Oh really? Seeing how mmap(2) requires the PROT_EXEC flag to make segments executable in the MMU, and checks those flags against the mode of the i-node, I found that hard to believe, and have it a try. These are the results:

$ cd /tmp
$ mkdir mtest
$ sudo mount -t tmpfs -o noexec none mtest
$ cd mtest/
$ vi test.c
$ gcc -o test test.c
$ ./test
bash: ./test: Permission denied
$ /lib/ld-linux.so.2 ./test
./test: error while loading shared libraries: ./test: failed to map segment from shared object: Operation not permitted
$ sudo /lib/ld-linux.so.2 ./test
./test: error while loading shared libraries: ./test: failed to map segment from shared object: Operation not permitted

I'm wondering though; why are all these groupware systems large, monolithic applications? I, for one, would never want to use a monolithic system like Zimbra or Citadel. (Or Exchange, for that matter, of course)

When I set up a system for just handling e-mail, I always use different programs for the different tasks -- one MTA (usually sendmail for me), one MDA (usually procmail for me), one IMAP server (usually dovecot for me), and one web front-end to it (I wrote my own web front-end, Dolda Webmail), and storing all the messages in the filesystem. You know, the standard Unix philosophy of doing one thing and doing it well?

Are there no similar subsystems for handling calendaring and tasks as well? I've heard of the CalDAV protocol, which seems kind of reasonable, but I haven't found any reasonable Linux server for it, and neither have I found any web front-end for it. And what about contact management? Are there any standards at all for that? Are there any more parts to a groupware system?

You are quite right in your point that "communism cannot work, since it does not deal with humans", but that is about as far as I'd be willing to agree with you.

To begin with, communism is not the ideal form of society either in practice nor in theory nor anywhere else. It is the product of a man who rejected all forms of rational thinking (you do know that Marx used Hegelian dialectics to derive communism, right?). You assert that in an ideal world, noone would be selfish, but as I have described elsewhere, a society of such beings cannot work to begin with; if noone were indeed selfish, there would be no self-interest to satisfy even by others, and noone would be happy to get work done for them, since they would not benefit from it. Selfishness, on the other hand, is what drives people (and thus, indirectly, society) forward, as I described in the post you replied to. The world of which you speak, where people are completely selfless but even so derive benefit from doing things is not only not the ideal world, it is a contradiction in terms.

Second, you describe capitalism as a system that "deals with real humans", which is a notion that I reject, and which is why capitalism and communism are not "alternatives" or "rival theories" as is often claimed. Communism, and many other theories like it, are indeed designed systems that are supposed to be applied to society. Capitalism, on the other hand, is not such a system; it was "designed" by noone, but grew by itself as a natural consequence of a society of free men. Certainly, it can be treated as a system, and there have indeed been many treaties written on it, but the difference is that capitalistic economics is a science that observes and predicts reality (as best observed in Austrian economics, as far as I've been able to tell), whereas communism is an edict, pushed onto a society.

You may want to read Common Sense by Thomas Paine, which explains quite well why we have government at all, and why government and society are two completely different things.

Thank you for proving my point: Obviously, you do it for selfish reasons. Per your own admission, you do it partly because you wish others to learn from your example and reap the benefits of reciprocal action, and partly because it makes you feel good ("because I am not a sociopath").

There is, as I've explained elsewhere in the thread, nothing that prevents selfish action from also benefiting others. The difference lies mainly in knowing that, ultimately, you do everything for selfish reasons, and there's no reason for being hypocritical about it.

Well, it's quite simple, really. I have a need for a program, so I write it. That's obviously my selfish reason for writing the code, as you rightly point out.

Then, when I decide to publish it as open source, it is for a number of reasons;

• Partly, I tend to hope that someone will look at the code, and maybe comment on it or even improve it. That hasn't happened to any great extent, however (though I have gotten a few human language translations for a webmail that I wrote);
• Partly, it is because of my personal joy in seeing people use what I've done. This is one of the reasons that I'd like to emphasize, though, because it may seem selfless or altruistic at first glance, which in fact it isn't;
• Partly, when people use it, I do tend to get a variety of bug reports and comments, not on the code, but at least on the features of the program, which is often quite useful to me;
• Partly, it lets me speak from personal experience in threads like these, rather than just speaking of principles without having partaken practically in them myself. :-)

It seems that some people, such as yourself, think that being "selfish" implicates the rejection of society. I would argue the opposite of what you do: Doing things that benefit oneself directly benefits society. (Only I won't, because I reject speaking in such terms as a "society which can benefit", as if it were anthropomorphizable)

People benefit from being part of a society precisely because of the other people in that same society doing things that benefit themselves. It is the basis of trade; two parties exchanging goods and/or services because the things being exchanged are worth more to the other. Note, however, that none of the parties trade for the benefit of the other, but for the benefit of the self, and even despite that, both benefit.

Only if you use some very odd definition of "altruism" which would be unknown. Normally, when one speaks of "altruism", one speaks of doing things with a complete lack of self-interest in the things one does, only for the benefit of others. Which is exactly why there can be no society where everyone is altruistic, because without any self-interest, there would be no benefit in any action, and everything would be pointless.

What is short-sighted is thinking that selfish action can only benefit oneself. Rather the opposite, if it did indeed not benefit the others involved in the action, it would not be agreed to in the first place. And that is why we have courts.

To be fair, it is you who introduced the dichotomy; let me quote: "If humans were never selfish and always worked for the betterment of everyone". My problem with that statement is its implication that it is somehow bad when people are being selfish. However, as you yourself write;

Which is quite correct. However, when that happens, people work on it together because of their own, selfish interesting in getting done whatever it is that needed to get done. They do not do it for the purpose of "the betterment of everyone"; they do it because they, themselves and individually, benefit from it. To go on:

You misunderstand capitalism, it seems. Capitalism is not a "system where work is done with the expectation of a possible reward". It is not a pre-planned system at all, to begin with. It is simply the natural consequence of a society where people are free to trade services with each other for whatever purpose and value they individually get to decide. This is the ideal form of society.

You claim that communism and/or socialism is the ideal form of society, and I would like to meet that statement somehow, but unfortunately I cannot, because typically when I ask 10 people what communism or socialism is, I get 15 different answers. I can however assert that people should definitely be selfish, because only then can they move forward.

I'd argue your post would have been better if you had stopped there, because that points out the core of the question: If everyone were completely altruistic, what should they do? If noone had any self-interest, there would be no useful work to do, since noone would benefit from it.

Please tell me; why should people work for the betterment of the whole of human society rather than for themselves? Why should people do things that do not benefit themselves?

I would argue against that. At least for my part, when I publish programs that I have written as open source, it is for perfectly selfish reasons.

If you read the summary, it does say "client usage", though.

Why? Why would you mind just having the files laying dormant on your file system? As others have pointed out, they're even used by many third-party programs, so at least it's better to let them remain and be used as shared objects.

I mean, there are a million other components of Windows that you may or may not need but that you can't remove either. Just look through the CLSID key in your registry, or check out the many utility programs in your System32 directory.

If you really wanted a system with choice of components, you wouldn't be using Windows to begin with. Why single out IE specifically?

I wouldn't be so sure. When you install the JRE, you get to choose whether it should integrate with MSIE and/or Mozilla browsers. I can't say that I've tried, but I'd guess that if you choose for it not to, then it doesn't install any plugins. If, on the other hand, you choose for it to integrate with the browser (which is, reasonably enough, the default), then it does so.

I really don't see the big deal here. When you install the JRE, you would normally expect it to install a browser plugin, so that applets are displayed, and that's what it does.

Mind you, this differs from Microsoft's plugin, which arrived unannounced through Windows Update.

I agree with the sentiment of your post, but this is not quite correct. Unicode was not invented for Plan 9 (in fact, it seems to have been invented by some Apple guy). Ken Thompson invented UTF-8 for Plan 9 with the purpose of encoding Unicode in an ASCII-compatible manner, and UTF-8 sees only very little usage on Windows, which mostly uses UCS-2 (or is it UTF-16 these days?).

I just thought I'd pick that nit. :)

I don't mean to be trolling, but I don't really think that anyone has a right to be surprised or hardly even angry anymore. Microsoft has been doing things of equal or far greater magnitude of evil for as long as they have existed. If you let an operating system from Microsoft run your computer, then, honestly, I think you just have to reap what you sow.

Why anyone is letting Microsoft run their computers, especially in a business or, even worse, in government, is beyond me. I mean, the people at MSFT clearly do not grasp the concept that people might want to own their own computers. Aside from free software, I can't even think of a single proprietary vendor that has the same track record of evil on their shoulders. Apple may be able to claim to be a competitor, but they don't match up to Microsoft.

I might get modded down for this, but I really don't mean to troll. I don't really think I've said anything but the truth.

Yeah, which is bad indeed. But infinitely better than a web browser.