The man of the year thing has never been a popularity contest exactly, Ayatollah Khomeni (sp??) was man of the year once (real bitchin Brad Holland cover too) as well as a number of other people you might not want to invite for dinner.
It isn't about popularity, it is about influence. Bezos is the single most visible proponent of e-commerce which virtually didn't exist three years ago, and is set to put a big dent in conventional retail this Christmas season.
Sure they are losing money, and they may well tank completely given time, but they(he) have set the paradigm for online business and captured the popular imagination with respect to technology to a greater extent than anyone since Apple, MS, or Netscape.
Believe it when you take delivery of one. I wouldn't be suprised if this is nothing more than a feint to get MS to come down on their per machine license fee.
Yes, you always hear the argument about throwing a bigger processor (or more hardware) at something in lieu of efficient programming. That kind of thinking can work if the character of the job stays the same, but it doesn't. The complexity of the jobs are changing and getting more complex, particularly with broadband and real time media delivery.
Just look at our desktop systems now. Applied to the kind of work being done five years ago they'd burn through the floor. So why does a 450 MHz machine still feel slow sometimes? (I must be getting old, becuase I still can't believe a machine rated in 100s of MHz could ever be slow). We aren't doing the same things we were five years ago.
Straight line approximations using boosted processor speeds will only go so far, but as the job gets more complex, the need for efficient programming can only increase.
When George Lucas made the original Star Wars in the late 70's, he reduced his 'salary' from Fox in exchange for a larger cut of the licensing rights for the merchandise that would accompany the release of the movie.
Much of Lucas' millions derive directly from that licensing arrangement following the success of Star Wars and the rest of the original triolgy.
To criticize him for it now completely misses the point and ignores the history Lucas' whole post Star Wars career. Without that money, much of what he's done (and he has undoubtedly done a lot to advance the technology of movie making) may never have been possible.
It blows me away that there are still people who think it is censorship to tell someone else to shut up when they are being offensive or disruptive.
In a forum like Slashdot this is not considered censorship, it is editorial license. Censorship involves prior restraint, keeping someone from saying something in the first place. As has been pointed out, these editorial measures would kick in only after an individual has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to be a true troll.
And whats all this about freedom of speech and the First Amendment? It is my understanding that since only the US government is explicitly covered by the First Amendment (and other branches of governement by subsequent interpretation) this isn't really a First Amendment issue. The First Amendment says that Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech. Unless there has been a special election that I don't know about, Mr. Malda, et al. are not representatives of the government.
This is more along the lines of a living room. The Slashdot guys are nice enough to erect this little electronic living room here and allow us all in to discuss topics of the day. If someone that I'd invited into my house began to foam at the mouth, shout profanities and verbally abuse others, I'd feel no compunction at ejecting them from my house.
I think the Slashdot guys do a tremendous job of keeping this place going and trying to keep the discussion moving forward. I don't think that demanding civility of others and trying to enforce it is too much to ask. As they say about TV, if you don't like what is on, change the channel or turn it off. There is a big web out there. If you really can't abide by some reasonable limits, go build your own Slashdot wanna-be.
I don't know about any other application but in MS Excel Scroll Lock locks in the current selection. Without Scroll Lock, arrow keys and Page Up/Down cause the selected area to change in the direction of the navigation. With Scroll Lock on the view changes, but the currently selected cells stay selected.
I love this. A year ago it was suicide to bring Linux into your organization. A year later it is just fine, due primarily to the people who were willing to ignore last years advice.
You need to get a little more perspective on things. Self restraint isn't Luddism. Just because something can be known doesn't mean that it must be known. Maybe down the road we will know enough to alter biology, but we don't know enough now.
Biology is fundamentally different than chemistry(your fire reference). The laws of chemistry were written at the moment of the Big Bang. The biological world is the result of eons of process. Nothing we can do can alter the laws of chemistry, but we are perfectly capable of destroying the unique product of all that evolution.
Applied molecular biology is like riding a wild bull. Sure you can get on, but you aren't really in control. What is going on now in biology, I am convinced, has as much to do with human arrogance and ambition as it does scientific inquiry.
Why do people keep acting like all this genetic engineering work is a good thing? It is certainly interesting to know how life "works", but I am really skittish about anyone using that knowledge to "develop applications" for want of a better phrase.
It has taken "nature" several billion years to get us where we are now. Does anyone really think that our mere 20-30 years of experience with this stuff qualify us to go messing around in there.
I think applied molecular biology will make the folly of nuclear weapons development pale by comparison.
I wouldn't line up for tickets just yet. That site looks way more like pitch than like product. Hollywood is famous for rumors of movies of famous literary properties that have been "in development" for years with nothing but the rumors to show for it. How many times have you heard about a new version of "The Lord of the Rings" being in the works? "Coming soon!!! Gravity's Rainbow: The Mini Series".
I'd say someone is just trying to generate enough buzz to get some real money interested. Now they've just expanded pitch-space into the web.
This is bit off topic and may have been covered when the movie first came out, but has anyone looked into the plausibility of harvesting the energy of captive human beings?
I'm no physicist, but this doesn't make much sense given my understanding of thermodynamics. I would think that it would be massively inefficient to do this given the amount of energy a human being requires just to stay alive plus the energy inputs of maintaining all the life support infrastructure.
From what I read, this turns on the timing of evidence in question, specifically that it was brought to light after the full discovery period had elapsed.
I'm sure that this is purely procedural on the part of MS, since I seem to recall their lawyers pulling the exact same thing, asking that late breaking evidence be admitted, in the DOJ trial and they prevailed, though not without a little tongue lashing by Judge Jackson.
This will probably turn on the temperment of the presiding judge in the Caldera case and just how solid the evidence (prospective evidence, I should say) is.
Too much of what passes back and forth at this place is of the circle jerk variety, if I may be permitted a colorful expression.
I like Mr. Barr's writing as much as anyone, but it is misleading, and consequently harmful to Linux advocacy to portray him as mainstream. He has as much impartiality here as an MSDN article does on Windows 2000. This article is clearly preaching to the converted, which is specious advocacy at best.
I'm always a little shocked to see a movement that calls itself Open Source be the habitue of so many closed minds. The number of flamers and knee-jerk MS haters is unhealthy. No one is going to win adherents to as underdog a cause a Linux by treating others not of like mind as though they were idiots. Microsoft can get away with being insular and dismissive of public or press opinion because they are obscenely rich. They can just keep spending money until the rest of us get tired of talking. Linux advocates can't do that. They have to show real results and let the results speak for themselves. Given the facts, reasonable people will reach the correct conclusion. And of course, there will always be some unreasonable people who will resist the conclusion regardless of the facts. Unfortunately, this site appears to attract an inordinately large number of this type.
This may be seen by some as a nit to be picked, but this appears to be only a link from CNN to Joe Barr at LinuxWorld. This isn't exactly what I would call the attention of the mainstream press, unless embedding a link is the equivalent of an internally generated story. I'd be much more impressed if it were an actual CNN correspondent who didn't already have the interest in the topic that Mr. Barr does (and a fine writer he is). The fact that they think enough of the subject to link to it is one thing, but it isn't quite the full editorial weight of CNN.
I'm more interested in seeing what Josh Quittner at Time has to say as he undergoes his baptism by Linux fire. Anyone out there offer him any help after his Linux article a couple of weeks ago.
I've seen a book from New Rider's Press on Programming with the GTK Toolkit (or something like that). I can't comment on it, however, as I've only just picked it up and skimmed, but I do know that it exists.
I will admit right up front that I don't know any of the details on this, but my first reaction to view with great skepticism anything having to do with Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia. He is one of the most ideologically pure members of the Shih'ite wing of the Republican Party. He is the American equivalent of the Australian faction that put through the net censorship legislation that is causing such a stir.
I am not certain why this has generated so much. Both items, support for Linux and loss of support for Netware, have been reported previously. The Notes server for Linux was announced, albeit tentatively, at LotusSphere in January. Dropping the Netware Notes NLM was reported in late '98.
I don't agree at all with the headline, there is too much imputing of motives going on than is supported by the article.
Clearly, this being an industry trade group, we know what their agenda is, but when I read the CNN article, all I saw was someone describe the amount of money spent on software as "peanuts". I don't think that it is logical or fair to jump from that statement to the headline of this article.
I guess that I was mixing apples and oranges a little bit, and not differentiating install from use issues. By paradigm, I meant the underlying similarities that all properly designed Windows applications should implement such as menu structure and the notion that certain similar functions are implemented in similar ways in different applications. Sort of an interface level polymorphism. Take copying a file, for instance, you can copy a file in Explorer the same way you copy text in a word processor. You select and use the Edit | Copy menu item, or Ctl-C at the keyboard. The underlying implementation is entirely different, but to the user, the activity is the same or similar.
Also, Linux is not yet helpful enough to the user the way Windows is. While you still need to know what you are doing in Windows to get it done, more clues are provided for you through the interface. It is like the design principle that people recognize information more easily than they recollect it. Linux at this point is an essay test, Windows is a multiple choice test. MS takes a well deserved beating for their business practices and general corporate arrogance, and disregard for technical quality, but you have to give them credit. If the back-end of Windows was as functional and stable as the front end is useful, there would be no contest between Windows and Linux.
I think people who dismiss the difficulty of installing Linux are not being realistic. Even the Red Hat install requires an understanding of both the machine and OS that are far beyond most users.
Linux is, from both an installation and use view, a real dividing line amoung computer users. If you have no computer experience, Windows is difficult until you get the paradigm at which point it becomes much easier. The paradigm for Linux, if there is one, is much more difficult to get.
I don't expect that Linux will ever become the favored OS of the casual user, but I also do expect that, due to the pervasiveness of computers and early age at which children are being exposed to them, the average adult user will be head and shoulders more savvy about the machines in another 10 years than they are today. Hopefully the proportion of casual to serious users will decline, and that is where Linux will grow.
I read Gravity's Rainbow about twenty years ago out of sheer cussedness. I couldn't figure out what it was about from the jacket copy, but the reviews were so glowing that I figured it had to be something special. It took three or four tries until I could figure out which way was up. It must have taken me a couple months to get all the way through (read on lunch hours and after dinner) and I didn't always follow all of it, but it was quite a read. The densest thing I've ever waded through. Every few years I pick it back up and make a reasonable dent in it before being overwhelemed once again. It is damned difficult to follow at times. The nice thing, though, is that if you don't mind reading eliptically, you can open it up just about anywhere and fall smack into some inspired set pieces. The one that really turned the trick for me was the scene where Slothrop is visiting his most recent conquests' mother and is offered a seemingly endless string of absurdly disgusting candies. That and the one where he follows his harmonica down into the the toilet at the night club. One of these days (when I retire?) I'll have another couple of months to devote to it again.
Slashdot Mirror
The man of the year thing has never been a popularity contest exactly, Ayatollah Khomeni (sp??) was man of the year once (real bitchin Brad Holland cover too) as well as a number of other people you might not want to invite for dinner.
It isn't about popularity, it is about influence. Bezos is the single most visible proponent of e-commerce which virtually didn't exist three years ago, and is set to put a big dent in conventional retail this Christmas season.
Sure they are losing money, and they may well tank completely given time, but they(he) have set the paradigm for online business and captured the popular imagination with respect to technology to a greater extent than anyone since Apple, MS, or Netscape.
Does anyone know anything about the origin of this person's nom de hack: 'Zyklon'?
The association that I made immediately is with 'Zyklon B', the trade name of the agent used in Germany to gas Jews during WWII.
Whatever his crimes or misdemeanors, his choice of hacker name instantly diminishes his credibility with me.
Believe it when you take delivery of one. I wouldn't be suprised if this is nothing more than a feint to get MS to come down on their per machine license fee.
Yes, you always hear the argument about throwing a bigger processor (or more hardware) at something in lieu of efficient programming. That kind of thinking can work if the character of the job stays the same, but it doesn't. The complexity of the jobs are changing and getting more complex, particularly with broadband and real time media delivery.
Just look at our desktop systems now. Applied to the kind of work being done five years ago they'd burn through the floor. So why does a 450 MHz machine still feel slow sometimes? (I must be getting old, becuase I still can't believe a machine rated in 100s of MHz could ever be slow). We aren't doing the same things we were five years ago.
Straight line approximations using boosted processor speeds will only go so far, but as the job gets more complex, the need for efficient programming can only increase.
When George Lucas made the original Star Wars in the late 70's, he reduced his 'salary' from Fox in exchange for a larger cut of the licensing rights for the merchandise that would accompany the release of the movie.
Much of Lucas' millions derive directly from that licensing arrangement following the success of Star Wars and the rest of the original triolgy.
To criticize him for it now completely misses the point and ignores the history Lucas' whole post Star Wars career. Without that money, much of what he's done (and he has undoubtedly done a lot to advance the technology of movie making) may never have been possible.
It blows me away that there are still people who think it is censorship to tell someone else to shut up when they are being offensive or disruptive.
In a forum like Slashdot this is not considered censorship, it is editorial license. Censorship involves prior restraint, keeping someone from saying something in the first place. As has been pointed out, these editorial measures would kick in only after an individual has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to be a true troll.
And whats all this about freedom of speech and the First Amendment? It is my understanding that since only the US government is explicitly covered by the First Amendment (and other branches of governement by subsequent interpretation) this isn't really a First Amendment issue. The First Amendment says that Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech. Unless there has been a special election that I don't know about, Mr. Malda, et al. are not representatives of the government.
This is more along the lines of a living room. The Slashdot guys are nice enough to erect this little electronic living room here and allow us all in to discuss topics of the day. If someone that I'd invited into my house began to foam at the mouth, shout profanities and verbally abuse others, I'd feel no compunction at ejecting them from my house.
I think the Slashdot guys do a tremendous job of keeping this place going and trying to keep the discussion moving forward. I don't think that demanding civility of others and trying to enforce it is too much to ask. As they say about TV, if you don't like what is on, change the channel or turn it off. There is a big web out there. If you really can't abide by some reasonable limits, go build your own Slashdot wanna-be.
I don't know about any other application but in MS Excel Scroll Lock locks in the current selection. Without Scroll Lock, arrow keys and Page Up/Down cause the selected area to change in the direction of the navigation. With Scroll Lock on the view changes, but the currently selected cells stay selected.
I love this. A year ago it was suicide to bring Linux into your organization. A year later it is just fine, due primarily to the people who were willing to ignore last years advice.
Joshua,
You need to get a little more perspective on things. Self restraint isn't Luddism. Just because something can be known doesn't mean that it must be known. Maybe down the road we will know enough to alter biology, but we don't know enough now.
Biology is fundamentally different than chemistry(your fire reference). The laws of chemistry were written at the moment of the Big Bang. The biological world is the result of eons of process. Nothing we can do can alter the laws of chemistry, but we are perfectly capable of destroying the unique product of all that evolution.
Applied molecular biology is like riding a wild bull. Sure you can get on, but you aren't really in control. What is going on now in biology, I am convinced, has as much to do with human arrogance and ambition as it does scientific inquiry.
Why do people keep acting like all this genetic engineering work is a good thing? It is certainly interesting to know how life "works", but I am really skittish about anyone using that knowledge to "develop applications" for want of a better phrase.
It has taken "nature" several billion years to get us where we are now. Does anyone really think that our mere 20-30 years of experience with this stuff qualify us to go messing around in there.
I think applied molecular biology will make the folly of nuclear weapons development pale by comparison.
Here is link to a recent thread about Neuromancer from Aint It Cool News. The script the guy is discussing in from 1990! I still think this is low level buzz.
I'd say someone is just trying to generate enough buzz to get some real money interested. Now they've just expanded pitch-space into the web.
This is bit off topic and may have been covered when the movie first came out, but has anyone looked into the plausibility of harvesting the energy of captive human beings?
I'm no physicist, but this doesn't make much sense given my understanding of thermodynamics. I would think that it would be massively inefficient to do this given the amount of energy a human being requires just to stay alive plus the energy inputs of maintaining all the life support infrastructure.
Other than that it was an extremely cool movie.
From what I read, this turns on the timing of evidence in question, specifically that it was brought to light after the full discovery period had elapsed.
I'm sure that this is purely procedural on the part of MS, since I seem to recall their lawyers pulling the exact same thing, asking that late breaking evidence be admitted, in the DOJ trial and they prevailed, though not without a little tongue lashing by Judge Jackson.
This will probably turn on the temperment of the presiding judge in the Caldera case and just how solid the evidence (prospective evidence, I should say) is.
Too much of what passes back and forth at this place is of the circle jerk variety, if I may be permitted a colorful expression.
I like Mr. Barr's writing as much as anyone, but it is misleading, and consequently harmful to Linux advocacy to portray him as mainstream. He has as much impartiality here as an MSDN article does on Windows 2000. This article is clearly preaching to the converted, which is specious advocacy at best.
I'm always a little shocked to see a movement that calls itself Open Source be the habitue of so many closed minds. The number of flamers and knee-jerk MS haters is unhealthy. No one is going to win adherents to as underdog a cause a Linux by treating others not of like mind as though they were idiots. Microsoft can get away with being insular and dismissive of public or press opinion because they are obscenely rich. They can just keep spending money until the rest of us get tired of talking. Linux advocates can't do that. They have to show real results and let the results speak for themselves. Given the facts, reasonable people will reach the correct conclusion. And of course, there will always be some unreasonable people who will resist the conclusion regardless of the facts. Unfortunately, this site appears to attract an inordinately large number of this type.
This may be seen by some as a nit to be picked, but this appears to be only a link from CNN to Joe Barr at LinuxWorld. This isn't exactly what I would call the attention of the mainstream press, unless embedding a link is the equivalent of an internally generated story. I'd be much more impressed if it were an actual CNN correspondent who didn't already have the interest in the topic that Mr. Barr does (and a fine writer he is). The fact that they think enough of the subject to link to it is one thing, but it isn't quite the full editorial weight of CNN.
I'm more interested in seeing what Josh Quittner at Time has to say as he undergoes his baptism by Linux fire. Anyone out there offer him any help after his Linux article a couple of weeks ago.
I've seen a book from New Rider's Press on Programming with the GTK Toolkit (or something like that). I can't comment on it, however, as I've only just picked it up and skimmed, but I do know that it exists.
I will admit right up front that I don't know any of the details on this, but my first reaction to view with great skepticism anything having to do with Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia. He is one of the most ideologically pure members of the Shih'ite wing of the Republican Party. He is the American equivalent of the Australian faction that put through the net censorship legislation that is causing such a stir.
Exactly my point. Also, don't forget that in Georgia, privacy stops at the bedroom door.
I am not certain why this has generated so much. Both items, support for Linux and loss of support for Netware, have been reported previously. The Notes server for Linux was announced, albeit tentatively, at LotusSphere in January. Dropping the Netware Notes NLM was reported in late '98.
Could wide dissemination of this article lead to....the Slashdotting of Slashdot?!?
I don't agree at all with the headline, there is too much imputing of motives going on than is supported by the article.
Clearly, this being an industry trade group, we know what their agenda is, but when I read the CNN article, all I saw was someone describe the amount of money spent on software as "peanuts". I don't think that it is logical or fair to jump from that statement to the headline of this article.
I guess that I was mixing apples and oranges a little bit, and not differentiating install from use issues. By paradigm, I meant the underlying similarities that all properly designed Windows applications should implement such as menu structure and the notion that certain similar functions are implemented in similar ways in different applications. Sort of an interface level polymorphism. Take copying a file, for instance, you can copy a file in Explorer the same way you copy text in a word processor. You select and use the Edit | Copy menu item, or Ctl-C at the keyboard. The underlying implementation is entirely different, but to the user, the activity is the same or similar.
Also, Linux is not yet helpful enough to the user the way Windows is. While you still need to know what you are doing in Windows to get it done, more clues are provided for you through the interface. It is like the design principle that people recognize information more easily than they recollect it. Linux at this point is an essay test, Windows is a multiple choice test. MS takes a well deserved beating for their business practices and general corporate arrogance, and disregard for technical quality, but you have to give them credit. If the back-end of Windows was as functional and stable as the front end is useful, there would be no contest between Windows and Linux.
I think people who dismiss the difficulty of installing Linux are not being realistic. Even the Red Hat install requires an understanding of both the machine and OS that are far beyond most users.
Linux is, from both an installation and use view, a real dividing line amoung computer users. If you have no computer experience, Windows is difficult until you get the paradigm at which point it becomes much easier. The paradigm for Linux, if there is one, is much more difficult to get.
I don't expect that Linux will ever become the favored OS of the casual user, but I also do expect that, due to the pervasiveness of computers and early age at which children are being exposed to them, the average adult user will be head and shoulders more savvy about the machines in another 10 years than they are today. Hopefully the proportion of casual to serious users will decline, and that is where Linux will grow.
I read Gravity's Rainbow about twenty years ago out of sheer cussedness. I couldn't figure out what it was about from the jacket copy, but the reviews were so glowing that I figured it had to be something special. It took three or four tries until I could figure out which way was up. It must have taken me a couple months to get all the way through (read on lunch hours and after dinner) and I didn't always follow all of it, but it was quite a read. The densest thing I've ever waded through. Every few years I pick it back up and make a reasonable dent in it before being overwhelemed once again. It is damned difficult to follow at times. The nice thing, though, is that if you don't mind reading eliptically, you can open it up just about anywhere and fall smack into some inspired set pieces. The one that really turned the trick for me was the scene where Slothrop is visiting his most recent conquests' mother and is offered a seemingly endless string of absurdly disgusting candies. That and the one where he follows his harmonica down into the the toilet at the night club. One of these days (when I retire?) I'll have another couple of months to devote to it again.