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Beanie Award Wrapup
The awards began predictably enough as Hemos narrowly took home the Hemos award. It amazes me how many people actually abstained rather than vote for Hemos, but alas, he still won. *grin* The award for Best Dressed went to Tux. Sadly, no one ever thought to nominate or vote for the fine women of FreeBSD, and Tux didn't even bother to show up for the award, leaving me with no one to hug. *pout* However, an Anonymous Coward was on hand to accept the Favorite Comment Poster award, as was CmdrTaco for the Favorite Author award. The Best Slashdot Story went to Quickies, and the Cluestick award for FUD went to Microsoft. Also, the pair of "Bully" awards for domain bullying and patent bullying went to Etoys and Amazon, repsectively.
The fun awards done with, it was time to get a little more serious (but not much) for the two grand awards. Best Unix Desktop Eyecandy went to Enlightenment, and Best Unix Earcandy went to XMMS. Best Desktop Theme went to BrushedMetal, which everyone uses at least a part of. The Best Perl Module award went to CGI, the best Apache Module award went to mod_perl, and the Best Open Source Text Editor went to vim. It's good to see things that I couldn't do my job without get some recognition, although I could probably have said the same about any of the nominees (except for Emacs, but that's a different matter entirely *grin*) The "Most Deserving of $2000" award went to Debian, while the Best Book award went to Programming Perl. Finally in this award category, the Non-graphical and Graphical Interface awards went to Pine and The GIMP, respectively.
The award for Most Improved Kernel Module went to USB, probably because it went from non-existent to usable in so short of a time. Alan Cox won the Unsung Hero award and immediately donated his winnings to the DVD defense fund, proving that he is indeed worthy of the name hero. Best Newbie Helper went to Tom Christiansen, famous for helping newbies find their way out of #perl (I'm kidding! Okay, only a little. Tom still rocks in my book.) and Most Deserving Open Source Charity went to the FSF. Best Open Source Advocate went to Linus Torvalds, surprisingly enough, but advocating by doing is one of the best ways to do it.
Finally, the Big Award for Most Improved Open Source Project went to the GNOME project. All of the nominees in this category were projects that at some point people shook their heads at, and now use on a daily basis, but GNOME just happened to beat out the rest.
Also, a new award for "Best Merger/Acquisition" was announced and awarded to VA Linux/Andover.Net to follow that day's news. All in all it was a good night, with lots of free beer and getting to know people who I'd only seen before on IRC or through e-mail. I imagine it was that way for a lot of people there.
It seems from all of this that it's just a way for Andover to try to buddy up to the Open Source community..."Look we're giving you 100,000$ for no reason at all, we're nice people".
Like as someone said somewhere, (either here, or themes.org - can't remember), "Why do we care about Andover.net? All they did was buy some successful portals"
Say byebye karma.
Best Newbie Helper went to Tom Christiansen, famous for helping newbies find their way out of #perl
I don't think the local trolls could have said it any better! Reminds me of the one helpful soul in #perl who, after looking at my code, told me what I could do with that copy of Perl Cookbook, and no, it wasn't RTFM.
.sig: Now legally binding!
Alan Cox won the Unsung Hero award and immediately donated his winnings to the DVD defense fund
Nothing against Alan, and it is nice that he donated his winnings to the DVD guys, but does it really makes sense to have a popular vote for an Unsung Hero? If so, shouldn't the person who comes in last get the award, since almost by definition, an unsung person is largely unknown and will have little chance of winning?
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Coming soon... the Slashgrits beanie awards.
How many bowls of hot grits should we pour down Rob's pants?
Thank you.
This is one of the more dissapointing areas of the awards. I was sad to only see Enlightment/Enlightment Based themes. There are a lot of other great themes in other window managers. For example, Blackbox(the window manager I use) has a lot of great themes--my favorite, is the default Sleet. I think it looks great, but that's only my opinion.
One of the more surprising awards was the one awarded to Alan Cox, the unsung hero awarded. I was glad that he got it, but I didn't think he would--he is usually mentioned in many of Slashdot's stories. It's nice of him for donating the money, so it's probably a good thing that he got the award.
Well, if you're going to snuff out Linux out of the gate (although I disagree, but that's probably because I compare it to NT)..
Sendmail? (So it's not the GPL. So What?)
Apache?
WindowMaker (A personal favorite)?
Just random thoughts.
-- IANAEG - I am not an elder god.
I nominate cat. It's never crashed, I use it daily, and I couldn't live without it.
I feel the Hemos Award was rigged, It should have been presented to me as I feel I am a better "Hemos" then the Hemos who accepted the award. This leads me to believe that there is a conspiracy underway to prevent the more worthy Hemos-i from stepping forward to claim their heritage. No - instead we are forced to acknowledge this false prophet Hemos as our true Hemos. This is most Anti-Hemos and his coming has been told in the great book of Hemos for some Hemoniums now. Anonymous Hemos #981376351
The Beanie awards were fixed! It was planned for Hemos to win the Hemos award, right from the beginning! He is an Andover.Net employee, and should have been disqualified because of this. The real winner was Abstain, but somebody with administrative access to the database (*cough*Hemos*cough*) must have tampered with the votes.
BSD Ass... check it out.
GNOME won for most improved is because it was so bad in the first place. Even with all of the supposed imporvements, it still can't touch KDE.
You know, you could try not flaming. Why can't Gnome touch KDE? And yes, Gnome was pretty bad to start. That's why it's called improvement.
KDE is more stable, has more features, and is overall a much better project, with nicer project leaders and a better toolkit.
One: you're dead wrong about stability. Compare the two, and it's a wash; both are pretty good but both still have a way to go.
Features: Pray tell, what does KDE have that Gnome doesn't?
Nicer project leaders: I'll grant, the KDE project leaders are nice. Even their responses to flames are nice (take it from someone who once flamed KWM and got called on it, by KWM's maintainer no less). But I don't see how Gnome's project leaders are any less nice. You'd better be ready with examples for this one...
Four: Better toolkit? Ever programmed in both of them? Unless you have, you have no right to compare.
Tom definitely doesn't deserve the "Best Newbie Helper" award. Sure, he's co-authored many great Perl books, but this just serves to confuse the facts. Tom's EVIL. (He's actually LAWFUL EVIL, which also confuses people, but just remember: EVIL is the opposite of GOOD.)
Go read Larry Wall's 2nd State of the Onion address. Pay particular attention to the following paragraphs:
Most of you are familiar with the virtues of a programmer. There are three, of course: laziness, impatience, and hubris.
These are virtues of passion. They are not, however, virtues of community. The virtues of community sound like their opposites: diligence, patience, and humility.
They're not really opposites, because you can do them all at the same time. It's another matter of perspective. These are the virtues that have brought us this far. These are the virtues that will carry our community into the future, if we do not abandon them.
If anyone can show me A SINGLE INSTANCE of Tom being either patient or humble, I'd love to see it. Otherwise, I'm going to keep on believing that this award was given to Tom not because he deserved it, but because he led the pack in name recognition.
Vital to slashdot
Denied cheap Andover stock
Give trolls a beanie
--- HAIKU MAN.
Windowmaker crashed quite frequently for me, so it wouldn't be win.
>One: you're dead wrong about stability. Compare the two, and it's a wash; both are pretty good but both still have a way to go.
Yup, both are pretty good, but have some room for improvement... I have been running KDE on my AIX workstation for several months no with litle or no incident (knock on polymer desk surface). I haven't gotten Gnome running over here yet, so I can't compare the two on this platform, but at home on Linux I haven't had any problems with KDE, and very few with (the newer releases of) Gnome...
I think both are good features wise - they aim at a different user segment, it seems, but both are configurable to whatever you really want (Gnome may have the edge here).
>Better toolkit? Ever programmed in both of them? Unless you have, you have no right to compare.
hmmm... I have, and I can say that QT is (IMHO) a lot nicer than GTK... but (shrug) it all depends on what styles you like as a programer. I find the interface easier and more intuitive, and the end results of either one can be pretty much identical (as I duck from the flying flames).
All in all, I started using KDE before Gnome (back when both were really bad), and that may have skewed my views, but all that really matters is What Works For You(TM).
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
humor_mode(on);
When I found out E won, I looked up from my plate of pancakes and said, "Well, that sucks. I shoulda won that one." (I really like pancakes)
As I ate my pancakes, I imagined Geoff and Carsten gladly accepting the award, and the $2000 prize that went with it.. I imagined them going to the bank to cash it, and stopping by Piggly Wiggly to pick up a roll of scotch tape, only to march home, tape all the bills together in one big long line, roll it up, and insert it into the toilet paper holder right next to the john. "Damnit!" I said to myself, "Geoff and Carsten make too much money! Salary! Stock options! What good would two grand do those two?" , and I began to dream...What would I do with two grand?
I'd put it to good use, thats what I would do with it.
I'd hire a skywriter up in Redmond to put the words "WE SUCK" with a big arrow pointing down to Microsoft's HQ, every day for a year.
I'd go to one of those ultra-sized supermarks and buy like 200 kegs of Log Cabin syrup..keep one for my pancakes, and pour the rest into Lake Washington where Gates lives, so his whole house smells like maple syrup for weeks. Call in the news media, and blame it on Bill, saying he finally went nutty like Howard Hughes did. "He just likes dumping maple syrup into the lake behind his house, then denying it." , i'd tell the press.
Or, if on that particular day, I felt particularly artistic, I would
I'll just eat my pancakes and wait till next year.
"Well, at least your not like Susan Lucci....not yet." - My dad
humor_mode(off);
Congrats Carsten & Geoff
Bowie J. Poag
Project Manager, PROPAGANDA For Linux (http://propaganda.themes.org)
Bowie J. Poag
Yep. I've seen it before. Slashdot burnout.
Too many Open-Source cheerleader stories. Too much psuedo-geek masturbation. Too many flames for people expressing opinions not SDC (SlashDot Correct).
Symptoms: Unmasked flaming, frustration with narrow-minded Linux zealots, not giving a flip about your "Karma" anymore.
Treatment: Abstain from Slashdot for a while. Take a vacation. Sharply limit future Slashdot visits. Let your old login die and create a new one with no traceable identifiers so you can flame freely. Post a well-crafted troll every now and then.
You've been reading Slashduh too long and too much, Foogle. The quality of the contributions around here is dropping. The good old days are over. Take a breather. When you come back, have some fun posting pure garbage with a default 2.
rellort -- President of Slashaholics Anonymous -- "Just because I use Linux doesn't mean I have to talk about it all damn day."
-- In the future, everyone will code Perl for 15 minutes. --
Now I hate the Gnome just as much as the next guy, but this is a bit overboard...
"BrushedMetal is a Gnome/E theme"
Uh, BrushedMetal is an Enlightenment theme. Enlightenment is not Gnome. I don't have one bit of Gnome on my box but I use Enlightenment and BrushedMetal, eSlate, and BlueHeart.
"I bet KDE and Windowmaker themes weren't even allowed in this stupid contest."
Did you nominate one? I was torn between Windowmakers's AIndustrial, KDE's Photon and E's BlueHeart, and I ended up with BlueHeart. There is a very good reason there were pretty much only Enlightenment themes nominated: you can do tons more with them than with any other wm themes.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
So what if KDE won no awards? If I wanted to use Windows, I would run Windows; it has a better interface anyway. (Spare me the flames, I care not.)
Seriously though, I am not out to bash KDE, to each their own. I am not a big fan of GNOME either, just another excuse to eat resources. That is what Enlightenment is for.
Enlightenment won best unix desktop *eyecandy* -- KDE and GNOME have very little *eyecandy*.
I am not too fond of the default Enlightenment theme. Nevertheless, you must agree that it is hard for a Blackbox theme to win the 'best theme' award. Enlightenment, overall, has the most eyecandy when it comes to themes. Blackbox is an excellent windowmanager. In fact, I am running it now. Nevertheless, it is simplistic. To reiterate, Enlightenment, overall, has really neat stuff when it comes to themes.
Quit complaining about it being 'one-sided.' Did you vote for what you liked? Good, you got your side in. If not, too bad, you should have. This was not intended to be a big deal anyway, it was just for fun.
I was slightly shocked when I read this report and saw 90% of negative comments. Why must everybody be so negative? Do you always have to go out of your way to attack Slashdot or something they have done? Opinions differ, get used to it, and deal. You are not 12 any more, try acting like it.
You people might enjoy life more if you quit whining.
Kind regards,
WHiTe VaMPiRe\Rem
I bet we'd be amazed how many so-called 'good posters' on Slashdot have alternate IDs for creative trolling. Myself, I'd fancy burning off the excess karma and always be sure to keep my karma at exactly 0. That would certainly be in synch with the concept of cosmic balance.
Aye, its got pretty bad, as for trolling, I cant be bothered. I'll just go on saying what I think. I wont just disappear like I did on usenet.
:)
(The fact I lost my ability to connect to a news server may have contributed to my dumping of usenet
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
The scene shortly following the announcement of the Hemos Award.
Please excuse my off-topicness.
My experience with KDE and Gnome, and YMMV, has been this. Both almost never crash, even with heavy use. Gnome crashes usually amount to the panel croaking and then starting up again right away. Big deal. At worst, X will quit. KDE crashes tend to cause X to lock up the mouse and keyboard, meaning that I have to drag my ass down the hall and beg someone to give me a telnet window so I can kill X myself. "Why don't you get Windows," they ask. Oh, the shame of it all, the humiliation!
Thank you, Gnome.
I mean, this happened like, last Thursday.
Anomalous: inconsistent with or deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Anomalous: deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Canard: a false or unfounded repor
KDE is more stable, has more features, and is overall a much better project, with nicer project leaders and a better toolkit.
You must not have used GNOME in a *long* while. After all, it was voted most improved project. Was KDE even nominated for anything? (honest question)
Then I discovered that Enlightenment sucks.
It ran slowly, used icons for things (ick), and made a general mess of my X session. I won't even get started on the customization menu ("transparent" window dragging? WTF?). Maybe somebody really loves Enlightenment, but that somebody is not me.
So then I found Sawmill. Sawmill has the Bluesteel theme, and yet doesn't suck. It has no icons, has genuinely useful customization, and lets me attach a theme to as many or as few windows as I'd like. (I usually pick one xterm for Bluesteel, just cuz). So, I voted for Bluesteel anyway simply because Shinyblue wasn't available.
Enlightenment may suck, but its prettiness can be ported...
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
vim has always been 'Charityware' - if you use it, you are encouraged to make a donation towards a charity working with orphans in Uganda. On Friday, Bram Moolenaar announced on the vim mailing list that vim had won the award, and that the money would go to that charity.
Which I think is pretty cool.
Paranoia isn't an infectious condition, it's a way of life
Oh, I know it was intended to be Gnome theme. In fact, Redhat wanted Enlightenment to be a part of Gnome. I still remember the murmurs of disbelief travelling across the SVLUG attendees as Mandrake calmly announced that, no, Enlightenment was not Gnome.
In any case, Gnome always stated that Gnome could be used with any windowmanager. That Redhat commissioned an Enlightenment theme to be used for Gnome appears to be self-deception.
Interesting that Gnome started the work of replacing Imlib and finding a new WM just after Rasterman left Redhat.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Way to go Foogle! A little too much cough medicine today? Dude, you need a rest. Take a few days off, enjoy the sun, go out and have adrink with those women who play basketball in high heels.
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
Valium is good.
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
--
The dog ate my