The problem with Stallman's terminology is that he sees software as expression of ideas, thus analogous to "free speech", and quite unambiguous. Many people see software, as you said, as a product, an inanimate object, and in that sense the confusion is easy to see. Notwithstanding Stallman's concept of software being arguably more accurate, the ambiguity is probably unavoidable.
That said, in context of an event about Free Software, at which RMS was apparently in attendance, there's precisely no excuse for not knowing the terminology, as several other posters have pointed out with (mostly car-free) analogies.
So call it "freedom software" - then there's no potential for confusion with "free (as in beer) software". (See also Microsoft's Office "Open" XML "standard".)
That's a more awkward phrase, which is why it wasn't used. There's nothing wrong with the phrasing "Free Software" other than a slight ambiguity of the sort that's rampant in the English language anyways. If people have trouble with a word having multiple meanings the problem is with their borderline illiteracy, not the word itself.
Stallman hasn't been made dictator yet, you know, not even in Cuba. We're still allowed to use "free" in its normal meaning.
Speak for yourself. Some of us, who perhaps regard freedom as more significant than money, would consider Stallman's definition to in fact be the "normal" meaning.
Has there always been this many anti-RMS trolls on/.?
Um... in spite of Richard Stallman's rather pathetic attempt to redefine the English language, that is what the term "free software" actually means. You cannot legitimately criticize the Oracle representative for using the English language correctly.
Yes, because the word "free" has precisely one definition, no others. A free man is one who can be acquired without cost, and free speech is being able to talk without paying for the privilege. Stallman, it seems, has used things called "dictionaries", unlike many people on slashdot.
"Free Software", in capital letters and in the context of the sort of event that RMS attends, is pretty unambiguous, despite your own attempt to muddy the waters. Good job on doing exactly what you accused Stallman of!
For those that bitch about high executive salaries, that's what they're often really getting paid for: They're people who've established they're good at staying ahead of the wave, surfing its leading edge and keeping their companies hugely profitable. If your ability can keep your company on the leading edge of the equilibrium wave, making $500m more a year than a company that rode the top of the wave, isn't it worth paying you $50m for that edge? I don't think anyone would begrudge your hypothetical executive his huge salary. The complaints usually center more on poor evaluation of performance--the salaries of all executives are set at a level fully appropriate for the highly skilled exec you describe, but underperforming execs are typically not punished much and, because of organizational inertia, may even have already left with big bonuses before the problems they caused become apparent.
Next thing you know, we're all supposed to love "fine foods" like caviar, raw meat with raw eggs (steak tartare), raw fish (most sushi) and god knows what else. Thanks, but no thanks. I'll just stick to whatever these elitists call crap. None of those are really particularly "fine foods", especially sushi, which developed into its modern form as a cheap, popular snack in (I think) Tokyo. Anyone who eats the food you mentioned because it's more "sophisticated" is a pretentious twit who cares more about being trendy than the actual food.
However, most people who enjoy the stuff you listed probably eat it because they like it. Just because it's not to your tastes doesn't mean everyone agrees with you, and you really shouldn't talk down food just because it's weird or unfamiliar; stuff you're okay with probably seems equally weird to other people. (Personally I think most fish is far better semi-raw than fully cooked; about the only fish I eat is sushi or smoked.)
Wow. Why all the anger and hatred at my opinion? I recommend Chamomile herbal tea to calm you down. Then you can take Ginkgo Biloba to strengthen your mind and form coherent sentences. And finally to get back into a good mood, a small bit of Peppermint should do the trick. Because not all opinions are created equal, and the ones you expressed are harmful and wrong. Having "opinions" is not a "get out of thinking free" card, sorry.
But the question is, what constitutes an overdose. I know for a fact that you can take up to 10 grams of vitamin C and nothing goes wrong. That's like, 20 "normal" pills (normal vit C pill seems to be 500mg in my experience).
Poor choice of example--you're talking here about quite possibly the least toxic substance we can consume. Measured as "percentage of minimum necessary for life" it's possibly easier to overdose on water than on vitamin C. Has anyone ever died from taking too much vitamin C?
Just about any other vitamin or nutrient (including many vital to life) is far, far easier to overdose on.
Make a living. Sell your code to the highest bidder. Don't listen to those Open Source Hippies. Yes, you should make your money by selling something incorporeal using a business model supported by a government-enforced monopoly. I mean, if you're relying on your own efforts instead of the government for your living you must be a hippie! Maybe even a communist!
Not trolling, but the above statement reminds me of the following quotation: All models are wrong, some are useful. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_E._P._Box/ Indeed, that's exactly the point. The Standard Model is quite useful, but also "wrong" and (even worse) wrong in a rather boring sort of way. The problem is that to find a new model that's slightly less wrong, or at least a more interesting kind of wrong, we need to find ways in which the Standard Model is less useful.
Thus, yet more confirmation of its utility boils down to "that's great, but now what?"
This is tagged 'blamecanada' yet most of this shit originates from the USA.
I'm living/from the USA, WHAT THE FUCK ARE THE REST OF YOU SMOKING? Do you fuckers need a clue-by-four upside your fucking hypocritical heads? Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the whole point of the blame Canada stuff in South Park to make fun of Americans for not taking responsibility for their own mistakes? I think your perception of irony may be misplaced.
Hollywood can give me movies in a format I'll accept or they can e2fsck off.
Personally I'd prefer them to reiser4fsck off, so that they're completely screwed and unrecoverable Unrecoverable except for a bit of blood found in Reiser's car, at any rate.
Except that all you apparently have to say amounts "you're wrong, blah blah, fishcakes". If you'd actually like to contribute something, such as explaining WHY I'm apparently wrong and clarifying what you understand to be the nature of international law, I'd be happy to listen and respond.
Also, please look up the definition of "straw man", you seem to be misusing it.
"It isn't nebulous at all." "International law is a mesh of treaties, agreements, and voluntary organizations,"
Those two statements directly contradict one another. If you were aware of the "mesh" of which you speak, you'd realize "nebulous" is an understatement. I dobut they're significantly more nebulous than any other system of laws, which are rarely known for their clarity or brevity.
But while the contents of those agreements may be quite nebulous, their existance hardly is. I was responding to the vague implication that international law was conjured up out of nowhere by evil foreign bureaucrats, or somehow imposed by an outside force or whatnot, or is given some authority derived from external sources. International law is just a set of agreements we've entered, often initiating the agreements ourselves. Complaining about international law somehow trumping our own laws or constitution in mysterious ways is false, disingenuous at best, and outright deceptive at worst.
We've been in this camp for a long time. When the UN wanted to teach girls about family planning, it was the US and Iran that went to bat against the measure. Doing things wrong for a long time does not make them less wrong. It's important to keep pointing out that if we're going to call ourselves the best, we can't defend our shortcomings by saying that the worst sort also do them. We have the potential to be better than that, damn it.
As an American, this attitude alone is disturbing as I see basic fundamental laws and constitutional rights being thrown out the window on the premise that some nebulous "international law" overrides what my elected representatives have been worked on to create legislation. It isn't nebulous at all. International law is a mesh of treaties, agreements, and voluntary organizations, which the US has entered willingly and often helped build. Holding to international law means honoring those agreements.
As an American, I thought honesty and keeping your promises were American values. That you seem to disagree makes me sad.
What if the people command their government to protect them? That's where you get laws that people don't generally complain about, such as criminalizing murder. The fuss is typically made when one group of people want the government to make laws that meddle with another group of people's affairs.
It's easy to forget that most laws are quite reasonable; because they are, we never hear about them, and take them for granted.
The nasty letters didn't work on North Korea, Iraq, Iran, etc etc, they certainly won't work
on the USA either, UN, WTO, all other "organizations" are powerless and pointless.
tom Oh, okay, so the USA isn't any worse than NK, Iraq, or Iran? That's a stunning endorsement.
It's like the Bush fans who justify his behavior by saying "oh, but Clinton did this stuff too!" Well, when you spend years whining and bitching about how bad the other guy was, you kinda lose the right to use "they did it first" as a defense.
It stands for Professional Engineer, a kind of licensing process demonstrating knowledge and competence to practice one's profession. They're mostly relevant for civil engineering (i.e., people whose screw-ups end up on the news as "major bridge collapses, 300 dead or missing"). PE also exists for mechanical and electrical engineers, but isn't uniformly required, as far as I know. I've never even heard of PE for anything software related, though some people have argued in favor of such a requirement.
In some locales, you can't legally call yourself an "engineer" unless you have a PE to your name, much like you can't start working as a doctor or lawyer without appropriate paperwork.
There's no logic involved here. The average slashdot user is anti-WTO unless they find *against* the US. Then suddenly everybody loves the WTO.
It's not a question of morality. It's just trendy to hate the US right now. Projecting your own failings onto others, eh? It seems pretty trendy on/. these days to hallucinate some huge anti-American bias, and there's certainly no morality or logic involved in that attitude. Reality check: the US government is acting like a dick and people are calling us on it.
Do you actually have a logical, ethical defense of the US's behavior, or are you just another mindless drone (excuse me, I mean 'typical slashdotter')?
And, one will note, if all gambling were 100% illegal in the US, we'd be in the clear with the WTO, too. This has nothing to do with "protecting" people (not that protecting people from themselves is a good thing anyways).
If my parents tried pulling that level of bullshit on me, they'd find every computer in the household wiped clean. Of everything.
And you'd find your ass grounded for at least a couple months and probably wouldn't see a computer again until you moved out. Funny how that works, huh? Creating more resentment and more motivation for the child to lie to and rebel against his parents, leading to ever greater retribution from the parents, in a repeating cycle of escalation. Then the kid hits 18, moves out, probably screws up his life because he was never taught to be independent and responsible for himself, and barely speaks to his parents again. For the next ten years his mother occasionally cries herself to sleep because she doesn't know why her son hates her.
And then, whose fault will it be in the end, for not being mature enough to stop the destructive pattern?
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with Stallman's terminology is that he sees software as expression of ideas, thus analogous to "free speech", and quite unambiguous. Many people see software, as you said, as a product, an inanimate object, and in that sense the confusion is easy to see. Notwithstanding Stallman's concept of software being arguably more accurate, the ambiguity is probably unavoidable.
That said, in context of an event about Free Software, at which RMS was apparently in attendance, there's precisely no excuse for not knowing the terminology, as several other posters have pointed out with (mostly car-free) analogies.
Sorry, did you just say our choice of language should be made by what RMS deems suitable?
No, actually, I did not just say that.That's a more awkward phrase, which is why it wasn't used. There's nothing wrong with the phrasing "Free Software" other than a slight ambiguity of the sort that's rampant in the English language anyways. If people have trouble with a word having multiple meanings the problem is with their borderline illiteracy, not the word itself.
Stallman hasn't been made dictator yet, you know, not even in Cuba. We're still allowed to use "free" in its normal meaning.
Speak for yourself. Some of us, who perhaps regard freedom as more significant than money, would consider Stallman's definition to in fact be the "normal" meaning.
Has there always been this many anti-RMS trolls on /.?
Um... in spite of Richard Stallman's rather pathetic attempt to redefine the English language, that is what the term "free software" actually means. You cannot legitimately criticize the Oracle representative for using the English language correctly.
Yes, because the word "free" has precisely one definition, no others. A free man is one who can be acquired without cost, and free speech is being able to talk without paying for the privilege. Stallman, it seems, has used things called "dictionaries", unlike many people on slashdot.
"Free Software", in capital letters and in the context of the sort of event that RMS attends, is pretty unambiguous, despite your own attempt to muddy the waters. Good job on doing exactly what you accused Stallman of!
> turn off light
It is very dark. You are now likelier to eat a grue.
> eat grue
You hungrily devour the grue. You suddenly feel as if you are in Soviet Russia.
However, most people who enjoy the stuff you listed probably eat it because they like it. Just because it's not to your tastes doesn't mean everyone agrees with you, and you really shouldn't talk down food just because it's weird or unfamiliar; stuff you're okay with probably seems equally weird to other people. (Personally I think most fish is far better semi-raw than fully cooked; about the only fish I eat is sushi or smoked.)
But the question is, what constitutes an overdose. I know for a fact that you can take up to 10 grams of vitamin C and nothing goes wrong. That's like, 20 "normal" pills (normal vit C pill seems to be 500mg in my experience).
Poor choice of example--you're talking here about quite possibly the least toxic substance we can consume. Measured as "percentage of minimum necessary for life" it's possibly easier to overdose on water than on vitamin C. Has anyone ever died from taking too much vitamin C?Just about any other vitamin or nutrient (including many vital to life) is far, far easier to overdose on.
Er, wait, I think I missed something here.
All models are wrong, some are useful.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_E._P._Box/
Indeed, that's exactly the point. The Standard Model is quite useful, but also "wrong" and (even worse) wrong in a rather boring sort of way. The problem is that to find a new model that's slightly less wrong, or at least a more interesting kind of wrong, we need to find ways in which the Standard Model is less useful.
Thus, yet more confirmation of its utility boils down to "that's great, but now what?"
Personally I'd prefer them to reiser4fsck off, so that they're completely screwed and unrecoverable Unrecoverable except for a bit of blood found in Reiser's car, at any rate.
Except that all you apparently have to say amounts "you're wrong, blah blah, fishcakes". If you'd actually like to contribute something, such as explaining WHY I'm apparently wrong and clarifying what you understand to be the nature of international law, I'd be happy to listen and respond.
Also, please look up the definition of "straw man", you seem to be misusing it.
Those two statements directly contradict one another. If you were aware of the "mesh" of which you speak, you'd realize "nebulous" is an understatement. I dobut they're significantly more nebulous than any other system of laws, which are rarely known for their clarity or brevity.
But while the contents of those agreements may be quite nebulous, their existance hardly is. I was responding to the vague implication that international law was conjured up out of nowhere by evil foreign bureaucrats, or somehow imposed by an outside force or whatnot, or is given some authority derived from external sources. International law is just a set of agreements we've entered, often initiating the agreements ourselves. Complaining about international law somehow trumping our own laws or constitution in mysterious ways is false, disingenuous at best, and outright deceptive at worst.
As an American, I thought honesty and keeping your promises were American values. That you seem to disagree makes me sad.
It's easy to forget that most laws are quite reasonable; because they are, we never hear about them, and take them for granted.
on the USA either, UN, WTO, all other "organizations" are powerless and pointless.
tom Oh, okay, so the USA isn't any worse than NK, Iraq, or Iran? That's a stunning endorsement.
It's like the Bush fans who justify his behavior by saying "oh, but Clinton did this stuff too!" Well, when you spend years whining and bitching about how bad the other guy was, you kinda lose the right to use "they did it first" as a defense.
It stands for Professional Engineer, a kind of licensing process demonstrating knowledge and competence to practice one's profession. They're mostly relevant for civil engineering (i.e., people whose screw-ups end up on the news as "major bridge collapses, 300 dead or missing"). PE also exists for mechanical and electrical engineers, but isn't uniformly required, as far as I know. I've never even heard of PE for anything software related, though some people have argued in favor of such a requirement.
In some locales, you can't legally call yourself an "engineer" unless you have a PE to your name, much like you can't start working as a doctor or lawyer without appropriate paperwork.
It's not a question of morality. It's just trendy to hate the US right now. Projecting your own failings onto others, eh? It seems pretty trendy on
Do you actually have a logical, ethical defense of the US's behavior, or are you just another mindless drone (excuse me, I mean 'typical slashdotter')?
And, one will note, if all gambling were 100% illegal in the US, we'd be in the clear with the WTO, too. This has nothing to do with "protecting" people (not that protecting people from themselves is a good thing anyways).
And then, whose fault will it be in the end, for not being mature enough to stop the destructive pattern?
Video games: Serious Business.