41–50 of 67 posts
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You might have had a point half a decade ago. Nowadays it's pretty easy to get stuff done on Linux.
Nearly all the professional applications (engineering, finance, accounting, etc.) only run on Windows (or Mac OS X for the design stuff).
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He certainly is serious. But as long as his ridiculous totalitarian/communist ideas only apply to software, he's mostly harmless.
HN, wtf. Stallman is many things but would never, ever be "totalitarian/communist." Who is voting this troll up? Come on, this is supposed to be a hacker site. He even talks about regime change in Cuba to open up.
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From the quotes you put around the phrase "human rights", am I to understand that you don't think human rights really exist, or that they aren't rights, or something? Have you moved to Singapore yet? You seem to be pretty enthusiastic about it. I did not mean to say that it is an example of all of the bad things that can coexist with business freedom, just some of them. As far as per-capita GDP goes, Singapore has th…
>"I suspect that they had an equal chance of ending up like Thailand, or urban Malaysia, or other countries in the area; and it's not clear to me that aggressively persecuting Communists made a civil war less rather than more likely." The Thais and Maylays were with Singapore in taking aggressive anti-communist actions in the 1960s. None of the countries that escaped communism approached the Western liberal ideal of…
What do you think about the pre-civil-war human-rights records of Vietnam and Cambodia? Do you think they were more protective of political freedom before the wars than Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia?
> "If I were a resident of Southeast Asia, Singapore would be my #1 place to live. As is, I like the United States just fine."
I think infringements on human rights are less unpleasant in theory than in practice; maybe if you spend some time living there, you might have a more nuanced point of view about it.
> [Urbanity] "was a huge disadvantage in the early years." [economically]
Nearly all of world economic development during the 20th century was urban, if you measure by GDP. In industrialized countries, cities have been richer than the country for centuries — as long as there have been industrialized countries. It's true that cities can't be self-sustaining, but that seems to be an advantage when it comes to economic development.
> "I would be willing to bet that the average Singaporean is happy that their government..."
The average inhabitant of almost any country is happy about almost everything their government has done, especially a while back, and they would have been happy about their government doing the opposite if it had done the opposite.
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Yes. The sudden discovery of an easily-mined gold supply has the same function under a gold standard economy as the central bank expanding the monetary base in a fiat economy. In practice, gold supplies tend to be more predictable than central banks.
How are the random deposits of a heavy metal in the earth's crust more predictable then central banks?
I think using a fiat currency is probably a good idea, though.
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You might have had a point half a decade ago. Nowadays it's pretty easy to get stuff done on Linux.
Nearly all the professional applications (engineering, finance, accounting, etc.) only run on Windows (or Mac OS X for the design stuff).
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It's completely serious. Stallman thinks the social harm done by proprietary software licenses is greater than the good done by the ability to use the software. Do you think that's an unreasonable or laughable position? The consequence that it is better to close down the clubs than to let them encourage proprietary software usage is almost inescapable given the above premise.
Like most of us, I discovered programming using proprietary software (namely MS-DOS and QBASIC), and if an intolerant idiot tried to prevent me from using those tools, he would have been hit by a (then) heavy keyboard. (by the way, the case against using BASIC is certainly stronger than the case against using proprietary software.)
From the article: So I said, "Cuba has an important resource - lots of people who have never learned to use Windows. And here you are, destroying that resource, gratuitously. If you are not ready yet to switch these clubs so that they teach people free software, at least you should shut them down until they can." Does he say this seriously? I've seen people using this kind of hyperbole when in a partisan environment…
It's completely serious. Stallman thinks the social harm done by proprietary software licenses is greater than the good done by the ability to use the software. Do you think that's an unreasonable or laughable position? The consequence that it is better to close down the clubs than to let them encourage proprietary software usage is almost inescapable given the above premise.
1) cuban boys discovering hacking in computer clubs
2) something I'm too stupid to understand
3) clubs should be shut
Good work!
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HN, wtf. Stallman is many things but would never, ever be "totalitarian/communist." Who is voting this troll up? Come on, this is supposed to be a hacker site. He even talks about regime change in Cuba to open up.
That's not what I'm talking about. Stallman declared he'd rather see computer clubs closed than using Windows. He wants to convert (I'm quoting the article) the "important resource" (read: people 'unspoiled' by Windows) to free software (just like Che Guevara who went to Africa to convert people unspoiled by capitalism to the ideal of communism). So I rest my case: as far as software is concerned , he is a totalitari…
Yes, you are.
> Stallman declared he'd rather see computer clubs closed than using Windows.
Your paraphrasing is out of context and switches meanings. I am not going to even quote as you conveniently didn't quote that paragraph.
> He wants to convert (I'm quoting the article) the "important resource" (read: people 'unspoiled' by Windows) to free software
Yeah, so? He wants Free Software. Nothing new.
> (just like Che Guevara who went to Africa to convert people unspoiled by capitalism to the ideal of communism).
This is a very pathetic and childish hyperbole. You are the equivalent of the Fox News crowd for software.
(That's a hyperbole pun.)
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How are the random deposits of a heavy metal in the earth's crust more predictable then central banks?
The last major expansion of the Eurasian gold supply was in the 1500s and 1600s, due to the looting of the Americas, and I think it roughly tripled the amount of gold in circulation. There has never been an event since the advent of gold-as-currency that multiplied by ten the amount of gold in circulation within a century, but that happens to almost every fiat currency almost every century. Predicting which decade it…
The money supply and interest rates being econ 101.
And thinking of hyper inflation, where does that usually happen?
Zimbabwe, Yugoslavia, the Weimar Republic - if a bad government wants to screw you, a gold backed currency won't save you. Does anyone think someone like Mugabe wouldn't just change the rules to do what ever he wants?
Besides, even that Money as Debt movie explains that gold is easily manipulated and thus volatile, so not good as a currency.
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Nearly all the professional applications (engineering, finance, accounting, etc.) only run on Windows (or Mac OS X for the design stuff).
They can learn to write software to replace these so-called professional applications.