Then again the term "pagan" -- ie, a country-dweller (analogous to the Germanic "heathen" -- dweller in the heath) because of Christianity, too. Oh, sorry -- this is what happens when you post to slashdot in the middle of also writing for work. That should have read: "Then again the term "pagan" -- ie, a country-dweller (analogous to the Germanic "heathen" -- dweller in the heath) has become confused because of Christianity, too."
Most legislation flies through with barely a comment from most people. Unless it is something HUGE that the media can make a sensation out of -- PATRIOT ACT, assault weapons, etc -- there is no coverage except maybe on CSPAN.
The media is not going to raise awareness of a bill that benefits the media. No one will know about this except people who go out of their way to care, if you try and bring it up, most people won't want to hear it, etc. Maybe, if you're really lucky, you'll get called a "conspiracy nut," like when people try and raise awareness of plans for the "North American Union" and things like that.
Sad thing is, most people don't give a shit and don't want to hear anything that makes them feel more discomfort than they can reasonably handle based on the limits which they have received from the programming received from TV and school.
No, because GNOME is official GNU software. Back in the day before Qt had a GPL version, before people who didn't care about licenses or whatever have you started using Linux, there was a whole lot of commotion about that whole fact (KDE not being Free Software because Qt was only free-as-in-beer for use in open source software).
BSD users, who especially at this time (I'm talking like 1999-2000, and before), tended to be older and less fanatical about evangelizing "free software" as some sort of political end, as opposed to "FreeBSD and Apache are rock solid and cost nothing, or the $40 for the CD set. Let's use them." were more likely then to use KDE, if not more so than GNOME, defiantly more so than LINUX users were, if they were going to use a "desktop."
I think that's more or less accurate enough. Personally, I hate KDE (and I'm not that big of a fan about GNOME) but it's probably more of a technical decision at this point than it is a licensing issue. The DesktopBSD people must just like KDE.
In Latin there is no difference between "Cult" and "Religion" -- its the one word. The State Religion was "Cultus Deorum" -- cult of the gods. At a very basic, technical level, there is nothing wrong with the term.
On the other hand, in the age of middle east mega-religions, it's pretty much taken on the meaning of "unpopular, wrong, pseudo-religious scam," which Scientology also clearly is.
Then again the term "pagan" -- ie, a country-dweller (analogous to the Germanic "heathen" -- dweller in the heath) because of Christianity, too.
but the point is, Scientology is only out there confuse reality and roll you for your wallet -- same as every other religion.
I don't think first sale doctrine applies to the Psystar case, as the problem isn't that they're re-selling OS X. The problem is that OS X is running non non-Apple-branded hardware, which is in violation of the EULA.
"Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat." - Karl Marx
I'm saying he's making argument straight out of Marx to justify free software, he just changed the words.
Free software works more like third position distributivism, as advocated by Hilaire Belloc in The Servile State -- that is to say, there are three remedies to capitalism - socialism, slavery and property. Unchecked capitalism leads to slavery, but also necessitates socialist revolution UNLESS you take the third option - property.
That is to say that the means of production and exchange must be distributed as widely as possible, but that holdings are then privately owned. Free software is the perfect example of this. Anyone with a computer (means of production) and internet connection (means of exchange) can create value and trade for it and with it. Its generation of wealth at its purist.
However, we need a codified method of protecting our property - and that is the license. That is what allows us to exchange with each other without losing anything of our own but what we chose willingly to give up.
XanC on the other hand, chooses the Socialism path and paraphrases Marx. That is exactly the sort of argument that leads to "ignorant people" confusing what exactly it is that free software accomplishes - because many of the people who use and advocate it were confused in the first place.
However, its not really his fault that schools don't really teach Belloc or Chesterton but force Marx down your throat at every chance they get. Marx's analysis of the problem was correct -- his solution was flawed.
He said the future is in unlicensed software. Which, IIRC, was the end-game goal for GPL. GPL is a temporary system to enforce freedom in an age of copyright restrictions. If software in the future becomes truly unlicensed, then there's no need for GPL. The dictatorship of the proletariat is only a temporary system to enforce freedom in an age of government and capitalism. If society in the future becomes truly Communist, then there's no need for the dictatorship of the proletariat.
MS Not close. It will require time and ongoing investment. We've positioned ourselves for what we see as the future of software - unlicensed software, people having access to the software that they want at the time that they want it. The service ecosystem around that software will fund it. And if we are the company that has best anticipated that future, then we will be best positioned to benefit from it. The bolding, of course, is mine - however the quote is from the article. This, my friends, is dangerous thinking right there.
The GPL **IS** a License -- It's right there in the name. Same goes for BSD, Apache, MIT, etc. They are licenses.
The notion that copyright or license don't exist or are evil is the downfall of free software, which exists only because of protection for so-called "imaginary property."
Ubuntu is unlicensed, eh? And everything that's included in it, eh? So I guess I can change some #IFDEF s, release a "new" operating system, and get rich, eh?
Free software is not "public domain," which is what unlicensed/uncopywritten means. And that means I can totally jack it and never have to admi to it -- not even in a BSDL fashion.
I'm starting to think that Shuttleworth might be moving up the "dangerous idiot" scale.
He didn't know it happened. However, when he was taking a break, he got a phone call back from them asking if everything was OK. Frankly, I'm surprised that they didn't send out cops -- probably the GPS location was for the gun club (nra certified range, lots of cops are members) and so they figured it was some sort of accident.
Still, I would think they have a legal obligation to actually go check something like that out.
and if the phone is in the pocket you can end up dialing whoever/whatever... That happened to my dad once a couple of years ago (not a smart phone, one of those older Sony-Erikson non-folding phones)... only it happened to dial 911 while he was at the gun range shooting pistols.
great, so i have to walk around with this huge bulge in my pocket, with people either thinking I'm homeless and talking to myself, or that I just rolled Elton John for his ear piece, depending on what angle they are viewing me from?
isn't the difference between a BA and a BS whether or not you've had Calculus? That seemed to be the difference at my school -- I knew a few people who got BS in English... of course, I have a BA in English and it was mostly B.S.
Not to be funny or troll, but honestly -- this seems to do a whole bunch of things, but I can't imagine that it does any of them particularly well. Then again, I don't even use all the features on my verizon-locked motrolola krazer. It least it fits nicely in my pocket.
Its not for no reason, its for "science" -- at least in that 8th grade science fair sort of way. A friend of mine one time coated the inside of an altoid can with home made napalm, punched a hole in it for fuse, and tried to see how many fire crackers we could stuff in at a time and explode before we couldn't use it anymore (the answer was 12, but that was after 11 previous detinations, so, it may be morel like 12 + 11 +...1)
Of course, we were 22 and 23 at the time...
You never know when knowledge like this can be useful to you in the future.
That's why God intelligently designed the French Foreign Legion. Do your time under assumed name, and gain French citizenship under that name -- or go back to your home country with your real identity intact if things don't work out (well, work out well enough that you don't get splattered across Algeria).
One of their duties is guarding the ESA launch site in French Guiana, so some Slashdotters might be into that. Plus, working out and is a lot like "leveling up," as our friends at XKCD remind us. Just think of it as a real-life RPG.
Encrypt the drive and put it in a locked case, handcuffed to your wrist. Have a second person carry the key to the handcuffs and to the case and take a separate train. Just for good measures, send out decoys for both yourself and the man with they. Rendezvous at the consultant's headquarters.
yes, iGoogle -- you can totally customize your google experience with widgets and things of various sorts. Mine has a clock/calendar, BBC World News and WSJ tickers, and the weather. It also has a "theme" based around a satellite view of the Earth.
RedHat and Novell/SuSE used to have relatively high profiles. You used to be able to buy boxed sets of them at CompUSA and places, containing several CD-ROMS and a manual, and some other stuff.
I don't want to be cool or l33t. I'm not being a snob. But the crux of your argument seems to hinge on not wanting to pay for anything.
Most people don't build a computer, they buy it. It come with Windows on it, pre-configured to run with the hardware, and they don't mess with it any farther than that.
Take a look, for instance, at this computer at CompUSA. Even assuming that I don't mail in the rebate, I'm not likely to come out of the store with those same parts for any substantial savings. Windows is more or less "free" at that point.
Even given the economic argument, I'm still not buying it. Then again, people around here do seem to enjoy getting things for free as in beer. Can't say I don't enjoy free stuff, just that I'm not going to make some sort of stand on it and try and evangelize the crap out of it.
If people want to use it, I'm sure they'll find it on their own. I'm not a salesman, and I'm sure as hell not an evangelist. When I was a teenager, sure. But you know what, no one really seemed to give a shit that MS had crappy business practices or shoddy software, or that BSD and Linux were more solid or "free" or "open source" or anything else -- except for some people.
There were a few kids in high school that used linux because "m$ sux0rz." They were the same ones obsessed with "swordfish," "the matrix," "antitrust," and films of that nature. They were the ones that wanted to be bad-ass h4x0rz and 1337. they also had no friends.
I'm just saying that I can't see a compelling reason for average users to up and swap OSs for basic tasks, when they had one that was alright for it in the first place. I don't know anyone who's ever actually bought Windows to put on a computer, so Linux doesn't seem like a cost-saving thing for me.
I thought that is what he said to begin with -- that RH and Novell were already top contributers and that Canonical, which all they have done is make Ubuntu, is more or less a johnny-come-lately trying to dictate terms and more efficiently leverage the dev time of RH and Novell for their own gain.
When I assume something is there, because it always has been, and then its not, it pisses me off. Was adding it hard? No. Should I have had to do it? No.
Its not about being "banned from using" -- its about the right tool for the job. Widnows isn't/terrible/, except maybe from an engineering standpoint. Vista may be terrible, but that's not the point. Win2k pro and XP pro are pretty unobtrusive.
Why is it that "the right tool for the job" only seems to apply between linux distros around here. if I were saying 'use a mac,' then I might get modded up for it, too though.
Look at it this way -- if I need to apply baseboard molding to the wall in my house, I/could/ use a nail gun, but a hammer would do just fine.
I would whole-heartedly endorse an operating system designed from scratch to serve the needs of plain ol' users. However, trying to take a model of operation and then bend it and break it into something it wasn't meant to be under the guise of "but it/can/ be all things to all people" seems a tad misguided to me, perhaps even lazy.
Of course, maybe its just that the implementations so far just seem to fall short.
The underlying philosophies that lead to the design and implementation of UNIX and similar systems are quite different from those that lead to the development of Windows, the original Mac, and systems like that.
If all I wanted to do was basic, every day tasks, Win2k or XP would be more than sufficient. I wouldn't need anything else. Application availability would not be an issue.
People complain that Photoshop and such aren't available for Linux, BSD, Solaris, whatever. But we have plenty of computer algebra systems, 3d polotters, modelers and CAD systems, physics simulators, etc.
We have the tools needed for collaborative development and scaleable deployment of computing systems to serve in scientific, engineering and infrastructure roles. That's what UNIX was about.
BSD UNIX was chosen during DARPANET days because of its TCP/IP implimentation, but also because it was portable enough to provide source-compatability across hardware achitectures, from minicomputers to mainframes.
It wasn't supposed to be "for grandma." Stallman and the FSF, with their evangelistic, holy-war approach to software may have confused the issue. "free software for everyone! information wants to be free!"
If the reason you want grandma to run unix is because you're sick of having to clean spyware off of her system, frankly it very well may be overkill. It's like using an elephant gun to hunt a squirrel.
But, as I said, I may be missing the point because I didn't switch to "get away from" windows. I adopted the system when i was barely a teenager because I wanted to do things that it provided me the tools for. Perhaps that's why I don't lament the lack of Photoshop or games.
However, it seems to me that if people want to come to a *nix system, they should take the time to learn how and why things are the way they are. I can see no benefit from trying to make the system more like windows, because it will just cause confusion and frustration.
Slashdot Mirror
Hacksaw. Meat grinder. Crab pots. You can never be too careful when getting rid of someone...
Most legislation flies through with barely a comment from most people. Unless it is something HUGE that the media can make a sensation out of -- PATRIOT ACT, assault weapons, etc -- there is no coverage except maybe on CSPAN.
The media is not going to raise awareness of a bill that benefits the media. No one will know about this except people who go out of their way to care, if you try and bring it up, most people won't want to hear it, etc. Maybe, if you're really lucky, you'll get called a "conspiracy nut," like when people try and raise awareness of plans for the "North American Union" and things like that.
Sad thing is, most people don't give a shit and don't want to hear anything that makes them feel more discomfort than they can reasonably handle based on the limits which they have received from the programming received from TV and school.
No, because GNOME is official GNU software. Back in the day before Qt had a GPL version, before people who didn't care about licenses or whatever have you started using Linux, there was a whole lot of commotion about that whole fact (KDE not being Free Software because Qt was only free-as-in-beer for use in open source software).
BSD users, who especially at this time (I'm talking like 1999-2000, and before), tended to be older and less fanatical about evangelizing "free software" as some sort of political end, as opposed to "FreeBSD and Apache are rock solid and cost nothing, or the $40 for the CD set. Let's use them." were more likely then to use KDE, if not more so than GNOME, defiantly more so than LINUX users were, if they were going to use a "desktop."
I think that's more or less accurate enough. Personally, I hate KDE (and I'm not that big of a fan about GNOME) but it's probably more of a technical decision at this point than it is a licensing issue. The DesktopBSD people must just like KDE.
In Latin there is no difference between "Cult" and "Religion" -- its the one word. The State Religion was "Cultus Deorum" -- cult of the gods. At a very basic, technical level, there is nothing wrong with the term.
On the other hand, in the age of middle east mega-religions, it's pretty much taken on the meaning of "unpopular, wrong, pseudo-religious scam," which Scientology also clearly is.
Then again the term "pagan" -- ie, a country-dweller (analogous to the Germanic "heathen" -- dweller in the heath) because of Christianity, too.
but the point is, Scientology is only out there confuse reality and roll you for your wallet -- same as every other religion.
I don't think first sale doctrine applies to the Psystar case, as the problem isn't that they're re-selling OS X. The problem is that OS X is running non non-Apple-branded hardware, which is in violation of the EULA.
"Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat." - Karl Marx
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/index.htm
Pull your head out of your math books once in a while and read something. You might learn. I'm not making this stuff up.
I'm saying he's making argument straight out of Marx to justify free software, he just changed the words.
Free software works more like third position distributivism, as advocated by Hilaire Belloc in The Servile State -- that is to say, there are three remedies to capitalism - socialism, slavery and property. Unchecked capitalism leads to slavery, but also necessitates socialist revolution UNLESS you take the third option - property.
That is to say that the means of production and exchange must be distributed as widely as possible, but that holdings are then privately owned. Free software is the perfect example of this. Anyone with a computer (means of production) and internet connection (means of exchange) can create value and trade for it and with it. Its generation of wealth at its purist.
However, we need a codified method of protecting our property - and that is the license. That is what allows us to exchange with each other without losing anything of our own but what we chose willingly to give up.
XanC on the other hand, chooses the Socialism path and paraphrases Marx. That is exactly the sort of argument that leads to "ignorant people" confusing what exactly it is that free software accomplishes - because many of the people who use and advocate it were confused in the first place.
However, its not really his fault that schools don't really teach Belloc or Chesterton but force Marx down your throat at every chance they get. Marx's analysis of the problem was correct -- his solution was flawed.
Of course, we know how well that works out, too.
MS Not close. It will require time and ongoing investment. We've positioned ourselves for what we see as the future of software - unlicensed software, people having access to the software that they want at the time that they want it. The service ecosystem around that software will fund it. And if we are the company that has best anticipated that future, then we will be best positioned to benefit from it. The bolding, of course, is mine - however the quote is from the article. This, my friends, is dangerous thinking right there.
The GPL **IS** a License -- It's right there in the name. Same goes for BSD, Apache, MIT, etc. They are licenses.
The notion that copyright or license don't exist or are evil is the downfall of free software, which exists only because of protection for so-called "imaginary property."
Ubuntu is unlicensed, eh? And everything that's included in it, eh? So I guess I can change some #IFDEF s, release a "new" operating system, and get rich, eh?
Free software is not "public domain," which is what unlicensed/uncopywritten means. And that means I can totally jack it and never have to admi to it -- not even in a BSDL fashion.
I'm starting to think that Shuttleworth might be moving up the "dangerous idiot" scale.
He didn't know it happened. However, when he was taking a break, he got a phone call back from them asking if everything was OK. Frankly, I'm surprised that they didn't send out cops -- probably the GPS location was for the gun club (nra certified range, lots of cops are members) and so they figured it was some sort of accident.
Still, I would think they have a legal obligation to actually go check something like that out.
great, so i have to walk around with this huge bulge in my pocket, with people either thinking I'm homeless and talking to myself, or that I just rolled Elton John for his ear piece, depending on what angle they are viewing me from?
No thank you.
isn't the difference between a BA and a BS whether or not you've had Calculus? That seemed to be the difference at my school -- I knew a few people who got BS in English... of course, I have a BA in English and it was mostly B.S.
Not to be funny or troll, but honestly -- this seems to do a whole bunch of things, but I can't imagine that it does any of them particularly well. Then again, I don't even use all the features on my verizon-locked motrolola krazer. It least it fits nicely in my pocket.
Its not for no reason, its for "science" -- at least in that 8th grade science fair sort of way. A friend of mine one time coated the inside of an altoid can with home made napalm, punched a hole in it for fuse, and tried to see how many fire crackers we could stuff in at a time and explode before we couldn't use it anymore (the answer was 12, but that was after 11 previous detinations, so, it may be morel like 12 + 11 + ...1)
Of course, we were 22 and 23 at the time...
You never know when knowledge like this can be useful to you in the future.
That's why God intelligently designed the French Foreign Legion. Do your time under assumed name, and gain French citizenship under that name -- or go back to your home country with your real identity intact if things don't work out (well, work out well enough that you don't get splattered across Algeria).
One of their duties is guarding the ESA launch site in French Guiana, so some Slashdotters might be into that. Plus, working out and is a lot like "leveling up," as our friends at XKCD remind us. Just think of it as a real-life RPG.
Encrypt the drive and put it in a locked case, handcuffed to your wrist. Have a second person carry the key to the handcuffs and to the case and take a separate train. Just for good measures, send out decoys for both yourself and the man with they. Rendezvous at the consultant's headquarters.
Don't forget to wear mirrored sunglasses.
yes, iGoogle -- you can totally customize your google experience with widgets and things of various sorts. Mine has a clock/calendar, BBC World News and WSJ tickers, and the weather. It also has a "theme" based around a satellite view of the Earth.
RedHat and Novell/SuSE used to have relatively high profiles. You used to be able to buy boxed sets of them at CompUSA and places, containing several CD-ROMS and a manual, and some other stuff.
You can't anymore, though, and that's a shame.
I don't want to be cool or l33t. I'm not being a snob. But the crux of your argument seems to hinge on not wanting to pay for anything.
Most people don't build a computer, they buy it. It come with Windows on it, pre-configured to run with the hardware, and they don't mess with it any farther than that.
Take a look, for instance, at this computer at CompUSA. Even assuming that I don't mail in the rebate, I'm not likely to come out of the store with those same parts for any substantial savings. Windows is more or less "free" at that point.
Even given the economic argument, I'm still not buying it. Then again, people around here do seem to enjoy getting things for free as in beer. Can't say I don't enjoy free stuff, just that I'm not going to make some sort of stand on it and try and evangelize the crap out of it.
If people want to use it, I'm sure they'll find it on their own. I'm not a salesman, and I'm sure as hell not an evangelist. When I was a teenager, sure. But you know what, no one really seemed to give a shit that MS had crappy business practices or shoddy software, or that BSD and Linux were more solid or "free" or "open source" or anything else -- except for some people.
There were a few kids in high school that used linux because "m$ sux0rz." They were the same ones obsessed with "swordfish," "the matrix," "antitrust," and films of that nature. They were the ones that wanted to be bad-ass h4x0rz and 1337. they also had no friends.
I'm just saying that I can't see a compelling reason for average users to up and swap OSs for basic tasks, when they had one that was alright for it in the first place. I don't know anyone who's ever actually bought Windows to put on a computer, so Linux doesn't seem like a cost-saving thing for me.
I thought that is what he said to begin with -- that RH and Novell were already top contributers and that Canonical, which all they have done is make Ubuntu, is more or less a johnny-come-lately trying to dictate terms and more efficiently leverage the dev time of RH and Novell for their own gain.
When I assume something is there, because it always has been, and then its not, it pisses me off. Was adding it hard? No. Should I have had to do it? No.
Oh well. lesson learned and applied.
Its not about being "banned from using" -- its about the right tool for the job. Widnows isn't /terrible/, except maybe from an engineering standpoint. Vista may be terrible, but that's not the point. Win2k pro and XP pro are pretty unobtrusive.
/could/ use a nail gun, but a hammer would do just fine.
/can/ be all things to all people" seems a tad misguided to me, perhaps even lazy.
Why is it that "the right tool for the job" only seems to apply between linux distros around here. if I were saying 'use a mac,' then I might get modded up for it, too though.
Look at it this way -- if I need to apply baseboard molding to the wall in my house, I
I would whole-heartedly endorse an operating system designed from scratch to serve the needs of plain ol' users. However, trying to take a model of operation and then bend it and break it into something it wasn't meant to be under the guise of "but it
Of course, maybe its just that the implementations so far just seem to fall short.
The underlying philosophies that lead to the design and implementation of UNIX and similar systems are quite different from those that lead to the development of Windows, the original Mac, and systems like that.
If all I wanted to do was basic, every day tasks, Win2k or XP would be more than sufficient. I wouldn't need anything else. Application availability would not be an issue.
People complain that Photoshop and such aren't available for Linux, BSD, Solaris, whatever. But we have plenty of computer algebra systems, 3d polotters, modelers and CAD systems, physics simulators, etc.
We have the tools needed for collaborative development and scaleable deployment of computing systems to serve in scientific, engineering and infrastructure roles. That's what UNIX was about.
BSD UNIX was chosen during DARPANET days because of its TCP/IP implimentation, but also because it was portable enough to provide source-compatability across hardware achitectures, from minicomputers to mainframes.
It wasn't supposed to be "for grandma." Stallman and the FSF, with their evangelistic, holy-war approach to software may have confused the issue. "free software for everyone! information wants to be free!"
If the reason you want grandma to run unix is because you're sick of having to clean spyware off of her system, frankly it very well may be overkill. It's like using an elephant gun to hunt a squirrel.
But, as I said, I may be missing the point because I didn't switch to "get away from" windows. I adopted the system when i was barely a teenager because I wanted to do things that it provided me the tools for. Perhaps that's why I don't lament the lack of Photoshop or games.
However, it seems to me that if people want to come to a *nix system, they should take the time to learn how and why things are the way they are. I can see no benefit from trying to make the system more like windows, because it will just cause confusion and frustration.