Your comparison to telephones (POTS) regarding privacy is misdirected. You have no privacy when communicating by telephone. In fact, you probably have even less privacy via telephone than you do via Internet.
When you place a telephone call, your call doesn't go directly to the receiving party. It passes through at least one third party--your telephone service provider. If you're calling next door, chances are, your neighbor has the same telephone service provider you do (again, not considering VoIP phone services). You dial the number on your phone, but the call is actually placed in your local telephone exchange's automated switchboards (routers). These switchboards are entirely digital. This presents an easily exploitable opportunity for eavesdropping and recording. Sure, the phone company might tell you they ain't been droppin' no eaves, but they're the Phone Company. They can. And without a trace of it left behind.
If you're calling across the country or across the globe, there are probably going to be two or three other phone companies involved, with satellite links bridging gaps between continents. Your call can be (and most likely is) intercepted and recorded at any point along this path.
Not to mention the fact that someone could really just strip some insulation off of your phone line(s) going into your house and hook up a handset to the exposed wires. One could even go down to their local Radio Shack, pay $5 for some QuickPort connectors (basically miniature punch blocks with built-in RJ11 jacks), and use one of those with a regular residential phone instead.
Based on my experience, the primary reason why we still don't have a stable Hurd at this point is infighting. There are several camps of people within the Hurd development "team", some of them so far separated they refuse to even be in the same IRC channel as eachother. This infighting has a few different causes, the main one being with people's impatience with eachother's ideas. Another cause is, more or less, grandstanding. Also, the fact, that some people want to port Hurd over to L4 or Coyotos while others want to stay with Mach doesn't help, either.
Doesn't HP own the rights to both HP-UX and Tru64? Why don't they just release either one or both under a free software license and ship one of these operating systems, instead? They have complete control over HP-UX and Tru64 and they have complete control over HP machines. Combining their hardware assets with their software assets just seems like a no-brainer to me.
And let it be cancelled with only a 33% vote during that time. If a large portion of the nation isn't behind a law we shouldn't all live under it.
While we're at it, why don't we apply this same suggestion to the country's top-elected officials, such as the President and Vice President? I, for one, would welcome our new Democrat overlady.
So, what do you have to say about all of the non-human animals that can and constantly do distinguish between right and wrong?
A simple example: My cats know that they're not supposed to sleep on my clean clothes as I'm folding them and putting them away. However, when I catch them in the act, they know I'm upset with them even if I don't do or say a thing. They'll immediately jump off of the clothes when I enter the room and give me that leery look. The same happens when I get home and find them digging through a tipped-over trash can, on the kitchen table/counter, or any other thing they know they're not supposed to be doing.
When you consider the rights guaranteed through the constitution apply to all people, not just citizens, one might say they are inaliable to all men. (spelling fixed)
So, what, women are left in the dust? They don't deserve the same rights? They do fall under the whole "all people" moniker, you know.
...to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads...
Well, which one is it? Surely, an omniscient deity shouldn't have difficulty telling apart a hand and a forehead. An omniscient deity would also know how to convey its message accurately to the transcriber because, well, the deity would be omniscient. Goes with the territory, you know?
Seriously, I wish you so-and-sos would stop quoting a poorly-written book that's the center of the world's largest and most pervasive cults ever. There is never a good reason to do so, and doing so only makes you look about as intelligent as a paramecium.
Well, now that would be a great way for OSS to shoot itself in the foot. "Here, we'll give you some ideological crusade disguised as a license, and we can revoke it at any time for as little as making a deal with a corporation we don't like, or having more patents than we like, or also distributing some closed source programs we don't like, or simply because we've had a bad day and don't like you any more." Dunno about Novell, but I'm willing to bet that a lot of companies would drop Linux like a hot potato. Heck, I would, and I'm writing this in Linux.
No, you wrote your tirade in a Web browser, which displays with the aid of a graphics toolkit, which runs on top of your window manager, which runs on top of X, which runs on top of the kernel called "Linux". You can't write things "in Linux". People need to understand the distinction between a kernel and some programs run on top of an operating system, which runs on top of a kernel.
This "idealogical crusade", as you put it, is what gave developers the freedoms necessary for creating Linux and all of the other free components of your operating system.
There's also a fundamental difference between free/proprietary and open source/closed source. They may look similar on the outside, but in actuality, they are very different. Generally, a person who uses free software shuns proprietary software because they understand the dangers that come coupled with it. Conversely, a person who uses open source software typically doesn't have a problem with using closed source software and often uses both in parallel without making an effort to replace the closed source software with an open source software alternative.
Free is a matter of principals and ethics. Open source is a matter of convenience and cost.
If you want to abandon the freedoms that free software affords you and lock yourself into a proprietary system where its creators have complete control over what you can and cannot do with your computer, by all means, go right on ahead. But don't come crying back to the community when Microsoft or Apple have implemented a feature in their operating system that prevents you from being able to run your open source software in conjunction with their closed source software*, because you've been warned well in advance.
To be more specific, Linus Torvalds used Minix as a model for writing Linux (a kernel) because he wanted to run Minix on an x86 machine. He was planning on spearheading an entire operating system campaign, but his "team" stopped after the kernel because they found GNU, which, coincidentally, was missing a complete kernel.
GNU, on the other hand, directly used AT&T UNIX as a model.
Many of the stories and accounts in the Bible can be and have been verified.
Tell you what. Let's all write down a summary of things that have happened within the past hundred years or so, and then add something asinine into the mix, like, say, flying pink elephants, the re-creation of the Dodo bird, or a man splitting a large body of water in half with a walking stick. Then bury these writings in a time capsule and wait a couple thousand years.
For all you know, the religious aspects of "the Bible" are nothing more than some sort of practical joke some people (read: apostles/disciples) devised as a way to really screw with people in the future. Sort of like a mass-scale e-mail hoax chain letter type of thing. Just because it's really, really old doesn't make it true. And just because some tidbit can be cross-referenced elsewhere in other historical works doesn't make it factual. Don't forget that the people who wrote these religious texts are also the ones who wrote the contents of our ancient history books.
Critics need to know these details, if they are true. If not, they need to refute them. Either way, this post was informative to me and would be to others if it weren't below most people's thresholds.
Same here. Normally, I don't actively participate in boycotts, but this is one I plan to stick with. I refuse to give Sony any more of my money after this stunt. I managed to get all of my relatives to cancel their BMG mailorder accounts, too, in light of this debacle. I've had to make several electronics purchases since the cat was let out of the bag, and I've completely turned a blind eye to Sony products. Because of this, I've also avoided anything related to Sony products. I've been a loyal PSM subscriber since near the beginning. Since I'm not getting a PS3, I have no use for a continued subscription. The same goes for the continuation of the Final Fantasy series on the PS3. And let's not forget Sony Pictures! The HD DVD/Blu-Ray debate? No contest! Blu-Ray is Sony. HD DVD FTW!
Why would we want the operating system's kernel to be bloated with drivers? The kernel should stick to what the kernel does best. Any device drivers should be separate from the kernel. Having to recompile the kernel every time a new piece of hardware is installed is extremely ridiculous. Having a modular (orthogonal) driver infrastructure is the best course of action. Hey! While we're at it, why don't we just ditch Linux and concentrate development efforts on Hurd? Hurd's a very good example of an orthogonal design, and it's more or less complete! Linus, himself, said he wouldn't have started developing Linux if Hurd was already complete in 1991. Well, now Hurd is complete, so we can all move away from this blob-infested mess. Even if the community has to fork Hurd to get it out the door*, it would be a far better alternative than what we have now.
* The community doesn't have to do this, as there's already a packaging effort underway.
...huh? Are you sure you replied to the right comment?
I, too, was bullied all throughout my childhood. I was always sick, and so I was always the smallest and weakest. Yeah, I got cuts and bruises. Do I still have them now? No. However, each and every experience as a child shapes us into who we are as an adult. As I got older, I got bigger. Before I knew it, I was the tallest person in the crowd, and people stopped bullying me. Just because the bullying had stopped doesn't mean the residual mental effects of past bullying magically disappeared. Physical wounds heal rather quickly, even deep ones. I wouldn't say the same thing about mental wounds, though, and just like a physical scar, a mental one is prone to reinjury.
Think of a domestic abuse victim, who constantly gets smacked across the face if they anger their abuser. The slightest raise in voice from the abuser would receive a certain response, probably in preparation to getting smacked across the face. Years later, this abuse victim is free of their abuser. They don't have bruises on their face anymore. However, when they feel they've angered someone, you can't possibly tell me they won't still get nervous and instinctually brace for a smack.
I'd say you are the troll here, unless you'd like to vindicate yourself, in which case, feel free.
There are these things called real life, fresh air, exercise, well-being, and real-world experience. Some people equate the value of life to how much experience one has gained throughout its course. Here, in case you're new to these concepts:
If you need help coping, just remember: Take it easy. One day at a time.
CAPTCHA: ejected, as in what you should be, from your seat.
Not trying to troll or flame, just a bit perplexed about people's apparent inability to comprehend the differences between life (having one, that is) and living. Computers exist to augment our lives, not to replace them. I'm not saying I'm perfect, either. Computers are my career and a hobby of mine. It's easy to become assimilated. However, every once in a while, you just have to take a step back and enjoy life, otherwise you might just end up missing it. I've personally found the aspects of Taoism that concentrate on dualism and balance to be especially helpful when trying to keep everything in my life together. See also Thelema and, to a lesser extent, Satanism.
What's wrong with peer review? It was working for Blue Frog.
What if there were some form of a trust network? People designate other people as part of their trust network, and so on and so on. Then, each individual person maintains their own personal list of valid URLs with optional wildcards. If someone comes across a domain that's been squatted, they add the entire domain to their own blacklist. People who are connected to this individual could then opt to receive notifications of these types of actions and also add the domain to their own blacklist. Enough blacklist hits will raise the "spam" level of a Web site. Elevated "spam" levels can send the suspect Web site to a special queue that search engine maintainers can manually check for validity at their option.
To go a step further, instead of limiting levels to "spam" sites, this trust network could incorporate a predefined list of labels/tags. User-generated labels/tags could be added to a flag list to be adopted as "official".
Basically, what I'm envisioning is a semi-peer-to-peer* del.icio.us or digg, based on a protocol like FOAF, with a lookup service comparable to SpamAssassin/SpamCop. In the event there are issues with the central "authority" of this network**, it could switch over to a completely peer-to-peer network, eliminating the absolute need for core servers***.
* See also NTP, DNS. ** See also Blue Security/Blue Frog. ** See also Okopipi Project.
+4 Insightful? What are you mods thinking? Just because copyright disappears doesn't mean you now magically have all of the source code for a binary executable. It just means you can "pirate" binary-only/proprietary/"closed source" programs without fear of legal consequences. Free distribution of a proprietary program doesn't suddenly make the program not proprietary.
I am an avid free software supporter and I completely agree with you. Instead of everyone forking projects or creating five different beta quality solutions that all aim to accomplish the same thing, everyone should be pooling their resources together to perfect the projects that are already out there. We should have a handful of mainstream distributions. Ideally, we'd only have one base "meta-distribution" with other special-purpose distributions building off of the base, and everyone working on a distribution would be combining all of their efforts into one big massive distribution effort.
GNOME / KDE? It seems like they're going in the same directions. Why not just merge the two and create a very, very good desktop environment instead of two good ones? They do the same things, just a little bit differently. With all of the advances in i18n and the like, I'm sure the developers could add extra customization "switches" in the meta-environment to make it behave the way people expect. The same thing with Enlightenment. Or Amarok / Rhythmbox. Or Xine / Mplayer. Or Galeon / Konqueror. Or HURD / Linux. Or...
Instead of starting all new projects and being counterproductive, why don't we all "just get along"? Think of all the work and all the progress made with "rival" free software applications. Now just imagine how much further along / stable / more advanced they'd be if all of that work were done on one project instead of two, three, four...
Most people will either look the phone number up when they need it on their bank's Web site, on their monthly statement, or on the back of their bank card. Trusting sensitive phone numbers (where a "man in the middle" type of attack could be devastating) to a computer address book is a bad idea, anyway.
I've never heard of a cell phone address book hack, however I'd be equally hesitant to store these phone numbers in my cell phone address book, especially if that cell phone is running an OS like Windows Mobile.
2020? Why don't we get started NOW? While NASA is going through the R&D stages of its first base, let's say "Moon Unit Alpha", they could be accepting donations from the collective public. That way, if their federal funding is cut, they still have funds to fall back on. If everyone interested in seeing "Moon Unit Alpha" donated some money, say, as part of a "NASA Supporters Club", with the option for recurring monthly membership fees, then NASA would essentially have a limitless supply of funds. Hmmm... Not only would they be able to build a "Moon Unit Alpha", but they could move on to "Moon Unit Beta" and eventually "Moon Unit Zappa"!
I'm sure many people would jump at the chance to have the ability to say they actively funded the building of a moon base. I know I would!
Slashdot Mirror
Your comparison to telephones (POTS) regarding privacy is misdirected. You have no privacy when communicating by telephone. In fact, you probably have even less privacy via telephone than you do via Internet.
When you place a telephone call, your call doesn't go directly to the receiving party. It passes through at least one third party--your telephone service provider. If you're calling next door, chances are, your neighbor has the same telephone service provider you do (again, not considering VoIP phone services). You dial the number on your phone, but the call is actually placed in your local telephone exchange's automated switchboards (routers). These switchboards are entirely digital. This presents an easily exploitable opportunity for eavesdropping and recording. Sure, the phone company might tell you they ain't been droppin' no eaves, but they're the Phone Company. They can. And without a trace of it left behind.
If you're calling across the country or across the globe, there are probably going to be two or three other phone companies involved, with satellite links bridging gaps between continents. Your call can be (and most likely is) intercepted and recorded at any point along this path.
Not to mention the fact that someone could really just strip some insulation off of your phone line(s) going into your house and hook up a handset to the exposed wires. One could even go down to their local Radio Shack, pay $5 for some QuickPort connectors (basically miniature punch blocks with built-in RJ11 jacks), and use one of those with a regular residential phone instead.
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSTN for more info on how the POTS phone system works and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_tapping for more info on just how easy it is to listen in on people's "private" phone conversations.
Based on my experience, the primary reason why we still don't have a stable Hurd at this point is infighting. There are several camps of people within the Hurd development "team", some of them so far separated they refuse to even be in the same IRC channel as eachother. This infighting has a few different causes, the main one being with people's impatience with eachother's ideas. Another cause is, more or less, grandstanding. Also, the fact, that some people want to port Hurd over to L4 or Coyotos while others want to stay with Mach doesn't help, either.
i crokernel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Hurd#Choice_of_m
RMS has little to do with any of it.
OTOH, there is a pretty high-priority movement to get GNU(/Hurd) packaged and officially released, which, based on what I last saw, has the support of everyone mentioned above: http://gnu.org/s/packaging & http://www.update.uu.se/~ams/home/todo
Doesn't HP own the rights to both HP-UX and Tru64? Why don't they just release either one or both under a free software license and ship one of these operating systems, instead? They have complete control over HP-UX and Tru64 and they have complete control over HP machines. Combining their hardware assets with their software assets just seems like a no-brainer to me.
It sounds like you should be retaining a lawyer and/or having the school investigated. Go to the (real) media. Write/call your local government.
Does your nephew's mother have the option of enrolling him in an alternate school, or are all schools in your area like this?
The very fact that the school is treating you like you're your nephew's legal guardian is most certainly illegal (note: IANAL).
it's just an anmimal and doesn't know better
So, what do you have to say about all of the non-human animals that can and constantly do distinguish between right and wrong?
A simple example: My cats know that they're not supposed to sleep on my clean clothes as I'm folding them and putting them away. However, when I catch them in the act, they know I'm upset with them even if I don't do or say a thing. They'll immediately jump off of the clothes when I enter the room and give me that leery look. The same happens when I get home and find them digging through a tipped-over trash can, on the kitchen table/counter, or any other thing they know they're not supposed to be doing.
When you consider the rights guaranteed through the constitution apply to all people, not just citizens, one might say they are inaliable to all men. (spelling fixed)
So, what, women are left in the dust? They don't deserve the same rights? They do fall under the whole "all people" moniker, you know.
...to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads...
Well, which one is it? Surely, an omniscient deity shouldn't have difficulty telling apart a hand and a forehead. An omniscient deity would also know how to convey its message accurately to the transcriber because, well, the deity would be omniscient. Goes with the territory, you know?
Seriously, I wish you so-and-sos would stop quoting a poorly-written book that's the center of the world's largest and most pervasive cults ever. There is never a good reason to do so, and doing so only makes you look about as intelligent as a paramecium.
I eat bible-thumpers for breakfast!
Well, now that would be a great way for OSS to shoot itself in the foot. "Here, we'll give you some ideological crusade disguised as a license, and we can revoke it at any time for as little as making a deal with a corporation we don't like, or having more patents than we like, or also distributing some closed source programs we don't like, or simply because we've had a bad day and don't like you any more." Dunno about Novell, but I'm willing to bet that a lot of companies would drop Linux like a hot potato. Heck, I would, and I'm writing this in Linux.
No, you wrote your tirade in a Web browser, which displays with the aid of a graphics toolkit, which runs on top of your window manager, which runs on top of X, which runs on top of the kernel called "Linux". You can't write things "in Linux". People need to understand the distinction between a kernel and some programs run on top of an operating system, which runs on top of a kernel.
This "idealogical crusade", as you put it, is what gave developers the freedoms necessary for creating Linux and all of the other free components of your operating system.
There's also a fundamental difference between free/proprietary and open source/closed source. They may look similar on the outside, but in actuality, they are very different. Generally, a person who uses free software shuns proprietary software because they understand the dangers that come coupled with it. Conversely, a person who uses open source software typically doesn't have a problem with using closed source software and often uses both in parallel without making an effort to replace the closed source software with an open source software alternative.
Free is a matter of principals and ethics. Open source is a matter of convenience and cost.
If you want to abandon the freedoms that free software affords you and lock yourself into a proprietary system where its creators have complete control over what you can and cannot do with your computer, by all means, go right on ahead. But don't come crying back to the community when Microsoft or Apple have implemented a feature in their operating system that prevents you from being able to run your open source software in conjunction with their closed source software*, because you've been warned well in advance.
* See also Trusted Computing.
To be more specific, Linus Torvalds used Minix as a model for writing Linux (a kernel) because he wanted to run Minix on an x86 machine. He was planning on spearheading an entire operating system campaign, but his "team" stopped after the kernel because they found GNU, which, coincidentally, was missing a complete kernel.
GNU, on the other hand, directly used AT&T UNIX as a model.
See also http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-history.html
Many of the stories and accounts in the Bible can be and have been verified.
Tell you what. Let's all write down a summary of things that have happened within the past hundred years or so, and then add something asinine into the mix, like, say, flying pink elephants, the re-creation of the Dodo bird, or a man splitting a large body of water in half with a walking stick. Then bury these writings in a time capsule and wait a couple thousand years.
For all you know, the religious aspects of "the Bible" are nothing more than some sort of practical joke some people (read: apostles/disciples) devised as a way to really screw with people in the future. Sort of like a mass-scale e-mail hoax chain letter type of thing. Just because it's really, really old doesn't make it true. And just because some tidbit can be cross-referenced elsewhere in other historical works doesn't make it factual. Don't forget that the people who wrote these religious texts are also the ones who wrote the contents of our ancient history books.
Critics need to know these details, if they are true. If not, they need to refute them. Either way, this post was informative to me and would be to others if it weren't below most people's thresholds.
- Ada Lovelace
- Ken Thompson
- Dennis Ritchie
- Douglas McIlroy
- Brian Kernighan
- Richard M. Stallman
- Linus Torvalds
- Alan Turing
- Donald Knuth
- Martin Cooper
Next.Same here. Normally, I don't actively participate in boycotts, but this is one I plan to stick with. I refuse to give Sony any more of my money after this stunt. I managed to get all of my relatives to cancel their BMG mailorder accounts, too, in light of this debacle. I've had to make several electronics purchases since the cat was let out of the bag, and I've completely turned a blind eye to Sony products. Because of this, I've also avoided anything related to Sony products. I've been a loyal PSM subscriber since near the beginning. Since I'm not getting a PS3, I have no use for a continued subscription. The same goes for the continuation of the Final Fantasy series on the PS3. And let's not forget Sony Pictures! The HD DVD/Blu-Ray debate? No contest! Blu-Ray is Sony. HD DVD FTW!
Why would we want the operating system's kernel to be bloated with drivers? The kernel should stick to what the kernel does best. Any device drivers should be separate from the kernel. Having to recompile the kernel every time a new piece of hardware is installed is extremely ridiculous. Having a modular (orthogonal) driver infrastructure is the best course of action. Hey! While we're at it, why don't we just ditch Linux and concentrate development efforts on Hurd? Hurd's a very good example of an orthogonal design, and it's more or less complete! Linus, himself, said he wouldn't have started developing Linux if Hurd was already complete in 1991. Well, now Hurd is complete, so we can all move away from this blob-infested mess. Even if the community has to fork Hurd to get it out the door*, it would be a far better alternative than what we have now.
* The community doesn't have to do this, as there's already a packaging effort underway.
...huh? Are you sure you replied to the right comment?
I, too, was bullied all throughout my childhood. I was always sick, and so I was always the smallest and weakest. Yeah, I got cuts and bruises. Do I still have them now? No. However, each and every experience as a child shapes us into who we are as an adult. As I got older, I got bigger. Before I knew it, I was the tallest person in the crowd, and people stopped bullying me. Just because the bullying had stopped doesn't mean the residual mental effects of past bullying magically disappeared. Physical wounds heal rather quickly, even deep ones. I wouldn't say the same thing about mental wounds, though, and just like a physical scar, a mental one is prone to reinjury.
Think of a domestic abuse victim, who constantly gets smacked across the face if they anger their abuser. The slightest raise in voice from the abuser would receive a certain response, probably in preparation to getting smacked across the face. Years later, this abuse victim is free of their abuser. They don't have bruises on their face anymore. However, when they feel they've angered someone, you can't possibly tell me they won't still get nervous and instinctually brace for a smack.
I'd say you are the troll here, unless you'd like to vindicate yourself, in which case, feel free.
There are these things called real life, fresh air, exercise, well-being, and real-world experience. Some people equate the value of life to how much experience one has gained throughout its course. Here, in case you're new to these concepts:
If you need help coping, just remember: Take it easy. One day at a time.
CAPTCHA: ejected, as in what you should be, from your seat.
Not trying to troll or flame, just a bit perplexed about people's apparent inability to comprehend the differences between life (having one, that is) and living. Computers exist to augment our lives, not to replace them. I'm not saying I'm perfect, either. Computers are my career and a hobby of mine. It's easy to become assimilated. However, every once in a while, you just have to take a step back and enjoy life, otherwise you might just end up missing it. I've personally found the aspects of Taoism that concentrate on dualism and balance to be especially helpful when trying to keep everything in my life together. See also Thelema and, to a lesser extent, Satanism.
What's wrong with peer review? It was working for Blue Frog.
What if there were some form of a trust network? People designate other people as part of their trust network, and so on and so on. Then, each individual person maintains their own personal list of valid URLs with optional wildcards. If someone comes across a domain that's been squatted, they add the entire domain to their own blacklist. People who are connected to this individual could then opt to receive notifications of these types of actions and also add the domain to their own blacklist. Enough blacklist hits will raise the "spam" level of a Web site. Elevated "spam" levels can send the suspect Web site to a special queue that search engine maintainers can manually check for validity at their option.
To go a step further, instead of limiting levels to "spam" sites, this trust network could incorporate a predefined list of labels/tags. User-generated labels/tags could be added to a flag list to be adopted as "official".
Basically, what I'm envisioning is a semi-peer-to-peer* del.icio.us or digg, based on a protocol like FOAF, with a lookup service comparable to SpamAssassin/SpamCop. In the event there are issues with the central "authority" of this network**, it could switch over to a completely peer-to-peer network, eliminating the absolute need for core servers***.
* See also NTP, DNS.
** See also Blue Security/Blue Frog.
** See also Okopipi Project.
The list goes on! The parents could sue...
I could keep going, but my brain hurts. I'm not used to thinking like an imbecile. Next!
Whoa, you can customize Final Fantasy 3? US or Japan? FF3 US is still my favorite out of the series...
a bbreviate
Oh. You're talking about Firefox? Please don't use "FF" to abbreviate Firefox, which is one word. Use "Fx" or "fx", instead. See also http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/faq#spell-
+4 Insightful? What are you mods thinking? Just because copyright disappears doesn't mean you now magically have all of the source code for a binary executable. It just means you can "pirate" binary-only/proprietary/"closed source" programs without fear of legal consequences. Free distribution of a proprietary program doesn't suddenly make the program not proprietary.
I am an avid free software supporter and I completely agree with you. Instead of everyone forking projects or creating five different beta quality solutions that all aim to accomplish the same thing, everyone should be pooling their resources together to perfect the projects that are already out there. We should have a handful of mainstream distributions. Ideally, we'd only have one base "meta-distribution" with other special-purpose distributions building off of the base, and everyone working on a distribution would be combining all of their efforts into one big massive distribution effort.
...
GNOME / KDE? It seems like they're going in the same directions. Why not just merge the two and create a very, very good desktop environment instead of two good ones? They do the same things, just a little bit differently. With all of the advances in i18n and the like, I'm sure the developers could add extra customization "switches" in the meta-environment to make it behave the way people expect. The same thing with Enlightenment. Or Amarok / Rhythmbox. Or Xine / Mplayer. Or Galeon / Konqueror. Or HURD / Linux. Or
Instead of starting all new projects and being counterproductive, why don't we all "just get along"? Think of all the work and all the progress made with "rival" free software applications. Now just imagine how much further along / stable / more advanced they'd be if all of that work were done on one project instead of two, three, four...
Most people will either look the phone number up when they need it on their bank's Web site, on their monthly statement, or on the back of their bank card. Trusting sensitive phone numbers (where a "man in the middle" type of attack could be devastating) to a computer address book is a bad idea, anyway.
I've never heard of a cell phone address book hack, however I'd be equally hesitant to store these phone numbers in my cell phone address book, especially if that cell phone is running an OS like Windows Mobile.
2020? Why don't we get started NOW? While NASA is going through the R&D stages of its first base, let's say "Moon Unit Alpha", they could be accepting donations from the collective public. That way, if their federal funding is cut, they still have funds to fall back on. If everyone interested in seeing "Moon Unit Alpha" donated some money, say, as part of a "NASA Supporters Club", with the option for recurring monthly membership fees, then NASA would essentially have a limitless supply of funds. Hmmm... Not only would they be able to build a "Moon Unit Alpha", but they could move on to "Moon Unit Beta" and eventually "Moon Unit Zappa"!
I'm sure many people would jump at the chance to have the ability to say they actively funded the building of a moon base. I know I would!