That's like complaining that the Fountainhead seems to promote individualism, or 1984 seems down on totalitarianism, or that Mein Kampf seems a touch racist. It's the goal of the author, and it's not hidden.
He's not out to "manipulate", he's out to convert, and then to improve the behavior of the converted. That might be the same thing as manipulation in the books of many folks, and I can definitely see how you wouldn't want that out of a fantasy series...
But honestly, CS Lewis pretty much wrote Christian propaganda, books on why he's not an atheist, etc...
It's just like complaining that when you went walking in the rain you got wet, is all.
I have Comcast, which occasionally has DNS issues (when it goes into "does not work" for a couple hours, that's often their DNSes going down).
Anyway, I plugged Googles IP into my hosts file, thus allowing me to get nifty things (like alternative DNSes and how to make my machine use them, along with possible fixes to future problems) from the Gcache.
The fact that they've basically backed up the Internet is, uh, interesting.
In the last story I had made a crack about the good M$ news not being newsworthy, but here it is.
Congrats to Microsoft! Fighting for equal rights is always cool by me.
I'm also liking the discussion of whether this is the proper role of companies. I argue that it is, but that such a bill being passed is actually *counter* to Microsoft's (or any other company that does *not* discriminate) best interests.
If I run Software company X, and I don't want to hire gay people, I'm artificially limiting my supply of employees. I'm overpaying for my supply because of this fact. Company Y, guided by a rational hand, now has a pool of folks who cannot work at X, and therefore has a larger pool of labor to choose from. Basically, Y gains a benefit for being smart (in history, this had problems, because everyone was stupid in the same way at the same time, hence the original laws that prevent you from firing a black person for being black).
Anyway, the point is, it's actually *against* their best interest to see their enlightened hiring practices spread far and wide (to their competitors). Cynically, they perhaps hope that the good reputation they gain will more than offset this, but it could just be because they believe it's the right thing to do. Certainly some of them do.
You are not required to carry an ID or a driver's license (though you may be in order to go about activities like driving). That's your first mistake. The USA is not the land of "papers, please". You can *choose* to do it (my job required a full background check, drug test, fingerprinting, but if I needed it just to exist I'd be pissed).
The argument "Law abiding folk have nothing to fear" is used time and time again by oppresive governments. It's not the American way.
That said, I'm pretty sure a national ID card is largely inevitable, and if they can implement it correctly (which this is not), it probably won't be used to violate civil rights left and right.
I care because it's a bad precedent, a step towards a land that is less free and more monitored. Have you seen some of the stuff that is illegal in some places? Certain sex consensual sex acts are just the start.
I also don't think it's a problem with the *current* government, but a potentially evil *future* one.
It's inherently a bad idea to build an infrastructure that a Hitler or a Stalin can immediately exploit should such a villian cease power, and this is a step in that direction.
This describes how I make all my moderate or large online purchases to a tee (things less than 20 bucks I'll just buy right away, usually, but then they are a small, small fraction of my total online spending).
What I'd like to see is for the crap pschyological tricks to stop. For instance, some items on Amazon won't show you the price until you add them to your cart. This pretty much defeats the whole point of a shopping cart / non shopping cart, and coincidentally, the Amazon shopping cart is not something I think about in the same way as I do at other websites.
I think "Time is an illusion" is an easier way to say it. If you have a picture you and a friend are looking at, and he wonders if the right side can ever travel to the left side and modify things, you'd wonder what he was talking about. I would argue that time is like that: static if viewed from enough dimensions, available for observation (in theory) as one massive N dimensional statue.
Look, I *LOVE* the no sounds in space (the preview seems to have them, but hopefully it's just for the trailer).
But what's their reason for revolvers? I don't recall them addressing it, and I've seen the entire season on DVD. I don't recall it being a big issue all the time, either. I know that the bad guys (the statist big government types) have energy weapons, and pretty much no one else, which seems either well explained or is strongly implied. But do they address revolvers over autoloaders? Cause a big famous design in autoloaders here in realworld is the 1911, named for the year, and it's quite popular still.
First, they pimp the food triangle. Now, the current one is way, way, better than the older one- but these are the guys that would pimp the older one too, because it's what the government says is best.
Well, we know that one was wrong now!
They talk about flouride as if it were necessary (they imply it's a nutrient!) but it really just replaces calcium in your teeth, making them softer and less hospitable to bacteria. Certainly not something that is necessary, more of a hack. Here in America I get wacky looks just for saying that (usually with a "purity of our natural essences" crack), but in Europe, how common is Flouridation?
Oh yea, right. It's very rare, having been tried and found wanting.
This site claims to have the truth. They're a lot more reasonable sounding than most quacks, but they have their agenda, and it sure isn't neutral.
Seriously, a religious troll in your sig? That's great. To make it better, it's actually a "my God(s) is/are better than your God(s)" troll.
Anyway, yea, I get upset about sound in space, because space doesn't have any fucking sound in it, because it's space.
Where there's no sound.
I watch very, very, little TV. Less than an hour per week this year and last, and only a little more before that. Firefly was one of a few exceptions to that, because it was so much better than than other shows that I actually wanted to watch it instead of doing other things. It wasn't perfect, but their clear willingness to try (silent space scenes among the elements) meant that it was worth my time.
Changing that now would be both a sell out and a different take on things completely.
My priorities are, of course, none of your business;)
That seen bugged me (more disturbing is the fact that they would be anywhere close to each other unless they were going between the same two points). There's others like it.
But it's still the hardest SF I've ever seen on TV.
Oh, they made some comment in the pilot at least, something about "rabbitting", which I assumed was their FTL. But it shows up a bunch: the glowy-butt part of Serenity glows and a pretty burst emanates, and poof, they are gone.
Still harder scifi than you'll see outside of a novel.
Well, honestly, fuck anybody who isn't a geek. They have all the other movies to pollute with their antiscientific expectations, right?
This is the hardest sci-fi I've ever seen in a series, and it still manages to pull off a focus on the characters as well. It's crazy good.
Defending all that stuff in Star Trek/Wars, Babylon 5, etc... well, that's fine. That's how those things go. I don't hold them to near the same standards as I do Firefly, that's for sure. It would be like expecting cartoons to obey the laws of physics, or news to be impartial, or sports shows to discuss math.
The first space seen in Firefly had me shouting at the edge of my seat, screaming at the TV, telling it how badass it was, and encouraging it to continue.
I don't really care how they do it in theaters, as long as they do. It would be crappy for the show to be one way, and the movie another.
I'll see it opening night if I can, unless it gets terrible reviews from smart people. But honestly, the trailer looks good, so it's probably ok.
Except for those sound effects, which I hope are trailer specific.
One of the big selling points of Firefly was that sound doesn't travel in space, so the space scenes have no sound. It was soooo cool, I couldn't not watch it. I really hope someone in the know can tell me whether that crap is in the movie or if it's just in the trailer.
Firefly was far too good to remain on the air, sadly.
PalmOne Treo 600 or 650 (600 is a reasonable price, but maybe more than everyone wants to pay, 650 I would call expensive) will serve your needs nicely, today. You don't have to wait for Dell to figure out exactly how much they can charge and get you to pay (hint: it'll be comperable to a Treo today).
The problem is that, if you the client (the searcher) search on a website that gives emphasis to hits that have paid you in some fashion, that's dubious. One of the early Google tricks was to get the sponsored links out of your face and denoted as such. In this case, however, it's actually worse*, because the sponsored links are being unfairly weighted for something utterly unrelated to content.
* Assuming it's true. This claim seems rather strong. Microsoft has no reason to do this without publicizing it ("use our products and be higher ranked"), and publicizing it would destroy their credibility. I personally believe that there is a better explanation than the one we are left to infer.
Microsoft is in a weak position in search, but not so weak that they would need this kind of duplicity. Why, when they can make themselves the default search engine of so many, would they go through the effort of making a wacky backdoor that will only bring them bad news? I'm not buying it.
That there was an article by an Open Source guy on the relevant website. Basically, the claim was that RMS was making up the division between them, and that they were really the same- except that RMS was dragging his heels about things.
The idea was that Free was just a certain type of Open, a subset in practice and not an upper level division like he implied.
I just didn't want to make a post that could be seen as inflammatory by someone who thinks that RMS has gone to far, or whatever.
Anyway, I didn't agree with the article when I read it. But making a neutral post when so many givens are disputed by *someone*, *somewhere*, is hard.
I love it when people do this. Your post doesn't specifically address me, but you did reply to me instead of the parent... Let's line-by-line!
"BK was used for kernel development. The Linux kernel. Hence, RMS calls it "Linux", because that is its name."
No one will disagree that Linux is a kernel. No one will disagree that its name is "Linux".
"In order for RMS to write "GNU/Linux" development, he would have to mean that the ENTIRE OS (meaning, kernel and all above components) used BK, which would be impossible and silly."
Note, "HE would have to mean". RMS has naming conventions, and he follows them strictly. I neither agree or disagree with HIS naming conventions, I merely note what would have to transpire for the parent's assessment to be correct.
"He also name drops GNU/Linux, mentioning that Linux has such visibility that it is often mistaken for the entire GNU/Linux OS."
Again, I'm paraphrasing RMS here.
"Whether you agree or disagree with RMS's naming conventions, he was not in any way inconsistent here."
I make sure to end on a neutral tone, hoping that no one could possibly mistake my post for an endorsement or a criticism of RMS's naming convention, an emotional topic throughout all of nerdtopia.
But, personally, I don't like RMS's move to rename the OS. I understand that he started a movement, organized, worked his ass off, and did it all for everyone, for principle, and also for fame (he's still a man, after all, and wants and deserves recognition for his life work- he certainly didn't get rewarded with billions of dollars here). It *IS* unfair that people say "Linux" while actually meaning a lot of GNU utilities (and other non-Linux things). There was first a "Lignux" thing, which I've never seen the details on, but it strikes me as sort of petty. And then to call it by a slash delimited name... well, it's not helping anyone.
People give things the names that they want. Corporations have found this out, as their trademarks become genericized and such. Language works like that. Microsoft has a billion versions of their OSes, but people know what you mean when you say "Windows". "Linux" is similar.
But the GPL doesn't give Stallman the right to try to persuade people to give it a name that lets his organization share the kudos that it deserves: he's ALWAYS had that right.
I would be a lot happier if Linus and RMS could just agree on a name. But, they don't really get along, and I'm not about to take sides on an issue that I know maybe 7% of what's going on about.
It's all names and ideas, and seems silly to an outsider, but the entire universe these programs exist in is names and ideas. Seeing graphics that portray the GNU as a mighty hero and a tiny Tux as a mascot can't be viewed as fair, either.
It' sa complex issue, and I don't wanna take sides on it. Hence the neutral post above.
I've wondered about this myself. In an essay (one of the ones in "Free Software, Free Society", and assuredly on his webpage or fsf's as well) he mentions that it is acceptable to run non-free software in order to develop a free alternative- so, it's acceptable to run Unix until a Linux kernel and a bunch of free tools enable development on a free platform, it's acceptable to have a PC running windows to make sure you can interoperate with Word, etc.
I find myself seeing his points but being unwilling to condemn closed source stuff. I guess that puts me more in the open source camp than the free software camp, but I do agree that the freedom you get with the source code an a friendly license are reassuring on many levels beyond simply getting better software.
(To avoid a half-troll myself, I'd like to point out that RMS's categories of software are disputed by more than a few, the Free/Open duality being attacked in particular)
The fact that he's idealogically hard edged is *why* he's controversial, recall.
Anyway, I'm glad of the announcement. I was hoping he'd throw in a final word after everyone else ran around, spurting blood.
Reading RMS is like a guilty pleasure.;)
To answer your question, my understanding is that RMS would rather have you develop a free alternative instead of ignoring the task, and in doing so solve the problem for you and the others that come after you.
BK was used for kernel development. The Linux kernel. Hence, RMS calls it "Linux", because that is its name.
In order for RMS to write "GNU/Linux" development, he would have to mean that the ENTIRE OS (meaning, kernel and all above components) used BK, which would be impossible and silly.
He also name drops GNU/Linux, mentioning that Linux has such visibility that it is often mistaken for the entire GNU/Linux OS.
Whether you agree or disagree with RMS's naming conventions, he was not in any way inconsistent here.
Seriously, someone wrote "64 bit support"? Is that legit? So, innovation is supporting the new hardware? That's absurd. So, is Apple copying Dell by offering compatibility with the latest video card or whatever?
Stoooooopid.
Most of these other things are built into an average Linux distro. Additionally, if you buy a Dell, many of them are just as present, as OEM addons.
Look, I'm sure Microsoft *is* copying Apple where they can. They always have, for my entire life. But the list of crap they are moaning about is ridiculous.
At work I have, literally, dozens of passwords, all required to be unique. This one has to be six characters. This one has to be eight. This one has to be greater than eight. A random mash of letters I can remember, invulnerable to any meaningful attack? NOPE, sorry, we need a number and a symbol. Within the first four characters.
This is stupid, stupid, shit. I remember some, and others need to be reset constantly.
Others? Well, they remember what they can and write down the rest.
It's really, really, dumb. Asinine password schemes anger me to no end. If all my passwords were randomly generated, I would simply have a big list of all my passwords. Make the consequences for doing that dire enough, and I would simply never remember a password past a couple of days.
Such stupid shit.
Can someone post that giant "I am a GNOME developer and I like it but I hate it and KDE is better and that is inherent in C++" troll?
Cause that thing shows up an average of 1.5 times per slashdot thing mentioning GNOME, and it'll often get modded insightful or interesting by mods who read the first two (noninflammatory) paragraphs.
Ok, this *is* news for nerds, and is *does* matter, but when Microsoft announced that they were backing the bill, did that make/.?
Granted, I enjoy M$ bashing too, but deciding to do *no* thing instead of the *right* thing (and you could easily make the point that this isn't something Microsoft should be involved in- I'd refute it, but you could make the point) isn't Microsoft being bad.
But seriously, did the original announcement of them backing this bill make Slashdot, or not?
Slashdot Mirror
That's like complaining that the Fountainhead seems to promote individualism, or 1984 seems down on totalitarianism, or that Mein Kampf seems a touch racist. It's the goal of the author, and it's not hidden.
He's not out to "manipulate", he's out to convert, and then to improve the behavior of the converted. That might be the same thing as manipulation in the books of many folks, and I can definitely see how you wouldn't want that out of a fantasy series...
But honestly, CS Lewis pretty much wrote Christian propaganda, books on why he's not an atheist, etc...
It's just like complaining that when you went walking in the rain you got wet, is all.
I have Comcast, which occasionally has DNS issues (when it goes into "does not work" for a couple hours, that's often their DNSes going down).
Anyway, I plugged Googles IP into my hosts file, thus allowing me to get nifty things (like alternative DNSes and how to make my machine use them, along with possible fixes to future problems) from the Gcache.
The fact that they've basically backed up the Internet is, uh, interesting.
I see where you are coming from, but I can't totally agree with you. Crushes on lesbians tend to go unrequited ;)
In the last story I had made a crack about the good M$ news not being newsworthy, but here it is.
Congrats to Microsoft! Fighting for equal rights is always cool by me.
I'm also liking the discussion of whether this is the proper role of companies. I argue that it is, but that such a bill being passed is actually *counter* to Microsoft's (or any other company that does *not* discriminate) best interests.
If I run Software company X, and I don't want to hire gay people, I'm artificially limiting my supply of employees. I'm overpaying for my supply because of this fact. Company Y, guided by a rational hand, now has a pool of folks who cannot work at X, and therefore has a larger pool of labor to choose from. Basically, Y gains a benefit for being smart (in history, this had problems, because everyone was stupid in the same way at the same time, hence the original laws that prevent you from firing a black person for being black).
Anyway, the point is, it's actually *against* their best interest to see their enlightened hiring practices spread far and wide (to their competitors). Cynically, they perhaps hope that the good reputation they gain will more than offset this, but it could just be because they believe it's the right thing to do. Certainly some of them do.
You are not required to carry an ID or a driver's license (though you may be in order to go about activities like driving). That's your first mistake. The USA is not the land of "papers, please". You can *choose* to do it (my job required a full background check, drug test, fingerprinting, but if I needed it just to exist I'd be pissed).
The argument "Law abiding folk have nothing to fear" is used time and time again by oppresive governments. It's not the American way.
That said, I'm pretty sure a national ID card is largely inevitable, and if they can implement it correctly (which this is not), it probably won't be used to violate civil rights left and right.
I care because it's a bad precedent, a step towards a land that is less free and more monitored. Have you seen some of the stuff that is illegal in some places? Certain sex consensual sex acts are just the start.
I also don't think it's a problem with the *current* government, but a potentially evil *future* one.
It's inherently a bad idea to build an infrastructure that a Hitler or a Stalin can immediately exploit should such a villian cease power, and this is a step in that direction.
This describes how I make all my moderate or large online purchases to a tee (things less than 20 bucks I'll just buy right away, usually, but then they are a small, small fraction of my total online spending).
What I'd like to see is for the crap pschyological tricks to stop. For instance, some items on Amazon won't show you the price until you add them to your cart. This pretty much defeats the whole point of a shopping cart / non shopping cart, and coincidentally, the Amazon shopping cart is not something I think about in the same way as I do at other websites.
I think "Time is an illusion" is an easier way to say it. If you have a picture you and a friend are looking at, and he wonders if the right side can ever travel to the left side and modify things, you'd wonder what he was talking about. I would argue that time is like that: static if viewed from enough dimensions, available for observation (in theory) as one massive N dimensional statue.
Look, I *LOVE* the no sounds in space (the preview seems to have them, but hopefully it's just for the trailer).
But what's their reason for revolvers? I don't recall them addressing it, and I've seen the entire season on DVD. I don't recall it being a big issue all the time, either. I know that the bad guys (the statist big government types) have energy weapons, and pretty much no one else, which seems either well explained or is strongly implied. But do they address revolvers over autoloaders? Cause a big famous design in autoloaders here in realworld is the 1911, named for the year, and it's quite popular still.
Seems kinda, uh, opinionated.
First, they pimp the food triangle. Now, the current one is way, way, better than the older one- but these are the guys that would pimp the older one too, because it's what the government says is best.
Well, we know that one was wrong now!
They talk about flouride as if it were necessary (they imply it's a nutrient!) but it really just replaces calcium in your teeth, making them softer and less hospitable to bacteria. Certainly not something that is necessary, more of a hack. Here in America I get wacky looks just for saying that (usually with a "purity of our natural essences" crack), but in Europe, how common is Flouridation?
Oh yea, right. It's very rare, having been tried and found wanting.
This site claims to have the truth. They're a lot more reasonable sounding than most quacks, but they have their agenda, and it sure isn't neutral.
Seriously, a religious troll in your sig? That's great. To make it better, it's actually a "my God(s) is/are better than your God(s)" troll.
;)
Anyway, yea, I get upset about sound in space, because space doesn't have any fucking sound in it, because it's space.
Where there's no sound.
I watch very, very, little TV. Less than an hour per week this year and last, and only a little more before that. Firefly was one of a few exceptions to that, because it was so much better than than other shows that I actually wanted to watch it instead of doing other things. It wasn't perfect, but their clear willingness to try (silent space scenes among the elements) meant that it was worth my time.
Changing that now would be both a sell out and a different take on things completely.
My priorities are, of course, none of your business
When they are in an atmosphere, they have all the normal attendant sci-fi noises. It's just space that's silent.
They probably saved some money. Either way, I loved it.
That seen bugged me (more disturbing is the fact that they would be anywhere close to each other unless they were going between the same two points). There's others like it.
But it's still the hardest SF I've ever seen on TV.
Oh, they made some comment in the pilot at least, something about "rabbitting", which I assumed was their FTL. But it shows up a bunch: the glowy-butt part of Serenity glows and a pretty burst emanates, and poof, they are gone.
Still harder scifi than you'll see outside of a novel.
Well, honestly, fuck anybody who isn't a geek. They have all the other movies to pollute with their antiscientific expectations, right?
This is the hardest sci-fi I've ever seen in a series, and it still manages to pull off a focus on the characters as well. It's crazy good.
Defending all that stuff in Star Trek/Wars, Babylon 5, etc... well, that's fine. That's how those things go. I don't hold them to near the same standards as I do Firefly, that's for sure. It would be like expecting cartoons to obey the laws of physics, or news to be impartial, or sports shows to discuss math.
The first space seen in Firefly had me shouting at the edge of my seat, screaming at the TV, telling it how badass it was, and encouraging it to continue.
I don't really care how they do it in theaters, as long as they do. It would be crappy for the show to be one way, and the movie another.
I'll see it opening night if I can, unless it gets terrible reviews from smart people. But honestly, the trailer looks good, so it's probably ok.
Except for those sound effects, which I hope are trailer specific.
One of the big selling points of Firefly was that sound doesn't travel in space, so the space scenes have no sound. It was soooo cool, I couldn't not watch it. I really hope someone in the know can tell me whether that crap is in the movie or if it's just in the trailer.
Firefly was far too good to remain on the air, sadly.
PalmOne Treo 600 or 650 (600 is a reasonable price, but maybe more than everyone wants to pay, 650 I would call expensive) will serve your needs nicely, today. You don't have to wait for Dell to figure out exactly how much they can charge and get you to pay (hint: it'll be comperable to a Treo today).
The problem is that, if you the client (the searcher) search on a website that gives emphasis to hits that have paid you in some fashion, that's dubious. One of the early Google tricks was to get the sponsored links out of your face and denoted as such. In this case, however, it's actually worse*, because the sponsored links are being unfairly weighted for something utterly unrelated to content.
* Assuming it's true. This claim seems rather strong. Microsoft has no reason to do this without publicizing it ("use our products and be higher ranked"), and publicizing it would destroy their credibility. I personally believe that there is a better explanation than the one we are left to infer.
Microsoft is in a weak position in search, but not so weak that they would need this kind of duplicity. Why, when they can make themselves the default search engine of so many, would they go through the effort of making a wacky backdoor that will only bring them bad news? I'm not buying it.
That there was an article by an Open Source guy on the relevant website. Basically, the claim was that RMS was making up the division between them, and that they were really the same- except that RMS was dragging his heels about things.
The idea was that Free was just a certain type of Open, a subset in practice and not an upper level division like he implied.
I just didn't want to make a post that could be seen as inflammatory by someone who thinks that RMS has gone to far, or whatever.
Anyway, I didn't agree with the article when I read it. But making a neutral post when so many givens are disputed by *someone*, *somewhere*, is hard.
I love it when people do this. Your post doesn't specifically address me, but you did reply to me instead of the parent... Let's line-by-line!
"BK was used for kernel development. The Linux kernel. Hence, RMS calls it "Linux", because that is its name."
No one will disagree that Linux is a kernel. No one will disagree that its name is "Linux".
"In order for RMS to write "GNU/Linux" development, he would have to mean that the ENTIRE OS (meaning, kernel and all above components) used BK, which would be impossible and silly."
Note, "HE would have to mean". RMS has naming conventions, and he follows them strictly. I neither agree or disagree with HIS naming conventions, I merely note what would have to transpire for the parent's assessment to be correct.
"He also name drops GNU/Linux, mentioning that Linux has such visibility that it is often mistaken for the entire GNU/Linux OS."
Again, I'm paraphrasing RMS here.
"Whether you agree or disagree with RMS's naming conventions, he was not in any way inconsistent here."
I make sure to end on a neutral tone, hoping that no one could possibly mistake my post for an endorsement or a criticism of RMS's naming convention, an emotional topic throughout all of nerdtopia.
But, personally, I don't like RMS's move to rename the OS. I understand that he started a movement, organized, worked his ass off, and did it all for everyone, for principle, and also for fame (he's still a man, after all, and wants and deserves recognition for his life work- he certainly didn't get rewarded with billions of dollars here). It *IS* unfair that people say "Linux" while actually meaning a lot of GNU utilities (and other non-Linux things). There was first a "Lignux" thing, which I've never seen the details on, but it strikes me as sort of petty. And then to call it by a slash delimited name... well, it's not helping anyone.
People give things the names that they want. Corporations have found this out, as their trademarks become genericized and such. Language works like that. Microsoft has a billion versions of their OSes, but people know what you mean when you say "Windows". "Linux" is similar.
But the GPL doesn't give Stallman the right to try to persuade people to give it a name that lets his organization share the kudos that it deserves: he's ALWAYS had that right.
I would be a lot happier if Linus and RMS could just agree on a name. But, they don't really get along, and I'm not about to take sides on an issue that I know maybe 7% of what's going on about.
It's all names and ideas, and seems silly to an outsider, but the entire universe these programs exist in is names and ideas. Seeing graphics that portray the GNU as a mighty hero and a tiny Tux as a mascot can't be viewed as fair, either.
It' sa complex issue, and I don't wanna take sides on it. Hence the neutral post above.
I've wondered about this myself. In an essay (one of the ones in "Free Software, Free Society", and assuredly on his webpage or fsf's as well) he mentions that it is acceptable to run non-free software in order to develop a free alternative- so, it's acceptable to run Unix until a Linux kernel and a bunch of free tools enable development on a free platform, it's acceptable to have a PC running windows to make sure you can interoperate with Word, etc.
;)
I find myself seeing his points but being unwilling to condemn closed source stuff. I guess that puts me more in the open source camp than the free software camp, but I do agree that the freedom you get with the source code an a friendly license are reassuring on many levels beyond simply getting better software.
(To avoid a half-troll myself, I'd like to point out that RMS's categories of software are disputed by more than a few, the Free/Open duality being attacked in particular)
The fact that he's idealogically hard edged is *why* he's controversial, recall.
Anyway, I'm glad of the announcement. I was hoping he'd throw in a final word after everyone else ran around, spurting blood.
Reading RMS is like a guilty pleasure.
To answer your question, my understanding is that RMS would rather have you develop a free alternative instead of ignoring the task, and in doing so solve the problem for you and the others that come after you.
BK was used for kernel development. The Linux kernel. Hence, RMS calls it "Linux", because that is its name.
In order for RMS to write "GNU/Linux" development, he would have to mean that the ENTIRE OS (meaning, kernel and all above components) used BK, which would be impossible and silly.
He also name drops GNU/Linux, mentioning that Linux has such visibility that it is often mistaken for the entire GNU/Linux OS.
Whether you agree or disagree with RMS's naming conventions, he was not in any way inconsistent here.
Seriously, someone wrote "64 bit support"? Is that legit? So, innovation is supporting the new hardware? That's absurd. So, is Apple copying Dell by offering compatibility with the latest video card or whatever?
Stoooooopid.
Most of these other things are built into an average Linux distro. Additionally, if you buy a Dell, many of them are just as present, as OEM addons.
Look, I'm sure Microsoft *is* copying Apple where they can. They always have, for my entire life. But the list of crap they are moaning about is ridiculous.
At work I have, literally, dozens of passwords, all required to be unique. This one has to be six characters. This one has to be eight. This one has to be greater than eight. A random mash of letters I can remember, invulnerable to any meaningful attack? NOPE, sorry, we need a number and a symbol. Within the first four characters. This is stupid, stupid, shit. I remember some, and others need to be reset constantly. Others? Well, they remember what they can and write down the rest. It's really, really, dumb. Asinine password schemes anger me to no end. If all my passwords were randomly generated, I would simply have a big list of all my passwords. Make the consequences for doing that dire enough, and I would simply never remember a password past a couple of days. Such stupid shit.
Gbabes or something...
Can someone post that giant "I am a GNOME developer and I like it but I hate it and KDE is better and that is inherent in C++" troll?
Cause that thing shows up an average of 1.5 times per slashdot thing mentioning GNOME, and it'll often get modded insightful or interesting by mods who read the first two (noninflammatory) paragraphs.
Ok, this *is* news for nerds, and is *does* matter, but when Microsoft announced that they were backing the bill, did that make /.?
Granted, I enjoy M$ bashing too, but deciding to do *no* thing instead of the *right* thing (and you could easily make the point that this isn't something Microsoft should be involved in- I'd refute it, but you could make the point) isn't Microsoft being bad.
But seriously, did the original announcement of them backing this bill make Slashdot, or not?