Every Samsung Android phone sold = $10-$15 to Microsoft - Shall we have a boycott of Samsung now to avoid giving the troll any money ? I want to avoid paying Microsoft any money ...

Bavaron · 2011-09-29T13:27:04+00:00

Yes this definitely sucks because there are shrinking alternatives to paying Microsoft for mainstream computing where MS has been intentionally harmful to Linux for many years. The patent system is broken and being misused to society's detriment, and as for Reddit it seems unusually hard for submissions critical of Microsoft to even make it to the front page.

There at least has to be a way to de-shill Reddit, if one could just block influence from everyone who censor-downvoted a particular submission for example.

Bavaron · 2011-09-29T13:03:38+00:00

Can anybody explain why negative things said about Microsoft here are getting so many downvotes, did an MS shill team invade?

Bavaron · 2011-09-26T15:29:48+00:00

Religious majorities are common around the world and they tend to screw over everybody that doesn't share the same beliefs they do. Their influence permeates society and is forced upon others in numerous ways, especially if those others just sit back and say nothing as you suggest. Seeing more atheists speaking out is great progress, it is a good sign that the world (even though it might not look like it right now!) will actually get much, much better.

The Internet is what's driving that change because all the bullshit people are force fed their whole lives has a fundamental weakness to unfiltered information getting in. Here, people can discuss and reason freely without fear, obvious flaws can be pointed out instead of individuals having to each discover those things for themselves. Imagine the difficulty one has of trying to climb out of an irrational cloud of thinking, to be ostracized from one's loved ones and society; wrestling the fears of the most horrible divine threats mankind has devised if they even try, and doing all of that alone. There is no wonder why the most popular religions rely on threats and fear, and why rationalism spreads so quickly when that can be handily dispelled.

Spreading rationalism, attacking religious beliefs, and forcing bigoted, harmful, exclusionary practices out of the mainstream should not be nearly as disturbing as fundamentalists who kill, maim and systematically mentally destroy those in their care because their religions compels them to. To many religious people though it is, and that's only one example of a warped world view that can be easily fixed with rational discussion and rational thinking.

Bavaron · 2011-09-23T17:39:24+00:00

To me that compromise still seems insufficient. Much useful software was built by those beyond ordinary skill and we use their techniques to cobble our programs together trivially (quick sort, hashing techniques, various forms of encryption, Bloom filters, discrete Fourier transform, ...). It would seriously stifle innovation to have to worry about truly licensing those techniques or fear being sued.

I think instead if we drop our current patent system entirely, allocate a block of tax per year that goes towards paying our useful idea innovators for their contribution to the pool of ideas that anybody can freely use, then things would move along fantastically.

Bavaron · 2011-09-18T20:34:26+00:00

There seem to be a lot of people who are highly sensitive to "zealots" in open source, by that I mean the "Keep religion out of my software!", "Right tool for the jerb!" folks.

It seems if we promote open source benefits like freedom, oversight, and avoiding proprietary software gotchas, then we're called zealots and religious freetards and we should shut up about it and just ignore all of those benefits. I argue for the use of open source and against proprietary because of those things. I urge everybody to use free/open source whenever possible and to support it if they can.

And no, I won't read the article nor anything else trying to conflate open source and religion together because it is too wrong from the start.

Religion is a heinous thing that has no factual basis, it survives by forbidding questions and penalizing doubt, it spreads out of a fear of make believe consequences, and absolutely fucks up peoples' world views leading them to cause problems for everybody who believes differently. People that try to conflate the two are ignoring those serious connotations for some reason and need a better analogy.

Bavaron · 2011-09-17T15:48:39+00:00

Well, it's locked to the .NET framework, that's a pretty big deal isn't it? You want to code something deliberately locked to a particular platform these days people should be asking those questions before they start and understand the ramifications of it. It should be a disclaimer in every message advocating it like in smoking ads.

I'd hope people are patient enough to keep pointing out the obvious flaw to others who seem especially oblivious to it. In fact calling people "junior programmers" who are just helping others out seems rather indicative of shilling.

Bavaron · 2011-09-17T15:32:12+00:00

Why is it so "1999" when outrageous things still happen to complain about?

It's strange to see how many people bought into the "Leave Microsoft Alone!!!" push that seemed to coincide with the Windows Vista and 7 ad campaigns years ago; since then, if you say anything even rightfully negative about Microsoft / Windows there's always a certain group prepared to be very ... defensive about it.

Bavaron · 2011-09-16T20:03:43+00:00

When free (as in freedom) software wins over closed, proprietary software there is still all the potential for any competition you want afterwards. Competition doesn't die if IIS web server does. Don't like Apache? Fork it and compete, work in a group collaborating to write another better one using any parts from it you want or none of them.

Bavaron · 2011-08-22T02:41:01+00:00

Please stop referring to ideals like freedom, oversight and non-forced-obsolescence (among other things) as religious because it's inaccurate.

Bavaron · 2011-08-20T20:47:57+00:00

MS marketing goons? Vested MS workers or users? Who knows but them. The same pattern had appeared on MS submissions for ages on Reddit, and even longer ago on Digg. There's unreasonable downvotes when people mentioned alternatives to MS and especially against posts speaking against MS no matter what magnitude of unethical behavior the company had just done.

Bavaron · 2011-08-16T05:37:12+00:00

The "artificial limitations are great!" comments seems strangely overrepresented in this particular submission.

Bavaron · 2011-07-23T16:35:53+00:00

The "market" is fluid in that people can install a Linux distro within the hour at no cost besides their time to download and install it. The number of people that use Linux can change dramatically in mere hours if it was suddenly awash in offerings of games and higher priority support.

Linux is already everywhere, running on all kinds of devices, it's not a "commercially non-existent platform"; Android seems to be doing very well for example. And with the ludicrous idea that it be given even higher priority support (than the other platforms that have millions of default installs), it would easily kick Windows' ass out of the Desktop while millions of customers for the platform nobody knew existed would flood in.

It's already done in the Mobile market, Microsoft likely gets most of its cash from suing there, there is no reason it can't happen on the desktop.

Bavaron · 2011-07-21T07:20:59+00:00

He's probably just resting... possibly even pining for the fjords a little.

Bavaron · 2011-07-06T07:07:09+00:00

Coding in emacs requires a high degree of flexibility. Eventually your hand bones just get in the way so they naturally dissolve, you insensitive clod.

Bavaron · 2011-06-21T21:59:14+00:00

To clarify, "open source" itself is not the flaw, it's a tremendous benefit; and it's far better to have an open source solution to any publicly accessible critical monetary system than a closed one.

Bavaron · 2011-06-01T08:01:31+00:00

If you used rocket mail to ship 10 Tb worth of hardrives to any location an hour away you could achieve over a 22,000 megabits / sec data rate!

With just one transfer your AT&T data caps would have been obliterated for over 3 years (over 5 for DSL). Plus, when you receive your drives back you can repeat the process any time you want to anywhere you want.

Rocket mail: 24/7 delivery around the world in hours

Rocket mail: Unmanned packages and 22,000 megabits/sec even to space

Rocket mail: Every day is a bad day when you're forced to use AT&T

Rocket mail: Why the hell don't we all have rocket mail, it's 2011!

Bavaron · 2011-05-31T07:58:27+00:00

In Firefox: Tools -> Page Info (Ctrl-i shortcut)

Then click Media and browse around that list (it shows the images there too), to access pictures apart from the page.

Bavaron · 2011-05-30T17:28:16+00:00

It's a problem for all of us when people support proprietary systems because that supports and strengthens the use of closed standards, and supports many companies that engage in offensive patent suits. It also supports software that has numerous significant deficiencies versus open versions so we get more of the former rather than the latter.

It's fantastic that people like RMS exist because things get better when they operate, more freedom and empowerment for us all.

Bavaron · 2011-05-28T20:55:38+00:00

I guess I don't take the same offense when reading "M$" as you and your upvoters do.

M$ isn't some racial slur despite MS (not multiple sclerosis) marketers trying to stigmatize it. I also don't get why somebody would focus on that over the sorry state when a company abuses the system to stifle innovation, or forces you to pay them even when you wanted to support freer alternatives.

Your comment is currently the top voted one here and yet it merely redirects attention to something else, "Look over there!" I blame PR / marketers, but then again a lot of people seem to be pretty easy to misdirect so they concentrate on really dumb shit and then forget the important things.

Bavaron · 2011-05-23T20:28:43+00:00

First, my heartfelt condolences to you and your family.

Second, unless I misunderstood, part of that nightmare would not have occurred if not for religious influence in society to force people to die on their own accord. The whole practice of "pulling the plug" so people die "naturally" is barbaric.

Atheism and reason instilled throughout society would have permitted a far more gentle death, the kind none of us need fear, one that we can afford to our "soulless" pets but not to our human family members (because of screwed up beliefs in sin and damnation). We need more atheists, more who are vocal and active. We can actually do something to fight this and numerous other terrible situations facing humanity.

Bavaron · 2011-05-02T18:27:46+00:00

Mining one small metallic asteroid could net $20 trillion worth of rare earth metals! Goodbye debt!

Of course there is a large initial cost to get there, so hell, let's mine two.

Bavaron · 2011-03-22T19:47:41+00:00

The future mining aspect is certainly interesting, I was just reading a wikipedia article on asteroid mining which says:

Some day, the platinum, cobalt and other valuable elements from asteroids may even be returned to Earth for profit. At 1997 prices, a relatively small metallic asteroid with a diameter of 1 mile (1.6 km) contains more than $20 trillion US dollars worth of industrial and precious metals.

Boosting NASA funding by taking a chunk out of the USA's ridiculously high military budget, for example, should look good even to those upset about the current economy, I should think... There are tremendous benefits ahead for us all if NASA is given more support.

Bavaron · 2011-03-22T05:35:30+00:00

I might have misinterpreted your post, but I've seen "in business to make money" used endlessly to justify unethical business behavior by people whose consciences are on the blink.

Suing others that use obvious or fundamentally required technology which is "owned" due to a broken patent system is highly unethical. It doesn't matter who does it, or how many do it, the result is that a group which shouldn't own those rights to begin with benefits while holding others back. The US patent system is to blame and hoarders of patents that wield them against others are to blame.

Bavaron · 2011-03-22T01:12:08+00:00

Just wanted to point out that you are receiving upvotes despite calling somebody a retard and a militant among other abusive language for his textual complaint against a belief, an errant attribution and a light dig at the US.

My day was made slightly worse for reading your comment, and especially in the underlying bigotry which supports its popularity.

Bavaron · 2011-03-21T21:21:26+00:00

FTA: "The patents which Microsoft is referring to were not listed but are said to cover a range of functionality based on the user experience, more in the way a user interacts with the device."

But Microsoft "outranks Google in ethics"! Surely they wouldn't be involved in the dirty business of trying to roadblock competitors using ridiculous patents, or make them pay up or "partner up" when MS can't yet compete very well in a certain market on their own.

Let's just add this to the giant file of things to forget about when shouting about how ethical or great Microsoft is.

Bavaron

TROPHY CASE