Well, if you consider me to be one of those pseudo-marxists (personally, I don't consider myself one, pseudo or otherwise), I'd like to blow a hole in your theory: I have a real job - and a damn good one at that - but still have time to engage in a fair bit of commentary here.
I have no problem with the notion of private enterprise. I have no wish to live in a planned economy, or in a situation where businesses are nationalised.
What I do have a problem with is today's ridiculous situation where corporations can ride roughshod over individuals, a fact that can be plainly seen almost every day in Slashdot's Your-Rights-Online stories.
Dammit, I never have points when I need them, only when they're inconvenient.
Why should I pay for a test drive?
on
Rent a Segway
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· Score: 2, Insightful
If they want me to buy one of these things, why should I have to pay $5 to test it? They're going to have to do better than that to get me to waste my money on crap like this.
So, how about email to other people on the same server as me. Do I get taxed for that?
How about if I have a computer in my house, and I email other members of the household on it. Do I get taxed for that?
Or if I start communicating with people using a different protocol - maybe I hack at jabber and make it a form of an email delivery system, or do something similar with a bot on IRC. Do I get taxed for that?
Do I get taxed for all of the email that my root account sends me through cron jobs? Do I get taxed multiple times if I send a single email to multiple people? How about if all those people were only sitting on the same server and hence only a single SMTP connection is required to connect to it?
I run my own server. Are they going to snoop my traffic to see how much email I send?
If so, I'll set up VPNs to the servers of people who I email regularly. Are they then going to demand to check my logs to ensure I'm paying the correct amount?
It's clear that economics morons who write crap like this have never read an SMTP RFC in their lifetime.
OpenBSD hasn't even moved to ELF format binaries yet. This means that development on binutils tools (such as ld, etc) has stalled - and as a result, certain applications (eg, avifile) simply won't compile under it.
I like that OpenBSD in that it has been ported to more platforms than FreeBSD, but the years-old binutils is incredibly annoying.
I'm amazed with the crap that human resources droids dream up with to justify their jobs. When I interview people, I get to the point quickly: determine their Unix knowledge. If they don't demonstrate cluefulness about that, they don't get the job.
I do not need to unduly stress them out with bullshit questions regarding manhole covers to determine if they're going to work in my organisation.
...because the loss of privacy leads to victimisation.
Sure, you're not doing anything illegal. But Inspector Plod is watching you anyway, and hey, he sees you downloading an interesting piece of porn.
Oh! It turns out you like watching [insert odd sex act here]. He guesses that might mean you are a member of [potentially embarrassing minority group]. He then uses this evidence to make your life hell.
Political groups can use these increased surveillance powers to spy on their opponents. Everyone ends up feeling "watched" and suddenly no-one trusts anyone anymore.
If an Internet provider uses encryption to preserve its customers' privacy and has access to the encryption keys, it must turn over the intercepted communications to police in a descrambled form.
Like I'd ever hand over my encryption keys to my ISP.
I've often wondered - I've got a Sony Vaio, which came for a licence for Windows ME (which I don't use anyway). But when the laptop eventually dies, does the licence die with it?
The Iraqi parliament will have the right to set down the law as to which standard is used in their country. If they say no-go to the US standard, then that's the way it should be.
Do Sun provide hardware support for systems that have been installed without {their Linux/Redhat}, these days?
I remember this was a problem with their Cobalt range - you had to use the distribution that came with it, or you couldn't get hardware support.
Our site uses Debian, and we basically want a homogenous site. It's a pain to have to administer more than one distribution, and for our purposes, Debian easily outshines Redhat.
Being able to buy Cobalts from Sun would have made the switch to Linux far more palatable for upper level manglement, but the lack of hardware support from Sun for machines without their distribution was a deal-breaker for us.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, if you consider me to be one of those pseudo-marxists (personally, I don't consider myself one, pseudo or otherwise), I'd like to blow a hole in your theory: I have a real job - and a damn good one at that - but still have time to engage in a fair bit of commentary here.
Well, if these sort of posts are getting modded up so often, maybe there is a problem with the system, then?
It's not like Slashdot is limiting its moderators to all-out-Trostkyists, is it?
Who said I was a communist?
I have no problem with the notion of private enterprise. I have no wish to live in a planned economy, or in a situation where businesses are nationalised.
What I do have a problem with is today's ridiculous situation where corporations can ride roughshod over individuals, a fact that can be plainly seen almost every day in Slashdot's Your-Rights-Online stories.
So what's wrong with passengers hunting for the best deal? I thought that's what the free-market and capitalism were all about.
Ah. Yeah. No, neither of those are supposed to benefit mere mortals. Only the rich elite.
...you can rest assured that I'm going to disclose it widely, anonymously and with great fanfare.
...until you accidentally spool that mp3 to the printer ;)
...it looks like we'll have to start writing these games ourselves and releasing them under and open-source licence.
Let's see the bastards ban that.
Dammit, I never have points when I need them, only when they're inconvenient.
If they want me to buy one of these things, why should I have to pay $5 to test it? They're going to have to do better than that to get me to waste my money on crap like this.
From cellular telephones to console video games to Operating systems. Is there anything they don't make?
Yeah. Stable software.
Just pick another name. It's not that hard. They were there first.
Besides, Firebird is a really crap name, IMHO.
Earthlink customers won't be able to receive any email from me in the future then.
If it takes more than one message to send them a email, it's too much effort on my behalf.
So, how about email to other people on the same server as me. Do I get taxed for that?
How about if I have a computer in my house, and I email other members of the household on it. Do I get taxed for that?
Or if I start communicating with people using a different protocol - maybe I hack at jabber and make it a form of an email delivery system, or do something similar with a bot on IRC. Do I get taxed for that?
Do I get taxed for all of the email that my root account sends me through cron jobs? Do I get taxed multiple times if I send a single email to multiple people? How about if all those people were only sitting on the same server and hence only a single SMTP connection is required to connect to it?
It's totally unenforcable. And unworkable.
I run my own server. Are they going to snoop my traffic to see how much email I send?
If so, I'll set up VPNs to the servers of people who I email regularly. Are they then going to demand to check my logs to ensure I'm paying the correct amount?
It's clear that economics morons who write crap like this have never read an SMTP RFC in their lifetime.
Is this open as in open source, or open as in closed?
Oh, and as an aside, can I freely download it and run it on an emulator without having to pay for it, so I can develop apps?
Screensavers with credits? Splashscreens with credits?
No-one wants this shit. If Hans wants to put it it reiserfs, let him feel free to, but I'll compile it all out, or switch to XFS.
I'd like to see a consumers' group sue their arse off for this.
OpenBSD hasn't even moved to ELF format binaries yet. This means that development on binutils tools (such as ld, etc) has stalled - and as a result, certain applications (eg, avifile) simply won't compile under it.
I like that OpenBSD in that it has been ported to more platforms than FreeBSD, but the years-old binutils is incredibly annoying.
...I've been blocking AOL for years. Only fair for them to reciprocate.
I'm amazed with the crap that human resources droids dream up with to justify their jobs. When I interview people, I get to the point quickly: determine their Unix knowledge. If they don't demonstrate cluefulness about that, they don't get the job.
I do not need to unduly stress them out with bullshit questions regarding manhole covers to determine if they're going to work in my organisation.
...because the loss of privacy leads to victimisation.
Sure, you're not doing anything illegal. But Inspector Plod is watching you anyway, and hey, he sees you downloading an interesting piece of porn.
Oh! It turns out you like watching [insert odd sex act here]. He guesses that might mean you are a member of [potentially embarrassing minority group]. He then uses this evidence to make your life hell.
Political groups can use these increased surveillance powers to spy on their opponents. Everyone ends up feeling "watched" and suddenly no-one trusts anyone anymore.
Protect your privacy while you still can.
Like I'd ever hand over my encryption keys to my ISP.
I've often wondered - I've got a Sony Vaio, which came for a licence for Windows ME (which I don't use anyway). But when the laptop eventually dies, does the licence die with it?
Or am I allowed to move it to another computer?
I still disagree.
The Iraqi parliament will have the right to set down the law as to which standard is used in their country. If they say no-go to the US standard, then that's the way it should be.
Do Sun provide hardware support for systems that have been installed without {their Linux/Redhat}, these days?
I remember this was a problem with their Cobalt range - you had to use the distribution that came with it, or you couldn't get hardware support.
Our site uses Debian, and we basically want a homogenous site. It's a pain to have to administer more than one distribution, and for our purposes, Debian easily outshines Redhat.
Being able to buy Cobalts from Sun would have made the switch to Linux far more palatable for upper level manglement, but the lack of hardware support from Sun for machines without their distribution was a deal-breaker for us.