DISQUS

The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs: Jaron Lanier takes on the freetards

  • Marc Andreessen · 1 year ago
    Lanier is right. And Firefox is another example -- not much innovation, but a polished copy of what's come before. iRider and Opera are examples of a really innovative browsers, and they're not open source.
  • Koka Sexton · 1 year ago
    OMG. How long does one have to stop showering to get hair to look like that?
  • deathbychichi · 1 year ago
    I'm one of the freetards and there's nothing free to compare to Final Cut, Logic, Photoshop et al. That's not to say the Internet isn't built on free software!

    Open source is great where stuff is well defined and you can basically mathematically prove the righteousness of your update, but it's like a committee coming up with a logo -- given enough participants, they'll always come up with a blue rectangle.

    For truly innovative stuff, the good stuff still comes from, as Brooks said, a "small number of agreeing, resonant minds."
  • Tennessee Tuxedo · 1 year ago
    Wow. That final sentence caused me to blow an entire slice of DiGiorno through my nose.

    I've got to say I think Jaron Lanier has my number. GNU has software tools that are an engineer's wet dream, and in that sense they're beautiful, but ultimately they are insignificant to all but an elite, egomaniacal few of us.
  • GNUYella · 1 year ago
    The GNU tools are NOT very impressive. They lag commercial tools and have done so for over a decade. Whew.
  • Walt · 1 year ago
    ROTFLMAO! I had to wipe the spit off my screen after I read that last line. Whoopi... hahaha
  • gmail · 1 year ago
    Dude could use a closed-source hair stylist. And ain't no way near as cute as Naked Jen for true.
  • lastangelman · 1 year ago
    There's freetards and property-tards and then there's pragmatists, who uses the best of both propriety-ware and FOSS and freely gives the finger to the extremists from both camps. Both sides CAN work side by side and get the job done.
    BTW,
    When did Jabba The Hut have a kid with Whoopie Goldberg?
  • Toki_chan · 1 year ago
    The opposite of Apple, who is one of the most innovative companies... and one of the company that creates and defends it's patents.
  • Sasnak · 1 year ago
    I can't believe this shit!
  • lastangelman · 1 year ago
    Shit IS unbelievable. But there it is, staring at you, smiling, getting right up your nose, weakening your knees, watering up your eyes, turning your stomach with its kryptonite-like powers. It's even worse if it is Somebody Else's Shit. You can't kill shit, at best you can cover it up, but sooner or later, everyone knows, it's there, in the room, lurking, infecting the atmosphere. You couldn't make this shit up. But there it is.
    Shit happens.
  • faddah · 1 year ago
    lastangelman — very good post. it suddenly explains to me nearly every fucking thing you've ever had an opinion on. thank you for that. no really. thank you.
  • lastangelman · 1 year ago
    Your welcome, faddah, unfortunately there's no explaining you or your opinions but that's okay, I don't try to focus or obsess on the inconsequential .
  • Mike Cane · 1 year ago
    faddah: Don't boddah. Given his handle, we can hope for truth in advertising -- and his extinction.
  • CS Clark · 1 year ago
    I love his description of a distraught Richard Stallman close to tears. Explains a lot, really, in that Stallman obviously was driven crazy-mad with grief and has been out for revenge to make sure his heart isn't broken again, like a friend who becomes misogynist because of one bad breakup. Poor little guy.

    Oh, and Jaron Lanier looks like this - http://tinyurl.com/2wuzcv - in real life but he puts on the freak suit for gigs because he knows the freetards and wikians wouldn't even listen to him criticise if they thought he wore a tie and shoes on a regular basis. But I realise you, FSJ, already know this and are just playing along to make me look a fool yadda yadda yadda... schtick's getting a bit old, tbh.
  • History Lesson · 1 year ago
    If Stallman was sucking on the public teet of MIT he'd never be able to make his idiotic statements. It'd be interesting to see what would happen if he actually had to work for a real company that had to make a product and sell it so it could stay in business and feed it's employees.
  • Mike Cane · 1 year ago
    >>>You big fat Whoopie Goldberg looking freak.

    You know, I was eating when I hit that and burst out in uncontrollable laughter.

    You would have more mercy if you just reached through the screen to kill me cleanly!!

    Scoble Twitter Update: Someone strangle me, pleez!!
  • lazyMan · 1 year ago
    I have to point out that have yet to see a picture of this guy where he doesn't look stoned out of his mind.
  • faddah · 1 year ago
    ahem ... we, uhh... just won't mention ... that iPhone runs on OS X ... which is from BSD Unix ... the root of which is ... errr ... (shh!) open source ... ahem ...

    uh, nothing to see here, folks! move along! move along! show's over! ...
  • drubart · 1 year ago
    But we WILL mention that the stuff in OSX that makes BSD not suck (like it usually does) is NOT Open-source.
  • comanchezen · 1 year ago
    yeah, but i'd hardly call bsd the product of the freetard movement. it remains the only legitimately at&t licensed derivative of the real, canonical unix, making it more of the next evolution of unix underpinnings than the polished turd that is linux...
  • History Lesson · 1 year ago
    Unix was developed by ATT and is definately not open source. Great job on your history dweeb.
  • ziggie · 1 year ago
    JL has been wrong about everything that he's said so far ... I don't think he's changing his track record with this. Have you visited all the VRML sites that he proselytized ten years ago? They don't exist because he was THAT wrong. If he was so plugged in why didn't he predict the Internet bust? Did he say anything ten years ago about social media? (no) Go get 'em FSJ!!!!!!
  • anon · 1 year ago
    Yeah. But you are forgetting something. He has dreads.