Notices by Dave Lane :flag_tino: 🇳🇿 (lightweight@mastodon.nzoss.nz), page 8

Don't you love proprietary software and trillion $ proprietary software corporations that really owns & controls 'yours'? 🤣 https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/15/amazon_echo_disabled_allegation/

@Firesphere yes, it does so implicitly, if it's proprietary. If it hasn't screwed us yet, there's still time. (but maybe it already has, and we just don't realise it yet).

@billbennett the fact that we continue to excuse their behaviour means they have all the social license they need... and they use it to make many of us complicit. We have to reject them entirely.

@billbennett we just have to stop allowing ourselves to think "yeah, those oil/pharma/processed food/softdrink/tech megacorporations are 'my brand' - I'm a big fan!" We need to call them out for what they are: our (humanity's) enemy.

@billbennett not at all. There are many perfectly moral commercial transactions. But none of the big tech corporations enjoy that high ground.

But yes, a lot of otherwise 'nice' people have corrupted themselves by working in aid of those corporations.

Thanks @billbennett for pointing out that the AWS and Apple 'gift horse' might not be quite as generous as it appears. https://billbennett.co.nz/commece-commission-annual-telecommunications-monitoring-report-2023/ I wonder, too, Bill, if those corporations are enjoying the same profitable tax benefit loopholes that Microsoft has long exploited: https://davelane.nz/self-serving-generosity That'd be an interesting topic for an investigative journalist...

@billbennett They are not allies to marginalised communities. They merely exploit those same communities for PR gain (and to hook those communities on their over-priced, agency-sapping proprietary tech). We need to call them out. They're not our friends or allies. They are actively exploiting us all and working against our best interest. Let's be honest with ourselves: they're the real enemy.

@billbennett I think it's just correct. There's really no other way to interpret any of this. Anything else is just wishful thinking, and it plays right into their hands. Look where giving them the 'benefit of the doubt' thus far has landed us.

@billbennett I've long argued that, due to the very structure of the 'corporation' (the public listed one, that is), they're irredeemable. (c.f. https://davelane.nz/megacorps) And the evidence supporting that conclusion continues to mount every day.

@colinsmatt11 Yes, I sometimes prefer that, too... sadly, it seems that some people won't get that because it's not a familiar English word, although I agree it makes sense to normalise the borrowed word. @doctormo @webmink

@colinsmatt11 problem is, if you have to explain a marketing phrase, it's already failed. :( @doctormo @webmink

In another thread on Mastodon, someone has pointed out that "Free and Open Source Software" is almost always misunderstood by non-practitioners as meaning "free of cost software, i.e. freeware, & open source software", where the latter (aka #OSS) has in recent years been undermined in the mainstream by Github, Microsoft, the Linux Foundation, & other corporate interests to mean 'weak' open source licenses like MIT, Apache, & BSD, which do far less to protect the 4 Freedoms, *not* Copyleft. 1/3

@webmink rightly notes in https://the.webm.ink/the-return-of-freeware the term 'free' is deeply fraught in English due to it's dual meaning: primarily 'zero cost' and only secondarily 'preserving freedom'. So the question is "How could we refer to both succinctly & unambiguously?" ... Perhaps we're not taking enough advantage of the term #Copyleft... which is quite unique to this context and signifies Free Software license with inherited properties (banned for use within many corporations, notably GOOG) 2/3

@Oozenet I think scientific fraud is generally cause by people feeling forced to get results to research that allow them to continue to receive funding and/or the ego boost that comes from having others dependent on one's perceived value (usually in the eyes of non-scientists who control the finances). @strypey

@Oozenet what I'm saying is that external pressures - namely the need to convince non-scientists of the value of one's work to allow it to be sustainably funded, creates a power dynamic that suits certain kinds of personalities, and those personalities are, in my experience, those who're most likely to allow self-interest to overwhelm their quest for understanding.

@Oozenet @strypey to be honest, I'm not overly fussy about which hair-splitting variations of Christianity I reject. I'm equal-opportunity in that respect.

@Oozenet @strypey heh, yes, agreed. Even so, I suspect that each of the 3000ish identified theistic religions, whether or not it values faith, it still says it's the one true religion...

@Oozenet @strypey perhaps my sample size is too small... my impression is that indigenous 'religions' which are inseparable from culture and place are less dogmatic and more accepting, whereas the 'mind virus' religions that see to infect as many as possible (see 'missionary', 'evangelist', and 'jihad') are entirely less so.

@Oozenet @strypey unless I'm mistaken, well more than half of the 'religious' people on earth adhere to an Abrahamic religion (Judaism, Christianity, or Islam), and faith is the greatest virtue in all of those. I wouldn't call it a rare feature among the religious.

@Oozenet @strypey I feel like 'the pursuit of knowledge' is a compelling motivation - most practising scientists will already feel that, in my experience. I think, in many places, religion is a *disincentive* for learning/knowledge, as increased knowledge reveals the basic inadequacy of religious explanations of everything. Maybe that's another capitalist co-option/corruption of religion - like the Prosperity Gospel.