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Good Lord! the font on my monitor is tiny, coupled with the word Chromatic, and I translated Peril -> Perl.

I want one of those "Perl Sensitive Sunglasses" that would be so darn cool.

You and this gentleman must be kindred spirits:
http://www.wgz.org/chromatic/projects/emperor/apos trophe_abusers.html

Perhaps your contemporaries see a difference between depriving someone of a physical item and making an exact digital duplicate of digital content.

Preach on, brother!

BTW, I noticed you linked to a page of books. I really don't feel like paying for them, so could you put up a link to some .pdf files without evil DRM? I certainly don't want to steal a physical book, but reading a PDF without paying a dime seems fine and dandy!

Or does this only apply to other people's work and not your own?

- A video game developer who has been ripped off many times

I've been working on something similar, encouraging people to write their life stories in short, daily segments. Anything that helps people to write something deliberately, every day, is a good idea. It doesn't have to be perfect. You don't have to show anyone. You just have to practice putting words to paper (so to speak) every day for a month.

See Write Your Life.

Movable Type is indeed excellent weblogging donationware. The folks at Movable Type are great at providing requested features and documenting their software. Installation takes (and I mean this) fewer than 15 minutes, set-up maybe 1/2 hour for even the most non-technical of users.

I would rather run the latest release of Slash and went so far as to even check out chromatic's Running Weblogs with Slash (NB: /.'ers, /. is a weblog) after reading this recent /. story about "Building Online Communities."

My problem though is that Slashcode requires a dedicated server--or one on which you have root acces--to install. I'm sure this gives Slash many advantages, but those of us who can't afford dedicated server solutions can't make use of those advantages. My web host doesn't even allow shell access.

Movable Type (and a few other brands of weblog software) offers people with cheap web-hosting solutions to successfully install high-quality, customizable, open-source weblog software. The couple who run Movable Type produce a quality product. Check them out if you want to run weblog software but don't have a lot of money.

I wonder if the /. crew couldn't be persuaded to come up with a version of Slash that doesn't require a dedicated server . . .

Actually, this isn't as far from the truth as you think it is. Everyones favorite anonymous Perl KU (kwalitee usherance) developer, chromatic, manged to turn the Bill of Rights into a circumvention device.

Nuts to that. Apologies to Dr. Seuss.

RIAA guy

RIAA guy
Guy RIAA

That RIAA guy
That RIAA guy!
I do not like that RIAA guy.

Can you play CDs you buy?

I cannot play them,
RIAA guy.
I cannot play CDs I buy.

Can you play them
Here or there?

I cannot play them here or there.
I cannot play them anywhere.
I cannot play CDs I buy.
I cannot play them,
RIAA guy.

Can you play them in a house?
Can you play them with a mouse?

I cannot play them in a house.
I cannot play them with a mouse.
I cannot play them here or there.
I cannot play them anywhere.
I cannot play CDs I buy.
I cannot play them, RIAA guy.

Can you play them in a box?
Can you play them with a fox?

Not in a box.
Not with a fox.
Not in a house.
Not with a mouse.
I cannot play them here or there.
I cannot play them anywhere.
I cannot play CDs I buy.
I cannot play them, RIAA guy.

Would you? Could you?
in a car?
Rent them! Lease them!
Here they are.

I would not, could not,
in a car.

You may rent them.
You will see.
You may lease them week by week.

I would not lease them week by week.
Nor year by year! Please let me be.

I cannot play them in a box.
I cannot play them with a fox.
I cannot play them in a house.
I cannot play them with a mouse.
I cannot play them here or there.
I cannot play them anywhere.
I cannot play CDs I buy.
I cannot play them, RIAA guy.

A train! A train!
A train! A train!
Could you, would you on a train?

Not on a train! Not week by week!
Not year by year! RIAA! Let me be!
I should not, could not, in a box.
I could not, should not, with a fox.
I cannot play them with a mouse.
I cannot play them in a house.
I cannot play them here or there.
I cannot play them anywhere.
I cannot play them, RIAA guy.

Say!
In the dark?
Here in the dark!
Should I keep you in the dark?

You should not keep me in the dark.

Would you, could you, in the rain?

I would not, could not, in the rain.
Not in the dark. Not on a train,
Not in a car, Not in a tree.
I cannot play them, RIAA, you see.
Not in a house. Not in a box.
Not with a mouse. Not with a fox.
I cannot play them here or there.
I cannot play them anywhere!

You cannot play CDs you buy?

I cannot play them, RIAA guy.

Could you, would you, with a goat?

I would not, could not with Hilary Rosen!

Would you, could you, on a boat?

I could not, would not, on a boat.
I will not, will not, with that goat.
I cannot play them in the rain.
I cannot play them on a train.
Not in the dark! Not week by week!
Not in a car! You let me be!
I cannot play them in a box.
I cannot play them with a fox. I cannot play them in a house.
I cannot play them with a mouse.
I cannot play them here or there.
I cannot play them ANYWHERE!

I cannot play CDs I buy!

I cannot play them, RIAA guy.

You cannot play them.

SO you say.
Rent them! Lease them!
And you may.
Pay up and you may I say.
RIAA!
If you will let me be,
I will rip them.
You will see.

Say!
I like CDs I buy!
I do!! I OWN them, RIAA guy!
And I would play them in a boat!
And I would play them despite your goat...
And I will play them in the rain.
And in the dark. And on a train.
And in a car. And in a tree.
Fair use is good so good you see!

So I will play them in a box.
And I will play them with a fox.
And I will play them in a house.
And I will play them with a mouse.
And I will play them here and there.
Say! I will play them ANYWHERE!

I do so like CDs I buy!
Screw you!
Screw you, RIAA guy!

(feel free to spread that around... just link back to my website, if you do)

It's just way too weird... guy publishes on slashdot and on O'Rilley + has an open source project called Jellybean but he never uses his real name?

What's even weirder is that even his resume doesn't contain his real name!

Unless this person legally changed his name to 'chormatic', this is just a bit too eccentric for my taste. Anyone got some insight?

PS: I'm asking this because I'd like to know who exactly am I criticizing when I'm placing comments on someone's reviews.

There are plenty of programs out there that can work well with just an HTML+JavaScript interface, especially if you have a small database (even a DB_File!) on your machine, and an interpreter for a scripting language like Perl or Python.

I'm curious to see whether it does anything more than Jellybean can... there's something compelling about a tiny local web server with the power of mod_perl and a simple interface that lets you build persistent, network aware applications that can replicate data between clients. With XPCOM, it's certainly possible to write a nicer interface than one that only has HTML Form widgets and some onClick handlers.

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That's a very striking point. As Dilger points out, that original interface made sense because the target audience for such a GUI was business workers already familiar with real files, real folders, and real trash cans.

Expecting college students (who probably don't have much work experience in a paperful office) to have an existing knowledge of such things is a problem: The fiction has to be learned.

It doesn't make sense to base the interface metaphor on experience and knowledge the users don't have! You wouldn't expect a city kid to know how to milk a cow, or a bushman to drive a city bus, without some training.

The problem is, users end up learning this metaphor as if it were the truth of things, and not just a convenient mental model to explain the bare metal underneath.

I say, if you're going to have to teach something from scratch, find a better metaphor based on something the users already know, or stick to teaching the actuality of things. Don't maintain the cargo cult repetition of ritual without understanding.

(Yes, this issue is near and dear to me. I've mentioned A GUI for Gurus before, and i'll keep mentioning it until someone builds it. Maybe the Entity folks...)

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It get "caught" strongarming volunteer sites by sending out review hardware and then calling in the chips to get rid of information about competitors -- then explains it away by claiming it hires temporary workers with the authority to make those deals but not the oversight not to.

Personally, I think it's a normal company with good hardware that needs to get rid of the marketing department and give the technical people more control.

Read more at my NVIDIA history or analysis pages. I don't really understand what the company's doing, but at least my video card works.

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It get "caught" strongarming volunteer sites by sending out review hardware and then calling in the chips to get rid of information about competitors -- then explains it away by claiming it hires temporary workers with the authority to make those deals but not the oversight not to.

Personally, I think it's a normal company with good hardware that needs to get rid of the marketing department and give the technical people more control.

Read more at my NVIDIA history or analysis pages. I don't really understand what the company's doing, but at least my video card works.

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He offered to let me in on beta testing their new Linux drivers, and offered to send me a shiny new GeForce for testing. A couple of days later, the beta drivers went fairly public. There are still internal betas to which I, in theory, have access... but I haven't heard from the fellow since.

I haven't seen the card, either, and it's been a few months.

Was it a bribe for me to take down the pages on my site critical of NVIDIA? I don't know. It certainly wasn't specified in the e-mails -- the card was coming so I could "publish updated benchmarks".

Don't get me wrong, giving the company the benefit of the doubt is kinda painful. Just remember that there are people working there who are tremendously helpful (Terrence Ripperda and the other official folks in #nvidia on irc.openprojects.net) and sympathetic to our concerns. Heck, they even got rid of the GPL violations in three days (instead of the weeks they said when the story originally broke).

Still... I can't immediately dismiss these reports.

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• Take an open standard.
• Add one small incompatibility.
• Hide that incompatibility for a few months.
• Write a paper describing the incompatibility in sufficient detail, so that implementing the necessary changes is trivial.
• Post a warning on the paper that implementing the specification without advance written permission is illegal.
• Wrap the paper in some sort of mechanism which presents the warning and a license agreement nominally waiving fair use, reverse engineering, and free speech rights.
• Make sure the mechanism only works on platforms where your implementation is already present, and, thus, no clean-room version is necessary.
• Distribute liberally, knowing that standard means of unwrapping the document -- on any platform but your own -- will not present the invalid license agreement anyway.
• Wait for the information to spread to all interested parties.
• Use the threat of legal force to intimidate anyone who might be considering writing a competing implementation -- not necessarily even based on information from the paper -- into cancelling the effort.
• Bask in the glow that you have not used dumping, product tying, or buyouts to maintain your monopoly position. Just good old American justice.

It's also unethical. I'm not surprised.

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According to the articles What is NVIDIA doing? and The Case for Fully Free Drivers, nVidia has a history of running source code through an obfuscator before releasing it.

According to the articles What is NVIDIA doing? and The Case for Fully Free Drivers, nVidia has a history of running source code through an obfuscator before releasing it.

Since chromatic doesn't seem to be around today, I may as well mention a helpful little page he's put together, for those who haven't seen it yet:

What is Nvidia doing?

There's a lot of information there about their (lack of) support for free OS's, issues with the DRI, etc. It was put together shortly after the Nvidia and Linux Troubles article on /. by PI's Frank LaMonica.

Have to add, of course, that if ATI's new Radeon hardware really does outdo the GeForce 2, and ATI releases programming specs for that puppy-- Nvidia is toast.

Completely Agree. I haven't been able to get XFree86 4.0 to work at all with my brand new GeForce. This site might hold some promise: snafu.wgz.org/chromatic/nvidia/nvid ia.html ... if you have any luck please let me know...


_MO
mglynn@tufts.edu

In your opinion, what is the best and/or most effective way to go about this? The court of public opinion? Economic arguments? Pointing out the higher quality of free drivers? Or should I just advise people to move to more enlightened hardware manufacturers.

(Thanks for the GNU/Abacus, by the way!)

--

Link is here.

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Okay, maybe I oughtn't reply to my own post, but... I've just uploaded the nVIDIA Rant Page, outlining my side of the story. I'll keep it updated and put some stuff in place to gather names and stories from other less-than-satisfied customers. Please spread it around.

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Other people will likely present examples of Windows being decidedly non-intuitive ("To shutdown, click Start" and "To save, click on a backwards drawing of a floppy") -- but that's not the point.

The point (as I have argued before) is that copying an existing user interface somewhere it doesn't belong is a worse idea than designing a flawed interface from scratch. Putting a Start button in Linux is like putting a crank on the front of your car.

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The gist of my argument is that, if open standards and protocols benefit any one person or organization more than that person or organization contributes to everyone else (as is the case for pretty much everybody!), perhaps removing those benefits will help convince a rogue organization to stop trying to embrace, extend, deform, and extinguish those standards and protocols. It would be nice to get some suggestions and critiques and comments on it. :)

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The gist of my argument is that, if open standards and protocols benefit any one person or organization more than that person or organization contributes to everyone else (as is the case for pretty much everybody!), perhaps removing those benefits will help convince a rogue organization to stop trying to embrace, extend, deform, and extinguish those standards and protocols. It would be nice to get some suggestions and critiques and comments on it. :)

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Start your own. No one here will stop you. It's what Rob and Jeff did, it's what Scoop did, it's what Joe P. did, it's what the guys behind Themes.org did. Hey, even Bruce did it, and he had some money already.

Unless VA or Andover somehow make it so that people can't visit my site, I won't worry.

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Everybody who bought Microsoft products (from OEMs and partners to end users) did so by their own choice. If no one wanted microsoft products, no one is forced to buy them.

Missed Windows Refund Day, did you?

How about the story in my essay about the future of business software? One particular company with which I have a passing acquaintance had to purchase Office 2000 just to get one bug fix which prevented them from communicating with their business partners. (I supposed they weren't *forced* to do so, but the company did feel a need to stay in business. If you don't build anything to sell, you'll run out of money pretty quickly.)

Let's try an analogy -- 'everybody' bought petroleum distillates from 'Standard Oil' not because they all thought that it was the best deal, but because that is the only choice they could see. Sure, some people may have been able to drill in their backyards and set up a gasoline still, but did that work for most people?

No, Microsoft isn't in the business of saying 'buy this software or your dog gets it', but the company does behave in such a way to suggest, 'Nice company, pity if you can't read documents from anyone else.'

--
QDMerge 0.4!

You might say, he'd pretty much mastered that world.

The fake world, but not the real one. The rest of the story is how Neo (et al) do the same thing again where they don't have solipsistic abilities.

Besides that, I heard a rumor that Carrie-Ann Moss will not be playing Trinity.

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QDMerge 0.4!

What do you think of the Nitrozac Boot Squad? Does it sometimes worry you having all these pale and pasty geeks with flabby bottoms with fetishes for your feet? (And knees, and hands, and hair)

Do you get a lot of slack for running a Mac? Have you any plans to switch to Linux soon?

Do you consider yourself a techno-talking babe? Where did you get the idea for the techno-talking babes, are they based on anyone you know, or did you just make them up?

When are you going to have more comics of Linus Torvalds back on there? Mm..