I'm looking forward to how his, "Reasons not to use Uber, Sidecar, and Lyft" will be received around here.
Reasons not to buy from Amazon
61–70 of 152 posts
Re: Reasons not to buy from Amazon
#62Small point: tax avoidance is legal and sensible. Would anyone or any company seek to maximize its tax bill bar bizarre circumstances? Rather, the reverse. If there's a devastating avoidance loophole it's the job of government to redraft the regulations or let the courts decide.
Re: Reasons not to buy from Amazon
#63I've only seen rants of this tone, format and length from bona-fide crazy people. There's a line here and I hope stays on the side where I can continue to respect him. If he wants me to use GPL3 I'll take it under advisement. If he wants to tell me where to buy toothpaste I won't. I'm a fan of outsiders, the 60s, the whole deal. I love the whole idea of Stallman. I want more Stallmans! I also disagree with nearly eve…
People like Stallman (and whoever would be his polar opposite) need to exist in order to establish the boundaries and give us a framework to finding a balance between egalitarianism and greed.
Re: Reasons not to buy from Amazon
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
s/Swindle/Kindle/g and you're back. Just because somebody picks abrasive plays-on-words doesn't make their rhetoric any less rational. Unpalatable and annoying, yes, but that's got nothing to do with the argument structure and statements themselves.
When people revert to name-calling it really rubs me the wrong way, and makes me less likely to take their objections seriously. Like when people write "Micro$oft", "Microshaft", "CrApple", etc. If you have rational objections to something, you don't need to resort to such childish tactics. ...Frankly, I'd prefer more rationality from Richard Trollman. ;-)
Oh, I absolutely agree about picking childish names! It's not particularly effective, and it does tend to lose your audience.
Made-up names can be done with a wink-and-a-nod when punching up for great effect ("We had particular issues integrating with a vendor who we won't name but are a bit fruity--we'll call them Orange for the sake of comparison"), but usually it's done by people who aren't particularly bright.
At the same time, there is kind of an open question as to how much power a name has. If we only ever use the proper trademarks for these folks, are we not always granting them a certain amount of legitimacy and respect?
Re: Reasons not to buy from Amazon
#65Amazon in all honesty likely had zero choice but to comply with the NSA. Also it might not even be the one complying, but rather the shipping carrier.
Actually a lot of what Stallman is complaining about boils down to Amazon is a company that complies with US based court orders, and sells things on publisher terms.
I really don't see much that doesn't apply to say Google:
* Distributes books with restrictive licenses (Google Play Books)
* Sells online music with restrictive terms (Google Play Music)
* Can remotely delete content (Yes, http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Android-Google-Applications-Andr... )
* Can force auto updates (Yes you can disable updates to chrome, but not the google update client https://support.google.com/installer/answer/146164#Policies )
* Google's cloud is even more restrictive than Amazon's on content, and their TOS gives you no recourse.
Apple likewise does much the same thing (except they don't have a public cloud offering).
Re: Reasons not to buy from Amazon
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Restrictive in that it prevents you from fucking people over. This is like saying laws against slavery restrict freedom (freedom to own slaves). https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/freedom-or-power.html
> Restrictive in that it prevents you from fucking people over. Restrictive in that it controls how you must license derivative works and release source code. It imposes an ideology on others. > This is like saying laws against slavery restrict freedom (freedom to own slaves). No, really, it's absolutely nothing like saying that, and if you care about free software (however defined, but in particular along the lines…
If you build something you should definitely have something to say about what others can do with your work, especially if you give it away for free. And nobody imposes something on you - you are perfectly free not to use GNU licensed things.
Re: Reasons not to buy from Amazon
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
So, are you saying that Stallman makes points 1, 2, 3, ... n , and many are interesting, but point 37 is irrational? Or are you saying that although many of the points are interesting, point 37 is irrational, therefore the entire thing--points 1 though n --is tainted?
I'm not basseq, but I'm saying that making childish pun insults is not a prudent way to pose arguments, including valid arguments.
Barring a point-by-point analysis, his interesting points include:
- Non-ethical corporate compliance with surveillance activities.
- Pay-for-placement allegations. (Especially interesting given recent lawsuit for ratings spam.)
- Warehouse worker treatment.
- Monopolistic pricing power, particularly against small publishers. (Also ironic, as Amazon has given self-publishers a great platform.)
Note that this is just a list of allegations: this isn't a particularly investigative piece. (Though several have been linked and/or published elsewhere.)
Less valid arguments/rhetoric include:
- Calling the Kindle a Swindle. (Cute, but I can't take your argument as a serious, objective view.)
- Broad "freedom" arguments about file formats (PDF, MP3) and rights associated with same not originating with Amazon.
- Auto-update as a "back-door".
- Hosted content vs. owned content and the pros and cons therein.
- Workers "walk all day under the orders of a computer". (Like Uber drivers drive all day under the orders of a computer?)
- General competitiveness against bookstores and differences in business models.
So I'm saying that Stallman makes N interesting points (albeit without much in the way of reasoning), another N points I find to be logically unsound, and that combination of factors lead to an overall "article" that isn't very impactful.
The interesting points are still interesting.
Re: Reasons not to buy from Amazon
#68> "Amazon cut off service to Wikileaks, claiming that whistleblowing violates its terms of service. It had no need to go to court to prove this, because if you rent a server from Amazon, you have no rights." I find it highly amusing that RMS doesn't seem to agree with Amazon's restrictive ToS agreement but his GNU software license is one of the most restrictive licenses out there. If I include a GNU licensed library…
Sweet fucking Jesus, do we need to talk about the GPL here? It's an utter derail here, and the way comments are ranked here means that the top pages of this thread are going to be the same hashing out of pros and cons and it's incredibly tedious.
Re: Reasons not to buy from Amazon
#69RMS is supporting buying the book directly from the publisher. But what if they are running IIS on the server, or Flash on their front-end? Doesn't this mean that he is recommending the use of proprietary software?
Re: Reasons not to buy from Amazon
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Restrictive in that it prevents you from fucking people over. This is like saying laws against slavery restrict freedom (freedom to own slaves). https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/freedom-or-power.html
That's a strawman. It could also be like saying laws against gay marriage restrict freedom. You aren't making a point about reality, you're just comparing two things that have one thing in common. You lose your rights to your code if any of your code includes GPL code. Many people who write code necessarily avoid the GPL because of this.
> That's a strawman
We need a hotkey for that one.