You are correct in a legal sense, but in a moral sense I find this sort of thinking reprehensible. That the majority of people should be able to ban something because they don't like it, without any justification like that it will violate one of their basic rights (life, property, etc), is one of the worst aspects of the democratic system. Why should one group dictate the behavior of another just because there is more of them? And you can't always get away from it, so arguing that you can leave a community doesn't cut it. Tell me where in the US a same sex couple can go to have a legitimate marriage? Civil unions as in Vermont aren't even legally the same as marriages. People act like if it's not spelled out letter for letter in the constitution then you should feel lukcy if you have that particular "privilege". If you aren't killing, injuring, or stealing from anyone then you shuldn't need to ask the government or the majority for permission.
Well, I haven't seen the web site which got the guy locked up, but if he is advocating the use of bombs and such to overthrow the government then this is not political speech, as much as an incitement to violence. It is valid to say that you hate the government and that it needs to change, but it is not protected by the first ammendment to tell people to murder other people, be it for political reasons or otherwise. Free speech has limitations - which personally, I think is a good thing. On the other hand if he was arguing for peaceful overthrow of the government and just happened to be posting bomb making instructions, that would be a different issue I suppose.
Wrong. The cost of entry into the software market is almost nil compared to many other markets. I could do it from my basement in fact, given gcc or even an assembler if I were talented enough. No factory needed. How many companies are there producing computer games do you think, compared to how many there are producing cars? The government never stopped any of the things that you claim would happen in pure capitalism from happening. They didn't have to.
And who said they should've given up? Or I'm sorry, is this another free software should be the only software discussion? Hell, I'm not even sure I agree that monopolies are evil, though form slashdot you'd think anyone who has more than 50% of market share in any field should be rounded up and put into concentration camps. Ugh. Freakin god damn commy hippies.
If you want to fight SCO, just make sure you donate to the EFF and any legal funds established to fight this FUD.
Yeah, that'll help. What it seems to me that the open source community doesn't get, is that businesses don't care about ideology. If you're counting on anyone who's in it for moral reasons to defend Linux users against SCO, you're screwed. IBM, RedHat, SuSE, et all, understand what is on the line here. Money. Software, Free, free, or neither, is big business. If RedHat sent their lawyers into a court arguing about the immorality of closed source software vis a vis the FSF they'd get laughed out of court, and rightfully so, in my opinion. If you want your OS to be a religious thing, instead of a practical one, that's great. Just don't expect business to buy into it. And SCO already said they had no plans to sue non-commercial Linux users, only commercial ones.
Capitalism is a "laisse faire" economic system. (I might've butchered the spelling, sorry) So a company that is supported by laws which protect it's monopoly status, is not a capitalist company. The US is not a pure capitalist system, and it is this lack of pure capitalism which allows Microsoft to be protected from competition. Just because something exists in the US does not make it capitalist and just because Microsoft says they're capitalists doesn't make it so. Microsoft says they're innovators too, do you believe that?
broadcast television is by no means indistinguishable from cable, and it is diminishing in popularity. My area, which is a fairly large metropolitan area, has maybe a dozen channels on broadcast. On the other hand, our basic cable service has more than fifty channels. More and more people are buying cable and satellite television. The more people watch TV the fewer people who are going to rely on broadcast TV. If you watch a couple of hours of TV a week, then a satellite dish would be a waste of money. If you watch a few hours a day, a satellite dish starts sounding like a good idea.
You've actually got this backwards. In source based distribution they can not distribute source for certain things because of licensing. You can't compile GPL code with certain licensed code and then distribute it freely. What you can do though is distribute the code and let people compile it themselves, which is what Gentoo does. Gentoo tends to avoid a lot of these legal issues with the way that they distribute packages. Almost nothing is part of the actual distribution, it just exists on the mirrors and the repository contains instructions for the OS on how to build it.
The world sucks because jobs are moving overseas? And the world also sucks because religious bigotry is on the rise? So people who aren't Americans shouldn't be allowed to compete against Americans for jobs and Catholics should be treated as pariah's... because they're all "religious bigots". So do you want freedom (including free trade) or fascism (keeping those "bigots" from opening their mouths)? Also, probable cause is not enough to convict you.
You accuse people of religious bigotry then single out one religion to insult. You talk about losing our freedoms, but then want to restrict free trade. God, have you even read 1984? Guess what - in 1984's society they don't need a reason to convict you, so new ways of gathering real evidence doesn't bring that any closer.
He was definitely right about techies being the most paranoid group of people ever.
On a completely unrelated note, it's not that Senator Hollings doesn't know about problems caused by the DCMA. It's that he's EVIL! He, Satan, the reanimated corpse of Walt Disney, and Michael Eisner OBVIOUSLY got together to think up the DMCA, and then got it enacted into law by spending money from drug cartels through Bill Gates (not many people know this, but Microsoft isn't where he gets his money, it's from drugs. Microsoft never sells software, it's all just pirated - I mean who would pay for that. they just make up sales figures to cover up the drug money). What would be even more upsetting to people is if they knew about the secret provision in the DMCA that you have to a member of Skull and Bones to read, which says that if you use non Microsoft software, then it is legal for your personal information to be stolen and used for any purpose.
Face it, politics is a nasty dirty business that no honest man will have anything to do with. To state otherwise reveals either a lack of critical examination or deluded ideals
Ah, the agree with me or you're stupid argument. What better way to prove how right you are then this?
Read the post you're responding too. He mentioned court costs. Of course, I disagree with him, but that's another issue. With a refund like this you could get a Dell laptop for like $399 after the mail-in rebate and refund? Of course would you really want one? Anyway, it's a valid point that he did have to go through a hassle to get that cash, so it depends on how valuable your time is to you.
This directly contradicts just about every piece of evangelizing about OSS that I've ever heard - that it is more innovative. What you're basically saying, as far as I can tell, is that OSS is inherently lacking in innovation, rather OSS can just copy technology that has already been made and successfully marketed in closed source for a few years?
Developing in house solutions is generally a much different type of programming than that which is done for commercially available applications. Typically in house it applications are written in very high level languages such as Java, C#, asp, php, i.e. not C, C++, assembly.. How does that kind of work help one to hack on a kernel or a RDBMS? If this is the only kind of software that is going to be paid for, then the level of hobbyist skill is going to drop considerably. If you don't believe me, take someone you know who thinks their great at VB and sit them down in front of an IDE open to some source code for the linux kernel and give them a bug to fix.
If Open Source were the only software solution there would become a lack of demand for paid developers. Sure there ar epoeple who make a living developing for open source but they are in the minority. So if the lack of demand for developers went down the people who currently work on open source projects as a hobby who are programmers would largely have to move to another profession to be able to support themselves. This fallout in the demand for software developers would cause a shift away from software development in education. Sure, some people would still study computer science, but many, many less. So the pool of hobbyist developers would grow smaller and drop in skill level. This would most likely cause a great deal of stagnation on open source projects, leaving a wide opening for closed source software to move quickly back into the market by being able to afford the best developers full time, not just as hobbyists. So basically, the way I see it, open source is dependant upon closed source, just as closed source software is dependant on open source software frequently.
There is no need for banner ads unless people try to get greedy and actually make lots of money doing this, but if thats the case, thats capitalism.
Capitalism? Oh my god! Run away, run away... I wonder if this many geeks were anti-capitalism before the dotcom craze ended, I strongly suspect not...
You can't get a PC with the same specs for $1500 less. You can get a good PC for $1500 less. The G5 Dual 2ghz would make it look really weak though. 1ghz bus, dual 2ghz ppc 970 (an Athlon MP is NOT the same, not even close), 8x agp, pci-x, serial ATA, blah, blah, blah. Price a system that's actually almost equivalent instead of just having in common that they are dual processor systems, and see how much it runs you.
I have several pieces of electronics equipment in my room with a red off light. Why?? (none of them run on batteries though) If there are no lights on, I can tell that it's off, go figure.
Mac zealots are stupid because they think only Macs are worth paying attention to. Windows zealots are stupid because they don't realize that there are things other than Windows. Linux zealots are stupid because they discount anything that's not Open Source. Conclusion? Zealots are stupid.
Sony is not following Apple. Apple didn't invent the small and light notebook. They just did it better than anyone else had to that point.
This notebook by Sony is nice but I could get a 12" PowerBook for $1399... loaded with the options I'd want more like $1600-$1700.. still considerably lower than the Sony. The metal case is a bit derivative, but it's got a different look from the PowerBooks and I like it (I like the PowerBooks a little bit more, but that's me).
If you read the site about the case, then it clearly states that you are elligible to get into the class if you saw one of the offending advertisements. You don't have to have been fooled.
Well, my Dad had a Toshiba desktop that had only a recovery CD, but when he requested it they sent him the actual Windows disk. Have they stopped doing this?
Slashdot Mirror
You are correct in a legal sense, but in a moral sense I find this sort of thinking reprehensible. That the majority of people should be able to ban something because they don't like it, without any justification like that it will violate one of their basic rights (life, property, etc), is one of the worst aspects of the democratic system. Why should one group dictate the behavior of another just because there is more of them? And you can't always get away from it, so arguing that you can leave a community doesn't cut it. Tell me where in the US a same sex couple can go to have a legitimate marriage? Civil unions as in Vermont aren't even legally the same as marriages. People act like if it's not spelled out letter for letter in the constitution then you should feel lukcy if you have that particular "privilege". If you aren't killing, injuring, or stealing from anyone then you shuldn't need to ask the government or the majority for permission.
Well, I haven't seen the web site which got the guy locked up, but if he is advocating the use of bombs and such to overthrow the government then this is not political speech, as much as an incitement to violence. It is valid to say that you hate the government and that it needs to change, but it is not protected by the first ammendment to tell people to murder other people, be it for political reasons or otherwise. Free speech has limitations - which personally, I think is a good thing. On the other hand if he was arguing for peaceful overthrow of the government and just happened to be posting bomb making instructions, that would be a different issue I suppose.
And who said they should've given up? Or I'm sorry, is this another free software should be the only software discussion? Hell, I'm not even sure I agree that monopolies are evil, though form slashdot you'd think anyone who has more than 50% of market share in any field should be rounded up and put into concentration camps. Ugh. Freakin god damn commy hippies.
If you want to fight SCO, just make sure you donate to the EFF and any legal funds established to fight this FUD. Yeah, that'll help. What it seems to me that the open source community doesn't get, is that businesses don't care about ideology. If you're counting on anyone who's in it for moral reasons to defend Linux users against SCO, you're screwed. IBM, RedHat, SuSE, et all, understand what is on the line here. Money. Software, Free, free, or neither, is big business. If RedHat sent their lawyers into a court arguing about the immorality of closed source software vis a vis the FSF they'd get laughed out of court, and rightfully so, in my opinion. If you want your OS to be a religious thing, instead of a practical one, that's great. Just don't expect business to buy into it. And SCO already said they had no plans to sue non-commercial Linux users, only commercial ones.
What's wrong with anarchy? I will never understand people who think that it's moral to favor the weak over the strong.
Capitalism is a "laisse faire" economic system. (I might've butchered the spelling, sorry) So a company that is supported by laws which protect it's monopoly status, is not a capitalist company. The US is not a pure capitalist system, and it is this lack of pure capitalism which allows Microsoft to be protected from competition. Just because something exists in the US does not make it capitalist and just because Microsoft says they're capitalists doesn't make it so. Microsoft says they're innovators too, do you believe that?
broadcast television is by no means indistinguishable from cable, and it is diminishing in popularity. My area, which is a fairly large metropolitan area, has maybe a dozen channels on broadcast. On the other hand, our basic cable service has more than fifty channels. More and more people are buying cable and satellite television. The more people watch TV the fewer people who are going to rely on broadcast TV. If you watch a couple of hours of TV a week, then a satellite dish would be a waste of money. If you watch a few hours a day, a satellite dish starts sounding like a good idea.
You've actually got this backwards. In source based distribution they can not distribute source for certain things because of licensing. You can't compile GPL code with certain licensed code and then distribute it freely. What you can do though is distribute the code and let people compile it themselves, which is what Gentoo does. Gentoo tends to avoid a lot of these legal issues with the way that they distribute packages. Almost nothing is part of the actual distribution, it just exists on the mirrors and the repository contains instructions for the OS on how to build it.
You accuse people of religious bigotry then single out one religion to insult. You talk about losing our freedoms, but then want to restrict free trade. God, have you even read 1984? Guess what - in 1984's society they don't need a reason to convict you, so new ways of gathering real evidence doesn't bring that any closer.
You are dumb.
He was definitely right about techies being the most paranoid group of people ever. On a completely unrelated note, it's not that Senator Hollings doesn't know about problems caused by the DCMA. It's that he's EVIL! He, Satan, the reanimated corpse of Walt Disney, and Michael Eisner OBVIOUSLY got together to think up the DMCA, and then got it enacted into law by spending money from drug cartels through Bill Gates (not many people know this, but Microsoft isn't where he gets his money, it's from drugs. Microsoft never sells software, it's all just pirated - I mean who would pay for that. they just make up sales figures to cover up the drug money). What would be even more upsetting to people is if they knew about the secret provision in the DMCA that you have to a member of Skull and Bones to read, which says that if you use non Microsoft software, then it is legal for your personal information to be stolen and used for any purpose.
Face it, politics is a nasty dirty business that no honest man will have anything to do with. To state otherwise reveals either a lack of critical examination or deluded ideals Ah, the agree with me or you're stupid argument. What better way to prove how right you are then this?
Read the post you're responding too. He mentioned court costs. Of course, I disagree with him, but that's another issue. With a refund like this you could get a Dell laptop for like $399 after the mail-in rebate and refund? Of course would you really want one? Anyway, it's a valid point that he did have to go through a hassle to get that cash, so it depends on how valuable your time is to you.
wow, clever how you thought to change rights management to restriction management. That's almost as cool as calling Microsoft, Micro$oft.
Both major parties blatantly gerrymander.
This directly contradicts just about every piece of evangelizing about OSS that I've ever heard - that it is more innovative. What you're basically saying, as far as I can tell, is that OSS is inherently lacking in innovation, rather OSS can just copy technology that has already been made and successfully marketed in closed source for a few years?
Developing in house solutions is generally a much different type of programming than that which is done for commercially available applications. Typically in house it applications are written in very high level languages such as Java, C#, asp, php, i.e. not C, C++, assembly.. How does that kind of work help one to hack on a kernel or a RDBMS? If this is the only kind of software that is going to be paid for, then the level of hobbyist skill is going to drop considerably. If you don't believe me, take someone you know who thinks their great at VB and sit them down in front of an IDE open to some source code for the linux kernel and give them a bug to fix.
If Open Source were the only software solution there would become a lack of demand for paid developers. Sure there ar epoeple who make a living developing for open source but they are in the minority. So if the lack of demand for developers went down the people who currently work on open source projects as a hobby who are programmers would largely have to move to another profession to be able to support themselves. This fallout in the demand for software developers would cause a shift away from software development in education. Sure, some people would still study computer science, but many, many less. So the pool of hobbyist developers would grow smaller and drop in skill level. This would most likely cause a great deal of stagnation on open source projects, leaving a wide opening for closed source software to move quickly back into the market by being able to afford the best developers full time, not just as hobbyists. So basically, the way I see it, open source is dependant upon closed source, just as closed source software is dependant on open source software frequently.
There is no need for banner ads unless people try to get greedy and actually make lots of money doing this, but if thats the case, thats capitalism. Capitalism? Oh my god! Run away, run away... I wonder if this many geeks were anti-capitalism before the dotcom craze ended, I strongly suspect not...
You can't get a PC with the same specs for $1500 less. You can get a good PC for $1500 less. The G5 Dual 2ghz would make it look really weak though. 1ghz bus, dual 2ghz ppc 970 (an Athlon MP is NOT the same, not even close), 8x agp, pci-x, serial ATA, blah, blah, blah. Price a system that's actually almost equivalent instead of just having in common that they are dual processor systems, and see how much it runs you.
What, you implying iTunes Music Store won't pave the way for Bill Gates obtaining DRM rights over my soul? (Yes, my soul is digital)
Extra storage, transferring files to or from someone who does not have high bandwidth, backups, installing software, music cds, video cds..
I have several pieces of electronics equipment in my room with a red off light. Why?? (none of them run on batteries though) If there are no lights on, I can tell that it's off, go figure.
Mac zealots are stupid because they think only Macs are worth paying attention to. Windows zealots are stupid because they don't realize that there are things other than Windows. Linux zealots are stupid because they discount anything that's not Open Source. Conclusion? Zealots are stupid. Sony is not following Apple. Apple didn't invent the small and light notebook. They just did it better than anyone else had to that point. This notebook by Sony is nice but I could get a 12" PowerBook for $1399... loaded with the options I'd want more like $1600-$1700.. still considerably lower than the Sony. The metal case is a bit derivative, but it's got a different look from the PowerBooks and I like it (I like the PowerBooks a little bit more, but that's me).
If you read the site about the case, then it clearly states that you are elligible to get into the class if you saw one of the offending advertisements. You don't have to have been fooled.
Well, my Dad had a Toshiba desktop that had only a recovery CD, but when he requested it they sent him the actual Windows disk. Have they stopped doing this?