First, thanks for coming on the thread to answer questions.

Out of interest, what is the criteria for the editorial staff putting together a post. Most of the front page stories are more or less exactly as the submitter submitted them. Under what circumstances do you generally exercise this kind of editorial control?

The GIMP is GPL'd so they can make derivative works all they like so long as they're also GPL'd. Mere aggregation (i.e. putting some other crap plus gimp in the same installer) doesn't make the other aggregated things have to fall under the GPL, as is specified in the license.

PRINCESS Leia, PRINCESS Amidala...

You forgot Princess Jar-Jar.

We just finished a project with a high-end ATI/AMD R9 290X so we could use their EyeFinity tech to make a single desktop span over multiple monitors and be adjusted for bezels etc.

Honest question, but why do you need eyefinity for that? On X, I can place physical screens pretty much wherever I like on an arbitrary grid with whatever arbitrary gaps I want, and that's spanning multiple physical cards with chipsets (though not with 3D support in that case). Do other windowing systems not gennerally support such features?

As much fun as it is for the conspiracy theorists here to presume Slashdot is some tyrannical overlord, I figured there was a different reason for not posting it

ITYM Dice, not slashdot, who also holds Sourceforge. Anyway, it was all over the tech news and all over the firehose. This story is very belated. Now, sure, soulskill may have been away, but it's not like no new stories were put on the front page in the intervening time.

It's hardly paranoia that a company attempts to control its image on the "properties" that owns.

Seriously dude, your real world experiences are WRONG. Get your facts from the internet, not real life.

Joking aside, give up. The guy you're trying to argue with is utterly impervious to logic, facts or reason. I've tried arguing with him and he's utterly impenetrable.

Sorry, dude, you have to put down the pipe and work for a living.

Ad homenim, as expected from one who lacks a rational argument.

I have my own company and I work hard and enjoy it, and I still support basic income. There's little point in trying to win you over with rational arguments since you're clearly of the opinion that anyone supporting this is a workshy slacker. If I've got you wrong, and you are actually interested, then there's plenty to read onlinbe about it.

Tax everyone the same; don't create a special hated class of people who are taxed more.

For certain definitions of the "same", sure. How about taxing everyone's disposable income the same. Taxing gross income the same disporportionately affects poor people more becaue the value of money is not uniform. If you can barely affort food, an extra $10 a week is worth a lot more than if you're earning $100k.

We shouldn't be spending more that we're all willing to pay in taxes,

Well that means we spend $0, because some people are unable or unwilling to pay any taxes. Still, I like roads, fire engines and etc.

this game of "spend more and tax him over there" cannot survive much longer.

Depends how it's played. If you make it corrupt, when you tax the poor and middle class and pile the money on to the richest the sure, it can't survive. Wealth redistribution is however useful.

what do you mean "we should spend more on basic income"???

are you saying i should just quit my job because the government ( you) will pay for it? THANK YOU!!! ive been waiting for this day for so long!!!!

Yes, basically. Firstly, why not? It will provide enough for basic food and basic shelter but little in the way of luxury. We are rich enough collectively to make sure everyone gets to eat and have a roof over their heads.

Secondly, this is more or less already the case.

The thing is if you have a basic income, you can also scrap a whole bunch of laws. Minimum wage, tax credits, food stamps, all that can just go in the bin. The basic income is more transparent and simpler. It also doesn't require vulnerable people to dealwith vast amounts of government buearacracy.

Finally it subsidises rich companies less. At the moment many large companies etc don't pay a living wage, so people need to get employed and then get some form if income support. Oh and people are trapped living paycheck to paycheck so the companies can more or less be as evil as they like. Once people have a basic income, they have the choice whether to sell labour for that price and also have much more freedom in negotiations.

Most of the arguments seem win-win to me.

You think we have a "representative democracy" here in the US?

Yes, because you vote in representatives who vote for you instead of voting directly on every issue. That's the name for the structure of the government that you have. No one sait it was a GOOD representative democracy:)

If you're saying you paid for Google services because you bought a phone with then,

I bought the phone from google, so yeah, I paid google for the services.

John sold his copyright, then copied himself.

Not according to anyone else. His argument was more that he has a certain sound and he sold off the copyright to a particular instance of that sound. The court agreed.

Teens are not allowed to do anything fun, thanks to feminised nanny-state society of fear and control. If something is not safe (=fun), it is instantly removed. Chemistry sets, anyone? Computers where you can hack and program? Making little explosions and bombs for fun? We did it, but teens nowadays are deprived from everything remotely fun.

So feminists are responsible for anti terrorism laws and are also responsible for Nintendo, Sony, Google, Apple and formerly Sega making locked down systems that can't be hacked? Okey dokey. You're not a raving nutjob at all. Nosireee.

Listen, Luddites, Google has no obligation to provide you with squat, unless you are paying them.

Where did my phone come from? Magical woodland faries?

Which is much less avaiable than SMS.

Not outside of Mountain View or the google bus. If you don't live there, well, fuck you.

That seems to be pretty much the attitude of google these days. Either that or incompetence. For example, distressingly often I get an Edge or 2G connection. Even though I have all maps for the area cached, searches still take 5 minutes. It has to send about 10 bytes and get back a few k of textual results and coordinates. Even at 9600bps that should take seconds not minutes.