You are a pirate if you use Open Source.

http://www.osnews.com/story/22921/US_Copyright_Lobby_FOSS_Weakens_Software_Industry_


They want the US Trade Representative to place countries like Brazil, India, and Indonesia on the Special 301 list, which is a list of countries that do not, according to mostly the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America and the IIPA, do enough to protect intellectual property rights.

Damned if you don't and damned if you do.

Interesting to see how they wish to punish two of US's biggest trading partners and fastest growing economies.

 

Yeah, Baby

Free Market mechanisms and policy based on liberty all the way...

 

"a galaxy far far away" is starting to really sound good..

In the meantime, join me
http://www.chiff.com/home_life/holiday/talk-like-pirate-day.htm
in learning the lingo, cuz I'm not gonna stop using open source!

 

Yep and I only see open source growing even more now that 2 billion potential users are in line.

 

Sometimes I am NOT proud to be an American. To all of you in the rest of the world, allow me to apologize for my brainless government. I swear, lobbyists and special interest groups need to be banned from access to our government. I'm trying hard to figure out what else besides company wallets open source software "hurts". We're for sure the greediest nation on the planet. Screw these guys, I'll use whatever software I please and so should other countries. I'm tired of the U.S being a damn bully.

 

That makes 2 of us. I've got a mix of paid and open source on my computers and will continue to use open source as much as possible. In fact, my desktop is going to open source (Linux) as soon as I can decide which version I prefer. I'm eyeing Ubuntu but am really looking hard at Slackware too.

 

All I have to say to that is that 0.5% of the US makes the decisions for the remaining 99.5%. And the 0.5% that make those decisions are clinically brain dead.

Sul.

 

Since you are switching over from Windows, I would advise Ubuntu over Slackware, the most compelling reason is that Ubuntu is big, well supported, of course in some ways like Windows but not there yet. Slackware is quite good and fast as well but when it comes to software, package manager etc. Debian based Ubuntu rules, myriads of software and ppa to boost. You can also consider MINT which is Ubuntu with everything in it.

 

I downloaded Mint from distrowatch. Haven't tried it yet. It's one of the five or six I'm planning to check out. I've got a couple of versions of Ubuntu, 7.10 and a newer version, 8x. Actually, 7.10 seems to run better on my desktop. The 8.x version (live CD) had problems. Might have been the download, though.

Thanks for the info on Slackware. I guess I was thinking of it because I've heard about it for years. Haven't actually tried it yet.

 

sharpnin up me cutlass r r

 

Gettin ready to keephaul.........

Seriously, they might declare it to be piracy but good luck in implementing that in China and India.

 

It's happening pretty fast, actually

Fortunately, that is only one side of the story. There is light on the other side of the Atlantic:

http://www.osor.eu/

 

Mint is really quite good. I have the latest Mint KDE x64 on the desktop and Mint Gnome x64 on the laptop, both run great. Mint takes care of all the little niceties out of the box, makes life so easy, especially for one new to linux. Well worth a serious look.

 

China is our banker, they won't say a word to them, they can't afford it. It's coming soon, the U.S is running out of friends. We the citizens of course are the ones that will suffer the consequences when it happens. By the way, don't you mean "keelhaul"?

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keelhauling

Pretty gruesome stuff.

Btw, China's military has been on Linux for a long while.

 

And they'll stay on Linux whether the infringement zealots like it or not. Yeah, I knew what Keelhauling involved. There's much worse, but it certainly couldn't have been too fun.

 

Your welcome, over here in the UK I expect to see something like this soon, we will not be able to use a computer that does not have the BigBro version OS that keeps check and reports back on everything the user does, to be kept in an unsecured database somewhere, or just left on a train.

...and yes to all of the people that say because I dont want to be followed and checked up on every second of my life I must be doing something bad, there will be a point at which you will also want it to stop, but, by then there will be no others left to help you stop it.

 

Unfortunately the corporations interest in maintaining the concept of intellectual property pretty much own the government in the US.

 

S

I don't recall voting for you. Then again, I don't recall voting. Never mind.

Edit. Oops, somehow left out the smiley's to denote humor.