Now you'd think, perhaps incorrectly, that a technically-oriented forum would tend to attract those with a scientific, empirical bent. But it appears that slashdot also appeals to the religious sort of nutjob - the person whose rational faculties are so far gone they actually believe in Creationism or refuse to accept the evidence of evolution.
Really now, why bother listening to folks like this? It's clear they're as off their bloody rockers as the loons who talk about being abducted by aliens. Write them off as candidates for the funny farm, entirely without credibility, and mod them down to "pathetic, mad losers". Interesting for a laugh, but nothing more - certainly not worth investing the energy to argue with.
These sad little fools belong in the 13th century. Leave them there while the rest of us move on into the 21st.
Ah yes, Miguel - the guy who sold out to MS recently. Certainly an authoritative source given the fact that he wants to integrate Gnome into.NET, an act entirely contradictory to the principles on which the Gnome project was founded.
Anything that Miguel says from this point on is worth about as much as the paper it's printed on.
Have you ever spoken to an upper executive working for Microsoft? These guys are amazing; according to them Microsoft can do no wrong and everything the company does is gold. Criticism only shows that you aren't clueful or worse, are trying to stand in the way of progress - which amounts to World Domination(TM).
Fact is, MS Management lives in a dream world which after only a few minutes convinced me this guys were just another form of cultist. Cultists who believe 100% in Microsoft and think that any opposition whatsoever to what the company wants (including laws, which are for lesser mortals) is something to be ignored or destroyed.
The decision makers at MS are loons. They spend no time whatsoever listening to customers, much less responding to them. The prevalent attitude is "fuck the proles, they'll come around even if we have to hurt them to get them to see the light". It isn't just typical corporate greed, it's greed combined with *fanaticism*.
Or put another way, it used to be that only the government had the means to effectively and arbitrarily punish large groups of people. Now, others can do the same, or even strike at back the government in a similar fashion.
Okay, but this doesn't tell me why this is a bad thing, or why I should fear these people more than my own government. Given my governments long, bloody track record I can't say I'm particularly inclined to find the developing situation less unpleasant than the one that came before.
Well, hell yeah. If MS came along and installed that piece of shit WinXP on my system I'd be righteously pissed. After all the time I put in to tweaking my Linux boxes, I might even be inclined to chase after the hapless MCSE with my.38....
So, Miguel, how much did Bill have to offer you to get you to SELL OUT COMPLETELY?!!. Jesus Christ, but this guy became a corporate MS whore literally overnight - and he's the primary on Gnome?
Please, somebody else take over before Miguel really fucks things up for whatever it took to buy the use of his asshole. Gnome is founded upon the core principal of 'free software whenever possible', entirely antithetical to MS and.NET. Anyone with half a brain can see that either Miguel is getting a good rimming for some tasty US dollars, or he stopped taking his medication quite awhile ago.
If profiling is one of the tools that we need to use to prevent the death of more innocent people, then fine.
Timothy McVeigh. Okay, I say we profiler all young white males, especially little fucking college pricks who post on slashdot expounding on why profiling is a great idea and anyone who disagrees with him needs to 'grow a spine'. Get a clue, twit.
If certain ethnic groups over here don't like the profiling, then my suggestion is that they lean on the people that they damn well know are involved in terrorist acts against the states and either turn them in, make them stop, or eliminate them.
Yeah, all us white boys need to 'lean' on the criminal element to stop all those future McVeighs. Only, I don't know any potential McVeighs - do you?
I do, however, know some racist shits who post here on this discussion group. Given their obvious hate of anyone who ain't a good ol' white boy (McVeigh be damned), I think the FBI should get on their sorry asses and turn the screws until they turn in their right-winger bomber-extremist buddies.
(The older I get the more I think that bitch-slapping young little pansy-ass bigots like these is a poor alternative to all-out sterilization....)
The United States of America is all for free speech.
So long as that speech doesn't advocate doing away with the present government, eh? I'm sure Adams, Jefferson, et.al. would whole-heartedly agree with you!
It's also a democracy, where you can elect a new government to install new laws if you disagree with the current state of affairs.
Why, that's the funniest goddamn thing I've heard all day! And it's a republic, by the way, not a democracy.
Not to mention that a great chunk of the government at all levels is not accountable to the people (if you need illumination, check out your local city hall to see what 'administrative rules' and 'administrative fees' are, and see how they're implemented. These are euphemisms for 'laws' and 'taxes' which aren't enacted by the legislature, a direct violation of the Constitution. It's done at all levels of government and is just one of many examples I could list here.)
Elected officials (who presumably represent a majority of the populace) will eventually populate the group responsible for interpreting the Constitution, the Supreme Court. Therefore, in a theoretical sense (before you start screaming about corporate america owning the politicians), the people do control the government.
Hey, so long as we have the theory who needs the reality!
By ignoring the political route and espousing the virtues of a violent overthrow, you have now entered the realm of "terrorist" or "freedom fighter."
And let's not forget the most nefarious terrorist of all - George Washington! Evil, evil man!
In a country where the freedom of speech is guaranteed in the very Constitution you want to do away with, you are more than likely to be considered a terrorist.
I see...so it's free speech only so long as said speech doesn't piss off the government. What an...interesting interpretation of the word 'free'. I'm sure Thomas Paine would have bone or two to pick with you.
And frankly, I would agree with that assessment.
Gosh, what a surprise! Guess you thought the Tories were the good guys.
Here's a suggestion: if you don't like the system and don't feel like changing the system, take your bombs and move to Columbia or the middle east.
I'm sure your King George-loving ancestors said the same thing to Ben and his buddies. But ho! The irony! Here's another King George and you seem to be following in their footsteps!
You must be making your great-great-great-whatever grandfather proud right about now.
I agree that this guy was out of line because of his criminal activities, but your quote:
How can someone advocate violent overthrow of the government and expect the government to look the other way?
somehow implies that such advocacy is a bad thing, and this rather ignores just about everything said by the guys who actually wrote the Constitution. Adams and Jefferson both loudly proclaimed that it was not only the right but the duty of the people to violently overthrow any government which was deemed to no longer served the interests of the people. And all of our Founding Fathers actually believed this to be a fundamental right, as they actually did just that.
Yes, the kid is an idiot, but I oppose the prosecution of any person who speaks aloud the thought that the government needs to be brought down by force. If the government does indeed serve the people it has nothing to fear from such agitators, who'll be viewed as loons by the general populace; if it does have something to fear then the end result may very well be armed pseudo-troops breaking down your door and hauling you off to jail for speaking your mind.
Imagine if the shoe were on the other foot. A free protocol is implemented in an open source IM client; AOL modifies its software to work with that protocol so that its users can send messages using servers that implement the open source software; the developers of that software consistently modify it to exclude AOL IM users.
Imagine how loudly AOL would bitch about the 'unfairness' of such tactics....
And it's neither accredited nor peer-reviewed. It's like reading the old Discovery or Omni magazines - take everything you read with a grain of salt, because it could be just so much bullshit.
Free Software and Open Source aren't defined by which copyright is preferred (a great deal of Open Source code is GPL'd), but by philosophy. The Free Software folks think it's inherently evil to make a buck (or a living) off of the software that *you* write, through gymnastics of the irrational which defy logic; the Open Source folks think that making a buck is just fine, but you'd better damn well provide the source code so we know what's in the box.
On the flip side, there's absolutely no reason to believe that over the lifetime of the entire galaxy that no species has arisen which doesn't want to expand. All you need is curiosity and an appreciation for different scenery.
And you don't need a huge amount of energy to fill the galaxy. Using ramscoop ships you could ship tens of thousands of colonists in leapfrog from one system to another in relatively short order, effectively colonizing all habitable planets within a speedy (galactic) time frame. It wouldn't matter at all if the civilization remained coherent so long as a *single* one of these colonies developed successfully and continued the chain.
This is anthropomorphized Star Trek silliness with no basis in science or logic. Not only anthropomorphized, but *liberally* anthropomorphized ("oooh, you nasty humans are still killing each other!").
Puh-lease. Stow the SF 'violent human race sickens advanced cultures' shtick. It's old, it's tired, and most of all, it's ludicrous.
And as odd and new-age Boomerish this sounds, it's also the most likely explanation. That is, those civilizations which reach the technological level required to colonize the galaxy lose interest in such pursuits because such things no longer intrigue them - and in fact they shortly thereafter 'disappear', at least to our limited wetware perspective. It's the only logical explanation that accounts for both the lack of current non-human residents here on Earth and the galactic 'silence' we run into at every turn.
Any other hypothesis runs into a host of other unsolvable problems which essentially boil down to 'where is everyone?'. No matter how rare intelligent life is all you need is *one* successful species to fill the galaxy over a relative short time frame - the fact that this hasn't happened requires that you either admit the human race is the *only* intelligence to arise in this galaxy (uh huh), invent a rather lame excuse for why *everyone* has failed, subscribe to some sort of X-Files/Star Trek silliness, or embrace the above explanation knowing that you can't explain what happens to everyone, only that *something* does.
Guess we'll find out in a century or two, assuming we survive the next couple hundred years.
One small correction: Venus isn't terraformable. Why? because Venus is almost tidelocked to the sun. Even if you could alter the atmosphere the 'day' and 'night' would last months, resulting in temperatures of hundreds of degrees F to minus hundreds of degrees F. While the right size and (possibly) the right composition, a planet that's tidelocked or nearly tidelocked isn't in any way, shape, or form terraformable.
Guess we hit a hot button. An idiot blathers uninformed opinion, is called on it, and confirms his membership among the submorons by engaging what I'm sure in his little brain is actually witty banter. An idiot who by his own admission doesn't use Linux and has zero investment in how it's developed.
I guess that's the difference between a democracy and autocratic rule, the latter being what you seem to rabidly prefer.
As a political system of a nation I have to live in, then no, I don't prefer autocracy. For a piece of software owned by a single individual, then hell yes - because that's the way it is and there isn't any evidence that changing things will make them better. Given how many of the naysayers are complete fuckwits, I'd hazard a guess that putting Linux under democratic rule would really bollix things.
But it's quite clear that you have some trouble distinguishing between what people have to live with (e.g., a real government in a nation they reside in) and what they don't have to live with (e.g., using Linux). Try wrapping your brain around the incredibly vast gulf that separates the two - if you can.
If you've already changed your OS, then precisely what bug is up your ass? You've hardly a leg to stand on if you've no involvement with the issue whatsoever.
As for my "sad and twisted view of life", don't make me laugh. We're talking about software, and specifically, about reality regarding that software. If you don't happen to like that reality then that's just too damned bad, eh?
And who decides that success? You? By what criteria? What twist of fate made your opinion on the matter of Linux's "success" more important than Linus's?
If Linus decides that Linux is best off as an OS for fans and not the masses, then *that* is the criteria upon which "success" is judged. And that is the *only* criteria which counts.
You just aren't getting it. Linus has the sole decision because ultimately it belongs to him. You don't have any right whatsoever to try to 'take' it from him, even if you could.
That's what it boils down to. *You* have no rights whatsoever concerning the kernel. If this bothers you, use another product.
Amazing how many jealous little twits pop out of the woodwork when articles like these come along (including the author, it seems). You know the kind - they go on and on about how "Linux is bigger than Linus", or that "democracy is better than autocracy", or some such rot. None of these 'arguments' are more than nebulous, poorly-defined horseshit without so much as a smidgeon of hard evidence to back them up, but that doesn't stop the fools from spouting page after page of useless rhetoric.
What does it really boil down to? The complainers aren't Linus - that's the sum total of the argument. Linus is famous, Linus is respected, Linus approaches the status of a demigod in the eyes of a few - and the complainers are nobodies who'll never reach anything like this stature during the course of their lifetime. Envy galls them, so they do their best to try to pull down the guy who's exceeded everything they might ever hope to accomplish, all before the age of 40. Same shit, different venue.
What really points out these losers as vicious, jealous little maggots is Linux itself - they aren't in any way required to use it so they can, if they're so dissatisfied with the way Linus runs things, go off and use another OS. Or fork Linux. It's all good. And if they were serious about their unrest they would.
But that's not the *real* point, eh? The actual goal is to pull down Linus based on the age-old preschool argument "if I can't be Linus, then neither can Linus".
Slashdot Mirror
Now you'd think, perhaps incorrectly, that a technically-oriented forum would tend to attract those with a scientific, empirical bent. But it appears that slashdot also appeals to the religious sort of nutjob - the person whose rational faculties are so far gone they actually believe in Creationism or refuse to accept the evidence of evolution.
Really now, why bother listening to folks like this? It's clear they're as off their bloody rockers as the loons who talk about being abducted by aliens. Write them off as candidates for the funny farm, entirely without credibility, and mod them down to "pathetic, mad losers". Interesting for a laugh, but nothing more - certainly not worth investing the energy to argue with.
These sad little fools belong in the 13th century. Leave them there while the rest of us move on into the 21st.
Max
Ah yes, Miguel - the guy who sold out to MS recently. Certainly an authoritative source given the fact that he wants to integrate Gnome into .NET, an act entirely contradictory to the principles on which the Gnome project was founded.
Anything that Miguel says from this point on is worth about as much as the paper it's printed on.
Max
Have you ever spoken to an upper executive working for Microsoft? These guys are amazing; according to them Microsoft can do no wrong and everything the company does is gold. Criticism only shows that you aren't clueful or worse, are trying to stand in the way of progress - which amounts to World Domination(TM).
Fact is, MS Management lives in a dream world which after only a few minutes convinced me this guys were just another form of cultist. Cultists who believe 100% in Microsoft and think that any opposition whatsoever to what the company wants (including laws, which are for lesser mortals) is something to be ignored or destroyed.
The decision makers at MS are loons. They spend no time whatsoever listening to customers, much less responding to them. The prevalent attitude is "fuck the proles, they'll come around even if we have to hurt them to get them to see the light". It isn't just typical corporate greed, it's greed combined with *fanaticism*.
Max
Or put another way, it used to be that only the government had the means to effectively and arbitrarily punish large groups of people. Now, others can do the same, or even strike at back the government in a similar fashion.
Okay, but this doesn't tell me why this is a bad thing, or why I should fear these people more than my own government. Given my governments long, bloody track record I can't say I'm particularly inclined to find the developing situation less unpleasant than the one that came before.
Max
Well, hell yeah. If MS came along and installed that piece of shit WinXP on my system I'd be righteously pissed. After all the time I put in to tweaking my Linux boxes, I might even be inclined to chase after the hapless MCSE with my .38....
The son-of-a-bitch would deserve it.
Max
So, Miguel, how much did Bill have to offer you to get you to SELL OUT COMPLETELY?!!. Jesus Christ, but this guy became a corporate MS whore literally overnight - and he's the primary on Gnome?
.NET. Anyone with half a brain can see that either Miguel is getting a good rimming for some tasty US dollars, or he stopped taking his medication quite awhile ago.
Please, somebody else take over before Miguel really fucks things up for whatever it took to buy the use of his asshole. Gnome is founded upon the core principal of 'free software whenever possible', entirely antithetical to MS and
Perhaps Miguel should run for office.
Max
If profiling is one of the tools that we need to use to prevent the death of more innocent people, then fine.
Timothy McVeigh. Okay, I say we profiler all young white males, especially little fucking college pricks who post on slashdot expounding on why profiling is a great idea and anyone who disagrees with him needs to 'grow a spine'. Get a clue, twit.
If certain ethnic groups over here don't like the profiling, then my suggestion is that they lean on the people that they damn well know are involved in terrorist acts against the states and either turn them in, make them stop, or eliminate them.
Yeah, all us white boys need to 'lean' on the criminal element to stop all those future McVeighs. Only, I don't know any potential McVeighs - do you?
I do, however, know some racist shits who post here on this discussion group. Given their obvious hate of anyone who ain't a good ol' white boy (McVeigh be damned), I think the FBI should get on their sorry asses and turn the screws until they turn in their right-winger bomber-extremist buddies.
(The older I get the more I think that bitch-slapping young little pansy-ass bigots like these is a poor alternative to all-out sterilization....)
Max
The United States of America is all for free speech.
So long as that speech doesn't advocate doing away with the present government, eh? I'm sure Adams, Jefferson, et.al. would whole-heartedly agree with you!
It's also a democracy, where you can elect a new government to install new laws if you disagree with the current state of affairs.
Why, that's the funniest goddamn thing I've heard all day! And it's a republic, by the way, not a democracy.
Not to mention that a great chunk of the government at all levels is not accountable to the people (if you need illumination, check out your local city hall to see what 'administrative rules' and 'administrative fees' are, and see how they're implemented. These are euphemisms for 'laws' and 'taxes' which aren't enacted by the legislature, a direct violation of the Constitution. It's done at all levels of government and is just one of many examples I could list here.)
Elected officials (who presumably represent a majority of the populace) will eventually populate the group responsible for interpreting the Constitution, the Supreme Court. Therefore, in a theoretical sense (before you start screaming about corporate america owning the politicians), the people do control the government.
Hey, so long as we have the theory who needs the reality!
By ignoring the political route and espousing the virtues of a violent overthrow, you have now entered the realm of "terrorist" or "freedom fighter."
And let's not forget the most nefarious terrorist of all - George Washington! Evil, evil man!
In a country where the freedom of speech is guaranteed in the very Constitution you want to do away with, you are more than likely to be considered a terrorist.
I see...so it's free speech only so long as said speech doesn't piss off the government. What an...interesting interpretation of the word 'free'. I'm sure Thomas Paine would have bone or two to pick with you.
And frankly, I would agree with that assessment.
Gosh, what a surprise! Guess you thought the Tories were the good guys.
Here's a suggestion: if you don't like the system and don't feel like changing the system, take your bombs and move to Columbia or the middle east.
I'm sure your King George-loving ancestors said the same thing to Ben and his buddies. But ho! The irony! Here's another King George and you seem to be following in their footsteps!
You must be making your great-great-great-whatever grandfather proud right about now.
Max
I agree that this guy was out of line because of his criminal activities, but your quote:
How can someone advocate violent overthrow of the government and expect the government to look the other way?
somehow implies that such advocacy is a bad thing, and this rather ignores just about everything said by the guys who actually wrote the Constitution. Adams and Jefferson both loudly proclaimed that it was not only the right but the duty of the people to violently overthrow any government which was deemed to no longer served the interests of the people. And all of our Founding Fathers actually believed this to be a fundamental right, as they actually did just that.
Yes, the kid is an idiot, but I oppose the prosecution of any person who speaks aloud the thought that the government needs to be brought down by force. If the government does indeed serve the people it has nothing to fear from such agitators, who'll be viewed as loons by the general populace; if it does have something to fear then the end result may very well be armed pseudo-troops breaking down your door and hauling you off to jail for speaking your mind.
Max
Imagine if the shoe were on the other foot. A free protocol is implemented in an open source IM client; AOL modifies its software to work with that protocol so that its users can send messages using servers that implement the open source software; the developers of that software consistently modify it to exclude AOL IM users.
Imagine how loudly AOL would bitch about the 'unfairness' of such tactics....
Max
And it's neither accredited nor peer-reviewed. It's like reading the old Discovery or Omni magazines - take everything you read with a grain of salt, because it could be just so much bullshit.
Max
Snorting a bit too much crack, I see.
Free Software and Open Source aren't defined by which copyright is preferred (a great deal of Open Source code is GPL'd), but by philosophy. The Free Software folks think it's inherently evil to make a buck (or a living) off of the software that *you* write, through gymnastics of the irrational which defy logic; the Open Source folks think that making a buck is just fine, but you'd better damn well provide the source code so we know what's in the box.
Max
Cites? Sources? Proof?
Max
On the flip side, there's absolutely no reason to believe that over the lifetime of the entire galaxy that no species has arisen which doesn't want to expand. All you need is curiosity and an appreciation for different scenery.
And you don't need a huge amount of energy to fill the galaxy. Using ramscoop ships you could ship tens of thousands of colonists in leapfrog from one system to another in relatively short order, effectively colonizing all habitable planets within a speedy (galactic) time frame. It wouldn't matter at all if the civilization remained coherent so long as a *single* one of these colonies developed successfully and continued the chain.
Max
Only an infinite God (which you and I are not) could create an "interesting" universe.
Evidence to support this assumption? None.
Max
This is anthropomorphized Star Trek silliness with no basis in science or logic. Not only anthropomorphized, but *liberally* anthropomorphized ("oooh, you nasty humans are still killing each other!").
Puh-lease. Stow the SF 'violent human race sickens advanced cultures' shtick. It's old, it's tired, and most of all, it's ludicrous.
Max
And as odd and new-age Boomerish this sounds, it's also the most likely explanation. That is, those civilizations which reach the technological level required to colonize the galaxy lose interest in such pursuits because such things no longer intrigue them - and in fact they shortly thereafter 'disappear', at least to our limited wetware perspective. It's the only logical explanation that accounts for both the lack of current non-human residents here on Earth and the galactic 'silence' we run into at every turn.
Any other hypothesis runs into a host of other unsolvable problems which essentially boil down to 'where is everyone?'. No matter how rare intelligent life is all you need is *one* successful species to fill the galaxy over a relative short time frame - the fact that this hasn't happened requires that you either admit the human race is the *only* intelligence to arise in this galaxy (uh huh), invent a rather lame excuse for why *everyone* has failed, subscribe to some sort of X-Files/Star Trek silliness, or embrace the above explanation knowing that you can't explain what happens to everyone, only that *something* does.
Guess we'll find out in a century or two, assuming we survive the next couple hundred years.
Max
One small correction: Venus isn't terraformable. Why? because Venus is almost tidelocked to the sun. Even if you could alter the atmosphere the 'day' and 'night' would last months, resulting in temperatures of hundreds of degrees F to minus hundreds of degrees F. While the right size and (possibly) the right composition, a planet that's tidelocked or nearly tidelocked isn't in any way, shape, or form terraformable.
Max
Guess we hit a hot button. An idiot blathers uninformed opinion, is called on it, and confirms his membership among the submorons by engaging what I'm sure in his little brain is actually witty banter. An idiot who by his own admission doesn't use Linux and has zero investment in how it's developed.
Try getting a life.
Max
"Find pr0n featuring Traci Lord with two men wearing spandex."
Frankly, I'd rather see Traci Lords in the spandex, and not the two men.
Max
I guess that's the difference between a democracy and autocratic rule, the latter being what you seem to rabidly prefer.
As a political system of a nation I have to live in, then no, I don't prefer autocracy. For a piece of software owned by a single individual, then hell yes - because that's the way it is and there isn't any evidence that changing things will make them better. Given how many of the naysayers are complete fuckwits, I'd hazard a guess that putting Linux under democratic rule would really bollix things.
But it's quite clear that you have some trouble distinguishing between what people have to live with (e.g., a real government in a nation they reside in) and what they don't have to live with (e.g., using Linux). Try wrapping your brain around the incredibly vast gulf that separates the two - if you can.
Max
If you've already changed your OS, then precisely what bug is up your ass? You've hardly a leg to stand on if you've no involvement with the issue whatsoever.
As for my "sad and twisted view of life", don't make me laugh. We're talking about software, and specifically, about reality regarding that software. If you don't happen to like that reality then that's just too damned bad, eh?
Max
And who decides that success? You? By what criteria? What twist of fate made your opinion on the matter of Linux's "success" more important than Linus's?
If Linus decides that Linux is best off as an OS for fans and not the masses, then *that* is the criteria upon which "success" is judged. And that is the *only* criteria which counts.
Max
You just aren't getting it. Linus has the sole decision because ultimately it belongs to him. You don't have any right whatsoever to try to 'take' it from him, even if you could.
That's what it boils down to. *You* have no rights whatsoever concerning the kernel. If this bothers you, use another product.
This isn't a democracy.
Max
Amazing how many jealous little twits pop out of the woodwork when articles like these come along (including the author, it seems). You know the kind - they go on and on about how "Linux is bigger than Linus", or that "democracy is better than autocracy", or some such rot. None of these 'arguments' are more than nebulous, poorly-defined horseshit without so much as a smidgeon of hard evidence to back them up, but that doesn't stop the fools from spouting page after page of useless rhetoric.
What does it really boil down to? The complainers aren't Linus - that's the sum total of the argument. Linus is famous, Linus is respected, Linus approaches the status of a demigod in the eyes of a few - and the complainers are nobodies who'll never reach anything like this stature during the course of their lifetime. Envy galls them, so they do their best to try to pull down the guy who's exceeded everything they might ever hope to accomplish, all before the age of 40. Same shit, different venue.
What really points out these losers as vicious, jealous little maggots is Linux itself - they aren't in any way required to use it so they can, if they're so dissatisfied with the way Linus runs things, go off and use another OS. Or fork Linux. It's all good. And if they were serious about their unrest they would.
But that's not the *real* point, eh? The actual goal is to pull down Linus based on the age-old preschool argument "if I can't be Linus, then neither can Linus".
Transparent, pathetic assholes.
Max