[sclug] Cheap'n'nasty Tesco Linux machines

[Phillip Chandler]

Sorry I though it made sense when in the whole email. It was a judge
judy analogy, and if you know judge judy you know what Im going on
about.
It was basically trying to prove a point. The point was that I got the
impression from Mr Stallman, that his lifestyle was along the lines of
no phone, not wanting to give out personal details, squatting at his
place of work etc, because he wanted to live his life with minimal
recorded details of him. So the point was that he was cutting off his
nose to spite his face, in light of the fact that if he lived in the UK,
he would be on a min of 4 Gov databases, and Im assuming he's on the
equivalent in the country of residence. Maybe if Id used a computer
analogy it would have been clearer. My sincere appologies. But then Im
thinking Im whaffling on a bit and off the subject. We've gone from
Tesco PC's to Mr Sallman in a matter of two days.

On Sat, 2008-03-15 at 18:21 +0000, Alex Butcher wrote:
> On Sat, 15 Mar 2008, Phillip Chandler wrote:
> 
> > Richard Stallman. Id read that he even refuses to have a mobile as he
> > has to give information to a company about himself, and that he lives on
> > site as a legit squatter ? From his own site and what Id read about him,
> > I get the impression that he totally refuses to use anything that is
> > closed source, proprietary etc, and to have anything that means having
> > info store on any database ????
> 
> rms certainly does tend to live in ways highly consistent with his system of
> beliefs and values on copyright and patents. He's very much the evangelist
> for aforementioned beliefs and values, but I think he's wise enough to
> realise that not everyone finds it personally acceptable to live as he does.
> My comment regarding rms not being in favour of copyright and other
> 'intellectual property' laws being simply swept away is based upon a) the
> GPL *relying* upon copyright law in order to guarantee the freedoms it
> offers and b) a talk he gave in Bristol a few years back, and which I
> attended. In it, he proposed that different forms of creative works be given
> different types and lengths of protection. A transcript of a talk he gave in
> 2001 appears to be pretty similar to that which I remember attending -
> <http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/copyright-and-globalization.html>. Pay
> particular attention to rms' three classes of creative works; functional,
> philosophical and aesthetic about halfway through.
> 
> > Its unfortunate that unless your an illegal immigrant, and working for
> > back-handers, then you have no way of getting away from the fact, that
> > there is probably a hand full of official government databases out there
> > that contain info about a person. Im talking NI number, medical records,
> > voting register, DVLA, thats four databases for a start. The info about
> > where you have lived and worked since leaving school is available, even
> > what type of car you have driven since driving legally (You are legal
> > arnt you ?).
> 
> I'm not sure why you're bringing this topic into this discussion on the
> value (or otherwise) of copyright. Would you care to elaborate?
> 
> Best Regards,
> Alex.