Lolwut? So when I connect to my corporate network to do legal stuff I get a paycheck for, I am a pirate?

choice. Again—the freedom to do what we want vs. the inability to do the things that we want/need to do, yet labeled conveniently as "more freedom (*though you can't do what you want/need to do with it)."

It's a losing argument. I'm happy to pay for a view. The market has set prices reasonably well. I'm happy to pay for Kindle books, for an iPad, for Adobe Creative Cloud, and many other things. They enable me to do the things that I need to do before I *die*.

Free software can offer none of these things right now. My life is finite; I don't have time to wait for the second coming before doing my computing. The freedom to be shafted? Sure, I suppose if that's how you want to see it. Nonetheless, it's what I want to do. Telling me not to, then selling that to me as "freedom" is just not persuasive. Paternalistic, sure. Persuasively free? Not really.

I used Linux exclusively as my desktop for 17 years (1993-2010). I did it because Linux did what I needed at a price that I needed—for most of that time. Toward the end, it became clear that Linux wasn't able to do the things that I wanted to be able to do—that it was restricting my freedom. The pendulum had swung; I switched to the GNU toolchain way back in the SunOS days because it gave me more freedom, not for ideological reasons, but for practical ones—the freedom to get stuff done that I couldn't otherwise get done; by 2007 or so, being stuck with the FSF world was like using stock SunOS back in the '80s—there were things I wanted to get done that I just plain needed other tools in order to accomplish. I was willing, and remain willing (and most consumers are willing) to pay a reasonable cost to accomplish those things. When powerful computing cost $tens of thousands, GNU was persuasive. But now that it's priced reasonably, we're happy to pay.

The heavy costs of a complete platform switch in mid-life kept me on Linux from about 2007 through 2010, but eventually it became clear that a switch was in order. My labor in maintaining a working Linux desktop and trying to bang free and open software into shape to do the things I needed was exceeding the costs of buying an off-the-shelf solution from a proprietary vendor, by several orders of magnitude.

FSF advocates can argue all they want that somewhere down the road, as a result of my having chosen a "non-free" platform, my freedom will be restricted—but I'll be happy to deal with that eventuality when it comes. I have no interest in sitting around for decades to wait and see if more freedom to accomplish my tasks arrives in pure FSFland; by then, my working years will be over. It's not a tenable proposition.

I began to use the GNU toolchain on SunOS in the '80s; RMS and I are of the same generation, and I value his code and contributions.

However, at the end of the day, his utopian and context-independent understanding of freedom falls flat. Freedom is not about potential, or about futures unrealized. It is about agency, today—at least for most people.

In very simple terms, if what you want is the freedom to watch DRM'ed content that you value, then RMS has no answer for you other than sacrifice—i.e. give up that freedom in the interest of some other freedom that he promises will be better. But that's not an answer to the question, nor is it—practically speaking—freedom at all. I want to watch that movie. RMS suggests that I should choose not to, as a matter of ethnical responsibility and self-interest.

But I already know where my self-interest lies—in watching the movie. And the ethical responsibility to others may be laudable—but it rings hollow to call that a measure of freedom: "Your freedom lies in not doing what you want to do, and others not doing what they want to do."

That's a strange definition of freedom, indeed. It's rather like other utopian versions of freedom, say under the Soviet system—"We are all setting each other free! We have almost no freedom at all today, particularly in comparison to others, but by god, someday, maybe a few decades or a few generations down the road, we'll get there and have far more than them! In the meantime, heads down and sacrifice, everyone! And stop complaining!"

You just won't get that far in the world if you're selling that as "freedom."

from free in practice, i.e. he is missing any concept of substantive freedom or constitutive practice.

Most users can make this distinction easily.

Free in theory but utterly constrained in practice is something most users don't care for. Since most users are not coders, most are much freer in practice with software that "just works." Sure, they *could in theory* be more free with free software that does less, since they could just rewrite the missing parts themselves, without IP encumbrances, but in practice, they would have to dedicate time and resources to learning how to code and architect software that most do not have the time and resources to dedicate.

The choice between "live without functionality that makes you more practically free" and "sacrifice other important parts of your life and study to become a programmer instead if you want that functionality" does not feel like freedom to most users, it feels like constraint.

On the other hand, "take this money that you already have, buy a product that you can already afford, and do the entire list of things you'd like to do" feels very much like freedom to most people.

Stallman's argument is a long-view, edge-case worry that will never affect most users. I'd argue that for 90 percent of the users out there, limiting themselves only to free software would actually make them less free in practice, because the actual, real-world universe of things they could likely manage to do with their tech on a day-to-day basis as a result would, in practice, be shorter.

Stallman's myopia is not new—it goes fairly far back in western philosophy. But as has long been pointed out, finding a way to drop out of society may be the path to the greatest freedom in theory, but in practice, society (roads, planes, trains, automobiles, electricity, grocery stores, and so on) makes most of us more free, even though it comes with a bunch of restrictions (a.k.a. laws) that don't afflict the lone "natural man" that has no connection to it.

But in fact the lone "natural man" is unlikely to ever be able to duplicate, in practice, every enablement and enabling facility that society is able to grant—even if he is free to duplicate them himself, without rules, when outside of society—in theory.

This kind of people have government-approved full access to the (potentially naked) selfies of all underage girls of the entire world, celebrity or not, and they surely abuse of it. And are supported for doing that.

Was my biggest concern. Shortly after it got discovered was concluded that won't hit us. But we got a short time notice, in the case that it would be precisely calculated where it would land, and that be over/near a big city (even with the low odds of it), would be no way to stop it, and for some scale of cities 1 week of advice won't be enough (or will do by itself enough damage).

We should hope that bigger/more damaging rocks should be more visible and that we get aware of them with more anticipation, but in the other hand, we are using now the money that we could invest in detect or even avoid that kind of end of the world scenarios on saving banks of their own risk taking or creating new wars.

LXC existed for some years so far, and the same for containers and similar technologies in other platforms. What Docker added over lxc is adding the use of an unionfs for reusing/improving containers, a simple way to share them, and a simple but powerful command line utility and api to manage them.

There is nothing so special in sulphur, charcoal and salt peter, but do the right mix with them and you get something explosive (and used in revolutions, too)

http://www.ocamljava.org/

... Exterminate! Exterminate! Exterminate!

I always like it when the gays come out. That's always their first thought.

It's like Fred Phelps and his obsession with gays. I mean gees guy, give it a rest (technically he is because he's dead). We understood you were a closeted gay, but did you have to overcompensate so much?

She even admitted flat out on twitter to having sex for publicity

Apparently there are some desperate people in the gaming industry because speaking for myself, she is not attractive. Not hideous but not someone I'd consider, even when drunk.

But each to their own, right? More power to them if they felt the only way to get the goods on her games was to sleep with her.

Isn't Georgia one of those states where a majority of the folks rail against government intrusion and regulations into the private sector?

Must be nice to talk out of both sides of your mouth. Maybe they should get a gig as a sideshow freak.

What if someone doesn't have a smart phone but a solid, reliable "dumb" phone? What then? Are they going to be penalized because they can't be tracked?

Bite me. Insurance is enough of a scam now as it is. Having them track you in real time is pathetic. If they want to see how good a driver I am, see how many accidents I've had.

None? Well guess what, I must be pretty damn good not to have hit anyone in the decades I've been driving so stop raising my rates every year.

They provide this crappy support because they can get away with it.

You're lying. Everyone knows private industry is so much more efficient and responsive than the government so you're just making up this shit.

Private industry would NEVER treat their customers in the manner you described. They would bend over backwards, expending all needed time, effort and money to make sure your problem is resolved quickly and efficiently.

For those who don't grasp sarcasm, this was it. I work for a government agency and while we have all the people described in this thread, I can assure you, the private sector is just as incompetent and slow moving as anything the government does. The stories I could tell you about slow response, pawned off troubles and general incompetence. . .

Considering the average adult that went through the Ice Bucket Challenge, it would be a great advice for them too. I won't be surprised at all if it ends killing more people than ALS.