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What is with the "troll" thing around here?

A Troll is related to the 'flaimbait' moderation. It's like saying "I was wrong in assuming gaim would offer similar stability" in a thread celebrating the achievements of Gaim. It serves no purpose other than to attract a whole bunch of people telling you to go screw yourself.

I don't want to lose any more karma then I have left

That's a mistake. Karma is just a silly thing that it says on your user page. Nobody sees it but you, and it really means nothing. Anybody who has posted many comments has "Karma: Excellent" there unless all they do is post nonsense. Speak your mind, screw the groupthink.

Not to troll, but in some ways this makes me a little sad. Those were the days of 400+k of assembly code, and largely very well optimized.

And then you look at most programmers today, and the way bloated operating systems are written, not to mention the bloated applications that go with it.

I guess we've more or less lost programming of that kind, even things like mobile and thin-client devices these days run higher-end language platforms like Java. I do understand that higher levels of abstractions bring more capability, and we probably would not have been able to handle the complexities of today's code all in assembly -- but a lot of people seem to be using that as an excuse to come up with bloated, non-optimized and useless code swell with features nobody uses.

Reminds me of The Story of Mel, and what we've lost.

I remember a day when /. newbies would be roasted for confusing the terms hacker and cracker - now the editors do it :-/

That's not hacker! It's cracker. Hackers create, crackers destroy.

-ESR (fake)

Hacker != Cracker. How-to.

I am all for the exchange of ideas and a fostering of ties between communities. I would believe that the community of hackers would not shun the idea like our government counterparts have shunned other such opportunities.

I for one would browse their LUG's online community site often and with interest.

Almost. He's Finnish-Swedish.

you are clearly misunderstanding what FUD is, you say:

he different is that FUD - fear, uncertainty, doubt - can in fact be grounded in reality

as the previous responses have indicated with their links to the definition, which I will repeat, FUD is a technical term for disinformation that is intended to inspire fear, uncertainty, and doubt. If it's grounded in reality, it is by definition not FUD. I hate these MOD PARENT X posts, but you just cannot get away with saying something that blatantly misinformed.

Defined by Gene Amdahl after he left IBM to found his own company: FUD is the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that IBM sales people instill in the minds of potential customers who might be considering [Amdahl] products. The idea, of course, was to persuade them to go with safe IBM gear rather than with competitors' equipment. This implicit coercion was traditionally accomplished by promising that Good Things would happen to people who stuck with IBM, but Dark Shadows loomed over the future of competitors' equipment or software. See IBM. After 1990 the term FUD was associated increasingly frequently with Microsoft, and has become generalized to refer to any kind of disinformation used as a competitive weapon.

The OSI position paper has a good summary of the various meanings of "Unix" and why when people say that Linux comes from Unix they don't mean it in the legal, code-copying sense.

... who wrote the comparator tool which was one of the two tools used in the analysis.

ESR deserves three cheers for 'scratching his itch', making a tool to compare copyrighted code. To have it actually used in the SCO case which was the annoying impetus for its creation (AFAICT) has to be a nice feeling.

I'm not an ESR fanboy, but I'll give him props when I think he deserves it and in this case I think he does.

--LP

This CUPS Horror fairly describes why a Gooey interface to printers are not enough.

He's just trying to deflect attention from the Pirates of Silcon Valley slashfic. Editors are on crack! This is news for nerds but apparently it doesn't matter to them!!! Mod this post up to show your support for software developer slash fiction.

ESR wrote a very insightful piece on exactly this.

Read a little Raymond...

Why Libertarians Should Not Love Bill Gates

haha, the 9mm fans are celebrating like there is no tomorrow.

but it don't make no difference to the 1911 owners. 7+1 is all she wrote...

ain't that right ESR? http://www.catb.org/~esr/guns/rig.html/

-

"Is it possible that building a Unix operating system really only takes a few months --and, oh by the way, you don't even need the source code to do it?" Yes, it is possible, because there are published interface standards. I might have done it myself if it had occurred to me to try -- in fact, I have sometimes wondered why it didn't occur to me.

http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/samizdat-respons e.html

Who said Linux could not make it in the print world ?

Now, if only they could make it in the printer world!

Stupid drivers... mumble mumble mumble

I think I agree, though I'm having some trouble imagining what form such an "existence proof" could take, other than providing a P algorithm for some particular NP-Complete problem. Or at least, providing enough of an outline of such an algorithm that, even if the proof can stand with a few details of the actual algorithm left as an exercise for the reader, filling in the gaps wouldn't be too much harder.

I understand you're probably talking about something completely different, namely, a completely abstract existence proof that would work without even hinting at any actual algorithm. But like I said, I'm having trouble imagining how that would go.

I haven't studied that much algorithm theory, but all the NP-Completeness proofs I've seen have consisted of providing an actual algorithm for reducing problem X to some already-known-to-be-NP-Complete problem Y (plus verifying the succinct certificate property of X's solution, which is usually relatively trivial). Of course I realize a P=NP proof would be a very different sort of thing, but I've always imagined it taking a similar form.

As much as I side with IBM here, it does seem a bit ironic to see IBM complaining about a competitor "perpetuating fear, uncertainty and doubt."

It's an attempt to usurp control from the Erics of the world.

The way they teach it in elementary school, "average" is the sum of a bunch of numbers, divided by the number of numbers. I.e., It's exactly the same as what we more-mathematically-advanced folk call the "arithmetic mean".

The fancier term "measure of central tendency" refers collectively to the kind of thing that "mean", "median", and "mode" all are. It's true, I guess, that when speaking very loosely, you might use "average" to mean "measure of central tendency", but usually, I think, people who know enough math to be aware of the difference would know which specific term they mean and use the correct one, and if "average" is used at all, it's in the elementary-school sense, i.e., synonymous with "mean", when you really mean "mean".

Even if you do use "average" to refer collectively to all of the specific terms, using it to specifically but ambiguously mean any particular method of averaging other than "mean" is considered harmful. And confusing the median with the mean is especially bad, because the technical difference between them is often so very important.

Free Software Bazaar?

Read this article, "The magic cauldron" for an excellent explanation why.

HTML Hell

You know you're in Design Hell when:
blinking text - The title at the top blinks and animates, so: Check.
gratuitous animation - Check
garish backgrounds - Check.
unreadable text/background combinations - Check.
pointless use of small or font tags - Check.
masturbation with javascript - Check.
unnecessary use of Java - Check.
CSS that changes the hotlink colors - Check.
background MIDI, Flash, Shockwave, and other abominations - 2 points for this (animation on the side, background music)

You know you're in Content Hell when you see:
hit counters - Check.
guestbooks - Check.

12 points. Although, looking at that site I feel it should have much, much more...

ND

Besides, the nerdy types spend a lot more time looking me in the eyes and a lot less time staring at my chest.

Obviously you haven't met ESR. (Link not safe for people with irony disorders.)

You know. I'm disappointed that /. would get this wrong. Although the content of this topic has it right, why would you then title it with "hacked" instead of "cracked"? Of all places, /. should be setting the bar by using correct terminology.

You know. I'm disappointed that /. would get this wrong. Although the content of this topic has it right, why would you then title it with "hacked" instead of "cracked"? Of all places, /. should be setting the bar by using correct terminology.

I'll go for usenet being a proper noun, but it's lowercased anyway because it derives etymologically from Unix culture and so is case-sensitive.

retard with a lower-case 'r'

The internet we have happens to be the only worldwide internetwork, but it would certainly be possible to have another.

Yes. That's the point. The one we have is one among many networks; there are thousands of them. Many of them have names too, regardless of how stupid or trite all of the names are.

Three processes? Good grief! Give them four -- or even two -- but not three. It's not just a good idea; it's the Law.

I shouldn't have to point this out here, but I guess I do... The original definition of "hacker" was just that a skilled programmer. See this entry int the Jargon File. Personally, I'm annoyed by the usage of hacker to mean some that breaks into other's machines.

I shouldn't have to point this out here, but I guess I do... The original definition of "hacker" was just that a skilled programmer. See this entry int the Jargon File. Personally, I'm annoyed by the usage of hacker to mean some that breaks into other's machines.

Or holeing up in the wilderness with a bunch of guns.

While he won't give you a paper copy of his books for free (limited commons), Eric S. Raymond, another open source advocate, publishes his paper books online for free - as in beer and speech. Some (all?) are under a Creative Commons license.

From the summary:

The article is a historical overview of the open source revolution, starting in the 80s with the GNU Project [...]

There is no reasonable interpretation of history that can make this claim about GNU true: GNU was started to pursue software freedom. The open source movement did not yet exist. When GNU began, the open source movement would not exist for over another decade.

I do not say this to flamebait or to raise suspicions of malevolence but to clarify and prevent people from being deceived into thinking the free software and open source movements are the same thing. The people at the Free Software Foundation, in particular the most prominent members (Richard Stallman, Eben Moglen, and Brad Kuhn) have all spoken and written on this issue clarifying how these movements are not the same and asking not to be lumped in with the open source movement.

But this is not the first time proponents of the open source movement have tried to take credit for work that is not theirs. Countless articles and posts on discussion websites (including /.) call the GNU GPL an "open source" license merely because the Open Source Initiative has set their license acceptance terms to include the GPL and listed this license in their list of approved licenses. Eric Raymond, co-founder of the Open Source Initiative, has included the Emacs editor as an example of an "open-source project" without acknowledging that this program was initially written by RMS; RMS did not write Emacs to benefit "open-source" nor would he consider Emacs an "open-source project". RMS wrote Emacs to benefit the free software movement and the GNU project, which he founded.

Mark Webbink, chief counsel for Red Hat and proponent of open source, recently wrote an essay describing different "open source" licenses and apparently found the concept of copyleft so useful he employed it in his essay. He spent quite some words explaining the concept, but he never called the concept by its name nor did he explain that he didn't come up with it (the FSF did years ago). People reading that essay might think otherwise because of (what amount to) his intellectual dishonesty. Ironically, the Open Source Initiative does not use copyleft in its license list. The reasons why one might want to use one of the OSI-approved licenses over another are not clearly delineated on the OSI site (unlike the FSF's site which provides brief commentary on free software licenses).

So let's give credit where credit is due. The open source movement should be happy that they have acheived so much popularity and helped bring so many people to use and develop excellent software. There's no need to try and take credit for the works of others.

Thus once again, proving that the Jargon dictionary knows all... All X Sucks

My original formulation was that every problem ``will be transparent to somebody''. Linus demurred that the person who understands and fixes the problem is not necessarily or even usually the person who first characterizes it. ``Somebody finds the problem,'' he says, ``and somebody else understands it. And I'll go on record as saying that finding it is the bigger challenge.''

1) Mu. (I don't accept the premises.)

2) I'm very disheartened that someone could make this kind of trip, especially a Jew, and still not believe that God has revealed His presence in any way. Mind-boggling. Were you paying attention when they talked about the Six Day War? That alone ought to convert any skeptic.

"I don't care if it's in the dictionary or not."

That's funny in itself. :-)

"'Obsolete' is not a verb, damnit."

All nouns can be verbed.

And that leaves me wondering, what's the easiest way to get something to Linus? :) I believe he's up in San Jose now, it should fairly cheap to FedEx a case of beer and a thank-you card from LA. :)

OOhh, I found This Page that says he drinks Guinness. What a coincidence, that's what I've been drinking since an Irish friend of mine introduced me to it years ago (at an Irish pub, of course). I'm planning on going to the Guinness brewery in Ireland sometime this year, maybe I'll get him a gift. :)

Really, I find this bald zealot much scarier than this hairy one.

And Eric, that combover is fooling nobody. You're bald. Deal with it.

A claim contradicted by the words of RMS & the FSF

Ok, I stand corrected, though of course the GPL does still stand on copyright, so the GPL would be obsolete without copyright. For some reason I thought RMS thought like Larry Lessig on this issue, who of course is a strong believer in copyrights, but looks for a balance. Lessig, of course founded the Creative Commons project.

Easy- and pointless. Who would do that 'stealing'? A traditional commericial software company? They can't exist, because without copyright, they only get one customer for each product.

Here I have to disagree with you. Of course commercial software companies would not be able to make much of a profit, as you rightly point out. However, most software is not produced by commmercial software companies, but by in-house programmers found in every company. Right now the GPL compells these programmers to submit changes in software back to the community, whereas with public domain software this is not the case. Eric Raymond states:

First, code written for sale is only the tip of the programming iceberg. In the pre-microcomputer era it used to be a commonplace that 90% of all the code in the world was written in-house at banks and insurance companies. This is probably no longer the case--other industries are much more software-intensive now, and the finance industry's share of the total must have accordingly dropped--but we'll see shortly that there is empirical evidence that approximately 95% of code is still written in-house.

Without copyright law all that in-house developed code does not have to be returned to the community. You might be a cynic and say that there is massive GPL violation going on anyway, or you might make the leap of faith and say organisations will be compelled to share (like Raymond does), however I remain unconvinced.

south africa just (2004-07-15) had a ruling on a similar case: the 3x internet speed increase tv ad. it was upheld by the "self-regulating" advertising standards authority (asa).

i'm skeptical about the ruling. no publicly available references are cited, and it amounts to the word of the appellant (tim dowson) versus 20+ local industries underpinning the asa.

as my rule of thumb, when the claim sounds like a common spam subject line, you'll will ping my bogometer .

- p

The numerous falsehoods that have supported Microsoft through the years are well known and documented. The very terms "vaporware" and "FUD" were invented to make it simpler to talk about how Microsoft works.

Strictly speaking, FUD is the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that IBM sales people instill in the minds of potential customers who might be considering [Amdahl] products.

Whatever. What I think he got mostly right? (From what I've read, I'm not that avid ESR reader... ;-)

• http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar - It influenced me a lot when I started maintaining a larger free software project.
• http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/unix-koans/ - They are beautiful and I even get most of them! ;-)
• http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/loginataka.html - Again, a beautiful writeup and I think it makes some nice points, in connection with the next work.
• http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html - Yes, I mean it - of course it does not apply 100% but I still think it is extremely valuable and instructive for newcomers. I just wish he more emphasized "Points For Style" being fully optional. (Still, I think any person intelligent enough (no matter in what direction is the intelligence developed) simply can write their native language well and have at least basic taste and skill in music.)
• http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html - It's excellent.

That's a fair portion of his major works.

I disliked i.e. http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/. He gets most things right there too but disturbingly many things he doesn't, while trying to sound too authoratitive. He describes the objectively widely accepted practices (one program one thing), mixing his controversial opinions in (on say Perl or vim). That's an ethical crime.

I wanted to complain to him but since I wrote him few times regarding technical problems with his software and got no reply, I don't think he will care about this, unless I get my reply published somewhere ;-).

Whatever. What I think he got mostly right? (From what I've read, I'm not that avid ESR reader... ;-)

• http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar - It influenced me a lot when I started maintaining a larger free software project.
• http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/unix-koans/ - They are beautiful and I even get most of them! ;-)
• http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/loginataka.html - Again, a beautiful writeup and I think it makes some nice points, in connection with the next work.
• http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html - Yes, I mean it - of course it does not apply 100% but I still think it is extremely valuable and instructive for newcomers. I just wish he more emphasized "Points For Style" being fully optional. (Still, I think any person intelligent enough (no matter in what direction is the intelligence developed) simply can write their native language well and have at least basic taste and skill in music.)
• http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html - It's excellent.

That's a fair portion of his major works.

I disliked i.e. http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/. He gets most things right there too but disturbingly many things he doesn't, while trying to sound too authoratitive. He describes the objectively widely accepted practices (one program one thing), mixing his controversial opinions in (on say Perl or vim). That's an ethical crime.

I wanted to complain to him but since I wrote him few times regarding technical problems with his software and got no reply, I don't think he will care about this, unless I get my reply published somewhere ;-).

Whatever. What I think he got mostly right? (From what I've read, I'm not that avid ESR reader... ;-)

• http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar - It influenced me a lot when I started maintaining a larger free software project.
• http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/unix-koans/ - They are beautiful and I even get most of them! ;-)
• http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/loginataka.html - Again, a beautiful writeup and I think it makes some nice points, in connection with the next work.
• http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html - Yes, I mean it - of course it does not apply 100% but I still think it is extremely valuable and instructive for newcomers. I just wish he more emphasized "Points For Style" being fully optional. (Still, I think any person intelligent enough (no matter in what direction is the intelligence developed) simply can write their native language well and have at least basic taste and skill in music.)
• http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html - It's excellent.

That's a fair portion of his major works.

I disliked i.e. http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/. He gets most things right there too but disturbingly many things he doesn't, while trying to sound too authoratitive. He describes the objectively widely accepted practices (one program one thing), mixing his controversial opinions in (on say Perl or vim). That's an ethical crime.

I wanted to complain to him but since I wrote him few times regarding technical problems with his software and got no reply, I don't think he will care about this, unless I get my reply published somewhere ;-).

Whatever. What I think he got mostly right? (From what I've read, I'm not that avid ESR reader... ;-)

• http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar - It influenced me a lot when I started maintaining a larger free software project.
• http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/unix-koans/ - They are beautiful and I even get most of them! ;-)
• http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/loginataka.html - Again, a beautiful writeup and I think it makes some nice points, in connection with the next work.
• http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html - Yes, I mean it - of course it does not apply 100% but I still think it is extremely valuable and instructive for newcomers. I just wish he more emphasized "Points For Style" being fully optional. (Still, I think any person intelligent enough (no matter in what direction is the intelligence developed) simply can write their native language well and have at least basic taste and skill in music.)
• http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html - It's excellent.

That's a fair portion of his major works.

I disliked i.e. http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/. He gets most things right there too but disturbingly many things he doesn't, while trying to sound too authoratitive. He describes the objectively widely accepted practices (one program one thing), mixing his controversial opinions in (on say Perl or vim). That's an ethical crime.

I wanted to complain to him but since I wrote him few times regarding technical problems with his software and got no reply, I don't think he will care about this, unless I get my reply published somewhere ;-).

Whatever. What I think he got mostly right? (From what I've read, I'm not that avid ESR reader... ;-)

• http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar - It influenced me a lot when I started maintaining a larger free software project.
• http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/unix-koans/ - They are beautiful and I even get most of them! ;-)
• http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/loginataka.html - Again, a beautiful writeup and I think it makes some nice points, in connection with the next work.
• http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html - Yes, I mean it - of course it does not apply 100% but I still think it is extremely valuable and instructive for newcomers. I just wish he more emphasized "Points For Style" being fully optional. (Still, I think any person intelligent enough (no matter in what direction is the intelligence developed) simply can write their native language well and have at least basic taste and skill in music.)
• http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html - It's excellent.

That's a fair portion of his major works.

I disliked i.e. http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/. He gets most things right there too but disturbingly many things he doesn't, while trying to sound too authoratitive. He describes the objectively widely accepted practices (one program one thing), mixing his controversial opinions in (on say Perl or vim). That's an ethical crime.

I wanted to complain to him but since I wrote him few times regarding technical problems with his software and got no reply, I don't think he will care about this, unless I get my reply published somewhere ;-).

Whatever. What I think he got mostly right? (From what I've read, I'm not that avid ESR reader... ;-)

• http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar - It influenced me a lot when I started maintaining a larger free software project.
• http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/unix-koans/ - They are beautiful and I even get most of them! ;-)
• http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/loginataka.html - Again, a beautiful writeup and I think it makes some nice points, in connection with the next work.
• http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html - Yes, I mean it - of course it does not apply 100% but I still think it is extremely valuable and instructive for newcomers. I just wish he more emphasized "Points For Style" being fully optional. (Still, I think any person intelligent enough (no matter in what direction is the intelligence developed) simply can write their native language well and have at least basic taste and skill in music.)
• http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html - It's excellent.

That's a fair portion of his major works.

I disliked i.e. http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/. He gets most things right there too but disturbingly many things he doesn't, while trying to sound too authoratitive. He describes the objectively widely accepted practices (one program one thing), mixing his controversial opinions in (on say Perl or vim). That's an ethical crime.

I wanted to complain to him but since I wrote him few times regarding technical problems with his software and got no reply, I don't think he will care about this, unless I get my reply published somewhere ;-).

And so on and so forth with insane stereotyping throughout the whole thing.

It's a generalization. And label applied to people based on beliefs or behavior can only ever be, at best, a generalization. The titles of the section "A Portrait of J. Random Hacker" should make that clear. It's about as accurate as describing conservatives as Christian, pro-business, anti-abortion, anti-gay or describing liberals as atheist, anti-businesses, pro-abortion, pro-gay. It's a reasonable summary, but not a perfect one.