Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 2nd Jan 2012 19:12 UTC
Late last year, president Obama signed a law that makes it possible to indefinitely detain terrorist suspects without any form of trial or due process. Peaceful protesters in Occupy movements all over the world have been labelled as terrorists by the authorities. Initiatives like SOPA promote diligent monitoring of communication channels. Thirty years ago, when Richard Stallman launched the GNU project, and during the three decades that followed, his sometimes extreme views and peculiar antics were ridiculed and disregarded as paranoia - but here we are, 2012, and his once paranoid what-ifs have become reality.
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RE: Put your work where your mouth is.
by Thom_Holwerda on Mon 2nd Jan 2012 21:20
in reply to "Put your work where your mouth is."
Member since:2005-06-29
There are others way to support Free and open software, other than using it (which sometimes isn't an option). This "use it or sod off" attitude really isn't helping Free/open source software.
What helps is educating people about the pros and cons, and then let them decide for themselves. Don't force them. Don't feel morally superior or insult them. It's not their fault they're using the software they like or are accustumed with, so don't act like it is.
The best future is one where Free/open source software and proprietary software push each other to excel, for the benefit of all. We don't need an all-FOSS world; we simply need a world where FOSS is competitive and seen as a real competitor in as many fields as possible - forcing proprietary vendors to be on edge.
RE[2]: Put your work where your mouth is.
by grayskull on Tue 3rd Jan 2012 04:30
in reply to "RE: Put your work where your mouth is."
Member since:2008-02-08
"Could people please not use this list to announce information of no particular interest to the people on the list? Hundreds of thousands of babies are born every day. While the whole phenomenon is menacing, one of them by itself is not newsworthy. Nor is it a difficult achievement—even some fish can do it. (Now, if you were a seahorse, it would be more interesting, since it would be the male that gave birth.)"
RMS
http://edward.oconnor.cx/2005/04/rms
Free Software = Good
Open Source = Good
RMS = Bad
RE[2]: Put your work where your mouth is.
by M.Onty on Tue 3rd Jan 2012 10:05
in reply to "RE: Put your work where your mouth is."
Member since:2009-10-23
There are others way to support Free and open software, other than using it (which sometimes isn't an option). This "use it or sod off" attitude really isn't helping Free/open source software.
What helps is educating people about the pros and cons, and then let them decide for themselves. Don't force them. Don't feel morally superior or insult them. It's not their fault they're using the software they like or are accustumed with, so don't act like it is.
The best future is one where Free/open source software and proprietary software push each other to excel, for the benefit of all. We don't need an all-FOSS world; we simply need a world where FOSS is competitive and seen as a real competitor in as many fields as possible - forcing proprietary vendors to be on edge.
What helps is educating people about the pros and cons, and then let them decide for themselves. Don't force them. Don't feel morally superior or insult them. It's not their fault they're using the software they like or are accustumed with, so don't act like it is.
The best future is one where Free/open source software and proprietary software push each other to excel, for the benefit of all. We don't need an all-FOSS world; we simply need a world where FOSS is competitive and seen as a real competitor in as many fields as possible - forcing proprietary vendors to be on edge.
This is appears to be a more nuanced view than that expressed in the article itself. I would recommend appending something of the sort to the article for clarity.
RE: Put your work where your mouth is.
by r_a_trip on Tue 3rd Jan 2012 14:09
in reply to "Put your work where your mouth is."
Member since:2005-07-06
If you want to truly support the Free Software Movement, the least you could do is actually using it.
I agree, but putting money where your mouth is, seems so incredibly hard to do, since convenience is king and features gained fall under the largest possible umbrella of entitlement.
In a few years we will see who are the haves and who are the have-nots.
Edit: added quote.
Edited 2012-01-03 14:11 UTC
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:15 UTC
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:11 UTC, submitted by Drumhellar
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 21:41 UTC
Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 17:04 UTC
"But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.More News »
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Member since:
2007-06-21
"This is why you should support Linux, even if you use Windows. This is why you should support Apache, even if you run IIS."
If you want to truly support the Free Software Movement, the least you could do is actually using it.
'I support free software but iphone applications are more fun' or 'I like Linux but Windows works-for-me' means nothing.
Im not saying we all should be as extreme as rms. Noone could be as extreme as him.We sometimes need to get some job done. But least we could do is giving up on some features of propertiary softwares.