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Open Source Worse than Flying
george writes "In an article published on TheRegister, Otto Z. Stern makes the bold statement that "The only thing as goat-rendering awful as flying has to be the progression of open source code." Accusing Open Source of being buggy and its devolopers of preoccupation with mudane details."I'm sitting here...wondering when the Linux freaks are going to solve their Ubuntu versus Mandriva color scheme debate or maybe even write a printer driver so that something I buy actually works with my open sores PC.""
Open Source stole his initials.
What's wrong with flying?
He should get that "open sores" PC checked out. That doesn't sound good at all.
If your PC is giving you open sores perhaps you should stop rubbing up against it so hard.
Open-source Mozilla Firefox 1.5 is out, and it's decidedly less buggy than IE.
Synergy is your friend
Isn't it the responsibility of the hardware manufacturer to provide drivers? Perhaps I am just crazy...but aren't generic drivers a godsend in themselves?
What day is it? Could you please tell me?
Where is the foot icon?
Another thing that is goat-rendering awful is this story.
When the ones developing it are the ones using it all the time. The closer to things you are, the easier it is to lose track of how bad they suck (there's a reason the first thing apple removed from their unix was X11).
what is this, an attemt to start the biggest flame war ever? we all know this isn't news, it's just the opinion of one idiot. what the hell is it doing on slashdot?
"The only thing as goat-rendering awful as flying has to be the progression of open source code." I'm a pilot who happens to like flying as well as open source so screw him!
Who is this Jimmy character, and why was he cracking corn in the first place?
article (-1 Flamebait)
Exactly. Accusations. He doesn't really know what he's talking about...and his article speaks for itself in that context. He really comes off like a fanatic, but I would say: you have an "open source PC." I do too. Mine works. Lots of peoples' do. So...either you're doing something wrong, or perhaps you're a rambling, fanatical curmudgeon. Regardless, have you bought Windows?
Oh, it doesn't appear that you did. At least, if you have, it isn't good enough for you to mention.
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
It's not a problem if he buys it or codes it his damned self instead of complaining.
Yet another shill trying to get hits by rubbishing Linux/OpenSource, even if done in jest. Hohum. As interesting as watching Laura Didio or Marueen O'Gara.
I'm a pilot you insensative clod!
Chances are any disscution on Slashdot will degrade into a flamewar about ID/Christianity within 14 posts.
samzenpus trolled! It wasn't even tuesday!
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
The guy's a tool, but who is he and why should I or anyone else care about his opinion?
Open sores, and you infected your PC? Damn, good thing that whole "
genital herpes" thing isn't contagious!
Oh wait...
This guy is loonier than Robert X. Cringely. I think you can tell somebody has finally lost it when they adopt a pseudonym with a middle initial that occurs late in the alphabet.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
If this were fark, this would be the perfect thread to link to the 'attention whore' girl in the bikini doing hand-stands on the beach.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
This man must be the UK's answer to John Dvorak!
Well, he's obviously never flown United Airlines.
Who exactly is Otto Z. Stern? What is his background, credentials, past software development involvement, and so on?
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
I've always wondered what sort of day jobs Slashdot trolls would have, and now I think I know.
What is this guy's problem? Someone who compares supercomputing to a Linux distribution's choice of color scheme to further his argument isn't exactly who I'd call on the next time I want a rational argument.
He WANTS FREE (as in beer, of course) SOFTWARE that OTHER PEOPLE wrote on THEIR TIME, on HIS TERM? He's getting the work for free (as in beer, obviously) and whine endlessly about it not working to HIS satisfactory? Nobody is forcing the stuff down his throat; if it's not to his liking, do what thousands and thousands of other people do: MODIFY IT TO HIS SATISIFACTION, or go run whatever OTHER software that can satisfy him. What a stupid FSCK.
Sounds like somebody's "Waaah" meter is pegged out. Go cash that Microsoft check and shut up, Otto.
Drop me a line at:
Key ID: 0x54D1D809
Can someone explain to me what this guy means? Maybe he's in a different universe than me, but I know I have far less problems with open source software than other software I've used. I may not be some hardcore coder, but I know that open source makes sense AND, unlike his stupid Windows, it fucking works when you need it to.
"Accusing Open Source of being buggy and its devolopers of preoccupation with mudane details." Something the author of this post is obviously not concerned about either.
Otto Z. Stern
Finland has a representative democracy. They aren't socialist. They were also some of the staunchest enemies of Soviet Communism during the cold war. Stories of hour long stand-offs between the Finish-Soviet border were common; whole platoons would dig into the snow on either side of the border and stare at one another for hours.
This guy sounds like a radio-shock jock. Ignore him and he'll go away.
I am mean come on this is an alternative OS people !!!!
Give the Open Source guy a few months and generally you will get a driver for your all-in-one printer/fax/washes my car printer thingee. Sometimes yes it takes longer but that is the rub folks you are working off of an alternative OS that most hw manufacturers are never going to directly support. Sometimes the new driver is easy and sometimes without specs... its damn nearly impossible to reverse engineer all of the features. Oh, you don't like that?
Sorry man maybe its time to go back to Windows or Mac OS X.
The linux freaks you see arguing over color schemes are not writing that neat new program or usually that device driver.
Those are fans for the most part not developers.
Yes, in a free world where there are no central authority forcing people to code but folks doing what they want yes sometimes the development process can seem slow and other times there is a burst of activity (note Rhythmbox as of late adding a ton of features after a ton of time where little seemed like it was going on).
Maybe people need to stop criticizing the Open Source community and start focusing on the corporations that make money off of linux and ask why RedHat and Novell and the folks behind Mandriva are not forcing some of their employees to do some of this coding.
But then again what is the obsession with printers?? I have seen this mentioned in a few criticisms of desktop linux but rarely if ever have a problem with Fedora or Suse or Ubuntu anymore. Now, sound in Gnome? That is where I am pulling my hair out!!! Someone replace ESD pleeeeeeeeze.
But I am still grateful for a free OS and all the people using their own time to contribute.
ACK
are you a troll?
*makes a cross with fingers*
ubuntu
sure i'm not buying multifunction printers or new bluetooth cameras. But my bluetooth mouse keyboard works fine on ubuntu did take some configuring but its a ms mouse, canon 5mp s1is via usb works great. firewire drives no problem.
then again i've been around long enough to know most new tech doesn't work worth a crap and is replaced before the bugs are even fixed. and i buy older hardware which saves bucks for important shit not gadgets
i'm sure this dumbass is one of the ones who send a txt note as a word document
dont know what hes talking about.
As something serious? Printer drivers are not the problem. It's all the oddball stuff. I'm sitting here trying to make a Corex business card scanner work in linux (anyone good with usbsnoop and usbrobot?).
It takes me longer to look up what chipset a new motherboard has, than it does to do "modprobe blah.ko". And if he'd stop using fruity-assed distros and desktop environments, there might be less debate about color schemes... or maybe he wants all the graphic designers (whose only way to constructively contribute is to give us fancy eye candy) to start writing printer drivers. That's right out of the microsoft playbook, I think.
Mr. Otto Z. Stern has a few lessons to learn about life on the internet and the cause of Free/Open Source software. For one... I take issue with his assertion that a "normal" 25 year old with a blue tooth device should even be allowed to put that anywhere near a computer unless he's a Linux user. Can you imagine what kind of havoc we'll see when the first bluetooth capable virus hits? Can you say "Beowulf cluster of all Nokia cell phones on the planet DDoSing the US DOD via bluetooth"?
Next, the guy talks about free/open source coders like they're here to solve his personal problems. Look Otto... if you can't be arsed to hit the man pages, edit a few thousand text config files and generally RTFM, then you have no business EVER using a computer for anything. Keep your interaction with technology where it should be: With ATMs and game consoles. In fact I fear that ATMs might even be too complicated for you.
How is it that someone like Otto can get in print at the Register and I can't rub two fity cent pieces together for all the writing I've done on Slashdot? I'll tell ya what Mr. Register, if ya give me a temporary writing gig, I'll take my payments in 10 packs of Cadbury Cherry Ripe Slices from down under. Do we have a deal or what?
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
The Register's URL is http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/29/ otto_fly_open/ Hehe.
Is someone just trying to provoke Slashdotters into an absolute frenzy lately? I've been seeing a flamebait, as-offensive-as-possible anti-F/OSS story every couple of days, and not the same one over and over again.
I'm all for showing both sides of the fence, but damn, choose people closer to the center instead of moonbat extremists.
This story deserves nothing more than a -5 flamebait. Discuss.
First off, people should work on what inspires them. So if people want to argue over a color scheme then great, why would anyone want them to do otherwise? The corollary is that this guy is a jerk.
Also, one of the biggest gripes about open source is the lack of a user-friendly UI (example: The GIMP). So any more attention spent in that area is a good investment for the community. (And likely those not part of the community as well.)
FYI: I count myself in the later group.
This is news? I don't think so. Maybe a troll or flame at most, but there is absolutely NO content in that story. Unless you already have, don't bother to RTFA. Stories like this are very embarrassing for those of us (such as myself) who stand on the Windows/Closed Source side of the debate.
A COLA troll got a piece on The Register. So very 1996. How quaint that it made it to the front page.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
Don't like it? Don't use it. Go pay Apple or someone else for software, or fix it yourself, but stop bitching. What is this guy's content-less rant doing on the frontpage, anyway?
As Johnny Storm would say: Flame on!
I read the article. Afterwards though, I am more confused.
Was it an overdone example of poor writing, or posing-at-witty critique of OSS?
In the former, it succeeded brilliantly, and the latter, failed just as dramatically.
At least it was more entertaining than another paid microsoft shill's bogus study.
3/10 because I feel generous.
Tell him to get a Samsung ML-1610, comes with the Linux drivers right in the box! As do most of their other models, works like a charm.
Does he mean gut rendering?
or maybe even write a printer driver so that something I buy actually works with my open sores PC.
Excuse me, but isn't it the vendor that's respsonsible for providing drivers? If you want to place some blame, jump on their ass.
Linux contributors have tried to pick up some of the slack, but because of the fact that everything that isn't open-source is most likely proprietary, this is not an easy hurdle to overcome.
It's obvious that the Register was looking for filler, because this article wastes a good deal of space with absolutely NOTHING of substance.
I could be a terrorist for all I know! (shudder)
RIAA + Sony = Rootkit of all Evil
They give the MS the code for their drivers to package with Windows, MS doesn't write them.
If they did that for Linux as well, no problem.
As it is, open source programmers do more than Microsoft's programmers - the whole hardware rant is a little unfair.
smash.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
...talk to the printer manufacturer and ask them to support Linux? Maybe?
Okay, the original post is a troll, but seriously, so many big names in the computer industry have been spouting paperless office drivel for so long that I can't really believe that people want to print stuff?
Yeah, ok, there are some things, maybe a buss card printer or photo printer, but really, printing is the LAST thing I'm worried about. I believe in the paperless office, and I take that practice home with me too.
He might have a point about coordinated application integration, but if printing is all he is worried about, I say we pitch in and buy him a 128 box of crayons and some paper!
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
With that article, the definition of troll should be accopanied with a picture of that guy. Sure if he wants to dis the airline industry about its incompentence he has a point in the same way with blue tooth he is free to but that level of trolling will help no one.
The airline industry well only the government can fix that problem seeing as how they regulated that thing to suit their needs so if they get out of the way and let the free market do it maybe itll fix things, sure there will be plenty of companies that die but maybe someone will compete.
Then theres open source, which while it is true that a lot of a programmers could learn a lesson in usability, doesn't really care to cater to such a troll. For one OSS developers have trouble with vendors that don't play nice, so if the hardware doesn't work properly blame the company that wants to protect its "IP", second these developers only do what they can when they can. Sure theres red hat and suse that fund developers but Novell and Red Hat aren't interested in cameras or the latest toy, they have a market and its buisness enterprise. Sure theres Lindows(I forget their new name) and Mandrake and they do have decent integration that make things easy. If blue tooth support ain't added yet its cause they haven't managed to get to it and other things are probably more important. Besides if you don't like it why don't you code it?????
Ahh but youll say its not your job, and Ill say its not my job. So whoever wants it really bad will have to do it. Maybe hell be lucky enough to get sponsored by a linux company maybe not, but no ones forcing you to linux. Besides Linux has goals and reaching everyone and being all things to everyone is not one of them, thats Microsoft's goal. Personally i choose Linux cause its Unix-like, and its license is agreeable(I personally don't like my rights subject to the whim of a major corp that is known for questionable ethics).
Flame wars generate a lot of messages...
Each posted message requires several page views (login/preview/confirm,etc)
Articles with high message counts seem likely to attract readers (the count gives a rough measure of how interesting/controversial the topic is)..
More readers means more page views... (have to click on messages to view threads/etc)
In short, it is in SlashDot's FINANCIAL interest to periodically let an imflammatory 'article' "slip by". I bet a ton (long/short/metric/etc) of money is made just from advertising / pay-per-click revenue...
Such pieces of crap mean $$$$ for CowboyNeal.
I use articles like this as a barometer. The more transparently ridiculous they are, the more frightened _they_ are. Open Source software is something to be worried about, what with no licenses, little if any upfront cost, and extraordinary quality. This is even more the case when your company has produced no new products of value with which to entice your customers. Microsoft could have been a pretty decent big company, really. But they promised their shareholders the moon and now they're beginning to miss on the payments. Their perdicament is to be expected in any healthy economy in an intelligent population. In the fullness of time _every_ product becomes buggy whips.
- Hilary Rosen is a lesbian.
- Carli Fiorina is a man.
- Only a sniping blogger militia can protect us from exploding Chinamen.
I rest my case.I've been reading some of this guys other articles, and I'm pretty sure he either feeds on flamefests like demons feed on souls, or the guy really loves dry humor. At first I thought it was the former, but after reading an article where he openly asks for a date from the chair of the RIAA(who is a lesbian), I firmly believe he just thinks the brits are a bit too wet for his funny bone.
Ashley Vance of The Register
proof
On a side note, where can I find a flamebait-free slashdot?
-------
Chunky Bacon
...that keeps open source OSes from hitting mainstream desktops. You know there's something seriously flawed with the software development process when someone resorts to "you're doing something wrong" as an explanation for why a piece of software isn't easy or enjoyable to use.
The software should accommodate the user, not the other way around.
Actually, I'm always open to reading opinions and ideas from people that I have never heard of. Sometimes I'm pleasantly surprised that these "unknown" people can have truly inspiring or insightful commentary.
No so with Mr. Stern.
I checked out "My prostate's as hard as an opal" and was similarily disappointed with his fetish around his own ass and related body parts. "Big Google is much worse than Big Oil" manages to mention herpes in the first line, and never does get around to making a solid case against Google apologists.
So, it's good that I read through some of his drivel, now I'll know to avoid anything written by him in the future.
Is it just me or is the Register getting worse by the week with it's "reporting"? I just RTFA and it's terrible writing. I mean, I couldn't hand that in for Freshman English class.
Other "stories" are just press releases, and wow they get honked off at Google.
On a related note, cow-RENDING is definately harder than goat-RENDING...I am told it has something to do with the extra stomachs.
Cheers,
Adam Wayment
p.s. we all know open source security is better than...well, any thing else...so maybe we should start an open source TSA initiative and solve Holiday flying woes. ;)
The story was funny.
I've read studies where Hot Branding compares favorably against Microsoft's latest license agreement. But maybe they were funded by Hot Branding Zealots.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The cups interface is fabulous and rediculously simple. There are very few printers that I just connect to. And I do not have to put up with clunky and unnecessary junk interfaces. All of the hp deskjet series are there. There are very few that do not just plain work. And I will let you in on a little secret, most of the newer printers are backward compatable with alot of the simple color print drivers from 5 years ago!
of course, Otis = Otto...
Whats the use of pointless eye-candy (like compositing and transparent xterms) when the underlying windowing system (X) is more broken than a New Orleans levee. The big problems in Linux won't ever be addressed because you can't get enough people to agree on a common vision and work to achieve it (well that and the hostility towards commercial developers).
Linux is a lot like windows, each new version is a little bit better, but it is chained to doing many of the important (and broken) things the same as every version before it. Linux won't ever be great when it gets developed a lot like a katamari, layers of hacks that get thicker and thicker as time goes on.
Only Apple (and Steve Jobs) has the guts to throw out all the old garbage (X windows, the many start up daemons, unix copy/paste, gtk) and replace it with fresh new ideas (quartz, launchd, xcode).
The article reads like he's trying to be the Mr. Blackwell of...something.
Too bad he doesn't seem to define what that "something" is.
What's worse is that he's no Mr. Blackwell either.
That article is one of the least coherent things to appear on Slashdot, and that's quite an achievment. I never really liked stream of conciousness in high school and I can't say that I like it any better on a web page than in paperback. I can't imagine what posessed anyone to submit that story or what caused an "editor" to post it. It just doesn't have any content.
Sounds like the stuff Dvorak would say. It's really boring reading this crap, yet I think it's on slashdot because it's a guaranteed story to generate posts which surely helps slashdot's income.
The only time I boot into Windows is when I need to print.
Is there a neat, flexible way to get the same control of a Samsung ML-1451N? I want to print 2 and 4 pages onto one page of paper, etc.
(The description said "Linux compatibility", sigh. Wonderful printer, I literally don't know how often paper jams, since I haven't seen it yet. But I won't buy another Samsung product without checking carefully first.)
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
n Open source 3d model of a goat that we can render while flying?
...last time I checked, hardware manufacturers were supposed to produce the drivers.
OTOH - I might want one of those butt plugs - I have a bit of travelling to do...
Been there, done that, paid for the T-shirt
and didn't get it
He likes to stroke his ego, or rather have his mother do it.
"You owe it to yourself and should be proud of your commitment to his eloquence and overarching grandeur."
Please, I think I am going to be sick.
Don't bother reading it as it will not give you anything but a grumpy old man act (if this Otto is 25 then that's just twice as bad).
Quick summary:
- introductionary rambling quote by Thomas Jefferson that doesn't add anything
- introductionary (yup it reads like introduction number two) rambling quote by Ottos mom (I'm not sure if would be worse or better if it in fact was ghostwritten by Otto) praising her son in the most pompous way and mentioning that Otto was referred to by the New York Times
- Otto making a point about not caring about being mentioned by the New York Times (we're almost halfway through the "article" by now)
- trashtalking airlines and flying
- trashtalking Burt Rutan with some mumbeling about a meditation capsule
- some more airline trashtalking
- trashtalking about open source
- trashtalking about Finland and Linus Torvalds (hey Otto come to Norway: a country jokingly (and sadly with a grain of truth) referred to as one of the last communist states by Swedes)
That's it, really. Not a shred of intelligence, just whining from someone who either must be insanely spoilt (I blame his mom) or totally fails at some kind of attempt at elitist wittiness.
Why the fuck would george (submitter) or samzenpus (editor) think anyone would find this article interesting? Perhaps it would be for psychology students trying to profile Otto but somehow I imagine not many would waste time doing that ("whining asshole" isn't much of a scientific diagnosis anyway).
Nah the only likely reason this appeared is for the purpose of some kind of link-exchange deal.
Now I know why I'm not reading the Register but I can't comprehend why I'm reading Slashdot, perhaps it's time to find somewhere else to hang out on the net. Feel free to suggest replacements to Slashdot (Digg ain't it and it should have a varied technology-interested userbase numbering above three digits).
And Otto if you're reading this please go buy a hooker (I'm sad to say this seems like the only likely option for you) and break up with your mom - you'll thank me afterwards. Not trying to insult Otto, just trying to convey to him and any reader what kind of impression he gives of himself.
Disclaimer: I'm Norwegian but not a communist (I'd vote Bush/republican if I was American), I enjoy flying as long as I can look out of a window, I'm aware that almost all F/OSS is unpollished and that there's lots of stuff to improve radically but I still love F/OSS both because of the ideals and the results so far. Last but not the least I've never heard of this Otto before and hope I never will again.
this comment is provided "as is" and without any express or implied legibility or congruity [...]
On the topic of the Open Source community nitpicking the details of everything, I'd have to agree. There always seemed to be more politics in Open Source than in the United Nations, and with few rare exceptions, most Open Source software that I've used have communities that seem incapable of just sitting down and making something that works. So much of the debate and bickering is completely unnecessary. Now I'm no software developer, but here's a short list of things I'd consider in an Open Source software project:
y ou-guys-are-dicks arguments, and the like. All these things only take time away from creating valuable, useable software.
a) Why in the world would anyone want to use this software? Does something else currently available do the same thing? Does your open source solution do it faster? easier? How is the user rewarded (in a way meaningful to an average user) for using your open source solution over the existing competition?
b) Does the world really need your open source solution? Yes, choice is good, but if 25 other open source projects exist that offer audio file playback with an attractive UI, will your idea offer something new, or just make the open source audio player software community more complex and confusing? Is your new idea worth starting a new project, or could you just contribute to an existing one?
c) Do you have clear direction in your open source project? Do you have realistic goals to aim for? Will you stick with those goals or will you keep changing them whenever you get halfway there? (I'm looking at you GNOME)
d) Can you and your project's team create software for COMPUTER USERS? Can you get some average Joes to try your software and give you input? Computer users understand things like the "go" button, "the start bar thing" and "x-ing out of programs". Does your software cater to this, or does it ask your user if they'd like to "Terminate this process and it's child processes"? You might know what a PID is, but to a computer user, "PID" is the end of the word "stuPID", which is what they'll be calling your software if you throw terms like that at them.
These points are worth discussion in an open source community, as opposed to licensing issues, color schemes, neato animations, our-software-won't-interoperate-with-yours-cause-
He must be a Libra. The match with this horoscope is really stunning.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
His problem is with Linux fundies, then. But we can't compare the Mandriva color schemes with Bittorrent, PHP, or Apache.
And yes, Linux has been famous for its poor hardware support.
Rather than just dismissing this guy as a loon, perhaps the Linux fanboys should look at some of these points. I'm not going to debate the technical merits of X11 or whatever, but just look at the bottom line. Desktop Linux has what, 2% market share? Hasn't it had the same 1-2% share for the last five years? All I see on here over and over repeatedly is "it's almost there, it just needs a little this or that". It's been "almost there" for five years I know of. When will the fanboys just give in and admit that nomatter what their sense of superiority, the platform as a desktop OS is getting nowhere (slowly). Can we just for once be honest and call Desktop Linux the big turkey it is??
Funny you should mention this. The GStreamer folks currently are working on getting the infrastructure in place to replace ESD with GStreamer.
See this page for more details.
"Big Google is much worse than Big Oil": ... It pays people to love Firefox and does something or other with OpenOffice.
Another part of the problem here is that Google pitches this whole open source love thing.
"Fears rise as Google tries to emulate Microsoft" :
Having Google dominate the browser is just like Microsoft dominating the desktop. Let's get an open source search engine going right now.
So let me get this straight. We should be mad that Google pays people to create software to be used by anybody for free, and we need to take over because Google is a big, evil corporation by creating an open source search engine?
I know that it's probably taken a bit out of context, but I'm really having a hard time reading any of his articles and discerning a cohesive thought, much less a consistent one.
Has he contributed any of his time, money, or skills towards developing open source software? If not, he should shut up.
Look, I'm not trying to say that you have to be a programmer in order to criticize software, but you can't just flame "Open Source" like this. The whole idea is that bugs, when discovered, can be fixed, and that new features can be contributed by users. Can't say that about Closed-source.
If he has a beef with a particular peice of software, let him criticize that particular component, and offer meaninful assistance in the form of time or money.
In flying (to continue his analogy), the airlines are obligated to provide you with a level of service, since they don't allow you to jump into the conference room and set prices or decide whether to serve peanuts or not. Your choice is to deal with it, or start walking.
With Open Source, you're getting it free. It's not Otto-matic, and if the Ottos of the world have have a problem with that, they should get in on the action and lend a hand.
So shut up and start walking, or help push.
there are some valid points to be made.
This guy did a very poor job of it and it wasn't even long enough to even be considered a rant. He didn't make many points beyond what was summarized in the Slashdot post.
For myself, I could go on about a number of problems that seem to plague many open source projects. The focus for many seems to be on adding features at the expense of usability. There are exceptions, obviously. But many open source apps simply aren't that intuitive or easy to use.
As a simple example, several months back, I wanted to find out the temperature of the CPU on my Linux box. A trivial task on a Windows box, as there are a number of tools that provide this information. I installed an app that could supposedly provide this information. It, in turn, depended on me installing several other libraries. After 3 hours of trying and running into nothing but problems, I finally gave up. I mean, come on, why does a simple app to tell you the CPU temperature have to be more difficult than setting up iptables?
This all might not be so bad if the support on many of these projects weren't loaded with arrogant jerks whose response is usually a cacaphony of RTFM and basically treating you like an idiot if you don't have intimate knowledge of their particular software (the mencoder support mailing list comes to mind).
And this, in turn, wouldn't be so bad were the FMs not so poorly organized and written (in this case, mencoder doesn't come to mind as they have excellent documentation, but a very complex piece of software). Again, I'm not saying all projects have these problems, and oftentimes better support can be found from other users rather than the actual developers. For example, the help on LinuxForums.org tends to be quite helpful, though you tend to get less detail on the more obscure products.
All that said, there's been great progress in many areas of OSS and I suspect, with time, it will continue to improve.
I like bad analogies so let me try.... Committing yourself and your business to Microsoft is like Skydiving without a parachute.
I'm guessing it took ol' Otto ten hours to write his screed because he had to wait for his machine to reboot over and over....
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
It is nice to hear an alternitave opinion once in a while. Open Source is not a cure-all, it has a dark side too.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
My favourite recent example of The Register misinformation: it is "difficult or impossible" to use "mainstream" websites with Firefox!
Incidentally for people who believe that FUD here are some facts:
1) I had someone working for me make a list of the investor relations sections of the websites of all FTSE350 companies (UK listed blue chips and mid-caps). He used Firefox, he only had problems with one site (Rank).
2) In the last year a team that has varied between two and four heavy users of the web found only one other site (apart from Rank) that failed to work with Firefox or Opera: a third world branch of HSBC.
I emailed this to The Register, and did not get a reply. The Register is true to its tabloid roots and just wants to put stuff up, without regard to facts. I only read it for BOFH stories - The Inquirer has a lot more actual news content and it recently replaced The Register in my live bookmarks (next, I am going to replace /. with Digg for carrying time-wasting stories like this).
The Register has always been like this. I remember a review of Red Hat a few years ago that gave the impression that, ext 3 was too unstable for use on a desktop (not by the time it was an option in RH it wasn't) and that an ext2 file system would be irretrievably broken if you pulled the power cable. Combining these two "facts" it came to the conclusion that Linux (unlike Windows!) did not have a file system that was ready for the desktop.
I do not think that They are MS shills. It is simply not possible to report accurately on something as complicated as an OS without ever using it yourself.
Congratulations Mr Stern for such a Vivid description of your prostate:
- opal.html
http://www.therockalltimes.co.uk/2005/10/10/stern
Can we really rely on this mans advice to influence us? I did after reading this artical and the mental imagery wasnt all that great.
Anyone who reads The Register regularly would know, Otto Z. Stern is a troll, "his" columns are probably not even written by the same person from week to week. It's quite funny watching how easily the Slashdot crowd rise to such obvious bait.
a.
I never understood why they took out X11, seems like it would make more sense to keep it.
Apple / NeXT never really had X11 to remove. It's always been available, but never a key part by any means.
Apple's first unix, A/UX back in the late 1980s, had X11 but it also ran normal Mac apps. I'm not exactly sure of the architecture of it, but I know Apple's X11 implementation was later spun off as an X11 client/server for the regular MacOS called "MacX". (Apple also made a Mac emulator for SunOS and HPUX called MAE: Macintosh Application Environment).
Mac OS X is basiclly the next version of NeXTstep/OpenStep... recall that NeXT bought Apple for negative $400 Million. NeXTstep was based on 4.2BSD and Display Postscript. X11 support came from third party vendors and freeware projects. These days Apple has X11 on the Mac OS X installer (it might still be an optional install, but it's there and it's supported).
That has to be deliberate!
Okay, Otto... before bitching that Linux can't easily configure and use a Bluetooth camera, how about we point out that neither can Windows? Been there, done that, driver didn't support it.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
It actually sounded insightful to me.
in my opinion, home users should be the target of hardware manufacture supported linux. I dont realy care about the average user, i have little incommon with them, accept perhaps games, p2p, msn and internet. And games is the only that would realy benifit from wider use. Printing out of home, seems to me to be cheaper/better quality and easyer.
1. Find a dictionary.
2. Look up "render."
3. Hang thy head in shame.
HP has an excellent printer drivers project complete with a working GTK toolbox program: http://hpinkjet.sourceforge.net/> Just install CUPS and then follow the instructions here: http://hpinkjet.sourceforge.net/install.php> as for the Article.. Zern tends to write with his tongue in cheek.
-- Cheers!
Careful whose illiteracy you're so hasty to imply. He presumably means "goat-rendering" in the sense of rendering fats (definition 1a here).
it sounds like this guy has spent way tooo much time looking at Goatse. He was incoherient and made little to no sense.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I thought driving a car was worst than flying. It's some health condition many of us are afflicted with, and has the highest death toll of them all.
"In the end, given enough time... given the right environment..."
Corporate America does not give enough time, and is not the right environment. Having recently stopped working in a corporate environment just for that reason, I can tell you that Quality is NOT Job #1 at most corporations. In fact, you're likely to get laughed at if you even suggest that you privelege quality over, say, deadlines, quantity, marketing strategy, or six dozen other business interests.
When you're working for your own ego, your own pleasure, and your own interests, however, rather than for shareholders, mid-level management, and upper management, you are likely to do INFINITELY better work. At least, I know I do.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
For those that can't bother to follow the link:
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
Hah. This is the biggest piece of shit I've ever seen. I can't believe it actually got published on The Register.
It seems like the major complaint of Linux, and really this guys ONLY complaint is about Linux support for random hardware. I guess he's never thought about it. He expects all these linux people to write drivers for vast amounts of hardware? Does Microsoft write drivers for all these pieces of hardware? The answer is "No." Microsoft barely writes any drivers. The hardware makers provide drivers for Windows. And hardware makers today dont provide ANY information about their crazy hardware. Does this mean Microsoft Windows is better than Linux? I think Linux is doing a damn good job at supporting the amount of hardware it does! Whatever..
You cant judge the greatness of an operating system by comparing the amount of manufacturer made drivers to the amount of reverse engineered ones.
Has anyone noticed that the URL for his article is http://www.theregister.co.uk/.../otto_fly_open/?
Otto Z. Stern is sitting there...wondering when the Linux freaks are going to solve their debate about Otto Z. Stern
more stable than IE 6, come on folks stop smoking the linux crack. Its good , on par with IE ,but not any less buggy.
Ultimately, it's the hardware manufacturer's responsibility to provide drivers for those systems they feel they can profit from. And they have no obligation to support hardware they label as "obsolete." Take the case of Wacom. They never provided any drivers for Linux at all, so a project called "linux-wacom" had to take the reigns there. And as much as I wish Wacom would support their old serial tablets under Mac OS X they absolutely refuse to do so. So it fell to me to step up and start my own open source project to get my perfectly-good serial Wacom tablet working.
Incidentally my project needs help with the preference pane, ADB, and Intuos components... any takers?
http://tabletmagic.sourceforge.net/
-- thinkyhead software and media
Windows is the expensive corporate jet that you get limoed directly to on the tarmac, and it then craters into a mountain 20 minutes into the flight.
Mac OS X is like riding on the back of an angel. A beautiful and sexy angel. :)
Well, at least it's not a car analogy.
Maybe we've finally found the origin of goatse.cx
A fricken confused homebrewed mess.
From the article: "Seriously, open source software progresses at commercial flight speed."
350 - 750 Mph? Thats not bad! FLY OPEN SOURCE! FLY DAMN YOU!
guess what?
yep. its simon.
You want drivers? Go fucking write them! If there aren't drivers for your distro and can't be bothered to develop them yourself - DON'T FUCKING BUY THE DISTRO!
You want drivers? Ask nicely and wait, or pay somebody to do it. Simple. Who's going to write a driver "just for the fun of it" if they don't own your particular piece of hardware?
This shit is free for the most part - what do you want?!?!? Bitch to the people you gave your money to, not the people writing code in their spare time......
Oh! You thought I was talking about TFA? Haha, nah. Reading TFA smacks of effort. With a summary like that, why bother?! I have better things to do, like sawing my legs off with a dull hacksaw and pouring lemon juice in my eyes. Ah... memories.
I'm trying to port Linux to an Airbus, you insensitive clod!
Join the anonymous, help develop the network: http://www.i2p2.de
He's a joke, nothing "he" writes is meant to be taken seriously.
But then, the guy does work for a Think Tank afterall, so what do you expect?
I love OSS. At least half the applications on my computer are OSS, I'm writing this from FireFox, in the background I have Eclipse and OpenOffice open too. But I still have some issues with OSS.
It's not the quality of what OSS projects produce, it's the difficulty of getting involved. It's like a rite of passage. You can't just open up a compiler, read the source, and start typing code. Getting started is a complicated process. There are numerous OSS projects I'd love to get involved in, but actually setting up my computer to have a functional environment is frequently more work than I can stomach. In comparison, designing and writing code is far easier than configuring my system to prepare to join an OSS project. Some people have said that it's no more difficult than understanding the system at a commercial project, but I disagree. Any commercial projects I've been involved in usually have their computers already configured so you can just start working, no break in stride.
For the most part, the thought of how much work it's going to be to get started keeps me from even taking the first step to get involved. I spent many hours just trying to configure my system to get involved with the Mozilla project, and didn't even get to the point I could review the code because of build problems. And of course real life intervenes so the amount of time I can spend at once trying to configure my system is limited.
Maybe this is a necessary hazing ritual, but in my opinion, the day that software developers don't also need to be System Configuration Experts, the progress of OSS will skyrocket. If there were simply an executable file that you run and it setup a complete environment where you can just start typing code and contribute, OSS would progress at light speed because much less capable developers could still contribute with small bug fixes, or even clarifying comments, adding comments, or just restructuring code modules.
Some people might think that's a bad idea because complete idiots could try to participate, but there's numerous ways around that like ranking/priority systems attached to code reviews (i.e. Positively ranked developers would have their code reviews take precedence over unknown developers, and trolls who not only didn't produce anything valuable, but even wasted reviewers time with complete nonsense pseudo code could have rankings knocked down so they wouldn't even be visible to review)
This trash is about as irrelevent as Robert Cringely.
Otto Z. Stern's articles appear in the Register's humor section as just that-humor articles. Does no one check these things anymore?
The role of the writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say. -Anais Nin
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Next time do some research before you buy the hardware, and support those vendors that provide working and recent drivers, and tell them about it. Even if you can't program yourself, that would be supporting OSS. As long as you buy stuff from vendors that don't even manage to release the specs (because they are afraid that somebody could clone their crap), shut up and buy proprietary stuff.
open (SIG, "</dev/zero"); $sig = <SIG>; close SIG;
I'll make a stretch and say this is yet another example of the widespread anti-science attitude railing against the dread spirit of innovation.
"I'll show you something goat-rendering awful!"
Real programmers can write assembly code in any language. -- Larry Wall
Unless you have a preoccupation will paper documents.
You know, I think this inability to distinguish irony from sincerity explains a lot about the success of Dubya in hoodwinking Americans into voting for him. He'd've got nowhere in Europe, because he's obviously a clown - obvious to anyone equipped with a sense of humour or of irony, anyway.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
Steel worse than Calligraphy
Refrigerators worse than Mineral Spirits
Apples worse than Oranges...
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
Innovation is the Act of Sharing Knowledge. Any invention is based on existing knowledge of some kind, or input if you wish. Sharing knowledge between more people means more people will get new ideas. Then the more you share, the faster the progression. Given that you're able to make use of the new knowledge developed. Now, software is pure knowledge. Not a product.
Open 'sores' gave his wife a PERL necklace.
I've model airplanes and am hoping to get my flying license soon. I have (www.zenithair.com) airplane kits in mind for later. Up here in Canada, you have huge expanses of wilderness to fly about and thousands of lakes to land in, if you can land in water.
OSS and flying... nothing like it.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Otto Stern is a spoof column... DUH!
What are you listening to? (http://megamanic.blogetery.com/)
You know it's serious budget justification time when /. will link to this kind of crap.
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
Sounds like a three sheets to the wind, through and through damned Yankee or desert resident, or maybe he's just a sophmore at a community college in Chicago? Some people say it's just some jerk called Ashlee Vance at the Register, never heard of him..
Anyway, yup, searched for "Otto Z. Stern" on google and the blog entry was just so funny. The gift that keeps giving for sure! Like Otto's herpes? The blog attack on Otto did indeed show up on top. Can you say "obsessive-compulsive"?
I think that bit with Otto and his mom running on extolling the virtues (or lack) of his prostate was hysterical. (If he exists, it's too good to be true how outthrust he is about everything.) Though I think I have a right to demand that he disclose the nature of his middle initial (is it a Heinlein's Number of the Beast reference?) and post a pho-to! (Of your face, silly!) And stop sitting on the copying machine you can get badly hurt.
Also had a lot of fun with those responses Otto posted in this thread under pseudonyms, I laughed my ass off! The people next to me even laughed and they had no clue! Can you spot them?
Honestly his rant about useability was useful if not quite digestible, he is certainly smart enough to get a retainer from Microsoft. My hat's off to you Otto (or whoever you are)! The prostate bit's getting old fast though! And no I don't want to hear about butt plugs or whatever it is you're selling! Ack!
I never knew about that rule! Now I finally have free reign to really shorten the lines at soup kitchens.
In practice, most users with a decent Linux distro should have the majority of drivers (especially printer drivers) they need. The commercial version of CUPS adds a whole bunch more. Hey, "Open Source" doesn't mean you don't have to pay for things. Nobody, after all this time, has any business confusing Open Source with "free as in beer".
If there is a device that you need kernel-level support for, then there's a pretty decent chance the kernel will have support. It just might not be compiled in. Again, "Open Source" doesn't mean "lazy". You may need to put in some work, but it's not going to kill you. There is a big difference between coal mining in China and running a makefile.
Finally, there's this matter of what is trivial. When was the last time you decorated the foundations of your house for Christmas? How many Slashdot readers can say for certain what type of cement and/or rock was used? How many have directly observed the foundations of their house? Never and none? Then surely they must also be trivial. Or maybe - just maybe - there are details which are extremely important, they just don't appear to be to the casual, ill-informed user.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Seriously, I'm not going to buy from Canon when they don't offer support. Where is the problem?
I guess he bought a printer without getting information, if it is compatible. What a lamer! This is the same as I would complain that my "Mario World 64" cartridge does not fit into the Playstation, I bought recently.
I've got to interject here - I'm an Avionics/Airframe Mechanic and we do in fact take pride in what we do. I don't really care about your goofy Linux dork debate but I work harder than anybody else I know keeping the aircraft that make your entire way of life possible the safest and most reliable form of transportation on the face of the planet, bar none. What happens if you code in a bug? Perhaps a company loses money and users are inconvenienced. What happens if I don't pay attention and install a shear nut instead of a tension nut? People die. Have a little respect for those with greater responsibilities than yourself.
For one thing real operating systems have ABIs and APIs for driver developers.
Should Linux Have a Binary Kernel Driver Layer?
if dear Otto can't get his printer working, that's proof! The whole open source community is scheming against him by delaying his flights. Luckely I wasn't mislead by the offending language and in the article into thinking Otto is just some dim wit who's ravings should be ignored. These accusations will no doubt be the end of open source and then... no more delays at the airport. Thank you for saving the world, Otto.
assignment != equality != identity
What's so original in Office 2003 that it deserves the credit of "surging ahead"?
Oh my god... he doesn't get it.
I don't know what else to say.
I couldn't get past the quote from Thomas Jefferson, followed by the quote from his mother and his own gushing on about the New York Post or something to actually read much of his blog entry, but glancing at the titles of some of his other ... pieces ... I get the feeling he has an axe to grind against google, open source and "geeks." Why are we feeding his hunger for attention?
I don't care why you're posting AC
Clearly, it's the licensing that causes bad programming...
This obviously is one of the people that think 'Open Source' is a person or company, that is just there to fix the problems of the grumpy home user like him/herself. And moreover, one of the people that Open Source is about free beer, and live on parasitically ever after.
Why spend twenty square centimeters worth of pixels on the Slashdot frontpage on Cro-mags?
...is that what "think tanks" are? :p
Personally, I feel Mr.Otto's articles are generally a step backwards in the human way of thinking.
Everything, from structure to content, makes me think this guy writes whatever is on his mind at
the time.
Back to the point, open source software has advantages & disadvantages (so obvious to us, not Mr.Stern),
and the truth is that it has brought radical changes to computing. If Mr.Stern can't see that, I suggest
he proceeds to live in a world where Microsoft builds his house, and wait until winter.
I'm running FC4 which is stable and has a pretty recent KDE.
* If you double click on a text file, it opens a new window (KWrite) which is a much better editor than Notepad. (I personally prefer GViM, and it's not too hard to configure it to use that.)
* I hit the red hat (start menu), clicked and held on an app, and dragged it to my desktop. It asked if I wanted to copy or link to it. Either way, it works.
* I just opened a text file in KWrite (double clicking from konqueror), copied text (CTRL-C), and then closed it. Then I created a new text file (in Konqueror - right click->Create New->Text File), double-clicked it, and I pasted with CTRL-V. It worked.
* Your review is over a year and a half old. You should try out the latest version. A lot happens in a year in the OS world.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
You Have Been Trolled
...is Slashdot posting trolls on the front page?
There is an interesting book on this issue:
http://www.lulu.com/content/155267
It should be obvious that the /. meanstream has no sense of humor. Unless something is explicitly marked as humor, they will never realize it. The troll subpopulation is no better, there endless repetition is considered the high point of humor.
IMO, the OSS community could use more people like this guy.
;) ) though. Those of us that don't know much as far as that can at least do as much as bug reports (responsible ones, not "I used all the optimilizations and now nothing works *waaaah*" or "My finger itches when I right click my desktop") or perhaps give suggestions as to a programs future functionality. Personally, I wouldn't mind if everything was in Motif and grey; as long as it did what was necessary. Things like drivers are, sadly, scarce for people who are stuck with things like Lexmark printers, etc. Focus does need to be put on that kind of stuff.
:D
Yeah. That's my opinion on the matter.
Yes, interface and appearance are important, but functionality and actual improvements on programs do need some attention. Myself, I currently couldn't program my way out of a wet paper sack. I am learning (a lot...yay Gentoo.
Anyhoo... yeah. Long time reader, first time poster.
Hi.
Having used Linux on my home PC for about 6 years, I've just decided to replace it with Windows XP Pro.
The reason is simply that I haven't got the time to get the new printer and DVD-Writer to work properly with Linux. The DVD-writer is nearly a year old - it's taken me that long just to put in into the machine. The idea of spending my evenings and weekends banging my head against a brick wall to get it to work - rather than spending that time with my wife and daughter - is just plain silly to me.
I realise this is because the hardware manufacturers are in the pockets of Microsoft, but I just want my PC to work the way I want to without having to spend days on it.
I also got really fed up with Fedora - every time I switched my PC on, it wanted to do an update. It's too much like being nagged! I want to use my bandwidth for checking email, etc, not for patching libraries I probably never use. I tried gentoo - but that just takes far too long to install anything, and unless you have the time to mess around with the compilation flags, there's little point in gentoo.
So it seems to me the challenge is to create a strongly marketed and branded Linux PC with well-publicised hardware that is guaranteed to work. A brand that would be known by ordinary people who just use computers as an end user (like apple mac and windows), not as a professional. So that you could go into PC World and see a whole range of hardware that will work with the 'Womble System'. It doesn't even need the words GNU or Linux in the title - and not having those words would remove the politics from the brand, which most end-users are not interested in.
Incidentally, I am not against open source software. As a software engineer, I use open source software all of the time (eclipse, in particular).
Really -- flying is cool. It's not awful and it's certainly doesn't render goats. So open source is worse than flying, which is really cool. I guess this means open source is only pretty cool. Thank god I don't actually read the articles here; I have a feeling this one would get me really mad.
Only on slashdot could people take this seriously...
This sig is intentionally left blank
What's wrong with X-Windows? The old "It's too slow"? Because locally it's working all in memory, no network, and nice and zippy.
u n", typically for utilities you've asked to start when you log on.
.rc files by hand - in 2005. You haven't had to do that for over 10 years on Windows. I don't miss not playing the game of "guess which copy of xf86config the system is actually using".
.NET (which allows things like Windows Mobile .NET - and, as a happy coincidence - Mono). Apple dumped OS9 and is doing things with Carbon and Cocoa. Even Palm is dumping their Garnet API in favor of Cobalt. These companies would NOT be radically updating their APIs if there was no advantage to do so.
Working locally doesn't mean it's (1) efficient, or (2) is able to take advantage of latest machines (like drawing GUI controls in hardware).
An example: X-windows still only uses 16-bit integers for screen coordinates. On modern hardware these coordinates are literally twice as slow to manipulate compared to using native integer size numbers (32-bit or now 64-bit). This is because the machine code has to use a prefix operator that says "the following operation is on a 16-bit number, not a (native) 32-bit one". A simple 16-bit add is twice the instruction count of a 32-bit one. If you're only doing it once it doesn't matter - but the inefficiencies do eventually add up if you're doing it several thousand times for complicated GUI work.
Another example is that you immediately have to use the X-video extension to do any sort of graphics work if you expect performance - it bypasses the network-ready graphics channel. And then you have the bypass of the bypass if you do anything with accelerated OpenGL.
It's a combination of architectural API considerations like this that gradually rot the codebase. Eventually you end up with a nasty, hacky API that has more hoops than actual base functionality.
What's wrong with the start up daemons? There are lots of them, but you can tweak and tune them. The typical daemons started on a system configured for "workstation" or "desktop" tends to be similar to the number of processes I end up running in Windows XP or Mac OS X.
Why would I not have a mouse daemon? Or not have a sound card daemon? When am I ever not going to want to use a mouse or sound card in a modern GUI environment? It's obsolete and quaint considerations like this that gradually build the case for considering them more of a core part of the system.
Or is it the method daemons start up with? I find it no more or less confusing the mess that is the combination of Windows services and startup programs.
Er.. okay. Look in: Start menu -> Administrative Tools -> Services. All the Windows services are listed there. Also, there's a folder for each user: Start menu -> All Programs -> Startup - any shortcuts you place there run when you log on. There's a 3rd place as well in the registry: "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\R
And I'm sorry that I still find it a complicated hassle trying to edit multiple Linux
The reality is that you don't have the foggiest idea what you're talking about.
The parent poster may not, but I'm sorry - I do. But if you really want to continue supporting the 30 year old X-windows architecture - go ahead. The major commercial competitors have gone through several itterations of their windowing APIs in an attempt to modernize and tidy up their systems. Microsoft is in the process of dumping MFC and Win32 in favor of Windows Forms and
...open tsores!
I mean, come on, Otto Z. Stern? It sounds too much like Alfred E. Neumann.
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
why do people expect things to work.? ...
I try to avoid this way of thinking. I think it is extremely ungrateful
If things do work : one should thank the efforts of those who have given their time to make it so.
Anyway, there is usually a choice ; If one doesn't like some software one can:
either:
1- be constructive. help improve the OSS in question. this is how we work and grow OSS. make the world a better place
2 - use something else, e.g. os X
When the seagulls follow the trawler, it's because they think sardines will be thrown in to the sea
...which came in any colour - as long as it was black - you can express any opinion you want about FOSS as long as it's positive.
/. response to this. There a post arguing the guys wrongly obsessed about printer drivers. He writes online, why print? Great. Linux is ready for the desktop but only if want to use /. approved peripherals. Good model for success.
It might have an element (or attempt at) humour in it but if it challenges the status quo that FOSS is the solution to everything then it's wrong.
It's amusing seeing the
FireFox is better than IE. Yawn. If there was less nit-picking and more development so the same could be argued about other applications there might be a point to this.
Many comment here reject the article out of hand. May be there is nothing to it, may be FOSS is perfect. But why can you post that XP BSOD every 5 second and get moderated funny but suggest there's a problem with a FOSS app and your're spreading FUD. There have been a few hushed posts recently that suggest FireFox isn't the most stable application in the world either.
As for in fighting try suggesting emacs is better than vi; KDE better than gnome. Here, at least, there's a point. And it's a serious one.
This article seems pretty strange to me. After all, the author is complaining that open source is buggy. And if this is true, so what? What is the motivation of an open source developer? Obviously I can't answer for all of them, but I can make my motivation known.
For me there are multiple reasons why I code for open source:
1) I wrote a little tool for myself, which I think might be usefull for others too. So instead of keeping it on my harddisk, I can just as well register it on sourceforge and put it up there.
2) Somebody (or I myself) has started a project that interests me (curiousity, education, etc.), so I take a look at it and contribute to it.
3) An open source project, that I use has some bugs or missing functionality and if it is annoying enough for me, I fix it and submit the changes.
4) Since I have only limited time and knowledge in other areas, I can offer my service as a programmer and team up with a modeler, soundengineer and other artists sharing a mutual interest (like a game concept). I can code the game but I can't model, so in order to play the game that I coded, I would need to hire a modeler to make it look good. The modeler has the same view the other way around. He can't code so in order to make his game come to life he needs a coder. Obviously open source is a good alternative, because both offer their services for free and get the other service in return.
5) I'm using free software a lot, so I want to give something back in return
Now when I look at all these reasons, it is always me who is at the center of it. I don't code for others, I code primarily for myself and then share it. So even if the code is buggy by SOME OTHER standards, this would not really matter to me, because obviously, as long as I'm satisfied with the performance I don't have any reason to change it so that it matches some OTHER requirements. Of course I MIGHT do this, but I don't have an obligation to do so.
That's the nature of open source. If you don't like it, grab the source and change it yourself. No use in complaining to others what they should or should not do, because NONE of the open source developers have an obligation to any other one except themselve. Unless they get paid for, which is an entirely different matter.
World to Otto Z. Stern: GOAT.
Mr. Stern is John Dvorak without the talent.
If you can, please, mod the article "-1, Troll".
Thanks.
There's a hidden treasure in Python 3.x: __prepare__()
guys, if you're reading a satirical British website and you don't get something, ignore it.
4 2056.2147.html)
For point of reference to those that take his column seriously, there should be a foot icon next to it.
I'll spell it out: it - is - a - joke
Sorry if I'm condescending you, but I thought that such net veterans as yourselves would be used to this kind of thing by now (refer to the classic "Is Your Son a Computer Hacker?" page: http://www.adequacy.org/public/stories/2001.12.2.
I'll leave you with one thought. Finns are socialists. Linus Torvalds is Finnish. Linus Torvalds got here on an airplane. Oh no they are going to neutral us to death! Watch out or they will complain about the same crummy service their airlines have!!
For Free Computer Help, and Technical Answers
In related news, one particularly ingenious team has given potential converters the best (worst?) of both worlds by combining both open source and flying.
OK, I'll start with the assumption that I should know this 'Otto' guy and that he is so revered in the IT world that his word is law and I should hang on his every saying. Congratulations, Otto, you have discovered that people who work on Open Source software development projects, sometimes more for love than money, take longer to develop stuff than full-time programmers working as part of a major development team within the same physical organisation, and/or building.
You have also found out that such developers are more accessible so some of the issues they deal with are 'customer' driven or become transparent to the outside world - I'm sure Microsoft's development teams have anguished over ergonomics, colour schemes, button locations too - but without it becoming public or subject to third party input. Count yourself lucky you might be able to contribute to a project with a simple email or forum post.
So why do you despair?
Can you see a way to make the whole process better? OK, get involved.
Do you hate the way it has screwed up your system? OK, go install Windows XP and live a happy life with no compatibility problems, buggy printer drivers or other such troubles (that's ironic, by the way).
Do you just want to publish 'talking point' articles to satisfy the needs of your followers? OK, mission completed - can I go now?
Oh, yes - I *did* read the article - did he get paid for those ramblings? Someone woz robbed! Oh, and by the way, Otto, I am NOT one of your 'wonderful friends' - how presumptuous!
AT&ROFLMAO
one more thing Mr. Otto.. if you RTFM then maybe your printer would work.. lazy fucking bastard
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Wah! Wah! Wah!
My free software won't work with every piece of bleeding edge and extremely proprietary piece of hardware I buy on a whim.
Wah Wah wah.
There's definitely a problem with open source development. My guess is that more emphasis should be place on raising money. Maybe open source programmers need more support than they are getting.
There is a HUGE, well-known bug in Firefox 1.5, the CPU and Memory Hogging bug. Developers refuse to fix it, even though anyone can demonstrate the bug easily. Apparently there is some kind of social problem. Maybe no one has the authority to deal with a major bug.
This bug has been reported to Bugzilla, and is very easy to reproduce (see below), but Firefox developers have marked it invalid because there is not enough specific information! The bug has existed in Firefox for more than 2 years, and several people report that it is worse in Firefox 1.5. Firefox's Bugzilla does not allow direct links from Slashdot, so copy and paste Bugzilla URLs into a new tab. Remove the space:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=131 456
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=222 660
The huge memory use, and 94% CPU use with no activity, occur after opening and closing many Firefox windows and tabs, as happens when researching something on the internet over a period of hours or days. The bug symptoms are worse after putting the computer on standby or after hibernating. My experience has been that the memory and CPU hogging always occur together, so they appear to be the same bug. However, the CPU hogging symptom takes longer to appear.
You can demonstrate the memory use problem quickly by loading and closing the following large web page into multiple Firefox tabs a few times:
http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_mono/ libc.html
To see the memory and CPU percentage used in Windows, right-click on the Taskbar and choose Task Manager. Choose the Processes tab.
The bug has often been reported on Slashdot. Here are a few examples:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=169676&cid=141 43632
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=168683&cid=140 62501
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=168683&cid=140 62671
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=168683&cid=140 66613
I posted the bug numbered 222660 in Bugzilla. It is interesting to note that apparently no developer has bothered to read the entire bug report and take the time to understand it. For 2 1/2 years, developers have been saying things like this: 1) Maybe this bug is fixed in the nightly version. 2) Yes, this bug exists, but it isn't important. 3) No one has posted a TalkBack report. (If they read the bug report, they would know that there is never a TalkBack report, because the bug crashes TalkBack, too.) 4) If you would just give us more information, we would fix this bug. 5) This bug report is a composite of other bugs, so this bug report is invalid. The other bugs aren't specified. 6) You are using Firefox in a way that would crash any software. 7) I don't like the way you worded your report. 8) Often someone uses the subject to act out anger; that person pretends to be interested in the subject.
I doubt this subject will just go away, not after more than 2 1/2 years of discussion. There has been a Slashdot story about it: Reducing Firefox's Memory Use. There's a lot of discussion in the comments to the story that the problem is a bug, rather than just something that needs improving.
Other people have raised the issue, all somewhat inaccurately, since the "memory leak"
It's all psychology. Otto Stern used to be the keenest of open saucers and went so far as to wear a full Tux suit including headpiece wherever he went. Reader, this man was Tux. Then one day in New York his tail became hopelessly wedged in the back seat of a taxi driven by a new arrival from Turkey who spoke no English at all. Despite his sqwarks for help, Stern was unable to free himself until the meter on the cab had run up a bill for $6583.29. He's been looking for a free ride ever since, not to mention donations for medical assistance to his tail which now hangs off centre by a shameful 60 degrees.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
A guy saying writing a WHOLE PARAGRAPH dissing open source!
...when you can Open Source and crash?
Isn't it a bit ironic that you're bashing open source when you're also telling us that you're having the hardware related problems with NVIDIA's open source hostile hardware (which they don't release specifications for) and their own CLOSED SOURCE proprietary drivers? Blame NVIDIA for that, not Ubuntu.
The writer is almost right for the wrong reasons. Open source isn't buggy, it's just that many FLOSS projects still have a heck of a lot of development work to be done. For instance, in Linux if you don't have an Epson scanner you're going to be lucky not to have trouble, and God help you if you want wireless networking to work... but a few years down the line and maybe things will be improved. However the main problem here is hardware manufacturers - after all, "out of the box" Windows supports *some* hardware but not actually that much. You generally have to load a manufacturer-provided driver separately, and of course until they start writing Linux drivers too, the ol' penguin's going to have a harder time of it.
If you want buggy, unstable and time wasted on "bells and whistles" that should have been spent on bug-fixes and needed features, look no further than Redmond 1997-2004. They appear to be cleaning up their act and finally dealing with these issues, but the proof will be in the pudding.
I do wish more work could be put into writing device drivers and other niggly points, but this is where some of the most technically difficult issues are, and due to the effort required this in particular is more-strongly affected by demand than other aspects of FLOSS. At present, out of principle I'm grinning and bearing it, and checking hardware compatibility or driver availability online before I buy...
FTFA: I'll leave you with one thought. Finns are socialists. Linus Torvalds is Finnish. Linus Torvalds got here on an airplane.
Nice one there, Otto. Make analogies that are about as fitting as the buttplug you currently have up your arse, and make a 2003-esque snide swipe at anything European as being Sociamalist or whatever.
Congrats, it's people like you that give Americans the reputation of being loud-mouthed, overweight, dumb-as-shit, opinionated bullies with an attitde problem, while they certainly aren't, at least not all.
Now, fuckwad, did, you have anything real to say, or were you just trolling for attention again?
He's an ungrateful bastard.
He got the OS (which is the result of years of hard geek work) for free - If he wants more, why doesn't he make it himself instead?
I have been reading slashdot for a while now (usually with my morning cuppa tea) but this time i decided to sign up and join in the fun. After reading this LINUX vs. EVERYOTHER OS thread (and many other threads along same lines) heres my opinion; Your average John Doe will never switch over to linux! Why? 1. People dont like being degraded and feel dumb 2. Command line interfaces and inconsistent ways to install programs / access options on linux make people feel dumb (see 1 above) and they get frustrated 3. I personally use linux daily to run my dedicated servers, everything has to be done thru putty, and after spending alot of my precious time in "RPM hell" and resolving dozens of dependencies or spending hours on end sifting thru mailing lists to find some obscure command that was never added or explained in the official documentation. Heck all that carry on makes windows installer look sexy. 4. Im discusted by how some devlopers cry "open source", but once they see a profit to be made they sell out (examples Mysql / RedHat / Invision etc). Heck Google are paying me $1 everytime someone downoads Firefox from my site! 5. I cant say "If thats bug is bothering you, fix it yourself!" to my boss or customers! That sort of arrogant attitude will get me fired or loose me customers 6. Not all computer users are geeks, if you dont take their needs into account ur not going anywhere, be it Plug and Play printers, Recording TV, playing with tunes for their their ipods (i do hate ipods) 7. Not all people are connected to the internet! (many developing countries and even developed ones!) or have high speed internet! people dont have time to patch their systems and resolve a zillion dependecies or spend hours sifting thru groups looking for help 8 as someone before said "people just want things to work" and they want to be listened to give people what they want and they will switch to linux, once again people want to play their mp3s / pRon / graphics intensive games, chat to their family on the other side of the globe, edit their digital photographs They dont want spending days on end patching bugs, figuring out how something that should be simple works well thes my 2 euro cent :)
nt
My response: Who cares what the non-techie, point-and-drool end-user wants or needs? Let the commercial people worry about that stuff.
In the course of every project, it will become necessary to shoot the scientists and begin production.
Let me guess, the reason is they wanted to build in their own look-and-feel? So X sucks?
This would only mean Linux sucks for Apple-addicts. For other people, Linux with X might be very fine. For people who can't stand the Apple look-and-feel, it might be a relief.
Apple is not the best for all. It's the best for a certain amount of users. They choose to serve this group well, better than everybody half. A good choice. A pity Apple-users generally don't understand this choice.
Trust me, I work for the government.
The article, I believe, is intended to be humourous. As you'd expect from the less than serious Reg.
With the 20 second delay that Slashdot enforces between hitting 'Reply' and 'Submit', it's going to take me at least two hours to post "You have been trolled" to everyone who took this utterly obvious piece of satire at face value.
Don't you know?
Go through their archives and you'll find every (weekly, or is is fortnightly) article by 'Otto Z. Stern' follows a similar, unbelievably reactionary tone. And yes, there's usually some chump in the letters page each week raging at this guy Stern and his "warped worldview" or whatever.
And they have to gently inform the correspondent that...
IT WAS AN IRONIC PIECE!
Come on, don't the little inserts like "goat-rendering" give you the tiniest clue that it's not entirely serious?
he doesnt have to buy it.
Uh, from what I've seen, the Linux drivers for NVIDIA and ATI graphics boards are provided by, uh, NVIDIA and ATI. Respectively.
Some issues I have noticed:
Or perhaps, you never know, it was a JOKE article? Huh? Surely the quote from his mother was a clue?!
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Anyone who's ever tried to administer CUPS for linux knows this guy has a point. And anyone who has EVER tried to burn a disk on linux knows he REALLY has a point. I mean, what ever happened to the notion of zero config? And for DVD/RW whatever happened to the File System model? The DVD/CD - RW application is incredibly mickey mouse.
Open sores worse with flies??!!!
"In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people." --Linus Torvalds
Congratulations to the ./ croud. You are extremely simple to troll. Otto S. does not exist. It is The Register's pseudonym they use when they are bored and want to stir up some shit. In one article they piss on the Mac fanatics, in another they piss on the FOSS fanatics. Nothing to see, move along.
The reason why open software /seems/ to have more bugs is that most programmers do not get paid, many projects even arise as a result of freetime, rather than regular work you are accustomed to. Compare: Free products from enterprises (e.g. SAPDB (now MaxDB)) or big team-ups (Linux and the BSD kernels) are IMHO more bugfree than any -- excuse the following biased-ness -- product from Microsoft.
Like any normal user ever get's to use emacs or gnome-terminal.
Trust me, I work for the government.
Sounds great, maybe if enough demand could be shown he could organize a group or 'company' if you would to write the driver. Also, this is a very cool idea you have about each person hiring a private software developer to fix bugs in their OS. Would work out great for me.
"one is windows. it is produced by a single company, all spare parts are manufactured by the same company. it comes in slight variety, having several models. you are not able to buy older models, though you can buy a new model, trash it and use some older model."
You misspelled "Mac".
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Ask yourself this: what does Linux do better today compared with in 2000, almost 6 years ago? I'm not talking about crap like antialiased text- I mean things that actually MATTER to users...
There are myriad examples. KDE makes Windows 2000 look like a dinosaur. I shall give you one example where Linux makes my life about a thousand times easier:
Mobile computing. Linux ROCKS the laptop, and here's why. I have to make frequent site visits. Each site I visit has a different network infrastructure. So I use SCPM, which is basically profile management. When I visit a new site, I create a new profile and set up all the networking settings, file shares and so on. So then, when I visit that site, I just have to choose that profile, and SCPM transparently swaps out all my configuration files, restarts all the networking services, and I'm up and running in about fifteen seconds.
Quetion answered?
"The dew has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning"
Whay can't we moderate an article -1 Flamebait...? ;-)
It's amazing how many people don't recognize this article for what it is.
Anybody here ever read Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal? Have you ever seen a Gilbert and Sullivan production?
In case you didn't realize, this article is SATIRE.
It's not meant to be taken seriously. He's making fun of people who argue against Open Source, so calm down, reread this article, and have a good laugh at the expense of M$ and everyone else who hates Open Source.
== First cross river, then insult alligator.
Flying is fun. It's the crashing part that sucks.
"Skyhawk 87E, you are cleared for the option..."
This guy dont undestand what he is talking about. Look at his arguments about flying. He is crying about strip searches before the flight. If you ask me I would rather be strip searched then fall off the sky in a fireball after some nut blow up a plane. What is the problem with overbooking? There is a reason why it is called "econom class". Aircarriers try to save money in any way possible to make tickets cheaper so they overbook. If you dont like it fly buisness class. His arguments about plane speeds are laughable. Did he forget about concord failure?
After all this he is tarting to critisise open source. Why open source coomunity should make drivers for all printers? Printer companies release new model every week. There is no way you can backward engeneer that fast. And it is manafacturer who should make driver in the first place. What is wrong with arguing about interface/colour scheme of Mnadrive vs Ubuntu? It is important part of any system. Usually people who are involved it these time of discussion cannot/dont want to write drivers for the authors stupid printer.
We can therefore conclude that the athour of the article is trolling/flaming in a very stupid way. He should first think then write.
I think he really needs to see a doctor about those open sores. From his tone, it sounds like he might have advanced syphilis. He needs antibiotics stat!
Because it's true.
The middle mind speaks!
People here may feel like bashing the article, but owning a computer consulting business, I can assure you that many people in the general public feel this way also. Who really wants the hassle besides us geeks? I find it hard to believe that Linux will be an end-user OS until the driver scheme changes, and the OS just works for people.
.tgz files? The post has a point, and developers should listen, or stop bashing what is working and continue writing a geek OS. By geeks, for geeks, period.
We may have the time and knowledge to compile and futz around with this and that, but do you really think that someone who just wants to check their email wants to mess with
BTW: I run a Fedora Core 3 fileserver and a Slackware 10.2 system, as well as a Server 2003, and various XP Pro and 2000 machines. I never need to do anything to the Fedora system, but setting up the Samba? Love to see John Q. Public do that!
DISCLAIMER:
I don't believe what I write, and neither should you.
The Register/The Inquirer is just The Sun for geeks.
"You should never doubt what nobody is sure about." -- Willy Wonka
Nothing like the smell of a front page troll in the morning.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
You got the point! ;-)
Either you come up with constructive critisism, or you're moaning. If you're moaning, you're not contributing and you can just as likely shut up. In fact, by moaning you are pulling the project down..
Neither Microsoft or the OSS community is helped with: This interface sucks! The people who made this are losers.
What helps is: This button can be named "Ok" according to standard Window-management pratices, so as to avoid confusion over what it really does (save the work and close the dialog). The navigation list can with advantage display the items in a hierarchical manner. etc..etc..
Instead of saying: This shit just doesn't work! (You can say it when home alone, but it just doesn't help when you yell it across the globe..)
This helps: I have a Megablaster nVidia 256MB card with 1 S-Video output blablabla. The arts-daemon fails to recognize it at start-up giving an error-message: etc...etc..
Searching on the internet and special forums for clues helps.
Even being polite and not expecting anyone to do free work for you, helps alot.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Step 1:
Before pulling away from your crucial Mono project work to write a flame, please hand a normal 25-year-old your Linux box and show them how to connect the system to their bluetooth camera and then smack yourself.
Step 2: Allow Open Source user to beat your unmercifully for buying a Bluetooth camera which serves little practical use when flash media is cheap, universally compatable. Why use a USB cable or flash drive when you can tell all you friends your camera is wireless. Rejoice as you transfer your pictures using 1/2 your battery, using a slow, insecure, outdated techonlogy using an overpriced adapter on your PC that costs as much as a 1gb flash card. YAY for Otto!!!
I doubt that 5% of the PC market will have any impact on hardware vendors.
I would argue quite the opposite: We need to write our own drivers where and whenever possible, as this makes more hardware Linux compatible. The larger the compatibility list, the more people will want it on their desktop, the more people using it, the more likely that a hardware mfg decides that writing and supplying drivers is a competative advantage they can use to sell their product.
I think the lack of drivers has two sources:
(1) - 5% market share. As a 'producer' it doesn't make necessarily make sense to spend time capturing such a small percentage of the market - write for Windows and you get in the order of 90% of the market.
(2) - OSS people do the work for you. As a 'producer' having someone else 'pay' for the work means more profit for you.
The closed-source option has neither of these two disadvantages ... and in my opinion the only way to overcome them is to play along with #2 until #1 is no longer true ...
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
since the college newspaper. "I'll leave you with one thought. Finns are socialists. Linus Torvalds is Finnish. Linus Torvalds got here on an airplane." need i say more about the ignorant stupidity of this writer
Before pulling away from your crucial Mono project work to write a flame, please hand a normal 25-year-old your Linux box and show them how to connect the system to their bluetooth camera and then smack yourself.
1. Install KDE.
2. apt-get install kdebluetooth
3. Profit!
And he's got a point, although things are a lot better than they used to be. The fact is that Linux, like most Open Source projects, suffers from the lack of a Marketing Department. Without it, us geeks are free to work on the technical details that interest us (which is why OSS is so great for back-office server utilities, etc.); but there's also no guidance or focus in supplying the features users want.
It's not just a matter of *understanding* what non-techies want. You also have to have the motivation and committment to actually implement the features in a timely manner, rather than drifting onto technical tangents and minutiae. OSS suffers from the lack of a business end; or more simply, the lack of someone breathing down your neck, applying pressure to do the things that are most needed, not what's most interesting.
That's quite a suggestion by Otto Z. Stern, and a nasty one for sure. All Torvalds did was put in practice the things he learned inside CS class, what he admired the most: an open system, and what he was inspired by: the approach of Operating Systems Design as taught by Andy Tanenbaum, who has been decorated for his work numerous times. Mister Stern should maybe focus his attention at designing the new generation aviation machinery again, instead of putting down the work of individuals outside his field of expertise.
Robert
When clueless newbies are complaining about drivers for Linux in the same way that they have complained for years under Windows (maybe not printers, but something), I take it as a sign that Linux has arrived.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
...is giving a fair, and balences critique of Open Source. Wait, what? You say he isn't? Let me read that again? My you are right....he's just some loudmouth asshat. Why the hell did this even make slashdot?
Open source BLEEDS!!!!
Emacs is good operating system, but it has one flaw: Its text editor could be better.
Wow, as a Linux geek and an airline employee, I find that doubly offensive :-)
Accusing Open Source of being buggy and its devolopers of preoccupation with mudane details.
Uhhh, yeah. Microsoft has NEVER done that. If you're going to point the "bug" finger at anyone, point it at everyone who deserves it, which is, well, every company that's ever made software. Bugs are a fact of life in programming. The only difference being the frequency and severity of them, and how quickly they are fixed.
And they said zombies weren't real!
"If checking to see if your printer is post-script compatible is too complicated for you then you probably need help with more than just your computer."
And statements like this are what keeps Linux from being useful, and explains why Linux users are generally reviled.
My eyes stopped working while reading output from a command line console! I was reminded why "Menu Driven" systems were fantastic back then.
The author of the article really needs to decide what he wants! He's complaining about the type of people he has to deal with at the airport and the quality of service, but then he complains when things are too hard for the average person. If things were a little more difficult for the average person, maybe there would be nothing for him to complain about and everyone would be a little more competent.
OK first off, I am a pilot, I support and use many common Open Source projects (Fedora, Mozilla Firefox/Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org) and I read the full article.
Now on to the rant!
This guy doesn't even attempt to understand the mechanics behind the scenes of an airline. There are anywhere from 20 to 550 people on a single flight. The fact that there are so many people alone is reason enough for so much security on an airline. As soon as you step onto the aircraft your safety is that airline's reasonability. The long wait is also caused by the number of people that are all on one flight. You if you can only process 5 people a minute, with the larger flights that means that it will take nearly an hour to process them all at peak efficency. Unfortuantly people show up late and not everything is going to happen at peak efficency, so you have to show up early if you want to make it to the aircraft still feeling safe. As far as making you wait in the terminal with stupid people, well he must just get bad flights. I have made a few good friends in my travels.
Now to the open source issue. The problems that he described aren't so much with the acutal process of open source but rather with people arguing over insignifigant things which leads to delays in parts of the programs that really matter. This unfortunatly is a problem that cannot be helped in a large democratic like environment. With any majority rules system of decision there will be conflicts of interests between the participants. I have not had any real problems with drivers on my own linux box, granted I do have some pretty old hardware. But the Linux environment is still under heavy development so I would let that slide. Mozilla Firefox has already become far better than their Microsoft IE and with Sunbird well on the way the Tunderbird/Sunbird combo will be much better than Outlook.
THIS JUST IN: random jackass talks crap about open source and in particular, Linux! Not news.
I think 90% of the Linux/FreeBSD/Other complaints I hear, is about hardware not working properly. People seem to blame the operating system for the lack of drivers for their hardware. Last I looked, hardware manufacturers are responsible fro writing the drivers. Hardware is NOT submitted to Microsoft for drivers to be made. We are fortunate enough that we have some very talented developers who DO make drivers for hardware, not because they have to, but because they can. Someday maybe people will call manufacturers and complain there is not a driver for other operating systems, but until then, I hope they at least realize, its not the fault of the operating system.
I assume that was a joke. VS is miles behind Eclipse. What does Eclipse do that VS doesn't? Loads, including
Multithreaded debugging.
Code changes while debugging that work.
Intellisense that's actually intelligent
(why would I want to type "int foo = private"? VS intellisense offers it!
Background compilation and error decorators in the file view.
Lot's more refactoring
and that's just the start.
The main feature of VS is it's point and drool user interface builder, but a lot of people seem to make bad interfaces with it due to the high complexity of Dot-Net in comparison to VB. As UI is such a small part of development anyway, this is probably not that much help in the long term.
Do we really need to have some whining troll as a topic of conversation on Slashdot? Doesn't that happen enough already by itself?
Use whatever OS you want to and STFU.
Ewwwwwwwwww. Amusing but ewwww.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
To all those open source fanatics,
.dll, .so, etc.) would be owned by its creator. Each end user (client machine or person) that uses an assembly would pay 1 to 10 cents per year to the creator. This is less than you spend on any non-free software. Even with many modules, the cost of a sophisticated system would still be only a few dollars per year, much less than a Tivo. If the end user installs both product A and product B that each use module X, then the end user only pays for one module X even though he is using it in two products.
> Besides, what's this guy's problem anyway? He's got the source, why doesn't he just fix the bugs?
Let's get real for a minute and cut the b.s. Whenever any business is looking to use open source, they are looking at it only because it is free as in beer -- beer, by the way, isn't free as in beer -- and not because it is intellectually free. Businesses want free stuff, like adolescents downloading songs they didn't pay for, and then they want to resell it for a profit adding the least amount of value (and hence work/cost) they can get away with.
So this guy, like everyone else in the real world of business, doesn't care about the openness of the source. In fact, he doesn't even want the source. He wants the feature set, and he wants it free. Then he can add a couple of trivial functions, repackage it, and sell it (not give it away, because only a fool would do that).
As such, businesses that use open source don't even want the source itself. They would be happier with a fully built assembly that they can just copy to a directory. The businesses do not want to contribute to open source, they want to exploit it so they don't have to hire quality programmers. Actually generating wealth is hard.
Unfortunately, it takes a lot of time and effort to develop quality software. Thus, few good programmers are willing to spend all that time developing quality open source for free. After all, contrary to popular belief, programmers are people too. The 60-80 hours a week they spend coding is time that could have been spent: with family, on the beach, having a hobby, dating, hanging out with friends, etc. Ultimately, any system that requires a lot of hard work and time from individuals without offering any reward to those individuals is not sustainable. College students may have a lot of free time and something to prove, but those of us above 30 don't.
So if you believe in open source, you should think about what it is you really value: costless software or transparent software. Open source can work as transparent software that costs money, but generally only if it is done with tax payers dollars. For a few situations, this makes sense. It would be good for the government to hire some really good software development company to build an open source electronic voting system. If done right, which it can be, in the long run it would save the tax payers money and make elections more accurate.
In most places, open source does not make sense because individual companies, rather than society, reap the profits. Luckily, there is a far better and more sustainable alternative: inexpensive but high quality software. Think about it. If Tim Berners-Lee got just one penny per year per web server, he would be richer than Bill Gates, and he would deserve to be. If we concentrated our efforts on building an infrastructure that allows a programmer to get a tiny profit from a software module he created from each user, there would be a great incentive to write high quality software modules that are highly compatible with other software and do very useful things.
How would that work? Here's one way. Each assembly (.jar,
Result... The end user costs are very low for these modules, and he never pays twice for the same module. The business user has no cost to use a module in his product and therefore will use the highest quality ones. To quote Toyota, "Quality is free." The creator of high quality
Yeah, I suppose you're right. I guess I was too tired to appreciate the subtlety of his humour.
I don't care why you're posting AC
This really misses the point of software in general, which is that you can duplicate it for free any number of times when you get something that works. That's where the profit comes from in commercial systems - set something up once with some amount of effort, duplicate it a gazillion times and make money on each one. Free software works the same way if you let it. Everyone doesn't have to build the same parts over and over again unless they want to improve things or just enjoy something unique. The painless way to use free software is to find something that already works and copy it exactly. You can do this any number of times and it's still free. Just make sure the hardware is the same on all machines and there is no extra effort or expense to make any number of them work the same.
If this had been in the Onion would you have taken it so seriously?
He is right anyway. I use it, i love it, but oss can get pretty petty. Just look through all the 'my distro can kick your distro's ass' talk in /. and u see.
I love humanity, it is people I hate
BTW, I don't think X is bad either. Nor is it all that precious.
It makes me feel warm and fuzzy whenever I see this type^1 of user dislike Linux. To me it means that one more person capable of believing they can delete the internet from their computer^2 will not be asking me the most stupid fucking questions of all times.
1 An individual that believes double clicking on "their" icon is using a computer.
2 Usually referred to as a "hard drive" by this type of user.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
- thermaldynamics - thermodynamics is a word, thermal dynamics is two words - and I imagine you meant the other.
- teh - I know, the IRC-style spelling is popular here at
/. but it seems a poor choice for a purported NASA rocket scientist ...
- relase - letter dropping, to match the name dropping?
I'm cool with a claim of authority, but then I claim you ought to take the time to write it right. Mmmkay?Hmmm. Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
I Care about any desktop theme. Get over it. I use my
box for software development (I can't wait for my Nokia 770 to show up, I've got the development kit loaded and I wrote
an app to test). I also use my box for creating family videos. Kino is great and my Cannon Elura 70 works great
with it. Blender... heck what an excellent 3D Animation tool. And network hacking on a Linux box is a piece of cake.
Nessus, nmap, kismet.
The guy who put up the post regarding this must have had his windoqze box gpf one too many times.
The point is, I dislike X as much as the next guy, but the operand size prefix certainly doesn't count as a whole separate instruction. That's not the source of X's slowness.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
whenever i cant find a linux driver, i use ndiswrapper, and ive never had an issue. maybe he should try that too
Were you honestly surprised that the default (Microsoft) drivers did not include those for an Apple keyboard? That seems a teensy bit disingenuos of you.
Hmmm. Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
This is a neat-o point of view, at freedom means being allowed (by your superiors) to do things that they have prescribed as acceptable. Rock on!
Would you buy a car that had the hood welded shut because they were kind enough to supply you with a couple extra holes in your gas-door for oil, transmission fluid, etc?
Or even better, we can take the ingrediants lists and nutrition labels off the food. If our Masters tell us it's what we want to eat then it's our duty to eat. Besides, whatever it is they're putting in there sure makes me want MORE! Not to mention the shakes I get if I don't get it every few days...
You may think I'm trolling with that analogy, but it's all too apt. I don't remember if the NSA_KEY bit back in WinNT 3.5(?)SP3(?) was a hoax, but that's just the kind of danger that closed source represents. If you don't know what the computer is doing with the information you give it (even worse, when you're not ALLOWED to know), then feed it with all kinds of personal and financial information, well, that's just foolish. It's just like depantsing bending over for a stranger that comes up to you and tells you that he's a proctologist, and that you need an exam, but you're not allowed to see his credentials. He IS wearing a doctor's coat tho...
Here comes the choo-choo!!!
Learn about something called sarcasm. It's one of the greatest comic devices and something sorely lacking in American culture.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Otto Z. Stern is a director at The Institute of Technological Values - a think tank dedicated to a more moral digital age. He criticizes the fact that planes don't fly faster without stopping to think why that is. He criticizes the people that promote opensource. He criticizes opensource, while doing it in a way that seems to say opensource is linux. Open sourced includes a lot more things than that. After all of the insults, the article states he is a director at a think tank dedicated to a more moral digital age. There is a difference between insulting and informing on the negative aspects and, apparently, he does not know it.
Well put!
'Most' people don't care how their computer works (just like most don't care how their car works). They just want it to work... every time.
Indeed, most programmers I know don't care how some stuff works. They're happy to use previously-built libraries in their programs, without ever once asking to see the source code. I would be terribly surprised if Linux programmers were different, as a whole.
Saying that things should always be transparent (in whatever sense of the word) so that people can always see everything about them is absurd. It wouldn't surprise me if you could look around your office/home/wherever-you-are right now and find 10 things, about which you have no idea of their construction, use, components, etc.
My point is that I never needed to take all those physics classes to use a light switch.
It was self-built machine. And it was not a question of computer not recognizing the keyboard. It recognized it just fine. Linux worked right away, and it even worked in GRUB! W2K was the only piece of the computer which would not work with the keyboard automatically. So I would chalk this one as a Windows-problem and not hardware-problem.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Sometimes I think these things get raised once in a while just to keep the Open Source term popular. Open Source is much less strong, conceptually speaking and in terms of future-proofing, against proprietary software than Free Software is. Free Software is about principles, which will never change, while Open Source is just about economics which can be changed with a price drop in proprietary software. As it stands, about 2 thirds or 3 quarters of open software is GPL'd Free Software, not Open Source. We really should refer to it as Free Software, if we're too lazy to use terms like FOSS. So, articles like this are harmful to us. Please be more careful, and at least use the term FOSS. (FLOSS isn't so good, because it isn't a unique word for search engines, if people want to find out what we're talking about).
I find it incredibly funny that all the slashdotters here are far to wound up in their own little defensive worlds to spot a joke when they see it. The Reg runs Otto Stern and Verity Stob and numerous other "joke" stories from time to time as a break from the us from the normal monotony of the usual *real* corporate attacks on Linux etc.!! Get a life. Col
Wasn't that taken down a long time ago?
Think of someone with average intelligence. Now think 1/2 the world is dumber than that guy.
Open Source software always works for me, I've never had a problem with it. I find that (in Windows XP) Open Source is "just as good" and more stable than what comes from Redmond (in theory Redmond, in most cases it was written elseware). There were some buggy Linux printer drivers a few years ago, but the ones that I use at home on my 7 computers (and Ubuntu Linux)in the past two years, are not buggy, and often do a better job imaging than the ones that Windows uses. The only real "bug" in Ubuntu (that I have found)is installing the printer drivers (they might have changed that in this release)--they don't install "like Windows" and not quite like the GUI indicates.
John W....
Sounds like a great student project for someone in political AI.
It's not a _MAGICAL_ keyboard. It's just a USB keyboard. So it happens to be made by Apple, so what? And the point was that it required several reboots to get something like keyboard to work! And it took several reboots to get it working again after switching the port it was connceted to!
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.