It's good to see someone finally speaking out against ICANN. It seems like sometimes only the geek elite care about these issues, so every little bit of added publicity helps. Still, it is sort of questionable as to whether he's qualified to pass any sort of judgement in this situation. He is pretty convincing on Law and Order, but I'm not sure he really does have a legal background. And that's one of my favorite shows; a non-fan would probably be even less likely to value his opinion.
I find Stallman instead to be one of the most persistently, relentlessly reasonable people whose thoughts I've ever encountered.
Maybe that's because the only people whose "thoughts" you "encounter" have 4-digit uids on Slashdot. Try leaving the basement once in a while, and you'll recognize Stallman for the loon he is.
Whatever you end up doing, please don't come anywhere near my house. It's dangerous enough driving with all the people talking on the phone and eating dinner. Rather than working on yet another way to grab yourself a Darwin award, I suggest you look into speech recognition.
I think I have a chance at taking home the trophy. I've been browsing since the mid 90's, and I've got my moves down. I can read User Friendly in one window while submitting a Register article to Slashdot in another and bookmarking the latest Flash meme in a third. I haven't seen an ad since 1998, I've never been fooled by a goatse link, and I clean my cache biweekly. My History is organized better than most people's Favorites, an appropriate plugin is always found, and I have a script set up to automatically notify webmasters of broken links. I truly am a Great Browser, and I think I have what it takes to compete with the best.
Marketing doesn't work anyway. I wear Nikes because they're fast, not because they look good on TV. The most famous marketing ploy in recent history has got to be Apple's "1984" Super Bowl ad, and a whole lot of good that did them. They teetered on the verge of bankruptcy for two decades before they finally (gasp, horror) figured out that they should just forget about marketing and introduce a good product (the iMac) to an underserved market (teenage girls).
Now granted, what I don't know about OpenBSD could fill a book, but I'm curious as to whether there's really enough of an audience for such a book. Linux has only recently reached the point where books devoted to it (including the excellent Linux Kernel Internals) were justified, even by such geekly heavyweights as O'Reilly. Not only is OpenBSD used by a tiny slice of the small, and continuously dwindling, community of *BSD users, but it is used primarily in routers and firewalls, by experienced Unix users.
I'd think a book would be more likely to succeed if it were on an OS distribution that is popular with newbies, enjoys a large market share, and is used on the desktop. OpenBSD is the opposite of all of these, and their financial woes are pronounced enough that this could be the mistake that finally puts them under. You don't have to be an economist to see that the market just isn't there. This is why *BSD continues to falter, even as Linux's popularity explodes.
You know what, I believe that they're losing money from people "stealing" intellectual "property." But so fucking what? The way I see it, if you try to trample all over my God-given Constitutional rights, you deserve to lose money. At least Adam Smith would have agreed with Marx on this point.
I use a certain piece of Windows software that is very difficult to make, and therefore costs a lot of money. However, I have heard about "Open Source" and would like to get something for nothing. Clearly I am not interested in switching operating systems or (horror) volunteering any of my valuable time. Can you friendless computer geeks help me? Go Open Source!
This is the third one of these this week. This one wasn't so bad, but can you believe the nerve of this guy?
I watched it, and I gotta say I dug it, and set Tivo up to snag the rest of it.
So you'll watch it without commercials, the Sci-Fi Channel will lose money on the show, and in a few months you'll be running a story about how a group of fans are raising money to keep it on the air...incredible.
I think current physicists would rather try to pass their work off as some sort of homage than to come right out and admit that they're chasing a pipe dream.
Another thing that irks me is the whole idea of wanting to know what people like Einstein were "really like." This always results in a deluge of personal details, the publication of which is not only disrespectful of the dead but largely useless. I mean, he was a brilliant physicist: do I really need to read his poetry from when he was 15?
Government tracking with satellites == bad, remember?
I swear, when they finally start installing video cameras in everyone's houses, all they'll have to do is say they're BlueTooth enabled or XML-RPC enhanced and the geeks will eat it up.
I'm curious as to whether this is technically legal under the DMCA. We all know that emulation is almost always in violation of intellectual property laws (doubly so when it is used to steal video games, as in MAME, Stella, and WINE), and I don't know why this would be any different. The Acorn ROM is probably proprietary. I'd hate to see such a valuable educational resource be marred by the taint of theft. Why don't we just start over and do it right rather than make up for our past errors by stealing?
Forgive me for gloating, but I'm once again elated at how quickly this bug was squashed. Literally hours after the kernel was released, we have a fix available. Meanwhile, Windorks are still getting hammered by the Klez and ILOVEYOU virii. It's a miracle Linux and less popular open source programs like *BSD haven't wiped out the competition entirely.
Of course, I'm sure some of the more bleeding-edge types were bitten by this buglet, but I guess that comes with the territory; backup backup backup! I hope no Slashdotters lost any of their porn collections.
This event has a lesson for us. Of course, I expect the Slashdot response to be something along the lines of "they should have used Linux," but the true fact is that all technology, even Linux, is unreliable. Rather than dicking around with which OS can provide the best network, we should accept that none of them provide the robustness necessary for things like hospitals and fire departments, and what we really need is to reduce our dependency on technology altogether. If the hospital had been paper-based, this tragedy would not have occurred.
This is a great victory for geeks everywhere. Disney has always done a good job of supporting "long shot" geek movies (Toy Story, anyone?). They have the market clout to make people see the beauty in things usually only appreciated by us geeks. If you think about it, The Sorcerer's Apprentice was sort of a prototypical hacker programming geek. The promotion of this film in competition for an Oscar is only going to help geeks of all walks of life. Hopefully, geeks on Slashdot will continue to support Disney so that we can get more of this!
Does anyone look at corporate websites anymore? The only national company whose site I ever look at is Microsoft, and that's only for MSDN stuff and security patches. Time Warner? Please. If I need to see what time Will and Grace is on, I can check the paper.
No need to haul out references to books or count buzzwords...just look at the software world and the question answers itself.
Since the early days of computing in the late 70's, we've seen systems grow more larger and more complex. Whereas entire OSes used to be written by a single person (granted, a gifted person like the Woz or Bill Gates), these days we have companies like Sun and Microsoft with literally hundreds of developers and testers for a word processor, let alone the thousands of folks around the world who contribute to Linux, Apache, or KDE.
Given this incredible change in how software is developed, we'd expect to see systems collapse into instability and mayhem, but save for a few exceptions (Windows 9x, anyone?) this has largely not been the case. Windows XP, Mac OS X, and Linux 8.0 have proven, if anything, more stable and reliable than their predecessors. For an even more dramatic example, look at NASA's software or popular video games. It's clear that not only has software development expanded in scope exponentially, but it has become objectively better in the process. Development has never been better, and I see no reason why this trend shouldn't continue.
Slashdot Mirror
It's good to see someone finally speaking out against ICANN. It seems like sometimes only the geek elite care about these issues, so every little bit of added publicity helps. Still, it is sort of questionable as to whether he's qualified to pass any sort of judgement in this situation. He is pretty convincing on Law and Order, but I'm not sure he really does have a legal background. And that's one of my favorite shows; a non-fan would probably be even less likely to value his opinion.
I want to see you."
I find Stallman instead to be one of the most persistently, relentlessly reasonable people whose thoughts I've ever encountered.
Maybe that's because the only people whose "thoughts" you "encounter" have 4-digit uids on Slashdot. Try leaving the basement once in a while, and you'll recognize Stallman for the loon he is.
Whatever you end up doing, please don't come anywhere near my house. It's dangerous enough driving with all the people talking on the phone and eating dinner. Rather than working on yet another way to grab yourself a Darwin award, I suggest you look into speech recognition.
I think I have a chance at taking home the trophy. I've been browsing since the mid 90's, and I've got my moves down. I can read User Friendly in one window while submitting a Register article to Slashdot in another and bookmarking the latest Flash meme in a third. I haven't seen an ad since 1998, I've never been fooled by a goatse link, and I clean my cache biweekly. My History is organized better than most people's Favorites, an appropriate plugin is always found, and I have a script set up to automatically notify webmasters of broken links. I truly am a Great Browser, and I think I have what it takes to compete with the best.
Sign me up.
Wine and plenty of anal sex with young boys.
Oh, sorry, I thought you wanted to power Greeks.
Jeez, the MPAA was already upset about IP over Ethernet. This'll drive them up the wall.
Marketing doesn't work anyway. I wear Nikes because they're fast, not because they look good on TV. The most famous marketing ploy in recent history has got to be Apple's "1984" Super Bowl ad, and a whole lot of good that did them. They teetered on the verge of bankruptcy for two decades before they finally (gasp, horror) figured out that they should just forget about marketing and introduce a good product (the iMac) to an underserved market (teenage girls).
Now granted, what I don't know about OpenBSD could fill a book, but I'm curious as to whether there's really enough of an audience for such a book. Linux has only recently reached the point where books devoted to it (including the excellent Linux Kernel Internals) were justified, even by such geekly heavyweights as O'Reilly. Not only is OpenBSD used by a tiny slice of the small, and continuously dwindling, community of *BSD users, but it is used primarily in routers and firewalls, by experienced Unix users.
I'd think a book would be more likely to succeed if it were on an OS distribution that is popular with newbies, enjoys a large market share, and is used on the desktop. OpenBSD is the opposite of all of these, and their financial woes are pronounced enough that this could be the mistake that finally puts them under. You don't have to be an economist to see that the market just isn't there. This is why *BSD continues to falter, even as Linux's popularity explodes.
You know what, I believe that they're losing money from people "stealing" intellectual "property." But so fucking what? The way I see it, if you try to trample all over my God-given Constitutional rights, you deserve to lose money. At least Adam Smith would have agreed with Marx on this point.
I use a certain piece of Windows software that is very difficult to make, and therefore costs a lot of money. However, I have heard about "Open Source" and would like to get something for nothing. Clearly I am not interested in switching operating systems or (horror) volunteering any of my valuable time. Can you friendless computer geeks help me? Go Open Source!
This is the third one of these this week. This one wasn't so bad, but can you believe the nerve of this guy?
...in the head of Strom Thurmond.
I watched it, and I gotta say I dug it, and set Tivo up to snag the rest of it.
So you'll watch it without commercials, the Sci-Fi Channel will lose money on the show, and in a few months you'll be running a story about how a group of fans are raising money to keep it on the air...incredible.
I think current physicists would rather try to pass their work off as some sort of homage than to come right out and admit that they're chasing a pipe dream.
Another thing that irks me is the whole idea of wanting to know what people like Einstein were "really like." This always results in a deluge of personal details, the publication of which is not only disrespectful of the dead but largely useless. I mean, he was a brilliant physicist: do I really need to read his poetry from when he was 15?
I'm not reading [the reviews]. I finished re-reading TTT saturday, and am ready to see Ents walk.
I thought the Ents were supposed to be the big SPOIL-able thing in this one.
Government tracking with satellites == bad, remember?
I swear, when they finally start installing video cameras in everyone's houses, all they'll have to do is say they're BlueTooth enabled or XML-RPC enhanced and the geeks will eat it up.
I'm curious as to whether this is technically legal under the DMCA. We all know that emulation is almost always in violation of intellectual property laws (doubly so when it is used to steal video games, as in MAME, Stella, and WINE), and I don't know why this would be any different. The Acorn ROM is probably proprietary. I'd hate to see such a valuable educational resource be marred by the taint of theft. Why don't we just start over and do it right rather than make up for our past errors by stealing?
Forgive me for gloating, but I'm once again elated at how quickly this bug was squashed. Literally hours after the kernel was released, we have a fix available. Meanwhile, Windorks are still getting hammered by the Klez and ILOVEYOU virii. It's a miracle Linux and less popular open source programs like *BSD haven't wiped out the competition entirely.
Of course, I'm sure some of the more bleeding-edge types were bitten by this buglet, but I guess that comes with the territory; backup backup backup! I hope no Slashdotters lost any of their porn collections.
Best Slashdot story ever. Construction slated for January.
This event has a lesson for us. Of course, I expect the Slashdot response to be something along the lines of "they should have used Linux," but the true fact is that all technology, even Linux, is unreliable. Rather than dicking around with which OS can provide the best network, we should accept that none of them provide the robustness necessary for things like hospitals and fire departments, and what we really need is to reduce our dependency on technology altogether. If the hospital had been paper-based, this tragedy would not have occurred.
This is a great victory for geeks everywhere. Disney has always done a good job of supporting "long shot" geek movies (Toy Story, anyone?). They have the market clout to make people see the beauty in things usually only appreciated by us geeks. If you think about it, The Sorcerer's Apprentice was sort of a prototypical hacker programming geek. The promotion of this film in competition for an Oscar is only going to help geeks of all walks of life. Hopefully, geeks on Slashdot will continue to support Disney so that we can get more of this!
When will they port it to my bandsaw?
New York City's busiest park
In what units does one measure "business"?
Does anyone look at corporate websites anymore? The only national company whose site I ever look at is Microsoft, and that's only for MSDN stuff and security patches. Time Warner? Please. If I need to see what time Will and Grace is on, I can check the paper.
No need to haul out references to books or count buzzwords...just look at the software world and the question answers itself.
Since the early days of computing in the late 70's, we've seen systems grow more larger and more complex. Whereas entire OSes used to be written by a single person (granted, a gifted person like the Woz or Bill Gates), these days we have companies like Sun and Microsoft with literally hundreds of developers and testers for a word processor, let alone the thousands of folks around the world who contribute to Linux, Apache, or KDE.
Given this incredible change in how software is developed, we'd expect to see systems collapse into instability and mayhem, but save for a few exceptions (Windows 9x, anyone?) this has largely not been the case. Windows XP, Mac OS X, and Linux 8.0 have proven, if anything, more stable and reliable than their predecessors. For an even more dramatic example, look at NASA's software or popular video games. It's clear that not only has software development expanded in scope exponentially, but it has become objectively better in the process. Development has never been better, and I see no reason why this trend shouldn't continue.