If two particles sent back in time arrive in the same order and at the same interval, then you could send information, even if you're restricted to morse code or something. I'd bet that the timing and ordering of the particles' arrival could not be controlled, but I would not complain if someone proves me wrong :)

I think that's a fine reason for a person deciding to personally not use proprietary software. I think it's a terrible reason to say everyone should only use free software. I'm a software developer, but I don't want to be told "add it in yourself" when I go looking for a new feature, most especially when that feature is already available elsewhere. Certainly, non-programmers do not want to get that answer either! It is unreasonable to expect that of the general population.

To give a concrete example, I choose to use iTunes and/or Windows Media Player because they are easy to use and provide all the features I need without any tweaking; I have never found this to be the case for any FOSS media player. (Quite the opposite.) Why should I spend my time fixing the deficiencies in one of a dozen FOSS media players when I can just use a proprietary one that I know works? "It helps everyone else" is a good ideal, but it is not a good argument. I have better things to do with my time than fix deficiencies in FOSS media players.

My problem with Stallman isn't that he doesn't want to use proprietary software, or even that he thinks proprietary software is inherently evil; my problem is that his reason for opposing cell phones is simply paranoia. Yes, there's a chance someone will use your cell phone to track where you are.The ability to track your location is inherent in the nature of the device - you have to be connected wireless to a tower, therefore you can be tracked with some degree of precision. Has Stallman suggested an alternative technology that allows mobile communication but prevents the device from being tracked? Is it his opinion that we should not use mobile communication devices at all, merely because they can be tracked?

More importantly, why is this small chance that someone will bother tracking my location so bad? It's not hard to find my home address; it's equally trivial to find the address of the building I work in. I must travel between the two locations, so my usual approximate location during commuting hours is obvious. Anyone passingly familiar with me knows I go to church on Sundays, and church building locations and meeting times are also public knowledge. That's all without ever tracking me through my cell phone. I don't care if people know any of that, so why should Stallman's problem with cell phones concern me? I'm not asking why I should care about privacy; I'm generally opposed to government policies that reduce privacy. I'm asking, why I should care that my phone reveals my location when my location is virtually always known anyway?

A good solution to the problem "I don't want to be tracked when I go to location X" that does not require giving up the benefits of having a mobile communication device is to not carry your device when you go to location X. It's a silly reason to abandon mobile communication technology entirely.

As for microphones theoretically recording me, I see no real reason for concern there, either. There is a very large difference between theoretical threats and likely threats. My computer could be recording me, too, in theory, whether or not I'm running open source software, but that theory does not mean I should abandon the use of computers, nor does it mean that computers are "tools of Big Brother".

I'll say this another way, because Stallman and many of my fellow Slashdotters apparently don't understand the concept: in any society, we must give up some degree of privacy in order to interact with one another. It is stupid to make interaction with each other much harder on the slim chance that someone might use a person's cell phone to track or listen to that person.

Yes, there's always the possibility that companies will screw up their software, or remove features, etc., like Sony with OtherOS. "Only use FOSS" is not the only solution, nor is it even the best solution in many cases. The most practical solution is to not buy from companies that do this. Companies aren't stupid; if they know removing features will result in a tangible loss of sales, they won't do it. (The problem with Sony right now is that they don't see a tangible loss of sales; we have nobody to blame but ourselves. I am seriously flabbergasted when people's solution to "Sony sucks, they took away OtherOS" is to buy a second PS3.)

I'm not opposed to Stallman having his own opinions, but he's really taking this to an absurd extreme. Supposing the hardware were "open source", that doesn't help; it's much harder to fix a hardware bug than a software bug, even if you have the schematics and the expertise. Other people can't get your fix merely by grabbing your changes from source control, and without expensive equipment and/or disassembling your device piece by piece, you can't even verify that the device you're holding matches the schematics. Open source hardware is only useful to a point.

As for Stallman's reference to Stalin.... I'm pretty sure there's a name for the logical fallacy where you invoke people's emotions to make your point, rather than actually making logical arguments. Let's look at what he said:

Yet he offers no evidence that cell phones are tracking devices which record where we go all the time (i.e. having a GPS does not automatically mean the device is recording our movements, let alone reporting those movements to anyone), nor that they are being used as remote surveillance devices. His only argument is the emotional one, playing on people's fear of Stalin's brand of communism, and the speculation (implied as fact) that the government will track your every move and listen to every sound you make just through your cell phone... merely because you have a cell phone. His argument is made even more stupid by stating that mobile devices running Android are just as untrustworthy as the rest merely because carriers include proprietary software on them, ignoring the fact that tracking is possible regardless of what software is on the device, as long as it is turned on, and ignoring the fact that you can simply remove the proprietary software.

In other words, the only basis for his argument that we should not use cell phones is pure and simple paranoia, and that, my fellow Slashdotters, is why I don't care one bit what Stallman says about cell phones (or really anything else).

And some of us got tired of having to dual-boot just to play games, of trying to hack various things together to get games to run under wine, of having a selection of high-quality games smaller than the selection available for OSX, of having distro updates hork the system (*cough*Ubuntu 10.10*cough*), of getting told "STFU and RTFM" when asking for help, of being told "you don't want to do that" when asking how to do something without being asked why I wanted to do it, of being told "recompile it with X, Y, Z flags" to solve various problems, of being told to "submit a patch" when asking about a bug or missing feature, of running software with fewer features for... what, ideological reasons? Should I go on?

I'm a software developer as a profession and as a hobby, but I have very little interest in fixing my tools (let alone my operating system!) as a prerequisite to working on the stuff I actually care about.

Honestly, I have no reason to fully switch back to Linux, and I will not have a reason unless (or, if you insist, until) I get somehow meaningfully screwed over by proprietary software. Thus far, the only times I have been screwed over by software in any meaningful way have been caused by problems with Linux (e.g. the aforementioned Ubuntu 10.10 update which pretty much made my system unusable).

IMNSHO, it's kind of stupid to refuse to use proprietary software on the chance that it will screw you over someday. If it works well, use it, and if it does screw you over (e.g. Sony removing OtherOS), then switch to alternatives - and that applies to open source software as much as it applies to proprietary software.

Now, before people flame me, I do like Linux, and I use it daily, along with several useful open source tools, but until the open source community can match a lot of the "evil" proprietary software out there, I have a very strong incentive to stay with proprietary software.

As another practicing member of the LDS Church, I second LWATCDR's objection to Cmdr Taco's tag line. We do not practice polygamy, and using a story tag to imply that we do is a deliberate participation in perpetuating that incorrect idea.

I'm also getting quite frustrated with the Slashdot editors' complete inability to do even a quick reading of the referenced article before posting a summary, especially when the summary is inflammatory like this one. The article makes no reference to political party affiliation as a motivation for the bill, nor does it reference the LDS Church in any way.

Why does Slashdot even *have* editors, if they're not going to fact-check?

Uh... they already offer 12Mbps plans for $43/month... I hope that doesn't get interpreted as an encouragement to increase prices.

Very well. Remove "often in exchange for large grants" and answer the resulting question.

I'll start reading their studies when they stop selectively excluding data in order to produce the results they want.

I'll start reading their studies when they stop cherry-picking a time range for the study in order to produce the results they want. (The time range stuff is at the beginning of part 1; other issues are examined in that 4-part video series as well.)

I'll start reading their studies when they stop trying to avoid publishing in peer-reviewed journals, when they stop trying to sabotage the careers of scientists who disagree with them (same link), when they stop ignoring the objections of other scientists, and so on and so forth.

In short, why should I trust the conclusions of these "scientists" when they repeatedly demonstrate that they're interested in "proving" pre-determined results, often in exchange for large grants, rather than actually finding the truth?

I think you're greatly underestimating the importance of privacy. Suppose you were put into juvenile detention for a few weeks for some relatively small offense, but did not commit even a traffic violation during the following 20 years. Now suppose this is true of 20% of the population. If each individual keeps this secret of his or her youth, would you argue that those harmless secrets prevent our survival as a race?

Or suppose you have a shoe fetish that you only indulge in your bedroom. "Complete openness in all aspects of our lives" certainly encompasses that, seeing as how it is an aspect of one's life; is it your argument that we cannot explore deep space or survive our supposed eventual destruction if we don't know about your shoe fetish?

I see absolutely no reason why "properly exploring deep space" or "surviving our eventual destruction" should depend on "complete openness in all aspects of our lives". It's a rather large leap of logic and an absurdly broad requirement, but you've provided no basis for the argument.

You don't get those things if you're flying domestic... at least not that I've ever seen. They don't even feed you nowadays.

I like the idea of issuing a baseball bat to every passenger at boarding time (to be returned at the destination gate) for that reason. Sure, a terrorist on board would have a bat, but he'll find it difficult to use when everyone else does too... That way there's no chance that most passengers simply won't have melee weapons with them.

I think the reason Ubuntu instructs the user to reboot is that relatively few Ubuntu users would understand that they don't need to reboot, they "just" need to manually restart services A, B, and C, kill Gnome, and then log in again... That sort of thing is far beyond the capabilities of your average computer users.

Besides, who really wants to look through dozens of updates to figure out the affected services? I know I'd rather just reboot. It takes far less time than reading all the update notes and then trying to remember whether any services that depend on those updated packages (but were not themselves updated) need to be restarted as well.

The problem is, it isn't the school's responsibility to get kids to school, it's the parents' responsibility. Think of this from the kid's perspective. If your teachers don't trust you, you have no reason to trust them, right? And if you don't trust them, why would you want to listen to what they try to teach, or do as they say?

Schools should not be forcing kids to do anything at all. If the school is concerned that a student's absences are impeding his learning, or provide any other concern, they should go through the kid's parents. If a student is behaving disruptively, then nothing the school can do will improve the situation; that must be resolved by the kid's parents. No good can come of allowing schools to do more than simply teach the students.

Kids may not be fully developed, but they're far more intelligent and perceptive than you give them credit for. They are, in fact, capable of making good long-term decisions, if their parents teach them how to do it. They are, in fact, capable of understanding why they should attend school and put some effort into it, if their parents teach them why. They are, in fact, capable of understanding why they should behave respectfully to their fellow students and to teachers, if their parents teach them why. These are not problems resolvable by GPS tracking devices or detention, they must be resolved by good parenting.

Parents who want schools to do their parenting for them are causing far more trouble than anything else. Parents who do not accept responsibility for their child's behavior -- by attempting to force schools to take on that responsibility -- are giving that child a very poor message: "we don't love you enough to take care of you." I'm sure I don't have to explain why that would tend to worsen a child's behavior, rather than improve it -- and as I already pointed out, good parenting is the solution, not draconian school-instituted punishments.

From the parents' perspective, yes; but schools have no place deciding how much freedom or privacy students have, least of all after school hours, away from school property. This GPS tracking crosses the line rather blatantly, but requiring an 8pm check-in is even more ridiculously invasive. My wife and I are the only two people who have a reason to know where our daughter is at 8pm.

There be dragons! It is an extremely bad, dangerous idea to allow schools to take over any aspect of parenting; schools should teach the curriculum, nothing else. It is not the school's place to decide a parent isn't "keeping the kids in check" well enough for the school's taste.

When my daughter goes to school, I intend to see to it that the school does not overstep its bounds. I don't care whether the school thinks I'm too lax; it's not their business how I raise my child. I certainly don't intend to simply let her run amok with no discipline, but it will be my discipline, not that of some uncaring school official. If circumstances dictate that she must be tracked, I will do the tracking as I see fit, not the school.

This was precisely my problem. After elementary school, I quickly became bored with the curriculum in middle school, and with only one or two exceptions, it got even worse in high school. I probably averaged a B- through high school (and even then, only because my parents were not pleased when I got Cs). But I wasn't dumb, by any means; my SAT/ACT scores were high enough to get me a full tuition scholarship for college despite my poor GPA.

In other words, my problem was apathy, and apathy is not solved by removing fun from the classroom. The few classes I actually enjoyed were classes where I was *encouraged* to have fun; I particularly enjoyed the jewelry-making and basic electronics classes. I loved the yearly statewide high school programming competition put on by a local university my first two years of high school, but what teacher really cares enough to put in the time to help prepare four kids for a one-time competition? It didn't help that the teacher put in charge of that was really the golf coach and remedial math teacher. Suffice it to say, despite my pleas, we did not attend the competition my senior year.

People like to say that high school is supposed to prepare kids for college. In my case, that wasn't even close to true. By the time I got to college, apathy had become a habit, and I'm sure I don't have to point out that apathy doesn't produce good grades in college.

Agreed. Removing kids' privacy is obviously the goal -- hence the requirement to check in at 8pm. Schools should not know or care where kids are after school.