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"Ken Starks It's the way of The Internet. What was once a raging firefight between two or more factions, is now a topic dead and forgotten somewhere on Slashdot or within other piles of forgotten Internetia. What was once a topic or cause over which to go to war, now only survives as fodder for The Oatmeal or other hip and funny sites. I'm talking about former the-tempests-in-a-teapot for such things as: #systemd #Mir #it_is_GNU/Linux_you_luddite Well, you get the idea…"

"Ken Starks It's the way of The Internet. What was once a raging firefight between two or more factions, is now a topic dead and forgotten somewhere on Slashdot or within other piles of forgotten Internetia. What was once a topic or cause over which to go to war, now only survives as fodder for The Oatmeal or other hip and funny sites. I'm talking about former the-tempests-in-a-teapot for such things as: #systemd #Mir #it_is_GNU/Linux_you_luddite Well, you get the idea…"

"The impact of technological change on culture, learning, and morality has long been the subject of intense debate, and every technological revolution brings out a fresh crop of both pessimists and pollyannas. Indeed, a familiar cycle has repeat itself throughout history whenever new modes of production (from mechanized agriculture to assembly-line production), means of transportation (water, rail, road, or air), energy production processes (steam, electric, nuclear), medical breakthroughs (vaccination, surgery, cloning), or communications techniques (telegraph, telephone, radio, television) have appeared on the scene. The cycle goes something like this. A new technology appears. Those who fear the sweeping changes brought about by this technology see a sky that is about to fall. These "techno-pessimists" predict the death of the old order (which, ironically, is often a previous generation's hotly-debated technology that others wanted slowed or stopped). Embracing this new technology, they fear, will result in the overthrow of traditions, beliefs, values, institutions, business models, and much else they hold sacred. The pollyannas, by contrast, look out at the unfolding landscape and see mostly rainbows in the air. Theirs is a rose-colored world in which the technological revolution du jour is seen as improving the general lot of mankind and bringing about a better order. If something has to give, then the old ways be damned! For such "techno-optimists," progress means some norms and institutions must adapt-perhaps even disappear-for society to continue its march forward. Our current Information Revolution is no different. It too has its share of techno-pessimists and techno-optimists. Indeed, before most of us had even heard of the Internet, people were already fighting about it-or at least debating what the rise of the Information Age meant for our culture, society, and economy."

does Kurtopia need someone to mow the lawn?

no, but we do need someone to take our throm-dib-u-lator apart though

"First, you should observe that there are two distinct domains - the descriptive domain and the predictive domain - and that data and information belong to the descriptive domain. I like Davenport and Prusaks' (1998, pp 2-3) definition of data as being "a set of discrete, objective facts existing in symbolic form that have not been interpreted". The symbolic form may be text, images, or pre-processed code. Data is usually organised into structured records, however it lacks context. The declaration 'Iron melts at 1,538 degrees Celsius.' is a data statement because it has no context. In this model when data is enriched by adding context it may become information. Information is data with a message, and therefore has a receiver and sender. It is data with relevance and purpose that is useful for a particular task, and is meant to enlighten the receiver and shape their outlooks or insights. Information results in an action that allows the data to be applied to a specific set of circumstances and to be employed effectively. Data only becomes information after it has been interpreted by the receiver. Furthermore information is descriptive. For example the statement 'Newcastle steel-mill's smelter temperature has been set at 2,300 degrees Celsius.' conveys information because it has been enriched by context. The enrichment from data to information is a 'know what and how' procedure that results in an understanding of relationships and patterns. However, information by itself remains descriptive and without additional data or information it cannot be used to predict an event or outcome."

[ Posted May 6, 2015 By Bruce Byfield Submit Feedback » More Articles » Every since Linux first became popular, articles have been condemning its shortcomings. Hardly a month goes by without someone explaining what Linux lacks, or how it needs a particular feature, application, or service to be usable-- and, as often as not, the complaints are misguided.]

[ Posted May 6, 2015 By Bruce Byfield Submit Feedback » More Articles » Every since Linux first became popular, articles have been condemning its shortcomings. Hardly a month goes by without someone explaining what Linux lacks, or how it needs a particular feature, application, or service to be usable-- and, as often as not, the complaints are misguided.]

"Phil Shapiro The Video Screening Room The DMCA doesn't just make it illegal for you to circumvent DRM to rip and burn a DVD of 'War Games' or to install a pirated copy of Windows. It also can make it illegal for you to repair or modify things you own. Public television and radio in the United States have been surprisingly shy about covering the open source movement, but this video by Mike Rugnetta at PBS Digital Studios shows that they may be waking up."

"Phil Shapiro The Video Screening Room The DMCA doesn't just make it illegal for you to circumvent DRM to rip and burn a DVD of 'War Games' or to install a pirated copy of Windows. It also can make it illegal for you to repair or modify things you own. Public television and radio in the United States have been surprisingly shy about covering the open source movement, but this video by Mike Rugnetta at PBS Digital Studios shows that they may be waking up."

" There are four billion people on the planet without PCs or access to affordable personal computers. That figure should surely be tempered with some contextualization i.e. not everybody actually wants to have an Internet connection and many traditional, native or bucolic ways of live do still exist on the planet"

" There are four billion people on the planet without PCs or access to affordable personal computers. That figure should surely be tempered with some contextualization i.e. not everybody actually wants to have an Internet connection and many traditional, native or bucolic ways of live do still exist on the planet"

"A startling fact is that there are in excess of a billion people who have some type of disability. That represents approximately 15% of the world's population with a physical, sensory or mental limitation that interferes with their ability to move, see, hear or learn. 350 million people in the world are partially sighted or blind. "

"Christine Hall When I read that the Takoma Park Maryland Library has 28 workstations running Linux, I literally couldn't believe it. Really? A library offering the public Linux? Whenever I go to a library, all I ever see are Windows machines or maybe a Mac or two. When I mention Linux as an alternative, and I sometimes do, I'm usually met with blank stares and the staff begins to think I'm nuts."

"Christine Hall When I read that the Takoma Park Maryland Library has 28 workstations running Linux, I literally couldn't believe it. Really? A library offering the public Linux? Whenever I go to a library, all I ever see are Windows machines or maybe a Mac or two. When I mention Linux as an alternative, and I sometimes do, I'm usually met with blank stares and the staff begins to think I'm nuts."

"But what about the kinds of jobs where measuring someone's "output" isn't about counting the number of widgets they produced, but rather it's about how they managed a team or influenced others or helped people collaborate better? While it might be easy to measure someone's output on an assembly line, how do we decide how well a manager manages or a leader leads?"

The networked information economy improves the practical capacities of individuals along three dimensions: (1) it improves their capacity to do more for and by themselves; (2) it enhances their capacity to do more in loose commonality with others, without being constrained to organize their relationship through a price system or in traditional hierarchical models of social and economic organization; and (3) it improves the capacity of individuals to do more in formal organizations that operate outside the market sphere. This enhanced autonomy is at the core of all the other improvements I describe. Individuals are using their newly expanded practical freedom to act and cooperate with others in ways that improve the practiced experience of democracy, justice and development, a critical culture, and community. ... [M]y approach heavily emphasizes individual action in nonmarket relations. Much of the discussion revolves around the choice between markets and nonmarket social behavior. In much of it, the state plays no role, or is perceived as playing a primarily negative role, in a way that is alien to the progressive branches of liberal political thought. In this, it seems more of a libertarian or an anarchistic thesis than a liberal one. I do not completely discount the state, as I will explain. But I do suggest that what is special about our moment is the rising efficacy of individuals and loose, nonmarket affiliations as agents of political economy.

"by Cathleen O'Grady Nov 24 2014, 4:00am CET If you know how to do something and people around you start doing it differently, you have two options: stick to what you know, or change to use their strategy. If the new strategy is more efficient than yours, or gets better results, it's a no-brainer, so you switch. But if it's exactly as efficient and produces the same results, the decision to switch is based on another factor-conformity."

"by Cathleen O'Grady Nov 24 2014, 4:00am CET Share Tweet 24 If you know how to do something and people around you start doing it differently, you have two options: stick to what you know, or change to use their strategy. If the new strategy is more efficient than yours, or gets better results, it's a no-brainer, so you switch. But if it's exactly as efficient and produces the same results, the decision to switch is based on another factor-conformity."

"You can help foster this in your community, or employees, or teammates by not being too helpful and allowing people to pitch in."

"You can help foster this in your community, or employees, or teammates by not being too helpful and allowing people to pitch in."

"January 14, 2016 Joe Collins 0 Comment How To There is one application that I simply must have on every Linux system I install and that's htop. It doesn't matter whether it's a virtual machine or installed on hardware. It doesn't matter what distribution it is or whether the system is running a GUI Desktop Environment or not, I gotta have htop. It has become such an integral part of "

"Whether it's video from the Internet Archive, music from Creative Commons, or audiobooks from Librivox, you can play it right away. You don't have to wait for it to finish downloading. WebTorrent - network of peers WebTorrent Desktop connects to both BitTorrent and WebTorrent peers. It can talk to peers running Transmission or uTorrent, and it can also talk to web pages like instant.io."

"Whether it's video from the Internet Archive, music from Creative Commons, or audiobooks from Librivox, you can play it right away. You don't have to wait for it to finish downloading. WebTorrent - network of peers WebTorrent Desktop connects to both BitTorrent and WebTorrent peers. It can talk to peers running Transmission or uTorrent, and it can also talk to web pages like instant.io."

"In other words, they opined, it's the desktop, and not the distro, which represents the operating system - or even the entire computer - to most users."

"The FOSS Force Poll Inquiring minds wanted to know, so we asked. When choosing what to run on a machine - we're talking computing machines running GNU/Linux here - what's more important, the choice of distro or which desktop environment to run? We began asking"

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"Today, let us talk about a simple, yet another must-have utility in your arsenal. Meet agedu, a small utility that tracks down the wasted disk space in your Linux system. Running out of disk space? No worries! Install agedu and find out which directories or files are consuming more space. Just delete them if they are no longer needed or move them safely to an archive medium to free up some space. It works on Windows and Unix-like operating systems. It is available under MIT license. That means you can use it for free, copy, distribute, and reuse."

"Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act forbids a wide range of speech, from remix videos that rely upon circumvention, to academic security research, to publication of software that can help repair your car or back up your favorite show. It potentially implicates the entire range of speech that relies on access to copyrighted works or describes flaws in access controls-even where that speech is clearly noninfringing."

"It was in Russia that the word "oligarchs" was first used to denote very rich businessmen. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has adopted the term to refer to billionaires who create or take over media empires to serve their business or political interests. There is a worldwide trend towards increasingly concentrated ownership of conglomerates that combine media outlets (TV channels, radio stations, newspapers and news websites) with banks, telecoms, property firms and construction companies. All this suits the rulers of countries such as China that espoused capitalism in order to better suppress democracy. "