Very good point, but it had absolutely zero to do with Linux. If anybody thinks otherwise...
OMG, Bush is trying to identify with the black hatters!
Posted on 09/29/2006 8:45:47 AM PDT by Halfmanhalfamazing
I was specifically complaining about ignorant Americans who make improvements to Linux and are subsequently forced to give those improvements away to the rest of the world for free. Yes I know that some do it out of their own free will, but that doesn't mean it's not some sort of communist conspiracy. In fact, the leftist quack pictured above claims in his "manifesto" that is his very intention.
Completely trying to blow off and distract from the fact that you posted while you had absolutely no idea what you were talking about?
Don't worry, we're used to it.
Tweet, tweet, tweet... The little birdie changed his tune in mid-paragraph! I'm impressed. He must be part Arkansas Thongbird.
How many Microsoft programmers aren't Indian? :p
FYI calling me names isn't distracting from the fact you're tarred with Bill Clinton on this. Putting up your Red Cloak isn't helping either.
Most of Microsoft's employees, especially programmers, are in the US. International Business Machines must be who you're talking about.
Show me one instance. And I mean actually forcing someone to give away his code, with no alternative.
And, no, the lawsuits won against and settlements reached with those who violated the GPL don't count. There the authors had a choice -- quit distributing code that belongs to others without a license or put their own code under that license (plus sometimes financial penalties in either case).
Now that I think about it more, doesn't GE remind you of Gov. William J. Le Petomane?
LOL. I loved your reply at #16. Nice to see you around again.
It's nothing of the sort. Anything Bill Clinton says or does must be looked at through the lens of what he wants, and who he's trying to woo.
How many times, back in the old days, did we see Clinton doing product placement -- Starbucks coffee cups with the label helpfully visible to the photog; a can of Diet Coke on the table during the Israel/Pali talks at the Wye Plantation; the ostentatious use of Macs in the WH ... they're all product placement aimed at certain electoral niches, and the money they can provide.
So if Clinton is "doing Linux," there's a reason. And for that reason one need look no further than Howard Dean's 2004 successes with the online geeks -- he raised millions of dollars from them.
Not the spokesman, no ... and there's no "technical knowledge" required. Clinton cannot have missed the fact that Howard Dean's "Internet Strategy" was a hugely successful money-raiser.
If Clinton used "Ubuntu" on purpose, meaning Linux, it's because he knows that the leftist geeks will react with wild enthusiasm to it. "He's one of us," they'll moan, all aswoon....
Count on it: if Clinton used the term on purpose, it's because he's in seduction mode.
I have to be more careful when buying commercial software though. Little restrictions and other nasties are buried in EULAs, and I have to read carefully to make sure I'm not accepting any restrictions or risks.
For example, the EULA on a security update for Windows Media Player basically said that Microsoft can come into my computer and do what they want, even keep me from running other software. That's unacceptable, especially as you had to accept it if you wanted to close some gaping security holes in WMP.
Another example I've told you about is in many Microsoft products. A user isn't allowed to publish benchmarks without Microsoft's approval, and Microsoft has abused that clause to prevent the release of benchmarks that didn't look good for them and even kept the US Air Force from internally publishing C++ compiler benchmarks for a while. One such restriction from Network Associates was thrown out, but then not everybody has the money (or a friendly AG) to fight for their free speech with the big guys.
They even go so far as to claim that you can't reverse-engineer the network protocols used (not the software, just analyzing the network traffic it generates) to prevent interoperability. Such was the case with Blizzard.
So, for once, will you stop being chicken and address those hard issues that actually affect us? I'd especially like to hear your take on why Microsoft kept benchmarks from being released.
I highly doubt he even knows what Linux is. Some handler told him to say "ubuntu" to the crowd to pander to them, and he said it, end of story.
That can be done with any software, doesn't require Linux. Dean was just the first to really leverage the Internet in an election.
Agreed. And, as noted above, whether he knows or not is immaterial. The important thing is to be seen as "one of us."
Some handler told him to say "ubuntu" to the crowd to pander to them, and he said it, end of story.
You'd be wrong about that. Clinton views politics as a type of seduction. He would have asked a handler for a good word, as a pickup line ... but the motivation for using the word would have been Clinton's, not the handler's.
Very good point, but it had absolutely zero to do with Linux. If anybody thinks otherwise...
OMG, Bush is trying to identify with the black hatters!
Stop being defensive about Linux, and start looking at it from Clinton's perspective. It's a big mistake to just push it off as a random word. He never does stuff like this by accident -- there's malice aforethought involved.
Dean was just the first to really leverage the Internet in an election.
Sure, but the point is not Howard Dean, it's the money that Howard Dean raised from a previously ignored source: leftist internet geeks (of whom there are many).
As I said above, Clinton sees politics as a form of seduction. He needs to become The Chosen One for whatever group he's seducing. For the lucrative leftist internet geek sector, he's not gonna get mileage with "Microsoft Excel." He might get more out of "Mac OS-X," but it's clunky.
No, Clinton knows that he's got to use something just obscure enough, and so close to being newly trendy, that it puts him right at the front -- a fresh and dynamic leader, eyes fixed on the future, and all that crap that made him so attractive back in '92. So he needs a single word ... and it doesn't matter whether he knows what it means, or not. He just has to seem like he's part of it, and his charisma will complete the seduction.
I'm not calling you names; I'm mocking you. I do that to trolls and other posters I fail to take seriously. Some might say that playing poke-the-troll is a vice, but I call it entertainment.
It wasn't random. It was perfectly in context to pander to that audience. You just have the wrong audience that he's pandering to -- it's not the geeks.
it's the money that Howard Dean raised from a previously ignored source: leftist internet geeks (of whom there are many).
Dean's money came from the general population of people online, not especially geeks.
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