Regular readers know that Bulgaria has a secret agenda to destroy astronomy. Not satisfied with all the Universe, though, they are also trying to undermine copyright laws:
[Bulgarian Forein] Minister Kalfin started his own blog, to be found at www.kalfin.eu, where he will be discussion issues about Bulgarian foreign policy, EU membership, etc. The blog is based on open source software - Wordpress, and is the first such an initiative by a Bulgarian minister. Mr. Kalfin invited Joichi Ito to become an author at his blog - an invitation that was accepted by the famous Japanese IT-investor and blogger.
Open-source software? WordPress?? Ye gods. What’s next? MySpace?
If anyone is curious, this entry is mostly a response to this.
November 1st, 2006 at 12:31 am
Googling for the term WordPress gives top ten references to the GNU-licenced (and therefore open-source as far as I’m aware) blog-publishing software. Is this a bit of misunderstanding, or just a sneaky way of drumming up support for that Saturn cause? (Honestly, although living in Central Europe myself, I’d prefer Saturn too. Going to vote.)
November 1st, 2006 at 8:15 am
It appears to me that the software is, in fact, “Open Source” under the “GPL” concept. The WordPress site states:
“The GNU General Public License, or GPL, is an open source license. Open source doesn’t just mean that you can view the source code — it has political and philosophical implications as well. Open source, or “Free Software”, means you are free to modify and redistribute the source code under certain conditions. Free doesn’t refer to the price, it refers to freedom. The difference between the two meanings of free is often characterized as “Free as in speech vs. free as in beer.” The GPL is free as in speech.” ( http://codex.wordpress.org/License )
I fail to see where this indicates anything other than accuracy in the “Open Source” comment.
JC
November 1st, 2006 at 10:22 am
Wow. Sense of humor anyone?
November 1st, 2006 at 12:02 pm
The sentence I wrote - “Is this a bit of misunderstanding, or just a sneaky way of drumming up support for that Saturn cause?” - was actually meant to be ironic. However, as a non-native English speaker I suppose I have failed to express the wit. Nevertheless, the original joke was probably based on false information, and the Bad Astronomer (and his readers) cares very much about accuracy of his facts.
November 1st, 2006 at 5:15 pm
Dude. Can see you baggin’ on Bulgaria. I mean… look at it.
But then you start bashin’ WordPress and I’m all like, WTF?
Then I scroll down a bit and go… Ah. Sarcasm. Some of us are working to hard, it seems. Beer, anyone?
E.
November 2nd, 2006 at 12:37 am
I’m sure Phil is just pointing out that those unreconstructed commies in Bulgarislavia-or-whatever are undermining our freedom to profit from our intellectual property by supporting the anarcho-hippie plot against “global capitalism” (ie freedom) which is “Open Source”.
November 2nd, 2006 at 6:14 am
Ah sarcasm. So difficult to express in the written word:). Personally I rely on facial cues, hand gestues, and tone of voice to understand when sarcasm is being used.
I used to include “topic of conversation, and stupidity of topic” in there as well, but then I discovered that people have some rather strange opinions. Because of this I can’t decide something is sarcasitic based solely on the ridiculousness of the arguement being used:P.
This makes sifting sarcasm (and related things like saccharine) from written works difficult at best.
November 4th, 2006 at 4:10 am
Sarcastistic??
Being sarcastic I presume (not being sarcastic about that.)
April 26th, 2007 at 3:38 am
American industry is trying to impose some very fascist forms of copyright laws, but we, the Europeans, are resisting :p~ Europe is FREE and when I say FREE, I mean that Europeans do have more FREEDOM than people in the USA, and no one from America can ever get us away this freedom.