The FSF would go after all software hoarders if they could, but unfortunately they only have legal power to go after the ones who violate the GPL (and only on software copyright FSF). Sad but true.
Hypocrisy is insincerity by virtue of pretending to have qualities or beliefs that you do not really have. The FSF does not go after GPL violators to "promote lawfulness", they do it in accordancy with their philosophy.
The five highest moderated posts are all posts saying that copyright infringement is theft (it'd have to be a strange definition of theft that'd make copying theft) or calling it "piracy". Yeah, well, this one's for my fellow buccaneers.
"You're only a consumer if you purchase what you consume" - does that mean that a child who's mother gives her food is not a consumer? Does that mean that a Debian user who got it gratis with jidgo is not a consumer?
The old "blurring the argument" vague talk about "you condemn GPL violation, how can you condone piracy?" GPL is about freedom for the end user to run, copy and modify software. Unauthorized copying is about that too, to a lesser extent.
RMS, who wrote the GPL and should know what he's talking about, once said that: "Sometimes I think that perhaps one of the best things I could do with my life is: find a gigantic pile of proprietary software that was a trade secret, and start handing out copies on a street corner so it wouldn't be a trade secret any more, and perhaps that would be a much more efficient way for me to give people new free software than actually writing it myself; but everyone is too cowardly to even take it."
These days, we have plenty of free software to go around, and it's harder for the proprietary software industry to fight the free software movement than the "warez movement" since the former is currently legal (the second was too, in the US, before 1976), so I only use free software and I'd suggest that to the malaysians as well.
But the same does not apply to music and movies. While most of the best music and literature these days are free and underground, we still have time to dig the groove of some non-free beats. So we can sponsor the evil RIAA, or take some risks by violating bad laws, or do without the non-free music. We can all make our own choices.
Listen. They're just codecs. You can still play both on the same computer. Hopefully, there will be good vorbis hardware players available soon (as soon as a good integer implementation is available), and maybe they'll play both Vorbis and Mp3 so you can use Vorbis for those newlymade rips while still having access to that good old Mp3 warez-collection.
"Apple is no longer a closed system. They have a proprietary GUI, true, but how is that different from a Linux distributor bundling in their proprietary software?"
It's not very different, but I'd hardly advocate one of those distros. Debian doesn't bundle proprietary software, there are many other distros that doesn't. (I think slackware, mandrake and redhat doesn't, but I'm not sure.)
"The core of the OS, Darwin, is open source, BSD license."
No, not at all. It's some other weird apple license.
GNU/Linux isn't inferior to Windows in functionality and ease of use. The reason that it isn't growing even faster than it is is that it's pretty hard to switch OS, and people think that it is harder still.
The free software movement has given billions of dollars worth of software to everyone, including peruvians.
Microsoft is sorta lending away some crummy binaries for a while and they say that this is worth $550,000. Maybe they gave the prez some money under the table, as well.
By giving non-free, binary only software to your people you are limiting their creativity and creating a dependency on Redmond.
The list is all about combating newspeak and doublethink. Confusing libre (freesp) with gratis (freeb) is just what Microsoft want you to do, so they can call Explorer "free" software. Didn't you see http://www.icq.com? They claim to offer free software.
I suggest running Debian Unstable (could be renamed to "Debian Current"). If you want source, just apt-get source package name. I don't see what BSD or Gentoo can do that Debian can't.
Yeah, okay, that's one difference to kwin; but metacity is not very useful without gnome (or some sort of ae-menu).
To be honest, it slipped my mind that sawfish is still default. I use metacity at the moment (when I'm in gnome country, otherwise I use Ion) but I miss a lot of lispy features from sawfish.
Neither of the wm's appear to be very fast and stable, though... or I'm just having bad luck.
First of all; as has already been pointed out - the software can not meaningfully separate between copying for your self (spaceshifting, making "mixtapes" for the car or bike) and copying for your friends.
The former is (was?) legal in the US under the Audio Home Recording Act, and the second is legal in many countries. I'm currently in Sweden, where it's legal to give copies of music to up to five friends. (There's an actual legal precedent of that exact number as a guideline. Yes, I agree that this is fucked. Limits should be zero, one or infinity.)
Huh? Metacity is to gnome as kwin is to KDE. Metacity uses the gnome libs and stuff like that. You can use other wms with KDE (like blackbox), you don't have to use kwin.
(I love gnome 2 btw and have high hopes for future gnomes.)
I do program C/C++ a lot, but pressing the capslock key for one (or a few) words? It's much, much faster to just hold the shift key. (I touch type.)
The actual point, though, was that when I press control, I almost always press another key as well (as in, C-h or C-t or C-p), so it needs to be placed so I can easily do that. That's not the case for capslock. It could switch (back) places with control without becoming a "worse" button.
I agree. Switching them would make sense because the control key is often pressed in combination with some other key, and having it far away makes it hard to hit.
Capslock is a "toggle" button so it could reasonably be placed anywhere. I usually remove it completely - I mean, I haven't used it in a long time.
Where qwerty spreads things out so that all fingers are used frequently, dvorak causes you to use half your fingers far more frequently than the others.
This is not true. The buttons on the home row are "aoeu id htns". All very common letters - and all on a finger of their own (except "id"). So all the fingers on both hands are used.
Also qwerty relies a lot on alternating hands.. this is shown to be much faster than using a single hand to type a word.
An analysis of almost any english text will show that qwerty alternates less between the hands than dvorak. Dvorak has all the vowels on the left hand, so you'll have to use it several times for almost every word.
The thing with qwerty that bothers me the most is that it requires my fingers to dance over the keyboard all spidery, while dvorak only forces me to move my fingers once or twice per word. I worked as a translator one summer, typing all day long. After a while, my finger began aching. That's when I seriously began thinking of switching.
Look: some economic students want to badmouth dvorak and promote qwerty for some rather silly reasons having to do with economic theory. I don't care about that.
I've used qwerty for twelve years before I switched to dvorak. Now I use both (nothing but dvorak on my own computer, though). The switch wasn't that easy, but it was worth it. It took me a few days to learn it properly. (One of my friends learned it in one evening, though - she wrote freakishly fast almost right away.)
More and more people are hearing of dvorak from the internet or their friends, and some of them switch. I know several people IRL (living in my town) who uses dvorak. In the typewriter age, switching to dvorak is a difficult and expensive task. In the computer age, switching is a manner of typing "setxkbmap dvorak" in the nearest xterm. (Have an image of the new keyboard layout on your screen, and look at it instead of at the keys. Keep the fingers on the home row. If you like it (it takes about a month to be good, though), you can mod your keyboard or get a special one.)
Dvorak isn't the be-all and end-all of keyboards, but I think it's an improvement on qwerty, just as qwerty was an improvement on the abcde-style layouts before it.
Dvorak won't miraculously cure your RSI (although it did help against my finger-aches) or make you become the fastest typist in the world (although the fastest typist in the world did use dvorak).
"must not discriminate against people or groups" (DFSG 5)
"to run the program for any purpose" (FSF freedom zero) - e.g; the GPL is a copyright license only. Not some click-wrap/accept-before-you-use piece of shit.
And while it goes against the Slashdot groupthink, I would say that no system yet has worked any better than capitalism, despite the wretched, absurd criminalities of Enron, Global Crossing, the MPAA/RIAA, Microsoft, Disney, etc. etc.
Anarchism in Spain worked pretty good, or so I'm told.
GPL basically says "this has to be GPL forever" (unless you're the copyright holder). The GPL may not be the free-est of all free (it's copyleft, after all), but at least it stays that way.
Non-copyleft licenses are simple and clean and a bag of chips, but that does not help you if someone tricks you into getting a non-free version of X or BSD.
The world without copyright would essentially be "everything is X-style licensed for ever". Not as many hassles as copylefted licenses has (incompabilites with other copyleft licenses), but no worries about someone making proprietary versions of the code.
The GPL is a weapon against that. They have lobbyists and NDAs, we have copyleft.
Slashdot Mirror
The FSF would go after all software hoarders if they could, but unfortunately they only have legal power to go after the ones who violate the GPL (and only on software copyright FSF). Sad but true.
Hypocrisy is insincerity by virtue of pretending to have qualities or beliefs that you do not really have. The FSF does not go after GPL violators to "promote lawfulness", they do it in accordancy with their philosophy.
Subject says it all.
The five highest moderated posts are all posts saying that copyright infringement is theft (it'd have to be a strange definition of theft that'd make copying theft) or calling it "piracy". Yeah, well, this one's for my fellow buccaneers.
"You're only a consumer if you purchase what you consume" - does that mean that a child who's mother gives her food is not a consumer? Does that mean that a Debian user who got it gratis with jidgo is not a consumer?
The old "blurring the argument" vague talk about "you condemn GPL violation, how can you condone piracy?" GPL is about freedom for the end user to run, copy and modify software. Unauthorized copying is about that too, to a lesser extent.
RMS, who wrote the GPL and should know what he's talking about, once said that: "Sometimes I think that perhaps one of the best things I could do with my life is: find a gigantic pile of proprietary software that was a trade secret, and start handing out copies on a street corner so it wouldn't be a trade secret any more, and perhaps that would be a much more efficient way for me to give people new free software than actually writing it myself; but everyone is too cowardly to even take it."
These days, we have plenty of free software to go around, and it's harder for the proprietary software industry to fight the free software movement than the "warez movement" since the former is currently legal (the second was too, in the US, before 1976), so I only use free software and I'd suggest that to the malaysians as well.
But the same does not apply to music and movies. While most of the best music and literature these days are free and underground, we still have time to dig the groove of some non-free beats. So we can sponsor the evil RIAA, or take some risks by violating bad laws, or do without the non-free music. We can all make our own choices.
A modern x86 system? What's that? x86 hasn't been modern since... well, has it ever?
Listen. They're just codecs. You can still play both on the same computer. Hopefully, there will be good vorbis hardware players available soon (as soon as a good integer implementation is available), and maybe they'll play both Vorbis and Mp3 so you can use Vorbis for those newlymade rips while still having access to that good old Mp3 warez-collection.
"Apple is no longer a closed system. They have a proprietary GUI, true, but how is that different from a Linux distributor bundling in their proprietary software?"
It's not very different, but I'd hardly advocate one of those distros. Debian doesn't bundle proprietary software, there are many other distros that doesn't. (I think slackware, mandrake and redhat doesn't, but I'm not sure.)
"The core of the OS, Darwin, is open source, BSD license."
No, not at all. It's some other weird apple license.
I know you can do it on the old ones.
As for installing programs... maybe work on deity-gtk? I think apt and dpkg are pretty easy as they are.
What does unexplained bruises have to do with free software? RMS isn't going to beat you. ...very hard.
GNU/Linux isn't inferior to Windows in functionality and ease of use.
The reason that it isn't growing even faster than it is is that it's pretty hard to switch OS, and people think that it is harder still.
The free software movement has given billions of dollars worth of software to everyone, including peruvians.
Microsoft is sorta lending away some crummy binaries for a while and they say that this is worth $550,000. Maybe they gave the prez some money under the table, as well.
By giving non-free, binary only software to your people you are limiting their creativity and creating a dependency on Redmond.
The list is all about combating newspeak and doublethink. Confusing libre (freesp) with gratis (freeb) is just what Microsoft want you to do, so they can call Explorer "free" software. Didn't you see http://www.icq.com? They claim to offer free software.
I suggest running Debian Unstable (could be renamed to "Debian Current"). If you want source, just apt-get source package name. I don't see what BSD or Gentoo can do that Debian can't.
Sawfish is the default window manager in GNOME
Yeah, okay, that's one difference to kwin; but metacity is not very useful without gnome (or some sort of ae-menu).
To be honest, it slipped my mind that sawfish is still default. I use metacity at the moment (when I'm in gnome country, otherwise I use Ion) but I miss a lot of lispy features from sawfish.
Neither of the wm's appear to be very fast and stable, though... or I'm just having bad luck.
First of all; as has already been pointed out - the software can not meaningfully separate between copying for your self (spaceshifting, making "mixtapes" for the car or bike) and copying for your friends.
The former is (was?) legal in the US under the Audio Home Recording Act, and the second is legal in many countries. I'm currently in Sweden, where it's legal to give copies of music to up to five friends. (There's an actual legal precedent of that exact number as a guideline. Yes, I agree that this is fucked. Limits should be zero, one or infinity.)
Huh? Metacity is to gnome as kwin is to KDE. Metacity uses the gnome libs and stuff like that. You can use other wms with KDE (like blackbox), you don't have to use kwin.
(I love gnome 2 btw and have high hopes for future gnomes.)
Huh? Linux isn't a company or other entity. Mac OS doesn't have voting members on the ARB, does it?
I do program C/C++ a lot, but pressing the capslock key for one (or a few) words? It's much, much faster to just hold the shift key. (I touch type.)
The actual point, though, was that when I press control, I almost always press another key as well (as in, C-h or C-t or C-p), so it needs to be placed so I can easily do that. That's not the case for capslock. It could switch (back) places with control without becoming a "worse" button.
Samething goes for Apple's current keyboards, including the ones on their portables.
I agree. Switching them would make sense because the control key is often pressed in combination with some other key, and having it far away makes it hard to hit.
Capslock is a "toggle" button so it could reasonably be placed anywhere. I usually remove it completely - I mean, I haven't used it in a long time.
The thing with qwerty that bothers me the most is that it requires my fingers to dance over the keyboard all spidery, while dvorak only forces me to move my fingers once or twice per word. I worked as a translator one summer, typing all day long. After a while, my finger began aching. That's when I seriously began thinking of switching.
Look: some economic students want to badmouth dvorak and promote qwerty for some rather silly reasons having to do with economic theory. I don't care about that.
I've used qwerty for twelve years before I switched to dvorak. Now I use both (nothing but dvorak on my own computer, though). The switch wasn't that easy, but it was worth it. It took me a few days to learn it properly. (One of my friends learned it in one evening, though - she wrote freakishly fast almost right away.)
More and more people are hearing of dvorak from the internet or their friends, and some of them switch. I know several people IRL (living in my town) who uses dvorak. In the typewriter age, switching to dvorak is a difficult and expensive task. In the computer age, switching is a manner of typing "setxkbmap dvorak" in the nearest xterm. (Have an image of the new keyboard layout on your screen, and look at it instead of at the keys. Keep the fingers on the home row. If you like it (it takes about a month to be good, though), you can mod your keyboard or get a special one.)
Dvorak isn't the be-all and end-all of keyboards, but I think it's an improvement on qwerty, just as qwerty was an improvement on the abcde-style layouts before it.
Dvorak won't miraculously cure your RSI (although it did help against my finger-aches) or make you become the fastest typist in the world (although the fastest typist in the world did use dvorak).
China fights the unions - workers don't even have the right to free association.
Like the old qoute goes: under capitalism, man oppresses man. Under (leninist or maoist) communism, it's the other way around.
Same oppressive shit, different name.
"must not discriminate against people or groups" (DFSG 5)
"to run the program for any purpose" (FSF freedom zero) - e.g; the GPL is a copyright license only. Not some click-wrap/accept-before-you-use piece of shit.
I think this image by Scott McCloud says it all... (scroll down).
Anarchism in Spain worked pretty good, or so I'm told.
GPL basically says "this has to be GPL forever" (unless you're the copyright holder). The GPL may not be the free-est of all free (it's copyleft, after all), but at least it stays that way.
Non-copyleft licenses are simple and clean and a bag of chips, but that does not help you if someone tricks you into getting a non-free version of X or BSD.
The world without copyright would essentially be "everything is X-style licensed for ever". Not as many hassles as copylefted licenses has (incompabilites with other copyleft licenses), but no worries about someone making proprietary versions of the code.
The GPL is a weapon against that. They have lobbyists and NDAs, we have copyleft.