Part of the problem some of us have with the idea of 'A Democracy' is that government should not be far reaching. Basically, government should be limited in scope, and a lot of society and social constructs should be untouched by government. Making a country a 'Democracy' implies that people vote on all sorts of issues about everything. In particular, they vote on issues that some of us feel goverment should not intrude.
There are a class of people who are really into government. Let's call them politicians. Some are 'left' and some are 'right.' They want government meddling in all kinds of areas where it's unnecessary for goverment to be. The notion of 'Democracy' as decried by some of these people implies that we should all do a lot more voting on a lot more topics. Which is the opposite of a 'mind your own business' philosophy.
Did you know that one of the first coins minted by the new US Goverment in the late eighteenth century has the legend 'Mind Your Business' printed right on it?
Actually, there are newsgroups and list servers where a lot of people talk about a lot to do with problems and continuing development. There may be a 'go away, you are on your own' feel to it when people wander in with ridiculous questions that they should go to a FAQ (or better yet- go to a Man Page) to get the answer to.
Frightening corellary: I have evesdropped on OpenBSD developer lists. Theo actually seems like a cordial guy who knows his stuff and is okay to get along with. But I know how to read Man Pages, and agree with him and his community on the perils of Howto docs that lead people down a merry trail they don't understand.
It's a much more complicated matter than can be discussed on Slashdot. Most of the people who come down hard on the 'closed nature' of the open software development communities are gate crashers trying to sabatogue things they disagree with on a political level.
Most people aren't capable of installing ANY Os on their home computer. Many, many people are completely incapable of installing anything that doesn't pop up an 'install' dialogue box when the CD is plugged into the drive.
And my experience has been that not a lot of software for Linux is distributed on CDs where an installer pops up when the CD is inserted.
Usability issues after the software is installed on the PC also could be raised. Microsoft puts a lot of effort into designing and testing for usability. Much as I strongly prefer the way the freenixes do it, I am not going to pretend it's magically 'just as easy' when there are very, very few strongly supported 'usability' people working on software for the freenixes.
I know how to use the pkg system on NetBSD to install software, even to build it from source when necessary. I know there are (what I would view as) totally out-of-control efforts to automate this stuff on 'user friend' freenixes (I bailed from that whole disaster after I had learned how to cleanly and effectively edit the files in/etc by hand and realized what a horrible kludge are all those python scripts that Red Hat and others seem fond of.)
All I remember is that while the rest of us were plugging ethernet cards into our PC's, the Apple folks were running the built in 'Pokeytalk' (Appletalk) through their serial ports and acting all righteous that they had been 'networked out of the box' for so long.
It comes down to who owns the copyright. The FSF prefers that people who license software under the GPL turn over the copyright to them. In fact, they strongly recommend this.
However, Bill Gates would also like the copyright to everything turned over to him. Also I am sure Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs would as well. . .
The strenth of the GPL, however, is not in the FSF maintaining it. It is in how many developers use it. Only time will tell wether programmers will follow the FSF 'forward' to the v.3 license. If not, it doesn't matter one wit what the FSF 'meant.'
Face it: there are many programs licensed with the GPL whose programmers did not surrender the copyright over to the GPL. The FSF wishes that were not the case, and in fact pleads with programmers to 'give it all to the FSF' but that's where things stand.
Mabye you're correct, but the dual rail +12/-12 needed for 'RS-232' is easily generated right in the interface chip with a few capacitors. Said chip only needs +5v to operate.
Of course, 'violations' of the voltage on 'Rs-232' ports has historically been really really common. Old PCs often had problems operating with serial mice, because the voltage span on the RS-232 ports on some machines was only a few volts. I remember an old Northgate 386 at work that had that problem.
When I had an account there, CompuServe charged more (it was $12 per hour) if you dialed into the 1200 baud modem pool. You got connect time for half that amount if you dialed in on the 300 baud pool. And since they had a halting interface where you hit multiple returns to traverse to any area of the system, it made sense to connect at 300 baud anyways.
Why would you tell them 'they can download this (OpenOffice) for FREE'??
Hand them a burned CD. If you're advocating it, you've probably already downloaded it. Save the bandwidth and give them an instant chunk of OSS for free.
If you 'kill the e icon' then there are going to be things the user can't accomplish anymore.
I have only one shortcut in IE on my Windoze machine, and that is to my bank. I believe I could accomplish ebanking with Netscape 7 or so on this NetBSD machine, but that gets awkward because it wants to share preferences/bookmarks/accounts with Mozilla and gets all pissy. And I'm not that keen on running a Linux closed-source binary (which is what NetScape 7 is) on my main desktop system. I prefer native Mozilla, thankyou.
I've heard horror stories of young, presumptuous techs who promise to "fix" a computer, and then proceed to nuke somebody's Windows 95B OEM / Office 97 installation that they've been using for years, and install Ubuntu with OpenOffice.
The only way that would even work acceptably for regular computer users is if the machine in question was vasty overpowered for Windows 95B and Office 97 in the first place. Which isn't likely if they've been using it for years. A modern Linux install with OpenOffice will vastly overwhelm any machine from that era. Now, I could put together a useful and powerful desktop system using NetBSD, FVWM, and a good load of lighter apps to make a highly usable system on a system of that level (higher end 486 or Pentium I) but nobody is gonna accomplish that by slamming in a modern Linux 'distro' CD and sitting back to watch it install.
Not everything depends on being 'economically viable' to exist. Much music and art is produced which has nothing to do with economic viability. I mean, hell, there are racoons out in my yard every night. There's nothing economically viable about them at all. And don't get me started on the economic viability of the lightening bugs out in our field in the summer nights.
There is actually a 'HURD-kernel' version of Debian ('little Debian snack cakes' is what I always think) for anybody adventurous enough to give it a spin.
I brought a Windows 95 beta in to work from a Microsoft seminar, back in the day, and installed it on my machine over the Windows for Workgroups we were all running at the time. It was really cool, in fact, because the 'Network Neighborhood' icon let me browse deep into areas that the IT people had no idea were open. I had to actually avoid opening files with salary info, etc. because I knew it was wrong.
On a lark, a bit later, I decided to move the date forward a year to see how the machine would handle it.
It 'expired' the install. Moving the date back didn't renable it. I had to do a complete reinstall to get it running again. I am sure that they have become much 'meaner motherfuckers' now than they were back in the days before Windows 95 was released.
Slashdot Mirror
Nice things??
How would Slashdot being peppered with inline graphics, even if inoffensive ones, be termed 'nice.'
I mean, come on, now. This isn't an AOL chat room hyar.
Part of the problem some of us have with the idea of 'A Democracy' is that government should not be far reaching. Basically, government should be limited in scope, and a lot of society and social constructs should be untouched by government. Making a country a 'Democracy' implies that people vote on all sorts of issues about everything. In particular, they vote on issues that some of us feel goverment should not intrude.
There are a class of people who are really into government. Let's call them politicians. Some are 'left' and some are 'right.' They want government meddling in all kinds of areas where it's unnecessary for goverment to be. The notion of 'Democracy' as decried by some of these people implies that we should all do a lot more voting on a lot more topics. Which is the opposite of a 'mind your own business' philosophy.
Did you know that one of the first coins minted by the new US Goverment in the late eighteenth century has the legend 'Mind Your Business' printed right on it?
Like, you know, every free nation on Earth.
You mean all those nations that don't have a Bill of Rights?
"Outside of society"
(patti smith)
Actually, there are newsgroups and list servers where a lot of people talk about a lot to do with problems and continuing development. There may be a 'go away, you are on your own' feel to it when people wander in with ridiculous questions that they should go to a FAQ (or better yet- go to a Man Page) to get the answer to.
Frightening corellary: I have evesdropped on OpenBSD developer lists. Theo actually seems like a cordial guy who knows his stuff and is okay to get along with. But I know how to read Man Pages, and agree with him and his community on the perils of Howto docs that lead people down a merry trail they don't understand.
It's a much more complicated matter than can be discussed on Slashdot. Most of the people who come down hard on the 'closed nature' of the open software development communities are gate crashers trying to sabatogue things they disagree with on a political level.
Most people aren't capable of installing ANY Os on their home computer. Many, many people are completely incapable of installing anything that doesn't pop up an 'install' dialogue box when the CD is plugged into the drive.
/etc by hand and realized what a horrible kludge are all those python scripts that Red Hat and others seem fond of.)
And my experience has been that not a lot of software for Linux is distributed on CDs where an installer pops up when the CD is inserted.
Usability issues after the software is installed on the PC also could be raised. Microsoft puts a lot of effort into designing and testing for usability. Much as I strongly prefer the way the freenixes do it, I am not going to pretend it's magically 'just as easy' when there are very, very few strongly supported 'usability' people working on software for the freenixes.
I know how to use the pkg system on NetBSD to install software, even to build it from source when necessary. I know there are (what I would view as) totally out-of-control efforts to automate this stuff on 'user friend' freenixes (I bailed from that whole disaster after I had learned how to cleanly and effectively edit the files in
Anyhow.
All I remember is that while the rest of us were plugging ethernet cards into our PC's, the Apple folks were running the built in 'Pokeytalk' (Appletalk) through their serial ports and acting all righteous that they had been 'networked out of the box' for so long.
What have you coded? When did you last program something? (your VCR doesn't count)
The Zealots are the people who have never written one nit of code, and come to Slashdot to preach about how people who write code should behave.
He hasn't learned the proper lesson from
Whoah! I know Stalinist code-word phrasing when I see it.
"You will remain in the cell until you learn the proper lesson."
It comes down to who owns the copyright. The FSF prefers that people who license software under the GPL turn over the copyright to them. In fact, they strongly recommend this.
However, Bill Gates would also like the copyright to everything turned over to him. Also I am sure Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs would as well. . .
The strenth of the GPL, however, is not in the FSF maintaining it. It is in how many developers use it. Only time will tell wether programmers will follow the FSF 'forward' to the v.3 license. If not, it doesn't matter one wit what the FSF 'meant.'
Face it: there are many programs licensed with the GPL whose programmers did not surrender the copyright over to the GPL. The FSF wishes that were not the case, and in fact pleads with programmers to 'give it all to the FSF' but that's where things stand.
A lot of education spending is taxed and spent at the local level.
Some of us feel ALL education spending should be at that level.
Mabye you're correct, but the dual rail +12/-12 needed for 'RS-232' is easily generated right in the interface chip with a few capacitors. Said chip only needs +5v to operate.
Of course, 'violations' of the voltage on 'Rs-232' ports has historically been really really common. Old PCs often had problems operating with serial mice, because the voltage span on the RS-232 ports on some machines was only a few volts. I remember an old Northgate 386 at work that had that problem.
When I had an account there, CompuServe charged more (it was $12 per hour) if you dialed into the 1200 baud modem pool. You got connect time for half that amount if you dialed in on the 300 baud pool. And since they had a halting interface where you hit multiple returns to traverse to any area of the system, it made sense to connect at 300 baud anyways.
Look out, though. Illegal immigrants might be the ones to build the fence.
I've used Linux since 1993**. It's not ready for 'prime time' if by that is meant: widespread install randomly on regular folk's computers at home.
(** I actually don't use it for much anymore. Even Slackware has gotten kind fat and obfuscated in recent times. I run NetBSD.)
Why would you tell them 'they can download this (OpenOffice) for FREE'??
Hand them a burned CD. If you're advocating it, you've probably already downloaded it. Save the bandwidth and give them an instant chunk of OSS for free.
If you 'kill the e icon' then there are going to be things the user can't accomplish anymore.
I have only one shortcut in IE on my Windoze machine, and that is to my bank. I believe I could accomplish ebanking with Netscape 7 or so on this NetBSD machine, but that gets awkward because it wants to share preferences/bookmarks/accounts with Mozilla and gets all pissy. And I'm not that keen on running a Linux closed-source binary (which is what NetScape 7 is) on my main desktop system. I prefer native Mozilla, thankyou.
The only way that would even work acceptably for regular computer users is if the machine in question was vasty overpowered for Windows 95B and Office 97 in the first place. Which isn't likely if they've been using it for years. A modern Linux install with OpenOffice will vastly overwhelm any machine from that era. Now, I could put together a useful and powerful desktop system using NetBSD, FVWM, and a good load of lighter apps to make a highly usable system on a system of that level (higher end 486 or Pentium I) but nobody is gonna accomplish that by slamming in a modern Linux 'distro' CD and sitting back to watch it install.
We also have a Lowes and a Tractor Supply. Oh, and Walgreens and CVS, and still even Radio Shack.
I wish there was a Target or K-Mart, but not yet anyway.
I can also drive about fifteen miles to a pretty well-filled outlet mall, though.
Not everything depends on being 'economically viable' to exist. Much music and art is produced which has nothing to do with economic viability. I mean, hell, there are racoons out in my yard every night. There's nothing economically viable about them at all. And don't get me started on the economic viability of the lightening bugs out in our field in the summer nights.
Sure. And it could have been provided as a plug-in for OS/2 Warp. It wasn't. It won't be.
Duke Nukem Forever will also run on HURD.
There is actually a 'HURD-kernel' version of Debian ('little Debian snack cakes' is what I always think) for anybody adventurous enough to give it a spin.
You're supposed to type the URL in at the command line using wget.
I brought a Windows 95 beta in to work from a Microsoft seminar, back in the day, and installed it on my machine over the Windows for Workgroups we were all running at the time. It was really cool, in fact, because the 'Network Neighborhood' icon let me browse deep into areas that the IT people had no idea were open. I had to actually avoid opening files with salary info, etc. because I knew it was wrong.
On a lark, a bit later, I decided to move the date forward a year to see how the machine would handle it.
It 'expired' the install. Moving the date back didn't renable it. I had to do a complete reinstall to get it running again. I am sure that they have become much 'meaner motherfuckers' now than they were back in the days before Windows 95 was released.