Oh, I agree, the BSD license might actually be better than the GPL for ensuring software freedom just because it puts the onus on the developer community and not some non-existant legal process to make things free. Linux people are sitting on the sidelines because (a) a lot of them tend to adopt Linus' pragmatic approach and think short-term, and (b) those who don't expect the license and the law to fight the fight for them, hence this article.
Fact: I need good 3D support. NOW. Not in 2000 years. [...] THIS, sir, is not short-sighted.
I believe, sir, that this is the very definition of short-sightedness.
With the slight problem that writing such a driver is not easy. In fact, among all drivers, these are one of the hardest to write. [...] And don't tell me that someone will write an OS driver that can compete with the CS ones, this is just plain wrong.
Who do you suppose writes the drivers at nVidia and ATI? Do you think they have superhuman robots doing all their coding for them? If they are in fact real people, what makes them better than OSS coders?
Today's features would be avaiable in 5-7 years, if people would work 24/7 on them. 5-7 years are a LONG time in this business.
Um. Did you need a calculator to figure that out? How many people are we talking here? I think you may have just made up a number here. I'm really getting tired of typing the phrase "no basis in fact".
So the pessimistic naysayers would have said five years ago upon being told that Sun would soon make the bulk of its software OSS. Again, bullshit defeatist thinking, without any factual reasoning. I do understand the challenges involved, but I don't think they are insurmountable by any stretch of the imagination.
Yeah, it's great to be an idealist, but there are some of us who want usable 3D.
This is a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. The reason that open-source drivers for nVidia and ATI cards don't have usable 3D is precisely because you and others continue to use the proprietary drivers. It short-circuits the demand for free drivers just enough to satiate people into not coding them. You may think you're being pragmatic, but you're really just being short-sighted.
...it's not likely that NVidia and ATI will ever open their drivers completely.
You say it's not likely, but you give no reason. Fine, let's assume it's unlikely. They wouldn't have to open their drivers. They'd just have to open the hardware spec enough to allow open driver coding. It could easily work business-wise for them, since they could offload a lot of coding work onto the free software community.
Free Software is great for some things, but occasionally the FSF has to recognize that some proprietary elements are unavoidable.
Again, you're just saying this, but giving no reason why. There is absolutely no valid reason why any proprietary element is unavoidable! That's just bullshit defeatist thinking with no basis in fact other than the status quo: "Things have been this way for as long as I care to remember, so how could they ever be different?"
Linux should be *open* to using either. If not than it's not really a "open" tool.
This is why people argue that the BSD license is more open than the GPL. However, the restriction against linking with proprietary code is what ensures that certain free software actually gets written. It's a means to an end that ultimately results in true openness.
Also, unlike the gulags, those put there were caught red-handed committing atrocities. [...] You have to be a very bad person to end up there.
As the other poster pointed out, this is not necessarily true. Caught red-handed by whom? Most of the detainees aren't in there as a result of American investigations. It's not a prison for convicted criminals, it's a round-up camp for suspected troublemakers (read: GULAG). If you actually had to be bad to end up there, there would be trials and convictions.
Aside from the 1.21 GW thing, if the GGP was trying to be funny making a reference to BTTF, he/she utterly failed... sounded to me like it was totally serious...
You've made your bigotry quite clear with your unapologetic ignorance and your IMO's, but I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and take your post somewhat seriously for comment.
They waged war against our country and are being kept alive only out of the restraint of the American government. [...] These aren't innocent bystanders. They're warriors commited to killing Americans.
Because someone told you they did? Do you realize that the vast majority of the detainees there weren't even captured by U.S. forces, but rather by bounty hunters? The America you seem so intent on defending was founded upon, among other things, the ideas that one is innocent until proven guilty, and that all people are created equal. Many prisoners held at Guantanamo are detained indefinitely without charge or conviction. By conveniently choosing to afford rights only to your own citizens, you are nullifying the validity of your own ideology.
These are non-uniformed combatants (to whom the Genevea convention most certainly does NOT apply). They could (and should IMO) be drug out and shot at a moment's notice, quite legally.
While the Bush administration has sneakily avoided classifying the prisoners as POW to get around the Geneva convention (which no other government in the world has supported, mind you), the U.S. has in the past signed other international treaties that clearly ban what they are doing with Guantanamo. So no, it wouldn't be legal, not by a longshot.
If you want to know torture, examine a Muslim prison where fingers, hands, eyes, tongues are removed. Feeding is optional. Ever seen a "stoning" (and no, I don't mean you and and your friends with a bong)? A beheading?
Where are these Muslim prisons? Are you just making this up? Provide some facts, we don't want to hear your sensationalist bullshit.
...to call this one of the worst prisons in the world demonstrates a remarkable ignorance of real prisons.
Amnesty International called the Guantanamo Bay detainment camp the "gulag of our times", and the U.N. has called it a "human rights scandal". I won't comment on how bad it is relative to other prisons worldwide, but the existence of 'worse' prisons doesn't somehow justify the existence of Guantanamo Bay's.
I don't know what the AC is talking about but yes, 1 J/s = 1 W, thus, 1.21 MJ/us = 1.21 GW.
OTOH, I don't know where you get the idea that 1 GW is precisely the amount of power needed to disable a missile, and that the only factors worthy of consideration are said power and the 'effective range' of the laser...
Wal-Mart pushes a shitload of games. Thus, they have a shitload of influence over the game publishers. The game publishers don't go out of business precisely because they bow to Wal-Mart's (and to varying lesser degrees, other retailers') demands. From the publisher's point of view, it's only profitable to snub Wal-Mart and their ilk if the intrinsic quality and appeal of the unadultered game can outmarket the mighty retail machine with a watered-down version.
Fair enough. I'm an electrical engineer, so I understand that there are plenty of applications of software that do actually take advantage of today's immense computing capabilities and that there are things we need still more computing power to do. Those applications are coded well, because they still have pressure upon them to be efficient.
My comment was more in the context of PC hardware and desktop software (since TFA is about the $100 laptop), and my point is that in that context computing power far exceeds the need of its users. Computationally intensive applications like yours drive the demand for fast hardware, not desktop applications, but the manufacturers push this progressively faster hardware onto the desktop market even if that market doesn't need it. With all this extra headroom, programmers add features which take up resources that people don't need, and get sloppy with their coding. The result is bloated and inefficient software that runs well on modern hardware but can't run on older hardware, for no good reason. This in turn drives people to buy faster hardware, and the cycle continues...
This mentality, while pervasive among supposed computer experts, is entirely untrue. Software is bloated. These days, hardware is getting so big and fast that programmers don't have to optimize their software to cram functionality into something that will run decently (resulting in a better program). We don't need this new hardware; there simply isn't enough human need for functionality to take advantage of it. Instead of cramming functionality, the programmers take up every ounce of system resources they can now by being lazy. Think about it: 20 years ago, computer science taught you to write good programs in relatively low-level languages; now they teach you to program in languages like Java with virtually no regard for efficiency. Programs could be written much, much more efficiently, and most of what we use today could easily be made to run on hardware over ten years old if more effort was put into optimizing it.
But then they couldn't force you to upgrade your computer every couple years, could they?
There's nothing wrong with the Linux 'core', the Linux 'core' is the kernel (Linux == kernel), and it's quite easy to configure the sources to compile only what you need. If by the 'core' you mean the base GNU system, I don't see what the problem is, it's very clean (and, I should add, mostly the exact same system as FreeBSD uses).
There's something wrong with a lot of GPL packages, yes. However, I've found at least one of each for virtually everything I do that runs well with minimal dependencies. And I use CLI and Blackbox, so it's not like I'm talking about a bunch of interdependent KDE or Gnome packages.
I use Gentoo Linux and FreeBSD, they're both quite clean when properly installed and maintained. You're probably just not liking the bloatedness of distros like Red Hat (which, by the way, was still bloated 7 years ago).
There are plenty of electromechanical devices other than electromagnetic solenoids and motors out there, capable of exerting physical force controlled by an electrical impulse (in this case from an RF receiver). Examples: piezo buzzers and liquid crystals. I'm not aware of anything other than solenoids or motors that could exert the kind of force necessary to release a latch of reasonable size, but even if it is just a solenoid and the 'smart materials' stuff is PR hype, it doesn't detract from the usefulness of the product. Engineering is about implementing a solution or improvement in a practical way.
The 'intelligence' (from what I gather) comes from the fact that multiple combinations of latches can be programmed to open on different button presses. That way there's no need for a manual explaining exactly which fasteners need to be opened to do each task: you just hit the right button and all the correct fasteners pop open.
Mechanical Latch + Electromechanical Actuator + Programmable RF Control Circuit + Coded Transmitter = fairly innovative (if potentially insecure) product with a broad range of applications. I don't know what more you're looking for.
We allow our children to see violent imagery everywhere, from our games to the news. But we are so violently against sexual imagery.
I've often noticed a stark difference of values on this point between Canada and the U.S. when it comes to media. I live in a border city in Canada and get a split of American and Canadian broadcast TV from Detroit and Toronto. Before the watershed, the American channels avoid sexual content like the plague but seem quite content to show gunfights and the ensuing gore in graphic detail. By contrast, at the same time on a Canadian station, you could easily see a nipple or two or even catch a softcore sex scene, but you're far less likely to see even a fistfight without it cutting to the next scene or a commercial.
Personally I kinda prefer the way the Canadian stations do it.:-)
In college, I once ordered a book only to find it was the "overseas" paperback edition. Beware of these, not only are they fake but they will not last to heavy use and have no color/durability.
I'm not sure what you do with your books, but to me "heavy use" means lugging it around in a bag and reading it once in a while. I used these books for a lot of my classes throughout electrical engineering, a program that made heavier use of its books than I should have liked, and they worked out quite nicely. I bought good textbooks when I planned on keeping them, but if it was just for the duration of the course I paid 1/4 as much for the cheapo edition. Just don't pay full price for them.
Your comparison of this laptop initiative to giving a man a fish is very poor.
Giving people laptops, without getting into too much detail, is essentially giving people in developing nations access to information that they have no other way of obtaining. It has the potential to have a somewhat analogous effect to the introduction of the printing press in Europe in the middle ages: the common uneducated person suddenly has access to something that traditionally has been controlled by a few elite.
Education is not something you can squander, like a fish or money or even a temporary home. Information doesn't cost anything to give, and ideally lasts forever. The only thing that has an expense attached to it is the means of distributing the information - in this case, $100 per laptop, plus some distribution and infrastructure costs.
Further, playing down the merits of this project simply because there exist better solutions is irresponsible. You are essentially claiming that we should do nothing if we aren't going to completely rework the foreign policies and internal structures of virtually every government on earth. Nothing about this project is stopping you and I from trying to make bigger and better changes (aside from the expended focus, energy, time and money on the part of those who participate in the project - all those things are renewable resources). Mother Teresa is a good parallel to consider.
You are correct, a lack of opportunity is what is holding the 'less fortunate' people down. However, education is opportunity. It is precisely what the common population in underdeveloped nations needs to escape the shadow of their oppressors at home and abroad. Giving them laptops is not like giving them a fish. Giving them laptops is like giving them a library card and a ride to the library; all that's left is for some well-meaning librarian to point them to some books about fishing.
What OSS licenses besides the GPL would have been prohibitive to it having become as popular as it has become?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but in 1991 I believe the only software license around that involved community contribution back into the codebase was the GPL. Most "OSS" licenses at the time were academic or between companies for development purposes. OSS was quoted because the term wasn't coined until 1998.
Bullshit. You could have spent the time you've spent posting on Slashdot working for a charity instead. Be reasonable. You're being hypocritical saying that Google is evil because they don't do everything they can, when you clearly don't. Your response may be that you do more somehow, but then we're not dealing with absolutes anymore and you're no more qualified to say where the line should be drawn than a Google exec. You're shooting yourself in the foot with your holier-than-thou self-righteous attitude.
A human can be expected to not intentionally act or fail to act resulting in someone else's loss (loss encompassing all causal negative effects), but only within reason. There's no way any person can live their entire life, or even a day of it, without somehow causing someone else loss. Just by buying food to eat, you have added yourself to the demand curve and thus helped increase food prices while there are people who can't afford food. So there's a line that takes into account the relative gain and loss of everyone involved and effects that propagate into the future; I won't tell you where it should be drawn, but it's not at either extreme.
By the same token, a human can be expected to intentionally act or fail to act resulting in someone else's gain, but again only within reason. No one donates every penny of their disposable income and every free minute of their time to charities, and even if they did, to be efficient they'd have to figure out what charities or other actions on their parts would likely result in the best future outcome, a heuristic problem quite beyond the computing power of the human brain. There's a line here too, and again, I won't tell you where to draw it, but personally I don't think Google has crossed to the "evil" side of it quite yet (impressive enough for any company), especially considering there are reasons other than tax deductions to only donate to registered charities.
Slashdot Mirror
But what will pacman mean to my children / grandchildren?
Kids still play with yo-yos and hula hoops.
69 mpg, rather...
I live in Canada, and I don't think I've ever seen a motorcyclist not wearing a helmet whilst driving on any actual road.
And Smart cars can get up to 60 mpg on regular unleaded...
My Canadian diesel Smart was getting around 89 mpg on a trip from Windsor to Montreal (850km or so).
Oh, I agree, the BSD license might actually be better than the GPL for ensuring software freedom just because it puts the onus on the developer community and not some non-existant legal process to make things free. Linux people are sitting on the sidelines because (a) a lot of them tend to adopt Linus' pragmatic approach and think short-term, and (b) those who don't expect the license and the law to fight the fight for them, hence this article.
Fact: I need good 3D support. NOW. Not in 2000 years. [...] THIS, sir, is not short-sighted.
I believe, sir, that this is the very definition of short-sightedness.
With the slight problem that writing such a driver is not easy. In fact, among all drivers, these are one of the hardest to write. [...] And don't tell me that someone will write an OS driver that can compete with the CS ones, this is just plain wrong.
Who do you suppose writes the drivers at nVidia and ATI? Do you think they have superhuman robots doing all their coding for them? If they are in fact real people, what makes them better than OSS coders?
Today's features would be avaiable in 5-7 years, if people would work 24/7 on them. 5-7 years are a LONG time in this business.
Um. Did you need a calculator to figure that out? How many people are we talking here? I think you may have just made up a number here. I'm really getting tired of typing the phrase "no basis in fact".
So the pessimistic naysayers would have said five years ago upon being told that Sun would soon make the bulk of its software OSS. Again, bullshit defeatist thinking, without any factual reasoning. I do understand the challenges involved, but I don't think they are insurmountable by any stretch of the imagination.
Yeah, it's great to be an idealist, but there are some of us who want usable 3D.
This is a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. The reason that open-source drivers for nVidia and ATI cards don't have usable 3D is precisely because you and others continue to use the proprietary drivers. It short-circuits the demand for free drivers just enough to satiate people into not coding them. You may think you're being pragmatic, but you're really just being short-sighted.
You say it's not likely, but you give no reason. Fine, let's assume it's unlikely. They wouldn't have to open their drivers. They'd just have to open the hardware spec enough to allow open driver coding. It could easily work business-wise for them, since they could offload a lot of coding work onto the free software community.
Free Software is great for some things, but occasionally the FSF has to recognize that some proprietary elements are unavoidable.
Again, you're just saying this, but giving no reason why. There is absolutely no valid reason why any proprietary element is unavoidable! That's just bullshit defeatist thinking with no basis in fact other than the status quo: "Things have been this way for as long as I care to remember, so how could they ever be different?"
Linux should be *open* to using either. If not than it's not really a "open" tool.
This is why people argue that the BSD license is more open than the GPL. However, the restriction against linking with proprietary code is what ensures that certain free software actually gets written. It's a means to an end that ultimately results in true openness.
Also, unlike the gulags, those put there were caught red-handed committing atrocities. [...] You have to be a very bad person to end up there.
As the other poster pointed out, this is not necessarily true. Caught red-handed by whom? Most of the detainees aren't in there as a result of American investigations. It's not a prison for convicted criminals, it's a round-up camp for suspected troublemakers (read: GULAG). If you actually had to be bad to end up there, there would be trials and convictions.
Dude, I'm not retarded.
Aside from the 1.21 GW thing, if the GGP was trying to be funny making a reference to BTTF, he/she utterly failed... sounded to me like it was totally serious...
You've made your bigotry quite clear with your unapologetic ignorance and your IMO's, but I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and take your post somewhat seriously for comment.
They waged war against our country and are being kept alive only out of the restraint of the American government. [...] These aren't innocent bystanders. They're warriors commited to killing Americans.
Because someone told you they did? Do you realize that the vast majority of the detainees there weren't even captured by U.S. forces, but rather by bounty hunters? The America you seem so intent on defending was founded upon, among other things, the ideas that one is innocent until proven guilty, and that all people are created equal. Many prisoners held at Guantanamo are detained indefinitely without charge or conviction. By conveniently choosing to afford rights only to your own citizens, you are nullifying the validity of your own ideology.
These are non-uniformed combatants (to whom the Genevea convention most certainly does NOT apply). They could (and should IMO) be drug out and shot at a moment's notice, quite legally.
While the Bush administration has sneakily avoided classifying the prisoners as POW to get around the Geneva convention (which no other government in the world has supported, mind you), the U.S. has in the past signed other international treaties that clearly ban what they are doing with Guantanamo. So no, it wouldn't be legal, not by a longshot.
If you want to know torture, examine a Muslim prison where fingers, hands, eyes, tongues are removed. Feeding is optional. Ever seen a "stoning" (and no, I don't mean you and and your friends with a bong)? A beheading?
Where are these Muslim prisons? Are you just making this up? Provide some facts, we don't want to hear your sensationalist bullshit.
Amnesty International called the Guantanamo Bay detainment camp the "gulag of our times", and the U.N. has called it a "human rights scandal". I won't comment on how bad it is relative to other prisons worldwide, but the existence of 'worse' prisons doesn't somehow justify the existence of Guantanamo Bay's.
I don't know what the AC is talking about but yes, 1 J/s = 1 W, thus, 1.21 MJ/us = 1.21 GW.
OTOH, I don't know where you get the idea that 1 GW is precisely the amount of power needed to disable a missile, and that the only factors worthy of consideration are said power and the 'effective range' of the laser...
Key word: masses.
Wal-Mart pushes a shitload of games. Thus, they have a shitload of influence over the game publishers. The game publishers don't go out of business precisely because they bow to Wal-Mart's (and to varying lesser degrees, other retailers') demands. From the publisher's point of view, it's only profitable to snub Wal-Mart and their ilk if the intrinsic quality and appeal of the unadultered game can outmarket the mighty retail machine with a watered-down version.
Fair enough. I'm an electrical engineer, so I understand that there are plenty of applications of software that do actually take advantage of today's immense computing capabilities and that there are things we need still more computing power to do. Those applications are coded well, because they still have pressure upon them to be efficient.
My comment was more in the context of PC hardware and desktop software (since TFA is about the $100 laptop), and my point is that in that context computing power far exceeds the need of its users. Computationally intensive applications like yours drive the demand for fast hardware, not desktop applications, but the manufacturers push this progressively faster hardware onto the desktop market even if that market doesn't need it. With all this extra headroom, programmers add features which take up resources that people don't need, and get sloppy with their coding. The result is bloated and inefficient software that runs well on modern hardware but can't run on older hardware, for no good reason. This in turn drives people to buy faster hardware, and the cycle continues...
This mentality, while pervasive among supposed computer experts, is entirely untrue. Software is bloated. These days, hardware is getting so big and fast that programmers don't have to optimize their software to cram functionality into something that will run decently (resulting in a better program). We don't need this new hardware; there simply isn't enough human need for functionality to take advantage of it. Instead of cramming functionality, the programmers take up every ounce of system resources they can now by being lazy. Think about it: 20 years ago, computer science taught you to write good programs in relatively low-level languages; now they teach you to program in languages like Java with virtually no regard for efficiency. Programs could be written much, much more efficiently, and most of what we use today could easily be made to run on hardware over ten years old if more effort was put into optimizing it.
But then they couldn't force you to upgrade your computer every couple years, could they?
There's nothing wrong with the Linux 'core', the Linux 'core' is the kernel (Linux == kernel), and it's quite easy to configure the sources to compile only what you need. If by the 'core' you mean the base GNU system, I don't see what the problem is, it's very clean (and, I should add, mostly the exact same system as FreeBSD uses).
There's something wrong with a lot of GPL packages, yes. However, I've found at least one of each for virtually everything I do that runs well with minimal dependencies. And I use CLI and Blackbox, so it's not like I'm talking about a bunch of interdependent KDE or Gnome packages.
I use Gentoo Linux and FreeBSD, they're both quite clean when properly installed and maintained. You're probably just not liking the bloatedness of distros like Red Hat (which, by the way, was still bloated 7 years ago).
There are plenty of electromechanical devices other than electromagnetic solenoids and motors out there, capable of exerting physical force controlled by an electrical impulse (in this case from an RF receiver). Examples: piezo buzzers and liquid crystals. I'm not aware of anything other than solenoids or motors that could exert the kind of force necessary to release a latch of reasonable size, but even if it is just a solenoid and the 'smart materials' stuff is PR hype, it doesn't detract from the usefulness of the product. Engineering is about implementing a solution or improvement in a practical way.
The 'intelligence' (from what I gather) comes from the fact that multiple combinations of latches can be programmed to open on different button presses. That way there's no need for a manual explaining exactly which fasteners need to be opened to do each task: you just hit the right button and all the correct fasteners pop open.
Mechanical Latch + Electromechanical Actuator + Programmable RF Control Circuit + Coded Transmitter = fairly innovative (if potentially insecure) product with a broad range of applications. I don't know what more you're looking for.
We allow our children to see violent imagery everywhere, from our games to the news. But we are so violently against sexual imagery.
I've often noticed a stark difference of values on this point between Canada and the U.S. when it comes to media. I live in a border city in Canada and get a split of American and Canadian broadcast TV from Detroit and Toronto. Before the watershed, the American channels avoid sexual content like the plague but seem quite content to show gunfights and the ensuing gore in graphic detail. By contrast, at the same time on a Canadian station, you could easily see a nipple or two or even catch a softcore sex scene, but you're far less likely to see even a fistfight without it cutting to the next scene or a commercial.
Personally I kinda prefer the way the Canadian stations do it. :-)
In college, I once ordered a book only to find it was the "overseas" paperback edition. Beware of these, not only are they fake but they will not last to heavy use and have no color/durability.
I'm not sure what you do with your books, but to me "heavy use" means lugging it around in a bag and reading it once in a while. I used these books for a lot of my classes throughout electrical engineering, a program that made heavier use of its books than I should have liked, and they worked out quite nicely. I bought good textbooks when I planned on keeping them, but if it was just for the duration of the course I paid 1/4 as much for the cheapo edition. Just don't pay full price for them.
Your comparison of this laptop initiative to giving a man a fish is very poor.
Giving people laptops, without getting into too much detail, is essentially giving people in developing nations access to information that they have no other way of obtaining. It has the potential to have a somewhat analogous effect to the introduction of the printing press in Europe in the middle ages: the common uneducated person suddenly has access to something that traditionally has been controlled by a few elite.
Education is not something you can squander, like a fish or money or even a temporary home. Information doesn't cost anything to give, and ideally lasts forever. The only thing that has an expense attached to it is the means of distributing the information - in this case, $100 per laptop, plus some distribution and infrastructure costs.
Further, playing down the merits of this project simply because there exist better solutions is irresponsible. You are essentially claiming that we should do nothing if we aren't going to completely rework the foreign policies and internal structures of virtually every government on earth. Nothing about this project is stopping you and I from trying to make bigger and better changes (aside from the expended focus, energy, time and money on the part of those who participate in the project - all those things are renewable resources). Mother Teresa is a good parallel to consider.
You are correct, a lack of opportunity is what is holding the 'less fortunate' people down. However, education is opportunity. It is precisely what the common population in underdeveloped nations needs to escape the shadow of their oppressors at home and abroad. Giving them laptops is not like giving them a fish. Giving them laptops is like giving them a library card and a ride to the library; all that's left is for some well-meaning librarian to point them to some books about fishing.
We'll have to wait and see if Stephen Harper's years of Bush lapdogging were just opposition hype talk... otherwise, we might start closing the gap.
What OSS licenses besides the GPL would have been prohibitive to it having become as popular as it has become?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but in 1991 I believe the only software license around that involved community contribution back into the codebase was the GPL. Most "OSS" licenses at the time were academic or between companies for development purposes. OSS was quoted because the term wasn't coined until 1998.
Bullshit. You could have spent the time you've spent posting on Slashdot working for a charity instead. Be reasonable. You're being hypocritical saying that Google is evil because they don't do everything they can, when you clearly don't. Your response may be that you do more somehow, but then we're not dealing with absolutes anymore and you're no more qualified to say where the line should be drawn than a Google exec. You're shooting yourself in the foot with your holier-than-thou self-righteous attitude.
A human can be expected to not intentionally act or fail to act resulting in someone else's loss (loss encompassing all causal negative effects), but only within reason. There's no way any person can live their entire life, or even a day of it, without somehow causing someone else loss. Just by buying food to eat, you have added yourself to the demand curve and thus helped increase food prices while there are people who can't afford food. So there's a line that takes into account the relative gain and loss of everyone involved and effects that propagate into the future; I won't tell you where it should be drawn, but it's not at either extreme.
By the same token, a human can be expected to intentionally act or fail to act resulting in someone else's gain, but again only within reason. No one donates every penny of their disposable income and every free minute of their time to charities, and even if they did, to be efficient they'd have to figure out what charities or other actions on their parts would likely result in the best future outcome, a heuristic problem quite beyond the computing power of the human brain. There's a line here too, and again, I won't tell you where to draw it, but personally I don't think Google has crossed to the "evil" side of it quite yet (impressive enough for any company), especially considering there are reasons other than tax deductions to only donate to registered charities.
Thinking in absolutes is evil.