Re:Weren't they aware of this during implementatio
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VLC & European Patents
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Not the best reference, but it's pretty commonly spread around.
http://pub.cyberlogic.net/news.php?NID=662
If you look in here, you can see a quote from Linus, who undoubtably has some good legal advice, stating that he does not encourage engineers to investigate patents, because finding patent infringement is the responsibility of the patent holders, patent infringement is subject to interpretation, and you get triple damages if you knew about it.
There are a multitude of sources that will confirm this, that's just one of the first ones I came across googling. Check for yourself.
Re:Weren't they aware of this during implementatio
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VLC & European Patents
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· Score: 4, Informative
Programmers are generally recommended NOT to investigate patents at all. If they knowingly offend, they pay triple damages when taken to task over it in the US (holy mecca of patent litigation)
The generally accepted practice in the business world is build it without having any awareness that it was previously discovered or patented, then have your lawyers look for infringement and negotiate a deal. The developers, engineers, etc are generally prohibited from going anywhere near patents.
Consciously avoid being exposed to other ppls ideas, reinvent the wheel, employ a bunch of people who could be doing something productive to find out after the fact if anyone has invented this before, and then hope that there's enough revenue for your new idea left after you pay to license the patents.
Kind of puts the lie to the whole "in the interests of progress" thing, doesn't it?
Wall clocks, watches and alarm clocks all use the power in a rundown fashion. Who cares if they use a small current? They will still last half as long with these new batteries.
You don't keep the other devices on all the time, no. But they are still not burst-of-power type devices. When you do use them, you generally use them for a long time. Hours at a time. While I haven't had the opportunity to test these batteries in such devices, after reading the article, I'm led to believe that they do not match the usage pattern that makes these batteries the optimal choice.
The cell phones aren't using alkaline batteries. That's irrelevant to the fact that they are still a run-down style device, and one of the most popular devices on earth.
And it's nice to hear how you strongly doubt that I know what I'm talking about. I have a digital answering machine. You take the batteries out, the messages are gone. If that wasn't the case, I wouldn't put it on the list, would I?
If I am going to go and buy just enough batteries for each device each time I purchase, then these new batteries would have a place in my digicam, and I'd likely be better off with alkalines for the others. But I usually save money by buying my batteries at a department store in boxes of 40. In which case, I am likely going to see better returns on my money by skipping these new batteries, and throwing a couple of spare sets in my bag if I'm going out for extended periods taking pictures (like camping).
I agree. And after reading the article, it appears that we are both right. Basically, the visual quality of LCDs doesn't suck nearly as bad as it used to... they're almost as good as CRTs now.
Personally, I still don't like them. I still notice the ghosting effects. They're less pronounced yes, but that's like comparing a deep gouge with a faint scratch. If you're staring at the thing all day, it's still annoying. Same thing with dead pixels. It only takes one for me to not want to use the monitor anymore.
I think I'll go grab some new CRTs this weekend before they're all gone.
I've given up on asking people to read the article. But is it really too much to even read the post? One is a rundown test, where you continuously drain the battery. Most real devices aren't used that way.
The devices within my sight as I sit at my desk that use their batteries in a rundown fashion.:
Governments aren't allowed to require it to be labeled, at least in North America. NAFTA forbids it. It is considered a barrier to trade, and if any government, (municipal, state/provincial or federal) were to attempt to introduce such legislation, the companies that sell GM food would sue the hell out of them and win.
Democracy is dead. Welcome to Planet Starbucks.
Re:Free thought is a challenge to authority!
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EZTree Shuts Down
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No, I am not arguing meaningless manners. I am correcting repeated factual inaccuracies, inconsistencies and incoherance in your postings and expanding upon my points. You, on the other hand, appear to be here not to engage in intelligent dialogue, but to attempt to belittle those around you. You must be a very insecure person.
Either or both of totalitarianism and democracy does not accurately describe the gamut of the FOSS environment. I didn't make a primary errror. I made a clear factual statement. I understand exactly what your statement says. And it is false.
As was your statement that communism and authoritarianism are interchangeable. One moment you are talking to me about the "default of the english language", and the next you are attempting to justify your error by stating that I and everyone else who reads this thread should know well enough to interpret your statement using C++ syntax? Get off your high horse bud. Have the words "I stand corrected" ever left your lips? Try it sometime.
It's not my responsibility to intuit truth from whatever false statements come out of the masses around me like some witchdoctor reading the bones. It is my personal responsibility to excercise critical thinking and ignore such statements so that my own thinking capacity does not degenerate as yours appears to have done, and my social responsiblity when engaging in dialogue to share my critical thinking with those I am conversing with in order that we may all learn from each other.
Although you do appear to have learned enough to post as an anonymous coward. I guess that the lesson about fools and removing doubt got through somewhere.
First up, moral authority does enter into it, because this is not just theoretical science, it is also technological application. Investing effort into the development of technology based on science does require a moral decision. It's not a matter of building it then determining if it's safe, it's a matter of estimating the risks and social consequence involved in building it in the first place.
Example? Investigating biology doesn't require a moral decision presuming that you do no harm in your research and create nothing new that could propagate. But investing efforts in applying biological science to the areas of virus based vaccinations, genetically modified foods and germ warfare do require moral decisions.
Secondly, morality doesn't have anything to do with religion or faith. Read up on some philosophy some time. Those who surrender their moral decisions to someone else such as a religious or political leader are not moral people. They may or may act in a moral fashion, but if they don't decide for themselves if the actions are moral or not then the final morality of their actions amounts to more of a coincidence.
Understanding, investigation, logic and a consideration of the ramifications of an action on the individual and the environment the live in are prereq for moral decision making. Religious faith destroys the capacity for morality. Please don't propagate the lie.
I can tell you that I will fight you tooth and nail on this issue. I make my living selling information in the form of software code and various other computer related IP.
Me too. And I will fight YOU tooth and nail on this issue. Because I don't need a copyright to continue to make money, there are lots of ppl out there that want me to create new things and will pay me copyright or no. As far as I'm concerned, if you're not capable of finding someone out there in the world who wants you to create something new for them and will pay you to do so, you don't deserve to recieve a creators income stream and should go flip burgers at Macdonalds.
Re:Free thought is a challenge to authority!
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EZTree Shuts Down
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It appears I was not adequately clear. Your concerns are not valid, so far as I, the writer, find the answers in the post you respond to.
I'm sorry, that sentance doesn't appear to quite make sense. Although I do sense a general arrogance and the implication that your not being clear or making sense are somehow to reflect upon the reader and not you, the one supposedly communicating here.
However, I did not comment that Communism was a governmental system, simply that Orwell opposed authoritarianism rather than the Communism mentioned, so the * use.
I believe that the relevant piece of your very long run on sentance was
is the rise or enshrinement of authoritarianism-the *communism that he opposed
Now, perhaps you didn't intend to say that communism was authoritarianism, but that was what you said. An asterix is not a footnote.
Your comment on the variety of types of management for FOSS projects was described in the last sentence.
I do not agree. You said either or both the proper balance between authoritarianism for efficiency and democracy for general welfare, and this implies that these two government styles cover the gamut of leadership styles in the FOSS environment. This is clearly not the case. The diversity among the many projects out there demonstrates that your statement is clearly false.
The government and economic comparisons seemed preferred by the poster I responded to and were used for that reason-this is a site for professionals, and the foolish and childish have no place here so the post was written for an audience of fellows capable of understanding at least slightly complex ideas and not the former who can not.
Generally, professionals learn to communicate properly, particularly when they're doing so in a public forum. They are also generally capable of clarifying themselves without insinuating in such an offensive fashion as you have done that their own lack of clarity indicates stupidity or immaturity on the part of the reader. As a matter of fact, I'd consider lashing out at others in such a fashion rather than digesting what was said and clarifying themselves to be a characteristic that interferes with ones ability to learn. When I encounter such people, I usually discover that they are relatively stupid.
Nah.. you'll turn into the human blob... one big out of control endlessly growing mound of flesh.
Lets do it to livestock instead. Grow em till it's almost time to slaughter, then transform em into cancer-cows and watch em balloon. Monitor em, then slaughter em just before the deformation kills them and grind them into burger.
Get your lawyer to take a close look at their literature and see precisely what they're representing those IP blocks as. If the wording isn't precisely done, you might be able to go after them for misrepresenting your business and nail them with a slander charge. If they require a fee for removal, go after them for extortion as well.
As for dealing with the problem, it occurs to me if ISPs were to provide custom whitelists for their customers that could be automatically updated by the customer on the fly, that could go a long way towards mitigating the damage. Then if you did get onto one of these blacklists, your clients could go in and whitelist you so you can continue to communicate with them until the problem is properly resolved.
Re:Free thought is a challenge to authority!
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EZTree Shuts Down
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I am afraid, if your position indicates any tendency for the average world citizen, that you lack the genuine capacity for critical thought. What Orwell is opposing in the real literary meaning of his text, such as is applicable even now, is the rise or enshrinement of authoritarianism-the *communism that he opposed had at the time become overtly and excessively focused on the provisional governance of the revolutionary area and imposed authoritarian demands on it to suppress that motive force. FOSS represents rather, for most successful projects, either or both the proper balance between authoritarianism for efficiency and democracy for general welfare more than any other systems as participation is either fully optional or selected as avenues of development by corporations to whom the workers have already sold the quantity of their labor power that if assigned it would take from them.
Communism isn't Authoritarianism. It's an economic system, not a system of government. You can have a democratic communist society, you can have a democratic socialist society and you can have a democratic capitalist society.
And FOSS isn't exclusively any of the above. If you were going to describe the linux development process, for example, it would be better described as totalitarianism, because Linus has absolute authority on what goes in. But that really would be kind of misleading, because he doesn't get to tell anyone what to do, he just decides what goes into the source tree for his kernel. He doesn't even have the capacity to take his ball and go home. I could take his exact tree and release it as ShieldWolfix and if people were more interested in working with me than with him, that would be the end of this authority.
There are other projects are administered in a more democratic fashion. There are also a lot of meritocracies. Apache is generally considered to be one. The administration varies with every project.
I would say that using these sort of metaphors to describe the FOSS world is not a good idea for anyone that has an interest in them though. They relate only in a tenuous fashion, but are highly charged emotionally with a lot of people. You are pretty much guaranteed to rub a lot of people the wrong way when you use these terms.
I quoted from one of the bottom paragraphs in the article and asked for clarification. Do you honestly think I didn't read the damned thing already?
What I want to know is, how do these large companies that are making contributions to linux like IBM etc track the tree and submit their patches etc through BitKeeper as McVoy stated they would continue to do when Linus and Co no longer have access to it?
BTW, if you're going to get all arrogant and open your post with "RTFA", perhaps you could RTFQ next time and answer it instead of just flapping your gums.
I can't give you any examples, as I haven't gone there in a couple of years, but I found his site to be one of the worse ones. Toms too.
If you want accuracy in your information, best is to check out a support site for the product that isn't run by the manufacturer. amdmb.com for example I've found to be great for finding out about unstable hardware. I've seen critical posts disappear in manufacturer run forums before, so I wouldn't assume that a lack of people with problems there means there aren't any.
I've always found aceshardware.com to be excellent if you're interested in actually knowing what's going on and not just how many frames per second you get in whatever the flavour of the month is.
I think he's referring to the fact that the US was pretty much the number one copyright offender in the world when they got started. The British were flipping and the Americans just flipped them off. It was only when the US started having significant developments of their own that they started to care about "IP"
After reading what he has to say, it appears to me that he's got two trains of thought running in his head. The "open source yay" train of thought that the marketing people tell him to espouse, and what he really thinks. Just an impression based on the way he seems to frequently conflict with himself, like someone who's putting on a front but knee-jerks out their real opinion when they're put on the spot, then tries to recover from it.
Larry noted that the kernel tree will continue to be tracked by BitKeeper, as many kernel developers have been commercially licensing the product for that purpose. This includes employees of many large companies who actively contribute to Linux development such as IBM, Intel, HP, Nokia and Sun as well as many smaller companies.
I'm not familiar with BitKeeper. Can anyone comment on the possible ramifications of having all these large-scale commercial contributors using a tool that Linus & Co no longer use/have access to?
Flipping off Bush was stupid. Exactly what do we gain by "flipping off" the leader of another country? Particularly our largest trading partner? You can disagree without pissing off people you might need a favour from, but Chretien was incapable of that. That's small town bully behaviour, not global statesman behaviour. Can you see Lester B. Person "flipping off" the US President? No? Why not? Because he's a statesman.
Right. We should be sending out our envoys to be nice and friendly with the Iranians too, eh? And maybe we can go have tea in North Korea when we're done. I mean, they're a far cry better than Bush. At least they generally restrict the harm they do to the people that keep them in power.
Don't know if you're aware of this, but if you can trust any of the polls that have been done, GWB is considered by popular Canadians to be the most dangerous man on earth, to be the man on earth most likely to lead us to a world war, and to be a criminal who belongs in jail. I'd just as soon have the leader of my country going and playing nicey-nicey with Hitler. So basically, the man was implementing the will of his people. That is generally considered the ideal for a democratic society.
And you're right. I don't care what kind of guy Cretien is outside of how well he did his job. I'll take a corrupt official who can excercise restraint in his corruption and do a good job before an incompetent any day. Sir John A was one of our greatest PMs ever, and he was a drunk who used to get in brawls outside the parliment house. But that doesn't change the fact that he built the country. I don't ask my banker if he sleeps around on his wife, and don't ask my mechanic if he cheats at cards. As long as I can trust them to do the job that they're supposed to be doing for me better than the next guy, that is ALL that matters. I don't expect people to be saints, I just expect them to do their jobs properly.
Besides, really... who the hell else is going to run the country, that homophobic hillbilly Stephen Harper? I'm sure that would do good things for our relations with the states, if nothing else. Him and GW would get along famously I'm sure. Might drag us back into the victorian age while he's at it, but we've got to prioritize, right?
That's totally bogus. We're not talking about a secret trial where the participants are co-conspiritors here. The jury are members of the public. Post trial court documents are accessable to the public, and their accuracy can be verified by simply speaking to the jurors. Your talk of constitutional rights and censorship is bullshit. Keeping court evidence from the public until after the trial does not in any way deprive anyone of their constituional rights, and it remains transparent because everything is disclosed after the proceedings are completed. You're twisting the facts here because you have no basis for your position.
And nice job taking my quote completely out of context.
I sure as hell wouldn't want to go into a courtroom as a defendant and be judged by people who had already been presented with all the details of my case
Now, that makes me sound like an idiot and misleads anyone who reads it. It sure does make you look a lot smarter than me, and does good things for your position, but it's basically misrepresenting me. And when the moderators conceal my post and all anyone reads is yours, everyone who reads this is going to form opinions about me based on your twisted bullshit.
What I said was:
I sure as hell wouldn't want to go into a courtroom as a defendant and be judged by people who had already been presented with all the details of my case, with the parts that don't sell filtered out and brought to them by the best salesmen in the business. Would you?
So basically, you're a perfect illustration of my point. You're the manipulative salesman filtering out the truth so he can sell his position, and you're lying to people about my position. And evidence has shown that I can't trust the other people on slashdot not to form opinions on this basis. They do it all the time, you can browse the forums and see ignoramuses spouting off everywhere and making illogical emotional bullshit arguments that are not factual. Considering that this is supposedly one of the places where the smarter of us come for our news, it's not looking very good for your position.
The rule is simple. People who have been already been exposed to misleading bullshit from people like you are not permitted to participate in jury duty and hold a persons fate in their hands because it is not fair and it is not just.
I think his point was that they are restricting the rights of their own citizens to travel outside their borders. As in, you're only allowed to leave if we give you permission to leave. One of those things that they used to point the finger at Iraq about. One of those totalitarian things, you dig?
God damn that country scares me. Every day they look more and more like Germany in the 30s. Constant surveillance of its citizenry, living in a nice comfy womb of propaganda, secrets, secret police, imprisoning people without trial or accountability, ever increasing unification between the corporations and the goverment, the ever increasing religious rhetoric of the leadership, government rewriting science, I mean fuck. They're scary enough without having all the worlds nukes and a president that can't string his words together.
And the proud American moderators will bring this offensive post to -1 in a heartbeat.
Slashdot Mirror
Not the best reference, but it's pretty commonly spread around.
http://pub.cyberlogic.net/news.php?NID=662
If you look in here, you can see a quote from Linus, who undoubtably has some good legal advice, stating that he does not encourage engineers to investigate patents, because finding patent infringement is the responsibility of the patent holders, patent infringement is subject to interpretation, and you get triple damages if you knew about it.
There are a multitude of sources that will confirm this, that's just one of the first ones I came across googling. Check for yourself.
Programmers are generally recommended NOT to investigate patents at all. If they knowingly offend, they pay triple damages when taken to task over it in the US (holy mecca of patent litigation)
The generally accepted practice in the business world is build it without having any awareness that it was previously discovered or patented, then have your lawyers look for infringement and negotiate a deal. The developers, engineers, etc are generally prohibited from going anywhere near patents.
Consciously avoid being exposed to other ppls ideas, reinvent the wheel, employ a bunch of people who could be doing something productive to find out after the fact if anyone has invented this before, and then hope that there's enough revenue for your new idea left after you pay to license the patents.
Kind of puts the lie to the whole "in the interests of progress" thing, doesn't it?
Wall clocks, watches and alarm clocks all use the power in a rundown fashion. Who cares if they use a small current? They will still last half as long with these new batteries.
You don't keep the other devices on all the time, no. But they are still not burst-of-power type devices. When you do use them, you generally use them for a long time. Hours at a time. While I haven't had the opportunity to test these batteries in such devices, after reading the article, I'm led to believe that they do not match the usage pattern that makes these batteries the optimal choice.
The cell phones aren't using alkaline batteries. That's irrelevant to the fact that they are still a run-down style device, and one of the most popular devices on earth.
And it's nice to hear how you strongly doubt that I know what I'm talking about. I have a digital answering machine. You take the batteries out, the messages are gone. If that wasn't the case, I wouldn't put it on the list, would I?
If I am going to go and buy just enough batteries for each device each time I purchase, then these new batteries would have a place in my digicam, and I'd likely be better off with alkalines for the others. But I usually save money by buying my batteries at a department store in boxes of 40. In which case, I am likely going to see better returns on my money by skipping these new batteries, and throwing a couple of spare sets in my bag if I'm going out for extended periods taking pictures (like camping).
I agree. And after reading the article, it appears that we are both right. Basically, the visual quality of LCDs doesn't suck nearly as bad as it used to... they're almost as good as CRTs now.
Personally, I still don't like them. I still notice the ghosting effects. They're less pronounced yes, but that's like comparing a deep gouge with a faint scratch. If you're staring at the thing all day, it's still annoying. Same thing with dead pixels. It only takes one for me to not want to use the monitor anymore.
I think I'll go grab some new CRTs this weekend before they're all gone.
I've given up on asking people to read the article. But is it really too much to even read the post? One is a rundown test, where you continuously drain the battery. Most real devices aren't used that way.
The devices within my sight as I sit at my desk that use their batteries in a rundown fashion.:
1 Wall clock. 2 Watches. 1 Alarm clock. 1 Radio. 5 different electronic toys. 1 Flashlight. 2 Cell phones. 1 Answering machine.
Total: 14.
The devices within my sight that use intermitant high-bursts of power:
1 Digital Camera.
Total: 1
What was that you were saying about most real devices?
ZephyrXero: Read the article next time you post. You're wrong. Moderators: Read the article next time you mod someone insightful. You're wrong.
Governments aren't allowed to require it to be labeled, at least in North America. NAFTA forbids it. It is considered a barrier to trade, and if any government, (municipal, state/provincial or federal) were to attempt to introduce such legislation, the companies that sell GM food would sue the hell out of them and win. Democracy is dead. Welcome to Planet Starbucks.
No, I am not arguing meaningless manners. I am correcting repeated factual inaccuracies, inconsistencies and incoherance in your postings and expanding upon my points. You, on the other hand, appear to be here not to engage in intelligent dialogue, but to attempt to belittle those around you. You must be a very insecure person.
Either or both of totalitarianism and democracy does not accurately describe the gamut of the FOSS environment. I didn't make a primary errror. I made a clear factual statement. I understand exactly what your statement says. And it is false.
As was your statement that communism and authoritarianism are interchangeable. One moment you are talking to me about the "default of the english language", and the next you are attempting to justify your error by stating that I and everyone else who reads this thread should know well enough to interpret your statement using C++ syntax? Get off your high horse bud. Have the words "I stand corrected" ever left your lips? Try it sometime.
It's not my responsibility to intuit truth from whatever false statements come out of the masses around me like some witchdoctor reading the bones. It is my personal responsibility to excercise critical thinking and ignore such statements so that my own thinking capacity does not degenerate as yours appears to have done, and my social responsiblity when engaging in dialogue to share my critical thinking with those I am conversing with in order that we may all learn from each other.
Although you do appear to have learned enough to post as an anonymous coward. I guess that the lesson about fools and removing doubt got through somewhere.
First up, moral authority does enter into it, because this is not just theoretical science, it is also technological application. Investing effort into the development of technology based on science does require a moral decision. It's not a matter of building it then determining if it's safe, it's a matter of estimating the risks and social consequence involved in building it in the first place.
Example? Investigating biology doesn't require a moral decision presuming that you do no harm in your research and create nothing new that could propagate. But investing efforts in applying biological science to the areas of virus based vaccinations, genetically modified foods and germ warfare do require moral decisions.
Secondly, morality doesn't have anything to do with religion or faith. Read up on some philosophy some time. Those who surrender their moral decisions to someone else such as a religious or political leader are not moral people. They may or may act in a moral fashion, but if they don't decide for themselves if the actions are moral or not then the final morality of their actions amounts to more of a coincidence.
Understanding, investigation, logic and a consideration of the ramifications of an action on the individual and the environment the live in are prereq for moral decision making. Religious faith destroys the capacity for morality. Please don't propagate the lie.
I can tell you that I will fight you tooth and nail on this issue. I make my living selling information in the form of software code and various other computer related IP.
Me too. And I will fight YOU tooth and nail on this issue. Because I don't need a copyright to continue to make money, there are lots of ppl out there that want me to create new things and will pay me copyright or no. As far as I'm concerned, if you're not capable of finding someone out there in the world who wants you to create something new for them and will pay you to do so, you don't deserve to recieve a creators income stream and should go flip burgers at Macdonalds.
It appears I was not adequately clear. Your concerns are not valid, so far as I, the writer, find the answers in the post you respond to.
I'm sorry, that sentance doesn't appear to quite make sense. Although I do sense a general arrogance and the implication that your not being clear or making sense are somehow to reflect upon the reader and not you, the one supposedly communicating here.
However, I did not comment that Communism was a governmental system, simply that Orwell opposed authoritarianism rather than the Communism mentioned, so the * use.
I believe that the relevant piece of your very long run on sentance was
is the rise or enshrinement of authoritarianism-the *communism that he opposed
Now, perhaps you didn't intend to say that communism was authoritarianism, but that was what you said. An asterix is not a footnote.
Your comment on the variety of types of management for FOSS projects was described in the last sentence.
I do not agree. You said either or both the proper balance between authoritarianism for efficiency and democracy for general welfare, and this implies that these two government styles cover the gamut of leadership styles in the FOSS environment. This is clearly not the case. The diversity among the many projects out there demonstrates that your statement is clearly false.
The government and economic comparisons seemed preferred by the poster I responded to and were used for that reason-this is a site for professionals, and the foolish and childish have no place here so the post was written for an audience of fellows capable of understanding at least slightly complex ideas and not the former who can not.
Generally, professionals learn to communicate properly, particularly when they're doing so in a public forum. They are also generally capable of clarifying themselves without insinuating in such an offensive fashion as you have done that their own lack of clarity indicates stupidity or immaturity on the part of the reader. As a matter of fact, I'd consider lashing out at others in such a fashion rather than digesting what was said and clarifying themselves to be a characteristic that interferes with ones ability to learn. When I encounter such people, I usually discover that they are relatively stupid.
Nah.. you'll turn into the human blob... one big out of control endlessly growing mound of flesh.
Lets do it to livestock instead. Grow em till it's almost time to slaughter, then transform em into cancer-cows and watch em balloon. Monitor em, then slaughter em just before the deformation kills them and grind them into burger.
I betcha Macdonalds would go for it.
Get your lawyer to take a close look at their literature and see precisely what they're representing those IP blocks as. If the wording isn't precisely done, you might be able to go after them for misrepresenting your business and nail them with a slander charge. If they require a fee for removal, go after them for extortion as well.
As for dealing with the problem, it occurs to me if ISPs were to provide custom whitelists for their customers that could be automatically updated by the customer on the fly, that could go a long way towards mitigating the damage. Then if you did get onto one of these blacklists, your clients could go in and whitelist you so you can continue to communicate with them until the problem is properly resolved.
I am afraid, if your position indicates any tendency for the average world citizen, that you lack the genuine capacity for critical thought. What Orwell is opposing in the real literary meaning of his text, such as is applicable even now, is the rise or enshrinement of authoritarianism-the *communism that he opposed had at the time become overtly and excessively focused on the provisional governance of the revolutionary area and imposed authoritarian demands on it to suppress that motive force. FOSS represents rather, for most successful projects, either or both the proper balance between authoritarianism for efficiency and democracy for general welfare more than any other systems as participation is either fully optional or selected as avenues of development by corporations to whom the workers have already sold the quantity of their labor power that if assigned it would take from them.
Communism isn't Authoritarianism. It's an economic system, not a system of government. You can have a democratic communist society, you can have a democratic socialist society and you can have a democratic capitalist society.
And FOSS isn't exclusively any of the above. If you were going to describe the linux development process, for example, it would be better described as totalitarianism, because Linus has absolute authority on what goes in. But that really would be kind of misleading, because he doesn't get to tell anyone what to do, he just decides what goes into the source tree for his kernel. He doesn't even have the capacity to take his ball and go home. I could take his exact tree and release it as ShieldWolfix and if people were more interested in working with me than with him, that would be the end of this authority.
There are other projects are administered in a more democratic fashion. There are also a lot of meritocracies. Apache is generally considered to be one. The administration varies with every project.
I would say that using these sort of metaphors to describe the FOSS world is not a good idea for anyone that has an interest in them though. They relate only in a tenuous fashion, but are highly charged emotionally with a lot of people. You are pretty much guaranteed to rub a lot of people the wrong way when you use these terms.
I quoted from one of the bottom paragraphs in the article and asked for clarification. Do you honestly think I didn't read the damned thing already?
What I want to know is, how do these large companies that are making contributions to linux like IBM etc track the tree and submit their patches etc through BitKeeper as McVoy stated they would continue to do when Linus and Co no longer have access to it?
BTW, if you're going to get all arrogant and open your post with "RTFA", perhaps you could RTFQ next time and answer it instead of just flapping your gums.
I can't give you any examples, as I haven't gone there in a couple of years, but I found his site to be one of the worse ones. Toms too.
If you want accuracy in your information, best is to check out a support site for the product that isn't run by the manufacturer. amdmb.com for example I've found to be great for finding out about unstable hardware. I've seen critical posts disappear in manufacturer run forums before, so I wouldn't assume that a lack of people with problems there means there aren't any.
I've always found aceshardware.com to be excellent if you're interested in actually knowing what's going on and not just how many frames per second you get in whatever the flavour of the month is.
I think he's referring to the fact that the US was pretty much the number one copyright offender in the world when they got started. The British were flipping and the Americans just flipped them off. It was only when the US started having significant developments of their own that they started to care about "IP"
After reading what he has to say, it appears to me that he's got two trains of thought running in his head. The "open source yay" train of thought that the marketing people tell him to espouse, and what he really thinks. Just an impression based on the way he seems to frequently conflict with himself, like someone who's putting on a front but knee-jerks out their real opinion when they're put on the spot, then tries to recover from it.
Larry noted that the kernel tree will continue to be tracked by BitKeeper, as many kernel developers have been commercially licensing the product for that purpose. This includes employees of many large companies who actively contribute to Linux development such as IBM, Intel, HP, Nokia and Sun as well as many smaller companies.
I'm not familiar with BitKeeper. Can anyone comment on the possible ramifications of having all these large-scale commercial contributors using a tool that Linus & Co no longer use/have access to?
Right. Well, you come back and let me know if you find any pearls... all you seem to be capable of slinging is mud.
Flipping off Bush was stupid. Exactly what do we gain by "flipping off" the leader of another country? Particularly our largest trading partner? You can disagree without pissing off people you might need a favour from, but Chretien was incapable of that. That's small town bully behaviour, not global statesman behaviour. Can you see Lester B. Person "flipping off" the US President? No? Why not? Because he's a statesman.
Right. We should be sending out our envoys to be nice and friendly with the Iranians too, eh? And maybe we can go have tea in North Korea when we're done. I mean, they're a far cry better than Bush. At least they generally restrict the harm they do to the people that keep them in power.
Don't know if you're aware of this, but if you can trust any of the polls that have been done, GWB is considered by popular Canadians to be the most dangerous man on earth, to be the man on earth most likely to lead us to a world war, and to be a criminal who belongs in jail. I'd just as soon have the leader of my country going and playing nicey-nicey with Hitler. So basically, the man was implementing the will of his people. That is generally considered the ideal for a democratic society.
And you're right. I don't care what kind of guy Cretien is outside of how well he did his job. I'll take a corrupt official who can excercise restraint in his corruption and do a good job before an incompetent any day. Sir John A was one of our greatest PMs ever, and he was a drunk who used to get in brawls outside the parliment house. But that doesn't change the fact that he built the country. I don't ask my banker if he sleeps around on his wife, and don't ask my mechanic if he cheats at cards. As long as I can trust them to do the job that they're supposed to be doing for me better than the next guy, that is ALL that matters. I don't expect people to be saints, I just expect them to do their jobs properly.
Besides, really... who the hell else is going to run the country, that homophobic hillbilly Stephen Harper? I'm sure that would do good things for our relations with the states, if nothing else. Him and GW would get along famously I'm sure. Might drag us back into the victorian age while he's at it, but we've got to prioritize, right?
That's totally bogus. We're not talking about a secret trial where the participants are co-conspiritors here. The jury are members of the public. Post trial court documents are accessable to the public, and their accuracy can be verified by simply speaking to the jurors. Your talk of constitutional rights and censorship is bullshit. Keeping court evidence from the public until after the trial does not in any way deprive anyone of their constituional rights, and it remains transparent because everything is disclosed after the proceedings are completed. You're twisting the facts here because you have no basis for your position.
And nice job taking my quote completely out of context.
I sure as hell wouldn't want to go into a courtroom as a defendant and be judged by people who had already been presented with all the details of my case
Now, that makes me sound like an idiot and misleads anyone who reads it. It sure does make you look a lot smarter than me, and does good things for your position, but it's basically misrepresenting me. And when the moderators conceal my post and all anyone reads is yours, everyone who reads this is going to form opinions about me based on your twisted bullshit.
What I said was:
I sure as hell wouldn't want to go into a courtroom as a defendant and be judged by people who had already been presented with all the details of my case, with the parts that don't sell filtered out and brought to them by the best salesmen in the business. Would you?
So basically, you're a perfect illustration of my point. You're the manipulative salesman filtering out the truth so he can sell his position, and you're lying to people about my position. And evidence has shown that I can't trust the other people on slashdot not to form opinions on this basis. They do it all the time, you can browse the forums and see ignoramuses spouting off everywhere and making illogical emotional bullshit arguments that are not factual. Considering that this is supposedly one of the places where the smarter of us come for our news, it's not looking very good for your position.
The rule is simple. People who have been already been exposed to misleading bullshit from people like you are not permitted to participate in jury duty and hold a persons fate in their hands because it is not fair and it is not just.
I think his point was that they are restricting the rights of their own citizens to travel outside their borders. As in, you're only allowed to leave if we give you permission to leave. One of those things that they used to point the finger at Iraq about. One of those totalitarian things, you dig?
God damn that country scares me. Every day they look more and more like Germany in the 30s. Constant surveillance of its citizenry, living in a nice comfy womb of propaganda, secrets, secret police, imprisoning people without trial or accountability, ever increasing unification between the corporations and the goverment, the ever increasing religious rhetoric of the leadership, government rewriting science, I mean fuck. They're scary enough without having all the worlds nukes and a president that can't string his words together.
And the proud American moderators will bring this offensive post to -1 in a heartbeat.
Make a point not to speculate on that anymore.