You realize that "Microsoft Linux" could never exist though, since as soon as both words are written onto the CD, it will annihilate itself with the matter-antimatter collision, destroying everything around it for a good couple of miles in the process.
The year is 2050. During the great Internet Reformation twenty-five years ago, all the spammers were herded up into a rocket and sent hurtling towards the sun. All, except for one...
This man, driven insane by the lack of "$$$ QUICK" and "Free Porno" messages in his mailbox, hides in his only remaining refuge- under the sea. As Internet law has long held that people sending unsolicited e-mail shall be shot on sight, he concocts a devious way to return canned meat to the world.
Recent developments in Artificial Intelligence have created incredibly intelligent computer systems - they very nearly approximate the mental capacity of small sea creatures. With this, and the fifty-year-old technology of submarine e-mail, he forges the dreaded SPAM FISH. *dun dun DUNNNN!!!*
Using nanotechnology to automatically reproduce, these spam fish quickly reduce the Internet to its pre-2000 state - so much junk e-mail gets spread that there is roughly enough bandwidth remaining to match today's 56K modems. While the majority of end-users weep at the loss of their streaming video porn and free MP3s, the geeks of the turn of the century - now old, and considered useless by most of Silicon Valley, vaguely remember a post on Slashdot (back before Natalie Portman used the DMCA to shut it down).
(hey, how about that? I incorporated AI, nanotech, Natalie Portman, and off-the-wall future predictions into one post, and even managed to stay vaguely on-topic!)
I'm still not sure if I can risk writing an article about Linux going mainstream. After all, no one has ever gotten fired for writing an article about Microsoft.
Yo yo yo, I'm Billy G And everyone wants a piece of me Web-side, E-side, all's my land Make sure no fucka get no hand If some fucka wanna fuck with me I'll smash them through my WebTV
And when the competition starts to rock I say go suck my cock And I buy up all their stock
So don't no fucka fuck with me O I fuck your computer with a BSoD I pimp out all those hippie LUGs If they dare fuck my 65,000 bugs You know you want a piece of me 'Cuz I'm the G Of all technology
(In the spirit of open-source, I'll leave it to y'all to finish the rap:)
One thing I wonder about, every time I hear about MacOS X, is whether the development tools will be provided with the actual release? The operating system looks well-designed (well, not the GUI, yet), but as a hacker (-wannabe?) I like to have development tools to play around with.
GCC is free, so it shouldn't be too difficult to just get the C/Objective C compiler. But the cool NeXT Project/Interface Builder suite should be either included in the OS, or free(beer)ly available.
Just as a side note, since MacOS X is the successor to both NeXTSTEP and MacOS, Apple should make the UI more-or-less exactly like Classic MacOS, with an option to go NeXTSTEP-wise as well. Just my opinion (as a WindowMaker user).
Irish police are on the lookout for a dangerous criminal. Labelled the "Shaver", he has been prowling the countryside, breaking into people's homes, and shaving the beards off of several of the men known to frequent the many pubs in the country.
While the Shaver's motives are unclear, it is even more unclear as to why the victims become so distraught after losing their facial hair. Shane O'Connor, a wife of one of the victims, said, "Well, I told me husband ne'er to go to those awful bars again. He's been good about it for a whole month, he 'as. But ever since this Shaver character relieved him of his beard, he's been trembling like mad, and every moment I take me eyes off the devil, he's off in some dirty pub again!"
In other news, a new brewery has sprung up in Northern Ireland. Called the Bearded Guiness Company, this new brewery has managed to output an enormous volume of quality Guiness stout, without any apparent source. More on this amazing little brewery at 6:00.
In a move that could dramatically change the biological systems on Earth, Amazon.com has applied for a patent on air, at least in the United States. Air is a technology used by Amazon.com employees to import oxygen into their and their customers' blood supplies, where it can be carried to the vital organs for the exchange of som carbon dioxide.
This "air" is commonly used by many organisms, including Amazon competitors, to sustain life. Amazon's possession of a patent on the technology could allow the company to prohibit others from using it, or Amazon could charge them a fee if they want to use it.
"If they choose to enforce this, it may radically impact aspects of emerging lifeforms, natural and artificial," Rob Labatt, an analyst at the research firm Gertner Group, said Friday. "The vital question is whether they'll enforce it."
"Are the going to patent affiliate programs next?" said John Segrich, an analyst CIBC World Markets, and frequent air-user, who follows Amazon.com. "I would certainly think this will be quickly challenged."
Amazon wouldn't say today what plans it has for the new patent.
Sun Pyrosystems | Posted by Grogg on 12:15 PM February 25th, 12000 B.C. from the ooga-booga dept.
Kragga write, "I saw good article about UltraSpark 3 at Ace's Rock Field. It goes into depth about technical specs of this fire-burning technology. Best part is second page where they talk about mammoth cooking, roasting, and flamability (up to 1000 BTUs!) There are some excellent examples of mammoth cooking, and fire-starting latency."
IMHO, the best bet Linux has for the desktop in the long term is GNUstep, which is working towards providing a free(speech) implementation of the OPENSTEP API. I'm sure anyone who has ever played with a NeXT machine will tell you how great the OPENSTEP API + Interface Builder are/were for application development. It is the same API behind MacOS X's "Cocoa" API, so with all the forthcoming commercial support for MacOS X, these same apps could be available on Linux with as little effort as "make".
The OPENSTEP API also addresses problems still facing GNOME and KDE, such as cut & paste, and the hideous font support inherited from X, among other things. While X's selection-based clipboard system is great for text, it makes no attempt to handle any other content, like images, sound, or formatted text. I don't know how GNOME/KDE apps handle this, but many aps have a private 'clipboard' which only functions within that program, preventing, say, cutting an image from the GIMP and pasting it into a WordPerfect document. The pasteboard in OPENSTEP, IIRC, provides a MIME-type-based board which all other OPENSTEP apps can access.
Also, the Display PostScript (DPS) system which OPENSTEP is built on makes sophisticated graphics output simple to implement, and also provides consistency between what comes out of the printer and what shows up on the screen (WYSIWYG;-). On most Unices, a completely different font set is available for X programs than there is for the PostScript engine (be it GhostScript, DPS, or a printer), so it is difficult to get real WYSIWYG apps under normal X. Also, antialiasing could concievably be built into the DPS engine, and with all the OPENSTEP apps using DPS, you could get a very nice display.
When GNUstep shapes up to be a full OPENSTEP implementation, it will provide an elegant basis for both application users and developers. With Linux being the buzzword it is now, developers will probably move to the OPENSTEP API when they find they can produce the same program for both MacOS X, which is shaping up to be a big consumer OS, and Linux, which wants to be the same.
How many of you folks have even heard of me? That's what I thought.
I would like my $2000 in cash, please.
Soon we're going to need commercial apps...
on
PPCLinux.Apple.Com
·
· Score: 1
... for Linux on PowerPC. As Linux becomes more popular, regular folks are going to buy machines that say "Linux preinstalled". They will probably note this, but not bother to remember whether their computer is of Intel, PowerPC, etc. architecture. When they want, say, the latest version of WordPerfect (which they heard runs on Linux), they'll be pretty puzzled when their G4 machine refuses to run Intel-only binaries.
We need to wake up software companies to the fact that Linux is not Intel-only! We all moan about how inferior the x86 architecture is to PowerPC and other modern architectures, but if we don't do anything about it, Linux will be tied to the Intel platform, just like Windows is now.
If Microsoft is broken up into Operating Systems, Applications, Hardware etc. this will not change market share at all. Windows will still be the dominant OS. Office will still be the dominant office suite.
It would benefit the industry much more to make Microsoft release full documentation of all the obscured, hidden, and secret APIs, protocols and file formats they use to maintain superiority in the software industry, so fully compatible alternatives may be developed.
Of course, if Microsoft could be broken up _and_ forced to release documentation, that'd be even better.
I have my own (top-secret:) project I'm working on. I like the module idea - can I rip the module code from XFree86 without a whole lot of effort? The main thing that inhibits me is the size of the source code tarballs. Perhaps someone could point me to the one I have to download, so I don't have to fetch the whole big mess.
All someone needs to do is write a kiddie game for Linux, that has no Windows counterpart. But it can't be just any kiddie game - it needs to be chock full of gimmick characters wired into children's minds by TV, like Pokémon! Just think, one ad later...
Little Billy: "Mommy, can I reformat our hard drive and put Linux on our computer?"
Mother: "But why? Linux is so gosh-darn complicated."
Billy: "But they have Pokémon for Linux now, and Daddy says Linux is reelyreelyreeely good!"
Mother: "But I like using Micorsoft Office, and Microsoft Internet Explorer, and Microsoft Windows... I don't even think I could figure out how to install it for you!"
Billy: "But you'll learn it all anyway... for me?" (gives sad puupy look)
Mother: "It's just too much for a silly game."
(Billy snaps) Billy: "BUT I WANT POKÉMON NOW! )(#@&%#!#%#%!#$P#%()#%* #%(#_#%*#%(151%@#%"
Mother: "Uhh.. but it's only a game..."
(Billy starts breaking things) (Mother downloads Linux-Mandrake the next day)
With the sad manipulable effect TV has on children, we could sweep Microsoft's desktop monopoly away from them, right under their nose.
Well, since we're making bacteria now, who knows when we'll start to build humans from scratch? If people still appreciate the blues X years from now, here's a little ditty to send to the 22nd century:
Test-tube Baby Blues by Joe Groff
They ripped an ovum from my mom, My dad donated some sperm, Mixed it in a glass tube 'bout twice the size of a worm,
Chorus: Now I'm a test tube baby, Oh yeah! That's what I be... Now no one wants me around, I'm in artificial misery.
When I was brought up in daycare, The others reminisced of their wombs, The jar I developed in, I say, it felt more like a tomb!
Chorus
I walked up to a pretty woman, She asked me 'bout my mother, I said "she's unit #653A or maybe someone other."
Chorus
Now I may be artificial, But my feelings are really real, Don't gimme no crap about ethics, boy, I already heard that shpeel.
Now I'm a test-tube baby, Oh yeah! That's what I be... No one wants me around, I'm in articial misery.
Yeah, nobody wants to be around, I'm in artificial misery!
Another million seller, don't you think? Well, as the French say, C'est la vie...
Instead of the '5 points, 3 days' method imposed now, experiment with letting _everyone_ have some moderator influence (except maybe folks with negative Karma). But instead of having one moderator == one +/- to the score, require that in order for a comment to budge from a 1 to a 2, or a 2 to a 3, that it be given maybe 100 positive moderations from distinct people. Of course, the flipside is that a number (maybe 75) of negative moderations bring the comment down.
Why a lower value for negative moderation? There are really only two steps below the average level of 1 you can go down, and trolls and other weeds should be filtered out ASAP.
Also, to tell whether it's really worth someone's while to score a certain comment, show how many other people have already moderated each comment.
The sheer volume of moderation occuring under this model should cause posts to even out to a deserving value in a small period of time, and the evil marks of troll moderators will be drowned out by those of honest folks (which hopefully comprise a majority of Slashdot readers). And metamoderation will be unnecessary, since if someone doesn't like the way a comment's been marked, they can do something about it.:^)
Slashdot Mirror
You realize that "Microsoft Linux" could never exist though, since as soon as both words are written onto the CD, it will annihilate itself with the matter-antimatter collision, destroying everything around it for a good couple of miles in the process.
This man, driven insane by the lack of "$$$ QUICK" and "Free Porno" messages in his mailbox, hides in his only remaining refuge- under the sea. As Internet law has long held that people sending unsolicited e-mail shall be shot on sight, he concocts a devious way to return canned meat to the world.
Recent developments in Artificial Intelligence have created incredibly intelligent computer systems - they very nearly approximate the mental capacity of small sea creatures. With this, and the fifty-year-old technology of submarine e-mail, he forges the dreaded SPAM FISH. *dun dun DUNNNN!!!*
Using nanotechnology to automatically reproduce, these spam fish quickly reduce the Internet to its pre-2000 state - so much junk e-mail gets spread that there is roughly enough bandwidth remaining to match today's 56K modems. While the majority of end-users weep at the loss of their streaming video porn and free MP3s, the geeks of the turn of the century - now old, and considered useless by most of Silicon Valley, vaguely remember a post on Slashdot (back before Natalie Portman used the DMCA to shut it down).
(hey, how about that? I incorporated AI, nanotech, Natalie Portman, and off-the-wall future predictions into one post, and even managed to stay vaguely on-topic!)
Well, I just happen to have the human genome with me as well. It just won't fit into this comment box.
I know that. It was a JOKE. Laugh, for christ's sakes!! :-)
With the long appeals process coming up, the last thing we need is another operating system Microsoft can claim as competition in the marketplace.
I'm still not sure if I can risk writing an article about Linux going mainstream. After all, no one has ever gotten fired for writing an article about Microsoft.
"This criminal has performed an illegal operation and will be terminated immediately. If the problem persists, appeal to a higher court."
Yo yo yo, I'm Billy G
:)
And everyone wants a piece of me
Web-side, E-side, all's my land
Make sure no fucka get no hand
If some fucka wanna fuck with me
I'll smash them through my WebTV
And when the competition starts to rock
I say go suck my cock
And I buy up all their stock
So don't no fucka fuck with me
O I fuck your computer with a BSoD
I pimp out all those hippie LUGs
If they dare fuck my 65,000 bugs
You know you want a piece of me
'Cuz I'm the G
Of all technology
(In the spirit of open-source, I'll leave it to y'all to finish the rap
One thing I wonder about, every time I hear about MacOS X, is whether the development tools will be provided with the actual release? The operating system looks well-designed (well, not the GUI, yet), but as a hacker (-wannabe?) I like to have development tools to play around with.
GCC is free, so it shouldn't be too difficult to just get the C/Objective C compiler. But the cool NeXT Project/Interface Builder suite should be either included in the OS, or free(beer)ly available.
Just as a side note, since MacOS X is the successor to both NeXTSTEP and MacOS, Apple should make the UI more-or-less exactly like Classic MacOS, with an option to go NeXTSTEP-wise as well. Just my opinion (as a WindowMaker user).
What is the entire process for registering a domain name, anyway? Do I just pay the cash and tell them my IP address, or what?
:)
I'm just wondering, because if I ever get a static IP link, a little vanity domain name might be nice.
FrontPage's lack of proper software garbage collection is the perfect environment to test hardware garbage collection in.
Irish police are on the lookout for a dangerous criminal. Labelled the "Shaver", he has been prowling the countryside, breaking into people's homes, and shaving the beards off of several of the men known to frequent the many pubs in the country.
While the Shaver's motives are unclear, it is even more unclear as to why the victims become so distraught after losing their facial hair. Shane O'Connor, a wife of one of the victims, said, "Well, I told me husband ne'er to go to those awful bars again. He's been good about it for a whole month, he 'as. But ever since this Shaver character relieved him of his beard, he's been trembling like mad, and every moment I take me eyes off the devil, he's off in some dirty pub again!"
In other news, a new brewery has sprung up in Northern Ireland. Called the Bearded Guiness Company, this new brewery has managed to output an enormous volume of quality Guiness stout, without any apparent source. More on this amazing little brewery at 6:00.
In a move that could dramatically change the biological systems on Earth, Amazon.com has applied for a patent on air, at least in the United States. Air is a technology used by Amazon.com employees to import oxygen into their and their customers' blood supplies, where it can be carried to the vital organs for the exchange of som carbon dioxide.
This "air" is commonly used by many organisms, including Amazon competitors, to sustain life. Amazon's possession of a patent on the technology could allow the company to prohibit others from using it, or Amazon could charge them a fee if they want to use it.
"If they choose to enforce this, it may radically impact aspects of emerging lifeforms, natural and artificial," Rob Labatt, an analyst at the research firm Gertner Group, said Friday. "The vital question is whether they'll enforce it."
"Are the going to patent affiliate programs next?" said John Segrich, an analyst CIBC World Markets, and frequent air-user, who follows Amazon.com. "I would certainly think this will be quickly challenged."
Amazon wouldn't say today what plans it has for the new patent.
Sun Pyrosystems | Posted by Grogg on 12:15 PM February 25th, 12000 B.C.
from the ooga-booga dept.
Kragga write, "I saw good article about UltraSpark 3 at Ace's Rock Field. It goes into depth about technical specs of this fire-burning technology. Best part is second page where they talk about mammoth cooking, roasting, and flamability (up to 1000 BTUs!) There are some excellent examples of mammoth cooking, and fire-starting latency."
Hmm... a cluster running off of these things would be very, um, attractive.
:)
Sorry, had to say it
-Joe
The OPENSTEP API also addresses problems still facing GNOME and KDE, such as cut & paste, and the hideous font support inherited from X, among other things. While X's selection-based clipboard system is great for text, it makes no attempt to handle any other content, like images, sound, or formatted text. I don't know how GNOME/KDE apps handle this, but many aps have a private 'clipboard' which only functions within that program, preventing, say, cutting an image from the GIMP and pasting it into a WordPerfect document. The pasteboard in OPENSTEP, IIRC, provides a MIME-type-based board which all other OPENSTEP apps can access.
Also, the Display PostScript (DPS) system which OPENSTEP is built on makes sophisticated graphics output simple to implement, and also provides consistency between what comes out of the printer and what shows up on the screen (WYSIWYG ;-). On most Unices, a completely different font set is available for X programs than there is for the PostScript engine (be it GhostScript, DPS, or a printer), so it is difficult to get real WYSIWYG apps under normal X. Also, antialiasing could concievably be built into the DPS engine, and with all the OPENSTEP apps using DPS, you could get a very nice display.
When GNUstep shapes up to be a full OPENSTEP implementation, it will provide an elegant basis for both application users and developers. With Linux being the buzzword it is now, developers will probably move to the OPENSTEP API when they find they can produce the same program for both MacOS X, which is shaping up to be a big consumer OS, and Linux, which wants to be the same.
How many of you folks have even heard of me? That's what I thought.
I would like my $2000 in cash, please.
... for Linux on PowerPC. As Linux becomes more popular, regular folks are going to buy machines that say "Linux preinstalled". They will probably note this, but not bother to remember whether their computer is of Intel, PowerPC, etc. architecture. When they want, say, the latest version of WordPerfect (which they heard runs on Linux), they'll be pretty puzzled when their G4 machine refuses to run Intel-only binaries.
We need to wake up software companies to the fact that Linux is not Intel-only! We all moan about how inferior the x86 architecture is to PowerPC and other modern architectures, but if we don't do anything about it, Linux will be tied to the Intel platform, just like Windows is now.
If Microsoft is broken up into Operating Systems, Applications, Hardware etc. this will not change market share at all. Windows will still be the dominant OS. Office will still be the dominant office suite.
It would benefit the industry much more to make Microsoft release full documentation of all the obscured, hidden, and secret APIs, protocols and file formats they use to maintain superiority in the software industry, so fully compatible alternatives may be developed.
Of course, if Microsoft could be broken up _and_ forced to release documentation, that'd be even better.
Oops! I mean wget -O /dev/stdout ...
$ wget -o /dev/stdout http://foo.com/bar.mp3 | amp /dev/stdin
Of course, it only works on Unix.
I have my own (top-secret :) project I'm working on. I like the module idea - can I rip the module code from XFree86 without a whole lot of effort? The main thing that inhibits me is the size of the source code tarballs. Perhaps someone could point me to the one I have to download, so I don't have to fetch the whole big mess.
Pardon my greediness...
All someone needs to do is write a kiddie game for Linux, that has no Windows counterpart. But it can't be just any kiddie game - it needs to be chock full of gimmick characters wired into children's minds by TV, like Pokémon! Just think, one ad later...
Little Billy: "Mommy, can I reformat our hard drive and put Linux on our computer?"
Mother: "But why? Linux is so gosh-darn complicated."
Billy: "But they have Pokémon for Linux now, and Daddy says Linux is reelyreelyreeely good!"
Mother: "But I like using Micorsoft Office, and Microsoft Internet Explorer, and Microsoft Windows... I don't even think I could figure out how to install it for you!"
Billy: "But you'll learn it all anyway... for me?" (gives sad puupy look)
Mother: "It's just too much for a silly game."
(Billy snaps)
Billy: "BUT I WANT POKÉMON NOW! )(#@&%#!#%#%!#$P#%()#%* #%(#_#%*#%(151%@#%"
Mother: "Uhh.. but it's only a game..."
(Billy starts breaking things)
(Mother downloads Linux-Mandrake the next day)
With the sad manipulable effect TV has on children, we could sweep Microsoft's desktop monopoly away from them, right under their nose.
-Joe
--
Moderators, do your worst!
Test-tube Baby Blues by Joe Groff
They ripped an ovum from my mom,
My dad donated some sperm,
Mixed it in a glass tube 'bout twice the size of a worm,
Chorus:
Now I'm a test tube baby,
Oh yeah! That's what I be...
Now no one wants me around,
I'm in artificial misery.
When I was brought up in daycare,
The others reminisced of their wombs,
The jar I developed in, I say, it felt more like a tomb!
Chorus
I walked up to a pretty woman,
She asked me 'bout my mother,
I said "she's unit #653A or maybe someone other."
Chorus
Now I may be artificial,
But my feelings are really real,
Don't gimme no crap about ethics, boy, I already heard that shpeel.
Now I'm a test-tube baby,
Oh yeah! That's what I be...
No one wants me around,
I'm in articial misery.
Yeah, nobody wants to be around,
I'm in artificial misery!
Another million seller, don't you think? Well, as the French say, C'est la vie...
Instead of the '5 points, 3 days' method imposed now, experiment with letting _everyone_ have some moderator influence (except maybe folks with negative Karma). But instead of having one moderator == one +/- to the score, require that in order for a comment to budge from a 1 to a 2, or a 2 to a 3, that it be given maybe 100 positive moderations from distinct people. Of course, the flipside is that a number (maybe 75) of negative moderations bring the comment down.
:^)
Why a lower value for negative moderation? There are really only two steps below the average level of 1 you can go down, and trolls and other weeds should be filtered out ASAP.
Also, to tell whether it's really worth someone's while to score a certain comment, show how many other people have already moderated each comment.
The sheer volume of moderation occuring under this model should cause posts to even out to a deserving value in a small period of time, and the evil marks of troll moderators will be drowned out by those of honest folks (which hopefully comprise a majority of Slashdot readers). And metamoderation will be unnecessary, since if someone doesn't like the way a comment's been marked, they can do something about it.