This goes out to all Voluntaryists out there!
(and everyone else who are allegedly for freedom but still haven't adopted coherent ethical thinking)
This little rant is about your responsibility as a consumer to support and use products that are in line with your ethics and principles, and not to support those products that acts in the diametrically opposite interests.
Hint: If you own apple-products, Kindle e-book readers, or use Windows operating systems, or Gmail, you are doing it WRONG. WAY wrong._
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"In a move that angered customers and generated waves of online pique, Amazon remotely deleted some digital editions of the books ('1984' and 'Animal Farm') from the Kindle devices of readers who had bought them. "
Let's face it. Freedom of speech in itself is not the ultimate producer of all other essential freedoms for mankind.
-The ability to protect freedom of speech is.
This includes two things:
1 The ability to uphold the protection of the free speaker, meaning defensive force, the right to own and operate the means of self-defense and protection. In USSA they call it the 2:nd amendment, a scribble of the "violent terrorist criminals" that founded their nation, that is describing this inherent right. This right is already mostly deteriorated in the minds of most of the worlds population, and has left most of the rest of this planets "freedom" of speech entirely up to the whims of their tyrant masters.
2 The ability to reach recipients of the message of the free speaker. This used to entail things like it being a crime to open correspondence not addressed to you, bugging telephones, or discriminating access to public audiences. In our digital age it has come under fierce attack by organizations that parasite on the collectible data and information of our collective communication, to a point where everyone everywhere is monitored and analyzed at all times. But it does not stop there. Now the giants of production of electronics are in cahoots with the most heinous of proprietary software mongers that wishes to have secret access to your electronic equipment. This is no wild conspiracy theory, but a FACT well documented and exposed by many daring hackers, whistle-blowers, reverse-engineering efforts, and software and hardware analysis.
In the linked case at the bottom, is described a very disgusting practice in where huge hardware manufacturing corporations has come together to fabricate a standard for this underlying system on your computer, under a pretense that is the direct opposite of the actual intent. The thing in your computers that manges all the different components from memory and graphics processors, to the hard-drive, microphone, camera and keyboard of your computer, is now made to REFUSE to let you install an operating system of YOUR choice, leaving you with the ONLY option to PAY for a malicious operating system (when a plethora of perfectly good options are readily available freely at no charge) that WILL monitor you at all times, even when you think it is turned off or inactive, and report your every move to unknown national or economical interests, via the corporate manufacturer, or directly to the buyer of the information.
Again, this is not even remotely some paranoid unfunded accusation, it is a cemented FACT. In reality, enormous data storage facilities costing tax-cattle hundreds of millions of dollars are being built, in order to store and process all this, mostly illegally and immorally gathered information, and now they are trying to make sure no one can even use any electronics that isn't completely undermining this essential second pillar of free speech.
In Defense of Free Software: My Case Against Lenovo in Mexico
I've had plenty of experience with Linux. It's a fine operating system. But it lacks many crucial commercial applications that makes it unviable for producing many kinds of deliverables to clients.
You want to do graphic design? Or film production? Or photo editing? Or animation? Or 3D rendering for anything from architecture to criminology to television advertising? Or music production? Or even plain accounting? Then you will not be running Linux. Because the tools in commercial use typically require Windows - and sometimes (if you're lucky) MacOS X. The Adobe suite. Autodesk. Avid. Fruityloops. Etc etc etc. (MSOffice cough)
It's not fair. And you could argue there are free tools that perform many of the same tasks. Blender, GIMP, Inkscape, Ardour, LibreOffice, etc etc etc. All fine tools. That no one in the commercial world uses.
So if you want to sell your work, you use what your clients use. Or you go hungry.
Thanks, you inspired me to expand on this.
Enjoy!
In Response To a Defender Of Corpware