When the local Wal-Mart is selling new PCs for $280, who cares about old machines?
Yep, let's all rush out and spend $280 to have the ability to surf the internet. Yeah, I don't think so. Plenty of people care. My siblings use older machines (we're talking 500 MHz here) to browse the web, with Firefox, and it's sluggish. Not everybody is made of money, old machines are great for the "email + quick surfing" type of people.
I'm running KDE/OpenSUSE on a 400 MHz machine, I use Firefox as my browser, and I get reasonably snappy performance. It does bog down on occasion (like when I have one of those 30-foot-long blog pages open (Why, for the love of all that doesn't suck, do people do this?)) but it's usually not too bad.
We got that fixed in 2.0 -- which should be out in a few months. A really nice text shape feature. In 1.6 you could try embedding a kword document, but that's a bit of a paint.
Boudewijn Rempt,
Krita maintainer
Awesome, I'm looking forward to it. Thanks for the reply.
I don't think so, since irredundantless would actually mean redundant. For the full analogy to work, the word would have to logically mean the opposite of what it was intended to (since irregardless would logically mean regardful) Or perhaps I'm reading too much into it. Open hand, insert face. Oy.
Well, you are absolutely free to do so, just don't use anybodies else's code, that they were free to choose to licence under which ever version of GPL they preferred.
Eh, whatever. Not sure what you're point is. Oh, wait, are you saying that if I publish close sourced code I can use GPL'd in it? I fully realize that. I'm not stupid.
If you're trying to say that I prefer closed source then you completely missed the point of everything I was saying.
What you are really saying is that nobody else is allowed to publicly publish code under a licence that you can't steal from and claim as your own.
You lie. At no point did I say that. I did at one point say "That's right! Because true freedom can only occur when everyone does it my way!:-P" but if you had been paying attention you would have realized that I was being sarcastic. In my last post (the one that you responded to) I made the point (very clearly, I though) that while I like Open Source licenses, I believe that people have the right to use whatever license they wish (as long as they don't thereby infringe on someone else's license).
I bet you also like first to patent laws, not first to publish the idea.
Well, since I'm not really a fan of patents (especially software patents) you lose that bet. What did I win?
Don't get me wrong. I like open source software. I like the GPL (in all of it's various incarnations). I just think that it's absurd (and more than a bit hypocritical) for advocates of freedom to tell us that we have to do things their way. If I really want to release something under (for instance) a Creative Commons license or even (gasp!) a closed-source license, that's my prerogative and if RMS or anyone else has a problem with that then it's their problem, not mine.
I agree - a lot of games these days with slick graphics, but poor gameplay.
*cough* Halo *cough*
A game which really involves you is going to be good regardles of whether it has DirectX 40343233 or is text mode. Hell, has anyone played LORD on a BBS before?
An interesting article, but it shows a remarkable lack of knowledge, both on the part of the author and on the part of some of the people that he quoted. He seems to think that if you distribute software under the GPL, that it gives Stallman control of said software, or that it gives Stallman a right to sue people who (mis)use the software. That simply isn't true. The copyright owner (i.e. the person(s) or company that actually wrote the software) controlls it, and is responsible for suing those who infringe on the GPL.
"In recent years Stallman and the FSF have been cracking down on big Linux users, enforcing terms of the existing license (GPLv2, for version 2) and demanding that the big tech outfits crack open their proprietary code whenever they inserted lines from Linux."
If said companies broke the terms of the GPL, then they're in the wrong, aren't they? I mean, hey, if I broke the terms of the license for, say, MS Windows and Microsoft found out about it, they'd be all over me like stink on you-know-what. But when the big corporations are called on *their* (alleged) copyright violations, suddenly it's Stallman that's in the wrong.
And then there's the fact that it goes on paragraph-after-paragraph describing Stallman in the most unflattering terms. I mean, hey, Stallman is no saint, and he is a bit bizarre, but what does that have to do with the GPL? What does hair in soup have to do with copyright law? What does bad singing have to do with finance? Forbes *is* a finance magazine and not a celebrity trash rag, right?
"A cantankerous and finger-wagging freewheeler, Stallman won't comment on any of this because he was upset by a previous story written by this writer."
Ah, I see. Daniel Lyons said bad things about Richard Stallman, so Stallman snubbed Lyons, so Lyons is in a snit. Grow up, guys.
> Marriage isn't a right? The hell you say! The minute you try to tell me who I can and can't marry is the minute I tell you go play hide-and-go-fuck-yourself.
Oooh, I was agreeing with a lot of your post up until that line, then you lost me.
You cannot marry a member of your immediate family.
You cannot marry an inanimate object.
You cannot marry anyone if you are already married.
You cannot marry someone of insuficcient age.
You cannot marry someone in order to become naturalized.
You cannot marry an animal or plant.
And, no Virginia, in many states you cannot marry a member of your gender.
Sorry, but there are legal restrictions already on marriage, so you cannot say you have the "right" to marry whomever you want. Er, well, you can say that, and you can even piss and moan about it as you have done, but you'd be wrong.
One niggling little point: plants, animals, and inanimate object's aren't a "who".:-)
The rest of the points are things I didn't think of when I was firing off my message. Yes, I fully realize that there are limits to who and what you can marry. It's just that b17bmbr's assertation that I don't have a right to marry really burned me, and went off on him without fully thinking it through.
I still stand by that statement in a literal interpretation though: The minute he tries to tell me who to marry, etc. . .
And for what it's worth, there are no apostrophes in "whose" and "yours".
driving is a privilege not a right. there are certain things we trade to live in a free society, such as unlimited freedoms "I'll wherever, whenever, however" with basic safety.
You're equating "driving is a right" with "driving recklessly and irresponsibly is a right". Sorry, that doesn't fly.
Yes, driving is a right. No, reckless driving is not a right. Yes, free speech is a right. No, yelling "fire" in a crowded theater is not a right. Yes, owning a gun is a right. No, murdering people is not a right. I think you can see the pattern here.
You own a dry cleaning business, you follow all the rules, laws, etc. A female employee gets pregnant. She can't work around the toxic cleaning solutions. Fine. OSHA comes in and orders the business closed until changes are made, fines them, and orders them to pay temporary lost wages.
A much better solution would be to simply not allow the business to force the woman to be around the toxic substances, and not allow the business to in any way punish the woman for not being around the cleaning solution. If that means that she can't be in the building, fine. They still have to pay her normal hourly wages even if she can't come to work. Or, they can make the changes necessary to allow her to work.
Forcing the business to close, fining them, etc. is pretty close to jackbooted thuggery. OSHA should be slapped hard for that.
We(society) accept traffic cops and their patrolling of the streets to keep us safe. (This is not the same as "law enforcement though.) We must follow traffic laws or else we'll be unable to drive anywhere.
The traffic cops make us follow the laws, but that's not law enforcement. Err . . . OK. If you say so.
BTW, I think that reasonable traffic laws are a good thing. Like I said earlier, reckless, irresponsible driving is not a right; it's a crime.
As for rights, I feel the major problem we have is that everyone feels everythign is a right. And no, aboriton, marriage, and welfare are not rights.
Marriage isn't a right? The hell you say! The minute you try to tell me who I can and can't marry is the minute I tell you go play hide-and-go-fuck-yourself. You want to know what isn't a right? Forcing your narrow-minded ideas of morality on other people. Hold on a minute. {Checks the Constitution.} Nope, it's not in there. Ya know what is, though? The right to travel. Imagine that.
That just highlights the problem. We have grown accustomed to thinking everything is a right. Rights are an entirely different idea. Being able to "just do something" is hardly a right. I just can't drive, I don't own the road, I don't own the traffic lights, and I don't follow the rules, I can endanger others.
Gee, really. Let me ask you something. Who's money paid for that road? Who's money paid for that traffic light? Who's money pays the salery of that traffic cop? Who's money lines the pockets of the guys who wrote the traffic laws? Mine, that's who's. Yes, and your's as well. And yes, that does mean that I (partially) own the streets and the traffic lights. They're my streets and I have the right to drive on them. And no, I don't have the right to break the traffic laws.
There are plenty of people who use their news reader and email client for text-only reading. Why should they have to download and install something that they don't use. The whole point of Firefox and Thunderbird is to provide minimal, usable, extensible tools. Install the basic package and then slap on whatever cruft you personally need.
There are lots of extensions that I use (tabbed browsing stuff, for instance) that I use all the time. On the other hand, that functionality isn't needed to make Firefox usable, so it isn't part of the core browser. It's kind of annoying having to manage all of those extensions, but I undersand and respect the philosophy behind Firefox and Thunderbird.
I wasn't trying to "blow your statement out of proportion". I was trying to show the absurdity of that type of argument by showing a more extreme example.
Which as I thought I made clear in my response, I can't stand.
Err . . . OK. If you can't stand to have people try to poke holes in your statements, why are you posting to slashdot? I'm just asking.
I believe that there are situations where taking a spammer's mail server offline by any means necesary is a good thing. I beleive that there are situations where extreme measures are entirely unwarranted. To try and show it in clearcut black and white as you are is, IMO, completely and totally irresponsible.
Right. I'm just saying that participating in an illegal DDOS attack is probably not a good idea. And you're arguing with that by saying that I'm being irresponsible. OK, but I'm not going to be the one explaining all of this to the judge, am I?
By the way, let me reiterate one of my positions: the whole "if you're don't agree with me, then you're obviously on their side" philosophy is a large, steaming, odoriferous crock of shit. No, I'm not on the spammer's side.
Let me get this straight. To use it, you need to hover your mouse over the link. Then you get a tooltip with a list of URLs that you can click on. Only, it doesn't work on, like, 85% of the browsers out there. (Please, no IE vs. Firefox flame wars. That's not the point.)
And this guy has the audacity to claim that it's a useful alternative to just linking to all of the relevant URLs the way that normal people do (i.e. multiple plain vanilla html links). 'Scuse me if I don't leap onto this particular bandwagon; I think I'll keep doing it the old-fashioned way.
[. ..] I'm getting quite sick and tired of people taking my statements and either blowing them out of proportion, as you have done [. ..]
I wasn't trying to "blow your statement out of porportion". I was trying to show the absurdity of that type of arguement by showing a more extreme example. Note that I never said that you believe that pickpockets should be tortured to death; I merely offered it as an example of the "you either agree with me or you must be on their side" type of statement.
It's the difference between being an accomplice and being a victim. If you have a piece of property, and you invite someone onto your property so they can deal crack, then you have committed a serious crime. If they're trespassing on your property, then they've committed a crime against you. Likewise, if you knowingly host DDOS software, then you're in the wrong, whereas if you're an unwitting part of a botnet, then you are blameless. (You should probably secure your computer, though.)
[. ..] I mean having the government declare a "war on spammers" [. ..]
Groan. If you want to get rid of something, the last thing you want is for the government to declare "war" on it.
I mean, think about all of the things (not countries, mind you, but things) that the feds have declared war on. Have they ever actually won?
Alcohol (i.e. the Prohibition): Lost.
Poverty: Losing.
Terrorism: Losing.
Drugs: Losing, in a big way.
No, sorry. I think that a "war on spammers" would be doomed to be a hideous failure. Instead, they should just enact some tough-but-reasonable spam-control laws, and stick by them.
The RIAA already engages in DoS attacks against file-sharers and entire P2P networks. Flooding the P2P networks with corrupted files in a deliberate effort to disrupt activity on the network sounds like a DoS to me.
<humor class="ironic">
Damn straight! I tried to DL a Madonna song, and all I got was a clip of Madonna swearing at me, followed by several minutes of silence. Someone should throw them in jail for trying to interfere with my illegal file sharing!
So by saying that DDoSing warez servers is a bad thing? Or are you saying that they should be proteced and allowed to carry out illegal activities?
You could just as easily say something like "So hanging, drawing, and quartering pickpockets is a bad thing? Are you saying that pickpockets should be protected and allowed to carry out their illegal activities?"
Nobody is saying that spam is a good thing. We're just trying to decide on the appropriate course of action.
I'm not saying that I like the idea of DDoS attacks; at the same time I'm not going to allow my personal dislike of them to keep from saying that it may or may not be a good thing for bringing down servers.
Not a good thing, I think. It sets a bad precident.
Ultimately, any manner of dealing with spam can be seen as a gateway for heavy handed squashing other things that major corporations don't like and carry enough influence to accomplish their own ends. If you're willing to dismiss one of them, you might as well give up on fighting netcrime in all its' forms.
There is a number of things that can be done. First, you can write to your political representatives and let them know how you feel about spam (but be polite!). Second, keep tight control of your email addresses. Don't give them out to any entity that you don't absolutely trust. Since I have started following this police, I haven't recieved a single piece of spam. Thirdly, if you do get spam, get a good spam filter. I've heard good things about spamassassin. Fourth, secure your computer. Quite a lot of spam (no, I don't have any figures) comes from botnets. Either get a really good firewall or use an OS that isn't targeted for botnets.
I lay a lot of the blame for the current spam problem at the feet of the purveyers of insecure computer systems. What the hell are they thinking selling an insecure, unprotected computer system given today's hostile networking environment. Shame on them. (No, this isn't a slam against Windows, per se. Windows can be made secure; it just isn't, by default.)
Slashdot Mirror
I'm running KDE/OpenSUSE on a 400 MHz machine, I use Firefox as my browser, and I get reasonably snappy performance. It does bog down on occasion (like when I have one of those 30-foot-long blog pages open (Why, for the love of all that doesn't suck, do people do this?)) but it's usually not too bad.
Boudewijn Rempt,
Krita maintainer
Awesome, I'm looking forward to it. Thanks for the reply.
Failing that Krita is coming along very well as an image editor, it lacks a few features, but is far more usable than the GIMP.
One of the features that it's lacking (as of version 1.6.0) is the ability to edit text. Until it gets that, I will continue using the Gimp.
(...that was my attempt at getting some "Insightful" points) Pthbbbt!
(What do I get for a no-word comment?)
Don't get me wrong. I like open source software. I like the GPL (in all of it's various incarnations). I just think that it's absurd (and more than a bit hypocritical) for advocates of freedom to tell us that we have to do things their way. If I really want to release something under (for instance) a Creative Commons license or even (gasp!) a closed-source license, that's my prerogative and if RMS or anyone else has a problem with that then it's their problem, not mine.
*cough* Halo *cough*
Dude! *Googles "Legend of the Red Dragon"*
I can see it now; Redmond being besieged by 400,000 angry Mapuche. :D
An interesting article, but it shows a remarkable lack of knowledge, both on the part of the author and on the part of some of the people that he quoted. He seems to think that if you distribute software under the GPL, that it gives Stallman control of said software, or that it gives Stallman a right to sue people who (mis)use the software. That simply isn't true. The copyright owner (i.e. the person(s) or company that actually wrote the software) controlls it, and is responsible for suing those who infringe on the GPL.
If said companies broke the terms of the GPL, then they're in the wrong, aren't they? I mean, hey, if I broke the terms of the license for, say, MS Windows and Microsoft found out about it, they'd be all over me like stink on you-know-what. But when the big corporations are called on *their* (alleged) copyright violations, suddenly it's Stallman that's in the wrong.
And then there's the fact that it goes on paragraph-after-paragraph describing Stallman in the most unflattering terms. I mean, hey, Stallman is no saint, and he is a bit bizarre, but what does that have to do with the GPL? What does hair in soup have to do with copyright law? What does bad singing have to do with finance? Forbes *is* a finance magazine and not a celebrity trash rag, right?
Ah, I see. Daniel Lyons said bad things about Richard Stallman, so Stallman snubbed Lyons, so Lyons is in a snit. Grow up, guys.
The rest of the points are things I didn't think of when I was firing off my message. Yes, I fully realize that there are limits to who and what you can marry. It's just that b17bmbr's assertation that I don't have a right to marry really burned me, and went off on him without fully thinking it through.
I still stand by that statement in a literal interpretation though: The minute he tries to tell me who to marry, etc. . . Spelling Nazi.
Yes, driving is a right. No, reckless driving is not a right. Yes, free speech is a right. No, yelling "fire" in a crowded theater is not a right. Yes, owning a gun is a right. No, murdering people is not a right. I think you can see the pattern here. A much better solution would be to simply not allow the business to force the woman to be around the toxic substances, and not allow the business to in any way punish the woman for not being around the cleaning solution. If that means that she can't be in the building, fine. They still have to pay her normal hourly wages even if she can't come to work. Or, they can make the changes necessary to allow her to work.
Forcing the business to close, fining them, etc. is pretty close to jackbooted thuggery. OSHA should be slapped hard for that. The traffic cops make us follow the laws, but that's not law enforcement. Err . . . OK. If you say so. BTW, I think that reasonable traffic laws are a good thing. Like I said earlier, reckless, irresponsible driving is not a right; it's a crime. Marriage isn't a right? The hell you say! The minute you try to tell me who I can and can't marry is the minute I tell you go play hide-and-go-fuck-yourself. You want to know what isn't a right? Forcing your narrow-minded ideas of morality on other people. Hold on a minute. {Checks the Constitution.} Nope, it's not in there. Ya know what is, though? The right to travel. Imagine that. Gee, really. Let me ask you something. Who's money paid for that road? Who's money paid for that traffic light? Who's money pays the salery of that traffic cop? Who's money lines the pockets of the guys who wrote the traffic laws? Mine, that's who's. Yes, and your's as well. And yes, that does mean that I (partially) own the streets and the traffic lights. They're my streets and I have the right to drive on them. And no, I don't have the right to break the traffic laws.
There are plenty of people who use their news reader and email client for text-only reading. Why should they have to download and install something that they don't use. The whole point of Firefox and Thunderbird is to provide minimal, usable, extensible tools. Install the basic package and then slap on whatever cruft you personally need.
There are lots of extensions that I use (tabbed browsing stuff, for instance) that I use all the time. On the other hand, that functionality isn't needed to make Firefox usable, so it isn't part of the core browser. It's kind of annoying having to manage all of those extensions, but I undersand and respect the philosophy behind Firefox and Thunderbird.
By the way, let me reiterate one of my positions: the whole "if you're don't agree with me, then you're obviously on their side" philosophy is a large, steaming, odoriferous crock of shit. No, I'm not on the spammer's side.
Let me get this straight. To use it, you need to hover your mouse over the link. Then you get a tooltip with a list of URLs that you can click on. Only, it doesn't work on, like, 85% of the browsers out there. (Please, no IE vs. Firefox flame wars. That's not the point.)
And this guy has the audacity to claim that it's a useful alternative to just linking to all of the relevant URLs the way that normal people do (i.e. multiple plain vanilla html links). 'Scuse me if I don't leap onto this particular bandwagon; I think I'll keep doing it the old-fashioned way.
I, for one, welcome our new Insightful FP overlords.
News flash! MS-DOS still performs on 20-year-old hardware. Film at 11:00.
:-)
And hey, DOS is somewhat compatable with WinXP. DoomII will run on either system.
It's the difference between being an accomplice and being a victim. If you have a piece of property, and you invite someone onto your property so they can deal crack, then you have committed a serious crime. If they're trespassing on your property, then they've committed a crime against you. Likewise, if you knowingly host DDOS software, then you're in the wrong, whereas if you're an unwitting part of a botnet, then you are blameless. (You should probably secure your computer, though.)
I mean, think about all of the things (not countries, mind you, but things) that the feds have declared war on. Have they ever actually won?
No, sorry. I think that a "war on spammers" would be doomed to be a hideous failure. Instead, they should just enact some tough-but-reasonable spam-control laws, and stick by them.
Damn straight! I tried to DL a Madonna song, and all I got was a clip of Madonna swearing at me, followed by several minutes of silence. Someone should throw them in jail for trying to interfere with my illegal file sharing!
</humor>
Nobody is saying that spam is a good thing. We're just trying to decide on the appropriate course of action. Not a good thing, I think. It sets a bad precident. There is a number of things that can be done. First, you can write to your political representatives and let them know how you feel about spam (but be polite!). Second, keep tight control of your email addresses. Don't give them out to any entity that you don't absolutely trust. Since I have started following this police, I haven't recieved a single piece of spam. Thirdly, if you do get spam, get a good spam filter. I've heard good things about spamassassin. Fourth, secure your computer. Quite a lot of spam (no, I don't have any figures) comes from botnets. Either get a really good firewall or use an OS that isn't targeted for botnets.
I lay a lot of the blame for the current spam problem at the feet of the purveyers of insecure computer systems. What the hell are they thinking selling an insecure, unprotected computer system given today's hostile networking environment. Shame on them. (No, this isn't a slam against Windows, per se. Windows can be made secure; it just isn't, by default.)