81–90 of 233 posts
Edit: People are getting downvoted left and right. Why is this such a polarizing topic?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah right, because MIT is such a cheap school, it totally is required to use free software, because that is going to make a difference. Instead, MIT should make sure that students get their software and materials free of charge, not that the material or software itself is free (just because students on scholarships or alike may not have the money). They should use what is best for the students and not what is best t…
Free software is a matter of freedom, not price. But your comment contradicts itself. Your posited opposition between "what is best for the students" and "what is best to support some ideology" is without foundation — different ideologies differ precisely in that they make different claims about what is best for people, such as students. Whatever set of claims you endorse about "what is best for the students" constit…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah right, because MIT is such a cheap school, it totally is required to use free software, because that is going to make a difference. Instead, MIT should make sure that students get their software and materials free of charge, not that the material or software itself is free (just because students on scholarships or alike may not have the money). They should use what is best for the students and not what is best t…
Free software is a matter of freedom, not price. But your comment contradicts itself. Your posited opposition between "what is best for the students" and "what is best to support some ideology" is without foundation — different ideologies differ precisely in that they make different claims about what is best for people, such as students. Whatever set of claims you endorse about "what is best for the students" constit…
This obviously never happened. What Chomsky and Herman instead did was criticizing the media portrayals of the Khmer Rouge vs. the US bombings that took place at the same time, killing 600000 civilians in Cambodia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Freedom_Deal).
Great that his institution lets him run servers for his classrooms from “any” place. At my school, first thing: disconnect all your servers except for required lavoratory things. ...
I will probably get downvoted a lot, and this is more or less pertinent to this, so here's a rant: I am quite sick to make software work these days: someone coded something using Python3.6 and numpy1.18.5 then three years pass. Now, it's Python3.8.9 and the software is incompatible with it, so now I have to download Python3.6.5 (not Python 3.6.1) e try to make things work. But then TLS/SSL was discontinued and I'm ge…
Have I got some nixpkgs to sell you then :) Really though, with the nix package manager ( https://nixos.org/ ), if anyone at any point in time had a working nix package for a given program, and as long as all the inputs (source code) are still either online or cached somewhere with the same sha256, it's possible to get the exact same output. This works with very few exceptions. Some things, like systemd dbus calls, r…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah right, because MIT is such a cheap school, it totally is required to use free software, because that is going to make a difference. Instead, MIT should make sure that students get their software and materials free of charge, not that the material or software itself is free (just because students on scholarships or alike may not have the money). They should use what is best for the students and not what is best t…
Free software is a matter of freedom, not price. But your comment contradicts itself. Your posited opposition between "what is best for the students" and "what is best to support some ideology" is without foundation — different ideologies differ precisely in that they make different claims about what is best for people, such as students. Whatever set of claims you endorse about "what is best for the students" constit…
It’s important to understand and try to find why that person is thinking this way than to shut them down in the manner you have, again with the same subjective ideology that the parent is commenting on.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Free software is a matter of freedom, not price. But your comment contradicts itself. Your posited opposition between "what is best for the students" and "what is best to support some ideology" is without foundation — different ideologies differ precisely in that they make different claims about what is best for people, such as students. Whatever set of claims you endorse about "what is best for the students" constit…
> celebrate the mass human sacrifice of the Khmer Rouge killing fields as an inspiring example of class struggle, as MIT professor Noam Chomsky did This obviously never happened. What Chomsky and Herman instead did was criticizing the media portrayals of the Khmer Rouge vs. the US bombings that took place at the same time, killing 600000 civilians in Cambodia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Freedom_Deal ).
That article was written before the worst of the killings happened in 1978, though it still seems outrageous to me that it blames the bad conditions in Cambodia on US bombings killing water buffalo; Chomsky touts "the destructive American impact on Cambodia and the success of the Cambodian revolutionaries in overcoming it" and describes reports that “virtually everybody saw the consequences of [summary executions] in the form of the corpses of men, women and children rapidly bloating and rotting in the hot sun,” as "fallacious", saying that they "collapse[] under the barest scrutiny".
The US bombings were indeed terrible, but (as the page you link explains) they did not kill anywhere close to the 600k people you claim, and they happened earlier than the Khmer Rouge killing fields, not at the same time.
I have corrected my comment to instead make the more defensible, though still perhaps controvertible, claim that Pol Pot celebrated the sacrifices in that way.
What’s wrong with paying for a product or a service if it’s better for my students? Isn’t the teacher’s job to find the best available tools for their students and not engage in some kind of open source software usage high score? Edit: People are getting downvoted left and right. Why is this such a polarizing topic?
Of course, because there's a material cost for manufacturing physical things. The marginal cost of "manufacturing" copies of digital information after the information is created the first time is the price of the electrons it takes to perform that copy, so very close to zero.
I think everyone agrees there's a real weight of responsibility on teachers. Some feel that getting students onboard with FOSS is the responsible choice.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah right, because MIT is such a cheap school, it totally is required to use free software, because that is going to make a difference. Instead, MIT should make sure that students get their software and materials free of charge, not that the material or software itself is free (just because students on scholarships or alike may not have the money). They should use what is best for the students and not what is best t…
It's not about the price, it's about the freedom I assume. Having free of charge proprietary software for students is a different approach. I wouldn't call it unethical though.
What’s wrong with paying for a product or a service if it’s better for my students? Isn’t the teacher’s job to find the best available tools for their students and not engage in some kind of open source software usage high score? Edit: People are getting downvoted left and right. Why is this such a polarizing topic?
>Don’t we buy oscilloscopes, lathe machines, incubators, scientific glass, etc for our student labs? Of course, because there's a material cost for manufacturing physical things. The marginal cost of "manufacturing" copies of digital information after the information is created the first time is the price of the electrons it takes to perform that copy, so very close to zero. I think everyone agrees there's a real wei…