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Richard Stallman Collapses At Barcelona Conference

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Re: Richard Stallman Collapses At Barcelona Conference

#231

Post by rogerbinns »

Joeboy wrote: post #184
rogerbinns wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are the health insurance plans means tested? ie does a millionaire pay the same as someone who is unemployed? Does the government also contribute some money behind the scenes? In the UK dentistry is not covered by the National Health Service. (More accurately it can be but the vast majority of dentists opt out.) As for waiting lists the UK did significantly increase spending in order to reduce them. (The UK also had…

> In the UK dentistry is not covered by the National Health Service. (More accurately it can be but the vast majority of dentists opt out.) I don't know about the whole country, but in the cities I've lived in recently it's been no problem to get NHS dental care, at least for the basics. I guess I can't fault your words technically, but I think "In the UK dentistry is covered by the National Health Service" would be…

In the cities I lived in in the UK (west London, Cambridge) it was impossible to get NHS dentists and there were very few of them. They even had waiting lists to join. Admittedly this was over a decade ago. Perhaps the intervening years of increased spending has had an effect. Or maybe it is correlated with the cost of living - more expensive areas mean dentists want the higher private income?

Re: Richard Stallman Collapses At Barcelona Conference

#232

Post by mpusr »

mibbitier wrote: post #212
exDM69 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There was a time when some of the things he talks about mattered (1980s), and that time has long gone. On the contrary. RMS's extreme views on software freedom are more relevant than ever before. In the 2000's we have seen computers turn from general purpose programmable machines into walled gardens where you need a permission from the manufacturer to write and sell programs that run on them. That's pretty much the…

Software. Hardware. The difference is not relevant. I also can't easily modify my toaster to fry sausages, because of the toaster company not releasing the design schematics and moulds. It's not free hardware!

The toaster lets you open it, the toaster lets you modify it, it has standard screws and doesn't explicitly lock you out. It gives you no help in modifying it, but you are permitted to do so, and there are no mechanisms in place to stop you from doing it. If someone were to make a tool that lets you modify the toaster, that would not be illegal, and I highly doubt the toaster company would take issue with it.

Re: Richard Stallman Collapses At Barcelona Conference

#233

Post by linuxhansl »

excuse-me wrote: post #64
skrebbel wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There, you're doing it. It is all right for someone to be skeptical about any commonly held view, except when it's about sex with minors. In any discussion about any kind of sex with anyone under 18 whatsoever, if you're not 100% fully completely convincedly against it, then you're a bad person!!1 Why can't we just discuss this? Like we can discuss anything else? Especially in the US, where the norm appears to be tha…

You can get married at 16 in the UK (and most of europe) but if you took a picture of your wife giving birth you would be an evil child pornographer.

Another data point: Sex at age 14 is legal in Germany (as long as both parties consent, and it does not involve a position of power - such as a teacher). Even sex at younger ages is not illegal per se, but parents can choose press civil charges (which they rarely do).

Re: Richard Stallman Collapses At Barcelona Conference

#234

Post by mibbitier »

beeneto wrote: post #220
mibbitier wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He influences others with his (IMHO poisonous ideology). For some bizarre reason, some people listen to his mad rhetoric. That's why others dislike him. IMHO, he hurts several things. He hurts free software, and he hurts the software industry as a whole.

I have never considered your point of view and I am curious about it. Can you explain why you think his ideology is poisonous? Also how can it be possible that he's hurting the free software movement, when I thought he CREATED the free software movement.

He created the free software movement in the same way that Douglas Crockford created JSON. eg he didn't.

Re: Richard Stallman Collapses At Barcelona Conference

#235

Post by meatpopsicle »

gyardley wrote: post #42
raganwald wrote: post #32

Social/Moral question: Is it acceptable to wish Mr. Stallman well in light of allegations that he has advocated for truly awful practices? e.g. Dutch pedophiles have formed a political party to campaign for legalization. I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. http://stallman.org/archives/2006-may-aug.html

Wow, I had no idea. That's repugnant. Why do people still invite him to conferences? Surely there's less-objectionable representatives of his views on software.

And this is why raganwald's flamebait is indeed flamebait; gyardley decided to run with someone else's opinion/third-hand information without researching whether or not it was true, or even in context.

Which is pretty much what raganwald wanted to happen: fear, uncertainty, and doubt have been successfully seeded.

Re: Richard Stallman Collapses At Barcelona Conference

#236

Post by _quasimodo »

w0utert wrote: post #183
VeejayRampay wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about it being more secure. It's that at least when it's suffering from malfunction, you got shitloads of eyeballs on the thing to make it work and work well. Why do you think all the OpenBSD tools are so ubiquitous?

Keeping this in the context of devices like a pacemaker, do you really believe that an open-source development model would be safer for the people who depend on it than a closed-source model? Do you expect them to flash custom ROMs to the pacemaker that keeps them alive if it turns out there may be a problem with them, instead of going to the hospital to get the thing replaced?

Oh come on, free software does not imply an open source development model and vice versa. You could very well have the software developed by a professional team and release it as free software.

Re: Richard Stallman Collapses At Barcelona Conference

#237

Post by icebraining »

cglace wrote: post #213
icebraining wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's unjust to make people contribute to society through taxes if they want to live in it. They're free to opt-out from that implicit contract by going to live elsewhere. There's plenty of inhabited places on Earth still. In any case, rights can and are sometimes eclipsed by others. The idea of natural, absolute rights is just ridiculous.

"They're free to opt-out from that implicit contract by going to live elsewhere." Is it your position that everything can be justified by a persons ability to get up and move?

No, just some.
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