It's like when people complain about spam. It takes longer to complain about it than it does to just delete the email.
I'm well aware of that, but that's not really the point. I do it to try and help good ISPs punish spammers so that spamming becomes less profitable, and to try and thwart fraudulent fast-buck schemes (there are a lot of them out there). Also to get open relays closed to make it hard to spam anonymously. So I'm doing it for both selfish and altruistic reasons.
Reporting spam does make sense, especially when you're getting flooded by it to the point where it's hard to find real messages. Check out spamcop.net for an easy method and an FAQ.
Yeah, the Nazis had two legs so everyone who has two legs is a Nazi!
This sort of "ad homenim" thing goes on a lot. The programme "Against Nature" on Channel 4 in Britain in 1998 tried to imply an association between environmentalists and Nazis because... er, because the Nazis liked planting trees and Hitler "was a vegetarian" (no he wasn't, he claimed to be but ate pork).... Ummm, convincing.
Very good point. With true anonymous virtual networks like FreeNet being worked on now, tracing could become literally impossible even with a warrant. I suppose one possibility, if someone's being harassed, is to try and lure them into revealing themself - but that's not necessarily going to work.
That's correct. It's substantiated as well. If you don't believe him/her, read the original article, or even better, this, from the Bavarian government no less:
As you can see, Monsanto (responsible for GM foods, the Terminator gene [though they backed off on that one], pesticides, Agent Orange...) and Wal-Mart have categories all to themselves!
Re:Technical superiority alone doesn't always win.
on
Stopping the FUD
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But wouldn't it be great if they had all the facts and made a truly informed decision?
Sure, and this site helps by trying to collect all the pro-Linux arguments in one place.
You might say, "Wouldn't it be better if there was an unbiased review of the pros and cons?". I would argue that is an illusory goal. No-one can be both sufficiently expert and sufficiently unbiased in the OS wars (nor in other controversial subjects like politics and religion). Rather than trusting someone else to be objective, I think people should make up their own minds by looking at both (several?) sides of the story.
Re:mainstream credibility of LinuxToday?
on
Stopping the FUD
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· Score: 1
But isn't the founding premise of this website the notion that the mainstream media is monolithically accepting of anti-Linux FUD?
No, that's simplistic. There is a tendency to repeat the FUD without fact-checking or contrary arguments, of course (just as in other areas of journalism). There are also some good pro-Linux pieces, even in the mainstream press. Particularly in the British computer press - if I had a penny for every time I'd seen a pro-Linux article or editorial I'd be a rich man!:)
If sources already exists, where is the need for this webpage?
They do exist, but they're scattered. The aim is to collect together the arguments in one place, and just skimming through it I find it very impressive. I'd advise you to actually read what your criticising before you criticise it.
We're talking about, in some cases, informing the people who think that...
Linux has no GUI
Linux has no tech support available
Linux is strictly a hobbyists choice
etc. etc. And yes, there really are plenty of people who think like this. Surveys show that plenty of people in Britain still haven't heard of the Internet yet!
Re:Only anti-Linux FUD or all FUD?
on
Stopping the FUD
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· Score: 1
But due to weird and unusual gravitational interactions, asteroids from the belt can sometimes be "plucked out" into a near-earth-crossing orbit. After all, just consider all the masses involved - quite a complex system, no? We can't even solve the 3-body problem precisely, much less the 10^whatever-body problem!
And how can you judge whether they "work"? Do they result in fewer false convictions, or fewer false acquitals, or what? But then how do you establish whether a conviction was false?
It might prove impossible to establish whether trials by judge or trials by jury work better in practice (unless there are clear trends, like judges being more racist than juries). All you can do is say that trial by jury is fairer for theoretical reasons, some of which I just mentioned.
It might very well be passed, although it would never "stick" for very long after judicial review. And during that time some people the government didn't happen to "like" might be threatened or arrested effectively for just using encryption, and there would be nothing they could do about it because they would be prevented from telling anyone about it by that law!
It's a bit like the CDA which was obviously unconstitutional yet they passed it anyway. More an act of public relations than an act of legislation. In this case I think it's a measure designed to give police even greater powers to harass political activists and suspected criminals. But in the long term it is stupid because it can't possible stand up to human rights scrutiny.
How can you say that? Judges in Britain are predominantly white, male, small-c conservative, etc. A lot of them are Freemasons and/or go hunting. Do you seriously think they are likely to treat fairly a black woman accused of violence at an anti-hunting demo? I think not!
Juries are supposed to be drawn from a cross-section of the population, and the mere fact that there are multiple people in itself helps to tackle biases (as long as not all the jurors have the same bias).
Never! Breaking right to privacy, right to fair trial, right to not be forced to self-incriminate... throw the book at it!!
In fact, I don't know when the Human Rights Bill will pass (has it passed yet?), but this could go down merely on a Judicial Review against the Human Rights Act, right? It wouldn't even need to have to go all the way to the ECHR. That's supposed to be the point of incorporating the European Convention on Human Rights into British law, I thought.
It's totally amazing how they can be passing human rights acts and freedom of information etc. with the one hand, and yet be taking away fundamental human rights with the other!
I haven't read the SciAm article, but I can add that Roger Penrose, the renowned physicist and mathematician, has written two whole books focusing on the implication of Godel's theorems for the "artificial intelligence" project - and thus for understanding the way our minds work (particularly wrt mathematics). I give them both five stars!
The Emperor's New Mind - not too technical but hard going nevertheless and Shadows of the Mind - tightly reasoned arguments, devoting dozens of pages to all kinds of different criticims he has encountered.
(I provide the Amazon links not to make affiliate $$$ but to provide the reader reviews so that people can judge for themselves whether the books look interesting enough to read.)
(There's also "The Large, the Small and the Human Mind", edited by him, but that's not worth reading IMO.)
Psyche journal online has several critiques of SOTM which he responds to and tries to rebut. This is much much more techie than SOTM. Whether he suceeds or not in proving his case is still disputed!
1. Linux, as far as I know, did not start as a "the FSF's GNU project".
Most ordinary people perceive Linux to be the complete distro, not just the kernel - and Red Hat, SuSE etc. encourage this impression. While the latter is probably the technically correct definition (RMS for one certainly claims that it is), under the former definition Linux really did start with the GNU project (AFAIK), which predated the kernel.
2. Linux, AFAIK is not a "reverse engineered Unix clone".
Of course it is! In the sense that it was developed by initially trying to emulate the behaviour of other unices as far as possible (pragmatically). Certainly the GNU tools were designed with high compatibility with UNIX in mind, and obviously the kernel had to be quite compatible (and it is certified POSIX compliant - but then again, so is NT!). But of course "clone" doesn't do it justice.
They haven't actually claimed SCSL is open source though have they? They just set it up so that people might assume that way - and sure enough, people are even starting to think that Sun said SCSL was "open source". Which they never did (to my knowledge).
Slashdot Mirror
I'm well aware of that, but that's not really the point. I do it to try and help good ISPs punish spammers so that spamming becomes less profitable, and to try and thwart fraudulent fast-buck schemes (there are a lot of them out there). Also to get open relays closed to make it hard to spam anonymously. So I'm doing it for both selfish and altruistic reasons.
Reporting spam does make sense, especially when you're getting flooded by it to the point where it's hard to find real messages. Check out spamcop.net for an easy method and an FAQ.
This sort of "ad homenim" thing goes on a lot. The programme "Against Nature" on Channel 4 in Britain in 1998 tried to imply an association between environmentalists and Nazis because... er, because the Nazis liked planting trees and Hitler "was a vegetarian" (no he wasn't, he claimed to be but ate pork).... Ummm, convincing.
I don't know. It's a worrying question.
http://www.innenministerium.bayern.de/english/scie ntology/
WHAT THE F***!?! This is even scarier than I thought. Undeletable trojans, here we come...
Dmoz: Allegedly Unethical Firms.
As you can see, Monsanto (responsible for GM foods, the Terminator gene [though they backed off on that one], pesticides, Agent Orange...) and Wal-Mart have categories all to themselves!
Sure, and this site helps by trying to collect all the pro-Linux arguments in one place.
You might say, "Wouldn't it be better if there was an unbiased review of the pros and cons?". I would argue that is an illusory goal. No-one can be both sufficiently expert and sufficiently unbiased in the OS wars (nor in other controversial subjects like politics and religion). Rather than trusting someone else to be objective, I think people should make up their own minds by looking at both (several?) sides of the story.
No, that's simplistic. There is a tendency to repeat the FUD without fact-checking or contrary arguments, of course (just as in other areas of journalism). There are also some good pro-Linux pieces, even in the mainstream press. Particularly in the British computer press - if I had a penny for every time I'd seen a pro-Linux article or editorial I'd be a rich man! :)
If sources already exists, where is the need for this webpage?
They do exist, but they're scattered. The aim is to collect together the arguments in one place, and just skimming through it I find it very impressive. I'd advise you to actually read what your criticising before you criticise it.
We're talking about, in some cases, informing the people who think that...
- Linux has no GUI
- Linux has no tech support available
- Linux is strictly a hobbyists choice
etc. etc. And yes, there really are plenty of people who think like this. Surveys show that plenty of people in Britain still haven't heard of the Internet yet!Open Directory: Planetary_Defense/ and
http://dspace.dial.pipex.co m/town/terrace/fr77/more.htm.
This only underlines the conclusion that this Centre (British spelling please!) is urgently needed.
http://www.cubicle2.freeserve.co.uk/
Care to explain the confusion, mindscream?
It might prove impossible to establish whether trials by judge or trials by jury work better in practice (unless there are clear trends, like judges being more racist than juries). All you can do is say that trial by jury is fairer for theoretical reasons, some of which I just mentioned.
It's a bit like the CDA which was obviously unconstitutional yet they passed it anyway. More an act of public relations than an act of legislation. In this case I think it's a measure designed to give police even greater powers to harass political activists and suspected criminals. But in the long term it is stupid because it can't possible stand up to human rights scrutiny.
Juries are supposed to be drawn from a cross-section of the population, and the mere fact that there are multiple people in itself helps to tackle biases (as long as not all the jurors have the same bias).
It really is. There's been no doubt about that in all the press articles about this (AFAIK).
In fact, I don't know when the Human Rights Bill will pass (has it passed yet?), but this could go down merely on a Judicial Review against the Human Rights Act, right? It wouldn't even need to have to go all the way to the ECHR. That's supposed to be the point of incorporating the European Convention on Human Rights into British law, I thought.
It's totally amazing how they can be passing human rights acts and freedom of information etc. with the one hand, and yet be taking away fundamental human rights with the other!
The Emperor's New Mind - not too technical but hard going nevertheless
and Shadows of the Mind - tightly reasoned arguments, devoting dozens of pages to all kinds of different criticims he has encountered.
(I provide the Amazon links not to make affiliate $$$ but to provide the reader reviews so that people can judge for themselves whether the books look interesting enough to read.)
(There's also "The Large, the Small and the Human Mind", edited by him, but that's not worth reading IMO.)
Psyche journal online has several critiques of SOTM which he responds to and tries to rebut. This is much much more techie than SOTM. Whether he suceeds or not in proving his case is still disputed!
Most ordinary people perceive Linux to be the complete distro, not just the kernel - and Red Hat, SuSE etc. encourage this impression. While the latter is probably the technically correct definition (RMS for one certainly claims that it is), under the former definition Linux really did start with the GNU project (AFAIK), which predated the kernel.
2. Linux, AFAIK is not a "reverse engineered Unix clone".
Of course it is! In the sense that it was developed by initially trying to emulate the behaviour of other unices as far as possible (pragmatically). Certainly the GNU tools were designed with high compatibility with UNIX in mind, and obviously the kernel had to be quite compatible (and it is certified POSIX compliant - but then again, so is NT!). But of course "clone" doesn't do it justice.
Open Directory: Open Source Java