While I didn't agree with all of/.'s conclusions drawn from the Hellmout series, I thought it made some very important points (I also contributed a comment from my own high school days).
However, the sweeping generalizations that/. keeps making about parents & teachers Vs. geeks are sickening. I personally have had teachers and administrators, both in H.S. and college, who cared 100% about the kids in their class/school, and thank God had parents who didn't sit back and let their child be attacked by school jerks without protest./. is guilty of the crime is prosecuting others for, and has to learn the real meaning of "tolerant" (i.e. not hating and being fearfull of all that is different than me), not the pitifull small minded meaning popularized by Western Society's hopelessly confused political left (i.e. "tolerant" = liking those who are as liberal as me and scorning anyone who dares to be to the right of me).
Why do so many members of the "open minded" and "free thinking" OpenSource community feel it necessary to bash anyone who disagrees with them? Ratings exist because many parents don't want their kids exposed to certain things, and K-Mart is merely helping them out by actually enforcing the ratings. You may not agree with the decision of those parents, but HOW DARE YOU try to deny them the right to raise their children as THEY see fit instead of how YOU see fit!!!!! You've got a long way to got to understand the term "open".
One of the hardest, but mots important, things a parent has to learn to do is let go as their child gets older. As kids grow up, they need space to figure out who they are, what they can dom and become there own person. RMS clearly can't deal with letting go of the OpenSource world, so he has fabricated a new SILLY idea to try to hold on. That leads to breakign a child's spirit, or having him/her sever connections with the parent. RMS - which would you prefer?
I'm getting a little tired of hearing "Mozilla is dead - IE has all of the market share". Since when does OpenSource mean "Thou shalt curry favor in the eyes of the mass-market"? I always thought OpenSource meant build the best peice of software you can, no matter what business concerns have to say about it. The guys at Mozilla are building the ONLY 100% standards compliant browser. They have doen some new cool sutff (XUL, etc.). Feature creep? bloating? tell me - how many redunant features are in the average Linux distro? How BIG is the average distro? Does suck call RedHat or Suse (with all of their 7 CDs) dead or bloated just because they are huge and haven't usurped NT and Solaris? I think it's about time that the community got back to thinking more about QUALITY and less about world domination.
I think you totally miss the point of limiting access to "adult" (read: morally reprehensible) material. Everything in the world can be used for good or bad, depending on context, motivation, etc. The creation of a human starts with the same act between husband and wife that will get a man and woman arrested in the context of prostitution. Pulling a trigger and killing someone can be done in self-defense, and hence totally justifiable, or as an act of cold-blooded murder - an awful crime punishable by death. War is, as the saying goes, Hell, but sometimes necessary to stop something even worse. And yes, killing an animal can be to eat and sustain yourself, or, as a video game, serve to feed blood-thisty tendencies. The point of limiting access to things like Soldier of Fortune is to avoid desensitizing people to senseless and pointless violence. Eating hamburgers is neither senseless nor pointless. I do agree, however, that any slaughterhouse which tortures an animal before its death (or in the act of killing it) should be closed. There are quick and painless ways to kill, and to do it any other way is much worse than playing a game.
two things: 1) Look in history - has there ever been a time when some over-whelming force hasn't held most of the power? Whether it was the Roman, Greek, Egyptian, Babalonian, etc. Empires, the Church in Europe in the middle ages, Islamic dictators in the mid-east today, the former Soviet Union, etc. And Guess what? people survived as people, and the dignified human race and soul out-lived all of those empires. 2) lets say you are right - why aren't you moving to Havenco or joining a Montanna milita or something? If things are hopeless, why don't you bail? Because the reality is that every generation faces its own challenges, and unless we all nuke each other, that will continue. Today's "all-powerfull demigods" are nothing but a paragraph in the history books tomorrow. Ever read "Osymandys" - I know I got the name wrong, but you know what I'm talking about - the poem about the enscription on the broken statue of a long-gone ruler?
Let's say you're the worrying type and buy into what Joy said. So if the end of the world will come through renegade programmers releasing nano-tech based robots to destroy us all, does that mean that the OpenSource movement, which opens up high-end technology to absolutely everyone who wants it, is the beginning of the end according to Joy? What an interesting coincedence. What a convenient thing for Sun Microsystems to tell the President!!
when it comes down to it, there is no case law regarding inforcing the GPL, and even if there would be, there is no magical way to detect violations. You just have to watch the market you're in and hope you'll spot obvious violations.
For all we know, there's Linux kernel code in the Win2k code. Can you prove there is or isn't? No way!
about 100 years ago a leading Jewish religious scholar (known as the Cofetz Chaim)commented that as subsequent generations grow weaker in their beleif and trust in God, God makes things like technology show us more and more that various aspects of religion must be true. For example, if 16th century man thought that it is not possible that when you die and go up to heaven you will have to give an acounting for your entire life which has been recorded, 20th century man, given the advent of audio and video recording, really should have no conceptual problem with it. Whether you are religious or not, you must admit that this brain scan thing will force a very fundemental issue - do human beings have souls? If you answer "no", then there is no difference between carbon you and scanned you. Of course, that lack of difference proves nothing, but it certainly has to make you think.
does anyone know what the performance is like on a 56k modem? Can this possibly substitute fir being able to run locally? This still doesn't sound like a real solution to the Windoze problem - so instead of your PCs crashing, you will have 25 instances on Word97 running on your NT server and it will go down. Big deal. I don't think there can be a mass migration of Windoze users to Linux until you can run your Win32 apps LOCALLY on your Linux machine, with the full realiability of Linux and feature set of the Win32 app. Do you want to have to dial up every time you use Word or Excel? I don't think so. Do you want to be the Network Admin in charge of an NT box running 200 instances of Word2000? I don't think so.
The average Linux book (RedHat unleashed, Linux in 21 days - that whole genre) take a fundementally flawed approach - they assume you can teach end-users how to ls -l, grep, etc. That is WRONG - plain users couldn't even deal with the DOS command set, do you think they are ready for UNIX? To handle newbie end-users coming from the Win9x world, you need simple books.tutorials wthat only teach the same KDE/GNOME based features as the ones people used in Win9x - you CAN'T teach OS concepts such as what a file system really is to an MS user. They need a simple - "click on this icon to do this" approach.
I'm not saying this to be nasty to MS users - I'm sure Electrical engineers can get a good laugh at us programmers for our pitiful understanding of these computer things that we spend the day working on. The point is that you can't pile info on to people which is above their head and expect them to absorb it, so start VERY slow and low, and if they want to go deeper, they will find how to get there. You first spent years in grade school learning 2+2=4 before you tried to do derivations!
I don't think ESR meant that there is a clear mapping from Quake to E-commerce. Rather, the point is that Quake teaches us some good security lessons. And if you think that bad security can't be designed into e-commerce just as easily as Quake, you're living in a research lab on the North Pole.
You missed something very simple. Windows 9x is distributed by one compnay, and therefore has one face, and being main stream is a limitation. But do you know what - Windows 2k has MANY faces - regular, pro, server, data center, etc. Why? becuase somone who spends his day in MS VisualStudio has different OS needds than somone who spends his day in MS Office. Now, it's true that when it comes to Win2K it's all the same thing, but the point is that there is no reason why there shoulnd't be multiple flavors of Linux for different people. For example, a Mandrake 8 with KDE 2.0 which any idiot can install and use, a Debian for your purist hackers, and a RedHat 7 for someone in the middle. That's the beauty of OpenSource OS - you can have your cake and eat it too via multiple distributions. And the fact that they will all be using Linus's kernel means they will be compatible. The whole "if Linux goes mainstream it wil......" is a joke - the kernel will never be touched by idiots, and what you put on top of the kernel is up to you and/or your distribution!
I think it has just as much potential as patening the DNA sequence - just think - the way your lungs force air to pass over your lips may just infringe on patents related to airflow caused by jet engines and wings. Anyone ready for a cease-and-desist-breathing order?:)
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Hey Jon - ever stop and read your own posts?
see this site for real info on work done at NYU's Media Lab on 3D w/o goggles
However, the sweeping generalizations that /. keeps making about parents & teachers Vs. geeks are sickening. I personally have had teachers and administrators, both in H.S. and college, who cared 100% about the kids in their class/school, and thank God had parents who didn't sit back and let their child be attacked by school jerks without protest. /. is guilty of the crime is prosecuting others for, and has to learn the real meaning of "tolerant" (i.e. not hating and being fearfull of all that is different than me), not the pitifull small minded meaning popularized by Western Society's hopelessly confused political left (i.e. "tolerant" = liking those who are as liberal as me and scorning anyone who dares to be to the right of me).
Why do so many members of the "open minded" and "free thinking" OpenSource community feel it necessary to bash anyone who disagrees with them? Ratings exist because many parents don't want their kids exposed to certain things, and K-Mart is merely helping them out by actually enforcing the ratings. You may not agree with the decision of those parents, but HOW DARE YOU try to deny them the right to raise their children as THEY see fit instead of how YOU see fit!!!!! You've got a long way to got to understand the term "open".
One of the hardest, but mots important, things a parent has to learn to do is let go as their child gets older. As kids grow up, they need space to figure out who they are, what they can dom and become there own person. RMS clearly can't deal with letting go of the OpenSource world, so he has fabricated a new SILLY idea to try to hold on. That leads to breakign a child's spirit, or having him/her sever connections with the parent. RMS - which would you prefer?
I'm getting a little tired of hearing "Mozilla is dead - IE has all of the market share". Since when does OpenSource mean "Thou shalt curry favor in the eyes of the mass-market"? I always thought OpenSource meant build the best peice of software you can, no matter what business concerns have to say about it. The guys at Mozilla are building the ONLY 100% standards compliant browser. They have doen some new cool sutff (XUL, etc.). Feature creep? bloating? tell me - how many redunant features are in the average Linux distro? How BIG is the average distro? Does suck call RedHat or Suse (with all of their 7 CDs) dead or bloated just because they are huge and haven't usurped NT and Solaris? I think it's about time that the community got back to thinking more about QUALITY and less about world domination.
openSource version of 3D StudioMax + some features from Gimp + open Flash swf format = GPL version of Flash?
I think you totally miss the point of limiting access to "adult" (read: morally reprehensible) material. Everything in the world can be used for good or bad, depending on context, motivation, etc.
The creation of a human starts with the same act between husband and wife that will get a man and woman arrested in the context of prostitution. Pulling a trigger and killing someone can be done in self-defense, and hence totally justifiable, or as an act of cold-blooded murder - an awful crime punishable by death. War is, as the saying goes, Hell, but sometimes necessary to stop something even worse. And yes, killing an animal can be to eat and sustain yourself, or, as a video game, serve to feed blood-thisty tendencies. The point of limiting access to things like Soldier of Fortune is to avoid desensitizing people to senseless and pointless violence. Eating hamburgers is neither senseless nor pointless. I do agree, however, that any slaughterhouse which tortures an animal before its death (or in the act of killing it) should be closed. There are quick and painless ways to kill, and to do it any other way is much worse than playing a game.
two things:
1) Look in history - has there ever been a time when some over-whelming force hasn't held most of the power? Whether it was the Roman, Greek, Egyptian, Babalonian, etc. Empires, the Church in Europe in the middle ages, Islamic dictators in the mid-east today, the former Soviet Union, etc. And Guess what? people survived as people, and the dignified human race and soul out-lived all of those empires.
2) lets say you are right - why aren't you moving to Havenco or joining a Montanna milita or something? If things are hopeless, why don't you bail? Because the reality is that every generation faces its own challenges, and unless we all nuke each other, that will continue. Today's "all-powerfull demigods" are nothing but a paragraph in the history books tomorrow. Ever read "Osymandys" - I know I got the name wrong, but you know what I'm talking about - the poem about the enscription on the broken statue of a long-gone ruler?
sorry - here's the URL: here
see this article at the NY Times - the guy backed out, and the Bush campaing seems to be less than happy :-)
Let's say you're the worrying type and buy into what Joy said. So if the end of the world will come through renegade programmers releasing nano-tech based robots to destroy us all, does that mean that the OpenSource movement, which opens up high-end technology to absolutely everyone who wants it, is the beginning of the end according to Joy? What an interesting coincedence. What a convenient thing for Sun Microsystems to tell the President!!
With the popularity and features of Java constantly growing, where do you see C++ holding its ground and fiting in 5 years from now?
For all we know, there's Linux kernel code in the Win2k code. Can you prove there is or isn't? No way!
and of course no companies attitudes are affected at all by the new millions of $ they now have to consider. You beleive it.
about 100 years ago a leading Jewish religious scholar (known as the Cofetz Chaim)commented that as subsequent generations grow weaker in their beleif and trust in God, God makes things like technology show us more and more that various aspects of religion must be true. For example, if 16th century man thought that it is not possible that when you die and go up to heaven you will have to give an acounting for your entire life which has been recorded, 20th century man, given the advent of audio and video recording, really should have no conceptual problem with it.
Whether you are religious or not, you must admit that this brain scan thing will force a very fundemental issue - do human beings have souls? If you answer "no", then there is no difference between carbon you and scanned you.
Of course, that lack of difference proves nothing, but it certainly has to make you think.
does anyone know what the performance is like on a 56k modem? Can this possibly substitute fir being able to run locally? This still doesn't sound like a real solution to the Windoze problem - so instead of your PCs crashing, you will have 25 instances on Word97 running on your NT server and it will go down. Big deal. I don't think there can be a mass migration of Windoze users to Linux until you can run your Win32 apps LOCALLY on your Linux machine, with the full realiability of Linux and feature set of the Win32 app. Do you want to have to dial up every time you use Word or Excel? I don't think so. Do you want to be the Network Admin in charge of an NT box running 200 instances of Word2000? I don't think so.
I'm not saying this to be nasty to MS users - I'm sure Electrical engineers can get a good laugh at us programmers for our pitiful understanding of these computer things that we spend the day working on. The point is that you can't pile info on to people which is above their head and expect them to absorb it, so start VERY slow and low, and if they want to go deeper, they will find how to get there. You first spent years in grade school learning 2+2=4 before you tried to do derivations!
was that meant to sound like a kid in kindergarten or first grade? If you want to argue a point, prove what you're saying or keep quite!!
how about proving what you're saying instead of making sweeping declaratiosn without backing them up?
I don't think ESR meant that there is a clear mapping from Quake to E-commerce. Rather, the point is that Quake teaches us some good security lessons. And if you think that bad security can't be designed into e-commerce just as easily as Quake, you're living in a research lab on the North Pole.
True, 5 UIs is annoying, but I think the reality is that one UI, probably KDE, will end up being the defacto standard.
You missed something very simple. Windows 9x is distributed by one compnay, and therefore has one face, and being main stream is a limitation. But do you know what - Windows 2k has MANY faces - regular, pro, server, data center, etc. Why? becuase somone who spends his day in MS VisualStudio has different OS needds than somone who spends his day in MS Office. Now, it's true that when it comes to Win2K it's all the same thing, but the point is that there is no reason why there shoulnd't be multiple flavors of Linux for different people. For example, a Mandrake 8 with KDE 2.0 which any idiot can install and use, a Debian for your purist hackers, and a RedHat 7 for someone in the middle. That's the beauty of OpenSource OS - you can have your cake and eat it too via multiple distributions. And the fact that they will all be using Linus's kernel means they will be compatible. The whole "if Linux goes mainstream it wil......" is a joke - the kernel will never be touched by idiots, and what you put on top of the kernel is up to you and/or your distribution!
the new one was terrible. When will the original movies be on DVD?
I think it has just as much potential as patening the DNA sequence - just think - the way your lungs force air to pass over your lips may just infringe on patents related to airflow caused by jet engines and wings. Anyone ready for a cease-and-desist-breathing order? :)