I think we were talking about different time period. I was mentioning the period AFTER Islam. And you refer to any history books, you will find that it was a period of prosperity,justice and education. I know before Islam, the condition was different.
>> All I know about what happens after that is some basic stuff about Mohammed and his journey to Mecca (or was it Medina?).
Medina(Actually he travelled from Mecca to Madina)
>>Ironic, you're correct, that the one country in the world bent on murdering as many Moslems as possible is also adhering more to Islam concepts than the Moslems they're slaughtering.
Yes you are right. I know your country(the Govt, not the people) is bent on murdering muslims. But still there is more element of "Islamism" in US (like freedom of expression , lack of monarchy etc) than in the "Islamic countries". In these so called islamic countries , what you can see is nothing but Islam and Isalmic values.
>>Anyway, last I heard about Persia being a relevant technological power was in the 500's AD when they were fighting the Roman general Belisarius. At that time, they were feudalistic.
Let me disagree with you here. What they had at that time was not feudalistic. They had perfect Islamic rule at that ime in Persia and it was radically different from feudalism. There were no poverty and prosperity of that period is well known( I am talking about the period of 600 ADs and all). But later on things got changed and then came feudalism. Its still there. What you can see in middle east now is an exquisit blend of feudelism and capitalism. Its funny that you can see more Islamic values and principles in US than you can see in middle east.
>> Considering then that Islam is the dominant religion *only* in countries that are behind the rest technologically, in spite of the fact that they are also the "cradle of civilization", and have therefore been populated longer than any western country, does that indicate that keeping knowledge hidden is actually condusive to building civilization?
No, not at all IMO. These "islamic countries" are lagging behind in technology and education NOW. Its true. But that was not the case earlier. They had a glorious past when they were well advanced in these things. What happened later was they deviated from Islamic values and principles including(but not limited to) education and information. Now what they are following is not at all Islamic. I would say most of the Islamic countries are actually feudalistic societies. Also, the western societies didnt advance when they kept information "hidden". On the contray , they advanced when information and knowledge was essentially FREE. Now they are adopting a "hidden" approach in technology and education. Lets see where it takes them in the coming periods. IMHO, this will have a negative impact on their lead in the coming periods.
>> If that were entirely true, no-one would get paid in Iran, since everything would be considered the 'product of God', since God is the source of all creation.
No, according to Islam God is the absolute owner of everything and people who "own" them are persons AUTHORIZED to do transactions and spend accordingly(think of someone who has leased it or hired, but dont have to pay for the lease). The only condition is that all the transactions have to be according to Islamic principles. Making profit is perfectly legitimate as long as its not crossing the limits of Islamic rules. You can charge for any service you offer within that condition
>> According to Islamic law If I understand it correctly(), God is the source of all invention and creation and therefore the holder of all copyright
You make an interesting point. Its interesting to think of Islam and Free softwares. In fact proprietory software itself is not very Islamic. Islam is very much against putting obstacles in reading or learing. Actually Quran start with the word "READ"("Iqra'h in Arabic) and free information is an essential thing according to Islam. Proprietory softwares are exactly at the opposite spectrum. What they are saying is like "dont read" or "dont do much" ; just do ONLY what we are asking you to do . Also, as something similar to you said, Islam doesnt gives you "absolute power" over anything. Whether its money , software or anything. According to Islam, Allah is the real (read absolute) owner of any property and you are a "temporary owner" or rather someone who is authorized to posses this and spend accordingly. So any behaviour out of the assumption that " I am the owner, I can do wahtever I feel like" and attaching so many restrictions(something like Microsoft EULA) are not the Islamic way. In all these contexts, I am surprised that Islamic scholars are not debating the software issues(Free vs proprietory) in an Islamic context much.
When I said "standing upto US bullying" I didnt mean it as perfect. You need strong leadership and political will for that. No country in this world at present scenario do that, including nuclear powers. Having said that, Japanese situation is not that bad. Atleast in trade negotiations and all they fair BETTER than India and all I believe. My point is that possession of nuclear power per se does not give ability to stand upto bullying or atleast the countries with nuclear weapons dont do better in this issue than the countries without it.
>> It keeps you from getting shoved around by bullying a##eholes like the US really well
You dont need nuclear weapons for that. Look at Japan. Heck even cuba doesnt have nuclear weapons. They all manage to stand up to US "bullying". And now after being nuclear power also, successive Indian govts vie (with pakistan) to be "better friend" of US rather than saying anything against their "bullying tactics".
>> Also, the radiation safety and other protocols will go a long way toward getting a proper nuclear energy program
There were many reports pointing the lack of safety in Indian nuclear power plants including some official/semiofficial agency report.
>>assuming that you're planning to build nuclear power plants after you've built nuclear explosives and not the other way around.
No, India started it other way and politicians had always used the nuclear reactor programs as a cover for the country's weapons program.
>> India won indipendence only 55 years ago, and is fast turning into an intelectual and finincial world power. They have a space program, nuclear wepons and huge investment from global companies such as IBM and Dell.
How does wasting the resources to acquire nuclear weapons help to become a intellectual or financial power ?
>> But seriously, we all complain about MS's problems, now we've actually got a outlet to complain to. If you don't speak up now, you really have no room to speak later!
Its not that microsoft doesnt know their weakness or why people go after linux. They know the reasons behind all these. And people have on so many occasions shown them what is the problem with MS softwares and the business practice followd by MS and why they dont like it. But the response from MS have been less than encouraging at best and bullying at worst. This survey is also, I suspect not something to know the "heart and mind" of linux users and tailor their software according to that. But I would suspect that they will use the informations from such linux studies to look in to ways to CIRCUMVENT these problems in a clever way. MS cannot and will not change their busniess tactics easily. Their entire business culture is build upon un-ethical and shoddy practices. To expect any revolutionary or fundamental change from them is naive at best. They have never even admitted their wrong doing any time despite being found guilty on so many occasions. That itself shows what sort of a mindset the people at the holm of Microsoft does have.
>> My point was that license is hugely important for something that the user might link to while w/ application it doesn't matter as long as it's "free enough".
Let me clarify this point again. The argument that "proprietory-friendly" license alone will attract ISVs is a myth. If that was the case, then GTK should have attracted a lot of ISVs and QT would not have. But what we see at present is GTK has failed in this aspect and QT has indeed attracted a lot of ISVs. So what is important is not just license but other things like technical superiority and better documentation and support. Atleast in this case( GTK vs QT) these factors have beaten license issue. Also when I say "technical merits", I dont mean "look and feel". What I mean is better architecture, APIs , documentation and support.
As someone who have read almost all the mails in the list so far, I think the decision to go with GNOME was taken in a BAD way atleast. First there was a lot of discussion about the technical merits of these 2 and later it was decided to go with GNOME based almost solely on "proprietory friendly" license of GTK. If that was the only criteria for selecting the softwares, then what is the purpose of discussion? its easy to compile a list softwares with the above license. Also, as far as I understand(someone correct me if I am wrong in this please) QT has been adopted by the ISVs far more than the GTK. It boasts of a customer base including IBM, Adobe , Samsung and many many other high profile companies. So if all these companies have found the technical mertis of QT(better documented APIs, more powerfull, architectural superiority etc.) more than the "proprietory unfriendly"[sic] nature of the license, then why the same logic does not apply to Userlinux? . The same goes with Epiphany also. It seems to be (not finalized though) decided that Epiphany would be the default browser. There was a lot of discussions about browser choice also. Mostly it was agreed that Mozilla firebird was the best choice . But then at the end Epiphany was chosen(?) based solely on the "better GNOME integration".Again why there needs to be a lot of discussion about the technical merits if at the end some criteria like "proprietory friendly" nature of the license and "Gnome integration" are going to be the sole criteria. Is these 2 factors so important to give such a huge weightage over technical merits and everything else ? After carefully reading all the mails also, I have not found a good answer for these concerns. Perhaps I am missing something. But anyway I wish all the best for Bruce and his effort.
>> Why do you think a corporation deserves market protection from cheap foreign goods if they're exploiting the lack of labor protection?
What level of additional "protection" an average american programmer get than say an indian programmer working in Bangaloor ? I am not an american. But what I understand is (correct me if I am wrong in this) that you dont have much protection in US software field atleast. Also, there is not much exploitation in indian software field(atleast comparing to the US condition). So what is the point ?
>> We need to go back into isolation and let the world see how they do w/o our charity.
Exactly !! if americans had got back isolated, then this outsourcing woud not have happened. I have wrote this in earlier discussions and would say it again. Outsouring is part of so called "globalisation" which is something amrica started , perpetuated and above all BENEFITED the most. More than any other country in the world america has contributed and benefited out of this process. Now you think its not good for you , because it starts to affect YOU ALSO. so it was ok as long as it was destabilizing third world economies and third world job market ? Then regarding charity, I wont even comment about that BS.
I have generalized things a bit in my previous post. But let me clarify again. In NO case people can buy microsoft solution without paying a penny atleast to them (and hence US economy for that matter). But its certainly POSSIBLE in open source software. You can have as many linux installation as possible without paying anything to Redhat or SUSE for example. Ofcourse it may not be the case all them time. In many case its a mixed one with a single big company(like IBM) and some local sub contractors and in some cases it could be even a single entity ( like IBM again) alone. But my point is that its always possible to not pay a penny to US economy with open source solutions and its NEVER possible with M$ solution(or for other proprietory solutiosn from US firms) . By the way, I am working in a linux consultancy firm in a neighbouring country of IRAQ. so I see this argument coming up quite frequently.
> but keep in mind that many many sites wouldn't be there if nobody saw their ads...
I understand your thinking, but let me disagree with you. Most of the sites which provide "good" content(ofcourse what is "good" is very very objective) are not dependent on ads much. This is especially true in the case of news sites. Most of the good news site( I dont mean the highly biased and propogandistic mainstream ones) are not ad based. Also, I am sure even if this ads become irrelevent, some other model with more decentralization and less business would emerge in that place. In other words, a darwinian selection would come up there also. I wouldn't regret much if I see these ad-based sites go off and something else come up in that place. People who want to communicate with the world in an easy and cheap way would always find internet as a good tool.
Good comments! but let me disagree with you on the following part,
>Anotehr point, people ahead of me talked about "Linux is free, the US won't benifit from it!" well, last time I checked, which is not too long ago, RedHat was a US company and the charge money for their solutions, minus Fedora. IBM, HP, Dell and other manfacturers make the hardware that Linux runs on it and it does cost money
Actually what people are saying is when its microsoft solutions, almost entire money goes to one single corporation(from the software part atleast). But when its linux it may not go to any international firm at all. In most of the countries linux support is offered by local firms. They dont have to pay any royalties or license fees to the linux vendor in US for using it. This is how local firms (and thus local economy ) get benefited if people go buy open source way. In short, open source way is more distributed and microsoft way (or any proprietory way) is more centralized.
Actually when I said GPL I meant GPL/LGPL. LGPL is different from BSD in that you cannnot make LGPLed software proprietory and it PERPETUATES the freedom. Commercial firms prefer GPL/LGPL over BSD. Its a fact. They dont want to support BSD licensed project and see their competetors leveraging their work against them in the future by making it closed. Regarding the question why they prefer LGPL against GPL is simple. With LGPL they have the advantage of GPL( protection from competetors leveraging their work against them) and still they can keep their linking proprietory code as such.
> even the best Linux distros are dramatically less stable and robust than the BSDs
Any benchmark or anything to substantiate your claims ?
> GPL-only licensing is the kiss of death for the kinds of large-scale commercial support such a venture needs.
Bullshit !! Then how come commercial vendors like IBM, HP and all support linux and not any BSD based proejcts ? When they joined the "linux bandwagon", BSDs were clearly superior. Actually commercial firms prefer GPL because they are guarantied that their work wont be leveraged by competetors against them.
> that the code can never be placed under another more restrictive license,
Then it would be against the very idea of BSD license . BSD license is all about freedom to do ANYTHING you like with the code.
> As much as I detest Microsoft, I've reached the conclusion that the GPL is a greater long-term threat
Please try to join SCO my dear. As far as I know , they are the only one who holds such a view at present.
I belive the success of Linux(and GNU) over BSD was because of the license also. Most of the opensource/free software developers want their work to REMAIN free. Face it, most of the people dont like their work to be taken away by corporations and made proprietory. If we look in to repositrories like freshmeat and sourceforge this trend is clearer. A good majority of the programs are released under GPL/LGPL. Even many of those who use *BSD as their platform also tend to follow this pattern more or less. Actually if BSDs were licensed GPL, then I think they would have continued to enjoy the developer base they had in the past. If UserLinux is to be dropped in favour of UserBSD, I think its going to enounter the same fate of BSDs.
>>Technically, the 1991 war remained a cease-fire, a truce which Iraq violated by firing on US patrols during said cease-fire. This invoked the US's right to resume hotilities
But that was not the STATED reason for going war. The stated reasons were WMD, Iraq-Al-Qaida relation and relation with 9/11. None of these have been proven right. In fact it has become clear that these were false.
>>Furthermore, Iraq was in violation of about 2 dozen UN resolutions.
What about Israel ? they are breaching far more. Will US do ANYTHING for that matter?
>> Absurd. We are still finding Egyptian mummies and artifacts that are several millenia-old buried in the desert. We could find Saddam's weapons 250 years from now buried somewhere.
Then why the same logic was not applied to UN inspection team ? why is it that UN team is supposed to find the WMD in a short time and US has to be given 250 years for the same.?
>> Luckily we are there instead of some country that wants to take over and loot their oil
By "we" if you mean Halliburton et al., then I would agree with you
>> I must ask you why we are mainly being attacked in the region known as the Suni Triangle, why are we not engaged in other regions of the country?
Partially true. Even though, some of the high profile attacks were in these "sunni-triangle" , other areas too are regulary seeing fight.
>> If these were everyday citizens, why would they lay their life on the line to fight us when the Iraqi leadership will be taking over in 6 months?
Yah, like Afghan is having "their own" government now, right? They are motivated by factors like Nationality, Islam , anti-americanism etc. All these feelings are running very strong in entire middle east and Iraq in particular.
>> why are their only bands of guerillas fighting us?
But haven't you noticed the people from little kids to old ladies celebrating every attack on US and other occupying soldiers ? Not everyone who supports a movement (or feeling) take arms ! But the attack on occupying force is SUPPORTED by MOST of the Iraquis.
Telling that fight against invading american forces would decline because of this is pure BULLSHIT ! Becuase Iraquis were not fighting out of loyality to saddam. Almost none of them ever liked saddam (even though they had to tollerate him for a long time out of fear). The people who are fighting against the US forces are not saddam loyalists as propogated by US media. They are ordinary people who doesnt want their country to be ruled by a foreign force and loot their oil and wealth by a foreign power. If at all this is going to have any effect on the resistance to american forces, its going to be positive. Becuase saddam was an absolutely bad element in the fight against the occupying forces. Now that they got rid off him, they can be more motivated and more united in their struggle. If there was something which divide Iraqis it was Saddam. Now thats also gone. What we can expect is more unified and popular struggle against the occupying forces.
>I think the editorial staff needs to make a concerted effort to become more professional, drop the dupes, and fix the grammar.
Have you ever thought why slashdot is getting(and able to maintain) the huge popularity ? because the vast majority of the people here dont care for the mistakes you have mentioned from the editors. What they are looking for is quality discussion and what they expect from editors is good selection of stories and perhaps a good comment. Thats all. They know that a site like slashdot which is free, open and update continuously is bound to have these mistakes. There is nothing so surprising about it. None of the mistakes you have mentioned causes any perceivable quality deterioration for the site in general.
I think going after reverse engineering the Outlook MAPI is a terrible and never-ending task. As microsoft keep changing things to ensure incompatibility with Free softwares, its pointless to chase outlook. An alternative cross platform mail client like Thunderbird makes a lot of sense in this background.
I know I am going to get modded down terribly for this. I dont care. Because this is my sincere opinion. I want to ask these average americans who bitch about outsouring , what is wrong with outsouring ? its part of globalization which is something america initiated, perpetuated and benefited MOSTLY. Giant american multinational corporations went and screwed up virtually every local industries and firms in developing countries. As a result of this american economy benefited a lot(whether it was just for a few rich or not is open to debate). Heavily subsidized american agricultural products resulted in devastation of un-subsidized farmers in the developing countries. All these time, these guys who bitch about outsourcing were happy with these. But when the same trend of globalization continued and resulted in so called "outsourcing" , all hell broke loose !!!. So where were you all when a HELL LOOOOT of farmers and other industry workers in developing countries like india were loosing jobs becoz of globalization ? Or is it that "anything is OK as long as we are at the receiving end" ? Why there is a hypocrisy when its outsouring ?
Slashdot Mirror
>> Hmm, probably not the best thing in the world
I think we were talking about different time period. I was mentioning the period AFTER Islam. And you refer to any history books, you will find that it was a period of prosperity,justice and education. I know before Islam, the condition was different.
>> All I know about what happens after that is some basic stuff about Mohammed and his journey to Mecca (or was it Medina?).
Medina(Actually he travelled from Mecca to Madina)
>>Ironic, you're correct, that the one country in the world bent on murdering as many Moslems as possible is also adhering more to Islam concepts than the Moslems they're slaughtering.
Yes you are right. I know your country(the Govt, not the people) is bent on murdering muslims. But still there is more element of "Islamism" in US (like freedom of expression , lack of monarchy etc) than in the "Islamic countries". In these so called islamic countries , what you can see is nothing but Islam and Isalmic values.
>>Anyway, last I heard about Persia being a relevant technological power was in the 500's AD when they were fighting the Roman general Belisarius. At that time, they were feudalistic.
Let me disagree with you here. What they had at that time was not feudalistic. They had perfect Islamic rule at that ime in Persia and it was radically different from feudalism. There were no poverty and prosperity of that period is well known( I am talking about the period of 600 ADs and all). But later on things got changed and then came feudalism. Its still there. What you can see in middle east now is an exquisit blend of feudelism and capitalism. Its funny that you can see more Islamic values and principles in US than you can see in middle east.
>> Considering then that Islam is the dominant religion *only* in countries that are behind the rest technologically, in spite of the fact that they are also the "cradle of civilization", and have therefore been populated longer than any western country, does that indicate that keeping knowledge hidden is actually condusive to building civilization?
No, not at all IMO. These "islamic countries" are lagging behind in technology and education NOW. Its true. But that was not the case earlier. They had a glorious past when they were well advanced in these things. What happened later was they deviated from Islamic values and principles including(but not limited to) education and information. Now what they are following is not at all Islamic. I would say most of the Islamic countries are actually feudalistic societies. Also, the western societies didnt advance when they kept information "hidden". On the contray , they advanced when information and knowledge was essentially FREE. Now they are adopting a "hidden" approach in technology and education. Lets see where it takes them in the coming periods. IMHO, this will have a negative impact on their lead in the coming periods.
>> If that were entirely true, no-one would get paid in Iran, since everything would be considered the 'product of God', since God is the source of all creation.
No, according to Islam God is the absolute owner of everything and people who "own" them are persons AUTHORIZED to do transactions and spend accordingly(think of someone who has leased it or hired, but dont have to pay for the lease). The only condition is that all the transactions have to be according to Islamic principles. Making profit is perfectly legitimate as long as its not crossing the limits of Islamic rules. You can charge for any service you offer within that condition
>> According to Islamic law If I understand it correctly(), God is the source of all invention and creation and therefore the holder of all copyright
You make an interesting point. Its interesting to think of Islam and Free softwares. In fact proprietory software itself is not very Islamic. Islam is very much against putting obstacles in reading or learing. Actually Quran start with the word "READ"("Iqra'h in Arabic) and free information is an essential thing according to Islam. Proprietory softwares are exactly at the opposite spectrum. What they are saying is like "dont read" or "dont do much" ; just do ONLY what we are asking you to do . Also, as something similar to you said, Islam doesnt gives you "absolute power" over anything. Whether its money , software or anything. According to Islam, Allah is the real (read absolute) owner of any property and you are a "temporary owner" or rather someone who is authorized to posses this and spend accordingly. So any behaviour out of the assumption that " I am the owner, I can do wahtever I feel like" and attaching so many restrictions(something like Microsoft EULA) are not the Islamic way. In all these contexts, I am surprised that Islamic scholars are not debating the software issues(Free vs proprietory) in an Islamic context much.
When I said "standing upto US bullying" I didnt mean it as perfect. You need strong leadership and political will for that. No country in this world at present scenario do that, including nuclear powers. Having said that, Japanese situation is not that bad. Atleast in trade negotiations and all they fair BETTER than India and all I believe. My point is that possession of nuclear power per se does not give ability to stand upto bullying or atleast the countries with nuclear weapons dont do better in this issue than the countries without it.
>> It keeps you from getting shoved around by bullying a##eholes like the US really well
You dont need nuclear weapons for that. Look at Japan. Heck even cuba doesnt have nuclear weapons. They all manage to stand up to US "bullying". And now after being nuclear power also, successive Indian govts vie (with pakistan) to be "better friend" of US rather than saying anything against their "bullying tactics".
>> Also, the radiation safety and other protocols will go a long way toward getting a proper nuclear energy program
There were many reports pointing the lack of safety in Indian nuclear power plants including some official/semiofficial agency report.
>>assuming that you're planning to build nuclear power plants after you've built nuclear explosives and not the other way around.
No, India started it other way and politicians had always used the nuclear reactor programs as a cover for the country's weapons program.
>> India won indipendence only 55 years ago, and is fast turning into an intelectual and finincial world power. They have a space program, nuclear wepons and huge investment from global companies such as IBM and Dell.
How does wasting the resources to acquire nuclear weapons help to become a intellectual or financial power ?
>> But seriously, we all complain about MS's problems, now we've actually got a outlet to complain to. If you don't speak up now, you really have no room to speak later!
Its not that microsoft doesnt know their weakness or why people go after linux. They know the reasons behind all these. And people have on so many occasions shown them what is the problem with MS softwares and the business practice followd by MS and why they dont like it. But the response from MS have been less than encouraging at best and bullying at worst. This survey is also, I suspect not something to know the "heart and mind" of linux users and tailor their software according to that. But I would suspect that they will use the informations from such linux studies to look in to ways to CIRCUMVENT these problems in a clever way. MS cannot and will not change their busniess tactics easily. Their entire business culture is build upon un-ethical and shoddy practices. To expect any revolutionary or fundamental change from them is naive at best. They have never even admitted their wrong doing any time despite being found guilty on so many occasions. That itself shows what sort of a mindset the people at the holm of Microsoft does have.
>> My point was that license is hugely important for something that the user might link to while w/ application it doesn't matter as long as it's "free enough".
Let me clarify this point again. The argument that "proprietory-friendly" license alone will attract ISVs is a myth. If that was the case, then GTK should have attracted a lot of ISVs and QT would not have. But what we see at present is GTK has failed in this aspect and QT has indeed attracted a lot of ISVs. So what is important is not just license but other things like technical superiority and better documentation and support. Atleast in this case( GTK vs QT) these factors have beaten license issue. Also when I say "technical merits", I dont mean "look and feel". What I mean is better architecture, APIs , documentation and support.
As someone who have read almost all the mails in the list so far, I think the decision to go with GNOME was taken in a BAD way atleast. First there was a lot of discussion about the technical merits of these 2 and later it was decided to go with GNOME based almost solely on "proprietory friendly" license of GTK. If that was the only criteria for selecting the softwares, then what is the purpose of discussion? its easy to compile a list softwares with the above license. Also, as far as I understand(someone correct me if I am wrong in this please) QT has been adopted by the ISVs far more than the GTK. It boasts of a customer base including IBM, Adobe , Samsung and many many other high profile companies. So if all these companies have found the technical mertis of QT(better documented APIs, more powerfull, architectural superiority etc.) more than the "proprietory unfriendly"[sic] nature of the license, then why the same logic does not apply to Userlinux? . The same goes with Epiphany also. It seems to be (not finalized though) decided that Epiphany would be the default browser. There was a lot of discussions about browser choice also. Mostly it was agreed that Mozilla firebird was the best choice . But then at the end Epiphany was chosen(?) based solely on the "better GNOME integration".Again why there needs to be a lot of discussion about the technical merits if at the end some criteria like "proprietory friendly" nature of the license and "Gnome integration" are going to be the sole criteria. Is these 2 factors so important to give such a huge weightage over technical merits and everything else ? After carefully reading all the mails also, I have not found a good answer for these concerns. Perhaps I am missing something. But anyway I wish all the best for Bruce and his effort.
>> Why do you think a corporation deserves market protection from cheap foreign goods if they're exploiting the lack of labor protection?
What level of additional "protection" an average american programmer get than say an indian programmer working in Bangaloor ? I am not an american. But what I understand is (correct me if I am wrong in this) that you dont have much protection in US software field atleast. Also, there is not much exploitation in indian software field(atleast comparing to the US condition). So what is the point ?
>> We need to go back into isolation and let the world see how they do w/o our charity.
Exactly !! if americans had got back isolated, then this outsourcing woud not have happened. I have wrote this in earlier discussions and would say it again. Outsouring is part of so called "globalisation" which is something amrica started , perpetuated and above all BENEFITED the most. More than any other country in the world america has contributed and benefited out of this process. Now you think its not good for you , because it starts to affect YOU ALSO. so it was ok as long as it was destabilizing third world economies and third world job market ? Then regarding charity, I wont even comment about that BS.
I have generalized things a bit in my previous post. But let me clarify again. In NO case people can buy microsoft solution without paying a penny atleast to them (and hence US economy for that matter). But its certainly POSSIBLE in open source software. You can have as many linux installation as possible without paying anything to Redhat or SUSE for example. Ofcourse it may not be the case all them time. In many case its a mixed one with a single big company(like IBM) and some local sub contractors and in some cases it could be even a single entity ( like IBM again) alone. But my point is that its always possible to not pay a penny to US economy with open source solutions and its NEVER possible with M$ solution(or for other proprietory solutiosn from US firms) . By the way, I am working in a linux consultancy firm in a neighbouring country of IRAQ. so I see this argument coming up quite frequently.
> but keep in mind that many many sites wouldn't be there if nobody saw their ads...
I understand your thinking, but let me disagree with you. Most of the sites which provide "good" content(ofcourse what is "good" is very very objective) are not dependent on ads much. This is especially true in the case of news sites. Most of the good news site( I dont mean the highly biased and propogandistic mainstream ones) are not ad based. Also, I am sure even if this ads become irrelevent, some other model with more decentralization and less business would emerge in that place. In other words, a darwinian selection would come up there also. I wouldn't regret much if I see these ad-based sites go off and something else come up in that place. People who want to communicate with the world in an easy and cheap way would always find internet as a good tool.
Good comments! but let me disagree with you on the following part,
>Anotehr point, people ahead of me talked about "Linux is free, the US won't benifit from it!" well, last time I checked, which is not too long ago, RedHat was a US company and the charge money for their solutions, minus Fedora. IBM, HP, Dell and other manfacturers make the hardware that Linux runs on it and it does cost money
Actually what people are saying is when its microsoft solutions, almost entire money goes to one single corporation(from the software part atleast). But when its linux it may not go to any international firm at all. In most of the countries linux support is offered by local firms. They dont have to pay any royalties or license fees to the linux vendor in US for using it. This is how local firms (and thus local economy ) get benefited if people go buy open source way. In short, open source way is more distributed and microsoft way (or any proprietory way) is more centralized.
Actually when I said GPL I meant GPL/LGPL. LGPL is different from BSD in that you cannnot make LGPLed software proprietory and it PERPETUATES the freedom. Commercial firms prefer GPL/LGPL over BSD. Its a fact. They dont want to support BSD licensed project and see their competetors leveraging their work against them in the future by making it closed. Regarding the question why they prefer LGPL against GPL is simple. With LGPL they have the advantage of GPL( protection from competetors leveraging their work against them) and still they can keep their linking proprietory code as such.
> even the best Linux distros are dramatically less stable and robust than the BSDs
Any benchmark or anything to substantiate your claims ?
> GPL-only licensing is the kiss of death for the kinds of large-scale commercial support such a venture needs.
Bullshit !! Then how come commercial vendors like IBM, HP and all support linux and not any BSD based proejcts ? When they joined the "linux bandwagon", BSDs were clearly superior. Actually commercial firms prefer GPL because they are guarantied that their work wont be leveraged by competetors against them.
> that the code can never be placed under another more restrictive license,
Then it would be against the very idea of BSD license . BSD license is all about freedom to do ANYTHING you like with the code.
> As much as I detest Microsoft, I've reached the conclusion that the GPL is a greater long-term threat
Please try to join SCO my dear. As far as I know , they are the only one who holds such a view at present.
I belive the success of Linux(and GNU) over BSD was because of the license also. Most of the opensource/free software developers want their work to REMAIN free. Face it, most of the people dont like their work to be taken away by corporations and made proprietory. If we look in to repositrories like freshmeat and sourceforge this trend is clearer. A good majority of the programs are released under GPL/LGPL. Even many of those who use *BSD as their platform also tend to follow this pattern more or less. Actually if BSDs were licensed GPL, then I think they would have continued to enjoy the developer base they had in the past. If UserLinux is to be dropped in favour of UserBSD, I think its going to enounter the same fate of BSDs.
>>Technically, the 1991 war remained a cease-fire, a truce which Iraq violated by firing on US patrols during said cease-fire. This invoked the US's right to resume hotilities
But that was not the STATED reason for going war. The stated reasons were WMD, Iraq-Al-Qaida relation and relation with 9/11. None of these have been proven right. In fact it has become clear that these were false.
>>Furthermore, Iraq was in violation of about 2 dozen UN resolutions.
What about Israel ? they are breaching far more. Will US do ANYTHING for that matter?
>> Absurd. We are still finding Egyptian mummies and artifacts that are several millenia-old buried in the desert. We could find Saddam's weapons 250 years from now buried somewhere.
Then why the same logic was not applied to UN inspection team ? why is it that UN team is supposed to find the WMD in a short time and US has to be given 250 years for the same.?
>> Luckily we are there instead of some country that wants to take over and loot their oil
By "we" if you mean Halliburton et al., then I would agree with you
>> I must ask you why we are mainly being attacked in the region known as the Suni Triangle, why are we not engaged in other regions of the country?
Partially true. Even though, some of the high profile attacks were in these "sunni-triangle" , other areas too are regulary seeing fight.
>> If these were everyday citizens, why would they lay their life on the line to fight us when the Iraqi leadership will be taking over in 6 months?
Yah, like Afghan is having "their own" government now, right? They are motivated by factors like Nationality, Islam , anti-americanism etc. All these feelings are running very strong in entire middle east and Iraq in particular.
>> why are their only bands of guerillas fighting us?
But haven't you noticed the people from little kids to old ladies celebrating every attack on US and other occupying soldiers ? Not everyone who supports a movement (or feeling) take arms ! But the attack on occupying force is SUPPORTED by MOST of the Iraquis.
Telling that fight against invading american forces would decline because of this is pure BULLSHIT ! Becuase Iraquis were not fighting out of loyality to saddam. Almost none of them ever liked saddam (even though they had to tollerate him for a long time out of fear). The people who are fighting against the US forces are not saddam loyalists as propogated by US media. They are ordinary people who doesnt want their country to be ruled by a foreign force and loot their oil and wealth by a foreign power. If at all this is going to have any effect on the resistance to american forces, its going to be positive. Becuase saddam was an absolutely bad element in the fight against the occupying forces. Now that they got rid off him, they can be more motivated and more united in their struggle. If there was something which divide Iraqis it was Saddam. Now thats also gone. What we can expect is more unified and popular struggle against the occupying forces.
>I think the editorial staff needs to make a concerted effort to become more professional, drop the dupes, and fix the grammar.
Have you ever thought why slashdot is getting(and able to maintain) the huge popularity ? because the vast majority of the people here dont care for the mistakes you have mentioned from the editors. What they are looking for is quality discussion and what they expect from editors is good selection of stories and perhaps a good comment. Thats all. They know that a site like slashdot which is free, open and update continuously is bound to have these mistakes. There is nothing so surprising about it. None of the mistakes you have mentioned causes any perceivable quality deterioration for the site in general.
I think going after reverse engineering the Outlook MAPI is a terrible and never-ending task. As microsoft keep changing things to ensure incompatibility with Free softwares, its pointless to chase outlook. An alternative cross platform mail client like Thunderbird makes a lot of sense in this background.
I know I am going to get modded down terribly for this. I dont care. Because this is my sincere opinion. I want to ask these average americans who bitch about outsouring , what is wrong with outsouring ? its part of globalization which is something america initiated, perpetuated and benefited MOSTLY. Giant american multinational corporations went and screwed up virtually every local industries and firms in developing countries. As a result of this american economy benefited a lot(whether it was just for a few rich or not is open to debate). Heavily subsidized american agricultural products resulted in devastation of un-subsidized farmers in the developing countries. All these time, these guys who bitch about outsourcing were happy with these. But when the same trend of globalization continued and resulted in so called "outsourcing" , all hell broke loose !!!. So where were you all when a HELL LOOOOT of farmers and other industry workers in developing countries like india were loosing jobs becoz of globalization ? Or is it that "anything is OK as long as we are at the receiving end" ? Why there is a hypocrisy when its outsouring ?