His sig says Skype is nonfree. What does that even mean?
Stallman is a kook and lives in an alternate reality. Pay no attention to him.
Richard Stallman response to Boston Police efforts
261–266 of 266 posts
Re: Richard Stallman response to Boston Police efforts
#262Wow. I agree with RMS 100% on this point. (Should I be worried?) For all of our wonderful attributes, humans are irrational.
Should I be worried? Depends; you'll probably not want to share this point with strangers. Since we've been repeatedly traumatized as a nation over the fears of 'terrorism' by war-hawks and sensationalist media outlets, many Americans expect a similar level of emotional reactionism from their compatriots. And when they don't get it from you, they turn on you quickly. I don't think it's healthy, but I guess it's under…
Ha, thanks for the advice! (Maybe that's why Facebook friend count is plummeting...) In retrospect, the worry stemmed from the possibility of contracting RMS's personality traits. Irrational, indeed.
Re: Richard Stallman response to Boston Police efforts
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean look at all the silencers people have to get away with murder - oh wait, they don't - because they are illegal and highly regulated. Murderers rarely use such things A silencer is cheap and trivial to manufacture from common materials. I think you overestimate the deterrence of an additional felony charge. "Q. What are you in for? A. Murder... and an unlicensed weapon accessory."
Often these trivial laws are passed in order to be catch alls. You might get off on a technicality of a murder charge, but they get you for the illegal silencer. Remember, they got Al Capone on income tax violations.
And you think that's a good thing?
Re: Richard Stallman response to Boston Police efforts
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess that it is easy to opine from afar when you have no skin in the game. The government has an obligation to protect public safety, and madmen on the loose shooting policemen and tossing bombs out car windows certainly qualifies as a public safety event. I suppose if Mr. Stallman's home or office were to catch fire, we shouldn't paralyze the immediate area with noisy fire trucks. The background check issue is a…
Afar? The MIT police officer was killed outside Stallman's building.
I'm being a little sarcastic, although sometimes I think that Stallman's ivory tower is located in another dimension.
Re: Richard Stallman response to Boston Police efforts
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can read his political notes and get a pretty good grasp. But to use a metaphor, it's possible to find a bug without knowing what the patch is.
if I'm not mistaken RMSs concepts about security are to have essentially none.
You are mistaken. RMS believes that users should control their computing experience. As such, he thinks that university administrators shouldn't restrict access to powerful features, such as the ability to install software, on communal machines.
This is very different from civil safety, or defending against terrorism. RMS takes the (in my mind very reasonable) view that terrorism is not costly if it doesn't provoke an auto-immune response, and that civil liberties are more important than obliterating terrorism.
Re: Richard Stallman response to Boston Police efforts
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do we bother to have laws at all if people are going to break them? I mean look at all the silencers people have to get away with murder - oh wait, they don't - because they are illegal and highly regulated.
oh wait, they don't - because they are illegal and highly regulated. OR, it could be because they're expensive, ineffective, don't last, and hurt accuracy. Or because most murders are not planned out in advance, in excruciating detail, by criminal masterminds (or even the crooks in episodes of Columbo). Somebody who finds out their spouse is cheating on them and decides to kill them in a fit of rage isn't going to ca…
It's also important to understand that suppressors are not silencers. Most movies depict a suppressed handgun as sounding like an air rifle: that's just not the case unless you're talking about specially built firearms (integral suppressors, no leaks for gas) with sub-sonic rounds. I am going to guess that very few crimes have the monetary pay-off to justify such an investment (and if they do, the criminals can certainly afford to purchase a CNC machine and manufacture a supresor themselves).
On the other hand, a regular 9mm handgun or a .223/.308 rifle with a suppressor will still be very loud: comparable to a car's engine back firing, a tire blow out, or a firecracker. That's definitely a reduction in noise compared to a regular gun shot, but while one such noise might go unnoticed, a rapid succession of such noises certainly will.