Slashdot Mirror
North Korea's Home-Grown Operating System Mimics OS X
CambodiaSam sends the latest on "Red Star OS," North Korea's attempt at a home-grown operating system. Previously, it had closely resembled Microsoft Windows, but a new update now strongly mimics Apple's OS X.
"Despite living in a country very much shut off from the outside world, many people in North Korea do have access to technology - including mobile phones. However, devices are heavily restricted. Internet access, for instance, is locked down, with most users able to visit only a handful of sites mostly serving up state-sponsored news. The Red Star OS is peppered with North Korean propaganda, and its calendar tells users it is not 2014, but 103 — the number of years since the birth of former North Korean leader Kim Il-sung. An earlier version of Red Star OS was made available worldwide in 2010 after a Russian student posted it online. The latest version is believed to have been released some time in 2013."
Are we really any different? All hail the Unix gods.
Day 1: It wouldn't stop, the redirecting. At first I thought it was malware. Had my first drink in a long time.
Day 2: Barely had the strength to carry on as the BETA REDIRECTIONS continue.. trying not to talk to hallucinations at the bar and in the bathroom which laugh at me about these redirections.
Day 3: Discovered the BETA redirections were random, and while at first they looked somewhat usable, when I looked at me and my monitor screen in the mirror, a horrible woman with flesh hanging off of her body looked back, trying to lead me into a dance as the word BETA appeared across her rancid breasts.
Day 4: These BETA corridors go on FOREVER! On the plus side, I've taken up disassembling vehicles to corner this BETA beast and sacrifice myself rather than lead others to discovering it. I ate some red snow.
Day 5: Finding it harder to concentrate. I've ate some more of the red snow. The taste is starting to grow on me.
Day 6: This typewriter is the only entertainment I have, apart from throwing things at the walls, trying to get some response from the BETA which is now taking over my mind.
Day 7: Hahahahahha! Would you believe it? I'M STILL BEING REDIRECTED TO SLASHDOT BETA PAGES! AHAHhahahaah! Type, type, ding, ding! Wooo!
Day 8: The hallucinations are actually real! Would you believe it? They have offered to help me if I agree to work for them. I'm thinking about patenting this delicious red snow, the taste is unreal!
Day 9: Having black out sessions where I cannot remember large passings of time. Found some makeup, thought I'd paint a joker smile on my face to amuse the people only I can see!
Day 10: Productive today, part of what I wrote for my new screenplay:
I cannot opt out of Slashdot BETA!
I cannot opt out of Slashdot BETA!
I cannot opt out of Slashdot BETA!
I cannot opt out of Slashdot BETA!
I cannot opt out of Slashdot BETA!
I cannot opt out of Slashdot BETA!
I cannot opt out of Slashdot BETA!
I cannot opt out of Slashdot BETA!
I cannot opt out of Slas
(drops of blood on paper)
FUCK beta a second time
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
Why does the roman alphabet kerning always look off in East Asian implementations. It's always bothered me on Japanese pages, but Korean too?
Set your phasers on "funky"!
It's worth noting that an important part of the culture that the kims enforced on north korea is "self reliance". Everyone is taught from a very young age that you can't depend on foreigners, and that everything should be produced in country. It makes sense, even without the massive censorship, that they'd do this whereas, say, China wouldn't.
*NB this is an understanding I've mostly gained from reading the axis of evil tour, not from expertise or in-depth sociological research
Gosh, an OS that mimics another GUI? Would never happen in the 'west'?
There was an unknown error in the submission.
If not, Dear Leader is going to get some serious f-bombs dropped on him by Linus and Richard.
Buy your next Linux PC at eightvirtues.com
Looks like someone confused an OS with a WindowManager again.
\kids these days
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Home grown Linux distro maybe. It looks more like they slightly altered elementary OS or Pear OS, applied an OS X theme and replaced the standard dock with cairo-dock. I would be surprised if they had the resources to write an entire OS from scratch.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
Are you suggesting that Tim Cook is about to lose an uncle?...
http://classic.slashdot.org/ ftw
So what is it, really? A pirated copy? Based on Windows? OSX? Linux? Something unique?
It's about a dictatorial regime imposing a new version of its software on what it sees as a captive population of users, with a generic new user interface obviously copied from somewhere else.
Oh sorry, you meant Red Star, not Slashdot Beta! No idea. Looks like Linux.
imo soon /. with their beta design, will create a mass exodus of users and the end game is a ghost town like Kuro5hin, if any of you remember it.
North Korea is hardly unique in using alternative calendars. Japan uses dates based on the emperor's reign. You can set windows to use it.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
for a limited time only, per the announcement.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
I propose that we boycott stories and only discuss the abomination that is Slashdot Beta.
Moderators - only spend mod points on comments that discuss Beta
Commentors - only discuss Beta
Keep this up for a few days and we may finally get the PHBs attention.
http://slashdot.org/?nobeta=1 also works, if it bugs out like it did for me and there isn't a sidebar or footer.
Everything is better with chainsaws.
I'm pretty sure the OS was made public back in 99, not 2010 as has been misreported by this article.
1. judged over a period of time to be of the highest quality and outstanding of its kind.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
Instead, its going to look like somenobody's blog
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
I think it's funny how they mock the N. Korean government for presenting Kim Il Sung as a god and yet they are all too happy with their year 2014 that pushes some ordinary human being, who may not have even existed
...and who, if he did exist, was born a few more than 2,014 years ago in any case. :-)
Fuck you, slashdot, for taking away classic.
Brave Sir Robin ran away. ("No!") Bravely ran away away. ("I didn't!")
For me, it looks like an old KDE skin.
A distro that uses gnome + cairo dock or similar as primary desktop is now mimicking OS X as something new and world-shaking? In the login you probably could choose to boot a desktop that mimic Windows 7, Solaris CDE, OLPCs Sugar, or KDE (whatever it mimics). And that happens in most other linux distributions too, the horror!
I scanned through both FAs, but I fail to see "xenophobic fear" or mocking regarding the DPRK's year 103. What are you guys talking about?
Dark Reflection
1) Not sure why you're that worried about it, it seems to be to be just a comment, like one odd thing that they saw.
2) Mild irony, for Taiwan it is also year 103. Go to any Post office, official office, or even read an expiration date on an item you just bought. Why 103? Sun-Yat-Sen and Chinese Democracy. Yes, Chinese democracy wasn't just a bad Guns and Roses album, but a real thing, at least until outside forces messed with it. And like you had year 10 of the Qing Dynasty here, now you have year 103 of the era of democracy. So, they at least are honoring the democratic era of mainland China.
#3803. You've been at slashdot for more than a while. What is your view of beta Slashdot?
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
You must be confused and offtopic. Today's comments are dedicated to saying fuck BETA.
"Despite living in a country very much shut off from the outside world, many people in North Korea do have access to technology - including mobile phones."
I keep seeing this claim, that "many" people have cell phones. This is a country where 10% of the population have a landline. North Korea claims they have 1 million cell phone subscribers, but really, do you believe that?
Even if it were true, that's about four percent of the population, which does not fit any dictionary definition of "many" I have ever seen.
Please help metamoderate.
developer on a payroll
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
#3803. You've been at slashdot for more than a while. What is your view of beta Slashdot?
From what I've read here, my view is "I'd like to avoid it if at all possible". If I can temporarily try it, and revert (and complain) if it really sucks, I might try it just to make sure they haven't "improved" it as much as, say, nbcnews.com has "improved" recently.
Surely this is based on some Linux simulation of OS/X, can anybody identify it?
I find it hard to believe NK took KDE and modified it themselves to look like OS/X, rather than basing it on work already done.
#3803. You've been at slashdot for more than a while. What is your view of beta Slashdot?
From what I've read here, my view is "I'd like to avoid it if at all possible". If I can temporarily try it, and revert (and complain) if it really sucks, I might try it just to make sure they haven't "improved" it as much as, say, nbcnews.com has "improved" recently.
Tried it. It hasn't "improved" quite to the the extent of nbcnews.com, but it's definitely an "improvement" in that sense. (More shiny, less useful; too many big pictures. I'm waiting for headlines like "15 ways to improve your .Net skills" or "5 weird ways LISP can simplify your code" or....)
THANK YOU.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
"Previously, it had closely resembled Microsoft Windows, but a new update now strongly mimics Apple's OS X."
Sounds like it was written by the Gnome developers.
Why change for the sake of change? Why are site visitors to be forced into something awful and unwanted? The new beta is awful. There is no other way to put it. If I am forced into the beta I will simply leave - forever.
from ubuntu to every other feces of the month linux distro
I visited it today for the first time in ages. Still sucks. Masses of wasted screen space. Surely it's possible to create a portal that converts the beta to the classic style?
soylentnews.org
Let's not overstate the quality of the "classic" interface. The fact that it still barfs over unicode and HTML is unforgivable. And after you submit a message, you are left in limbo, without a button to get back to where you were. And the browser back button method results in a "are you sure you want to resubmit this form" dialog!
Lets not get misty eyed over an old interface just because it's familiar.
The new beta looks like a bad case of ReCode (recode.net) envy to me.
In a Monty Python movie you'd now qualify for a free flight off the cliff, you know that, right?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Just hit up SlashBI. You're welcome.
Oh sure. But improvements dont need to come at the cost of readability.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
. . . in both eye-sockets.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Just hit up SlashBI.
The goggles, they do nothing!
Those issues should be fixable without a major redesign.
In the beta, is there any way to see if your posts have been replied to and quickly get to those replies? You know, like reddit had 7 years ago.
This is the first time in ages I've actually logged on to comment. I just want it on the record in my own name how much the Beta site hurts. I mean, after all these years, I've just finally gotten used to all the faults and boom! Here comes a whole new set of awful. I'll take a well-tuned slant six Dodge over an oil leaking, off-idle stumbling, lemon of a [insert disfavored auto brand here].
I rather enjoy the fact that almost none of the higher moderated comments have anything to do with the story itself and rather about Slashdot Beta. Goes to show how much people hate what this will do to Slashdot.
Account abandoned. I can't fucking spell for shit and Slashdot doesn't even allow time-limited edits of posts. Plus you'
Good on ya, mate. Keep this thread on topic. BETA is teh sux0r!
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Where can we get a copy?
I have been a regular visitor to Slashdot for around 15 years. For that, I get the checkbox to disable ads, though I browse with Javascript disabled so my browser does not slow down.
I come here for the discussions, and often read comments at +5, changing that only if I find a discussion interesting and warrants reading at a lower level.
The new beta uses JQuery for the comment threshold selector, and changes that on the fly. This means all the comments are loaded, but not visible, and processing any page with considerable number of comments will slow down MY computer! If I have a few tabs open to read later, my computer will be unusable.
If they insist that I enable Javascript to browse the site at the threshold I want, then they will lose me as a long time. I imagine that others long timers will hate the site too.
Dice have to remember that this site has two unmatched features, interlocked: a moderation system that is good at cutting down the trolling, spamming, and noise, and a comment section that is frequented by many people who are passionate about technology and other nerdy stuff.
If they manage to aggravate a lot of their users, the comment section will no longer be attractive to the audience. Perhaps we should revive kuro5hin?
I wrote the above in a feedback form that I filled a while ago, and I am emailing this comment to their feedback@slashdot.org.
Please send them feedback too.
And mod this up so Dice can see what they are getting themselves into.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
Oh gawd ... I had no idea what the flap was all about. That is fscking brutal.
[ ... ]
I had to go back and take another look - like slowing down to see a fatal accident. It's still brutal.
Going to the mobile site redirects to http://classic.slashdot.org/ on my phone and a desktop browser. I can't see them pushing the beta view on mobile users, but stranger things have happened.
[17] Leary, T., White, C., Wood, P. R., Bhabha, W. D., and Wirth, N. Lambda calculus considered harmful. In Proceedings
And we have our own brainwashing to content with. I mean, really, blue pill or red pill? Most want to taste that juicy steak, even if it does not really exist. I applaud them for at least trying to develop their own OS. I could say, 'life is shit in North Korea', if not for the fact that the so-called dear leaders in my corner of the globe seem to be taking diligent notes on how things are run in North Korea and then applying it here. Sure not all at once, but bit by bit, we're getting there. So ronerrryyyyyyyyyyy
"SO we bide our time, waiting for a purer kick to bloom and the future is still bleak, uncertain and beautiful" -GSYBE
as opposed to eating dog food elsewhere?
So -- tell us. Are you this quick witted or did you have to think a moment to come up with this perfect reply.
No, I just chuck this stuff out there without too much thought - much like the Slashdot Beta development process.
What the fuck did I just see?!
I think my brain is bleeding.
The Mac App store is only another method of reaching apps. You can still download and install anything you want off the Internet. Gatekeeper is easily overridden too. Plus, you can muck about with the software on various levels using Terminal and other tools. It's more of a case of shutting off low-level access to people who don't have the patience to read a few guides and/or don't know what they're doing. Also, since Darwin is open source, there are a lot of third-party kernel extensions installable. The hardware for both Macs and iOS devices is repairable, if iFixit is anything to go by, although modifiability is an issue with the smaller laptops, and near-impossible with the phones and tablets, but not a lot of people are going to mod phones, and you can order the laptops at higher tech-specs. What you said about software is mostly true for iOS, but then again, who's going to mod a mobile OS? The iOS App Store's selection of apps covers most things anyway.
I'm sure its GPL since its tax payer sponsored...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Those issues should be fixable without a major redesign.
You'd have thought. Yet here we are more than a decade later, and after a couple of changes of management, with a few new features implemented, but none of these fundamental flaws in the classic UI addressed.
Haha... *exactly* the same thing.
For the record, most scholars think Jesus really did exist -- even the ones who don't believe in the sky daddy.
Yeah, I can see the long forgotten gospel of Kim surfacing in the unicorn cave: Jesus slapped the Jewish people around, closed the boarders, set up internment camps for political enemies, declared himself "dear leader", killed people who crossed him, and then used his huge-ass finger to wind the clock of the ancient world so that year zero was his birthday. And then crucified himself. All the while, Claudius was eating Sheppard's pie, and planning the century of humiliation with Queen Victoria's great^100 grand mother.
It's forgotten history!!! Who are you to say that it didn't happen!!!
*exactly* the same thing. (face-palm.)
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
I love it that they made the 3 top left window buttons look like Kim Jong Ill's glasses. Aww
I wasn't referencing the linked articles, but commenting on the summary.
The term "propaganda" may have inoccuous roots, but clearly holds a sinister connotation and it is juxtoposed in the same sentence with the bit about the North Korean year. This is the xenophobic fear mongering I was referencing.
"Xenophobic fear mongering" just seems too strong a term. Maybe a little mocking.
Dark Reflection
You know what was great about Slashdot classic? I could browse it at work and raise no suspicions. You know what sucks about Slashdot Beta? It looks just like all the other sites I CANNOT BROWSE AT WORK WITHOUT RAISING SUSPICIONS. Fuck!
Actually, it's been Unicode aware since forever. In fact, may years ago you could use Unicode with aplomb.
What happened was due to repeated abuse of Unicode that screwed up page layout, the site uses a very strict whitelist of acceptable Unicode characters.
Paste in a text snippet from any article that uses smart quotes, and you get alphabetti spaghetti. Same if you use the UKP currency symbol.
Those are not possibly excluded due to abuse. And even if they were, displaying a string of random characters is not a rational way of having a whitelist.
Your explanation makes no sense.
As it appears, this is based off of/is a Linux distro.
Nothing home grown about it.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
Just name it 'Kimix' - after the Kims
Instead, its going to look like somenobody's blog
You're giving beta WAY too much credit. Most blogs don't hurt my eyes anywhere near as much as beta did the one time I didn't manage to avoid it.
Looks like a Duck but cracks like windoz.