romanovic

Users have the right to break or circumvent geoblocks, DRM, and other technological mechanisms that would prevent them from discovering, viewing, and archiving information that they have lawful access to.

I would personally reword the end of the sentence to be "...discovering, viewing, and archiving any discoverable information." I do think the abolishment of copyright and other IP is an important and necessary step of our progress in the information age (though not one that I expect to happen in my lifetime). I agree that as authors we should have no obligation to distribute our content, but when we do, our choice is effectively "how many global internets would you like to release your information to? Options: 0 or 1." Personal ownership of property is important, and should be inviolable. Copies of information are not property, nor is information a finite resource that can be boxed up into an ownable piece of property. As a creator, I still have full control and "ownership" of all of my time and resources, as well as copies of information that I produce for myself. I do not maintain any ownership over identical copies of information I have produce that others manufacture for themselves, or redistribute, or acquire from a source other than me.

All of the guiding principles in this manifesto rightly approach the recognition of this core idea that all individuals must be free to interact with information how they will, and that individual interactions with information take precedence over government and corporate interests. Duplication of information is likely the most common interaction we have with information. It should have no special exception that allows a government to set up and maintain regimes that enforce the monopoly ownership and artificial scarcity of copies of information.

All of this being said, I appreciate the thoughtful compilation of all of these guiding principles into a manifesto, and believe that overall, it describes the proper way we should recognise individual rights in the digital age. Thank you!

For comparison, I live in a US suburb with a population density of around 1K people per square mile, and is a good example of a place where packs of children regularly play outdoors on any neighborhood street you care to walk down (maybe not as many who once would have, and children's screen time is a problem here like anywhere) despite the low population density. Some neighborhood characteristics: * 30 minute drive away from downtown. 40 min during rush hour. * Home prices here are much more affordable for single income families like us. Our monthly payment on a 6 bedroom house in the suburb costs the same as rent on the average 2 bedroom apartment in the city, and several $hundred less than the average 3 bedroom. * The farther away from the city center, the lower crime tends to be, and parents are more willing to send their children out for unsupervised play. More children are visible despite living in a much less densely populated neighborhood. * Local children's play groups are easy to find on social media, meetup.com, etc. * Major tech center 15 min drive away. * Supply of local jobs exceeds people available to fill them, resulting in below average unemployment, and greater than average incomes. * Bikable neighborhoods - many multi-use paths separate from car traffic, so we worry less about sending kids out on their bicycles to neighborhood parks or biking with young kids in a trailer. Often shared with horseback riders, which our kids are always excited about. Also makes for a more pleasant bicycle commute to work (at least, until I get closer to the city). * Trails and nature easily accessed - without getting in my car, I can and do run or bike from my doorstep up into mountain trails with a nice view of the valley.

And of course there are disadvantages: * Commute time. It takes me 28 minutes to get to work in the morning, so I lose almost an hour per day to travel, but this is relatively ok compared to other cities. * Fewer public transportation options - must transfer from the train to a bus to get to my remote corner of the metro area. These days it's easier to take Uber to the nearest train station when my car is not available. * Fewer night life options within walking distance of home * Fewer dining options within walking distance of home * Businesses have difficulty hiring, with so few people looking for work who are not already employed. * Not near a coast

All of this is to say, if growing a family in a neighborhood with other families with children is a priority, there are absolutely affordable cities around the US where you can make this happen. Even on a single income. Even in low population density areas. Even without giving up access to a nearby metro area and all of the culture and services it has to offer. If you are not willing to move to any of those places, maybe there is something more important to you, as has already been said.

I also do not see much basis for the opening statements, as written. Which individuals or communities are pushing the dogma that you shouldn’t write anything yourself? I’d be interested to know where Erik has met resistance when writing software specialised for his set of problems. Anecdotally, this is the opposite of my experience as a programmer.

OpenSSL and other cryptography libraries are a special case - implementing your own crypto library is almost universally accepted to be a very bad idea for what should be obvious reasons. OpenSSL is used widely because it solves a problem that is best served by a universal solution - the need for standardised protocols to secure internet communications. Of course there are alternative crypto libraries out there, but it is not a bad thing that most of us rely on a single library that really is well-suited to solve this need for crypto. We benefit much more by focusing developer resources and eyeballs on OpenSSL rather than trying to diversify for the sake of diversification.

Heartbleed is a very poor example that doesn’t support the premise of this post. It was discovered, publicly disclosed, and immediately fixed because it is open source, widely used, and has so many developer eyeballs on it. This was a positive outcome to a severe vulnerability, not a consequence of failing to diversify. Closed-source crypto libraries (or any that do not undergo the scrutiny of many developers and crypto specialists) are the domain of persistent, equally severe vulnerabilities that go undiscovered and/or undisclosed, increasing our exposure to malicious actors.

Someone mentioned Titanium earlier. Titanium shares the major advantages Paulo points out in his case for Xamarin (i.e. single language, cross-platform, native apps, access to native APIS). But Titanium also has a couple clear advantages over Xamarin:

  - Titanium is FOSS - Xamarin's cost is merely very inconvenient; its closedness is much more repulsive
  - Titanium doesn't sideline those of us who develop on linux (a linux-based OS rules the mobile market, after all)

I suppose Apple devotes a lot of manpower and is very "active" in excluding all developers and applications outside of its walled garden.

Google is much different in that you have the option to publish on alternate app markets, or self-publish your own apps, of which Google gets a cut of $0. This lack of control over their own app marketplace is probably the cause of Google's flagging stock price and Android's failure to effectively compete with iOS in the mobile market.

> If we spent the last thirty years inspired by what we saw in Star Trek, what’s going to inspire us for the next thirty?

Futurism isn't lost in the Star Trek reboot. The tech seen in the new Star Trek movies, rather than diminishing futurism, serves to show us that the future that Star Trek introduced to us these past few decades is just around the corner. They are using devices we are now starting to see every day, and some tech that we can imagine our children using in the very near future.

Maybe that's not as exciting to some, but to have that mix of technology and design from the present day feels like a confirmation that a lot more Star Trek tech might become reality within our lifetimes :).

This is the key issue. I spent a year or two as a Git skeptic, but then I realised that git is the wrong answer only if the question is "What SCMs are out there that will magically improve version control while presenting me with an interface and workflow identical to SVN?"