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Comment Re:Sugar (Score 2) 499

No way.
I live in Uruguay, we grow some fruit here, but also import a lot. Local fruit usually looks like you picked it up from a tree.
Imported fruit looks more uniform, and more colorful, and usually has some kind of wax to protect it. They also have small labels in each piece, some times.
Also, local fruit smells like fruit, imported fruit has no smell, in comparison.

Of course, YMMV, but the closer you are to the source, it's easier to get fresher produce.

Comment Re:tl;dr (Score 5, Insightful) 331

The only economically sustainable solution is to have a labor force that matches labor requirements. What Marx didn't foresee was the tremendous medical advances the world has seen in the past 100 years, allowing unsustainable population growth while the need to unskilled labor declines. No amount of sharing, unionization, or wealth transfer will help when there are billions of people with no demand for their labor.

Don't let ideology blind you. People don't need jobs.
People need food, shelter, medical care, and several other things. Jobs is one of the ways you can get those.
If there _are_ enough resources for everybody, probably we can come up with way to distribute them effectively, even one that doesn't need busywork. It's not an easy problem, but seems solvable.

Comment Re:There is no conspiracy. (Score 1) 259

Regardless of the users IP, Hulu can track those users and sell their information, VPN or not. They've got those subscribers billing credentials, after all. A VPN is useful if you don't want someone else looking into your connection, but for the site you're visiting, especially one that needs your credit card, a VPN isn't meant to be a protection from them getting your info. Your ISP won't (or at least shouldn't) have a clue that you're visiting Hulu, should you be using a VPN, though.

You are mostly right. About your ISP, it would probably be very easy to know what you're up to, by comparing your data usage pattern against other online video users usage. Hulu and other services with heavy traffic probably have a specific traffic usage signature that they can identify, even if you are using a VPN.

Comment Re:Does the math work out? (Score 1) 193

I live in Uruguay.
We export lots of soy and wheat.
In the most productive lands, Cargill sells seeds, finances, rents machinery, and buys the result. Of course, farmers are independent, but Cargil controls the price, and what they grow. From the outside, it's as if they _are_ the producer.
Something very similar happens in parts of Argentina.

Monsanto has a large presence here, also.

It's not a long shot to think that they might end up managing all our crops, if they tried really hard.

Comment Re:April Fools! (Score 1) 162

I've never understood the popularity of git. It may be useful for open source by supporting distributed development but it seems far less useful for a traditional corporate environment. SVN just makes far more sense to me in terms of command structure. If I wanted a DVCS I would probably go with Mercurial. Git is just awful.

I am working in a traditional corporate environment right now.
SVN sorks great, even when you use branchs. The problem is that merging is just not worth it.
Right now, we use SVN, and the equivalent of a pull request in github or similar, is a manual process, with several pain points, that works against the grain of development. We need to have separate code reviews for commits, and then count on developers merging code that is accepted.
We also have problems creating branches, destroying them.

I think SVN was OK for the enterprise when the enterprise didn't need all the pretty things modern development processes bring. Right now, they want to deploy every few days, automated testing, decentralized development, and SVN doesn't fit well.

About Git being awful, that might be true, even though I doon't see it. There might be a need for better tools, but the command line client is good, specially compared to the svn client. In any case, it's the dominant player in DVCS, it's the safest investment.

Comment Re:Precisely (Score 4, Insightful) 1098

The thing is that you are worried about computing in the current world.
RMS is worried about the future of computing, and has helped shape it, winning several battles, even though he is losing the war.

Of course there are IP laws/contracts/whatever that don't let you link to GPLed code. That's why it's GPLed, so the work of free software developer does not help those who want to shrink our freedom.

You can use our work, if you share, if you don't share, go build it yourself. It _is_ us versus them, and RMS sees it very clearly.

Fifteen years ago, RMS rants about a dystopian future looked exaggerated. Right now, they look like old news.

You are right that the GPL is a PITA when you want to work with proprietary software, that's not a bug, it's a feature, which BSD software lacks. That's because the GPL is supposed to have a long term effect.

Comment Re:Unprofessional all around (Score 1) 692

I agree.
At my second interview for a job, I was told that, if hired, I would be on trial for 3 months. I replied that I welcomed the opportunity of getting to know the company before making a long term decision, they replied that _I_ was expected to commit long term from day one.
We ended up working together for three years, but I had to help them fix their hiring process and expectations a little bit.

Comment Re:My favorite brand of snake oil is open source (Score 1) 291

Not only in that case.
Your ability or interest might change. Like what happened now with NSA backdoors getting more publicity, the Linux code is getting more reviewed for their backdoors, even after being in use for several years. If the source were not available, it would be a lot harder to check.

About "non-code submmitting users", I don't think they are the ones who should audit it. You can trust someone who does submit code, or you can suddenly gain interest in security and start checking it, or even pay soomeone to do it. The thing is that it's possible.

This is why it's a lot better to think in terms of Free Software and not open source. Technical advantages are hard to value if they are not used. Freedom is a lot easier to understand. You have the freedom to use the code as you like, share it and whatever. To illustrate the importance of freedom vs its exercise: lots of people don't want to, or don't have the money to travel outside their countries, but we don't like to have that possibility restricted.

Comment Re:My favorite brand of snake oil is open source (Score 1) 291

1 - Citation needed. In the sense of open source being easier to debug than proprietary code, it's undeniable.
2 - Citation needed. That strawman is getting old.
3 - True. It does mean anyone _can_, not that anyone _will_ . That's very valuable by itself. You can trust the vendor for example, but have the possibility to stop trusting them. Don't you prefer to be able to find backdoors vs not being able?
4 - Citation needed. Same as 2 -

Comment Re:Why? ~nt~ (Score 1) 267

The great mistake of society is a desire to eliminate the poor.

You make sense. But it's a very subversive thing to say, for an American.
Your point is that if someone is to be rich, then someone else needs to be poor.
Plus, you don't really care about poverty, you just care about your standards of living.
But following your ideology, if one were to get rid of poverty, one would first need to get rid of the rich. You can't have everyone living above poverty levels, if you don't first get rid of the rich.

You discovered marxism. Congratulations. And good luck implementing that in the United States.

Comment Re:It isn't an OS (Score 1) 41

Erm no. The ability to use a few apps which interface with the Linux kernel and type in a shell that something resembles bash (not even close mind you, it's an even more cut down version of sh) does not make Android Linux. Nothing out of the box Linux works on Android. All the libraries except for the ones providing essential hooks into the kernel are missing. Those programs / libraries which do hook into the kernel are also different from their linux counterpart (go copy "mount" from you phone onto your ubuntu box and try boot up the system).

Really there's nothing Linux about Android other than the underlying kernel.

Linux _is_ a kernel. Everything else you are talking about is mostly the GNU part of GNU/Linux.
Android has the same amount of Linux than any flavor of GNU/Linux, so the GP is right, even though he uses the wrong terms.

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