I hate to admit it, but I might have to agree with you about that. Wiring for net access is *not* necessarily the same as wiring up the rural south with electricity.
On a bad day --- and we sometimes seem to be having more of those --- the prospect of wiring the entire country (and beyond) with net access looks like the unholy panopticon love child of Margaret Atwood and Michel Foucault while John Stuart Mill takes pictures.
If it were not for my discovery of the open source movement, I would little political hope at all on this point.
The rural mountainous states in the US are less populated and tougher to cover with access. An analog to the Tennessee Valley Authority (rural electrification in the US) is needed to spread the cost for the public benefit of universal access. And before *that* can happen the political culture in the US probably needs to . . . er, change some.
I'm new to/. and read the posts, in part, to learn about tech subjects. I get a lot out of the exchanges, and the reading has turned out to be worth the effort because my learning curve is less steep.
Your post, for e.g., let me know about the earlier HOWTO which I did not know. Its always been terrific when someone who understands something abstruse-to the-uninitiated takes time to point out shortcuts along the way or break down the more fundamental concepts.
I just hope that's at least some of the purpose of/. because the reaction I get sometimes is less (ahem) hopspitable.
Its more like a field where everyone can (and does) say you're wrong. But lit-crit students are often less dogmatic about the correspondence of their ideas to truth, reality and the perfect flavor of ice cream.
There's a whole set of metaphysical assumptions that get challenged more scientifically in lit-crit depts.
The "rational subject," for e.g., is a matter of dispute in classes that read Derrida, Foucault, Lacan and their indecipherable friends.
Personally, I think Richard Rorty is more fun to read. He likes to be clear.
That's a great book but compared to US labor history, its treatment of the willingness of business to beat, rob and kill is mild.
And never underestimate the willingness of those being mistreated to accept, insist on the mistreatment.
". . . Let the fools have their TAR-TAR sauce . . . "
I had that thought too. Roaming the streets for pirated cd's seems like a breach of the peace waiting to happen. It reminds me of landlords who evict tenants by changing the locks. Its demented.
. . . has an opportunity to show leadership on global warming by leading the US away from fossil fuels. Since Bush is a lifelong oilman, he would have added moral authority on the issue.
-until the image of an actor could be digitally sampled and then cast in a new movie? Like the commercials that use licensed images of Elvis or Humphrey Bogart to advertise contemporary products but an entire feature using a sampled image of Bogie that cannot be distinguished from images made from the actor.
I see a whole new area of licensing and intellectual property battles. Then again, I'd love a chance to redo Star Wars Episode 1. The story just cries out for new casting. At least erase Jar Jar.
Thanks for clarifying --- I'm guessing Knoppix may be something I will be able to use to learn more about Linux and continue to journey away from MS.
I'm not to the point where I easily understand Linux files and what they are for, how to adjust them, etc. I have a dozen books and practice as much as I can. Its just slow learning for someone w/o much tech background and who was originally reared on MacIntosh.
(I've made a note of your post to keep with my Knoppix cd.)
Back to the drawing board on the minimalist "instant law office" project.
That's the question on my mind. How much more can be done with google? And/or how much more can be done for $12 billion? I think of the so-called dot.com bubble and RJR-Nabisco, AOL-Time Warner and wonder whether this IPO is such a great idea -- whether as an investment or for the good of google.
I'd be more jazzed if their mgmt decided to run google more like Linux.
Doing more with less through cooperative effort is better for taxpayers and, I think, more efficient. That's another reason I'm attracted to the open source movement and minimalist Linux distros like Knoppix.
I ordered my copy of Knoppix after reading the last Groklaw posts. I'm excited by Knoppix's potential to liberate cash-strapped nonprofits (think rural emergency shelter) from the need to tie up scarce dollars in MS software licenses.
In the context of lawyers who work for low-income persons, a compressed, bootable Linux and an open source office suite is nothing short of revolutionary. Remote, rural nonprofit-run offices with dated hardware need to be emancipated from the need to continually budget for MS upgrades every two years or so.
(It would be even better if it booted from a floppy and the word processor ran prompts from the command line. Given enough time . . . . )
Heartfelt thanks to Knoppix, Debian and anyone else who worked on this in some way!
The task of distinguishing "morality" from "fashion" may not be one for which an algorithm can be designed. . . . That said, I've met more than one person who claimed during casual conversation that he had found one --- between more important jobs.
. . . anywhere in the article or the footnotes citing to a decision in which some fundamental aspect of the GPL was legally at issue. I will dig into the material deeper but has someone else found a reported decision yet?
. . . Other/. posters have noted the importance of educating lawyers regarding the principles of open source philosophy. I agree. The 14th Amendment to the US Constitution was primarily enacted to guarantee freedoms of African-American citizens against repressive state governments.
In practice, the Amendment was read by courts to guarantee "artificial person" status and attendant constitutional protections to business corporations. (The intended beneficiaries of the 14th amendment waited until the 1960s to substantiate their nominally guaranteed protections via the civil rights movement.)
I realize its not the tightest of analogies, but I worry that mission of GPL is not yet on firm ground -- just as the mission as the 14th Amendment was not on firm ground in the late 19th century.
. . . that a programmer was accused of "stealing" software. As/. readers know, in 1976, Gates attacked those who "stole" BASIC from him and the whole idea of sharing source code. Gates made the following claim in his 2/3/76 open letter to hobbyists:
"[By stealing software you] prevent good software from being written. Who can afford to do professional work for nothing? What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free?"
Pamela Jones' story inspires me. I struggle with technical topics, and her description of how she escaped MS in the law office by using knoppix and Mandrake was helpful to me.
I'm not always sure whether the opensource community realizes how much it has to offer other professions --- esp. the legal profession which can (on bad days) be so adversarial that the benefits of more community-centered approaches to problem-solving are missed.
***
Maybe AOL just resents any adverse possession of their cyberspace --- spam does not bother AOL so much as the fact that spammers are not paying AOL to spam eyeballs that AOL feels it has bought and paid for.
Slashdot Mirror
I hate to admit it, but I might have to agree with you about that. Wiring for net access is *not* necessarily the same as wiring up the rural south with electricity.
On a bad day --- and we sometimes seem to be having more of those --- the prospect of wiring the entire country (and beyond) with net access looks like the unholy panopticon love child of Margaret Atwood and Michel Foucault while John Stuart Mill takes pictures.
If it were not for my discovery of the open source movement, I would little political hope at all on this point.
- linked to the net through his gear? I couldn't tell from the story.
The rural mountainous states in the US are less populated and tougher to cover with access. An analog to the Tennessee Valley Authority (rural electrification in the US) is needed to spread the cost for the public benefit of universal access. And before *that* can happen the political culture in the US probably needs to . . . er, change some.
I'm new to /. and read the posts, in part, to learn about tech subjects. I get a lot out of the exchanges, and the reading has turned out to be worth the effort because my learning curve is less steep.
Your post, for e.g., let me know about the earlier HOWTO which I did not know. Its always been terrific when someone who understands something abstruse-to the-uninitiated takes time to point out shortcuts along the way or break down the more fundamental concepts.
I just hope that's at least some of the purpose of /. because the reaction I get sometimes is less (ahem) hopspitable.
Its more like a field where everyone can (and does) say you're wrong. But lit-crit students are often less dogmatic about the correspondence of their ideas to truth, reality and the perfect flavor of ice cream. There's a whole set of metaphysical assumptions that get challenged more scientifically in lit-crit depts. The "rational subject," for e.g., is a matter of dispute in classes that read Derrida, Foucault, Lacan and their indecipherable friends. Personally, I think Richard Rorty is more fun to read. He likes to be clear.
That's a great book but compared to US labor history, its treatment of the willingness of business to beat, rob and kill is mild. And never underestimate the willingness of those being mistreated to accept, insist on the mistreatment. ". . . Let the fools have their TAR-TAR sauce . . . "
I had that thought too. Roaming the streets for pirated cd's seems like a breach of the peace waiting to happen. It reminds me of landlords who evict tenants by changing the locks. Its demented.
This article in Nature got a more charitable reception than the global warming story.
- the angle I drop just about anything I don't want to end up under the couch.
True . . . true, but that's why they call it leadership.
. . . has an opportunity to show leadership on global warming by leading the US away from fossil fuels. Since Bush is a lifelong oilman, he would have added moral authority on the issue.
- can they program it to find us a presidential candidate?
-until the image of an actor could be digitally sampled and then cast in a new movie? Like the commercials that use licensed images of Elvis or Humphrey Bogart to advertise contemporary products but an entire feature using a sampled image of Bogie that cannot be distinguished from images made from the actor. I see a whole new area of licensing and intellectual property battles. Then again, I'd love a chance to redo Star Wars Episode 1. The story just cries out for new casting. At least erase Jar Jar.
Thanks for clarifying --- I'm guessing Knoppix may be something I will be able to use to learn more about Linux and continue to journey away from MS. I'm not to the point where I easily understand Linux files and what they are for, how to adjust them, etc. I have a dozen books and practice as much as I can. Its just slow learning for someone w/o much tech background and who was originally reared on MacIntosh. (I've made a note of your post to keep with my Knoppix cd.) Back to the drawing board on the minimalist "instant law office" project.
Are the pleadings posted anywhere? On Groklaw? It would be easy to narrow the issues being discussed here quite a lot by reviewing those.
I2ANAP (not a programmer) but that's a really interesting idea. I'd help test that sort of search engine just because its so cool sounding.
That's the question on my mind. How much more can be done with google? And/or how much more can be done for $12 billion? I think of the so-called dot.com bubble and RJR-Nabisco, AOL-Time Warner and wonder whether this IPO is such a great idea -- whether as an investment or for the good of google. I'd be more jazzed if their mgmt decided to run google more like Linux.
Yes and don't forget regulation by the SEC with associated costs and duties.
Doing more with less through cooperative effort is better for taxpayers and, I think, more efficient. That's another reason I'm attracted to the open source movement and minimalist Linux distros like Knoppix.
I ordered my copy of Knoppix after reading the last Groklaw posts. I'm excited by Knoppix's potential to liberate cash-strapped nonprofits (think rural emergency shelter) from the need to tie up scarce dollars in MS software licenses. In the context of lawyers who work for low-income persons, a compressed, bootable Linux and an open source office suite is nothing short of revolutionary. Remote, rural nonprofit-run offices with dated hardware need to be emancipated from the need to continually budget for MS upgrades every two years or so. (It would be even better if it booted from a floppy and the word processor ran prompts from the command line. Given enough time . . . . ) Heartfelt thanks to Knoppix, Debian and anyone else who worked on this in some way!
The task of distinguishing "morality" from "fashion" may not be one for which an algorithm can be designed. . . . That said, I've met more than one person who claimed during casual conversation that he had found one --- between more important jobs.
. . . anywhere in the article or the footnotes citing to a decision in which some fundamental aspect of the GPL was legally at issue. I will dig into the material deeper but has someone else found a reported decision yet? . . . Other /. posters have noted the importance of educating lawyers regarding the principles of open source philosophy. I agree. The 14th Amendment to the US Constitution was primarily enacted to guarantee freedoms of African-American citizens against repressive state governments.
In practice, the Amendment was read by courts to guarantee "artificial person" status and attendant constitutional protections to business corporations. (The intended beneficiaries of the 14th amendment waited until the 1960s to substantiate their nominally guaranteed protections via the civil rights movement.)
I realize its not the tightest of analogies, but I worry that mission of GPL is not yet on firm ground -- just as the mission as the 14th Amendment was not on firm ground in the late 19th century.
. . . that a programmer was accused of "stealing" software. As /. readers know, in 1976, Gates attacked those who "stole" BASIC from him and the whole idea of sharing source code. Gates made the following claim in his 2/3/76 open letter to hobbyists:
"[By stealing software you] prevent good software from being written. Who can afford to do professional work for nothing? What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free?"
Pamela Jones' story inspires me. I struggle with technical topics, and her description of how she escaped MS in the law office by using knoppix and Mandrake was helpful to me. I'm not always sure whether the opensource community realizes how much it has to offer other professions --- esp. the legal profession which can (on bad days) be so adversarial that the benefits of more community-centered approaches to problem-solving are missed. ***
Maybe AOL just resents any adverse possession of their cyberspace --- spam does not bother AOL so much as the fact that spammers are not paying AOL to spam eyeballs that AOL feels it has bought and paid for.