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Yep, it's good to have the OS creator set an example for the users. Then if you want to be that profile, you can use that OS, right?

Bill Gates -- rich capitalist demigod
Linus Torvalds -- kernel hacker and all around nice guy
Theo de Raadt -- K-K00l 5kR1p7 k1DD1e!!1!

OpenBSD: the choice of the next generation of Slashdot users. *sigh*
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Unless security is your primary consideration, you probably aren?t going to use OpenBSD for all of your Unix servers. Linux, FreeBSD and NetBSD all
excel in various areas where OpenBSD does not. However, OpenBSD certainly has its place, and should be part of any network administrator?s toolkit.
For your most security-sensitive tasks, OpenBSD is very likely to be ?the right tool for the right job.?

Drinking and coding is bad news: look what it did to Cox and the Linux kernel!

Although the DOS compatibility is a nice side-effect, after kicking back a few... I guess...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

"Mr. D" fits right in here on Slashdot, I like that DIME-WARNER reference.

It's good to see an artist who understands that the problem isn't the sanctity of copyright, it's the corruption of the music industry. Now that an alternative exists, no one wants to help support an institution so foul that some people would even go to illegal means to do so.

Personally, I've been thinking of signing up for one of those music clubs--"11 free CDs for the price of 1!" Assume shipping and handling, and ~15 for a CD, and it comes out to between $2-3 for each CD. I consider that to be a fair price. It's way above manufacturing costs, and still mostly profit. The problem I'm having is finding enough CDs that they offer, that I actually like. But I could at least fill out my collection some, since I haven't been buying anything new for a while. (once it started getting over $14, I said "fuck it", and only bought used stuff...)

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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Darn terms getting in the way. I tend to reserve "Pure Evil", or evil-with-a-capital-E (Evil) for that, but yeah, it's at least annoying, and at mose somewhat evil. :)

I guess if someone included *ALL* of your code and nothing else in a package, and said "since this is under the BSDL and it is compatible with the GPL, I can release it as such", and changed the name, and listed you in the CREDITS and whatnot, then yes, they could. But that'd be a pissy thing to do. But if you had a clause forbidding it, it wouldn't be GPL-compatible anymore. :|

I'm still waiting for Microsoft to quietly release the Wine project on top of BSD with proprietary modifications as the next version of Windows, and say "See? Look at the lower system requirements, smaller code base, and excellent native POSIX compatibility we have now! If you want to pay extra, we'll even throw in an X-Se^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Next Generation Terminal Server functionality! (xhost +)"... ;)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Credit is fine, but the first startup logo? That's what that "CREDITS" file is for. I'm sure the consumer doesn't know or care what "Jet3D" is, and if it was the first logo, *I'D* think I had bought a flight simulator by accident. Only the programmers would really care, so put it in something they'd read, don't force everyone else to see it (FIRST!)...

They also aren't *just* asking for credit. They're asking for either source code (to all your stuff, like a GPL'ed library, not an LGPL'ed one) or barring that, a private commercial licensing agreement. Quite a bit more than credit, I'd say.

I thought the old BSD license (advertising clause) was somewhat evil as well. If everyone did that, and was bound by it, we'd have all sorts of "sponsored by, blah blah blah" in every project. This license is worse because if another project did this, they'd be incompatible. (unless you displayed both logos simultaneously, so they could both be "FIRST"... In fact, XOR them together! ;)

That clause in the BSDL was all that stopped it from being shareable with the GPL. (sharing the code back, though, is problematic, unless the author of said code simultaneously releases it under the BSDL, etc., etc., which makes the GPL somewhat evil, from the other perspective...)

Maybe a lot of thought, time and effort went into their product, but it doesn't look like it went into their license. I'd much rather people used one of the pre-existing, boilerplate licenses with commonly known restrictions and effects. It makes these issues much easier.

My other question was somewhat rhetorical, as in leading up to the next conclusion: no matter how great this library is, write your own so everyone can use it without these restrictions.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Yeah, I was just joking, some people on slashdot can't grasp that. I try not to offend gay people, just humorless people. And sometimes humor gets a little too close to the truth, but... well, that's parody for you.

I doubt real homophobes are encouraged by other's use of slang. They might be repressed, or confused, but I hope they aren't that easily manipulated.

Remember, people, gay means happy! You *do* want people to be happy, right? If you didn't want that, that would certainly be queer... um, strange. Because queer means strange...

Oh, but I wasn't kidding about the lawyer part. :)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

You must display the original unmodified Jet3D logo as the first logo on startup of your product, demo or application. You must also prominently display the Jet3D logo on any marketing materials, advertising or packaging of your product.

This sounds really neat. I never made anything out of lego mindstorms, but I'm pretty impressed by any kid's toy that has a programming language, or allows you to build a scanner, a computer case, a Millenium Falcon, etc., etc.

In other news, a new subatomic particle was discovered: the legon. It turns out that there are many varieties of these interlocking particles, and they form the building blocks of reality, bonded together by duct tape. It is speculated that virtual worlds might be composed of pure legons without duct tape, presently referred to as "Zowie!" particles. Yow, are we virtual yet!?!!!

And if I hear anyone rant about the plural of lego being 'lego' and not legos or legoes or leggo my eggo or anything else, I'm going to stuff legos down their pants. (ha ha ha, a new slashdot trend!)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

It's a reasonable argument. It isn't *completely* wrong, but it has some problems...

Personally, *I* wouldn't even want to touch Microsoft's code! Their code would be invaluable for finding out how they really implement a particular feature, but I wouldn't necessarily want to copy their implementation.

Porting Wine to DOS would be much easier than cleaning up Microsoft's code. The code base is *much* smaller, and it has similar levels of functionality. Also, the extra features should be implemented much quicker with more code and more interested parties. (look at what Corel's support did for the project. Now think about what would happen if everybody got interested in it...)

Also, then Windows really would be free, and its source would be a lot cleaner, and it could run on anything x86, with Unix vendors free to hack in everything else. And it would run on Unix on Merced, quite likely.

As Windows is right now, yes, it's a huge mess. But it doesn't have to be. Bug-for-bug compatibility sucks, but hopefully some of that would get phased out over time, just like Windows does now. And if the Microsoft code had to be used, the first thing that would happen is a massive code cleanup, making the Mozillia project look like a cakewalk.

Of course, this might also mean that Windows would never *die*, and we'd all have little Windows apps mixed in with our X apps. :(
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

That is a beautiful article, and a wondrous solution. If I could have mod points, and the Score could go above 5, I'd give the points to you.

I've often wondered why it is that MS couldn't simply play fair, even with this lawsuit and the facts staring them in the face. They always release their apps to the Mac late, and now that Linux has at least as much market share, they still try to ignore it as a viable platform (even if it would make them money!).

But they've always had the gall to completely ignore the industry, their customers, their supporters and detractors, and only follow the money. Well guess what, that approach isn't working anymore. Following the money only ends up hurting everyone, including yourself for not seeing further money-making opportunities down the road when people like you and aren't conspiring against you. Microsoft isn't stupid, but their greed clouds their judgement, even still.

I'd love to see an actual "Open API" attitute to standards across the board, but I don't think it'll ever happen. The only solution right now seems to be to create competing open standards and patent them to keep them open.

Microsoft is a problem, but they aren't the only problem. I'd like to be able to legally use and create mp3's, gif's, and perhaps one day mp4's. I'd like to have a chance in hell of playing Sorensen encoded Quicktime 4 movies on Linux. I'd like to be able to write or use a truly free software DVD player without being branded a criminal.

There's something very wrong with the current laws and climate towards computer standards and intellectual property. There's nothing wrong with making a little money, but don't do it on the standards, do it on the apps! Would you play baseball if someone charged you for "using" the official rules? Of course not, you'd play wiffleball and softball if you had to, but you'd *want* to play baseball, and maybe you'd be forced to do it in secret...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

It could be expanding very slowly. :)

But seriously, I meant this as a law of Hardware Envelopment, as a counterpoint to this one.

The Law of Software Envelopment:
"Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs that cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can." -- JWZ

Examples of this are Emacs and Netscape.

Therefore:

Proposed Law of Hardware Envelopment:
"Every console attempts to expand until it can play mp3's. Those consoles that cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can." -- PDB

Comments?
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

You scared me for a second there. I didn't think they had a WinCE port of Quake 3 *yet*, or for that matter an x86 translator for the SH4, they'll have to get Transmeta working on it right away... ;)

Yeah, but will the X-Box run Linux? (it could if it wants to be both a "Cheap-PC" *and* an "X-Box", I mean, my cheap PC is an X box because it runs Linux...)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Well, they're going to port Quake III:Arena to it, so I think it'll kick a *lot* of ass. :)

They also will have an mp3 player for it... Is there a new law that says hardware devices expand until they can play mp3's?

I'm surprised they aren't selling internet access like WebTV or something, though. And I'm sure Sega could have the best VRML plug-ins ever! ;)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Hmm, that's funny. I thought the "king of floating point" was what made *Intel* absolutely superior to everyone else.

I concede that the cache speed is a problem for AMD, although in most benchmarks it seems to affect things perhaps less than optimizing for Intel chips does, and maybe makes the Athlon comarable in speed to the PIII, I have run into situations on my K6 where programs run horribly because of the cache. However, people need to start writing code with less cache misses where possible! Smaller is still better, a lot of the time. But AMD is working on that anyhow, just like Intel is working on actually releasing 1Ghz chips in any measurable quantity.

Also, Intel has major problems with (guess what?) overclockability, high power consumption, not producing reliable chips in quantity, not selling them for reasonable (market?) prices, and high operating temps! When you're pushing the chips this hard, they're *all* going to have these problems. I admit that the Athlon is a beast, but it's also faster, clock-for-clock, than the PIII core, which explains the extra transistors.

As to the future: Intel will have their new (slower for x86!) next generation architecture, while AMD will have... copper interconnects? Faster cache speeds? Even faster 64bit x86-compatible chips? Well, we'll see what the future brings, but I know who I'm rooting for.

And if you really want overclockability, low power consumption, good operating temps, etc., etc., don't look to fast chips from Intel *or* AMD, but rather wait for Transmeta or get a PPC chip or something.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

This is not an insightful post. It is an extremely *REDUNDANT* post. Every time there is a post that gets moderated up for good reason someone has to jump in with the "This post isn't a new idea because I saw it on slashdot before, so you didn't really come up with this idea" post.

There's no insight in that anymore.

Or, rather, maybe someone thought it was *still* a valid point. The "Amiga back from the grave" is a redundant *SLASHDOT* story, so I'd expect some of the same kinds of comments. Quit your bitching, and don't waste our time encouraging downward moderation for good posts. Maybe someone *else* hasn't seen it before, or maybe you could post some *content* instead of whining.

Now I'll try to do my part. The closest thing I've seen to a modern Amiga these days is BeOS. However, the Amiga was also an impressive beast with its own special integrated hardware. Perhaps if a 'Be Box' was aggressively marketed as "The Next Amiga" and had really awesome graphics hardware, (read: decent support for at least one 3D-accelerator that it ships with, DVD, large HD, lots of RAM, popular editing applications...) we'd have a cool new toaster again!

But it probably won't happen, and all that intuitive interface stuff is just wasted on a Unix dude like me... :)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

How different is USB and Firewire in design from SCSI? On the face of it, they sound like very similar technologies, except that USB is built-in with less hassle. But I haven't checked it out in any detail, as is usually the case with me and most hardware I don't own (either one, as it happens).

Also, I was wondering about those USB keyboards: do I really need to be typing that fast? Do you think Word can keep up, or would the paperclip get dizzy? ;)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Wyse Technology has put Linux at the heart of its newest "thin-client" product, bumping Java aside as the best way to power the low-cost networked machines.
[...]
Previously, Wyse developed a machine based on the Java operating system and took it to a test market, during which Wyse learned "that this product was not meeting the needs of their customers," said a spokesman for the company.
[...]
Wyse also sells a line of thin clients based on Microsoft's Windows CE operating system, but those are able to connect only to Windows servers, McNaught said.

Wyse Technology, the leading maker of dumbed-down computers known as thin clients, is retooling its product line for the home market.
[...]
The company uses Windows CE in its low-priced machines, McNaught said. Its more powerful ones use Embedded Windows NT, which is more powerful but requires more expensive hardware.
[...]
"Linux wasn't really the right solution," McNaught said. "I think Linux is going to be a huge deal on servers, but what we found out was it's too limiting on clients."
[...]
The foray into Linux did, however, give Wyse enough leverage to persuade Microsoft that a version of the Internet Explorer Web browser would be a major improvement to the Windows CE machines, he added.

No, it doesn't, or I'd do that in Linux. :)

Thanks, though. There aren't as many VESA 2.0 compliant video cards out there as you might think. (this compared to ATAPI CD-ROM drives, say.) I hate proprietary hardware interfaces...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Okay, I booted the thing, I'm posting this with BeOS... This time I stuck it on another drive, but it turns out the drive wasn't the issue. All my stuff is on an extended partition, so it's more of a DOS compatibility issue than a Linux one. (the installer didn't find anything in extended partitions when I checked it, but BeOS can read the raw drive just fine. Am I doing something wrong?)

Anyhow, first impressions: networking was really easy to set up, since it knows about my 3c905, and the layout UI is some MacOS / Windows hybrid which should be easy for novices to figure out. However, the command prompt is GNU Utils all the way, with should be great for us power users who don't care about that darn GUI thing. :)

My video card isn't supported out of the box, (it's a crappy Trident PCI card) so this is all in 640x480, grayscale. I don't have sound yet, but my TV card works, and since I have networking I'm going to look for drivers now. The default web browser is okay, (loads slashdot, lets me log in, can't see my user page though) and once Be gets more driver support out-of-the-box, (I guess there's more on the CD) and more applications running on it, (Windows compatibility layer?) this should be a killer OS! I like the anti-aliased text, even in grayscale. I'd like to see that on X more often...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Excellent. I've alluded to this a few times, I do the same with JWZ's dadadodo, and your program seems to do a good job as well. Does it generate lots of paragraphs that you hand-picked?

Getting the last 20 or so stories and filtering out the slashdot crap in shell script isn't that hard, eventually I'll keep around some permanent scripts for it. Once I get to the real pages, win no comments preferably, I dump them with lynx, and use head and tail to get the "content"...

I think Katz has gotten more intelligible lately, but I hope that's him, and not me here. I don't want to end up understanding him and going insane! ;)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

First off, the Linux download is smaller. The disk images are exactly the same, but Windows users get an installer, and some tools they need to get it working / make it easier.

I know because before I found the Linux version, I was trying to get the Windows version to work. I eventually managed to get all the files extracted using Wine, and it has a disk image, a file system image, etc.

The disk images for Windows and Linux are different; the (512 MB!) file system image is the same.

BeOS can't find its file system image with either disk. I put all its stuff in '/home/beos', which is a separate partition on my machine, so this should work. It bitches about the superblock, I tried enabling/disabling DMA transfers, etc., etc.

Does support for IDE harddrives or ext2 under BeOS blow this bad, or is it just me? I'm using pretty generic hardware here...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Don't link to something that isn't the article. At least someone posted it later...

Pardon me? Of *course* I know what ROT-13 is. A while back, I posted about using rounds of ROT-26 for encryption... ;)

unity% which rot13
rot13: aliased to tr A-MN-Za-mn-z N-ZA-Mn-za-m

You use it on USENET when you don't want to spoil a joke for someone. But all the jokes here on slashdot have been spoiled lately, so maybe we should have used it...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

What about just changing the names, and making "Informative" into "Troll" and "Insightful" into "Flamebait", so we can have (Score: +3, Troll)?

I mean, that's basically how it works *now*, you'd just be fixing a bug! Yeah, that's it...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

I didn't see this story at all, even in German. Couldn't they make up a correct link next time?

Oh well, linking to German is better than mangling it, I guess.

I did find this April Fool's joke on CT, though. Replacing a real estate site with a porn site, what a great idea! Or maybe they could start an "Amateurs" site with real estate agents... :)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Nope, looks like business as usual.

Those whacky '1337 d00ds...

"Phree Phiber Optik!!1!" :)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

No, I hadn't! I'm going to have to show that one to my girlfriend... She'll love the "PsyDuck with a railgun"... I'd buy some PokeQuake merchandise, that'd be so funny!

If anyone else has other cool news that I missed, please post it, this is much better than the Slashdot news today...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Finally, slashdot posts some *funny* April Fools Day links! :)

I don't know who linked to it before, but the newsletter over at ticalc.org did the translations right, with a human to mangle them! I laughed and laughed...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Dude, for once, Barrapunto is *much* better than Slashdot. I can't read Spanish that well, but it's a lot more readable than this crap, and I know they carried the Google MentalPlex story that I submitted to Slashdot last night... Go figure.

Oh well, at least slashdot finally linked to something on salon.

Låhdo+: n£ws FoR Lus£RZ, tuFf thå+ M@++urZ,

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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Before everyone starts spouting off about this, uninformed, stay calm and follow the links!

Look-and-feel cases are old news, but they're coming back in a big way, and patent infringement is serious business, in this case US Patent number 5,876,324, which Andover might use to put kuro5hin in a world of pain!

I say we Slashdot Slashdot about what we think of Andover.net's behavior!
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Heh heh heh.

I had a special boot configuration just for Ultima VII, because nothing else would work. It also ran a bit too fast on my P133. (I got it late, there was no way it would have run on my 386 when it came out--it'd be like trying to run Ultima IX on that P133. :)

At one point, since I didn't know what else to do with my 32MB of RAM, and I was sick of hearing the disk grind, I loaded U7 into a 17MB compressed RAM drive. It was pretty quiet then!

It looks like they wrote their own XMS management routines, with garbage collection in the interpreter, and references to "voodoo memory", and lots of debugging. Looks like a hack to me!

Ah, those were the days. I need to play through the old games, and I want to at least try U9. I think my favorite was Ultima V on the C64. I still have the map and the manuals, and also the collection...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

And The Wizardry Compiled, I think.

Great books, anyhow. Rick Cook also writes relatively clueful tech articles...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

...using the OSS[1]-emulation from the OSS[2] ALSA project, I managed to produce an OSS[3] from my hi-fi speakers...

Seriously, though, that was a good article. I'll just be happy if I can get a sound card that does full duplex under Linux, I want to try out those Internet phone programs... (multiple DSP's would be cool too!)

I haven't checked out the ALSA project, but I've been having problems with some poorly written applications that end up locking up my sound card. However, if it gets stuck into the kernel anyhow, or if I get a new sound card, hopefully my problems will go away.

---
1) Open Sound System
2) Open Source Software
3) Optimum Stereo Signal

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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Well, no, if you've ever seen an NT box recover from a crash, you should know how false that is.

1) It isn't all journaled, just the metadata.

2) If it doesn't need much "Fscking", then... Mommy, what's that blue chkdsk-lookin' thing on boot-up?

I don't know what you could do to clean up an NT machine, but I'd like to see it. Maybe Windows 2000 will be the big answer to your problems. ("Wait for the upgrade"...)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Sweet, I wrote the same thing (in C) a while back.

I'm going to write another version eventually that only chops the message to a fixed space after the last >, because otherwise it'll mange ASCII art. (I tried it on your page just to make sure that it works the same way mine does...)

main()
{
inti=0;
chars[512];
while(gets(s)){
while((s[i]=='>')||(s[i]==''))
i++;
puts(s+i);
i=0;
}
}

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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Hmm. I browsed that page in lynx, and didn't have a problem figuring it out. The left frame was "menu", since lynx supports frames. (and it should, since frames finally made it into the spec--are there any major browsers that don't support frames anymore?)

I would have preferred tables because I still think frames are evil, but okay. (On Lynda's main page, she's got a kewl script that breaks out of frames. ;)

I know why people use graphics that are simply text. If there were a good, standard way to give everyone the same fonts, we could just use that. But there isn't, not really.

Lynx also shows the names of the images in the links, and these images are all named consistently. The ALT text would be exactly the same, except without the ".gif". w3m goes one better, and just shows the names, and that they are images.

Sure, these are technically errors, but please explain to me who would run into them? Someone using Mosaic with image loading turned off? Please. It isn't great, sure, but it isn't a "monstrosity".

However, you're right, someone doesn't know how to write HTML, was in a hurry, or hacked a pre-existing page. You should never have a closing body without a starting body tag, and frames don't need a starting body tag, so...

But even with all that, these pages look fine in most any browser, AFAICT. Isn't that the point?
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Specifically, what is Lynda doing that deliberately breaks cross-platform compatibility? Her pages looked readable in w3m under Linux, and that's good enough for me.

Open standards and cross-platform compatibility *can* exist, but not enough people use it! There's a big difference between writing a spec and making people conform to it. Until the HTML spec is *better* than what Evil-Browser-X wants you to do, people aren't going to use it, and Conformant-Browser-Y will be broken.

Therefore, a project like Mozilla is a step in the right direction: a great, spec-conformant browser with a fast engine that people can use for their own projects might cause people to write HTML with it in mind. (web browsers are like platforms for HTML) If so, the HTML would naturally be more spec-conformant because the browser is.

In an ideal world, the W3C would put out the best browser, and the spec would be friendlier than anything a corporation can come up with. Do you now understand that we live in a far less than ideal world, the spec is a nasty compromise with big corporate interests looming over it, and Amaya is an ugly-looking, unpopular browser?

Are you now wishing for people to use those darn open standards, and write pages with cross-platform compatibility in mind?

I know I am. I'd rather use HTML and JPEGs than let PowerPoint mangle perfectly good images, but people like me are in the minority, and the majority has taken over the web.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Wow. My nemesis, thy name is gargle.

Even if a post doesn't contribute to the discussion, *or* if you don't like it, it isn't redundant unless it's been said. And in this case, it seriously wasn't offtopic, since people were *still* posting interview questions! I would moderate it as "Informative".

A warning like that needs to be at the top, so people don't waste their time writing questions that won't be answered, and seriously don't waste their time flaming other people who write the questions...

I know how people get mod points, but I have yet to see the logic in the system. I've been reading slashdot a lot less lately, but I'm sure I'm not an average user, or whatever they're looking for.

From what I've read thus far, I like Lynda because she seems to understand the realities of the situation while still hoping for a real solution.

You must realize that web sites would be much more usable and aesthetically pleasing if they worked the same way, on all web browsers? Like maybe if I didn't have to see unsupported character codes in HTML that only work in Windows/IE5 for some reason? Hmm? I wonder why that happens...

And for the record, I didn't say a damn thing about "Open Source", she did, and you did. I liked the quote, and was surprised I found it there, amid all the web newbie tool talk, and thought the Slashdot community might find it interesting. I also mentioned the other web design points I was interested in from the article, which you chose to ignore.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Actually, I still think the "magic 'O' word" in this case is "Open standards", but the other two 'words' are required to ensure that.

However, Open Source goes a long way to helping out the other three goals: if you can simply recompile, or patch the source, what could be more open and friendly than that? It's additional and optional, and programmer-friendly. No one else should care, except that they might get an enhanced product out of the deal. But we'll see how Netscape 6 is soon enough...

But I was just sharing a quote I found interesting, that raised my opinion of Lynda, who I had never heard of before. And as no one else commented on it before me, could someone kindly explain how I'm "Redundant" too?

I also thought the guy posting to explain that this wasn't a "Slashdot Interview" candidate was being very helpful, and I think he got moderated down for his troubles. Do I not get moderator access because they know I won't moderate down the good posts? No, really, I'd like a reply, preferably from the people who moderate down on this thread. :)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Well, you have the wrong link, for starters.

Try this one (Lynda with a 'Y').

And yeah, it still doesn't validate, but the W3C Validator is strict, and pretty crappy too. And the CSS validates just fine. Pretty good, for a (probably hacked) "Adobe GoLive 4" generated page.

And remember: Valid HTML might be syntactically correct, but that doesn't make it Good.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Wendy: If you could have one wish, forgetting the practicality of whether it can be done, what would you like to see changed in the Web development world?

Lynda: Open standards, open source, browser compatibility and cross-platform compatibility. A tall order indeed.

Slashdot is pretty arrogant, and if it were any more interactive, JonKatz would get the *crap* beaten out of him on a daily basis...

Hmm. Well, he wouldn't like that, but some of us might... I mean, he does ask for it... But then he'd have to write about it, and it'd be "Another Columbine" and "Voices from the Bathroom" and whatever... :)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

It struck me as a much better book than the one they used here for the intro classes, (written at least partially by Perry--don't take her class, I'm not even going to speculate about little boys on Hillsborough St. ;) but that isn't saying much.

Whatever happened to the K&R book? Oh wait, that's C. Mommy, why aren't they writing in C?

But to be fair, I was really interested in what Stroustrup had to say about programming in C++ with the STL. I'm amazed that it's such a well-written class library that it can be more efficient than flat-out C code for simple things...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Considering the incredibly low opinion his students have of him, maybe he should listen before he opens his big mouth and digs himself into a deeper hole.

But does he listen? No, he whines. Well, I guess his critics were right, then.

And he must have paid extra to that boy on Polk St., not to tell... ;)

Oops, I defamed him in a public forum! Ban Slashdot and the Internet! It's evil! People can express their opinions without censorship! BURN ALL TEXT!!!
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Yeah, I had that happen too. Some trigger-happy maintenance programmer out there needs to tune his perl script...

I don't think these "free account" places can possibly last. All the old "free account" of any sort usually ends up failing miserably sooner or later. With a limited supply (of servers) and a near infinite demand (of lamers), and no revenue generator that I've heard of yet, this sounds like a real loser.

So I can buy stock in it, and become a millionaire, right? :)

I haven't been posting on slashdot that much lately. Is this crap normal now? 17/83? Come on, people!

First Post Above Score:1, yeah! ;)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

What, your qubix kernel doesn't want to run in supervisor mode either?

Does that count as an observer?

Damn you Heisenberg, and your Uncertainty Principle! :)

Oh well. I think it already runs QNX...

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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

First, I don't understand why a company would pay so much for chili. Given the current price of ground beef in our market economy, and...

Oh. Sorry. Am I the only person who thinks that "Chilli!Soft" is a really dumb name? They should be happy about being bought by a reputable company. (read: with a marketable name...)

I guess I just lose it when they start talking about that "integrating Chili!Soft Active Server Pages technology". I'd never buy Microsoft chili on the web; I'm sure it'd taste like ASP! :)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Jon, your ideas are your own, and believe me, no one is going to steal them from you. :)

Yeah, all of us hackers are evil pirates. My web browser "steals" copyrighted images every day and makes copies of them. Those .au files I used to listen to were just as enjoyable as the radio. When I first thought up that bubblesort algorithm, I didn't know someone else had done it first.

...but the difference is, now that there is money involved, corporations are entering the picture and getting lawsuit-happy, and generally trashing the world that we built in the first place, and exploiting its features.

I'd much rather live in a world where record companies did not exist, banner ads were illegal, phone and computer companies could not own media or patent simple ideas, musicians were supported by the goodwill of their fans, without anyone to take their excess money, and slashdot discussions were intelligent.

But I think that's enough fantasy for one day...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Ars Technica always has interesting technical stuff. Heck, it's "News for Nerds" by definition. Kudos to slashdot for linking to it, especially since they post some of the better Slashdot links on Ars. :)

They wrote an excellent article on the Crusoe, (I just wrote a short paper on it for class, myself, although I used the white paper for reference...) and were looking forward to this architecture. It's nice to hear more details.

Wow, these results are really impressive! I wish someone would implement an x86 interpreter on x86 that actually ran faster. I wonder if the limited number of registers would really get in the way of a control program, though. Transmeta, where are you? ;)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

What are you talking about? Linux is not socialist or fascist, but rather embodies the ideal of the perfect communism, where everyone contributes what they can, and hopefully gets what they need. But since the barrier to entry is so much lower, information is essentially free to all, and distribution problems go to nil!

...And do you really think the moderators will fall for something so simplistic?

[...]

Damn, I wish I had thought of this one first! :)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.