From a moral perspective, I think he's on fine ground.

I dunno. I've always thought the idea of open or closed code to be a personal choice and not related to morals that much. It's not morally bad to keep code closed, in the same way that opening your code doesn't make you morally sound. It's just an abstract that Stallman and a bunch of like-minded geeks believe is important, even if the rest of the world does not. There's no real widespread justification for code opening as being a moral issue, compared to say child slavery, selling weapons to a country/group known for inhuman acts/war crimes, etc. It's just something that some geeks have come to believe is a moral issue, when (in my opinion) it's not.

Not yet anyway. It might be if it gets further recognition as a moral issue, but if even Linus doesn't give a fuck about the supposed "moral implications" of his code being open/closed source, then I don't think it's that big a deal. /rant off

It's not a dog-eat-dog world. The world is just what we make of it.

Unfortunately it's not always in our power to change the world in order to make it more like what we'd want. The most we can do is better ourselves, but when you're running a business you're probably going to find certain aspects of it go against the idealism of one's youth. The world isn't going to make succeeding in business easier if you try to stick to an unhealthy level of idealism - you'll just end up either failing or remaining small fry and stagnant (basically just delaying the inevitable). If I stick to my idealism and fail in my business as my more aggressive competitors step over me, then what the hell did I achieve?

I wish it weren't so cut-throat in business, but to ignore the fact that it IS and hence requires the same approach to stay alive, is tantamount to suicide.

Despite Richard Stallman's objections if he heard the same question*, open-source is not going to help in any way here. Your technology is what's known as a "trade secret", and would be the basis for whatever revenue your company makes. Giving out the algorithms to your competitors would be corporate suicide, and gain absolutely nothing except a reputation for being a total idiot.

Google open-sources things that it can afford to have open sourced, because it's to their benefit in various, interrelated ways. They're in the business of information after all, and whatever avenues they can make in obtaining said information are all the better.

* His first objection of course would be to first clarify the difference between free and open-source software, which I'm aware of but don't see the relevance in this particular case.

No shit. It's a dog-eat-dog world out there, if you've ever had to fight to get something. Jesus it's amazing how naive some people are. Oh wait... this is Slashdot.

Steam is just another way of controlling what I run and being able to terminate my ability to use the software any time the publisher wants. Fuck Steam.

Actually I agree with you. I used to have a Steam account with a few games on it, but it never grew too large because I was unable to resolve my concern about having all my games controlled by a single point of failure - the continual validation of my Steam account. So I got rid of it and stick with stuff like GOG or the Humble Bundles for my kick. It's not the same though, but the lack of any DRM is the only way I'll feel OK about digital distribution.

Having said that, it's true that the vast majority of profits of PC gaming are happening on Steam, weather we like it or not. That's the point I was making in my previous post, as to how PC gaming isn't actually dying.

But now Windows gaming is all but dead

Heh. I keep hearing this but all I can think about is the MASSIVE amount of money Valve must be getting through Steam, all the talk about the upcoming Christmas sales and all the new games that keep appearing on Steam.

If you're looking what goes for PC gaming at regular brick-and-mortar outlets, see the pathetic selection and think PC gaming is dying, you just aren't looking at the right place. It's all digital distribution baby. But hey, whatever convinces you to move to Linux I guess.

Parent was speaking how GPs claims were so ridiculous that they'd fit right in with the ID crowd. Given how trollish the comment was, I think this is fair.

Why is why I don't post that much on Internet forums (well, such that I don't take things seriously here). You can't get any serious discussion over such things - people are accusing everyone about being fanboys or trolls. Sometimes it's justified, while other times it's just a lashing out against anyone who has a different opinion which they don't want to hear and be exposed to. Honest discussion and discourse is impossible with emotional topics like politics and computing... and just about everything I guess.

It's frighting how much we think the same. You're already one of my Slashdot friends, but if Slashdot ever adds a BFF or "Bestie" relationship option, you're gonna be a worthy contender. :)

It's not black and white. They'll judge you on the whole package. Humans are visual creatures so appearance is still pretty important (there's a reason tits and ass are the first things most men are attracted to in a woman). But unless they have some semblance of a personality, a relationship is not going to develop.

Wow, way to state your incouragble bias right at the end there. It sounds like, in your eyes, the only "right" way is the Apple way. You'd fit right in on the ID side of an evolution debate...

I'm no Apple fanboy, but how can you respond like that? He just said that if a modern OS cannot perform smooth scrolling, it's a shitty OS, and I'd agree. People have standards when it comes to UI, and it's nothing to do with the "Apple way"... unless of course you've become accustomed to the high interface standards Apple are known for and hence are less tolerable than Linux users I guess.

* Assassinations of Iranian scientists (the ones we know about: Majid Shahriari, Masoud Ali Mohammadi, Majid Shahriari, Fereidoun Abbasi-Davani (survived), Darioush Rezaeinejad)

Wait... the CIA had to kill this Majid Shahriari fellow TWICE? Was he a zombie or something? Aim for the head you fools!

thats why linux values freedom of choice most of all. If you don't like it, switch and quit your bitchen. try fluxbox or Awsome. The gnome expatriate DE of choice has been XFCE but i think theres a branch of metacity being mantained like there's a kde3 branch being maintained

I really hate this retort. A lot of people used GNOME 2 because it was the best at what it did. Either KDE was too complicated (too many options/controls) or XFCE was too lean (lacking in functionality). GNOME 2 had a nice middle-ground. With GNOME 3 fucking up things, we have a problem. We can stick with GNOME 2 until it falls into disrepair (which does happen when libraries are upgraded but the DE is not), or we can switch to something like MATE which is still in development.

The problem with the argument of how Linux provides options is that they aren't necessarily any good. People generally use one DE over another because it provides something the others don't. If the development direction of said DE makes it no longer desirable, all the freedom of choice doesn't help much if now ALL of your options are lackluster as opposed to all but one.

Note that I'm a big fan of Windows 7 and think Linux on the desktop is for the most part shit, so don't confuse me with some anti-Microsoft zealot. Anyways...

* The ability to effectively address more than 4GB of ram actually impacts a lot of end users here in 2011 (Particularly engineers and scientists).

True, although you have to be specific and mention the 64-bit version of Windows 7. It's not a native feature for Win 7 to access more than 4GB of RAM - Windows XP 64-bit could do it, it was just a poorly supported operating system.

* Sending client facing staff into the field with Windows XP is embarrassing. It is bad for business and can cause a lot of legitimate concern about how technology savvy your company is.

Most people probably don't care. If they can do their jobs with XP, that's all they are concerned with. To me it wouldn't be enough to suggest how tech savvy the company was one way or another, as there might be many legitimate reasons for still using XP. It's very rarely black and white.

* Office 2010 is a required upgrade for anyone you put on 2007 because 2007 remains completely unstable.

We're discussing 7 vs XP here, but in any case - how is Office 2007 unstable? You state that as if it's a known fact and that's all there is to it. I like Office 2010 as well, but it's not what I'd consider a particular huge difference from 2007. Except that Outlook now has a proper tabbed/ribbon interface and all Office tools now have a dashboard for various features such as print preview.

* CYGWIN supports actual portable scripting and Powershell is an MS centric hack to try and keep sysadmin skills from being portable. There is no comparison. Powershell is good, but it is no Cygwin, not even close.

I don't know much about either to comment.

* Windows 7 is more secure. Period. End of story.

Probably, although appropriate work habits and settings can still ensure XP is quite secure. Anything that Windows 7 can protect against that XP can't by now is probably fairly exotic or niche, compared to the attack vectors that normally get people into trouble.

I noticed that about TOSes, and, in fact, I've started doing just that. Last year, I spent over $1200 on gaming, both PC and Console (and none on credit, to counter the inevitable trolls).

This year? $140.

I've already decided I'm finished playing the console game, now that all three console makers are playing the stupid Sony bullshit, of forcing potentially console-crippling updates to be installed before playing games that have nothing to do with the console's dashboard software.

I passed on Skyrim because of the steam requirement, which puts me under Steam's TOS even if I buy the boxed version, too. I get the feeling that by this time next year, I will, in fact, be finished as a gamer.

Look. Despite what I have been posting, I am NOT a Steam fanboy in the slightest. I'm very partial to the idea of having control over my own software, and am definitely not a fan of basically what we're getting with Steam and Origin - a perpetual rental license that is tied to a single account, which if compromised or otherwise goes against the ToS for whatever reason, could result in a total blocking out of the software you and I paid money for. It's insane!

And yet... not enough people seem to be complaining. Dissenting views like yours are far and few between these days, and it's a concern as well because it means that people have either given up trying to get anyone to listen to them about these very legitimate concerns, or they're too young/ignorance to have the foresight to care.

So what does someone like me do? Well, I've tried the Humble Bundles and there are a lot of good games there, but I've noticed indie games generally don't seem to have the lasting appeal that bigger budget titles from professional publishing houses have (not all of course). So I find myself caught between two sides, and I guess I felt that to get the Deus Ex'es and the Skyrims and the other games that people play and talk about, I'd have to suck it up and live with it. Because it's not getting any better it seems.

Though maybe your solution of giving up gaming entirely is better. It is a healthier option after all. :) I just wish more people had these concerns, or at least expressed them. We are gaming pariahs for disliking Steam basically, and hence aren't listened to. I just don't know if I'm prepared to give up gaming. I'm not principled enough, so I console myself with these logical facts to try and make things like Steam more palatable, in case the worst does happen.

And any of the games I don't currently have downloaded, because one of the big advantages of steam is that you can save disk space by being able to re-install at will? Gone.

So? If it's a concern then keep them all downloaded and installed. For most people they won't be concerned about this scenario happening, and so can benefit for being able to reinstall at will. But for someone like you, then maybe you have to be a bit unreasonable to make things more reasonable.

And if I'm going to jump through those kinds of stupid hoops, I might as well just pirate the games. And I'm not even talking about the problem being if Valve goes under or sells Steam. I'm talking about taking it for granted that they'll play nice. All they have to do is take out the weasel words from the TOS, and I'd have no problem buying from them (thought I wouldn't mind them trimming down the damn steam client a bit, so I could more effecively buy and play older games on older systems...).

I have no reason to believe that Valve didn't know exactly what they were doing when they put that term in there. Unless they change it to a guarantee to make the games available, with an explicitly listed set of exceptions, I just don't consider them trustworthy.

The Steam client is already pretty trim. Its memory profile is quite small compared to even Windows Live Messenger, a bloody IM client. If a computer's performance is THAT BAD when running the Steam client that it somehow interferes with the computer's ability to run games, then this is more of a sign that the computer is probably not worth gaming on anyway. Or... games from somewhere like Good Old Games is more suitable for that piece of shit hardware. :)

As for the TOS, it's a stock standard legal license that you'd find everywhere. ALL corporations and companies write licenses that are geared towards providing them with all the rights and the customer bugger all. It's not nice, but it's to be expected. You might as well hang up your gaming pants right now because you'll be fucked by everyone once digital distribution is the only way games are sold.