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From the article:

Microsoft for the first time has named Linux distributors Red Hat and Canonical as competitors to its Windows client business in its annual filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Yeah, there are lots of pointless legal disclaimers in 10-K filings to cover respective companies' own asses.

It's not the first time that Microsoft has acknowledged Linux as a threat to their business model. It might be the first time they have put it in their 10-K report, but I don't consider legal disclaimers in an annual SEC filing to be newsworthy.

Has anyone read the Red Hat, Inc. 10-K report. Anyone take the time to count the number of competitors, listed by name, in there? Now ask yourself, is that newsworthy?

From the article:

Microsoft for the first time has named Linux distributors Red Hat and Canonical as competitors to its Windows client business in its annual filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Yeah, there are lots of pointless legal disclaimers in 10-K filings to cover respective companies' own asses.

It's not the first time that Microsoft has acknowledged Linux as a threat to their business model. It might be the first time they have put it in their 10-K report, but I don't consider legal disclaimers in an annual SEC filing to be newsworthy.

Has anyone read the Red Hat, Inc. 10-K report. Anyone take the time to count the number of competitors, listed by name, in there? Now ask yourself, is that newsworthy?

From the article:

Microsoft for the first time has named Linux distributors Red Hat and Canonical as competitors to its Windows client business in its annual filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Yeah, there are lots of pointless legal disclaimers in 10-K filings to cover respective companies' own asses.

It's not the first time that Microsoft has acknowledged Linux as a threat to their business model. It might be the first time they have put it in their 10-K report, but I don't consider legal disclaimers in an annual SEC filing to be newsworthy.

Has anyone read the Red Hat, Inc. 10-K report. Anyone take the time to count the number of competitors, listed by name, in there? Now ask yourself, is that newsworthy?

Not really. Our best plan for artificial weaponized meteors is telephone-pole-to-crowbar sized rods of tungsten. Somehow I doubt that much tungsten weighs less than 0.5 pounds.

AKA the orbital LART.

More accurately, they run on more magic.

Bash scripting first; go study this, to learn bash. Then maybe some PHP, depending on what you're doing.

Perl is abstract, hideously ugly, has utterly alien syntax unlike anything you will find anywhere else, and will make your ears bleed. Also don't go anywhere near assembler unless you are a mathematical savant. You also likely won't need to bother with C, either; 98% of what you might want to do in C will generally be done far more easily and painlessly in something else. Read this as well. Most of the hot shot Debian scrubs these days don't bother to, and they should.

You will only need Cobol if you're wanting to do this for a living, and even then, it probably isn't a language which anyone should learn as a new skill these days; still, banks and other similarly eldritch, sadomasochistic institutions can sometimes still want it. With Java, who knows? Some people use that for various things, but ask before you assume people will want you to have it. If you can get away with avoiding it, do so.

Also, do not try to learn to code purely for its' own sake; you won't learn anything that way. Find something you want to do; even if it's only something like setting up a cron job at first, and then do that. Learn vim or Emacs, read the RFCs for the net protocols, and listen to some psytrance while doing all of the above. Have a reason for doing it, and enjoy it while you do it, or you'll never get anywhere.

The idea that anyone is astroturfing Slashdot is, in itself, both dumb and paranoid in equal amounts. Do you seriously think anyone with both decision-making power and a lack of technical knowledge a) actually reads Slashdot in the first place and b) is going to make up their mind based on a posting here (or even a thousand of them) ?
   

A) Yes and B) No. The reason I think A) is true is because I know Microsoft's culture. They are paranoid. And they are out to win at all costs. And winning for Microsoft means that everyone else has to lose. Including any credible competition, which, we know from the Halloween Memos that Microsoft has viewed Linux as a credible threat since at least 1998. That's more than 10 years.

Eric felt his scrotum contract in its latest desperate attempt to keep his testicles warm. This hospital, wherever it was, was damned drafty.

It didn't help that the nurses on his floor, who had been treating Eric like a complete bitch, liked to keep the air conditioning cranked up. Or was it just his room? He noticed they pulled their cardigans and sweaters around them only when they came to see him.

"Nurse! Nurse!" Eric shouted. "Excuse me, nurse?!"

Eric heard a chair creak, followed by footsteps coming down the hall. They were quick around here, one of the only good things Eric had yet noticed. Perhaps it was because of his celebrity status.

"Yes?" the nurse said, crossing her goose-pimpled arms.

"Nurse, it's damn cold in here," Eric said. "And I think my pain medication is wearing off. Can I have some more pills?"

Her beady eyes, set atop wrinkled, puffy cheeks, lasered him in his bed. This was the sixth time Eric had shouted for her since her shift began. She didn't know him well but she was definitely starting to hate him.

"Oh! And my urinal needs emptied!" Eric added.

The nurse pursed her lips and folded her arms without breaking eye contact, "get fucked" in body language.

Eric smiled a crooked, leering grin at her and winked in a bid to charm her into emptying his piss. The nurse wondered if he was about to have another seizure.

She picked up Eric's chart, flipped through it, and replaced it.

"Mr. Raymond," the nurse said, "you're not due for more pain medication for two more hours."

Eric's mustache, orange and drooping, twitched.

"Do you need your bandages looked at?"

Eric shifted in his bed, stiff and uncomfortable. He slowly, awkwardly, stretched his hospital gown down over his knees.

"Nooo, no, no I don't," Eric said. "My bandages are just fine."

"Fine then," the nurse said. "I'll get your urinal. Do you need anything else?"

Eric watched as the nurse lifted his urinal carefully off of his lunch tray. It was completely full1,000 cubic centimeters, one full quart of piss and mounding at the top.

The nurse stifled a gag as she slowly made her way into the restroom.

"This damn IV has me swimming!" Eric called after her with a quick laugh.

He heard her pouring his urine into the toilet and felt the urge to go again. It had been dark brown, viscous, and smelled to high heaven like sick wet meat. He really hoped whatever they had him on was working.

She returned from the restroom and replaced Eric's urinal.

"I'll be back when it's time for your medication," she said. "Dinner is in an hour."

With that she left until, she knew too well, the next time Eric grew bored or irritated.

Feeling as anxious as ever, Eric reached for billywig, his blueberry iBook, which had finally charged. He hit the start button and watched Yellow Dog Linux slowly crawl off of the hard drive into RAM.

Thank god this hospital had wifi. Thank god he had an Airport card in his iBook.

http://www.google.com/search?q=brown+piss

"Nope."

http://www.google.com/search?q=my+piss+is+brown

"Hmm Nope."

http://www.google.com/search?q=my+piss+is+brown+std

"Nope."

http://www.google.com/search?q=my+piss+is+brown+and+smells+like+rotting+meat+std

Eric was having no luck. The more he optimized his Google searches, he noted with alarm, the less relevant his search hits became.

foul smelling like decay meat and at times like grated yam. this odor ... and fifth day i see dirth brown dischargeAbnorm

Eric felt his scrotum contract in its latest desperate attempt to keep his testicles warm. This hospital, wherever it was, was damned drafty.

It didn't help that the nurses on his floor, who had been treating Eric like a complete bitch, liked to keep the air conditioning cranked up. Or was it just his room? He noticed they pulled their cardigans and sweaters around them only when they came to see him.

"Nurse! Nurse!" Eric shouted. "Excuse me, nurse?!"

Eric heard a chair creak, followed by footsteps coming down the hall. They were quick around here, one of the only good things Eric had yet noticed. Perhaps it was because of his celebrity status.

"Yes?" the nurse said, crossing her goose-pimpled arms.

"Nurse, it's damn cold in here," Eric said. "And I think my pain medication is wearing off. Can I have some more pills?"

Her beady eyes, set atop wrinkled, puffy cheeks, lasered him in his bed. This was the sixth time Eric had shouted for her since her shift began. She didn't know him well but she was definitely starting to hate him.

"Oh! And my urinal needs emptied!" Eric added.

The nurse pursed her lips and folded her arms without breaking eye contact, "get fucked" in body language.

Eric smiled a crooked, leering grin at her and winked in a bid to charm her into emptying his piss. The nurse wondered if he was about to have another seizure.

She picked up Eric's chart, flipped through it, and replaced it.

"Mr. Raymond," the nurse said, "you're not due for more pain medication for two more hours."

Eric's mustache, orange and drooping, twitched.

"Do you need your bandages looked at?"

Eric shifted in his bed, stiff and uncomfortable. He slowly, awkwardly, stretched his hospital gown down over his knees.

"Nooo, no, no I don't," Eric said. "My bandages are just fine."

"Fine then," the nurse said. "I'll get your urinal. Do you need anything else?"

Eric watched as the nurse lifted his urinal carefully off of his lunch tray. It was completely full1,000 cubic centimeters, one full quart of piss and mounding at the top.

The nurse stifled a gag as she slowly made her way into the restroom.

"This damn IV has me swimming!" Eric called after her with a quick laugh.

He heard her pouring his urine into the toilet and felt the urge to go again. It had been dark brown, viscous, and smelled to high heaven like sick wet meat. He really hoped whatever they had him on was working.

She returned from the restroom and replaced Eric's urinal.

"I'll be back when it's time for your medication," she said. "Dinner is in an hour."

With that she left until, she knew too well, the next time Eric grew bored or irritated.

Feeling as anxious as ever, Eric reached for billywig, his blueberry iBook, which had finally charged. He hit the start button and watched Yellow Dog Linux slowly crawl off of the hard drive into RAM.

Thank god this hospital had wifi. Thank god he had an Airport card in his iBook.

http://www.google.com/search?q=brown+piss

"Nope."

http://www.google.com/search?q=my+piss+is+brown

"Hmm Nope."

http://www.google.com/search?q=my+piss+is+brown+std

"Nope."

http://www.google.com/search?q=my+piss+is+brown+and+smells+like+rotting+meat+std

Eric was having no luck. The more he optimized his Google searches, he noted with alarm, the less relevant his search hits became.

foul smelling like decay meat and at times like grated yam. this odor ... and fifth day i see dirth brown dischargeAbnorm

the best course ? find something that interests you, maybe something that you use every day - and find something you don't like about the product, or maybe think of how it could be improved.
it's famously called scratching your own itch.
why is that an effective way ? because you are interested, of course ! you see the results of your work, you use them.

what project to choose ? it's completely up to you. pick one, look at what they have on their web, wiki, join their irc channel, talk with people. see whether you like them - because that is important.

you could look at major projects who have specific sections to help new contributors like http://contributing.openoffice.org/ or http://techbase.kde.org/Contribute, or take a look at the many smaller projects in various categories like personal or system management software, games or... anything.

but really, basic requirements :
1. you are interested;
2. you can work with the people on the project.

everything else will come itself.
also, you are in no way limited to a single project - actually, it is beneficial to participate in multiple projects because you'll get familiar with various organisational, code versioning, documentation and communication practices. contributing a few fixes here and there can be very eye-opening on how these things come together.

good luck :)

Eric felt his scrotum contract in its latest desperate attempt to keep his testicles warm. This hospital, wherever it was, was damned drafty.

It didn't help that the nurses on his floor, who had been treating Eric like a complete bitch, liked to keep the air conditioning cranked up. Or was it just his room? He noticed they pulled their cardigans and sweaters around them only when they came to see him.

"Nurse! Nurse!" Eric shouted. "Excuse me, nurse?!"

Eric heard a chair creak, followed by footsteps coming down the hall. They were quick around here, one of the only good things Eric had yet noticed. Perhaps it was because of his celebrity status.

"Yes?" the nurse said, crossing her goose-pimpled arms.

"Nurse, it's damn cold in here," Eric said. "And I think my pain medication is wearing off. Can I have some more pills?"

Her beady eyes, set atop wrinkled, puffy cheeks, lasered him in his bed. This was the sixth time Eric had shouted for her since her shift began. She didn't know him well but she was definitely starting to hate him.

"Oh! And my urinal needs emptied!" Eric added.

The nurse pursed her lips and folded her arms without breaking eye contact, "get fucked" in body language.

Eric smiled a crooked, leering grin at her and winked in a bid to charm her into emptying his piss. The nurse wondered if he was about to have another seizure.

She picked up Eric's chart, flipped through it, and replaced it.

"Mr. Raymond," the nurse said, "you're not due for more pain medication for two more hours."

Eric's mustache, orange and drooping, twitched.

"Do you need your bandages looked at?"

Eric shifted in his bed, stiff and uncomfortable. He slowly, awkwardly, stretched his hospital gown down over his knees.

"Nooo, no, no I don't," Eric said. "My bandages are just fine."

"Fine then," the nurse said. "I'll get your urinal. Do you need anything else?"

Eric watched as the nurse lifted his urinal carefully off of his lunch tray. It was completely full1,000 cubic centimeters, one full quart of piss and mounding at the top.

The nurse stifled a gag as she slowly made her way into the restroom.

"This damn IV has me swimming!" Eric called after her with a quick laugh.

He heard her pouring his urine into the toilet and felt the urge to go again. It had been dark brown, viscous, and smelled to high heaven like sick wet meat. He really hoped whatever they had him on was working.

She returned from the restroom and replaced Eric's urinal.

"I'll be back when it's time for your medication," she said. "Dinner is in an hour."

With that she left until, she knew too well, the next time Eric grew bored or irritated.

Feeling as anxious as ever, Eric reached for billywig, his blueberry iBook, which had finally charged. He hit the start button and watched Yellow Dog Linux slowly crawl off of the hard drive into RAM.

Thank god this hospital had wifi. Thank god he had an Airport card in his iBook.

http://www.google.com/search?q=brown+piss

"Nope."

http://www.google.com/search?q=my+piss+is+brown

"Hmm Nope."

http://www.google.com/search?q=my+piss+is+brown+std

"Nope."

http://www.google.com/search?q=my+piss+is+brown+and+smells+like+rotting+meat+std

Eric was having no luck. The more he optimized his Google searches, he noted with alarm, the less relevant his search hits became.

foul smelling like decay meat and at times like grated yam. this odor ... and fifth day i see dirth brown dischargeAbnorm

Eric felt his scrotum contract in its latest desperate attempt to keep his testicles warm. This hospital, wherever it was, was damned drafty.

It didn't help that the nurses on his floor, who had been treating Eric like a complete bitch, liked to keep the air conditioning cranked up. Or was it just his room? He noticed they pulled their cardigans and sweaters around them only when they came to see him.

"Nurse! Nurse!" Eric shouted. "Excuse me, nurse?!"

Eric heard a chair creak, followed by footsteps coming down the hall. They were quick around here, one of the only good things Eric had yet noticed. Perhaps it was because of his celebrity status.

"Yes?" the nurse said, crossing her goose-pimpled arms.

"Nurse, it's damn cold in here," Eric said. "And I think my pain medication is wearing off. Can I have some more pills?"

Her beady eyes, set atop wrinkled, puffy cheeks, lasered him in his bed. This was the sixth time Eric had shouted for her since her shift began. She didn't know him well but she was definitely starting to hate him.

"Oh! And my urinal needs emptied!" Eric added.

The nurse pursed her lips and folded her arms without breaking eye contact, "get fucked" in body language.

Eric smiled a crooked, leering grin at her and winked in a bid to charm her into emptying his piss. The nurse wondered if he was about to have another seizure.

She picked up Eric's chart, flipped through it, and replaced it.

"Mr. Raymond," the nurse said, "you're not due for more pain medication for two more hours."

Eric's mustache, orange and drooping, twitched.

"Do you need your bandages looked at?"

Eric shifted in his bed, stiff and uncomfortable. He slowly, awkwardly, stretched his hospital gown down over his knees.

"Nooo, no, no I don't," Eric said. "My bandages are just fine."

"Fine then," the nurse said. "I'll get your urinal. Do you need anything else?"

Eric watched as the nurse lifted his urinal carefully off of his lunch tray. It was completely full1,000 cubic centimeters, one full quart of piss and mounding at the top.

The nurse stifled a gag as she slowly made her way into the restroom.

"This damn IV has me swimming!" Eric called after her with a quick laugh.

He heard her pouring his urine into the toilet and felt the urge to go again. It had been dark brown, viscous, and smelled to high heaven like sick wet bad meat. He really hoped whatever they had him on was working.

She returned from the restroom and replaced Eric's urinal.

"I'll be back when it's time for your medication," she said. "Dinner is in an hour."

With that she left until, she knew too well, the next time Eric grew bored or irritated.

Feeling as anxious as ever, Eric reached for billywig, his blueberry iBook, which had finally charged. He hit the start button and watched Yellow Dog Linux slowly crawl off of the hard drive into RAM.

Thank god this hospital had wifi. Thank god he had an Airport card in his iBook.

http://www.google.com/search?q=brown+piss

"Nope."

http://www.google.com/search?q=my+piss+is+brown

"Hmm Nope."

http://www.google.com/search?q=my+piss+is+brown+std

"Nope."

http://www.google.com/search?q=my+piss+is+brown+and+smells+like+rotting+meat+std

Eric was having no luck. The more he optimized his Google searches, he noted with alarm, the less relevant his search hits became.

foul smelling like decay meat and at times like grated yam. this odor ... and fifth day i see dirth brown dischargeAb

Dear Savage Love:

I am a 51 year old male who is into hardcore scat. I meet men at Linux user groups for turd binges and human toiletry on a monthly basis.

My longtime physician recently retired and I'm having trouble finding another one who is willing to prescribe the appropriate antibiotics and parasite medications that are essential for this kind of lifestyle. All of the general practitioners I've talked to tell me to stop my "potentially life-threatening activities" and won't discuss long-term care.

Dan, I need a doc who's willing to work with me in my shit-struggle and give me the pills necessary to continue exploring Linux hippie ass. Do you recommend any certain kind of doctor or even individuals? I'm quite wealthy and am willing to travel nationally for this care.

Thanks,
  Eric S. Raymond

From: emad.elharaty@gmail.com
To: esr@catb.org
Date: JUN 20 2009 16:27
Subject: IRANIAN HACKER COMMUNIQUÉ

Eric,

It's Emad.

I know we haven't spoken since that whole Michael incident, but I think we should put our heads together about these Iranian hackers.

Meet me at the Carney's Point Flying J at 10 PM. Get shower stall 16 and wait for me. I'll be wearing a Slashdot t-shirt and drinking Bawls.

Don't be late. The future of Iranian hackers depends on it. So does the security of America too I guess, and gun ownership or something.

Emad

Read more

You can help. Get involved by going over to the NedaNet Resources Page and setting up a squid proxy or, better yet, a Tor proxy, to help the Iranian dissidents. This is a real, live underground network, being run by Eric Raymond and some other folks who are remaining anonymous.

It's also an acronym--it stands for mung until no good. :-)

See also sense three of that link.

It's also an acronym--it stands for mung until no good. :-)

Mung
Munge
Munge

Please turn in your card at the door on your way out.

Mung
Munge
Munge

Please turn in your card at the door on your way out.

Eric Raymond's famous essays on relationships and the modern geek: http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/sextips/

Microsoft is becoming infamous for these bogus get the "facts" campaigns

For those few who might be unfamiliar with the GTF campaign from the Summer of '04 of the past, here is a contemporary treatment.

Yup, it's just a SMOP

That said, I don't know how to manage an open source project and generate a community around our efforts other than posting to various blogs every once in a while when I see something related.

Some good pointers can be found in The Cathedral and the Bazaar.

Nope. It's not. Hacking still means tinkering. It's just that today, the media uninformed shit-storm even reached the dirty bottom of all Slashdot users.

Here, where we know what we are talking about. We call unauthorized access "cracking" (like you crack a safe).

This is the reference, as long as we still live: http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/H/hacker.html ^^
But I bet you don't even know the jargon file.

No, my argument is that it's a pointless question.

Of course you're perfectly within your rights to ask pointless questions, just don't expect the answers to be very enlightening.

Face it, whenever you fly, be it in a Boeing or in an Airbus, you're putting your "lives in the hands of a computer", because computers fly planes these days. The "battle-tested pilot" is just along for the ride like the rest of us.

In an emergency the pilot will try to fly the plane and no matter if it's an Airbus or a Boeing, it will let him do that.

So I'll just go ahead and change my argument. The question isn't just pointless, it's in fact meaningless. The only correct answer is "Mu".

There's a whole series in the Crunchly cartoons by Guy L. Steele, such as this one where he buys a hydraulic computer of sorts...

http://catb.org/jargon/html/Y/YHBT.html ...and nope, I'd not seen that particular troll before. I'm not sure how, but there you go. I learned two new things today.

No. If they are trying to do something stupid or pointless the deserve to be told so. Also people should read this before asking questions.

Specifically this poster should have read this and done number 5.

No. If they are trying to do something stupid or pointless the deserve to be told so. Also people should read this before asking questions.

Specifically this poster should have read this and done number 5.

Personally, I believe the bought Sun just to get control of MySQL so they could kill it, since it was taking sales away from them.

A cogent and insightful theory, except that it's precisely like Mack buying out Segway because it was taking truck sales away from them.* Oracle doesn't have a credible product (or even a foot in the door) in any market where MySQL is already effective.

But this won't be totally effective

For the basic reason I stated above

we need to get all the MySQL users to rally behind one of the forks not controlled by Oracle.

Fair enough; I dislike Oracle's business dealings and basic arrogance enough to get me behind a genuine grassroots fork. But don't succumb to Amiga Persecution Complex. If it happens, the non-Oracle fork's ultimate poor uptake and small community won't be because of some sinister Oracle Trilateral Commission keeping the little guy down; it'll be the little guy just being little.

*I'd like to point out the nifty Slashdot-compliant car analogy. OK, technically, truck analogy.

Yep, a supposed 'computer wizard' who couldn't even disassemble a printer driver

Um, says who? I can read assembler in several dialects, but darned if I wanna reverse engineer a Python program by looking at its bytecode. Even if it was written directly in assembler and not a relatively HLL, in the time when self-modifying code and Mel were common, even a genius would be loathe to binary patch something like that. Just think: the next time they release a new version, you get to start over from scratch!

It's your right to dislike Stallman or disagree with his positions, but you can't objectively call him a bad programmer.

The official 64 bit Slackware comes just in time because the 32 bit OS will die in 2008. reference: http://catb.org/esr/writings/world-domination/world-domination-201.html

Your problem is most likely smart quotes.

You don't blame a wolf for eating sheep. You shoot the wolf or build a better fence.

In this world, you know there are wolves. If you don't protect yourself, then you are a sheep.

If you haven't seen these, I suggest you spend a minute reading On Sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdogs by Dave Grossman and The Parable of the Sheep by Charles Riggs

Why? I can see some justification on the strXXX functions where you don't know how many bytes are going to be copied unless you call strlen first, but in memcpy you pass how many bytes to copy in as a parameter. So this is to protect programmers who can't do math?

Yes. The article describes a replacement function memcpy_s that compares the copy size to the destination buffer size and throws an exception if the copy size is larger. It's still unsafe if the program lies to memcpy_s about the destination buffer size, and now it appears to needs exception support in the runtime (which based on my tests can add an extra 64 KB to your elevator controller's firmware).

See also Amiga Persecution Complex.

the US won't rule out conventional (read: kinetic) responses to cyber-attacks.

So, with geolocation services, we could finally make all the jokes about ICBM addresses come true?

Incidentally, it also means we consider non-state cyber-attackers to be illegal enemy combatants, which means we can do all kinds of nasty stuff to them."

First they tortured the terrorists,
And I felt kinda iffy about that,
Even though it worked on TV.

They they tortured Iraqi civilians,
And I felt pretty embarassed,
Even though I was safe at home in America.

Then they tortured people they thought were suspicious,
And I started to get scared,
Even though I didn't hang out with anybody like that.

Then they started torturing the spammers, the botnet herders, and the malware authors,
And I'm sorry, Professor Niemoller,
But that makes up for everything!

1. ^ [1] http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/I/I-for-one-welcome-our-new-X-overlords.html

with RTSes the entire map is in play and there can be many things that aren't immediately visible even when they are on the screen (e.g. factory queues) so if you lose your memory of the situation it's not as easy to recover.

Which is why Nintendo's choice to add a second screen was such a win. An RTS on the DS can show factories' orders and unit locations on the top screen and let the player interact with units on the touch screen. I just wonder how Sony can keep up with demand for "mouse style" play after having killed its touch-screen handheld (Clie) in favor of the PSP.

Ship first, patch later and frequently.

Release early, release often?

Pfff. Magic, meet more magic!

However, according to Zawinski's Law, it also needs to read mail...

My first experience installing and using linux was with Red Hat Linux 4.1. It was mostly out of curiosity as my younger brother had been using linux but I didn't expect much from a free operating system. At the time I was running Windows 95, Windows NT 4 and OS/2 Warp 4 on the same box so I was already well prepared the difficulties of a multi-boot setup and using a diversity of operating systems.

Its been awhile but I don't recall any major issues with the installation. It definitely required more tweaking than the other operating systems to get a working desktop, but as pretty much anyone in this forum knows there is a high probability of install difficulties with almost any operating system when you build a custom system rather than purchase a pre-installed system.

I don't recall the window manager I used at the time but it was a functional desktop albeit not as polished as Windows or OS/2. But something interesting happened, I found Gimp.

I had a large flatbed color scanner on a SCSI bus that I used in Windows and OS/2. In Windows I used the applications that shipped with the scanner and for OS/2 I purchased an image editing program, I don't recall the name anymore, in both cases the applications absolutely refused to use the full size of the scanner. The scanner was a full legal size 8.5x14 but the proprietary applications would only allow up to 8.5x11 scans. With a little research I found there were applications available for purchase that would use the full scan size but I was not in dire need of full legal size scans so I held off on the purchase.

When I used Gimp+SANE with the flatbed scanner it allowed complete legal size scans! My eyes were opened. In the proprietary closed source software world the extra scan size required extra cash, which seemed ludicrous and disingenuous as I doubt it required any significant code changes to implement, but in the open source world the software was written to take full advantage of the hardware's capabilities and it was FREE!

At that point I was sold. By 2003 I was only running linux based operating systems, my laptop, three desktops in the house, a couple of firewalls/routers and a few servers. During this time I have become progressively aware of the ridiculous demands of the closed source proprietary software vendors. They have become sick and demented on their own greed to the point where they've twisted the purpose of Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution from "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" into some bizarre protected and perpetual revenue stream. In this upside down world created by closed source software vendors research and development capital is spent not to advance the science or art but instead to create false limitations on there proprietary applications capabilities to create equally false product price points.

No wait, make that 2000.

Don't jump to your guns and proclaim ESR's clairvoyant genius, though. In 2000, he said to LWN "I believe that will happen probably within five to six month from now." I hope for his sake he didn't sit and wait it out...

Why exactly does it merit any research? This is not riddle posed by Nature -- people devised this device (ha-ha), and know all the answers perfectly already, they just don't want to tell you. You are not advancing scientific progress by figuring out somebody's scheme.

So as long as somebody knows exactly how the system works, that's good enough for you? Fine, but that's not how all of us are wired. Google's knowledge of their audio fingerprinting scheme is useless to me if I want to know how it works and they won't tell me.

Making the details of these kinds of systems publicly available is a valuable service to society as a whole because it means each person who is interested in similar technology or systems doesn't have to waste his/her time repeating the same experiment. It also provides extremely useful information for average Google YouTube users who want to upload videos but don't want said videos unconditionally muted because Google's algorithms can't distinguish between fair-use samples and blatant copyright infringement.

(sigh)

Seriously, are you new around here?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literal_and_figurative_language

http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/S/suit.html

Perhaps you should have quoted a more current version of the entry:

Great Runes: n.

        Uppercase-only text or display messages. Some archaic operating systems still emit these. See also runes, smash case, fold case.

        There is a widespread legend (repeated by earlier versions of this entry, though tagged as folklore) that the uppercase-only support of various old character codes and I/O equipment was chosen by a religious person in a position of power at the Teletype Company because supporting both upper and lower cases was too expensive and supporting lower case only would have made it impossible to spell 'God' correctly. Not true; the upper-case interpretation of teleprinter codes was well established by 1870, long before Teletype was even founded.

Great Runes: n.

Uppercase-only text or display messages. Some archaic operating systems still emit these. See also runes, smash case, fold case.

There is a widespread legend (repeated by earlier versions of this entry, though tagged as folklore) that the uppercase-only support of various old character codes and I/O equipment was chosen by a religious person in a position of power at the Teletype Company because supporting both upper and lower cases was too expensive and supporting lower case only would have made it impossible to spell 'God' correctly. Not true; the upper-case interpretation of teleprinter codes was well established by 1870, long before Teletype was even founded.

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/G/Great-Runes.html

When I was a kid I went through the whole hacker stage using the childish excuse "We help people by highlighting vulnerabilities", this excuse does not hold water either legally or ethically.

Educate yourself:

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html

A hacker isn't somebody who breaks into other machines maliciously. But some who break into systems DO take the moral high ground by getting into the system and leaving information for the administrator about what vulnerability was open and how to secure it without defacing the site.

I hope this unethical behaviour goes on their academic transcript.

What's so unethical? This is like if somebody put a sign in front of an open building that says "please write on the walls", you leave your building for a year or two and nobody has written on it except a bunch of guys who are using the wall to pass encoded messages to each other. If you don't like what they wrote, erase it, tell them they can't do it anymore. Chances are, they'll go find somebody else's open building rather than further piss you off.

What the students did was they just stopped writing on anybody's walls because they were pressured by the university. Maybe what they did annoyed some people, as it was not what the site owners were expecting, but you can't really complain too hard about the situation being "unethical" all things considered. They used the site for what it was made for in an unexpected way.

In addition, most of these abandoned sites are COVERED in spam messages because the admins didn't properly secure against bots posting viagra ads from top to bottom. Can you really blame the grad students for saying, going back to our analogy "hey, this guy just has ads for penis enlargement all over his wall, he probably won't mind if we start passing messages to each other..."? Get off your high horse. The backlash here is well within the site owners rights, but I don't think there should be consequences other than having to stop the project.

Hard SF has more hard science in it, yes, but that doesn't inherently make it more difficult to read. Soft SF--Tiptree, as I mentioned above--can be just as impenetrable.

And the formalism is sometimes hard to recognize as such, since it's done so oddly. Eric Raymond wrote some interesting notes about that, though they are, like everything else he writes, suffused with his own brand of politics.