Nothing to do with Linux Re: 2021

The Natural Philosopher

2021-01-07 06:29:41 UTC

Post by B1ackwater
I'm old enough to remember exactly what "commie" means.
There are a lot of ex-USSR/Cuba/STASI-East-Germans/Cambodians
who damned well know as well. They ARE out there, you only have
to talk to them.
"Utopia" - for the masters. Pure Hell for everyone else. Fascism
was simple and mellow by comparison. Carefully re-read your
Orwell, he understood the reality-bending aspects quite well.
We saw it just the other day when Pelosi voted to ban "gender
based" language in the Congress. Far-leftism is beyond Orwellian,
beyond Kafkaesque - more "Dali-esque" surrealism. The idea is
to make sure nobody understands anything - the death of Reality.
But again this has nothing to do with Linux.

Actually it does. Linux, free software, the Internet and open source is
something that would never ever happen in a totalitarian regime.

I remember back in the day when we were pushing TCP/IP against the
government approved big businesses designed X protocols, that people
objected to SMTP email on the grounds it had no mechanism to tell you if
delivery had been achieved. We pointed out that it was far more often
achieved than with X400!

It is a question of design by committee, implemented by worker ants over
decades, versus designed by a couple of blokes in a
shed/garage/basement/skunk works,. and succeeding because its right
there at the time when it's needed.

Remember Interop? we didn't refer boundary implementation problems to a
central committee or authority to arbitrate over whose protocol was not
working, or to assign blame, we worked out why kit wouldn’t talk, fixed
it till it did, and then wrote that up as an RFC which other people
could comply with, if they wanted to sell stuff, or not, if they didn't.

That whole model is deeply libertarian and market orientated. It was
absolutely the opposite if the top down 'dirigiste' style thinking of
the Left.

It is all about a free economy that grows where it finds nourishment and
dies where it finds none, versus a planned centralised economy and
society which keeps things going when they should die and stifles new
growth because it wasn't planned.

Forget personalities: Think system theory. Which responds better to
changing conditions, a slow highly centralised control system where each
and every detail is analysed by a central authority, or a decentralised
system where feedback is localised and local decisions are taken
locally, and only broad strategic feedback is applied overall?

Imagine device drivers written in BASIC and run as part of the central
core programs

That's Big State. Trying to achieve world government, and a flat uniform
society that all buys McDonalds, uses Amazon and face-book and Microsoft
windows.

The UK, having left the EU, is now injecting people with any frigging
vaccine that has a chance of working. The European Union is still
debating over which one is best...and the drug companies are lobbying
hard, brown envelopes are doubtless being passed, and no doubt the
approved vaccine will be from the biggest European drug company with the
deepest pockets. And no alternatives will be tried at all.

Uniformity, versus diversity, sluggish bureaucratic centralisation
versus vibrant unplanned market economy.Rule by people with
qualifications versus rule by people who succeeded.

Never mind trump, are you at heart a 'liberal' - in favour of
centralised controlled society (for the best possible reasons of
COURSE!), or a libertarian, in favour of society going wherever it can
find its own nourishment?

The USA has been slavishly following the European road to communism, in
the guise of a moral crusade. Run by big business for big business - how
much easier it is to have a product stamped 'government approved' than
to ensure it is actually of quality and what people actually want!

A lot of people voted for Trump. Is one half of America really stupid,
ignorant, deplorable and lacking in moral conscience?

Strangely, when more than half (of the people who bothered to vote)
voted to leave the EU, we got *exactly* the same description applied to
*us*.

How could the USA vote for such a terrible man?

Perhaps because he wasn't ramming a woke agenda down their throats
strangling off their free enterprise and handing it all to a
multinational on a plate.

You are still free to vote, but in this welter of fake news, propaganda,
glove puppets, zombies and outright lies, do you know who you are
*really* voting for? Or what their agenda *really* is?

--
“It is hard to imagine a more stupid decision or more dangerous way of
making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people
who pay no price for being wrong.”

Thomas Sowell