Once again, RMS is not making it all-or-nothing.
He is making his OWN position all-or-nothing (ie. he will work for Free Software or no software at all).
All he wants to do is build an alternative to proprietary software. he's raised his flag and if you want to you can rally to it, or not.
It is up to each business as to whether they rally to the flag in some form of other.
Some have (IBM), and some never will (Microsoft).
How the hell do Red Hat make any money at all then? Think 'services'.
Trust one of the few trolls to support Allchin to be imediately and easily disproven.
People listen to RMS because they often agree with him and everyone loves to be told they're right at some time or other.
He is much needed - if we lose people with his fervour (the thing that means he *doesn't* gel with executives) then it will surely have a knock-on effect down the line to people who hold less extreme views. Why? Because then people can cast *them* as the 'extremists' who no-one should listen to and so it goes on.
It's just as condescending to say 'How many years until we give up on RMS?' as it is for RMS to state that holding a view on 'intellectual property' is thoughtless, only this time you're playing to the crowd and not standing up for anything. People will make up their own minds on whether they want to listen to him, just as they will on whether intellectual property is something worthwhile to think about.
The criticism that the GPL harms innovation is obviously silly but what strikes me is that the Microsoft comments are heavily leaning towards portraying the GPL in a generally negative light.
They're probably hoping people won't realise you don't have to use it.
The only intent they should look at is the intent to kill or injure. If they blew up the pub accidentally (hard to believe, but for the sake of argument:-) then of course they'd get a lesser sentence, probably of manslaughter.
If the law, and this is a big 'if' that I wait to be proven, gives out harsher sentences because of the beliefs of the defendant and not because of the danger to society they represent then of course it is entirely wrong.
Of course it may well be that if someone hates a group of people then they have a strong motivation for causing harm, perhaps more so than some random grudge against other people in general.
This all has to be weighed up by the courts I guess.
The only difference, of course, between a hate crime and a thoguth crime is that a hate crime has someone DO something due to hate...
You'll notice that there are no rules against thinking in any of the major developed countries, but only upon actions, from which it may be inferred that you thought something.
For example: if someone blows up a pub in the centre of London and mentions this to other people, stating that they did it because it was a gay pub and they hate gay people, then it's a hate crime.
If the person just said 'I hate gay people' and didn't blow anything up then they'd be fine.
For those that don't know, the BNP are the UK equivalent of the KKK.
Except they don't bother with the religon stuff they just like murdering black people.
"You can have a car of any colour, as long as it is white"
I'm using it for my degree dissertation which is a case study into a working e-commerce project.
It takes a little while to set up but the power afforded you is immense.
You're not a moron, and 'right-thinking' types would be morons themselves to classify people who do not like CCTV for reasons of privacy as morons.
I like CCTV, personally. It helps catch people who commit real offences.
It is one thing to set up this sort of monitoring but another to abuse it, and frankly actual abuse of this is very hard to envisage for ordinary people, at least in the UK.
I've yet to hear a really convincing argument as to why I might be the victim of abuse of CCTV cameras by those in a position to do so.
No your logic must be very warped if you think banning child porn (in any form) is similar to banning Doom. In fact I'd say that was totally illogical.
Doom is not there for people to enjoy virtual killing, it is a game for people to enjoy winning. It just so happens that you have to do some virtual killing in order to get there.
The object of child porn is to...lust over little kids. That's it. Can you think of another use for child porn?
Sorry if this offends your free speech morals but life is a bit more complex than "Anyone who bans anything is a prude and just doesn't like someone else's cartoons".
Without free speech we'd not be here discussing this, but there are, in my opinion, reasonable limits like child porn.
>it's not as if arresting some guy in Hungary >with 50 gigs of kddie pr0n will save a helpless >little girl in Alabama from being molested
You're wrong. Little girls in Alabama can get molested partly because there is a market for pictures of it happening.
Not for every case, granted, but then not every car crash is because of drunk driving but that is still banned, basically because it encourages the crashes.
And so having people out there thinking they can get away with complicity in the enjoyment of molestation of children encourages it to happen.
I am sure you're not someone who takes the evil of child molestation lightly, but I disagree strongly with your assessment of how it is affected by child porn afficionados across the world.
The whole point of the law is to differentiate between what is right and wrong. If the law bans Doom because of the same reasons it bans virtual child pornography then somewhere along the line it has gone very wrong and you have a different problem on your hands.
This 'moral question' doesn't have to have a slippery-slope on either side.
It is up to the law makers to decide what is allowed and what isn't.
They legislate for what is commonly agreed upon, so that they are truly representatives of the people rather than a bunch of people sitting in judgement from on-high upon everyone.
Or at least this is how it is meant to be.
The question is: will the law reflect the will of the people if it is passed? You have to take into consideration the free speech issue here, of course, in that it is one small limit on it. But I think that one small limit on it is a price small enough to pay for taking away what is a really evil thing.
The question of whether it will lead on to similar rulings covering subjects that are not regarded as so evil by so many people is one to be tackled later if they happen to crop up.
Laws should not be there to make sweeping moral generalisations about virtual reconstructions of *anything* that offends someone but should be able to realistically reflect the will of the people who it affects.
If it can't do that then you can consider the law to have failed, but don't for one moment think that stopping this nasty material is in some way morally related to, say, banning depictions of murder in a computer game.
Just my opinion, anyhow.
It's alright. If that person ran a business they'd go bust quite quickly after rejecting plenty of well-paid Netscape-using customers and gaining a reputation for hating their clientel in the process.
I think this page is designed to piss you off.
The caching in Netscape 4 is still better than that in IE, though, which is hilarious.
Netscape6/Mozilla won't cache the output of CGI scripts that have been sent form contents and really gets on my nerves right now.
How bad it is to live in a place where the only alternatives in life are power cuts or environmental meltdown.
There is such a thing as guzzling loads of electricity and perhaps if people bothered to cut their power usage once in a while the system might be able to cope.
I don't mean never turning on your television, just switching off lights when there's no-one in the room, that sort of thing.
The alternative? Well it is not looking pretty is it...?
So you're saying it's impossible to generate electricity for the needs of people without seriously polluting the environment?
Hope you enjoy what you create.
NS4 was very very slow for tables. So slow that on one page IE managed to render it in about 2 seconds (it was full of nested tables) and NS4 took 2 minutes.
Mozilla seems to be slow generally - the 'usability' slowness people talk about.
Jakob Neilsen wouldn't like it for sure.:-)
That's a very good point indeed about keeping the story on so avoid trolls elsewhere.
Not sure that the selling of Slashdot to anyone has changed it much but frankly it matters not what happens to Slashdot.
It's just a website.
Slashdot Mirror
Once again, RMS is not making it all-or-nothing.
He is making his OWN position all-or-nothing (ie. he will work for Free Software or no software at all).
All he wants to do is build an alternative to proprietary software. he's raised his flag and if you want to you can rally to it, or not.
It is up to each business as to whether they rally to the flag in some form of other.
Some have (IBM), and some never will (Microsoft).
How the hell do Red Hat make any money at all then? Think 'services'.
Trust one of the few trolls to support Allchin to be imediately and easily disproven.
Is Free Software harmful to free enterprise?
If not, why bother to bring it up?
People listen to RMS because they often agree with him and everyone loves to be told they're right at some time or other.
He is much needed - if we lose people with his fervour (the thing that means he *doesn't* gel with executives) then it will surely have a knock-on effect down the line to people who hold less extreme views. Why? Because then people can cast *them* as the 'extremists' who no-one should listen to and so it goes on.
It's just as condescending to say 'How many years until we give up on RMS?' as it is for RMS to state that holding a view on 'intellectual property' is thoughtless, only this time you're playing to the crowd and not standing up for anything. People will make up their own minds on whether they want to listen to him, just as they will on whether intellectual property is something worthwhile to think about.
The criticism that the GPL harms innovation is obviously silly but what strikes me is that the Microsoft comments are heavily leaning towards portraying the GPL in a generally negative light.
They're probably hoping people won't realise you don't have to use it.
But if I don't use those words how can I feel smugly self-satisfied about my superior idolect?
The only intent they should look at is the intent to kill or injure. If they blew up the pub accidentally (hard to believe, but for the sake of argument :-) then of course they'd get a lesser sentence, probably of manslaughter.
If the law, and this is a big 'if' that I wait to be proven, gives out harsher sentences because of the beliefs of the defendant and not because of the danger to society they represent then of course it is entirely wrong.
Of course it may well be that if someone hates a group of people then they have a strong motivation for causing harm, perhaps more so than some random grudge against other people in general.
This all has to be weighed up by the courts I guess.
The only difference, of course, between a hate crime and a thoguth crime is that a hate crime has someone DO something due to hate...
You'll notice that there are no rules against thinking in any of the major developed countries, but only upon actions, from which it may be inferred that you thought something.
For example: if someone blows up a pub in the centre of London and mentions this to other people, stating that they did it because it was a gay pub and they hate gay people, then it's a hate crime.
If the person just said 'I hate gay people' and didn't blow anything up then they'd be fine.
"Goo goo ga joob" actually.
Sorry I don't often pedant, but I thought a change might do me good.
For those that don't know, the BNP are the UK equivalent of the KKK.
Except they don't bother with the religon stuff they just like murdering black people.
"You can have a car of any colour, as long as it is white"
Have you actually visited the UK to find out what it is like?
I'm using it for my degree dissertation which is a case study into a working e-commerce project.
It takes a little while to set up but the power afforded you is immense.
(And anyone that disagrees is a hamsup lo)
Well this Brit found it funny. ;-)
+1 if I could...
You're not a moron, and 'right-thinking' types would be morons themselves to classify people who do not like CCTV for reasons of privacy as morons.
I like CCTV, personally. It helps catch people who commit real offences.
It is one thing to set up this sort of monitoring but another to abuse it, and frankly actual abuse of this is very hard to envisage for ordinary people, at least in the UK.
I've yet to hear a really convincing argument as to why I might be the victim of abuse of CCTV cameras by those in a position to do so.
No your logic must be very warped if you think banning child porn (in any form) is similar to banning Doom. In fact I'd say that was totally illogical.
Doom is not there for people to enjoy virtual killing, it is a game for people to enjoy winning. It just so happens that you have to do some virtual killing in order to get there.
The object of child porn is to...lust over little kids. That's it. Can you think of another use for child porn?
Sorry if this offends your free speech morals but life is a bit more complex than "Anyone who bans anything is a prude and just doesn't like someone else's cartoons".
Without free speech we'd not be here discussing this, but there are, in my opinion, reasonable limits like child porn.
>it's not as if arresting some guy in Hungary >with 50 gigs of kddie pr0n will save a helpless >little girl in Alabama from being molested
You're wrong. Little girls in Alabama can get molested partly because there is a market for pictures of it happening.
Not for every case, granted, but then not every car crash is because of drunk driving but that is still banned, basically because it encourages the crashes.
And so having people out there thinking they can get away with complicity in the enjoyment of molestation of children encourages it to happen.
I am sure you're not someone who takes the evil of child molestation lightly, but I disagree strongly with your assessment of how it is affected by child porn afficionados across the world.
The whole point of the law is to differentiate between what is right and wrong. If the law bans Doom because of the same reasons it bans virtual child pornography then somewhere along the line it has gone very wrong and you have a different problem on your hands.
This 'moral question' doesn't have to have a slippery-slope on either side.
It is up to the law makers to decide what is allowed and what isn't.
They legislate for what is commonly agreed upon, so that they are truly representatives of the people rather than a bunch of people sitting in judgement from on-high upon everyone.
Or at least this is how it is meant to be.
The question is: will the law reflect the will of the people if it is passed? You have to take into consideration the free speech issue here, of course, in that it is one small limit on it. But I think that one small limit on it is a price small enough to pay for taking away what is a really evil thing.
The question of whether it will lead on to similar rulings covering subjects that are not regarded as so evil by so many people is one to be tackled later if they happen to crop up.
Laws should not be there to make sweeping moral generalisations about virtual reconstructions of *anything* that offends someone but should be able to realistically reflect the will of the people who it affects.
If it can't do that then you can consider the law to have failed, but don't for one moment think that stopping this nasty material is in some way morally related to, say, banning depictions of murder in a computer game.
Just my opinion, anyhow.
It's alright. If that person ran a business they'd go bust quite quickly after rejecting plenty of well-paid Netscape-using customers and gaining a reputation for hating their clientel in the process.
I think this page is designed to piss you off.
>It's time non-Microsft users realize that the >world has left them behind.
Nice troll, but irrelevant of course.
It's time that trolls realised the world has left them behind and no-one finds them funny anymore.
What's funny is that actually sounds like a good idea compared to what is going on right now!
It'll never work, but it is an incredibly neat solution.
The caching in Netscape 4 is still better than that in IE, though, which is hilarious.
Netscape6/Mozilla won't cache the output of CGI scripts that have been sent form contents and really gets on my nerves right now.
How bad it is to live in a place where the only alternatives in life are power cuts or environmental meltdown.
There is such a thing as guzzling loads of electricity and perhaps if people bothered to cut their power usage once in a while the system might be able to cope.
I don't mean never turning on your television, just switching off lights when there's no-one in the room, that sort of thing.
The alternative? Well it is not looking pretty is it...?
So you're saying it's impossible to generate electricity for the needs of people without seriously polluting the environment?
Hope you enjoy what you create.
NS4 was very very slow for tables. So slow that on one page IE managed to render it in about 2 seconds (it was full of nested tables) and NS4 took 2 minutes. :-)
Mozilla seems to be slow generally - the 'usability' slowness people talk about.
Jakob Neilsen wouldn't like it for sure.
That's a very good point indeed about keeping the story on so avoid trolls elsewhere.
Not sure that the selling of Slashdot to anyone has changed it much but frankly it matters not what happens to Slashdot.
It's just a website.