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• People have to listen
• People who listen will agree
• People who agree will do something about it
• Most people will agree
• Most people have something worth saying
• People who disagree have to defend themselves for disagreeing

Clueless admins who have to reinstall to fix something aren't admins. They're looking for a new job.

I wouldn't call someone following the TechNet directions clueless. On the other hand, I would rather find a new job than work with an operating system which may require reinstallation to recover from a Service Pack.

(TechNet directions may be found at http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q 173/5/07.ASP )

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Is it truly freedom, when you expect to be (at least) socially blasted for expressing controversial ideas?

Sure! Or do you want Freedom From Consequences?

If Singer has the free-speech rights to suggest euthanizing children under certain circumstances, I have the same right to call him a murderer or a monster or a hero or a saint.

Funny, how expressing "unpopular" views makes one heroic, while expressing "popular" views makes one vulgar. If the simple act of expressing one's views is a Good Thing, does it really matter what those views are, Jon?

Even if the majority of them are "Welcome to my homepage, it is under construction. Click Me to go back to Yahoo!"? Or does the message actually count for something, too?

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No, the last time I reinstalled NT Server was four months ago. Our department print/web/file server suddenly started to give the strange error message, "Evaluation Period Ended. This installation will shut down in an hour." It had to be rebooted every hour so that people could get their work done before we had a chance to fix it.

The rumor going around here was that my predecessor had installed a Service Pack with a severe problem -- turning a licensed installation of NT Server into the Evaluation version. He got that service pack from Microsoft. Just a rumor. From the corporate IT guys who talk on the phone with Microsoft every week. Just a rumor.

Either way, an Operating System that has to be rebooted every hour until you reinstall is not what I want on my server. It might also have been nice to have warning beforehand... but then, I guess, there wouldn't have been as many people willing to write a $2000 check for a license (which we already had).

PS -- Linux novices have no business administering production servers. Someone whose idea of fixing a misbehaving server is reinstallation is not welcome to touch any of my servers.

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I'm not sure MTV wants to show Rob and Jeff not wearing pants all day, unless it's "Hackers: Living in an Underwear Commercial".

Sorry guys.

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Assigning papers that call for the rote repetition of researched facts (I wish there were another r-word in there) is like forcing musicians to hand-craft their own instruments?

Serious Musicians building their own instruments (at least once) would be a good thing. Just like Serious Programmers writing their own programming languages or compilers or whatever else good Computer Science Courses have them do.

Now the author is right in that repeating the same facts on some assigned topic isn't all that useful. But isn't the point of education to teach people how to find things out for themselves? (Okay, maybe I'm an idealist.)

If I were a teacher, I'd rather have one student sweating over a stack of books in the library for the first time in his life turn in a list of facts he culled from that stack, giving credit to those books, than a dozen students (like I was) who can crack a book and write a nice essay that doesn't say much but winks at the author.

Yeah, essays for sale and graders for sale subverts this process... but plagiarism was always a problem with education, and graduate assistants have been doing the grading for a long time anyway. That's not a reason to get rid of meaningless assignments. At the very least, it prepares students for the Real World. (As I'm contemplating a two-hour meeting to present some guy with a box of cigars....)

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Bruce, you're spot-on right. The only explanation I can offer is that Sun is a Bigger Deal than Troll Tech. If a big proprietary vendor with a nice Unix (admittedly a loss leader for nicer hardware) can open things up a little bit, that's a validation of what we believe in (that the bazaar is better than the cathedral in certain circumstances), that is a major achievement. To find out that it isn't really the case, but rather a marketing-type of move... well, that smarts more than having to use lesstif or GTK.

That, and a lot of us are kinda disappointed with Java and standards.

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I'm not so sure it's a change.

I tend to think of this Linus as the one who says "Whoever writes the code gets to make the license" followed by "but shouldn't lie about the license terms in order to capitalize on the hard work lots of people have already done to make the World A Better Place." The second part just wasn't necessary before.

At least, that's my understanding of what he said. I don't speak for Linus Torvalds or my employers or many other people.

As a side note, maybe you ought to call up Scott MacNealy and remind him that being able to look at some source code doesn't necessarily mean that Solaris is libre. (ouvre?)

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Remember kids, compare the future versions of your product with the previous version of your competitor's product, and you will gain marketshare.

(128 MB swap partitions being a limitation of the 2.0.x kernels, for example).

Plus, if Microsoft can claim (er, insinuate) that Plug and Play, USB, and APM actually work in NT 4.0 (maybe with special patches and hacks), shouldn't we be able to claim that XFS and ext3 support journaling right now? I mean, Stephen Tweedie and his merry men are testing journaling Right Now! Not to mention the memory limitation being erased... and which OS is 64 bit clean?

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Linux could be orders of magnitude ahead of it's current state if everyone were working on a common distribution rather than wasting resources through duplication.

Linux or *BSD could be orders of magnitude behind the curerent state if everyone took the current code as The Best Way To Do It instead of wasting resources submitting patches.

Sometimes having competition and similar projects leads to very good things.

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Rereading Islands in the Net recently, I was struck by the observation that the humble DVD rendered some of the early scenes almost obsolete (only in a speculative sense).

With that in mind, are there any technological or cultural developments in the past few years that have caused you to rethink your speculations/predictions/opinions about the near future? If so, what are they?

Thanks for your time!

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RedHat 6 came out months before RedHat went public.

Besides that, RedHat did not write Netscape, so it is unfair to blame them for Netscape's bugginess (it hardly seems fair to blame Netscape for it -- I think the definition of a web browser has to include random crashes anymore).

On this RH 6 box right here, Enlightenment is working just fine, with regard to focus. I don't use Gnome, so I won't comment on that, except to say that my X used to do the same thing, until I realized that the stupid onboard video chipset needed a tweak in my XF86Config.

Yes, some companies care more about the bottom line than quality software. That doesn't mean that all companies do.

RedHat may ship buggy stuff now and then, just like most everyone else, but until I see otherwise, I'm convinced they're trying to do the Right Thing.

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Redhat can't go a week without having a security problem found. It rescently IPO'd. I only expect this to get worse.

So... how many of the security problems are in programs written by RedHat programmers?

Believing that software gets worse when a company gets public investors is as naive as believing that software is buggy because consumers are computer-ignorant and want lots and lots of nifty features.

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If so, I bet Jobs spent six months picking the perfect shade of blue.

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How is that fragmentation?

I've been upgrading my (not RedHat) system at home ever since I first got it up and going with packages from rpmfind, or tarballs, or whatever. There are web sites out there with uptimes of months and even years who don't feel the need to upgrade with every distribution's minor release.

The whole GNU/Linux system doesn't magically update everything in one big chunk just once or twice a year. You might be thinking of the *BSDs, which are much more monolithic in only that regard.

If you're arguing that beta testing releases leads to market fragmentation, then I could understand how Windows might have a monopoly (since Microsoft's beta testing seems to be less powerful than that of many free software projects).

On the other hand, your statement that beta tests are for marketing purposes leads me to believe that your definition of beta is much different from mine.

GNU/Linux is a system in a state of refinement, not rapid evolution. Yes, that's a generalization, and yes, RedHat has a history of pushing the envelope. For the most part, though, what you see on a distributed CD is not the sort of thing that Microsoft or Bethesda or Take 2 will charge you money for -- a first look at spaghetti debugging code. Since the difference between minor versions is small, a decent upgrade utility will take care of the big needs.

Perhaps you've noticed that RedHat still provides upgrades and bug fixes for versions 5.x and older?

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You're thinking of EMF, Enhanced Meta-File. The unfortunate thing there is that it does not play well with PCL on the higher-end LaserJet printers. At least, in all of my testing, it didn't.

Otherwise, you're quite correct.

By the way, one of the annoying thing about Windows client printing is that the drivers are pulled down with each print job. You'd think someone would come up with some way of checking the version or something to save network traffic... oh well!

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I have just such a thing. I call it the combination of my taste, my common sense, and my discrimination.

I don't want a computer or a website (or whatever Jon Katz meant -- it's not clear) to make the tough choices for me. That would be giving in to technology and allowing it to master me, instead of the other way around.

"But there is so much information out there! It has to be filtered somehow!" (imaginary response)

True... but there's already more information than any one person can handle. We passed that point with the Library at Alexandria. I suppose we'll just have to deal with it.

Once someone demonstrates a working Autonomous Intelligent Agent with fuzzier logic than strict SQL, maybe it'll be time to re-evaluate my position. Until then, I'll make my own decisions, thank you very much.

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I suppose that depends on how often he checked your prices. If he brought a hundred of his friends and went through your shelves every hour, you'd probably be less pleased.

If you had large advertising displays at the end of each aisle, and if you made a non-trivial amount of revenue from each display, and if this fellow and his colleagues had some way of bringing the desired item directly to the checkout stand for the customer, bypassing those displays... you'd have a pretty cool grocery store, and I'd shop there.

The analogy falls apart right there.

I sympathize with both sides of this issue, unfortunately. Maybe eBay should tighten up its /robots.txt file a little bit and look into improving its search engine and notification service. The last time I checked (four or five months ago), both were pretty poor. Maybe the meta-auction sites should log their delivery statistics and present a portal value argument.

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Astute readers know why you've reluctantly taken a position as a Linux evangelist, open source sociologist, and prime target. Taking the opposite approach, is there anything which would convince you to step down, that your posts were no longer necessary?

This is not meant to be inflammatory ... it's just a roundabout way of asking how far along your goals are, and what your plans will be if you ever meet them.

Thanks for your time!

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We only have two choices? Abandon all technology and flee to the woods or embrace the 'consuming technological chaos and be subsumed'? (Okay, that's my phrase, but I think I get Jon's point.)

How about treating technology as tools? I don't use a computer because I'm afraid that I can't keep up with the world unless I do -- I use it because it helps me do work. I don't write Perl code because of a deep-seated artistic desire for expression (that's what Perl poetry is for), I write it because it helps me get things done.

That's the same reason my father uses a welding torch or an air compressor or a socket wrench. Not because he wants to have the latest and greatest gadgets, but because he can use them.

Yes, I like to keep up with my e-mail, and I like to check a few web sites and newsgroups regularly, but I can take a week at the beach without any of those things and survive just fine.

I think most people can do the same. Thus, it's a false dilemma.

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The real value of information is the organization of that information.

Yes, there are millions of websites out there. Yes, there are probably dozens of them with information relating to what I want to know at any given moment. Now how do I find them? (Substitute 'websites' with whatever you prefer.)

THAT will be the killer application and the killer service to provide -- not generating new information nor providing access to it, but helping people find and use it.

I think the OSS community had that in hand a long time ago. Would you rather sit on the phone for four hours to talk to a low-paid support technician who might be able to send a bug report to a Bug Report Engineer who might have met a programmer once on the line, or would you rather read the kernel-dev archives?

If information is free, then the ability to find the information you want is invaluable.

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Does that mean people will be 'renting' or 'leasing' software from Microsoft now? Granted, it's already happening in the corporate world, but will that move to the home and small-business markets, too? That seems like a strange move.

What I don't understand is why people still charge for software when other people give away hardware for signing up with an ISP or what-have you.

I would think that software is less likely than hardware to be considered a commodity. Insert standard line about the cost of replicating hardware versus the cost of copying software here. On the other hand, Microsoft doesn't sell much hardware, and their support doesn't seem worth the price to home users.

Not that home users account for much revenue there, but the NY Times article did talk about MSN....

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The article didn't make this very clear, but I think what Linus meant was that the common practice of paying for bugfixes (oh, I mean upgrades!) would soon end.

It's about time, too. I've seen plenty of bugs in Office 97 which prevented people here from doing their work. Microsoft acknowledged the behavior as a bug and recommended purchasing Office 2000 (which would come out seven months later) as a fix.

To make an annoying story short, they ended up using the beta version of Office 2000 just to get work done. I won't miss that sort of thing.

Compare that to the Linux kernel development model. How long had the 2.2 series been out before 2.0.38 appeared? And how much did the kernel maintainers charge for that?

It's not the upgrades that are the issue. It's being "forced" to pay to upgrade software which should have worked correctly in the first place that is the problem.

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The Company's extensions to the Linux software kernel will rapidly distinguish its products from all other available Linux software.

Dunno... if there were real competition in the x86 market (at least, real enough to the perception of the suits at Microsoft), don't you think they'd try to port their software?

(The only reason I don't include the Macintosh in there is because the original poster said x86.)

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In my opinion, the whole thing might have been avoided if Corel had made a distinction between their software and software written by other people.

Most people here would probably agree that Corel has the right (and even the responsibility) to choose a license for the software they develop. They do not have the right to choose a licence for the software they did not develop. They most assuredly do not have the right to change the license for GPL'd software that they have modified.

Unfortunately, the language in the beta licensing agreement makes it sound as if that is exactly what Corel has done.

If they amend that license to apply only to the software they have created or modified from non-GPL'd code, I can't think of any valid criticisms of the license.

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I'm glad to know that there is at least one more technological crisis to worry about come 1/1/2000.

Seriously, won't the switch require huge changes to existing infrastructure? The big routers on the great big cables -- won't they have to be changed/upgraded/reprogrammed to handle the larger numbers without screwing up the network addresses?

Seems like it to me... but I haven't been following too closely. What are the low level changes we need before we can switch?

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That's true to a certain extent... but I'm not working a 20 hour week, and my car doesn't fly, and we haven't eradicated poverty or crime or violence or hard labor. I've heard all of those things promised.

I guess I'm of the belief that while technology will change things, it won't change things very much. There are still subsistence farmers in China walking behind their water buffalo just like their ancestors did three thousand years ago. They will still probably do that when (and if) we ever come up with Artificial Life.

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Hmmm. A bunch of (rather past it) novelists predict that in n years we will be doing all sorts of wild far out things with new acronyms. How many times have these novelists been right in the past?

Nearly every great technological leap has been heralded as That Which Will Usher In a New Age of Prosperity. Think of television, electricity, the steam engine, mass production, literacy, and the like.

Think of the promises Lenin made, or Stalin, or Castro, or Franco.

Think of the Romantic movement of the 19th century -- particularly idealistic communes such as the Chataqua community.

Think of the Englightenment.

Think of the Holy Roman Empire.

In other words, while it's fun to drool over imaginary achievements which may be possible in fifty years (Popular Science predicted flying cars by 1980, communities on the moon in 1990 or something like that), history buffs won't take it too seriously, unless it actually happens.

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So much for Microsoft's vaunted 'Freedom to Innovate'.

Maybe Microsoft wants more smart people to help them innovate better products. But I doubt it.

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Nitrozac is one of the hardest working people I know. Big thanks to her and all of the other people out there doing their labors of love day in and day out regardless of any material success.

It's nice to see you getting recognition and acclaim. Keep up the good work!

okay, so maybe I'm a little biased:

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What happens if traffic on Slashdot decreases? Will shareholders insist on a format change to drive ad impressions up? If stock price plummets, shareholders will eventually hold the company accountable. I do not see any way to avoid ramifications to /. itself.

I'd say that depends on how much of the stock goes on the block, and how many shares are kept... um... over there. *pointing to Andover*

RedHat only sold a small percentage of the total shares. That does two things -- it makes the pre-IPO owners fantastically rich, on paper, and it keeps them in charge of the company. Even if you can get all of the public shareholders to agree on something, the influence there may be 10% of the total voting shares. Or less.

Don't be surprised if Andover does the same thing. If there's a money crunch, they can always sell off some of the extra stock for more capital.

Maybe they should start a consulting business for sites using the Slash code... hmm... or the Freshmeat code, if people prefer PHP....

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I've been getting an overwhelming attitude among geek guys recently that women geeks are just a toy like their new 21 inch moniotr. with a "Where can I buy my own?" attitude. You guys go on about petrifying whatever female geek catches your fancy for the day, you talk about 'creating' your own linux nerd, you suggest female geeks as great beowulf clusters, you say "I wish I could show her my box, heh heh heh". You guys pride yourselves on your intelligence, and you want to be respected for your mind, well so do I. Geek respect is earned, no matter what gender you are, and you're never going to find a female geek if you can't give her the basic respect you'd give any other geek.

That's very true -- it's a common attitude. (The statue thing is just creepy.)

That attitude isn't confined just to geek guys, though. It's present in guys in general. Just think back to the junior high or high school locker room. Sure, the metaphors are different. Lots more sports euphemisms... but it was there, and in all sorts of people.

Now there may be a larger percentage of geek guys with underdeveloped social abilities than the percentage of non-geek guys with the same lack of personal acuity, or there may not be. That's not really my point. It's just too common everywhere.

I do wonder if other industries went through the opposite growth pains. Did the flight attendants of the 60's lament the lack of men in that role? How about in nursing?

I also wonder if the geek tendency to let his job and related interests dominate his life has anything to do with the curious desire so many of us have to bring more women into our field. It's probably not as altruistic as the simple desire to even the playing field.

I'd prefer to meet someone with at least some divergent interests. Keeps me challenged with something other than the latest O'Reilly book. You can only recompile your kernel so many times, but arguing over "opera or action movie?"* lasts forever.

* My pick depends on the opera.

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Umm...what exactly does an abacus soaked in Jell-O feel like?

Squishy, chunky, and much less likely to burn your fingers.

That doesn't exactly fly with the ultra-low-power-consumption rumors, but the writer gets points for style.

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I would imagine that some of the time, posts get bumped up simultaneously. If I tag a post with Score 1 as 'Insightful' and another moderator does the same thing at the same time, it goes to Score 3. Neither of us may have thought it was worth more than Score 2, but because we both refreshed the page when it was at Score 1 and acted appropriately, it goes a little higher than either intended.

Perhaps we need a 'Preview' mode for moderation?

I guess this only affects those of us who like to read everything on one page, nested.

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What are the odds that this would get rid of most of the banner advertising on the web? I mean, would that be such a bad thing?

On the other hand, I'd hate to see Slashdot shut down because of loss of revenue. And I really hate bad patents.

Still....

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Two questions:

1. You're one of the few comic artists I've seen taking advantage of some of the peculiarities of the Web (animation, polls, integrating various quasi-real life happenings into your storyline on occasion -- see last week's Archives for details). Do you think others will follow suit?

2. Along the same lines, do you think the self-referentialism in After Y2K has been a difficult line to walk, creatively? Is there a balance you've reached between telling a good and funny story and what some may consider a bit of self-indulgence?

Thanks for the laughs!

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Let's see... exactly how does the popularity of free and open source software equate to mass ownership and control of the means of production?

What are the means of production in this case? The programming languages? The compilers? The hardware? The knowledge and experience of programmers, documentation writers, designers, and software engineers? A $20/month Internet connection? MAE-East? Cisco?

If he'd framed his thoughts in the "Intellectual Property vs. Human Achievement" debate, perhaps he'd have some modicum of a point.

Otherwise, you're stuck on the slippery slope that says that derivation and trigonometry tables are communism, self-help books are communism, do-it-yourself videos are communism....

I think the moral of this story is: Just because you aren't getting paid or receiving other benefits from open source/free software doesn't mean that no one else is -- or that everyone else would turn it down out of political or economic principles.

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Perhaps it was a one-page book? They have to start somewhere! *grin*

Anyway, thank you for taking the time to do this, Tim. (And thanks to Roblimo too!)

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Does that mean that I can take my ticket stub to the next movie, and they'll let me in for free to see the rest of the episode?

That would be cool.

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Hm, that makes me think of electronic paper. I wonder if you could build a huge, thin display panel using these guys as intelligent pixels?

Sure, the dot pitch would be terrible, but that's why you use a whole wall!

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Anyone who's been anywhere near true computer geeks soon comes to realize that the driving ethic behind the Internet isn't pornography, technology or money-making. It's not even freedom. It's the yen for cool stuff - designing it, programming it, acquiring it or trying it out.

I disagree. The driving ethic behind the Internet is about communication. That was the focus of the ARPANet, and that was why researchers and universities jumped on board.

That's why e-mail (and, to a lesser extent, messaging services) is the Killer Application.

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I think you're on to something there!

Now for my next thought... I wonder if it would be a Good Idea or a Bad Idea for certain stories to have moderation points. For example, Jon Katz essays tend to generate large numbers of posts. What if everyone who had moderator access had an extra point, just to use in moderating posts attached to that particular story?

It's just a thought I had last night while trying to fall asleep. Now I'm at work, trying *not* to fall asleep.

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I like the ID idea, but not the IP address idea. It's easy enough to do an nslookup on an IP address and figure things out.

One problem, though, is that some of us who sometimes post behind firewalls all have the same IP address.

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You're right. The upgrade treadmill is a state of mind. However, all it takes is a handful of people running on it to cause other people to want to catch up.

Case in point: At work, I'm working on upgrading a whole department with the latest version of a project management software package. This involves negotiating a licensing deal with a big software company (it's been in progress for three months) and upgrading the software on every machine, by hand.

Why? Because one of the manufacturing plants recently upgraded their project management software, and the documents aren't backwards compatible. *sigh*

That's what I'm worried about with non-completely-open office software. It's too ubiquitous to leave in the hands of any one company.

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I'm giving my grandmother a Linux system. I think of it as similar to setting up a kiosk somewhere. All she has to do is turn it on, logon, find her games and a word processor and maybe e-mail, and shut it down correctly.

Choice is good, though... how many good RTOSs are out there that run killer apps like a word processor?

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Would you ever consider making previous editions of certain books free for download when supplanted by newer editions?

For example, when Larry Wall finally gets around to writing the 3rd edition of the Camel (probably about the same time as Perl 6), would you consider making the second edition available in electronic format?

I realize this has the possibility of forking documentation, but it's hard to find anyone more qualified than Larry, Randal, and Tom, for example. It would only work for certain books.

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Maybe that will clear up that error message I get when compiling Enlightenment. 'No beer in fridge' indeed!

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I'd say Be is far more appropriate for the desktop than Linux. Linux for the servers, Be for the desktop... Sounds nice to me and coherent too.

How stable is Be on the desktop? I've heard good things there, but one of the things I really like about Linux (for members of my family who just want a box that WORKS) is essentially zero-administration on their part, and very little on mine.

If Be can offer something similar, I'll look into it.

I prefer Linux on my desktop for development. Unlike Slashdot, however, the percentage of developers in the Real World is fairly low, so my opinion isn't terribly useful there.

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Is the clean shaven myth the greatest piece of marketing brainwashing in western european history?

The necktie ranks right up there, too.

Thanks for answering more questions, by the way. Very classy.

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