ropers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > If you chose to dig your heels in over this, you could sue the German > revenue service and very likely win.
AFAIK, somebody has already tried that. That's why they granted to send it in using the postal way for a few companies which meet certain conditions. Anyway, quitting the job isn't the best thing to do if you can still keep your job if you run Skype in a VM. I'm happy that I don't have to :). > a) Buy (preferably well-documented) hardware for which free and open > source drivers exist. AMD started to document their hardware, but still, they haven't released all the required documentation. As soon as they have, I might buy a card from them. And as soon as there a usable drivers, a buy is definite, to show them I support their attitude of releasing specs. > b) Write a free and open source driver for your hardware. (Learn to > reverse-engineer and program if necessary.) nouveau already does so. It's a *VERY* time consuming task - too much time consuming for me, sadly, but I'd be interested in helping, though. > c) Pay someone to write a free and open source driver for your > existing hardware Oh, that would be really expensive and I'm low on money :(. It will take ages until someone finishes a WORKING driver WITH 3D support which is completely based on reverse engineering. > d) Refuse to play games that require blobs to run. Yup, that's the only possibility for me. But honestly, I prefer to be able to play games and have one blob. Anyway, most games are blobs as well. > These are all choices. Not all of them are easy or very comfortable or > quick choices, but they are choices. Nobody ever suggested that > freedom was free. Yeah, it are choices, but none of them is satisfying. > I didn't say (and IIRC Daniel didn't say) that you promoted the use of > buggy software. We both DID say that you **sort of** promoted the use > of buggy software, and I think that's accurate. Well, I wouldn't call it promoting blobs just because you use one. > You repeatedly *proposed* to get rid of them, but actions speak louder > than words and you (and I admittedly, I'm ashamed to say) still use > some blobs, which is sort of promoting the use of buggy software. All my systems besides my main desktop are blob-free. My laptop is, so is my second desktop, so is my router, so is my EFIKA. So I *am* doing something against it :). > If the Jabber-ICQ gateway you use didn't suck, would you then no > longer urge people to switch? It's not only the gateway I use which sucks. I already setup my own gateway to get around the too many connections problem. It's the ICQ protocol itself that sucks. Additionally, their server's EULA is unacceptable for me. If I can't convince users to switch to Jabber, I encourage them to use encryption. I think it's a crime to save the logs of all conversation and even selling them to 3rd parties if they want to (you have to agree to that). They even create a search index for the logs, so the music industry could ask for all logs which contain "MP3" and sue a lot of people. For me, this is totally unacceptable and thus I promote Jabber whereever I can. And I have success with this, most of my friends switched to Jabber and it are only very few left who insist on ICQ. > > When you say you "have it again", are you referring to use of the ICQ > protocol or software? Pidgin ( > http://www.openbsd.org/4.2_packages/i386/pidgin-2.0.1p0-gtkspell.tgz-long.html > ) is free and open source and can use the ICQ protocol, so avoiding > the ICQ software at least is painless. Avoiding the ICQ protocol is > more difficult, I grant you that. But it's your choice to make. I'm refering to the protocol as I only use Windows for games. :) Anyway, the client is the worst. I know Pidgin, but it can't help me to get rid of the ICQ Protocol. Anyway, I prefer Gajim over Pidgin, which is a pure Jabber client which supports far more of the Jabber features. I can only recommend Gajim's SVN version, it rocks :). > If your friends won't bother with you unless you sacrifice your PC's > security, your money, and your principles, then what good are they? Well, they will bother with me even if I don't use ICQ, but I like to have the possibility to have a way to contact them besides Real Life and telephone. And hey, I even found another reason for having ICQ: When someone asks for your ICQ number, you give it to him and as soon as you get added, you tell them how much better Jabber is. I already had success with this, very often even and it's far easier then telling them "No, I don't have ICQ, please create yourself a Jabber account", because when they added you in ICQ, you can explain everything they need to know on how to create a Jabber account to them via ICQ. > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > > Are you doing this for non-repudiation? I'm doing this due to lazyness. I often forget to disable it when sending to mailing lists. -- Jonathan
