Except, of course, that a metric fuckload of people do use Linux, and other free or open source software, every day. Hell, you used Slashcode to send your message, and you're using it to read this one now.
And free/open source software has nothing to do with communism.
i heard he had a radio show in which he read the books, andhe had to write parts even during the show because the books were not finished... plz correct me if i'm wrong
Ok, you're wrong. The radio series existed before the books, and it wasn't him reading anything, it was a radio show with actors and sound effects and all the usual accoutrements. The radio series roughly corresponds to HHGTTG and RATEOTU, but it's s pretty rough correspondence.
Why should someone have the civil liberty to send me emails about "horse fucking"
For the same reason that they have the right to come up next to you in a bar and say, "Hey, let me tell you about this horse I fucked the other day...".
Of course there are limits; if you get up and move and he follows you and keeps telling his story, that's harassment, which is actionable. (Spamming that continues after you've demanded them to remove you could be considered in this category - but so would someone who keeps forwarding you stupid and offensive jokes after you've asked them to stop.) If he stands out in the middle of a quiet residental street screaming out his story, that's disturbing the peace, which is actionable. (Flooding your inbox with spam might qualify also.) The content of the story itself is irrelevent; it's time, place, and manner that can be regulated.
The spam issue has nothing to do with the fact that the spam might be embarassing to you. It does, however, have everything to do with fraud and forgery; even the most libertarian people can't be against a law that punishes that.
There's often trademark violation involved as well (lately I've been getting a lot of spam made up to look like Yahoo! was somehow involved); while trademark is highly overused these day, someone using your mark to attempt to legitimize their spam is clearly over the line.
I was embarrassed! Where's my right to have my computer connected without the cable guy thinking I'm a pervert?
Hmm...don't see that one in the Magna Carta, Declaration of Independence, any state constitutions, the Bill of Rights...sorry, but I don't think there's a right to not be embarrassed by other people's speech.
Does anyone outside of academia still use Fortran for anything?
It's still used in scientific applications. I know three years ago, when I contracted at Raytheon STX (formerly Hughes STX...reasonably big name in aerospace), the guys who did the number crunching side of things worked with FORTRAN a lot.
After they managed to damage three packages for me in less then a year, UPSmade my permanent shit list. I'm now willing to pay extra to have things shipped by FedEx or USPS Priority mail.
USPS Priority mail is a pretty good deal for small packages and for important-but-not-critial documents.
Open Source originated from people working on 'side' projects aside from their 'job'.
Uh, no.
May I suggest youread about the history of BSD? And the GNU project?
Set the wayback machine for the 1970s, when it was highly likely the programs came with source, and it was normal for programmers to (gasp!) share ideas and help each other. Take a look at how much software has come out of publically funded universities and research groups. A lot of free and open source software has come, and continues to come from, people who get paid for it.
I thought the guys who won the Nobel Prize for Physics already discovered a new form of matter. Is this more of their
findings, or something totally different?
Totally different. The Nobel guys found a new state of matter, the Bose-Einstein condensate.
Does this mean that there could be 2 new forms of matter to bring the total up to 5
forms?
There's already (at least) 5 states of matter: solid, gas, liquid, plasma (gas so hot that it gets ionized - the sun's made out of it), and the recently confirmed Bose-Einstein Condensate (gas so cold that weird quantum things start to happen).
You've also got the degenerate states of matter found in white dwarfs (where the electrons squeeze together), neutron stars (where the electrons smush into the nucleus), and black holes (where...well, it all breaks down there). These don't seem to be counted in the usual enumeration of states of matter, but then they've never been produced on Earth, they're really still theoretical.
What they'd be looking for out of this new discovery is more along the lines of a new fundamental particle or force.
Environmentalist's concern about the ozone layer and the hole in the atmosphere brought about the end to natural CFC's (freon) being used throughout the world....when
the volcano in the Phillipines erupted it was reported that more CFC's poured into the air than the U.S. could in a hundred years.
If you got your news from something other than right-wing talk radio and press releases from toxic chemical manufacturers, you might know that there are no natural CFCs in any substantial quantity on this planet.
That's exactly the sort of attitude that has caused the sort of spectactular failures of software projects to be accepted as the norm. Software Engineering is *not* "hacking" or "coding" or "programming", it's *engineering*,
like building a bridge or a skyscraper.
We'd like it to be so, but it ain't.
The behavior of bridges and skyscapers is determined by classical physics, which allows us to make precise predictions.
The behavior of computer programs is governered by complexity theory, which tells us that any reasonably complex program has non-predictable behavior. And the manageability of software development depends on human understanding and appreciation of code - there's an aesthetic factor.
Certainly things could be better...the fact that something has a large component of art doesn't mean that there aren't areas of mastery for a practitioner to study. But at its heart, the creation of complex software requires a creativity and intuition that cannot be set to a timetable.
(Yes, one can "engineer" art to some degree - popular music being an example, where teams of marketers follow formulas to construct the next boy band. But that does not result in a quality product that stands the test of time.)
In a well analyzed and properly planned project, the actual coding stage is little more than data entry.
But the problem still applies to the design phase.
Libertarian Socialism (or anarchism if you wish) doesn't recognize ownership. "Property is theft"
Only when speaking of capital - "the means of production", land, natural resources, etcetera - as property.
Without private property, there can be no private decisions. Fine. But when the idea of property is extended to the land, to water, to natural resources, even to ideas, that's theft. When government organize systems that put control of economic resources into the hands of a few, that's theft.
so why should I work to build a surplus if I can't control it, can't direct it, and it has almost no benefit for me
Artisan and craftsman have been building up surpluses of their works since long before the invention of capitalism.
Ogg made three stone axes when he only needed one, banking up some extra labor against future need. One day Grog came back from a gathering expedition with a bushel of succulent berries. Ogg traded his two extra axes for some of Grog's berries, accomplishing a trade of his stored ax-making labor for Grog's berry-picking labor.
If they tried to do this today, Ogg would have to buy his rocks from someone with mineral rights, and Grog would have to pay some land owner to pick berries on "his" land. Ogg might even have to pay patent royalties to the holder of the stone ax patent. Parasitic "owners" who contribute no labor to the process must be appeased.
Let's not forget that setting a price on a good or a service, and thus setting its value is a necessary precondition for *any* economic system to work right.
There's no reason why a system based on labor can't have a market that sets prices! Socialism does not necessarily imply a command economy.
Where globalism, capitalism, and "Big Business" get ugly is when the government (any government) intervenes in any way:
whether its a subsidy, a tariff, an embargo, even a bailout (a la airlines).
Fine. Let's get government out of the economic picture. We can start with the revokation of all government-issued corporate charters. Then we get rid of all government-created land deeds, mineral and resource rights, copyrights, and patents.
It's evident that totally free trade can "save the world."
Stating a thing does not make it so. It's customary, when saying someting is "evident", to make at least some allusion to what the evidence is.
If I have the medicine you need to live, I can coerce you quite well without force or threat of force, can I not?
If I and my partners control all the available food and you are hungry, we can coerce you quite well. If we own the land and you want a roof over your head, we can coerce you.
And if we own the capital, and you want a job, we can coerce you. That's capitalism in a nutshell.
Control of resources is highly effective coercion. That's why we often use blockades and sanctions to get other nations to do what we want.
there's always a choice...it may not be a fair choice, mind you, but there's always some choice to be made.
Choice does not imply lack of coercion. If I point a gun at you to try to enforce my will, you can always choose to die.
...(and let's face it, blocking or highly taxing imports is a socialist concept)...
No, it's not. Socialism does not mean a highly regulated economy, it means an economic system based on exchange of labor rather than ownership of capital. Socialism does not necessarily imply a highly regulated market or a command economy.
If we did nothing but say, "oh, I'm sorry, it MUST be our fault that you killed 5000 people", we would look like weakened fools--it's the exact recipe for getting taken advantage of and losing our position of power.
Not wanting to lose a position of power, or to look foolish, is no excuse for violence - either on the personal or national level. ("I had to beat him up, or people would think I'm a wimp." is a favorite bully justification.)
We must find those responsible and obtain justice with as minimal damage to innocent people as possible.
And bombing people has nothing to do with justice, or with minimizing damage to the innocent. Current U.S. actions are comparable to firing into a crowd of people in an attempt to bring down a murderer standing in the middle.
Ever heard of lead-free solder? I thought everyone used it.
For plumbing, crafts, and metalwork, yes, the solder used is almost always lead-free.
For electonics, you'll still find the lead-bearing stuff in general use - the rosin core solder you get at your local Radio Shack is most likely still 60/40 tin/lead.
There is work underway to eventually eliminate the use of lead-bearing solders in electronics, but it's still a way off. And who knows how long it will be before it's adopted worldwide.
So solder/desolder only where there's adequate ventilation.
Mainly, I do this because my time is limited and I have to unsolder components whenever I can. I'd love to use a 110V bulk unsolder gun, but in truth my 9V one works fine.
Activities that produce lead vapors are not recommended for enclosed spaces like airplane cabins.
In most Microsoft EULAs, it states you can't give the software to nations or individuals involved in making atomic,
bacteriological, or chemical weapons.
Hmm, you swallowed the M$ line that the shell (internet explorer) is part of the OS.
Nonsense. I learned that definition back in the 80's. (I also learned the difference between a shell and a web browser long before IE was written.) Do you thing RMS is a Micro$soft dupe when he notes, "But you can't use a kernel by itself; a kernel is useful only as
part of a whole operating system."
Admittedly, "operating system" is a fuzzy term; some use it to mean only the kernel, while some refer to the system as a whole. "Kernel" and "system" are clearer, and I prefer to use them. Linux - i.e., what Linus wrote - is the kernel. The stuff that makes it a useable system - and the whole vision of a free (as in speech) Unix-like system - is GNU.
Many people have made major contributions to the free software in the system, and they all deserve credit. But the reason it is
a system--and not just a collection of useful programs--is because the GNU Project set out to make it one. We made a list
of the programs needed to make a complete free system, and we systematically found, wrote, or found people to write
everything on the list. We wrote essential but unexciting major components, such as the assembler and linker, because you
can't have a system without them. A complete system needs more than just programming tools; the Bourne Again SHell, the
PostScript interpreter Ghostscript, and the GNU C library are just as important.
By the early 90s we had put together the whole system aside from the kernel (and we were also working on a kernel, the
GNU Hurd, which runs on top of Mach). Developing this kernel has been a lot harder than we expected, and we are still
working on finishing it.
Fortunately, you don't have to wait for it, because Linux is working now. When Linus Torvalds wrote Linux, he filled the last
major gap. People could then put Linux together with the GNU system to make a complete free system: a Linux-based GNU
system (or GNU/Linux system, for short).
In day-to-day use, yes, I call my machine a Linux box. But I also call generic facial tissue "Kleenex", and the Canon copier in the office a "Xerox" machine. I am aware of the difference and make it clear when necessary.
Also, isn't hurd an OS built on a mach kernel, or is it just a kernel?
Mach is a microkernel, which is not the same thing as a kernel. If you have a microkernel, you build servers that sit on top of it to provide the usual kernel services; the Hurd is a collection of such servers. You could can the Hurd a kernel, loosely speaking. (GNU does.)
...the GNU project's replacement for the Unix kernel. The Hurd is a collection
of servers that run on the Mach microkernel to implement file systems, network protocols, file
access control, and other features that are implemented by the Unix kernel or similar kernels (such as Linux)....The Hurd, together with the GNU Mach microkernel, the GNU C Library and the other GNU programs, provides a rather complete and usable operating system today.
things like gcc are not part of the OS, they are applications - they happen in userspace.
The fact that is happens in userspace does not imply that it's not part of the OS.
Linux (using the term in the strict sense) is a kernel. The Hurd is a kernel. A system with only a kernel is pretty damn useless.
OS = kernel + shell + basic system applications (things like ls and grep, not TeX or Mozilla). You can actually do things on a computer with only an operating system installed. Not much, but some things.
...the Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of the draft and found that "Congress acted well within its constitutional authority to raise and regulate armies and navies" under Article I, Section 8.
The rampant illiteracy of the courts does not change the content of the Constitution.
Unfortunately, the government acting in concert with that document has long been the exception rather than the rule.
The draft is in the same category with federal drug laws, censorship laws, and gun control laws - supported not by a firm foundation of law, but instead dangling from the barrel of a gun.
The opinions of the court on these topics belong on the dungheap of history, next to the Korematsu and Dred Scott decisions.
A lot of people around here complain about market research companies
harvesting data from people, through cookies and devices like personal video recorders.
There are other ways to do market research than covert operations, you know.
If you'd like to know my product preferences, and the information is worth something to you, you could pay me to take a survey. Heck, if it was non-intusive enough I might do it for free. But I'll do it as my conscious choice, and I'll give away or trade the information that I desire, not what they can spy out of me.
Slashdot Mirror
Except, of course, that a metric fuckload of people do use Linux, and other free or open source software, every day. Hell, you used Slashcode to send your message, and you're using it to read this one now.
And free/open source software has nothing to do with communism.
Ok, you're wrong. The radio series existed before the books, and it wasn't him reading anything, it was a radio show with actors and sound effects and all the usual accoutrements. The radio series roughly corresponds to HHGTTG and RATEOTU, but it's s pretty rough correspondence.
For the same reason that they have the right to come up next to you in a bar and say, "Hey, let me tell you about this horse I fucked the other day...".
Of course there are limits; if you get up and move and he follows you and keeps telling his story, that's harassment, which is actionable. (Spamming that continues after you've demanded them to remove you could be considered in this category - but so would someone who keeps forwarding you stupid and offensive jokes after you've asked them to stop.) If he stands out in the middle of a quiet residental street screaming out his story, that's disturbing the peace, which is actionable. (Flooding your inbox with spam might qualify also.) The content of the story itself is irrelevent; it's time, place, and manner that can be regulated.
The spam issue has nothing to do with the fact that the spam might be embarassing to you. It does, however, have everything to do with fraud and forgery; even the most libertarian people can't be against a law that punishes that.
There's often trademark violation involved as well (lately I've been getting a lot of spam made up to look like Yahoo! was somehow involved); while trademark is highly overused these day, someone using your mark to attempt to legitimize their spam is clearly over the line.
Hmm...don't see that one in the Magna Carta, Declaration of Independence, any state constitutions, the Bill of Rights...sorry, but I don't think there's a right to not be embarrassed by other people's speech.
It's still used in scientific applications. I know three years ago, when I contracted at Raytheon STX (formerly Hughes STX...reasonably big name in aerospace), the guys who did the number crunching side of things worked with FORTRAN a lot.
After they managed to damage three packages for me in less then a year, UPSmade my permanent shit list. I'm now willing to pay extra to have things shipped by FedEx or USPS Priority mail.
USPS Priority mail is a pretty good deal for small packages and for important-but-not-critial documents.
Uh, no.
May I suggest youread about the history of BSD? And the GNU project?
Set the wayback machine for the 1970s, when it was highly likely the programs came with source, and it was normal for programmers to (gasp!) share ideas and help each other. Take a look at how much software has come out of publically funded universities and research groups. A lot of free and open source software has come, and continues to come from, people who get paid for it.
Totally different. The Nobel guys found a new state of matter, the Bose-Einstein condensate.
There's already (at least) 5 states of matter: solid, gas, liquid, plasma (gas so hot that it gets ionized - the sun's made out of it), and the recently confirmed Bose-Einstein Condensate (gas so cold that weird quantum things start to happen).
You've also got the degenerate states of matter found in white dwarfs (where the electrons squeeze together), neutron stars (where the electrons smush into the nucleus), and black holes (where...well, it all breaks down there). These don't seem to be counted in the usual enumeration of states of matter, but then they've never been produced on Earth, they're really still theoretical.
What they'd be looking for out of this new discovery is more along the lines of a new fundamental particle or force.
If you got your news from something other than right-wing talk radio and press releases from toxic chemical manufacturers, you might know that there are no natural CFCs in any substantial quantity on this planet.
Volcanic eruptions can put chlorine into the atmosphere. But that's meaningless, because chlorine isn't chlorofluorocarbon, and doesn't reach the statosphere.
It's amazing that anti-ecological industrial propaganda has become so widespread that otherwise intelligent people believe shit like this.
We'd like it to be so, but it ain't.
The behavior of bridges and skyscapers is determined by classical physics, which allows us to make precise predictions.
The behavior of computer programs is governered by complexity theory, which tells us that any reasonably complex program has non-predictable behavior. And the manageability of software development depends on human understanding and appreciation of code - there's an aesthetic factor.
Certainly things could be better...the fact that something has a large component of art doesn't mean that there aren't areas of mastery for a practitioner to study. But at its heart, the creation of complex software requires a creativity and intuition that cannot be set to a timetable.
(Yes, one can "engineer" art to some degree - popular music being an example, where teams of marketers follow formulas to construct the next boy band. But that does not result in a quality product that stands the test of time.)
But the problem still applies to the design phase.
Only when speaking of capital - "the means of production", land, natural resources, etcetera - as property.
Without private property, there can be no private decisions. Fine. But when the idea of property is extended to the land, to water, to natural resources, even to ideas, that's theft. When government organize systems that put control of economic resources into the hands of a few, that's theft.
Artisan and craftsman have been building up surpluses of their works since long before the invention of capitalism.
Ogg made three stone axes when he only needed one, banking up some extra labor against future need. One day Grog came back from a gathering expedition with a bushel of succulent berries. Ogg traded his two extra axes for some of Grog's berries, accomplishing a trade of his stored ax-making labor for Grog's berry-picking labor.
If they tried to do this today, Ogg would have to buy his rocks from someone with mineral rights, and Grog would have to pay some land owner to pick berries on "his" land. Ogg might even have to pay patent royalties to the holder of the stone ax patent. Parasitic "owners" who contribute no labor to the process must be appeased.
There's no reason why a system based on labor can't have a market that sets prices! Socialism does not necessarily imply a command economy.
Not all socailism is state socialism. Read up on libertarian socialism.
Stating a thing does not make it so. It's customary, when saying someting is "evident", to make at least some allusion to what the evidence is.
Ah, sophmoric libertarian philosophy.
If I have the medicine you need to live, I can coerce you quite well without force or threat of force, can I not?
If I and my partners control all the available food and you are hungry, we can coerce you quite well. If we own the land and you want a roof over your head, we can coerce you.
And if we own the capital, and you want a job, we can coerce you. That's capitalism in a nutshell.
Control of resources is highly effective coercion. That's why we often use blockades and sanctions to get other nations to do what we want.
Choice does not imply lack of coercion. If I point a gun at you to try to enforce my will, you can always choose to die.Yes! Yes! Yes!
That was the best! Using your character's heatbeat instead of hit points was brilliant.
There's an interview with one of the creators here.
Not wanting to lose a position of power, or to look foolish, is no excuse for violence - either on the personal or national level. ("I had to beat him up, or people would think I'm a wimp." is a favorite bully justification.)
And bombing people has nothing to do with justice, or with minimizing damage to the innocent. Current U.S. actions are comparable to firing into a crowd of people in an attempt to bring down a murderer standing in the middle.
Lebanon? Our entire Middle East policy is dominated by the black gold.
Kosovo? Again, not oil, but I'm sure that lead, zinc, cadmium, gold, silver, and coal mines have the interest of the US ruling class.
For plumbing, crafts, and metalwork, yes, the solder used is almost always lead-free.
For electonics, you'll still find the lead-bearing stuff in general use - the rosin core solder you get at your local Radio Shack is most likely still 60/40 tin/lead.
There is work underway to eventually eliminate the use of lead-bearing solders in electronics, but it's still a way off. And who knows how long it will be before it's adopted worldwide.
So solder/desolder only where there's adequate ventilation.
Nonsense. I learned that definition back in the 80's. (I also learned the difference between a shell and a web browser long before IE was written.) Do you thing RMS is a Micro$soft dupe when he notes, "But you can't use a kernel by itself; a kernel is useful only as part of a whole operating system."
Admittedly, "operating system" is a fuzzy term; some use it to mean only the kernel, while some refer to the system as a whole. "Kernel" and "system" are clearer, and I prefer to use them. Linux - i.e., what Linus wrote - is the kernel. The stuff that makes it a useable system - and the whole vision of a free (as in speech) Unix-like system - is GNU.
In day-to-day use, yes, I call my machine a Linux box. But I also call generic facial tissue "Kleenex", and the Canon copier in the office a "Xerox" machine. I am aware of the difference and make it clear when necessary.Mach is a microkernel, which is not the same thing as a kernel. If you have a microkernel, you build servers that sit on top of it to provide the usual kernel services; the Hurd is a collection of such servers. You could can the Hurd a kernel, loosely speaking. (GNU does.)
The Hurd is, according to GNU,
The fact that is happens in userspace does not imply that it's not part of the OS.
Linux (using the term in the strict sense) is a kernel. The Hurd is a kernel. A system with only a kernel is pretty damn useless.
OS = kernel + shell + basic system applications (things like ls and grep, not TeX or Mozilla). You can actually do things on a computer with only an operating system installed. Not much, but some things.
The rampant illiteracy of the courts does not change the content of the Constitution.
Unfortunately, the government acting in concert with that document has long been the exception rather than the rule.
The draft is in the same category with federal drug laws, censorship laws, and gun control laws - supported not by a firm foundation of law, but instead dangling from the barrel of a gun.
The opinions of the court on these topics belong on the dungheap of history, next to the Korematsu and Dred Scott decisions.
There are other ways to do market research than covert operations, you know.
If you'd like to know my product preferences, and the information is worth something to you, you could pay me to take a survey. Heck, if it was non-intusive enough I might do it for free. But I'll do it as my conscious choice, and I'll give away or trade the information that I desire, not what they can spy out of me.