In my experience, part of the risk is gambling that you'll be able to get zoning by-laws overturned, so that land you bought as cheap agricultural can be sold as as very expensive residential. There's enough money involved to seriously subvert the political system, making it very difficult for regular folks to get their politicians to stand behind the planning documents that are supposed to be safe-guarding the future of our communities. In the end the politicians get a nice campaign donation, and we're stuck with another eye-sore cookie-cutter subdivision on prime agricultural land.
Full disclosure: I've been involved with enough community groups fighting against such zoning by-law changes to have come to the conclusion that all land speculators are devil-spawn, although intellectually I know that's probably not true in all cases.
That's probably the best answer to the kde vs gnome debate I've seen. I still think it's the wrong answer, or more to the point, a good answer to the wrong question.
The OP was concerned about all the new things they were going to have to figure out. The answer for people new to the game is not to explain every decision as it comes up. The answer is to eliminate all the decisions that are not absolutely essential to get up and running.
So without being asked, here are my answers to some random questions:
What distro should I use as a newbie?
If you've got a friend who is patient enough to help you out, and you like hanging out with them, use whatever they use. If you don't, use Ubuntu. It's currently the most popular, there are very active forums and paper books to help you out.
GNOME or KDE?
Not important. Use whatever is the default with your distro. Play around with that for a while. When you know enough to know there are things you don't like and can't fix, then you can start to experiment with other options. You will have enough to learn when you install linux for the first time without worrying about more than one desktop environment.
I guess just about everything else falls out from that. Best apps to start with: the defaults. If there isn't a default, go with the popular choices: OpenOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird. Make it easy on yourself, and work on new things as they come up. Once you know you don't like OpenOffice, you can take a look at AbiWord or Koffice or whatever, but these are not decisions that newbies need to be bombarded with on the first day.
Which is not to say you should actively avoid all the options available. It's really cool to have near instant access to a whole variety of different browsers, or mail clients, or whatever, and to be able to play around with them freely. But those of us with a bit more experience need to be very careful about not overwhelming newbies with choices that can and should be put off until they've settled in a bit.
The worst thing that could happen to a new user is to get worried about deciding between gnome vs kde, and asking google for advice. Next thing you know they've found one of Linus's gnome flame-fests and we all look like loons. Everyone suspects were fanatics already -- with a bit of effort newbies might go days or even weeks before they confirm this suspicion, but we'll all have to pull together for that to happen:)
I think most people would acknowledge that there are some circumstances where the only way to do it properly is by reproducing someone's prior work
True, but these are by far the exceptional cases. In the great majority of papers in my field (evolutionary biology) cited works are just that - cited, without reproducing data or analysis beyond quick summaries. The poster who started this thread was claiming that it is standard practice to reproduce any data you discuss, which is not the case.
The only way to discuss the results of someone else's work in a reasonable way is to show those results.
That's just wrong. It is in fact very rare to reproduce someone else's data in order to discuss them in your own paper. The point of citing their work is to allow readers to look it up if they want to see the details for themselves. It's up to the reviewers to make sure that they haven't grossly misrepresented the cited work, and up to the reader to evaluate for themselves the finer point of the discussion.
Apparently you do not work in a scientific field.
And what field do you work in? Can you provide a single peer-reviewed journal that routinely allows authors to republish other people's data as part of their discussion? Figures and tables, not just brief summaries.
Having invested the time in learning to use emacs efficiently, Lyx felt like a step backwards. At this point I'm far more efficient with Emacs/auctex/bibtex than I ever was with Word/Endnote. But LyX might be a way to convince others to give it a try. At this point, though, I think the best hope for widespread use of open formats is going to be OOo/Word style interfaces to something like.odf. Once that becomes an accepted standard, it shouldn't be too difficult to convert back and forth between.tex and.odf. Or between any commonly used open format.
Depends on what you mean by aggressive. There *is* progress being made, with various US states and European countries starting to demand open formats for their data. Now is definitely a good time to push this issue, but perhaps with more tact than GNU/Linux zealots are used to. The next step for me will be sending letters to professional society newsletters. It's all fine and well to argue for open formats with the slashdot crowd, but there's growing awareness in the general public that we could be capitalizing on. I guess you've been trying without success, but I'll give it a shot before giving up and returning to the world of Word.
This is not about helping OOo. There is no reason for MS to do anything to help OOo. But if we let the argument get reframed into a MSword vs OOwriter debate we miss the larger picture.
The big picture issue here is maintaining access to our own data. My thesis, in.tex format, could be read by any editor from the past three decades..doc didn't exist 30 years ago, and even over the timespan when it did there's not guarantee that documents are forward and backward compatible. There's every reason to expect that a.doc file written today will be totally unreadable by any editor available in 30 years time. My.tex file will read just fine.
The point is it's in our best interest to use open formats. MS gets the job done *today*, but at the cost of placing our trust in a notably untrustworthy company. If they change the format they force us all to upgrade to maintain the ability to freely access and exchange our data with each other. MS can choose to change the rules at any time. Or they could just get out of the wordprocessing business altogether, leaving us high and dry.
The fact that 90% of the world currently uses.doc format for exchanging formatted text doesn't preclude improving on that model. I'm not demanding that we all switch to.tex format now, although that would be most convenient for me. I am demanding that we put all public data into a publicly available format. It is a very bad idea to let ourselves stockpile large volumes of information in formats that we don't control. Granted, there is no compelling moral reason to impose this on private individuals, although it would be in their best interest as well in the long run.
Your car analogy is flawed, as they usually are. Proprietary document formats are like books that can only be read when sitting in an approved chair, or under a special light. That may be marginally acceptable when the chair or light is ubiquitous, but it is ultimately an unnecessary restriction. There are better alternatives, so why should we accept such arbitrary limits?
The.doc format isn't really the issue here, it just becomes a target because it is the main obstacle in returning to a situation where we control our own data.
Outside of CS, math and physics, I think MS is the standard. Even the bioinformatics lab in our department (plant science) maintains a windows box for wordprocessing, despite the fact that they use Unix for all their real work. Heck, even some CS departments are pretty tied to MS. I went to a CS seminar at the local university on TeX/LaTeX, and was surprised to find that it was being presented not as a standard tool, but rather as 'something you might like to try instead of Word'.
Unfortunately, I have to deal with journal editors who require 'word processing' documents, preferably.doc format. I'm not sure why exactly, as they must convert it to something more robust before it gets sent for printing, but at the submission stage it has to be.doc. And my supervisor and several other professional contacts use the 'track changes' option in Word for their comments, which doesn't seem to work with OOo. Thankfully my thesis can be submitted as pdf, so my supervisor is going to have to deal with pdf|rtf|tex for final revisions. She actually prefers to read left-justified double-spaced word documents over tex-formatted pdf output. I think it's a form of 'Stockholm Syndrome'.
As soon as I graduate, and move a step up from the bottom of the academic ladder, it will be time for some aggressive advocacy in favour of at least.odf, if not.tex, for document exchange. Sadly, as a grad student if you don't follow the rules you don't graduate...
Sure, MS uses all kinds of ethically suspect business practices. But if we were all to buy a mac today and continue to use proprietary formats for our data we'd have accomplished absolutely nothing.
I don't think which OS you use is nearly as important as what formats you use. If we could convince our friends and colleagues that closed formats were unacceptable, and collectively send that message to MS (and Apple, and...), then things would change. I don't care what OS you use, but it is incredibly aggravating that for no better reason than social inertia I almost have to use.doc formats for my own ideas, at least if I want to share them with my supervisor, journal editors, etc. But once we reject undocumented, closed formats, I don't care what OS and applications you use. If you choose to edit your XML based document in MSWord, that's fine, so long as I can choose to edit that same document in OOo, Abiword, Emacs, ed, awk or whatever else.
'course, if we agreed to use only open formats, then MS would have to start competing on new features rather than the inconvenience of switching to other systems. But you never know, they might be capable of a few good ideas if we force the issue. That's the real point - not to eliminate MS, but to make them serve the needs of their customers, rather than imposing their will on their customers, and everyone their customers interact with.
So what's your point then? Because PhDs are hard to get, and once achieved they confer social status beyond what you think they actually merit, it becomes ok to fraudulently claim you have one?
What you say about religious awe and stigma may be true in many cases. That doesn't justify further subverting the whole system by accepting fraud as an appropriate response.
I have seen from the inside the problems with the process of acquiring a PhD, and the misuse of same by people who've suffered through it. That said, when I complete my PhD in evolutionary biology in a few months my opinions on the subjects of ecology and evolution damn well better carry more weight than that of the average chump.
So what? If they were completely compatible then I'd wonder what was the point of making up a new license at all. They don't do the same thing. The GPL is intended for use with software, Creative Commons adapts the idea of copyleft to apply to more traditional publishing.
I think the point is that there are different needs for different sorts of publishing. If you are working on code and its documentation, GPL is the way to go. Probably also a good choice for textbooks. More personalized work, like fiction, opinion pieces, even some technical discussions, need to be protected from unacknowledged alteration, so verbatim copying, or enforced modification of credits is entirely appropriate.
The concept of Free Software as embodied by the GPL does not generalize well beyond the confines of software, at least not without the sorts of modifications provided by Creative Commons licenses.
To that end, I think the biggest complaint the history professors would have had would be students citing work that was based on articles that were subjective and questionably biased. It does not seem much different than any of the published works found in a library that could also be just as subjective and biased.
No, that's just plain wrong. There is a much more important difference between wikipedia and the library. Sure, both have lots of subjective and biased information. The key difference is the documentation of the sources involved. For scholarly research the source of your material is as important as its content. It's fine for me to draw on subjective work, so long as I cite it properly and the reader is able to track down the source and check it out for themselves. You could also argue that I need to be objective in interpreting the subjective work of others, but that's still not as important as providing verifiable sources.
The biggest drawback with wikipedia is that you can't do that. The information may be completely accurate and objective, but if you can't give a better source than "HanSolo666" it isn't worth squat.
Wikipedia is still a good starting point, for a quick overview and a pointer to more substantial sources. If you use it that way that's great. However, if your literature search ends at Wikipedia you are not doing legitimate academic research.
Yes, we do have problems, and you, yes, you, english lady waiting for your husband to come home from the pub, linux is not for you right now.
I agree it's not ready for everyone, but with newbie-friendly distros like Ubuntu and Mepis around, it's not just for hard-core geeks either. The desktop is ready for anyone with a bit of patience and curiosity. Granted, it is harder than just turning on your Windows box and clicking on the big E, but many (slightly above) average windows users are already doing things more sophisticated than a Mepis install.
So yeah, we don't want to sell it for everyone yet, but lets not undersell it to people that could make productive use. If you are already administering a Linux server you've got a lot more skill and knowledge than hordes of fanatic Linux newbs who are doing pretty astonishing things with the desktop.
Here's a message I think we can sell to moderately-skilled computer users: Dual-boot. In my experience, Gparted does a great job of slicing up your harddrive. Installing Mepis or Ubuntu takes less than an hour. Play with it for an afternoon and see how far you get. You might just be surprised at how much works without having to chase down obscure driver-lore. If you love it, stay. If not, come back when the interest strikes. Nothing lost but a few hours of TV-time.
It's true that rms may not be the best introduction to linux (or gnu/linux) for the general, non-technical public audience. But there are lots of very eloquent Free Software advocates who can be very persuasive without coming across as gonzo anarchist whack jobs. Regular people are starting to notice DRM, at least when they can't (easily) transfer their iTunes files to another player. Get someone like Eben Moglen in there to talk about MS and Apple working with the entertainment industry to sell us our "culture by the sip", and that will resonate with them.
Get someone from a free documentation project like Project Gutenberg, or the library community, to talk about proprietary formats and the dangers they pose to our ability to access our own data. Maybe not everyone will get it, but I think there would be real value in introducing people to the idea that they can get off the MSOffice upgrade treadmill.
I know rms' stubborn adherence to sticking GNU in front of Linux rankles a lot of people. But this is exactly why it is so important. If we want to argue in favour of Linux only in terms of features (more stable, excellent browsers, spreadsheet needs work, wordprocessors ok, multimedia tricky etc.) then we throw away our most compelling strengths. If you just want to replace Windows, Linux is ok, but if Windows is the standard we measure by we will always come out behind. But if you want to replace the proprietary paradigm that Windows represents, GNU/Linux offers more than enough to make up for the gap between OOCalc and Excel.
Like any social movement, you have to present your message with tact. But that doesn't mean you should abandon that message all together.
Many academic publications are available online at the local state university.
The publications are available, to anyone living close enough to a university to use the library. But the data is most definitely not. Open access data, at least in biology, is still the exception, rather than the rule. Even with journals that have online supplements, the extra material is usually more detailed analysis, not the data itself.
The exception in my field relates to gene sequences, which must be submitted to an open access repository like Genbank. This enables two important avenues for research. First, we can verify that the sequences used in a study were correct - if they don't match independently produced sequences for the same species then the results of the study will need to be reconsidered. Second, the time and effort that went into producing those sequences need not be duplicated by other researchers. Both are important in moving the science forward.
The whole scientific process is finally starting to take full advantage of the benefits of the internet. At this point there is no reason for all studies and their data to be publicly available for no additional fee beyond the tax money that was invested in their creation. The only thing preventing this is the inertia associated with the current publishing/funding system. It will take some time to develop a new working model, but it will happen.
Thanks. That's the most reasonable response I've seen, and it makes sense. I'm not a Christian, or likely to become one, but enough people I know and admire are that I do want to understand what they get from it. Perhaps I'll give up on the Old Testament, which seems to portray a spiteful, violent God, and try working through the New Testament instead. Interesting, too, that Jews, who are working primarily from the Old Testament are not inclined to literal interpretations of the text.
yp
ps. To those who modded me 'flamebait' - go suck rocks.
Biblical teachings are context-dependent? If the rules change depending on where and when you live, how do you decide which of the teachings are absolute, and which are open to interpretation?
I still don't understand this. In the old Israel they were too stupid to interpret the ten commandments themselves, so God lays down additional rules very explicitly. Nowadays, we're smart enough to understand the 10 commandments, so we can now disregard his other rules? If the other rules were there to clarify the 10 commandments for simpletons, should we not assume that they are by design consistent with the spirit of the 10 commandments? Or is it that somewhere later on in the bible Jesus rescinds the anti-gay stuff?
Honest question, I haven't read much of the new testament, and lots of smart people seem able to reconcile Christianity with homosexuality, so I expect I'm missing something important here.
Any person that calls themselves a Christian but hates homosexuals, Muslims, non-Christians, liberals, etc. is sorely deluding themselves.
Ok, but how does this square with Leviticus:
If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads
Are you suggesting that you should love homosexuals even while you put them to death? 'cause that's a subtlety that may not be so reassuring to the homosexuals at the receiving end of your loving.
Seriously, how you can be both progressive and follow the Christian bible is a mystery to me. I know there are in fact a lot of progressive christians, even gay christians, but it doesn't make any sense to me. The book itself contains many hateful passages like the one above. And it's a religion, which means it's not supposed to be subject to rational thought - you take it on faith, unquestioning. If you are both progressive and christian does that not mean that you've decided to disregard the offensive passages? And once you do that, is there any faith left in what you do? If you can rationalize away the killing gays bit, why not the thou shalt not kill bit? Faith is an all or nothing business I thought...
It provides far more powerful tools for the analysis and display of data than Excel. Granted, it is basically a programming language, so it is not as intuitive as a spreadsheet, but it can be used for everything from adding columns to completing cutting-edge statistical analysis, including publication-quality graphics. The spare nature of the interface would prevent any marketing goons or pointy-haired bosses from thinking they know enough to mess with it, while allowing anyone who spends a day or two getting up to speed to do just about anything you can imagine doing with numbers.
Ok, it's hard to skim an audio file, so I'm not going to spend another hour on this. However, Moglen does clearly outline the problems with coercive/violent redistribution of wealth between 16:30 and 18:00, stating that "we do not have to do that anymore". You read that as meaning we do not need to use 'excessive' coercion, but I think the rest of his speech makes clear that no coercion at all is necessary.
To turn it around, where does he propose coercive redistribution of any kind? What kind of coercion does he advocate? The point I took from the talk was that with the development of Free software development models we no longer need to find the balance between just redistribution and excessive coercion - Free software decouples coercion from redistribution. In fact, redistribution is no longer even meaningful. You can redistribute dollars by taking taxes from the rich and giving them to the poor. How do you redistribute Free software? You can only distribute it to people, you can't redistribute it, ie take it away from one person to give it to another.
I think you miss the most important point. In an industrial economy with finite resources social justice may have required coercive redistribution of wealth, and that redistribution was basically impossible to achieve in an equitable way. In an information economy the resources are not finite, so redistribution, in the sense of taking from one person to give to another, is no longer needed. We can all share the resources without requiring that anyone give anything up.
Slashdot Mirror
In my experience, part of the risk is gambling that you'll be able to get zoning by-laws overturned, so that land you bought as cheap agricultural can be sold as as very expensive residential. There's enough money involved to seriously subvert the political system, making it very difficult for regular folks to get their politicians to stand behind the planning documents that are supposed to be safe-guarding the future of our communities. In the end the politicians get a nice campaign donation, and we're stuck with another eye-sore cookie-cutter subdivision on prime agricultural land.
Full disclosure: I've been involved with enough community groups fighting against such zoning by-law changes to have come to the conclusion that all land speculators are devil-spawn, although intellectually I know that's probably not true in all cases.
yp.
Emacs 22 is vaporware
Not so much: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/06/shiny-and- new-emacs-22.html
yp.
That's probably the best answer to the kde vs gnome debate I've seen. I still think it's the wrong answer, or more to the point, a good answer to the wrong question.
The OP was concerned about all the new things they were going to have to figure out. The answer for people new to the game is not to explain every decision as it comes up. The answer is to eliminate all the decisions that are not absolutely essential to get up and running.
So without being asked, here are my answers to some random questions:
What distro should I use as a newbie?
If you've got a friend who is patient enough to help you out, and you like hanging out with them, use whatever they use. If you don't, use Ubuntu. It's currently the most popular, there are very active forums and paper books to help you out.
GNOME or KDE?
Not important. Use whatever is the default with your distro. Play around with that for a while. When you know enough to know there are things you don't like and can't fix, then you can start to experiment with other options. You will have enough to learn when you install linux for the first time without worrying about more than one desktop environment.
I guess just about everything else falls out from that. Best apps to start with: the defaults. If there isn't a default, go with the popular choices: OpenOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird. Make it easy on yourself, and work on new things as they come up. Once you know you don't like OpenOffice, you can take a look at AbiWord or Koffice or whatever, but these are not decisions that newbies need to be bombarded with on the first day.
Which is not to say you should actively avoid all the options available. It's really cool to have near instant access to a whole variety of different browsers, or mail clients, or whatever, and to be able to play around with them freely. But those of us with a bit more experience need to be very careful about not overwhelming newbies with choices that can and should be put off until they've settled in a bit.
The worst thing that could happen to a new user is to get worried about deciding between gnome vs kde, and asking google for advice. Next thing you know they've found one of Linus's gnome flame-fests and we all look like loons. Everyone suspects were fanatics already -- with a bit of effort newbies might go days or even weeks before they confirm this suspicion, but we'll all have to pull together for that to happen :)
yp.
I think most people would acknowledge that there are some circumstances where the only way to do it properly is by reproducing someone's prior work
True, but these are by far the exceptional cases. In the great majority of papers in my field (evolutionary biology) cited works are just that - cited, without reproducing data or analysis beyond quick summaries. The poster who started this thread was claiming that it is standard practice to reproduce any data you discuss, which is not the case.
yp.
The only way to discuss the results of someone else's work in a reasonable way is to show those results.
That's just wrong. It is in fact very rare to reproduce someone else's data in order to discuss them in your own paper. The point of citing their work is to allow readers to look it up if they want to see the details for themselves. It's up to the reviewers to make sure that they haven't grossly misrepresented the cited work, and up to the reader to evaluate for themselves the finer point of the discussion.
Apparently you do not work in a scientific field.
And what field do you work in? Can you provide a single peer-reviewed journal that routinely allows authors to republish other people's data as part of their discussion? Figures and tables, not just brief summaries.
yp.
Having invested the time in learning to use emacs efficiently, Lyx felt like a step backwards. At this point I'm far more efficient with Emacs/auctex/bibtex than I ever was with Word/Endnote. But LyX might be a way to convince others to give it a try. At this point, though, I think the best hope for widespread use of open formats is going to be OOo/Word style interfaces to something like .odf. Once that becomes an accepted standard, it shouldn't be too difficult to convert back and forth between .tex and .odf. Or between any commonly used open format.
yp.
Depends on what you mean by aggressive. There *is* progress being made, with various US states and European countries starting to demand open formats for their data. Now is definitely a good time to push this issue, but perhaps with more tact than GNU/Linux zealots are used to. The next step for me will be sending letters to professional society newsletters. It's all fine and well to argue for open formats with the slashdot crowd, but there's growing awareness in the general public that we could be capitalizing on. I guess you've been trying without success, but I'll give it a shot before giving up and returning to the world of Word.
yp
This is not about helping OOo. There is no reason for MS to do anything to help OOo. But if we let the argument get reframed into a MSword vs OOwriter debate we miss the larger picture.
The big picture issue here is maintaining access to our own data. My thesis, in .tex format, could be read by any editor from the past three decades. .doc didn't exist 30 years ago, and even over the timespan when it did there's not guarantee that documents are forward and backward compatible. There's every reason to expect that a .doc file written today will be totally unreadable by any editor available in 30 years time. My .tex file will read just fine.
The point is it's in our best interest to use open formats. MS gets the job done *today*, but at the cost of placing our trust in a notably untrustworthy company. If they change the format they force us all to upgrade to maintain the ability to freely access and exchange our data with each other. MS can choose to change the rules at any time. Or they could just get out of the wordprocessing business altogether, leaving us high and dry.
The fact that 90% of the world currently uses .doc format for exchanging formatted text doesn't preclude improving on that model. I'm not demanding that we all switch to .tex format now, although that would be most convenient for me. I am demanding that we put all public data into a publicly available format. It is a very bad idea to let ourselves stockpile large volumes of information in formats that we don't control. Granted, there is no compelling moral reason to impose this on private individuals, although it would be in their best interest as well in the long run.
Your car analogy is flawed, as they usually are. Proprietary document formats are like books that can only be read when sitting in an approved chair, or under a special light. That may be marginally acceptable when the chair or light is ubiquitous, but it is ultimately an unnecessary restriction. There are better alternatives, so why should we accept such arbitrary limits?
The .doc format isn't really the issue here, it just becomes a target because it is the main obstacle in returning to a situation where we control our own data.
yp.
Outside of CS, math and physics, I think MS is the standard. Even the bioinformatics lab in our department (plant science) maintains a windows box for wordprocessing, despite the fact that they use Unix for all their real work. Heck, even some CS departments are pretty tied to MS. I went to a CS seminar at the local university on TeX/LaTeX, and was surprised to find that it was being presented not as a standard tool, but rather as 'something you might like to try instead of Word'.
yp.
Unfortunately, I have to deal with journal editors who require 'word processing' documents, preferably .doc format. I'm not sure why exactly, as they must convert it to something more robust before it gets sent for printing, but at the submission stage it has to be .doc. And my supervisor and several other professional contacts use the 'track changes' option in Word for their comments, which doesn't seem to work with OOo. Thankfully my thesis can be submitted as pdf, so my supervisor is going to have to deal with pdf|rtf|tex for final revisions. She actually prefers to read left-justified double-spaced word documents over tex-formatted pdf output. I think it's a form of 'Stockholm Syndrome'.
As soon as I graduate, and move a step up from the bottom of the academic ladder, it will be time for some aggressive advocacy in favour of at least .odf, if not .tex, for document exchange. Sadly, as a grad student if you don't follow the rules you don't graduate...
yp.
Sure, MS uses all kinds of ethically suspect business practices. But if we were all to buy a mac today and continue to use proprietary formats for our data we'd have accomplished absolutely nothing.
I don't think which OS you use is nearly as important as what formats you use. If we could convince our friends and colleagues that closed formats were unacceptable, and collectively send that message to MS (and Apple, and ...), then things would change. I don't care what OS you use, but it is incredibly aggravating that for no better reason than social inertia I almost have to use .doc formats for my own ideas, at least if I want to share them with my supervisor, journal editors, etc. But once we reject undocumented, closed formats, I don't care what OS and applications you use. If you choose to edit your XML based document in MSWord, that's fine, so long as I can choose to edit that same document in OOo, Abiword, Emacs, ed, awk or whatever else.
'course, if we agreed to use only open formats, then MS would have to start competing on new features rather than the inconvenience of switching to other systems. But you never know, they might be capable of a few good ideas if we force the issue. That's the real point - not to eliminate MS, but to make them serve the needs of their customers, rather than imposing their will on their customers, and everyone their customers interact with.
yp.
So what's your point then? Because PhDs are hard to get, and once achieved they confer social status beyond what you think they actually merit, it becomes ok to fraudulently claim you have one?
What you say about religious awe and stigma may be true in many cases. That doesn't justify further subverting the whole system by accepting fraud as an appropriate response.
I have seen from the inside the problems with the process of acquiring a PhD, and the misuse of same by people who've suffered through it. That said, when I complete my PhD in evolutionary biology in a few months my opinions on the subjects of ecology and evolution damn well better carry more weight than that of the average chump.
yp.
So what? If they were completely compatible then I'd wonder what was the point of making up a new license at all. They don't do the same thing. The GPL is intended for use with software, Creative Commons adapts the idea of copyleft to apply to more traditional publishing.
I think the point is that there are different needs for different sorts of publishing. If you are working on code and its documentation, GPL is the way to go. Probably also a good choice for textbooks. More personalized work, like fiction, opinion pieces, even some technical discussions, need to be protected from unacknowledged alteration, so verbatim copying, or enforced modification of credits is entirely appropriate.
The concept of Free Software as embodied by the GPL does not generalize well beyond the confines of software, at least not without the sorts of modifications provided by Creative Commons licenses.
yp.
(assuming you're from the US) Because you live in a democracy where, in theory, the population chose their government.
(assuming you're from the US) Because, in theory, you live in a democracy.
fixed that for you.
yp.
To that end, I think the biggest complaint the history professors would have had would be students citing work that was based on articles that were subjective and questionably biased. It does not seem much different than any of the published works found in a library that could also be just as subjective and biased.
No, that's just plain wrong. There is a much more important difference between wikipedia and the library. Sure, both have lots of subjective and biased information. The key difference is the documentation of the sources involved. For scholarly research the source of your material is as important as its content. It's fine for me to draw on subjective work, so long as I cite it properly and the reader is able to track down the source and check it out for themselves. You could also argue that I need to be objective in interpreting the subjective work of others, but that's still not as important as providing verifiable sources.
The biggest drawback with wikipedia is that you can't do that. The information may be completely accurate and objective, but if you can't give a better source than "HanSolo666" it isn't worth squat.
Wikipedia is still a good starting point, for a quick overview and a pointer to more substantial sources. If you use it that way that's great. However, if your literature search ends at Wikipedia you are not doing legitimate academic research.
yp.
Yes, we do have problems, and you, yes, you, english lady waiting for your husband to come home from the pub, linux is not for you right now.
I agree it's not ready for everyone, but with newbie-friendly distros like Ubuntu and Mepis around, it's not just for hard-core geeks either. The desktop is ready for anyone with a bit of patience and curiosity. Granted, it is harder than just turning on your Windows box and clicking on the big E, but many (slightly above) average windows users are already doing things more sophisticated than a Mepis install.
So yeah, we don't want to sell it for everyone yet, but lets not undersell it to people that could make productive use. If you are already administering a Linux server you've got a lot more skill and knowledge than hordes of fanatic Linux newbs who are doing pretty astonishing things with the desktop.
Here's a message I think we can sell to moderately-skilled computer users: Dual-boot. In my experience, Gparted does a great job of slicing up your harddrive. Installing Mepis or Ubuntu takes less than an hour. Play with it for an afternoon and see how far you get. You might just be surprised at how much works without having to chase down obscure driver-lore. If you love it, stay. If not, come back when the interest strikes. Nothing lost but a few hours of TV-time.
yp.
It's true that rms may not be the best introduction to linux (or gnu/linux) for the general, non-technical public audience. But there are lots of very eloquent Free Software advocates who can be very persuasive without coming across as gonzo anarchist whack jobs. Regular people are starting to notice DRM, at least when they can't (easily) transfer their iTunes files to another player. Get someone like Eben Moglen in there to talk about MS and Apple working with the entertainment industry to sell us our "culture by the sip", and that will resonate with them.
Get someone from a free documentation project like Project Gutenberg, or the library community, to talk about proprietary formats and the dangers they pose to our ability to access our own data. Maybe not everyone will get it, but I think there would be real value in introducing people to the idea that they can get off the MSOffice upgrade treadmill.
I know rms' stubborn adherence to sticking GNU in front of Linux rankles a lot of people. But this is exactly why it is so important. If we want to argue in favour of Linux only in terms of features (more stable, excellent browsers, spreadsheet needs work, wordprocessors ok, multimedia tricky etc.) then we throw away our most compelling strengths. If you just want to replace Windows, Linux is ok, but if Windows is the standard we measure by we will always come out behind. But if you want to replace the proprietary paradigm that Windows represents, GNU/Linux offers more than enough to make up for the gap between OOCalc and Excel.
Like any social movement, you have to present your message with tact. But that doesn't mean you should abandon that message all together.
yp.
Many academic publications are available online at the local state university.
The publications are available, to anyone living close enough to a university to use the library. But the data is most definitely not. Open access data, at least in biology, is still the exception, rather than the rule. Even with journals that have online supplements, the extra material is usually more detailed analysis, not the data itself.
The exception in my field relates to gene sequences, which must be submitted to an open access repository like Genbank. This enables two important avenues for research. First, we can verify that the sequences used in a study were correct - if they don't match independently produced sequences for the same species then the results of the study will need to be reconsidered. Second, the time and effort that went into producing those sequences need not be duplicated by other researchers. Both are important in moving the science forward.
The whole scientific process is finally starting to take full advantage of the benefits of the internet. At this point there is no reason for all studies and their data to be publicly available for no additional fee beyond the tax money that was invested in their creation. The only thing preventing this is the inertia associated with the current publishing/funding system. It will take some time to develop a new working model, but it will happen.
yp
Hope this helped.
Very much. Thanks for taking the time. I will check out the passages you cite!
yp.
Thanks. That's the most reasonable response I've seen, and it makes sense. I'm not a Christian, or likely to become one, but enough people I know and admire are that I do want to understand what they get from it. Perhaps I'll give up on the Old Testament, which seems to portray a spiteful, violent God, and try working through the New Testament instead. Interesting, too, that Jews, who are working primarily from the Old Testament are not inclined to literal interpretations of the text.
yp
ps. To those who modded me 'flamebait' - go suck rocks.
Biblical teachings are context-dependent? If the rules change depending on where and when you live, how do you decide which of the teachings are absolute, and which are open to interpretation?
yp
I still don't understand this. In the old Israel they were too stupid to interpret the ten commandments themselves, so God lays down additional rules very explicitly. Nowadays, we're smart enough to understand the 10 commandments, so we can now disregard his other rules? If the other rules were there to clarify the 10 commandments for simpletons, should we not assume that they are by design consistent with the spirit of the 10 commandments? Or is it that somewhere later on in the bible Jesus rescinds the anti-gay stuff?
Honest question, I haven't read much of the new testament, and lots of smart people seem able to reconcile Christianity with homosexuality, so I expect I'm missing something important here.
yp.
Any person that calls themselves a Christian but hates homosexuals, Muslims, non-Christians, liberals, etc. is sorely deluding themselves.
Ok, but how does this square with Leviticus:
If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads
Are you suggesting that you should love homosexuals even while you put them to death? 'cause that's a subtlety that may not be so reassuring to the homosexuals at the receiving end of your loving.
Seriously, how you can be both progressive and follow the Christian bible is a mystery to me. I know there are in fact a lot of progressive christians, even gay christians, but it doesn't make any sense to me. The book itself contains many hateful passages like the one above. And it's a religion, which means it's not supposed to be subject to rational thought - you take it on faith, unquestioning. If you are both progressive and christian does that not mean that you've decided to disregard the offensive passages? And once you do that, is there any faith left in what you do? If you can rationalize away the killing gays bit, why not the thou shalt not kill bit? Faith is an all or nothing business I thought...
yp.
Can you name me an open source spreadsheet-like program that is not an Excel clone?
What about R http://www.r-project.org/?
It provides far more powerful tools for the analysis and display of data than Excel. Granted, it is basically a programming language, so it is not as intuitive as a spreadsheet, but it can be used for everything from adding columns to completing cutting-edge statistical analysis, including publication-quality graphics. The spare nature of the interface would prevent any marketing goons or pointy-haired bosses from thinking they know enough to mess with it, while allowing anyone who spends a day or two getting up to speed to do just about anything you can imagine doing with numbers.
yp
Ok, it's hard to skim an audio file, so I'm not going to spend another hour on this. However, Moglen does clearly outline the problems with coercive/violent redistribution of wealth between 16:30 and 18:00, stating that "we do not have to do that anymore". You read that as meaning we do not need to use 'excessive' coercion, but I think the rest of his speech makes clear that no coercion at all is necessary.
To turn it around, where does he propose coercive redistribution of any kind? What kind of coercion does he advocate? The point I took from the talk was that with the development of Free software development models we no longer need to find the balance between just redistribution and excessive coercion - Free software decouples coercion from redistribution. In fact, redistribution is no longer even meaningful. You can redistribute dollars by taking taxes from the rich and giving them to the poor. How do you redistribute Free software? You can only distribute it to people, you can't redistribute it, ie take it away from one person to give it to another.
I think you miss the most important point. In an industrial economy with finite resources social justice may have required coercive redistribution of wealth, and that redistribution was basically impossible to achieve in an equitable way. In an information economy the resources are not finite, so redistribution, in the sense of taking from one person to give to another, is no longer needed. We can all share the resources without requiring that anyone give anything up.
yp.