The fact that you and others here seem unable to fathom a future where a human's basic nutritional needs are easily met (at negligible or no economic cost) thanks to technological/biological innovation frustrates me immensely.
Just wanted to point out that the heading for that article ("Amsterdam wants to get rid of Airbnb website") seems misleading. Nothing in the (short) article indicates that the municipality has a problem with Airbnb itself. But then again, misleading headlines are business as usual for such a shoddy paper as the Volkskrant.
If you read the article you would have come across the paragraph that said "McDonald's began rolling out Wi-Fi in its U.S. restaurants years ago. In 2010, McDonald's made it free even for those not buying food.". The article does mention that folks will generally feel obligated buy something.
I decided to buy this Windows/Steam bundle for $13.37 (about € 10,-) with the default split (THQ 8.69, charity 2.67, Humble tip 2.01) and was quite happy to see that on the download page you can still select your contribution to count as, for statistical purposes, for Linux. I'd be quite curious to see how many other folks did this.
Just wanted to add: the Dutch production VPRO produced a documentary a while back that deals with this subject matter. From what I recall they actually "tour" the area where all these facilities are located nowadays.
Money & Speed: Inside the Black Box is a true thriller that takes us to the heart of our automated financial world. On the basis of interviews with people directly involved and data visualizations to the millisecond, a reconstruction of the fastest and deepest drop in U.S. stock markets ever.
I'm only superficially aware of the rules and procedures in Congress so perhaps I've been mistaken. It might be that 2005/2006 bill H.R. 22 was different from the later bill H.R. 6407 which passed under suspension of the rules and voice vote (under a voice vote the names or numbers of representatives voting on each side are not recorded).
The "crisis" is entirely manufactured by Congress. Yes, Congress. They (and by "they," I mean mostly Republicans who seem to want to drive the post office into bankruptcy)
Can you elaborate on your position? In the article you link to Ralph Nader refers to Congress as a whole and doesn't place blame squarely (or mostly as you say) with one of the two parties. If I look at just the numbers then in 2006 the Democrats held 44 seats in the Senate compared to the Republican's 55 and the bill passed the Senate unanimously. In the House the Democrats held 202 seats (and essentially also another independent seat) compared to the Republican's 230 and with the exception of one abstain all Democrats voted in favor of the bill. Of the Republicans 20, including Ron Paul, voted against the bill.
As for Ron Paul, he claims he's pro-constitution, but stated he would have voted for a law that repealed Full Faith and Credit as defined in the Constitution
I believe you are incorrectly referring to Ron Paul's position on the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA):
In 1996 Congress exercised its authority under the full faith and credit clause of Article IV of the Constitution by passing the Defense of Marriage Act. This ensured each state could set its own policy regarding marriage and not be forced to adopt the marriage policies of another state. Since the full faith and credit clause grants Congress the clear authority to “prescribe the effects” that state documents such as marriage licenses have on other states, the Defense of Marriage Act is unquestionably constitutional. (Before the House of Representatives, July 22, 2004)
Section 1 - Each State to Honor all others Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.
Feel free to elaborate your position if you think I misread what you were saying.
In that video Harry Reid isn't talking about riders, he's talking about the practice of earmarking or congressional directive spending.
Riders are awful and should be banned through a constitutional amendment, earmarks however are an entirely different matter as the person you replied to pointed out.
I have to admit that entertainment like this can lead to desensitization of an event that is current and problematic
I'm much more troubled by how much the general population (which mostly consists out of non-gamers) couldn't give a shit less about anything that is happening in Afghanistan. If you want to complain about something desensitizing folks look no further than the constant barrage of reality television shows.
While you do make a valid point (be careful about what you run) and I personally can't actually understand the code provided I have to say that sometimes you have to put a little trust in others. Do you inspect and thoroughly understand every update that your distro suggests? Considering the fact the tool is distributed through Ksplice's website, you have to be seriously paranoid to think Ksplice would even dare to do anything like that.
A few years ago I was working for a consultancy agency where the employees were on the road a lot and I set-up a local private StatusNet installation (then Laconica) to enable them to more easily share "stuff" with each other (mostly sharing news and general thoughts). It was and still is a big hit. So, I can certainly believe people would be using Chatter.
Zimmerman [Canonical] objected primarily to Kroah-Hartman's definition of "Linux ecosystem," finding it "odd" in that he included GCC, binutils, X.org and Glibc in with the Linux kernel. Also, "He disregards most of the desktop stack (including GNOME and KDE), all desktop and server applications, and most anything else that is recognizable to an end user as 'Linux'." Not least of all, Zimmerman accused Kroah-Hartman of failing to acknowledge his link with Novell, a key Canonical competitor.
While I don't know how much Canonical employees (or people sponsored by Canonical) contribute to other projects I don't think it's fair to limit the contributions to those before mentioned projects.
In Amanda's blog, she asks, "What constitutes a contribution?" She says, "They [Canonical] focus on building a usable, more polished, more designed, better branded and better supported Linux distribution for the consumer market. By any one’s measure they have been successful in that endeavor. By my measure that is a very valuable contribution to the greater Linux movement."
Canonical would still need to build a user interface on top of the server component, so while it is a good idea there would still be quite a bit of work for Canonical to do as Google has not and most likely will not open source their own Wave implementation. Then again, let's not forgot that Google Wave in the current state is completely unusable for both communication (chat, discussion etc.) and any form of collaboration (specifically collaboration on documents). EtherPad on the other hand actually nails it regarding document collaboration.
So integrating EtherPad support into Ubuntu One would be feasible in the short term, at least to allow users to work together on Notes. It would be double as awesome if there was an effort to integrate support for libinfinity (from Gobby) in Tomboy (which already synchronizes with Ubuntu One). Then for collaboration over the web you'd use Ubuntu One's EtherPad functionality and in your desktop you can easily collaborate from within Tomboy.
It is true that at the moment there is indeed a "need" for proprietary software in quite a few areas. However, only in a sense that there is either no free/libre alternative, the alternatives are of lesser quality (where quality is obviously subjective) or (and this is quite often the case) the consumer has becomed locked-in.
However, there is no inherent need for software to be proprietary, the only reason that proprietary software still exists is because the producers (read: software companies) are in a lot of cases satisfied with the status-quo (a proven business model, at least in the sense of making money) and the consumers are not aware there is a better alternative (which would, among other things, lead to higher quality software).
Outside of the IT-industry, where Open Source has essentially already won (it's just that not everybody realizes it yet), this is still very obvious. It's in those areas where vendor lock-in is still the name of the game.
However, as soon as new innovative business models are popularized across the board, in which the advantages of Open Source development outweigh the advantages of keeping your software behind lock and chain, it'll be the end of proprietary software. This process will accelerate once consumers become aware of the advantages (for them) of Open Source development.
Let me see if I get this right. You're trying to use your inability to figure out how to make a living through other means than developing proprietary software as an example that "free software just doesn't work"?
You're so wrong it's not even funny. I advise you to read Stallman's essay Why “Free Software” is better than “Open Source”. Here's a quote from the essay that gets to the essence of what we're talking about here:
The fundamental difference between the two movements is in their values, their ways of looking at the world. For the Open Source movement, the issue of whether software should be open source is a practical question, not an ethical one. As one person put it, “Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement.” For the Open Source movement, non-free software is a suboptimal solution. For the Free Software movement, non-free software is a social problem and free software is the solution.
As I understand it to Stallman the primary goal of Free Software is not "better software" in terms of say stability, usability etc., it's "better" in the sense that it's the most ethical.
P.S.
I'd like to point out that I personally don't think Stallman is entirely correct in his description of the Open Source movement, as the goal of Open Source has always been the same as Free Software (among other things see Bruce Peren's "It's Time to Talk About Free Software Again"). However, regretfully the term Open Source has in a lot of cases, as evidenced from this entire discussion, become diluted.
Slashdot Mirror
The fact that you and others here seem unable to fathom a future where a human's basic nutritional needs are easily met (at negligible or no economic cost) thanks to technological/biological innovation frustrates me immensely.
Are you paying for the oxygen you breath every second of your existence? What makes food any different?
It already exists: https://openhatch.org/
I registered a while back but haven't really bother to use it.
Just wanted to point out that the heading for that article ("Amsterdam wants to get rid of Airbnb website") seems misleading. Nothing in the (short) article indicates that the municipality has a problem with Airbnb itself. But then again, misleading headlines are business as usual for such a shoddy paper as the Volkskrant.
If you read the article you would have come across the paragraph that said "McDonald's began rolling out Wi-Fi in its U.S. restaurants years ago. In 2010, McDonald's made it free even for those not buying food.". The article does mention that folks will generally feel obligated buy something.
If it's not obvious, don't sign up.
Awesome. Great find!
I decided to buy this Windows/Steam bundle for $13.37 (about € 10,-) with the default split (THQ 8.69, charity 2.67, Humble tip 2.01) and was quite happy to see that on the download page you can still select your contribution to count as, for statistical purposes, for Linux. I'd be quite curious to see how many other folks did this.
Just wanted to add: the Dutch production VPRO produced a documentary a while back that deals with this subject matter. From what I recall they actually "tour" the area where all these facilities are located nowadays.
Backlight - Money and Speed: Inside The Black Box
I'm only superficially aware of the rules and procedures in Congress so perhaps I've been mistaken. It might be that 2005/2006 bill H.R. 22 was different from the later bill H.R. 6407 which passed under suspension of the rules and voice vote (under a voice vote the names or numbers of representatives voting on each side are not recorded).
Helpful article on the subject: http://www.salon.com/2012/03/14/congresss_war_on_the_post_office/singleton/
The "crisis" is entirely manufactured by Congress. Yes, Congress. They ( and by "they," I mean mostly Republicans who seem to want to drive the post office into bankruptcy )
Can you elaborate on your position? In the article you link to Ralph Nader refers to Congress as a whole and doesn't place blame squarely (or mostly as you say) with one of the two parties. If I look at just the numbers then in 2006 the Democrats held 44 seats in the Senate compared to the Republican's 55 and the bill passed the Senate unanimously. In the House the Democrats held 202 seats (and essentially also another independent seat) compared to the Republican's 230 and with the exception of one abstain all Democrats voted in favor of the bill. Of the Republicans 20, including Ron Paul, voted against the bill.
And just because I feel like it, here's some George Carlin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIraCchPDhk
So how exactly do you interpret the latter part ("Congress may by general Laws prescribe...")?
As for Ron Paul, he claims he's pro-constitution, but stated he would have voted for a law that repealed Full Faith and Credit as defined in the Constitution
I believe you are incorrectly referring to Ron Paul's position on the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA):
In 1996 Congress exercised its authority under the full faith and credit clause of Article IV of the Constitution by passing the Defense of Marriage Act. This ensured each state could set its own policy regarding marriage and not be forced to adopt the marriage policies of another state. Since the full faith and credit clause grants Congress the clear authority to “prescribe the effects” that state documents such as marriage licenses have on other states, the Defense of Marriage Act is unquestionably constitutional . (Before the House of Representatives, July 22, 2004)
Here's the text of Article IV, Section 1:
Section 1 - Each State to Honor all others .
Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof
Feel free to elaborate your position if you think I misread what you were saying.
In that video Harry Reid isn't talking about riders, he's talking about the practice of earmarking or congressional directive spending.
Riders are awful and should be banned through a constitutional amendment, earmarks however are an entirely different matter as the person you replied to pointed out.
Actually, it's a bunch of whiners who are trying to stop game manufacturers from profiting from the hardships they are still struggling to overcome.
I can think of much more despicable examples of war profiteering that most certainly don't involve game publishers...
I have to admit that entertainment like this can lead to desensitization of an event that is current and problematic
I'm much more troubled by how much the general population (which mostly consists out of non-gamers) couldn't give a shit less about anything that is happening in Afghanistan. If you want to complain about something desensitizing folks look no further than the constant barrage of reality television shows.
Are we still allowed to call people Grammar Nazis or has that too been deemed too politically incorrect?
While you do make a valid point (be careful about what you run) and I personally can't actually understand the code provided I have to say that sometimes you have to put a little trust in others. Do you inspect and thoroughly understand every update that your distro suggests? Considering the fact the tool is distributed through Ksplice's website, you have to be seriously paranoid to think Ksplice would even dare to do anything like that.
A few years ago I was working for a consultancy agency where the employees were on the road a lot and I set-up a local private StatusNet installation (then Laconica) to enable them to more easily share "stuff" with each other (mostly sharing news and general thoughts). It was and still is a big hit. So, I can certainly believe people would be using Chatter.
Kroah-Hartman Attacks Canonical, Linux Magazine (September 19th, 2008)
While I don't know how much Canonical employees (or people sponsored by Canonical) contribute to other projects I don't think it's fair to limit the contributions to those before mentioned projects.
Also from Canonical Contribution Chronicles, Linux Magazine (September 23rd, 2008):
It's a collaborative real-time editor for documents (in the broadest sense of the word).
Canonical would still need to build a user interface on top of the server component, so while it is a good idea there would still be quite a bit of work for Canonical to do as Google has not and most likely will not open source their own Wave implementation. Then again, let's not forgot that Google Wave in the current state is completely unusable for both communication (chat, discussion etc.) and any form of collaboration (specifically collaboration on documents). EtherPad on the other hand actually nails it regarding document collaboration.
So integrating EtherPad support into Ubuntu One would be feasible in the short term, at least to allow users to work together on Notes. It would be double as awesome if there was an effort to integrate support for libinfinity (from Gobby) in Tomboy (which already synchronizes with Ubuntu One). Then for collaboration over the web you'd use Ubuntu One's EtherPad functionality and in your desktop you can easily collaborate from within Tomboy.
It is true that at the moment there is indeed a "need" for proprietary software in quite a few areas. However, only in a sense that there is either no free/libre alternative, the alternatives are of lesser quality (where quality is obviously subjective) or (and this is quite often the case) the consumer has becomed locked-in.
However, there is no inherent need for software to be proprietary, the only reason that proprietary software still exists is because the producers (read: software companies) are in a lot of cases satisfied with the status-quo (a proven business model, at least in the sense of making money) and the consumers are not aware there is a better alternative (which would, among other things, lead to higher quality software).
Outside of the IT-industry, where Open Source has essentially already won (it's just that not everybody realizes it yet), this is still very obvious. It's in those areas where vendor lock-in is still the name of the game.
However, as soon as new innovative business models are popularized across the board, in which the advantages of Open Source development outweigh the advantages of keeping your software behind lock and chain, it'll be the end of proprietary software. This process will accelerate once consumers become aware of the advantages (for them) of Open Source development.
Let me see if I get this right. You're trying to use your inability to figure out how to make a living through other means than developing proprietary software as an example that "free software just doesn't work"?
You're so wrong it's not even funny. I advise you to read Stallman's essay Why “Free Software” is better than “Open Source”. Here's a quote from the essay that gets to the essence of what we're talking about here:
As I understand it to Stallman the primary goal of Free Software is not "better software" in terms of say stability, usability etc., it's "better" in the sense that it's the most ethical.
P.S.
I'd like to point out that I personally don't think Stallman is entirely correct in his description of the Open Source movement, as the goal of Open Source has always been the same as Free Software (among other things see Bruce Peren's "It's Time to Talk About Free Software Again"). However, regretfully the term Open Source has in a lot of cases, as evidenced from this entire discussion, become diluted.