^open source software isn't socialism, it is the epitome of the free market.

socialism would be software created by the government, and how horrific would that be?

^ Actually, I think the open source movement undercuts the whole idea of "only private industry could have created <X>." I'd go so far as to say it's a proof positive that a form of socialism can provide tremendous results, and at the same time provide many aspects that libertarians find appealing (ability to customize for very niche sets of needs and desires, for example).

I don't think it undercuts the idea that people who create works of knowledge like programmers, musicians, and artists have a right to own their creations, simply because they can be cheaply and effectively duplicated. To follow that reasoning, as a banker it's okay for me to steal from you, because it's easy for me to just modify your balance to zero, and I'm doing it with my own private pen and paper (or more accurately, my accounting mainframe).

I do think there are real challenges ahead, because it does seem like intellectual property law is fighting an ultimately losing battle. I think severing the property aspect of that creative process really would cut back on the quality of our art, culture, and equally important, our engineering.

A world in which the true creative class does not get to reap the rewards of their labors, but where "investors", "executives", and "publishers" get the lion's share seems to have things exactly backwards.

I don't like what RIAA does, and on a gut level I agree that "information wants to be free", I just don't know that it should be free, so long as we're organized under a system based largely on personal property.

Under your previously stated definitions of wealth and work, I create neither, and except for when I was young, I never have. I've always worked in some sort of idea-making role, and while I earn a comfortable living doing so, my creations are largely making other people rich.

I think a lot of this has to do with the disrespect for intellectual property; companies shouldn't be able to say "everything you create while working for us belongs to us alone" -- that is much closer to slavery than taxation ever has been.

^Well, for one, patent law is a government sponsored monopoly so that doesn't mesh well with the free market or libertarianism. For two, if you have a copyright, you get to tell me what I can and can't do with my own property. If you copyright a book you effectively become a partial owner of every pen and paper in the jurisdiction of that law -- you get to tell other people what words they can and can't write with their own pen and paper in the privacy of their own homes; and that is very much at odds with freedom or liberty.

To use the example here: file sharing of mp3s, When you download a song you aren't trespassing, stealing, destroying, or otherwise utilizing another's property you are simply rearranging the surface of your OWN hard drive based on publicly available information. To claim that one cannot rearrange their own hard drive as they wish, is to claim that one does not really own that hard drive.

The same argument can be made for patents. Imagine if someone had patented the wheel, the house, clothes, or even cooking. Patents do not foster progress, they greatly inhibit it. Property law is, in my mind, intended to protect scarce (tangible) resources; which ideas, inventions, and patterns clearly are not.

As far as programming goes, don't you think the open source movement presents a strong argument against copyright? After all, I am typing this on an Ubuntu system.

Varo is lean mean and committed to running Videosift. These other technologies are convenient for small scale sites without large user bases or dynamic content, but they can really become a PITA when you are talking about managing large dynamic communities. I promise you that the cost of ownership of Varo is much much lower than trying to shoehorn a bull like Joomla into doing all of the things we know and love about Videosift.

Like searching by channel? How efficient is it really to search through all the channels, letting users browse through pages and pages of results instead of pinpointing the places that should be searched in the first place? Look, what I'm trying to say is that building one's own CMS will always leave out basic functionality here and there. Some of it will result in uneccessary traffic. The great thing about that Google Search you posted is that while there are problems with Open Source CMSs, there are also people working on solutions to these problems. All that weight is on Lucky's shoudlers (and possibly your own, since you seem to have some insight into VaroCMS).

I don't share your bad experiences with Joomla, especially not with the editing part. However, you might be right when you say that they're unfit for this kind of community. I'd argue that you could tailor most Open Source CMS's to anything you want, but if you say that this would be more work than building VaroCMS from scratch I'll gladly take your word for it.

But what I won't believe is that this site's system has no room for improvement. If you're telling me that there are no ways to make this system more efficient and use less bandwidth and server time, putting it above and beyond all the open source cms's out there then I'd have a hard time believing you.

I don't want to clog up this thread, but let me say one more thing. I have great admiration for lucky and all the great work and effort he has put into this site and this community. I'm not trying to badmouth his work. But when all I hear is that this has been a one-man project from the technical side and then see some core functionality missing I have to start wondering how efficient the backend of the whole thing is. It might be great for all I know, but you can't blame me for wondering about it.

I have to say that Choggie's videos are perhaps the ones I've enjoyed most on the whole sift (and the site is still about videos, isn't it?), but a ban should be a ban no matter what. If you think it's too final, then you should rather work on ways for a member to get more warnings before a final ban. Stripping away star powers for offending members could also be an option. But it should not be a possibility for existing users to bring a banned member back from the dead just because they are missed. If someone wants back, they can contact the admins themselves and ask for a second chance, and the admins can confer with the community about it if they so choose. Necromancy like you are suggesting will only lead to favouritism and cliques, IMHO.

Now, Swampgirl, I understand the reason for this initative was the apparent hypocrisy of an admin posting a video and supposedly making fun of an old member. But as Lucky explains, it seems that Choggie himself is perfectly happy with his videos being sifted, without necessarily wanting to return as a member. I think it was a funny video, and would have upvoted it wether it was Choggie or not. The identity of the poster is then irrelevant, be it an admin or a regular member. Besides, any embeddable video on the net is fair game to post on VideoSift as far as I am concerned, regardless of the uploader's history.

Long story short: I believe the whole premise of this nightmarishly long debate has been rendered moot, and I don't understand why it is still an issue.






^And Linux users own you all. Bow to the power of xterm and open source!

Ok, apparently there is a lot more to it than I thought at first. I'm still mucking about trying to figure it out. I might have been mistaken in that I can only get it to rotate for playback so far.

In the meantime, go to Preferences, and click "Reset All" to get everything back to a known good place. I'm going to play around with it some more, and I'll let you know if I can get it to work.

Part of the reason for VLC's crappy UI is because it can do so many different things, it's hard to create a coherent UI for it all. The other is because it's an open source project that apparently does not have the services of a really good UI designer. And it was originally written as a command line Unix app.

I’ve added some items to the original post concerning two books on Twitter, TwitterGroups and links to the profile I have. If I think of other stuff, I’ll probably do another blog post.

In December Pownce pulled the plug and remains as an archive. Jaiku will soon follow. Plurk is similar to Twitter, but I don’t think it has as broad an appeal as does Twitter – even though it has threaded conversations. On Plurk, I am also dotartdude.

All they have to do is open source their findings and they'd save the world. You could have mini labs all over the world contributing and solving problems. No one would get rich though, and no one could hoard all the fame.

The "fix" is terrible. Mixing two systems in a single district is a nightmare for recounts or accountability of any kind. This country needs a well implemented standardized electronic voting system, it should be open-source, and it should be well reviewed.

WIKI formatting.

You know. [http://link for links]
and

• * for lists

Such a fantastic game. A short while back, I played the re-release of Star Control 2 since Toys For Bob made it open source.

You can pick and choose which sound/music packs you want to load with it, from either the PC or 3DO versions. I tried to keep it as close to the original PC settings for nostalgic reasons, but I highly enjoyed the 3DO voice acting! If you feel like cranking it up again, I recommend turning that feature on.

Very Fast! And has its own task tray so you can see all processes (and what is eating up memory)

Very cool!

Also you can detach tabs as solo windows
so so cool for reference browsing. (did I mention it's stupid fast??)

I think if I get a little netbook it will be default browser - no problems o far Great App!

Nice one google! and open source too!
I can see this getting very popular!

>> ^MaxWilder:
Politicians will never allow Open Source software in the government.
1. You will never convince them it can be secure, since anybody can find out how it works. To the old-timers, proprietary=secure.
2. There would be no way to funnel taxpayer money to their cronies.



But then old-timers also think that the internets is just a series of tubes.

Politicians will never allow Open Source software in the government.

1. You will never convince them it can be secure, since anybody can find out how it works. To the old-timers, proprietary=secure.

2. There would be no way to funnel taxpayer money to their cronies.

In reply to this comment by chilaxe:
Perhaps reinstall Firefox or do a system restore back to when it was working. Or try the open source version of word, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org

Also, if you keep your comments shorter and more to the point, there's a greater chance people will get through the whole thing

In reply to this comment by GeeSussFreeK:

{ps. anyone know of a good online spell checker? My firefox is buggerd and it spelled checked for me}


Hehe, thanks. The open office I can do, hard to keep my answers short though...im such a wind bag lol. Just been to lazy to install open office...now is as good a time as any.