I'm guessing the mod who modded it troll couldn't cope with policing themselves. Doesn't stop 'em policing others though...
Funny how you often get people who are the most strident about various things (especially related to morality) who are also so hypocritical.
I'm capable of not going on a rampage through the streets, you should be too, and if aren't, do you really think the police will stop you? (Obviously the police don't stop rampages through the streets...)
I've an idea, let's just shoot the buggers instead. In fact, if we take out the politicians the the corporate bosses, perhaps we could start running our own lives for ourselves. That sounds like a nice idea, and I know that I could handle it.
Probably people will disagree, perhaps because they think they couldn't handle the responsibility of having to police themselves instead of having the police do it for them...
Tell me again why anyone should care? I'm serious, what does it matter if Google are a little bit not patriotic? Personally (and I'm not in the US), I had to do a search (ironically using Google...) to actually even find out what it is!
I'd be more worried if they were glorifying past military adventures, rather then if they are simply ignoring them.
You know what they say in Australia, "best we forget". For it is better to forget then to glorify war, to raise to hero status those who have died in service of an outdated concept (the country) in often imperialistic wars.
I'm also not interested in a debate just here, if you want one, goto the URL under my name and register. I'll probably notice and respond.
(apathy maybe, now breaking the fourth wall, hey mods! I've got great karma, but I didn't put my karma bonus on this because I only wanted to talk to the person I'm responding to. That means you don't have to mod me down (or up).)
Fuck the police. There are so many problems with the criminal/legal system that it isn't funny. Innocent people being locked up, harassed etc., is just the tip of the ice berg. There is so much shit happening under the surface that you can't see, that you don't hear about (and you are a relativly intelligent person who doesn't get all their news from the mainstream media, or at least I assume you are...).
>1) Doing ANY research on an innocent individual is obviously completely illegal for the police Well it should be, it should be as hard as possible for the police to do their job, that way they might actually not misuse their powers... >2) If any individual actually commits a crime, that's a failure of the police, not a problem in this individual I wouldn't say the police alone, what causes property crimes? The existence of property... >3) nobody, not even convicted murderers, are guilty Plenty of convicted murderers (let alone people who were convicted of other "crimes") aren't actually guilty at all... Why? Two reasons, incompetence and malice. For example, the police and prosecutor fucking up the evidence. Or the jury and/or judge being biased towards the defendant (racist perhaps), or the police framing the defendant, or whatever. The police don't often care if who they get is the actual criminal, they just want a conviction...
>The things the police is allowed to do should be well-defined, and respected, by "us", meaning the parliament. I don't know about you, but I'm not represented in any parliament. In fact, the only true way for be to be represented would be if I was in their myself! No parliament is the answer, government by the people (not the "people's representatives", who are actually often just bought corporate shitheads) is the answer.
>On the contrary, while I do not agree with the argument that his current actions are violating the rights of the state (of the police if you will), he is danguerously close to doing just that. Care to explain, 1) how the police or state actually has any rights at all, 2) how his actions are borderline close to violating these (non-existent) rights?
(And for all the trolls who think they might jump in and mention the Cold War, fuck off. I'm an anarchist, who ever won, the people would have lost. The only winning move is not to play.)
The piece also leaves a bit to be desired. While it states "Of the 34 developers who responded, many of them are associated with projects like Apache and PostgreSQL that don't even use the GPL.", it neglects to mention how many. Of course, I can't be fucked actually reading the study (it is in PDF after all...). But other then that, it looks OK.
On to the study it self, I agree with the authors point that far more then 34 people have participated in the drafting of the GPL v3. Not only GNU folks, but major corporations.
If nothing else, the GPL drafting process doesn't even need to open. The Free Software Foundation could easily have hidden with some lawyers for a couple of months and then simply presented the new GPL. Obviously all the FSF stuff would go over, as would quite a lot of other stuff that has the V2 or later clause. Most developers aren't lawyers, and I'm sure that they would accept the new GPL, even if they didn't have a say in drafting it (compare version two), so long as it looks alright.
Conclusion, the study is stupid and a waste of time. While I don't use the GPL for my own projects (preferring something simpler), they are quite simple projects. For anything major, the GPL does the job, and will no doubt continue to do the job well into the future.
I use Ubuntu. Most of that stuff (or equivalent) is installed by default or a quick apt-get install (I actually use Synaptic, but whatever) away.
I also don't have to worry about a virus scanner or anti-adware stuff (well, I do get Adblock Plus and NoScript). Thus, I don't have to worry about subscriptions or similar.
Even if I do sometimes have problems, it still takes less time then downloading and installing all those individual components and getting them in the correct place, and fixing the "Start" menu placings and so on.
On the topic of virus checkers, I read a while ago (and can't find again...) about one of the first. It didn't have any of this subscription crap, when installed, it simply took a snapshot of the file system and complained if anything changed. How fucking hard is it to do that now?
To maintain backwards compatibility, MS Windows could have "fake" C:\Windows directories for each program that required it (or run them all in a Win9X jail or something).
Bah, even I could design a secure operating system. Programs shouldn't be able to modify other programs.
I'm an anarchist, I would prefer worker owned and controlled media, but hey.
My point was that the commercial media aims to make money, media that is not motivated by money, tends to be more neutral. But, you can't deny that commercial media aims to make money, otherwise what is the point?
Indeed. People claim the media in the US is "left-wing" or "liberal", no, the media in the US is like the media in most "Western" countries, it is capitalist.
It aims to make a buck, and it aims to protect the current system it lives in. If it can make a buck by dissing the right, it will do so, if it can make a buck by dissing the "left", it will do so. In this case, they obviously don't see any money to be made from the story, so they aren't following it.
(And, the media in the US might be "left-wing" compared to the US, but it is right-wing compared to, for example Europe. And in Australia, two of the five TV channels tend to be neutral (can you guess which two? I'll give you a hint, they are funded by the government (at least to a certain extent)).)
That's fine, I pretend not to be the Googlebot... Thus getting in without having to register. When I have to register, I of course fake my information.
You have heard of Jeremy Bentham yes? (One of the first real utilitarians, who helped to raise John Stuart Mill, a classical liberal.) He wrote of the Panopticon, a prison where at any time the guards could see what any of the prisoners were doing. Of course, the prisoners could never see what the guards were doing (or know when they were under surveillance). Things are much easier now with the advent of CCTV. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon
Foucault, he wrote a lot on the idea. But the original was from Bentham. George Orwell's 1984 also describes a "panopticion" society, whether he got his idea from Yevgeny Zamyatin's We (a novel about a society where all the buildings are built of glass) is debatable.
Today, the idea of the panopticon (literally, seeing or observing all) has moved beyond prisons into the wider society. Take Britain for example, with its millions of cameras. Yet shit loads of these are actually fake. The UK is now, to a certain extent, a "panopticon" society. At one movement, you might be being watched. But you don't know when, or really even by whom.
In the context of the article, computers are "all seeing", that is, they can see everything you have written. In this case, it only covers part of your actions, and not all of them.
I use a different user name on every online forum (except for this one and www.revleft.com). This is a precautionary measure to make it harder to link all my online personas. Of course, it is possible, if you have sufficient computing power and/or access to the machines (and their logs) that I have used. However, for a simple search it is not easy. I have also attempted (well I do now anyway) to create usernames that are not easily found by a simple search (except that "apathy maybe" now comes up for both RevLeft and Slashdot, where as previously it didn't...). Another precaution I take, is to edit forum posts to remove personal information (or else simply not post that information).
Along with the right to vanish, I think that every website should, once the relevant information such as browser stats and geographical stats (if relevant) should delete all their logs.
Privacy is something that has to be fought for by the individual, and by those who control websites and online communities.
Basically, it uses buffer over flows to insert nasty code into a computer. The RFID chips contain the code and when read exploit problems in the reader. You can use commercially available tools to write your own RFID chips. Have fun.
Civil disobedience. Fuck the law and rules. If they are wrong it is your *duty* to ignore them. Fuck boundaries and so on. Do you know why these kids were trying to by pass the proxies? No. But I can guess, perhaps there was some sites that they (the kids) knew were fine, but were blocked because some fascist controlled the blocking software... Or maybe it was a Chinese Communist Party official. You would be the sort of person saying, "oh those dissidents, if only they had have not tried to access those websites they would be fine. But they broke the LAW!".
Three simple possible ways, (ranked in order of preference). One, don't send people, send robots. Two, only send people who do not cling to the outdated notion of monogamy and who are also bi-sexual (or at least bi-curious). Three, castrate and/or otherwise remove the people's sexual desires (there are chemicals that will do only while they are being taken, and when they are stopped being taken, they stop working and everything goes back to normal). With this one, the chemicals would have to be put in the food, otherwise the folk won't take 'em...
Similarly, with death you can also fix any problems, but One, sending robots. I'm sure there are other ways (make sure that everyone is mentally well adjusted and so on), but everyone lies on psych tests. (Read Blue Mars.) Actually, now I've just read the article. What to do with dead bodies... Feed them back into the organic system, feed them into the power plant, throw them out the airlock. What else is there to do? Keep them in storage until the ship gets back to Earth?
So, I just signed up (using a fake name and address etc. of course, for you it is tonysmtih@mailinator.com and fuckshitup) and downloaded my first songs.
The sign up process is crap with a bunch of information that they don't really need and will probably sell (year of birth and gender (but only male and female...) for example).
The actual ad at the start isn't that bad, but after a while I would definitely get sick of it... So, as has been mentioned, a program to skip the ads... But the music is so crap that even if the ads weren't there...
Because there will always be those who wish to stay one the "right side of the law" (for whatever reason). However, considering it would be incredibly easy to remove ads from either the start or the end of a song, or if embedded in an album to separate the tracks, it will just provide another way for people to get music.
I don't think they can make any money of the service, so OK I guess it is doomed to failure.
Personally, I've been listening to ad free (varied full tracks, including big name bands) music legally for a few weeks from Last.fm and I'm quite happy.
Never? The simple addition of an 'i' in front of a word is not solely a Apple thing. I can't be fucked finding references to back up my assertions, and I am in no way a lawyer (though I once had a nice wank about a law student...), but I would be very surprised if you could trademark a single letter in such a broad range of applications. It would probably be like Intel trying to trademark '486' failing and then using Pentium from then on (and nothing to do with the fact the 486+100=485.9999999199191 on the P1).
If they can simulate half a mouse's brain, then they can surely simulate a politicians. Now we can start rounding up those scum and replacing them with computers...
Actually, I'm not in the USA, but I am quite sure that even if I was in Cuba I would be allowed to write that essay...
And I'm even fairly sure, that despite the problems Cuba has (and I in no way hold up Cuba as a good system, I'm an anarchist), I would be able to write an essay criticising Cuba's electoral system (vote for a parliament, then they vote for the president, actually that sounds like the US system, vote for an electoral collage...) and not be locked up or otherwise punished (they aren't the USSR you know...).
And of course you are right! I should not talk only of the embargo, but also the torture that the USA government either outsources (secret flights over Europe? Saudi Arabia and Egypt? ring any bells?) or commits in its own prisons. OK, so I'm sure a lot of the stuff in Iraq wasn't expressly permitted by the higher ups, but the stuff in Guantanamo Bay Naval Base certainly was.
To talk about problems in another country without also acknowledging the problems of your own country (assuming that you support them of course... I don't), that is hypocritical. Pot, meet kettle. I understand it wants to call you black.
Also, I have never seen anything (except random rants like your post) that suggests that RMS says that anyone who uses Free Software is saint. I would be interested in seeing it...
And the USA is a "democratic and free country"? I for one think not. (And I've written an essay on why the presidents position in particular isn't democratic or particularly free, which can be found at a fine website.)
Also, bitch and moan about how the embargo has done absolutely nothing (except keep the "Miami Cubans" happy and voting for whichever party). Face it, the embargo has done nothing, the USA trades with regimes that are much worse (Saudi Arabia for example, and previously Iraq (where did they get those chemical weapons from again?)) and the UN has voted every year for ages to have it removed (with only ever about 3 or 4 countries (and normally two, can you guess which two?) opposing and a similar number abstaining I think). And you wonder why US foreign policy is hated around the world.
I can't speak on why RMS hasn't been publicised objecting to "nasty" regimes (though I wouldn't be surprised if he has said something...), but I can say that calling him a "lame hypocrite" is stupid. I'm glad the whole of the Free Software Movement is not like you.
Firstly I have read the article. But only 'cause the webmaster is a stupid fucker. Hear that webmaster? YOU ARE A STUPID FUCKER!
Onto the thingy now...
As has already been mentioned, it would be good if China did adopt ODF over their own format. Numbers numbers numbers. However, don't think that Sun are doing this out of the goodness of their own hearts. They want to open up a market for their own products (Star Office).
The fact that Uniform Office Format is already an open XML format doesn't make this a high priority though. It can easily (relatively speaking) implemented into OpenOffice.org and using XSL you don't even need to do that I would imagine.
Though I am sure that Nazi Germany, the USSR for much of its history had a national card. Papers please. Oh, and Greece has a national ID card that you must produce on request ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_ID#Countries _with_compulsory_identity_cards ). Though I'm sure that only poor people get harassed about it, when driving around in your limo you won't have to worry. And despite all the elaborate security functions, I'm sure it is easy to pay to get another ID card. France requires you to provide sufficient ID, and Wikipedia explains how the ID checks are common, mainly in poor areas ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_ID#France ). And then we have South Africa with its old pass laws ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pass_Law ).
My point is not that a place will become totalitarian, simply that it becomes a heck of a lot easier. The benefits are mainly for those who would increase the power of the state.
People. People who are lazy fuckers more particularly.
What pisses me of is websites that use JavaScript and/or cookies and don't tell you that they are needed. I have both turned off my default (NoScript and CookieCuller), and I often come across sites that require one or the other to use basic functionality. And then don't tell me.
There are very few sites that actually need these things. And if they do, they should tell me so that I can turn it on. Rather then fuck around wondering why it won't work.
Personally I code my websites to be compliant XHTML and CSS (unless they are quick and dirty ones). I don't use JavaScript. I don't use Flash or similar.
I also have a message that comes up when the browser doesn't support CSS (or at least the NOCSS part). And if I used JavaScript, would also have a message come up (hidden if JavaScript was used). The same with cookies, if they are needed, the person gets told (at the time). Unless cookies are essential (such as for login information) they shouldn't be used.
Take a site that is for an airline. They have it available in heaps of languages. So I click English, and then click something else, and it takes me back to the front page. Why the fuck cant' it use server side sessions?
Slashdot Mirror
I'm guessing the mod who modded it troll couldn't cope with policing themselves. Doesn't stop 'em policing others though...
Funny how you often get people who are the most strident about various things (especially related to morality) who are also so hypocritical.
I'm capable of not going on a rampage through the streets, you should be too, and if aren't, do you really think the police will stop you? (Obviously the police don't stop rampages through the streets...)
I've an idea, let's just shoot the buggers instead. In fact, if we take out the politicians the the corporate bosses, perhaps we could start running our own lives for ourselves. That sounds like a nice idea, and I know that I could handle it.
Probably people will disagree, perhaps because they think they couldn't handle the responsibility of having to police themselves instead of having the police do it for them...
Tell me again why anyone should care? I'm serious, what does it matter if Google are a little bit not patriotic? Personally (and I'm not in the US), I had to do a search (ironically using Google...) to actually even find out what it is!
I'd be more worried if they were glorifying past military adventures, rather then if they are simply ignoring them.
You know what they say in Australia, "best we forget". For it is better to forget then to glorify war, to raise to hero status those who have died in service of an outdated concept (the country) in often imperialistic wars.
I'm also not interested in a debate just here, if you want one, goto the URL under my name and register. I'll probably notice and respond.
(apathy maybe, now breaking the fourth wall, hey mods! I've got great karma, but I didn't put my karma bonus on this because I only wanted to talk to the person I'm responding to. That means you don't have to mod me down (or up).)
Fuck the police. There are so many problems with the criminal/legal system that it isn't funny. Innocent people being locked up, harassed etc., is just the tip of the ice berg. There is so much shit happening under the surface that you can't see, that you don't hear about (and you are a relativly intelligent person who doesn't get all their news from the mainstream media, or at least I assume you are...).
...
>1) Doing ANY research on an innocent individual is obviously completely illegal for the police
Well it should be, it should be as hard as possible for the police to do their job, that way they might actually not misuse their powers
>2) If any individual actually commits a crime, that's a failure of the police, not a problem in this individual
I wouldn't say the police alone, what causes property crimes? The existence of property...
>3) nobody, not even convicted murderers, are guilty
Plenty of convicted murderers (let alone people who were convicted of other "crimes") aren't actually guilty at all... Why? Two reasons, incompetence and malice. For example, the police and prosecutor fucking up the evidence. Or the jury and/or judge being biased towards the defendant (racist perhaps), or the police framing the defendant, or whatever. The police don't often care if who they get is the actual criminal, they just want a conviction...
>The things the police is allowed to do should be well-defined, and respected, by "us", meaning the parliament.
I don't know about you, but I'm not represented in any parliament. In fact, the only true way for be to be represented would be if I was in their myself! No parliament is the answer, government by the people (not the "people's representatives", who are actually often just bought corporate shitheads) is the answer.
>On the contrary, while I do not agree with the argument that his current actions are violating the rights of the state (of the police if you will), he is danguerously close to doing just that.
Care to explain, 1) how the police or state actually has any rights at all, 2) how his actions are borderline close to violating these (non-existent) rights?
(And for all the trolls who think they might jump in and mention the Cold War, fuck off. I'm an anarchist, who ever won, the people would have lost. The only winning move is not to play.)
The piece also leaves a bit to be desired. While it states "Of the 34 developers who responded, many of them are associated with projects like Apache and PostgreSQL that don't even use the GPL.", it neglects to mention how many. Of course, I can't be fucked actually reading the study (it is in PDF after all...). But other then that, it looks OK.
On to the study it self, I agree with the authors point that far more then 34 people have participated in the drafting of the GPL v3. Not only GNU folks, but major corporations.
If nothing else, the GPL drafting process doesn't even need to open. The Free Software Foundation could easily have hidden with some lawyers for a couple of months and then simply presented the new GPL. Obviously all the FSF stuff would go over, as would quite a lot of other stuff that has the V2 or later clause. Most developers aren't lawyers, and I'm sure that they would accept the new GPL, even if they didn't have a say in drafting it (compare version two), so long as it looks alright.
Conclusion, the study is stupid and a waste of time. While I don't use the GPL for my own projects (preferring something simpler), they are quite simple projects. For anything major, the GPL does the job, and will no doubt continue to do the job well into the future.
I use Ubuntu. Most of that stuff (or equivalent) is installed by default or a quick apt-get install (I actually use Synaptic, but whatever) away.
I also don't have to worry about a virus scanner or anti-adware stuff (well, I do get Adblock Plus and NoScript). Thus, I don't have to worry about subscriptions or similar.
Even if I do sometimes have problems, it still takes less time then downloading and installing all those individual components and getting them in the correct place, and fixing the "Start" menu placings and so on.
On the topic of virus checkers, I read a while ago (and can't find again...) about one of the first. It didn't have any of this subscription crap, when installed, it simply took a snapshot of the file system and complained if anything changed. How fucking hard is it to do that now?
To maintain backwards compatibility, MS Windows could have "fake" C:\Windows directories for each program that required it (or run them all in a Win9X jail or something).
Bah, even I could design a secure operating system. Programs shouldn't be able to modify other programs.
I'm an anarchist, I would prefer worker owned and controlled media, but hey.
My point was that the commercial media aims to make money, media that is not motivated by money, tends to be more neutral. But, you can't deny that commercial media aims to make money, otherwise what is the point?
Indeed. People claim the media in the US is "left-wing" or "liberal", no, the media in the US is like the media in most "Western" countries, it is capitalist.
It aims to make a buck, and it aims to protect the current system it lives in. If it can make a buck by dissing the right, it will do so, if it can make a buck by dissing the "left", it will do so. In this case, they obviously don't see any money to be made from the story, so they aren't following it.
(And, the media in the US might be "left-wing" compared to the US, but it is right-wing compared to, for example Europe. And in Australia, two of the five TV channels tend to be neutral (can you guess which two? I'll give you a hint, they are funded by the government (at least to a certain extent)).)
That's fine, I pretend not to be the Googlebot... Thus getting in without having to register. When I have to register, I of course fake my information.
Doesn't everyone do that?
You have heard of Jeremy Bentham yes? (One of the first real utilitarians, who helped to raise John Stuart Mill, a classical liberal.) He wrote of the Panopticon, a prison where at any time the guards could see what any of the prisoners were doing. Of course, the prisoners could never see what the guards were doing (or know when they were under surveillance). Things are much easier now with the advent of CCTV. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon
Foucault, he wrote a lot on the idea. But the original was from Bentham. George Orwell's 1984 also describes a "panopticion" society, whether he got his idea from Yevgeny Zamyatin's We (a novel about a society where all the buildings are built of glass) is debatable.
Today, the idea of the panopticon (literally, seeing or observing all) has moved beyond prisons into the wider society. Take Britain for example, with its millions of cameras. Yet shit loads of these are actually fake. The UK is now, to a certain extent, a "panopticon" society. At one movement, you might be being watched. But you don't know when, or really even by whom.
In the context of the article, computers are "all seeing", that is, they can see everything you have written. In this case, it only covers part of your actions, and not all of them.
If I leave, everything I've said will still be there and attributable to me long after my views might have changed
http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?RightToVanish
I use a different user name on every online forum (except for this one and www.revleft.com). This is a precautionary measure to make it harder to link all my online personas. Of course, it is possible, if you have sufficient computing power and/or access to the machines (and their logs) that I have used. However, for a simple search it is not easy. I have also attempted (well I do now anyway) to create usernames that are not easily found by a simple search (except that "apathy maybe" now comes up for both RevLeft and Slashdot, where as previously it didn't...). Another precaution I take, is to edit forum posts to remove personal information (or else simply not post that information).
Along with the right to vanish, I think that every website should, once the relevant information such as browser stats and geographical stats (if relevant) should delete all their logs.
Privacy is something that has to be fought for by the individual, and by those who control websites and online communities.
Here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RFID#Viruses is a nice little bit, and a link to the original article. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060315-6386 .html
t ag.html?_r=5&th&emc=th&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&ore f=slogin&oref=slogin and to the real original webpage http://www.rfidvirus.org/index.html
ArsTechnica links to http://www10.nytimes.com/2006/03/15/technology/15
Basically, it uses buffer over flows to insert nasty code into a computer. The RFID chips contain the code and when read exploit problems in the reader. You can use commercially available tools to write your own RFID chips. Have fun.
Civil disobedience. Fuck the law and rules. If they are wrong it is your *duty* to ignore them. Fuck boundaries and so on. Do you know why these kids were trying to by pass the proxies? No. But I can guess, perhaps there was some sites that they (the kids) knew were fine, but were blocked because some fascist controlled the blocking software ... Or maybe it was a Chinese Communist Party official. You would be the sort of person saying, "oh those dissidents, if only they had have not tried to access those websites they would be fine. But they broke the LAW!".
He's dead Jim. That means he's doing nothing because he no longer exists.
Apologises if you are actually a materialist and were just saying it to be stupid.
Three simple possible ways, (ranked in order of preference).
...
One, don't send people, send robots.
Two, only send people who do not cling to the outdated notion of monogamy and who are also bi-sexual (or at least bi-curious).
Three, castrate and/or otherwise remove the people's sexual desires (there are chemicals that will do only while they are being taken, and when they are stopped being taken, they stop working and everything goes back to normal). With this one, the chemicals would have to be put in the food, otherwise the folk won't take 'em...
Similarly, with death you can also fix any problems, but
One, sending robots.
I'm sure there are other ways (make sure that everyone is mentally well adjusted and so on), but everyone lies on psych tests. (Read Blue Mars.)
Actually, now I've just read the article. What to do with dead bodies
Feed them back into the organic system, feed them into the power plant, throw them out the airlock. What else is there to do? Keep them in storage until the ship gets back to Earth?
So, I just signed up (using a fake name and address etc. of course, for you it is tonysmtih@mailinator.com and fuckshitup) and downloaded my first songs.
The sign up process is crap with a bunch of information that they don't really need and will probably sell (year of birth and gender (but only male and female...) for example).
The actual ad at the start isn't that bad, but after a while I would definitely get sick of it... So, as has been mentioned, a program to skip the ads... But the music is so crap that even if the ads weren't there...
Anyway, it might survive, you decide.
Because there will always be those who wish to stay one the "right side of the law" (for whatever reason). However, considering it would be incredibly easy to remove ads from either the start or the end of a song, or if embedded in an album to separate the tracks, it will just provide another way for people to get music.
I don't think they can make any money of the service, so OK I guess it is doomed to failure.
Personally, I've been listening to ad free (varied full tracks, including big name bands) music legally for a few weeks from Last.fm and I'm quite happy.
Never? The simple addition of an 'i' in front of a word is not solely a Apple thing. I can't be fucked finding references to back up my assertions, and I am in no way a lawyer (though I once had a nice wank about a law student...), but I would be very surprised if you could trademark a single letter in such a broad range of applications. It would probably be like Intel trying to trademark '486' failing and then using Pentium from then on (and nothing to do with the fact the 486+100=485.9999999199191 on the P1).
If they can simulate half a mouse's brain, then they can surely simulate a politicians. Now we can start rounding up those scum and replacing them with computers ...
Actually, I'm not in the USA, but I am quite sure that even if I was in Cuba I would be allowed to write that essay ...
...) and not be locked up or otherwise punished (they aren't the USSR you know ...).
... I don't), that is hypocritical. Pot, meet kettle. I understand it wants to call you black.
...
And I'm even fairly sure, that despite the problems Cuba has (and I in no way hold up Cuba as a good system, I'm an anarchist), I would be able to write an essay criticising Cuba's electoral system (vote for a parliament, then they vote for the president, actually that sounds like the US system, vote for an electoral collage
And of course you are right! I should not talk only of the embargo, but also the torture that the USA government either outsources (secret flights over Europe? Saudi Arabia and Egypt? ring any bells?) or commits in its own prisons. OK, so I'm sure a lot of the stuff in Iraq wasn't expressly permitted by the higher ups, but the stuff in Guantanamo Bay Naval Base certainly was.
To talk about problems in another country without also acknowledging the problems of your own country (assuming that you support them of course
Also, I have never seen anything (except random rants like your post) that suggests that RMS says that anyone who uses Free Software is saint. I would be interested in seeing it
And the USA is a "democratic and free country"? I for one think not. (And I've written an essay on why the presidents position in particular isn't democratic or particularly free, which can be found at a fine website.)
Also, bitch and moan about how the embargo has done absolutely nothing (except keep the "Miami Cubans" happy and voting for whichever party). Face it, the embargo has done nothing, the USA trades with regimes that are much worse (Saudi Arabia for example, and previously Iraq (where did they get those chemical weapons from again?)) and the UN has voted every year for ages to have it removed (with only ever about 3 or 4 countries (and normally two, can you guess which two?) opposing and a similar number abstaining I think). And you wonder why US foreign policy is hated around the world.
I can't speak on why RMS hasn't been publicised objecting to "nasty" regimes (though I wouldn't be surprised if he has said something...), but I can say that calling him a "lame hypocrite" is stupid. I'm glad the whole of the Free Software Movement is not like you.
Firstly I have read the article. But only 'cause the webmaster is a stupid fucker. Hear that webmaster? YOU ARE A STUPID FUCKER!
...
Onto the thingy now
As has already been mentioned, it would be good if China did adopt ODF over their own format. Numbers numbers numbers. However, don't think that Sun are doing this out of the goodness of their own hearts. They want to open up a market for their own products (Star Office).
The fact that Uniform Office Format is already an open XML format doesn't make this a high priority though. It can easily (relatively speaking) implemented into OpenOffice.org and using XSL you don't even need to do that I would imagine.
I'm a happy user of 6.10 however, so I won't be upgrading for a bit.
... In fact, I think I can keep my 6.10 system and just install Java from the 7.4 system can't I?
...)
In fact, I think I might wait a couple of months before getting the upgrade.
Though Java is nice
All in all, Ubuntu looks very tasty.
(Interestingly the front page of the Ubuntu homepage still says that it is going to be released tomorrow
Did I say that?
s _with_compulsory_identity_cards ). Though I'm sure that only poor people get harassed about it, when driving around in your limo you won't have to worry. And despite all the elaborate security functions, I'm sure it is easy to pay to get another ID card. France requires you to provide sufficient ID, and Wikipedia explains how the ID checks are common, mainly in poor areas ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_ID#France ). And then we have South Africa with its old pass laws ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pass_Law ).
Though I am sure that Nazi Germany, the USSR for much of its history had a national card. Papers please. Oh, and Greece has a national ID card that you must produce on request ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_ID#Countrie
My point is not that a place will become totalitarian, simply that it becomes a heck of a lot easier. The benefits are mainly for those who would increase the power of the state.
People. People who are lazy fuckers more particularly.
What pisses me of is websites that use JavaScript and/or cookies and don't tell you that they are needed. I have both turned off my default (NoScript and CookieCuller), and I often come across sites that require one or the other to use basic functionality. And then don't tell me.
There are very few sites that actually need these things. And if they do, they should tell me so that I can turn it on. Rather then fuck around wondering why it won't work.
Personally I code my websites to be compliant XHTML and CSS (unless they are quick and dirty ones). I don't use JavaScript. I don't use Flash or similar.
I also have a message that comes up when the browser doesn't support CSS (or at least the NOCSS part). And if I used JavaScript, would also have a message come up (hidden if JavaScript was used). The same with cookies, if they are needed, the person gets told (at the time). Unless cookies are essential (such as for login information) they shouldn't be used.
Take a site that is for an airline. They have it available in heaps of languages. So I click English, and then click something else, and it takes me back to the front page. Why the fuck cant' it use server side sessions?