As usual, high spin is indicated by the red end of the line. Here are the spin scores for all of the speeches analyzed (positive numbers are high spin):
1. Bush 0.40 2. Thompson 1.71 3. Lieberman -0.73 4. Romney 4.36 5. Huckabee -1.8 6. Giuliani 2.97 7. Palin -0.62 8. McCain -7.38 9. M. Obama -1.24 10. Hillary Clinton 2.43 11. Bill Clinton 0.99 12. Biden -1.35 13. Obama 0.31
seems like a bit of discrepancy with what's reported in the article.
why are we not taught about Zeus and his cohort in science?
why are we not taught about the Dream time?
why are we not taught about Santa Claus and his flying reindeer (much more energy-efficient way of getting around places, considering how much ground he covers in one night)?
The problem with MPEG encoding and decoding is that the data itself is not well suited to multi-threaded analysis.
Not quite true. Someone above already explained some of this re VisualHub.
The video data/frame at 0:00 is very likely completely unrelated to the data/frame at 5:00, thus you can simply chop up the raw file into a number of segments and process them in parallel.
Some clever stitching is probably required to put the whole thing back together in the end.
Multi-threading is most efficient when it is applied to discrete data sets that have little or no dependency on each other.
Exactly, so you chop up the raw input into segments and they become discrete data sets.
from the summary: "Recent evidence released is showing the North Pole ice is melting at the highest rate ever recorded. As a result, the Pole may be completely ice-free at the surface and composed of nothing but open water by September. "
This is restrained? this is about as strong a warning as it gets. The reason it doesn't sound like someone screaming from the top of their lungs is because scientists are supposed to report facts, interpretation and predictions.
Unless you mean _you_ can't tell that they are being serious about it, that you need the kind of sensational titles from those weekly celebrity magazines, like "Is Arctic Melting Again?!!! Scientists Say We Will All Die Next Year!"
By the time you feel their warning is sufficiently dire, it's already too late to do anything about it. Don't worry, it's not that much longer to go.
There have been plenty of dire predictions, but it's never going to enough for people who stick fingers in their ears and pretend they can't hear anything they don't want to hear.
You know, just because there are two sides to the debate, doesn't mean the answer is somewhere in the middle. Sometimes, one side is just completely wrong.
To practice law in any place any country is a privilege to be earned, not a right. You have to pass exams and so on, it's not easy and not everyone gets to do it.
They want to disbar him because he is an embarrassment and he's abusing the position of a law practitioner. He is also a menace to the society because of he is a lawyer, one of the several occupations whose words hold sway in courts of public opinion as well, and yet he has been saying stuff which clear does not represent the opinion(s) held by most of the other lawyers in Florida.
The disbarment is not a gag order, it does not take away his right to say the stuff he's been saying for years.
As for SCO.... you do realise that people don't like them because they were just wrong?
Just because there are two sides to an argument doesn't mean that you should take the middle ground. Sometimes, one side is just wrong. Plain wrong.
If two people are arguing the result of 1+1 = ? person A says the answer is 3, and person B says the answer is 2 (and going apoplectic trying to explain), are you going to tell them to not be emotional and just take 2.5 as the answer?
Going from "is my work really outdated?" to "How can I keep my work from becoming outdated?" and implicitly assumes that the work _is_ outdated. Wasting time considering how to deal with inane questions from clueless intellectual artiste is just stupid.
Would you ask your plumber how to improve network design just because some guy thinks the Internet is a series of tubes?
Sure, it's important to have constructive criticisms and developers certainly should be open to such, but it's just as important to understand which criticisms are even worth considering.
If you've ever worked in scientific research you will have better understand of this. In every area of research I've been involved in, there are always some quacks or backyard inventors who claim they have found the solution to all of the unanswered questions and yet refuses to publish or elaborate, only profusely arguing that the scientific community is too old-fashioned to accept their ideas. Bollocks!
-----
Now, please carefully consider the following:
1. was your comment really just bollocks?
then follow up by:
2. how can you keep your comment from becoming total bollocks 3. how can you write comments that don't sound like bollocks
It's not software assembly of DNA sequence, which is relatively trivial, a walk in the park. The difficult part is actually assembling the _real_ dinosaur chromosome, assembling some Nx10,000 genes correctly, i.e. after sequencing everything, finding out which gene goes on which chromosome and the order they are in and hoping that the "junky" parts you'd ignored is _really_ junk. Then you need to splice all these pieces of PCR'd DNAs together, making several molecules which are hundreds of millions or several billion nucleotides long.
Building up the actually thing is much much more difficult than just assembling the sequence in computers.
Like I said, I am sure you are a good person in your daily life.
Nevertheless, your original comment suggest that you think that the "average Joes" are only charitable if they are God-fearing? That it takes some "special" people to do good for others?
Would you be interested in the success of the OLPC project if it has absolutely zero bearing on your group?
It is not the aim of OLPC to sell like Dells in developed countries, in case you haven't noticed already. Its hardware and software specifications are far from "normal" usages in such countries, but not far _below_, since in many areas it certain excels. This "give one get one" program serves to bring higher awareness among the developed countries, as the presence of some of these machines will certain generate interest and queries among those who were not previous aware of them.
First, you make it sound like being a geek or philanthropist are bad things or deviant from normal behaviour.
Second, are only the God-fearing allowed to help others? only tech-loving people should play with gadgets? You wouldn't bother helping others unless there was some strong incentive to do so? Your curiosity is only limited to that which you are familiar with? I don't wish to judge you from the few words you have typed in the comment, but the world-view presented within them seems to be extremely narrow and dogmatic. If makes you sound like the people I see who'd go bargain-hunting at charity auctions.
I am sure you are a good person in your daily life.
nope, I was thinking that they realised their gaffe has really backfired and there was nowhere else left for them to go. So they simply packed up and went home.
On the assumption that these people are not entirely stupid:
1. If they were really working to break MS Office dominance, they would have realised by now that what they have said was completely stupid, and may have brought harm to the "cause", as the damages were amplified by clueless "journalists" and "analysts" (e.g. http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=875)
2. If they were MS stooges, the credibility required to carried out their work successfully was pretty much destroyed.
Nothing more to do in either case, to continue hanging onto the empty name of OpenDocument Foundation would be farcical on the same scale as Enderle or DiDio.
I don't bother to read Dvorak anymore, since I always feel dumber aftewards, so I have no idea how good are his predictions or if they are so bad they are guaranteed to be wrong (anti-prediction, in a sense).
but his gripe about not able to read web content on phones is really just a problem of people not generating format for phone use. He should spend a few weeks or months in Japan and use their system.
yes, check out chromatin packing. Essentially, some parts of the chromosome is packed into structures that are not so accessible. Chromatin packing also varies in different cell types or organs. It is thought to be "folding out" the parts of chromosome not required as much in specific cells.
The reason that our own genes don't get significantly interrupted is that the majority of our genome doesn't code for anything; viruses insert themselves into areas we aren't using anyhow. This is an outdated idea. It would be more correct to say that we don't know what the majority of our genome encode for. Currently, it is estimated that around 40-60% of our genomic DNA is transcribed into RNA. A small fraction of these are messenger RNAs, which encode for proteins. We have no idea why (or often even "how" as not all have apparent signals for transcription to begin) these sequences are expressed. One of the new-ish idea in evolution is that many novel micro/small RNAs are rapidly (on the evolutionary scale) evolved in and out of the genome.
- 90+% of the western World's population knew for a fact that the Sun and Moon and all other celestial bodies circle around the Earth - a few scores of people believed that, with the exception of the Moon, there are evidence for the contrary.
When does popular opinion matter to something that is either true or false?
95% of the World's population are dumber than some 5% of the World's population, which group would you tend to believe on matters of facts?
But if you want to believe that a statistically insignificant (yes, really - most people don't care, much less even know, about this) group of hobbyists and hackers have "forced" Apple to scramble to release an SDK, go right ahead.
Wrong.
I love all the people who think Apple (particularly Jobs) is some sort of prophetic visionary. They react to the market as much as any other profit-seeking companies.
Geek cred is a small but significant factor in tech gadgets and Apple knows this, given that one of the primary reasons for Apple's rising popularity is due to OS X, and one of the reason for OS X's rising popularity is the *nix code base.
That particular video may not have been the sole factor for the Apple's battery replacement program, but it was certainly part of the increasing public awareness of the defects in the Apple devices. However, (and I say this in deep admirations) Apple nevertheless found a way to extract even more money out of its blindly loyal customers while at the same time somewhat-sorta-maybe addressing the criticisms.
And your "moving target" theory is just BS. 1) OS X as a platform has been around for long enough, and Apple took pride in announcing that their phone and new iPod runs on the same platform, and being the first non-smart phone to require some 800mb of OS codes. 2) it didn't take lots of arm-twisting for Symbian, Nokia and (dare I say) Microsoft and other companies to release SDKs for their mobile platforms. While they may have varying validation protocols and so on, they didn't parade some random wild BS theory about their OS being "uncertain". Even Jobs wasn't saying this in his bit. If the API's have been settled, they wouldn't and shouldn't have released the product.
As usual, they were just testing the market to see if they can make even more money out of 3rd parties and customers, which is after all, the goal of every profitable company.
From just a fast read of the article, I think the claim "creating" a new life is a bit exaggerated.
It's pared down from the genome of a pre-existing species and probably permuted the organisation of the genes on the chromosomes, therefore not much "creation" was involved, they just figured out what genes are not essentially for cell/organism viability and removed them. Granted, a LOT of work had to have been done to stitch together the final artificial chromosome, but still, I think it would be more correct to say it's an artificially _modified_ chromosome rather than created.
Gene therapy labs often play with the HIV virus, by taking out the nasty bits and put in replacement genes, to study whether it is an effective delivery system.
Scientists have difficulty predicting function and structure of known/natural proteins/genes, let alone making new ones. However, gene modification is very common, for example, GFP (green fluorescent protein) is commonly modified to fluoresce other colours. And genome paring is also pretty common, there was a group that removed 5 MB (megabases) from mouse genome and the mice still looked and behaved normally _in_the_lab_, can you claim that they were a new species of mouse?
Last I heard, the Mayo lab (http://www.mayo.caltech.edu/research.html) has created a completely novel gene which produced a protein that folded as they predicted it would. I haven't followed up on the progress since then.
Sure, it took tremendously amount of effort, but it's still exaggeration. An example, perhaps a bit unfair, but it's like saying people who pared down Windows installations by removing non-essential files are "creating" new operating systems.
We shouldn't go into this with rose-colored glasses, with blind idealism.
Yes, but projects like this are driven by idealism in the first place. I suppose there are differences between practical and blind idealism, but while it is important to note the possible pitfalls, it is also equally important not to lose sight of the ideal.
I hope this is not sounding evangelical already, but I believe the OLPC team (both administrative and technical sides) have considered most if not all the possible eventualities this project may encounter and decided to go ahead with it anyway.
So there will always be some bad apples, but that's the same everywhere. There are plenty scammers on the internet from first world countries too. Just because people don't live below the poverty line doesn't mean they don't want to acquire wealth in dodgy manners, in fact, they are even more creative at it. Equally, just because people live below the poverty line doesn't mean they all want to scam money from richer folks.
By some people's standards, I am probably living in the slums. I've heard of people living in styles where their daily expenses are greater than my annual income, but I don't really feel the need to con money out of these "rich" people. At the same time, I know many people who are in much worse financial situations than myself, but I've not felt they are trying to take advantage of me financially.
I suppose you are arguing that by given technological tools to poor people, we are giving them the possibility to commit offences. But (let me put on my rose-tinted glasses) we are also at the same time enabling others the opportunity to do good, and hopefully in the long run, the good will outweigh the bad.
What critics like you never seem to consider is that perhaps they _have_ considered the possibility and concluded that the benefit it will bring these countries and children outweighs the harm that some individuals might do?
Or are you advocating that we should just cut them loose entirely? embargo the entire continent until they've managed to pull themselves up to the first world standard, just in case any aid we give them backfires on us? (yes, I am well aware that I am exaggerating for the sake of dramatics).
He has much more credibility than say, Steve Ballmer Does he? I don't know Theo, have never met him or communicated with him, but he does have certain "reputation". Same with Steve chair-throwing-"I'll-bury-them" Ballmer, but while Ballmer seems to be able to control his tantrums in public, Theo does not appear to be able to do so.
Many people still put great store by public demeanor, that they will prefer having a business relationship with someone who appears reasonable (even knowing that they will probably stab you in the back tomorrow) over someone who cannot control their temper to have a discussion.
Having said that, I have to make it clear that in no way do I think Ballmer's contributions (if they can be termed as such) towards IT is anywhere close to Theo de Raadt. And just in case you want to bring up RMS, I really don't know much about him, but while GPL is his baby, I don't think he represents programmers who adopt GPL for their codes.
There's often an assumption of moral superiority of the GPL from the GPL camp. And there isn't such an moral superiority assumption from the BSD camp?
I understand Theo does not represent the whole of the BSD camp, but if Theo really thinks their "philosophy" is "morally superior" to GPL, then he should stop complaining in interviews about how companies don't give them money.
while I am as glad as most people here about SCO's deserved and inevitable downfall, sometimes I couldn't help thinking whether it would have been better if Novell hadn't stepped into this fight.
Sure, I understand that they are protecting their rights and IP and that they are right to do so. But by pulling the carpet out from under SCO's feet, they also prevented SCO's claims that "millions of lines of codes were copied from UNIX to Linux" being thoroughly tested (and debunked) in court.
I think that it was a good thing that SCO targeted IBM, who 1) had the resources to fight SCO (and their sponsors), and 2) happened to be on the side of Linux developers/users. So it would have been an excellent opportunity to quash this claim once and for all. Despite SCO's bluster and chest-thumping, I think it would have been extremely unlikely for them to be able to convince any person of even limited intelligence of their claims (including Enderle, Didio and O'Gara).
But all we have now is a statement from Novell saying that there is no Unix in Linux. With Novell being so deep in bed with Microsoft, I am slightly nervous with Novell's overall position and and disposition towards Linux.
Slashdot Mirror
http://skillicorn.wordpress.com/
check out this entry:
http://skillicorn.wordpress.com/2008/09/05/comparing-the-democratic-and-republican-convention-spin/
As usual, high spin is indicated by the red end of the line. Here are the spin scores for all of the speeches analyzed (positive numbers are high spin):
1. Bush 0.40
2. Thompson 1.71
3. Lieberman -0.73
4. Romney 4.36
5. Huckabee -1.8
6. Giuliani 2.97
7. Palin -0.62
8. McCain -7.38
9. M. Obama -1.24
10. Hillary Clinton 2.43
11. Bill Clinton 0.99
12. Biden -1.35
13. Obama 0.31
seems like a bit of discrepancy with what's reported in the article.
I like football, but I don't support any particular team, therefore, football is not really a sport?
so why are we not taught about the FSM?
why are we not taught about Zeus and his cohort in science?
why are we not taught about the Dream time?
why are we not taught about Santa Claus and his flying reindeer (much more energy-efficient way of getting around places, considering how much ground he covers in one night)?
She never said it's their job.
she did. she said: "teach them both."
meaning, she wants _science_ teachers to teach creationism.
The problem with MPEG encoding and decoding is that the data itself is not well suited to multi-threaded analysis.
Not quite true. Someone above already explained some of this re VisualHub.
The video data/frame at 0:00 is very likely completely unrelated to the data/frame at 5:00, thus you can simply chop up the raw file into a number of segments and process them in parallel.
Some clever stitching is probably required to put the whole thing back together in the end.
Multi-threading is most efficient when it is applied to discrete data sets that have little or no dependency on each other.
Exactly, so you chop up the raw input into segments and they become discrete data sets.
"remarkably restrained for an awfully long time"?
Hahahahahaha!
from the summary:
"Recent evidence released is showing the North Pole ice is melting at the highest rate ever recorded. As a result, the Pole may be completely ice-free at the surface and composed of nothing but open water by September. "
This is restrained? this is about as strong a warning as it gets. The reason it doesn't sound like someone screaming from the top of their lungs is because scientists are supposed to report facts, interpretation and predictions.
Unless you mean _you_ can't tell that they are being serious about it, that you need the kind of sensational titles from those weekly celebrity magazines, like "Is Arctic Melting Again?!!! Scientists Say We Will All Die Next Year!"
By the time you feel their warning is sufficiently dire, it's already too late to do anything about it. Don't worry, it's not that much longer to go.
There have been plenty of dire predictions, but it's never going to enough for people who stick fingers in their ears and pretend they can't hear anything they don't want to hear.
You know, just because there are two sides to the debate, doesn't mean the answer is somewhere in the middle. Sometimes, one side is just completely wrong.
What!?
To practice law in any place any country is a privilege to be earned, not a right. You have to pass exams and so on, it's not easy and not everyone gets to do it.
They want to disbar him because he is an embarrassment and he's abusing the position of a law practitioner. He is also a menace to the society because of he is a lawyer, one of the several occupations whose words hold sway in courts of public opinion as well, and yet he has been saying stuff which clear does not represent the opinion(s) held by most of the other lawyers in Florida.
The disbarment is not a gag order, it does not take away his right to say the stuff he's been saying for years.
As for SCO.... you do realise that people don't like them because they were just wrong?
Just because there are two sides to an argument doesn't mean that you should take the middle ground. Sometimes, one side is just wrong. Plain wrong.
If two people are arguing the result of 1+1 = ?
person A says the answer is 3, and person B says the answer is 2 (and going apoplectic trying to explain), are you going to tell them to not be emotional and just take 2.5 as the answer?
Bollocks!
Going from "is my work really outdated?" to "How can I keep my work from becoming outdated?" and implicitly assumes that the work _is_ outdated. Wasting time considering how to deal with inane questions from clueless intellectual artiste is just stupid.
Would you ask your plumber how to improve network design just because some guy thinks the Internet is a series of tubes?
Sure, it's important to have constructive criticisms and developers certainly should be open to such, but it's just as important to understand which criticisms are even worth considering.
If you've ever worked in scientific research you will have better understand of this. In every area of research I've been involved in, there are always some quacks or backyard inventors who claim they have found the solution to all of the unanswered questions and yet refuses to publish or elaborate, only profusely arguing that the scientific community is too old-fashioned to accept their ideas. Bollocks!
-----
Now, please carefully consider the following:
1. was your comment really just bollocks?
then follow up by:
2. how can you keep your comment from becoming total bollocks
3. how can you write comments that don't sound like bollocks
It's not software assembly of DNA sequence, which is relatively trivial, a walk in the park. The difficult part is actually assembling the _real_ dinosaur chromosome, assembling some Nx10,000 genes correctly, i.e. after sequencing everything, finding out which gene goes on which chromosome and the order they are in and hoping that the "junky" parts you'd ignored is _really_ junk. Then you need to splice all these pieces of PCR'd DNAs together, making several molecules which are hundreds of millions or several billion nucleotides long.
Building up the actually thing is much much more difficult than just assembling the sequence in computers.
You don't seem to understand the concept of quotation.
Generally, one is not supposed to change the actual words used.
Like I said, I am sure you are a good person in your daily life.
Nevertheless, your original comment suggest that you think that the "average Joes" are only charitable if they are God-fearing? That it takes some "special" people to do good for others?
Would you be interested in the success of the OLPC project if it has absolutely zero bearing on your group?
It is not the aim of OLPC to sell like Dells in developed countries, in case you haven't noticed already. Its hardware and software specifications are far from "normal" usages in such countries, but not far _below_, since in many areas it certain excels. This "give one get one" program serves to bring higher awareness among the developed countries, as the presence of some of these machines will certain generate interest and queries among those who were not previous aware of them.
First, you make it sound like being a geek or philanthropist are bad things or deviant from normal behaviour.
Second, are only the God-fearing allowed to help others? only tech-loving people should play with gadgets? You wouldn't bother helping others unless there was some strong incentive to do so? Your curiosity is only limited to that which you are familiar with? I don't wish to judge you from the few words you have typed in the comment, but the world-view presented within them seems to be extremely narrow and dogmatic. If makes you sound like the people I see who'd go bargain-hunting at charity auctions.
I am sure you are a good person in your daily life.
nope, I was thinking that they realised their gaffe has really backfired and there was nowhere else left for them to go. So they simply packed up and went home.
On the assumption that these people are not entirely stupid:
1. If they were really working to break MS Office dominance, they would have realised by now that what they have said was completely stupid, and may have brought harm to the "cause", as the damages were amplified by clueless "journalists" and "analysts" (e.g. http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=875)
2. If they were MS stooges, the credibility required to carried out their work successfully was pretty much destroyed.
Nothing more to do in either case, to continue hanging onto the empty name of OpenDocument Foundation would be farcical on the same scale as Enderle or DiDio.
I don't bother to read Dvorak anymore, since I always feel dumber aftewards, so I have no idea how good are his predictions or if they are so bad they are guaranteed to be wrong (anti-prediction, in a sense).
but his gripe about not able to read web content on phones is really just a problem of people not generating format for phone use. He should spend a few weeks or months in Japan and use their system.
yes, check out chromatin packing. Essentially, some parts of the chromosome is packed into structures that are not so accessible. Chromatin packing also varies in different cell types or organs. It is thought to be "folding out" the parts of chromosome not required as much in specific cells.
But this is NOT the only possible mechanism.
few hundred years ago,
- 90+% of the western World's population knew for a fact that the Sun and Moon and all other celestial bodies circle around the Earth
- a few scores of people believed that, with the exception of the Moon, there are evidence for the contrary.
When does popular opinion matter to something that is either true or false?
95% of the World's population are dumber than some 5% of the World's population, which group would you tend to believe on matters of facts?
Wrong.
I love all the people who think Apple (particularly Jobs) is some sort of prophetic visionary. They react to the market as much as any other profit-seeking companies.
Geek cred is a small but significant factor in tech gadgets and Apple knows this, given that one of the primary reasons for Apple's rising popularity is due to OS X, and one of the reason for OS X's rising popularity is the *nix code base.
That particular video may not have been the sole factor for the Apple's battery replacement program, but it was certainly part of the increasing public awareness of the defects in the Apple devices. However, (and I say this in deep admirations) Apple nevertheless found a way to extract even more money out of its blindly loyal customers while at the same time somewhat-sorta-maybe addressing the criticisms.
And your "moving target" theory is just BS. 1) OS X as a platform has been around for long enough, and Apple took pride in announcing that their phone and new iPod runs on the same platform, and being the first non-smart phone to require some 800mb of OS codes. 2) it didn't take lots of arm-twisting for Symbian, Nokia and (dare I say) Microsoft and other companies to release SDKs for their mobile platforms. While they may have varying validation protocols and so on, they didn't parade some random wild BS theory about their OS being "uncertain". Even Jobs wasn't saying this in his bit. If the API's have been settled, they wouldn't and shouldn't have released the product.
As usual, they were just testing the market to see if they can make even more money out of 3rd parties and customers, which is after all, the goal of every profitable company.
with the writing of this post!
From just a fast read of the article, I think the claim "creating" a new life is a bit exaggerated.
It's pared down from the genome of a pre-existing species and probably permuted the organisation of the genes on the chromosomes, therefore not much "creation" was involved, they just figured out what genes are not essentially for cell/organism viability and removed them. Granted, a LOT of work had to have been done to stitch together the final artificial chromosome, but still, I think it would be more correct to say it's an artificially _modified_ chromosome rather than created.
Gene therapy labs often play with the HIV virus, by taking out the nasty bits and put in replacement genes, to study whether it is an effective delivery system.
Scientists have difficulty predicting function and structure of known/natural proteins/genes, let alone making new ones. However, gene modification is very common, for example, GFP (green fluorescent protein) is commonly modified to fluoresce other colours. And genome paring is also pretty common, there was a group that removed 5 MB (megabases) from mouse genome and the mice still looked and behaved normally _in_the_lab_, can you claim that they were a new species of mouse?
Last I heard, the Mayo lab (http://www.mayo.caltech.edu/research.html) has created a completely novel gene which produced a protein that folded as they predicted it would. I haven't followed up on the progress since then.
Sure, it took tremendously amount of effort, but it's still exaggeration. An example, perhaps a bit unfair, but it's like saying people who pared down Windows installations by removing non-essential files are "creating" new operating systems.
Yes, but projects like this are driven by idealism in the first place. I suppose there are differences between practical and blind idealism, but while it is important to note the possible pitfalls, it is also equally important not to lose sight of the ideal.
I hope this is not sounding evangelical already, but I believe the OLPC team (both administrative and technical sides) have considered most if not all the possible eventualities this project may encounter and decided to go ahead with it anyway.
So there will always be some bad apples, but that's the same everywhere. There are plenty scammers on the internet from first world countries too. Just because people don't live below the poverty line doesn't mean they don't want to acquire wealth in dodgy manners, in fact, they are even more creative at it. Equally, just because people live below the poverty line doesn't mean they all want to scam money from richer folks.
By some people's standards, I am probably living in the slums. I've heard of people living in styles where their daily expenses are greater than my annual income, but I don't really feel the need to con money out of these "rich" people. At the same time, I know many people who are in much worse financial situations than myself, but I've not felt they are trying to take advantage of me financially.
I suppose you are arguing that by given technological tools to poor people, we are giving them the possibility to commit offences. But (let me put on my rose-tinted glasses) we are also at the same time enabling others the opportunity to do good, and hopefully in the long run, the good will outweigh the bad.
What critics like you never seem to consider is that perhaps they _have_ considered the possibility and concluded that the benefit it will bring these countries and children outweighs the harm that some individuals might do?
Or are you advocating that we should just cut them loose entirely? embargo the entire continent until they've managed to pull themselves up to the first world standard, just in case any aid we give them backfires on us? (yes, I am well aware that I am exaggerating for the sake of dramatics).
Many people still put great store by public demeanor, that they will prefer having a business relationship with someone who appears reasonable (even knowing that they will probably stab you in the back tomorrow) over someone who cannot control their temper to have a discussion.
Having said that, I have to make it clear that in no way do I think Ballmer's contributions (if they can be termed as such) towards IT is anywhere close to Theo de Raadt. And just in case you want to bring up RMS, I really don't know much about him, but while GPL is his baby, I don't think he represents programmers who adopt GPL for their codes. There's often an assumption of moral superiority of the GPL from the GPL camp. And there isn't such an moral superiority assumption from the BSD camp?
I understand Theo does not represent the whole of the BSD camp, but if Theo really thinks their "philosophy" is "morally superior" to GPL, then he should stop complaining in interviews about how companies don't give them money.
you married your brother?
while I am as glad as most people here about SCO's deserved and inevitable downfall, sometimes I couldn't help thinking whether it would have been better if Novell hadn't stepped into this fight.
Sure, I understand that they are protecting their rights and IP and that they are right to do so. But by pulling the carpet out from under SCO's feet, they also prevented SCO's claims that "millions of lines of codes were copied from UNIX to Linux" being thoroughly tested (and debunked) in court.
I think that it was a good thing that SCO targeted IBM, who 1) had the resources to fight SCO (and their sponsors), and 2) happened to be on the side of Linux developers/users. So it would have been an excellent opportunity to quash this claim once and for all. Despite SCO's bluster and chest-thumping, I think it would have been extremely unlikely for them to be able to convince any person of even limited intelligence of their claims (including Enderle, Didio and O'Gara).
But all we have now is a statement from Novell saying that there is no Unix in Linux. With Novell being so deep in bed with Microsoft, I am slightly nervous with Novell's overall position and and disposition towards Linux.
and tomorrow's headline:
"Copyright groups claim study shows unlicensed usage of copyright materials is costing US $2.2 trillion."