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The fatal flaw of libertarianism, exemplified by BSD vs GPL
I'll get right to the point: libertarianism's fatal flaw is that it commits a fallacy, the name of which I do not know, in assuming that the fewest up-front restrictions on personal freedoms necessarily and inevitably translates into the most freedom for the most people into the indefinite future.
The BSD vs GPL licensing example is perhaps the single best illustration of this I've seen in the tech world to date. Debate, and I use the term charitably, rages on still about the merits of each license, with the BSD partisans making almost verbatim the exact same argument just laid out above: that the BSD license is morally, ethically, and pragmatically superior because it places fewer restrictions on who may do what with the code.
By contrast, they say, the GPL is infectious, inserting itself like a retrovirus into the replication machinery of any code licensed with it and forcing certain behaviors (redistribution of source) the BSD types disagree with. As I understand it, the reason they give explicitly for disliking this is that it means fewer people will use the GPL compared to the BSD license, which theoretically therefore translates into BSD-licensed code both proliferating and persisting more than its GPL'd siblings.
What this *actually* means, on the psychological and perhaps subconscious level, is "fuck you, I won't do what you tell me." Sorry guys, but it's the truth: dress it up however you like, but the underlying principle here is "I don't wanna share."
It also betrays an almost stunning naivete about human nature, the very same one that small-L-libertarianism itself seems predicated on. There is a sort of ceteris paribus assumption at work here, one which assumes that the wide world of coding is meritocratic (it is not), equal-access (it is not), and measures worth solely on quality, correctness, usefulness, etc., of code (it does not). It is the Just World Fallacy writ small and in C, you might say.
It *completely* fails to take into account human nature, and such wholly non-technical yet pervasive and powerful human engines of corruption as the corporation. Witness Theo de Raadt's anger, entirely justified morally but also entirely his own fault, over the lack of gratitude from corporations who took OpenSSH and OpenBSD itself for their own use and contributed back, perhaps, a single laptop, which took over a year to arrive.
From the outside, this makes perfect sense. I mean, if you leave a plate of cookies out with a sign that says "free cookies," you don't have a right to complain when someone comes by and takes the entire plate for him/herself. But somehow this simple and obvious line of thought seems to elude the BSD-license partisans, or maybe they quash it for ideological reasons, such as faith (and it *is* a faith position...) in the idea that their code will conquer by virtue of spreading far and wide and continuing to evolve.
In addition to being an oddly r-type strategy for the kind of people who, well, think in terms of r-type and K-type to begin with, they neglect to reckon with the fact that entities with larger resource bases than they do can close the source. Oh, yes, you still have the original code and can fork it, but de facto, the original code *becomes* the fork, due to lack of reach and distribution. Hobbyist coders, who are mostly the ones who use the license, simply cannot compete with BigCorp Inc's programmers, not on time, not on money, and in some cases not on talent, at least not collectively. The world does not work like a cartoon (there's that Just World Fallacy again!); the plucky underdog usually gets beaten nine ways from Sunday and loses everything.
Far from being the unwashed moon-unit closet Communists they are accused of being, the GPL's partisans understand human nature all too well, and in particular have come to grips with the fact that we are not angels. They understand that sometimes a couple of well-placed extra regulations can end up preventing a lot of real restrictions on freedom later on.
Mandating that the source be redistributed while allowing charge for the distribution of binaries is actually much more free-market in the long term, in that it ensures that should the distributing entity get greedy and stupid, current, relevant source is available for immediate forkage. Now this doesn't solve the problem with the gap in power and reach between the underdog and BigCorp Inc, but it *does* mean that the value and hard work put into the original code is not lost to the greater community, i.e., the barrier to entry is *lower* in this case since one need not attempt to reverse-engineer everything that happened since BigCorp Inc acquired and closed the source after forking it.
The real point to all this is that this BSD/GPL dust-up is a microcosm of small-L-libertarian thinking and the central fallacy therein. In life, as in coding, the smallest up-front number of restrictions on personal freedom does *not* translate into the most freedom for the most people for the greatest amount of time. In fact, it doesn't take too much brainwork even from a purely deductive standpoint, with no empirical observation whatsoever needing to be done, to see that this is so: game theory and the iterated prisoners' dilemma, for example.
We have a number of such posters on this board who are frankly completely round the twist on this, as religious as any suicide bomber, and I'm *not* just talking about the "violently-imposed monopoly" spammer. Worse still, they consider themselves some sort of original, enlightened, superior thinkers, as if they're the first ones to do the ideological equivalent of dropping trou and pissing an Anarchy symbol into the snow, reality and human nature and empirical observation be damned. Dunning-Krugeritis affects this crowd badly, and prevents them from having the humility to examine their beliefs critically. Worse still, they act as if they're morally as well as intellectually superior.
Well, libertarians, I leave you this thought: two wrongs might not make a right, but sometimes they can prevent a third, fourth, fifth, or hundredth wrong, or much worse wrongs. Your misplaced purity obsession leads to far worse in the medium and long term, and you're too full of yourselves to see it, or even open your eyes to look. The world is not just, humans are not angels, there are other shades besides #000000 and #FFFFFF, and emergent behavior is a thing.
For the love of Stallman, THINK. As the point of code is not code for code's sake, the point of the economy is not making money for money's sake. Do not let the tools become the masters of the craftsmen (and women) using them. Remember than money was made for humans, not humans for money. The root of all evil is treating people like things and things like people.
Murder of Two Cyclists Covered Up in Mexico
Mexico says round-the-world cyclists were murdered
Mexican investigators say two European cyclists did not die in an accident as first claimed - they were murdered. The bodies of Holger Hagenbusch, from Germany, and Krzysztof Chmielewski, from Poland, were found at the bottom of a cliff in Chiapas state.
Local authorities had said the pair appeared to have fallen after losing control. However, relatives and fellow cyclists suspected it was more sinister, and had called for a deeper investigation.
The newly appointed special prosecutor, Luis Alberto Sánchez, said, on Friday, that they were killed in what appears to have been a robbery. "Our investigations up to now indicate this was an intentional homicide," he said.
[...] After travelling to Mexico to identify his brother's body, [Reiner] also found out information about the Polish biker. "The Polish cyclist was decapitated and had a foot missing," he wrote on Facebook.
[...] Chmielewski sustained a head injury that may be a gunshot wound, said Mr Sánchez. His body was found next to a bike - but it was not his own. It belonged to his German companion, which aroused suspicions.
Web 1.9999999ification
Hey look everybody, I've momentarily(?) become a self-indulgent prima donna that chooses to waste everyone's time by posting vapid, self-referential crap on this as yet unused little corner of the web called "acid andy's Journal"!
It was just looking a bit empty so I thought I'd experiment by writing something here. Doubtless it'll annoy a few people, but I'm somewhat used to that, even if it makes me a little uncomfortable on some deeper, more subconscious level.
Isn't writing about yourself in a journal a bit sorta social networkish? I mean, where do you draw the line between a journal and a fucking "blog"? Is this web 2.0? It better not be! I seem to have some religious aversion to that term. It reminds me of disgusting things like F***book and Beta.
If anyone likes or hates hearing my ramblings, I'll probably try this again sometime. I might even come up with a topic. Something technical maybe, or broadly philosophical, or an angry rant about how few people make allowances for nerdy, eccentric, self-indulgent weirdos. Did I manage self-deprecation there? Seems doubtful.
OK, enough! acid andy out. *BOOM!*
P. S. This drivel was fuelled by nothing more than a very unusually excessive amount of exercise and more coffee than usual.
P. P. S. Did I bore you to tears yet?
That time Obama brought home hostages from North Korea
President Trump on Wednesday hailed the release of three U.S. detainees in North Korea, but in negotiating with Kim Jong Un, the Trump administration may have played into Pyongyang's history of "hostage diplomacy," harshly criticized by National Security Adviser John Bolton when Barack Obama was president.
Bolton admonished Obama in 2009 for engaging in “political ransom” with North Korea after Obama dispatched another former president, Bill Clinton, to negotiate the release of two American journalists. Bolton argued it put humanitarian aid workers, academics and other Americans at risk. It also gave the north "political legitimacy" and emboldened Iran and other autocracies to take similar steps to gain leverage on the United States.
"Despite decades of bipartisan U.S. rhetoric about not negotiating with terrorists for the release of hostages, it seems that the Obama administration not only chose to negotiate, but to send a former president to do so," Bolton, who worked as ambassador to the United Nations for President George W. Bush, wrote in an op-ed in the Washington Post that year.
"The reporters' arrest, show trial and subsequent imprisonment (twelve years hard labor) was hostage taking, essentially an act of state terrorism," Bolton added. "So the Clinton trip is a significant propaganda victory for North Korea, whether or not he carried an official message from President Obama.”
Trump adviser Bolton criticized Obama's 'hostage' talks; now welcomes them with North Korea
LDS Church Splits With "Boy" Scouts
Republicans lying about WMDs...
...worked out so well last time!
White Women's Weaponized Tears
How white women use strategic tears to avoid accountability
What We Know (And Don't Know) About 'Missing White Women Syndrome' (i.e. you don't even need to see the tears to weaponize them)
Looks Like You're Stuck With Me
Well, I asked NCommander nicely if I could be fired for triggering up some SJW butthurt this week but it seems being freed from doing most of the adminy and codey stuff around here to return to a leisurely life of porn, fishing, and vidya is not in the cards at the moment. Ah well. When life hands you lemons, bean the people who annoy you in the face with them.
R U even juuling, bro?
Student warns about 'Juuling' trend in eye-opening video
Juul, the vape device teens are getting hooked on, explained
arrr yooo {2Z} juuling Delysid in class, breh¿
Trump is Lying More Now than at Beginning of his Presidency
President Donald Trump and the truth have grown more distant in recent months, according to a new analysis.
The Washington Post has been tracking the president’s false or misleading claims since he took office in January of last year.
In total he has averaged 6.5 false or misleading claims a day, but that the number of those claims has crept up since the beginning of his presidency. In the first 100 days of his administration, Trump averaged just 4.9 of those claims a day. In the last two months, that rate has almost doubled to 9 false or misleading claims a day, according to the Post. However, that number is bolstered by Trump’s rally in Michigan last week, where he lied 44 times during an 80-minute speech.
DONALD TRUMP IS LYING MORE NOW THAN HE WAS AT THE BEGINNING OF HIS PRESIDENCY
