This is wrong in basically every respect. Your characterization of relativism is apparently some version of subjectivism, which is distinct. Relativism applies at the level of groups - a particular group has a well-defined standard that is then right for that group. Two groups may disagree and have no recourse, but two individuals within the same group do think that only one could be right, as the group standard determines this. This is not at all logically flawed as you suggest. There is also subjectivism, in which each individual is her own standards-bearer. Here you can use something like a Wittgensteinian argument to claim that "private rules" are incoherent, but this argument does not work at groups of at least 2. "Objectivism" is a term of art to describe Ayn Rand's philosophy, which is a fusion of a branch of egoism and virtue ethics. You mean "Absolutism" which claims that moral rules are absolute and universal. There is still a further distinction to be made between how context-sensitive rules can be (that is, whether rules have the character of "don't lie" or "don't lie under these circumstances"). Of course, there are then many other distinctions to be made in other dimensions, like whether you have a consequentialist theory, a deontological theory, an intuitionist theory, etc. Also of note, John Stuart Mill did not "come up with the theory of Utilitarianism" - he had a version of a theory of Utilitarianism, and his version is nothing like what you describe. Utilitarianism goes back to at least Frances Hutcheson (who was the first to state the Greatest Happiness Principle), and at the very least Jeremy Bentham is a more appropriate figure to attach to the version of utilitarianism that you discuss. Of course, Mill has arguments against almost precisely what you raise as a devastating problem. In fact, Mill is a standard-bearer for the "high liberal tradition" in which education, personal development, and extensions of rights are hallmarks. How this is "what is wrong with democracy" is not at all clear.
Besides getting the ethics (and meta-ethics) wrong, you should also note that just as humans are social animals, there are lots and lots of non-human social animals that are also more than happy to act altruistically. Not just primates, even. Anyway, things to think about before you want to sound too authoritative on this stuff again.
What people seem to be most upset about is that somewhat random people can read up about you. But that only works if you let random people be your "friends" on facebook. This provides some disincentives for people to just add tons of people as friends. Maybe there needs to be two tiers of contacts - associates and friends. With friends you get the feeds and updates, and you don't with associates (and they don't get yours). Cries of privacy violation are a bit much - facebook is a public forum. What you put online is your responsibility. If you don't want people to know you broke up with your partner, then don't provide that information at all on facebook.
At best, it sounds like people want finer-grained access control. The feeds simply exposed the underlying problem, rather than creating a problem.
What I find interesting is that Google is developing products that are the building blocks for something larger. Orkut seems like it was a test run, and Google doesn't care about it anymore. Myspace and Facebook are the fads these days, but they still aren't very good. But Google has blogging, shared calendars, maps, chat, classifieds and email. Add in a few more mechanisms to figure out what you like and where you live (which someone like Amazon has, through your purchasing habits), then Google can auto-generate a large portion of a profile for you, and further make some pretty good guesses about who you might like to be friends with. But most importantly, it can tie it in to actual, real-world events. You like band X, Google can tell you when that band is coming, how to get there, and who might be interested in joining you. Then it can put it into your calendar for you. Want to go to dinner? Google can give you information on the restaurants in your area. Social Networking isn't that useful unless it connects to your real-world life. Google is building the pieces to do that. And no doubt it can make plenty of ad dollars off of being your social life's facilitator.
Instead of just showing road traffic and only offering driving directions, Yahoo could make using public transportation easier by offering directions using buses, subways, and commuter rails as an option. It would allow people to use public transportation without having to spend a lot of time figuring out all the different bus routes and schedules. Maybe it would reduce the traffic a bit.
One of the main problems that I see in identity/privacy/security issues at the moment is that people are convinced that there is a purely technological solution. That's just false. One thing you will have to consider is how much it is worth it to someone to cheat, what are the initial costs of getting an identity, and what are the costs to a discovered cheater. If the benefits to cheating outweigh the costs at all, then you lose. If there is money to be made in cheating, someone will find a way to do it.
Secondly, you as an individual (or a small business) will never be able to run this service. The insurance cost alone has priced you out of the market. You are providing some degree of certainty above the status quo that people registered with you are who they say they are. That has significant value, at least linearly related to number of users. Which means insurance prices would be huge. This is a business most naturally suited to an insurance company, not a technology company or an individual.
Finally, why do you claim that centralization is necessary? We barely use this in real life. Birth certificates don't come from a central authority - they come from towns and hospitals. Driver's licenses are issued by states. Credit cards are issued by banks. Student IDs are issued by universities. Even these things that we consider centralized are decentralized. Our more informal relationships are completely decentralized. A web of trust more accurately reflects our relationships, not a hub with a bunch of spokes. Why would you want such a huge single point of failure?
iBiblio stands out as an excellent repository for a wide range of culturally valuable resources. As it and other sites grow in size, the importance of good searching and indexing becomes extremely relevant. Have you given any thought to how you might want to cope with this? Specifically, are there any metadata schemata that you are considering using? I would love to see iBiblio be used more like a content feed to research/cross-referencing applications.
Re: Now Waaaaait a Minute here....
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.NETly News
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Calm down here. First of all, Salon is *much* more of a political magazine than a tech site. The vast majority of their articles are social or political articles. I doubt the Slashdot traffic really makes that much of a difference for them. And remember, that while they are typically rather liberal-leaning, they also publish David Horowitz every week, where he generally slams liberals as much as possible. They try to publish both sides of the story. That is what a good magazine does.
Gnumeric has been an active project for several years, so I can't see how you could possibly be saying anything true. In fact, Jody Goldberg is offering people a beverage of their choice if they can find a reproducable crash/freeze in it. It is pretty much the best free spreadsheet there is, and I have no trouble using my Excel files in it. And being that it is still under active development, I don't know where you got "done" from.
Evolution is also an excellent email/calendar/task manager. I like it better than outlook - it is easy to set up encryption with it, it is standards-compliant, and it loads fast. I'd have a hard time calling it "shit software."
And, there is no need for me to compile it anymore, since Ximian does a great job packaging it all. Ximian GNOME is rather pleasant to use....and I can't really think of any "modern" features that it is lacking. It's not perfect, but I don't know what is. The great thing is that I can fix it myself if something annoys me, or at very least email the developers about it. Good luck trying to do that with Windows XP.
The other day, when I checked Red Carpet, I saw that 1.2 was out, so I installed it. Once I noticed the availability of Red Carpet Express, I bought the yearlong subscription (for $99). I haven't purchased software in three years or so, since everything I use is free. But I know that Red Carpet has saved me a great deal of time, which means more hours I can be productive. It is really easy to use, and unlike windows update, it takes care of *everything* on my computer. That's pretty damn nice. Not only that, but the software that Ximian puts out is excellent. At first I was hoping that the premium service would offer additional "stuff", like more channels, to make it a better value proposition for the customers. Although that would still be nice, Ximian already offers a huge value to their customers. If it isn't worth paying money for, I don't know what in the software/services world is.
...go to a trade school. A liberal arts education helps to develop you as a *person*. If I just wanted to learn to program, I could read a bunch of programming books and get a job doing it. But I wanted to learn Computer Science. So I learn what theory is behind it all. The math to go along with it. I am picking up a philosophy degree as well, both because it is interesting and believe it or not, it really helps with CS. You see, those "wastes of time" like learning method, or taking mythology or whatnot actually train you how to think. College is not meant to be a job training site - it is meant to develop you as an academic, and as a thinker. I'm not learning facts really, but I am learning how to apply knowledge. People are confused as to the purpose of a college education. It is to expand your mind, and refine its ability to reason. I'm a junior, and I can easily tell how much better I am at thinking and solving problems (not just CS problems) than I was before I started. Of course, in high school I assumed that there was no need for a wide educational base - I thought that I knew what I wanted to do, so why not get really involved in it, and forego the rest? Except one of the best classes I've taken so far was Russian Literature - not having to do with any of my 3 majors. Undergraduate study is a time to expand your horizons - doctoral work is when you can focus on one thing.;-) Also, one fringe benefit of a liberal education is that it makes you a much more interesting person. I've found that generally, people with very regimented programs, like business or engineering, are barely *people* - they are so focused on their area of study that they fail to appreciate the value of anything else. Not very interesting conversationalists to say the least. In 10 years (probably less) it will catch up with them, and they will regret having not made the most of their time in college.
I hope that people actually take time to read Ximian's press releases before passing judgement. But that is probably asking too much. Ximian is offering (in 45 days) two new Red Carpet-based services, ON TOP OF the current *free* Red Carpet updating service they provide as a gift to the community. First is Red Carpet Express, which is basically guaranteed fast access to software updates. A lot of people (including myself) requested something like this. I am happy that they are offering it. The second service is especially cool. The CorporateConnect idea is great. Basically, companies can tailor exactly what software (and in what channels) is offered, and which users can access that software. And it can push updates automatically in the corporate LAN. That is an incredibly useful tool. Ximian is being smart, and focusing on the Corporate desktop (and those customers) rather than end-users. Creating tools and services like these that really add value to a company's IT infrastructure is what is going to make Ximian succeed. End-user oriented business models can come later. Ximian is going to continue to create great software, and develop really useful services that are worth the money.
You misunderstand what Mono is. It is not the "services" part of.Net, like Passport or Hailstorm. It is just the development environment. C#, a JIT engine, a GC system, and the class libraries. There is no pay-for-use or passport requirement. As for security, there are just as many security holes as one would find in any development envrionment. Probably fewer, because C# is takes a managed approach to memory.
I am sure that Adobe has a trademark on the "Illustrator" name. This pretty much means that it has a naming monopoly on the word Illustrator as it pertains to computer drawing programs. Appending a "K" doesn't adequately differentiate the product. Using an original name is a much better idea. There is no real way to defend what KIllustrator is doing in a court.
You seem to forget that all of this "New Media" can't exist without those boring Old Media venues. Slashdot is nothing without the article links. People still need to get their news from somewhere. Not everything can be an editorial. Sites like Salon.com deliver amazingly high-quality writing. Few other venues even come close to the level of skilled journalism that exists there. I like salon.com because I get the sense that the journalists really love journalism, and they really care about what they are writing. And they are excellent at expressing those things. That's something you can't find in USA Today or even the venerable Slashdot.
Arguments to teach assembly as a first language are rediculous. Intro courses should not be geared towards weeding out all but the 31337 few - they should give an introduction to the subject matter. Java is pretty well suited to deal with this. It is cross-platform, it is well designed and pretty clean, has excellent standard libraries, and hides a lot of the messy details from you. Teaching pointers, or memory management alongside for loops and conditionals is foolish. In an introductory english course, do you go straight to Chaucer? You start with more approachable material, and you learn the basics. Then, as your skills improve, you move on to learning the underlying mechanics, and see how the concepts are universal.
Of course, Python is a great language, and I could very easily see that a course could be designed with it in mind. But the same could be said for lisp, or prolog, ML, or any number of other languages. But teaching C or C++, or some form of assembly first is just dumb. Beginning programmers should be concerned with *concepts* not implementation details. Learning data structures or basic algorithms becomes much more difficult when you have to deal with pointer math.
Java isn't the end-all, be-all of languages, but it is pretty nice. It seems like a good choice for beginners. Comments on its non-free nature are pretty wrongheaded. The Java standard is a published spec. Anyone can make a Java-compatible compiler or Virtual Machine...they just can't call it Java. GJ (Generic Java) is one such implementation. GCC-Java also is a free java compiler. So I don't see how it is any different than C in that respect, other than Sun controls the standard to a large extent.
The point that you seem to be missing is that this "custom" of property rights that you seem to refer to is the Western Liberal tradition, as Locke set it out. Take a look at "Second Treatise on Government" - Locke describes private property to be that which one has put work into. That use of labor makes it one's own. The difference with "Intellectual Property" is that there is no exclusiveness. If I have something, it doesn't mean that you can't too. So if we both have it, we can both put work into it, and make it our own. So since anyone can own intellectual property, by Locke's conventions, when why not make everyone own it? The arguments against things like the DMCA is not that it is magically wrong and physical property is right, but that it goes against the basic ideas that the country was founded on. Our economy would have been nothing without reverse-engineering the design of textile mills in England. The computer industry would be tiny had not Compaq and others reverse-engineered IBM's PC. Things like the DMCA are Fat-Catism at it's worst. Huge companies that benefitted from the country's open framework now want to make that framework more restrictive to protect what they built.
Articles like this tend to be popular, simply because they make people either really mad, or elated. As I am a pretty big GNOME and FSF supporter, it made me mad. But, I was mad not because I discovered that these two organizations have been embarking on a sinister plot to ruin the "community," but because I was shocked at the lack of journalistic integrity demonstrated in the article. But hey, it drives a lot of traffic.
First, the notion that the FSF's financial details are not available. That is plain false. Anyone can request them (politeness probably helps) - simply as them or the IRS for their tax forms. Others have stated in other forums that they have had no problems getting such reports.
Second, the whole PayPal thing. This really bothers me. It was suggested on slashdot a little while ago by various members of this very forum that perhaps Eazel should accept donations somehow from grateful users, to show their support for the company. Eazel, being an *extremely* community-oriented company, complied. Bart Decrem even went so far as to suggest to people who just wanted to support Free Software in general to make donations to the FSF, since if Eazel goes under, they would be legally obligated to give funds to creditors. Eazel has, in many ways, made every attempt to encourage community feedback and involvement in all of its projects. Yet the supposed "community" that slashdot apparently represents essentially slaps them across the face with unwarranted accusations of unethical practices.
As for Ximian and Eazel fighting for control of GNOME, and arguing over base libraries, this is really contrived. Yes, members of both companies have argued technical merits of various bits of software. Sometimes arguments get heated, especially when everyone is under a deadline (thanks to the demanding slashdot crowd who quickly complains about any slippage in schedule, then as soon as a product comes out on time, finds a fault and blames evil marketing machines for forcing products out early). But, as anyone can read by looking at the public mailing list archives, disputes are resolved, and the framework is improved in the end. This happens in any project. It just happens that in the Free Software world, these discussions are made public.
Corporate control of GNOME is pretty much wrong in every way. The GNOME Foundation doesn't grant corporate entities voting rights. It is also against the GNOME Foundation's charter for more than 3 people from the same company to be on the Board at once. And all board members are elected by the general GNOME Foundation membership. It is true that a number of employees at Eazel and Ximian (as well as other companies) are actively involved in core parts of GNOME. But, they have been in that capacity for a while, long before these companies existed. They saw an opportunity to do what they loved doing full time, and get paid for it. Shouldn't this be lauded, rather than attacked? These people are making really excellent Free Software. Instead of thanking them, this supposed community alternately slams them for not producing more for free, or for having a "flawed business model." Make up your mind.
I am feeling a growing disgust for the "masses" of the slashdot crowd, and the Free Software community at large. It used to be a real community - people actively exchanging ideas in a postive manner, everyone happy to see Linux in the news for some reason, and people actually working on projects to contribute back to the community. That doesn't really happen so much anymore. We have a few dedicated people that work harder than ever to further the causes so many people here pretend to care about, but at the end of the day, people just bitch at them for not making it exactly the way they wanted. But, of course, they can't be troubled to do anything like helping out. Because to people, it is selfishness that matters, not freedom. People attack people like RMS or Miguel or others, whether they be individuals or companies, while it is these people that have gotten Free Software to where it is today. But what do you all do? Attack them. Freedom comes at a price. Responsibility. I hope that some people eventually realize their responsibility and live up to it. But that is probably too much to hope for.
Re:hmm nice.. now get some work done... right now!
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Ximian gets new CEO
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Gnome.org never provided binary packages, really. Red Hat used to build RPMs, but they decided that Ximian's packages were a lot better. Debian still has people making.deb packages for gnome. So I don't really see what there is to gripe about.
While Rusty presents some reasonable ideas, the artlce as a whole is fairly mistaken. The Declaration of Independence intentionally *left out* property ownership as a self-evident right. It is heavily based on John Locke's Second Treatise on Government, where Locke claims that property ownership is one of the more fundamental rights. Much of Western Liberal thought has been based on (or in reaction to) Locke's notion of Natural Rights. And according to Locke and those who are in similar vein, Natural Rights are what is precisely NOT socially constructed.
Another upsetting point of view that Rusty takes is that the framing of the constitution is fundamentally skewed towards corporations. This is a fundamental falsehood. The United States was based on a basic fear or power. Our whole society was set up to be incredibly inefficient, and with plenty of opportunity for power to be checked. It is only through vast misreadings of the founding documents of the US do you arrive at the notion that Greed Is Good, and that corporations are first-class citizens. Yes, society is organized around a concept of self-interest, but that is not fundamentally capitalistic. If you read much of Jefferson's writings, you quickly find that he is hugely in support of small communities of Yeoman farmers, each independent and active in politics. Which is exactly what Rusty is arguing for.
Rusty is also fairly mistaken on notions of Communism. One, there has never been a real, Marx-like Communist country. Communism requires the (supposedly inevitable) downfall of capitalism first. It needs all the infrastructure that capitalism provides. And like it or not, pretty much all of the ideals of communism (at a very fundamental level) are mirrored in the original social contract that Locke proposes. It is just that Marx is naive about the power of self-interest. Other similar community-oriented political theories are further flawed, like Rousseau's notion of a community. The most important notion that a political theory can have is healthy fear of power, no matter what form it comes in. Only Locke and thinkers like him (like Jefferson and Madison) amply realize this.
So I say that any problems that exist in America's current social contract already have solutions. They lie in the original documents of our country. Some have just chosen to ignore them. To correct this situation, we have to model ourselves more closely towards this original framework, and demonstrate how we are in the true vein of American ideals.
Ways to enhance the public knowledgebase
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Ask Robert Young
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With your sponsorship of ibiblio.org, and some comments that you have made, you have shown that you care about providing easy access to public-domain (and open-licensed) works - from software to art to research materials. I applaud this effort, and would be interested in hearing what you think needs to be done on a larger scale to make these resources more readily available to the general public. Would a superior metadata system help, allowing for better searching and cataloging? Does the web provide a good enough user experience for this, or do we need better peer-to-peer filesharing systems, with sites like ibiblio.org as permenant nodes? Any thoughts would be appreciated.
The cool thing about "peer to peer" isn't that I can damn the man, or subvert my government. Anyone who seeks to do those things really isn't going to accomplish much just with technology. What I am excited about is being able to really use the potential of the Internet. I see Peer to Peer technologies being developed to let me use the Internet in a more effective manner. Why is Napster so popular? Because it makes it pathetically easy to get the songs you like. Wouldn't it be great if I could do the same thing with texts when I am doing research? Automatic cross-referencing? Being able to find and view artwork at museums that are halfway around the world? I see it as being able to get rid of artificial structure, like DNS, and actually search for and retrieve what I want. I'm looking for information, not a given website. Also, the whole micropayment thing that was so quickly swept aside could really allow content creators to make money on the Internet. Banner ads don't seem to be working out too well. I'd be happy to pay for what I find I enjoy online, but there is no real mechanism for doing that yet. Building an optional payment system into a peer to peer filesharing system would be a pretty elegant solution to the problem. So I see a pretty big benefit to joe schmoe, as well as myself. Much better searching, with better, more accurate results. And if I can do this with files, why not goods or services? What better way would there be to comparison shop? All of this would be pretty damn useful.
no neeed to lie. There are no such plans for Nautilus. Eazel is a company dedicated to the Free Software community and the Gnome community. Their online storage is done with WebDAV - any browser supporting WebDAV can access them. You don't need to install the services to use it. In fact, for the gnome 1.4 release, the nautilus that ships with that will not have any of the services. So try and be honest. A disussion forum is useless when it is filled with dishonesty
The problem is that there is something of a philosophical difference between the two camps. It is actually fairly big. Open Source derives its reasoning for open source code from Utility - open source code will make better products faster, and is a better development model. Free Software bases its thinking on a Rights-based system. It doesn't matter if the resulting software is better or worse, what matters is the preservation of Rights. Good software is just a side benefit. Your argument is like claiming that both John Stuart Mill (who pretty much defined Eudaimonist Utilitarianism) and John Locke (who basically started modern Western Liberal political thought) say the same thing. They really don't. Mill defended Liberty with Utilitarianism, which is an easier argument to win, but as soon as the benefits of Liberty are no longer apparent, you lose your Liberty. Locke made the harder argument that preserves Liberty no matter what. I see RMS trying to do the same with Free Software. It is a harder sell, but it is the right way to go in the long run.
This article isn't necessarily promoting a libertarian viewpoint. In fact, it is working from the Western tradition. John Locke's political writings are pretty much the basis for the constitution of the USA. And it is an economic fact that scarcity preceeds property. Every economic theory that is worth taking seriously is based on that. If that weren't true, how can you even begin to explain concepts like supply and demand? Economics is a study of scarcity. We assign value to items that are hard to get. The more available they are, the less their value. The trouble with this notion of property is how we are to interpret it for IP, which is easily reproduced. Being that IP creators are now able to publish and distribute their works themselves, it is a valid excercise to explore the ramifications of removing the traditional "Middle Men" from the market. If you spend some time and review the history of copyright, you will quickly see that it was originally done to protect the IP creators, but has transitioned into a system that protects the middle men. Is this what we want to reward, or is it idea creation? Also, a large function of copyright is to increase the knowledgebase of the public after the author has had the opportunity to enjoy a limited monopoly. However, the Sonny Bono copyright extension act has extended copyrights an additional 25 years. How does this help the public? I don't see how any of these ideas are libertarian. They are just sane public policy.
If you look at history, Encyclopedias have traditionally been written with intentional bias. The first encyclopedia was written mainly by Diederot and other french luminaries in a hubristic attempt to create a collection of all human knowledge. They were not coincidentally also some of the major thinkers of Western political history, operating under a very restrictive monarchy and church. So, in order to further their political agenda of ridding France of the monarchy, and encouraging a government that had the consent of the people, their encylopedia was full of completely slanted entries, all of which were designed to undermine the monarchy without the censor's noticing. Almost all encylopedia's since have set out to do essentially the same thing - push whatever political or social agenda the creators want. The GNUPedia people are doing what has always been done. Incidentally, a number of other encyclopedias were first started by having interested people sending entries in to the editors by mail. All that is changing is that now we can use email. So, before you think RMS is crazy, read up on some history, and realize this is how it has always been done. If anything, RMS should be praised - especially by the community whose agenda such an effort would most help.
Slashdot Mirror
This is wrong in basically every respect. Your characterization of relativism is apparently some version of subjectivism, which is distinct. Relativism applies at the level of groups - a particular group has a well-defined standard that is then right for that group. Two groups may disagree and have no recourse, but two individuals within the same group do think that only one could be right, as the group standard determines this. This is not at all logically flawed as you suggest. There is also subjectivism, in which each individual is her own standards-bearer. Here you can use something like a Wittgensteinian argument to claim that "private rules" are incoherent, but this argument does not work at groups of at least 2.
"Objectivism" is a term of art to describe Ayn Rand's philosophy, which is a fusion of a branch of egoism and virtue ethics. You mean "Absolutism" which claims that moral rules are absolute and universal. There is still a further distinction to be made between how context-sensitive rules can be (that is, whether rules have the character of "don't lie" or "don't lie under these circumstances").
Of course, there are then many other distinctions to be made in other dimensions, like whether you have a consequentialist theory, a deontological theory, an intuitionist theory, etc.
Also of note, John Stuart Mill did not "come up with the theory of Utilitarianism" - he had a version of a theory of Utilitarianism, and his version is nothing like what you describe. Utilitarianism goes back to at least Frances Hutcheson (who was the first to state the Greatest Happiness Principle), and at the very least Jeremy Bentham is a more appropriate figure to attach to the version of utilitarianism that you discuss. Of course, Mill has arguments against almost precisely what you raise as a devastating problem. In fact, Mill is a standard-bearer for the "high liberal tradition" in which education, personal development, and extensions of rights are hallmarks. How this is "what is wrong with democracy" is not at all clear.
Besides getting the ethics (and meta-ethics) wrong, you should also note that just as humans are social animals, there are lots and lots of non-human social animals that are also more than happy to act altruistically. Not just primates, even. Anyway, things to think about before you want to sound too authoritative on this stuff again.
What people seem to be most upset about is that somewhat random people can read up about you. But that only works if you let random people be your "friends" on facebook. This provides some disincentives for people to just add tons of people as friends. Maybe there needs to be two tiers of contacts - associates and friends. With friends you get the feeds and updates, and you don't with associates (and they don't get yours). Cries of privacy violation are a bit much - facebook is a public forum. What you put online is your responsibility. If you don't want people to know you broke up with your partner, then don't provide that information at all on facebook.
At best, it sounds like people want finer-grained access control. The feeds simply exposed the underlying problem, rather than creating a problem.
What I find interesting is that Google is developing products that are the building blocks for something larger. Orkut seems like it was a test run, and Google doesn't care about it anymore. Myspace and Facebook are the fads these days, but they still aren't very good. But Google has blogging, shared calendars, maps, chat, classifieds and email. Add in a few more mechanisms to figure out what you like and where you live (which someone like Amazon has, through your purchasing habits), then Google can auto-generate a large portion of a profile for you, and further make some pretty good guesses about who you might like to be friends with. But most importantly, it can tie it in to actual, real-world events. You like band X, Google can tell you when that band is coming, how to get there, and who might be interested in joining you. Then it can put it into your calendar for you. Want to go to dinner? Google can give you information on the restaurants in your area. Social Networking isn't that useful unless it connects to your real-world life. Google is building the pieces to do that. And no doubt it can make plenty of ad dollars off of being your social life's facilitator.
Instead of just showing road traffic and only offering driving directions, Yahoo could make using public transportation easier by offering directions using buses, subways, and commuter rails as an option. It would allow people to use public transportation without having to spend a lot of time figuring out all the different bus routes and schedules. Maybe it would reduce the traffic a bit.
One of the main problems that I see in identity/privacy/security issues at the moment is that people are convinced that there is a purely technological solution. That's just false. One thing you will have to consider is how much it is worth it to someone to cheat, what are the initial costs of getting an identity, and what are the costs to a discovered cheater. If the benefits to cheating outweigh the costs at all, then you lose. If there is money to be made in cheating, someone will find a way to do it.
Secondly, you as an individual (or a small business) will never be able to run this service. The insurance cost alone has priced you out of the market. You are providing some degree of certainty above the status quo that people registered with you are who they say they are. That has significant value, at least linearly related to number of users. Which means insurance prices would be huge. This is a business most naturally suited to an insurance company, not a technology company or an individual.
Finally, why do you claim that centralization is necessary? We barely use this in real life. Birth certificates don't come from a central authority - they come from towns and hospitals. Driver's licenses are issued by states. Credit cards are issued by banks. Student IDs are issued by universities. Even these things that we consider centralized are decentralized. Our more informal relationships are completely decentralized. A web of trust more accurately reflects our relationships, not a hub with a bunch of spokes. Why would you want such a huge single point of failure?
iBiblio stands out as an excellent repository for a wide range of culturally valuable resources. As it and other sites grow in size, the importance of good searching and indexing becomes extremely relevant. Have you given any thought to how you might want to cope with this? Specifically, are there any metadata schemata that you are considering using? I would love to see iBiblio be used more like a content feed to research/cross-referencing applications.
Calm down here. First of all, Salon is *much* more of a political magazine than a tech site. The vast majority of their articles are social or political articles. I doubt the Slashdot traffic really makes that much of a difference for them. And remember, that while they are typically rather liberal-leaning, they also publish David Horowitz every week, where he generally slams liberals as much as possible. They try to publish both sides of the story. That is what a good magazine does.
Gnumeric has been an active project for several years, so I can't see how you could possibly be saying anything true. In fact, Jody Goldberg is offering people a beverage of their choice if they can find a reproducable crash/freeze in it. It is pretty much the best free spreadsheet there is, and I have no trouble using my Excel files in it. And being that it is still under active development, I don't know where you got "done" from.
Evolution is also an excellent email/calendar/task manager. I like it better than outlook - it is easy to set up encryption with it, it is standards-compliant, and it loads fast. I'd have a hard time calling it "shit software."
And, there is no need for me to compile it anymore, since Ximian does a great job packaging it all. Ximian GNOME is rather pleasant to use....and I can't really think of any "modern" features that it is lacking. It's not perfect, but I don't know what is. The great thing is that I can fix it myself if something annoys me, or at very least email the developers about it. Good luck trying to do that with Windows XP.
The other day, when I checked Red Carpet, I saw that 1.2 was out, so I installed it. Once I noticed the availability of Red Carpet Express, I bought the yearlong subscription (for $99). I haven't purchased software in three years or so, since everything I use is free. But I know that Red Carpet has saved me a great deal of time, which means more hours I can be productive. It is really easy to use, and unlike windows update, it takes care of *everything* on my computer. That's pretty damn nice. Not only that, but the software that Ximian puts out is excellent. At first I was hoping that the premium service would offer additional "stuff", like more channels, to make it a better value proposition for the customers. Although that would still be nice, Ximian already offers a huge value to their customers. If it isn't worth paying money for, I don't know what in the software/services world is.
...go to a trade school. A liberal arts education helps to develop you as a *person*. If I just wanted to learn to program, I could read a bunch of programming books and get a job doing it. But I wanted to learn Computer Science. So I learn what theory is behind it all. The math to go along with it. I am picking up a philosophy degree as well, both because it is interesting and believe it or not, it really helps with CS. You see, those "wastes of time" like learning method, or taking mythology or whatnot actually train you how to think. College is not meant to be a job training site - it is meant to develop you as an academic, and as a thinker. I'm not learning facts really, but I am learning how to apply knowledge. People are confused as to the purpose of a college education. It is to expand your mind, and refine its ability to reason. I'm a junior, and I can easily tell how much better I am at thinking and solving problems (not just CS problems) than I was before I started. Of course, in high school I assumed that there was no need for a wide educational base - I thought that I knew what I wanted to do, so why not get really involved in it, and forego the rest? Except one of the best classes I've taken so far was Russian Literature - not having to do with any of my 3 majors. Undergraduate study is a time to expand your horizons - doctoral work is when you can focus on one thing. ;-) Also, one fringe benefit of a liberal education is that it makes you a much more interesting person. I've found that generally, people with very regimented programs, like business or engineering, are barely *people* - they are so focused on their area of study that they fail to appreciate the value of anything else. Not very interesting conversationalists to say the least. In 10 years (probably less) it will catch up with them, and they will regret having not made the most of their time in college.
I hope that people actually take time to read Ximian's press releases before passing judgement. But that is probably asking too much. Ximian is offering (in 45 days) two new Red Carpet-based services, ON TOP OF the current *free* Red Carpet updating service they provide as a gift to the community. First is Red Carpet Express, which is basically guaranteed fast access to software updates. A lot of people (including myself) requested something like this. I am happy that they are offering it. The second service is especially cool. The CorporateConnect idea is great. Basically, companies can tailor exactly what software (and in what channels) is offered, and which users can access that software. And it can push updates automatically in the corporate LAN. That is an incredibly useful tool. Ximian is being smart, and focusing on the Corporate desktop (and those customers) rather than end-users. Creating tools and services like these that really add value to a company's IT infrastructure is what is going to make Ximian succeed. End-user oriented business models can come later. Ximian is going to continue to create great software, and develop really useful services that are worth the money.
You misunderstand what Mono is. It is not the "services" part of .Net, like Passport or Hailstorm. It is just the development environment. C#, a JIT engine, a GC system, and the class libraries. There is no pay-for-use or passport requirement. As for security, there are just as many security holes as one would find in any development envrionment. Probably fewer, because C# is takes a managed approach to memory.
I am sure that Adobe has a trademark on the "Illustrator" name. This pretty much means that it has a naming monopoly on the word Illustrator as it pertains to computer drawing programs. Appending a "K" doesn't adequately differentiate the product. Using an original name is a much better idea. There is no real way to defend what KIllustrator is doing in a court.
You seem to forget that all of this "New Media" can't exist without those boring Old Media venues. Slashdot is nothing without the article links. People still need to get their news from somewhere. Not everything can be an editorial. Sites like Salon.com deliver amazingly high-quality writing. Few other venues even come close to the level of skilled journalism that exists there. I like salon.com because I get the sense that the journalists really love journalism, and they really care about what they are writing. And they are excellent at expressing those things. That's something you can't find in USA Today or even the venerable Slashdot.
Of course, Python is a great language, and I could very easily see that a course could be designed with it in mind. But the same could be said for lisp, or prolog, ML, or any number of other languages. But teaching C or C++, or some form of assembly first is just dumb. Beginning programmers should be concerned with *concepts* not implementation details. Learning data structures or basic algorithms becomes much more difficult when you have to deal with pointer math.
Java isn't the end-all, be-all of languages, but it is pretty nice. It seems like a good choice for beginners. Comments on its non-free nature are pretty wrongheaded. The Java standard is a published spec. Anyone can make a Java-compatible compiler or Virtual Machine...they just can't call it Java. GJ (Generic Java) is one such implementation. GCC-Java also is a free java compiler. So I don't see how it is any different than C in that respect, other than Sun controls the standard to a large extent.
The point that you seem to be missing is that this "custom" of property rights that you seem to refer to is the Western Liberal tradition, as Locke set it out. Take a look at "Second Treatise on Government" - Locke describes private property to be that which one has put work into. That use of labor makes it one's own. The difference with "Intellectual Property" is that there is no exclusiveness. If I have something, it doesn't mean that you can't too. So if we both have it, we can both put work into it, and make it our own. So since anyone can own intellectual property, by Locke's conventions, when why not make everyone own it? The arguments against things like the DMCA is not that it is magically wrong and physical property is right, but that it goes against the basic ideas that the country was founded on. Our economy would have been nothing without reverse-engineering the design of textile mills in England. The computer industry would be tiny had not Compaq and others reverse-engineered IBM's PC. Things like the DMCA are Fat-Catism at it's worst. Huge companies that benefitted from the country's open framework now want to make that framework more restrictive to protect what they built.
Articles like this tend to be popular, simply because they make people either really mad, or elated. As I am a pretty big GNOME and FSF supporter, it made me mad. But, I was mad not because I discovered that these two organizations have been embarking on a sinister plot to ruin the "community," but because I was shocked at the lack of journalistic integrity demonstrated in the article. But hey, it drives a lot of traffic.
First, the notion that the FSF's financial details are not available. That is plain false. Anyone can request them (politeness probably helps) - simply as them or the IRS for their tax forms. Others have stated in other forums that they have had no problems getting such reports.
Second, the whole PayPal thing. This really bothers me. It was suggested on slashdot a little while ago by various members of this very forum that perhaps Eazel should accept donations somehow from grateful users, to show their support for the company. Eazel, being an *extremely* community-oriented company, complied. Bart Decrem even went so far as to suggest to people who just wanted to support Free Software in general to make donations to the FSF, since if Eazel goes under, they would be legally obligated to give funds to creditors. Eazel has, in many ways, made every attempt to encourage community feedback and involvement in all of its projects. Yet the supposed "community" that slashdot apparently represents essentially slaps them across the face with unwarranted accusations of unethical practices.
As for Ximian and Eazel fighting for control of GNOME, and arguing over base libraries, this is really contrived. Yes, members of both companies have argued technical merits of various bits of software. Sometimes arguments get heated, especially when everyone is under a deadline (thanks to the demanding slashdot crowd who quickly complains about any slippage in schedule, then as soon as a product comes out on time, finds a fault and blames evil marketing machines for forcing products out early). But, as anyone can read by looking at the public mailing list archives, disputes are resolved, and the framework is improved in the end. This happens in any project. It just happens that in the Free Software world, these discussions are made public.
Corporate control of GNOME is pretty much wrong in every way. The GNOME Foundation doesn't grant corporate entities voting rights. It is also against the GNOME Foundation's charter for more than 3 people from the same company to be on the Board at once. And all board members are elected by the general GNOME Foundation membership. It is true that a number of employees at Eazel and Ximian (as well as other companies) are actively involved in core parts of GNOME. But, they have been in that capacity for a while, long before these companies existed. They saw an opportunity to do what they loved doing full time, and get paid for it. Shouldn't this be lauded, rather than attacked? These people are making really excellent Free Software. Instead of thanking them, this supposed community alternately slams them for not producing more for free, or for having a "flawed business model." Make up your mind.
I am feeling a growing disgust for the "masses" of the slashdot crowd, and the Free Software community at large. It used to be a real community - people actively exchanging ideas in a postive manner, everyone happy to see Linux in the news for some reason, and people actually working on projects to contribute back to the community. That doesn't really happen so much anymore. We have a few dedicated people that work harder than ever to further the causes so many people here pretend to care about, but at the end of the day, people just bitch at them for not making it exactly the way they wanted. But, of course, they can't be troubled to do anything like helping out. Because to people, it is selfishness that matters, not freedom. People attack people like RMS or Miguel or others, whether they be individuals or companies, while it is these people that have gotten Free Software to where it is today. But what do you all do? Attack them. Freedom comes at a price. Responsibility. I hope that some people eventually realize their responsibility and live up to it. But that is probably too much to hope for.
Gnome.org never provided binary packages, really. Red Hat used to build RPMs, but they decided that Ximian's packages were a lot better. Debian still has people making .deb packages for gnome. So I don't really see what there is to gripe about.
While Rusty presents some reasonable ideas, the artlce as a whole is fairly mistaken. The Declaration of Independence intentionally *left out* property ownership as a self-evident right. It is heavily based on John Locke's Second Treatise on Government, where Locke claims that property ownership is one of the more fundamental rights. Much of Western Liberal thought has been based on (or in reaction to) Locke's notion of Natural Rights. And according to Locke and those who are in similar vein, Natural Rights are what is precisely NOT socially constructed.
Another upsetting point of view that Rusty takes is that the framing of the constitution is fundamentally skewed towards corporations. This is a fundamental falsehood. The United States was based on a basic fear or power. Our whole society was set up to be incredibly inefficient, and with plenty of opportunity for power to be checked. It is only through vast misreadings of the founding documents of the US do you arrive at the notion that Greed Is Good, and that corporations are first-class citizens. Yes, society is organized around a concept of self-interest, but that is not fundamentally capitalistic. If you read much of Jefferson's writings, you quickly find that he is hugely in support of small communities of Yeoman farmers, each independent and active in politics. Which is exactly what Rusty is arguing for.
Rusty is also fairly mistaken on notions of Communism. One, there has never been a real, Marx-like Communist country. Communism requires the (supposedly inevitable) downfall of capitalism first. It needs all the infrastructure that capitalism provides. And like it or not, pretty much all of the ideals of communism (at a very fundamental level) are mirrored in the original social contract that Locke proposes. It is just that Marx is naive about the power of self-interest. Other similar community-oriented political theories are further flawed, like Rousseau's notion of a community. The most important notion that a political theory can have is healthy fear of power, no matter what form it comes in. Only Locke and thinkers like him (like Jefferson and Madison) amply realize this.
So I say that any problems that exist in America's current social contract already have solutions. They lie in the original documents of our country. Some have just chosen to ignore them. To correct this situation, we have to model ourselves more closely towards this original framework, and demonstrate how we are in the true vein of American ideals.
With your sponsorship of ibiblio.org, and some comments that you have made, you have shown that you care about providing easy access to public-domain (and open-licensed) works - from software to art to research materials. I applaud this effort, and would be interested in hearing what you think needs to be done on a larger scale to make these resources more readily available to the general public. Would a superior metadata system help, allowing for better searching and cataloging? Does the web provide a good enough user experience for this, or do we need better peer-to-peer filesharing systems, with sites like ibiblio.org as permenant nodes? Any thoughts would be appreciated.
The cool thing about "peer to peer" isn't that I can damn the man, or subvert my government. Anyone who seeks to do those things really isn't going to accomplish much just with technology. What I am excited about is being able to really use the potential of the Internet. I see Peer to Peer technologies being developed to let me use the Internet in a more effective manner. Why is Napster so popular? Because it makes it pathetically easy to get the songs you like. Wouldn't it be great if I could do the same thing with texts when I am doing research? Automatic cross-referencing? Being able to find and view artwork at museums that are halfway around the world? I see it as being able to get rid of artificial structure, like DNS, and actually search for and retrieve what I want. I'm looking for information, not a given website. Also, the whole micropayment thing that was so quickly swept aside could really allow content creators to make money on the Internet. Banner ads don't seem to be working out too well. I'd be happy to pay for what I find I enjoy online, but there is no real mechanism for doing that yet. Building an optional payment system into a peer to peer filesharing system would be a pretty elegant solution to the problem. So I see a pretty big benefit to joe schmoe, as well as myself. Much better searching, with better, more accurate results. And if I can do this with files, why not goods or services? What better way would there be to comparison shop? All of this would be pretty damn useful.
no neeed to lie. There are no such plans for Nautilus. Eazel is a company dedicated to the Free Software community and the Gnome community. Their online storage is done with WebDAV - any browser supporting WebDAV can access them. You don't need to install the services to use it. In fact, for the gnome 1.4 release, the nautilus that ships with that will not have any of the services. So try and be honest. A disussion forum is useless when it is filled with dishonesty
The problem is that there is something of a philosophical difference between the two camps. It is actually fairly big. Open Source derives its reasoning for open source code from Utility - open source code will make better products faster, and is a better development model. Free Software bases its thinking on a Rights-based system. It doesn't matter if the resulting software is better or worse, what matters is the preservation of Rights. Good software is just a side benefit. Your argument is like claiming that both John Stuart Mill (who pretty much defined Eudaimonist Utilitarianism) and John Locke (who basically started modern Western Liberal political thought) say the same thing. They really don't. Mill defended Liberty with Utilitarianism, which is an easier argument to win, but as soon as the benefits of Liberty are no longer apparent, you lose your Liberty. Locke made the harder argument that preserves Liberty no matter what. I see RMS trying to do the same with Free Software. It is a harder sell, but it is the right way to go in the long run.
This article isn't necessarily promoting a libertarian viewpoint. In fact, it is working from the Western tradition. John Locke's political writings are pretty much the basis for the constitution of the USA. And it is an economic fact that scarcity preceeds property. Every economic theory that is worth taking seriously is based on that. If that weren't true, how can you even begin to explain concepts like supply and demand? Economics is a study of scarcity. We assign value to items that are hard to get. The more available they are, the less their value. The trouble with this notion of property is how we are to interpret it for IP, which is easily reproduced. Being that IP creators are now able to publish and distribute their works themselves, it is a valid excercise to explore the ramifications of removing the traditional "Middle Men" from the market. If you spend some time and review the history of copyright, you will quickly see that it was originally done to protect the IP creators, but has transitioned into a system that protects the middle men. Is this what we want to reward, or is it idea creation? Also, a large function of copyright is to increase the knowledgebase of the public after the author has had the opportunity to enjoy a limited monopoly. However, the Sonny Bono copyright extension act has extended copyrights an additional 25 years. How does this help the public? I don't see how any of these ideas are libertarian. They are just sane public policy.
If you look at history, Encyclopedias have traditionally been written with intentional bias. The first encyclopedia was written mainly by Diederot and other french luminaries in a hubristic attempt to create a collection of all human knowledge. They were not coincidentally also some of the major thinkers of Western political history, operating under a very restrictive monarchy and church. So, in order to further their political agenda of ridding France of the monarchy, and encouraging a government that had the consent of the people, their encylopedia was full of completely slanted entries, all of which were designed to undermine the monarchy without the censor's noticing. Almost all encylopedia's since have set out to do essentially the same thing - push whatever political or social agenda the creators want. The GNUPedia people are doing what has always been done. Incidentally, a number of other encyclopedias were first started by having interested people sending entries in to the editors by mail. All that is changing is that now we can use email. So, before you think RMS is crazy, read up on some history, and realize this is how it has always been done. If anything, RMS should be praised - especially by the community whose agenda such an effort would most help.