They *want* you to go back to watching regular TV, where the ad revenue is greatest.
As you probably know, that cat's not going back into the bag. I wonder whether the inability to admit this and work with it is a special trait of media companies or if it's just true of large organizations in general?
Re:Rogue Wireless Carrier SysAdmin
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Cellular Repo Man
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· Score: 1
The issue to user is, whether you want to buy or to rent a house.
That's a pretty good description. The real problem in my mind is that this rental model did not come about as a result of overwhelming customer demand, but rather, is being pushed onto customers. It is reminiscent of the various software-rental models that have come up from time to time. I also don't think most people appreciate that you ultimately pay more when you amortize a purchase -- they just seem to be looking at the monthly payment with little consideration for the total cost. Ultimately, we all stand to suffer a bit because Joe Sixpack refuses to think of these things, allowing them to become profitable/successful and commonplace.
Perhaps I'll stop with my anti-Republicanism when they stop actively fighting my self interest.
If they want me to stop hating them perhaps they should stop fighting hate crimes legislation and preventing me from having all of my rights. Perhaps they should acknowledge that as a citizen, one that pays taxes no less, that I should have an equal amount of freedom.
But then again, we could just pretend like the party doesn't have some incredibly anti-American policies. Perhaps we could then force it into a dogma because clearly people's own self interest must be dogma.
I think it's vaguely ironic that you can't comprehend that people might hate the Republican party on it's merits without being strict partisans.
You're absolutely right about the Republican party having anti-American policies. Unfortunately, both of the major parties have this problem. If it were only one of them, then this would have been a self-correcting system.
The one thing I'd like to ask you about is hate-crime legislation. To me, a hate crime is a thought crime because it depends on what the criminal was thinking at the time the crime was committed. It seems to me that if someone commits i.e. murder, we should try them for murder. What they were thinking at the time may help the prosecution to establish motive, but the actual crime is having illegally killed another human being. Otherwise the next logical step is to punish people who have such thoughts whether or not they also committed any other crime.
The problem is we as a culture are not big fans of taking ideas to their completion, to any and all "next steps" to find out at what point they break down. If that point is fairly close to the proposed implementation, then the idea is probably a bad one that will do more harm than good. If that point of failure is a far extreme that is not remotely connected to the proposed implementation, then it may or may not be a good idea. To me, hate crimes are clearly the former case.
If we start looking at every politician based soley on his or her merits alone and ignore his or her political affiliation we would see the enormous "change of course" that we have been promised oh-so-many times and never actually seen.
The problem is that the vast majority of voters will never do that. The politicians know this and they know the key to winning is name recognition and publicity. That requires vast amounts of money in the modern era, which requires a vast organization (i.e: political party) to raise and manage said funds. Like most other large organizations the political party eventually forgets its original mandate and starts to focus on preserving and expanding the organization.
Smarter people than I have failed to come up with a viable solution to this problem. In short, we are all screwed.
That's what I mean when I say that we've lost our way. I do, with respect, disagree with you on one thing: "smart" isn't going to solve this problem. Wisdom is up to the task, however. The misunderstandings about wisdom happen not because it is so difficult that few could hope to grasp it, but rather, because it is so simple that nearly everyone overlooks it. The way I see it, there are but a few root causes of the mess we're in:
The original American spirit of rugged individualism, independence, and freedom was based on pride. The trouble with pride is that it always focuses on the self, and the self is mutable and impermanent compared to the timeless principles on which these virtues could also be based. That means that pride is a shifting sand, while a more solid foundation is also available. Because of that, pride has a number of weaknesses that render inevitable its eventual undermining. The worst of these are convenience and its decay into dependence.
For all of their foibles, governments understand one thing very well: if you want to own someone, get them to depend on you and your support by doing for them what they should do for themselves. Sell it in terms of convenience or duty. You see this in the USA with states that are afraid to defy the federal government because doing so would mean the loss of federal funding. States have the ability to levy their own taxes for exactly the purpose of raising the funds they need, yet many have come to depend on the federal money to where their budgets don't work without it.
You see this on an individual level with the amount of upheavel that would happen if Social Security were suddenly cancelled. In a more subtle form, you see it when you are taught, from the time you are a child, that it is up to the "experts" to determine your intelligence, aptitudes, future success, well-being, and in summary, your self-worth. You see it when suddenly, the early education of children becomes an important government priority and thus, the state takes on a responsibility that rightfully belongs to parents. All of this in spite of the rather open declaration by various 19th century industrial tycoons that regulating the poor and preventing them from becoming educated enough to seriously question the status quo was the purpose of public education. Really, it's amazing; today's authoritarians are masters of subtlety by comparison. This, of course, was later extended to include the growing middle class. There is no greater reference for this than John Taylor Gatto's free online book. You see it as well when there is a pill for every ill, an emphasis on instant gratification, and shallow thinking rife with logical fallacies and propaganda techniques as mainstream news.
Then there is religion. The morality of Judaeo-Christian beliefs was once a unifying force for this country. Many of the problems with this are now well-known and easily grasped. One problem is not so obvious. The mainstream forms of Christianity are more properly called Churchianity. Their followers do not love one
it has got to be pretty clear by now that no one in Washington has the balls to even utter the word "treason" -- which is effectively what the blatant ignorance of the Supreme Law of the Land amounts to
I have always felt, and have said repeatedly on this Web site, that anyone who wants political power needs to be held to a stricter standard than the average citizen. That's especially true when you consider that nearly all politicians are also lawyers, so it's not like they are unclear on the meaning of "shall not be infringed." I do indeed consider it treason when a politician knowingly creates or votes for a law that is in any way unconstitional. Just as the Constitution demands, I would like to see vigorous enforcement of the death penalty (legally and with due process, of course) attached to anyone who holds public office and takes any action, knowingly or otherwise, that contradicts the Constitution. Let us decide that one can live a long and happy life without ever having political power; that if someone wants political power anyway, let them accept a very high standard of personal accountability to go with it.
Re:Rogue Wireless Carrier SysAdmin
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Cellular Repo Man
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· Score: 1
Oops. I am simply trying to think positively for any pitfalls you tried (worried) to address.
There are no worries here, for I consider that to be a weakness, a way to suffer before anything bad has even happened. No one can see the folly of that and still want to do it. Besides, worry implies an element of uncertainty. There is no uncertainty about the fact that we have this nasty habit of concerning ourselves with outward symptoms and not the underlying problems that cause them. There is no uncertainty about the fact that there are better ways to live that don't require a person to feel like a victim. There is no uncertainty that another bad precedent is not in our interests.
To be honest, I still don't see how anything you have said relates to anything I have said. I have no problem saying that there may be some obvious connection that I am completely overlooking, because if that is true, then denying it won't solve anything. But that connection, if it exists, remains elusive to me.
Re:Rogue Wireless Carrier SysAdmin
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Cellular Repo Man
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· Score: 1
If people shoot at students and teachers in a campus and kill themselves in the end, it would be nicer if they kills thousands of computers and the owners can spend some time with their families.
I seem to have missed your point. If that relates to what I was discussing, may I ask you to explain how?
The guarenteed revenue stream that a contract has helps reduce the cost of doing business (the customer aquisition cost can be defrayed over more payments).
This is why when your contract runs out you get offers for free phones in the mail from your carrier. They WANT you to get a free phone, rather that risk you leaving at any point. And this while you are paying "too much" monthly. Look at how expensive pay as you go plans are. Contracts reduce rates.
I have an alternative view on what would reduce rates. It's simple, too.
Make all mobile phones able to interoperate with all of the national cellular networks. Make the cellular companies' FCC licenses depend on fully publishing their protocols/etc. as open standards if necessary. The idea here is that you can independently buy any phone you like from the vendor of your choice and then use it on any network you like. Then get rid of all contracts and make the carriers adopt month-to-month plans. You pay for one month of service; at the end of that month, you can decide not to buy more service or to switch to another carrier with no penalties whatsoever and no need to obtain a different phone. Then let the carriers compete on price, coverage, and service.
I would expect much bitching and moaning from the carriers, but that's too bad. Their current system is a way to avoid having to be very competitive. That's the only reason why they lock customers into 2-year contracts and it's the only reason why they artificially restrict phones. That's certainly in their interests but it is not in ours. Currently the game is played according to their rules.
I think we forget sometimes that this happens only because we accept it. There are few or no products or services that we need so badly that we should accept someone else's dominance in order to have them. If you really value freedom, then you know that this price is too high. Certainly it should not be the norm that almost every telco wants you to do this. Somehow humanity lived without cellular phones for a very long time (though many seem to have forgotten this) so I don't consider them an exception to this rule.
I see that valuing our toys and conveniences more than our freedom and independence makes us, as a whole, rather easy to push around. It's not usually recognized as the weakness that it is. That's a shame. We really need to decide whether the interests of artificial constructs such as corporations are more or less important than the interests of individual human beings. Once we decide that, we can take positions that are consistent with that decision. In this case, that's especially true considering that most (all?) of the telcos are government-protected monopolies that were set up to serve a public interest in the first place. I won't debate whether that was the best arrangement. I only observe that requiring them to do business in a less self-serving manner is consistent with that arrangement.
Re:Rogue Wireless Carrier SysAdmin
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Cellular Repo Man
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· Score: 4, Insightful
How much fun will it be when the wireless carrier fires Crazy Stu, the wacky UNIX sysadmin with the penchant for conspiracy theories and bad dental health.
When HR comes around to fire Stu, he leaves his timebomb in place. The one that fires out the kill message to hundreds - nay - thousands of customers - and disables their leased laptops all at once.
What a day that will be.
I hope it does not come to that, but should that happen anyway, in a way I would be grateful. It is unfortunate that things like that often have to happen before people are willing to question whether what they were doing was a good idea. My opinion is that anything which is needlessly centralized and open to this sort of vulnerability is a bad idea, especially when there are already established ways to deal with the problem this intends to solve. I consider the likelihood of such an exploit occurring to be irrelevant; there would be no such possibility at all if this were the correct solution.
We are talking about financers and lenders, or those who do something similar by using long-term contracts to subsidize what would otherwise be an up-front cost. It's a form of credit because it takes time to become profitable and it depends on the other party not defaulting. If such people want to extend credit to those who are bad risks, that is the original problem and an improved "repo man" does nothing to solve it. It only addresses the symptoms of the original problem.
For people who default on a loan or a contract, this pseudo-solution is essentially an alternative to taking them to court. It means that the lender can just remotely disable the equipment that was not paid for without having to use any sort of due process. It is thus an extra-legal power that did not previously exist, and is rightfully called a power grab. The entire point of the court system is that both sides can make their case. If the money required to bring a lawsuit against a large corporation already makes this difficult for the average person to pursue, taking the courts entirely out of the equation makes it impossible. This is not a good precedent. If this catches on, it will become increasingly difficult to buy a cell phone or perhaps a laptop without agreeing to allow it.
It's amazing to me that we will do almost anything, come up with nearly any clever solution, go to any effort, to avoid directly addressing the actual cause of our problems. It's as though we feel threatened by the prospect, or inadequate at having failed to realize its simplicity. This is why we live in a superficial society. This is also why there are so many bad precedents which seem inevitable although they did not need to be that way at all.
No-win-no-fee has a much more substantial benefit to the poor than the rich and powerful, who a) can afford the costs anyway and b) are much more likely to be in a position to want to suppress unwanted speech.
The solution to that is to make it more difficult for the rich and powerful to suppress unwanted speech, not to make it easier for both the rich and poor to suppress unwanted speech. The only reason why defamation was ever a problem is because people are naive and will accept a thing as true without ever investigating the issue or otherwise testing the truth of what was said. We use law to deal with this because that's easier and much more desirable to those in power than equipping each citizen to discern truth and to be very difficult to deceive.
Remember that propaganda and manipulation is a favorite tool of governments everywhere -- they use those to accomplish what the monarchies of old accomplished by intimidation and brute force. The result is the same, except that someone who buys into propaganda thinks that his beliefs are his own, while someone who submitted to brute force and overwhelming state power has no doubt that he is being controlled. That's also why freedoms are always taken away "for your safety" etc. Thus, a difficult-to-deceive citizenry which is highly skilled in and knowledgable about argumentation, logical fallacies, and propaganda techniques is not something that they want. If they wanted that, then you would never be able to graduate from public schools without demonstrating mastery of these things.
This is why we have these phony debates instead of finding the one factor that makes all of the rest of this possible and directly addressing it.
No they don't. Not relative to the differences between Trident and most other engines.
There may be some differences, but they're nothing when compared to IE's awful rendering engine. Just look at the broken box model, or the hasLayout flag for example.
For around the last five years my Web design job has always revolved around making things look right in standards compliant browsers, then hacking for IE. Look at the code of most sites these days and you'll see an IE-specific style sheet.
Imagine the sum total of the economic cost to Web designers worldwide, if such a figure could be accurately assessed. I wonder just how large this number would be? To me this sort of unnecessary and deliberate incompatibility is very much like spam; it's a business practice that causes others to bear its costs. If the total cost to Web designers everywhere could be known, I really would have no problem with fining Microsoft for that amount, accompanied by the legal use of government police power to seize assets if this is necessary to pay the fine.
If that sounds drastic, I say that the only thing more absurd is the idea that we should have to put up with this kind of shit and shouldn't use any means available to discourage it, within the bounds of the law of course. I really believe that the only reason why Microsoft gets away with half of the things that they do is because of the general public's ignorance and lack of technical understanding. If not for that then I would expect at least some type of backlash against it, much like what Sony experienced due to their rootkit DRM.
I'm not buying this story at all. I live and work in Silicon Valley. I do see lots of folks getting laid off at a higher rate than in the past. At the same time, I see the same folks quickly finding new work. Sometimes it involves a pay cut, often it does not. I just don't see IT in this area being affected as deeply as other professions in other parts of the country. It is not bad enough in IT that good people are turning to lives of crime to make ends meet.
Perhaps the phenomenon of outsourcing has already gradually done the damage to this industry that a poor economy would have done more suddenly. That's just an idea; I don't really have the economic understanding to know how to determine whether there is any truth to that, but that was my first impression when I saw your post. Maybe someone who does understand economics can tell me if there is any validity to it.
Also, the point is to point the laser at the window and have it reflect. By measuring changes in the angle of reflection you can reconstruct sound hitting the inside of the window.
Double-pane glass with a vacuum between the panes removes this attack vector.
Is it common for double-pane glass to contain anything that could be called a vacuum? I'll admit I don't know but I always thought they just had regular atmospheric-pressure air between the panes, as an extra layer of insulation. Would you need a proper vacuum to dampen the sound vibrations enough to defeat this attack?
looks like it's time to stock up on tinfoil and old reflective (mainly old aol) cds.
imagine what the govt can do if regular scientists can do this with regular lasers (not including with sharks)
Consider that around 1980, they (the US Gov't) admitted to having spy satellites that could photograph a vehicle's license plate from orbit. That's what they were willing to admit to back then; you can bet that their most advanced technologies were kept secret. Then the stealth bomber was kept a secret for about thirty years. Anyone who saw one back when it was secret would have probably called it a UFO since, well, it's a flying object that couldn't be identified without proper security clearances. At least, I know that the U-2 spy plane caused UFO reports back when it was a secret. This makes me wonder if years from now, we'll learn that some of these "flying saucers" and the incredible maneuvers they can do were actually some kind of experimental aircraft.
It's not so absurd that the secret government technology would be years ahead of private industry. For one thing, private industry has to make a profit and can't devote all of their resources to pure research. For another, government agencies, particularly those which are defense-related, receive ridiculous amounts of funding. That's the ones we know about; I suspect that some of these $400 toilet seats and such were a way to fund some of the kinds of projects that fall under "national security". Then consider the talent to which they have access. I've heard that the NSA likes to recruit top mathematics students and wouldn't be surprised to learn that such recruitment efforts are more common.
You raise an excellent point. I wonder if we'll ever know, even years later, about half of the things that are going on right now.
did have to laugh at this. Slashdot is a traumatizing place if your goal is reasonable and objective discussion. Part of my fun here is pointing out the ironies in peoples arguments.
To me, that is a challenge, not in the sense of a contest but in the sense of exploring what is possible. The challenge is to bring reason and objectivity, and things higher still than those, into discussions where they otherwise would be absent. The art is to do that in a self-evident way that can show reason to the unreasonable, or to show that a thing is true on its level but that there are higher perspectives available. It's a most rewarding thing to do.
This is something I pride myself in not being. I (try to) let my thoughts and views on anything everything evolve as time goes on. As far as arguing against points you never made? Yes, I was. Perhaps because I'm arguing against the FOSS, or more appropriately RMS mindset, not necessarily you in particular. But I do admit that I made assertions about you and your viewpoint that weren't necessarily true. So for that, I'm sorry.
Pride is an obstacle as much as it's an ally. You just summed up how it may be an ally. I'll show how it's an obstacle. I think you suspected early on the truth in what I was trying to tell you. What I perceive as the theme of this thread is that you were testing me to see if I would be found wanting. Note that people rarely do things like this consciously and deliberately. Possibly you've heard lots of things that sounded really great, except they came from people who were no less miserable than you, no stronger than you, no more compassionate than you, so you reason quite rightly that their beliefs haven't done them much good. If I lost my patience with you and became insulting or angry or anything like that, it would mean that I was found wanting. It is difficult or maybe even impossible to accept truth from people who are found wanting. Pride is the reason why you felt a need to test what could have been directly known in what you may call an intuitive sense.
I've said before that you are intelligent; to me that is easy to discern. The problem with intelligence is that it alone is not enough. Please pardon the expressions I use to explain this; this is how I once explained it years ago to a friend of mine. I'll illustrate: if you take a belligerent, angry, conceited fuck and give him intelligence, what will happen is that he or she will become better at being a belligerent, angry, conceited fuck. No breakthrough will be made that will refine the person's character or bring about anything like true wisdom. That's one of the least-understood aspects of intelligence, cleverness, high IQ, whatever you call it. It's the folly of our exclusive reverence for it.
I appreciate that you have what it takes to make the admission you just made. It takes some courage to do that. I can now explain how wisdom and real compassion protect you from succumbing to the foibles of others and replicating their mistakes. You said "I'm sorry" but had you asked me to forgive you, I would tell you that there is nothing to forgive. I see things that are true and I call them by their proper names, to the best of my ability -- that is discernment. What actually makes human beings suffer needlessly is quite different. I never judged you in the first place, so I never condemned you as a person and I never got angry or upset with you. That means I never suffered because of anything you said or did. Thus, there is no injury to be forgiven.
Namaste. May you find real joy and the guidance of true inspiration. If life suddenly becomes simple and effortless because you yourself are not doing anything, then you've found them.
My problem, in particular with your argument, is where do you get off saying that the GPL is a holy standard that others must adhere to?
That's quite trivial, though "holy" is your word, not mine. You just can't get over the fact that someone can appreciate freedom, including software freedom, without being a zealot and so you feel the need to insert words that I clearly never used. Feel free to perform a text search on this thread if you don't believe me; you won't find me calling it "holy" anywhere, nor will you find me saying that anyone "must" adhere to it. That you feel a need to do this is a position of weakness that you'll abandon once you see the folly of it for yourself.
To answer your question: the majority (perhaps a plurality) of all Open Source software is licensed under a version of the GPL. When I say "community" below, I refer to every Linux distribution and almost every piece of Linux software as well as cross-platform Free Software such as FireFox and all of the associated programmers and users. All of those either directly use or derive some benefit from the GPL. The reasons for the GPL's prevalence are not difficult to discern; it provides everything you need for the free exchange of ideas and prevents others from removing those freedoms. That's why the growth of available Free Software skyrocketed when the GPL was adopted, in a way that it did not with the existing BSD-style licenses.
In other words, it works and it works well and among members of the community it is widely used. That's exactly why I make the self-evident observation that if someone wants to do something for that community, they would do so under the GPL or at the very least, a license that is compatible with it. From there it follows that it was not Microsoft's intention to allow this community to derive any benefit from its code. That is emphatically not a statement that they should have done otherwise; it is a simple observation. Thus, the community has no reason to celebrate Microsoft's published source code. To you or me, Microsoft's business position is obvious; unfortunately, some people are a bit naive and need to have this pointed out. Thus, the purpose of making this claim was to correct the growing misconception that Microsoft is ever going to be an ally of Free Software, which is a stricter term than "Open Source".
That was my sole claim. So far you've addressed 2-3 claims I never made. That you can do that without feeling silly should give you pause. It's somewhat rare but you are not the first to do this whom I have encountered. At any rate, your choice now is to either address that claim or to set up another straw man consisting of claims I never made and then proceed to attack that straw man. If you do, I'll see the weakness of the tactic and the desperation to feel "right" that drives it and I'll observe this knowing that it is beneath you. Now, I challenge you to either demonstrate why my reasoning is flawed or admit that zealots are not known for correct reasoning. You are unable to perform the former and you're prideful enough to have a difficult time with the latter, obvious though it should be.
I'm interested in how you resolve the dilemma. If you want to continue down the path you are already on, you could try a little harder to make this into a personal matter. If so, you will fail because that isn't tempting for me no matter how belligerent you get, but it's the only "third option" you have other than just deciding not to respond at all. I think you can do much better than the desperation you have shown so far, but that's not very important unless you also think so.
I think this whole argument between us occurred because you could already see Microsoft's business position and its implications on your own. To you that was obvious, and it should be, but there is a great deal of ignorance concerning basic business strategy and those who already understand it were not my target audience. Mayb
demonizing me and calling me "zealot" and other names because I dared to make observations and support them with reason
Sorry, your long winded response isn't going to convince me otherwise. The article and summary simply stated that Microsoft had released open-source software, which they did. You're an evangelist of a particular open source license that has all sorts of religion behind it, preaching down other licenses that don't align themselves with your principles. To say that nobody will find this useful is ridiculous. Sure, your "community" might not have any use for it. What is it with your community and their sense of entitlement?
Eh let's make one observation that should be fairly obvious: if not for the success of Open Source software under the GNU Public License, of which the most prevalent expression is the GNU/Linux operating system and its associated applications, then Microsoft would not now show any interest in publically releasing any code of theirs. As much as they talk of innovation, and as many new things as they have genuinely innovated, Microsoft is just following someone else's lead on this one.
So, Microsoft sees an existing community based on the ideals of Open Source software. This is an active, vibrant community that continues to grow. That community has largely standardized on the GPL. Thus, there is already an established and widely-used way to do this. Microsoft sees that and does it another way. That cannot be an accident. It is obvious that any incompatibility is deliberate. The reasons you gave are adequate to explain it; GPL is a competitor.
So I sign onto Slashdot and I see a story about this. Then what do I see? I see people coming from a largely Linux background discussing the merits of Microsoft's code as though it were of any use to them. My message was for them, that this is not the community contribution from Microsoft that they may have been expecting. This is, in fact, a PR move. Companies make PR moves expecting that people who see them will be impressed by them. I'm not. Knowing that any good feelings I may have had about this were carefully engineered by someone in Microsoft's marketing department really ruins them for me. I don't know how I could more simply explain this to you.
Now, I see the GPL and I find that it works. The Free Software community did not just arbitrarily choose the GPL because they rolled some dice. The GPL works and it works for a reason. It provides everything you need to have this sort of community based on the free exchange of ideas. Thus, I am not an evangelist, no more than I am an "evangelist" for aspirin if I tell you that it will make a headache go away. Further, you have a screwey definition of "entitlement". When I say "this is not useful for the community" that is not a statement of entitlement. Now, if I said "this is not useful for the community and this is some sort of crime" then THAT would be entitlement. Now that someone has illustrated the difference for you, you can avoid this sort of confusion in the future.
In reality, people like you are a dime a dozen. You think you know the first thing about me, including what I believe, how I am motivated and why I might say what I say. Like most of your kind, you don't realize that I am the world's foremost expert on what I think, so even when I tell you that your assumptions about me are wrong, you continue to argue. That you presume to know where I am coming from better than I would know this, and without claiming any sort of psychic powers, is quite amazing. This, by the way, is why the Open Source community often discourages its more religious advocates -- people like you can't tell the difference between a real fanatic and someone who merely appreciates freedom, and yet you feel entitled to paint with a very broad brush. I'd like to see what you as an individual look like when you jump off of this bandwagon.
It's more along the lines of 99.9% of erroneous mathematical proofs use that font and unless I see something obviously interesting and very quickly, I'm going to ignore it. Guilt by association.
In other words, "I'm not a human being; I am a prize. Reaching me is the same as winning the prize. If you want to win that prize, you will submit to my control and play the game according to my rules. If not, you lose the game before you even started playing."
The people-pleasers love this kind of invitation because then you can praise them for being "good" and agreeable. They go along to get along. It's the only "goodness" they will know because they are addicted to the approval of others. That addiction is what you exploit when you set yourself up to be some sort of prize. Hypothetically, it's like telling a crack whore that you'll give her some crack if she'll perform some sexual favors for you, except that doing it the way you do it allows you to believe that it's somehow noble. The crack whore has no such delusions, nor do her clientele, because in her case it is easy to call things what they are. In your case, the easy excuses that lead to a belief that you are doing anything other than attempting to control is an obstacle to calling this what it is. The belief in this sort of control and that it is ever legitimate leads to all sorts of perversions of the idea of authority. On the personal or family level, it leads to "do as I say, not as I do." On a national level, it's one of the forces that turns democratic nations into totalitarian states with increasingly authoritarian policies.
It's an attempt to cause people to do what they would not otherwise do in order to please you and avoid your judgment of guilt, by association or otherwise. You won't be able to truly respect anyone who submits to this sort of coercion, so even if you get what you want, it is tainted. That is a proper result because this is one of the more subtle, less in-your-face ways to bully people (there are many such ways, some of them even look quite agreeable on the surface). No bully ever respects the weak people who submit to him, nor could he. Likewise, no bully respects the weak people who want to be an even bigger bully, which is why seeing the wrong of this does not tempt me to condemn you or insult you for it, not even in my mind.
Of course the real flaw in the first paragraph is that you are in fact a human being. Control of others isn't worth reducing that status to a mere prize. The price is too high. Further, if you had a pure intent and were seeking knowledge, you would navigate the obstacles (real or perceived) like incorrect presentation and would not allow them to stop you from examining that knowledge. You would need no heuristic to replace or complement the process of evaluating the knowledge and applying whatever tests of truth you think are appropriate. That's why this is about control and can only be about control. I can tell that you are intelligent. If you really wanted to know something, it would probably be difficult to hide it from you. That's why this stumbling block is artificial.
The alternative is childishly simple. It consists of accepting that people will often do things you don't like and realizing that they may feel the same way when they look at you, and then appreciating that the vast majority of those things don't matter. They don't matter unless they materially determine the truth or the falsehood of any claims that are made, facts that are presented, or reasoning that is elucidated. Things like the choice of a font or the spelling of a name fail this test. It cannot be otherwise. The actual truth or falsehood of an argument can only be determined on a case-by-case basis, so statistical comparisons based on the aesthetic choices of others cannot help.
Paradoxically, it's much easier to understand than it is to explain. It's one of those things that is not so complex that few people could understand it, but rather, it is so simple that almost everyone overlooks it. I certainly overlooked it for a long time. Because of that, please excuse the length of this post.
You present an extraordinarily literate argument[1] though. Anyone who can write like you do has utterly no business defending `M$', justifiable anger or not. IMO.
If your respect for my arguments or my ability as a writer were genuine, you would perhaps be puzzled by my perceived defense of "M$" and may ask me about it but you would not presume to tell me what is or is not my business. That's tantamount to telling me what I should or should not say, or how I should or should not feel about an issue. I strongly doubt you would go along with someone else doing this to you; you seem far too independent and free-thinking for that. It's alright, for I think being so easily offended is a serious weakness, but you should know that it won't work.
I wasn't actually pronouncing the use of "M$" to be right and good. I was accepting the reality that people are going to use it whether or not I enjoy it. The least-understood quality of human beings is that they always feel like what they do is right, or at least necessary. That's true no matter how wrong they actually are. This has an interesting effect because human beings also have egos.
There is nothing to which ego is more sensitive than anger and its various manifestations, such as frustration or resentment. When you tell them "you're wrong", not because you see that they are misguided and want something better for them, but because what they did has offended you or caused you to resent or condemn or judge them, you stimulate their ego. Now it's no longer about whether you had a point. Now it's about who's going to yield to whom, who's going to win the contest in which you are now engaged. That's if they are inclined to contests. If they are not, they'll just write you off by judging you as "unpleasant" etc. and ignoring you. Then nothing changes.
The simple fact is, you cannot convince anyone of anything without their consent. Get them on their high horse and they will make it a point to prove that to you. The way you were attempting to correct "M$" was from one ego to another, yours to theirs, which is why it must fail. It will fail or it will succeed for the wrong reason by appealing to the people-pleasers who should not be so concerned with whether you approve of them. Either way, no one learns anything and no one becomes a stronger person.
It does not have to be that way, of course. There can be compassionate understanding instead. I'll sum up the true problem for you, the obstacle of obstacles, the one cause of all of the ignorance in the world. People are leaves in the wind. They are products of their environments with no real self-hood who better resemble automatons than independent, free-thinking human beings. They can be this way while still clinging to the idea that their beliefs and impulses are their own. Modern education and mass media only encourage these things because both are heavily invested in them. If you properly see this, then you realize that these people are like slaves and don't know it. You realize that they are far less free than you are and that they suffer in many ways because of it.
If you yourself have not been too compromised, then you cannot see this without wishing that they be more free, that they not suffer so needlessly. You'll understand that any problem you could have with them comes from their slave status because only free people can truly understand and only free people can truly love. If they had real understanding and if they loved other people, then any "problem" you could have would not be a problem. You a
If you believe that recognizing the strategic aspects of Microsoft's business decisions makes one a zealot, then you are fortunate. You are fortunate because you have never seen a real zealot.
Yeah, and what would happen if MS was found using GPL'd code in their software?
The same thing that would happen if a Free Software developer were found using Microsoft's non-GPL code in their GPL software: a legal problem. The incompatibility of the licenses is mutual and I never suggested otherwise. Thus, I'm not sure what you believe you are explaining to me.
So Microsoft can't use GPL code, and you're totally cool with that. But as soon as GPL'd code can't incorporate MS OSS, it's some sort crime against humanity? Do you realize how stupid this is?
Microsoft can use GPL code if they want, they just have to honor the GNU Public License. They have chosen not to do that, which is their prerogative. Microsoft can't (legally) use GPL code in their closed-source software, and I am "totally cool with that," yes. Free Software developers who release software under the GPL can't (legally) use Microsoft's non-GPL code, and I am "totally cool with that" too. I never claimed it was a crime against humanity. I claimed that there are consequences which work together to make sure that this situation doesn't do very much to benefit the Free Software community and that Microsoft, since they are not stupid, knows this. You do know that the purpose of Open Source is so that other developers can actually use the code, right? Your reaction is out of proportion to what I was saying and I suspect that you know it.
Microsoft is a business. GPL'd software is their competitor. If they want to start releasing OSS software, why would they release code that their competitor could use freely, while they couldn't touch their competitors code. Do you see the stupidity in your complaint?
But that's exactly my point. GPL'd software is indeed their competitor and shrewd businesses, such as Microsoft, don't assist their competitors. That's why it doesn't make much sense to celebrate Microsoft's "open source" when it's "open source" that most of the community cannot use. Open Source that you can't actually use might as well be closed source. That wasn't a complaint, by the way, it was an observation.
The observation is very simple. The point of the GPL is freedom. Most Free Software developers use the GPL for that reason. Microsoft cannot profit from this. Microsoft then releases non-GPL-compatible code. Free Software developers cannot use Microsoft's code without losing the full freedoms of the GPL. Thus, it would be a mistake for them to do anything but ignore Microsoft's code because the price for using it is too high. If there is any part of that which you do not understand or which looks like I am "complaining about a crime agianst humanity", you let me know and I'll clear it up for you.
I think it's great that Microsoft is joining the open source game, and I sure as hell don't blame them for being smart about it.
I don't really "blame" them because I would have to blame them for being true to the nature of a corporation. Their position is easy to understand and the actions they are taking are predictable. What I question is the "greatness" of Microsoft "joining the open source game" when they are doing it in a way that ensures that the existing "players" of the "open source game" cannot utilize their contributions. It's a PR move, plain and simple. Good PR for Microsoft and a way to tempt developers away from the GPL might be a reason for Microsoft and its stockholders to celebrate but it's not a reason for anyone else to celebrate.
Microsoft has produced code that is "open" in name only and is actually all-but-useless for develo
I beg to differ. If you're so puerile to have the need to use "M$ Winbloze" or "open sores software" in a rational discussion, it seems as if you're trying to sidestep the issue with colorful language. Call things by their name and focus on arguments rather than taking trite potshots.
I've never seen it demonstrated that a puerile character is the one and only reason why anyone would ever use an epithet like "M$". That would be a very difficult thing to prove and just one exception would destroy the proof. It may be a common reason but if so we have a word for that, which is "stereotype", and the problems with basing decisions on them, especially character judgments, are well known. Assuming that there is absolutely no other reason (and it is an assumption) is a convenient way to look down on someone or to dismiss what they say without ever having to show why their argument was wrong. That's about the only "useful" purpose it serves. I've never felt like those tactics were necessary or appropriate if you really are right and they really are wrong. If you're skilled, you can "win" arguments whether you are actually right or not; that is done with tactics like this.
Finding a personal trait that you find distasteful (justifiably or not) and then thinking it provides a valid reason to disagree with an argument without showing the reasoning which led you to do so is the definition of "ad hominem attack." It amounts to "I don't like you, so you must be wrong". If someone is sidestepping an issue, by all means call them on it. However, identifying that doesn't depend on the way they spell a company's name. It's so easy to identify, in fact, that using such a heuristic could only hinder you.
I believe that most of the attempts to disparage or characterize Microsoft, including this one, come from a general frustration with their strong-arm tactics and ruthless dominance of this market. Indeed that frustration is wrong, and if you want to do something about it, why not do something that has a chance of addressing the root problem? The root problem is that people see the undesirable things that Microsoft does and then they make the mistake of resenting them for it. It comes out in the language and epithets that they use and it's easy to detect. Microsoft is not exactly an angel so this wrong way of dealing with them is easy and tempting.
If you feel any sort of anger or forms of anger like frustration or resentment, know that it is always preceded by a judgment. If not for judgment, then you could watch the wrong that others do and call it what it is without being affected by it. When you see Slashdotters deal with Microsoft in this wrong way and then judge them for it, you are actually doing the same thing. You are repeating with them the error that they made with Microsoft. Describing your objection with more sophisticated or neutral language does not change this. That's actually what anger does; it makes you replicate wrong. It cannot be otherwise because it is a negative energy. Just like those people, you feel justified. Effectively, this means you are following their lead while protesting what they are doing. Thus, they won't feel a need to listen to you because this process makes you just as wrong as they are. They can sense that whether or not they are consciously aware of it (most are not).
That's what judgment is; it's the wrong way of being right. You can repeat the post you just made until you every last Slashdotter has read it. It would either change nothing or it would make a few people change for the wrong reason: not because they learned anything or became stronger people, but because they want to win the approval and agreement of others. The better way is to show them what I am trying to show you, that their frustration is part of the problem. That won't give you the "satisfaction" of judging the person, but all that ever did was to make a mockery of real satisfaction.
I disagree that using M$ to represent Microsoft is a full representation of my feelings towards that company (I'm not the AC from the comment above).
I find the M$ abbreviation to be clever, brief, and valid representation of what is a very large and wealthy corporation. Additionally, there are the past comments from Ballmer and Gates comparing open source software to communism, so the capitalist slant is appropriate.
But now you have to make assumptions about my feelings towards that observation. Just because I can see it, doesn't say whether I think it is good or bad. So you are being defensive, and projecting your own bias towards the commenter.
I appreciate seeing anyone who is willing to call things what they are. It's a pleasing thing to see. It's a shame that more people don't understand the difference between discernment and judgment. The way I often hear it explained is that discernment plus resentment equals judgment. It's as good of an explanation as any until you can see the dynamics of it for yourself (I know that you yourself can do this; that was for anyone not familiar with it).
As far as commenting AC, that has more to do with the Slashdot community (which I find to be remarkably intelligent, funny, and wise; the reason for visiting this site is the comments) which is so well established, and places a premium on a low user ID (not IQ).
If you think they put a premium on a low UID, they really put a premium on posting non-AC. Really though, I find that anyone who sees my six-digit UID (or anything else, for that matter) and thinks that this entitles them to make personal assumptions about me is coming from such an extreme position of weakness that I can make short work of them. I have had people do things like this when I correctly used certain "key words" -- I intended their standard meaning as found in a dictionary while they assumed that I must be just like other people who use similar words. You'll notice that some people are very desperate to find a way to dismiss you or write you off or make you (in their minds) like something they have dealt with before and to which they feel superior.
That's usually because they dislike what you say but are aware that they don't have what it takes to properly explain why they disagree with it. Maybe they are afraid of losing an argument. Maybe someone who is secure in what they believe represents a challenge to why they are not. Maybe they know you are right and still don't like it. Whatever their reason may be, they are judgmental, reactive, quick to try to make things personal, and they lack a solid foundation of self-evident truth for their beliefs. All of these things mean that they are cowardly and you have nothing to fear from them.
If anyone acted this way towards me because of my relatively high UID, they never admitted it. I never felt that UID had much to do with it in my case. I think it's more that they don't really know how to deal with someone who isn't trying to win their approval (ego) and won't cave in to their various forms of pressure (control), because most of the world does both of those things. It's as though they see something different and are not very discerning so they need to test it. Thus, they turn up the pressure to see if you will react the way that they would, i.e by doing back to them what they have done to you.
If you do, then you lose your real brightness. Then they can rest assured because the challenge you didn't know you posed to them has been eliminated. Then they can continue to feel superior to you and judge you because you crumbled under their pressure. If you do not succumb to their attempts to belittle or degrade or intimidate or pressure, then you reveal what sort of person they really are and at the same time show them a living example of a higher standard. It makes their tactics backfire and they actually experience the upset that they intended to i
So what? The viral GPL license is not the only one that makes your software free.
What you say is factually correct yet it misses the point entirely. I like benefit of doubt so I'll assume that you were not being deliberately obtuse. If Microsoft really wanted to release source in a way that is useful for the community, then they would be compatible with the GPL or would simply use the unmodified GPL. They know very well that the vast majority of Free Software, especially that which is available for Unix-like operating systems, is GPL.
So a developer who maintains GPL software has two choices regarding the code that Microsoft releases. The first choice is to ignore it and avoid using it, because I would certainly expect Microsoft to vigorously pursue anyone who violates their license. The second choice is to abandon the GPL and release the software under the Microsoft license so that Microsoft's code could be incorporated into the project. This has two benefits for Microsoft. At the very least, they can talk a good game about how "open" they are becoming while actually doing very little for the community. At the most, they can tempt people to stop using the GPL.
The GPL and Free Software in general is perhaps Microsoft's first experience with a potential competitor that they cannot buy out and cannot embrace-and-extend, so their huge resources and preferred tactics are rendered useless. Either they just give up or they realize that they cannot use the "direct approach". I would not expect them to just give up. The saying that comes to mind is "if you get into bed with Microsoft, you're going to get fucked." Anyone who really believes that Microsoft has had a change of heart and is now a trustworthy ally of Free Software is frankly rather naive. You're dealing with an entity that became so dominant in its industry by means of shrewd business decisions and Machiavellian strategy. I would expect a close-source software company with even half of their willingness and ability to dominate to see Free Software as an implacable enemy that requires new tactics. If anyone believes it could possibly be otherwise, the evidence against you is strong but I'd like to know why you feel that way.
In defense of the use of M$ etc, I see it as sort of a short hand, like Garry Trudeau would do with politicians.
I don't generally use "M$" but I wanted to tell you how I see it. I see it as a way to separate the petty members of the audience who cannot overlook a small and harmless "transgression" (even that word is too strong for it) from those who are less superficial. I prefer to directly deal with wrong responses so this does not tempt me, but this is something that I wish more people understood. If I wanted to apply a self-maintaining "filter" to the audience, then I would deliberately do things like this. Then they would do all of the filtering work and categorize themselves for me because the people who balk at seeing "M$" will either decide not to respond or will soon make their objection known. Either way, they filter themselves so I would not have to, thus I could quickly move on to a post that answers whatever point I was making. They would actually self-select and assist me with disregarding them (this is the important part) no matter what their actual intentions were.
What I described above is a very basic and simple example of strategy. There is a certain mindlessness to merely re-acting to what other people do. It allows their actions to determine your behavior. Just about any predictable response that you have which can be operated in such a push-button fashion can be used against you. Now, I think that's appropriate only for an adversary who cannot be reasoned with, because other human beings are not toys and it is wrong to treat them as such (even with their active assistance). However, you can bet that your politicians and advertisers and public relations types have no such moral qualms. There are far more malicious uses of this process than having people unwittingly filter your Slashdot responses for you.
I once considered studying psychology, since everyone always came to me for insight and understanding.
Let's say that there is a reason for that and that I can sense when I am dealing with such a person. Whether they are in the room with me, on the telephone, or on a Web site and potentially thousands of miles away is no obstacle. True insight and understanding are not the product of a deductive or inductive process, though these lower-level processes can help you to put them into words for the benefit of others. The real insight comes from connecting to the source of inspiration and it is a Divine thing, to be honored and respected by means of correct use. Connected to that source, difficult things become easy and complex things become simple and intuitive. It gives human beings the ability to perceive the true nature of things and to know the truth when they hear it. That brightness in you that others have recognized is a true gift.
I'd just like to say, I did read your whole post, and I thank you for explaining yourself so well. The writing is commendable.
Like all good things that are done for the right reason, authoring that post was its own reward. You could, in fact, reject every last part of it and insult me for writing it and this would have no power whatsoever to remove the joy I found in it. That is the contrast to what I meant by "externally motivated." Trying to upset me (especially without cause) would injure your joy and well-being, however, so it's a delight to know that you feel no such temptation. I'm not suggesting you would really be malicious, of course; I just wanted to give you a better idea of where this comes from.
When people derive important parts of their being from externals and not from the True Source, they become leaves in the wind and their joy is subject to events and outcomes which are largely beyond their control. Even their "joy" makes a mockery of joy because it is not pure; it is dependent on outcome. This is the only mode of being that psychology recognizes. The number one external with which people make this mistake is the approval and praise of other people. If you suffer without a person's approval, then you are that person's slave. This is the single biggest mistake that men make with women: they think they can have a healthy relationship at the same time that they need that woman for anything. It is a little-known fact that you can bully with phony kindness even more easily than you can bully with cruelty. When men make this mistake, they bring out the worst in a woman, the ruthlessly clever ability to manipulate, and quickly become its prey.
Subscribing to this system and its equivalents which are found in business and politics is the reason why genuine people who interact with no ulterior motives are so rare. Most of them are ignorant, operating on a sort of autopilot, and would be horrified if they could see just how fake they really are. A few of them are aware of it and enjoy the mindgames and the feeling of power; those people are very far gone. The antidote to this is quite simple: there are few things I know of which are more powerful than a truly pure motive.
I even looked up "namaste", since I'd only heard it once before. At the time, I wasn't near a computer, so I couldn't look it up.
You may find several meanings of "namaste." The one I like best is "that which is Divine within me salutes that which is Divine with you." It is a reminder of our true nature.
Slashdot Mirror
They *want* you to go back to watching regular TV, where the ad revenue is greatest.
As you probably know, that cat's not going back into the bag. I wonder whether the inability to admit this and work with it is a special trait of media companies or if it's just true of large organizations in general?
That's a pretty good description. The real problem in my mind is that this rental model did not come about as a result of overwhelming customer demand, but rather, is being pushed onto customers. It is reminiscent of the various software-rental models that have come up from time to time. I also don't think most people appreciate that you ultimately pay more when you amortize a purchase -- they just seem to be looking at the monthly payment with little consideration for the total cost. Ultimately, we all stand to suffer a bit because Joe Sixpack refuses to think of these things, allowing them to become profitable/successful and commonplace.
Perhaps I'll stop with my anti-Republicanism when they stop actively fighting my self interest.
If they want me to stop hating them perhaps they should stop fighting hate crimes legislation and preventing me from having all of my rights. Perhaps they should acknowledge that as a citizen, one that pays taxes no less, that I should have an equal amount of freedom.
But then again, we could just pretend like the party doesn't have some incredibly anti-American policies. Perhaps we could then force it into a dogma because clearly people's own self interest must be dogma.
I think it's vaguely ironic that you can't comprehend that people might hate the Republican party on it's merits without being strict partisans.
You're absolutely right about the Republican party having anti-American policies. Unfortunately, both of the major parties have this problem. If it were only one of them, then this would have been a self-correcting system.
The one thing I'd like to ask you about is hate-crime legislation. To me, a hate crime is a thought crime because it depends on what the criminal was thinking at the time the crime was committed. It seems to me that if someone commits i.e. murder, we should try them for murder. What they were thinking at the time may help the prosecution to establish motive, but the actual crime is having illegally killed another human being. Otherwise the next logical step is to punish people who have such thoughts whether or not they also committed any other crime.
The problem is we as a culture are not big fans of taking ideas to their completion, to any and all "next steps" to find out at what point they break down. If that point is fairly close to the proposed implementation, then the idea is probably a bad one that will do more harm than good. If that point of failure is a far extreme that is not remotely connected to the proposed implementation, then it may or may not be a good idea. To me, hate crimes are clearly the former case.
If we start looking at every politician based soley on his or her merits alone and ignore his or her political affiliation we would see the enormous "change of course" that we have been promised oh-so-many times and never actually seen.
The problem is that the vast majority of voters will never do that. The politicians know this and they know the key to winning is name recognition and publicity. That requires vast amounts of money in the modern era, which requires a vast organization (i.e: political party) to raise and manage said funds. Like most other large organizations the political party eventually forgets its original mandate and starts to focus on preserving and expanding the organization.
Smarter people than I have failed to come up with a viable solution to this problem. In short, we are all screwed.
That's what I mean when I say that we've lost our way. I do, with respect, disagree with you on one thing: "smart" isn't going to solve this problem. Wisdom is up to the task, however. The misunderstandings about wisdom happen not because it is so difficult that few could hope to grasp it, but rather, because it is so simple that nearly everyone overlooks it. The way I see it, there are but a few root causes of the mess we're in:
The original American spirit of rugged individualism, independence, and freedom was based on pride. The trouble with pride is that it always focuses on the self, and the self is mutable and impermanent compared to the timeless principles on which these virtues could also be based. That means that pride is a shifting sand, while a more solid foundation is also available. Because of that, pride has a number of weaknesses that render inevitable its eventual undermining. The worst of these are convenience and its decay into dependence.
For all of their foibles, governments understand one thing very well: if you want to own someone, get them to depend on you and your support by doing for them what they should do for themselves. Sell it in terms of convenience or duty. You see this in the USA with states that are afraid to defy the federal government because doing so would mean the loss of federal funding. States have the ability to levy their own taxes for exactly the purpose of raising the funds they need, yet many have come to depend on the federal money to where their budgets don't work without it.
You see this on an individual level with the amount of upheavel that would happen if Social Security were suddenly cancelled. In a more subtle form, you see it when you are taught, from the time you are a child, that it is up to the "experts" to determine your intelligence, aptitudes, future success, well-being, and in summary, your self-worth. You see it when suddenly, the early education of children becomes an important government priority and thus, the state takes on a responsibility that rightfully belongs to parents. All of this in spite of the rather open declaration by various 19th century industrial tycoons that regulating the poor and preventing them from becoming educated enough to seriously question the status quo was the purpose of public education. Really, it's amazing; today's authoritarians are masters of subtlety by comparison. This, of course, was later extended to include the growing middle class. There is no greater reference for this than John Taylor Gatto's free online book. You see it as well when there is a pill for every ill, an emphasis on instant gratification, and shallow thinking rife with logical fallacies and propaganda techniques as mainstream news.
Then there is religion. The morality of Judaeo-Christian beliefs was once a unifying force for this country. Many of the problems with this are now well-known and easily grasped. One problem is not so obvious. The mainstream forms of Christianity are more properly called Churchianity. Their followers do not love one
it has got to be pretty clear by now that no one in Washington has the balls to even utter the word "treason" -- which is effectively what the blatant ignorance of the Supreme Law of the Land amounts to
I have always felt, and have said repeatedly on this Web site, that anyone who wants political power needs to be held to a stricter standard than the average citizen. That's especially true when you consider that nearly all politicians are also lawyers, so it's not like they are unclear on the meaning of "shall not be infringed." I do indeed consider it treason when a politician knowingly creates or votes for a law that is in any way unconstitional. Just as the Constitution demands, I would like to see vigorous enforcement of the death penalty (legally and with due process, of course) attached to anyone who holds public office and takes any action, knowingly or otherwise, that contradicts the Constitution. Let us decide that one can live a long and happy life without ever having political power; that if someone wants political power anyway, let them accept a very high standard of personal accountability to go with it.
Oops. I am simply trying to think positively for any pitfalls you tried (worried) to address.
There are no worries here, for I consider that to be a weakness, a way to suffer before anything bad has even happened. No one can see the folly of that and still want to do it. Besides, worry implies an element of uncertainty. There is no uncertainty about the fact that we have this nasty habit of concerning ourselves with outward symptoms and not the underlying problems that cause them. There is no uncertainty about the fact that there are better ways to live that don't require a person to feel like a victim. There is no uncertainty that another bad precedent is not in our interests.
To be honest, I still don't see how anything you have said relates to anything I have said. I have no problem saying that there may be some obvious connection that I am completely overlooking, because if that is true, then denying it won't solve anything. But that connection, if it exists, remains elusive to me.
If people shoot at students and teachers in a campus and kill themselves in the end, it would be nicer if they kills thousands of computers and the owners can spend some time with their families.
I seem to have missed your point. If that relates to what I was discussing, may I ask you to explain how?
The guarenteed revenue stream that a contract has helps reduce the cost of doing business (the customer aquisition cost can be defrayed over more payments).
This is why when your contract runs out you get offers for free phones in the mail from your carrier. They WANT you to get a free phone, rather that risk you leaving at any point. And this while you are paying "too much" monthly. Look at how expensive pay as you go plans are. Contracts reduce rates.
I have an alternative view on what would reduce rates. It's simple, too.
Make all mobile phones able to interoperate with all of the national cellular networks. Make the cellular companies' FCC licenses depend on fully publishing their protocols/etc. as open standards if necessary. The idea here is that you can independently buy any phone you like from the vendor of your choice and then use it on any network you like. Then get rid of all contracts and make the carriers adopt month-to-month plans. You pay for one month of service; at the end of that month, you can decide not to buy more service or to switch to another carrier with no penalties whatsoever and no need to obtain a different phone. Then let the carriers compete on price, coverage, and service.
I would expect much bitching and moaning from the carriers, but that's too bad. Their current system is a way to avoid having to be very competitive. That's the only reason why they lock customers into 2-year contracts and it's the only reason why they artificially restrict phones. That's certainly in their interests but it is not in ours. Currently the game is played according to their rules.
I think we forget sometimes that this happens only because we accept it. There are few or no products or services that we need so badly that we should accept someone else's dominance in order to have them. If you really value freedom, then you know that this price is too high. Certainly it should not be the norm that almost every telco wants you to do this. Somehow humanity lived without cellular phones for a very long time (though many seem to have forgotten this) so I don't consider them an exception to this rule.
I see that valuing our toys and conveniences more than our freedom and independence makes us, as a whole, rather easy to push around. It's not usually recognized as the weakness that it is. That's a shame. We really need to decide whether the interests of artificial constructs such as corporations are more or less important than the interests of individual human beings. Once we decide that, we can take positions that are consistent with that decision. In this case, that's especially true considering that most (all?) of the telcos are government-protected monopolies that were set up to serve a public interest in the first place. I won't debate whether that was the best arrangement. I only observe that requiring them to do business in a less self-serving manner is consistent with that arrangement.
How much fun will it be when the wireless carrier fires Crazy Stu, the wacky UNIX sysadmin with the penchant for conspiracy theories and bad dental health. When HR comes around to fire Stu, he leaves his timebomb in place. The one that fires out the kill message to hundreds - nay - thousands of customers - and disables their leased laptops all at once. What a day that will be.
I hope it does not come to that, but should that happen anyway, in a way I would be grateful. It is unfortunate that things like that often have to happen before people are willing to question whether what they were doing was a good idea. My opinion is that anything which is needlessly centralized and open to this sort of vulnerability is a bad idea, especially when there are already established ways to deal with the problem this intends to solve. I consider the likelihood of such an exploit occurring to be irrelevant; there would be no such possibility at all if this were the correct solution.
We are talking about financers and lenders, or those who do something similar by using long-term contracts to subsidize what would otherwise be an up-front cost. It's a form of credit because it takes time to become profitable and it depends on the other party not defaulting. If such people want to extend credit to those who are bad risks, that is the original problem and an improved "repo man" does nothing to solve it. It only addresses the symptoms of the original problem.
For people who default on a loan or a contract, this pseudo-solution is essentially an alternative to taking them to court. It means that the lender can just remotely disable the equipment that was not paid for without having to use any sort of due process. It is thus an extra-legal power that did not previously exist, and is rightfully called a power grab. The entire point of the court system is that both sides can make their case. If the money required to bring a lawsuit against a large corporation already makes this difficult for the average person to pursue, taking the courts entirely out of the equation makes it impossible. This is not a good precedent. If this catches on, it will become increasingly difficult to buy a cell phone or perhaps a laptop without agreeing to allow it.
It's amazing to me that we will do almost anything, come up with nearly any clever solution, go to any effort, to avoid directly addressing the actual cause of our problems. It's as though we feel threatened by the prospect, or inadequate at having failed to realize its simplicity. This is why we live in a superficial society. This is also why there are so many bad precedents which seem inevitable although they did not need to be that way at all.
The solution to that is to make it more difficult for the rich and powerful to suppress unwanted speech, not to make it easier for both the rich and poor to suppress unwanted speech. The only reason why defamation was ever a problem is because people are naive and will accept a thing as true without ever investigating the issue or otherwise testing the truth of what was said. We use law to deal with this because that's easier and much more desirable to those in power than equipping each citizen to discern truth and to be very difficult to deceive.
Remember that propaganda and manipulation is a favorite tool of governments everywhere -- they use those to accomplish what the monarchies of old accomplished by intimidation and brute force. The result is the same, except that someone who buys into propaganda thinks that his beliefs are his own, while someone who submitted to brute force and overwhelming state power has no doubt that he is being controlled. That's also why freedoms are always taken away "for your safety" etc. Thus, a difficult-to-deceive citizenry which is highly skilled in and knowledgable about argumentation, logical fallacies, and propaganda techniques is not something that they want. If they wanted that, then you would never be able to graduate from public schools without demonstrating mastery of these things.
This is why we have these phony debates instead of finding the one factor that makes all of the rest of this possible and directly addressing it.
No they don't. Not relative to the differences between Trident and most other engines.
There may be some differences, but they're nothing when compared to IE's awful rendering engine. Just look at the broken box model, or the hasLayout flag for example.
For around the last five years my Web design job has always revolved around making things look right in standards compliant browsers, then hacking for IE. Look at the code of most sites these days and you'll see an IE-specific style sheet.
Imagine the sum total of the economic cost to Web designers worldwide, if such a figure could be accurately assessed. I wonder just how large this number would be? To me this sort of unnecessary and deliberate incompatibility is very much like spam; it's a business practice that causes others to bear its costs. If the total cost to Web designers everywhere could be known, I really would have no problem with fining Microsoft for that amount, accompanied by the legal use of government police power to seize assets if this is necessary to pay the fine.
If that sounds drastic, I say that the only thing more absurd is the idea that we should have to put up with this kind of shit and shouldn't use any means available to discourage it, within the bounds of the law of course. I really believe that the only reason why Microsoft gets away with half of the things that they do is because of the general public's ignorance and lack of technical understanding. If not for that then I would expect at least some type of backlash against it, much like what Sony experienced due to their rootkit DRM.
I'm not buying this story at all. I live and work in Silicon Valley. I do see lots of folks getting laid off at a higher rate than in the past. At the same time, I see the same folks quickly finding new work. Sometimes it involves a pay cut, often it does not. I just don't see IT in this area being affected as deeply as other professions in other parts of the country. It is not bad enough in IT that good people are turning to lives of crime to make ends meet.
Perhaps the phenomenon of outsourcing has already gradually done the damage to this industry that a poor economy would have done more suddenly. That's just an idea; I don't really have the economic understanding to know how to determine whether there is any truth to that, but that was my first impression when I saw your post. Maybe someone who does understand economics can tell me if there is any validity to it.
Also, the point is to point the laser at the window and have it reflect. By measuring changes in the angle of reflection you can reconstruct sound hitting the inside of the window. Double-pane glass with a vacuum between the panes removes this attack vector.
Is it common for double-pane glass to contain anything that could be called a vacuum? I'll admit I don't know but I always thought they just had regular atmospheric-pressure air between the panes, as an extra layer of insulation. Would you need a proper vacuum to dampen the sound vibrations enough to defeat this attack?
looks like it's time to stock up on tinfoil and old reflective (mainly old aol) cds.
imagine what the govt can do if regular scientists can do this with regular lasers (not including with sharks)
Consider that around 1980, they (the US Gov't) admitted to having spy satellites that could photograph a vehicle's license plate from orbit. That's what they were willing to admit to back then; you can bet that their most advanced technologies were kept secret. Then the stealth bomber was kept a secret for about thirty years. Anyone who saw one back when it was secret would have probably called it a UFO since, well, it's a flying object that couldn't be identified without proper security clearances. At least, I know that the U-2 spy plane caused UFO reports back when it was a secret. This makes me wonder if years from now, we'll learn that some of these "flying saucers" and the incredible maneuvers they can do were actually some kind of experimental aircraft.
It's not so absurd that the secret government technology would be years ahead of private industry. For one thing, private industry has to make a profit and can't devote all of their resources to pure research. For another, government agencies, particularly those which are defense-related, receive ridiculous amounts of funding. That's the ones we know about; I suspect that some of these $400 toilet seats and such were a way to fund some of the kinds of projects that fall under "national security". Then consider the talent to which they have access. I've heard that the NSA likes to recruit top mathematics students and wouldn't be surprised to learn that such recruitment efforts are more common.
You raise an excellent point. I wonder if we'll ever know, even years later, about half of the things that are going on right now.
To me, that is a challenge, not in the sense of a contest but in the sense of exploring what is possible. The challenge is to bring reason and objectivity, and things higher still than those, into discussions where they otherwise would be absent. The art is to do that in a self-evident way that can show reason to the unreasonable, or to show that a thing is true on its level but that there are higher perspectives available. It's a most rewarding thing to do.
Pride is an obstacle as much as it's an ally. You just summed up how it may be an ally. I'll show how it's an obstacle. I think you suspected early on the truth in what I was trying to tell you. What I perceive as the theme of this thread is that you were testing me to see if I would be found wanting. Note that people rarely do things like this consciously and deliberately. Possibly you've heard lots of things that sounded really great, except they came from people who were no less miserable than you, no stronger than you, no more compassionate than you, so you reason quite rightly that their beliefs haven't done them much good. If I lost my patience with you and became insulting or angry or anything like that, it would mean that I was found wanting. It is difficult or maybe even impossible to accept truth from people who are found wanting. Pride is the reason why you felt a need to test what could have been directly known in what you may call an intuitive sense.
I've said before that you are intelligent; to me that is easy to discern. The problem with intelligence is that it alone is not enough. Please pardon the expressions I use to explain this; this is how I once explained it years ago to a friend of mine. I'll illustrate: if you take a belligerent, angry, conceited fuck and give him intelligence, what will happen is that he or she will become better at being a belligerent, angry, conceited fuck. No breakthrough will be made that will refine the person's character or bring about anything like true wisdom. That's one of the least-understood aspects of intelligence, cleverness, high IQ, whatever you call it. It's the folly of our exclusive reverence for it.
I appreciate that you have what it takes to make the admission you just made. It takes some courage to do that. I can now explain how wisdom and real compassion protect you from succumbing to the foibles of others and replicating their mistakes. You said "I'm sorry" but had you asked me to forgive you, I would tell you that there is nothing to forgive. I see things that are true and I call them by their proper names, to the best of my ability -- that is discernment. What actually makes human beings suffer needlessly is quite different. I never judged you in the first place, so I never condemned you as a person and I never got angry or upset with you. That means I never suffered because of anything you said or did. Thus, there is no injury to be forgiven.
Namaste. May you find real joy and the guidance of true inspiration. If life suddenly becomes simple and effortless because you yourself are not doing anything, then you've found them.
That's quite trivial, though "holy" is your word, not mine. You just can't get over the fact that someone can appreciate freedom, including software freedom, without being a zealot and so you feel the need to insert words that I clearly never used. Feel free to perform a text search on this thread if you don't believe me; you won't find me calling it "holy" anywhere, nor will you find me saying that anyone "must" adhere to it. That you feel a need to do this is a position of weakness that you'll abandon once you see the folly of it for yourself.
To answer your question: the majority (perhaps a plurality) of all Open Source software is licensed under a version of the GPL. When I say "community" below, I refer to every Linux distribution and almost every piece of Linux software as well as cross-platform Free Software such as FireFox and all of the associated programmers and users. All of those either directly use or derive some benefit from the GPL. The reasons for the GPL's prevalence are not difficult to discern; it provides everything you need for the free exchange of ideas and prevents others from removing those freedoms. That's why the growth of available Free Software skyrocketed when the GPL was adopted, in a way that it did not with the existing BSD-style licenses.
In other words, it works and it works well and among members of the community it is widely used. That's exactly why I make the self-evident observation that if someone wants to do something for that community, they would do so under the GPL or at the very least, a license that is compatible with it. From there it follows that it was not Microsoft's intention to allow this community to derive any benefit from its code. That is emphatically not a statement that they should have done otherwise; it is a simple observation. Thus, the community has no reason to celebrate Microsoft's published source code. To you or me, Microsoft's business position is obvious; unfortunately, some people are a bit naive and need to have this pointed out. Thus, the purpose of making this claim was to correct the growing misconception that Microsoft is ever going to be an ally of Free Software, which is a stricter term than "Open Source".
That was my sole claim. So far you've addressed 2-3 claims I never made. That you can do that without feeling silly should give you pause. It's somewhat rare but you are not the first to do this whom I have encountered. At any rate, your choice now is to either address that claim or to set up another straw man consisting of claims I never made and then proceed to attack that straw man. If you do, I'll see the weakness of the tactic and the desperation to feel "right" that drives it and I'll observe this knowing that it is beneath you. Now, I challenge you to either demonstrate why my reasoning is flawed or admit that zealots are not known for correct reasoning. You are unable to perform the former and you're prideful enough to have a difficult time with the latter, obvious though it should be.
I'm interested in how you resolve the dilemma. If you want to continue down the path you are already on, you could try a little harder to make this into a personal matter. If so, you will fail because that isn't tempting for me no matter how belligerent you get, but it's the only "third option" you have other than just deciding not to respond at all. I think you can do much better than the desperation you have shown so far, but that's not very important unless you also think so.
I think this whole argument between us occurred because you could already see Microsoft's business position and its implications on your own. To you that was obvious, and it should be, but there is a great deal of ignorance concerning basic business strategy and those who already understand it were not my target audience. Mayb
demonizing me and calling me "zealot" and other names because I dared to make observations and support them with reason
Sorry, your long winded response isn't going to convince me otherwise. The article and summary simply stated that Microsoft had released open-source software, which they did. You're an evangelist of a particular open source license that has all sorts of religion behind it, preaching down other licenses that don't align themselves with your principles. To say that nobody will find this useful is ridiculous. Sure, your "community" might not have any use for it. What is it with your community and their sense of entitlement?
Eh let's make one observation that should be fairly obvious: if not for the success of Open Source software under the GNU Public License, of which the most prevalent expression is the GNU/Linux operating system and its associated applications, then Microsoft would not now show any interest in publically releasing any code of theirs. As much as they talk of innovation, and as many new things as they have genuinely innovated, Microsoft is just following someone else's lead on this one.
So, Microsoft sees an existing community based on the ideals of Open Source software. This is an active, vibrant community that continues to grow. That community has largely standardized on the GPL. Thus, there is already an established and widely-used way to do this. Microsoft sees that and does it another way. That cannot be an accident. It is obvious that any incompatibility is deliberate. The reasons you gave are adequate to explain it; GPL is a competitor.
So I sign onto Slashdot and I see a story about this. Then what do I see? I see people coming from a largely Linux background discussing the merits of Microsoft's code as though it were of any use to them. My message was for them, that this is not the community contribution from Microsoft that they may have been expecting. This is, in fact, a PR move. Companies make PR moves expecting that people who see them will be impressed by them. I'm not. Knowing that any good feelings I may have had about this were carefully engineered by someone in Microsoft's marketing department really ruins them for me. I don't know how I could more simply explain this to you.
Now, I see the GPL and I find that it works. The Free Software community did not just arbitrarily choose the GPL because they rolled some dice. The GPL works and it works for a reason. It provides everything you need to have this sort of community based on the free exchange of ideas. Thus, I am not an evangelist, no more than I am an "evangelist" for aspirin if I tell you that it will make a headache go away. Further, you have a screwey definition of "entitlement". When I say "this is not useful for the community" that is not a statement of entitlement. Now, if I said "this is not useful for the community and this is some sort of crime" then THAT would be entitlement. Now that someone has illustrated the difference for you, you can avoid this sort of confusion in the future.
In reality, people like you are a dime a dozen. You think you know the first thing about me, including what I believe, how I am motivated and why I might say what I say. Like most of your kind, you don't realize that I am the world's foremost expert on what I think, so even when I tell you that your assumptions about me are wrong, you continue to argue. That you presume to know where I am coming from better than I would know this, and without claiming any sort of psychic powers, is quite amazing. This, by the way, is why the Open Source community often discourages its more religious advocates -- people like you can't tell the difference between a real fanatic and someone who merely appreciates freedom, and yet you feel entitled to paint with a very broad brush. I'd like to see what you as an individual look like when you jump off of this bandwagon.
Get a little d
In other words, "I'm not a human being; I am a prize. Reaching me is the same as winning the prize. If you want to win that prize, you will submit to my control and play the game according to my rules. If not, you lose the game before you even started playing."
The people-pleasers love this kind of invitation because then you can praise them for being "good" and agreeable. They go along to get along. It's the only "goodness" they will know because they are addicted to the approval of others. That addiction is what you exploit when you set yourself up to be some sort of prize. Hypothetically, it's like telling a crack whore that you'll give her some crack if she'll perform some sexual favors for you, except that doing it the way you do it allows you to believe that it's somehow noble. The crack whore has no such delusions, nor do her clientele, because in her case it is easy to call things what they are. In your case, the easy excuses that lead to a belief that you are doing anything other than attempting to control is an obstacle to calling this what it is. The belief in this sort of control and that it is ever legitimate leads to all sorts of perversions of the idea of authority. On the personal or family level, it leads to "do as I say, not as I do." On a national level, it's one of the forces that turns democratic nations into totalitarian states with increasingly authoritarian policies.
It's an attempt to cause people to do what they would not otherwise do in order to please you and avoid your judgment of guilt, by association or otherwise. You won't be able to truly respect anyone who submits to this sort of coercion, so even if you get what you want, it is tainted. That is a proper result because this is one of the more subtle, less in-your-face ways to bully people (there are many such ways, some of them even look quite agreeable on the surface). No bully ever respects the weak people who submit to him, nor could he. Likewise, no bully respects the weak people who want to be an even bigger bully, which is why seeing the wrong of this does not tempt me to condemn you or insult you for it, not even in my mind.
Of course the real flaw in the first paragraph is that you are in fact a human being. Control of others isn't worth reducing that status to a mere prize. The price is too high. Further, if you had a pure intent and were seeking knowledge, you would navigate the obstacles (real or perceived) like incorrect presentation and would not allow them to stop you from examining that knowledge. You would need no heuristic to replace or complement the process of evaluating the knowledge and applying whatever tests of truth you think are appropriate. That's why this is about control and can only be about control. I can tell that you are intelligent. If you really wanted to know something, it would probably be difficult to hide it from you. That's why this stumbling block is artificial.
The alternative is childishly simple. It consists of accepting that people will often do things you don't like and realizing that they may feel the same way when they look at you, and then appreciating that the vast majority of those things don't matter. They don't matter unless they materially determine the truth or the falsehood of any claims that are made, facts that are presented, or reasoning that is elucidated. Things like the choice of a font or the spelling of a name fail this test. It cannot be otherwise. The actual truth or falsehood of an argument can only be determined on a case-by-case basis, so statistical comparisons based on the aesthetic choices of others cannot help.
Paradoxically, it's much easier to understand than it is to explain. It's one of those things that is not so complex that few people could understand it, but rather, it is so simple that almost everyone overlooks it. I certainly overlooked it for a long time. Because of that, please excuse the length of this post.
If your respect for my arguments or my ability as a writer were genuine, you would perhaps be puzzled by my perceived defense of "M$" and may ask me about it but you would not presume to tell me what is or is not my business. That's tantamount to telling me what I should or should not say, or how I should or should not feel about an issue. I strongly doubt you would go along with someone else doing this to you; you seem far too independent and free-thinking for that. It's alright, for I think being so easily offended is a serious weakness, but you should know that it won't work.
I wasn't actually pronouncing the use of "M$" to be right and good. I was accepting the reality that people are going to use it whether or not I enjoy it. The least-understood quality of human beings is that they always feel like what they do is right, or at least necessary. That's true no matter how wrong they actually are. This has an interesting effect because human beings also have egos.
There is nothing to which ego is more sensitive than anger and its various manifestations, such as frustration or resentment. When you tell them "you're wrong", not because you see that they are misguided and want something better for them, but because what they did has offended you or caused you to resent or condemn or judge them, you stimulate their ego. Now it's no longer about whether you had a point. Now it's about who's going to yield to whom, who's going to win the contest in which you are now engaged. That's if they are inclined to contests. If they are not, they'll just write you off by judging you as "unpleasant" etc. and ignoring you. Then nothing changes.
The simple fact is, you cannot convince anyone of anything without their consent. Get them on their high horse and they will make it a point to prove that to you. The way you were attempting to correct "M$" was from one ego to another, yours to theirs, which is why it must fail. It will fail or it will succeed for the wrong reason by appealing to the people-pleasers who should not be so concerned with whether you approve of them. Either way, no one learns anything and no one becomes a stronger person.
It does not have to be that way, of course. There can be compassionate understanding instead. I'll sum up the true problem for you, the obstacle of obstacles, the one cause of all of the ignorance in the world. People are leaves in the wind. They are products of their environments with no real self-hood who better resemble automatons than independent, free-thinking human beings. They can be this way while still clinging to the idea that their beliefs and impulses are their own. Modern education and mass media only encourage these things because both are heavily invested in them. If you properly see this, then you realize that these people are like slaves and don't know it. You realize that they are far less free than you are and that they suffer in many ways because of it.
If you yourself have not been too compromised, then you cannot see this without wishing that they be more free, that they not suffer so needlessly. You'll understand that any problem you could have with them comes from their slave status because only free people can truly understand and only free people can truly love. If they had real understanding and if they loved other people, then any "problem" you could have would not be a problem. You a
If you believe that recognizing the strategic aspects of Microsoft's business decisions makes one a zealot, then you are fortunate. You are fortunate because you have never seen a real zealot.
The same thing that would happen if a Free Software developer were found using Microsoft's non-GPL code in their GPL software: a legal problem. The incompatibility of the licenses is mutual and I never suggested otherwise. Thus, I'm not sure what you believe you are explaining to me.
Microsoft can use GPL code if they want, they just have to honor the GNU Public License. They have chosen not to do that, which is their prerogative. Microsoft can't (legally) use GPL code in their closed-source software, and I am "totally cool with that," yes. Free Software developers who release software under the GPL can't (legally) use Microsoft's non-GPL code, and I am "totally cool with that" too. I never claimed it was a crime against humanity. I claimed that there are consequences which work together to make sure that this situation doesn't do very much to benefit the Free Software community and that Microsoft, since they are not stupid, knows this. You do know that the purpose of Open Source is so that other developers can actually use the code, right? Your reaction is out of proportion to what I was saying and I suspect that you know it.
But that's exactly my point. GPL'd software is indeed their competitor and shrewd businesses, such as Microsoft, don't assist their competitors. That's why it doesn't make much sense to celebrate Microsoft's "open source" when it's "open source" that most of the community cannot use. Open Source that you can't actually use might as well be closed source. That wasn't a complaint, by the way, it was an observation.
The observation is very simple. The point of the GPL is freedom. Most Free Software developers use the GPL for that reason. Microsoft cannot profit from this. Microsoft then releases non-GPL-compatible code. Free Software developers cannot use Microsoft's code without losing the full freedoms of the GPL. Thus, it would be a mistake for them to do anything but ignore Microsoft's code because the price for using it is too high. If there is any part of that which you do not understand or which looks like I am "complaining about a crime agianst humanity", you let me know and I'll clear it up for you.
I don't really "blame" them because I would have to blame them for being true to the nature of a corporation. Their position is easy to understand and the actions they are taking are predictable. What I question is the "greatness" of Microsoft "joining the open source game" when they are doing it in a way that ensures that the existing "players" of the "open source game" cannot utilize their contributions. It's a PR move, plain and simple. Good PR for Microsoft and a way to tempt developers away from the GPL might be a reason for Microsoft and its stockholders to celebrate but it's not a reason for anyone else to celebrate.
Microsoft has produced code that is "open" in name only and is actually all-but-useless for develo
I've never seen it demonstrated that a puerile character is the one and only reason why anyone would ever use an epithet like "M$". That would be a very difficult thing to prove and just one exception would destroy the proof. It may be a common reason but if so we have a word for that, which is "stereotype", and the problems with basing decisions on them, especially character judgments, are well known. Assuming that there is absolutely no other reason (and it is an assumption) is a convenient way to look down on someone or to dismiss what they say without ever having to show why their argument was wrong. That's about the only "useful" purpose it serves. I've never felt like those tactics were necessary or appropriate if you really are right and they really are wrong. If you're skilled, you can "win" arguments whether you are actually right or not; that is done with tactics like this.
Finding a personal trait that you find distasteful (justifiably or not) and then thinking it provides a valid reason to disagree with an argument without showing the reasoning which led you to do so is the definition of "ad hominem attack." It amounts to "I don't like you, so you must be wrong". If someone is sidestepping an issue, by all means call them on it. However, identifying that doesn't depend on the way they spell a company's name. It's so easy to identify, in fact, that using such a heuristic could only hinder you.
I believe that most of the attempts to disparage or characterize Microsoft, including this one, come from a general frustration with their strong-arm tactics and ruthless dominance of this market. Indeed that frustration is wrong, and if you want to do something about it, why not do something that has a chance of addressing the root problem? The root problem is that people see the undesirable things that Microsoft does and then they make the mistake of resenting them for it. It comes out in the language and epithets that they use and it's easy to detect. Microsoft is not exactly an angel so this wrong way of dealing with them is easy and tempting.
If you feel any sort of anger or forms of anger like frustration or resentment, know that it is always preceded by a judgment. If not for judgment, then you could watch the wrong that others do and call it what it is without being affected by it. When you see Slashdotters deal with Microsoft in this wrong way and then judge them for it, you are actually doing the same thing. You are repeating with them the error that they made with Microsoft. Describing your objection with more sophisticated or neutral language does not change this. That's actually what anger does; it makes you replicate wrong. It cannot be otherwise because it is a negative energy. Just like those people, you feel justified. Effectively, this means you are following their lead while protesting what they are doing. Thus, they won't feel a need to listen to you because this process makes you just as wrong as they are. They can sense that whether or not they are consciously aware of it (most are not).
That's what judgment is; it's the wrong way of being right. You can repeat the post you just made until you every last Slashdotter has read it. It would either change nothing or it would make a few people change for the wrong reason: not because they learned anything or became stronger people, but because they want to win the approval and agreement of others. The better way is to show them what I am trying to show you, that their frustration is part of the problem. That won't give you the "satisfaction" of judging the person, but all that ever did was to make a mockery of real satisfaction.
I'm trying to give you
I appreciate seeing anyone who is willing to call things what they are. It's a pleasing thing to see. It's a shame that more people don't understand the difference between discernment and judgment. The way I often hear it explained is that discernment plus resentment equals judgment. It's as good of an explanation as any until you can see the dynamics of it for yourself (I know that you yourself can do this; that was for anyone not familiar with it).
If you think they put a premium on a low UID, they really put a premium on posting non-AC. Really though, I find that anyone who sees my six-digit UID (or anything else, for that matter) and thinks that this entitles them to make personal assumptions about me is coming from such an extreme position of weakness that I can make short work of them. I have had people do things like this when I correctly used certain "key words" -- I intended their standard meaning as found in a dictionary while they assumed that I must be just like other people who use similar words. You'll notice that some people are very desperate to find a way to dismiss you or write you off or make you (in their minds) like something they have dealt with before and to which they feel superior.
That's usually because they dislike what you say but are aware that they don't have what it takes to properly explain why they disagree with it. Maybe they are afraid of losing an argument. Maybe someone who is secure in what they believe represents a challenge to why they are not. Maybe they know you are right and still don't like it. Whatever their reason may be, they are judgmental, reactive, quick to try to make things personal, and they lack a solid foundation of self-evident truth for their beliefs. All of these things mean that they are cowardly and you have nothing to fear from them.
If anyone acted this way towards me because of my relatively high UID, they never admitted it. I never felt that UID had much to do with it in my case. I think it's more that they don't really know how to deal with someone who isn't trying to win their approval (ego) and won't cave in to their various forms of pressure (control), because most of the world does both of those things. It's as though they see something different and are not very discerning so they need to test it. Thus, they turn up the pressure to see if you will react the way that they would, i.e by doing back to them what they have done to you.
If you do, then you lose your real brightness. Then they can rest assured because the challenge you didn't know you posed to them has been eliminated. Then they can continue to feel superior to you and judge you because you crumbled under their pressure. If you do not succumb to their attempts to belittle or degrade or intimidate or pressure, then you reveal what sort of person they really are and at the same time show them a living example of a higher standard. It makes their tactics backfire and they actually experience the upset that they intended to i
So what? The viral GPL license is not the only one that makes your software free.
What you say is factually correct yet it misses the point entirely. I like benefit of doubt so I'll assume that you were not being deliberately obtuse. If Microsoft really wanted to release source in a way that is useful for the community, then they would be compatible with the GPL or would simply use the unmodified GPL. They know very well that the vast majority of Free Software, especially that which is available for Unix-like operating systems, is GPL.
So a developer who maintains GPL software has two choices regarding the code that Microsoft releases. The first choice is to ignore it and avoid using it, because I would certainly expect Microsoft to vigorously pursue anyone who violates their license. The second choice is to abandon the GPL and release the software under the Microsoft license so that Microsoft's code could be incorporated into the project. This has two benefits for Microsoft. At the very least, they can talk a good game about how "open" they are becoming while actually doing very little for the community. At the most, they can tempt people to stop using the GPL.
The GPL and Free Software in general is perhaps Microsoft's first experience with a potential competitor that they cannot buy out and cannot embrace-and-extend, so their huge resources and preferred tactics are rendered useless. Either they just give up or they realize that they cannot use the "direct approach". I would not expect them to just give up. The saying that comes to mind is "if you get into bed with Microsoft, you're going to get fucked." Anyone who really believes that Microsoft has had a change of heart and is now a trustworthy ally of Free Software is frankly rather naive. You're dealing with an entity that became so dominant in its industry by means of shrewd business decisions and Machiavellian strategy. I would expect a close-source software company with even half of their willingness and ability to dominate to see Free Software as an implacable enemy that requires new tactics. If anyone believes it could possibly be otherwise, the evidence against you is strong but I'd like to know why you feel that way.
I don't generally use "M$" but I wanted to tell you how I see it. I see it as a way to separate the petty members of the audience who cannot overlook a small and harmless "transgression" (even that word is too strong for it) from those who are less superficial. I prefer to directly deal with wrong responses so this does not tempt me, but this is something that I wish more people understood. If I wanted to apply a self-maintaining "filter" to the audience, then I would deliberately do things like this. Then they would do all of the filtering work and categorize themselves for me because the people who balk at seeing "M$" will either decide not to respond or will soon make their objection known. Either way, they filter themselves so I would not have to, thus I could quickly move on to a post that answers whatever point I was making. They would actually self-select and assist me with disregarding them (this is the important part) no matter what their actual intentions were.
What I described above is a very basic and simple example of strategy. There is a certain mindlessness to merely re-acting to what other people do. It allows their actions to determine your behavior. Just about any predictable response that you have which can be operated in such a push-button fashion can be used against you. Now, I think that's appropriate only for an adversary who cannot be reasoned with, because other human beings are not toys and it is wrong to treat them as such (even with their active assistance). However, you can bet that your politicians and advertisers and public relations types have no such moral qualms. There are far more malicious uses of this process than having people unwittingly filter your Slashdot responses for you.
Let's say that there is a reason for that and that I can sense when I am dealing with such a person. Whether they are in the room with me, on the telephone, or on a Web site and potentially thousands of miles away is no obstacle. True insight and understanding are not the product of a deductive or inductive process, though these lower-level processes can help you to put them into words for the benefit of others. The real insight comes from connecting to the source of inspiration and it is a Divine thing, to be honored and respected by means of correct use. Connected to that source, difficult things become easy and complex things become simple and intuitive. It gives human beings the ability to perceive the true nature of things and to know the truth when they hear it. That brightness in you that others have recognized is a true gift.
Like all good things that are done for the right reason, authoring that post was its own reward. You could, in fact, reject every last part of it and insult me for writing it and this would have no power whatsoever to remove the joy I found in it. That is the contrast to what I meant by "externally motivated." Trying to upset me (especially without cause) would injure your joy and well-being, however, so it's a delight to know that you feel no such temptation. I'm not suggesting you would really be malicious, of course; I just wanted to give you a better idea of where this comes from.
When people derive important parts of their being from externals and not from the True Source, they become leaves in the wind and their joy is subject to events and outcomes which are largely beyond their control. Even their "joy" makes a mockery of joy because it is not pure; it is dependent on outcome. This is the only mode of being that psychology recognizes. The number one external with which people make this mistake is the approval and praise of other people. If you suffer without a person's approval, then you are that person's slave. This is the single biggest mistake that men make with women: they think they can have a healthy relationship at the same time that they need that woman for anything. It is a little-known fact that you can bully with phony kindness even more easily than you can bully with cruelty. When men make this mistake, they bring out the worst in a woman, the ruthlessly clever ability to manipulate, and quickly become its prey.
Subscribing to this system and its equivalents which are found in business and politics is the reason why genuine people who interact with no ulterior motives are so rare. Most of them are ignorant, operating on a sort of autopilot, and would be horrified if they could see just how fake they really are. A few of them are aware of it and enjoy the mindgames and the feeling of power; those people are very far gone. The antidote to this is quite simple: there are few things I know of which are more powerful than a truly pure motive.
You may find several meanings of "namaste." The one I like best is "that which is Divine within me salutes that which is Divine with you." It is a reminder of our true nature.