Posts by Goat Jam 2482 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Mar 2008
"The whole point of Freedom is that you don't get to dictate to anyone else what Freedom means."
While this is indeed true it does not follow that the GPL is all about "freedom".
The GPL is already quite restrictive compared to say the BSD licence and it is not outside the realms of possibility that future versions could include such "morality" clauses.*
* Not that I would favour such a thing, I'm just pointing out that it is not altogether impossible.
"You can specify exactly which exes can be run and even if the user manages to get permission to an exe that he/she shouldn't be able to run, they won't be able to run them, because they're not on the list"
I'm genuinely interested in knowing how this works. My first thought was that if I were trying to run a malicious EXE I would rename it to something that I would expect to be on the whitelist, say explorer.exe or something.
I assume that this wouldn't actually work though, it wouldn't be much of a security feature if it did.
Everything is OK. Don't worry, nothing bad can happen because our masters wouldn't be able to get away with it, not with intellectual giants such as yourself on their case, keeping them to heel and all.
Or not.
On the one hand there is you, throwing insults and espousing your "ignorance is strength" attitude and then there is me, who provided a link to an article that goes into some detail about how the whole thing came about.
I'm betting you didn't even read the article I posted before launching into your little diatribe right?
Perhaps you could enlighten yourself just once and actually read the evidence instead of doing the standard thing of using the "tin foil hat" insult and asserting some total nonsense that rich people are smarter everything else that happens is an accident.
It is _by_design_ that Western education systems produce barely literate cretins who's primary role in life is to be good little consumers and not rock the boat.
From http://www.cantrip.org/againstschool.html
<quote>
Inglis breaks down the purpose - the actual purpose - of modem schooling into six basic functions, any one of which is enough to curl the hair of those innocent enough to believe the three traditional goals listed earlier:
1) The adjustive or adaptive function. Schools are to establish fixed habits of reaction to authority. This, of course, precludes critical judgment completely. It also pretty much destroys the idea that useful or interesting material should be taught, because you can't test for reflexive obedience until you know whether you can make kids learn, and do, foolish and boring things.
2) The integrating function. This might well be called "the conformity function," because its intention is to make children as alike as possible. People who conform are predictable, and this is of great use to those who wish to harness and manipulate a large labor force.
3) The diagnostic and directive function. School is meant to determine each student's proper social role. This is done by logging evidence mathematically and anecdotally on cumulative records. As in "your permanent record." Yes, you do have one.
4) The differentiating function. Once their social role has been "diagnosed," children are to be sorted by role and trained only so far as their destination in the social machine merits - and not one step further. So much for making kids their personal best.
5) The selective function. This refers not to human choice at all but to Darwin's theory of natural selection as applied to what he called "the favored races." In short, the idea is to help things along by consciously attempting to improve the breeding stock. Schools are meant to tag the unfit - with poor grades, remedial placement, and other punishments - clearly enough that their peers will accept them as inferior and effectively bar them from the reproductive sweepstakes. That's what all those little humiliations from first grade onward were intended to do: wash the dirt down the drain.
6) The propaedeutic function. The societal system implied by these rules will require an elite group of caretakers. To that end, a small fraction of the kids will quietly be taught how to manage this continuing project, how to watch over and control a population deliberately dumbed down and declawed in order that government might proceed unchallenged and corporations might never want for obedient labor.
</quote>
http://www.cantrip.org/againstschool.html
When you first install Chrome it asks you which search engine you want as default.
IIRC your options are Google (goog), Bing(msft) or Yahoo(msft) so actually 2 of the three options you are given are for MS provided search.
Does IE give you such a choice? No, no it doesn't, you have to deliberately figure out how to switch to Google.
Despite MS illegally leveraging their monopolies* (Windows->IE->Bing), Google still has the highest market share.
I think that says something about what people actually want despite the whining coming from Redmond and their hordes of sycophants.
* IE is less a monopoly than it once was, despite it still benefiting from being prominently installed on every mandatory installation of MS monopoly OS. That also says something about what people actually want.
"You are, with respect, both underestimating the business & marketing risk of a hardware manufacturer creating a physical tablet intended to run an OS and presumably apps ecosystem under significant control of a competitor"
Or not.
Google (now) owns Motorola Mobility, who is a direct competitor to Samsung, HTC, et al.
I'm not sure what the difference is here.
"Will a company such as say, Samsung or HTC, develop tablets for WebOS? Which is "sponsored" by HP, a potential competitor?"
Permit me to answer a question with another question.
"Will a company such as say, Samsung or HTC, develop tablets for Android? Which is "sponsored" by Google, a potential competitor?"
In Australia, we can have more than 20 per hour of adverts in an hour.
That, the constant moving of programs around and the year or more lag between overseas releases anbd their air dates in Aus its no wonder that so many people turn to <ahem> "alternate sources" for their viewing material.
Not that I would do that of course.
The moronic talking heads on TV and radio promulgate this attitude constantly, proudly announcing at every and any opportunity "Oh, I don't know how to use <slightly technical thing>" as if it is some sort of badge of honour to be displayed with pride.
As for people who just want you to do it for them rather than participate in the solution I'm with you there.
I'll _guide_ you towards the answer but I sure as hell won't just do it for you just so you can maintain a pseudo-elitist position where you are not required to comprehend anything that you consider to be beneath you.
I bet that every hotel, restaurant and car, not to mention the venue itself was heavily airconditioned.
I also bet they were all chauffeured around in individual limousines, probably with some hand wave towards some nonsensical "carbon offset" scam to make it all seem acceptable.
A bigger bunch of hypocrites you won't find.
I said;
"Perhaps, but then none of the other manufacturers seem able to undercut them with their me-too products."
Bullseyed said;
"that people who buy Apple products have no comprehension of cost benefit analysis"
So Samsung, RIM, HP, Sony all sell tablets _at_the_same_price_ as the ipad but it is apple buyers who are unable to do a cost benefit analysis?
What you are suggesting is that people should compare the ipad to other tablets and choose the other tablets because they are cheaper and/or better than the ipad.
<Kryten>
An excellent plan sir with only two drawbacks. The other tablets are neither better nor cheaper than the ipad"
</Kryten>
It's a bit rich having your posting history brought up (in lieu of any actual valid point) by someone cowering behind an AC shield.
Hypocrite
Just for the record, the two points I made, which you have thus far failed to adequately address;
1) Bill Gates stands to make a profit from his investment if this company succeeds.
From the article:
"The system is being developed by Intellectual Ventures, the investment vehicle and sometime patent troll set up by former Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold, and taken to market by TerraPower, which is partially funded by Gates."
Now, if that sounds like a benevolent charity to you then I'll have some of what you are smoking.
2) Bill Gates has done immeasurable harm to the IT industry and has destroyed a multitude of innovative businesses in order to protect his illegally leveraged monopoly.
This is a matter of historical record which I am not prepared to argue about.
Now, instead of attacking my posting history from behind an AC cloak how about you actually respond to those points with something that is not arrant nonsense.
Or bugger off, I don't much care either way.
Oh, and "Microsoft facilitated the placement of an affordable computer on every desk" is nonsense. He provides an over priced and underwhelming monopoly OS and forces it to be installed on every PC sold.
How things may have turned out without the drag of the Microsoft Tax holding the industry back is anybodies guess.
.
Estimated net worth is $57B. And you reckon he's given "practically all" his money to charity.
As to never accusing Bill/ms of doing good?
So fricking what?
Does that make my points (he will make money from this deal/he has caused great harm to the IT industry) any less valid?
If the best you can do to defend Bill is a nonsense claim that he gave all his money to charity and to attack me on a personal level then I would suggest you get yourself a better comment writer.
Oh, and Bill Gates did not invent "affordable computers". Not even close. I have absolutely no idea where you got that particular bit of nonsense from.
Apple sure have them rattled!
It's astonishing that not one of them, except for maybe Samsung, have managed to counter the ipad in any significant manner.
It's also astonishing how quickly these companies give up when they don't manage to whip up significant sales for the overpriced and underwhelming products that they apparently believe people desperately want to buy.
"free storage from Box in the first year of operation, and a reduced annual rate"
So, just more preinstalled crapware that requires an ongoing subscription then.
At least it's better than getting a measly 3 months AV subscription (followed quickly by exhortations to pay up" or become "unprotected"
I run Ubuntu Natty in a VM here at work and Firefox is a bloated, memory leaking mess. It get's slower and slower as the hours pass, requires frequent restarts and refuses to remember my tabs.
By coincidence, I just switched to Chromium this morning and it absolutely flies in comparison.
Mozilla need to debloat Firefox and stop with this insane major version update every two weeks madness.
I don't know what is happening out there in OSS project land but I don't like it. Not one little bit..
The people in charge of Ubuntu, Gnome and Mozilla have clearly gone batshit insane over the last couple of years.
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