Freedom is the ability to do something without the fear of punishment.
Close, but not quite. Freedom is the absence of restriction. The difference is crucial. Your definition focuses on the consequences of an action, while the dictionary definition focuses on the ability to perform an action.
To add a necessary clarifying point (with regards to that subset of freedom known as liberty), freedom ends where another's freedom begins. In other words, you cannot use freedom to restrict freedom. At the point where you ability begins to restrict another's ability, it ceases to be liberty and is called "privilege".
Copyright infers upon an author many privileges. The only software that is truly free as in having a complete lack of privilege is public domain software. Licensed software is judged by how much privilege it retains (or additionally aquires through contractual agreements) or gives up. Unrestricted licenses like BSD or MIT have the fewest retained privileges, and conseqently the most liberty. Copyleft licenses like the GPL and LGPL enforce a few more privileges and have a bit less liberty. Both, however, are nearly equivalent with regards to most proprietary commercial software.
They're not freedoms. They're more like the "really really nice attributes to have for software". The four "freedoms" are very useful attributes, but no way in heck do they rank up there with freedom of speech, religion and due process. After all, wars have been justifiably fought over the latter, but only the most sociopathic stallmanite would ever advocate violence in the prescence of the former.
Nonsense. I don't know where you got this information, but it's flat out wrong. It may have been true in the past, but it is not true now, nor has it been true within the at least the last year. At least on the 5.x branch.
Hyperthreading is *NOT* SMP! It is a single CPU that can only do the work of a single CPU. It pretends to be two CPUs but it is not. If you were talking about multiple core CPUs, then you would be right, but p4 HTT processors are single core.
Treating HTT at SMP is, to quote from the FreeBSD Handbook, "naive". Intel agrees, though they don't use that word. Here's a quote from the article you mentionL "but further performance gains can be realized by specifically tuning software for Hyper-Threading Technology." In other words, you tune software for HTT *differently* than you do for SMP.
The vast majority of people use Windows because they want to use Windows. Most of the remainder use Windows because they don't know of anything else. Face it, for most people prefer Windows because they consider it the best product. Even when they know about and appreciate Mac OSX, they prefer Windows. I've know people whose first computer was a Mac and their second a Win/Dell. While they nearly all agree that Windows has shoddy quality, they don't want quality, as demonstrated by their similar preferences for McDonalds and Walmart.
Don't confuse your tiny little geek universe with the real world. I don't really understand the average human being either, but like it or not they're the ones who run the show.
That $100 laser is powerful enough to permanently blind someone. Granted, it's probably useless at the range used in this case. However, so would a.22 caliber pistol. There's not a chance in heck of a.22 pistol puncturing the cockpit windshield of a 747 a few miles overhead.
But should I still point a pistol at a 747 and pull the trigger, any observing policemen would be well within their rights to haul my ass off to jail.
Every laser I have ever seen includes a prominent and impossible-to-ignore warning: dangerous to your eyeballs you nitwit! The accused shined this laser into the eyeballs of an airline pilot. If the jury (yes, he will get a jury) finds him willfully culpable of this act, then he deserves jail time.
This is not different than if someone shot a BB gun at an airplane cockpit. The odds of a BB gun penetrating the windscreen of any airplane cockpit is between zero to zilch, but anyone doing so would be up on identical charges. And rightly so. I don't give a shit if he was just "goofing around". All the "goofing around" defense does is throw the crime into the category of "criminal negligence."
But then I guess you proved that already by missing my point.
Then you should have made your point a hell of a lot clearer. Because as near as I can tell with my limited English skills, you said "How is it NOT harmful to society to have any one thing controlled by one person alone?" Isn't that what you said?
You probably meant software when you said "thing", but considering your reply, I'm not too sure. Maybe you're unclear on the concept of property. Let me clue you in. I own my refrigerator. It is my property. It is controlled by me alone. That means no one is allowed to repair it without my permission!
...or if you really are aiming to insult people who show some appreciation for what the guy has accomplished.
Not all of you, to be sure, but quite a large number of you RMS fans genuinely treat him as an infallible incarnation of perfection. You have zero tolerance for disagreement with him. You become extremely angry if someone declares a tiny minor point of his to be in error. You go absolutely nuts if the "GNU" is not prefixed to "Linux". I genuinely do appreciate Richard Stallman. But that doesn't mean I think he is perfect. Sometimes the man can be <gasp> wrong.
I am not trying to insult anyone, I am merely trying to get you all to sit back and take a deep breath.
After they have retired into homes with increasing property values, what is to keep them from losing them?
Proposition 13? Oh, I forgot, that California proposition, which prevented foreclosing on elderly widows when their property values increased, has been declared universally evil by the progressives in this state. Which is why I am not, and never will be, a "progressive."
Create a graph. Label the X-axis "wealth". Label the Y-axis "tax rate". Draw three lines, one horizontal, one diagonal to the right and the other diagonal to the left. Got it? Okay, that horizontal line is a "flat" tax. The diagonal to the left is "regressive", and the diagonal to the right is "progressive".
This is simple elementary school mathematics. A 10% tax on 10,000 is exactly the same rate as a 10% tax on 1,000,000, regardless of whether they're annual incomes or property values. You may of course, depending on the pointiness of your political head, argue that a flat tax is unfair. But you cannot honestly or mathematically call it regressive.
The problem most people make is in assuming that GNU is an operating system, or that operating systems mutate into a GNU operating system if any part of GNU is used within it. Nonsense!
The kernel essentially *IS* the operating system. A libc would be very handy, but is not necessary. A shell would be very handy, but is not necessary. ls, cp, tar, sed, etc., are not necessary. You do need some small infrastructure around the kernel, but that infrastructure has always been provided by the various distros (init scripts, etc).
I can trivially swap in and out one of a dozen shells, the majority of which are do NOT belong to GNU. I can trivially replace ls, mv and rm as well. For linkage reasons I cannot trivially do this with glibc, but it still isn't a onerous amount of work to relink everything with another libc.
How (to put it somewhat flamebaitily;) do they sleep at night?
Easy. They lay down their heads, close their eyes, and doze off.
Seriously, you're problem in understanding them is that you have a completely different world view from theirs. To a commercial proprietary software developer, the copyright on the software is a valuable property. As artificial as copyrights maybe, they are valuable. Furthermore, since there is NO coercion involved in the purchase or use of software, there is no guilt associated with protecting that asset with end user licenses.
Personally I do not much agree with the concept of copyright. On the other hand, I am a firm believer in contracts. Consequently, I see nothing wrong with a developer protecting their hard work with contracts to prevent disemination. License agreements should NOT be clickthru and shrinkwrap crap, but if they are valid contracts, there is nothing wrong with them.
I have no problems with software secrecy, as long as it is done voluntarily and peacefully. To GNU, however, this is heresy.
Programmers write free software to subvert a system that denies them the protection of their property rights by pricing legal defense of those rights out of their reach.
As a Free Software developer, I must disagree. Some, or rather, a very few, may have that as their impetus, but I certainly do not.
I write my Free Software on my own time as a hobby. To commercially proprietarize my hobby would be beyond rude. It would be like baking cookies for all the neighborhood children and then charging their parents for it. My software is a freely given gift, with no strings attached. I also brew beer as a hobby, but I don't charge my friends for a bottle, nor force them to sign NDAs before I give them a recipe.
Property tax is not regressive, it's flat (at least most property taxes are). An equal percentage of value is paid regardless of economic status. Just because it isn't progressive doesn't automatically make it regressive. Calling a flat tax "regressive" is cheap politicizing.
He's not a father figure. More like the crazy uncle you have to invite over for Christmas dinner because he's family, who when he has too much eggnog in him starts ranting about GNU/yule GNU/logs and GNU/figgy GNU/pudding.
The problem with RMS is that he has become a diety for many in the community. It is heresy to disagree with him. It is blasphemy to mention that he might, just might, be ever so slightly off target. His works have been canonized into a Holy Scripture and to disagree with even one verse of it is to endure eternal hell at the hands of his disciples.
Dammit people! He is a human being! No different from you or I. Do not worship him. Do not attribute to him the quality of infallibility. He is not a god!
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Freedom is the ability to do something without the fear of punishment.
Close, but not quite. Freedom is the absence of restriction. The difference is crucial. Your definition focuses on the consequences of an action, while the dictionary definition focuses on the ability to perform an action.
To add a necessary clarifying point (with regards to that subset of freedom known as liberty), freedom ends where another's freedom begins. In other words, you cannot use freedom to restrict freedom. At the point where you ability begins to restrict another's ability, it ceases to be liberty and is called "privilege".
Copyright infers upon an author many privileges. The only software that is truly free as in having a complete lack of privilege is public domain software. Licensed software is judged by how much privilege it retains (or additionally aquires through contractual agreements) or gives up. Unrestricted licenses like BSD or MIT have the fewest retained privileges, and conseqently the most liberty. Copyleft licenses like the GPL and LGPL enforce a few more privileges and have a bit less liberty. Both, however, are nearly equivalent with regards to most proprietary commercial software.
Your yardstick says the same thing his yardstick does: yes.
They're not freedoms. They're more like the "really really nice attributes to have for software". The four "freedoms" are very useful attributes, but no way in heck do they rank up there with freedom of speech, religion and due process. After all, wars have been justifiably fought over the latter, but only the most sociopathic stallmanite would ever advocate violence in the prescence of the former.
Nonsense. I don't know where you got this information, but it's flat out wrong. It may have been true in the past, but it is not true now, nor has it been true within the at least the last year. At least on the 5.x branch.
Hyperthreading is *NOT* SMP! It is a single CPU that can only do the work of a single CPU. It pretends to be two CPUs but it is not. If you were talking about multiple core CPUs, then you would be right, but p4 HTT processors are single core.
Treating HTT at SMP is, to quote from the FreeBSD Handbook, "naive". Intel agrees, though they don't use that word. Here's a quote from the article you mentionL "but further performance gains can be realized by specifically tuning software for Hyper-Threading Technology." In other words, you tune software for HTT *differently* than you do for SMP.
That is until Sun revoke's Linux's license...
The vast majority of people use Windows because they want to use Windows. Most of the remainder use Windows because they don't know of anything else. Face it, for most people prefer Windows because they consider it the best product. Even when they know about and appreciate Mac OSX, they prefer Windows. I've know people whose first computer was a Mac and their second a Win/Dell. While they nearly all agree that Windows has shoddy quality, they don't want quality, as demonstrated by their similar preferences for McDonalds and Walmart.
Don't confuse your tiny little geek universe with the real world. I don't really understand the average human being either, but like it or not they're the ones who run the show.
That $100 laser is powerful enough to permanently blind someone. Granted, it's probably useless at the range used in this case. However, so would a .22 caliber pistol. There's not a chance in heck of a .22 pistol puncturing the cockpit windshield of a 747 a few miles overhead.
But should I still point a pistol at a 747 and pull the trigger, any observing policemen would be well within their rights to haul my ass off to jail.
The charge isn't "distracting someone". The entire premise of your post is thus groundless.
Every laser I have ever seen includes a prominent and impossible-to-ignore warning: dangerous to your eyeballs you nitwit! The accused shined this laser into the eyeballs of an airline pilot. If the jury (yes, he will get a jury) finds him willfully culpable of this act, then he deserves jail time.
This is not different than if someone shot a BB gun at an airplane cockpit. The odds of a BB gun penetrating the windscreen of any airplane cockpit is between zero to zilch, but anyone doing so would be up on identical charges. And rightly so. I don't give a shit if he was just "goofing around". All the "goofing around" defense does is throw the crime into the category of "criminal negligence."
I can also buy a gun for $100. Does that give me the right to shoot it into the cockpit of a 747 or police helicopter?
But then I guess you proved that already by missing my point.
Then you should have made your point a hell of a lot clearer. Because as near as I can tell with my limited English skills, you said "How is it NOT harmful to society to have any one thing controlled by one person alone?" Isn't that what you said?
You probably meant software when you said "thing", but considering your reply, I'm not too sure. Maybe you're unclear on the concept of property. Let me clue you in. I own my refrigerator. It is my property. It is controlled by me alone. That means no one is allowed to repair it without my permission!
Don't you just LOVE government enforced monopolies like TDS?
Government run businesses have the efficiency of the USPO, prices of the IRS, and customer service of the DMV. Who can say no?
Solaris was designed for servers and workstations. It was never meant for the low end desktop. 39% is pretty high if you think about it.
...or if you really are aiming to insult people who show some appreciation for what the guy has accomplished.
Not all of you, to be sure, but quite a large number of you RMS fans genuinely treat him as an infallible incarnation of perfection. You have zero tolerance for disagreement with him. You become extremely angry if someone declares a tiny minor point of his to be in error. You go absolutely nuts if the "GNU" is not prefixed to "Linux". I genuinely do appreciate Richard Stallman. But that doesn't mean I think he is perfect. Sometimes the man can be <gasp> wrong.
I am not trying to insult anyone, I am merely trying to get you all to sit back and take a deep breath.
After they have retired into homes with increasing property values, what is to keep them from losing them?
Proposition 13? Oh, I forgot, that California proposition, which prevented foreclosing on elderly widows when their property values increased, has been declared universally evil by the progressives in this state. Which is why I am not, and never will be, a "progressive."
Create a graph. Label the X-axis "wealth". Label the Y-axis "tax rate". Draw three lines, one horizontal, one diagonal to the right and the other diagonal to the left. Got it? Okay, that horizontal line is a "flat" tax. The diagonal to the left is "regressive", and the diagonal to the right is "progressive".
This is simple elementary school mathematics. A 10% tax on 10,000 is exactly the same rate as a 10% tax on 1,000,000, regardless of whether they're annual incomes or property values. You may of course, depending on the pointiness of your political head, argue that a flat tax is unfair. But you cannot honestly or mathematically call it regressive.
How is it NOT harmful to society to have any one thing controlled by one person alone?
I own a refrigerator. That one thing is controlled by one person alone. Me. I guess that makes me anti-social. I guess I'm harming society. Oh well.
The problem most people make is in assuming that GNU is an operating system, or that operating systems mutate into a GNU operating system if any part of GNU is used within it. Nonsense!
The kernel essentially *IS* the operating system. A libc would be very handy, but is not necessary. A shell would be very handy, but is not necessary. ls, cp, tar, sed, etc., are not necessary. You do need some small infrastructure around the kernel, but that infrastructure has always been provided by the various distros (init scripts, etc).
I can trivially swap in and out one of a dozen shells, the majority of which are do NOT belong to GNU. I can trivially replace ls, mv and rm as well. For linkage reasons I cannot trivially do this with glibc, but it still isn't a onerous amount of work to relink everything with another libc.
How (to put it somewhat flamebaitily ;) do they sleep at night?
Easy. They lay down their heads, close their eyes, and doze off.
Seriously, you're problem in understanding them is that you have a completely different world view from theirs. To a commercial proprietary software developer, the copyright on the software is a valuable property. As artificial as copyrights maybe, they are valuable. Furthermore, since there is NO coercion involved in the purchase or use of software, there is no guilt associated with protecting that asset with end user licenses.
Personally I do not much agree with the concept of copyright. On the other hand, I am a firm believer in contracts. Consequently, I see nothing wrong with a developer protecting their hard work with contracts to prevent disemination. License agreements should NOT be clickthru and shrinkwrap crap, but if they are valid contracts, there is nothing wrong with them.
I have no problems with software secrecy, as long as it is done voluntarily and peacefully. To GNU, however, this is heresy.
Programmers write free software to subvert a system that denies them the protection of their property rights by pricing legal defense of those rights out of their reach.
As a Free Software developer, I must disagree. Some, or rather, a very few, may have that as their impetus, but I certainly do not.
I write my Free Software on my own time as a hobby. To commercially proprietarize my hobby would be beyond rude. It would be like baking cookies for all the neighborhood children and then charging their parents for it. My software is a freely given gift, with no strings attached. I also brew beer as a hobby, but I don't charge my friends for a bottle, nor force them to sign NDAs before I give them a recipe.
Property tax is not regressive, it's flat (at least most property taxes are). An equal percentage of value is paid regardless of economic status. Just because it isn't progressive doesn't automatically make it regressive. Calling a flat tax "regressive" is cheap politicizing.
Talk about a bunch of ungrateful children...
He's not a father figure. More like the crazy uncle you have to invite over for Christmas dinner because he's family, who when he has too much eggnog in him starts ranting about GNU/yule GNU/logs and GNU/figgy GNU/pudding.
The problem with RMS is that he has become a diety for many in the community. It is heresy to disagree with him. It is blasphemy to mention that he might, just might, be ever so slightly off target. His works have been canonized into a Holy Scripture and to disagree with even one verse of it is to endure eternal hell at the hands of his disciples.
Dammit people! He is a human being! No different from you or I. Do not worship him. Do not attribute to him the quality of infallibility. He is not a god!
Sheesh.