It's just so fucking sad to think about the amount of time, talent and money that's wasted on this kind of crap.
Software should help people, bring people together, make stuff easier to do. It should not restrict us, seperate us, and make things harder to accomplish.
The goatse.cx lawyer has informed us that we need a warning! So.. if you are under the age of 18 or find this photograph offensive, please don't look at it. Thank you!
Re:what MS funded "study" about Linux isn't FUD?
on
Stallman vs Ken Brown
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Perhaps Stallman doesn't realize that it isn't a single person making the confusion it's everyone.
You got it wrong. Stallman very much realizes that most people get it wrong. And that's all the more reason to correct them.
Also, keep in mind that a lot of users are unaware of the GNU Project's involvement. He's trying to reach them also.
Although this is not banning or censoring, strictly speaking, the Bush administration and the corporate media is not much better than its Chinese equivalents.
They distorted the facts about the real reason for the Iraqi war -- the claim that there were WMD were at best speculative, and at worst plain lies.
The US (and European - the Danish, at least) mainstream media have been very US-friendly and projected into most people the sense that somehow, the war was 'OK', even though there were no WMD, and therefore no valid reason (besides money, oil, power, and influence) to invade a sovereign nation.
The US surely can't point fingers at China for not upholding the basic human rights. The imprisonment of many people in Guantanamo Bay with no trial, no evidence, and for basically no real reason other than show the right-wing voters (who sadly seems to be the majority of US voters) that "we're doing something about terrorism".
As a Dane, it's just so sad to see how the Danish government is following the US lead in practically everything. "Oh, we'd sure like the Danish prisoners out of Guantanamo Bay, but if we cannot, they probably deserve to be there anyway. And we sure don't give a flying fuck about any other prisoners than the Danish."
doesn't 42 equal 54 in base 13? Would not 42, written in base 13, be 33?
Yes, that's the whole point! Douglas Adams put the question to be "What is six times 9?", since the answer should be 42. Of course, this was a joke, since 6 * 9 is really 54.
So someone made a new joke of that, pointing out that 42 is correct, as long as we use base 13 instead of the usual base 10. So to make this painfully clear:
Ok. Perhaps there are some interesting things to pick out from this. But it is a giant leap to claim that the next big thing will be extensible programming. I think we can all remember XML, OOP, and all the rest.
Good ideas, which are the correct choice for some problem domains (OOP is for instance often a good choice for GUI's , IMO). But they're not the best choice for everything
So this is Yet Another Buzzword. At least he didn't shorten it to XP.;)
The GNU Free Documentation License should also be considered for any kind of free document. Although it is modelled for documentation for programs, it could really be applied for most things.
However, the GNU FDL has had some controversy within Debian, who have considered moving works licensed under it to the non-free section. Of course, this has undergone Much debate, with Richard Stallman under heavy fire.
I think this quote really says it all about why this is a good idea:
"People who don't understand how I interact with the people I work with literally feel better just having it down more as a documented process," he [Linus] said.
The only reasons companies discriminate based on age is that younger people are easier to persuade to work harder, longer hours, and that they usually doesn't require as high pay as older, more experienced applicants.
It is NOT because younger people are smarter or brighter than older people. And who says they are, anyway? IMO, any supposed loss in thinking quickly is easily made up by the experience and better problem solving skills of older people.
People interested in the early days of game hacking should read "Hackers: Heroes of the computer revolution" by Steven Levy.
It also has an accurate history of the early days of the MIT AI Lab (where Stallman and others started out), and the early days of BASIC.
It has several chapters about the birth of Sierra (then called On-Line Systems, IIRC). Great stuff, and should be required reading for anyone interested in the early days of computing. Truly great book.
Bochs (link in article is wrong!) is not a DOS emulator!
From the website:
Bochs is a highly portable open source IA-32 (x86) PC emulator written in C++, that runs on most popular platforms. It includes emulation of the Intel x86 CPU, common I/O devices, and a custom BIOS.
If we Ignore the attempts of Microsoft and others to make the web dependent on proprietary formats, etc. for a moment, the future of the web is quite exiting.
I'm talking about the Semantic Web, which is an attempt to deal with the IMO biggest problem with the web, and especially searching the web for information: you can only search according to syntax. Words, regexes, etc. is really the best you can do right now.
Searching would be so much better if we had semantics. Semantics would make searches and web pages in general much easier for computers to index and relate to what is actually being searched for.
An example: searching for "a yellow car for sale in $CITY, with a cost between $VAL1 and $VAL2." would not give a lot of unusable results today, but the semantic web would return what is actually asked for.
Of course, all this is just theory, and a best-case scenario example. And there are lots of obstacles for the semantic web; many people are happy with the web as it is, and it will take a long time to implement it.
Probably, some ideas would be incorporated slowly into the web as we know it now.
If we fight the subpoena, it means substantial legal fees associated with litigation. If we produce materials, it means substantial effort to gather the relevant documents. Even though we'll be reimbursed for the direct costs, the indirect costs in staff time will be ours to bear.
Now is the time to support the FSF, so they can fight this thing. It'd be awful if they had to give out private emails and other communication.
Become a member of the FSF and support them financially. (I am already a member). You can also send anonymous donations, or buy something from GNU Press.
Hopefully, we can get the magic from the first three movies back.
I think both Episode I and II were good movies (II was better than I), but still somewhat lacking compared to the first three.. Perhaps it was the overuse of CGI?
There is a difference between people (of any color) and animals. That difference is sapience. That alone makes it alright to risk any number of animals to save the life of one human. Its the same reason that animal based medical research is ok.
Actually, thinking about it you do make a point. I agree that there should be an ethical differentiation of sentient species and non-sentient species.
However, I think you are wrong in saying that any number of animals should be risked to save a single human. The key point being: how do you decidee when a species is sentient or not? You really can't, can you? To some degree, maybe. Apes, for instance, should be considered sentient. And what about robots? (OK, that part of the discussion is probably best left out for a few more years:)
It seems that you just think that only humans are sentient, which I certainly don't agree with.
Screw PETA, kids avoid getting blown up while playing soccer etc beacuse of stuff like this.
It must be nice to be able to categorize the values of lives like that.
Do you realize that people were saying roughly the same thing about black people back when slavery was abound? The lives of black people were obviously not worth as much as white people's lives.
Sadly, our ethics has not developed much further in that manner, so man still treats other species very poorly. Just think about how your meat was treated prior to it being processed into your steak.
I'm not saying that we should all become vegetarians (I'm not), but we should definitely start doing something about how we treat animals.
Cygnus was actually the very first company to deal exclusively in Free Software (back then the term 'Open Source' was not yet coined). The company's founder, Michael Tiemann actually got the idea from the GNU Manifesto, which outlines ways to make money from Free Software.
Cygnus primarily provided support, but I think they also did some development. Maybe someone can elaborate?
In my mind, Cygnus is a good example of how a small company can survive on just dealing in Free Software. Many people need support, or perhaps need custom-made changes to Free Software.
AFAIK, Cygnus is now part of Red Hat, and Michael Tiemann is CTO of Red Hat.
Slashdot Mirror
So you're advocating security through obscurity?
Why keep secrets to the public?
Microsoft Windows is not Free Software.
Software should help people, bring people together, make stuff easier to do. It should not restrict us, seperate us, and make things harder to accomplish.
I knew this day would come. Emperor Gates has foreseen it. Together we can rule the empire, father and son.
It is your destiny *breathes heavily*
No, it is not.
It's a book so named that Gnome advertises on their front page. That makes it official to me.
It's especially amazing, considering that Gnome is an important part of GNU. What's up, Gnome foundation? Don't you care about documentation freedom?
The goatse.cx lawyer has informed us that we need a warning! So.. if you are under the age of 18 or find this photograph offensive, please don't look at it. Thank you!
You got it wrong. Stallman very much realizes that most people get it wrong. And that's all the more reason to correct them.
Also, keep in mind that a lot of users are unaware of the GNU Project's involvement. He's trying to reach them also.
Although this is not banning or censoring, strictly speaking, the Bush administration and the corporate media is not much better than its Chinese equivalents.
They distorted the facts about the real reason for the Iraqi war -- the claim that there were WMD were at best speculative, and at worst plain lies.
The US (and European - the Danish, at least) mainstream media have been very US-friendly and projected into most people the sense that somehow, the war was 'OK', even though there were no WMD, and therefore no valid reason (besides money, oil, power, and influence) to invade a sovereign nation.
The US surely can't point fingers at China for not upholding the basic human rights. The imprisonment of many people in Guantanamo Bay with no trial, no evidence, and for basically no real reason other than show the right-wing voters (who sadly seems to be the majority of US voters) that "we're doing something about terrorism".
As a Dane, it's just so sad to see how the Danish government is following the US lead in practically everything. "Oh, we'd sure like the Danish prisoners out of Guantanamo Bay, but if we cannot, they probably deserve to be there anyway. And we sure don't give a flying fuck about any other prisoners than the Danish."
Yes, that's the whole point! Douglas Adams put the question to be "What is six times 9?", since the answer should be 42. Of course, this was a joke, since 6 * 9 is really 54.
So someone made a new joke of that, pointing out that 42 is correct, as long as we use base 13 instead of the usual base 10. So to make this painfully clear:
6 * 9 = 54 (in base 10). And 54 = 42 in base 13.
Good ideas, which are the correct choice for some problem domains (OOP is for instance often a good choice for GUI's , IMO). But they're not the best choice for everything
So this is Yet Another Buzzword. At least he didn't shorten it to XP. ;)
However, the GNU FDL has had some controversy within Debian, who have considered moving works licensed under it to the non-free section. Of course, this has undergone Much debate, with Richard Stallman under heavy fire.
The only reasons companies discriminate based on age is that younger people are easier to persuade to work harder, longer hours, and that they usually doesn't require as high pay as older, more experienced applicants.
It is NOT because younger people are smarter or brighter than older people. And who says they are, anyway? IMO, any supposed loss in thinking quickly is easily made up by the experience and better problem solving skills of older people.
It also has an accurate history of the early days of the MIT AI Lab (where Stallman and others started out), and the early days of BASIC.
It has several chapters about the birth of Sierra (then called On-Line Systems, IIRC). Great stuff, and should be required reading for anyone interested in the early days of computing. Truly great book.
From the website:
Bochs is a highly portable open source IA-32 (x86) PC emulator written in C++, that runs on most popular platforms. It includes emulation of the Intel x86 CPU, common I/O devices, and a custom BIOS.
If we Ignore the attempts of Microsoft and others to make the web dependent on proprietary formats, etc. for a moment, the future of the web is quite exiting.
I'm talking about the Semantic Web, which is an attempt to deal with the IMO biggest problem with the web, and especially searching the web for information: you can only search according to syntax. Words, regexes, etc. is really the best you can do right now.
Searching would be so much better if we had semantics. Semantics would make searches and web pages in general much easier for computers to index and relate to what is actually being searched for.
An example: searching for "a yellow car for sale in $CITY, with a cost between $VAL1 and $VAL2." would not give a lot of unusable results today, but the semantic web would return what is actually asked for.
Of course, all this is just theory, and a best-case scenario example. And there are lots of obstacles for the semantic web; many people are happy with the web as it is, and it will take a long time to implement it.
Probably, some ideas would be incorporated slowly into the web as we know it now.
Now is the time to support the FSF, so they can fight this thing. It'd be awful if they had to give out private emails and other communication.
Become a member of the FSF and support them financially. (I am already a member). You can also send anonymous donations, or buy something from GNU Press.
Hopefully, we can get the magic from the first three movies back.
I think both Episode I and II were good movies (II was better than I), but still somewhat lacking compared to the first three.. Perhaps it was the overuse of CGI?
Very nice to see some recognition for the kernel developers and other Free Software developers.
To me, they really are some sort of modern day heroes.
Actually, thinking about it you do make a point. I agree that there should be an ethical differentiation of sentient species and non-sentient species.
However, I think you are wrong in saying that any number of animals should be risked to save a single human. The key point being: how do you decidee when a species is sentient or not? You really can't, can you? To some degree, maybe. Apes, for instance, should be considered sentient. And what about robots? (OK, that part of the discussion is probably best left out for a few more years :)
It seems that you just think that only humans are sentient, which I certainly don't agree with.
It must be nice to be able to categorize the values of lives like that.
Do you realize that people were saying roughly the same thing about black people back when slavery was abound? The lives of black people were obviously not worth as much as white people's lives.
Sadly, our ethics has not developed much further in that manner, so man still treats other species very poorly. Just think about how your meat was treated prior to it being processed into your steak.
I'm not saying that we should all become vegetarians (I'm not), but we should definitely start doing something about how we treat animals.
I find it a little hard to believe that many W32 API's are never used by apps. But if it is really true, talk about code bloat!
Cygnus primarily provided support, but I think they also did some development. Maybe someone can elaborate?
In my mind, Cygnus is a good example of how a small company can survive on just dealing in Free Software. Many people need support, or perhaps need custom-made changes to Free Software.
AFAIK, Cygnus is now part of Red Hat, and Michael Tiemann is CTO of Red Hat.