Slashdot Mirror
Generative Quickies
Time once again to clean up the submissions bin: First up,
Georg C. F. Greve wrote in to tell us that the April issue of Brave GNU Word is up.
As always, we have Linux websites popping up left and right:
Michael wrote in to point us to LinuxPlanet for newbies,
23D sent us linuxartist.org for the non technical folks,
and Popeye wrote in to show us The Linux Lounge for people who I guess want to sit.
President John F. Kennedy wrote in to tell us that Propaganda for E is out if you need awesome (and gigantic) tilable background images.
Frater 219 wrote in to say that ESR has updated the Jargon File to 4.1.1.
Next up, some Slashdot ink:
Shag hooked us up with a story about the Slashdot Effect taking down another site,
Tomalak brought this Article about Slashdot in InternetWorld (thankfully there is no picture)
and cgray wrote in with a link to an article about Jimmy Guterman experiencing the Slashdot Effect- except this one is mostly about the flame.
Newton sent us www.ihatestarwars.com for those of you who are sick of the hype.
jeth gave us a link to special agent Kimble a Flash Movie.
The Wanderer submitted the Dysfunctional Faily Circus in response to last weeks quickie about the Circus reviews in Amazon.
An anonyous reader sent us Goumet Ting's page. It looks exactly like my diet.
I have no idea whether this guy really hates
star wars or not but I do know I've never laughed so hard in my life!
Man.. am i jealous or what.
But love his work, it's really well done. Hey kimble, hope you got well after your car crash (very cool car, very cool jet! and cool pics overall)..
It's annoying as hell trying to relate Slashdot's URL to somebody verbally ..
o rg"
"Aych-tee-tee-pee-colon-slash-slash-slashdot-dot-
.. at which point they look with you with a blank expression that says "Get the FUCK outta here!"
hehe. i was going to write an email bashing him, but it would have been about 12 pages long. That page was the best example of stupidity and anti-logic i've seen in a while. and he paid for his own domain!
speaking of the /. effect, it's hit that gourmet site.
Unfortunately when I went to see the movie I get a javascript error. That's under both IE and netscape, bummer. The opening looks nice though.
Oh, I know all about the folks who kept seeing "Jurassic Park" over and over again: I've always submitted that the only way to have made that damn film tolerable was to dub over the tyrannosaur's roars with Dennis Hopper's dialogue from "Blue Velvet". (Actually, I hear that some lunatic, probably the folks responsible for "Apocalypse Pooh", did this: at the end, the tyrannosaur stands over the remains of the Jurassic Park Reception Station, screaming "I'LL FUCK ANYTHING THAT MOVES, HA HA HA!")
As for "Star Wars" and all its permutations, let's put it this way: George Lucas may have a better special effects budget, but Ed Wood was a much superior writer, director, and producer. The only real difference between the two was that Ed wasn't followed around by feckless fanboys telling him that he was a god.
Cordially,
Paul T. Riddell
The Healing Power of Obnoxiousness:
The Paul T. Riddell Essay Archive
http://www.hpoo.com
"Clubbing Fanboys Like Baby Seals Since 1997"
"went overboard"
Heck the guy went insane.
Speeder bikes are a great idea to get around.
Thing is, one only goes 50kph when you're about
to be shot by the ememy. Otherwise you go about
10kph and never die at all.
Say this
"http" colon slash slash slash dot dot org
now type that
get it?
'/.' doesn't even make much sense in the Unix shell (well, filesystem actually). Well, I guess you could do something silly like /././../etc/./passwd but I doubt whoever wrote the article could parse that...
--
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
HTTP Error 403
403.9 Access Forbidden: Too many users are connected
This error can be caused if the Web server is busy and cannot process your request due to heavy traffic. Please try to connect again later.
Please contact the Web server's administrator if the problem persists.
-------------
dogbert [~] telnet 24.1.112.72 80
Trying 24.1.112.72...
Connected to 24.1.112.72.
Escape character is '^]'.
HEAD / HTTP/1.0
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: Microsoft-IIS/4.0
[...]
-------------
I wish people would consider using real software to serve web content. Following links these days is like enduring eye surgery by way of pointy chunk of plywood. At least use a _tool_ for the job; a flash of the label marked "Fisher Price" isn't a good sign.
" ITWeb recently experienced the dreaded "Slashdot effect", feared by network administrators the world over."
/. effect. LOL.
From the ITWeb story on the
"shop smart:shop s-mart" ash
Uh, what about 5 for $5.00 frozen chinese dinners? Or that venerable staple, the frozen burrito (your fav brand here), perferrably hot, not medium. Oh, yeah, what about 8 for $1.00 ramen noodles? Now, that's gourmet!
"shop smart:shop s-mart" ash
Read the changelogs. Better yet, dig up old versions and check them yourself. "Eric Conspiracy" has had an entry for a long time. In fact, the entry might even date back to GLS's editorship.
I thought it was hillarious that he tacked on a few of the more idiotic e-mails he received.
Sometimes I'm embarrassed by the number of Slashdot kiddies that go to such lengths to show people that they're smarter than they are because they can install Linux.
Instead of flaming and attacking every single Windows user when he describes the issues he had to deal with during the course of his Linux installation, try LISTENING instead. Every single time an article is posted to Slashdot that has a Windows user's take on installing Linux, the idiot Slashdot kiddies come out of the woodwork and thoroughly embarass the rest of us.
He's right: Linux users for the most part tend to agree that the next step in the OS's evolution is to work towards becoming a mainstream OS, replacing the niche that Windows currently holds. If all we do is tell those Windows users that report on their efforts to make that leap that they are idiots, morons or should "learn Unix" first, we do NOTHING to help Linux reach that goal. In fact, not only do we set Linux back, but we give the entire OpenSource community a very bad name.
Wasn't Linux ranked as having the best peer technical support available? So why the hell do we have all of these Slashdimwits telling those in a position to help us immensely that they are "a moron"?
Think about it folks, and remember, if these aren't the types of people we're trying to convert to Linux, who are?
Besides, Chips and Dips is a far older tradition.
yadda
Guterman set out to do one thing: find out how easy it is to setup Redhat Linux on a Windows machine. Why is this key? If Linux is going to "crush Microsoft", it's going to have to do it by converting current users. What he found is that it isn't easy. He gave relatively good reasons why it isn't. Yes, for experienced Slashdotters, it is relatively easy. We know how it works. If something minor goes wrong, we can adjust and fix it. Guterman doesn't care about you. He cares about the other people who can't fix something minor, i.e. the people who use only Windows.
..."
/flood/ of e-mail. He obviously reads /. Let him read your comments.
People basically have been saying, "Well, Windows ext2 support sucks, so thank your lucky stars that any FAT32 support was available at all!" Wrong attitude. You're basically saying that "If Windows doesn't support it, we shouldn't have to be expected to either." The whole reason we like Linux is because it does stuff well, not just because it does stuff better than Windows. If something isn't done well, that's a call to make it work correctly, not say, "Well, look at what Microsoft can't do
I think Guterman was wrong about Partition Magic, though. No operating system should have to include a utility to make it dual boot with another OS. If people want to run more than one OS on their computer, they need to expect to cough up extra for it, not expect it as a feature of their OS's installation setup.
I'd like to see Jimmy do a review of Caldera's new OpenLinux 2.2. His criticism seems much more constructive than it is biting. If there's something painfully wrong with the process, I'm sure he'll point it out a lot faster than a regular Slashdot reader will. Of course, I could give it to my Mom; she'd find it the fastest.
And, finally, what's with everyone clamoring for the man's e-mail address? Hell, the whole point of this latest article was that he received a
There's a very fine line between advocacy and arrogance.
Sorry to be so rude, but I very much agree with the above. And I contend the Linux's FAT32 support blows Windoze's ext2 support out of the water.
:).
/.ers were rude to you, Jimmy. But you're really not acting like you're on top of the situation.
To me, supporting a file system means being able to use it. As in, I have several FAT filesystems mounted right now. Works fine. Has worked fine for a while. Was definitely in RH5.1's kernel (2.0.36? 34? whatever), since I recall installing a friend's system w/it and mounting his FAT32 HD. But can Windoze use an ext2 disk? Or any of the other dozen fs's linux supports? No.
Now partitioning, that's a different issue. You gotta make room for an OS. Linux distro's (w/the recent exception of Caldera, bravo to them) don't generally include PartitionMagic, so you can't generally on-the-fly repartition you windoze machine to install linux. This doesn't surprise me. FAT32 was not at all meant to be dynamically resized. Perhaps there are some FS's that are, but I'm not familiar with any. The guys who wrote PartitionMagic figured out how to do it, and if you want it you can pay (or get Caldera
Can Windows repartition a computer that has only Linux installed to install? No. In fact, it'll probably screw up your MBR as a prize. So why should Linux be able to squeeze Windows out of the way?
You either use PartitionMagic, or leave room beforehand (as I did, and have since I first installed linux lo those many years ago) and you'll be fine.
I'm sorry some
Any what's your bloody email address anyway?
*whacks Royster upside the head*
Don't do that, folks. spinn re-routed the incoming slashdot traffic to his archives, which are on a bigger pipe and where he doesn't get charged for the bandwidth. You'll still get to see the Dysfunctional Family Circus, and spinn doesn't go broke. If you like the place enough to stick around, the regular pages will be back in place soon.
-- Raven
-- Raven
I can understand it to some extent, but there are a couple of things that he said that don't make much sense.
First, he complained of the complexity involved with installing Linux as a second OS on the same box. When someone offered up a suggestion (Partition Magic), he blew it off because it required purchase of another program. You can't just go to sleep at night expecting the Partition Fairy to drop by and do the work for you. He wanted the results, but did not want to make the effort to get them. (And if you've ever used Partition Magic, you know how little effort it really requires. Especially version 4.)
Secondly, he implied that Linux is not free because he chose to spend $50 to purchase a Red Hat retail version. Heck, if he would have stopped by I would have burned him a copy for no charge. (Of course I live in Phoenix, so his travel cost might make the $50 seem reaonable.) Surely he could have found someone in Chicago to burn him a copy. And then he could have applied the $50 toward the purchase of Partition Magic. Free software (beer, speech, whatever) is no less free if you consciously choose to spend $$$ to buy it from somebody.
Jimmy, if you seriously want to test the installation of this OS on the box that currently contains Windows you have two wonderful choices:
1. Install Linux over Windows (aka Windows upgrade)
2. Purchase Partition Magic and make an effort.
I don't doubt your sincerity in wanting to install and run it. But your expectations are a little out of line.
p.s.: If you don't want to buy Partition Magic, you can get Caldera's 2.2 release. It has a limited version of Partition Magic that should work just fine for you.
The only one I noticed was views@vineyard.com. If that isn't him, I'm sure they can get it to him.
Now, blasphemy would be to have a Linux distribution which doesn't install gnuchess/xboard by default. :)
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Quine "quine?
As for resizable filesystems, AIX's filesystem is, sorta. It's more like the Linux logical partition thing (combining multiple partitions together to make one big logical partition), but I believe the individual partitions can be resized. I Am Not An AIX Admin, I just use it at work and have had to see our AIX admin mess around with partitions. :)
Aside from that, I pretty much agree with what's been said. The author of the article doesn't sound like he made much of an effort to understand what/why he was doing. You want an alternative to Windows? Good first step, but for now, learn what you're doing first. Generally it's a good idea to learn how to drive a car before switching from riding a bicycle.
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Quine "quine?
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Quine "quine?
Some people are so much fun. Others...aren't. ;)
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Quine "quine?
How cool is that site, man I wish I could do that. I'm trying to understand whether the guy is for real or not.. I mean does he really own that Jet? Is he really as rich as his web site makes out?
I find it hard to believe that this guy has that much spare time to put together such a nice site. I reckon he probably hired some graphics designers to do it for him.
Oh, dear. Poor SpinnWebe is going to get clobbered hard by the Slashdot Effect. His server has never had a very large pipe, and I fear either he or his provider are going to fall over hard once the hits start swarming in...
Nevertheless, I've been a follower of it for years, and I think it's worth bookmarking The Dysfunctional Family Circus, as well as its companion site, It's A Dysfunctional Life, which is exactly like the DFC, except it uses real-life photos. This one and this one are especially hilarious examples of what you can expect.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
If the IP address above is correct, I checked it too and got something different:
telnet 24.1.112.72 80
Trying 24.1.112.72...
Connected to 24.1.112.72.
Escape character is '^]'.
HEAD / HTTP / 1.0
HTTP/1.0 200 Document Follows
Content-Length: 4378
Content-Type: text/html
Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 03:28:16 GMT
Last-Modified: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 03:26:28 GMT
Server: OmniHTTPd/2.02
Connection closed by foreign host.
Your password has expired, please login to change it.
Amazon took those "Daddy's Cap" reviews down... did anybody save them? The Masonic conspiracy one ROCKED! :)
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
CmdrTaco: More machine now than man -- twisted and evil...
grouptheory@ihatestarwars.com
let the flamage begin...
0 1 - just my two bits
Gee! I guess getting ripped off is a compliment!
"The Linux Lounge" stole its name and theme (beer drinking penguin) from the ORIGINAL EFnet #LinuxLounge (http://www.linuxlounge.org).
DrDev
Who cars? It's funny and Star Wars is waaay over hyped.
Too bad some people don't get DFC, it must be a genetics thing. From what I've seen, the Pokey Gene and the DFC Gene must not be too far apart...
Many of the Amazon reviews were also posted to the alt.fan.spinnwebe newsgroup. If your server doesn't get it, you can check it out on Deja News.
Maybe the Quickies should just use a Chips and Dips inspired icon anyways, and ditch the iVac...
Um, hello?
Not for nothing, but after what happened in CO yesterday, the *last* thing I want to see is a gunman in black, shooting at someone with a semi, while the victim begs for his life.
Even if the victim *is* Bill Gates.
No offense, but I think this one could have waited until next week or something...
-- r0e
big city. small cake. * m e t r o c a k e ! *
I love the speeder bike analysis. This guy
really went overboard.
All you have to do is insert the following code after :
Then use the site manager to enable your geoguides.
Spread the word! Beat up anyone who doesn't submit! (Okay, don't beat anyone up.)
All you have to do is insert the following code after <BODY> on each page:
<!--#geoguide-->
Then click the button to enable geoguides on all your pages.
Spread the word! Offer to make the change _for_ people just so you won't have to suffer!
If you don't see angle brackets, cut me some slack; I'm having some trouble previewing this.
Damn, I was getting set for a good set of anti-Star Wars rants, but despite a couple of interesting points, as I read through it seemed like he was getting more crazy and irrational. I thought, is this just flamebait? But no then you find he's a religious fanatic too. He's not just pretending he's a nut, he really is a nut.
The site he links to is really funny, though... it's worth looking at (even though it is on *goddamn* *geocities* *with* *their* *goddamn* *fuckedup* *pop-up* *ads*):
The Force=Satan
My take on Star Wars: the first movie was obviously a breakthrough, the second movie was saved only by the Leigh Bracket script, the third was very uneven, and not really worth much... the "special effects as star" concept was already getting really tired. And speaking of racism in Star Wars: I was really pissed that the one strong black character that was introduced in the second movie was literally turned into a spear carrier in the third.
I will probably go see the new movie, but I don't expect much from it. Certainly not after seeing those shots in the last issue of Wired... it looks like we're in for some really dorky, ugly aliens this time around, even worse than Jim Henson's crap.
And as for any religious implications of the Force... in the real world, you may notice that power falls into the hands of both the good and the bad, and guns work no matter who pulls the trigger. If that doesn't contravene the existence of god, than neither does positing a black and white magic. If you really want to look for something to be upset about, I might suggest "Raiders of the Lost Ark", in which Jehova is turned into a special effect.
He's taken down the page. But, you can get to the actual cartoons with a different URL. Try this. There are navigation icons on the page.
/. effect. Bwa ha ha ha!
No one can escape the
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
Ouch! I probably deserved that.
/me slinks off into a corner.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
Am I just blind? I can't find the guy's e-mail address. He brings up a few points I'd like to respond to him about, but can't find anything for feedback.
And call me dumb, because I didn't reference the story I was refering to. Anyway, does anybody know Jimmy Gutterman's e-mail address?
I've already emailed ESR about this... but it is telling that while OSI enjoyed a hyperlink in the Jargon File, and open source had an entry, the FSF had an entry but not a hyperlink and "free software" has not even an entry.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
I tell people about this cool site at "slashdot period org". If they're not geeky enough to figure out the "http://" part, they won't enjoy the site.
Wow. That was a crazy sequence. I cannot believe someone spent that much time on that animation. Pretty impressive for Flash. And it _worked_ under Linux. I am impressed.
Although the theme was a little lame -- how many anti microsoft things have we seen lately?
-tbd
ihatestarwars.com is pretty foolish, but there's a slightly similar thing here which I thought was hysterical. This one is of course tongue-in-cheek - I doubt anyone who could get seriously worked up about the evils of Star Wars would have the wit to argue their case well.
Okay, the site was sort of funny, especially all the work he did on the odds of surviving a speederbike ride. But I was so disappointed on the morality bit. All he did was rehash the (much funnier) rant from Clerks.
This sort of thing will probably go over reallllly well around September or so when everyone and their mom has seen PM six times.
Then again, my friends and I never got tired of Jurassic Park the summer it came out.
"Dude, I'm bored."
"JP starts at the buck theatre in 20 minutes."
"That's what we did last night...OK, let's go."
-"I talked to God and here's the deal/ He said to floss between each meal" -- Uninvited
I liked his site too, but...
:D
anyone I know that has money doesn't have to take pictures around all the things they own, because it's no big deal to them that they own it... because they have so much money.
As an example, a friend of mine got accepted to a college his parents wanted him to get in to, and because he went there his parents bought him a $1.3 million house on a golf course 10 minutes from the school (the house is under his name). He has 4 very nice cars (NS-X, Mercedes, etc) and gets $15,000 per month allowance on top of that for spending money.
All that and he doesn't have a single picture of himself with a single thing he owns. Because none of it is a big deal to him.. he's used to it.
By the way, he is about the most miserable person I know... nothing to look forward to. Quite sad if you think about it.
--SONET
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do. --Benjamin Franklin
I thought "slashdot" refered to the http:///..org, not the /. in Unix commands, as the above article asserts.
I'm sure everyone's noticed the email where the webmaster mocks some guy for poor spelling. Anyway, I've gone through and compiled a list of
misspellings on this page.
I sent an email of this to the webmaster, so he may be fixing them without commenting, so check them quick.
Original Films are Crap section: 2nd paragraph, 'Furthermore' is
misspelled as 'Futhermore', and 'suspension' is misspelled
as 'supsension'. In the 3rd paragraph, 'inappropriately' is
misspelled as 'inapropriately', and 'commercial' is misspelled
as 'comercial'. In the 4th paragraph, 'amaturely' is misspelled
as 'amaturly'. In the 7th paragraph, 'peeves' is misspelled as
'peves'
Moral Issues section: In the 2nd paragraph, 'largely' is misspelled as
'largerly'. In the 4th paragraph, 'ostensibly' is misspelled as
'obstensibly', and 'you' is misspelled as 'ou'.
Speeder Bike Implausibilities section: In the last paragraph, 'scene'
is misspelled as 'sceen'.
Selected Comments section: In the 3rd paragraph, 'certain' is
misspelled as 'ceartain'. In the 2nd response, 'discussion' is
misspelled as 'dicussion'. In the 4th response, 'sentence' is
misspelled as 'sentance', and 'whipped' is misspelled as 'wipped'.
As for the author's Christian basis of anti-Star Wars sentiment, "let he who is without sin..."
Well,
I have short term memory but I did this and belive it was FAT32.
If you happen to have PQ magic, and it freezes and wont work like mine did and your NT/98 what have you resides on one partition Or You lack funds Or you just got this itch and want to scratch it.
Read the readme on fips.
Defrag your drive, so that your assuming everything on the end is now free space.
Use fips , Chop off your partition where you want it, use whats left over for linux.
Was very quick and easy for me.
OR - If like me you dont want to dual boot and/or maybe just like to use two or more OS's at once
use
http://www.vmware.com/
very nice stuff - and very easy to setup,
course if you don't get the beta you'll be paying for it, and the only thing I would want, which I should probably ask them about, is that it doesn't seem to support devices that have drivers only under the virtual OS, thatd be nifty.
- IE I have special card with drivers for NT - I must use vmware for NT and run linux on top of it which I'd really rather not.
Yep, and the whole thing could be demolished by allowing the speeder bikes some limited smarts -
an ability to miss big obvious trees but still needs some pilot ability to avoid more complex situations. This could reduce the mean-time-between-crashes but still allow some spectacular bangs.
Ho hum, novelish site, but a little too cranky to spend much time on.
Actually it is rocket science...
So every time they start up a bike they can expect to live for only 225 feet, which
corresponds to around 2 seconds worth of travel. Even though the average time to
death is 2 seconds some pilots do live longer than this but based on the standard
deviation only 1 pilot in a billion lives for over 8 seconds.
Ouch.
Well, I disabled JavaScript, that simple.
OK, maybe I've missed something here, but what is so difficult about pronouncing "Slashdot". Surely it's just "slash" (hmm, nothing difficult so far), then "dot" (hey, that was easy).
/. Where's the problem?
Slashdot. Slash-dot.
~ Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity ~
I can't figure out if the fellow is parodying those who take Star Wars seriously, or if he's taking hating Star Wars seriously because so many people are loving Star Wars seriously. It's all so confusing and my head is going to explode now.
But on the other hand, if you read every page of www.ihatestarwars.com in the voice of the Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons, it becomes wackily funny. Try it!
Of course, the whole speeder bike thing was total nonsense. Pilots aren't particles, and they don't decide to go in a particular direction then just move around obstacles. Look around an open forest like that (unlike the nasty brush around here), and you'll be able to see in many directions for hundreds of meters (and with a speeder bike, if you can see straight, you can drive straight). As long as the pilot chooses his path carefully, he could get around fairly safely.
Gah! How I hate frames! But at least he put a table of contents for non-frames browsers. And indeed, his solitary link on his links page is to that "The Force=Satan!" page. Nosing around that site will quickly reveal that it was a joke. Given that he doesn't spot sarcasm in one of the emails he quotes in his "interesting email responses", I suspect he doesn't realise that the "The Force=Satan!" page is a joke, either. Ouch.
Love the way he put 'Eric Conspiracy' in the Jargon file, what a monkeyfuck. Yes siree that really deserves to be there.
I'm truly glad that he's not in charge of maintaining the dictionary or the Encyclopedia Britanica. I bet you that he'd shove in 'ESR' entires posthaste, along with one of those pictures you show children that refuse to brush their teeth.
Also love his fortune cookies page with a whole file of his own quotes. I bet that he uses them as sigs. He aparently equates himself with great minds like Jefferson and Madison. Also note how trite and stale his quotes are in comparison.
Write article about linux.
Get it on slashdot.
Get flood of responses, some positive, some not-so-positive.
Write another article about all the responses, and get another flood of responses.
I call it yellow journalism in that it's journalism for the sake of selling papers (getting hits) rather than for information, enlightened commentary or whatever -- but who ever accused journalists of seeking after those?
Oh, and I don't agree with his major argument -- Windows is the dominant standard, so Linux and company should acknowledge this fact and plan for it.
[And speaking of installing operating systems (from scratch, not for dual-boot)] I installed RedHat, the first time ever (for a friend, keep it away from MY machine) without reading a manual, and just following the onscreen instructions. Meanwhile, the rare task of loading Windows 98 on a blank machine was complicated by the fact that it needs a FAT partition, already formatted, to install. If there are no partitions, it fails with an error, if the partition is there but not formatted, it quits later. Without anything to tell you WHY it failed, and what you need to do. Fortunately, I could guess what it wanted -- but just try that with a Linux product and you'll receive no end of criticism about user-un-friendliness. Well, compare an OS that almost always comes pre-installed to one that almost always has to be installed after-the-fact, and see which one's installation routine gets scrutinized more closely.
--- Where's my X.400 protocol decoder?
Well, for one thing, yes journalists try to sell papers. I mean, we are talking about business to a certain extent.
For another, I think he was providing useful information. He reviewed a product, then got a *lot* of feedback on his use of that product, some of it useful suggestions (using PartitionMagic, frex). He thought it would be interesting to remark on other people's suggestions.
Not to mention the fact that he does write, on the whole, an opinion column. When lots of people disagree with his opinion, then that's worth discussing.
IMHO, YMMV, etc.
There is nothing I hate more than someone who argues for something when they happen to be ill-informed, or unable to make a consistent arguement. It actually makes me feel sick to my stomach to have to listen to garbage that doesn't even agree with the garbage on a different page of the same site. Wait, there is something I hate more... Pity. I really hate feeling pity for really stupid people, but sometimes I can't help it.
Last week, my site was mentioned on slashdot. (I run the DFC on my site, along with a bunch of other stuff, thank you...sigh...) Several people sent me mail, saying "whooaaa, look out, slashdot effect, man, look out for the slashdot effect." And I'm looking at my logs, thinking, "What effect?" I do a pretty brisk amount of traffic already, and those mentions increased my traffic by, oh, maybe 25%. Blip level.
So, added to the fact that seeing the phrase "slashdot effect" so many times was getting my auto-anti-groupmind circuits kicking in, I was like, "pfft. Slashdot. Pfft. Effect. Pfft."
And, of course, this thing gets posted, and immediately my traffic goes up 500%. Uhhuh. Thank you, God, thank you so bloody much.
I forget, but I think my server's only sitting on a 256K pipe just now. What a mess that was. I'm temporarily sending that traffic over to spinnoff.com, which is at a provider that doesn't limit bandwidth (hee hee hee! stupid morons). Hope y'all come back later, ya hear?
Oh, I was wondering what you were talking about, but finally read the ITWeb article you're talking about.
This is because you're used to saying "slashdot". Probably very few people who read this message still say the "http" part, but many of my clients do, for some reason. (Although the majority also assume "www" is at the start of every machine name on the Web. Go figure.) So, for the standard person, they pronounce it like this:
"aitch tee tee pee colon slash slash slash dot dot com."
Which, yeah, would be confusing, if you're in the habit of using all that noise anyway.