops and laptops have at least one "must-have" or "really really wanna have" program that just will NOT run under linux. For them, linux is a non-starter.
Linux on the desktop is the guy on star trek with the red shirt. At some point, you know what McCoy is going to say. And a large part of that is because the GPL discourages profit from "pure software plays."
If its so great, why didn't it take hold when you could buy a $200 linux desktop machine from WallyWorld during the Vista days? Fact: It died because of the inability to run most software. Why aren't online vendors like Dell really pushing their Linux offerings, instead of burying them? Because of it's inability to run most software.
In both cases, the cost of returns kills it for them. You *literally* cannot give a linux computer away nowadays. Don't believe it? Take that tired Windows XP machine, throw a desktop distro on it to "give it new life", and try to give it away. Nobody wants it after you tell them that it won't run most of their programs. "Well, you can use it to read email and surf the web - IF you can get it to connect. But forget about your multi-function printer, even if it says that it supports linux on the box, because it probably doesn't".
Linux is great for infrastructure, but as a consumer OS, it's not gonna happen. Instead, someone will either throw a layer of proprietary stuff atop it, or do like Apple did, build atop BSD. Then they can actually make money on sales of the package itself, instead of just support, which consumers won't pay for.
Re:Strangely inspirational
on
The RMS Tour Rider
·
· Score: 1, Interesting
He doesn't get to define the term "open source" OR the term "free software." Reality disagrees with him, but that's no surprise. Unlike Steve Jobs, the RMS Reality Distortion Field only extends to his outermost dirt layer.
The reality is that the GPL is more restrictive than the BSD, MIT, Apache, or many other licenses, and the financial reality is that successful products (in the sense that you make money selling the software and not a bundle of services) are going to have to either use a GPL exception, multiple licenses for the same code, an LGPL workaround, a different license, or layer a differently-licensed product atop GPL-licensed code.
GPL-licensed code is not free software. THAT is the reality. It's not free as in freedom, and it's only "free as in beer" if your time is worth zero. This doesn't mean it doesn't have value - just that RMS vision failed - miserably. Think of it - Microsoft had a huge problem with Vista, and WalMart, who can sell pretty much anything cheap, couldn't successfully sell a $200 linux pc because the GPL prevents the development of a stable desktop stack. The returns ate them alive. Contrast that with the FreeBSD-based Darwin/OSX, sold by the most valuable company in the world. Apple hired some of the FreeBSD devs, and contributed back a lot of code. Win/win. Now think about this - originally, they were going to use linux, but the GPL killed that idea.
Linux is winning in the mobile world only because it's buried underneath a layer of Android code (with that "nasty" free as in we really mean it you are even free to redistribute without having to give up your source Apache license).
He says that people should respect HIS copyrights and choice of license, but that nobody should respect mine, or yours, or your employers.
That's the definition of a hypocrite - and it deserves being attacked, because he has continually, and very publicly, called those who disagree with him as "evil" and deserving of being ripped off.
As for IBM, there is no way that they would accept - they have a much better understanding of licensing than he does. Heck, he doesn't even get that the GPL permits someone to resume redistribution after a violation by simply downloading a new copy of the code and conforming to the new license grant because of contra proferentem and clause 6 of the GPLv2 - a position that was ridiculed by some of the freetards when I pointed it out a couple of months ago, but the International Free and Open Source Law Review has just pointed out that contra proferentem applies even to the GPL.
RMS does not offer to "help" unless it benefits him. Look at the lies over the Android GPLv2 termination. Why the lies? Because he wants attention and money! And for him, attention is foremost - it's why he pulled the Steve Jobs slam in the first place. Like many narcissists (and unlike people with Aspergers) he's VERY aware of what people think, and exploits it whenever he can, same as Fred Phelps.
Re:It's not just what you say, but how
on
The RMS Tour Rider
·
· Score: 1, Informative
I've actually met a "narcissistic man-child with grandiosity problems". RMS is not one. Not even close. Perhaps you should read up about the definition of the word before you start foaming at the mouth.
The OP was actually being nice compared to the reality that is RMS. "Narcissistic man-child with basic lapses of hygiene that even a 6-year-old "gets" (like picking his boogers or toe jam and eating it in public is a "no-no") who lost his ability to code more than a decade ago, and as a result is doing everything he can to demean programmers, even those who contribute to F/LOSS, if they don't slavishly accept his now-failed idea that "the GPL is the only acceptable license" is more like it.
The GPL has failed. It has created software that is LESS, not more, free. Most of the really useful stuff (apache, firefox, php, mysql, android, chrome, openoffice, qt) either uses a different license, or a license exception that doesn't require copyleft redistribution of the source code of modifications.
The two successful consumer OSes? Windows and OSX (derived from FreeBSD). Even WalMart, who can sell pretty much ANYTHING, couldn't sell a discount $200 Linux PC - the returns ate any profit. But they can sure move a wad of 64gig iPad2s at $829 and even gaming laptops running Windows at $1,500.00.
Heck, the GPL doesn't even conform to the requirements of free software listed on the FSF home page.
Smart people learn from their mistakes. REALLY smart people learn from other people's mistakes. RMS? He's the #1 example of "open source for closed minds."
The GPL removes the financial incentives, and that's why we've never had a year of the linux desktop, and never will.
In reality, someone picking through a bag of M&Ms isn't at all unsanitary or unsettling.
It depends on who's doing the picking. What if it was RMS after he finished eating his boogers or his toe cheese?
Re:Strangely inspirational
on
The RMS Tour Rider
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
He doesn't have Aspergers. He lets people think he does, because it lets him get away with all sorts of crap. What he has is a form of narcissism. (Hint: see his attack on Jobs - he is VERY much aware of social conventions, and purposefully flouts them to gain attention because he believe that how HE feels about something is more important than anyone else).
As for lies - just look at his attack on linux 2 months ago via the FSF, claiming that it was too risky to use because it was "only" GPL version 2, and urging people to put pressure to get the devs to change to GPLv3, supposedly because the GPLv3 would be better for Android, knowing that any such change would cause the manufacturers to immediately drop linux and swap in bsd as the underlying OS.
"Manipulative bastard" is actually too weak a term for such lies. He's actively undermining F/LOSS for his own ego. That's what narcissists do - after all, its all about them, not reality.
Yes, I'm sure his public statements will be what judges and lawyers refer to instead of actual copyright law
His public statements are definitely what a judge would look at if someone brought them up to defend violating the GPL on software that has been assigned to the FSF, of which he is the head.
The same as if you have a sign in your driveway saying "No Parking' and you've been notorious for declaring in public that people should be allowed to park anywhere they want, no restrictions, no matter what sort of signage is in place. If I then park in your driveway, I can defend against you trying to claim that I am trespassing by pointing to your public declarations saying that doing what I did is fine by you. It's called estoppel. I am allowed to depend on your public representations. That *IS* the law.
Well, after reading the whole rider, it may have more to do with tax evasion and the avoidance of declaring as income the value of any benefits he receives, such as the value of meals, etc.
That, or like many paranoiacs, he lacks the ability to put things into perspective, as well as no ability to see anything beyond black and white. Then again combining narcissism and paranoia gives much the same results - someone who is incapable of seeing things from another persons' perspective, and who thus thinks that it's "reasonable" that anyone who disagrees is out to get them.
The good news? There's zero chance of his reproducing.
Re:Strangely inspirational
on
The RMS Tour Rider
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Here - the entire quote makes it quite clear:
When your friend says "that's a nice program, could I have a copy?" At that moment, you will have to choose between two evils. One evil is: give your friend a copy and violate the licence of the program. The other evil is: deny your friend a copy and comply with the licence of the program.
Once you are in that situation, you should choose the lesser evil. The lesser evil is to give your friend a copy and violate the licence of the program.
Now, why is that the lesser evil? The reason is that we can assume that your friend has treated you well and has been a good person and deserves your cooperation. The reason we can assume this is that in the other case, if a nasty person you don't really like asked you for help, of course you can say "Why should I help you?" So that's an easy case. The hard case is the case where that person has been a good person to you and other people and you would want to help him normally.
Whereas, the developer of the program has deliberately attacked the social solidarity of your community. Deliberately tried to separate you from everyone else in the World. So if you can't help doing wrong in some direction or other, better to aim the wrong at somebody who deserves it, who has done something wrong, rather than at somebody who hasn't done anything wrong.
It is abundantly clear that he believes it is better not to respect copyright, and that it pirating copyright software is okay because it is attacking someone "who deserves it."
So, to be perfectly consistent, since the GPL depends on copyright, I should be perfectly okay to violate the GPL because "that evil person who puts restrictions on what I can do with their code deserves it" - which, btw, is now a valid defense to any company that violates any GPL code held by the FSF, since they're entitled to depend on the copyright holders' public statements.
As for the "personal attacks", the wackjob known as Stallman has it coming, since he has engaged, via such statements, in personal attacks on every programmer who has ever written proprietary code for a living. Anything less is not being consistent.
Re:Strangely inspirational
on
The RMS Tour Rider
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
His definition is counter to reality. In other words, he's a nutjob. Paranoid sociopaths can be very consistent - it doesn't mean that their ideas are worth anything. The proof is in the pudding - the average user will never use, and doesn't want, a"GNU/Linux" desktop computer, because:
They're garbage. Too many forks, each with brittle customizations. You can depend on something critical breaking on every update (sure, I use it as my default OS, but after almost 15 years, I'm fed up - I'm switching back to BSD);
They come with too many restrictions on what you can and can't do, so they'll never attract the critical mass of user programs (and the "free" replacements are only free if you don't count the cost of your time);
Freaks and liars like RMS and Bruce Perens have given open source a bad name. The Steve Jobs attack by Stallman the day after he died was the last straw for me. You're known by the company you keep, and F/LOSS needs to clean house, and disavow these counter-productive leeches, because they're making us all look like idiots (and if we don't speak out against them, then we really ARE deserving of the title).
There really is no excuse. He has repeatedly done the indefensible, the unacceptable, and is motivated by a conceit that he is "special". The cure for that is a 55-gallon barrel of Gold Bond Foot Powder and a muzzle.
The guy hates programmers. He's jealous because he can't any more (not because of any alleged RSI - he posts a crapflood on a daily basis - but because, like many programmers, he simply "lost the ability"), and even if you contribute to free software in your spare time, you're scum if your day job involves writing closed code, and people should steal from you to "punish" you.
Then again what can you expect from a paranoid sociopath.
First, wth is GGPper mile? And no, both buses (all scenarios combined) and cars (on superhighways) have fewer fatalities per mile traveled than airplanes.
The energy savings of the bus (and cars with more than one passenger) are not a non-sequiteur - they're a bonus.
Throw in that the airliners are also making the air much more visibly dirty over a global scale (compare how clean the air was despite increased ground traffic right after 9/11) and air travel just sucks, even without the TSA.
For negative economic impact, look no further than the serial bankruptcies of all the airlines, despite heavy subsidies and passing off other costs as externalities.
Now throw in their refusal to accept the #1 recommendation, decades old, for making crashes more survivable - having seats face rearwards - because of "style" considerations.
You really are safer doing a road trip than taking the plane - and you're better for the environment as well.
Slashdot Mirror
This one looks pretty accurate.
And those AK-47s, armored plating, and millions of bucks is useless against a target you can't even target who threatens to out all your crooked connections, like the identities of the cops and politicians on your payroll.
First, you can be sure that they're smart enough to have a policy of "spill everything you know because we're going to assume it's been compromised anyway", same as the CIA and the military.
Second, most such groups are organized around cells of 2-3 members. You might know the other one or two, but you don't know anyone else. Your cell-mate knows you're gone, and has already gone down the rabbit-hole. They are assumed to be burned as well as the one who is missing. The druggies won't get anything useful.
You missed the point - anonymous isn't trying to end the drug cartels - they want the release of a certain person or they'll expose all the cartels "partners" - the crooked cops, politicians, newswriters, etc., who are enablers.
Then the other cartels go after that cartels partners-in-crime - either by co-opting them, or eliminating them if they don't play ball. The problem with co-opting them is they're not all that useful once it's known they're crooked.
Another side effect is that's one cartel less to worry about.
So anonymous takes out kiddie porn rings, exposes crooked politicians and cops and drug dealers ... someone want to remind me of how they're supposed to be the bad guys here when they're doing the jobs that the cops and politicians won't touch?
I know it's a shocking thing to do, but I actually read the article. He only wrote about managed languages. If all you ever learned was managed languages that didn't need you to deal with memory allocation, pointers, etc., good luck.
You might want to look at the number of prisoners in jails in the US compared to everywhere else
There's a problem somewhere, and it looks mostly to be a war on people by the government.
No, what's REALLY amazing is that the DHS is giving grants of $300,000 per unit for these toys (that's basically what they are - 50 pound toy helicopters). That's $375 an ounce. Forget selling crack - there's more profit in selling overpriced toys in the name of security.
Not really - it's useless in winds over 20mph.
You're talking New Jersey here. They'd just call it Urban Renewal, apply for extra grant money, and say it's all good.
Profit centers are outsourced all the time. "We're making $X by producing it locally, but we can make $5X by outsourcing."
Or this:
Obviously the type of guy who would say "C? No problem. Memory leaks? No problem." Then leak all over the place.
Only a person licensed under this chapter may make any professional use of the term "Engineer"
Many states have similar provisions. If you see someone calling themselves a "software engineer", but they aren't licensed by the state as an engineer, report them, they are engaging in fraud. Microsoft got nailed and had to change their courses from MCSE for exactly this reason.
Or do like any smart person would do - have infra-red lamps to project a pattern of heat sources that look like, gee, I don't know ... suspicious dead bodies that suddenly warm up and move around? Footprints ... including real-time "walking around and even up walls like Spiderman", and the occasional high-energy heat burst to overload the camera. A few automated-tracking laser pointers as well couldn't hurt.
Throw in a few home-made barrage balloons (don't use helium in those converted weather balloons - hydrogen gives both a bigger payload and a MUCH bigger bang for the buck!), lots of high-test fishing line blowing in the breeze to foul the rotors (the whole thing only weights 50 pounds), maybe a few fighting kites with string coated in broken glass, same as regular kite fighting, or better yet, hooks.
At 50 pounds, a few potato guns - or even paintball gun rounds or snowballs or a slingshot - can take one out.
The best way, of course, if one is floating 20 feet above you is to puncture one of the hydrogen-filled balloons at ground level. The hydrogen floats upward while dispersing, until it is ignited on contact with the UAV as a very nice fuel-air bomb. (You can test this on a small scale using hydrogen in a test tube - it really works, and dispersed fuel-air explosives are very efficient).
You could probably even take it down with a decent fishing rod - just snag the rotor and let it foul itself, then reel it in.
In other news, hackers have released a new version of the BackShadowHawk trojan, capable of taking control of both the ShadowHawk UAV and its' controller's computer. The most impressive feature is the ability to use Amazon's EC2 platform to generate false real-time images that let the controller think they've just bean-bagged a perp when they've really blown up a police car.
Also just in, the Boy Scouts of America have successfully detonated their first nuclear device. "Be prepared" is now taking on a whole new meaning. They don't anticipate any regulatory issues, not only because of their recent victory with extending their "right to bear arms" to include 40 watt plasma rifles or anyone over the age of 8, but because, as one troop master put it "we CAN nuke them - and we're working on the 'from orbit' part."
[ADVERTISEMENT] Target is having a sale on reactive personal armor. The MC Hammer "Can't touch this" 200kva jacket is now 70% off when you buy two or more. Fries muggers and panhandlers to a crisp. Avoids those inconvenient legal complications from "oops, wrong person" moments by not leaving any usble DNA. Batteries not included.
Breaking news: The current president of the United States of Western America has been executed. This makes 17 presidents in 4 years. When he was initially picked by random lottery, he had said that he would not serve, and he has made good on that threat. His last words were "f*ck you all, you're totally ape-sh*t anyway." A new president is being drafted from the ranks of the homeless. In the meantime, the vice-president, who has advanced ALS, drooled when informed that she is now the acting president of the USWA. Residents are being reminded to stay indoors to avoid the draft, because in a true democracy, ANYONE can be president - and this includes YOU!
In related news, citizens refused to remove the "Mandatory Responsible Government Balanced Budget Amendment" from the USWA constitution. Under that amendment, the President is responsible for balancing the budget within 3 months of attaining office, or be executed. "We demand responsible gobbement. And they damn well better not touch my benefits." said one voter.
The country of Texas has announced that it will no longer inter refugees from either the Eastern Confederacy or the USWA - they will be tried and executed by mobile courts hearing cases in the back of a 45' trailer, same as the Free State of Arizona has been doing with Mexicans since before Deconstruction.
[PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT] Relax, citizen. Everything is under control under control under control under control under ...
First, like I said, Stallman doesn't get to control the definition of "open source". And he's welcome to try to "bite my head off" - except that he's afraid of dogs that are too big to kill with one good kick, and mine are big enough to bite *his* head off.
I guess you forgot that RedHat got out of the consumer desktop market years ago They make (some of) their money selling a support package with their "enterprise desktop", but most of it is support contracts for servers and middleware. So thanks for proving my point that even the #1 player in linux can't figure out how to make money selling GPL software all by itsself, and especially not linux desktops.
Linux on the desktop is dead. Even the holdouts (I've been using it since slackware 3.1 or 3.2 - 12 floppies) are facing the fact that it's a dead end on the consumer front because of the hundreds of forks and the constant breakage and the poor licensing scheme.
The "average person" wants to do more than read emails. For that, and surfing the web, they have their iPhone and iPad. The vast majority of people still using desktops and laptops have at least one "must-have" or "really really wanna have" program that just will NOT run under linux. For them, linux is a non-starter.
Linux on the desktop is the guy on star trek with the red shirt. At some point, you know what McCoy is going to say. And a large part of that is because the GPL discourages profit from "pure software plays."
If its so great, why didn't it take hold when you could buy a $200 linux desktop machine from WallyWorld during the Vista days? Fact: It died because of the inability to run most software. Why aren't online vendors like Dell really pushing their Linux offerings, instead of burying them? Because of it's inability to run most software.
In both cases, the cost of returns kills it for them. You *literally* cannot give a linux computer away nowadays. Don't believe it? Take that tired Windows XP machine, throw a desktop distro on it to "give it new life", and try to give it away. Nobody wants it after you tell them that it won't run most of their programs. "Well, you can use it to read email and surf the web - IF you can get it to connect. But forget about your multi-function printer, even if it says that it supports linux on the box, because it probably doesn't".
Linux is great for infrastructure, but as a consumer OS, it's not gonna happen. Instead, someone will either throw a layer of proprietary stuff atop it, or do like Apple did, build atop BSD. Then they can actually make money on sales of the package itself, instead of just support, which consumers won't pay for.
He doesn't get to define the term "open source" OR the term "free software." Reality disagrees with him, but that's no surprise. Unlike Steve Jobs, the RMS Reality Distortion Field only extends to his outermost dirt layer.
The reality is that the GPL is more restrictive than the BSD, MIT, Apache, or many other licenses, and the financial reality is that successful products (in the sense that you make money selling the software and not a bundle of services) are going to have to either use a GPL exception, multiple licenses for the same code, an LGPL workaround, a different license, or layer a differently-licensed product atop GPL-licensed code.
GPL-licensed code is not free software. THAT is the reality. It's not free as in freedom, and it's only "free as in beer" if your time is worth zero. This doesn't mean it doesn't have value - just that RMS vision failed - miserably. Think of it - Microsoft had a huge problem with Vista, and WalMart, who can sell pretty much anything cheap, couldn't successfully sell a $200 linux pc because the GPL prevents the development of a stable desktop stack. The returns ate them alive. Contrast that with the FreeBSD-based Darwin/OSX, sold by the most valuable company in the world. Apple hired some of the FreeBSD devs, and contributed back a lot of code. Win/win. Now think about this - originally, they were going to use linux, but the GPL killed that idea.
Linux is winning in the mobile world only because it's buried underneath a layer of Android code (with that "nasty" free as in we really mean it you are even free to redistribute without having to give up your source Apache license).
He says that people should respect HIS copyrights and choice of license, but that nobody should respect mine, or yours, or your employers.
That's the definition of a hypocrite - and it deserves being attacked, because he has continually, and very publicly, called those who disagree with him as "evil" and deserving of being ripped off.
As for IBM, there is no way that they would accept - they have a much better understanding of licensing than he does. Heck, he doesn't even get that the GPL permits someone to resume redistribution after a violation by simply downloading a new copy of the code and conforming to the new license grant because of contra proferentem and clause 6 of the GPLv2 - a position that was ridiculed by some of the freetards when I pointed it out a couple of months ago, but the International Free and Open Source Law Review has just pointed out that contra proferentem applies even to the GPL.
RMS does not offer to "help" unless it benefits him. Look at the lies over the Android GPLv2 termination. Why the lies? Because he wants attention and money! And for him, attention is foremost - it's why he pulled the Steve Jobs slam in the first place. Like many narcissists (and unlike people with Aspergers) he's VERY aware of what people think, and exploits it whenever he can, same as Fred Phelps.
The OP was actually being nice compared to the reality that is RMS. "Narcissistic man-child with basic lapses of hygiene that even a 6-year-old "gets" (like picking his boogers or toe jam and eating it in public is a "no-no") who lost his ability to code more than a decade ago, and as a result is doing everything he can to demean programmers, even those who contribute to F/LOSS, if they don't slavishly accept his now-failed idea that "the GPL is the only acceptable license" is more like it.
The GPL has failed. It has created software that is LESS, not more, free. Most of the really useful stuff (apache, firefox, php, mysql, android, chrome, openoffice, qt) either uses a different license, or a license exception that doesn't require copyleft redistribution of the source code of modifications.
The two successful consumer OSes? Windows and OSX (derived from FreeBSD). Even WalMart, who can sell pretty much ANYTHING, couldn't sell a discount $200 Linux PC - the returns ate any profit. But they can sure move a wad of 64gig iPad2s at $829 and even gaming laptops running Windows at $1,500.00.
Heck, the GPL doesn't even conform to the requirements of free software listed on the FSF home page.
Smart people learn from their mistakes. REALLY smart people learn from other people's mistakes. RMS? He's the #1 example of "open source for closed minds."
The GPL removes the financial incentives, and that's why we've never had a year of the linux desktop, and never will.
It depends on who's doing the picking. What if it was RMS after he finished eating his boogers or his toe cheese?
As for lies - just look at his attack on linux 2 months ago via the FSF, claiming that it was too risky to use because it was "only" GPL version 2, and urging people to put pressure to get the devs to change to GPLv3, supposedly because the GPLv3 would be better for Android, knowing that any such change would cause the manufacturers to immediately drop linux and swap in bsd as the underlying OS.
"Manipulative bastard" is actually too weak a term for such lies. He's actively undermining F/LOSS for his own ego. That's what narcissists do - after all, its all about them, not reality.
His public statements are definitely what a judge would look at if someone brought them up to defend violating the GPL on software that has been assigned to the FSF, of which he is the head.
The same as if you have a sign in your driveway saying "No Parking' and you've been notorious for declaring in public that people should be allowed to park anywhere they want, no restrictions, no matter what sort of signage is in place. If I then park in your driveway, I can defend against you trying to claim that I am trespassing by pointing to your public declarations saying that doing what I did is fine by you. It's called estoppel. I am allowed to depend on your public representations. That *IS* the law.
That, or like many paranoiacs, he lacks the ability to put things into perspective, as well as no ability to see anything beyond black and white. Then again combining narcissism and paranoia gives much the same results - someone who is incapable of seeing things from another persons' perspective, and who thus thinks that it's "reasonable" that anyone who disagrees is out to get them.
The good news? There's zero chance of his reproducing.
Here - the entire quote makes it quite clear:
It is abundantly clear that he believes it is better not to respect copyright, and that it pirating copyright software is okay because it is attacking someone "who deserves it."
So, to be perfectly consistent, since the GPL depends on copyright, I should be perfectly okay to violate the GPL because "that evil person who puts restrictions on what I can do with their code deserves it" - which, btw, is now a valid defense to any company that violates any GPL code held by the FSF, since they're entitled to depend on the copyright holders' public statements.
As for the "personal attacks", the wackjob known as Stallman has it coming, since he has engaged, via such statements, in personal attacks on every programmer who has ever written proprietary code for a living. Anything less is not being consistent.
There really is no excuse. He has repeatedly done the indefensible, the unacceptable, and is motivated by a conceit that he is "special". The cure for that is a 55-gallon barrel of Gold Bond Foot Powder and a muzzle.
Make sure you have a baby in the house - he really hates "breeders".
The guy hates programmers. He's jealous because he can't any more (not because of any alleged RSI - he posts a crapflood on a daily basis - but because, like many programmers, he simply "lost the ability"), and even if you contribute to free software in your spare time, you're scum if your day job involves writing closed code, and people should steal from you to "punish" you.
Then again what can you expect from a paranoid sociopath.
The energy savings of the bus (and cars with more than one passenger) are not a non-sequiteur - they're a bonus.
Throw in that the airliners are also making the air much more visibly dirty over a global scale (compare how clean the air was despite increased ground traffic right after 9/11) and air travel just sucks, even without the TSA.
For negative economic impact, look no further than the serial bankruptcies of all the airlines, despite heavy subsidies and passing off other costs as externalities.
Now throw in their refusal to accept the #1 recommendation, decades old, for making crashes more survivable - having seats face rearwards - because of "style" considerations.
You really are safer doing a road trip than taking the plane - and you're better for the environment as well.