I have copied all the "interesting" comments that I have made on Slashdot lately. They are in order of oldest at the top to newest at the bottom. Hope someone finds these interesting!

1. Partisan Politics. The default mode of most political systems is that an individual who wishes to participate in governance must align with a political party. Political parties are designed with the idea of opposition which is supposed to be part of a system of checks and balances. In reality, the opposition is usually only done for the sake of appearances, is not applied rationally, and actually hinders most honest efforts at governance. What is the alternative? Certainly not single-party politics! Rather, no-party politics: every politician runs independently and on their own merits. Which leads to...
2. The system of nominations, and campaigning. This system severely limits the ability of individuals to participate in governance on the basis of merit. If I am able to vote for any individual I choose, even myself, I have the proper degree of freedom. Every adult in "good standing" should be eligible, and obligated to server their electorate if chosen. And, campaigning should be forbiddens as it leads to many of the worst aspects and abuses: only those with money (or serious partisan backing) can hope to "win".

Another major problem is people's attitude towards governance as the holding of power. Rather, governance is most effective when it is considered service. And the more broad that perspective of service is, the better! Demonstrated service to humanity should be the most significant factor in our decisions about who must govern.

In this time when globalization (the good kind - and yes there is such a thing - Linux is only possible because of it) is a fact of life, when environmental and economic and social problems influence every human being on the planet, we are just being perverse if we think that we can afford to vote on any other basis than demonstrated service to humanity.

Hmm. You have some good points. Certainly, not voting is often interpreted as tacit acceptance of the status quo. But there really is a deeper problem: what if you fundamentally disagree with the system.

For example, I personally disagree with partisan politics. There is no party, and there never will be one, that represents my views simply by virtue of its existance. I don't believe in one-party politics, I believe that zero party politics is the solution. So what am I to do? My voting is tantamount to acceptance of party politics.

Another example is that I believe that I should be able to vote for literally anyone. This is because I believe that the system of nominations and campaigning is inherently subject to corruption. If I vote, I cannot truly vote for the people I believe should be responsible for the governance of the nation. This is to me a severe restriction on my freedom. Again, voting (either for someone who is on the ballot, or abstaining or spoiling my ballot) is tantamount to supporting the system of nominations and campaigning. There is no way for me to register my specific complaints.

You mention three options: leaving the country, revolution, or starting a new party. For me, leaving the country is no solution. For one thing (and this may be an issue of my own ignorance) there is no country that has a political system which conforms to my ideals. For another thing, there are other good things about where I live which amount to me accepting a tradeoff: I have no political voice, but I have access to education and healthcare that is nearly unparalleled in the world.

The option of starting a revolution turns out not to be necessary. In fact, I belong to an international organization which has implemented a system very similar to what I have described which works effectively to govern millions of people from every country in the world. Since I am in it for the long haul, I'm not too worried about the current systems, except insofar as they are contributing to strife and dissention for human beings everywhere (and for that matter, animals and plants!).

For what its worth, I should mention that I am actually Canadian. Not that it makes any difference as far as politics is concerned...

Interestingly enough nationalism is one of my biggest problems with current systems. Have you read Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson? Very good historical and philosophical analysis of the origin and evolution of the concept of nationalism.

As it happens, I am slightly on the side of activist, although in a very moderate manner. I belong to the Bahai Community which has as one of its fundamental tenets the unity of humanity. It is crucial to recognize the global scope of most of our current problems (economic, social, environmental), and that these problems can only be solved after people have recognized their fundamental unity.

Technically, there is a way out of the dilemma presented by partisan politics: vote for an individual. Interview the candidates, learn about their character, and in particular their record of service to humanity. Vote on that basis and hopefully it will be sufficient. Realistically, I'm pretty doubtful about any politician in today's culture...

By the way, I am Canadian. Not that it matters as far as politics is concerned...

Actually, for what its worth, the reason I remain in Canada is because I pay higher taxes there than I would in the United States...

WHAT!!!?

Yup. That's my way of contributing. I am by far in the highest tax bracket in Canada which means I pay more than 50% of my income into taxes. Taxes which support universal health care, and relatively inexpensive, very high quality education.

Yes. Fortunately I am easy to ignore...

FWIW, I've had a small FreeBSD 4 box running for 150 days with no downtime. I server several domains using sendmail and apache. I have all the bad services turned off and I use ssh to get to the box - including getting and sending email. The box is a Pentium 233 w/ 32 MB Ram and an 8gig hd. Just so noone thinks I don't push the box, I've done _many_ installs and de-installs from the ports collection, I've got PostgreSQL running as well as Tomcat. I do java development on it from remote, and since I'm a relative novice for sysadmining, I do some pretty darn stupid things sometimes.

The box is rock solid. Just recently I had a runaway process consuming 100% cpu and several megs of process memory - and I didn't notice for over three weeks! Kill -9 PID got rid of it and the system is still going fabulously.

The system is located with a really small colo facility (how small? I was their first client about 7 months ago!), it has a UPS and it hasn't been down or disconnected since I flipped the switch on it. Oh. BTW, it's in Ontario, in Canada, and I've been in California for the last five months. I haven't even gone in to stroke the darn thing!

Its fun having my very own little server :0)

Just to remain on-topic, I'll through in a few more tidbits about the DIY option that I've learned. Shop around for colo for price if it concerns you. I was getting quotes in the USD500/month range, but by finding these small-timers, I'm down at about USD180/month. Also, they don't require me to have a rack mounted computer - nice since they tend to be quite a bit more pricey.

Also, just for some perspective, I haven't used Linux, and my other UNIX experience is while I was working at Sun with Solaris which was definately more unstable (restart required about once every two weeks). I have a friend who runs OpenBSD and has a similar stability record to my FreeBSD box. I have another friend with lots of (unasked-for) NT experience who is actually quite happy with its stability - though I don't know the numbers.

Hope this little summary helps if you go the DIY path.

I used to do a bit of WebObjects development back in the OpenStep days. WebObjects had three great things going for it: great tools, fantastic database connectivity middleware, and really solid web scripting and tag extentions.

Recently, I have been doing Java 2 Enterprise Edition development. At my day job, I am working in a high availability application server environment, and in my night job, I am prototyping a educational web system. In that second role I am using JSP's. (Dislaimer: I love Java compared to C++ but hate it compared to Objective-C.) As the article points out, the tool support is missing, and I personally find JDBC to be a pretty weak database interface, but the actual JSP technology is really cool! I've been working on custom tag extentions and they really rock - solving the problem of separating display code (html) from business logic and model code (accomplished with the use of JavaBeans and EJB's).

Personally, I think that the Java platform is the way to go in the long run. JSP's are a really good step to completing the platform and the Tomcat reference implementation is a great tool for prototyping.

This document/article does make some good points which relate to some of the main reasons why I have not embraced Linux (I'm a FreeBSD guy).

1. The license. I know, I know, the GPL is not just a legal document, but also a philosophy. The problem, is I think that it actually is self-destructive. The very nature of a viral license is to reduce the Freedom of Information. Not only that, but it really sucks from a legal perspective. The fact is, the boundary between what is allowed with the GPL and what is not, is very, very poorly defined. (See below for an example.)


2. Forking/competition. The whole KDE/Gnome thing just sucks. The fact is that competition should never have priority over unity (in my philosophical opinion). This means that competition for its own sake as seen in partisan politics, the economy, and software development is a ridiculous goal/justification for peoples inability to get along. That simple. ('Scuze me for the inflamatory remarks, but I feel pretty strongly about this.)

Hmm. Actually, the real question is "what constitutes distribution?". Binaries?

The recent DeCSS case is a really good example of the arbitrariness of setting a line of distribution. Think about this for a moment then read on...

Basically, software is information, and the GPL is a means to a philosophical approach to information, namely to ensure that the information encoded in software remains free. This is why the GPL bothers with derived works. So then the question is what is a derived work. Certainly there is a legal definition, but that definition is not apropos to this discussion. Why? Precisely because the GPL is about a completely different philosophy. The GPL attempts to subvert current legal theory and practice to create a new pholosophical framework for the freedom of information.

So, just what is the relationship between information and software? Well, to hear the DeCSS "team's" views on it, software is a form of expression. I believe this to be true. This is also fairly similar to the philosophy implied in the GPL. In fact, software is information at two levels: the symbols in which software is expressed, and the process/method which those symbols represent.

I would assert that the real goal of the GPL is to protect that second aspect: the process/method. I don't know this for certain, but the fact that derived works are protected and the fact that porting and linking are aspects discussed by the FSF Licenses, are good hints. This of course implies that the symbols aspect should also be protected as it is the original encoding of the process.

So now lets use some hypothetical examples to illustrate where those foundational comments lead.

All examles are based on the following scenario: Software "A" is GPL'd. I download an executable, run it a few times, and decide that I would like to use this functionality in Software "B" that I am writing.

1. I download "A"'s source, which happens to be written in C, and statically link it to "B". I then go out and share "B" with my friends neglecting to mention that source is available. VIOLATION!

2. Like 1., but link as a shared lib, and distribute "B" without "A", and without source. VIOLATION!

3. Write and distribute software "C" which automajically downloads "A", downloads "B"'s source, modifies "B"'s source for optimizations, builds "B" and runs "B". "C" is not distributed with source nor under the GPL. VIOLATION?

4. "A" is a reverse engineered version of X which has known public API's. Write and distribute software "C" which parses natural language queries in the domain of "X" and searches for software executables which implement "X"'s apis, downloads those executables, transforms the query into calls to the "X" apis, and then executes those calls on "A". "C" is not GPL'd. VIOLATION?

5. Write and distribute software "C" which parses natural language queries and searches for software executables to satisfy those queries. One query finds and installs "A" and "B" and then launches them. "C" is not GPL'd. VIOLATION? It uses "A", it distributes "A".

6. Write and distribute a document "C" with instructions on how to write "B", how to obtain "A", with no source, and not GPL'd. VIOLATION? Are instructions considered code? Is language and the brain considered sufficient as an executable?

Read "Le Ton Beau De Marot", "Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies" and "Godel Escher and Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter to discover the real depth to this problem: what constitutes "linking", "distribution", "derived works" and "use".

that the gaining popularity of Linux, the resurgence of Apple and its impending roll-out of BSD/Mach based OS X, are causing a significant amount of upset in the operating system market. So what?

Well, as a comp-sci degree holder, I know that there are a heck of a lot of "Really Good Ideas" out there that have to do with operating systems. Linux, the BSD's, and a bunch of research os's are all playing with these things.

That makes me hopeful that at some point fairly soon, perhaps in a couple of years, there will be enough fragmentation of the OS markets that it will be possible for a really new, really good OS paradigm to sneak up and win.

Now, I don't mean that Linux is bad or any other imagined slight. Linux is pretty darn good, but it doesn't really operate on a new technological paradigm. Most of its popularity is based on its unique development paradigm (Free/Open Source/Community software). As it transitions to popularity based on familiarity and demonstrated capability, it will become more difficult to change.

I have to say that I don't really know much about OS theory - so I might be full of it, but these are just random musings so... TIWAGOS (Take It With A Grain Of Salt).