I really wonder how they define a blog. So if the law restricts these discussions in blogs, does it mean that you can discuss these issues in a simple webpage, in a wiki, in a gopher server, in a file on an FTP server, in an email, over an IRC server, over VoIP, on a normal weblog operating on a port other than 80, on a password-protected blog, or through a technology not yet invented? Blogs could be obsolete in 10 years just as gopher is obsolete now (but still alive). Does it mean they are going to continue making new laws for every new technology? Good luck to them keeping current with a drive towards technological singularity that accelerates every year.
Do not give/rent/sell school-owned laptops to the students. Just let the students use their own laptops, bought by them or by their families/carers. You can help everyone have a laptop by giving the students gift cards/coupons, or making a special deal with a local computer shop and issuing a prepaid coupon that is valid only for laptops. You can get ideas on the specific implementation by studying how the Greek Government ran its own laptops-for-students programme (which is a special programme for good university students): the student can choose any laptop they want and are the owner of their laptops from the day of purchase; this works easily with the student just visiting a computer shop, saying they want to buy a laptop under the government's programme, the government issues a unique ID number to them which is then given to the shop (if I remember well), and the student gets any laptop they want with a 80% (up to 500 EUR) discount. In this way the student can get any laptop, even with GNU/Linux, with no strings attached, and it is their property. I do not know all the details of the programme, but at least that's what I remember when I happened to read about it.
Of course mouse will be extinguished pretty soon, because trackballs will dominate the Earth. I really cannot comprehend why people keep using mice when there are trackballs that do the job much better while helping you avoid wrist injuries, taking less space, and allowing finer control. And in case you are wondering, I have used touch interfaces and I hate them more than I hate mice. I certainly would not buy a touch interface device if it could not be used with a trackball and keyboard.
Just ask yourself what destruction is going to happen to your life if you lose the data. If the answer is "no problem", then hit Delete or just let the data to rot in an old RAID-1 setup until both disks crash and then just stop worrying.
If, however, you have some data that you think are particularly important, you can rent a safe deposit box in a bank for about 30 EUR per year (for an A4-sized box) and put copies of your data in there, paying attention to choose a bank that is too big to let fail:)
Exactly why would we need a GNU/Linux version of Chrome? GNU/Linux already has very good browsers such as Epiphany, developed by dedicated free software communities.
Successful traders don't use higher maths. You can't beat the market with maths, because the market is a complex adaptive system that cannot be predicted. You can, however, find out some likely scenarios using your insight, which is what successful traders use.
If I can lock down my laptop, then how long until criminals and crackers find a way to lock it down as well using the same technology as a new DoS attack?
I think the problem of theft can be solved very easily by just not storing any data on any local machine, store everything on your own servers instead.
I charge my PDA exclusively using solar power, but unfortunately that's all I can use solar power for, as for anything bigger I would have to have huge solar cells. Similarly, wind power is great, but it's difficult to collect lots of power from wind farms unless you devote lots of space for them.
The problem of efficiency is well-known and much-discussed, but solar and wind power also have some disadvantages that most people don't consider: they attach us too much to the environment. What will happen if the environment suddenly changes? Solar power isn't going to work after a major supervolcanic eruption, no matter where you are on the planet, except if we develop solar power with artifician suns on Earth (ie artificial small Dyson spheres). Wind power assumes that the wind patterns will remain the same, but a major climatic change could affect the current wind patterns so we would have to build new windfarms. Additionally, I am very concerned about wind power because it could prove fatal for many birds.
I do not think there is a single solution to our power needs. I believe that the best solution is to use a mixture of many power sources so that we are not dependent on any single source: 10% oil (as long as we still have it), 10% coal, 10% gas, 10% nuclear, 10% solar, 10% wind, 10% geothermal, 10% hydro, and so on, or maybe just have a slight bias in favour of solar/wind.
I also believe that it would be much better to have decentralised power grids, ie every human should be able to produce enough power for themselves plus some more that would be delivered to a worldwide power grid. Centralised power generation means massive plants with massive pollution around them, but if we decentralise power generation then there would be no pollution hotspots and any generated pollution could be cleaned easily by natural means (the wind etc). Decentralising power generation also enhances the probability of having surviving communities after a major catastrophe such as a big asteroid impact.
My machines (all laptops/netbooks, I do not like desktops because they eat lots of power and are thus anti-ecological) are now equipped with SSDs for the OS (Debian GNU/Linux) and for non-OS stuff, which is actually very little, I just plug some fast SD or CF memory cards or roomy USB flash drives. I do not use any hard disks anymore, except for a few old machines that I hardly use now or for my servers. Everything works great. I feel as if I am running supercomputers - it's so fast. Just to make sure my SSDs will live for a long time, I use ext2 instead of ext3/ext4, and I configured my/tmp to live in a tmpfs filesystem. Filesystem fixing takes just a few seconds with SSDs, so the speed advantage of journaling ext3/ext4 does not hold anymore, and after all I never liked journaling filesystems at all. I see no reason why anyone would want an SSD bigger than 32GB/64GB for an OS, except for booting multiple OSes. For those running games or other programs that need fast disk access, it is always possible to plug an external SSD over eSATA (or Firewire) or put multiple SSDs into your machines if the motherboard supports that.
Really, I cannot understand why anyone would want to provide a reply to such an email. Some emails should be left unanswered, and this was one of them.
The US government releases its stuff as public domain material.
The EU governments do not. UK government has Crown Copyright. Other governments have normal copyright. (IANAL).
This means that as free culture gets more popular and people spend more of their time reading free publications rather than proprietary publications, the US government has a hige advantage in being able to provide these free publications with free content, effectively projecting the US culture to the world.
But the EU governments do not have this ability so easily, they cannot easily project their culture to the world through free publications because their cultural works are not free.
Governments know very well how important it is to project their culture to the world (this is why all governments open offices or companies in other countries that promote their language, etc), and EU governments understand that now that free publications are on the rise and people get more influenced by free publications than by proprietary publications, they must do anything possible to be able to influence the free publications in promoting their own culture instead of the US culture.
EU governments are now realising that their restrictive copyright that applies to government material places them at a disadvantage compared to the US in influencing world culture. The obvious solution is to change their laws, but this may take time, so for the short-term the EU governments may be thinking that making specific donations under a free licence is a good idea while they are trying to decide how best to balance the US cultural dominance in free publications (because the US federal stuff is free, many wikis and other free publications make extensive use of US federal stuff, effectivelly helping promoting the US culture and the US government's worldview and history).
But such moves are not enough. You can't beat the US public domain cultural projection with one-off free donations of cultural works. EU governments must quickly make all their stuff public domain by default if they want people in the world to be influenced more by EU culture and not only by US culture.
Why not invent your own language? It's easy (every CS student can do it, albeit I'm not so sure about IT students). You can invest your time in learning about compiler design rather than about a particular language, and then go forward and build your very own programming language.
This experience will introduce you to the most important difference between the GNU/Linux and Windows worlds: the GNU/Linux people are creative, but the Windows people expect everything to be provided by their vendor ready for consumption.
Most sane businesses should have realized by now that they really only need the standard set (.com/.net/.org), plus the country TLDs for the countries where they're actually doing business.
I really cannot comprehend why one would want a ccTLD. com/net/org work just fine. In fact com/org are all we need, anything else is not needed IMO. Is it so difficult to set up a com/org and put a menu or homepage there asking the user the language and geography they want to use? For direct access use language/geography subdomains like en.example.org. Internet is supposed to be a world-wide medium, so I really see no value in maintaining domain names limiting you to a specific geography. Internet is globalisation at its finest and ccTLDs should be expired and replaced by non-geography specific TLDs.
I had really thought about creating a.nerd in OpenNIC. There is already.geek but geeks and nerds do have differences. If there are other nerds around here who would like to set up a.nerd in OpenNIC send me email and I think I can help.
I don't like USB for the same reasons. IEEE1394 (FireWire) is a much better bus in some respects like CPU usage. There exist FireWire flash drives that one can use, and work great under GNU/Linux.
Text message will ensure that all the details get there, not some garbled, half-heard phone call.
There is a serious problem, though: text messages may never get to the destination or may get there late, in case the text server is busy or unavailable, and the most serious problem is that you won't know that someone had tried to text you. With phone calls, at least, you know when the line gets cut off by network problems, but with text messages you can never know unless you were expecting a particular message. There is also no guarantee that you will receive the text messages in the order they were sent, if the server has problems.
Essentially texting has very similar problems to email when the email servers and intermediaries don't work correctly.
So, imagine getting the instructions for reattaching the arm before the instructions for removing it, while the instructions for cutting the bone were never delivered at all...
GNU/Linux does not have a market share because it operates out of the market. A few GNU/Linux distributions are commercial and therefore can have market share, but the majority of distros operate in out of the market. GNU/Linux is out of the market because it is not a product. Rather, GNU/Linux is an act of free speech, an act of love and passion, and a gift.
So, counting the market share of GNU/Linux has no meaning, since it's not a product. Calling it a competitor to any other OS is also wrong, for the same reason. Calling free software products of competitors are propaganda terms designed to make decision makers believe that GNU/Linux could potentially be subject to regulations about products. But if they suceed in this, then they can cook some new regulation that would effectivelly ban GNU/Linux. Don't let them do this, call GNU/Linux and free software what it really is: free speech, not a product, and therefore protected as free speech rather than subject to product regulations.
Just to tell you an example, suppose a new regulation says that all products must contain encryption that is X bits powerful and the keys be submitted to a central repository, but that the product must take precautions not to let its users discover the keys. Such a regulation would apply on products (IANAL: I am not a lawyer), but what if you printed a book with your words that just happen to be the secret keys? Free speech is protected so printing a book must be ok (IANAL: I am not a lawyer). Now, if someone comes and say "look you hackers, you created an OS and you put it online for download, therefore you have put a product in the market, therefore you must hide the secret key" that would be a cause of trouble if they suceed in labelling free software packages as products. But free software in my view is not a product, it is an exercise of free speech.
So, next time someone labels your free software a product, a market participant, or a competitor to their products, just tell them the truth: your free software was never supposed to be viewed as a product, your free software is instead only an act of free speech, and the fact that it is available online is an exercise of the right of assembly and communication with other people, as well as a gift.
In a similar way, product regulations may say that new TVs should do this and that, but if you are an engineer and you build your own homebrew TV at home and you just want to post its blueprints online to share your passion with fellow homebrew engineers then your creations should be treated as free speech rather than as an attempt to enter the market, therefore in my view amateurs should not be subject to product and market regulation rules in the same way as commercial players are.
Of course I have absolutely no idea whether this line of thinking would make any sense in a legal setting about questions of applicability of product regulations on free software, as I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.
The key to entrepreneurship is efficient work, rather than hard work. Entrepreneurship does not need to take a lot of work. In fact too much work can kill entrepreneurship if it's dull and inefficient. What entrepreneurship does require, however, is lots of intelligence, lots of efficiency, and lots of enthusiasm. You must work smart, in an efficient way, and enthusiastically, but hard work is not a requirement for successful entrepreneurship, as long as we understand that no hard work does not equate with laziness. However, in practice, most people who work enthusiastically end up working hard, albeit they don't see this is as a bad thing, and they may even like it.
To be a successful entrepreneur a person must avoid dull work at all costs and focus on doing smart work (ie high-efficiency work, ie a little work for great return) while maintaining the drive of an enthusiast (ie do work that "speaks" to your DNA, something that you do naturally all the time, for example nerds/geeks enjoy programming software and customising their hardware so they can work on it with enthusiasm). Hard work may come as a by-product of enthusiasm, but if you make the mistake to only focus on working hard you may end up doing inefficient dull work for little return.
Of course there is a problem with entrepreneurship, the fact that it requires attributes that not every person has: lots of imagination, analytical skills, creativity, motivation, and above all intelligence. But the main reason many people lack these skills is not because they don't have them, they do, but the education/school/university system does not help students to discover and express these skills. In fact schools teach children how to become good employees, ie people dependent on other people for their survival (which is the definition of a slave, ie a non-sovereign individual). And no, technical and business lessons aren't going to help with that (in fact good entrepreneurs are more like philosophers and artists, and I think that an entrepreneurship education should focus more on classics, the enlightenment, painting, music, dancing, etc).
a chance of failing and leaving you financially in the hole.
Jobs also have a chance of failing and leaving you financially in the hole. Ever heard of redundancies? The idea that a job is more safe is an illusion, and having a job means that you are always dependent on someone else.
Furthermore, the chance of hitting gold while being an employee is very low, especially for entry-level personnel, but for new entrepreneurs who focus on innovation the probability of hitting gold is much higher. But even if you don't hit gold, maintaining a business means you can be independent, able to feed yourself, not having to expect someone else to feed you. It's a good thing to be able to live without waiting for others to feed you, ie to be a sovereign individual. Being independent also means that you are more capable of supporting and helping others who are in need, which is a good thing.
It's wrong to say that one has never owned a computer. Most humans do have computers, because our hands are computers. Our brains are also computers, as are our whole bodies. Computers are everywhere, even in non-living things, if you know how to recognise them. In fact we are living in a huge computer. So, the summary should say that he has never owner a digital electronic programmable personal computer.
Epiphany works perfectly for me: small, clean, with support for custom stylesheets (which I use a lot, primarily to place serif fonts in place of these fscking sans-serif fonts some webmasters seem to be brainwashed in thinking that they are easier to read on screen), and upgradeable through extensions (either the included ones, third-party ones, or your own as it is very easy to build one). It even has support for both gecko and webkit (gecko seems to be working better on Debian GNU/Linux lenny/5.0 so I still use it even though webkit is now considered the preferred engine). A real full-screen view a-la Firefox 3.0 would be great to have by default, but never mind.
I really wonder how this or similar systems will respond to people who are living their own nerdy/geeky lives, or people from remote places of this planet, who are not proficient in the mainstream culture.
How will this system respond to people who have never seen the stimuli thrown at them?
A nerd/geek occupied with ham radio or assembly programming may have only accidentally seen images of Osama bin Ladin while rarely browsing non-technology sites or maybe while looking at newspapers at a kiosk while trying to find the magazine with the most recent GNU/Linux DVD. And bin Ladin may really mean nothing to a person from Zimbabwe, Madagascar, Siberia, Nunavut, Amazonia, Patagonia, or Antarctica.
Just start your own business. You don't need an employer if you already have a computer. Just start writing an interesting program or start offering some sysadmin service, you alone or with friends. No degree needed. No investment needed other than your own effort and time. I really cannot understand why everyone skips entrepreneurship as something remote or utopian and only thinks of becoming an employee when realising that they need some income. I can understand that you would prefer to become an employee if your specialty is about aerospace engineering because the tools of your job are more readily found in companies rather than at home, but with computers you already have anything you need to start producing. You only need creativity and intelligence.
Slashdot Mirror
I really wonder how they define a blog. So if the law restricts these discussions in blogs, does it mean that you can discuss these issues in a simple webpage, in a wiki, in a gopher server, in a file on an FTP server, in an email, over an IRC server, over VoIP, on a normal weblog operating on a port other than 80, on a password-protected blog, or through a technology not yet invented? Blogs could be obsolete in 10 years just as gopher is obsolete now (but still alive). Does it mean they are going to continue making new laws for every new technology? Good luck to them keeping current with a drive towards technological singularity that accelerates every year.
Do not give/rent/sell school-owned laptops to the students. Just let the students use their own laptops, bought by them or by their families/carers. You can help everyone have a laptop by giving the students gift cards/coupons, or making a special deal with a local computer shop and issuing a prepaid coupon that is valid only for laptops. You can get ideas on the specific implementation by studying how the Greek Government ran its own laptops-for-students programme (which is a special programme for good university students): the student can choose any laptop they want and are the owner of their laptops from the day of purchase; this works easily with the student just visiting a computer shop, saying they want to buy a laptop under the government's programme, the government issues a unique ID number to them which is then given to the shop (if I remember well), and the student gets any laptop they want with a 80% (up to 500 EUR) discount. In this way the student can get any laptop, even with GNU/Linux, with no strings attached, and it is their property. I do not know all the details of the programme, but at least that's what I remember when I happened to read about it.
Of course mouse will be extinguished pretty soon, because trackballs will dominate the Earth. I really cannot comprehend why people keep using mice when there are trackballs that do the job much better while helping you avoid wrist injuries, taking less space, and allowing finer control. And in case you are wondering, I have used touch interfaces and I hate them more than I hate mice. I certainly would not buy a touch interface device if it could not be used with a trackball and keyboard.
Wake me up when Firewire over UTP gets popular. THAT would be interesting.
Just ask yourself what destruction is going to happen to your life if you lose the data. If the answer is "no problem", then hit Delete or just let the data to rot in an old RAID-1 setup until both disks crash and then just stop worrying.
If, however, you have some data that you think are particularly important, you can rent a safe deposit box in a bank for about 30 EUR per year (for an A4-sized box) and put copies of your data in there, paying attention to choose a bank that is too big to let fail :)
Exactly why would we need a GNU/Linux version of Chrome? GNU/Linux already has very good browsers such as Epiphany, developed by dedicated free software communities.
Successful traders don't use higher maths. You can't beat the market with maths, because the market is a complex adaptive system that cannot be predicted. You can, however, find out some likely scenarios using your insight, which is what successful traders use.
If I can lock down my laptop, then how long until criminals and crackers find a way to lock it down as well using the same technology as a new DoS attack?
I think the problem of theft can be solved very easily by just not storing any data on any local machine, store everything on your own servers instead.
Most seasoned programmers can self-manage, so just tell them what the objective is and let them work in any way they like, preferably at their homes.
I charge my PDA exclusively using solar power, but unfortunately that's all I can use solar power for, as for anything bigger I would have to have huge solar cells. Similarly, wind power is great, but it's difficult to collect lots of power from wind farms unless you devote lots of space for them.
The problem of efficiency is well-known and much-discussed, but solar and wind power also have some disadvantages that most people don't consider: they attach us too much to the environment. What will happen if the environment suddenly changes? Solar power isn't going to work after a major supervolcanic eruption, no matter where you are on the planet, except if we develop solar power with artifician suns on Earth (ie artificial small Dyson spheres). Wind power assumes that the wind patterns will remain the same, but a major climatic change could affect the current wind patterns so we would have to build new windfarms. Additionally, I am very concerned about wind power because it could prove fatal for many birds.
I do not think there is a single solution to our power needs. I believe that the best solution is to use a mixture of many power sources so that we are not dependent on any single source: 10% oil (as long as we still have it), 10% coal, 10% gas, 10% nuclear, 10% solar, 10% wind, 10% geothermal, 10% hydro, and so on, or maybe just have a slight bias in favour of solar/wind.
I also believe that it would be much better to have decentralised power grids, ie every human should be able to produce enough power for themselves plus some more that would be delivered to a worldwide power grid. Centralised power generation means massive plants with massive pollution around them, but if we decentralise power generation then there would be no pollution hotspots and any generated pollution could be cleaned easily by natural means (the wind etc). Decentralising power generation also enhances the probability of having surviving communities after a major catastrophe such as a big asteroid impact.
My machines (all laptops/netbooks, I do not like desktops because they eat lots of power and are thus anti-ecological) are now equipped with SSDs for the OS (Debian GNU/Linux) and for non-OS stuff, which is actually very little, I just plug some fast SD or CF memory cards or roomy USB flash drives. I do not use any hard disks anymore, except for a few old machines that I hardly use now or for my servers. Everything works great. I feel as if I am running supercomputers - it's so fast. Just to make sure my SSDs will live for a long time, I use ext2 instead of ext3/ext4, and I configured my /tmp to live in a tmpfs filesystem. Filesystem fixing takes just a few seconds with SSDs, so the speed advantage of journaling ext3/ext4 does not hold anymore, and after all I never liked journaling filesystems at all. I see no reason why anyone would want an SSD bigger than 32GB/64GB for an OS, except for booting multiple OSes. For those running games or other programs that need fast disk access, it is always possible to plug an external SSD over eSATA (or Firewire) or put multiple SSDs into your machines if the motherboard supports that.
Really, I cannot understand why anyone would want to provide a reply to such an email. Some emails should be left unanswered, and this was one of them.
The US government releases its stuff as public domain material.
The EU governments do not. UK government has Crown Copyright. Other governments have normal copyright. (IANAL).
This means that as free culture gets more popular and people spend more of their time reading free publications rather than proprietary publications, the US government has a hige advantage in being able to provide these free publications with free content, effectively projecting the US culture to the world.
But the EU governments do not have this ability so easily, they cannot easily project their culture to the world through free publications because their cultural works are not free.
Governments know very well how important it is to project their culture to the world (this is why all governments open offices or companies in other countries that promote their language, etc), and EU governments understand that now that free publications are on the rise and people get more influenced by free publications than by proprietary publications, they must do anything possible to be able to influence the free publications in promoting their own culture instead of the US culture.
EU governments are now realising that their restrictive copyright that applies to government material places them at a disadvantage compared to the US in influencing world culture. The obvious solution is to change their laws, but this may take time, so for the short-term the EU governments may be thinking that making specific donations under a free licence is a good idea while they are trying to decide how best to balance the US cultural dominance in free publications (because the US federal stuff is free, many wikis and other free publications make extensive use of US federal stuff, effectivelly helping promoting the US culture and the US government's worldview and history).
But such moves are not enough. You can't beat the US public domain cultural projection with one-off free donations of cultural works. EU governments must quickly make all their stuff public domain by default if they want people in the world to be influenced more by EU culture and not only by US culture.
Why not invent your own language? It's easy (every CS student can do it, albeit I'm not so sure about IT students). You can invest your time in learning about compiler design rather than about a particular language, and then go forward and build your very own programming language.
This experience will introduce you to the most important difference between the GNU/Linux and Windows worlds: the GNU/Linux people are creative, but the Windows people expect everything to be provided by their vendor ready for consumption.
Most sane businesses should have realized by now that they really only need the standard set (.com/.net/.org), plus the country TLDs for the countries where they're actually doing business.
I really cannot comprehend why one would want a ccTLD. com/net/org work just fine. In fact com/org are all we need, anything else is not needed IMO. Is it so difficult to set up a com/org and put a menu or homepage there asking the user the language and geography they want to use? For direct access use language/geography subdomains like en.example.org. Internet is supposed to be a world-wide medium, so I really see no value in maintaining domain names limiting you to a specific geography. Internet is globalisation at its finest and ccTLDs should be expired and replaced by non-geography specific TLDs.
I had really thought about creating a .nerd in OpenNIC. There is already .geek but geeks and nerds do have differences. If there are other nerds around here who would like to set up a .nerd in OpenNIC send me email and I think I can help.
I don't like USB for the same reasons. IEEE1394 (FireWire) is a much better bus in some respects like CPU usage. There exist FireWire flash drives that one can use, and work great under GNU/Linux.
Text message will ensure that all the details get there, not some garbled, half-heard phone call.
There is a serious problem, though: text messages may never get to the destination or may get there late, in case the text server is busy or unavailable, and the most serious problem is that you won't know that someone had tried to text you. With phone calls, at least, you know when the line gets cut off by network problems, but with text messages you can never know unless you were expecting a particular message. There is also no guarantee that you will receive the text messages in the order they were sent, if the server has problems.
Essentially texting has very similar problems to email when the email servers and intermediaries don't work correctly.
So, imagine getting the instructions for reattaching the arm before the instructions for removing it, while the instructions for cutting the bone were never delivered at all...
GNU/Linux does not have a market share because it operates out of the market. A few GNU/Linux distributions are commercial and therefore can have market share, but the majority of distros operate in out of the market. GNU/Linux is out of the market because it is not a product. Rather, GNU/Linux is an act of free speech, an act of love and passion, and a gift.
So, counting the market share of GNU/Linux has no meaning, since it's not a product. Calling it a competitor to any other OS is also wrong, for the same reason. Calling free software products of competitors are propaganda terms designed to make decision makers believe that GNU/Linux could potentially be subject to regulations about products. But if they suceed in this, then they can cook some new regulation that would effectivelly ban GNU/Linux. Don't let them do this, call GNU/Linux and free software what it really is: free speech, not a product, and therefore protected as free speech rather than subject to product regulations.
Just to tell you an example, suppose a new regulation says that all products must contain encryption that is X bits powerful and the keys be submitted to a central repository, but that the product must take precautions not to let its users discover the keys. Such a regulation would apply on products (IANAL: I am not a lawyer), but what if you printed a book with your words that just happen to be the secret keys? Free speech is protected so printing a book must be ok (IANAL: I am not a lawyer). Now, if someone comes and say "look you hackers, you created an OS and you put it online for download, therefore you have put a product in the market, therefore you must hide the secret key" that would be a cause of trouble if they suceed in labelling free software packages as products. But free software in my view is not a product, it is an exercise of free speech.
So, next time someone labels your free software a product, a market participant, or a competitor to their products, just tell them the truth: your free software was never supposed to be viewed as a product, your free software is instead only an act of free speech, and the fact that it is available online is an exercise of the right of assembly and communication with other people, as well as a gift.
In a similar way, product regulations may say that new TVs should do this and that, but if you are an engineer and you build your own homebrew TV at home and you just want to post its blueprints online to share your passion with fellow homebrew engineers then your creations should be treated as free speech rather than as an attempt to enter the market, therefore in my view amateurs should not be subject to product and market regulation rules in the same way as commercial players are.
Of course I have absolutely no idea whether this line of thinking would make any sense in a legal setting about questions of applicability of product regulations on free software, as I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.
Many people install TVs and DVDs, as well as PCs in their cars now, with TFT screens. Should we also see screens banned?
something that takes a LOT of work
The key to entrepreneurship is efficient work, rather than hard work. Entrepreneurship does not need to take a lot of work. In fact too much work can kill entrepreneurship if it's dull and inefficient. What entrepreneurship does require, however, is lots of intelligence, lots of efficiency, and lots of enthusiasm. You must work smart, in an efficient way, and enthusiastically, but hard work is not a requirement for successful entrepreneurship, as long as we understand that no hard work does not equate with laziness. However, in practice, most people who work enthusiastically end up working hard, albeit they don't see this is as a bad thing, and they may even like it.
To be a successful entrepreneur a person must avoid dull work at all costs and focus on doing smart work (ie high-efficiency work, ie a little work for great return) while maintaining the drive of an enthusiast (ie do work that "speaks" to your DNA, something that you do naturally all the time, for example nerds/geeks enjoy programming software and customising their hardware so they can work on it with enthusiasm). Hard work may come as a by-product of enthusiasm, but if you make the mistake to only focus on working hard you may end up doing inefficient dull work for little return.
Of course there is a problem with entrepreneurship, the fact that it requires attributes that not every person has: lots of imagination, analytical skills, creativity, motivation, and above all intelligence. But the main reason many people lack these skills is not because they don't have them, they do, but the education/school/university system does not help students to discover and express these skills. In fact schools teach children how to become good employees, ie people dependent on other people for their survival (which is the definition of a slave, ie a non-sovereign individual). And no, technical and business lessons aren't going to help with that (in fact good entrepreneurs are more like philosophers and artists, and I think that an entrepreneurship education should focus more on classics, the enlightenment, painting, music, dancing, etc).
a chance of failing and leaving you financially in the hole.
Jobs also have a chance of failing and leaving you financially in the hole. Ever heard of redundancies? The idea that a job is more safe is an illusion, and having a job means that you are always dependent on someone else.
Furthermore, the chance of hitting gold while being an employee is very low, especially for entry-level personnel, but for new entrepreneurs who focus on innovation the probability of hitting gold is much higher. But even if you don't hit gold, maintaining a business means you can be independent, able to feed yourself, not having to expect someone else to feed you. It's a good thing to be able to live without waiting for others to feed you, ie to be a sovereign individual. Being independent also means that you are more capable of supporting and helping others who are in need, which is a good thing.
It's wrong to say that one has never owned a computer. Most humans do have computers, because our hands are computers. Our brains are also computers, as are our whole bodies. Computers are everywhere, even in non-living things, if you know how to recognise them. In fact we are living in a huge computer. So, the summary should say that he has never owner a digital electronic programmable personal computer.
Epiphany works perfectly for me: small, clean, with support for custom stylesheets (which I use a lot, primarily to place serif fonts in place of these fscking sans-serif fonts some webmasters seem to be brainwashed in thinking that they are easier to read on screen), and upgradeable through extensions (either the included ones, third-party ones, or your own as it is very easy to build one). It even has support for both gecko and webkit (gecko seems to be working better on Debian GNU/Linux lenny/5.0 so I still use it even though webkit is now considered the preferred engine). A real full-screen view a-la Firefox 3.0 would be great to have by default, but never mind.
I really wonder how this or similar systems will respond to people who are living their own nerdy/geeky lives, or people from remote places of this planet, who are not proficient in the mainstream culture.
How will this system respond to people who have never seen the stimuli thrown at them?
A nerd/geek occupied with ham radio or assembly programming may have only accidentally seen images of Osama bin Ladin while rarely browsing non-technology sites or maybe while looking at newspapers at a kiosk while trying to find the magazine with the most recent GNU/Linux DVD. And bin Ladin may really mean nothing to a person from Zimbabwe, Madagascar, Siberia, Nunavut, Amazonia, Patagonia, or Antarctica.
Just start your own business. You don't need an employer if you already have a computer. Just start writing an interesting program or start offering some sysadmin service, you alone or with friends. No degree needed. No investment needed other than your own effort and time. I really cannot understand why everyone skips entrepreneurship as something remote or utopian and only thinks of becoming an employee when realising that they need some income. I can understand that you would prefer to become an employee if your specialty is about aerospace engineering because the tools of your job are more readily found in companies rather than at home, but with computers you already have anything you need to start producing. You only need creativity and intelligence.