If so many writers of such diverse media are going to start to be locked in Thai prisons, perhaps it will become a nice place to stay. Think about it, if the government of Thailand start to get all Internet website owners in their prisons, Thailand's jails __will become the new Internet!__
It's like that joke, that Hell can be a better place to be, because of the company.
Now that the FSF put together a distribution we really do have something called "GNU/Linux".
That is the only issue here. We want to know whether or not Stallman will say "OK, this is GNU, and not simply a temporary GNU/Linux solution, using this Linux thing that I didn't see coming, until the true kernel that doesn't need a slash in the name is finally developed."
Truth is: it's just the GNU free-zation of Ubuntu. I don't care about Ubuntu to start with, so I won't care about this either.
If it is just that, the compilation of a (installable) live-CD with strictly free software, but that one can easily modify the/etc/apt/sources.list and download all w4r3z he or she wishes, than I'll stop whining.:P
To tell the truth, all I care about is that people use GRUB, Emacs, GCC, TeX, vtwm and apt-get install for anything else, the rest is candy to spoil your cybernetic teeth.
BTW, People should learn about this: I'll never install kubuntu in my machine because "cu" in Portuguese (pronounced just like ku) means "anus". It's almost literally "anusbuntu". I don't believe anything good can come from the anus, and that includes derived and sanctified live-CDs.
To me this feels just lame. It's a bit like the dream of the programming language that will forbid programmers to create bad code. "Oh, Debian is baaad, dude, it ALLOWS people to install proprietary filthy bits if that even crosses their minds. Let's do this new distro that kinda certifies every little file in the HD and if it meets something different from fully 100% GPL compatible, it just goes BOOM, explodes the box!!"
People must CHOOSE to have free software all the time, they must do so KNOWINGLY. They must be FACED with the alternative all the time, must be tempted by the devil all the time. That is how we go on with our lives. Yes, it is difficult.
The idea that we need a new "pure" distro instead of Debian (or many others) is ludicrous to me. People should just LEARN about howto use APT, and understand how that affect their lives, instead of look for a distro that "handle all that" for you, and send you to user heaven when you die without hassels.
This is a proposal to create alienated users, just like the dark side already does. It's playing by hteir rules. I've seen a lot of this in other contexts, it happens sooner or later.
Programming languages, like distros, are TOOLS. When weput limits to them, you are making a sin. That is the sin the proprietary world do all the time... Tools are extensions to our bodis andsouls, and by limiting them, thei are crippling us.
This distro is a limited distro. It was born from an idea of limiting what can (or should) be done. This PRINCIPLE is wrong, and should not be followed.
How much time before people get this and subvert it, find ways to install this or that proprietary thing? It will be sort of a "pirated" gNewSense, with probably an even worse name. So there will be them, the great "freedom fighters" who will "liberate" gNewSense for the people to use and finally do what they will, instead of strictly what the creators of the distro had in mind...
A "people's" version of a "GPL" version of a "people's" version of Debian... Can't you SERIOUSLY not install Debian and NOT include the contrib and non-free sources (which are not default BTW) and then NOT install skype, or pirated windows binaries or pirated Mathematica or SNES ROMs or Leisure Suit Larry or whatever? Just do that, do NOT use proprietary, instead of asking for your big brother to watch over you.
Perhaps they like the spirit of this in Venezuela, or other countries where Stallman has been going to a lot lately. I sure don't like it here in Brazil.
But what do I know? I haven't tried many distros in my life. I only switched from FreeBSD to Debian after I asked RMS himself forsuggestions, and I liked it ever since. He did look a bit uncomphortable at the time by suggestingit, I believe he still didn't find it the perfect distro. I honestly hope hedoesn't find THIS the perfectone,and feels at least a bit uncomphortable by suggestig it too...
How About Alberto Santos-Dumont, the actual father of aviation??...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santos_Dumont
Many of you probably don't know, but the actual centenary of aviation is next October!:) (ithink) We will actually fly a copy of the 14-bis, and I don't believe it will crash like you replica of the Wright brother's plane that crashed in the mud the other year...
It's time for you to start teaching the complete story to your children! And you know what, it sucks to grown here in Brasil, knowing about Santos-Dumont, but watching every time american TV shows ignoring him... Please, stop doing that!...I would also vote for the history of modern inventors and Engineers as Watt, Edison, Tesla, Ford, Babbage... There's also the folks involved in television and telephony... The history of these modern discoveries are sometimesconfusing. We should let our children know how confusing they are, and not simpy stick to someone's version of the history.....
HP calculators are still admired here in Brazil at least. I believe their market in europe is also bigger then in the USA, where it seems to me TI always had more market than HP.
Of course, their new HP49 sucks, I would never buy one!!! It seems like they just rushed to create a new calculator with an iMac like design.
And now their empire will ruin because palmtops are getting so cheap you can run Octave to make calculations. This will be nice... That is, if the teachers allow you to make a test with a computer!
There's a cute little story brazilian writer Lucia Carvalho wrote about childrens and computers.
It says she and her daughter and son were in a house with a lot of old things, when her daughter (the older child) found a typewriter. She had never saw one. The girl uses the thing, and then starts explaining to the mother how wondefull it is, because it doesn't need wires or "expansive ink cartridges"... Then they got a piece of paper and started using it. The girl was marvelled "look!! You just type and the letters are already there in the paper!... The only problem is that you cant's change the fonts, , but it doesn't matter. There's no trouble with saving files, printing... You just type and it's already there!!"
I can even translate the story if anybody is interested. I love it, because I care so much for the subject (I almost cry when i read it:_) ). Imagine what is it to discover this "new" paradigm... We're so used to computers we forget how difficult they really are. Of course the girl will eventually find that computers have a lot of advantages, but we should never stop questioning the real usefullness of our tools. And children are great for that.
Now, my political agenda. I'm very pro-(command line interface). I found this article once (trough slashdot I believe) about someone who teached command line to people who never user computers before. This article says a lot about how command lines are more dialog-like, while the mouse interface require a lot of abstraction, and thus the command line is near to the normal relationship with another human, while graphical interfaces requires a lot of metaphors and parallels...
Anyway, I believe children should be exposed to things like LOGO. It's an important way to look at things.
Once I asked professor Vibeke Sörensen (I'm her fan:) ) wich approach she tought artists should have when dealing with programming: graphical interfaces (like with fluxograms) or text programming... she said it's the same thing, it just depends wether you like working with a painting or with a poem... I think this is a great insight on the thing. People learning to program should be at least exposed to all approaches before learning deeply. So, I think if you want your children to develop a good view on computing, you should look for some command-line driven programs, since this kind of environment is getting rare those days.
Back in my old school days (ouch, my back!), I was forced to do a lot of "dir"s and "cd"s, and to know what was "a:" before loading my games... And I believe this helped me to start to like dealing with computers.
I would like to add just one nore thing: I learned a lot of english (I am brazilian) just because of computer programs. I had to know what was "file", "save", "open"... I also learned a lot because of sierra's RPG adventures like King's Quest and Space Quest. What I mean is that I owe a lot of important knowledge to difficulties I had with informatics those days, and I simply don't know how to make my future sons learn all that without making them playing Prince of Persia in an old XT!...:)
I don't know, I believe my children will be writting perl scripts before 12!...
I don't see many people analysing deeply the environmental impact of those technologies.
Suppose EVERYBODY started using wind and sea power... couldn't this change el niño's mood or something??
Possibly the impact is very weak, but I would like to see the figures.
And what about uniting the useful and the disagreeable? what about solar power centrals in the poles, where we are having already too much solar radiation???:)
I believe that in this contemporary globalized world, santa should create a south-pole base, to help distribute his gifts. Of course, the slay would be carried out by *flying penguins*!...
This way children fron the south hemisphere could start creating their own christmas folklore. It's sad to live here where christmas is in the summer, and see all that snow and furry coats when it's hot as hell...
I cant understand why this is a problem. Every science fiction reader should be waiting for this kind of thing to happen sooner or later.
When I created my account at Slashdot, I wrote everything in english, because afterall the site is all in english. I created my account in Orkut in english too, but now I dont see why, because I interact much more with brazillian friend and friends of friends then with international people... I naturally started to use more portuguese than english, because I just found brazillan friends everywhere.
I tought I would interact a lot with international people, like it happened in my old IRC times, but today I cant stand anymore the big wold-wide communities (like "programming", "free software", "atheists")... I simply cant have a fruitfull conversation on these international groups. Its just flame wars...
Now if a non-brazillian wants to take part of a group created by brazillian why cant this person just try to send an english message, and see if anybody wants to talk in english (or other language, perhaps)?... Why cant this person create a parallel community? this already happened in the good old ICQ and usenet times.
I think if someone has a genuine interest in a community subject, the love for it will break all language barriers!...:)
To finish: this is a non-problem. Ive seen people talking about "fight back and do blablabla". What *fight* my friends?!?! if brazillians are using the site more than north-americans this is just an epiphenomenon emergin from subtle characteristic on how brazillians relato to their friends... Lets just keep living admiring the peculiarities of each human being... If anybody wants to read messages in portuguese about any subject hes interested, I volunteer myself as a translator.
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If so many writers of such diverse media are going to start to be locked in Thai prisons, perhaps it will become a nice place to stay. Think about it, if the government of Thailand start to get all Internet website owners in their prisons, Thailand's jails __will become the new Internet!__
It's like that joke, that Hell can be a better place to be, because of the company.
Now that the FSF put together a distribution we really do have something called "GNU/Linux".
That is the only issue here. We want to know whether or not Stallman will say "OK, this is GNU, and not simply a temporary GNU/Linux solution, using this Linux thing that I didn't see coming, until the true kernel that doesn't need a slash in the name is finally developed."
Truth is: it's just the GNU free-zation of Ubuntu. I don't care about Ubuntu to start with, so I won't care about this either.
If it is just that, the compilation of a (installable) live-CD with strictly free software, but that one can easily modify the /etc/apt/sources.list and download all w4r3z he or she wishes, than I'll stop whining. :P
To tell the truth, all I care about is that people use GRUB, Emacs, GCC, TeX, vtwm and apt-get install for anything else, the rest is candy to spoil your cybernetic teeth.
BTW, People should learn about this: I'll never install kubuntu in my machine because "cu" in Portuguese (pronounced just like ku) means "anus". It's almost literally "anusbuntu". I don't believe anything good can come from the anus, and that includes derived and sanctified live-CDs.
To me this feels just lame. It's a bit like the dream of the programming language that will forbid programmers to create bad code. "Oh, Debian is baaad, dude, it ALLOWS people to install proprietary filthy bits if that even crosses their minds. Let's do this new distro that kinda certifies every little file in the HD and if it meets something different from fully 100% GPL compatible, it just goes BOOM, explodes the box!!" People must CHOOSE to have free software all the time, they must do so KNOWINGLY. They must be FACED with the alternative all the time, must be tempted by the devil all the time. That is how we go on with our lives. Yes, it is difficult. The idea that we need a new "pure" distro instead of Debian (or many others) is ludicrous to me. People should just LEARN about howto use APT, and understand how that affect their lives, instead of look for a distro that "handle all that" for you, and send you to user heaven when you die without hassels. This is a proposal to create alienated users, just like the dark side already does. It's playing by hteir rules. I've seen a lot of this in other contexts, it happens sooner or later. Programming languages, like distros, are TOOLS. When weput limits to them, you are making a sin. That is the sin the proprietary world do all the time... Tools are extensions to our bodis andsouls, and by limiting them, thei are crippling us. This distro is a limited distro. It was born from an idea of limiting what can (or should) be done. This PRINCIPLE is wrong, and should not be followed. How much time before people get this and subvert it, find ways to install this or that proprietary thing? It will be sort of a "pirated" gNewSense, with probably an even worse name. So there will be them, the great "freedom fighters" who will "liberate" gNewSense for the people to use and finally do what they will, instead of strictly what the creators of the distro had in mind... A "people's" version of a "GPL" version of a "people's" version of Debian... Can't you SERIOUSLY not install Debian and NOT include the contrib and non-free sources (which are not default BTW) and then NOT install skype, or pirated windows binaries or pirated Mathematica or SNES ROMs or Leisure Suit Larry or whatever? Just do that, do NOT use proprietary, instead of asking for your big brother to watch over you. Perhaps they like the spirit of this in Venezuela, or other countries where Stallman has been going to a lot lately. I sure don't like it here in Brazil. But what do I know? I haven't tried many distros in my life. I only switched from FreeBSD to Debian after I asked RMS himself forsuggestions, and I liked it ever since. He did look a bit uncomphortable at the time by suggestingit, I believe he still didn't find it the perfect distro. I honestly hope hedoesn't find THIS the perfectone,and feels at least a bit uncomphortable by suggestig it too...
How About Alberto Santos-Dumont, the actual father of aviation??... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santos_Dumont Many of you probably don't know, but the actual centenary of aviation is next October! :) (ithink) We will actually fly a copy of the 14-bis, and I don't believe it will crash like you replica of the Wright brother's plane that crashed in the mud the other year...
It's time for you to start teaching the complete story to your children! And you know what, it sucks to grown here in Brasil, knowing about Santos-Dumont, but watching every time american TV shows ignoring him... Please, stop doing that! ...I would also vote for the history of modern inventors and Engineers as Watt, Edison, Tesla, Ford, Babbage... There's also the folks involved in television and telephony... The history of these modern discoveries are sometimesconfusing. We should let our children know how confusing they are, and not simpy stick to someone's version of the history.....
HP calculators are still admired here in Brazil at least. I believe their market in europe is also bigger then in the USA, where it seems to me TI always had more market than HP. Of course, their new HP49 sucks, I would never buy one!!! It seems like they just rushed to create a new calculator with an iMac like design. And now their empire will ruin because palmtops are getting so cheap you can run Octave to make calculations. This will be nice... That is, if the teachers allow you to make a test with a computer!
It says she and her daughter and son were in a house with a lot of old things, when her daughter (the older child) found a typewriter. She had never saw one. The girl uses the thing, and then starts explaining to the mother how wondefull it is, because it doesn't need wires or "expansive ink cartridges"... Then they got a piece of paper and started using it. The girl was marvelled "look!! You just type and the letters are already there in the paper!... The only problem is that you cant's change the fonts, , but it doesn't matter. There's no trouble with saving files, printing... You just type and it's already there!!"
I can even translate the story if anybody is interested. I love it, because I care so much for the subject (I almost cry when i read it :_) ). Imagine what is it to discover this "new" paradigm... We're so used to computers we forget how difficult they really are. Of course the girl will eventually find that computers have a lot of advantages, but we should never stop questioning the real usefullness of our tools. And children are great for that.
Now, my political agenda. I'm very pro-(command line interface). I found this article once (trough slashdot I believe) about someone who teached command line to people who never user computers before. This article says a lot about how command lines are more dialog-like, while the mouse interface require a lot of abstraction, and thus the command line is near to the normal relationship with another human, while graphical interfaces requires a lot of metaphors and parallels...
Anyway, I believe children should be exposed to things like LOGO. It's an important way to look at things.
Once I asked professor Vibeke Sörensen (I'm her fan :) ) wich approach she tought artists should have when dealing with programming: graphical interfaces (like with fluxograms) or text programming... she said it's the same thing, it just depends wether you like working with a painting or with a poem... I think this is a great insight on the thing. People learning to program should be at least exposed to all approaches before learning deeply. So, I think if you want your children to develop a good view on computing, you should look for some command-line driven programs, since this kind of environment is getting rare those days.
Back in my old school days (ouch, my back!), I was forced to do a lot of "dir"s and "cd"s, and to know what was "a:" before loading my games... And I believe this helped me to start to like dealing with computers.
I would like to add just one nore thing: I learned a lot of english (I am brazilian) just because of computer programs. I had to know what was "file", "save", "open"... I also learned a lot because of sierra's RPG adventures like King's Quest and Space Quest. What I mean is that I owe a lot of important knowledge to difficulties I had with informatics those days, and I simply don't know how to make my future sons learn all that without making them playing Prince of Persia in an old XT!... :)
I don't know, I believe my children will be writting perl scripts before 12!...
I don't see many people analysing deeply the environmental impact of those technologies. Suppose EVERYBODY started using wind and sea power... couldn't this change el niño's mood or something?? Possibly the impact is very weak, but I would like to see the figures. And what about uniting the useful and the disagreeable? what about solar power centrals in the poles, where we are having already too much solar radiation??? :)
I believe that in this contemporary globalized world, santa should create a south-pole base, to help distribute his gifts. Of course, the slay would be carried out by *flying penguins*!... This way children fron the south hemisphere could start creating their own christmas folklore. It's sad to live here where christmas is in the summer, and see all that snow and furry coats when it's hot as hell...
I would really like to know what time sharing policy they are implementing... Fastest job first? FIFO? Multiple lines? random??...
My chances to ever travel to japan would increase 10000% if this PDA was a zaurus running linux with a good proposal for buying it after the trip...
I cant understand why this is a problem. Every science fiction reader should be waiting for this kind of thing to happen sooner or later. When I created my account at Slashdot, I wrote everything in english, because afterall the site is all in english. I created my account in Orkut in english too, but now I dont see why, because I interact much more with brazillian friend and friends of friends then with international people... I naturally started to use more portuguese than english, because I just found brazillan friends everywhere. I tought I would interact a lot with international people, like it happened in my old IRC times, but today I cant stand anymore the big wold-wide communities (like "programming", "free software", "atheists")... I simply cant have a fruitfull conversation on these international groups. Its just flame wars... Now if a non-brazillian wants to take part of a group created by brazillian why cant this person just try to send an english message, and see if anybody wants to talk in english (or other language, perhaps)?... Why cant this person create a parallel community? this already happened in the good old ICQ and usenet times. I think if someone has a genuine interest in a community subject, the love for it will break all language barriers!... :)
To finish: this is a non-problem. Ive seen people talking about "fight back and do blablabla". What *fight* my friends?!?! if brazillians are using the site more than north-americans this is just an epiphenomenon emergin from subtle characteristic on how brazillians relato to their friends... Lets just keep living admiring the peculiarities of each human being... If anybody wants to read messages in portuguese about any subject hes interested, I volunteer myself as a translator.