Of course we are not talking about IT support here, but about the Free Software movement, and in particular, Stallman. And it is amusing as hell to hear "the left" disparage "getting deeply into things". I guess we should just post blog entries and run straw polls, eh?
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Excellent point.
Like many, I used to consider Stallman to be an important figure but needlessly extreme.
I discarded this view as events re-schooled me.
What events? The creation, for example, of the Advanced Access Content System, an extraordinarily complex, cross platform effort to create a virtual gated community for "premium content".
The by now obligatory Wikipedia link, for the intrigued -
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS>
And a link to a paper by Peter Gutman on the costs this will impose upon Windows Vista specifically and the entire computer industry generally -
<http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html>
When Stallman demands that users avoid closed source software, he's advising us to resist the for-profit destruction of the age of open computing: a period which has produced tools that have proven rather useful for all sorts of imagined and unimagined tasks.
.d.
At this point, it's still not clear that intelligence and self-awareness are successful adaptations.
...................... http://monroelab.net/blog/