The only problem is, following redirects generate traffic (HTTP redirects can be gathered without actually loading the page, but script or META redirects can handled only by loading the whole page). Generating traffic does two thing (that I know; a more knowledgeable admin can probably think up more): 1) costs Slashdot (or its parent) bandwidth money (it's not like just changing Slashcode); 2) if not done correctly, Slashdot can be liable for more things... (I don't know exactly what; all I know is you have to be extra careful in programming if your program is going to generate traffic).
This is certainly not an easy problem. Perhaps if we ignore it, it'll go away.:)
I, for one, have myminicity.com blocked in my Privoxy setting (and I haven't seen other deceptive links related to anything else, not even Goatse or other such shock sites).
And if your ability to concentrate, effected by distractions, would be cheating, then telling a player that you T-baged his sister while his dad held her down would be cheating too. Wouldn't it? I means wouldn't trash talking and stuff designed to punk out an opponent and cause him to loose concentration or make it harder for them to think straight, be cheating? There are such things as "unsportsmanlike conduct", and I believe you can get a red card for that in soccer. The rules are probably different for each sport, but I would imagine most sports ban such trash-talking.
Can we now please ban mind doping, or will you lower the bar again for what ought to count as cheating in sports if mind doping is to be disallowed?
Well, one of his redirects go to h1.ripTREXway.com/slashdot1000/index.php (remove dinosaur; Please don't go to the link, it redirects directly to his Minicity spam. I can safely go there because I have his minicity explicitly blocked in my Privoxy setup). He posted the direct link to that PHP script once, but I'm too lazy to dig it up again.
From this alone, we can't exactly say anything (he could have hacked someone else's account and put that redirect script there---after all, if he has real access to a website, he would do a real redirect with the HTTP server, or he's just that stupid), but, well, I for one am done giving the benefit of doubt. But perhaps DDOSing Ripway wouldn't do the intended harm. We need to find a server for which he actually pays for bandwidth, not a flat fee.
That would be one way, but that places the burden on the wrong entity.
To be fair, all these URL shortening sites need to implement a feature like TinyURL's preview feature, since they are the enabler of these acts of spamming. Until they do, I am blocking all these URL shortening services (which is a snap with Privoxy).
Thanks for letting me know about those services. I've sent complaint email to those URL shortening services, imploring them to add a preview features so that spammers like you will starve.
Well, since you seem to have hardened your opinion that college is not competitive (despite the usual "bell curves" and such---in fact, this is the main incentive college professors can use to entice you to report your cheating classmates), let me bring in a different case:
I argue that lawyers not be allowed to drink coffee or consume any substance that allows them to keep unfair advantage (of better concentration and more waking hours) over their opponent. After all, caffeine and other prescription drugs designed to improve concentration are not good or health in large doses (in small enough doses... well, nearly everything is O.K. Even steroids), and they can't expect the opponent to want to damage his health in order to win the lawsuit, even if they do. In a way, they are forcing the opponent's lawyer to do the same. Unfairly.
So, there you go. Let's stop lawyers from destroying their health and family with their substance abuse and 100-hr workweeks.
I understand that athletics is usually more competitive than other fields of endeavor. But substance abuse is only a symptom of a much larger problem of society. You cannot simply treat the symptom by applying bizarre and unusual rules (after all, if you thought what I suggest for lawyers above is... unreasonable, how can you argue that what we already require for athletes is reasonable in any sense of the word?) about what they can and cannot do and hope that the real cause goes away on its own.
I haven't figured out exactly which problem of society generates these symptoms, but it probably has something to do with top athletes raking in millions of dollars.
Meta data (like the fact that you showed interest in some other facts) is also data, just like set of sets is also a set.
Your friend, just as you describe, could not only have passed on not only the information (probably an article or something) to other friends (let's call them "family"), but also the fact that *you* passed it on to him. After all, you made no effort to hide your own identity private when you shared that information, so why should your friend?
Of course, some common sense and other obstacles may prevent that from happening, especially if it's as serious as keeping your sexual orientation to yourself and a close circle of friends, but the fact of the matter is, if any information (yes, the fact that you are interested in some piece of information is also information---about you) should really be private, you should treat it like it is: encrypt it.
If you didn't take due diligence in keeping it private, you don't deserve privacy.
P.S. Really, if you are going to live a double life, showing a part of yourself to your friends and not showing that same part to your family (enough that you are outraged if one part leaks into another)... you should do a better job. Take up a pseudonym or something. Get a second account or something.
P.S. BTW, way to bring in a bad analogy. It's illegal in most states to record a phone conversation without knowledge and permission (often for both parties), much less broadcasting it to everyone. It is, however, not illegal in most states to send a URL to other people (which is what essentially this "sharing" of Google Reader items is---the links were already public (no login required), and you knew it).
But what if part of that "mental capacity" is really... measuring how well you can concentrate? That'd be true for a professional poker player, and the same would be true for a student taking an exam. Yes, other mental faculties still matter, but ability to concentrate is an important one (and there is a whole lot of personal difference there).
The same exact thing you said about "mind doping" holds true for "substance abuse" of athletes. Steroids don't magically give you a bulkier body. You still have to work out. You could almost say that all steroids do is compensate for lack of hormonal inclination towards building higher muscle mass. The exact same way caffeine helps you stay awake more and other substances help you concentrate (beyond what you'd "normally" be able to do).
You can draw as many lines in the sand and split as many hairs as you want. There is a definite double standards towards "substance abuse" of athletes and substance abuse of other professions that are, in nearly all aspects, including health of participants, exactly the same.
Even when the opposition can easily do the same? Should I be disqualified for taking a short nap before a chess tournament? Preempt: You can't compare that to steroid use, that would be more like reading a move book before a game. And... is reading a move book before a game illegal in chess tournaments?
If it is, well, it's the first time I heard of it.
The fact is, the whole "substance abuse" deal in professional athletics is an anomaly. In no fields of endeavor is anyone so handicapped in exactly what they can do to improve their performance.
I understand why that's the case, but it's mostly economics (i.e. professional athletics is an industry worth millions and billions of dollars in advertising and such), and that's another social issue altogether. As far as why "substance abuse" is really bad in the natural, non-situational sense goes, the only plausible argument I heard is "It's bad for health", and even that doesn't hold water---by that same logic, we should prevent college students from holding overnight cram sessions since that is bad for their health as well.
The only problem here is that it may take you more than 5 years to create it. 15 to 25 years sounds about right (knowing how hard it is to write that first novel unless you're independently wealthy)... and without Disney and Sonny Bono screwing things up, that's what we had originally. RMS has this right. Copyright should not be "one size fits all." For things like books (for which copyright was originally intended), 15 to 25 years is, yes, right.
On the other hand, for newer media like movies, TV shows, and software, even 5 years is too long (ever heard of a software product taking 5 years to be developed? Ever heard of one that didn't suck (to rule out the "Vista answer")?).
Even then, copyright should be far more flexible than it is---they should make some sort of annual or quarterly renewal compulsory to keep the copyright. After all, people put up with coming to work every day... since that pays the bills. If someone really relied on his copyrighted works to pay the bills, he can put up with a quarterly copyright renewal (for a nominal sum), and this will make sure that less used work (which are really put into the risk of disappearing from public views due to our draconian copyright laws) becomes public domain sooner.
But of course, this isn't 50.1% exercising its tyrannical power over 49.9%.
This is about 99.6% (in a particular, very narrow demographic, but assuming they don't change their mind, this is the demographic that will be the engines of the society 10, 20, 30 years from now) believing that a particular act is not morally wrong and being punished by a very small minority of special interests.
If 99.6% of the population believes that one should be able to ride public transportation options without paying (and if this were really the case, the public will find a way to keep those running), would you still support, for the sake of 0.4% (or far fewer) that insist that everyone pay $2 for each bus ride, that public transportation be expensive, with violators being fined $200,000 (or $10,000 for each infringement)?
Your egocentric p.o.v. is very flawed and not everyone thinks like you. Even if 50.1% of the people did think like you, it still doesn't make you right. I must say your criticism applies right back at ya. Yes, on matters of different kinds, the fact that a majority (yes, even 50.1%) believes in a way doesn't make it right. But on a matters of social issues and ethics, where the society itself defines right and wrong, a majority (usually more like 66%, since many such resolutions require 2/3 majority, for the simple reason (as you rightly point out) a slim majority should not be able to exercise tyrannical powers over a slim minority) does make something right.
I support the GPL over BSD-style licenses because I don't like the idea of Free code being used to improve proprietary software, but that's something I'm willing to live with if copyright is abolished, which is a more important goal. I thought that was always the (almost) explicit goal of copyleft. If we can't get rid of the draconian copyright laws, then we must subvert them to impotence. I've always considered GPL as the best stepping stone to a copyright-free society (or at least one that places a much more reasonable restriction on its length, like a maximum of 2 years for software, with the copyright registrant having to renew every 6 months or something).
If you want to share something with only a few people, encrypt it with their public key and email it to them (http://www.gnupg.org/). They will understand that it was meant only for them and not share it with others (nor will others, even if it were NSA, be able to find it out).
Laws of gossip dictate that if more than 2 people know something, it will soon become a public knowledge. Live with it.
Let's be honest here. If athletes are cheating when they consume chemicals that will help them perform at their best, so are you, whenever you do something that others don't.
Or Windows users, for that matter. The Xmingw X server works pretty well on Windows, and if you are allergic to free software (after all, I don't see why anyone would be using Windows otherwise), Hummingbird makes an X server.
I know you are just joking, but it is possible to filter out all available wavelengths and still maintain visibility.
First of all, there are not "at least three colors". Very few laser diodes (cheap ones, especially) lase at wavelengths less than 600 nm. There are green lasers at 532 nm (so here's one color to block), and I suppose apparently there are blue laser pointers now. But since those things cost an arm and a leg, it doesn't need to be blocked. Most red lasers lase at something close to He-Ne wavelengths (633 nm) or above (around 650 nm or so).
So, to effectively block all commonly available laser wavelengths, you just need a coating to block 532 nm, and another to block the range of 620 - 680 nm, and guess what---except for these specific wavelengths, it's no worse than wearing two sunglasses---actually better; you'd know if you've seen laser safety goggles; those things are pretty transparent (I've worn three on top of one another and still see most everything, except for the three wavelengths of the lasers I was working with at the time).
And as far as lost visibility goes, well, at daytime it doesn't really matter (it might actually help, by reducing glare or something). At nighttime, we are pretty insensitive to red anyway (rods are not too sensitive to red), so really, it's more like just wearing the green laser laser safety goggle. I don't know about you, but I'd feel pretty comfortable flying around (if I knew how, of course) wearing the green laser safety goggle.
Of course... costs are at issue here, probably, since those laser safety goggles themselves cost an arm and a leg. But the reality is not as bleak as you humorously made it out to be.
Well, I don't know about other people, but to me, it's not really a question of the reader quality. It's just that there are somanyreasonstoboycotttheentireSonybrand, and maybe just one reason to not like Amazon.
In fact, I might even say that with the exception of RIAA and MPAA, whenever any Sony product is compared with a competitor, Sony always loses because it's a brand that needs to be boycotted, with no regard to any technical merits whatsoever.
I know I might buy Kindle if it were a little cheaper (borderline at $200, definitely at $100). I know I will never use anything with "Sony" in its name, even if I was getting paid to use it.
Then you should have said "GPL-incompatible" or "non-free" projects ('though GPL-incompatible doesn't mean non-free, as there are many recognized free licenses that are GPL-incompatible), not "commercial". There are plenty of commercial projects (e.g. RedHat, among big ones, and all the embedded devices using BusyBox) that are GPL.
And I would have to take exception to your claim that dual-licensed projects are somehow freer than GPL, unless it's dual-licensed to accommodate two free software licenses that happen to be incompatible with each other.
While I can't claim enough moral superiority to judge programmers who license out their work under proprietary, non-free agreements, their acts do work to reduce everyone's freedom (mainly by supporting a non-free project/application). If this is too confusing for you, here's an oversimplified analogy to consider: if there was a country whose laws allowed slavery, are the laws of that country freer than that of U.S., which prohibits slavery?
If your answer is yes, well, then you and I disagree on the fundamentals and the best thing to do would be to agree to disagree. If your answer is no, then licensing out programs under non-free agreements is also not as free as insisting that all uses of the program remain free.
The most free condition in any situation is where all the freedom except the freedom to restrict others' freedom is allowed. When the freedom to restrict others' freedom (like... the "freedom to own and trade slaves") is allowed, then that is not as free as when that particular freedom is prohibited.
Not to mention highly irregular. Athletics has got to be the only field where participants are heavily handicapped by what they can and what they can't do. Even if we ignore the anachronistic rules stipulating that Olympics participants not be professional athletes (which, to me, sounds like stipulating that Putnam competition participants not be mathematics majors), all this fascistic fetish over what athletes can consume and cannot has an unnatural feel to it.
If we held every other field by the same rules that apply in athletics, we will be saying that supermodels are not allowed to use any dieting or weight control products because those are "performance-enhancing substances", as well as being damaging to their health when used in long-term. Likewise, students, researchers, and academics should be banned from consuming products containing caffeine, as again, this un-naturally keeps them awake; it is unhealthy and can be harmful in large doses (I think it's about 2 g that's harmful and 4 g might kill an adult).
I mean, it's not like everything about athletics is really "fair", anyways. If fairness was at issue here, every cyclist should use the same bike model (no specially engineered stuff from private companies that gives one player an edge over others), every swimmer should wear the same type of swim gear (some deal here), every runner should wear same shoes, etc. So long as they are allowing for variety in competing conditions, what's one more, as long as the governing policy is the same for everyone?
Any license that does not grant free redistribution (not free as in beer, free as in freedom---as in that the re-distributor is free to charge money for the service, if someone would pay) is definitely not free, and most likely not open source.
I don't know why people get these wrong impressions that "free software" == "anti-commercial", but nothing could be further from the truth. Free software is just about as Laissez-Faire, free, capitalistic economic system as you can possibly get (free from government-granted monopolies, etc.). Licenses that "play nice" with communities by "graciously" granting non-commercial uses is definitely better than completely proprietary licenses (or a lack of one), but it's only halfway there since any such license still restricts your freedom in ways that are not acceptable.
If you aren't totally convinced still why these "non-commercial only" licenses are wrong, here's a very simple reason why: Those licenses are GPL-incompatible, since GPL does not allow addition of restrictions with small exceptions, and any project or software using those restrictive licenses is excluding a lot of code out there that is already released under GPL.
Right now in America, if you tried to pass a law that says that everyone 'ACCUSED' of sex crimes against children gets lethal injection without a trial, and put it up to a general vote, it would pass. Thank god we aren't a true democracy. And thank God for the bill of rights that guarantee "due process"---in case we ever become a true participatory democracy (with all the technology and all, I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet).
You are forgetting that OOXML is not even a "de facto standard" yet. Vast majority of office suite users still have old versions of MS Office that doesn't recognize OOXML documents. Why should Free Software roll over to support it... when we have real chance of finally getting people not to use.docx for anything but for private uses? Why must we assume that everything MS does will succeed? Vista was a disaster, and maybe the whole new Office format will be a disaster, too!
But... in the end, if OOXML does become prevalent and we can't convince braindead secretaries not to send.docx attachments, then there is a real need for OOXML support in free software---and somebody will do that, when the time comes. Somebody will "do it right" (i.e. in a MS Office compatible way, since MS Office itself does not implement the full OOXML spec). But until then, there is no rational (idealistic or pragmatic) for trying to support a format that only lives in Imaginationland (i.e. fully standards-compliant OOXML).
Because... you see, there's a huge gap between a pragmatist and sycophantic yes-man. I hope you see it.
P.S. The HURD vs. Linux comparison is so unfair, if that's what's being used as idealist vs. pragmatist. The only difference between HURD and Linux is that Linux made the right initial design decisions (monolithic kernel that turned out to be easier to debug than a microkernel + userspace daemons). If you really want to compare success of idealism vs. pragmatism in that oversimplified way, compare the whole GNU project with Linux. Would you be happier with your system minus the Linux kernel (essentially BSD with GNU tools), or would you be happier with your Linux kernel but no GNU userspace tools (essentially the rest of the GNU/Linux OS), that would be... like, oh, Solaris with its kernel replaced by Linux or something.
Slashdot Mirror
The only problem is, following redirects generate traffic (HTTP redirects can be gathered without actually loading the page, but script or META redirects can handled only by loading the whole page). Generating traffic does two thing (that I know; a more knowledgeable admin can probably think up more): 1) costs Slashdot (or its parent) bandwidth money (it's not like just changing Slashcode); 2) if not done correctly, Slashdot can be liable for more things ... (I don't know exactly what; all I know is you have to be extra careful in programming if your program is going to generate traffic).
:)
This is certainly not an easy problem. Perhaps if we ignore it, it'll go away.
I, for one, have myminicity.com blocked in my Privoxy setting (and I haven't seen other deceptive links related to anything else, not even Goatse or other such shock sites).
Can we now please ban mind doping, or will you lower the bar again for what ought to count as cheating in sports if mind doping is to be disallowed?
Well, one of his redirects go to h1.ripTREXway.com/slashdot1000/index.php (remove dinosaur; Please don't go to the link, it redirects directly to his Minicity spam. I can safely go there because I have his minicity explicitly blocked in my Privoxy setup). He posted the direct link to that PHP script once, but I'm too lazy to dig it up again.
From this alone, we can't exactly say anything (he could have hacked someone else's account and put that redirect script there---after all, if he has real access to a website, he would do a real redirect with the HTTP server, or he's just that stupid), but, well, I for one am done giving the benefit of doubt. But perhaps DDOSing Ripway wouldn't do the intended harm. We need to find a server for which he actually pays for bandwidth, not a flat fee.
That would be one way, but that places the burden on the wrong entity.
To be fair, all these URL shortening sites need to implement a feature like TinyURL's preview feature, since they are the enabler of these acts of spamming. Until they do, I am blocking all these URL shortening services (which is a snap with Privoxy).
I just have fohooCOWtville.myminicity.com (remove herbivore) blocked in my Privoxy setup. It certainly reduces fear of these nasty links.
And, oh yes, if there's a fund setup to catch and kill these bastards, I fully support it.
Or just DDOS ripway.com (or is it h1.ripway.com), I guess.
But how do you go from Monarchy to Democracy without a few turns of Anarchy?
If you have a way, I'd like to know.
Thanks for letting me know about those services. I've sent complaint email to those URL shortening services, imploring them to add a preview features so that spammers like you will starve.
Dirty bastard.
Well, since you seem to have hardened your opinion that college is not competitive (despite the usual "bell curves" and such---in fact, this is the main incentive college professors can use to entice you to report your cheating classmates), let me bring in a different case:
... well, nearly everything is O.K. Even steroids), and they can't expect the opponent to want to damage his health in order to win the lawsuit, even if they do. In a way, they are forcing the opponent's lawyer to do the same. Unfairly.
... unreasonable, how can you argue that what we already require for athletes is reasonable in any sense of the word?) about what they can and cannot do and hope that the real cause goes away on its own.
I argue that lawyers not be allowed to drink coffee or consume any substance that allows them to keep unfair advantage (of better concentration and more waking hours) over their opponent. After all, caffeine and other prescription drugs designed to improve concentration are not good or health in large doses (in small enough doses
So, there you go. Let's stop lawyers from destroying their health and family with their substance abuse and 100-hr workweeks.
I understand that athletics is usually more competitive than other fields of endeavor. But substance abuse is only a symptom of a much larger problem of society. You cannot simply treat the symptom by applying bizarre and unusual rules (after all, if you thought what I suggest for lawyers above is
I haven't figured out exactly which problem of society generates these symptoms, but it probably has something to do with top athletes raking in millions of dollars.
Meta data (like the fact that you showed interest in some other facts) is also data, just like set of sets is also a set.
... you should do a better job. Take up a pseudonym or something. Get a second account or something.
Your friend, just as you describe, could not only have passed on not only the information (probably an article or something) to other friends (let's call them "family"), but also the fact that *you* passed it on to him. After all, you made no effort to hide your own identity private when you shared that information, so why should your friend?
Of course, some common sense and other obstacles may prevent that from happening, especially if it's as serious as keeping your sexual orientation to yourself and a close circle of friends, but the fact of the matter is, if any information (yes, the fact that you are interested in some piece of information is also information---about you) should really be private, you should treat it like it is: encrypt it.
If you didn't take due diligence in keeping it private, you don't deserve privacy.
P.S. Really, if you are going to live a double life, showing a part of yourself to your friends and not showing that same part to your family (enough that you are outraged if one part leaks into another)
P.S. BTW, way to bring in a bad analogy. It's illegal in most states to record a phone conversation without knowledge and permission (often for both parties), much less broadcasting it to everyone. It is, however, not illegal in most states to send a URL to other people (which is what essentially this "sharing" of Google Reader items is---the links were already public (no login required), and you knew it).
But what if part of that "mental capacity" is really ... measuring how well you can concentrate? That'd be true for a professional poker player, and the same would be true for a student taking an exam. Yes, other mental faculties still matter, but ability to concentrate is an important one (and there is a whole lot of personal difference there).
The same exact thing you said about "mind doping" holds true for "substance abuse" of athletes. Steroids don't magically give you a bulkier body. You still have to work out. You could almost say that all steroids do is compensate for lack of hormonal inclination towards building higher muscle mass. The exact same way caffeine helps you stay awake more and other substances help you concentrate (beyond what you'd "normally" be able to do).
You can draw as many lines in the sand and split as many hairs as you want. There is a definite double standards towards "substance abuse" of athletes and substance abuse of other professions that are, in nearly all aspects, including health of participants, exactly the same.
If it is, well, it's the first time I heard of it.
The fact is, the whole "substance abuse" deal in professional athletics is an anomaly. In no fields of endeavor is anyone so handicapped in exactly what they can do to improve their performance.
I understand why that's the case, but it's mostly economics (i.e. professional athletics is an industry worth millions and billions of dollars in advertising and such), and that's another social issue altogether. As far as why "substance abuse" is really bad in the natural, non-situational sense goes, the only plausible argument I heard is "It's bad for health", and even that doesn't hold water---by that same logic, we should prevent college students from holding overnight cram sessions since that is bad for their health as well.
On the other hand, for newer media like movies, TV shows, and software, even 5 years is too long (ever heard of a software product taking 5 years to be developed? Ever heard of one that didn't suck (to rule out the "Vista answer")?).
Even then, copyright should be far more flexible than it is---they should make some sort of annual or quarterly renewal compulsory to keep the copyright. After all, people put up with coming to work every day
This is about 99.6% (in a particular, very narrow demographic, but assuming they don't change their mind, this is the demographic that will be the engines of the society 10, 20, 30 years from now) believing that a particular act is not morally wrong and being punished by a very small minority of special interests.
If 99.6% of the population believes that one should be able to ride public transportation options without paying (and if this were really the case, the public will find a way to keep those running), would you still support, for the sake of 0.4% (or far fewer) that insist that everyone pay $2 for each bus ride, that public transportation be expensive, with violators being fined $200,000 (or $10,000 for each infringement)? Your egocentric p.o.v. is very flawed and not everyone thinks like you. Even if 50.1% of the people did think like you, it still doesn't make you right. I must say your criticism applies right back at ya. Yes, on matters of different kinds, the fact that a majority (yes, even 50.1%) believes in a way doesn't make it right. But on a matters of social issues and ethics, where the society itself defines right and wrong, a majority (usually more like 66%, since many such resolutions require 2/3 majority, for the simple reason (as you rightly point out) a slim majority should not be able to exercise tyrannical powers over a slim minority) does make something right.
If you want to share something with only a few people, encrypt it with their public key and email it to them (http://www.gnupg.org/). They will understand that it was meant only for them and not share it with others (nor will others, even if it were NSA, be able to find it out).
Laws of gossip dictate that if more than 2 people know something, it will soon become a public knowledge. Live with it.
Yes.
Let's be honest here. If athletes are cheating when they consume chemicals that will help them perform at their best, so are you, whenever you do something that others don't.
Or Windows users, for that matter. The Xmingw X server works pretty well on Windows, and if you are allergic to free software (after all, I don't see why anyone would be using Windows otherwise), Hummingbird makes an X server.
I know you are just joking, but it is possible to filter out all available wavelengths and still maintain visibility.
... costs are at issue here, probably, since those laser safety goggles themselves cost an arm and a leg. But the reality is not as bleak as you humorously made it out to be.
First of all, there are not "at least three colors". Very few laser diodes (cheap ones, especially) lase at wavelengths less than 600 nm. There are green lasers at 532 nm (so here's one color to block), and I suppose apparently there are blue laser pointers now. But since those things cost an arm and a leg, it doesn't need to be blocked. Most red lasers lase at something close to He-Ne wavelengths (633 nm) or above (around 650 nm or so).
So, to effectively block all commonly available laser wavelengths, you just need a coating to block 532 nm, and another to block the range of 620 - 680 nm, and guess what---except for these specific wavelengths, it's no worse than wearing two sunglasses---actually better; you'd know if you've seen laser safety goggles; those things are pretty transparent (I've worn three on top of one another and still see most everything, except for the three wavelengths of the lasers I was working with at the time).
And as far as lost visibility goes, well, at daytime it doesn't really matter (it might actually help, by reducing glare or something). At nighttime, we are pretty insensitive to red anyway (rods are not too sensitive to red), so really, it's more like just wearing the green laser laser safety goggle. I don't know about you, but I'd feel pretty comfortable flying around (if I knew how, of course) wearing the green laser safety goggle.
Of course
Well, I don't know about other people, but to me, it's not really a question of the reader quality. It's just that there are so many reasons to boycott the entire Sony brand, and maybe just one reason to not like Amazon.
In fact, I might even say that with the exception of RIAA and MPAA, whenever any Sony product is compared with a competitor, Sony always loses because it's a brand that needs to be boycotted, with no regard to any technical merits whatsoever.
I know I might buy Kindle if it were a little cheaper (borderline at $200, definitely at $100). I know I will never use anything with "Sony" in its name, even if I was getting paid to use it.
Then you should have said "GPL-incompatible" or "non-free" projects ('though GPL-incompatible doesn't mean non-free, as there are many recognized free licenses that are GPL-incompatible), not "commercial". There are plenty of commercial projects (e.g. RedHat, among big ones, and all the embedded devices using BusyBox) that are GPL.
... the "freedom to own and trade slaves") is allowed, then that is not as free as when that particular freedom is prohibited.
And I would have to take exception to your claim that dual-licensed projects are somehow freer than GPL, unless it's dual-licensed to accommodate two free software licenses that happen to be incompatible with each other.
While I can't claim enough moral superiority to judge programmers who license out their work under proprietary, non-free agreements, their acts do work to reduce everyone's freedom (mainly by supporting a non-free project/application). If this is too confusing for you, here's an oversimplified analogy to consider: if there was a country whose laws allowed slavery, are the laws of that country freer than that of U.S., which prohibits slavery?
If your answer is yes, well, then you and I disagree on the fundamentals and the best thing to do would be to agree to disagree. If your answer is no, then licensing out programs under non-free agreements is also not as free as insisting that all uses of the program remain free.
The most free condition in any situation is where all the freedom except the freedom to restrict others' freedom is allowed. When the freedom to restrict others' freedom (like
Not to mention highly irregular. Athletics has got to be the only field where participants are heavily handicapped by what they can and what they can't do. Even if we ignore the anachronistic rules stipulating that Olympics participants not be professional athletes (which, to me, sounds like stipulating that Putnam competition participants not be mathematics majors), all this fascistic fetish over what athletes can consume and cannot has an unnatural feel to it.
If we held every other field by the same rules that apply in athletics, we will be saying that supermodels are not allowed to use any dieting or weight control products because those are "performance-enhancing substances", as well as being damaging to their health when used in long-term. Likewise, students, researchers, and academics should be banned from consuming products containing caffeine, as again, this un-naturally keeps them awake; it is unhealthy and can be harmful in large doses (I think it's about 2 g that's harmful and 4 g might kill an adult).
I mean, it's not like everything about athletics is really "fair", anyways. If fairness was at issue here, every cyclist should use the same bike model (no specially engineered stuff from private companies that gives one player an edge over others), every swimmer should wear the same type of swim gear (some deal here), every runner should wear same shoes, etc. So long as they are allowing for variety in competing conditions, what's one more, as long as the governing policy is the same for everyone?
Perhaps you should check the definition of free software, or the Debian Free Software Guideline (which is the basis of the Open Source Definition).
Any license that does not grant free redistribution (not free as in beer, free as in freedom---as in that the re-distributor is free to charge money for the service, if someone would pay) is definitely not free, and most likely not open source.
I don't know why people get these wrong impressions that "free software" == "anti-commercial", but nothing could be further from the truth. Free software is just about as Laissez-Faire, free, capitalistic economic system as you can possibly get (free from government-granted monopolies, etc.). Licenses that "play nice" with communities by "graciously" granting non-commercial uses is definitely better than completely proprietary licenses (or a lack of one), but it's only halfway there since any such license still restricts your freedom in ways that are not acceptable.
If you aren't totally convinced still why these "non-commercial only" licenses are wrong, here's a very simple reason why: Those licenses are GPL-incompatible, since GPL does not allow addition of restrictions with small exceptions, and any project or software using those restrictive licenses is excluding a lot of code out there that is already released under GPL.
You are forgetting that OOXML is not even a "de facto standard" yet. Vast majority of office suite users still have old versions of MS Office that doesn't recognize OOXML documents. Why should Free Software roll over to support it ... when we have real chance of finally getting people not to use .docx for anything but for private uses? Why must we assume that everything MS does will succeed? Vista was a disaster, and maybe the whole new Office format will be a disaster, too!
... in the end, if OOXML does become prevalent and we can't convince braindead secretaries not to send .docx attachments, then there is a real need for OOXML support in free software---and somebody will do that, when the time comes. Somebody will "do it right" (i.e. in a MS Office compatible way, since MS Office itself does not implement the full OOXML spec). But until then, there is no rational (idealistic or pragmatic) for trying to support a format that only lives in Imaginationland (i.e. fully standards-compliant OOXML).
... you see, there's a huge gap between a pragmatist and sycophantic yes-man. I hope you see it.
... like, oh, Solaris with its kernel replaced by Linux or something.
But
Because
P.S. The HURD vs. Linux comparison is so unfair, if that's what's being used as idealist vs. pragmatist. The only difference between HURD and Linux is that Linux made the right initial design decisions (monolithic kernel that turned out to be easier to debug than a microkernel + userspace daemons). If you really want to compare success of idealism vs. pragmatism in that oversimplified way, compare the whole GNU project with Linux. Would you be happier with your system minus the Linux kernel (essentially BSD with GNU tools), or would you be happier with your Linux kernel but no GNU userspace tools (essentially the rest of the GNU/Linux OS), that would be
Er, there is no conflict between 1st and 3rd laws. The first law overrides the third law---in fact, that is the explicit stipulation of the third law.