Freeware and only freeware?

[Mark Carter]

In the same vein: Media Control, Noam Chomsky:
http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/talks/9103-media-control.html

I think I had a better link than that, but it's all I can come up with
on the spur of the moment.

 

[jo]

As opposed to the Soviet Union/Russia? How about Cambodia under Pol Pot?
Or Cuba?

Those countries are not "capitalist".

Real Utopias, huh?

Under capitalism, man oppresses man.
Under communism it is the other way round.

HTH

 

[Mark Carter]

Under capitalism, man oppresses man.
Under communism it is the other way round.

Don't know who said it, but I heard somewhere: "When the communists
gained control over Russia, they couldn't decide how to split it amongst
the people. So they split it amongst themselves".

 

[Mark]

My MS Office folder structure is 115 MB. My OOo folders are 137 MB. So now
which one is bloated?

Depends on which components you have installed, of course. How many
Mb's of MS Office files are in other folders though?

Mark

 

[Roger Johansson]

Don't know who said it, but I heard somewhere: "When the communists
gained control over Russia, they couldn't decide how to split it
amongst the people. So they split it amongst themselves".

Russia before the revolution was a serfdom system, the upper class had
all the power and the common people had no rights at all.

The first attempts at creating a workers society were not so
sophisticated. Some thought that if we can only put a worker in the boss
position we have communism. They overtook an old system and put workers
in the lead. But they did also realize that the whole system had to be
changed, the way the society worked had to be changed completely.

This was not easy to do in a very poor country, ravaged by civil war and
invasions armies from capitalist countries. They did the what they could,
under constant attacks and threats from the outside capitalist world.

A popular saying in post-communist east Europe:
"Everything they told us about communism were lies, but everything they
told us about capitalism was true."

East europeans are not happy at all with capitalism, and they do not want
their old system back. They want something better than both those
systems. They see the transparent democracy in northern Europe as an
ideal to strive for and develop further.

alt.society.futures is a suitable newsgroup for these kinds of discussions.
I'll be there.

 

[MLC]

_Mark Carter_, venerdì 31/dic/2004:

In the same vein: Media Control, Noam Chomsky:
http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/talks/9103-media-control.html

In Italy is even worse: here all the media channels (television, newspapers,
advertising, digital channels) are in the hands of one rich dwarf, whose
only interest is himself and his power.
This is not a true democracy anymore: the information is adulterated, the TV
news speak only about weather, actors, soccer, traffic, natural disasters
(in their way: we have now about 5000 missing people in S-E Asia, but they
only say that the deads are 14).
Owning all the media he can convince the poor people that he's good, because
he is rich, and the money is the only value, then who has much money has
much value...
Brrr... I couldn't imagine to live with these ideas...

 

[Roger Johansson]

In Italy is even worse: here all the media channels (television,
newspapers, advertising, digital channels) are in the hands of one rich
dwarf, whose only interest is himself and his power.
This is not a true democracy anymore: the information is adulterated,
the TV news speak only about weather, actors, soccer, traffic, natural
disasters (in their way: we have now about 5000 missing people in S-E
Asia, but they only say that the deads are 14).
Owning all the media he can convince the poor people that he's good,
because he is rich, and the money is the only value, then who has much
money has much value...
Brrr... I couldn't imagine to live with these ideas...

The idea behind this glorious new world order was formulated by the pope
in 1891. He was very worried about the support new ideas like democracy,
voting rights, labor unions, equal rights, socialism, communism, etc got
from the workers.

He invented the idea of corporativism, which was a way for the big
corporations and bankers to keep the control through supporting the
political parties which served the purposes of the rich, and the church.
How to use the power of money to control politics.

Mussolini showed up a few decades later and changed the name from
corporativism to fascism.

google: pope corporativism fascism

He and Hitler were fools who were used by stronger powers for specific
purposes, like crushing Soviet Union, and crushing the socialist and
labor union movements in Europe.

 

[Janice]

(e-mail address removed)
says...

Why not adware? That's like saying you will read books but not newspapers
since they have ads....

As it happens, I do read books but not newspapers. I watch
videotapes and DVDs but not commercial TV, and I block popups on the
Internet. Although they are occasionally informative, I find ads
annoying for the most part.

 

[ceed]

Newspaper ads don't spy on you.

The poster said "adware", not "spyware". Not all adware spy on you (unless
you choose to think so). On the other hand I do know that newspapers offer
advertisers information about their subscribers. Does that make them
"spypapers"?

 

[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=BBQ=AB?=]

Antoine scribebat:


In that case, they are mere professional software pirates which
could and should be sued.

No, the GNU GPL specifically grants the freedom to modify the code
in any way you want and to use it however you want /without/
disclosing anything to anyone. It's only if the modified code is
redistributed that the new source must be given along with the
binaries; if a developer is delivering a derivative[*] solution to
a third party, s/he must make the source available to that party,
but neither of them have to give it to anybody else.

[*] I mean a derivative of GPLed work. Other OSS licenses work
differently.

 

[Duddits]

The poster said "adware", not "spyware". Not all adware spy on you (unless
you choose to think so).

Which adware *doesn't* spyware other than Opera?

On the other hand I do know that newspapers offer advertisers information about their
subscribers.
Does that make them "spypapers"?

Just what kind of information would this be? My newspaper hasn't planted a
device that monitors my reading habits. The only information they have
from me is my name and address.

Dud

 

[Bob Adkins]

Depends on which components you have installed, of course. How many
Mb's of MS Office files are in other folders though?

Good point.

I installed everything but MS Outlook, which pretty much entangles your
entire system.

-- Bob

 

[Bob Adkins]

Which version of MS Office do you use? I remember that MSO '97 needed about
that much space, MS Works XP demanded already more if I recall correctly.

I use Office XP Pro with SP2.

It really is lightning fast, but I don't use it. I use OOo. My wife can't
get comfortable with OOo, so I must keep both installed. I know, it's a big
waste of money and space.

-- Bob

 

[ceed]

Just what kind of information would this be? My newspaper hasn't
planted a
device that monitors my reading habits. The only information they have
from me is my name and address.

Well, name and address is more than most spyware would get from you. If
you pay your subscription with a credit card they will know even more.
However, my point is just that spyware isn't neccessarily more evil than
stuff a lot of people use every day without any privacy concerns.

 

[Bob Adkins]

one. I still think such a sweeping generalisation as that is fatally
flawed.

Yes, my reply was a bit too general. I should have said "most of the major,
well-known Opensource projects", which is what I really meant. Some of the
smaller and less well-known Opensource programs are updated frequently and
are relatively free from bugs. ABI Word comes to mind. It's coming together
quite nicely.

The larger a project is, the more programmers are usually involved. And you
know what they say about too many cooks in the kitchen. (there I go
over-generalising again)

Is the chaos caused by many creative minds working with (or against) each
other ultimately a good thing, or a bad thing? One can certainly argue
either way.

-- Bob

 

[Chaos Master]

Duddits stated:

Which adware *doesn't* spyware other than Opera?

I have here a program that has a small ad... Opanda PhotoFilter (used
for simulating filter effects in digital photography), but the ad can be
toggled off and is just ad for another commercial product of the same
developer.
--
Chaos Master®, posting from Canoas, Brazil - 29.55° S / 51.11° W / GMT-
2h / 15m


"Now: the 3-bit processor, with instructions:
1. NOP - does nothing, increase PC. / 2. HLT - does nothing, doesn't
increase PC
3. MMX - enter Pentium(r) emulation mode; increase PC / 4. LCK - before
MMX: NOP ; after MMX: executes F0 0F C7 C8
5. HCF - Halt and Catch Fire / 6. EPI - Execute Programmer
7. DPC - Decrease PC"

 

[Semolina Pilchard]

Yes, my reply was a bit too general. I should have said "most of the major,
well-known Opensource projects", which is what I really meant. Some of the
smaller and less well-known Opensource programs are updated frequently and
are relatively free from bugs. ABI Word comes to mind. It's coming together
quite nicely.

I'm so glad we got through that little misunderstanding without
ripping each other's gizzards out, Bob.

The larger a project is, the more programmers are usually involved. And you
know what they say about too many cooks in the kitchen. (there I go
over-generalising again)

Is the chaos caused by many creative minds working with (or against) each
other ultimately a good thing, or a bad thing? One can certainly argue
either way.

Whatever business model is used, I suspect that there are large
numbers of people involved in every level of the creation of anything
as complex as an office suite.

If I may just slip into Roger Johansson mode for a moment (only
joking, Rog), it's our modern emphasis on individual genius that leads
us to believe that cooperation leads to poorer results. In reality,
outside of a very few limited fields of activity, everything of any
consequence is done cooperatively. We were rather more honest about
this in former times and gave joint effort its place. The rolling,
poetic and powerful prose of the King James Bible was created by a
large and diverse committee of High Churchmen and Puritans who were
anything but fond of each other. Similarly, the unparalleled Oxford
English Dictionary is, and has always been, the work of thousands of
disparate individuals.

 

[Antoine]

Some of these points are very good, I think for a good answer you
should also read the "philosophy" section of gnu.org or even mail
the FSF. I will try to answer some of the questions.

Thanks for the pointing me to this section.

Well, you have people who are well paid and are supported by
volunteers in many areas. And, to be exact, the many people who
help their neighbours with their Windows problems are doing mainly
the same thing.

Well, if I take an example : when a user wants to use a MS product,
he knows he has to pay the price for it ; things are clear, money is
needed to buy the software and help can be found : either free
(newsgroups, mvps, etc) or through non-free support. What I don't
find clear with big opensource projects is that at first sight (or
the for the average user), everything looks free whereas actually it
isn't : some developers are paid and huge companies spread huge
amounts of money to support some opensource projects. They don't do
it in a sheer altruist behaviour but mainly, imho, aim at
counter-balancing some powerful software editors' power.

Well, they will always be needed. There will never be a project
around that exactly fits your specific needs, you will have to
hire someone to change the program according to your needs. So,
even if "free software" would be the only kind of software
available, programmers could still earn money, simply due to the
fact that most people cannot program. Just the distribution
systems will change.

I am not sure. Products like apache, openoffice or mozilla's suite
generally only need some tuning which can be done by 'simple' system
administrators, network administrators or even users.

In that case, they are mere professional software pirates which
could and should be sued. (There was a recent judgement in German
where a company who had broken the GPL was sued and lost the trial
-- the court stated breaching the GPL would be identical to
breaching any propriety softwares license)

Q corrected our assertions but do you think fair that some
volunteers spend hours developping a free project and some companies
(adapt and then) use it order to make profit : it's true with
webhosting companies (apache, php, ...), with internet service
providers (postfix, sendmail, ...), without (generally) bringing a
single support to those projects (neither technical, nor financial,
maybe a backlink).

Well, but these hardware manufacturer need software to sell their
hardware. For example, OS/2 died because there were not enough
programs for it, even so it was technically superior to all other
operating systems for Intel processors at that time. The same is
true for hardware, of there were no good software for Intel,
people would buy more Apple, SPARC or whatsoever. Intel's
processor type is the widest spread due to a great variety of
software available.

You are right but look what happened recently to PalmSource(tm) :
facing huge problems in releasing PalmOS(tm) v6 so that the
licencees can implement it on their hardware, PalmSource(tm)
recently announced that it will from now work with a linux
opensource kernel and of course go on selling their on-top
PalmOS(tm) 'interface' to their licencees.

Best regards.

 

[Antoine]

Some of these points are very good, I think for a good answer you
should also read the "philosophy" section of gnu.org or even mail
the FSF. I will try to answer some of the questions.

Thanks for pointing me to this section.

Well, you have people who are well paid and are supported by
volunteers in many areas. And, to be exact, the many people who
help their neighbours with their Windows problems are doing mainly
the same thing.

Well, if I take an example : when a user wants to use a MS product,
he knows he has to pay the price for it ; things are clear, money is
needed to buy the software and help can be found : either free
(newsgroups, mvps, etc) or through non-free support. What I don't
find clear with big opensource projects is that at first sight (or
the for the average user), everything looks free whereas actually it
isn't : some developers are paid and huge companies spread huge
amounts of money to support some opensource projects. They don't do
it in a sheer altruist behaviour but mainly, imho, aim at
counter-balancing some powerful software editors' power.

Well, they will always be needed. There will never be a project
around that exactly fits your specific needs, you will have to
hire someone to change the program according to your needs. So,
even if "free software" would be the only kind of software
available, programmers could still earn money, simply due to the
fact that most people cannot program. Just the distribution
systems will change.

I am not sure. Products like apache, openoffice or mozilla's suite
generally only need some tuning which can be done by 'simple' system
administrators, network administrators or even users.

In that case, they are mere professional software pirates which
could and should be sued. (There was a recent judgement in German
where a company who had broken the GPL was sued and lost the trial
-- the court stated breaching the GPL would be identical to
breaching any propriety softwares license)

Q corrected our assertions but do you think fair that some
volunteers spend hours developping a free project and some companies
(adapt and then) use it order to make profit : it's true with
webhosting companies (apache, php, ...), with internet service
providers (postfix, sendmail, ...), without (generally) bringing a
single support to those projects (neither technical, nor financial,
maybe a backlink).

Well, but these hardware manufacturer need software to sell their
hardware. For example, OS/2 died because there were not enough
programs for it, even so it was technically superior to all other
operating systems for Intel processors at that time. The same is
true for hardware, of there were no good software for Intel,
people would buy more Apple, SPARC or whatsoever. Intel's
processor type is the widest spread due to a great variety of
software available.

You are right but look what happened recently to PalmSource(tm) :
facing huge problems in releasing PalmOS(tm) v6 so that the
licencees can implement it on their hardware, PalmSource(tm)
recently announced that it will from now work with a linux
opensource kernel and of course go on selling their on-top
PalmOS(tm) 'interface' to their licencees.

Best regards.

 

[Bob Adkins]

joking, Rog), it's our modern emphasis on individual genius that leads
us to believe that cooperation leads to poorer results. In reality,
outside of a very few limited fields of activity, everything of any
consequence is done cooperatively. We were rather more honest about
this in former times and gave joint effort its place. The rolling,
poetic and powerful prose of the King James Bible was created by a
large and diverse committee of High Churchmen and Puritans who were
anything but fond of each other. Similarly, the unparalleled Oxford
English Dictionary is, and has always been, the work of thousands of
disparate individuals.

/Gizzard ripping mode

I beg to differ. Most all of the best companies, ideas, and inventions have
come from the genius and determination of free-thinking individuals.
Collectives are mostly good for farming and enslaving people. I have nothing
against collaboration. Every great public work that has modernized the world
is the result of collaboration. However, collaboration is a means, not an
end in itself. We must continue to reward individual genius and risk taking.
Without it, we would most likely be communicating with a flat rock and a
chisel.

/Gizzard ripping mode

JK about the Gizzard ripping.

"We can never be free until I am free"

-- Bob