It's hard to say why Richard Linder went through such obscure means in order to get his credits rather than just studying his ass off for the SAT's, but I suspect the reason why he went for "cheap credits" is where the real untold story is.
My guess: He's smart, but not *that* smart. If you leave high school with a 4.0 GPA, some AP credit, 2400 SATs or 36 ACTs, and a couple of extracurriculars, you're right that you're pretty much set as far as college admission and financial aid. But if you're poor, and have a 3.5 GPA, no AP credit, and good but not great test scores, it's a lot more questionable.
Generally speaking, a "free ride" at an institution that has on-campus residency includes room and board. I actually was good enough in high school to get a couple of offers like that at some no-name universities, which I didn't take but would have if I hadn't been lucky enough to be born into relative wealth.
And despite that, libertarians and liberals generally have the same views on when a government should be allowed to spy on a citizen: only when the law enforcement can demonstrate probable cause that the citizen in question has committed a crime.
I'm sincerely hoping the submitter was being sarcastic about that. Because civil liberties shouldn't be a left-wing issue or a right-wing issue, it should be an every-wing issue. It's the fundamental idea of modern democracy, and should never be negotiable.
In this case, like it or not, these are his customers that he's ignoring.
Unless they're paying for Ubuntu in some way, these aren't his customers. In fact, based on RMS's accusations, it's arguable that they are in fact his product.
Here's the counterargument: The goal of software should be to make a computer do what its users want it to do. Anything that's not aimed at that goal is in effect attempting to steal the value of the computer (namely its capability of running software) from the user in favor of some other organization.
With that kind of understanding of software, concerns about "commercially viable" simply don't matter: As long as the torrents are passing around, as long as there's a server somewhere that has the code and I have an appropriate compiler, the project is alive. And actions like spying on users' local searches is in no way OK no matter who's doing it.
Also, in my admittedly anecdotal experience non-technical users who have no trouble at all handling a KDE or Gnome 2 interface have a much harder time finding things in Unity. That suggests that Unity isn't all that intuitive. I agree with the goal of having a technically viable Linux desktop, but we already have two that work quite well. The reason we don't have a huge market share has more to do with efforts by a certain company to ensure that no large manufacturer ever sells and seriously markets computers with Linux on them.
That's been an open question in psychology for over a century. There's some evidence for it, and some against it, and nobody has any kind of conclusive proof one way or the other.
Standard PR flak technique #137: When confronted by undeniable evidence of wrongdoing, attack the person or organization providing the evidence with accusations that can't be disproven. Words commonly used for this are "extremist", "conspiracy theorist", "silly", or "misguided".
As I posted in the other related story here, they seem to be hoping that they can make an OS with an 'oooooh, shiny' factors that makes people drop their principles.
* Python is massively easier to unit test: You can patch anything you possibly want, including system calls, it has fantastic mocking libraries and testing harnesses.
* Python supports modularity and has since day one. PHP's closest equivalent, namespacing, was tacked on at the last minute and not used properly.
Which standards? That's always the problem with standards, there are so many of them.
If you're going to pick the Linux Standard Base, the problem there is that it's decidedly not distro-agnostic, but specifically demands RPM-based package management.
The basic problem with business folks and open source is that they're trying to maximize profit, which means that anything that they give away is done for four basic reasons: 1. Loss leader to get people to buy something else: commercial support contracts, customizations, installation assistance, etc. 2. Convince the community that they're good for open source so they'll work for free. 3. The GPL or other "viral" open source licenses force them to. 4. Selling the user's eyeballs a la Firefox and Google.
For example, in the case of Red Hat, Fedora is their loss leader and "please work for free" tool. If the GPL didn't force them to give stuff away, then they wouldn't, because they'd really rather CentOS didn't exist.
MySql's another great example: They treat free Mysql as a loss leader to sell you support and advanced features. If you're trying to build on a truly open source platform, you're much better off with Postgres.
Lincoln as president wasn't a conservative: while he had come up through the Whig Party, he left in 1854 because of the party's willingness to compromise about the expansion of slavery. Abe Lincoln's Republican Party base were abolitionists, who were basically the left-wing agitators of early 19th century America. The big reason that the Southern gentry were so upset about his election was that they were afraid that he was going to take away their most valuable property (i.e. slaves) by force in the name of ideas like human decency and fairness. That this is similar rhetoric to the very common conservative pitch that the government is taking your stuff and giving it to black people is not a coincidence.
So it's a funny joke, but it turns out not to be true.
If you want to get a clear picture of the Republican Party today, look no further than the treaty ratification vote earlier this week: The Senate Republican Caucus wheeled in the 89-year-old former Republican Senate leader and 1996 Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole, took turns saying nice things to him, and then proceeded to give him a giant middle finger by voting down the treaty he was there to support. And the only reason they gave for not supporting the treaty (which was seen as a bipartisan idea up until that vote) was that they were afraid it was going to lead to a New World Order.
The US State department's info on Guatamala is certainly entertaining:
Leaving cars unattended in parking lots of fast food franchises can also invite break-ins in spite of the presence of armed guards. Make sure you leave the car just long enough to complete the meal—the armed guards are for decoration only.
Of course, that isn't how this will pan out. My cynical nature screams at me that the police will kick their feet, balk, whine, and throw a PR hissyfit with the press about those mean, dirty people with their dirty secrets wanting to hurt innocent people and children in order to protect themselves from justice, by supressing the motion.
You're less cynical than I am. I think that the conversation will go something like this: Police: We think we should trap all text messages. Congress: Can we use this to spy on Occupy protesters, right-wing protesters, and anyone else we find politically inconvenient? Police: Sure, no problemo. Congress: Ok, passed unanimously with no debate.
Slashdot Mirror
That's another parody. The original was Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
It's hard to say why Richard Linder went through such obscure means in order to get his credits rather than just studying his ass off for the SAT's, but I suspect the reason why he went for "cheap credits" is where the real untold story is.
My guess: He's smart, but not *that* smart. If you leave high school with a 4.0 GPA, some AP credit, 2400 SATs or 36 ACTs, and a couple of extracurriculars, you're right that you're pretty much set as far as college admission and financial aid. But if you're poor, and have a 3.5 GPA, no AP credit, and good but not great test scores, it's a lot more questionable.
Generally speaking, a "free ride" at an institution that has on-campus residency includes room and board. I actually was good enough in high school to get a couple of offers like that at some no-name universities, which I didn't take but would have if I hadn't been lucky enough to be born into relative wealth.
If you think that's disgusting, you should see the results of the fights he had with his younger brother!
And despite that, libertarians and liberals generally have the same views on when a government should be allowed to spy on a citizen: only when the law enforcement can demonstrate probable cause that the citizen in question has committed a crime.
I'm sincerely hoping the submitter was being sarcastic about that. Because civil liberties shouldn't be a left-wing issue or a right-wing issue, it should be an every-wing issue. It's the fundamental idea of modern democracy, and should never be negotiable.
In this case, like it or not, these are his customers that he's ignoring.
Unless they're paying for Ubuntu in some way, these aren't his customers. In fact, based on RMS's accusations, it's arguable that they are in fact his product.
Here's the counterargument: The goal of software should be to make a computer do what its users want it to do. Anything that's not aimed at that goal is in effect attempting to steal the value of the computer (namely its capability of running software) from the user in favor of some other organization.
With that kind of understanding of software, concerns about "commercially viable" simply don't matter: As long as the torrents are passing around, as long as there's a server somewhere that has the code and I have an appropriate compiler, the project is alive. And actions like spying on users' local searches is in no way OK no matter who's doing it.
Also, in my admittedly anecdotal experience non-technical users who have no trouble at all handling a KDE or Gnome 2 interface have a much harder time finding things in Unity. That suggests that Unity isn't all that intuitive. I agree with the goal of having a technically viable Linux desktop, but we already have two that work quite well. The reason we don't have a huge market share has more to do with efforts by a certain company to ensure that no large manufacturer ever sells and seriously markets computers with Linux on them.
That's been an open question in psychology for over a century. There's some evidence for it, and some against it, and nobody has any kind of conclusive proof one way or the other.
Replying to undo incorrect moderation You're absolutely right.
Standard PR flak technique #137: When confronted by undeniable evidence of wrongdoing, attack the person or organization providing the evidence with accusations that can't be disproven. Words commonly used for this are "extremist", "conspiracy theorist", "silly", or "misguided".
As I posted in the other related story here, they seem to be hoping that they can make an OS with an 'oooooh, shiny' factors that makes people drop their principles.
Also known as the Apple strategy.
"This is intended to make the whole experience even more interactive and useful for Canonical and their online retailer partners."
What's pretty clear is that Canonical is now trying to cash in. The good news is that it's easy to switch to another distro.
I've professionally programmed in both Python and PHP. There's no reasonable competition - Python wins hands down.
A few of the advantages of Python over PHP:
filtered = [x for x in unfiltered where x.foo=="bar"]
In PHP the same thing looks like:
$filtered = array_filter($unfiltered, function($x) { return $x->foo == "bar"; });
standards-compliant
Which standards? That's always the problem with standards, there are so many of them.
If you're going to pick the Linux Standard Base, the problem there is that it's decidedly not distro-agnostic, but specifically demands RPM-based package management.
The basic problem with business folks and open source is that they're trying to maximize profit, which means that anything that they give away is done for four basic reasons:
1. Loss leader to get people to buy something else: commercial support contracts, customizations, installation assistance, etc.
2. Convince the community that they're good for open source so they'll work for free.
3. The GPL or other "viral" open source licenses force them to.
4. Selling the user's eyeballs a la Firefox and Google.
For example, in the case of Red Hat, Fedora is their loss leader and "please work for free" tool. If the GPL didn't force them to give stuff away, then they wouldn't, because they'd really rather CentOS didn't exist.
MySql's another great example: They treat free Mysql as a loss leader to sell you support and advanced features. If you're trying to build on a truly open source platform, you're much better off with Postgres.
The reason for blue-collar workers is even more clear:
C: Some people are paid hourly and don't get any kind of paid time off, so missing a day of work is losing cash that they need to pay the rent.
I'm not sure there's any difficulties finding that consensus: People tell me where to go all the time!
In addition, Gandhi was quite racist towards Africans.
Lincoln as president wasn't a conservative: while he had come up through the Whig Party, he left in 1854 because of the party's willingness to compromise about the expansion of slavery. Abe Lincoln's Republican Party base were abolitionists, who were basically the left-wing agitators of early 19th century America. The big reason that the Southern gentry were so upset about his election was that they were afraid that he was going to take away their most valuable property (i.e. slaves) by force in the name of ideas like human decency and fairness. That this is similar rhetoric to the very common conservative pitch that the government is taking your stuff and giving it to black people is not a coincidence.
So it's a funny joke, but it turns out not to be true.
If you want to get a clear picture of the Republican Party today, look no further than the treaty ratification vote earlier this week: The Senate Republican Caucus wheeled in the 89-year-old former Republican Senate leader and 1996 Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole, took turns saying nice things to him, and then proceeded to give him a giant middle finger by voting down the treaty he was there to support. And the only reason they gave for not supporting the treaty (which was seen as a bipartisan idea up until that vote) was that they were afraid it was going to lead to a New World Order.
Oh, I'm sure GP's convictions are strong - at least so long as the checks keep coming.
The US State department's info on Guatamala is certainly entertaining:
Leaving cars unattended in parking lots of fast food franchises can also invite break-ins in spite of the presence of armed guards. Make sure you leave the car just long enough to complete the meal—the armed guards are for decoration only.
I really really hope Adam West is putting in a bid for this. After all, nobody messes with Adam We.
It turns out the small fortune is pretty small: Only about $400K. That makes him significantly poorer than most of Congress.
Of course, that isn't how this will pan out. My cynical nature screams at me that the police will kick their feet, balk, whine, and throw a PR hissyfit with the press about those mean, dirty people with their dirty secrets wanting to hurt innocent people and children in order to protect themselves from justice, by supressing the motion.
You're less cynical than I am. I think that the conversation will go something like this:
Police: We think we should trap all text messages.
Congress: Can we use this to spy on Occupy protesters, right-wing protesters, and anyone else we find politically inconvenient?
Police: Sure, no problemo.
Congress: Ok, passed unanimously with no debate.