Slashdot Mirror
Linux on Dilbert
maxm wrote in to
tell us that the series of
Dilbert Stripts Featuring Linux is
running this week on their website. Everyone and their brother
submitted this when it was on paper last week, now the rest
of us can read them.
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
So there's a java applet that says "Requires Pentium II". So I think, "Intel bigots. My UltraSparc can smoke your Pentium". But then, the thing is butt slow, and kills Netscape. So, is it possible to optimize a java applet to a particular architecture?
Scott Adamns has repeatedly stated that he's "sold out". He's also repeatedly stated that he's "not stupid". Idealism is for idealists, the workplace is reserved for contractors.
My mum can cope with linux fine. She's not stupid, but she's a doctor, not a computer specialist. Even so, I reckon most Moms could cope with at lease being a linux user, not necessarily a linux administrator ( i.e. root user), or a linux installer*. A properly configured linux desktop, with eveything the user should need on it, is usable by people with an IQ of only 100, not just us people with 180+ IQs
*Of course, a redhat single-boot workstation installaton onto a virgin PC with no OS installed could hardly be called difficult, these days along the lines of hit enter -hit enter - hit enter - and it doesn't reboot your system some silly amount of times. The installation usually only gets tricky when it comes to making a dual-boot system on a computer with windoze pre-installed - and my Mom managed that, by herself, admittedly with the help of partition magic. Why my Mom wanted to install linux in the first place is another story - but I think she was just curious.
"Competitionkeeping"? Hmm. Reminds me of warmongering^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hpeacekeeping :-)
In the end, Dilbert is just a cartoon. It was never meant to be a serious attack on management, but a way for SA to vent the sort of frustration that we all have when dealing with the morons in management. And despite the Dilbert-flavored corporate training kits and such, there are other more subversive Dilbert gimmicks, such as the Dilbert Zone blockers list that skewers companies that have set their proxy servers to screen out requests for the Dilbert web site. Then again, that might be self-serving, too.
If UF did it on Sunday, I guess it's a case of UF copying Dilbert, which would be nothing new.
Tried pulling up the page on an UltraSparc using Star Office 5.0...
consistently dies. Netscape has no problem with
it though.
Actually, I think they should be called FUDkeeper missles, but then I guess most of the general public wouldn't have got the joke.
When in doubt use cypherpunks:
user: cypherpunks
pass: cypherpunks
Hey, I'm an idealist too then!
I have a p2-366 and it still says check system requirements.
That's not Gates! That's Jerry Springer!
Though there isn't a lot of substance there to cover
Only 13 total episodes were ordered for 1st season.
How many people have died of AIDS? How many people have died in floods? How many people have died in famines? How many people have died in nuclear wars?
His wasn't the specious argument.
I guess "smileyy" doesn't reflect your demeanor
And the folks from Redmond aren't? C'mon; Linux users have a reason to be happy: there is now an affordable operating system that frees them from the whim of Mr. Gates.
I totally agree. Read "The Trouble with Dilbert"
by Norman Solomon. (You can find it off Google).
Dilbert is a cynical placebo and I'm sickened
by his attempt. (Never mind the bogus theory of
memetics mentioned. )
Remember the Enterprise in the anti-matter universe that the Star-Trek crew got caught in? Well that's what Gates is commander of! Notice the two-piece on the evil Uhuru in the background; she's not wearing the standard cheerleader outfit!
FYI:
Looking back at last week's strips, it appears that the Dilbert Zone will be featuring another Linux (GNU/Linux?) related strip tomorrow.
This has been my favorite link for getting the daily dilbert (and a handfull of others).
:-( And the ads do really suck, since they are mostly for car dealerships 3000 miles from where I live.
The excercise is to get the dilbert link to give you the page without first linking through the Sacto Bee. I've done it a couple of times, but both times my hacks stopped after a couple months. Now I just click on through.
I like seeing the VRML Dilbert scripts with an GPL'ed plugin. I'm writing one myself which is still in a very early stage. Does anyone knows where can I download a Dilbert script .wrl file for testing purpose? Or knows what nodes are used in the scripts featured at the Dilbert site?
I have two "Moms" in my office and they have never ventured away from word or IE. Even Excel is scary for them. By setting them up on Xwin/Netscape/Wordperfect at least I dont have to waste my time showing them how to Reboot three times a day
What I liked seeing was the introduction of linux as being Dilbert's mom's OS of choice. Maybe this will help expel some of the Redmond FUD (like the recurring MSNBC/Slate/etc. articles which continually trash linux as a viable desktop OS).
What FUD? My mother, let alone my grandmother would be scared $hi+less by Lunix. It is NOT ready for prime time as a desktop OS. EOS.
Speaking of Dilbert, anyone know why there have already been 3 reruns on 2 months? This is getting annoying...
That would discredit Linux once and for all!
Hmm...his mom has shown clueness in the past. I say Slackware.
I've found that since I started watching the series, while reading the strip I hear the actors' voices for the characters. The biggest incongruity is the PHB, since the PHB in the series is mainly clueless, while the one in the strip is more caustic.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
...his moms a linux bigot...that rocks :)
The problem with giving your mom a Linux system is that unless she's comfortable logging in as root and updating various packages when new versions come out --- or if you're going to regularly do this for her --- you're exposing her to a lot of security risk.
See my comment elsewhere on this subject.
That was a good reply to my comment. Please restore it from the pit of -1dom.
Didn't userfriendly have a comic like this on sunday... about microsoft and missles?
I see some copying going around here..
ChiefArcher
The reference is to Peacekeeper missiles and is an example of doublespeak. The point is that MS likes to assert that it must have competition or else it wouldn't have to use hard line tactics.
As a case in point, see the article on CNET in which a MS lawyer uses the following convoluted logic: "Gates's email [which looked for ways to protect he MS-DOS gold-mine against DR-DOS], for instance, directly contradicts Caldera's assertion that Microsoft monopolized the market for computer operating systems." See the slashdot article and the Caldera news release.
"L'IT c'est moi!"
Thank goodness I'm running "raw-and-uncut" else I would have missed this.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
Boink!
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
--
Gates seems to be sitting on the bridge of the Enterprise. I guess that makes him a good guy?
There is no such thing as luck. Luck is nothing but an absence of bad luck.
>Your mom raised you. Give her decent software.
Well, this weekend I set my mother up with a hand-me-down computer running Linux. She has very little computer experience and no MS conditioning, so I figured it would be no harder for her to learn KDE/Netscape/Wordperfect than Win98/IE/MSWord (and cheaper too).
Linux - If it's good enough for Dilbert's mom, it's good enough for yours.
What does he say to the exec, which they want to hear?
Embrace and Extend lead to:
"Peace talks."
lead to a:
"Peacekeeping Mission."
and I hear:
"Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity."
The Dilmom rolls her own. And has been maintaining the same machine (via the occassional dd HD copy) since 0.3!
She is also a regular contributor to the GNOME team, and is the GNOME Recipe Agent project maintainer.
That's funny, my mom uses Linux just fine. So does my 8 year old little brother. Check out: http://www.ultraviolet.org/treed/easy.ht ml
Ah the wonderful British "libel" laws that allow McDonalds to sue anyone who criticizes them. Great.
Subject says it all. Page loads fine. I even emailed the color version to a friend.
Yep, If Dilbert fans know about it. It's mainstream.
Well, I first registered well over a year ago, and despite the fact that they say up front that they can spam you, they never have. At any rate, I forgot my password- which is when someone pointed out that cypherpunk/cypherpunk works there. Now all my machines use that combo. Enjoy it...
IAAL,BIANLY
Who in their wrong mind decided that first-person testimony from a Linux-using mom belonged in the same category as first-posters and worse?
Has MS hijacked all the moderator positions or did somebody click the wrong button while trying to increase the score?
(Katz on C_SPAN I, live, 4/6/99, 6pm EDT)
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Aren't they kept in silos just outside Redmond?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
How many plagues have we had? How many worldwide floods and famines have we had? If you think about it, crediting the peacekeeper missiles with averting nuclear war is just as specious.
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
Or just FUD missiles (FUD rhymes with SCUD) :)
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
It's quite funny how foaming-at-the-mouth Linux users don't realize that "LINUX RULES" emails, etc, actually have a negative effect on people's view of Linux, and Linux users.
It's nice to know that Linux can dig it's own grave.
--
Daniel Baker - dbaker@cuckoo.com - dbaker@distributed.net
Scott Adams loves the use of irony, and Dilmom
is a good example of this. She is highly technical, and often puts Dilbert to shame. The fact that she uses Linux is not surprising at all.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
I find the series absolutly horrible. It tries to turn Dilbert into the "Simpsons" and often tries to force humor, and ends up not being funny. Plus it started repeating after only four or five episodes.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
Synidicated comic strips have something like a 6-week lead time. Also, the strips on "DilbertZone" ran in the newspapers two weeks prior. There is no way that Scott Adams could have stolen that idea from UF. I don't know what kind of lead time Illiad has, but doesn't he run in a couple of Newspapers?
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
Since when is Dilbert about social change? If it was it would run on the editorial page, not the "Funnies" page in the entertainment section.
(Well my moronic newspaper runs Dilbert on the business page, but I think that's the exception)
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
Why does Slackware equal cluefulness? I never
found it particularly difficult to install, just lacking in features, like a good package management tool.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
Why does Slackware equal cluefulness? I never
found it particularly difficult to install, just lacking in features, like a good package management tool.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
Another distro Jihad...
got Slack?
0 1 - just my two bits
This assumes a few things.
/. if my NYTimes password were ever to be known. Really.
1: That you gave them your actual snail address
2: That you gave them your actual email address
3: That you gave them a real phone number
And anybody who's afraid of cookies should really be worrying about what the black helicopters are picking up from their phone lines.
I know, that i personally would never be able to show my face again on
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
If you sign yourself up with NY Times OnLine, which is free, you can read Dilbert in sync with the dead trees.
You can get a raw AP news feed too. I recommend it.
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
Saw it monday.
This is just more of Scott Adams grabbing onto a geek meme, using it to further his strip, and selling us out to make money preserving the status quo.
What interest does Scott Adams have in improving the geek workplace, despite what his books might say? Without stupid managers creating all the problems he makes fun of, he has very little to write about.
Scott Adams is selling us out to management, and then throwing us a little scrap of meat to keep us from revolting.
pooptruck
UF isn't pointing out the follies of the tech workplace while doing it's damnedest to perpetuate them.
Scott Adams is like a weapons merchant selling guns to both sides in a war. He tells the execs what they want to hear, tells the peons what they want to hear, makes it a bit funny, and then rakes in the cash.
pooptruck
-- ultra1
No it's called "optimized" or "scalable" content it's intel's push to make the "web more fun with a pentium 3 processor". It's a marketing gimick pure and simple, they are trying to convince you to buy yet another processor to keep you on the nice 18 month cycle they have you on.
b
Or, you can hit the Sacramento Bee comics page -- no registration required at all.
Viewing the comics without the ad frames is left as an exercise to the reader.
I would like to see the "Pointy Haired Boss"
introduce linux into the office.
>That would discredit Linux once and for all!
Indeed it would! UP WITH IRIX!
Well said. Of course saying that "[insert favorite competitor here] sucks" has the same effect. Maybe someday open source as a whole will actually realize this.
--
What interest does Scott Adams have in improving the geek workplace
Umm, lets see...
For quite a while, Scott Adams drew his material from his job! He knows what it is like. He got fired from the job he was at when he started the strip, but if he has a new job, I doubt that all the problems with management have gone away. OF course, it is possible that he makes enough money off Dilbert and associated merchandise that he doesn't have another job.
You must have been treated pretty bad by some people if you can't believe that someone can empathize with you and want to make your life a little better by giving you some laughs. Just because he gets monetary compensation for his efforts doesn't meant that he can't empathise with the geek. You have to remember that, at least when he started the strip, he was one!
-Cheetah
Hmm... just wandered over to that site... :P~ ) :P
Using my Celeron 464Mhz box... (
And it doens't load? All my IE5 'Security' (ha! ha!) things check out... what the smeg is up with this? I demand the kidneys of the programmer
He seems to have an excellent grasp of the mindset and behavior of new Linux users.
Vidi, Vici, Veni
jeez, lighten up man. there is obviously a demand for tech humor... if you dont like it, dont read it!
"All that glitters is not gold"
Pardon my ignorance, but what are you talking about?
So, does this applet actually require that much horsepower, or is there some Java function to find out what type of processor it's running on? Somehow, given Intel's track record, I'd tend to suspect the latter.
Weblogging Considered Harmful:
It won't even TRY with my K6-2 300. It says "Oops, check requirements" which list a P166+. Yeah, I can swing that. To the other person, at the bottom of the page is a link to a "Comic Viewer" or something like that.
Hmm, maybe it just hates non-MS OSes.
Scott Adams is an idealist. His ideal is that he gets lots of money. If you want to know how he thinks, read everything Dogbert says.
http://www.sfbg.com/News/31/33/Opinions
it's an opinion piece written by Tom Tomorrow, of This Modern World fame. quite insightful.
-neil
Nice to see Dilbert keeps up with the latest thoughts out there (well this thread isn't exactly a recent occurence).
So, how many nuclear wars have we had since building the Peacekeeper missiles?
Hmm, I guess they worked.
-- Alastair
The subscriber agreement specifically says they reserve the right to advertise their own products to you, and the right to sell your info to other advertisers is opt-out, not opt-in. Sorry, no dice.
Furthermore, I get my news from Rueters, a British news agency with British libel standards for telling the truth (i.e. it's libel if it's not the truth, regardless of circumstances). I don't let AP parrot the latest spin at me. Rueters is free on Yahoo; they don't require so much as a cookie. (Cookies are required on NYT.)
So I'll simply wait a week for my Dilbert. It's not like it's the end of the world. Besides, I'm trying to show the world how TO do engineering, not how NOT to.
--
Linux - the choice of a GNU generation
What's going on here? How has a mom invaded our club for boy nerds? Who let her in?
:)
If she doesn't leave, I'm gonna have to tell my mom, and if SHE starts posting on slashdot, I'll have to start writing device drivers to feel more secure in my geek status.
-Chris
I've got that cartoon hanging off my computer at work with duct tape dilbert is allmost as good as userfriendly.
either we are networking or we areNT networking
Dilbert is a cartoon - SA just customized it to mainly address management idiocies.
Those idiocies will be around forever - plenty of places recognize that something is wrong, but don't care about fixing it. SA can sell management seminars till the cows come home, not too many will change.
BUT, his ideas on an ideal company (in the last chapter of his first book, the 'OA5' company) was right on. That was a company I would love to work for. That's the writing that keeps me reading Dilbert thru the agressive selling.
"It was me against the world, I was sure that I'd win.... but the world fought back, punished me for my sins" - Social D
Their eye candy "comic explorer IS butt-slow on any platform. They require a PII300, but is still runs pathetically slow on my PII450. They waste a lot of time with really bad animation of the pages truning as you switch between comics. Furthermore, this viewer fails to resize when a Sunday comic is shown.
If you want the exact same content, click on the "4-week Dilbert Archive" link near the top of the "Dilbert Zone" page. Exactly the same content, more rational presentation.
Dilbert is drawn about a month in advance.
?
Ooooh, sounds like you're ready to start a jihad over this.
I just don't understand how you see this. What "weapons" does he sell to managers? He gives the peons a great "weapon", for sure. There's no better way than to point out how stupid a proposed policy is than finding a Dilbert cartoon that pokes fun at it.
How does this help managers?
I don't disagree that if, by some miracle, all management suddenly got a clue, SA would be in trouble. But the reality is that he has nothing to worry about. Stupidity abhors a vaccuum.
--
--
Jason Eric Pierce
I think it's just broken. I have a PII 333 and it told me I didn't meet the requirements. Maybe it's part of some weak April fools joke.
--
--
Jason Eric Pierce
Exactly. It's pretty obvious from the stip that she's superior to Dilbert when it comes to technical proficiency.
--
--
Jason Eric Pierce
Sorry to poke holes in the conspiracy, but it says "Requires 300 MHz Pentium II Processor", not Pentium III. And if you click on the "System Requirements" link, it actually says "Pentium 166+".
--
--
Jason Eric Pierce
I think it had something to do with being a mid-season show that didn't run on a major network.
Hopefully it will pick up now that they've actually decided to keep it for sure.
--
--
Jason Eric Pierce
Besides that I maintain a secondary email address just to give to people I suspect might try to spam me. Those emails I check every couple of weeks or so, just to clear out the account. Most of my software is registered to my spam account, as well as all my other logins around the net.
Of course, seeing the problems my buddy Drew has with email helps to impart a zen attitude towards spam. (he owns an email address that most people use when they are entering a generic nonspam address..) He gets upwards of 40 emails a day that are pure spam, and its actually pretty interesting to see the crap flow in. In fact, he treats it like a sport, counting how many "be a porno webmaster" spams he gets vs how many "buy reconditioned printer gear" spams he gets each day. (porn usually wins) Did you know that Hot Horny Girls want to talk to You? It's True!
Also, I use an ISP in texas as my Primary email drop, and they have a fierce spam filter that keeps the crapola down to two or three a year. (io.com, if you are interested)
--------
Lotek---
It's too bad, too.. Dilbert was a cartoon that could have been great. (like Futureama)
Lotek---
Java applets don't care about specific processors. The bytecodes are for an "imaginary" virtual processor anyway.
I have heard anecdotal reports that the Java interpreter on Netscape for Solaris is a little crashy. I've noticed that Netscape 4.5 on my Linux machine is REAL crashy on some applets.
The "Requires Pentium II" was probably just the banner ad that was next in the queue. It could have just as easily been an ad for Sun, Apple, or Amazon.com.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
This is exactly the reason I boycotted United Media. If they could keep the ADVERTISING where it's supposed to be (in the banners) then I'd have a little respect for them. Meg used to be one of my favourite comics, but when they started plastering advertising (poorly disguised as 'requirements') all over the comics page I stopped going there...
I mean come on, a PII 300 TO VIEW A 16-COLOUR PICTURE?!?!? a 386 can do that!
So?! Who the hell cares? What's wrong with making money?
He provides a great product (humor) and gets paid for it. I have no problem with that. I don't see why folks seem to have such a hard time realizing that making money isn't a bad thing if it's done in an honest fashion.
Unlike Billy-boy.
- =^o.o^=
IMHO sunday's UF was much better then todays dilbert.
nmarshall
#include STD_DISCLAMER.H
R.U. SIRIUS: THE ONLY POSSIBLE RESPONSE
nmarshall
The law is that which it boldly asserted and plausibly maintained..
--Colonel Burr 1783
Pre-packaged installs from OEMS will takecare of that problem all together. Gnome is just as easy as windows. Maybe installing new hardware and what not is a little more difficult for the computer neophyte but hell my mom can't do that on windows anyway, so it really doesn't matter. Everything that would be a problem for mother or grandmother to do ona linux box would still be a problem for them on windows and vise versa would teu as well.
root@localbrain root>ps ax |grep thoughtd
Put it in your computer.
Dilbert Desktop
Moms are fine. Really. And if your mom is using Billware, she'll thank you for helping her migrate. My son (age nearly 21) commandeered my laptop and installed Linux around Christmas time. I used to go into homicidal rages over Word and general NT annoyances. Now my household is calm and peaceful. And I really can update my software. I think similarly configured moms are more common than you think--maybe closer than you think, too.
Your mom raised you. Give her decent software.
I am Dilbert's Mom. I sent it to my partner, who is on her way to becoming Dilbert's Mom.