61–70 of 841 posts
He is the one who we need now , in the era of saas/cloud run by big tech. So sad.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is what's on his personal page, stallman.org: `Richard Stallman has cancer. Fortunately it is slow-growing and manageable follicular lymphona, so he will probably live many more years nonetheless. But he now has to be even more careful not to catch Covid-19.`
for the curious, "follicular lymphoma" is what you want to search for. Fairly pithy site to get started: https://www.pathologyoutlines.com/topic/lymphomafollicularno...
Prognostic factors
- Median overall survival of > 15 years
What's cool about RMS is that he perfectly foresaw many decades ago the world that we live in today: your car or smart fridge refusing actions because its software says so. And you cannot change the bloody software! I cringe every time I see encrypted firmware running in trusted execution environment, DRM, DLCs for fucking physical products, websites or apps that scam you into signing up or giving up some other freed…
This very morning, my wife performed reset of cache/cookies from our family’s perfectly fine iPad 3 (yeah, the one from 2012, 11 years old). The iPad is our kitchen TV, it shows either some content from VLC (works perfectly fine, kudos to the devs) or some YouTube from Safari (the AppStore’s app support is long gone, web app still works quite well, even considering it was updated recently). Today I spent my morning t…
One of the things I like about Samsung tablets is that they have a "Battery saver" feature where you can restrict it from charging the battery past 85%, which is a generally good move if your tablet is going to be permanently plugged into power and used as some sort of fixed display.
I've had MANY brand name devices with lithium batteries bulge when left constantly plugged in at 100% battery for months and don't want to risk an explosion.
Asking out of curiosity, not to be cruel: I wonder if he's willing to use medical equipment that uses non-Free software? To my knowledge, his stated position against using non-Free software is pretty much absolute; but given that medical equipment's software is almost universally non-Free, taking that stance here would seriously endanger his ability to receive necessary medical care.
I will answer this assuming good faith, but this line of reasoning is very irritating since the answer (to me) is obvious. If RMS made a choice to use proprietary software, with the only alternative being his dead, there is absolutely no moral conflict, or even anything against his principle. The only issue could only ever arises if he claimed "Free Software is more important than human lives", which I am pretty sure…
Valuing freedom (even in limited spheres) more than human lives is a pretty familiar American idea. For example, recall Patrick Henry's "give me liberty or give me death" and consider that he was talking about the prospect of being taxed without his consent, not enslavement. Also, recall Private Eightball from Full Metal Jacket:
"Personally, I think, uh... they don't really want to be involved in this war. You know, I mean... they sort of took away our freedom and gave it to the, to the gookers, you know. But they don't want it. They'd rather be alive than free, I guess. Poor dumb bastards."
What's cool about RMS is that he perfectly foresaw many decades ago the world that we live in today: your car or smart fridge refusing actions because its software says so. And you cannot change the bloody software! I cringe every time I see encrypted firmware running in trusted execution environment, DRM, DLCs for fucking physical products, websites or apps that scam you into signing up or giving up some other freed…
The pity is that while he was remarkably prescient, he seems to have stopped adapting decades ago. GNU seems to have little interest in keeping up with modern developments, and seems to be content with maintaining the old command line tools for the most part. Meanwhile, they're becoming a smaller and smaller proportion of an useful software stack, and people are rewriting them in more modern fashions, eg, Rust. Prett…
Also, in suggesting they use Youtube or Twitter, you're simply exemplifying how you reject their principles. Those platforms are the opposite of free: Closed source, secret manipulation of content, censorship (and never mind the motivation), spying on users for the government, etc. The FSF would be hypocritical to endorse them. But of course, it does have "social network" videos - on PeerTube and MediaGoblin:
https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/fsf35-videos-online-find...
so ask yourself, why have we not been promoting those platforms, and why have everyone seemingly yielded to ever-widening control of our digital lives by these large corporations?
He is the one who we need now , in the era of saas/cloud run by big tech. So sad.
I always thought the advocacy was fundamentally correct, but way too distanced from achievable and realistic compromises within a system that wants profit over everything. The only real path would've been through legislation, and now we're back to setting your expectations to realistic.
If your side of the argument is all compromise-makers trying to meet people halfway you often end up giving up more than you’re comfortable with. Both types of people play a useful part.
He is the one who we need now , in the era of saas/cloud run by big tech. So sad.
He is the one who we need now , in the era of saas/cloud run by big tech. So sad.
What's cool about RMS is that he perfectly foresaw many decades ago the world that we live in today: your car or smart fridge refusing actions because its software says so. And you cannot change the bloody software! I cringe every time I see encrypted firmware running in trusted execution environment, DRM, DLCs for fucking physical products, websites or apps that scam you into signing up or giving up some other freed…
This very morning, my wife performed reset of cache/cookies from our family’s perfectly fine iPad 3 (yeah, the one from 2012, 11 years old). The iPad is our kitchen TV, it shows either some content from VLC (works perfectly fine, kudos to the devs) or some YouTube from Safari (the AppStore’s app support is long gone, web app still works quite well, even considering it was updated recently). Today I spent my morning t…
This really infuriates me because we (iOS developers) were all forced to see how it was happening. If you want to stay in the game, you have to develop for the newest devices, In order to do so, you need to upgrade your Xcode. In order to do so, you have to periodically upgrade your mac. And this is more or less fine. But at the same time newer xcode drops support for older yet perfectly functioning devices.
What can you do? Keep older macs with older xcode versions and at least be able to develop solutions for your own devices. But this is not a solution, it doesn't solve anything really, and it wouldn't help much in your kitchen example.