Slashdot Mirror

He wrote an INTERCAL compiler. I guess that counts for something, right?

Y U NO GOOGLE?

http://www.catb.org/~esr/software.html

I mean, my friend, you are just tongueincheeking a guy you know nothing about. At least educate yourself a bit more before going into mindless critic mode.

ESR is no different in this case as he has his own agenda he is trying to push.

You are more right than you realize. ESR considers himself one of the Open Source greats despite that his largest contribution is that he maintained the termcap db and his is the first I've heard anything from him since Linus Torvalds refused his rewrite of the kernel config system. Not to mention his self proclaimed expertise in lovemaking.

His main function in life is to be what bloggers were before we called them bloggers and really isn't someone we need or want as a spokesman.

Don't lambaste the eloquent genius who gave us the " Anti-Idiotarian manifesto" http://catb.org/~esr/aim/

Have you bothered to have a look at the list of things he's written? Now, please tell us all about the amazing stuff you've contributed to the community.

If it's the same as the last round, I'd say that we'd find the answer we were looking for in Redmond, WA.

And that's not just basic MS bashing - we have the memo.

Context matters people.

That's why just knowing the words and grammer isn't sufficient when learning a language.

Part of learning a language and culture is also knowing when people are joking.

Context matters people.

That's why just knowing the words and grammer isn't sufficient when learning a language.

Now there may be a bug uncovered in Phoon or perhaps the more bugs have dependencies like that.

the Cathedral and Bazaar meme here, I'm gonna call a GodWin.

You just did, so GodWin!

And seriously, it's not a meme, it's an essay by Eric S Raymond which seems to capture pretty well exactly why Paul Saffo is completely wrong.

Steven Elop is only a step away from Amiga Persecution Complex.

Except in his case, it won't be warranted, whereas in the actual case of the Amiga, it was. Cuz the market failure of the Amiga was clearly the result of a conspiracy.

Signed,
An Amiga Advocate

That's a nice story, without any actual facts in it. Woz had nothing to do with the Mac project at all and was still involved on Apple II while the Mac was being worked on . The overlapping windows concept, achieved by clipping windows, was created by Dan Engalls, from Xerox on SmallTalk, long before Jobs and Co walked in their door. http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taouu/html/ch02s05.html

Apple managed to duplicate this through the efforts of of few engineers on the Mac team, who actually came over from Xeorx PARC.

Additionally, Raskin was the key driving force behind the Mac at Apple before Steve Jobs even knew the project was being worked on. Jobs is credited with a hell of a lot of things that he really had very little to do with, until the project was already well underway (and yes I know this is beyond the scope of your comment). He did have a great eye for simplification but he was also a complete arsehole of a human being and routinely took credit for other people's work. He didn't actually invent the iPod, the iPhone, the Mac, the Apple I or II, etc, etc. About the only thing that was his from the start was the Lisa. Read the Biography by Walter Isaacson: it's a fascinating read about a complex human being who wasn't actually a very nice person, wasn't technically proficient himself at all yet still does deserve a lot of credit (but no where near as much as he does get) for many things we know and love about computers today.

Easy. flip the switch to more magic

ESR on SOPA opponents:

It's bad bunch of drivel, alright. It's a terrible flamebait — awful from start to finish, idiotic to the core, superficially pandering to the populist notion that pretty much everything a government does by definition must be evil.

Buit I can't help noticing that a lot of people critical about ESR's latest outings are the same people who've been cheerfully referring to other texts by him over the past decade — Cathedral and the Bazaar, The Magic Cauldron, you name it — and I have to wonder.

Don't these people ever learn? Anything? Do they even listen to themselves?

It's bizarre and entertaining to hear people who yesterday who were all about allegedly benign and intelligent analysis on open source economics by ESR are suddenly discovering that in practice, what they get is stupid and vicious comments that has been captured by a venal and shortsighted view about society.

Yeah, no shit? How....how do they avoid noticing that in reality nothing is black and white, and that in fact almost everyone and every organisation/institution says and does both intelligent and stupid things? And that in case of large organisations, it may even depend on whose actually in charge about something, or the topic it is about?

(before replying, please read the parent's citation)

ESR on SOPA opponents:

It's bad bunch of drivel, alright. It's a terrible flamebait — awful from start to finish, idiotic to the core, superficially pandering to the populist notion that pretty much everything a government does by definition must be evil.

Buit I can't help noticing that a lot of people critical about ESR's latest outings are the same people who've been cheerfully referring to other texts by him over the past decade — Cathedral and the Bazaar, The Magic Cauldron, you name it — and I have to wonder.

Don't these people ever learn? Anything? Do they even listen to themselves?

It's bizarre and entertaining to hear people who yesterday who were all about allegedly benign and intelligent analysis on open source economics by ESR are suddenly discovering that in practice, what they get is stupid and vicious comments that has been captured by a venal and shortsighted view about society.

Yeah, no shit? How....how do they avoid noticing that in reality nothing is black and white, and that in fact almost everyone and every organisation/institution says and does both intelligent and stupid things? And that in case of large organisations, it may even depend on whose actually in charge about something, or the topic it is about?

(before replying, please read the parent's citation)

Prognosis not good. The technology is just moving in the wrong direction. It's now commonplace to get PCs without cupholders.

The real issue here is not how many hands he has, but that he's not geeky enough to use the right idiom.

nice!

The real issue here is not how many hands he has, but that he's not geeky enough to use the right idiom.

Why do so many Slashdotters always feel like the best answer to a question is "you're doing it wrong"?

In my opinion, it relates to a point in ESR's essay "How To Ask Questions The Smart Way" titled "Describe the goal, not the step".

larger form-factor, touch based devices

When these larger form factors extend into a physical size three to four times that of the iPad, from 1024x768 up to 1920x1080, we're looking at gorilla arm syndrome.

See Figure 1.[1],[2]

A replacement for PATA or PCI has to interoperate only with other components in the same chassis, or possibly on the same desk in the case of eSATA and Thunderbolt. A replacement for TCP would have to interoperate with every other computer in the world. Imagine what a flag day that would be.

That said, yes, there are reasons why FOSS is generally more secure. One of them is the expectation of errors being revealed. We all want to avoid embarrassment. Closed source software doesn't usually need to worry about that.

I'd have to say its more along the lines of:
a) They are more likely to be revealed (because anyone can see the code)
and
b) They are more likely to be fixed (because anyone can work on the code)

To steal from ESR's "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", Many Eyeballs Tame Complexity.

Perhaps people are trying to encourage you to follow ESR's advice of describing your goal so that they can understand the step.

Perhaps, but most of the times I want my answers anyway. They might be irrelevant, but I don't like staying ignorant.

ESR also says you can sometimes get more helpful replies if you tell people what queries you've already used unsuccessfully.

I don't mind unhelpful answers when it's my fault for not mentioning I already try that or that. (also I do mind being asked "Did you try to turn it off and on again?"... specially when it works...). It's absolute no reply that is frustrating, also it's not the fault of anyone, except maybe myself asking in the wrong place...

Perhaps people are trying to encourage you to follow ESR's advice of describing your goal so that they can understand the step.

Perhaps, but most of the times I want my answers anyway. They might be irrelevant, but I don't like staying ignorant.

ESR also says you can sometimes get more helpful replies if you tell people what queries you've already used unsuccessfully.

I don't mind unhelpful answers when it's my fault for not mentioning I already try that or that. (also I do mind being asked "Did you try to turn it off and on again?"... specially when it works...). It's absolute no reply that is frustrating, also it's not the fault of anyone, except maybe myself asking in the wrong place...

I'm not sure about that. All too often, when I ask a specific question I get solution to some problem I don't have, or when I explain what I'm trying to do, I'm asked why I would like to do that in the first place.

Perhaps people are trying to encourage you to follow ESR's advice of describing your goal so that they can understand the step.

(Cause, you know, before asking I actually do a google search first, so when I ask something it's often not trivial.)

ESR also says you can sometimes get more helpful replies if you tell people what queries you've already used unsuccessfully.

I'm not sure about that. All too often, when I ask a specific question I get solution to some problem I don't have, or when I explain what I'm trying to do, I'm asked why I would like to do that in the first place.

Perhaps people are trying to encourage you to follow ESR's advice of describing your goal so that they can understand the step.

(Cause, you know, before asking I actually do a google search first, so when I ask something it's often not trivial.)

ESR also says you can sometimes get more helpful replies if you tell people what queries you've already used unsuccessfully.

What the hell are you talking about? What is "it" ? Who cares, and why? You might want to read this.

the system builders like me will put a decent free AV like Avast or Comodo

Right now I'm putting MSE on systems that I maintain for friends and family. What makes Avast better than the current MSE?

you had to fuck up and do the whole "M$" thing.

In early versions of the BASIC programming language, all string variable names ended with $. I see it as BASIC's counterpart to the shell- or Perl-style $PHB mentioned in the Jargon File, except alluding to Microsoft's beginnings as a developer of BASIC interpreters.

It would have been nice to include a little deeper history in this article, like maybe talking about the Jargon File, the dictionary for old school hackers that's filled with fascinating history about the technology and innovations behind some of the terms we still use online today.

Or would that detract from the idea that cultural-shifts resulting in lexical shifts is some kind of totally new and unexpected phenomenon?

I work in IT (sys admin), having spent a bit of time in the military. Military experience is certainly no stone-cold guarantee that you've got a quality person on your hands, but it does increase the probability significantly. Technical skills aside, the military tends to instill a fairly healthy amount of discipline, teamwork, and the ability to think/act under pressure. As my Dad puts it (formerly in the military for 12 years) - the ability to think and chew bubble gum at the same time.

As a former military system administrator myself, I'd like to point out that armed-services-veteran BOFHs have superior LART skills. They may complain about having to use improvised LARTs rather than appropriate purpose-made ones, but they adjust rapidly.

No government usually doesn't mean no law, it usually means a polycentric and customary legal system. Just think about it about, how many friends might I have, will they all believe you or want thier own vengance? What if you found out later that is wasn't actually me but just someone you thought was me? If you even thought about it for half a minute you would figure out there would be reason seek the aid of those with experience in investigation, a knowledge of social norms, and a reputation of impartiality and wisdom.

The real danger to humanity is blind obience. Government have killed nearly a quarter billion people in the twentieth century alone. There is only about half of one percent that are natural killers (sociopaths, or those without empathy), compared to about three-quarters that without extensive training to override instincts will not shoot back at those whom they have every reason to believe are trying the kill them. ESR has a good essay on the topic. http://catb.org/~esr/writings/killer-myth.html

BayStar took money from Microsoft, BayStar did a PIPE (Private Investment in Public Equity) in SCO.

http://slashdot.org/story/04/03/11/158214/baystar-confirms-microsoft-behind-sco-investment

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO-Linux_controversies#SCO_and_BayStar_Capital

also see below at that page under "Microsoft funding of SCO controversy".

Which leads to:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/halloween/halloween10.html

So that's pretty much as much evidence as I can imagine needing.

Hackers love to share. GNU/Linux should embrace this. If they do, they'll increase FOSS development in GNU/Linux tenfold. That's the entire point of my argument.

I see you're very knowledgeable about Debian and that was a long and thoughtful reply. Of course this is slashdot, so I don't mind playing devils advocate, but I'm actually a big fan of Debian. It is some of the most important software ever written. It's changed the world in amazing ways. I've used it as my main OS on my main machine, and we do on our severs at work, and the Ubuntu distro I use now for various reasons is based on Debian.

That said, my goal is to get GNU/Linux developers and the Debian devs in particular to wake up to the fact that we've built a cathedral when we need a bazaar. As you've likely read in the paper by that title, Emacs was developed in a manner where ever bit was laid by expert craftsman under the watchful eye of RMS. Contributors were not allowed to add to the cathedral willy-nilly. GNU was going to be built right, even if RMS had to do it himself. Meanwhile, Linux Torvalds threw out his kernal and encouraged everyone to use it and people started building all sorts of stuff. Anyone could write a program today, and have it shared on the list tomorrow. That was the bazaar, and it's where the heart and sole of GNU/Linux was created. Then came the Debian package manager, and the whole scene changed. It is wonderful to have pre-compiled repositories of verified code compiled from source, and that's the foundation that made Debian great. The problem is that this binary repository is managed lovingly by devoted monks. Every brick is carefully examined by experts and nothing gets included unless it passes the high standards of the Debian monastery. The good news is that it's no longer just one man in charge. The bad news is there's now a group of devoted monks in charge. The process of carefully examining every brick and excluding most has not changed since emacs.

The magic happening in Android, and I hate to admit but iOS too, is they've gone back to the bazaar model where anyone can share any app they like. Sure, most of it is crap. In fact they probably have an app for crap. Part of it is driven by developer greed, which is counter to what Debian stands for, but most of it is just hackers enjoying their new found freedom to share. Sure, the base is solid, and carefully crafted and built at Google. You can't just write any old crud and expect it to ship installed on every phone by default. You need the default code base to "just work". However, anyone is enabled to share whatever crap they like as an app in the market. That freedom to share is missing in Debian.

Now, back to the technical points we talked about. I'm not recommending sym links, but hard links to shared libraries, and I'm recommending that apps run chrooted in an app jail, and that they install in an application directory where every library they need has a hard link. They could have their own /usr/lib directories for their shared libraries, but on the actual disk it should be /Apps/MyStupidFartApp/usr/lib/libsndfile.so.whatever. This would keep MyStupidFartApp from colliding with my friend's competing BiggerAndBetterFarts app, as we're likely to want to install a /etc/fart.conf. Because my fart app has deeper tones, it wins and my friend's loses, but later he submits a patch to libsndfile while gets included in Debian but totally breaks my poorly tested fart app. Why should my popular fart app suffer because it has bugs that were sensitized by a new libsndfile shared library? If we just run them in their own jails, and never upgrade their shared libraries (except in sever security situations), that fart app should continue to run for decades. Why should I go through the Debian packaging and review process to share a stupid buggy fart app? Why does Debian stand in my way?

If God made the universe, then where did God come from?

Mu

Anything outside the universe is not bound by cause-and-effect or the conservation of mass.

Forget Grandma, what about Aunt Tilly?

• If the goal is to run custom video game software, the PC supports that.
• If the goal is to run custom video game software designed for use with a gamepad, any PC made since 1999 supports USB gamepads.
• If the goal is to run custom video game software that uses the Kinect sensor, any PC with Windows 7 supports that.
• If the goal is to run custom game software designed for multiple players and have them share the screen like in old-school Bomberman series or Street Fighter series, the PC supports that too. For one thing, HDTVs have VGA and HDMI inputs compatible with PCs, and for another, newer 1080p monitors for desktop PCs tend to be 21" to 23", or about as big as the TV that you may have used with your N64.

Microsoft has been trying to figure out how to fight the notion of open source, and especially Free Software, for more than a decade.

Except that was well over a decade ago when the idea of 'year of the linux desktop' was new and was thought to actually be a reality, of course it never became such. You know over a decade ago Apple's Steve Jobs had some quite famous quotes about stealing of ideas from other companies, but of course being so long ago, like the MS memos, it isn't really relevant today. These days there is no evidence to suggest MS is feeling threatened by Linux, in fact there isn't even any logic behind such a suggestion. Linux has always been a viable alternative but has been rejected by the masses for many reasons, and they aren't Microsoft-related.

Microsoft has been trying to figure out how to fight the notion of open source, and especially Free Software, for more than a decade.

I think it has something to do with Describe the goal, not the step. The goal is to play video games originally designed for discontinued platforms using a more modern computing platform. The step might involve a Mac mini.

RMS didn't do his development in the open. The Cathedral and the Bazaar was about this.

http://catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/

Here you go junior, from when you were in diapers.

Just in case somebody thinks this anonymous coward is a member of the slashdot tinfoil hat brigade, blaming Microsoft for everything...

Halloween Document 10 lays out in intimate detail how Michael Anderer, a consultant to SCO, used Microsoft to gain up to in his on words "$82-86 million." Baystar's manager of their $50 million SCO investment complained: "Mr. Emerson and I discussed a variety of investment structures wherein Microsoft would backstop, or guarantee in some way, Baystar's investment ... Microsoft assured me that it would in some way guarantee BayStar's investment in SCO."

The documents are in the public record, confirmed by all parties and well reported in the press. This is almost all of the money SCO used to fund their meritless 8-year legal campaign against Linux.

/And I'm not that AC either.

First, the plural of box is boxes, boxen is not a word.

If you had a sense of humor, you'd understand where "boxen" came from.

And if you knew what the jargon file was, you both would realize exactly how wrong (stupidly wrong, in the case of the parent) you are. The link is to a version that is twenty years old, which I felt was far enough back from that asinine youtube video to hammer the point home for the parent. Hopefully the GP will take some time to browse the file and realize that some of us here really do speak a different language...

It's an older hacker term derived from IBM:

FUD

While you are technically correct (about uncertainty and doubt), the term did come from a previous IBM exec after leaving the company. The term, since, has just passed down in antiquity.

I've never seen anyone use newb for newbie. But I've seen noob or n00b all the time. In fact if you do a google search for both newb and noob, it only returns a section of images for noob, therefore noob is more common and accepted.

Since it stands for "We Owned the Other Team"...

No, it doesn't...

The Jargon Lexicon says:

An interjection similar to “Yay!”, as in: “w00t!!! I just got a raise!” Often used for small victories the speaker dies not expect to be of special interest to anyone else. Some claim this is a bastardization of “root”, the highest level of access to a system (particularly UNIX), originated by script kiddies as a 133tspeak equivalent of “root”, and said as an exclamation upon gaining root access. Others claim it originated in the Everquest multiplayer game as an abbreviation of “wonderful loot”. Still other claim it on originated on IRC as the “Ewok victory cheer”] Adj. w00table has the sense of “cool” or “nifty”. This is one of the few leet-speak coinages to have crossed over into non-ironic use among hackers.

yes because microsoft has never ever ever done anything that might give people reason to be skeptical of studies that essentially proclaim that microsoft products are pieces of heaven that have come down to earth.

You'd better be calling The Good Lord for help right now, because while you weren't looking specialized chips like that DID become the dominant platform, and GPGPU is going to make it more so. The primary processor (which is also from a duopoloy) will just become a system management hypervisor.

Read up on the technological cycle of reincarnation. "All this has happened before. All this will happen again."