The part that you're missing is that Linux can be forked by anyone, and the fork will have just as much legal power of the code as Linus has today (except for the trademark). In fact, Linus himself even encourages forks and the competition it brings.

The point being that Linus is the boss simply because *everyone wants him to be*. If someone who can do a better job comes a long, that's great, developers can follow that guy or gal instead. But that hasn't happened, even though anyone and everyone has the power to just start a competing movement (a true free market).

Compare this to the physical world were there is only one physical land, only one government, only one police, etc. You can't fork a country like you can fork code.

However, it would be excellent if we use the tools in front of us to open up for more direct participation from voters. There's a million different problems that I can think of, but _we have the technology_, so why not use it to create a more open democracy?

I don't know how that stuff works in the US, but being Norwegian I can speak for Norwegian/Scandinavian hospitals (probably works roughly the same).

You can't just walk into a hospital and demand care. You need to see your normal doctor which can "order" a hospital to take you (or in an emergency the local 24/7 doctor or of course ambulance personnel can do the same).

Since doctors are paid the same regardless of what kind of treatment they give people, they have no incentive for giving wrongful or misleading diagnosis. There's no bonus if they lay off using the CAT-scan so often (or whatever it's called), and there's also no bonus if they treat 1000+ patients each.

They're paid to do the best job they can, and just like in any other profession they take pride in their work. Some are probably bad at their work, but like other higher education jobs, you're probably glad you can finally make money doing what you like (a friend of mine is studying to become a doctor [surgeon actually] as we speak, and after seven years of studies, he'll finally start working at a hospital full time).

In Scandinavia, we look in shock upon our American "neighbours" and how someone in their right mind could say no to the health care bill. Even the far far right parties wouldn't dream of removing free health care here (in Norway the far right party actually wants to spend more on it than what we're doing today).

Anecdote: When I was studying I had a semi-nasty biking accident that landed me a bed at the local hospital. After some surgery and lots of antibiotics, I started feeling better and wanted to go home. "I think we'll keep you for a couple of more days, those bacteria you had in that flesh wound was pretty nasty" was the message I got. So I ended up staying in the hospital for twelve days.

The hospital had no real incentive for keeping me there longer than needed, and no real incentive for kicking me out the door. They were simply giving me the medical care that I needed, and I didn't pay a dime. Yes I pay more taxes because of it, but I'll gladly pay that to see my neighbour get the same treatment that I did. (And *that* is socialism, by the way.)

So... how is that a threat to Linux? Is Mac OS X a threat to *BSD?

Linus and other prominent Linux developers considered the GPL v3 and it was rejected. There are pros and cons with GPL v2, just like GPL v3, just like BSD license, etc. See e.g. http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/linus-vs-the-gplv3/1200 regarding tivoization:

I'm not saying I necessarily agree, I'm just saying they made a conscious choice about it.

In my opinion (and I'm not alone in this), software patents are clearly the threat against Linux, and will be for a long time. Just look at Android (again).

So it's probably not wrong to conclude that since none of the mechanics above are relevant in video games (as you're saying, they're ignored) there's no transfer of either good or bad habits to real life.

(It would be different if e.g. you drive around in congested traffic for a big part of the game and learn that if you time your red lights correctly you can plow through an intersection.)

I think car physics are probably more transferable. I used to love Colin McRea Rally 2, and with an expensive wheel with force feedback I remember the angst of driving on ice and feeling *no force in the wheel* during a complete loss of grip. Whether it makes you a better driver ... does driving a rally car on a track make you a better driver?

I agree, but we can't be sure.

It would be nice to see the actual report this news item is based on.

Funny aren't you :-)

So what's "not determinism"? (Without going totally circular please.) If humans don't behave in a predictable manner, doesn't that mean we behave unpredictably? (Also known as "random".) And ... wouldn't that be pretty strange behaviour?

Behaving in a stable (and somewhat predictable) manner is normal. Saying that those who do not behave like this are the only ones who have free will would be .. a strange conclusion. Else, it's my conclusion that even something as complex as the human mind behaves predictably even from the view of the low processing power of fellow humans. Imagine something outside our universe looking in, that could gobble up all the information about everything in the universe: Seems logical that it would predict everything that's going on everywhere.

(And just to come full circle: What would our world look like if it wasn't predictable? What does that mean? What would it mean that humans behave in a unpredictable way? To me, that would mean no stability, no order, and just pure "randomness" [not chaos, just random], and a complete lack of logic.)

It basically boils down to: Define free will.

We're human beings with personalties. Most of us behave in a pretty consistent manner just about all the time, and this behaviour gets defined as personality. If free will is doing something outside your personality, then only people acting "randomly" and inconsistently (crazy people?) have free will.

Because we behave in fairly consistent manners, it's possible to predict what other peoples opinions, thoughts and even some actions will be. That's something fairly common for people you know very well, e.g. family and close friends.

You can predict these things because you know them. You understand how they behave, where they come from etc. Jumping ahead, it seems pretty logical to me that if e.g. a supercomputer outside the universe was given all the data about everything in the universe at a specific time (e.g. at the big bang) that it would be able to predict everything that happens.

Our behaviour is predictable. In that sense, we don't have free will (even though we might not know or understand that we don't). But since we can't predict much in this world, we end up experiencing "free will" in practice. The GPs comment was spot on in my opinion.

Just to mention quantum mechanics: I discussed this with a coworker the other day. Not being an expert, I think it boils down to atoms or energy existing in different forms at the same time, until it interacts with its surroundings. It's supposed to be impossible to predict because viewing/seeing/reading the state causes interaction and thus affects the result. However, I think we just don't have a thorough enough understanding of it yet. Determinism doesn't mean humans will ever predict everything (or anything for that matter), it just means that it's logical to conclude that everything is predictable.

(I usually use the fire example: If I take out a lighter from my pocket and set this paper on fire, will there exist a parallel universe where the paper doesn't light up? That's impossible. Why wouldn't it light on fire? It has to. [And just as the physics is predictable, so are our minds.])

No need to go that far east, just try out this Norwegian competitor to GitHub instead: http://gitorious.org/ . It might not be completely "outlaw" but without the DMCA the laws are at least a lot saner.

In fact, as others have mentioned further down, a mirror of some of the repos on gitorious is already available @ http://gitorious.org/ps3free.

I didn't follow that situation closely, but in my opinion they totally failed in communication. They said it was for "early adopters" but at the same time they labelled it 4.0 and stating something in the line of "we want as many early adopters as possible."

That's doublespeak and a total communication fail. Part of communication is *keep it simple* so that there's nothing to misinterpret and nothing to get "lost on the way".

They could have communicate this better much better. They could have called each version 4.0 Alpha 1, Beta 2 etc until what's now known as 4.2 (or 4.5 or whatever) finally became 4.0. They wanted it both ways (mass adoption with many testers, but no mainstream usage) and they blew it. Hopefully they (and others) will learn from their mistake.

(This might seem harsh, but it's just honest criticism.)

Reminds me of the Nobel peace prize that went to the chinese activist for human rights works.

In a sense, the west is asking China to move closer to our ideals. At the same time, the Norwegian government is planning on storing cellphone/Internet traffic metadata for 6-24 months for *every citizen* through the European Data Retention Directive, effectively moving Norway closer to China.

I don't really care precisely what every single entity is doing. What's important is that they *can* reinvent the wheel *if they so please*. Free market for producers. And then it's up to users in that market to decide what they want to spend time on. That wheel, or that other wheel? Or maybe that caravan over there? Free market for consumers. It's wonderful, may the best software win.

What are the odds that you are just trolling?

If they want a stable, long-term platform, they sure shouldn't choose Microsoft software. How often do Microsoft come out with new "game changing" versions of their software, forcing users to upgrade? I remember my sister complaining to me when she got a new laptop with Windows Vista on it (before W7 came out), how she "had to learn everything all over again".

The traditional business community might not get it. Perhaps someone who does get it should use the knowledge and software so easily available and get dirty rich after e.g. starting a web site where people can message each other and share pictures and movies or something.

Like healthy competition in a free market.

(The fact that people can't grasp that open source == free market just shows how poorly people actually understand open source.)

A fairly simple solution would be to use a large encryption key that only existed offsite (and offline), so that whenever the power goes, you have no way of decrypting without the key.

That means you have to physically show up at the data center whenever the power goes (cumbersome), but with uptimes these days that shouldn't be a problem.

If the police gets a warrant and comes home to your house by surprise, you better have a plan for that though. If you're really paranoid you probably could get a hold of "paper thin" CDs I once heard that crackers were using (the idea being that when the police is at the door you just tip over the cd-rack, destroying all the evidence [by "accident" or whatever], or in this case your decryption key).