Comment Re: Could be a good idea.. (Score 1) 110
That's great, but I think that your case is atypical.
That's great, but I think that your case is atypical.
The decline of UNIX is, among other things, attributed to "the abundance of Unix-specific apps that can now also run on competitor's servers."
There is this thing called GNU, which has the explicit goal to replace UNIX. So it is not that Unix-specific apps can only run on other systems, the whole system is replaced. And though largely backwards compatible, improved as well (and free of course).
In an effort to get ever more taxes for doing absolutely nothing
This is an ignorant remark. Compared with most governments and their institutes, the United Nations receive relatively little money compared with what they actually do. Read a few pages from http://www.dhf.uu.se/publications/development-dialogue/erskine-barton-childers-for-a-democratic-united-nations-and-the-rule-of-law/
But about the actual article: Of course it is a very bad idea to tax the Internet, certainly taxes on trafic since this can only affect net neutrality.
No one has more rights than a citizen of the United States.
WTF? I am from another country than the United States of America and I am offended by this statement. What about using the phrase world citizen or human being? You watch too much 24.
DHS? TSA? Please, write out these acronyms. Not all
Don't twist the words, the exact quote is:
We are funded to do research for the public good, yet prevented from taking our discoveries to the marketplace where they could be developed into new medicines.
So he does not say "funded by the public", but "funded [...] for the public good", etc.
Based on the actual quote you can give an argument for that this person is still an ass. Indeed, large parts of the funding are from the public, and therefore any inventions^H, ahum, discoveries(!) should be "returned" to the public immediately. There is still a market, medicines can be made from non-patented discoveries. If this is not possible, we are even in deeper shit that I thought.
Nevermind, the desktop variant is indeed not Linux based. (I should have read the FAQ before I posted.)
not based on Linux nor one of the BSDs
At least the server edition is based on the Linux kernel according to the about page.
Furthermore:
It uses the GCC compiler and many other tools from the GNU project.
So it is also, at least for a significant part, GNU based.
(Note that people often talk about GNU/Linux if they say Linux, so to be certain I show that it is also GNU based.)
Malicious code is the least of the problems with online voting.
Even though there are more obvious problems, I believe that the freedom to study and test the system is essential to any democratic voting system.
From the article:
But the free software movement he created did lead to the proliferation of Linux-based servers which are prevalent in data centers and power much of the Internet. This is perhaps ironic because Stallman expresses resentment about the credit given to the Linux kernel at the expense of his own GNU operating system.
I do not see how this would be ironic. I think the author does not understand that when people talk about a "Linux-based server" they virtually always mean a server with GNU/Linux.
Sure, it's good to have the source... It's nice to be able to see how things work, to make sure that they're doing the job we think they are, etc., etc. But that doesn't mean it's actually important to everyone that their software (and associated electronic devices) be open source.
This might be so, but this is not just about having the source code. It is about user freedom, as Stallman would put it. You might make a similar argument for free software, but that is less trivial. Then you will touch upon something fundamental like user freedom, which more people might care about than you now presume in your current argument.
Indeed, in any discussion where probability is relevant, people tend to say stupid things. Think for instance about insurances, the lottery, gambling, the weather, or the injust use of the word 'coincidence'.
The definition of truth is not the only problem with the GP's vision. If companies would be as truthful as they can, they wouldn't look like the best anymore and people would buy from another company, one which is less truthful. Capitalism, regardless of how you feel about it, is about trying to be the best by lying. The only alternative which is compatible with the GP's idea is something else than capitalism.
It might just be a convention, or netiquette, but I wish that people would adhere to these kind of conventions, instead of less important things like minor copyright infringement.
The reaction I get from a lot of the people who still download a lot of music from TPB and other places is "$1 is too much for a song!" So what? I think $80,000 is too much for a car, which is why I don't own aa $80,000 car. Not liking the price is NOT justification for taking it anyway.
Say $1 is too much for a song for me, if I then download is for no money at all, this does not affect the profit.
For a car this is different, because a car is a physical object. If I take a car for free, it cannot be sold to another person.
8 Catfish = 1 Octo-puss