4,002 karma · joined February 4, 2010
I'm having a few issues with the docking station on the W540, which I'm currently putting down to the docking station being faulty, as I had no such issues docking the X220.
I plan to test a different docking station in the next few days and see if the glitches go away (USB mouse sometimes needs resetting, and X loses the external monitor until it's restarted).
Sure there's a little more work to get set up (which I've scripted and put in Gitlab, so it's easy the second and subsequent times).
But the documentation is first class (in particular, the FreeBSD Handbook is great), and generally, when you set something up it stays that way.
Reminds me of late 90s / early 2000s GNU/Linux in that regard.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chappaquiddick_incident
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_VIII
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_John_XII
Wealth and power have insulated those who possess them from the consequences of their actions since forever.
Given the intentional double entendre and commercial success - it's now a cultural icon - I'm going to optimistically interpret its existence in a positive light. I mean, I can't imagine this product existing in many (most?) countries at the time.
I spent hours trying to stabilise my wife's XPS13 after a recent Windows Update sent it into paroxysms of BSODs. Reset, reimaged, the whole nine yards: nothing. Ended up installing Ubuntu on it and it's been rock-solid stable since.
1) The characteristics of a good laser-propelled acceleration sail would be different to those of a good solar-powered braking sail.
2) Flipping around while attached to a deployed solar sail would be hard. In my head I'm imagining something like looping a paraglider (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oEeTtQIEjs) but much harder. It'd have to be autonomous (no fly-by-wire at those ranges), and for recovery purposes I'd want to have a spare sail anyway that it could deploy in the case the primary got tangled.
Imagine you were making a sail-propelled probe, with the intent of slowing the probe so it was captured by the target system. So the probe would have two sails. The first would be deployed after launch, to catch the initial laser beam, then later solar winds, to accelerate to system escape velocity.
You'd then detach that sail, and cruise. Later, you'd deploy a second sail to start braking on your way into the target system, to slow to capture velocity.
The first thing the inhabitants of the target system would see would be the first, discarded, sail as it tumbled through their system and accelerated back out ...
Actually, wouldn't it be a blast if we found signs that someone had done just that already?
The members of the "upper middle class ticket" group might as well be selected by ballot from the intellectually qualified.
But I'd never suggest that if it in any way imperiled the idenfitifcation and support of the very best and brightest. Which, AFAICT, is exactly what this proposal would do.
I'm sure they'll still cure cancer and get us to Mars, right?
And the truly elite who miss out by random chance ... that doesn't matter because justice doesn't require us to recognise and appropriately reward genius.
In fact, screw those priviliged geniuses, they're only first in line because they won a genetic lottery right?
/s
How is a worker co-op using the licensed software for commercial purposes different from, say, a corporation?
One of the fundamentals of Marxism with which I disagree, though - at such a fundamental level that it drives an emotional response to the license we're discussing - is that paid labour is necessarily exploitation. That is, I consider the labour theory of value to be incorrect.
I'm reminded of the famous Reagan quote:
> How do you tell a Communist? Well, it’s someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It’s someone who understands Marx and Lenin."
I support Free software - financially, by evangelising it, by writing it, and by using it.
My point was that I think some large companies are getting a lot more value from their use of it than the authors and maintainers get from working on it.
(Edited to add: I agree wholeheartedly about downvoting vs. replying. I wish more people would reply instead of, or perhaps as well as, downvoting).
Which will happen. Purity wars in ideological movements are nothing new (and far from limited to the political Left!).
E.g. Orwell was shot during the Spanish Civil War, not by Fascists, but by a different bunch of Communists on whose side he was theoretically fighting.
> You’d have to be insane
Well, this is a Marxist thing, so that box comes pre-ticked.
That said, I think that this specific concern raised by the license is very real:
> ... If you want your code to empower students, artists, hobbyists, collectives, cooperatives and nonprofits to survive under capitalism while not contributing free labor to corporations.
I've seen a few cases where I think that open source authors and maintainers are getting it in the shorts. Yes there's value - "Egoboo", learning, personal promotion, etc. - but I don't think it's enough in many cases. For example:
* Free software that contributes to the growth and dominance of proprietary, for-profit ecosystems. E.g. I was recently back on Windows for the first time in a decade or so professionally, building an app I'd written in Common Lisp. Scoop (for package management on Windows) and Rosewell (which now supports Windows) made this super easy and pleasant. But ... why would you spend your time writing Free software to benefit such an ecosystem? Unless you're being paid for it, why not spend your time contributing to a Free ecosystem instead?
* Free software that is productised by cloud providers (e.g. https://www.zdnet.com/article/aws-hits-back-at-open-source-s...).
* Companies like Google, who are happy to build upon a plethora of open source products to generate billion-dollar profits, but who then turn around and actively give the middle finger to the communities without which they wouldn't exist (e.g. https://www.theregister.com/2019/04/03/googles_widevine_drm/).
I think it follows naturally.
If you replace objective standards of quality with favoritism, bribery, theft, and fraud, then of course you'll attract incompetents like moths to a flame.
Similar case that springs to mind is the chap who had to infect himself to prove that stomach ulcers were caused by bacteria.
True client story: I was once required to fill out opex/capex split timesheets into an Excel spreadsheet once a month, for each of my teams.
The spreadsheet came with instructions containing dire warnings that changing the formatting would change the semantic meaning of some of the cells, thereby breaking the spreadsheet for everyone.
I'm pretty sure that the developers of that spreadsheet used cell formatting to encode metadata about the cell values.
It's not like it's that long to start with.
In the end I decided that continuing to support Mozilla by using and advocating for Firefox was the lesser of two evils - the alternative being to surrender to a Web mono-culture.
The deciding factor for me was: what would harm free speech more?
1) a browser duopoly involving an org willing to chuck their CEO under a bus for legitimate but oppressive political donations, or
2) a browser monopoly owned by an advertising company?
In the end I decided (1) was the best bet. But I swear, Mozilla keeps me on my toes reconsidering it :)
My guess is the downvotes are an expression of the idea that, just because you personally find something relevant, doesn't make it okay for Mozilla to spam ~250 million people with what is essentially political advertising.
Feels like running a regular GNU/Linux distro, just on my phone. Much more suited to my purposes.
Used to? I'm still chuckling.
No, you can't. Because the people you're allowed to elect are all complicit in the creation and maintenance of these systems.
You shouldn't be able to, but I think in most jurisdictions you most certainly can.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-user_license_agreement#Enf...
Read the EULA. It almost certainly specifies that what you think you own, has in fact just been licensed to you.
Go read up about the Cheka, Mao, and the Stasi.
I use Fastmail, eschew most social media, and run a PinePhone. I'm not a fan of corporate surveillance.
But they're amateurs compared with the murderous surveillance states of years past.