First. Killing people and burning shit down is illegal. Do not need different laws to prevent it.
Ah Libertarianism. Saying only the laws in the Constitution matter, and that all other laws don't matter, instead of just using logic in general when it comes to good and bad laws. Well, unfair treatment of non-white humans was made illegal in the Constitution, fyi. Also, your utopian Libertarian view of "XYZ would be awesome if there were no laws governing XYZ thing" when it comes to this segregation is horribly flawed. What this would mean in America is *segregation*, where you'd end up with a lot of racist cities and states once again, and life would be even more rough than it is for non-white humans.
Clearly bad and harmful things should be illegal. Things that aren't shouldn't be. Most Americans agree with that! But segregation not being illegal? Most Americans would disagree. Yes yes, you want those dirty (group of individuals who have done nothing wrong) out of your store, but, well, they've done nothing wrong, so fuck you.
Yes, like no insurance, so that you're not gambling your money away your whole life. Also, the automobile industry should definitely not be encouraged in their free (for the rich) market price hikes of typical crash-related car parts which are largely in part due to the upward push from the insurance industry.
Which have to perfectly align with the original ones and can totally mess everything up if you're not careful, a fact I had direct experience with when the xorg-edgers repo completely effed up my installation and even after backing things out I ended up having to reinstall.
Meanwhile, Zero Install keeps each app separated and sandboxed and you could argue that it is better than adding a repo.
Right, but Ubuntu and others will never package Zero Install by default unless it started getting wider adoption because of two factors:
1. More apps need to start using it so it gets in higher demand.
2. Ubuntu and others benefit from market fragmentation. By having all the software in their repos which aren't compatible with other distros, that pulls users to their platform just for software access. This is of course contrary to what the free software and ubuntu philosophies are all about.
So for those who actually care about free software and about all users being able to access software, please help out Zero Install since it seems to be leading the rest of the cross-distro packaging solutions in features and momentum.
With Zero Install the packager can make the dependencies be whatever they want includiong the version numbers. If they didn't trust a library to not break things, they could even set the version == (require only that version and no other) if they wanted. The user can also force different versions to be used than the recommended one in case they ever disagreed with the packager.
You're confused and don't understand what Zero Install is. Maybe the feature list needs to be worded better, but it is infinitely better than "an RPM alternative" because it can run ALONG SIDE an existing package manager. Zero Install can be used on ANY DISTRO and can ADD TO that distro, so it will expand the number of packages that are accessible to users. If I release my software for Zero Install it means any user will be able to install it easily, get automatic updates, uninstall it easily, potentially share libraries with other programs, etc. That is better than a bunch of binaries laying around because you don't get all those features and nice cleanup with just releasing an archive of a binary your users run, and then you'd have to implement automatic updates in your binary as well.
So who cares if Zero Install doesn't have every app under the sun yet, the key part is that every app it does have will be available for anyone to use in any distro as long as those files and dependencies are hosted.
No more "you can't run this because you don't have glib.blahblahpoop", as long as it was packaged with the dependencies it will work for all Linux users.
Linux needs to be a proper single platform to unify community software efforts. I don't want my software to go unused and to not be of help to anyone just because 1970's UNIX fragmentation BS gets in the way of things.
"real standards" are whatever the biggest vendors do. A standards committee at best documents what the biggest vendors do, and at worst produces a meaningless document. Often standards are in no way open - sucks, but life often does.
You don't think folks on the standards committees share your ideals? Most do, but then there's reality, and nothing in reality is more worthless then a standard that vendors don't choose to follow.
Because everyone knows there's no way a government can have the power to protect citizens and ensure corporations don't fuck them over by ensuring interoperability. It's not like they have these things called legislatures that can make laws or anything. Besides, corporations were created to give all the wealth of a nation (and world) to one or a small group of individuals, not for the common good of society!
Aren't standards something the FCC is supposed to protect? Even better though an international organization should champion standards. I would suggest the ISO but after the whole OOXML fiasco they seem to be okay with declaring these same kinds of proprietary standards as standards.
Real standards need to rely on only open pieces throughout, and revisions especially if frequent should be backwards compatible. If you break compatibility, you should be creating a totally new and separate standard.
Oh Slashdot, you're such a good opinion/polling testing site for corporations...
Mozilla, Google, and others make data mining revenue, so Canonical wants in too. Funny, since I've been doing a lot lately while browsing to prevent tracking with user agent strings, cookies, scripts, and am considering Tor to hide my IP even. Meanwhile, Ubuntu is headed in the opposite direction. Time to switch distros after this.
Lol, they "need money" only if they come up with a business model that is moral, otherwise they can find other jobs. If they are going to data mine users, at the very least they need to build in options for easily opting into that instead of forcing that onto users.
At least if it gets bad someone can release a bundle without those included, or better yet an easy privacy option to enable/disable them, the way it should have been to begin with. I suggested it in the Ubuntu forums but that didn't go over very well.
There is no clear separation. When I do "quick searches" for private documents on my computer, I want to know that it is a search only on my computer. It's not in a "search online" lens, it's doing it in "search movies" and "search music". If you want to be data mined though, be my guest.
I do not help developers by offering to be spied upon, and at least then I would have a choice. The way it is now I have to do something proactive to protect myself. Simply moving to another distro is all that isn't *buntu.
You forgot the other ones. You need to remove the video and music lenses which pull info from YouTube, Google, and others, otherwise you will be querying those businesses even if you are just trying to search your own computer for content. It's a form of spyware.
Also having to remove crapware you don't want after you install something was an often-heard compaint about Windows. I'd rather not have it be on Linux now too.
Canonical: You're getting your morals turned around. Community should come before money. Forget what the spirit of Ubuntu was supposed to represent?
Artificial scarcity. It is the backbone of the American economy as well as many other corporatist nations. Since you can't make money off free stuff, stores won't carry it. Even when selling hardware, if they can make more money selling restricted software along with it, they will. Before if you got a discount from buying a pre-built computer with crapware on it, at least you could wipe it all and install whatever you wanted. Now with “secure boot”, they can push control onto the software level and control the entire software stack if the wanted to. Don't like that Windows 8 Crapware Edition on there? Too bad, you're stuck with it, and the Crapware Edition won't allow you to remove the crapware on it either, plus it comes with adware and spyware (when you purchased this computer, you automatically opted-in to provide us with “information for marketing purposes”) pre-loaded which you also can't remove. I can also see this entire system pushing out build-it-yourself computers since the pre-built one offers more money. Even if some semblance of DIY hardware is still available, at the very least the pre-built systems will ultimately cost less because the hardware vendors will get a cut of the marketing and data mining profits.
I just figured I would share the future in advance with everyone so that the reality would set in sooner: Start supporting vendors which sell pre-built computers that aren't locked down as well as standardized DIY hardware. Also, start supporting home fabrication projects which will soon be able to create primitive computers, because ultimately unregulated capitalism will always find some way to fuck you otherwise. DIY hardware is already horribly unstandardized and consumer-raping. If you live in a country which is regulated so you feel you don't have to worry - just wait, you will. There is meaning behind the saying with the roots and the evil. No, not the recipe for making evil root beer.
I doubt the mega store chain thing will work since Intel, AMD, etc can simply give Walmart and others a bigger cut of the profits to keep the competition out, one of the bigger problems in the capitalistic world in many countries right now I think. I think Internet sales, smaller shops, and the fab@home movement perhaps might be the only way to get past all the anticompetitive roadblocks at this point, at least at first until things take off.
He got it 100% right, driver standards and more standards in general are very much needed. It's completely possible to make a powerful kernel and have support for a standardized and evolving and improving ABI/API that retains backwards compatibility. There is no proof that constantly breaking drivers is something which is needed in order to advance kernel code. Simply put, modularity on every level is needed for freedom, ease-of-use, and to avoid reinventing the wheel constantly (to make pieces of the stack re-usable without having to throw the entire stack away).
Computers aren't supposed to get you to the applications you want and let you get work and playing done! They're supposed to be time-sucking vampires from hell that make you throw them out windows.
With Zero Install you can install programs on any distro, making it the only package manager that is cross-distro-capable currently that I know of. This means it is the only current potential universal Linux packaging standard. I'm interested in seeing a distro made just from Zero Install packages. It is not just another package format. Also, this does not address the reason why distros don't integrate and make compatible their package managers with an actual standardized format. The reason they don't is because every distro company wants an Apple iStore. They want it proprietary, just like the old Unixes. This behavior is NOT pro-freedom and pro-standards.
Slashdot Mirror
First. Killing people and burning shit down is illegal. Do not need different laws to prevent it.
Ah Libertarianism. Saying only the laws in the Constitution matter, and that all other laws don't matter, instead of just using logic in general when it comes to good and bad laws. Well, unfair treatment of non-white humans was made illegal in the Constitution, fyi. Also, your utopian Libertarian view of "XYZ would be awesome if there were no laws governing XYZ thing" when it comes to this segregation is horribly flawed. What this would mean in America is *segregation*, where you'd end up with a lot of racist cities and states once again, and life would be even more rough than it is for non-white humans.
Clearly bad and harmful things should be illegal. Things that aren't shouldn't be. Most Americans agree with that! But segregation not being illegal? Most Americans would disagree. Yes yes, you want those dirty (group of individuals who have done nothing wrong) out of your store, but, well, they've done nothing wrong, so fuck you.
Yes, like no insurance, so that you're not gambling your money away your whole life. Also, the automobile industry should definitely not be encouraged in their free (for the rich) market price hikes of typical crash-related car parts which are largely in part due to the upward push from the insurance industry.
Which have to perfectly align with the original ones and can totally mess everything up if you're not careful, a fact I had direct experience with when the xorg-edgers repo completely effed up my installation and even after backing things out I ended up having to reinstall.
Meanwhile, Zero Install keeps each app separated and sandboxed and you could argue that it is better than adding a repo.
Right, but Ubuntu and others will never package Zero Install by default unless it started getting wider adoption because of two factors:
1. More apps need to start using it so it gets in higher demand.
2. Ubuntu and others benefit from market fragmentation. By having all the software in their repos which aren't compatible with other distros, that pulls users to their platform just for software access. This is of course contrary to what the free software and ubuntu philosophies are all about.
So for those who actually care about free software and about all users being able to access software, please help out Zero Install since it seems to be leading the rest of the cross-distro packaging solutions in features and momentum.
With Zero Install the packager can make the dependencies be whatever they want includiong the version numbers. If they didn't trust a library to not break things, they could even set the version == (require only that version and no other) if they wanted. The user can also force different versions to be used than the recommended one in case they ever disagreed with the packager.
You're confused and don't understand what Zero Install is. Maybe the feature list needs to be worded better, but it is infinitely better than "an RPM alternative" because it can run ALONG SIDE an existing package manager. Zero Install can be used on ANY DISTRO and can ADD TO that distro, so it will expand the number of packages that are accessible to users. If I release my software for Zero Install it means any user will be able to install it easily, get automatic updates, uninstall it easily, potentially share libraries with other programs, etc. That is better than a bunch of binaries laying around because you don't get all those features and nice cleanup with just releasing an archive of a binary your users run, and then you'd have to implement automatic updates in your binary as well.
So who cares if Zero Install doesn't have every app under the sun yet, the key part is that every app it does have will be available for anyone to use in any distro as long as those files and dependencies are hosted.
No more "you can't run this because you don't have glib.blahblahpoop", as long as it was packaged with the dependencies it will work for all Linux users.
Linux needs to be a proper single platform to unify community software efforts. I don't want my software to go unused and to not be of help to anyone just because 1970's UNIX fragmentation BS gets in the way of things.
"real standards" are whatever the biggest vendors do. A standards committee at best documents what the biggest vendors do, and at worst produces a meaningless document. Often standards are in no way open - sucks, but life often does.
You don't think folks on the standards committees share your ideals? Most do, but then there's reality, and nothing in reality is more worthless then a standard that vendors don't choose to follow.
Because everyone knows there's no way a government can have the power to protect citizens and ensure corporations don't fuck them over by ensuring interoperability. It's not like they have these things called legislatures that can make laws or anything. Besides, corporations were created to give all the wealth of a nation (and world) to one or a small group of individuals, not for the common good of society!
Aren't standards something the FCC is supposed to protect? Even better though an international organization should champion standards. I would suggest the ISO but after the whole OOXML fiasco they seem to be okay with declaring these same kinds of proprietary standards as standards.
Real standards need to rely on only open pieces throughout, and revisions especially if frequent should be backwards compatible. If you break compatibility, you should be creating a totally new and separate standard.
Oh Slashdot, you're such a good opinion/polling testing site for corporations...
Mozilla, Google, and others make data mining revenue, so Canonical wants in too. Funny, since I've been doing a lot lately while browsing to prevent tracking with user agent strings, cookies, scripts, and am considering Tor to hide my IP even. Meanwhile, Ubuntu is headed in the opposite direction. Time to switch distros after this.
Lol, they "need money" only if they come up with a business model that is moral, otherwise they can find other jobs. If they are going to data mine users, at the very least they need to build in options for easily opting into that instead of forcing that onto users.
Morals take a backseat to food and shelter. Devs have to eat, they can't work for free
lol, says the CEOs of the oil industry. Great excuse, but there are other solutions that don't sacrifice morals.
At least if it gets bad someone can release a bundle without those included, or better yet an easy privacy option to enable/disable them, the way it should have been to begin with. I suggested it in the Ubuntu forums but that didn't go over very well.
I know of some ways, and they don't involve spying on users. How about offering installation and development services for two?
You can make money via paid development/support and other ways. You can have morals and have a business at the same time, it is possible.
There is no clear separation. When I do "quick searches" for private documents on my computer, I want to know that it is a search only on my computer. It's not in a "search online" lens, it's doing it in "search movies" and "search music". If you want to be data mined though, be my guest.
I do not help developers by offering to be spied upon, and at least then I would have a choice. The way it is now I have to do something proactive to protect myself. Simply moving to another distro is all that isn't *buntu.
You forgot the other ones. You need to remove the video and music lenses which pull info from YouTube, Google, and others, otherwise you will be querying those businesses even if you are just trying to search your own computer for content. It's a form of spyware.
Also having to remove crapware you don't want after you install something was an often-heard compaint about Windows. I'd rather not have it be on Linux now too.
Canonical: You're getting your morals turned around. Community should come before money. Forget what the spirit of Ubuntu was supposed to represent?
But your grandma got Linux because of you, and you shouldn't recommend spyware or adware to anyone.
Artificial scarcity. It is the backbone of the American economy as well as many other corporatist nations. Since you can't make money off free stuff, stores won't carry it. Even when selling hardware, if they can make more money selling restricted software along with it, they will. Before if you got a discount from buying a pre-built computer with crapware on it, at least you could wipe it all and install whatever you wanted. Now with “secure boot”, they can push control onto the software level and control the entire software stack if the wanted to. Don't like that Windows 8 Crapware Edition on there? Too bad, you're stuck with it, and the Crapware Edition won't allow you to remove the crapware on it either, plus it comes with adware and spyware (when you purchased this computer, you automatically opted-in to provide us with “information for marketing purposes”) pre-loaded which you also can't remove. I can also see this entire system pushing out build-it-yourself computers since the pre-built one offers more money. Even if some semblance of DIY hardware is still available, at the very least the pre-built systems will ultimately cost less because the hardware vendors will get a cut of the marketing and data mining profits.
I just figured I would share the future in advance with everyone so that the reality would set in sooner: Start supporting vendors which sell pre-built computers that aren't locked down as well as standardized DIY hardware. Also, start supporting home fabrication projects which will soon be able to create primitive computers, because ultimately unregulated capitalism will always find some way to fuck you otherwise. DIY hardware is already horribly unstandardized and consumer-raping. If you live in a country which is regulated so you feel you don't have to worry - just wait, you will. There is meaning behind the saying with the roots and the evil. No, not the recipe for making evil root beer.
I doubt the mega store chain thing will work since Intel, AMD, etc can simply give Walmart and others a bigger cut of the profits to keep the competition out, one of the bigger problems in the capitalistic world in many countries right now I think. I think Internet sales, smaller shops, and the fab@home movement perhaps might be the only way to get past all the anticompetitive roadblocks at this point, at least at first until things take off.
So...it's a CPU that uses an actual real standard for connecting to the rest of the motherboard/system?
Wow. Standards for freedom for end users, something the megacorps purposefully forget about. What a concept.
He got it 100% right, driver standards and more standards in general are very much needed. It's completely possible to make a powerful kernel and have support for a standardized and evolving and improving ABI/API that retains backwards compatibility. There is no proof that constantly breaking drivers is something which is needed in order to advance kernel code. Simply put, modularity on every level is needed for freedom, ease-of-use, and to avoid reinventing the wheel constantly (to make pieces of the stack re-usable without having to throw the entire stack away).
Computers aren't supposed to get you to the applications you want and let you get work and playing done! They're supposed to be time-sucking vampires from hell that make you throw them out windows.
Sillyface.
Yeah well Portage isn't cross-distro, and Zero Install is being de-coupled from GTK depedencies already.
With Zero Install you can install programs on any distro, making it the only package manager that is cross-distro-capable currently that I know of. This means it is the only current potential universal Linux packaging standard. I'm interested in seeing a distro made just from Zero Install packages. It is not just another package format. Also, this does not address the reason why distros don't integrate and make compatible their package managers with an actual standardized format. The reason they don't is because every distro company wants an Apple iStore. They want it proprietary, just like the old Unixes. This behavior is NOT pro-freedom and pro-standards.