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what a load of bullshit. take your tinfoil hat off. BSD as a group are far harder to control as they aren't off on zealotry crusades or out to dominate, they just get stuff done. Many commercial companies have had long term involvement with them including MS, this isn't new.

Agreed, and MS's money spends like any other money - if they do think they can control BSD they've got a surprise coming. Personally I don't think that's the plan. They do need to get into OpenStack, and they are desperate to get PowerShell ported to 'nix. Paying to have it supported, and contributing to the development of the pieces of BSD they use is just good business sense. MS may be all sorts of things - but generally they are not dumb when it comes to money.

It's not like they don't have their own Unix (SCO wasn't just a Linux attack venture) which may (possibly) be resurrected sometime in the future.

systemd is being implemented in distributions because a) it is good

you are _brainwashed_. absolutely brainwashed. read the independent assessment here:
http://www.softpanorama.org/Co...

and b) the people making that decision are the ones qualified to do so.

FUCK you. fuck you and your attitude thinking you have the right to tell me or ANYONE that i should bow down to other people's decisions. FUCK you and fuck off. you have NO right to tell me that i must worship the ground on which other people walk.

*I* have the freedom to make my *own* assessment. that is my right. and it's people like you who are not helping, by saying "yeah we should all trust someone else to make our decisions for us".

historically we know that when we abdicate responsibility to others for important decisions, it doesn't go so well, does it? what is _wrong_ with you??

sorry, but... you really gave me a shock there, i couldn't believe what you wrote.

When the response of industry leaders and Congress to the collapse in the jobs market of 2000 was to increase H-1b worker visas, it should have been a signal to any sane youngster US citizen (who wasn't an Asian immigrant) to steer clear of the IT industry. Yes, there are jobs that are well paying and yes there are a lot of US citizens, even older US citizens, who are getting them despite the insane guest worker policies pursued by Asian ethnic nepotism taking over Fortune 1000 IT hiring authority.

But think about the way casinos operate: When someone wins at the slots, the machines make lots of noise but when someone loses at slots, there is dead silence.

Since 2002 he was only partly employed. In 2009 he recollected

Essentially I have been officially unemployed for not quite five years now. There's never enough funding.

If you are a non-Asian US citizen, there are better ways of terminating your bloodline than getting a degree in IT, such as suicide bombing some of the industry leaders that expanded the H-1b visa program when the jobs market collapsed in 2000.

Take a look at ZTree.
Like TC but totally keyboard driven. I can't live without it.

I checked ZTree out and was thinking of some DOS comments, this being the GUI age and all.

Working with Total Commander your told up front that the program FAR is much better, has more support (plugins), and free http://www.softpanorama.org/OF...

So I checked out FAR http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F... and there it was; Norton Commander, yet FAR impressed me on it's first outing.

A, 7z x far.7z, then moved the output to a D:\MISGPRGS\FAR directory, ran FAR, right clicked on the display and it asked if there was something I wished to run in my Comodo firewall's sandbox, there was no delay the sandbox options was one of many options available.

- It knew of Comodos sandbox, meaning it hit the registry reading what it needed very quickly. Total Commander is actually pretty sluggish, to copy a large directory with TC is to find something else to do in the mean time, it's slower than windows copy. You can increase the buffers but it's not just it's copying that's slow; for it to hit the registry the way FAR did would I feel would take TC too long or even hang it for a bit.

I'm at a loss at the moment, I'd like a dual pane explore but right now just not sure which one.

Just saying if you like Ztree check out FAR http://www.farmanager.com/plug...

Sadly, there is a strong correlation between the same psychopathic personality characteristics and people in upper management:

http://www.softpanorama.org/Social/Toxic_managers/psychopath_in_the_corner_office.shtml

Will we just end up selecting for docile personalities and anyone who shows biomarkers for violent tendencies gets "special treatment?"

Cheers,
Dave

Compare with

http://www.softpanorama.org/Skeptics/IT_skeptic/it_obscurantism.shtml

Abstract

Nicholas Carr's provocative HBR article published five years ago and subsequent books suffer from the lack of understanding of IT history, electrical transmission networks (which he uses as a close historical analogy) and "in the cloud" software service provider model (SaaS). He cherry-picks historical facts to fit his needs instead of trying to describe real history of development of each of those three technologies. To be more correct Carr tortures facts to get them to fit his fantasy. The central idea of the article "IT does not matter" is simply a fallacy. At best Carr managed to ask a couple of interesting questions, but provided inferior and misleading answers. While Carr is definitely a gifted writer, ignorance of technology about which he is writing leads him to absurd conclusions which due to his lucid writing style looks quite plausible for non-specialists and as such influence public opinion about IT. Still as a writer Carr comes across as a guy who can write engagingly about a variety of topics including those about which he knows almost nothing. Here lies the danger as only specialists can sense that that "Something Is Deeply Amiss" while ordinary readers tend to believe his aura of credibility emanating from the "former editor of HBR" title.

Unfortunately the charge of irrelevance of IT made by Carr was perfectly in sync with the higher management desire to accelerate outsourcing and Carr's 2003 HBR paper served as a kind of "IT outsourcing manifesto". And the fact that many people were sitting between chairs as for the value of IT outsourcing partially explains why his initial HBR article, as weak and detached from reality as it was, generated less effective rebuttals then it should. This paper is an attempt to provide a more coherent analysis of the main components of Carr's fallacious vision five years after the event.

If one looks closer at what Carr propose, it is evident that this is a pretty reactionary and defeatist framework which I would call "IT obscurantism" and which is not that different from "creativism". Like with the latter, his justifications are extremely weak and consist of one hand of usage of fuzzy facts and questionable analogies, on the other putting forward radical, absurd recommendations ("Spend less", "Follow, don't lead", "Focus on vulnerabilities, not opportunities" and "move to utility-based 'in the cloud' computing") which can hurt anybody who trusts them or, worse, tries blindly adopt them.

The irony of Carr's position is that for the five years since the publication of his HBR article local datacenters actually flourished and until 2008 had shown no signs of impeding demise. In 2008 credit crush hit data centers hard, but they are just collateral damage of the financial storm. From 2003 to 2008 Data Centers experienced just another technological reorganization which increased role of Intel computers in the datacenter including appearance of blades, as alternatives to small to midrange servers, virtualization, wireless technologies and distributed computing (clusters). Moreover while there was some trend to the consolidation of datacenters within the large companies, the new power of laptops make "in the cloud" services promise pretty fuzzy as in no way remote datacenter can provide the same amount computer power as modern laptops. While perfect for such services as email, and (to lesser extent) Web browsing and in general, media consumption (which success of iPad demonstrated so vividly), for any computationally intensive application (for example, spreadsheets) promise of cloud computing become much less attractive, unless what we mean under the term is "application delivery". Security issues related to the move to private cloud are mindboggling. In May 2012 IBM has forbidden its employees from using cloud-based services such as Siri, Dropbox and iCloud.[IBM

Three words: The Mythical Man-Month. http://www.softpanorama.org/Bookshelf/Classic/tmmm.shtml

Look where Tanenebaum's "oh so superior" OS has gone in the past decade and a half compared to the "bloatware" Linus released.

While I agree with the rest of your post, this example is just wrong.

Minix adoption has nothing to do with the architecture, and everthing to do with the license and Tannenbaum's goal, which was a simple OS to use for education.

Up until recently Minix's license was almost hostile to commerical exploitation, and Tannenbaum himself refused patches and feature requests that would make Minix more than an educational tool.

It really had nothing to do with the architecture, and everything to do with the personalities of the people behind the projects.

And don't forget directories separated by slashes. They would have used forward slashes, except that they had already used forward slashes for flags (inherited from VMS by way of CP/M). And there were pipes, and redirection... Apparently one of the targets for MS-DOS 3.3 was to be compatible with MS's XENIX, with the eventual goal of switching everything over to XENIX. At least, I seem to recall reading that somewhere (Undocumented DOS, perhaps?). Lots of XENIX fun here.

It seems linux use is incompatible with "making a child".

And yet, somehow, we saw the release of Linus 2.0.

Plain vanilla dd is your friend. This is by far the simplest way of transferring DVDs around; I've used this method for years to archive discs to file servers.

IANAL, but I'm pretty sure there's only a small set of things you can't be fired for in the US, like race, and anything else is legal.

You can't be fired for religious belief. Join the church of GNU. it already has a saint

It's sad, and makes baby Stallman cry.

For anyone who's actually SEEN stallman, this is the funniest quote ever. For those who haven't, here

http://www.softpanorama.org/Skeptics/IT_skeptic/it_obscurantism.shtml

The traits are: the self-obsession of narcissism; the impulsive, thrill-seeking, and callous behavior of psychopaths; and the deceitful and exploitative nature of Machiavellianism.

These are the same people who become managers and make the big bucks. See http://www.softpanorama.org/Social/Toxic_managers/psychopath_in_the_corner_office.shtml

Cheers,
Dave

Since when is forking a bad thing? You seem to forget the current gcc is based off a fork of the original gcc, egcs. Here, read some: http://www.softpanorama.org/People/Stallman/history_of_gcc_development.shtml

Additionally, everyone is picking up webkit, Nokia, etc. Hell, even the KDE folks are picking up webkit!!!

And they just picked up cups.

Why do people who have no idea what they are talking about continue to make noise?

Actually, Microsoft Word was available for Xenix and Unix.

I can't help but wonder what the computer world would be like if Microsoft hadn't turned away from Xenix to work on OS/2...

Linux would be impossible without Microsoft as Microsoft is the owner of the platform called PC and Linux is just having a free hardware lunch here. So paradoxically Gates not Linus Torvalds is the real "father of Linux" ;-).

We also should remember about Microsoft Xenix which introduced F1-F2-F3 consoles switching and many other things that became standard on PC Unixes. The fact the Microsoft chose to kill it was very important as in no way a poor Finnish student who learned C while programming kernel can compete with Microsoft Xenix on PC. Linux filled the niche that Microsoft left. Look at http://www.softpanorama.org/People/Torvalds/index.shtml for the real story...

I think the key role of Linux as a free Unix implementation is to keep other vendors in check including Microsoft and Apple and provide "free for all" OS that emulates best features of Microsoft and OS X. It might be far from being perfect but it plays a very important role.

One automated way is to use Modular Syslog's hashed logging function:

http://ezine.daemonnews.org/200112/log_protection. html
http://www.softpanorama.org/Logs/log_management.sh tml
http://www2.corest.com/files/files/11/PEO.pdf
http://www.linuxsecurity.com/content/view/117280/5 0/

"open source represents the anarchist form of socialist revolution .. go ahead and limit your choices and allow RMS to protect you by limiting those choices"

The GPL actually acts to prevent others from limiting my choice in what I do with the software. The only proviso being I must also pass on such freedoms to others.

Your comments regarding anarchist reminds me of the writing of Dr. Nikolai Bezroukov. You aren't him by any chance .. :)

key words:

cult, social revolution, mutation, Socialist, anarchist, collectivized ..

Re:Don't like GPLv3? Run MSFT software

A good manager has good interpersonal skills and is usually gregarious. Unfortunately a psychopath often does a good job of imitating those characteristics. We hired one and it was a disaster. By the time we figured out what he was and got rid of him he had done a lot of damage to the organization.

The people who study managers are finding that psychopaths are good at getting management jobs but are very bad at running an organization.

My advice is to focus on achievements. How has the candidate done at team building? Really check their references. Ask for the names of some employees you can contact. A boss may miss the fact that someone is a psychopath but an employee never does.

link

You are correct. You can find the interview here: http://www.softpanorama.org/People/Stallman/interv iews.shtml

I guess this is enough to disregard the fact that it was GNU/Linux - *not BSD* - that was the first truely free Unix like OS.

Apparently Bill Joy started putting BSD together in early 1977. The FSF didn't exist until October 1985. From what I've read, the UNIX sources were distributed completely without restriction even earlier than 1977, since due to the antitrust case against them, AT&T weren't allowed to begin selling an operating system. The only charge that was being put on the source was the price of the mag tape, and I also don't know of any license restrictions either. Given the degree of university collaboration that existed early on, I can only assume that there weren't any. AT&T only became restrictive with the source themselves when they were released from the ban on selling it.

AFAIK, the main reason why UNIX wasn't used much outside of universities very early on was because of it originally being written for the PDP-8 and 11, which were very different architectures to the 80386. The first port that I know of to the 80386 that took place that I know of was the one done by the Jolitzes, which ended up becoming (more or less, anywayz) what we now know as FreeBSD.

It sounds like you've got the version of history that Stallman wants people to have; i.e., the one that makes him look like the sole father of the entire practice of releasing source code in general. From what I've been able to figure out anywayz, the truth is a bit different. UNIX was developed very collaboratively from its' inception, and as you yourself probably know, without source, that can't really happen. ;-)

Probably enough to disregard the fact that the "evil" FSF was already making available a shitload of software when Bill Gates was still dabbling in GWBASIC

The ANSI standard for Minimal BASIC is dated 1978, the same year Microsoft was founded. According to Wikipedia, the FSF was founded in October 1985...Looks like you're off by a couple of years. According to that, BASIC existed *before* the FSF. Also...I don't know what your own definition of "free" is, but Stallman himself was selling copies of Emacs during the 80s.

Rewriting history must be a nice hobby.

Reading history is a great hobby, sure...it allows me to know when it's been rewritten by someone else. ;)

You might dislike it, you might have another, but *ours* has been there well before BSD did *anything*.

Unfortunately that simply is not true...it's what you've been told. Don't take my word for it though...Go and do some research of your own. Some links that might help:-

Some accounts of early UNIX history from the UNIX Heritage Society. There's some early source code there as well.
20 Years of Berkeley UNIX.
Some info about where Stallman originally got at least some of his ideas.
The Art of UNIX Programming, which has a fair amount of historical info as well.
A rather non-canon biographical portrait of Stallman.
Another second opinion on Stallman, more or less in general.

Maybe if you take the time to go through this material, you might start to realise what my beef is. I don't like bullies, and I don't like frauds...Stallman is both, which from reading the above, you will learn. I strongly urge anyone else here who views me as merely a baseless troll to go to the above links and read that material as well. If I am a troll, the point of it is very simple:- This Emperor has no clothes.

softpanorama has a long paper on comparison of Linux and Solaris with some interesting points.

http://www.softpanorama.org/Articles/solaris_vs_li nux.shtml

From a discussion on BayPiggies about MVC:

Someone wrote: "a lot of the related literature seems to use MVC as the canonical example of a design pattern"

MVC is the canonical example of the "Cargo Cult" design pattern of blindly aping Smalltalk without understanding it or considering if there are any more appropriate design patterns.

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

I've never heard a good explanation of what a "controller" is really supposed to do (other than entangle brittle dependencies between the view and the model, and allow programmers to bill for more hours maintaining the code). But people always throw in that extra "controller" class and its requisite complexity, just because Smalltalk uses them, and it doesn't feel right imitating Smalltalk without the whole MVC trifecta.

Just because MVC is a commonly used and cited "pattern" doesn't mean it's the best one to use in all cases. It's better to have a "purpose" than a "pattern".

http://osteele.com/archives/2003/08/rethinking-mvc

-Don

If all the messages between the model and the view have to go through the controller, then it sounds like a bunch of middleware glue to me. Maybe somebody should write a SWIG-like tool that automatically writes all your controllers for you, since it sounds like a horrible mess to have to write and maintain by hand. I prefer the KISS approach of not using controllers at all. Given any piece of software, there's always going to be a bunch of miscellaneous functionality and glue code that doesn't fit into the nice little boxes envisioned by the designers. With MVC cargo-cult designs, all that miscellaneous stuff gets thrown into the "Controller" class, so it's more appropriately called "Model/View/Etcetera".

MVC was originally designed for Smalltalk, which is a dynamic language with closures, so it just doesn't work as well with static languages like Java (which eventually had to fake closures with inner classes). Java programmers end up abusing controllers to make up for deficiencies in the language that aren't such a big deal in other languages (like dynamically dispatching named events to methods, persistence, scripting, and customizing methods and properties of individual objects, etc). They end up re-inventing little pieces of other languages like Smalltalk, Lisp and Python, and the poor Controller (Etcetera) ends up being where they dump all that glue code that would otherwise be built into the programming language and framework.

-Don

Smalltalk was successful for the same reason the Lisp Machines (including MIT's CADR, Symbolics' Genera, TI's Exploder, Xerox's Interlisp-D) were successful: they had a rich, wonderful, interactive programming environments, which supported exploratory programming, and let you examine, modify and debug the entire state of the system, from the user interface all the way down to the file system and networking. Smalltalk was also successful in that it inspired and influenced a lot of other important languages like Self, which led to the Java hotspot compiler: http://research.sun.com/features/tenyears/volcd/pa pers/ungar.htm

The Eclipse platform was heavily influenced by IBM's extensive work on Smalltalk, and it shows. Sun's doing themselves a lot of self-inflicted damage by boycotting Eclipse, not because it sucks or they have anything that can touch it, but simply because they can't take the joke about its name. (But that's how IBM planned it -- who said a big blue corporation couldn't have a sense of humor?)

More on the "Cargo Cult" design pattern: http://www.softpanorama.org/SE/anti_oo.shtml

-Don

The complexity comes from King Solomon's solution of dissecting the input ha

You must be proud knowing that people like you are the inspiration for sites like this, and this, and this.

I would not call it brutal honesty but it is very interesting:
http://www.softpanorama.org/Articles/solaris_vs_li nux.shtml

Nothing to see here, move along to Where this Cnet hack got his ENTIRE NON-story from

and a nice link to some reading you'll enjoy

My comment had nothing to do with the GPL 3 improvements, which I support. SO the majority of the parent is nonsense. You might enjoy high-school English papers which overuse metaphors to fill up space for a homework assignment. Congratulations, you're a Cnet reader. I think you need to re-read my comment and rethink your reaction.

As per my comment, Wikipedia is not a source for information. Anyone who quotes wikipedia as a source is a hack trying to push an agenda. I don't quote /. comments as a source and I can't support quoting wikipedia (which amoounts to a volatile communal comment). The fact that you have to defend Wikipedia's content with "a majority of other random sources I read were kinda the same" belies the SERIOUS problems. There's a very good chance that the wikipedia entry will have MISINFORMATION now that it's made the front page of /. To pull this out of the realm of philosophy, poor design is to blame when information is the most inaccurate and least available when it's most requested. That's wikipedia.

Please stop spreading the Vulgar Raymondism that the Firefox code is read by millions of users. Have you read it yourself? I'll bet not! Most users and even programmers DO NOT read source code. You only hurt the open source / free software movement when you dump out steaming piles of horse shit like that. There are enough valid reasons to use open source / free software like Firefox, that you don't need to lie about it.

-Don

The external tee command is used to write to the standard output and to a file simultaneously. You place the tee command anywhere in a pipe command to divert a copy of the standard input (of tee) to disk and another copy to your terminal. Thus its name is from the world of plumbing; it allows one input and two outputs. The tee command actually allows multiple file copies. For example, sort unsorted | tee sorted | cut -c-20,41- | tee cutup | lp from: http://www.softpanorama.org/Tools/tee.shtml

Yeah, I had seen it in production use by 1995 or so, and was using Red Hat 7.0 on production servers back in 2000.

You're wrong about everybody having heard of Linux except Microsoft, though. The first Halloween document was dated Aug 11, 1998. They've been removed from the OSS site, supposedly to Raymond's site, but I was unable to find them there.

http://www.softpanorama.org/OSS/halloween.shtml
is a working link, though.

This is just Matusow in full-on shill mode.

Have not read all the threads or frankly the link, but this reminds me of an old story I was able to google: http://www.softpanorama.org/Scripting/Shellorama/h umor.shtml

Wish I had a better referece. This isn't quite how I remember the story, and I can't vouch for its accuracy, but I believe some variation of the story did happen. Think originally I read about it in InfoWeek or another rag.

The articles pointed to by this article seem to be pretty blatant solaris propaganda (or at least solaris fanboyism). Just check out this gem that the article claims contains facts. Here's just one great quote from the article:

"Currently Solaris 10 patches are still free for servers without support contracts which is nice for enterprise, but is really important for home users and hobbyists. Of major Linux distributions only Debian and Gentoo has free patches available, but using Debian puts you into the situation that is called "Not a Red Hat"(NRH): Red Hat commands well over 60% of Linux marketplace and that instantly shows in the availability of RPMs, commercial applications, books and other things. "

When was the last time I wished I could go through rpm hell instead of just apt-get install? Idiotic.

--
The Switchboard, a free, browser based, internet phone

[...] I suspect that the problem is not so much Linux-isms as SysV-isms. [...] Solaris is a direct SysV derivative, and Linux has strong SysV leanings. OpenBSD, obviously, comes from the BSD family.

I don't think so. Solaris probably contains a lot more BSD-code than it does SysV. That's the impression I've gotten anyway, and it would make a lot of sense since it was Bill Joy (Co. Founder of Sun Microsystems) who was one of the key-architects of SunOS (a.k.a Solaris) as well as the person largely responsible for the authorship of BSD (which pre-dates SunOS, of course). See:

http://www.softpanorama.org/Solaris/solaris_histor y.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Joy

People usually describe Solaris as a BSD derivative combined with some SysV stuff, I believe that's a lot more accurate than the other way around. Of course, I don't have any facts to back this up with (without doing a code comparison), so it's just a guess based on probability.

It took a while to find it, but you've done a bad spelling job. Viz:

Re:Ha! (Score:2)
by Minna Kirai (624281) on Wednesday April 06, @01:29PM (#12156224)
You have accidentally boldfaced the wrong part of the US Constition. Let me help:
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries

When the USA was young (prior to 1860 basically), it could best promote progress by ignoring patents from other nations. If not for the patent-infringing development of factory technology in New England, the South would've won the War of Northern Aggression.

Found at http://www.softpanorama.org/Copyright/index.shtml

Awful, awful stuff. I suggest hari kiri soon.

> Sendmail is THE MTA of choice for all major ISPs.

Not any more.
And what a sad piece of shit sendmail is!

In UNIX Hater's Handbook they rightly dedicated it a whole chapter "Sendmail: The Vietnam of Berkeley Unix".
Hahaha....

> Hotmail is not an ISP. Yahoo is not an ISP. Google is not an ISP.

ISP? Big deal - what now matters are these three.

According to educated guesses, sendmail has about 40% of MTA share:
http://www.softpanorama.org/Mail/mta.shtml
See this too: http://www.tummy.com/journals/entries/jafo_2004112 1_044830

You're quoting out of context, unlike Softpanorama, which is quite meticulous about revealing their sources and labeling their commentary as opinion. You're trying to do a hatchet job on Softpanorama, but if you provided links to your sources and put the quotes in context, that would undermine your argument.

The quote about hijacking the Minix community is clearly labeled as an opinion about a comment written by ESR in The Cathedral and the Bazar. The first person to accuse anyone of trying to hijack Minix was Andrew Tanenbaum himself in 1992. That opinion has been around a long time, and many people agree with it. If it's news to you, then you're wet behind the ears.

Andrew Tanenbaum:

By and large, I agree with what Glen said. A lot of folks really wanted free BSD, and tried to hijack MINIX in that direction. Then they successively tried to use Coherent, Linux, BSDI, HURD, and no doubt more in the future. Fine.

ESR's Cathedral and Bazar:

In fact, I think Linus' cleverest and most consequential hack was not the construction of the Linux kernel itself, but rather his invention of the Linux development model. When I expressed this opinion in his presence once, he smiled and quietly repeated something he has often said: "I'm basically a very lazy person who likes to get credit for things other people actually do." Lazy like a fox. Or, as Robert Heinlein might have said, too lazy to fail.

Softpanorama's commentary:

IMHO the hijacking of Minix community was the cleverest Linux hack (along with the adoption of GPL.). This way he got a lot of skilled developers and the community that can appreciate their efforts. Without them his efforts would probably collapse OSS or no OSS. This argument about invention of the development model does not look realistic...

As you can see from the quotes in context, Softpanorama is actually criticizing ESR, and complementing Linus.

Now we get to the part where you accuse Softpanorama of "bringing up his fathers membership of the communist party". Get your attributions straight. That was a straight-up, attributed quote from Wired Magazine, which you're quoting out of context in order to imply it's something that originated from Softpanorama, when it's not:

Wired Magazine 1.11 Leader of the Free World :

In a way, Linus was born to be a revolutionary. His parents were campus radicals at the University of Helsinki in the 1960s. Torvalds' father was a card-carrying Communist who spent a year studying in Moscow when his son was about 5. He served a stint as a minor elected official (he's now a prominent television and radio exec). Other kids teased Linus about his father's politics. "Growing up, I was terribly embarrassed by him," Torvalds says.

Softpanorama also quotes another source of this information:

Encyclopedia article about Nikke Torvalds. Free Online Encyclopedia:

"Torvalds was active in the Communist Party since he was a college student during the 1960s His political beliefs developed after learning of the atrocities committed against communist sympathizers in Finland. He later charged that his enthusiasm for the Party and its beliefs were the result of naiveté. He met his wife Anna at their university. As the family

You're quoting out of context, unlike Softpanorama, which is quite meticulous about revealing their sources and labeling their commentary as opinion. You're trying to do a hatchet job on Softpanorama, but if you provided links to your sources and put the quotes in context, that would undermine your argument.

The quote about hijacking the Minix community is clearly labeled as an opinion about a comment written by ESR in The Cathedral and the Bazar. The first person to accuse anyone of trying to hijack Minix was Andrew Tanenbaum himself in 1992. That opinion has been around a long time, and many people agree with it. If it's news to you, then you're wet behind the ears.

Andrew Tanenbaum:

By and large, I agree with what Glen said. A lot of folks really wanted free BSD, and tried to hijack MINIX in that direction. Then they successively tried to use Coherent, Linux, BSDI, HURD, and no doubt more in the future. Fine.

ESR's Cathedral and Bazar:

In fact, I think Linus' cleverest and most consequential hack was not the construction of the Linux kernel itself, but rather his invention of the Linux development model. When I expressed this opinion in his presence once, he smiled and quietly repeated something he has often said: "I'm basically a very lazy person who likes to get credit for things other people actually do." Lazy like a fox. Or, as Robert Heinlein might have said, too lazy to fail.

Softpanorama's commentary:

IMHO the hijacking of Minix community was the cleverest Linux hack (along with the adoption of GPL.). This way he got a lot of skilled developers and the community that can appreciate their efforts. Without them his efforts would probably collapse OSS or no OSS. This argument about invention of the development model does not look realistic...

As you can see from the quotes in context, Softpanorama is actually criticizing ESR, and complementing Linus.

Now we get to the part where you accuse Softpanorama of "bringing up his fathers membership of the communist party". Get your attributions straight. That was a straight-up, attributed quote from Wired Magazine, which you're quoting out of context in order to imply it's something that originated from Softpanorama, when it's not:

Wired Magazine 1.11 Leader of the Free World :

In a way, Linus was born to be a revolutionary. His parents were campus radicals at the University of Helsinki in the 1960s. Torvalds' father was a card-carrying Communist who spent a year studying in Moscow when his son was about 5. He served a stint as a minor elected official (he's now a prominent television and radio exec). Other kids teased Linus about his father's politics. "Growing up, I was terribly embarrassed by him," Torvalds says.

Softpanorama also quotes another source of this information:

Encyclopedia article about Nikke Torvalds. Free Online Encyclopedia:

"Torvalds was active in the Communist Party since he was a college student during the 1960s His political beliefs developed after learning of the atrocities committed against communist sympathizers in Finland. He later charged that his enthusiasm for the Party and its beliefs were the result of naiveté. He met his wife Anna at their university. As the family

You're quoting out of context, unlike Softpanorama, which is quite meticulous about revealing their sources and labeling their commentary as opinion. You're trying to do a hatchet job on Softpanorama, but if you provided links to your sources and put the quotes in context, that would undermine your argument.

The quote about hijacking the Minix community is clearly labeled as an opinion about a comment written by ESR in The Cathedral and the Bazar. The first person to accuse anyone of trying to hijack Minix was Andrew Tanenbaum himself in 1992. That opinion has been around a long time, and many people agree with it. If it's news to you, then you're wet behind the ears.

Andrew Tanenbaum:

By and large, I agree with what Glen said. A lot of folks really wanted free BSD, and tried to hijack MINIX in that direction. Then they successively tried to use Coherent, Linux, BSDI, HURD, and no doubt more in the future. Fine.

ESR's Cathedral and Bazar:

In fact, I think Linus' cleverest and most consequential hack was not the construction of the Linux kernel itself, but rather his invention of the Linux development model. When I expressed this opinion in his presence once, he smiled and quietly repeated something he has often said: "I'm basically a very lazy person who likes to get credit for things other people actually do." Lazy like a fox. Or, as Robert Heinlein might have said, too lazy to fail.

Softpanorama's commentary:

IMHO the hijacking of Minix community was the cleverest Linux hack (along with the adoption of GPL.). This way he got a lot of skilled developers and the community that can appreciate their efforts. Without them his efforts would probably collapse OSS or no OSS. This argument about invention of the development model does not look realistic...

As you can see from the quotes in context, Softpanorama is actually criticizing ESR, and complementing Linus.

Now we get to the part where you accuse Softpanorama of "bringing up his fathers membership of the communist party". Get your attributions straight. That was a straight-up, attributed quote from Wired Magazine, which you're quoting out of context in order to imply it's something that originated from Softpanorama, when it's not:

Wired Magazine 1.11 Leader of the Free World :

In a way, Linus was born to be a revolutionary. His parents were campus radicals at the University of Helsinki in the 1960s. Torvalds' father was a card-carrying Communist who spent a year studying in Moscow when his son was about 5. He served a stint as a minor elected official (he's now a prominent television and radio exec). Other kids teased Linus about his father's politics. "Growing up, I was terribly embarrassed by him," Torvalds says.

Softpanorama also quotes another source of this information:

Encyclopedia article about Nikke Torvalds. Free Online Encyclopedia:

"Torvalds was active in the Communist Party since he was a college student during the 1960s His political beliefs developed after learning of the atrocities committed against communist sympathizers in Finland. He later charged that his enthusiasm for the Party and its beliefs were the result of naiveté. He met his wife Anna at their university. As the family

You're quoting out of context, unlike Softpanorama, which is quite meticulous about revealing their sources and labeling their commentary as opinion. You're trying to do a hatchet job on Softpanorama, but if you provided links to your sources and put the quotes in context, that would undermine your argument.

The quote about hijacking the Minix community is clearly labeled as an opinion about a comment written by ESR in The Cathedral and the Bazar. The first person to accuse anyone of trying to hijack Minix was Andrew Tanenbaum himself in 1992. That opinion has been around a long time, and many people agree with it. If it's news to you, then you're wet behind the ears.

Andrew Tanenbaum:

By and large, I agree with what Glen said. A lot of folks really wanted free BSD, and tried to hijack MINIX in that direction. Then they successively tried to use Coherent, Linux, BSDI, HURD, and no doubt more in the future. Fine.

ESR's Cathedral and Bazar:

In fact, I think Linus' cleverest and most consequential hack was not the construction of the Linux kernel itself, but rather his invention of the Linux development model. When I expressed this opinion in his presence once, he smiled and quietly repeated something he has often said: "I'm basically a very lazy person who likes to get credit for things other people actually do." Lazy like a fox. Or, as Robert Heinlein might have said, too lazy to fail.

Softpanorama's commentary:

IMHO the hijacking of Minix community was the cleverest Linux hack (along with the adoption of GPL.). This way he got a lot of skilled developers and the community that can appreciate their efforts. Without them his efforts would probably collapse OSS or no OSS. This argument about invention of the development model does not look realistic...

As you can see from the quotes in context, Softpanorama is actually criticizing ESR, and complementing Linus.

Now we get to the part where you accuse Softpanorama of "bringing up his fathers membership of the communist party". Get your attributions straight. That was a straight-up, attributed quote from Wired Magazine, which you're quoting out of context in order to imply it's something that originated from Softpanorama, when it's not:

Wired Magazine 1.11 Leader of the Free World :

In a way, Linus was born to be a revolutionary. His parents were campus radicals at the University of Helsinki in the 1960s. Torvalds' father was a card-carrying Communist who spent a year studying in Moscow when his son was about 5. He served a stint as a minor elected official (he's now a prominent television and radio exec). Other kids teased Linus about his father's politics. "Growing up, I was terribly embarrassed by him," Torvalds says.

Softpanorama also quotes another source of this information:

Encyclopedia article about Nikke Torvalds. Free Online Encyclopedia:

"Torvalds was active in the Communist Party since he was a college student during the 1960s His political beliefs developed after learning of the atrocities committed against communist sympathizers in Finland. He later charged that his enthusiasm for the Party and its beliefs were the result of naiveté. He met his wife Anna at their university. As the family

This article should be required reading for Linus Torvalds fan-boys.

-Don

A Slightly Skeptical View on Linux

"I also think that Linus' cult of personality is one of the most significant negative moments of the movement for various reasons propagated by such different people/groups including but not limited to Eric Raymonds, Slashdot founders, Slate's Andrew Leonard, Linux distributors, etc. That's why this chapter can be considered as a modest attempt to address "Linux mythology" issue. All-in-all in this chapter I will try to paint a vivid picture of a talented, colorful and sharply individualistic Linux dictator: one of the most fascinating figures among open source pioneers. It's important to understand that this chapter was written as an antidote to publications emulating North Korean party newspapers articles that depict achievement of the party leaders with just substitution of Linux and Linus Torvalds in several places ;-)."

This article should be required reading for Linus Torvalds fan-boys.

-Don

A Slightly Skeptical View on Linux

"I also think that Linus' cult of personality is one of the most significant negative moments of the movement for various reasons propagated by such different people/groups including but not limited to Eric Raymonds, Slashdot founders, Slate's Andrew Leonard, Linux distributors, etc. That's why this chapter can be considered as a modest attempt to address "Linux mythology" issue. All-in-all in this chapter I will try to paint a vivid picture of a talented, colorful and sharply individualistic Linux dictator: one of the most fascinating figures among open source pioneers. It's important to understand that this chapter was written as an antidote to publications emulating North Korean party newspapers articles that depict achievement of the party leaders with just substitution of Linux and Linus Torvalds in several places ;-)."

This article should be required reading for Linus Torvalds fan-boys.

-Don

A Slightly Skeptical View on Linux

"I also think that Linus' cult of personality is one of the most significant negative moments of the movement for various reasons propagated by such different people/groups including but not limited to Eric Raymonds, Slashdot founders, Slate's Andrew Leonard, Linux distributors, etc. That's why this chapter can be considered as a modest attempt to address "Linux mythology" issue. All-in-all in this chapter I will try to paint a vivid picture of a talented, colorful and sharply individualistic Linux dictator: one of the most fascinating figures among open source pioneers. It's important to understand that this chapter was written as an antidote to publications emulating North Korean party newspapers articles that depict achievement of the party leaders with just substitution of Linux and Linus Torvalds in several places ;-)."

claimed the radical elements of the community could damage the reputation of open source software

Could? Looks a little too late for "could".
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Furry Teeth
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Could damage the reputation of open source???
LOL

Surprising that you got into MIT (or maybe you didn't.. you know, you might just be lying to make point here!! *gasp*!!).

Actually, yes, I'm an MIT alumnus. I don't think MIT makes its alumni records public on the web, but you can check for my photo in Technique (the MIT yearbook); I'm in the book for the class of 1992. If that still doesn't satisfy you, I'm sure you can call the Institute and verify that a Robert Poole did in fact study there from 1988 to 1992. I believe the registrar's office should have that information. I'd place a scan of my diploma online, but I don't feel like being a target of identity theft.

From the wikipedia article[...]

Since when has Wikipedia been an authoritative source of any information? Since just about anyone can contribute, the peer review and fact checking that would go into any garden variety encyclopedia would seem to be missing. But let's ignore that for the moment:

The term "X Windows" (in the manner of "Microsoft Windows") is officially deprecated and generally considered incorrect, though it has been in common use since the inception of X and has been used deliberately for literary effect, for example in the UNIX-HATERS Handbook.

So, basically, the Wikipedia article backs me up on this. The term has been in common use since the inception of X. How is this quote in any way, shape, or form a negation of what I wrote? Oh, yes... they "deprecated" the term "X Windows." Which doesn't stop people from continuing to use the term, regardless of whether some people want the term to die for political reasons. The X Consortium is free to request that people use one of the officially "blessed" names for X11. That doesn't mean I have to do what they ask.

And that thing about RMS and other MIT people calling it X WindowS (not by mistake) -- yeah, right. I believe you.

Well, besides the fact that the very Wikipedia article you quoted admits that the term "X Windows" has been in common use since the inception of X (i.e., since X was created, which was at MIT), I actually have some articles I can point you at:
A transcript of Richard Stallman's speech at NYU on May 29th, 2001
Section 29.21 of the GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual
A site containing choice quotes from RMS
A transcript of an interview with RMS
In addition, there's at least one other article I couldn't track down, but it was cited recently on Slashdot.

And BTW, common usage doesn't make 'then' and 'than' interchangeable. It's still an error when you do that. Same thing with X.

Actually, no, you're comparing apples and oranges here.

First off, "common usage" is not to be confused with "common errors." People make common grammatical and spelling mistakes for a variety of reasons; for instance, two words might sound the same or similar but be spelled differently. (Thus, the confusion of "then" and "than.") The two words are not used interchangeably except by the ignorant.

Examples of common usage trumping antiquated grammar or spelling rules:

• So-called "split infinitives." Once upon a time, a grammarian who thought that Latin-derived rules of grammar should apply to English decided that infinitives should never be split. Most modern English authorities agree that there's nothing wrong with split infinitives, and in fact, the split infinitive form of a sentence is often less cumbersome to speak. (Spoken language is primary; written language derives from spoken language.) So, "To boldly go where no man has gone before

If anyone wants a long analysis of the GPL vs BSD debate: Social aspects of the BSD vs. GPL debate (the notes) and Labyrinth of Software Freedom (the paper).

If anyone wants a long analysis of the GPL vs BSD debate: Social aspects of the BSD vs. GPL debate (the notes) and Labyrinth of Software Freedom (the paper).

Just a little NPOV pointer.

What's worse is when a worm is already emulating this service. I remembered reading some stuff about people recieving emails from dead people thanks to Klez. Still can't find firsthand stuff....

...One thing that Woz and agree on: the portrayal of Steve Jobs was good. In fact, Woz said that Jobs' tyrades and abuse of his employees was much worse than in the movie. The movie makes him out to be a real asshole with a messiah complex. Maybe it was all of the acid he dropped, I dunno....