Slashdot Mirror
Unintended Results From U.S. Hardware Dumps In Asia
Izeickl writes: "The BBC has a thought provoking story about old hardware being dumped in parts of Asia. The report 'details a group of villages in south-eastern China where computers from America are picked apart and strewn along rivers and fields.' the article also states 'The report suggested that as much as 80% of the America's electronic waste collected to be recycled is shipped out of the country.'"
Linux only:
fixed sound crash, going around memset bug in glibc i586/i686
Wondering how a bug could exist in such a fundamental basic function such as memset, we contacted Heinous Turdballs of Linux fame, and he was kind enough to give a few minutes of his time.
Q: Thanks for your time in answering some questions for us
A: No problem. As you know, I am umemployed and have no life, which is of course how I got involved in Linux in the first place.
Q: OK, Mr. Turdballs. By the way, do you mind if I call you 'Dirty GNU Hippie'?
A: I would rather you didn't. I prefer the term 'Dirty Linux Hippie'. As you know, my ratty and nasty hairdo, my rancid steaming armpits and my putrid stench of body odor makes me qualified, I think.
Q: I quite agree. Can you tell us about the memset bug?
A: Sure. We dont really know who is responsible for the bug. We don't know who is making changes, why they make them, or when.
Q: Hmm.. sounds chaotic!
A: It sure is. But Linux is free!!! We are dirty smelly GNU hippies with natty greasy long hair, enjoying the FREE LOVE of GNU software!
Q: Come to think of it, Linux sure does crash alot.
A: Yeah, but that will be fixed in the service pack - er, I mean kernel release. We also have support for some new device drivers that came out 2 years ago. You just have to recompile your kernel with the correct command line switches, after configuring your make file and making the correct edits to /etc/fstab. By the way, if you screw that up, you are really fucked.
Q: Sounds good. So, how do you organize who is working on Linux?
A: Mostly we don't. We pretty much let anyone have at it with the code base. We figure at some point, someone who actually knows something about operating systems will do some work on it. It has to happen eventually, its like a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters. Literally.
Q: That's great. What normally happens?
A: Normally someone comes in and fucks everything up completely, but we don't know who they are because we never actually talk to anyone who is making changes to the code. We assume that if you are capable of signing up for a Hotmail account, you must be pretty good at computers and you should be a tech lead in a major open sores project.
Q: Open sores?
A: Yes, I am sure you have heard of it. Its free, therefore its good. Check out sourceforge.net, where bad project ideas go to a quiet and lonely death when the developers realize that 12 year old kids should not be SQA leads when they are constantly getting atomic wedgies because they wear shirts saying "Put Linux Anywhere".
Q: OK, Back to the topic. Whats a typical day in the life of a Linux developer?
A: Usually his mom wakes him up in time to catch the school bus, like 8:00. We encourage this because we want the developers to be well edumacted.
By the time he gets home at 2:00 (the Linux enthusiast does not participate in socalled "extra cirricular" activities, or worry about being "well rounded" and does not have a "social identity" or "play well with others") he has been beaten up a few times for wearing a "I GNU SPOCK" tshirt.
Then, to take out his frustration, he hammers away at the keyboard for a few hours. If the resultant code compiles, he will go ahead and check it in. Then mommy tucks him in for the night.
Q: Interesting. So who will be in charge of resolving the memset bug?
A: We have a nice prospect in mind. He has a strong background in manual labor and performing menial tasks. I'm not sure what his name is but he has a hotmail account, dAsUpAhZillAZ99@hotmail.com.
Q: Sounds great. I'm looking forward to it!
A: Just keep reading slashdot, where are the pimply nerds congregate. You may get assaulted by some homosexual linux zealots, but you will learn to like it.
Q: Sounds like fun!
A: Also hang out at sourceforge.net, where bad project ideas go to a quiet and lonely death among the other dirty GNU hippie projects.
Q: Thanks for your time!
A: Tell commander tuna taco I said I will pay in full after I get a real job. Then I will be back for another taco-snotting.
This troll was reposted from the Troll Library without permission of the original author. If you object to this post, or if you wish to add your troll to the Troll Library, please reply to this message.
Since we have the best tech, and we "throw out" alot of working, but "outdated" technology, maybe they can put it to use. Besides, a little poison in the water in China is called "population control" and that's a good thing.
Reliable as your information is sure to be, this would be a far more costly way of business than the normal "bribing and dumping" disposal model. Why would they do this???
Not all followups are flamebait, BTW...
---"What did I say that sounded like 'Tell me about your day?'"---
that the US abides by? The ones about antarctica maybe? (unless they find oil there ;-)
The only one I can think of is the copyright convention, which has been embraced and extended too.
Well, Bush flatly shat on the Kyoto agreement because it wasn't financially kind to the US, so I imagine the chances of him giving a rats ass about this are slim to none. Actually, none.
Were it not for their onslaught of ever-more-bloated crap, the replacement rate of hardware would not be anywhere near so insane, and this dumping would be a far smaller problem.
Word 5.1 runs great on a P75. There really has been no reason to upgrade, for most boring PC uses.
Where do I click? Where do I click?
You dont get the point, it wasnt our war, on our soil....
Not the european campaign at least, Pacific, that was our war.
The man and MATERIAL Poured into the European was insane, we never got paid for most of that material, especially from the russians.
Im not Belittling the contributions of ANYONE, it was your war, and Hitler and his plans, were the direct result from your. being the european communitys inaction and arrogance.
EUROPE WASNT OUR FUCKING WAR, It became our war ONLY because of or desire to aid Brittan, dont question our contrtibution, and not only in WWII but our economic support postwar, we could have left europe a pile of rubble that it was, yes the europeans did for themselves, but it was their situation in the first place.
Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........