I hate windows, I never liked it, not ever. I went from DR DOS to Linux but I must admit, windows users are what made the internet what it is today.
Well, IMNSHO, I think it's the windows luser^H^H^H^H^Husers who made it possible for internet exploiters like spammers, bloated webpages, screwed up HTML email, and gratituously incompatible IE-specific Web pages to exist. In general, the deteriorating signal-to-noise ratio of the Net is, for the large part, due to the large Windows-user audience. Yes spammers existed before Windozers started to get on the scene, but it's only when you have such a large base of ignorant^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hunaware users who can easily fall prey to them that they have become so widespread. And it's when you have hoards and hoards of people who think it's "cool" to send HTML emails loaded with the latest, cutest, GIF animation that the Net started to harbor all the useless junk and suck up precious bandwidth.
OT1H they are the reason the Internet became so popular and so influential today. OTOH, they have caused a lot of grief like the plummeting S/N ratio, screwed-up HTML emails, bloated useless-graphics-laden webpages,... and they are the naive people who say "yes yes this feature will be SOOO neat" to MS when it comes out with the latest crapware oozing with features and security holes, and actually buys these crapware, not knowing the dangers nor the grief they cause the network.
Well, I don't even know why I'm ranting against Windows users, I've nothing against them personally. But it's just this paradoxical situation of the Net today -- it's very powerful and very influential because of the large numbers of these users. Which is good in a sense: it's because of this that people like us Slashdotters can make an impact just by posting/reading Slashdot. But OTOH there are also loads of crap on the Net nowadays (I'll refrain from repeating it all over again), also because large numbers of users are the audience.
Seems that every time something becomes this popular, immediately you have the "newbie effect" -- deterioration of quality, increase of noise, etc., alongside the better developments. Sad.
number of developers involved in linux kernel development and testing created a snowball effect with number of end users.
But this begs the question. Why didn't the BSD developers snowball the same way?
the mass quantity of resources that are mostly unix-generic that have linux in their name -- like the LDP and many unix apps that have linux in their name
Objection, Your Honour. If this is the case, the question would be, why didn't the coders adopt BSD as part of the name, instead of Linux? Perhaps there is something deeper here.
Do you think GNU/HURD might one day take over Linux's place? It certainly has a more modern design, although it is currently still in the works. Do you think it's a plausible alternative to Linux when it is ready for general consumption?
Or does Linux have a drive in the Open Source community that HURD doesn't? Linux seems to have generated a lot of enthusiasm, fandom, (and zealotry?). Could it be this drive that made Linux so successful and the lack thereof make HURD take such a long time to get developed?
(Disclaimer: I am NOT trying to start a flamewar between Linux and HURD supporters.)
I think it has a lot to do with his personality. If you've ever read any interview with Linus, you get the impression that he is a frank, straightforward man who has nothing to hide. He has his principles and plays by them. Contrast this with most top businessmen, (and please don't misunderstand, I'm not putting them down) who usually speaks in techno-babble (or is that biz-babble?) and try to sound "deep" with big words. They may not be insincere in any way, but somehow the "professional" and "biz" manner makes people feel they are far away. With someone like Linus, I think people can identify with him more. You almost feel like he is very approachable and won't turn up his nose with a "what a stinky beggar" attitude. (No, I'm not saying biz people have this attitude, but I'm talking about people's impressions here.)
If I were to choose between the "Linus type" and the "big CEO type", I'd choose the former, even if the latter has bigger bucks. I think many people would do the same.
Open Source liability? Hmm, isn't that what companies like RedHat are there for? I know some people don't like RedHat, but this question just brings the real issue to the front: most of us Open Source coders are here because it's fun to play around with code and invent new things. The last thing we want to worry about is whether we might get sued over somebody getting hurt by our latest invention. This is where companies like RedHat comes in -- they provide support, and act as somewhat the entity to point your finger at (read, sue) when things go wrong. We coders can't afford to be sued, hence the standard disclaimer of no-warranty in the GPL: we're not even getting paid (in most cases) for our contributions. We need somebody like RedHat as a "shield", so to speak, in case of major trouble.
But as to our responsibility in putting out quality products, I think the nature of Open Source itself lends very well to producing high-quality products. As hobbyists, we're definitely more concerned for creating the best software out there than how to stuff our products with features so that it's more marketable. Perhaps a few coders might be negligent, but with the vast diversity of coders involved in Open Source projects, each with their own needs, preferences, and biases, such problems surface quickly, and hence, get fixed quickly as well. I think I don't need to repeat past stories on how fast security holes in Linux are fixed, compared to MS offerings.
I suppose you can say there is negligence in the very fact that a security hole exists, but this is a little unreasonable because in a complex system, you don't know what the faults are until you actually put it to use. I think the more important issue is (1) whether problems like security holes are quickly fixed, and (2) coders care about their projects enough to make sure it doesn't contain obvious problems. I would say an Open Source project is stronger on both. On (2) particularly because of the coders' interest -- if your dinner depends on how well your code sells, you'd probably cut corners gladly so that you won't miss the deadline.
Anyway, to get back to the first point -- although we coders have enough interest to avoid obvious problems, and there are enough of us to quickly fix a problem when it comes up, there are still cases where major trouble might result. This is when a commercial entity like RedHat comes in -- it gives us dedicated workers, not just volunteers who could throw up their hands anytime and give up and leave the user in his own soup -- dedicated workers who are ready to accept more responsibility than hobbyists. We need both volunteers and dedicated people.
Interesting. After reading the other posts, I was beginning to get the feeling that I'm the only one who hates ergonomic keyboards and who type for hours on end on a traditional keyboard without any pains. It is definitely true that what matters is how you sit, how you type, and in my case, how far the keyboard is away from me.
What I do is very simple: my keyboard (which is a traditional non-ergonomic type), lies towards the far side of my desk. When I type, my wrists and elbows rest on the desk, and my arms are relaxed. I find that this makes a BIG difference from having the keyboard just in front of me. Having the keyboard at a comfortable distance seems to cure all my crampy and achy problems.
However, the mouse still causes me a lot of grief, especially if I use it for long periods of time. The uncomfortable, cramped-up configuration of my hand while holding the mouse is really painful after a while. I suppose I really should get a newer mouse with a rounder, higher shape (mine is an old traditional somewhat flat mouse). But the problem is, my elbow has nowhere to rest when I'm holding the mouse, so my wrists really start to hurt after a while. Perhaps it's time to move my desk lamp elsewhere so that I can put my mouse the same distance as my keyboard...:-)
On the contrary, this is exactly where the patent system should be giving motivation to inventors and researchers. Wasn't this the original intent of the patent system -- to motivate people to strive for an achievement, with the temporary reward from the patent system as an incentive?
IMHO this is different from the silly 1-click shopping patents and stuff like that, which are nothing groundbreaking, just greedy hoarding. But in the case of quantum computing, these people are actually breaking new ground, so they should be rewarded.
But of course, with the current state of the patenting system, this could easily be abused... Although in this case I'm more inclined to think that areas like these are where the patent system should be operating -- NOT in areas like marketing, where it's more a matter of greed than innovation. When researchers are making ground-breaking discoveries/inventions like quantum gates, they should be rewarded. But the patent system should NOT be acting as "greed-security" by granting idiotic patents to marketing types (like 1-click shopping).
I've been thinking about this... I believe that there is no such thing as one-size-fits-all. It's always generality vs. efficiency. If you make something so general it's useful to everybody, chances are that it's no longer efficient and clean. OTOH if you make something very efficient and clean, chances are it's not very general (because optimization is all about exploiting assumptions -- sometimes hidden or obscure assumptions that can help you take shortcuts. If there are no assumptions, you'd have to settle for a general solution which is probably not efficient.)
With this in view, I think what Linux needs is not to try to be all things to all men. Rather, there should be more different flavors of Linux, each suited to a particular niche. The way to get around the efficiency vs. generality tradeoff is to use compile-time configuration. I'm not just talking about the Linux kernel. The whole suite of GNU apps and other software that comes with the kernel must have this flexibility. Moreover, even the choice of support apps itself needs to be "prepackaged" in a similar manner.
We should stop trying to achieve one general solution for all -- that is unattainable. But we can have 5 or 6 different default Linux configurations, each with its own set of software/apps, its own optimizations. If each of these "flavors" complement each other, we can still cover everything without sacrificing much.
I think this is a "yes, and no" answer. OT1H new users would *rather* have to learn *one* UI once and for all. OTOH, experienced users do NOT want to be stuck with a "standard UI" that they cannot configure.
I think we need something of a compromise. Perhaps have a standard default UI that is uniform across all distros or something, but leave it configurable. The newbie who just bought his Linux pre-installed PC will get the "standard default" UI which is the same as the one every other newbie on his block has. The advanced user, or just the picky user, can always change the default during/after installation. There is no reason/need for imposing a "standard" that everybody has to stick to, because... there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all. There is only such a thing as one-size-fits-few.
Remember, one of the best things about Linux is configurability, and I would add IMHO, the lack of presumptiousness. One of my favorite peeves with MS crapware is that they are extremely presumptious. Ever tried MS Word and have it completely screw up a paragraph that begins with a number? Apparently some people actually like that. Well, the whole idea behind Linux is that you should be able to opt for things like this if you wanted, but it certainly should not be forced down your throat. And if it comes as a default, it must certainly be easy to change (not buried somewhere deep in some esoteric menu or worse, unknown config file).
So, in short, we need a default UI that the majority of users can grok, but all the other options must not be eliminated. Users must be given the full power to choose. If some people wants to be spoon-fed, fine, they can choose it that way. But don't assume that there aren't people who don't want to be spoonfed. We do not need Linux apps that won't work unless you have a particular flavor of UI active.
I just love it. Just when MS is burning mountains of cash trying to force CE down people's throat in the embedded market, the little Penguin comes along and says, "Hey, got a spot in this embedded phone project?" -- "Yeah, but we have tight HW requirements..." -- "No prob, I can run on a 386 with minimal RAM!" Bye-bye MS bloatware, Linux rules!
Linux has been a lot of things since it came into being. One of the best things it still is (and hopefully continue to be), is that it does not come with idiotic system requirements. MS bloatware's requirements (need i80986 at 500MHz, 2.1GB of RAM, 4GB of spare HD space, at MINIMUM) is just ridiculous. OK, I'm exaggerating. But you get the idea. To me, it sounds like both a marketing strategy to milk the cash cow by not bothering about bugs in your software so that users need to continually upgrade, and making each upgrade require so much *minimum* hardware that the poor user has no choice but to dish out more cash and upgrade hardware as well as software. Then along comes Linux, minimum requirements? i386, couple of MBs of RAM, and away you go. OK, it's not quite that, if you want X and other big software like that, but at least Linux is adaptable enough to be able to run on minimal HW. Windows? It comes as a 500lb package. Take it or leave it. Either you show your $$$ or go sit in the corner and cry. (Until a nice Penguin comes your way:-)
Is it just me, or is something really missing on/. recently?! We seem to keep getting increasingly ridiculous lawsuits posted on/. causing increasingly paranoid and cynical posts from increasingly emotional slashdotters. Is this some ploy to get traffic going to andover.net?! Sorry, people, but I must be missing something or is this world really getting that illogical??
This is getting crazy. Do people actually understand what search engines are?! Joe Schmoe goes and starts his company and calls it Joe Inc., and one fine day he goes and searches the Web for "Joe". Shocked by the number of websites that "steals" his name, he calls the authorities, who promptly goes and incriminates everyone else on earth named "Joe" who happened to use their own name on a website.
This is really ludicrous. Do people even understand what search engines are?! And it's not as if the word "Leonardo" is something so special that nobody would use it unless they were deliberately infringing somebody's trademark. If the controversy were over another site using the name "Slashdot" on another site, it'd be different. But even then, I don't think Slashdot.org shows up as the first entry when you search for "Slashdot" on a search engine. That is certainly not a reason to go running to the authorities.
What is the world coming to?! Have people become so petty and childish that they would go running to Mommy Police Department just because their site doesn't show up at the top of a search engine? Makes me sick. In this age of corporatism and mass commercialization, are companies becoming not only exploiting consumers to make more $$$ but also becoming so childish that something like the position in a search engine becomes reason to bring in the authorities???
Hmm, is it really such a good idea to have graphical installers? At least IMHO there should be a text-based fallback. I've seen graphical Linux installers fail (Corel being one, on newer video cards), which is really a shameful turn-off for people who are switching to Linux for the first time. Now, if only there was a text-based fallback, everything would be OK -- so even if the installer encounters some strange video card released just a day ago, it won't barf but simply fall back to a text-mode installer that at least gets the base system installed, then the user can worry about configuring Linux to work with his video hardware.
(No, using VGA16 does NOT guarantee anything... at least in Corel's case, the X server simply segfaults on the ATI Rage 128 even in VGA16 modes. Text-mode is virtually a 100% guarantee: why not be prepared for the worst when it doesn't cost that much?)
This is exactly why, despite the fact I love Linux and would love to see everyone use it, I will never push it on anyone. Unlike Windows, Linux is not dumbed down system that you can just pick up and drop anytime you want. You need to spend time to learn stuff -- and be willing to learn to begin with. You don't buy a Formula 1 car for just for fun -- you gotta be serious about it. If you want to just play around, you go get a second-hand al cheapo car. If somebody wants to switch to Linux, I'd be more than glad to help them along. But persuading a reluctant learner is not worthwhile in the least. You'll only create one more disgruntled Linux hater.
Much better if you *show* (not forcefully try to convince) them how superior Linux is, and let *them* decide they want it, and not you tell them they need it.
That's the problem with freedom of speech (supporters? advocates? zealots?). Doing things like DoS against somebody's server just to "prove a point" will only hurt freedom more than help it, in the long run. We need "peaceful" protests -- not disruptive actions. Yes we have to fight for our freedom rights, but doing childish things like ping floods, etc., will only give a very bad image to people outside of our circle, and actually advance the cause of those who want to take away our freedom (they can point at us and say "look at this bunch of childish fanatics, don't listen to them.")
I guess this is a principle we should all learn: whether fighting for freedom of speech, advocating Linux, or whatever the noble cause may be. "Promoting" Linux by flaming MS doesn't do any good at all, as most of us know very well. Similarly, DoS'ing etoys.com just to "show them" we don't like their actions won't do much except confirm, in the minds of the unknowing, that we are just a bunch of fanatics that should be ignored. What we need is to protest in a non-disruptive way. If enough of us drop a (polite!) note to etoys.com or to a congressman or whoever's in the position to take action, or raise some legal funds, and take some other means of non-disruptive action against this trend, we might actually make an effect.
Remember, if we lower ourselves to the opponent's level, we lose. Unfortunately it only takes a small percentage of us to behave in a childish way and people jump to the conclusion we're all like that.
I'm looking forward to replacing Communicator too... Communicator is just too unstable and has too many bugs.
Well, I hope Mozilla delivers on its promises (looks like it's going to, it's looking pretty good so far). We really need a standards-compliant browser out there ASAP so that web designers will stop producing pages that are compatible only with IE. Netscape has (or used to have; I hope still has) a large enough customer base that if Mozilla becomes popular among them, they will not be an insignificant percentage which web designers can ignore.
Not that I care that much about sites that use IE-specific code -- most of them are just useless fluff anyway. But the average Joe user likes all that fluffy eye-candy, and we certainly don't want the Web to become proprietarized because of this.
I personally think they should have full API/format releases *before* they release the product. Let M$ make all the money they want, just don't lock the gate to the playground with the alternative kids outside.
Ideally, yes. People may think I'm jumping to conclusions again about the decommoditizing of protocols in the Halloween documents, but whether or not the Halloween docs represent MS's real stand doesn't matter. The idea of decommoditizing protocols basically strikes the bottom-line of MS's survival (at least the way it is). MS is NOT going to start opening API's anytime soon. Partial docs, maybe, like incomplete win32 specs missing all those "undocumented" special features that only MS products get to use. But full docs, not in the forseeable future. Why? because that's how they can keep their monopoly (or at least, advantageous position over competition). They own the platform, and therefore they can argue that they have the right to "reserve" parts of the APIs for "future development and use". And why should they open up their API's just for some weirdos out there who don't use their mainstream OS?
I'm not deliberately starting another MS bashing here, but frankly, it's exactly the case that they DON'T want to open the playground to the alternative kids outside. Doing so will cause them to lose so much power in the market that any sane businessman won't even consider it (and Bill is one heck of a businessman -- ethics aside, he is to be admired for the way he handles business.) Frankly I don't think the DoJ will be able to do much about it either -- structural breakup will at most only do a little. The protocols are what matter -- whether MS is one big giant corporation or a gazillion small companies doesn't matter -- as long as protocols are closed, they're locking out whoever isn't already in the "inner circle" who have access to these protocols. The DoJ may be able to pry open their APIs slightly by company breakup -- but who's to stop them from distributing API's only among a small group of companies? After all, there will be "fair competition" -- albeit only amongst the "inner circle".
If something like this happens, it will be the end of hackerdom the way we know it. Protocols will become things that are accessible only to the elite few. The casual Joe hacker will never be able to afford to pay the access fees -- only proprietary solutions will ever be possible -- and writing drivers for alternative OS's will be no more. And when you're in MS's business, this is exactly what you WANT -- you want to raise yourself to a level above the masses so that they will come to YOU for solutions. And of course, in the meantime, to avoid that pesky DoJ interfering with your cash cow, you make some deals with a few other companies in the name of "innovation" and "leading the future of technology", so that when they point the finger you can retort that there is healthy competition.
I don't know about you, but I want to be able to open up the black box and tinker around inside. I don't want to be voiding my warranty or worse, breaking the law, just to see what's inside my computer. And I don't want to be told, "we're sorry but you can't use such-and-such technology e.g. streaming video because you're using an unsupported OS. Switch to our OS and everything will be flowery and nice." But alas, in this age of corporations, individual freedom is merely an afterthought... or perhaps not even that, just a troublesome issue to be suppressed so that more $$$ can flow.
Sorry for this rant. I love computers and I hate to see the way this technology is heading towards total proprietarization.
Forgive my ignorance, but why must trusted certificates be handled exclusively by a bunch of companies??!?!? I think the way IE and NS comes with "trusted" certs is a little off... Doesn't it only represent certificates that NS and MS "trusts"? If the web of trust is entrusted (pun intended) upon a few companies, they're basically telling you who to trust -- or more bluntly, who they want you to trust.
Isn't the whole idea of the web of trust mechanism to allow anyone to verify certificates they receive from somebody? Now if this verification goes through a bunch of companies (which eventually merge into a monopoly), isn't there the possibility that there could be some foul play?
Competition is healthy. As long as certificate providers have competition, they cannot afford to play foul. But as soon as competition is gone, all bets are off. Mergers of companies like these that are the sole provider of certificates to IE and NS are not good.
MHz comparisons are only rough estimates. It provides true comparison only when you're talking about the same family of processors with the same (or very similar) architecture. When you're talking about different architectures, all bets are off.
For example I might come up with a super 5000MHz processor, but it takes 100 cycles to perform an addition, while it only takes 2 cycles to add on a 100MHz processor. Performing addition on either processor takes the same time, in spite of the psychologically attractive 5000MHz label on one of them.
Any meaningful comparison of processors must be based not only on the relative speed of certain operations, but on the class of operations performed. For example, if I do a lot of math computation, a processor that does arithmetic faster will be faster to me. But the same processor may be utterly lousy for you because you want fast I/O, and it's only good at math ops.
My point is, this MHz competiting game is, to put it bluntly, childish. So Intel beats AMD by 50MHz -- big deal. A difference of 1000MHz may be more indicative, but still not decisive, using the contrived example above.
But of course, as long as competition is fierce, we end-users will be happy, as our systems will get faster and faster... so who cares about all this technicality anyway?:-)
Is the code that does this GPL'd? If so, somebody should incorporate this into the existing X configuration tools so that newbies won't get turned off by the complexity (and headache) of configuring X. (I know what it's like... I'm using a barely-supported chipset SiS 6326. I've suffered with using X at 800*600 since XF3.3.3. Apparently XF3.3.5 supports it but on 3.3.5 I still can't get XAA to work *at all*, can only use BitBlt but with no ImageBlt.)
This is amazing... so government agencies will be made to use free software unless free software doesn't have the required functionality? I must say, if this gets through it will be a big win for free software.
But I don't know if I like the idea of politics mixing into free software... we've seen some not-so-positive response with commercial entities getting into free software. I guess I'm just more confortable with a pure idealistic free software world. But I suppose anything that is worthwhile must prove that it can go beyond merely an idealistic context and usable in real-world applications.
While I tend to agree with you because the software *I* like (ie. open source software) happens to be on the protagonist side of this argument, there are other issues to consider... one being the freedom of choice of the buyer. I mean, if we're really looking at freedom of choice, aren't we also allowing for the possibility that people might actually want MS products? Why should we condemn them because they made the "wrong" choice, just because we think our choice is the "right" choice?
Everyone has a right to choose -- after all, isn't that the freedom of choice we're all fighting for here? How far can we go with Corel's attitude here? Are we saying, in the name of "fairness" that every company must be forced to consider options other than the one they chose in their freedom to choose, just because they must also be "fair" to competing products? What if a company decides to use Linux and Linux only -- are we saying then that they are "unfair" to other products like MS, Sun or whatever else out there?
Of course, you might say that the other options have better quality and thus merit consideration -- but remember that you can take the horse to the water but you can't make it drink. If people want to choose the "lousier" alternative, who are we to stop them? After all, that is their freedom to choose.
(Flame-shield: I'm not criticizing Corel. Just pointing out that the argument works both ways.)
Oh boy... the walls that people with the old, traditional commerce mindset bang into when they get on the Internet. Seems that people just don't grok what the h*** the Net's all about. If you look closely at this case, you'll realize that all eBay's trying to do is to create a "business setting" (as in the traditional model of business in the physical world) on the Net. Looks like they don't quite understand what the Net is all about -- information sharing.
Business on the Internet is completely different from business in a physical store. On the Net you can't really sell information -- because information is freely copied and redistributed. What you can do, however, is to publish information that others find helpful. In particular, you can publish information that attracts customers to buy from you. It will be difficult for the goods themselves to be shipped over the Net, because of the nature of electronic information (copy at no cost, almost no-cost of redistribution). If the goods are information itself, you'll definitely run into problems like this, which perhaps shows that the medium isn't exactly suited to your purposes.
If you want to make money on the Internet, you've got to understand that it's simply an information channel, not some bizarre, electronic equivalent of the physical world. You cannot expect to "own" information on the Net. There is no such thing, esp. not on the Net. You use it as an information channel to let people know of your existence, then they come and buy from you. You can't control information on the Net.
Because AOL spent resources to track down the spam, trace their origin, take action, and hire lawyers to bring it to court when the defendents refused to comply with their requests.
It's funny how the/. crowd has mixed feelings about this -- I suppose some people here hold a grudge against AOL (and I don't blame them). OT1H it's a good thing that AOL won -- at least this reduces the rate at which the signal to noise ratio of the Net decreases these days... OTOH a lot of spam originates from AOL users. But I hope people realize that AOL in itself isn't "evil". It's just that with any service marketed to the masses, not just with AOL, there are always abusers and people who don't know better than to send "cute mail" to each other all the time. For example: Slashdot, with the Natalie Portman posts... You aren't going to label Slashdot as "evil" and wish it to shut down just because a few lusers abuse it, are you?
I don't know whether the product itself is going to turn out great or not (the article is typical of commercial prose -- vague, unclear, non-specific on the details of the actual product) , but the fact that they open-sourced it is a very good thing.
A move like this effectively stops any corporation from hogging the protocol and "locking down" the market. There will be no way for MS (or anyone else for that matter) to abuse this technology by locking it down in proprietary implementations and forcing everyone else out of the market. Well, at least not directly. It's things like this that could eventually bring some balance into our world of mega-corporations vs. individual freedom.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, IMNSHO, I think it's the windows luser^H^H^H^H^Husers who made it possible for internet exploiters like spammers, bloated webpages, screwed up HTML email, and gratituously incompatible IE-specific Web pages to exist. In general, the deteriorating signal-to-noise ratio of the Net is, for the large part, due to the large Windows-user audience. Yes spammers existed before Windozers started to get on the scene, but it's only when you have such a large base of ignorant^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hunaware users who can easily fall prey to them that they have become so widespread. And it's when you have hoards and hoards of people who think it's "cool" to send HTML emails loaded with the latest, cutest, GIF animation that the Net started to harbor all the useless junk and suck up precious bandwidth.
OT1H they are the reason the Internet became so popular and so influential today. OTOH, they have caused a lot of grief like the plummeting S/N ratio, screwed-up HTML emails, bloated useless-graphics-laden webpages, ... and they are the naive people who say "yes yes this feature will be SOOO neat" to MS when it comes out with the latest crapware oozing with features and security holes, and actually buys these crapware, not knowing the dangers nor the grief they cause the network.
Well, I don't even know why I'm ranting against Windows users, I've nothing against them personally. But it's just this paradoxical situation of the Net today -- it's very powerful and very influential because of the large numbers of these users. Which is good in a sense: it's because of this that people like us Slashdotters can make an impact just by posting/reading Slashdot. But OTOH there are also loads of crap on the Net nowadays (I'll refrain from repeating it all over again), also because large numbers of users are the audience.
Seems that every time something becomes this popular, immediately you have the "newbie effect" -- deterioration of quality, increase of noise, etc., alongside the better developments. Sad.
But this begs the question. Why didn't the BSD developers snowball the same way?
Objection, Your Honour. If this is the case, the question would be, why didn't the coders adopt BSD as part of the name, instead of Linux? Perhaps there is something deeper here.
Just my $0.02 worth...
Do you think GNU/HURD might one day take over Linux's place? It certainly has a more modern design, although it is currently still in the works. Do you think it's a plausible alternative to Linux when it is ready for general consumption?
Or does Linux have a drive in the Open Source community that HURD doesn't? Linux seems to have generated a lot of enthusiasm, fandom, (and zealotry?). Could it be this drive that made Linux so successful and the lack thereof make HURD take such a long time to get developed?
(Disclaimer: I am NOT trying to start a flamewar between Linux and HURD supporters.)
I think it has a lot to do with his personality. If you've ever read any interview with Linus, you get the impression that he is a frank, straightforward man who has nothing to hide. He has his principles and plays by them. Contrast this with most top businessmen, (and please don't misunderstand, I'm not putting them down) who usually speaks in techno-babble (or is that biz-babble?) and try to sound "deep" with big words. They may not be insincere in any way, but somehow the "professional" and "biz" manner makes people feel they are far away. With someone like Linus, I think people can identify with him more. You almost feel like he is very approachable and won't turn up his nose with a "what a stinky beggar" attitude. (No, I'm not saying biz people have this attitude, but I'm talking about people's impressions here.)
If I were to choose between the "Linus type" and the "big CEO type", I'd choose the former, even if the latter has bigger bucks. I think many people would do the same.
Open Source liability? Hmm, isn't that what companies like RedHat are there for? I know some people don't like RedHat, but this question just brings the real issue to the front: most of us Open Source coders are here because it's fun to play around with code and invent new things. The last thing we want to worry about is whether we might get sued over somebody getting hurt by our latest invention. This is where companies like RedHat comes in -- they provide support, and act as somewhat the entity to point your finger at (read, sue) when things go wrong. We coders can't afford to be sued, hence the standard disclaimer of no-warranty in the GPL: we're not even getting paid (in most cases) for our contributions. We need somebody like RedHat as a "shield", so to speak, in case of major trouble.
But as to our responsibility in putting out quality products, I think the nature of Open Source itself lends very well to producing high-quality products. As hobbyists, we're definitely more concerned for creating the best software out there than how to stuff our products with features so that it's more marketable. Perhaps a few coders might be negligent, but with the vast diversity of coders involved in Open Source projects, each with their own needs, preferences, and biases, such problems surface quickly, and hence, get fixed quickly as well. I think I don't need to repeat past stories on how fast security holes in Linux are fixed, compared to MS offerings.
I suppose you can say there is negligence in the very fact that a security hole exists, but this is a little unreasonable because in a complex system, you don't know what the faults are until you actually put it to use. I think the more important issue is (1) whether problems like security holes are quickly fixed, and (2) coders care about their projects enough to make sure it doesn't contain obvious problems. I would say an Open Source project is stronger on both. On (2) particularly because of the coders' interest -- if your dinner depends on how well your code sells, you'd probably cut corners gladly so that you won't miss the deadline.
Anyway, to get back to the first point -- although we coders have enough interest to avoid obvious problems, and there are enough of us to quickly fix a problem when it comes up, there are still cases where major trouble might result. This is when a commercial entity like RedHat comes in -- it gives us dedicated workers, not just volunteers who could throw up their hands anytime and give up and leave the user in his own soup -- dedicated workers who are ready to accept more responsibility than hobbyists. We need both volunteers and dedicated people.
Interesting. After reading the other posts, I was beginning to get the feeling that I'm the only one who hates ergonomic keyboards and who type for hours on end on a traditional keyboard without any pains. It is definitely true that what matters is how you sit, how you type, and in my case, how far the keyboard is away from me.
What I do is very simple: my keyboard (which is a traditional non-ergonomic type), lies towards the far side of my desk. When I type, my wrists and elbows rest on the desk, and my arms are relaxed. I find that this makes a BIG difference from having the keyboard just in front of me. Having the keyboard at a comfortable distance seems to cure all my crampy and achy problems.
However, the mouse still causes me a lot of grief, especially if I use it for long periods of time. The uncomfortable, cramped-up configuration of my hand while holding the mouse is really painful after a while. I suppose I really should get a newer mouse with a rounder, higher shape (mine is an old traditional somewhat flat mouse). But the problem is, my elbow has nowhere to rest when I'm holding the mouse, so my wrists really start to hurt after a while. Perhaps it's time to move my desk lamp elsewhere so that I can put my mouse the same distance as my keyboard... :-)
On the contrary, this is exactly where the patent system should be giving motivation to inventors and researchers. Wasn't this the original intent of the patent system -- to motivate people to strive for an achievement, with the temporary reward from the patent system as an incentive?
IMHO this is different from the silly 1-click shopping patents and stuff like that, which are nothing groundbreaking, just greedy hoarding. But in the case of quantum computing, these people are actually breaking new ground, so they should be rewarded.
But of course, with the current state of the patenting system, this could easily be abused... Although in this case I'm more inclined to think that areas like these are where the patent system should be operating -- NOT in areas like marketing, where it's more a matter of greed than innovation. When researchers are making ground-breaking discoveries/inventions like quantum gates, they should be rewarded. But the patent system should NOT be acting as "greed-security" by granting idiotic patents to marketing types (like 1-click shopping).
I've been thinking about this... I believe that there is no such thing as one-size-fits-all. It's always generality vs. efficiency. If you make something so general it's useful to everybody, chances are that it's no longer efficient and clean. OTOH if you make something very efficient and clean, chances are it's not very general (because optimization is all about exploiting assumptions -- sometimes hidden or obscure assumptions that can help you take shortcuts. If there are no assumptions, you'd have to settle for a general solution which is probably not efficient.)
With this in view, I think what Linux needs is not to try to be all things to all men. Rather, there should be more different flavors of Linux, each suited to a particular niche. The way to get around the efficiency vs. generality tradeoff is to use compile-time configuration. I'm not just talking about the Linux kernel. The whole suite of GNU apps and other software that comes with the kernel must have this flexibility. Moreover, even the choice of support apps itself needs to be "prepackaged" in a similar manner.
We should stop trying to achieve one general solution for all -- that is unattainable. But we can have 5 or 6 different default Linux configurations, each with its own set of software/apps, its own optimizations. If each of these "flavors" complement each other, we can still cover everything without sacrificing much.
I think this is a "yes, and no" answer. OT1H new users would *rather* have to learn *one* UI once and for all. OTOH, experienced users do NOT want to be stuck with a "standard UI" that they cannot configure.
I think we need something of a compromise. Perhaps have a standard default UI that is uniform across all distros or something, but leave it configurable. The newbie who just bought his Linux pre-installed PC will get the "standard default" UI which is the same as the one every other newbie on his block has. The advanced user, or just the picky user, can always change the default during/after installation. There is no reason/need for imposing a "standard" that everybody has to stick to, because... there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all. There is only such a thing as one-size-fits-few.
Remember, one of the best things about Linux is configurability, and I would add IMHO, the lack of presumptiousness. One of my favorite peeves with MS crapware is that they are extremely presumptious. Ever tried MS Word and have it completely screw up a paragraph that begins with a number? Apparently some people actually like that. Well, the whole idea behind Linux is that you should be able to opt for things like this if you wanted, but it certainly should not be forced down your throat. And if it comes as a default, it must certainly be easy to change (not buried somewhere deep in some esoteric menu or worse, unknown config file).
So, in short, we need a default UI that the majority of users can grok, but all the other options must not be eliminated. Users must be given the full power to choose. If some people wants to be spoon-fed, fine, they can choose it that way. But don't assume that there aren't people who don't want to be spoonfed. We do not need Linux apps that won't work unless you have a particular flavor of UI active.
I just love it. Just when MS is burning mountains of cash trying to force CE down people's throat in the embedded market, the little Penguin comes along and says, "Hey, got a spot in this embedded phone project?" -- "Yeah, but we have tight HW requirements..." -- "No prob, I can run on a 386 with minimal RAM!" Bye-bye MS bloatware, Linux rules!
Linux has been a lot of things since it came into being. One of the best things it still is (and hopefully continue to be), is that it does not come with idiotic system requirements. MS bloatware's requirements (need i80986 at 500MHz, 2.1GB of RAM, 4GB of spare HD space, at MINIMUM) is just ridiculous. OK, I'm exaggerating. But you get the idea. To me, it sounds like both a marketing strategy to milk the cash cow by not bothering about bugs in your software so that users need to continually upgrade, and making each upgrade require so much *minimum* hardware that the poor user has no choice but to dish out more cash and upgrade hardware as well as software. Then along comes Linux, minimum requirements? i386, couple of MBs of RAM, and away you go. OK, it's not quite that, if you want X and other big software like that, but at least Linux is adaptable enough to be able to run on minimal HW. Windows? It comes as a 500lb package. Take it or leave it. Either you show your $$$ or go sit in the corner and cry. (Until a nice Penguin comes your way :-)
Is it just me, or is something really missing on /. recently?! We seem to keep getting increasingly ridiculous lawsuits posted on /. causing increasingly paranoid and cynical posts from increasingly emotional slashdotters. Is this some ploy to get traffic going to andover.net?! Sorry, people, but I must be missing something or is this world really getting that illogical??
This is getting crazy. Do people actually understand what search engines are?! Joe Schmoe goes and starts his company and calls it Joe Inc., and one fine day he goes and searches the Web for "Joe". Shocked by the number of websites that "steals" his name, he calls the authorities, who promptly goes and incriminates everyone else on earth named "Joe" who happened to use their own name on a website.
This is really ludicrous. Do people even understand what search engines are?! And it's not as if the word "Leonardo" is something so special that nobody would use it unless they were deliberately infringing somebody's trademark. If the controversy were over another site using the name "Slashdot" on another site, it'd be different. But even then, I don't think Slashdot.org shows up as the first entry when you search for "Slashdot" on a search engine. That is certainly not a reason to go running to the authorities.
What is the world coming to?! Have people become so petty and childish that they would go running to Mommy Police Department just because their site doesn't show up at the top of a search engine? Makes me sick. In this age of corporatism and mass commercialization, are companies becoming not only exploiting consumers to make more $$$ but also becoming so childish that something like the position in a search engine becomes reason to bring in the authorities???
Hmm, is it really such a good idea to have graphical installers? At least IMHO there should be a text-based fallback. I've seen graphical Linux installers fail (Corel being one, on newer video cards), which is really a shameful turn-off for people who are switching to Linux for the first time. Now, if only there was a text-based fallback, everything would be OK -- so even if the installer encounters some strange video card released just a day ago, it won't barf but simply fall back to a text-mode installer that at least gets the base system installed, then the user can worry about configuring Linux to work with his video hardware.
(No, using VGA16 does NOT guarantee anything... at least in Corel's case, the X server simply segfaults on the ATI Rage 128 even in VGA16 modes. Text-mode is virtually a 100% guarantee: why not be prepared for the worst when it doesn't cost that much?)
This is exactly why, despite the fact I love Linux and would love to see everyone use it, I will never push it on anyone. Unlike Windows, Linux is not dumbed down system that you can just pick up and drop anytime you want. You need to spend time to learn stuff -- and be willing to learn to begin with. You don't buy a Formula 1 car for just for fun -- you gotta be serious about it. If you want to just play around, you go get a second-hand al cheapo car. If somebody wants to switch to Linux, I'd be more than glad to help them along. But persuading a reluctant learner is not worthwhile in the least. You'll only create one more disgruntled Linux hater.
Much better if you *show* (not forcefully try to convince) them how superior Linux is, and let *them* decide they want it, and not you tell them they need it.
That's the problem with freedom of speech (supporters? advocates? zealots?). Doing things like DoS against somebody's server just to "prove a point" will only hurt freedom more than help it, in the long run. We need "peaceful" protests -- not disruptive actions. Yes we have to fight for our freedom rights, but doing childish things like ping floods, etc., will only give a very bad image to people outside of our circle, and actually advance the cause of those who want to take away our freedom (they can point at us and say "look at this bunch of childish fanatics, don't listen to them.")
I guess this is a principle we should all learn: whether fighting for freedom of speech, advocating Linux, or whatever the noble cause may be. "Promoting" Linux by flaming MS doesn't do any good at all, as most of us know very well. Similarly, DoS'ing etoys.com just to "show them" we don't like their actions won't do much except confirm, in the minds of the unknowing, that we are just a bunch of fanatics that should be ignored. What we need is to protest in a non-disruptive way. If enough of us drop a (polite!) note to etoys.com or to a congressman or whoever's in the position to take action, or raise some legal funds, and take some other means of non-disruptive action against this trend, we might actually make an effect.
Remember, if we lower ourselves to the opponent's level, we lose. Unfortunately it only takes a small percentage of us to behave in a childish way and people jump to the conclusion we're all like that.
I'm looking forward to replacing Communicator too... Communicator is just too unstable and has too many bugs.
Well, I hope Mozilla delivers on its promises (looks like it's going to, it's looking pretty good so far). We really need a standards-compliant browser out there ASAP so that web designers will stop producing pages that are compatible only with IE. Netscape has (or used to have; I hope still has) a large enough customer base that if Mozilla becomes popular among them, they will not be an insignificant percentage which web designers can ignore.
Not that I care that much about sites that use IE-specific code -- most of them are just useless fluff anyway. But the average Joe user likes all that fluffy eye-candy, and we certainly don't want the Web to become proprietarized because of this.
Ideally, yes. People may think I'm jumping to conclusions again about the decommoditizing of protocols in the Halloween documents, but whether or not the Halloween docs represent MS's real stand doesn't matter. The idea of decommoditizing protocols basically strikes the bottom-line of MS's survival (at least the way it is). MS is NOT going to start opening API's anytime soon. Partial docs, maybe, like incomplete win32 specs missing all those "undocumented" special features that only MS products get to use. But full docs, not in the forseeable future. Why? because that's how they can keep their monopoly (or at least, advantageous position over competition). They own the platform, and therefore they can argue that they have the right to "reserve" parts of the APIs for "future development and use". And why should they open up their API's just for some weirdos out there who don't use their mainstream OS?
I'm not deliberately starting another MS bashing here, but frankly, it's exactly the case that they DON'T want to open the playground to the alternative kids outside. Doing so will cause them to lose so much power in the market that any sane businessman won't even consider it (and Bill is one heck of a businessman -- ethics aside, he is to be admired for the way he handles business.) Frankly I don't think the DoJ will be able to do much about it either -- structural breakup will at most only do a little. The protocols are what matter -- whether MS is one big giant corporation or a gazillion small companies doesn't matter -- as long as protocols are closed, they're locking out whoever isn't already in the "inner circle" who have access to these protocols. The DoJ may be able to pry open their APIs slightly by company breakup -- but who's to stop them from distributing API's only among a small group of companies? After all, there will be "fair competition" -- albeit only amongst the "inner circle".
If something like this happens, it will be the end of hackerdom the way we know it. Protocols will become things that are accessible only to the elite few. The casual Joe hacker will never be able to afford to pay the access fees -- only proprietary solutions will ever be possible -- and writing drivers for alternative OS's will be no more. And when you're in MS's business, this is exactly what you WANT -- you want to raise yourself to a level above the masses so that they will come to YOU for solutions. And of course, in the meantime, to avoid that pesky DoJ interfering with your cash cow, you make some deals with a few other companies in the name of "innovation" and "leading the future of technology", so that when they point the finger you can retort that there is healthy competition.
I don't know about you, but I want to be able to open up the black box and tinker around inside. I don't want to be voiding my warranty or worse, breaking the law, just to see what's inside my computer. And I don't want to be told, "we're sorry but you can't use such-and-such technology e.g. streaming video because you're using an unsupported OS. Switch to our OS and everything will be flowery and nice." But alas, in this age of corporations, individual freedom is merely an afterthought... or perhaps not even that, just a troublesome issue to be suppressed so that more $$$ can flow.
Sorry for this rant. I love computers and I hate to see the way this technology is heading towards total proprietarization.
Forgive my ignorance, but why must trusted certificates be handled exclusively by a bunch of companies??!?!? I think the way IE and NS comes with "trusted" certs is a little off... Doesn't it only represent certificates that NS and MS "trusts"? If the web of trust is entrusted (pun intended) upon a few companies, they're basically telling you who to trust -- or more bluntly, who they want you to trust.
Isn't the whole idea of the web of trust mechanism to allow anyone to verify certificates they receive from somebody? Now if this verification goes through a bunch of companies (which eventually merge into a monopoly), isn't there the possibility that there could be some foul play?
Competition is healthy. As long as certificate providers have competition, they cannot afford to play foul. But as soon as competition is gone, all bets are off. Mergers of companies like these that are the sole provider of certificates to IE and NS are not good.
MHz comparisons are only rough estimates. It provides true comparison only when you're talking about the same family of processors with the same (or very similar) architecture. When you're talking about different architectures, all bets are off.
For example I might come up with a super 5000MHz processor, but it takes 100 cycles to perform an addition, while it only takes 2 cycles to add on a 100MHz processor. Performing addition on either processor takes the same time, in spite of the psychologically attractive 5000MHz label on one of them.
Any meaningful comparison of processors must be based not only on the relative speed of certain operations, but on the class of operations performed. For example, if I do a lot of math computation, a processor that does arithmetic faster will be faster to me. But the same processor may be utterly lousy for you because you want fast I/O, and it's only good at math ops.
My point is, this MHz competiting game is, to put it bluntly, childish. So Intel beats AMD by 50MHz -- big deal. A difference of 1000MHz may be more indicative, but still not decisive, using the contrived example above.
But of course, as long as competition is fierce, we end-users will be happy, as our systems will get faster and faster... so who cares about all this technicality anyway? :-)
Is the code that does this GPL'd? If so, somebody should incorporate this into the existing X configuration tools so that newbies won't get turned off by the complexity (and headache) of configuring X. (I know what it's like... I'm using a barely-supported chipset SiS 6326. I've suffered with using X at 800*600 since XF3.3.3. Apparently XF3.3.5 supports it but on 3.3.5 I still can't get XAA to work *at all*, can only use BitBlt but with no ImageBlt.)
This is amazing... so government agencies will be made to use free software unless free software doesn't have the required functionality? I must say, if this gets through it will be a big win for free software.
But I don't know if I like the idea of politics mixing into free software... we've seen some not-so-positive response with commercial entities getting into free software. I guess I'm just more confortable with a pure idealistic free software world. But I suppose anything that is worthwhile must prove that it can go beyond merely an idealistic context and usable in real-world applications.
While I tend to agree with you because the software *I* like (ie. open source software) happens to be on the protagonist side of this argument, there are other issues to consider... one being the freedom of choice of the buyer. I mean, if we're really looking at freedom of choice, aren't we also allowing for the possibility that people might actually want MS products? Why should we condemn them because they made the "wrong" choice, just because we think our choice is the "right" choice?
Everyone has a right to choose -- after all, isn't that the freedom of choice we're all fighting for here? How far can we go with Corel's attitude here? Are we saying, in the name of "fairness" that every company must be forced to consider options other than the one they chose in their freedom to choose, just because they must also be "fair" to competing products? What if a company decides to use Linux and Linux only -- are we saying then that they are "unfair" to other products like MS, Sun or whatever else out there?
Of course, you might say that the other options have better quality and thus merit consideration -- but remember that you can take the horse to the water but you can't make it drink. If people want to choose the "lousier" alternative, who are we to stop them? After all, that is their freedom to choose.
(Flame-shield: I'm not criticizing Corel. Just pointing out that the argument works both ways.)
Oh boy... the walls that people with the old, traditional commerce mindset bang into when they get on the Internet. Seems that people just don't grok what the h*** the Net's all about. If you look closely at this case, you'll realize that all eBay's trying to do is to create a "business setting" (as in the traditional model of business in the physical world) on the Net. Looks like they don't quite understand what the Net is all about -- information sharing.
Business on the Internet is completely different from business in a physical store. On the Net you can't really sell information -- because information is freely copied and redistributed. What you can do, however, is to publish information that others find helpful. In particular, you can publish information that attracts customers to buy from you. It will be difficult for the goods themselves to be shipped over the Net, because of the nature of electronic information (copy at no cost, almost no-cost of redistribution). If the goods are information itself, you'll definitely run into problems like this, which perhaps shows that the medium isn't exactly suited to your purposes.
If you want to make money on the Internet, you've got to understand that it's simply an information channel, not some bizarre, electronic equivalent of the physical world. You cannot expect to "own" information on the Net. There is no such thing, esp. not on the Net. You use it as an information channel to let people know of your existence, then they come and buy from you. You can't control information on the Net.
Because AOL spent resources to track down the spam, trace their origin, take action, and hire lawyers to bring it to court when the defendents refused to comply with their requests.
It's funny how the /. crowd has mixed feelings about this -- I suppose some people here hold a grudge against AOL (and I don't blame them). OT1H it's a good thing that AOL won -- at least this reduces the rate at which the signal to noise ratio of the Net decreases these days... OTOH a lot of spam originates from AOL users. But I hope people realize that AOL in itself isn't "evil". It's just that with any service marketed to the masses, not just with AOL, there are always abusers and people who don't know better than to send "cute mail" to each other all the time. For example: Slashdot, with the Natalie Portman posts... You aren't going to label Slashdot as "evil" and wish it to shut down just because a few lusers abuse it, are you?
I don't know whether the product itself is going to turn out great or not (the article is typical of commercial prose -- vague, unclear, non-specific on the details of the actual product) , but the fact that they open-sourced it is a very good thing.
A move like this effectively stops any corporation from hogging the protocol and "locking down" the market. There will be no way for MS (or anyone else for that matter) to abuse this technology by locking it down in proprietary implementations and forcing everyone else out of the market. Well, at least not directly. It's things like this that could eventually bring some balance into our world of mega-corporations vs. individual freedom.