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Slashback: VIP, Makers, RMS 160

Posted by timothy from the ok-so-sue-me dept.
Slashbacked below are a handful of updates, corrections and followups, on topics ranging from Tito in space to who really developed the next-generation OS/2. Please enjoy.

But who's counting? Martin Bogolmoni wrote in response to the report on the well-and-truly networked Dutch gaming fest called The Gathering, as mentioned here and praised for it's huge number of available gaming connections.

" The Gathering 99 -- 5300 switchports, but only 2,500 attendees (tickets). 2500 tickets has been all that can be sold for the last few years. TG01 was the first time that more than that have been sold .. 4,100. Also, for people coming from out of the Netherlands, (USA, England, etc..) there is no entrance fee. You are considered a VIP. -grin- Just a quick correction, since I love attending and working with The Gathering. (Not to mention speaking there...) "

Thanks, Martin :)

Whodunnit, really? A number of people emailed (some of them even politely!) to correct the story about the new eComStation, including Bob St John of Serenity Systems International, to point out that " the developer is not Mensys .. they are our distributor ... Serenity Systems is the developer."

Radu Trimbitas adds: "Mensys (like Indelible Blue in U.S.) is the main distributor of eComStation in Europe, among other things (Linux, BeOS, etc. distributors). They are very OS/2-friendly, so they made efforts to support this distribution, providing a web site with infos, support, etc."

Money may not talk but it has great facial expressions. Darren.Moffat writes "OSOpinion has updated their story and the OpenGroup also now mentions Apple this came from Daily Daemon News"

Space for me, and not for thee. csy writes "Dennis Tito returns jubilant to Earth. Meanwhile, John Glenn criticizes Tito's trip as a "misuse of a spacecraft designed for research". I guess space junkets by geriatric senators must count as research. Read the story on CNN."

And speaking of reactions, DelphiGeek writes: "There have been a plethora of stories on Microsoft's Mundie and his comments on Open Source. Postings of ESR, Linus and others rebuttals were posted here. However, I never saw anything displaying RMS' response. I find this odd seeing how the GPL was the license that was directly attacked. Here is a link to RMS' official response. Also on GNU there are several documents that are older that state his postion."

You'll note that RMS does not find "conciliatory" in his personal dictionary ;)

Nobody's opening any kimonos here, pal!

"Since the kimono has already been opened...

RLX is going to be demoing the RLX System 324 Web Server at Networld+Interop. RLX is not on the show floor but if you want to see it, look on their website and call the number or email sales@rlxtechnologies.com to get the info and get into see it.

Just a few notes of what has already been done with these things. An initial 220 Node Beowulf Cluster in one rack in under two man days, just as a proof of concept. On that line, RLX has been working with Scyld, (people like Don Becker and the original Beowulf crew), on some real cool integration of Scyld Beowulf. Brings the time down for a beowulf from days to hours. The rumor is they will even have a small cluster using the Scyld stuff at N+I.

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Slashback: VIP, Makers, RMS More

Slashback: VIP, Makers, RMS

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  • Re:Geriatric senators? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    By sending in Proofs of Purchase from Wheaties boxes and collecting aluminum cans and bottles. You have to remember to pour out any cans that still have soda or beer in them, though. Those can get really messy.

  • Go Tito! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    From what I can tell, NASA's just acting like a bunch of spoiled brats.
    "Waaaah! Tito's playing with our toys! Waaaaah! It's OUR clubhouse! We built it! We get to decide who's a member of our club! Waaaaahh, Waaahhh, WAAAAHHH"

    Don't think so? Remember how NASA threatened to not let Tito into THEIR part of the station?
    "Wahhhhh, You stay on your side of the room, you can't come into mine! I'm telling Mom! WAAAAAAH!"

    It was petty and elitist and it shamed the US, it's citizens and it's space program. Why should the taxpayers put up with this crap out of them? If they only want their special, hand-picked few to go in space, FINE! Let those special few figure out how to pay their own way into space and quit begging for handouts from the American taxpayers. We've been doing this for nearly 40 years and nobody's made a dime from it yet.

    Every manned launch has been paid for and subsidised by the taxpayers and frankly we haven't gotten our money's worth. All we ever get is more vague promises: "purer drugs, zero gravity crystals and so much more! Just give us more money and someday soon..."

    Except that the experiments we've done so far show that the drugs aren't any purer, the crystals grow just like they do on Earth, most animals and plants don't grow as well in space (except fungus and bacteria) and most things are more expensive and harder to control in zero-G. The only things that are cheaper and more readily available in space are hard vacuum and cosmic rays.
  • There have been many news reports about Microsoft simply appropriating code from many places (some stories reported Windows contains a lot of decompiler output, even). This is a free ride they get at the expense of those who developed the code. Had there not been this problem of commerical companies taking free code and making little mods to it and making money off it, with not so much as a tip of the hat to the authors, people would still just release their code as public domain. The GPL was a response to this phenomenon, of which it appears Microsoft is more guilty than most companies. It ensures that nobody makes money by selling someone else's freely given code. If someone wants to make money off my code, and it is GPL'd, they have to come to me for a different license. Otherwise they risk having their entire program become GPL'd. It could in fact be interesting to get a look at all the Microsoft sources, to see if any parts of GPL'd code anywhere have been put in. Even a tiny GPL'd routine inserted into Windows 2000 could have the legal effect of making free release, as GPL code, of the whole Windows 2000 source mandatory (and legal for anyone to do who has access to it). I wonder if Microsoft isn't a bit scared some of their source-under-glass access people might do just that kind of search? One developer in a hurry NEVER took any GPL'd code and used it? maybe...

  • Re:All The RMS You'll Ever Need. (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I suggest that we call it C/GNU/Linux, because if C didn't exist, GNU would never have worked. But wait, C is based on von Neumann computers, so it should be called von Neumann/C/GNU/Linux. But wait that is predicated on the work of Ada Byron and Charles Babbage, so it should be called that. Or to put in RMS sour words:

    These systems are often mistakenly called just "Linux"; calling them "Byron/Babbage/vonNeumann/C/GNU/Linux" corrects this confusion.
    This c

  • 1994 antitrust settlement (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    In 1994, Microsoft's NDA's for developers contained a clause which said: if you accept this NDA, then you can't work on similar features or drivers for any other operating system for a period of time. Microsoft had to abandon those clauses as part of the 1994 antitrust settlement.

    So yeah, that evil thought was part of Microsoft's business dealings back then. Whether they can legally do it again or not remains to be seen.

  • You really hit the nail on the head, and I hope you get modded up to 5.

    Putting a tourist into space WAS exploration, but not into astronomics: it was economics exploration. Missions that wouldn't have made sense as purely public projects, might now get accomplished with $20M of extra (delicate) cargo on board.

    Americans everywhere should hang their head in shame; you've just been out-entrepreneured by the Russians!

  • No, "Eben Moglen" was actually what they're saying at the beginning of Def Leppard's "Rock of Ages".
  • Foreign country.... somewhere in Europe... begins with N... that's close enough for most Americans.
  • Actually, I didn't find anything in that piece that was far off the mark until the last paragraph. But since it was in the "World Socialist Web Site" it's expected to have everything devolve into another reason why world socialism is the right thing. It's like reading a piece by RMS and getting the stock sermon about GNU/Linux. It would only be remarkable by it's absence.

    All told, good article. Plenty of time to bash communists (and as a Libertarian I do it regular) later, for now praise them for a rare example of good journalism in a computer related piece outside the trade press. It it such a rare thing that it should be noted.
  • Oh, you mean Reagan went over there personally and embezzeled the Russian Treasury? Reagan went out of his way to bankrupt the US, and the USSR, lemming like, followed, then passed us on the way to the sea. We may have slowed down slightly, but we haven't stopped.

    You may wish to check your math; Reducing our population will INCREASE the ratio of pollution the US puts out (assuming pollution stays fairly constant). The problem is reducing pollution per person, or increasing our birth rate without increasing pollution much :) I also fail to see why it (directly) relates to the human-rights committee.
  • Yeah, I did great stuff with OS/2. Warp was the ultimate DOS development platform (booting different DOS versions in each window), but even the last 16 bit (V1.3) version was really tight. I was running power plant air pollution systems on a 20Mhz 386 with like 8M of RAM, ran 24/7 like a charm with about 50 threads.

    It was just damn hard to install if you didn't know what you were doing. Sort of like Linux sometimes. :-)

    (Not trolling here, I've just had about 3 systems I never could get Linux on, as much as I love it. Ended up buying a VA Linux box!)

  • Bull****!

    The Atari ST didn't come CLOSE to the Amiga's capabilities. You must've had some good acid.

    Ah, the sweet smell of acrimonious Atari/Amiga/Mac wars... it helped them all so much!

  • But what was the true cost? (Score:3)

    by Jeremy Erwin ( 2054 ) on Tuesday May 08, 2001 @07:36PM (#236371) Journal
    Tito paid 20 million dollars for the trip. That covered the Russian Soyuz flight and maybe subsidized Russian space flight operations. However, station operations were basically shut down for that period. Since the ISS is a work in progress, that also meant that equipment was not installed, further delaying fully operational status.
    The United states has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in this station. Because of budgetary considerations, plans to increase the crew capacity to six (from three) have been put on hold.

    Could one make an economic case for building a multi billion dollar space station, and then renting it out to tourists for the cost of delivering them to orbit? No way! How would you pay for your multi billion dollar space station?

    The ISS was obstensibly designed for research. Tourists are a distraction. If some idiot with cash to burn believes that there is a sustainable market for space tourism, let him build his own space station.
  • brain skip or something. sorry.

  • new .sig quote (Score:4)

    by h2odragon ( 6908 ) on Tuesday May 08, 2001 @03:13PM (#236373) Homepage
    [of Microsloth]: "they're simply trying to scare people out of dealing with a competitor they can't buy, can't intimidate, and can't stop." --RMS in GNU press release.


    That's so well said it bears repeating. There's no better sign of impending victory than the frenzied confusion of an opponent who simply has no clue what to do.

  • Why the hell did this get moderated up as "funny"?

    Because some people prefer to laugh at death. Yes it was crass. As you grow up, you will learn that many (most) jokes are at somebody's expense. Go rent yourself a Sam Kinison tape; you need to train yourself to recognize this kind of humor, even if you can't appreciate it. Life's too short to be so easily offended.

  • You may apologize, but please don't regret saying it. I don't base my opinions of what's funny on what penn and teller or people on /. think.

    Finding humor in the most tragic of circumstances is a gift many people underappreciate.

  • That "free ride" as you called it involved having every aspect of his body poked, proded, sampled, tested and measured for weeks before, every minute of, and weeks after the trip. All in the name of science to answer questions like what does zero-g do to the geriatric. Have you ever seen how bone density tests are done? would you like to have one every week? how about daily while bouncing around in freefall? It's not clear to me why Glenn's efforts for the betterment of mankind need to be belittled.
  • * In the sense of the FSF dissapproving of closed source software ...

    Of course the FSF disapproves of what you call closed source software. After all, 'FSF' stands for 'Free Software Foundation' and not for 'Free and Non-Free Software Foundation'.

    * In the sense of the FSF dissapproving of Open Source interoperating with closed source...

    Does it? I believe the FSF has always promoted open standards. Or did you ever read about the FSF disapproving of TCP/IP?

    * In the sense of many of its followers who generally misuse the term `commercial' to mean non free / Open Source (hah!)...

    Commercial does not mean non-Free. RedHat is a commercial software company, but it produces and sells Free Software. The word 'proprietary' means non-Free. Note that software can even be proprietary and not-commercial, like binary-only freeware.

    And what exactly has FSF's followers shortcomings to do with the official position of the FSF?

    * In the sense of many FSF supporters and members constantly insistenting that `corporate interests (ie, business in general) and Open Soruce are mutually exclusive...

    I am pretty sure that the FSF itself does not insist on that. Actually, you might be surprised to hear that the FSF seldomly mentions Open Source at all (other than to state that it does not support the Open Source but the Free Software movement).

    It is always interesting (and sad) that people make claims about the FSF (or RMS) without ever caring to inform themselves about what the FSF really stands for [mit.edu].

    bye
    schani

  • yes, buts its done for `ethical' reasons. Most businesses don't share or care bour the FSF ethics. Open Source promotes Open Source because, on an engineeering levels, it is often *better*. Quality matters. Ethics don't.

    For some people software quality matters more than than having the freedom to modify and copy that software. For some other people, it doesn't. It seems you belong to the former, while I belong to the latter sort of people. That does not mean that I'm anti-business (I am not). It just means that I am against proprietary software. It does follow, though, that I am against proprietary software business.

    Most businesses, however, do not sell software licences. Some sell support, others hardware, some businesses even sell things like cars or vegetables. I do not believe that the FSF has any problems with those.

    The FSF dissapproving of closed an Open source software interoperting sucks and is not realistic. Most businesses will continue to use what's best, whether that be Apache or MS Word, because it (in their minds) is the bets for the job they are doing. Open Source interoperating with closed is an important part of this. Haven't you ever used Samba?

    Since I do not use Windows, I have little need for Samba, but that is beside the point. You may be surprised, however, that Samba is explictly listed in the GNU free software directory [gnu.org]. If you still want to argue that the FSF is against Free/Non-Free software interoperability, please come up with evidence (i.e. a link to an FSF page stating just that).

    If this is sad, then refute me. You haven't yet.

    Actually, I believe the burden of proof is on you. You keep stating that the FSF's position is this or that. Where do you get that from? Can you provide us with some links to official FSF pages that support your claims?

    Nevertheless, I will provide you with another link to an FSF page, namely on the subject of selling Free Software [gnu.org]. The FSF actually encourages selling Free Software. How anti-business is that?

    PS: I am fully aware that this is a troll. Nevertheless, if I can get just one person (by which I do not mean the original poster, of course) to actually read up on what the FSF stands for before believing some groundless claims, these postings will have done their deed.

    bye
    schani

  • I believe it does, in that the car and vegetable shops are likely using closed source software. By logical extrapolation, if closed source is unethical, then those who endorse enethical behaviour are in turn unethical.

    What the FSF views as unethical is the denial of certain freedoms to software users, more specifically the rights to copy and modify that software. Since car and vegetable shops do not provide software, the question of whether or not they deny someone those rights does not even arise.

    Your argument is along the lines of: Since it's unethical to hit someone with a baseball bat, it must be unethical to get hit by a baseball bat.

    bye
    schani

  • Microsoft and the their "Shared Source" (Score:5)

    by ansible ( 9585 ) on Tuesday May 08, 2001 @04:07PM (#236380) Journal

    An evil thought just occured to me...

    I think Microsoft has a more hidden purpose to it's "shared source" initiative. Everyone who gets to look at their source code undoubtedly must sign an NDA saying that they'll never reveal the source to the public, nor use the code or ideas for any other project.

    Every developer that agrees to it is now "tainted" when it comes to working on an open source software project. MS now has grounds for going after individual developers working on open source software, and has an indimidation tool for those just thinking about it. And as we know with legal stuff, it doesn't necessarily have to hold up in a trial, legal arguments just have to sound plausible enough for threats.

    Ideally (from MS's point of view), everyone in the world would sign such NDAs, and thereby stifle open source software development.

  • I agree.. In fact, I have no problem with this whatsoever. Think about this: Tito has advanced the cause of research by giving the Russians something that they need desperately. Cash to build new parts for the station.

    Does the idea of tourists at the station repulse me somewhat? Yes. Does the end of funding the station justify that means? Yes.

    Ben
  • McAuliffe was the final candidate from a looooong list of applicants that NASA picked through in order to decide who went. Tito wasn't chosen, he simply purchased his trip. Even though it cost $20 million, it's still a lot more accessable. There are a lot more people who have $20 million than civilians who will be chosen by NASA to go on a trip, and the price will surely come down as it becomes more common.
  • However, station operations were basically shut down for that period.

    Care to back that up with any facts? It sounded to me like the NASA astronauts were getting plenty of work done while Tito was up there.

    One of the things about sharing is not always getting your way. NASA should quit whining about this particular use of the station by one of the partners on this shared venture, especially since Tito didn't replace any needed parts or crew deliveries. Heck, the computer outages that NASA was having the week before probably threw off the schedule more than Tito did.

    Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!

  • How is it trespassing for him to be on the Russian part of the territory? Maybe NASA should charge all the people of Russia with trespassing on NASA territory in Moscow, etc.?

    As far as I can tell, NASA is spending my money, and Mr. Tito is spending his money. Now the Russian space agency will be spending Mr. Tito's money on stuff for the station, which is OK with me.

    Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!

  • Could one make an economic case for building a multi billion dollar space station, and then renting it out to tourists for the cost of delivering them to orbit? No way! How would you pay for your multi billion dollar space station?
    I'm sorry to say this (honestly, I really am sorry to say this) but there is not economic case of any sort for building the space station. Hopefully they'll do some good science up there, but the odds are not good that it's going to be worth billions. The standard line was that they were going to do lots of cool zero-gee materials research, but that last time I looked into this that was looking awfully bogus (like, let's say you *can* find a material that's easier to crystallize in microgravity, and let's say you do have a use for it... then what? You're going to ship raw materials into orbit, and finished product down? At current launch costs, how is it possibly going to be worth doing that?).

    The first commercial use of space was comsats, because information doesn't weigh anything. The second big commercial use will probably be power generation, for similar reasons.

    (If someone wants to tell me that the right way to build a powersat in space is to use manual labor, I'm willing to be convinced (in fact I'd be happy to be convinced), but you're talking a lot of overhead to get people up there and keep them alive...)

  • The Free Software Foundation is not anit-business, and is not a synonym for communism.

    You've heard this before I imagine, but you can't see anything but the standard dualities.

    And let me see, you're *complaining* that Stallman *only* got as far as writing a (1) compiler (2) some utilities (3) an integrated development environment that includes an editor.

  • That's only because the people that were involved with the Internet prior to Miscrosoft's entry into the scene (or market, if that's your thing) weren't able to defend themeslves. No one will believe Microsoft's attempt at doing something as stupid as co-opting open source, Linux, or whatever.

    On the other hand, people outside of the culture of the Internet, Open Source, xBSD, Linux, etc. don't actually care one or the other. Why should my mom care if Microsoft did or didn't invent anything they've embraced and extended?

  • Re:In my day we had to WALK to space, with no shoe (Score:3)

    by sharkey ( 16670 ) on Tuesday May 08, 2001 @05:29PM (#236388)
    So, are we getting any closer to a "B" ark?

    --

  • Damn... (Score:1)

    by Pope ( 17780 )
    I'm so good, bitch should be payin' me! :L)
  • I realize this is a joke, but you are completely missing the point of free software. Replacing ``Open Source'' with ``Free Software'' in language is not what RMS intends. Furthermore, you are implying that Open Source and Free Software are the same thing which, of course, they are not. (And this is the line Microsoft is trying to blur.)

    The founding fathers of the US didn't like excessive taxation, but low taxes wasn't the most important problem. They saught Freedom.

    --Ben

  • Dude, that's really funny!...that is until you consider all the people that are killed by drunk drivers who are totally innocent. And the people who are accidently shot every day. Oh yeah, real funny.
  • The paragraph about The Gathering [gathering.org] managed to get just about everything wrong. First, The Gatering is in Norway, not The Netherlands. As for the number of attendes, the previous story [slashdot.org] got it right, and this one got it wrong. The official numbers are here [gathering.org]. Last, The Gathering is not (at least not originally) a gaming fest, but a demo scene [scene.org] party.

    I attended The Gathering the first time in 1993, and it was actually more fun before there was a large network and a high speed internet connection, although I had a really good time in 1996 too.

  • I believe that Microsoft has concluded that they can't lose on this: every developer who peeks at Windows or Office code will have to live with the potential of being sued by a deep-pocketed litigator in the future if they should at any time work on a similar non-M$ product. At the same time, for every developer who considers this a bad idea and refuses access to M$ source, Chairman Bill can point to them and say, "See? People don't really want the source! Our research shows that 9 out of 10 developers don't need or aren't interested...." Kinda clever, in a Stalinist sort of way. :)
  • People will use free software as a proof of concept for starting out before someone with money backs the idea [snip]. Once the general public starts handing said person money for their concept, they can pay someone else money to buy commercial software.

    I agree that free software can make inroads where people aren't ready to pay for commercial software. I also agree that once most managers are convinced of a need, they don't much count on the value of freedom.

    However, a lot of what we "know" about the software "market" is about to change. Microsoft's defense of the status quo software market is pure hot air -- they know the jig is up, as evidenced by their behavior on EULAs and their movement towards subscriptions -- essentially a service model like Red Hat's, but more restrictive to the user and lucrative for them.

    Up to now the situation as we know it has been dominated by exponential growth. This has attracted investment, which is going to prefer being able to control the product.

    For many kinds of software (e.g. operating systems and desktop apps), we are now entering the thermodynamic heat death epoch -- the energy of extremely rapid growth is no longer available. Future growth for investors will no longer come out of capturing the largest slice of the overall market's growth. They can only take market share away from others, or extract more revenue from their customers.

    Microsoft's position of pwoer in this situation is unstable, and the know it. They can't grow in the way investors expect by operating as if the status quo will continue forever. They can't grow in areas where they are dominant by taking market share from others. Instead, they are undertaking short term measures to prop up revenues (getting much tougher on EULA interpretation, for example) and long term efforts to move customers locked into their existing technologies to a subscription model and to use their areas of domination to establish beachheads in new areas of growth. It's very dicey for them and for once the famed Microsoft paranoia is justified.

    So, I see open source/free software making inroads in the areas that have traditionally been MS dominated -- operating systems, development systems, LAN services, and office automation. This momentum might give it the credibility it needs to compete with Microsoft in new areas of growth.

    Anyhow, this is a long winded way of saying that I do agree with your comment. I get tired of the blind supporters of either side .. software and technology has massive influence economic and social issues. It certainly ain't sports - you know what I'm saying?

    I don't think proprietary software is going away. It may be morally less admirable or technically less serviceable, but it serves economic purposes in many areas, such as vertical market software or areas of rapid growth where it can marshall large investments. But I think over the long run it is going to stagnate or lose ground in mature markets.

  • None...they should be allowed to make all the drugs they want themselves for cheap. Millions of human lives, or MegaCo's "intellectual property"? Decision made.
  • "RMS insults Linus by comparing him to Han Solo"

    Hans Solo was the best character anyway...

    "RMS's vision of community is about subverting the institutions of US democracy in order to advance the cause of socialism."

    *Yawn* Oh no, the commies, socialists, run for your guns red-blooded Americans!! RMS's "vision" can be concisely stated as against exclusive intellectual property rights. Oh no! Society will crumble! Bleh. Patent and copyright in this country is blatently abused and exploited by large corporations. If your definition of capitalism allows for conglomerations of monopolies around absolute information hoarding, well, it's you that has the problem.
  • Heh.. I glanced at the topic and saw Slashback: RIP RMS at first glance. Woah!
  • common. We all know where Eben Moglen's agenda [columbia.edu] lies. I read a lot of his Anarchism stuff before I even heard of the GPL (but then again, that before I started looking for political arguments in software licenses).

  • Re:new .sig quote (Score:3)

    by QuantumG ( 50515 ) <qg@biodome.org> on Tuesday May 08, 2001 @04:44PM (#236404) Homepage Journal
    Blah. It is quite possible in a few years if hording source code has gone the way of the dodo that people will say "oh yes, Microsoft decided that it was better to let everyone see their sourcecode and the rest of the industry followed suit" and someone will say "but wasn't there open source before that?" and the reply will come back "oh yer, but it wasn't anything important, just hobbiest stuff". Microsoft has that way of getting at the mainstream. Anyone who was in the industry at the time would listen to that conversation and shudder but what are you gunna do, walk over and tell them off?
  • John Glenn earned his place in space.

    I believe in fair play. If we really owe him something, we should pay him back in full, and immediately. Then from this point on, we don't owe him a damn cent or privilege. (No, I haven't forgotten the S&L scandal.)

    Personally, I think he received fair value for his contributions while in the space program. What were the terms? With all the volunteers, I'll bet the terms were something like, "You will work your ass off, and you might die. But you will get the chance to go into space and be a hero." I think he kept his part of the bargain, and in return he was paid back in full.

    So... My question is, do we STILL owe Glenn something more, or has the check finally been paid in full? I really want to know.

    As for Tito, he made an important contribution to the Russian space program. From what I understand, his $$ more than covered the actual cost of his trip (Duh! The Russians wouldn't take him up, just to lose money). Anyway, the profits the Russians made can help them buy more stuff they need.

    I guess NASA just has too much money to even weigh the $20 million against the inconvenience of a visitor. Funny, this seems to be similar to the attitude of some businesses that hate their customers, view them as annoyances, and wish they would go away...

  • Re:Geriatric senators? (Score:5)

    by glebfrank ( 58922 ) on Tuesday May 08, 2001 @03:34PM (#236409)
    Yes, it was research. It may not have been the most hard-hitting, or vital research, but comparing John Glenn to Dennis Tito is
    insulting. John Glenn earned his place in space. He risked his life to be the first man to orbit the Earth in a capsule that was little
    more than a projectile. He went back into space as a genuine hero to many Americans. Dennis Tito was nothing but a crass opportunist using his money to buy something he could never earn.

    Bullshit. Whether or not Glenn "earned" it, it was still a joyride, so it's doubly hypocritical for him to call Tito's trip misuse of equipment.

    Tito is a pioneer no less than Glenn: commercial exploration of space is going to be crucial in the future, and Tito's trip is an important early step.
  • Not only did Russia get over $20 million dollars out of the deal (and do they ever need all the cash they can get), they set a precedent for a method of helping to pay for missions in space

    Not only that, but they set a precedent that a (basically) ordinary citizen ( albeit one with a LOT of money ) can pay for a trip into space. For millions of people who have dreamed of going into space, but weren't astronauts, this is a GIGANTIC leap for mankind. I know that, for me personally, it raises hopes that in my lifetime I may be able to buy a trip into space as well. And I consider that to be a GOOD thing.

  • Re:Dennis Tito In Space (Score:3)

    by ostiguy ( 63618 ) on Wednesday May 09, 2001 @02:26AM (#236412)
    How much money have you donated for AIDS drugs in Africa this year?

    ostiguy won't hold his breath
  • Totally valid points; I hadn't thought about the fact that market saturation is getting closer. Although we have a long ways to go, if the OS-on-every-device thing comes true?
    Garret

  • Re:Eben Moglen (Score:4)

    by SirSlud ( 67381 ) on Tuesday May 08, 2001 @04:31PM (#236415) Homepage
    I like to think of it this way:

    People will use free software as a proof of concept for starting out before someone with money backs the idea (or where the free software in question really /is/ better than the commercial software; this is obviously judged on an app by app basis and obviously is true in many cases). Once the general public starts handing said person money for their concept, they can pay someone else money to buy commercial software. This earns them more sales people through third party sales, etc, a financial crutch should they need it (I'm sure we're aware of companies buying other companies just because that company was their best billboard and customer), and accountability for failure and fault (what I like to call the 'killer finger', in spirit of the term 'killer app'). Thusly, they never grow as big and rich as Microsoft, and consequently, not as evil either. Microsoft is the karma garberator for the technology age! ;)

    People always seem intent on prooving that the only grass worth standing on is the grass on their side of the fence .. personally, I see the balance of power as both integral to the pervasion and success of technology and inevitable. It's like jaywalking .. if we ALL did it, traffic would never go anywhere, but if no one did it .. well, see, that just never happens. =) The balance is struck due to the benifits society as a whole reaps from it. (Can you tell I buy into the whole ying/yang thing?)

    Anyhow, this is a long winded way of saying that I do agree with your comment. I get tired of the blind supporters of either side .. software and technology has massive influence economic and social issues. It certainly ain't sports - you know what I'm saying?

    And Eben Moglen .. makes me think of hemoglobin, which is funny 'cause Microsoft is the blood sucker, and RMS is with the Eben Moglen (okay, its a stretch, but say it fast :P)

    Now Dance, Santa!

  • The Free Software Foundation is not anit-business

    * In the sense of the FSF dissapproving of closed source software ...
    * In the sense of the FSF dissapproving of Open Source interoperating with closed source...
    * In the sense of many of its followers who generally misuse the term `commercial' to mean non free / Open Source (hah!)...
    * In the sense of many FSF supporters and members constantly insistenting that `corporate interests (ie, business in general) and Open Soruce are mutually exclusive...

    They are.

    In my and many others opinion anyway.

  • As far as why we were voted off the Human Rights Commision, that is called payback. Payback for being critical of human rights abuses worldwide and not to mention a new administration with a 180 degree different viewpoint than the majority of socialist Europe.

    hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

    Ahem. The US was voted of the Human Rights commission because

    * It has steadfastly refused to apply any pressure to Israel to sign any UN anti-torture agreements that the majority on first world nations, including most of the EU, have signed

    * It also refuses to sign any treaties banning the use of land mines in combat

    * Various other bits and pieces that escape my mind because its currently overtaken by humor in response to your post.
  • Of course the FSF disapproves of what you call closed source software

    yes, buts its done for `ethical' reasons. Most businesses don't share or care bour the FSF ethics. Open Source promotes Open Source because, on an engineeering levels, it is often *better*. Quality matters. Ethics don't.

    The FSF dissapproving of closed an Open source software interoperting sucks and is not realistic. Most businesses will continue to use what's best, whether that be Apache or MS Word, because it (in their minds) is the bets for the job they are doing. Open Source interoperating with closed is an important part of this. Haven't you ever used Samba?

    Agreed more than 110% about the use of commerical. You seem to be repeating what I said, but anyway. `Followers' should actually be more specific - `official web site' is a good replacement.

    Correction: I meant Free software in the last paragraph.

    If this is sad, then refute me. You haven't yet.
  • Though I might back that up properly:

    http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-world-notes.h tm l

    There's more I'm sure, if you can be bothered finding the search button.
  • For some people software quality matters more than than having the freedom to modify and copy that software. For some other people, it doesn't. It seems you belong to the former, while I belong to the latter sort of people.

    I belong to the former, but there's another element you haven't mentioned - I thin kfreedom is an important element of quality. Just not all of it. I think most cumputer users, and soon most Linux users, will be in the same boat.

    I do not believe that the FSF has any problems with those.

    I believe it does, in that the car and vegetable shops are likely using closed source software. By logical extrapolation, if closed source is unethical, then those who endorse enethical behaviour are in turn unethical.

    Actually, I believe the burden of proof is on you. You keep stating that the FSF's position is this or that. Where do you get that from? Can you provide us with some links to official FSF pages that support your claims?

    I provided just that in a subling post to the one you're replying to. The implication of that link is that free != commercial, which is false.

    The FSF actually encourages selling Free Software. How anti-business is that?

    Not anti business at all, but it isn't really related. Its like me saying that `I brush my teeth - how troll-like is that?".

    PS: I am fully aware that this is a troll.

    No, you believe this to be a troll. There is a large diffference. Asides from this line thugh, a well argued post (much better than the guy on top of you).
  • Your argument is along the lines of: Since it's unethical to hit someone with a baseball bat, it must be unethical to get hit by a baseball bat.

    More by the same logic that makes euthenasia illegal in most countries.

    Aren't analogies pathetic?

    I seriously doubt the users of close source software see themselves as victims. In fact, I seriously doubt anyone but the FSF does. I furthermore doubt they embrace this notion as part of their moving to source code avliable software. They might we willing to entertain the multiple eyes theory, because its a little easier to stomach. And that's why I'm an Open Source rather than Free Software person.

  • Glenn deserves to be insulted for this.

    If age research was interesting why didn't NASA do similar research on Tito? I don't doubt for a second that he'd have been up for it. Instead NASA wasted the opportunity by insisting on acting like King Canute.

    Glenn's response is nothing short of disgusting in light of his thinly veiled boondoggle on the shuttle. He was an all American hero, but I'd have thought posterity would have taught him a lesson about speaking on who should be allowed in space. Remember that it's John Glenn who, during the space race, testified before congress that the trained female astronauts shouldn't be allowed to fly, keeping space an all male club for decades when NASA had ALREADY trained a contingent of women. Now Glenn is even more hypocritical saying Tito shouldn't have flown. Tito will go down in history as a pioneer, and Glenn's comments will be yet another tawdry footnote.

    NASA should hang it's head in shame, they opposed Tito's flight saying he was untrained, yet THEY are the ones who refused to train him with utterly inappropriate arrogance. Now Dan Goldin is implying Tito is unpatriotic for not buckling under to NASA's unreasonable demands, which ignored the RIGHTS of the other ISS operators. The more control of space we wrest from the paranoid beaurocratic nightmare that NASA has become the better off we'll all be. NASA's real concern here is that more people might realize what a state they are in. It's clear that NASA has been much too risk averse since the Challenger disaster. Thousands die on the roads each year, people die climbing Mount Everest each year, yet NASA is under the delusion that we must have virtually no risk exploring space. This is crippling manned flight and costing a fortune (which is spent elsewhere would save hundreds if not thousands of lives, if that asuages your conciense).
  • This is the outrageous lie propagated by NASA.
    Tito was well away from the American module. If NASA was on a go slow that is THEIR choice and THEIR responsibility. They claimed it was unsafe but that's political B.S. It was also NASA who refused to train Tito when he showed up as a Russian delegate (as if it was their right). Safety is a relative thing, there is no such thing as complete safety, and NASA contrived to make the station less safe by refusing Tito training in a failed gambit to keep him away, while hypocritically claiming that Tito lacked the training to visit the station. If you can't see this beaurocratic double-think for what it is then you probably REALLY believe that the ISS is worth all that cash for the science that get's done on board. Tito's visit to space is a valuable and pioneering event. Did you bitch when NASA sent US politicians into space (no not just John Glenn)? Did you call them idiots with cash to burn (PUBLIC cash this time not their own)?

  • It wasn't just Garn, either. There was also a Congressman (Bill Nelson) who got a joyride, bumping a regular crew member to the next available flight. NASA's web site lists him as "Payload Specialist 2". More like "Special Payload 2".

    That crew member was then killed in the Challenger explosion.

    Tito paid his own money, took a seat that would have gone empty (the Soyuz has three seats, but normally uses only two for these missions), and helped keep some Russian rocket scientists employed for civilian work rather than freelancing in Baghdad. Garn, Nelson, and Glenn all got rides by calling in favors.

  • Why couldn't NASA just have accepted the inevitable, and maybe tossed in a few experiments for Tito to help out on? Hook up a gizmawhatchit to his dinguszoib and see how many froobits he trings per hour while in space.

    Or whatever, ANYTHING to make it so he isn't just a waste of space. Hell, if I was paying my way, I think it would be cool to get to do some real live research too. Just feeding the friggen mice would be neat.

    Instead, Tito spent a few days in space and NASA got NOTHING (nada, zip, zilch) out of it except a big PR cream pie in the face for dragging their heels on the whole thing. What a buncha short sighted people.

    Yes yes, I understand that in the lawsuit-happy US of A they would be liable if he was an "official" crew member and something bad happened, but we didn't get into space in the first place by being a bunch of wimps. As long as he's already there, give the guy something useful to do and get something back. That's what waivers are for anyhow.

    As for Senator Glenn, I respect him and his accomplishments more than most people but in this case he's chasing the past.

  • Is it just me... (Score:3)

    by twjordan ( 88132 ) on Tuesday May 08, 2001 @04:34PM (#236427)
    or is Mensys a REALLY bad name for a company?

    Tony

  • Re:Geriatric senators? (Score:3)

    by Chairboy ( 88841 ) on Tuesday May 08, 2001 @04:10PM (#236428) Homepage
    It was absolutely NOT research. NASA has a program where all current and previous astronauts that have flown get a regular checkup (every few years) to monitor the later effects in life of space travel.

    John Glenn is one of the only astronauts who refuses to participate in this program. There is no good data for any researchers to use because unlike the rest of the aging astronauts (including positively ancient Story Musgrave), there are no data points between 1961 and 1997 on Glenn.

    Anyone who thinks that Glenn was doing anything other then collecting on a presidential political favor is delusional and does not understand the true story behind his return to space.
  • Nice to see RMS rebutt Mundie. I mean, there have been shocking things as seen on this story on Segfault.org [segfault.org]:

    Open Source Advocate Has Yet To Rebut Craig Mundie

    Jeff Parns considers himself a model for free software advocacy: helping out at installfests, answering questions on the Central Kansas Free Unix User's Group mailing list, working in his spare time on a user-friendly graphical interface to cron. Why, then, has he yet to write a long-winded essay rebutting Microsoft exec Craig Mundie's recent remarks about open source?

    Our crack interviewing team cornerned Parns in his home, where he was conspicuously not combing through the text of Mundie's remarks [microsoft.com], just as he had not been in attendance at NYU's Stern School of Business on May 3 to hear Mundie speak. What justified this weird behavior?

    "I [linuxtoday.com] really [wideopen.com] think [oreillynet.com] there [linuxtoday.com] are [nyu.edu] enough [linuxtoday.com] rebuttals [firetrench.com] already, [siliconvalley.com] " said Parns. "I [salon.com] mean, [siia.net] have [linuxtoday.com] you [weblogs.com] even [infoworld.com] read [oreillynet.com] all [ntk.net] those [linuxplanet.com] things? [alllinuxdevices.com] "

    Eric S. Raymond, whose two preemptive rebuttals sparked the craze, was pessimistic about the chances for a Parns rebuttal in the future. "Obviously, we can't force him to write a rebuttal to Mundie's wrong-headed remarks about open source," said Raymond. "However, it's possible that my new paper, 'How I Rebutted Craig Mundie's Wrong-Headed Remarks About Open Source In Copious Detail--And How You Can Too' will give him some ideas. In fact, there's sort of a little form rebuttal in Appendix C which he can sign his name to and get it linked from Linux Today."

    "As a full-time programmer, my day is pretty busy," said Brian Behlendorf of the Apache Software Foundation, whose anti-Mundie remarks were picked up by Infoworld. "Yet even I managed to stop by Mundie's speech and make a few remarks to the press. I don't think this Parns is even trying. I mean, even Steve Ballmer published a 3000-word Mundie rebuttal. Sic transit gloria Mundie, I guess."

    Even Parns' neighbors have begun to notice this gap in the open source ranks. "The way he helped me with my Red Hat install, I was sure he was some sort of hot-shot free software advocate," said Millie Leman, a local dominatrix and mother of two. "But I haven't heard one word from him about this Mundie thing. It makes a person wonder."

    "Look, it's spring, my son's about to graduate from junior high, I'm trying to get KCron to 1.0," said Parns, shooing this reporter out his front door. "Just leave me alone."

    Will Parns rebut? Already, rebuttals with his name on them have begun showing up, though he denies authorship. Watch for the rebuttal signed with Parns' Gnu Privacy Guard key, and keep reading Segfault.org for complete coverage of every Mundie rebuttal ever written.

    Tomorrow: An in-depth look at the rebuttal that Mark Billings of London saved to ~mark/mundie.txt, but never showed to anybody.

    (This 'story' was first shown at Segfault.org here [segfault.org], and was written by Leonard Richardson [mailto])

  • >He risked his life to be the first man to orbit >the Earth in a capsule that was little more than >a projectile.

    I always thought that it was Gagarin who first orbited the earth, not Glenn.

  • If Tito pays double the cost of the mission, thereby allowing Russia to continue their research, then doesn't that benefit everyone? The Russians needed to do nothing more than keep him out of danger for a few days, and in exchange they got both this mission and the next one for free.

    People ought to be singing Tito's praise for his generous contributions to science. Just because he got a few days in space doesn't make his contribution less noble. It's like the little trinkets they give you when you send money to PBS, if you sent in $20 million, they better give you something pretty damn spectacular.

    The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.

  • Please cite evidence

    It should be self-evident that "copyleft" is the use of copyright (the institution) to advance the cause of a community that operates according to a more socialist economic principle.

    Tracing evidence could become a full time job, but interesting little tidbits come to light now and then:

    Example 1. [209.249.55.157] It's long. Use your browser search function for "1%" (without the quotes) and you'll see that they are seeking taxation to fund themselves. It doesn't implicate RMS directly, just his close associates.

    I just dug that up in a google search looking for information about RMS in Argentina. I had seen someone on /. saying that RMS had lobbied Argentina's government for the passage of a "Free Software only" policy. A requirement that major governments use Free Software is an obvious step on the road to socializing software. The next step is that the government will be maintaining the software. At this point, many people say that it's OK because the government doesn't have to release the software, but the political reality is that they will have to release it. Just like magic, the government will hold a defacto monopoly on software development because the existance of Free Software developed by the government will drive competition from the market. This is textbook socialism, with all its attendant problems, and it is occuring with very little debate because the public at large doesn't understand what's going on.

  • And let me see, you're *complaining* that Stallman *only* got as far as writing[software listed]

    As individual achievements they are outstanding. As a team effort under his leadership they are short of the original goal. That's what I meant to say.

    OK, I'm done with this for now. Goodnight everybody.

  • All The RMS You'll Ever Need. (Score:3)

    by istartedi ( 132515 ) on Tuesday May 08, 2001 @03:19PM (#236444) Journal
    perl -e 's/Open Source/Free Software/gi' -p -i.bak *.html

    perl -e 's/Linux/GNU\/Linux/gi' -p -i.bak *.html

    I'm probably leaving out something. Anybody wanna help? Come-on, we can replace RMS and his lawyer with a Perl script. I just started playing around with Perl this week. I bet a real guru could implement a complete RMS in one or two lines.

  • Re:All The RMS You'll Ever Need. (Score:3)

    by istartedi ( 132515 ) on Tuesday May 08, 2001 @04:58PM (#236445) Journal

    OK, I'll bite. First, I was going for "Funny". You plainly aren't, so I'll stay in a serious mode.

    Some people read what he writes, but the words go in one ear and out the other.

    The implication here is that I don't understand or comprehend RMS. My contention is simply that I understand him in a way that is different from the way you understand him.

    If you actually think that RMS exists only to correct people on their usage of Linux vs. GNU/Linux, then you're dead wrong.

    No, that's not what I think. It was humor.

    Long after all of the c00l d00dz that use linux have abandoned the idea of Free software in favor of software that brings the platform users and bastardizes it for corporate interests, RMS will still be standing there with the GPL.

    Almost certainly true. I would be very surprised if RMS didn't hold his postion for the rest of his life. OTOH, what you see as "bastardiz[ing] for corporate interests" others see as progress. Because RMS operates in a world of technology, people often lose sight of the fact that he is really just another Leftist. When you peal away the mystique of computing from all this, it's really just Republicans and Democrats going at it like they always do.

    And you know what? People can flame all they want, but LOOK AT THE RESULTS HE'S GOTTEN. Go to ftp.gnu.org and tell me if that isn't one of the finest collections of software anywhere, free as in beer, free as in speech, or otherwise.

    He started to write a complete OS in the mid 80s. He wrote a C-compiler, and a text editor bloated with a Lisp interpreter. He hacked some *NIX tools, much of them written by others. He would be largely forgotten if the McArthur Foundation hadn't given him a grant that allowed him to devote more time to the project. Where do you think the Foundation got it's money? I'll tell you where--"evil" capitalism, that's where. Even with the grant, his system would still be nowhere without Linus. In return for this, RMS insults Linus by comparing him to Han Solo (not enough revolutionary purity in Linus).

    It's fun to chip away at a pillar of the community while you don't understand that the pillars are what hold the community up.

    RMS's vision of community is about subverting the institutions of US democracy in order to advance the cause of socialism. At this point, many people (especially moderators) have thought I was joking. How does that go? First they laugh...

    I am firmly convinced that when history is written, RMS will be compared to Eugene Debs, or possibly Upton Sinclair. His contributions to politics are in many ways more noteworthy than his contributions to computer science. Indeed, Sinclair "aimed for the heart and hit the stomach". RMS aimed for the mouth and hit the wallet. Such is the way of socialism in the US--it just doesn't play here like it does in Europe. Thank God.

  • RMS's vision of community is about subverting the institutions of US democracy in order to advance the cause of socialism.

    Please cite evidence. I think you (like others) are trying to co-opt RMS for your own cause. Low.

  • It should be self-evident that "copyleft" is the use

    (abuse)

    of copyright (the institution) to advance the cause of a community

    with you so far

    that operates according to a more socialist economic principle.

    You seem not to see it, but it is a huge leap to equate sharing of software to an overall "socialist economic principle". What many people don't realize is that RMS is very little interested in economic and political reform. His goals (to a first approximation) stop at creating enough free software that people who don't want to use proprietary software, don't have to (and at convincing people that they don't want to use proprietary software). I don't think you can read RMS's writings (esp the GNU manifesto) carefully and come up with evidence for anything more radical.

    Yes, RMS has become involved in politics at times and has mentioned a "software tax". But this is such a minor part of his activities, and so moderate in today's political climate (even in the US), that I don't think you can draw any significance from it.

    A lot of your argument seems to be based on the fact that Free Software is compatible with socialism, therefore Free Software must be associated socialism. This is logical nonsesnse; and given that flamboyant capitalists like ESR support Free Software, is manifestly pure bunk.

    Your evidence is all extremely circumstantial. Show me where RMS criticizes capitalism in principle, or advocates wide-scale political reform (socialist or any other kind, for that matter). Given that he recently lauded America's founders, who stood solidly on free-market principles, I think you will find it impossible. RMS has explicitly said he is not a communist (can't remember where, but he said it point blank); I don't know how far apart you think communism and socialism are, but I would expect a socialist to express some sympathy for communism.

  • Sharing is the VERY idea of socialism

    Sharing is the very idea of all genial human relationships. The notion that socialism has a monopoly on sharing is absurd. Socialism is about forced sharing, which isn't sharing (in the common sense) at all.

  • Re:All The RMS You'll Ever Need. (Score:3)

    by The Pim ( 140414 ) on Tuesday May 08, 2001 @04:00PM (#236449)
    perl -e 's/Linux/GNU\/Linux/gi' -p -i.bak *.html

    There is a major bug in your program: you are keeping a backup of the offensive file. It should be permanently eradicated. You might consider writing the correct version to a different disk, and destroying the old disk when you are done.

  • Every developer that agrees to it is now "tainted" when it comes to working on an open source software project.

    Funny, it seems the GPL does the same thing, just s/open/closed/. I guess we should live in fear of RMS storming into our offices and auditing our code?
  • I guess space junkets by geriatric senators must count as research.

    Of course it does. In a few years we'll be overrun with too many Baby Boomer Senior Citizens. We had to investigate to see if launching them into space was a viable plan to save the rest of humanity.

    It's either that or suffer through a dark future where there's a worldwide shortage of Fixodent and the AARP manages to lobby Congress into making illegally parking in a handicapped parking space a capital offense.

  • Dennis Tito In Space (Score:5)

    by xp ( 146294 ) on Tuesday May 08, 2001 @04:10PM (#236454) Homepage Journal
    Space for me, and not for thee. csy writes "Dennis Tito returns jubilant to Earth. Meanwhile, John Glenn criticizes Tito's trip as a "misuse of a spacecraft designed for research". I guess space junkets by geriatric senators must count as research.

    Umm, it's not clear to me why Dennis needs to be morally assaulted for spending his own money by the senator who got a free ride on the taxpayers.

    Tired of day trading with real money? Try Peak Trader [peakprogramming.com].

  • Umm, yeah, that's how capitalism works. You work at the things you're good at, get paid, and use that money to buy the things you can't produce yourself because you lack the skills or capital investment to do so.

    The assumption that many people make, which your post failed to include, is that there are certain things that we attempt to place beyond the reaches of pure money and capitalism. Science is one of them. Another, love. And intelligence--I could go on... But the point is that NASA and our space exploration should be more about science, more about exploration, more about goodwill, and less about capitalism and greed and our other selfish human desires.
    --

  • payed for AIDS drugs in Africa

    Someone just finished watching "Boston Public"...
  • Guess what, he went up in a RUSSIAN ship and had to sign a legally binding contract saying that he wouldn't touch anything on the American part of the station
    I have news for you. The Americans PAID for the Russian module. Just goto google and do a search for something like "America Pay Russia ISS". As far as why we were voted off the Human Rights Commision, that is called payback. Payback for being critical of human rights abuses worldwide and not to mention a new administration with a 180 degree different viewpoint than the majority of socialist Europe.
  • > Perhaps the AARP should look into leveraging its future power to purchase a small island or the like (possibly Australia due to Senior-friendly climate)

    Oh god, please no. Our population is aging, we already have more geriatic droolers than we can handle :/

  • Re:Geriatric senators? (Score:5)

    by lpontiac ( 173839 ) on Tuesday May 08, 2001 @04:55PM (#236467)
    > Dennis Tito was nothing but a crass opportunist using his money to buy something he could never earn

    Umm, yeah, that's how capitalism works. You work at the things you're good at, get paid, and use that money to buy the things you can't produce yourself because you lack the skills or capital investment to do so.

    Am I a crass opportunist for purchasing socks made in a factory with my money? I don't think so. I'd say that by earning the money to spend on the purchase of something, I've become perfectly entitled to it.

  • I think you may be thinking about the short story "Marching Morons," by C.M. Kornbluth (c. 1950), in which the world is overrun by people who use GUI interfaces instead of command-lines, and all the competent people end up with menial tech-support jobs. Finally, someone at tech support has the bright idea of telling all the users that they can get a free space ride to Venus, where they can pick up the next service pack for their OS (the rockets actually blow up on the pad, leaving the world free for competence to assert itself).

    Kornbluth never suffered fools gladly and his unabashed elitism and social Darwinism would have made him a high-karma /.er in very little time indeed if he'd had internet access in the 1950s.

  • and if God forbid everything went to hell, millions of dollars wouldn't have been spent trying to rescue you from the dept. store where you purchased your socks.

    Unless Tito went around flipping random switches (pretty unlikely) or ran into a personal medical situation (certainly a greater issue given his age, but mitigated by all the testing he probably had to undergo), whether or not things went to hell should be independent of his presence.

    Furthermore, Tito was hitching a ride on a mission designed to make sure that, if things did go to hell, there'd be a means for them to escape the station. I don't know how economically shaky Russia's space program is (but in general, the country's a mess), so I really can't say how important the money Tito provided was to the program's continual operation, but it certainly couldn't be hurting things.

    Finally, as long as Tito wasn't the one person who put them over capacity on a rescue mission, he doesn't up the cost of that mission. If everything went to hell, they'd have to incur the cost of either deploying the rescue craft or sending another shuttle anyway. Whether they rescue 4 people or 5 is irrelevant.

  • that's crazy. I'm in a high-performance computing
    class with a 64-node beowulf of mixed Athlon 900's and 1.2's. We bought the PC's in pieces and it took each person about an hour to build one.
  • Post #144 does not mention the word sharing. Nor is sharing the exclusive domain of socialism. In fact, the Republicans talk about it all the time with their compassionate conservatism and faith-based charity schemes.

    Most non-profits and charities are based on sharing, or helping people by donating money, goods, or services to them. In this sense, the FSF is no different than the Red Cross or any other United Way type group.

    The poster does make some rather misleading statements about the FreeDevelopers trying to implement taxation to fund their work. While all government budgets are derived only from taxation, the goal is not to implement a 1% Free Software tax, but rather to convince government to use 1% of its IT budget to develop Free Software, rather than spending that money on proprietary software. As a tax-payer, an American, and a voter, I don't think 1% is sufficient.

    Furthermore, the alleged troll's arguments with regards to Argentina are based on a logical fallacy: "the slippery slope". There is no demonstrated link in his/her A therefore B therefore C, chain of disaster that results in a socialist state. Even if there were, I think I'd prefer a little socialism, as opposed to government-subsidized corporate monopolies on software.
  • Man, there's something I haven't heard in about 8 years...
  • I think Microsoft has a more hidden purpose to it's "shared source" initiative. Everyone who gets to look at their source code undoubtedly must sign an NDA saying that they'll never reveal the source to the public, nor use the code or ideas for any other project.

    END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT FOR MICROSOFT SOFTWARE

    IMPORTANT: READ CAREFULLY - These Microsoft Corporation ("Microsoft") operating system components, including any "online" or electronic documentation ("OS Components") are subject to the terms and conditions of the agreement under which you have licensed the applicable Microsoft operating system product ("OS Product") described below (each an "End User License Agreement" or "EULA") and the terms and conditions of this Supplemental EULA. BY INSTALLING, COPYING, OR OTHERWISE USING THE OS COMPONENTS, YOU AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF THE APPLICABLE OS PRODUCT EULA AND THIS SUPPLEMENTAL EULA. IF YOU DO NOT AGREE TO THESE TERMS AND CONDITIONS, DO NOT INSTALL, COPY, OR USE THE OS COMPONENTS.

    ..pages of legalese..

    Section 11.1 - Here's some source code:

    int main()
    {
    // Irrelevant implementation details removed
    return 0;
    }
    By Clicking "I Agree", you agree to be bound to a Non-Disclousure Agreement (NDA) that prohibits you from using this Microsoft-owned code fragment in any non-Microsoft product, whether or not for profit...

    ..more pages of legalese..

    Select One:
    I Agree
    I Disagree (will quit instalation)
    I Agree, and I happen to be Linus Torvalds

    This information will be transmitted to Microsoft, to record that you agree to the terms on this Agreement.

  • Garn's in-flight contribution to research was experiments on throwing up in weightlessness. He was flown into space because he was on the Senate appropriations committee that funds NASA. So Garn got a space flight for the exact same reason as Tito: money. At least in Tito's case, it was his own money, not the public's.

  • Why NASA can't back Tito, et al (Score:3)

    by mojo-raisin ( 223411 ) on Tuesday May 08, 2001 @04:07PM (#236487)
    My take on Tito:

    If NASA begins to support space tourism, they will experience a huge backlash against their organization and lose much of their funding. The novelity of space tourists will quickly wear off, and soon people will realize their taxes are going to a program that can only be used by the super-wealthy. At that point, any other lofty goals NASA has will be history.

    If NASA wants to continue as an organization under its current mission, it cannot support space tourism.

    Of course, the question is then: Do we really want NASA around at all? It seems privatized access to space is the only long term solution.
  • It's funny because it's true. The AARP leaders would be licking their lips right now if they weren't afraid of cutting their tounge on their dentures. Unfortunately, the leaders tend to be "age-impaired" as well and will thus be gone before their organization reaches the zenith of its power. But they will still lay the foundation for the glorious empire of the 2010 AARP!

    Quick question though, with all these new seniors, won't Florida get a bit overrun? Sure, overflow is already spilling into Arizona, but will that really be enough? There is only so much desert you know. Perhaps the AARP should look into leveraging its future power to purchase a small island or the like (possibly Australia due to Senior-friendly climate) for providing overflow maintanence.
  • He's actually quite correct. Tito's voyage came on an international station built for research to help the people of the world. Glenn's trip came on a shuttle funded by the US to give the millitary-industrial complex billions of dollars. Clearly, Tito is violating the sacred trust of an international commison whilst Glenn merely sought the American Dream and helped fund the people who help us fight our horribly important wars.
  • I'll have to check Rudy Rucker out assuming I can find a book of his anywhere :) Thanks.

  • Comment removed (Score:4)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday May 08, 2001 @03:22PM (#236494)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Re:OS/2? (Score:3)

    by XO ( 250276 ) <.moc.liamg. .ta. .cire.edalb.> on Tuesday May 08, 2001 @04:14PM (#236495) Homepage Journal
    I'm surprised there's no other mentions of OS/2 floating around here. Quite the amazing system for it's time, during the Warp 3 era. Still quite an amazing system.. I just wish it could be easily trimmed back to be a lean monster like Linux can be. But it would take lot of effort to do so. I wonder if eComStation will be any better, less geared towards absolute redundancy and enterprise class server operations, even in the client edition. It's biggest downfall is it's resource usage. But at least it knew what to -do- with those resources, whereas it's competitor of the time NT, was just a resource slug that didn't use the resources for anything good except lunch.
    All your base belong to ---===*> XO
  • I assume you're trolling, or you would have come up with something better than that... But anyway:

    A requirement that major governments use Free Software is an obvious step on the road to socializing software.

    I think that would be a pretty great policy. Why should my tax dollars be sent en masse to Microsoft? If government switched to Free Software, they could save millions (billions?) AND they'd get a better (more thoroughly poked-at) system. My friend's NT server just got hacked the other day, through a classic Microsoft security hole. How much time and money do you think governments spent fixing "iloveyou" infected computers because the world's largest non-free software company couldn't be troubled to put reasonable security into their software? Why should we trust our government-run systems to a single, expensive, closed-source, company?

    You're absolutely right that this would benefit RMS. Not financially, of course. I think it would just make him really happy. Well, seeing a lack of convincing argument against his idea, why not make a guy happy?

    Just like magic, the government will hold a defacto monopoly on software development because the existance of Free Software developed by the government will drive competition from the market.

    It costs the software industry billions of dollars to create the software they produce. If government is going to spend anything approaching that hiring programmers to work on Free Software, then forget about it, it's stupid. I'm not sure how it's better for tax dollars to be spent to subsidize an industry-- which is what's currently happening-- than to open the door for a new one. If modern software companies can't produce or exceed the quality level of Free Software at the prices they charge, then they're not efficient. Such is the nature of the market that they should be forced to adapt, NOT be coddled as you would have it.

    It should be self-evident that "copyleft" is the use of copyright (the institution) to advance the cause of a community that operates according to a more socialist economic principle.

    Um, copyright != capitalism. It's a pretty old system, goes back through some governments that you might well consider "socialist". I personally think the GPL is unnecessary as a legal document (it's certainly never been enforced.) It's more a matter of philosophy. And as an idea, it's a good one that has spread.

  • Gates cracked under the strain of having two much money and developed a split personality. The RMS persona is Gates in disguise when the mood spectrum swings. (Check the glasses, they don't change.)
    Besides, you never see them together, do you?
    -----------------

  • Re:Geriatric senators? (Score:3)

    by McSpew ( 316871 ) on Tuesday May 08, 2001 @05:45PM (#236504)

    He risked his life to be the first man to orbit the Earth in a capsule that was little more than a projectile.

    Ahem. Ever heard of a man named Yuri Gagarin? He orbited the Earth nearly a year before Glenn.

    Now, that said, Glenn was a patriot and a hero to his country, but just because NASA forced him into retirement (he was too valuable as a living icon to risk losing in a fiery accident), does not mean they owed him a trip to space nearly 40 years later.

    The cover story about researching the similarities between aging and life in zero-gee didn't fool anybody. It was a publicity stunt by NASA to get some good press and earn some more good favor with politicians.

    Yes, Glenn underwent far more training than did Dennis Tito and yes, the Russians were irresponsible to send Tito into orbit without putting him through the same sort of training as any other guest cosmonaut, but Tito is a pioneer. He's the first space tourist who paid his own way. Hopefully, he won't be the last. Unfortunately, it's unlikely that any of us will ever be space tourists, but maybe our kids or grandkids will be some day.

  • Scene (Score:3)

    by bLitzfeuer ( 318604 ) on Tuesday May 08, 2001 @06:20PM (#236507)

    The Gathering [gathering.org] isn't meant to be so much a "gamer" party as it is supposed to be for the Demo [oldskool.org] Scene [ojuice.net] .

    Good examples of what demos are are here [scene.org] if you have a win32 or DOS box around.

    More parties like Mekka [demo.org], Assembly [assembly.org], The Party [theparty.dk] and others [ojuice.net] exist.

  • "In the past, it was only in science fiction novels that you could read about ordinary people being able to go to space," Nazarbayev told Tito. "But you laid the foundation for space tourism." Wait, wasn't Christa McAuliffe an ordinary person? I guess this lays the foundation for ordinary people coming back from space.
  • For the Russians, who have every right to do what they did, there was price Tito had to pay that they'd take him to space for. He paid it with money that he had earned. If he earned the money that the voyage cost him and paid for it, than he earned the trip.
  • "I have news for you. The Americans PAID for the Russian module." I have some history for you. The Russians wouldn't be in the state they are in where they can't afford moduals if it hadn't been for Reagan purposely bankrupting them. I realize that is a simplifacation but there is some truth to it. As for the UN, yes it is payback; not for critisizing human rights abusers, but for having a greater than 2:1 ratio of the % of world air-pollution we produce, to our percentage of the world population. We also catagorically refuse to sign any treaty to reduce said population. Our new administration is evidence that undermines Darwinean Evolution too, I don't even want to get into that though.

  • getting into space (Score:5)

    by Supa Mentat ( 415750 ) on Tuesday May 08, 2001 @03:25PM (#236514)
    You know, it occurs to me that every person in America with a conection to NASA (like John Glenn) really had a lot to say about Tito getting into space. I've even seen /.ers bitching about it. Guess what, he went up in a RUSSIAN ship and had to sign a legally binding contract saying that he wouldn't touch anything on the American part of the station. What gives anyone out of Russia the right to act offended? Not only did Russia get over $20 million dollars out of the deal (and do they ever need all the cash they can get), they set a precedent for a method of helping to pay for missions in space. The fact that NASA tried to block him from going up (they expected Russia to fold too) and that every damn politician in this country passed judgement on it and acted like it was an area in which they had supreme authority reeks of haughtyness. Maybe things like this are why the US was voted off the Human Rights commission for the UN as well as the International Narcotics Control Board a few days ago. Just something to think about next time we feel like giving orders to another country.
  • I have long held the opinion that in the modern era easy access to cars, alcohol, and firearms has greatly speeded up evolution. Some people seem to believe that because of modern medicine and industrial society human evolution has halted, but I see hope in every prom night car crash.

    And I see hope in your idiotic wish to take your genetic legacy on top of a pile of Russian built explosives and ride them into a zone of intense cosmic radiation for a few days. All I ask is that you do it BEFORE you breed.

    If I could put you in a metal barrel, shake you around a bit, lower you into a uranium mine for a couple of days and let you drink Tang while you were down there, would you pay me 20 million ?

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