You seem to be missing some very important concepts (the original poster even more so).
Concept #1: Government acts on behalf of it's own interests. If said country's interests are the same as another country's, then great. Most of the time it doesn't work that way. Let's use your confused concept of bin laden for this one: bin laden didn't like the Soviets. The US didn't like the Soviets either. Have you ever heard the phrase "your enemy's enemy is my friend?" Naturally the US gave bin laden some weapons. One thing to keep in mind is that we never sponsored him in any government. He was always a rogue. He was even disowned by his family. Citing him in your post was not a totally logical decision (but who ever accused a liberal of being logical?) You are also confusing the Mujahadeem with the Taliban. Not very poise.
Concept #2: Morality. It is grey in international relations. This is a result of different value systems (e.g. different definitions of 'good'). This is where socialists (liberals) have a lot of trouble. I can't support everyone's comments, but is the US inherently evil because of freedom (see chapter 1,What's So Great About America by Dinesh D'Souza)? This is relavent as to why we are being attacked by Islamic terrorists.
Concept #3: Good citation practices. This is a problem for a lot of people, so don't feel too bad. It's really hard for me to remember 1984 because I was 2 years old back then. If you could post links to relevant sources in your comments, at the very least cite a book or article, it would be a great help. I've never heard before that the US gave Iraq chemicals . This in peticular would be an enlightening read.
Concept #4: Nuclear Weapons. No one in their right mind actually wants to use these things (see Concept #2). The whole purpose of having these weapons is so that one need not use them. Husein is so dangerous because he's actually crazy enough to use them. North Korea hasn't passed that test yet, even though they don't actually have 'the bomb' (but they're trying to get one) and Israel isn't that stupid (they ARE pretty stupid). This relates prominantly with liberating the Iraqi people. Their leader is NUTS (in a BAD way)! Also, you can thank Mr. Clinton for dallying. It was HIS administration that was in office when opportunity was prime to take care of all these terrorists. It was during HIS administration that the US was beginning to be severly attacked. All Mr. Clinton did was raise highway speed limits and play around too much with Concept #2. The past can't be changed now, but I believe that Mr. Bush is trying to deal with it.
I hope that this will help you and other slashdotters. Have a nice day!
Perhaps their intention is not to harm the OSS project, but an association has been drawn between 'free as in (root)beer' and 'free' as in pirated. This isn't the first time they've gone after legitimate software, either; if you have image mounting software like daemon tools installed, the latest update of War3 won't even allow you to play the game. Blizzard ass_umes that anyone using that software is a pirate.
What Blizzard did sucks. How else should it be said? So they didn't intend to cause trouble. How does that fix the situation?
Let me use myself as an example of someone that legally owns War3 and can't use Battle.net: I use linux, and so I have to emulate the game with wine. It works fine for LAN games, but not for Battle.net.
Good intentions can and have caused some serious problems, so Blizzard doesn't get any brownie points there. They want to go after piracy; good for them. What they are missing is the fact that anything they engineer can be reverse engineered. People that write software hacks do so with binaries decompiled into assembly. Blizzard can mess around with all the petty irritations they like, but the fact is that they aren't seriously preventing a pirate from doing what a pirate does. What they are really doing is making things harder for the legitimate user. I do respect your stance, however. Many friends of mine that rely on software for their livelyhood feel the same way.
How many linux users change their browser string so that a given webpage will appear properly? How many of us reject cookies and allow only very limited java and javascript permissions? I don't believe there's anything wrong with the population sample, but I question the effectiveness and correctness of the collecting mechanism. Sure M$ has the dominate marketshare in desktops. Who will dispute that? But this kind of article goes from insult to injury. Websidestory should ask themselves who's story they're really telling.
Slashdot Mirror
You seem to be missing some very important concepts (the original poster even more so).
Concept #1: Government acts on behalf of it's own interests. If said country's interests are the same as another country's, then great. Most of the time it doesn't work that way. Let's use your confused concept of bin laden for this one: bin laden didn't like the Soviets. The US didn't like the Soviets either. Have you ever heard the phrase "your enemy's enemy is my friend?" Naturally the US gave bin laden some weapons. One thing to keep in mind is that we never sponsored him in any government. He was always a rogue. He was even disowned by his family. Citing him in your post was not a totally logical decision (but who ever accused a liberal of being logical?) You are also confusing the Mujahadeem with the Taliban. Not very poise.
Concept #2: Morality. It is grey in international relations. This is a result of different value systems (e.g. different definitions of 'good'). This is where socialists (liberals) have a lot of trouble. I can't support everyone's comments, but is the US inherently evil because of freedom (see chapter 1,What's So Great About America by Dinesh D'Souza)? This is relavent as to why we are being attacked by Islamic terrorists.
Concept #3: Good citation practices. This is a problem for a lot of people, so don't feel too bad. It's really hard for me to remember 1984 because I was 2 years old back then. If you could post links to relevant sources in your comments, at the very least cite a book or article, it would be a great help. I've never heard before that the US gave Iraq chemicals . This in peticular would be an enlightening read.
Concept #4: Nuclear Weapons. No one in their right mind actually wants to use these things (see Concept #2). The whole purpose of having these weapons is so that one need not use them. Husein is so dangerous because he's actually crazy enough to use them. North Korea hasn't passed that test yet, even though they don't actually have 'the bomb' (but they're trying to get one) and Israel isn't that stupid (they ARE pretty stupid). This relates prominantly with liberating the Iraqi people. Their leader is NUTS (in a BAD way)! Also, you can thank Mr. Clinton for dallying. It was HIS administration that was in office when opportunity was prime to take care of all these terrorists. It was during HIS administration that the US was beginning to be severly attacked. All Mr. Clinton did was raise highway speed limits and play around too much with Concept #2. The past can't be changed now, but I believe that Mr. Bush is trying to deal with it.
I hope that this will help you and other slashdotters. Have a nice day!
Perhaps their intention is not to harm the OSS project, but an association has been drawn between 'free as in (root)beer' and 'free' as in pirated. This isn't the first time they've gone after legitimate software, either; if you have image mounting software like daemon tools installed, the latest update of War3 won't even allow you to play the game. Blizzard ass_umes that anyone using that software is a pirate. What Blizzard did sucks. How else should it be said? So they didn't intend to cause trouble. How does that fix the situation? Let me use myself as an example of someone that legally owns War3 and can't use Battle.net: I use linux, and so I have to emulate the game with wine. It works fine for LAN games, but not for Battle.net. Good intentions can and have caused some serious problems, so Blizzard doesn't get any brownie points there. They want to go after piracy; good for them. What they are missing is the fact that anything they engineer can be reverse engineered. People that write software hacks do so with binaries decompiled into assembly. Blizzard can mess around with all the petty irritations they like, but the fact is that they aren't seriously preventing a pirate from doing what a pirate does. What they are really doing is making things harder for the legitimate user. I do respect your stance, however. Many friends of mine that rely on software for their livelyhood feel the same way.
The phrase "Think Stupid" was a parody, not something to be taken literally. Let the man do what he does well -- make nice laptops, and workstations.
How many linux users change their browser string so that a given webpage will appear properly? How many of us reject cookies and allow only very limited java and javascript permissions? I don't believe there's anything wrong with the population sample, but I question the effectiveness and correctness of the collecting mechanism. Sure M$ has the dominate marketshare in desktops. Who will dispute that? But this kind of article goes from insult to injury. Websidestory should ask themselves who's story they're really telling.