The idea behind free software is that the owners and users of computing devices (computers, printers, smartphones, etc.) should be free to do what they wish with the devices they buy, and that device vendors should not be able to place limits on the use of devices or otherwise dictate to owners how to use those devices. In order to maintain this control over their devices, owners need access to the source code of the software that runs (or runs on) the device. Enter free software.

Free software (FS) should not be confused with “freeware.” Freeware is software that you can obtain and use free of charge, but you don’t have access to its source code. The difference between the two distribution models is often expressed as free software is “free as in speech,” freeware is “free as in beer.” Although, as it turns out, if it is “free as in speech,” it will probably be “free as in beer.” Perhaps the best way to understand what free software is, is to think of it as being “free as in freedom.” The GNU Project identifies four specific freedoms, but really there are three. You have the right to:

1. Run the program any way you see fit
2. View and modify the source code
3. Make copies and share the code (modified or unmodified) with others

A BRIEF HISTORY

Prior to the late 1970′s the overwhelming majority of software programs were free in the sense of freedom. At that time, software companies began a deliberate campaign to force developers to sign Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) and agree not to share the source code of the programs they were developing. Although this didn’t sit well with many of them, they were eventually convinced, by the financial benefits, to go along.

One committed hacker, (((Richard Stallman))), balked and started his own campaign to “re-free” software. Stallman used the burgeoning internet community to advance his idea and created the GNU Project as a vehicle to accomplish his goal.

Because of the way software copyright laws work, Stallman needed to copyright all of his code or risk losing it to the public domain. This created a paradox. His goal was to undo the damage caused by copyright practices concerning software, but yet he would have to copyright his work or lose control over it, including the ability to make it free. He and his collaborators originated the idea of a “copyleft.” They would copyright their software and release it under a license that mandated that, while users of the software were guaranteed their freedoms, if they chose to redistribute the software they had to do so under the same license. This license is called the GNU General Public License (GPL).

The GNU Project’s stated aim was “to create a complete, free operating system.” They decided to make it POSIX compliant. Basically it would be a kind of clone of Unix – a powerful and popular operating system of the time. They were well on their way toward this goal, when a young Swedish student (who was a citizen of Finland), Linus Torvalds, announced that he was going to create a Unix-like operating system, that ran on the under-powered personal computers of the day. Ultimately, Torvalds, realizing the complementary aspects of the two projects, adopted much of the GNU Project’s software and released his kernel to the public under the GPL.

Big software companies began to take notice. In the two decades or so, that software had become proprietary, one company, Microsoft, had built a virtual monopoly for software running on personal computers. Competitors began to evaluate Linux as a means of breaking Microsoft’s monopoly. In the year 2000, IBM decided to invest $1 billion in Linux. This investment proved a boon to free software.

Today, there are over 50,000 free software projects. Some, like Linux, MySQL, Apache, and the GNU Compiler Collection are leaders in their respective fields. Free software systems, featuring the Linux kernel, run on everything from mainframes to tiny embedded devices and everything in between. If you surf the web, use a cell phone, or record television shows, chances are you’re using free software.

OPEN FOR DEBATE

Prior to IBM’s investment in the Linux kernel – and by extension free software – a debate began about what to call free software. Stallman preferred the term “free software” because he felt it emphasized the importance of source code freedom. Others disagreed. They argued that corporations would never be able to identity the value of something that they perceived as being “free as in beer.” They lobbied for a change in name to “open source software.” They felt this removed the emphasis from “free” and allowed them to demonstrate that this development model would enable more innovation, higher quality code, and faster development times. This counter-revolution would largely win out. Most folks today call free software, “open source software” and this may be the term with which you are familiar. But a horse by any other color, is still a horse and free software (regardless of what it is called) has certainly come of age.

(Editor’s note: This entry was originally published in October 2013. It was revised and updated March 2019, and again in December of 2021.)
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There is a war on, a war against creativity a war against individuality a war against beauty, national consciousness, a war against the western ideal.

How often do you stop and admire the aesthetics of say, a chair, a building, or a beautifully manicured public space? While it’s not unnatural to admire the beauty of art and other objects when visiting an art museum, we often take everyday aesthetics for granted. But we shouldn’t, here’s why.

Simply put, aesthetics make us happy. On an emotional level they elicit feelings of happiness and calm. They connect us to our ability to reflect on and appreciate the world around us which in turn gives us feelings of contentment and hope. Further still a connection to the area that surrounds us from our own street to the country as a whole, it gives us a identity, it  enforces a identity. 

A team of researchers set out to uncover the main driving factors of happiness in five major cities including – New York City, London, Paris, Toronto, and Berlin.

Using statistical analysis on data gathered by Gallup happiness surveys, as well as data they collected on their own, they discovered that people’s happiness can be contributed to living in an aesthetically beautiful city.

The things they are surrounded by in their daily environment had the greatest effect on their happiness including – history, green spaces, beautiful architecture, and cobblestone streets to name a few. People who live in aesthetically pleasing  environments are prone to a strong sense of regional or national identity, which in turn often leads to patriotism. 

They also concluded that our perception of beauty produces feelings we associate with happiness – like calmness, appreciation, reflection and hope. So in essence, experiencing beauty alters our emotions and makes us feel happier.

Since the end of world war 2 Western governments have declared war on beauty, this began in the great rebuilding programs of the 1950’s, when new housing shot up like wheat in a farmers field. Old and bomb damaged buildings were torn down and replaced with soulless uniform concrete blocks. it was often remarked that you could be anywhere in such streets as the buildings all looked the same from London to Moscow. 

In conclusion the war of Aesthetics is for the large part not unseen but the unknown, the unspoken war on the western ideal and in turn the west itself. We can and we must resist, it can be as simple as dressing beautiful or going that extra mile and creating something marvelous. Support the classic arts, buy better, demand better, be better. 

Dr. Paul Offit, one of the world’s top experts on vaccines, isn’t taking any more COVID vaccines. I learned about Paul’s conversion to anti-vaxxer status from reading Brucha Weisberger’s substack article.

First, watch this TV news clip paying very close attention starting 50 seconds into the clip:

Here’s the definition of an anti-vaxxer:

He also said he’s not getting any more COVID shots until he sees more data

And more vaccine hesitancy…

The question for your blue pilled friends

“So, if Dr. Paul Offit isn’t getting any more shots, why are you? Do you know something he doesn’t?”

Summary

We now have one more anti-vaxxer in the world.

Neo-Aristocracy emailed Paul asking him if he wants to join Martin Kulldorff and see the Israeli safety data that the Israeli Ministry of Health does not want anyone to see. Let’s see how red pilled Paul really is. I’ll update this article if he responds. Don’t hold your breath. Apparently, being open to seeing safety data that is counter-narrative is a career limiting move.

Hungary has long pushed to raise the birthrate of its country without relying on mass immigration

From Thursday, all pregnant women in Hungary who want an abortion must first listen to the heartbeat of their fetus before going through with the procedure, according to an announcement from Minister of the Interior Sándor Pintér, who is also responsible for healthcare and education in Hungary.

“The presented medical findings must record that the healthcare provider presented the factor indicating the vital functions of the fetus to the pregnant woman in a clearly identifiable manner,” said the minister. He said that the new ministerial decree requiring pregnant women to listen to the baby’s heartbeat was not a new law but simply a continuation of the 1992 abortion law, which has not been changed since it was passed.

The regulation requirement will be included in all applications for performing an abortion starting on Sept. 15, according to Hungarian newspaper Magyar Nemzet.

Several Christian-conservative organizations, such as CitizenGO and the Szent István Institute, welcomed the ministerial decree on the presentation of the fetal heartbeat to mothers.Tímea Szabó, the co-chair of green party Párbeszéd, said he believes that this step by the ruling party could be the beginning of an abortion ban, and therefore demands the immediate withdrawal of the measure.

Hungary has long pushed to raise the birthrate of its country without relying on mass immigration the tool of the vast majority of western nations, and part of that strategy has been trying to not only reduce abortions but also provide financial and societal incentives for couples to have children, including more access to daycare, better parental leave, and financial bonuses for buying a house and having more than one child.

While serving as family minister of Hungary, the country’s current president, Katalin Novák, celebrated huge progress on pro-family policies in 2020 by saying: “The recent demographic figures speak for themselves; the number of marriages is at a 40-year high, and the fertility rate is at a 20-year high, while the number of divorces hasn’t been as low as last year in the last six decades,” she said. Novák added that the country has favored policies that grow the country’s population without relying on the mass migration seen in many other European countries, which has been a priority for Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

“In all of Europe there are fewer and fewer children, and the answer of the West to this is migration,” said Orbán in 2018. “They want as many migrants to enter as there are missing kids so that the numbers will add up. We Hungarians have a different way of thinking. Instead of just numbers, we want Hungarian children. Migration for us is surrender.”

In Hungary, abortion is allowed until the 12th week of pregnancy under certain conditions, including the pregnancy endangering the life of the mother, if the fetus has a high risk of being born malformed, the pregnancy resulted from rape, and if the woman is in a severe crisis. Certain allowances also push the abortion limit to the 18th week of the pregnancy.

Hungary although far from perfect is consistently striving for the western ideal and at the same rate embarrassing the rest of the west. Here you have proof of what can be done when the state works for the people its responsible for. 

The study, entitled “X-ray dating of a linen sample from the Shroud of Turin,” went relatively unnoticed when it was published on April 11th, 2022. However, its conclusions deserved accolades from the scientific community and beyond.

A new analysis by Italian scientists of the Shroud of Turin using X-ray technology proves that the famous cloth dates back 2,000 years, contrary to the medieval origin suggested by the disputed 1988 carbon-14 analysis.

Until now, the carbon-14 dating carried out in 1988 dictated public opinion. At the time, many precautions had been taken to give the carbon experiment authority. Three independent laboratories, located in Zurich, (Switzerland), Oxford (UK), and Tucson (Arizona), had analysed fragments of the Shroud and had all come to the conclusion that the Shroud was a medieval forgery. 

However, within the same year, many voices were raised that objected to the method used in the testing, with a battery of different arguments. Carbon-14 dating, which is based on the radiological measurement of the carbon-14 naturally contained in organic matter, can be used to estimate the age of certain, very old artefacts or natural materials. It is commonly used in palaeontology or archaeology, but its relevance increases with the age of the object of study—ideally between 6,000 and 50,000 years. The technique was therefore not suitable for an object as recent—even assuming it was 2,000 years old—as the Shroud, and could only give an uncertain result, with a potential margin of error of several hundred years. Moreover, carbon-14 dating would not be able to rule out the many more recent foreign bodies that may have crept into the interstices of the cloth, and risk distorting the result. Another explanation was advanced saying the experiment was done on a latter fragment issued from a reparation of the original shroud. 

The X-ray dating technique used by the Italian scholars is a completely different and much more precise process. It involves analysing the Shroud at the level of atoms. The researcher will measure the natural ageing of the linen cellulose using X-rays, and then convert it into the time elapsed since manufacture. The results obtained from the Shroud were compared with those of other authenticated linen fabric samples, ranging in age from 3000 BC to 2000 AD. The measurements of the shroud were found to be particularly close to those of a linen fabric that historical records date back to the siege of Masada in Israel, between 55 and 74 AD. These results are therefore far from the medieval hypothesis put forward in 1988.

The X-ray technique offers a number of additional guarantees of reliability, explains Liberato De Caro, member of the research team, in an interview with the National Catholic Register. First, the sample required for the analysis is much smaller than that used for carbon-14 dating: 0.5 x 1 mm. The risk of finding exogenous particles is therefore considerably reduced. In addition, X-ray analysis can be carried out several times without damaging the support, whereas carbon-14 dating can only be done once per sample, which prevents any cross-checking in the event of doubt or error in the protocol. 

The results obtained and published in April are only a first step. The research team intends to have the experiment repeated by several other independent laboratories, on several samples, to establish a more conclusive body of evidence. In any case, these findings are in addition to other interesting signs already observed that point to the authenticity of the Shroud, such as the presence of old pollens found only around the Dead Sea. But the most important sign for the believer is certainly the presence of a body, printed in negative, on the Shroud, which was revealed in 1898, during the printing of a photograph, a phenomenon that to this day remains completely unexplained by science—but which faith in Christ can account for. 

As war with Russia escalates and the western powers continue to poke the already wide awake Russian bear, we take a look at just how likely the various European countries would actually follow through on their threats. From high to low, these are the percentages by country:

• 74% – Finland
• 73% – Turkey
• 62% – Ukraine
• 59% – Russia
• 58% – Kosovo
• 55% – Bosnia and Herzegovina
• 55% – Sweden
• 54% – Greece
• 47% – Poland
• 46% – Serbia
• 41% – Latvia
• 39% – Switzerland
• 38% – Ireland
• 38% – Macedonia
• 38% – Romania
• 37% – Denmark
• 29% – France
• 28% – Portugal
• 27% – United Kingdom
• 26% – Iceland
• 25% – Bulgaria
• 23% – Czech Republic
• 21% – Austria
• 21% – Spain
• 20% – Italy
• 19% – Belgium
• 18% – Germany
• 15% – The Netherlands

The results are from a 2015 WIN/Gallup International global survey. The sample size and methodology was as follows:

A total of 62,398 persons were interviewed globally. In each country a representative sample of around 1000 men and women was interviewed either face to face (30 countries; n=32258), via telephone (12 countries; n=9784) or online (22 countries; n=20356). Details are attached. The field work was conducted during September 2014 – December 2014. The margin of error for the survey is between 2.14 and 4.45 +3-5% at 95% confidence level.

Europe is the continent with the fewest people willing to fight a war for their country. Globally, an average of 61% of respondents in 64 countries said they would. Morocco (94%), Fiji (94%), Pakistan (89%), Vietnam (89%) and Bangladesh (86%) had the highest percentage willing to fight.

The country with the fewest people willing to go to war was Japan, with just 11% of respondents saying they would fight.

Russia aside i think its there’s more of a story here, you have 2 glaringly obvious avenues of concern. One that it’s non western nations that are far more willing to fight for their country than western ones which of course presents a major problem in the long term given the declining  western birth rate, and overall ever diminishing status. Two that the people of western nations seem more and more detached from the countries they are born into. Long gone are the days of for King country and God. 

Many of our readers will agree of course and have firmly decided some time ago they won’t fight for the various western occupational  governments as they see it and its understandable of course, however the findings here set an alarming picture of the collective western decay. The figures reek of disunity disloyalty and not least disenfranchised. 

You have a mixture of people that do love their country but wont fight for their corrupt governments and on the other hand a large % of the population that can’t even be bothered to object in any capacity verbally or otherwise the daily crimes of the state let alone risk their lives defending the homeland.

Its a red flag for all those still hell bent on pandering to the mass for western salvation / rebirth. 

Several months ago, I wrote a piece asking whether or not men still “admire, respect, and value the women who don’t chase after or toy with them.”

The question spawned from various works of classic literature and movies such as Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, which finds the heroine’s quiet, non-attention-grabbing ways captivating the heart of a man who has scores of women fawning over him.

This morning, The Telegraph seems to have answered the aforementioned question with a decided “yes.”

The Telegraph describes a popular Reddit thread which asks, “What is something women think makes them more attractive to men while men think it makes them less attractive?” and then goes on to list some of the more surprising responses:

More traits universally loathed were ‘duck faces’ and ‘fat lips’ – presumably an attack on fillers, pouting and plumping – and women acting ‘too ditzy’.”

While The Telegraph’s treatment of the Reddit thread was amusing, the responses the men gave made me stop and think. If their answers could be boiled down to a few words, they would likely say that they are uninterested in women who act as self-absorbed attention seekers.

Unfortunately, many in today’s society – both men and women – have been trained to be just that. Parents have been told to centre life around their child in order to promote their self-esteem. Students increasingly suffer from “emotional dependency,” a condition in which it’s difficult to function without continual affirmation and praise. Society has normalized the Culture of Narcissism, which leads toward “dependence on the vicarious warmth provided by others, … calculating seductiveness, … and deteriorating relations between men and women.”

In the last several years, we’ve witnessed a rise in the average age of marriage and a free fall  decline in birth rates. Which is so serious it puts our whole existence of the west at risk Is it possible that this phenomena could partially be the result of the culture’s promotion of self-esteem and narcissism, which has turned many young men and women into unattractive partners? If so who is behind this culture shift and what do they have to gain. I would hope most of our Neo-Aristocrat readers will already know.

Why Your Top 10 Reasons For Not Having Kids Are Stupid
The hour glass of your fertility turns upside down at 30, and five years later it’s all but drained.
You know that commercial where the guy goes, “I am never getting married,” then he says he’ll never have kids or move to the suburbs? Most of us suburban dads are embarrassed by how perfectly that imitates our lives.
I was so adamant about not having kids as a young man, I tried to get my tubes tied at the tender age of 21. Now that I have three, my only regret is waiting so long. I wish I could have had five. You’ll hear a lot of parents lament that they had too few or didn’t have a boy or had all boys, but you’ll never hear them say, “I wish I hadn’t had a kid.” Whenever I see couples without kids, I plead with them to change their ways because, almost without exception, the ones who refuse to breed are the ones who would make the best parents. Here are the same ten excuses they always make and why they’re wrong.

1. Ew, Diapers? Gross
Do you wipe your own ass? This is the same thing, only much smaller. You’ll be surprised how un-gross changing diapers is. I knew our third would be our last, and each diaper change was getting closer to the last I would ever do. I coveted each chocolate-covered nutsack like I was the White House pastry chef, and when the last diaper went into the trash, I cried like a baby.

2. I Hate Kids
No, you hate other people’s kids. We all do. These are your kids. They don’t just look like you, they are you. Have you noticed that, as you get older, your dad goes from cruel tyrant to just a wrinkled version of you? It’s the same with kids, but in reverse. If my son screws up a drawing, he rips it to pieces and hurls it into the garbage in a rage, where it lands next to the crumpled notes I just threw in there in a similar rage.

3. I Just Don’t See the Appeal
Do me a favour. Smell a baby’s breath and get back to me.

4. Only Egomaniacs Have Kids
“Are you so obsessed with yourself you need to make more of you?” a friend recently asked so I’d stop hassling him about being childless. You can phrase it any way you want, but the biological imperative is the most intrinsically human thing you can possibly do. It’s the meaning of life.
As far as it being selfish, trust me, you are way too busy running around praising, reprimanding, hugging, and giving time-outs to gloat at your prodigy. That’s something only the childless have time to think about.

5. I’m Too Selfish
This is the opposite of the egomaniac excuse, and it’s often followed by, “I can barely feed myself.” Don’t fret, virtue signalers. You will be able to summon the strength to prevent your child from starving to death. It’s an instinct that goes back at least a quarter of a million years. Besides, they scream so unbelievably loud at night, you can’t possibly ignore them.
After that, they learn to walk and develop incredible strategies to avoid being ignored, like growing big eyes and saying the darndest things such as “The Bob Marley has begun” and “Scientists say, when you read a book to love, you just fall apart.”

6. The World Is Overpopulated
Er, I don’t know how to say this without sounding like a eugenics nut, but it’s about quality, not quantity. Yes, India has dead bodies floating down the river. Your local public school having yet another kid named Cody is not going to cause global warming.
These kinds of myths gain traction because of the death of math. We want to save all the kittens and rescue all the pups and kill all the babies, because we think there are a finite number of each. There are seven billion of us. Your gestures aren’t “thinking globally.” They’re not thinking at all. If you go on to the beach and wash one grain of sand, you’re not “doing your part.” You’re wasting your time. We live in the safest, healthiest, and most prosperous nation ever. If anyone should feel good about creating more people here, it’s you. And if you don’t, someone else will.

7. My Parents Were Horrible and I Don’t Want to Repeat That
Yeah, your lineage has been polluted by the crappy parent gene, and you’re doing the world a service by cutting it off. In fact, the opposite is true. My experience has been that the children of negligent parents know exactly how damaging that is and are the least likely to reproduce it (“my experience” is code for “white middle class” and is relevant here because that’s likely who is reading this article—sorry).
Have you been around the dads without dads? The biggest problem with them is they dote on their children too much.

8. It’s No Big Deal If I Don’t
Really? How could it possibly be a bigger deal? Besides the part where our entire civilization is choosing to stop reproducing, what about you? Cavemen fought saber-toothed tigers. Your ancestors survived the plague. World war after world war went by, and your relatives made it through, and you’re going to throw that all away with a shrug? You’re ending that incredible journey through history because you like watching Netflix in the daytime?

9. It’s Too Expensive
So is eating out in New York if you do it wrong. You can have a dinner for $4 or you can have one for $400. Public school is free, and there are still plenty of areas where they’re just as good as private. Bicycles are cheap, toys are cheaper, second-hand clothes are everywhere, and kids don’t really care if they’re in an apartment or a mansion. College and piano lessons are all frills kids don’t require. In the ’70s, we didn’t have any of that stuff, and we loved it. Having a kid is exactly as expensive as you want it to be.

10. We’re Not Ready
Women are convinced they can cram a career in before their ovaries dry up, but did you notice you started menstruating at 14? Twenty-four is already ten years past that date. At 34, you’ve basically told your womb to pack it in. I’ve heard doctors get in trouble for saying this to their patients, but for the umpteenth time: The hour glass of your fertility turns upside down at 30, and five years later it’s all but drained.
Anecdotal evidence to the contrary is dangerous to cling to. I don’t know how many couples my age have realized it’s too late way after their best-before date and have spent tens of thousands of dollars attempting to reverse the clock. When they do manage to pull it off, they have to worry about health issues and autism, not to mention how brutal it is to get no sleep when you’re over 40.
Look, going out for dinner is fun and Barcelona is beautiful at this time of year, but eventually you close that chapter in your life and move on to the next one. That’s what I was trying to say in “The Death of Cool.” I’m not trying to take away the party years where you did whatever you wanted and traveled the world getting blackout drunk. Do that.
However, adults recognize this is only a stage, and eventually you’re ready to move on to the next one. You’ve been a kid for decades now. It’s time to grow up and make some of your own.