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That, and I don't think many phreaking boxes run an OS.

That, and I don't think many phreaking boxes run an OS.

You shouldn't be using a computer in the dark anyways, the contrast between the sceen and the wall is far too high. It hurts your vision.

You're clearly not a true geek.

Thats what I meant by the parallel between the GIMP/Photoshop thing. People like me who have only used Photoshop once or twice, say exactly the same thing in reverse. I can get more done in 20 minutes with The GIMP, than I would in two hours with Photoshop. 20 minutes in, I'd still be searching for how to do layers.

I've been using Blender on and off for about 4 years now and I still can't do anything worth a damn with it

We have a saying around here that goes a little like this: RTFM.

I'm glad that this subject is being discussed more and more in open source forums. This last year of exploring the Linux world has shown me that many creators in the open source world, with all their contempt for Microsoft and Windows-based products, don't understand its attraction for the general populace. They simply can't understand why people would pay for software when there's "free" stuff out that could do the same thing.

The "other Story" I mentioned is about the safari necessary to successfully configure CUPS. It's a great cautionary tale for all those who would create a software package they want to be well-liked and easily used.

A metaphor to help understand the frustration of neophytes just trying to get something done with their computer: "I'm sorry, but you don't get to drive your car to the store until you demonstrate that you can rebuild the transmission - with no manual."

Now I can show everyone just what intercal is capable of!

Oh, come on, it's in the Jargon file...

Point yum (/etc/yum.conf) at my isp's yum repository, also add references to Dag Wieer's repository and rpm.livna.org.

sudo yum check-update

then

sudo yum update

Then install java and flash player.

Eric S. Raymond has authored a nice guide entitled: Fedora Multimedia Installation HOWTO

Yep. The hacker emblem is the best I could come up with.
I'll be in Dublin tonight, so I can have a look.

I see a lot of people on Slashdot getting frustruated with "supid users," usually because the users ask what the techie hears as "stupid questions."

There are no 'stupid' questions. There are only basic questions and not basic questions. (This is seperate from bad vs. good questions.) The distinction that technical people miss is that the not basic are questions that assume or depend upon the basic questions. At some point, someone has to ask the basic questions.

The level of assumption and dependancy is directly porpotional to the level of technical complexity of the discussion. Some strictly not basic questions (that is, questions built on lots of assumptions and information from other questions) become basic. It is a matter of context.

This is like someone on irc asking for how to match configurations for xdm and X when a particular vendor's video driver install tool didn't handle it properly. This person assumes a lot of knowledge about the system that most people in #linux-basic won't know. On #x-video-drivers he or she might get flamed for not already knowing the answer or not providing sufficient information to deterime if this is a question for a simplier forum or really on the level of discourse for the moment.

When faced with a new person, the question a techie should ask him or herself is: at what level is this person? Is this person 'basic' to me (knows less) or 'not-basic' (knows equal or more)? Where does that person fit on the very wide (I hope) and non-linear scale of basic to expert for the topic at hand? Answering these questions will permit me to shape my language is usefull ways, if I choose to do so.

The article is highlighting an interesting aspect of this dicotomy about computers, cars and anything complex. Since the computer responses back to us, by design, a social model fits better than a tool-use model. However, any tool with complex parts also communicates back to its user. With continual use, the user learns the 'language' of their boat, car, et cetera and migrates from tool-use to social models of behaviour. At several of my workplaces, any office product of size larger than a human head had an informal name given to it by the secretary (even if it frequently starts 'that piece-of-shit'.)

For people, the most basic interactions are tool-use and social. We are a tool using species and tend to use tools so solve many of our problems (excepting the occasional 'real man' verses a stuck jar lid.) These tools do not talk to us. With anything that responds, pets, threats and people, we form complex social interactions. We have complex societies and engage in many-layers conversaion other people. Even if those people do not respond back.

At a basic level, the computer user may migrate from a tool use model to social model to deal with complexity and the communication originated from the computer. At a more expert level, the user can learn the 'language' of a particular machine and then generalize this to all computers. This process can involve complex factors such as location in space and time, mental and physical context, and history. It also may appear, to someone at a level not as basic as the humanizer, that this simplification from tool to person is to hide complexity only.

Of anyone making that mistake I should warn that doctors learn the machine of the human body as well as they can. The best doctors can use the human body as a tool to fight disease in the same way that they can use a stethoscope. This does not mean that that sick human has become a lesser 'tool' to help fix itself. The sick person is still a social person who interacts with people via social paths.

Your computer may not (at this time) care about how you feel, think or wish about it as a person. But knowing how you feel about that computer enables me, the techie, to gauge your level of jargon and level of expertise about the

Your definition is good, and if it's correct then I humbly apologise for being so trollish sir. Until some suitably respected authority confirms your definition, I shall have to call shenanigoats.

If you want an authority for this you don't need to look very hard, just hit the Jargon File.

quantifiers

In techspeak and jargon, the standard metric prefixes used in the SI (Système International) conventions for scientific measurement have dual uses. With units of time or things that come in powers of 10, such as money, they retain their usual meanings of multiplication by powers of 1000 = 10^3. But when used with bytes or other things that naturally come in powers of 2, they usually denote multiplication by powers of 1024 = 2^10.

Here are the SI magnifying prefixes, along with the corresponding binary interpretations in common use:

prefix decimal binary
kilo- 1000^1 1024^1 = 2^10 = 1,024
mega- 1000^2 1024^2 = 2^20 = 1,048,576
giga- 1000^3 1024^3 = 2^30 = 1,073,741,824
tera- 1000^4 1024^4 = 2^40 = 1,099,511,627,776
peta- 1000^5 1024^5 = 2^50 = 1,125,899,906,842,624
exa- 1000^6 1024^6 = 2^60 = 1,152,921,504,606,846,976
zetta- 1000^7 1024^7 = 2^70 = 1,180,591,620,717,411,303,424
yotta- 1000^8 1024^8 = 2^80 = 1,208,925,819,614,629,174,706,176

From The Jargon File

honey pot: n.
1. A box designed to attract crackers so that they can be observed in action. It is usually well isolated from the rest of the network, but has extensive logging (usually network layer, on a different machine). Different from an iron box in that its purpose is to attract, not merely observe. Sometimes, it is also a defensive network security tactic -- you set up an easy-to-crack box so that your real servers don't get messed with. The concept was presented in Cheswick & Bellovin's book Firewalls and Internet Security.
2. A mail server that acts as an open relay when a single message is attempted to send through it, but discards or diverts for examination messages that are detected to be part of a spam run.

With emphasis on the attract part. How are you going to monitor worms that propigate using windows with a linux box? You may be able to say, for instance, how many times a certain port was probed. You can't get a linux box to respond in the same way as a windows box without seriously getting into the kernel though.

Am I the only one who thinks that Steve Wozniak is a hacker in the meaning well beyond some defacements archiving script kiddies?

They amount to a trap door into an unknown amount of code for an insert or update. Sort of like the "COME FROM" construct in INTERCAL. In large database systems involving multiple development groups they can become an interaction nightmare; killing performance and having strange exceptions bubbling up from previously working code.

Seriously though, why did the author have to use the term Viagra to simple mean 'performance boost'

The Jargon File covers Geek Jargon Construction in Chapter 4, Soundalike Slang in this case

Seriously though, why did the author have to use the term Viagra to simple mean 'performance boost'

The Jargon File covers Geek Jargon Construction in Chapter 4, Soundalike Slang in this case

"Openness means dirty laundry IS aired in public." This is strictly a bad thing. We don't need to have CIOs potentially exposed to Richard M. Stallman and his self-aggrandizement. We don't want to have our critical customers exposed to the egos that rewrite dictionaries and spam mailing lists with idiotic rants about "anti-idiotarianism."

Frankly, I think the Open Source movement's greatest enemy is its own membership. When a professional software developer lets his ego get the best of him, he gets fired. When an open source developer starts ranting, he starts public embarrassing flame wars that only undermine investors' confidence in the viability of Linux tools.

Sincerely,
Seth Finklestein
Flaming For Peace

I'm not too worried yet though. Tempting though this might Windows make, there's still the politics/religion which holds Microsoft as the antichrist and the fact that for a gay geek like myself, Mac OS X fits the bill a hell of a lot better (pretty and useful!).

However, if Microsoft makes a really attractive platform for FOSS, it has the potential to create a quite different situation to the one we have today, where Microsoft is a champion of closed source cathedral-style development and Linux et al being the antithesis to that. Sure, there is FOSS software for Windows today, but it is not as common and generally more of a curiosity. How many people have the development tools to compile FOSS Win32 applications?

It carries, perhaps, the possibility of splitting the community up somewhat (between the hardcore zealots and those who just like FOSS). The important thing for Microsoft will be, as ever, dominance of the Windows platform, no matter what software users are running on it.

iqu :)

But what about joe jobs?

the obligatory link to the jargon file

Call Eric Raymond. He got Sun to open-source Java all by himself!

The Luxury of Ignorance is a good resource for 'granny-proofing' programs.

I for one welcome our new chicken-head-biting overlords!

If you pointed your criticism at my obsolete version of Windows, pointing out the security holes don't exist, your comment would be worth reading. If you just said I was a fool, or said I was a fool because I referred to an obsolete version, without backing it up with a reference to the fixed status of the new one, your comment wouldn't be worth reading. That's the difference between a worthwhile, though rude, correction, and a worthless flame.

BTW, a troll is criticized because it is designed merely to elicit responses, which is usually irrelevant: isn't all of Slashdot a troll? But a troll is bad when it has no informational content. My original post, although you might disagree with it, is cogent and includes information as facts as well as analysis.

Criticism of the information in these posts is worthwhile. Criticism of the personality or "intent" is irrelevant.

Joe doesn't know any local linux geeks that'll come fix something for a 6 pack of Duff

Maybe if he tried offering Gunniess instead, he would get a better reception?

Oh come on, it's not like you haven't sat down with $RELATIVE_FROM_USA to fix $COMPUTER_PROBLEM and been offered something like crudwiser. Ick.

Refined tastes on technology need not imply a favoritism to non-domestic American beverages. But this is an important facet of software that people leave out: culture.

I view that whole problem with software is not about the number of machines installed. The problem is about people, attitudes and perceptions.

I feel that addressing the difference of community will be the single most challenging task facing popular adoption of tools like Linux. The OS installed on a user's computer is a choice of that user. It is up to you to change that user's attitude. They will put up with horrid quality when they don't know of a better alternative.

In my opinion culture clash between 'Joe Sixpack Windows-User' and everybody else is dramatic. Both the Apple and $FREE_OS communities like to view themselves as fringe or special groups. They celebrate their difference from the mainstream. Pure and unadulterated Windows users form a different community than the users of Apple or $FREE_OS products. They belive the tools they have work and work adequately. The common users are people who are sufficiently content with their pre-packaged choice to not look outside the beige box. Due to bad practices by Microsoft, they also form the largest community of individual personal computer users.

It has been said that the I.Q. of a group is the lowest I.Q. of the members of the group divided by the number of members of that group (think communication overhead when talking with slow people.) Fortunately for the 'Aunt Tillies' of the world, individual users can have quite a solid grasp of basic computer skills. Unfortunately, confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance imply a lot of ineria.

While 'Aunt Tillie, CTO/CFO' grasps software quality, their grasp may be of the level of the average car buyer. This is a person who only needs to know about various cars during the rare purchase of a car. In the M$ dominated media of software boxes at your local $MEGA_MART, communicating the benefits of something like Linux or Apple over Microsoft products will require overcoming the established noise level of $ billions in marketing

This is why Microsoft is 50% marketing. This is why commercial Linux distributions are a Good Thing. This is why Apple is still here. The best hackers of the world have been excellent social engineers before anything else. It's time to put that 'social' part to a very good use.

Social engineering of the common man to want quality in software, rather than just settling for third best is possible. After helping run a student organization for Linux users for a few years, I have seen remarkable progress in the quality of various distributions. However, problems with GUI's, driver availability and application compatibility are but small technical hurdles that can be solved with adequate coding.

If you care about software quality then talk to you neighbor. Show off your computers. Maybe even offer them a Guinness while you watch DVDs on your PC with those neighbors. Get the word out.

And the hacker community loses a little more ground with this... "Hacker" is already common public usage for what some others who wear that name would rather call "cracker"; how long before it crowds even farther?

Doesn't help that the two opposing groups both lay claim to the same name.

the same tools can also help a hacker use that information to exploit your system (other side).

Cracker, dude. In this case/context it's called a cracker.

Do you want RMS to send you a letter too?

No, this is where the ludicrous "you're only using Linux because you're a GNU/Zealot, you won't even admit it sucks" argument comes in. Don't you just love ignorance?

Well, there are certainly GNU/Zealots out there who behave that way, so it's not so much ignorance as prejudice or overgeneralization. Even many of the zealots out there will admit Linux sucks. I just use it because for what I do the alternatives usually suck more.

I was going to use font installation as an example "Linux sucks" of my own (because while Linux programs have always worked fine with the default fonts for me, installing new fonts even a few years ago was a pain), but that doesn't seem to be true anymore.

I can't imagine how easy this is to do on, say, RedHat, these days. I bet it all comes preinstalled by default.

I couldn't tell you what the default font installation is (except that it just seemed to work), but I just investigated what the current (KDE 3.2 on Fedora Core 1) situation for installing new fonts is:

You browse to the directory in Konqueror, and see an icon which previews a dozen small characters in the font. Clicking on the font once displays a larger character set and an "Install" button, clicking on the button asks if you want to install the font as a Personal font or System font (and explains what each means, including the need for a password for a "System" install), and clicking on "Personal" installs it to your .fonts directory and gets X using it immediately.

No, this is where the ludicrous "you're only using Linux because you're a GNU/Zealot, you won't even admit it sucks" argument comes in. Don't you just love ignorance?

Well, there are certainly GNU/Zealots out there who behave that way, so it's not so much ignorance as prejudice or overgeneralization. Even many of the zealots out there will admit Linux sucks. I just use it because for what I do the alternatives usually suck more.

I was going to use font installation as an example "Linux sucks" of my own (because while Linux programs have always worked fine with the default fonts for me, installing new fonts even a few years ago was a pain), but that doesn't seem to be true anymore.

I can't imagine how easy this is to do on, say, RedHat, these days. I bet it all comes preinstalled by default.

I couldn't tell you what the default font installation is (except that it just seemed to work), but I just investigated what the current (KDE 3.2 on Fedora Core 1) situation for installing new fonts is:

You browse to the directory in Konqueror, and see an icon which previews a dozen small characters in the font. Clicking on the font once displays a larger character set and an "Install" button, clicking on the button asks if you want to install the font as a Personal font or System font (and explains what each means, including the need for a password for a "System" install), and clicking on "Personal" installs it to your .fonts directory and gets X using it immediately.

I dunno, those kinds of interface devices always look like they would cause a bad case of gorilla arm.

This Finnish word:
"epajarjestelmallistyttamattomyydellaansako han"
is a contrived example. It was probably invented in a competition to create the longest possible grammatically correct Finnish word.

Trying to parse it is challenging even to a native Finn like me. Even though the suffixes in that word are properly formed and grammar rules won't prohibit using them together, it won't necessarily make sense. I can spot at least a double negative in that word, which is bad style at the very least.

In short, this word is a Christmas tree packet for Finnish language.

This has to be the first time I've seen jargon actually fit concisely and neatly into a legal text!

I don't think it's the first time -- I even seem to recall one where the Jargon File was referenced from within a legal brief. (Link? Anyone?)

But we've got to at least mention the incredible irony of IBM being the one to accuse someone else of using FUD tactics (even though (or perhaps, especially since) they're right). I mean... IBM?! It's a strange, strange world...

Yet, regardless of his intentions, I believe his project will die as a public OSS project. Most FLOSS people won't allow themselves within ten parsecs of Microsoft code--and with good reason. Part of me wants to think MSFT is just looking for something--anything--they can get inside the OSS communities as some sort of trojan horse so they can pull a SCO later if necessary.

I'd rather just be able to use my computer how I wish without getting all political. I don't want to perceive MSFT vs. FLOSS as a war. I don't want to feel indignation every time billg opens his mouth, but he leaves me no choice.

This man represents at least one miniscule demographic within the Beast of Redmond that doesn't see through Ballmer's intolerant eyes. There's a chance (albeit slim) for Microsoft yet.

I say wait and see.

Just in time for Gates' Law to be maintained with the next version of Windows...

It amuses me, then, that I'm currently having problems sharing a printer between two MacOS X boxes. We have a home network consisting of two MacOS X machines, plus a FreeBSD box that I do most of my work on. The printer is on my wife's Mac, and I don't have printing set up on FreeBSD, so normally I just transfer a PDF file to my own Mac, then print it via her Mac. Hee hee -- it almost exactly mirror's Eric Raymond's original situation with sharing a printer between his machine and his wife's, except that the OS has been changed to protect the innocent.

Well it's true that setting up printer sharing was really easy. The problem is that it often doesn't work. I try to print, and I get this beautiful, lickable, throbbing blue dialog box that says "Unable to print" (or "There was a problem printing," or something equally useless -- I forget what, exactly).

So what ya gonna do on an OS that is supposed to Just Work, and one day it Just Doesn't? If it was Linux or FreeBSD, I could read the man page, or find out where the log file was. Oops -- no such option on MacOS X. On Linux or FreeBSD, I'd also probably get some kind of error message that, while written in Martian, would at least provide some hint as to what was wrong if shown to someone sufficiently knowledgeable.

So what do I do? Reboot my machine; no dice. Reboot her machine; no dice. Give up. Some days it works, and some days it doesn't. Shrug.

The solution ends up being just what it probably was in the Raymond household: transfer the file to my wife's machine, then ask my wife to get up from her desk and let me print the file. The main difference is that since MacOS X is a proprietary, closed-source system, there's no way for people with the necessary skillz to dig through the source code, figure out what's wrong, and fix it.

How can we accept Red Hat's per-seat pricing and overbearing EULAs that allow them to audit user sites for license compliance?

But Red Hat claims Enterprise Linux is still free--because customers are being charged for support, not for the software itself (ahem).

You can give away the software and make your money on the support.

Maybe my perspective is different on this because I make my living in the Support department of a company that sells support contracts that ultimately pay for me. I tend to be frustrated by our Sales and Implementation departments driving things under The Manufacturing Delusion, more interested in 'making the sale' than creating an environment that offers our customers an ongoing service. Lately I've seen signs to suggest we might be turning that around, though.

I have to agree, but which would be the optimal algorithm here? Bubble sort, shell sort, merge sort or maybe a heap sort? Of course when Darl ultimately goes to the big house, he may find himself facing (or about facing) an insertion sort.

Considering how bogus Darl's claims are, the bogo sort appears to be the most fitting algorithm.

Don't you mean the bazaar approach in reference to Linux?

The cathedral approach (from ESR's The Cathedral and the Bazaar ) is where a closed application is developed in seclusion from the rest of the world and we the unwashed masses are supposed to accept it as holy once we are graced with its presence.

Or did your professor's text mean something else when it said "cathedral"?

- Neil Wehneman

My PHB says it's too hard to install printers

Elegance means caring about what you create, caring not only that it works but that it works well, caring that other people may work on it, caring that it may be used in different conditions than you foresaw.

Elegance often means choosing simplicity, and restricting choice; choice isn't always a good thing. Better to have one overwhelmingly good way to do something, whether it's a UI method, an API, a language construct, a business process, or a class method, than umpteen bad ones.

Elegance may mean taking time; time to think things through before you start coding, or time afterwards refactoring out ugliness. But that time is well-spent, an investment that's often repaid.

Elegance usually means consistency: uniformity makes things easy to understand and predict, whereas inconsistency draws your attention to trivia, whether in concepts, code formatting and naming, UI layout, API design, system organisation, or whatever. (Time spent getting bogged down in arbitrary differences is wasted time, even if those differences are shiny or buzzword-laden.) But it can also bring power and flexibility.

Some examples of elegance are clear: Unix pipelines, UI tabs, the iPod. But most aren't so easy to spot. It takes some care to recognise it when you first see it, and more to create it, but it's well worth the effort.

PS. As Blaise Pascal said, "I have only made this letter rather long because I have not had the time to make it shorter."

This one is funny.

Eric S. Raymond -- the renowned Linux/Open Source evangelist/essayist -- couldn't figure out how to connect to a shared printer. So he wrote an essay describing the problem (the UI for printer configuration on his Linux system is horrible) and proposing a solution (open source developers should do a better job with UI design). Raymond wrote:

The configuration problem is simple. I have a desktop machine named 'snark'. It is connected, via the house Ethernet, to my wife Cathy's machine, which is named 'minx'. Minx has a LaserJet 6MP attached to it via parallel port. Both machines are running Fedora Core 1, and Cathy can print locally from minx. I can ssh minx from snark, so the network is known good.

This should be easy, right? *hollow laughter* Famous last words...

(Side note: parallel port? What year is it in the Raymond household?)

Raymond's description and criticism of the usability problems he encountered trying to achieve this are accurate and apt. The gist of it is that what seemed like the obvious way to go about the task was in fact completely wrong, and worse, there was no indication from the system that he wasn't on the right track.

This setup alone is sort of funny -- Linux Advocate Struggles to Configure Printer -- ha-ha. Even funnier considering past statements from Raymond regarding Linux-vs.-Windows usability; e.g. the forward for the book "Everyday Linux", wherein he wrote:

Conventional wisdom has it that Linux is doomed to a niche role on the desktop because it's too difficult for Aunt Tillie to run. But the days when Linux was really more complex to administer than a Windows machine are long past us. In the last three years the open-source community has made enormous strides in simplifying installation and normal housekeeping and presenting it through graphical user interfaces -- to the point where it's really quite a bit easier over time to maintain a Linux box than a Windows machine, whether you're an expert techie or not.

I mean, come on, it's funny that the guy who wrote that couldn't connect to a shared printer.

But it's when Raymond begins proposing "solutions" to the problem -- where "the problem" is the larger issue of open source software usability in general, not just the specific case of CUPS printer configuration -- that things get hilarious.

In his follow-up article, Raymond summarizes his proposal thusly:

A few days ago I uttered a rant on user-interface problems in the Common Unix Printing System. I used it to develop the idea that the most valuable gift you can give your users is the luxury of ignorance -- software that works so well, and is so discoverable to even novice users, that they don't have to read documentation or spend time and mental effort to learn about it.

Sounds good, on the surface. And indeed, most of the follow-up article is devoted to the congratulatory email Raymond received in response to part one:

This rant made it onto all the major open-source news channels, so I was expecting a fair amount of feedback (and maybe pushback). But the volume of community reaction that thundered into my mailbox far surpassed what I had been expecting -- and the dominant theme, too, was a bit of a surprise. Not the hundreds of iterations of "Tell it, brother!", nor the handful of people who excoriated me as an arrogant twerp; those are both normal features of the response when I fire a broadside. No, the really interesting part was how many of the letters said, in effect, "Gee. And all this time I thought it was just me..."

I agree that this is an interesti

This one is funny.

Eric S. Raymond -- the renowned Linux/Open Source evangelist/essayist -- couldn't figure out how to connect to a shared printer. So he wrote an essay describing the problem (the UI for printer configuration on his Linux system is horrible) and proposing a solution (open source developers should do a better job with UI design). Raymond wrote:

The configuration problem is simple. I have a desktop machine named 'snark'. It is connected, via the house Ethernet, to my wife Cathy's machine, which is named 'minx'. Minx has a LaserJet 6MP attached to it via parallel port. Both machines are running Fedora Core 1, and Cathy can print locally from minx. I can ssh minx from snark, so the network is known good.

This should be easy, right? *hollow laughter* Famous last words...

(Side note: parallel port? What year is it in the Raymond household?)

Raymond's description and criticism of the usability problems he encountered trying to achieve this are accurate and apt. The gist of it is that what seemed like the obvious way to go about the task was in fact completely wrong, and worse, there was no indication from the system that he wasn't on the right track.

This setup alone is sort of funny -- Linux Advocate Struggles to Configure Printer -- ha-ha. Even funnier considering past statements from Raymond regarding Linux-vs.-Windows usability; e.g. the forward for the book "Everyday Linux", wherein he wrote:

Conventional wisdom has it that Linux is doomed to a niche role on the desktop because it's too difficult for Aunt Tillie to run. But the days when Linux was really more complex to administer than a Windows machine are long past us. In the last three years the open-source community has made enormous strides in simplifying installation and normal housekeeping and presenting it through graphical user interfaces -- to the point where it's really quite a bit easier over time to maintain a Linux box than a Windows machine, whether you're an expert techie or not.

I mean, come on, it's funny that the guy who wrote that couldn't connect to a shared printer.

But it's when Raymond begins proposing "solutions" to the problem -- where "the problem" is the larger issue of open source software usability in general, not just the specific case of CUPS printer configuration -- that things get hilarious.

In his follow-up article, Raymond summarizes his proposal thusly:

A few days ago I uttered a rant on user-interface problems in the Common Unix Printing System. I used it to develop the idea that the most valuable gift you can give your users is the luxury of ignorance -- software that works so well, and is so discoverable to even novice users, that they don't have to read documentation or spend time and mental effort to learn about it.

Sounds good, on the surface. And indeed, most of the follow-up article is devoted to the congratulatory email Raymond received in response to part one:

This rant made it onto all the major open-source news channels, so I was expecting a fair amount of feedback (and maybe pushback). But the volume of community reaction that thundered into my mailbox far surpassed what I had been expecting -- and the dominant theme, too, was a bit of a surprise. Not the hundreds of iterations of "Tell it, brother!", nor the handful of people who excoriated me as an arrogant twerp; those are both normal features of the response when I fire a broadside. No, the really interesting part was how many of the letters said, in effect, "Gee. And all this time I thought it was just me..."

I agree that this is an interesti

Does anyone else find it interesting that this guy is the one giving the sex tips referenced in the article?

I mean, I was told not to judge a book by its cover but..

on a serious note, I am dating someone and she likes my geeky side. I forward her slashdot posts every week or so...it's pretty cool. yesterday we sat down and read some wikipedia together.

Does anyone else find it interesting that this guy is the one giving the sex tips referenced in the article?

I mean, I was told not to judge a book by its cover but..

on a serious note, I am dating someone and she likes my geeky side. I forward her slashdot posts every week or so...it's pretty cool. yesterday we sat down and read some wikipedia together.

Here's the text of the article to relieve the stress from the site. Slashdot operators: please link to it from the feature.

Introducing the RMS-Lint

Introduction

A new tool aims to revolutionize the way people communicate with the famous free software evangelist Richard M. Stallman, (also known by his initials - "RMS"). Its project leader Shlomi Fish has more to say of it:

"RMS-Lint is called RMS-Lint because like most lints it warns on many things that are obviously not errors, because there's a chance that they are. RMS-Lint is an interactive speller that runs over the document word by word with a sophisticated look-ahead and look-behind and warns the user over any word or combination of words that may irritate Stallman, or otherwise will be frowned upon by him."

RMS-Lint's Rules

In accordance to the Free Software Foundation's list of words to avoid and other documents available on the FSF Site, the following rules are recognized by RMS-Lint:

• Warns on every use of the term "Linux" not preceded by "GNU/". This is due to the fact that Stallman advocates using "GNU/Linux" instead of just "Linux" to refer to the entire operating system. It especially warns on "the Linux kernel" (because the kernel part is redundant as Linux is just the kernel).

  Legitimate use of the term "Linux" to refer to just the kernel are also warned about, but can be overridden.

• Warns on every use of the term "open source" and even the word "open". Replacements are "free software", "free", "revealed", "viewable", and the bootload of synonyms from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary". Also warns on the terms "closed-source" or "closed".

• Warns on every use of the term "free" for fear it may be used to imply costlessness. As for legitimate uses of the term ("free as in free speech"), it should be noted that being a lint, RMS-Lint attempts to cover every possible error, not just the ones that actually are such. Replacements are "liberal", "libre", "costless", "gratis", and you also have an option to ignore it.

• Warns on every use of the term "pirate" or "piracy". It is our belief that when talking to Dr. Stallman, people won't usually wish to talk about the sea-faring robbers, but instead on illegitimate copying of one form of media or another. Thus, RMS-Lint warns on every such use and suggests the alternatives of "illegal copier/copying", or "bucanneer".

• Warns on every use of "Intellectual Proprety" or "IP" (a common short form of it). The developers of RMS-Lint realize that IP can also mean the "Internet Protocol" (as in "IP address", "my IP is '192.168.1.1'"), but we believe that when corresponding to RMS, such use will be relatively uncommon, and does not justify risking mentioning "intellectual property" to him.

• And much, much more...

Opinions on RMS-Lint

Eric S. Raymond, a long time friend of Stallman, and the chief leader of the open source movement, expressed a great deal of content from the availability of this tool. "I've been waiting for such a thing all my life. Communicating with Richard has become more and more difficult, and RMS-Lint can easily make it much better."

Raymond's long time collaborator Bruce Perens also expressed happiness that RMS-Lint has become available. "Modern-day open source enthusiasts find it more and more difficult to communicate with Richard Stallman due to his terminological whims. RMS-Lint is just the tool that can help them validate their E-mails for RMS' correctness."

Meanwhile, Richard Stallman himself expressed dismay from this project: "RMS-Lint is an unsatisfying symptomatic cure for a big problem.

This is a debate that nobody will ever win. I was taught that bandwidth was the difference between lower/upper frequencies on a wire, i.e.
"The numerical difference between the upper and lower frequencies of a band of electromagnetic radiation, especially an assigned range of radio frequencies." (thank you Google).
And under that definition, these pigeons have no bandwidth (unless you're counting the frequency at which they flap their wings ;).

The Jargon File says
"Used by hackers (in a generalization of its technical meaning) as the volume of information per unit time that a computer, person, or transmission medium can handle. "Those are amazing graphics, but I missed some of the detail -- not enough bandwidth, I guess." Compare low-bandwidth. This generalized usage began to go mainstream after the Internet population explosion of 1993-1994. 2. Attention span. 3. On Usenet, a measure of network capacity that is often wasted by people complaining about how items posted by others are a waste of bandwidth."

I've been to a couple of colleges along the East Coast & in the Mid-West; by far the best times I've had (besides being home) were hanging out at MIT.

I mean, you have to be of that bend... but if you're a geek and enjoy the company of other geeks, MIT rocks.

Real Soon Now

No problem. *grin* Welcome aboard, BTW. If you want more help, check out The LinuxDocumentation Project at some point as well, which has an enormous amount of good information about Linux. I would also thoroughly recommend the first Halloween document which has a comparitive analysis of Windows and Linux, written by a man who at the time worked for Microsoft, with commentary from the Open Source Initiative. This document contains a lot of information about Linux's strengths in comparison to Windows, and why Microsoft view it seriously as a competitive threat.

Another very good source of information are Eric Raymond's The Cathedral and The Bazaar, which explains the open source philosophy.

One other source of information which I've found very interesting is the GNU Philosophy pages. As you most probably know, GNU software is a major part of a Linux distribution, and these pages talk about the underlying philosophy of the GNU project. I hope this helps, and if you benefit from using Linux yourself, remember to tell some friends about it...We need to keep spreading the word.