You have a good point about the very small margin in Florida, and (expanding that to country-wide) there are certainly instances where a candidate has won by a very small number of electoral votes. But... still, given that I considered both Bush and Kerry to be piss-poor choices for president, I don't think I'd vote for either of them, even if I knew ahead of time that such a close vote would be possible in my state. But I do acknowledge that there could be situations where the choice to ignore the two major parties might be harder to make.
I was in a similar situation as you, though: California, which Kerry clearly was going to win, so it was an easy choice to vote third-party.
Regardless, everyone (who actually votes, anyway:-/) needs to feel like they did the right thing by voting the way they did -- whether for strategic reasons or just plain hating one of the major candidates. If someone feels that a 'lesser evil' candidate has a chance and would be significantly more acceptable to them than the other majority-party candidate, more power to them. IMO, however, voting major-party solely because 'no one else will ever win' is irresponsible and just perpetuates our regrettable two-party system.
So-called "conservativism" and "liberalism" has two parts, at least how we deal with it in the US: fiscal and social. US Republicans tend to be both fiscally and socially right-leaning, while US Democrats are also fiscally conservative, but are generally socially liberal. There's a bit of a contradiction involved in this view, as being liberal socially usually involves support for things like universal state-sponsored health care (and the other programs you mention). So, US Democrats 'balance' that by supporting socially liberal programs that don't cost too much money to clash with their conservative fiscal side (or the financial interests that sadly contribute too much to their campaigns).
At least, that's how I look at it. Opinions may differ.
Considering that attitude, then "your piddling vote" doesn't matter regardless of who you vote for, so you might as well "waste" it voting along with your principles rather than "waste" it voting for one of the candidates who will surely win anyway. If your vote really doesn't matter, then it will do little to sway the balance between the two "majority" candidates.
I choose to take a longer view: to use the 2004 election as an example, voting for Bush or Kerry seemed like a waste to me. Obviously one or the other would have won, and I didn't see much of a difference between the two. Kerry might have been the popular "lesser of two evils" choice, but really, things wouldn't be much different with a Kerry presidency. I might as well cast my vote for a third-party candidate. Sure, they get a minuscule portion of the vote, but what does it matter? If more people voted with their convictions instead of wasting their vote on a major-party candidate, maybe things could eventually change. Certainly not for this election or the next, but maybe 15-20 years down the line.
there is nothing imaginery about the fact that if you work for years producing some digital content, you have the right to decide what to charge for it.
Why? This so-called "right" is just as made-up, invented, and imagined as so many these days. The absolute only reason there's a "right" to do this is because we have laws that (attempt to) protect it.
And yes, you could say the same thing about murder, assault, or regular physical property theft. We as a society have decided that people have the right to live (laws against murder). We've decided that people have the right to not be arbitrarily attacked by others (laws against assault). We've also decided that people have the right to feel safe about their physical property and that if someone breaks into your house and steals your stuff, they can be held accountable (laws against theft).
At some point, it was decided that ideas, performances, works of art, etc. should be protected as well, and so we have copyright. If society as a whole (or at least as a majority) decides that copyright is unjust, then, well, it should go away. Of course, it's not that simple: the minority with power and money who benefit from copyright have much more influence than the relative majority of those who would do away with copyright.
The fact that a lot of people willfully ignore the law and take what isn't there's anyway does not make the property rights 'imaginery' any mroe than the preponderence of people breaking the speed limit makes the speed limit imaginery either.
In a democracy, what 'a lot of people' (i.e., a majority) want should be law. Obviously, we don't live in a real democracy, and rich lobbyists and special-interest groups have far more influence on public policy than they should.
I guess the submitter would prefer it if the whole concept of copyright and IP did not exist, but I wouldn't get your hopes up for any new movies, TV, music, softwre or games in that case.
Open your eyes. There's plenty of good free content available on the internet. The open source movement proves that quality software can be made without the need for commercial interest. If copyright went away, we'd do just fine. However, I don't think copyright needs to go away. It just needs to be limited much more than it currently is. I think 7-10 years is plenty (and possibly excessive).
Re:Things like this are easy to fix.
on
Google's Evil NDA
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· Score: 1
I click 'I agree' ON TOSes without worrying about what they say.
Your linked article seems to be pointing out that "one-way benefit" contracts are not contracts; i.e., if only one party gets something out of it, and the other doesn't, then a court is not likely to enforce it.
But, if you're talking about TOSes (Terms of Service, I assume), presumably you're given these 'Terms' in exchange for a 'Service'. So, by agreeing to them, you're saying, "sure, I'll agree to these terms if you agree to provide me whatever service you're providing." That sounds suspiciously like consideration to me.
A Free Software author will never be able to write a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD player legally (at least not in the United States).
So? The same is true for DVD players, but we have several OSS DVD players. They may not be technically legal, but they're still here and very available.
Says who? The OP never specified what the 4 and 1200 referred to. He could have been counting columns and rows of some object. Saying I have 1200 rows with 4 foobars each is 5000 foobars because of significant figures is retarded. Context! It matters!
There's your problem. Unless you have a remarkably clean environment (no neighboring networks) and never use the wireless network for anything else, 11g is not suitable for video streaming. I'd suggest investing in a powerline networking solution, or just run good ol' ethernet cable if it's feasible. 802.11n may work for you when it's released, but who knows...
And what's wrong with that, really? I use my phone for two things: making and receiving calls, and (reluctantly) text messaging. If another carrier is going to offer me a better price to do exactly what I want to do (and likely give me a free shiny new phone), why shouldn't I switch? I don't care about my phone's ability to run other applications, phone-company-"blessed" or otherwise.
I think Nintendo knows what they're doing here. Bringing on new production lines takes time and -- most importantly -- money. I guess Nintendo figures that, in the long run, they'll make more money by avoiding sinking capital into new production, even if they lose a few customers here and there due to shortages. It's all just a numbers game, as with most things in business.
If you read the spec (yeah I know, this is/., no one actually reads), the daemon is marked 'special' by the kernel (due to a custom kernel mod), and can't be killed, even by root. The kernel and bootloader are both signed and checked by the hardware on boot, so if a potential thief tries to run their own kernel, the laptop will fail to boot.
For kids who get a little more advanced and want to mess with the kernel or bootloader of their laptop, they can apply for a special 'developer key' that will allow them to bypass the bootloader/kernel security checks.
Is it perfect? No, of course not -- in fact, the developers explicitly state that perfect security is a pipe dream. Will it be an effective theft deterrent? We'll see. Will it pose more problems than it's worth and cause hassles for the kids? Again, we'll see.
The OLPC project has received very strong requests from certain countries
considering joining the program to provide a powerful anti-theft service that
would act as a theft deterrent against most thieves.
We provide such a service for interested countries to enable on the laptops.
So, it's not enabled by default. I'm not a huge fan of this system, but higher up in the spec where it's described, it appears to be implemented entirely in software (it's a *deterrent*, not intended to make it completely theft-proof). So enterprising kids could potentially mod the kernel to allow them to kill the anti-theft daemon.
The situation isn't quite so dire, either. The lease periods can be set to any arbitrary value (the spec uses 3 months as an example of a longer period). Would you really expect the machine to not hit the internet for 3 months, even in a poor country where connectivity is spotty? Even then, the leases can be extended without internet access using a special USB key that can be provided to the schools with the laptops.
Regardless, if the OLPC country managers want to shell out the cash for these, and are worried about theft, why shouldn't they be allowed to request a way to protect their investment? $100 comes pretty close to the GDP in a lot of third-world countries (and possibly even exceeds it in some places).
If you read a little higher in the spec, it says the anti-theft system is implemented as a system daemon that not even root can kill (so apparently the kernel was modified for this to make that app special). Looks like it's entirely done in software, and the OLPC country managers have to even specifically ask that it be enabled for their laptops.
You do realise you referenced a manpage for the Plan9 OS, which has precious little to do with Linux (or UNIX in general), right? Linux doesn't even *have* an rfork() call.
If you'll RTFA (yeah, I know, no one does that...), the system can be completely disabled if the user so wishes. The purpose of the PKI is not to force someone to only use certain software; it's to help ensure that security updates haven't been compromised before getting to the laptop.
As for installing another Linux distribution, would that even be possible at present? I doubt any other distro would run properly on the OLPC's custom hardware without extensive modifications. Sure, you can argue "but they should have the freedom to break it if they want" -- and they do, as the article says. All this stuff can be disabled. Overwriting the OS should disable the anti-theft daemon, since the anti-theft system is implemented entirely in software.
I think the anti-theft provisions that turn the laptop into a brick are a bit much, but the actual spec (which I'm sure you didn't read either, as you're misquoting it) notes that the lease period can be set to any value (chosen by the country manager who distributes the laptop). A lease period of 3 months is given as an example. And in extreme circumstances, a USB drive with credentials that can be used to extend the lease period without needing access to the internet.
At any rate, the spec mentions that the anti-theft system is only installed and enabled on the request of the country purchasing the laptops. So it's not like the OLPC group is forcing this on anyone. If the countries are spending the cash on these things, I think it's reasonable that they should be able to try to protect their investment.
I have a decent number of reservations about the entire OLPC program, but c'mon, at least don't make up shit about it that isn't true.
Unfortunately, licensing AAC on standalone devices costs $0.50 per channel (for decoding; multiply by 2 if you want to do both decoding and encoding). So to distribute decoding software that can handle 5.1 sound, you'd have to pay $3 per unit. It's a little cheaper for PC-based decoders, and the prices drop as volume increases, but that's not really all that relevant. The patent holders haven't gone after open source decoders... yet. But they could do so at any time. Unencumbered formats are important. Our ability to record and play back audio and video in standard formats usable by a variety of devices should not be controlled and 'licensed' at the whim of large corporations.
Well, if the TSA doesn't accept Maine DLs at the airports, then everyone from Maine flying from there will have to submit to extra security searches. This would also be the case for Maine residents flying from airports in other parts of the country.
Flying without ID is perfectly possible: I found this out recently when I lost my DL while away on a trip. I expected to be hassled by bored, abrasive, grumpy people who would treat me like a criminal, and risk missing my flight due to the time spent in the 'extra security' line, but I was actually impressed with the speed, efficiency, and professionalism shown there. The TSA guy outside the security line who was checking IDs was even friendly, helpful, and actually said it was "no big deal." Of course, YMMV at different airports (this was LAS, for the record).
One example of this is the version control debate. Stallman rightly pointed out that Bitkeeper was a problem waiting to happen, and Torvalds didn't care until it was too late. Sure, you might say that the problem was avoided because Torvalds wrote git. But if he'd have done that in the first place, git would have been years ahead in development by now, and the Linux community could have avoided an embarrassing debacle.
Before Bitkeeper, they were using a private CVS repository, I believe, and Linus was merging patches by hand. I get the impression that Linus and co. didn't really know what they needed to make things easier. Bitkeeper solved a lot of problems, and they learned a lot about how a good distributed revision control system should work. If they tried to write git before the Bitkeeper experience, they likely wouldn't have known exactly what they needed.
At the risk of being modded "-1 Cold-Hearted Bastard"...
I think the deal here is that most people who post on/. can't really relate to the plight of Brazilian charcoal slaves. While it's certainly sad and awful, it doesn't affect our lives in any direct way. Being the media-content-addicted techies that we are, DRM is a big deal to us. It directly affects our music/movie-buying decisions, and puts (some believe) unreasonable restrictions on what we can do with things we purchase.
DRM may not rate high on the list of human rights violations when compared to Brazilian charcoal slavery, sure. But DRM probably matters a bit more to your average/. poster. Maybe that makes us all assholes, maybe not. But that just seems to be reality.
(To stretch things out a bit more, I could argue that issues such as DRM and legislation supporting it are key issues in the fight to ensure that government does not get too powerful, which can result in atrocities even worse than slavery. There are many pieces to that puzzle, and it's insane to suggest that DRM is the only thing that matters, but it's something that people here understand much better than the socio-economic implications of slave labor.)
Re:Standard geek viewpoint == standard geek proble
on
Why Vista Took So Long
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· Score: 1
Oh give me a break. In GNOME/GTK, they removed the location bar in the open file dialog several years ago, thus giving the user less choice and making the dialog simpler.
Except they didn't actually remove it. Hitting ctrl+L brings it up, as does pressing the '/' key. And since even that was apparently not enough, the entry box was added back to the dialog for gtk 2.10, implemented in a manner such that it sadly gets in my way on the occasions I don't want to use it.
I think the wireless is really the sticking point. I have a G4 Powerbook, and I have it set up to dual-boot with OS X and Linux. I've been using the OSS bcm43xx driver for wireless on Linux, and its stability has left something to be desired. Up until my recent upgrade (had to use a release candidate kernel), the machine would hard-lock if I left it for a few hours idle with the wireless radio on. For that reason alone, I could understand a heavy wireless user not wanting to use it. And that's just one problem I (personally) have been having; it's possible there are other problems with the driver I'm not seeing.
Also, the motherboard chipset on my Powerbook (nvidia UniNorth, or something) isn't very well supported, so I don't have suspend-to-RAM capability while running Linux. Linux PPC devs claimed earlier this year that it would be a while before it's supported. I don't even think anyone's working on it.
Speaking of nvidia, all I have is the OSS 'nv' driver for X, as nvidia doesn't provide binaries for Linux PPC for their proprietary driver. So, no decent 2D acceleration, even. (Not that this would be any different if I were running XDarwin, and I guess the article poster probably wouldn't care as he claims to have an older machine.)
For me, it's fine: I run Linux probably 85% of the time on my Powerbook, and I live with the deficiencies. But I certainly see why someone else might not find it acceptable. Stable wireless and suspend-to-RAM are pretty important to some people.
C'mon, I know no one reads the article, but your answer is write in the summary: "And, though the open source community has made great strides in reverse engineering proprietary drivers from Mac OS X, I would love to be able to simply keep using the drivers that came with it, for now."
I'm in California; not much better: sunrise at 6:55am, sunset at 4:54pm. Not really sure what the parent means about staying "in sync with the sun." I suspect he doesn't actually mean to wake with sunrise and go to sleep with sunset, since that's really not terribly practical, even in the middle of the summer. Well, I suppose it could be for a period in the summer, when sunset pushes past 8pm here, but that wouldn't last for very long.
I suspect that everyone is an agnostic. Even the pope doesn't know for sure that there is a god.
As an agnostic, I disagree. Having faith and being religious isn't about knowing that a particular doctrine is true; it's having strong belief that that doctrine is true: belief without need for evidence. That's basically what faith is: believing something to be true in the absence of any proof. While the pope may freely admit that he doesn't know whether or not God exists, he will unwaveringly declare his 100% belief that He does exist.
There's a great Wikipedia article about the difference between knowledge and belief, but I can't seem to find it. Glancing at the article about epistemology gives some insight, but doesn't really delve too deeply into the differences inherent in religious belief. (Note that the "belief" referenced in the epistemology article is not the same thing as religious belief.)
On a slight tangent, I find true strong atheism somewhat humorous, and, in a way, not very different from religion. Christians have an unflagging, irrational belief in Jesus Christ and God; atheists have a similarly irrational belief that no god exists. At least with agnosticism (well, certain forms of it), there's recognisance of a simple truth: we cannot know whether or not gods exist, so either the question is irrelevant and nonsensical; or the question is merely academic, and doesn't affect our lives in any material way.
Slashdot Mirror
You have a good point about the very small margin in Florida, and (expanding that to country-wide) there are certainly instances where a candidate has won by a very small number of electoral votes. But... still, given that I considered both Bush and Kerry to be piss-poor choices for president, I don't think I'd vote for either of them, even if I knew ahead of time that such a close vote would be possible in my state. But I do acknowledge that there could be situations where the choice to ignore the two major parties might be harder to make.
:-/) needs to feel like they did the right thing by voting the way they did -- whether for strategic reasons or just plain hating one of the major candidates. If someone feels that a 'lesser evil' candidate has a chance and would be significantly more acceptable to them than the other majority-party candidate, more power to them. IMO, however, voting major-party solely because 'no one else will ever win' is irresponsible and just perpetuates our regrettable two-party system.
I was in a similar situation as you, though: California, which Kerry clearly was going to win, so it was an easy choice to vote third-party.
Regardless, everyone (who actually votes, anyway
So-called "conservativism" and "liberalism" has two parts, at least how we deal with it in the US: fiscal and social. US Republicans tend to be both fiscally and socially right-leaning, while US Democrats are also fiscally conservative, but are generally socially liberal. There's a bit of a contradiction involved in this view, as being liberal socially usually involves support for things like universal state-sponsored health care (and the other programs you mention). So, US Democrats 'balance' that by supporting socially liberal programs that don't cost too much money to clash with their conservative fiscal side (or the financial interests that sadly contribute too much to their campaigns).
At least, that's how I look at it. Opinions may differ.
Considering that attitude, then "your piddling vote" doesn't matter regardless of who you vote for, so you might as well "waste" it voting along with your principles rather than "waste" it voting for one of the candidates who will surely win anyway. If your vote really doesn't matter, then it will do little to sway the balance between the two "majority" candidates.
I choose to take a longer view: to use the 2004 election as an example, voting for Bush or Kerry seemed like a waste to me. Obviously one or the other would have won, and I didn't see much of a difference between the two. Kerry might have been the popular "lesser of two evils" choice, but really, things wouldn't be much different with a Kerry presidency. I might as well cast my vote for a third-party candidate. Sure, they get a minuscule portion of the vote, but what does it matter? If more people voted with their convictions instead of wasting their vote on a major-party candidate, maybe things could eventually change. Certainly not for this election or the next, but maybe 15-20 years down the line.
And yes, you could say the same thing about murder, assault, or regular physical property theft. We as a society have decided that people have the right to live (laws against murder). We've decided that people have the right to not be arbitrarily attacked by others (laws against assault). We've also decided that people have the right to feel safe about their physical property and that if someone breaks into your house and steals your stuff, they can be held accountable (laws against theft).
At some point, it was decided that ideas, performances, works of art, etc. should be protected as well, and so we have copyright. If society as a whole (or at least as a majority) decides that copyright is unjust, then, well, it should go away. Of course, it's not that simple: the minority with power and money who benefit from copyright have much more influence than the relative majority of those who would do away with copyright. In a democracy, what 'a lot of people' (i.e., a majority) want should be law. Obviously, we don't live in a real democracy, and rich lobbyists and special-interest groups have far more influence on public policy than they should. Open your eyes. There's plenty of good free content available on the internet. The open source movement proves that quality software can be made without the need for commercial interest. If copyright went away, we'd do just fine. However, I don't think copyright needs to go away. It just needs to be limited much more than it currently is. I think 7-10 years is plenty (and possibly excessive).
But, if you're talking about TOSes (Terms of Service, I assume), presumably you're given these 'Terms' in exchange for a 'Service'. So, by agreeing to them, you're saying, "sure, I'll agree to these terms if you agree to provide me whatever service you're providing." That sounds suspiciously like consideration to me.
Well, not really, I don't think. The first AC's post was a joke, and was funny. The AC reply to that was also a joke; it just wasn't funny.
Says who? The OP never specified what the 4 and 1200 referred to. He could have been counting columns and rows of some object. Saying I have 1200 rows with 4 foobars each is 5000 foobars because of significant figures is retarded. Context! It matters!
And what's wrong with that, really? I use my phone for two things: making and receiving calls, and (reluctantly) text messaging. If another carrier is going to offer me a better price to do exactly what I want to do (and likely give me a free shiny new phone), why shouldn't I switch? I don't care about my phone's ability to run other applications, phone-company-"blessed" or otherwise.
I think Nintendo knows what they're doing here. Bringing on new production lines takes time and -- most importantly -- money. I guess Nintendo figures that, in the long run, they'll make more money by avoiding sinking capital into new production, even if they lose a few customers here and there due to shortages. It's all just a numbers game, as with most things in business.
If you read the spec (yeah I know, this is /., no one actually reads), the daemon is marked 'special' by the kernel (due to a custom kernel mod), and can't be killed, even by root. The kernel and bootloader are both signed and checked by the hardware on boot, so if a potential thief tries to run their own kernel, the laptop will fail to boot.
For kids who get a little more advanced and want to mess with the kernel or bootloader of their laptop, they can apply for a special 'developer key' that will allow them to bypass the bootloader/kernel security checks.
Is it perfect? No, of course not -- in fact, the developers explicitly state that perfect security is a pipe dream. Will it be an effective theft deterrent? We'll see. Will it pose more problems than it's worth and cause hassles for the kids? Again, we'll see.
The situation isn't quite so dire, either. The lease periods can be set to any arbitrary value (the spec uses 3 months as an example of a longer period). Would you really expect the machine to not hit the internet for 3 months, even in a poor country where connectivity is spotty? Even then, the leases can be extended without internet access using a special USB key that can be provided to the schools with the laptops.
Regardless, if the OLPC country managers want to shell out the cash for these, and are worried about theft, why shouldn't they be allowed to request a way to protect their investment? $100 comes pretty close to the GDP in a lot of third-world countries (and possibly even exceeds it in some places).
If you read a little higher in the spec, it says the anti-theft system is implemented as a system daemon that not even root can kill (so apparently the kernel was modified for this to make that app special). Looks like it's entirely done in software, and the OLPC country managers have to even specifically ask that it be enabled for their laptops.
You do realise you referenced a manpage for the Plan9 OS, which has precious little to do with Linux (or UNIX in general), right? Linux doesn't even *have* an rfork() call.
Are you just trolling?
If you'll RTFA (yeah, I know, no one does that...), the system can be completely disabled if the user so wishes. The purpose of the PKI is not to force someone to only use certain software; it's to help ensure that security updates haven't been compromised before getting to the laptop.
As for installing another Linux distribution, would that even be possible at present? I doubt any other distro would run properly on the OLPC's custom hardware without extensive modifications. Sure, you can argue "but they should have the freedom to break it if they want" -- and they do, as the article says. All this stuff can be disabled. Overwriting the OS should disable the anti-theft daemon, since the anti-theft system is implemented entirely in software.
I think the anti-theft provisions that turn the laptop into a brick are a bit much, but the actual spec (which I'm sure you didn't read either, as you're misquoting it) notes that the lease period can be set to any value (chosen by the country manager who distributes the laptop). A lease period of 3 months is given as an example. And in extreme circumstances, a USB drive with credentials that can be used to extend the lease period without needing access to the internet.
At any rate, the spec mentions that the anti-theft system is only installed and enabled on the request of the country purchasing the laptops. So it's not like the OLPC group is forcing this on anyone. If the countries are spending the cash on these things, I think it's reasonable that they should be able to try to protect their investment.
I have a decent number of reservations about the entire OLPC program, but c'mon, at least don't make up shit about it that isn't true.
Unfortunately, licensing AAC on standalone devices costs $0.50 per channel (for decoding; multiply by 2 if you want to do both decoding and encoding). So to distribute decoding software that can handle 5.1 sound, you'd have to pay $3 per unit. It's a little cheaper for PC-based decoders, and the prices drop as volume increases, but that's not really all that relevant. The patent holders haven't gone after open source decoders... yet. But they could do so at any time. Unencumbered formats are important. Our ability to record and play back audio and video in standard formats usable by a variety of devices should not be controlled and 'licensed' at the whim of large corporations.
Well, if the TSA doesn't accept Maine DLs at the airports, then everyone from Maine flying from there will have to submit to extra security searches. This would also be the case for Maine residents flying from airports in other parts of the country.
Flying without ID is perfectly possible: I found this out recently when I lost my DL while away on a trip. I expected to be hassled by bored, abrasive, grumpy people who would treat me like a criminal, and risk missing my flight due to the time spent in the 'extra security' line, but I was actually impressed with the speed, efficiency, and professionalism shown there. The TSA guy outside the security line who was checking IDs was even friendly, helpful, and actually said it was "no big deal." Of course, YMMV at different airports (this was LAS, for the record).
And really, "embarrassing debacle"? Hardly.
At the risk of being modded "-1 Cold-Hearted Bastard"...
/. can't really relate to the plight of Brazilian charcoal slaves. While it's certainly sad and awful, it doesn't affect our lives in any direct way. Being the media-content-addicted techies that we are, DRM is a big deal to us. It directly affects our music/movie-buying decisions, and puts (some believe) unreasonable restrictions on what we can do with things we purchase.
/. poster. Maybe that makes us all assholes, maybe not. But that just seems to be reality.
I think the deal here is that most people who post on
DRM may not rate high on the list of human rights violations when compared to Brazilian charcoal slavery, sure. But DRM probably matters a bit more to your average
(To stretch things out a bit more, I could argue that issues such as DRM and legislation supporting it are key issues in the fight to ensure that government does not get too powerful, which can result in atrocities even worse than slavery. There are many pieces to that puzzle, and it's insane to suggest that DRM is the only thing that matters, but it's something that people here understand much better than the socio-economic implications of slave labor.)
I think the wireless is really the sticking point. I have a G4 Powerbook, and I have it set up to dual-boot with OS X and Linux. I've been using the OSS bcm43xx driver for wireless on Linux, and its stability has left something to be desired. Up until my recent upgrade (had to use a release candidate kernel), the machine would hard-lock if I left it for a few hours idle with the wireless radio on. For that reason alone, I could understand a heavy wireless user not wanting to use it. And that's just one problem I (personally) have been having; it's possible there are other problems with the driver I'm not seeing.
Also, the motherboard chipset on my Powerbook (nvidia UniNorth, or something) isn't very well supported, so I don't have suspend-to-RAM capability while running Linux. Linux PPC devs claimed earlier this year that it would be a while before it's supported. I don't even think anyone's working on it.
Speaking of nvidia, all I have is the OSS 'nv' driver for X, as nvidia doesn't provide binaries for Linux PPC for their proprietary driver. So, no decent 2D acceleration, even. (Not that this would be any different if I were running XDarwin, and I guess the article poster probably wouldn't care as he claims to have an older machine.)
For me, it's fine: I run Linux probably 85% of the time on my Powerbook, and I live with the deficiencies. But I certainly see why someone else might not find it acceptable. Stable wireless and suspend-to-RAM are pretty important to some people.
C'mon, I know no one reads the article, but your answer is write in the summary: "And, though the open source community has made great strides in reverse engineering proprietary drivers from Mac OS X, I would love to be able to simply keep using the drivers that came with it, for now."
I'm in California; not much better: sunrise at 6:55am, sunset at 4:54pm. Not really sure what the parent means about staying "in sync with the sun." I suspect he doesn't actually mean to wake with sunrise and go to sleep with sunset, since that's really not terribly practical, even in the middle of the summer. Well, I suppose it could be for a period in the summer, when sunset pushes past 8pm here, but that wouldn't last for very long.
There's a great Wikipedia article about the difference between knowledge and belief, but I can't seem to find it. Glancing at the article about epistemology gives some insight, but doesn't really delve too deeply into the differences inherent in religious belief. (Note that the "belief" referenced in the epistemology article is not the same thing as religious belief.)
On a slight tangent, I find true strong atheism somewhat humorous, and, in a way, not very different from religion. Christians have an unflagging, irrational belief in Jesus Christ and God; atheists have a similarly irrational belief that no god exists. At least with agnosticism (well, certain forms of it), there's recognisance of a simple truth: we cannot know whether or not gods exist, so either the question is irrelevant and nonsensical; or the question is merely academic, and doesn't affect our lives in any material way.