No one would write software anymore. Oh, except for the part-time hobbyists who do these things for fun and don't really have any motivation for doing the best job they possibly can because no one is getting paid for anything.
You seem to underestimate the power of the part-time hobbyist, the quality of the software he started and the power of that software to rock the foundations of the industry which was built on money.
I met maddog when he came to Malaysia for the Free And Open Source Conference, and I got the oppurtunity to talk to him. Real nice guy, and has got plenty of interesting stories.
Was Microsoft ever fair? Doesn't it unfairly leverage its monopoly to crush competitors daily? Doesn't it lock people into their products, and charge an arm and a leg for upgrades? And now Microsoft is saying that other people wanting to develop an OS is "unfair"? Cry me a river.
So my respone, is that people shouldn "Just Apply The Damn Patches"
Well that's the whole problem isn't it? "Just apply patches". Unfortunately, even the concept of a "patch" goes way above the heads of most Windows users I know. No one bothers to apply patches until they've been bitten. Now any properly administered box can be secure, even Windows. But administration of a Windows box isn't as easy as using it.
I hear a lot of Microsoft apologists say "oh you Lunix people don't understand normal people who want to get work done instead of meddling with their systems". The sad truth is, even Windows requires a fair amount of "meddling" to be secure. At least *nix doesn't make it look easy, because it's not.
Now with M$ pushing WinXP down everyone's throats, and as their OS becomes more bloated with features that are unnecessary for most desktop users, the risk of the software being vulnerable also increases. The reality of today's computing is much different from when the time Windows first gained dominance. Many computers are networked together, and Windows just wasn't designed to be secure in this environment (unlike *nix, which was multiuser and networked from early on).
Times change, and Microsoft needs to change too to adapt. Despite all the money they have in the bank, they still need to sell something to survive in business. Perhaps they should stop their "let's put yet more bundled crap in our new OS release" strategy and instead try to make their OS more secure.
With Windows 95 Microsoft scored a hit. It has only gotten better since than. Gnome and KDE have been at it for years and are barely better then Win95, and still far behind WinXP.
How exactly is GNOME and KDE "behind" WinXP? I've used XP, and coming from Win98 I always go "where the $#@! has option X gone?" only to have is moved elsewhere because Microsoft thought it would be better there. They are *always* moving things around with each incarnation of Windows, and it's damn annoying. And people complain about GNOME being "inconsistent". Bah. It's all just a matter of opinion.
Are you kidding? I'd pay for Photoshop in Linux. It's a quality tool regardless of how we feel towards Adobe. I'm sure many graphics professionals would pay for it too (Disney is proof). Adobe should really consider porting Photoshop to Linux (no need for it to be open source, closed source works fine).
If as you say, with just a few clicks everything's magically done, why is there any need to memorize and type out a long command line to achieve the same goal (or write a shell script to do it for that matter)?
There really isn't any need to "memorize" commands, once you've used them often enough they become like a second nature. You see, a command is the natural way to order the computer something, as long as you know the "language" of communication.
Menus and buttons help when you want to choose from a list, but if you already know what you want, it's faster to just run a command. Just like in a restaurant, it's faster to just tell the waiter your order without shuffling through menus (as long as you know what you want).
Now I'm not saying that it is a bad thing to have fancy GUI's and menus. However, there are some of us who find the command line very convenient, and Microsoft just doesn't cater to us. The default command line in Windows is just plain retarded, and it takes a lot of installation of 3rd party software to get a sane CLI in Windows. Compare with Linux, where nice shells and programming tools are available out of the box.
It's not as if the things they are saying aren't true, command lines are hard to use in comparison to a GUI, and I've never yet thought "oh, I wish I could have the command-line capabilities that Linux has"
Well, maybe that's just you. If Microsoft's stuff fits your needs well, then go ahead and use them. However just because you think their way of doing things is awesome, it doesn't make it universally "true" for everyone.
IMO The problem with MS is they no longer understand the customer
I think they understand the customer all too well. Remember, M$ does not target geeky hackers who love fiddling with command lines and compiling source. They market their stuff with propaganda such as "command lines are hard, look at this happy friendly colorful GUI, it'll make you productive even if you're incredibly stupid". You have no idea how much that affects the hearts and minds of people. Over here in the CS department, I've had former classmates who were fanatically loyal to M$, for no other reason than "it has a more colorful GUI" and "easy to use, just clickety click and everything is magically done!". And these are computer science students. Think of how much influence M$ has on PHB's and decision makers.
Yes but in the movies they do cool computery things except with lots of flashy graphics around it.
Perhaps, but most of the time it's just some pseudo-technical looking text scrolling past in some fancy graphical font (see The Matrix).
When Windows '95 came out, some of the trade publications were drooling over the fact that the computer no longer booted up into "scary DOS messages", instead displaying therapeutic pictures of clouds. Bleh. At that point I decided Windows was ghey, and started to appreciate the nice technical-looking Linux.
I also like the option of a graphical boot... soothes the nerves of less-knowledgable people who will wonder why X, Y, or Z service is coming up.
I've never understood why this is so. Even back in the day when I was a clueless newbie, I found those messages to be really cool. It was like the computer was doing...cool computery things, just like in the movies.
The X-Wings, Y-Wings, A-Wings and B-Wings can be seen in the movies, so "official" designs exist already. The E-Wing is found in the comics, and I think the V-Wing is also somewhere in the expanded universe, so it exists in a "semi-official" way. So they designed ships for the rest of the alphabet.
I only tried it out in '01, but I fell in love with it ever since. Previously I had used Redhat, Mandrake and SuSE, but the minute I laid my hands on Slackware, I knew this was the distro I had been looking for.
That being said, if the RIAA breaks down the door to get the HDs I keep the stuff on, I have no problems whatsoever with activating the electromagnets sitting on top of 'em and scrambling the whole mess into indecipherable gobbledygook.
Ha! When I was a kid I only had an 8088 with a CGA monitor. 256 color pallete, but only 4 colors could be displayed at a time. Most of the time it was the sucky choice of cyan, purple, black and white. I dreamed of having a 16 color monitor, while chugging away on my dinky 4 color monitor. Uphill! Both ways!
Sigh... those were the days. I still have that computer too. I keep it around in case it becomes a collector's antique. And I'm 24 too.
I posted this before, but I made a typo so I'll post it again just for karma. Go ahead, mod me down:p
----
This is how it's going to be settled : IBM sends grim looking men in black suits to SCO, and a representative named "Smith" (who looks oddly familiar) confronts Darl Mcbride.
Smith: As you can see, we've had our eye on you for some time now, Mr. Mcbride. It seems that you've been living...two lives. In one life, you're Darl McBride, CEO of what used to be a respectable software company, you have a social security number, you pay your taxes, and you help your landlady carry out her garbage. The other life is lived in lawsuits, where you go around accusing everyone that they are guilty of virtually every computer crime we have a law for. One of these lives has a future, and one of them does not. I'm going to be as forthcoming as I can be, Mr. McBride. You're here because we need you to cut it out. We know that you think you can get your ailing company to be bought out. Now whatever you think you know about intelluctual property laws is irrelevant. You actions are considered by the open source community to be the annoying and disruptive. My colleagues believe that I am wasting my time with you but I believe that you wish to do the right thing. We're willing to wipe the slate clean, give you a fresh start and all that we're asking in return is your cooperation in dropping your stupid lawsuits against IBM.
Darl: Yeah. Wow, that sound like a really good deal. But I think I got a better one. How about I give you the finger... and we see you in court.
Smith: Um, Mr. Mcbride. You disappoint me.
Darl: You can't scare me with this Gestapo crap. We own UNIX IP rights. I want my lawyer.
Smith: And tell me, Mr. McBride, what good is your IP rights... if your company has violated so many of our patents.
(Smith drops a huge pile of legal papers on the desk with a thud)
Smith: You're going to help us, Mr. McBride whether you want to or not.
No, no, no... you don't get it. Managementy types love this kind of talk. "Five levels of involvement"... heh... good stuff. If it doesn't make sense, the better!
Slashdot Mirror
No one would write software anymore. Oh, except for the part-time hobbyists who do these things for fun and don't really have any motivation for doing the best job they possibly can because no one is getting paid for anything.
You seem to underestimate the power of the part-time hobbyist, the quality of the software he started and the power of that software to rock the foundations of the industry which was built on money.
I say: Spellchecking is for wimps. Be smarter. ;-P
...said the guy on Slashdot. Oh the irony.
I met maddog when he came to Malaysia for the Free And Open Source Conference, and I got the oppurtunity to talk to him. Real nice guy, and has got plenty of interesting stories.
Was Microsoft ever fair? Doesn't it unfairly leverage its monopoly to crush competitors daily? Doesn't it lock people into their products, and charge an arm and a leg for upgrades? And now Microsoft is saying that other people wanting to develop an OS is "unfair"? Cry me a river.
Well that's the whole problem isn't it? "Just apply patches". Unfortunately, even the concept of a "patch" goes way above the heads of most Windows users I know. No one bothers to apply patches until they've been bitten. Now any properly administered box can be secure, even Windows. But administration of a Windows box isn't as easy as using it.
I hear a lot of Microsoft apologists say "oh you Lunix people don't understand normal people who want to get work done instead of meddling with their systems". The sad truth is, even Windows requires a fair amount of "meddling" to be secure. At least *nix doesn't make it look easy, because it's not.
Now with M$ pushing WinXP down everyone's throats, and as their OS becomes more bloated with features that are unnecessary for most desktop users, the risk of the software being vulnerable also increases. The reality of today's computing is much different from when the time Windows first gained dominance. Many computers are networked together, and Windows just wasn't designed to be secure in this environment (unlike *nix, which was multiuser and networked from early on).
Times change, and Microsoft needs to change too to adapt. Despite all the money they have in the bank, they still need to sell something to survive in business. Perhaps they should stop their "let's put yet more bundled crap in our new OS release" strategy and instead try to make their OS more secure.
Giant blue gorillas with six million hit points, deadly accuracy, and are backed by a legion of undead lawyers.
And SCO is a puny little cockroach who tried to take them down.
With Windows 95 Microsoft scored a hit. It has only gotten better since than. Gnome and KDE have been at it for years and are barely better then Win95, and still far behind WinXP.
How exactly is GNOME and KDE "behind" WinXP? I've used XP, and coming from Win98 I always go "where the $#@! has option X gone?" only to have is moved elsewhere because Microsoft thought it would be better there. They are *always* moving things around with each incarnation of Windows, and it's damn annoying. And people complain about GNOME being "inconsistent". Bah. It's all just a matter of opinion.
Do you think you stand a chance against Arnold? If so, why?
Maybe she is one of them?
She is familiar with computers and all... maybe she speaks modem?
However, if you do want an rpm, there are people at Redhat who do build them ;)
You can download from here.
Slow news day?
Are you kidding? I'd pay for Photoshop in Linux. It's a quality tool regardless of how we feel towards Adobe. I'm sure many graphics professionals would pay for it too (Disney is proof). Adobe should really consider porting Photoshop to Linux (no need for it to be open source, closed source works fine).
If as you say, with just a few clicks everything's magically done, why is there any need to memorize and type out a long command line to achieve the same goal (or write a shell script to do it for that matter)?
There really isn't any need to "memorize" commands, once you've used them often enough they become like a second nature. You see, a command is the natural way to order the computer something, as long as you know the "language" of communication.
Menus and buttons help when you want to choose from a list, but if you already know what you want, it's faster to just run a command. Just like in a restaurant, it's faster to just tell the waiter your order without shuffling through menus (as long as you know what you want).
Now I'm not saying that it is a bad thing to have fancy GUI's and menus. However, there are some of us who find the command line very convenient, and Microsoft just doesn't cater to us. The default command line in Windows is just plain retarded, and it takes a lot of installation of 3rd party software to get a sane CLI in Windows. Compare with Linux, where nice shells and programming tools are available out of the box.
It's not as if the things they are saying aren't true, command lines are hard to use in comparison to a GUI, and I've never yet thought "oh, I wish I could have the command-line capabilities that Linux has"
Well, maybe that's just you. If Microsoft's stuff fits your needs well, then go ahead and use them. However just because you think their way of doing things is awesome, it doesn't make it universally "true" for everyone.
IMO The problem with MS is they no longer understand the customer
I think they understand the customer all too well. Remember, M$ does not target geeky hackers who love fiddling with command lines and compiling source. They market their stuff with propaganda such as "command lines are hard, look at this happy friendly colorful GUI, it'll make you productive even if you're incredibly stupid". You have no idea how much that affects the hearts and minds of people. Over here in the CS department, I've had former classmates who were fanatically loyal to M$, for no other reason than "it has a more colorful GUI" and "easy to use, just clickety click and everything is magically done!". And these are computer science students. Think of how much influence M$ has on PHB's and decision makers.
Yes but in the movies they do cool computery things except with lots of flashy graphics around it.
Perhaps, but most of the time it's just some pseudo-technical looking text scrolling past in some fancy graphical font (see The Matrix).
When Windows '95 came out, some of the trade publications were drooling over the fact that the computer no longer booted up into "scary DOS messages", instead displaying therapeutic pictures of clouds. Bleh. At that point I decided Windows was ghey, and started to appreciate the nice technical-looking Linux.
I also like the option of a graphical boot... soothes the nerves of less-knowledgable people who will wonder why X, Y, or Z service is coming up.
I've never understood why this is so. Even back in the day when I was a clueless newbie, I found those messages to be really cool. It was like the computer was doing...cool computery things, just like in the movies.
Sadly enough, I posted that entirely from memory.
The X-Wings, Y-Wings, A-Wings and B-Wings can be seen in the movies, so "official" designs exist already. The E-Wing is found in the comics, and I think the V-Wing is also somewhere in the expanded universe, so it exists in a "semi-official" way. So they designed ships for the rest of the alphabet.
I only tried it out in '01, but I fell in love with it ever since. Previously I had used Redhat, Mandrake and SuSE, but the minute I laid my hands on Slackware, I knew this was the distro I had been looking for.
Happy birthday Slackware. Live long and prosper.
On /. CBN is CowboyNeal.
That being said, if the RIAA breaks down the door to get the HDs I keep the stuff on, I have no problems whatsoever with activating the electromagnets sitting on top of 'em and scrambling the whole mess into indecipherable gobbledygook.
Dude, you remind me of Francis Ottoman.
My old childhood hero MacGyver has defeated entire armies with just a swiss army knife and duct tape.
Ha! When I was a kid I only had an 8088 with a CGA monitor. 256 color pallete, but only 4 colors could be displayed at a time. Most of the time it was the sucky choice of cyan, purple, black and white. I dreamed of having a 16 color monitor, while chugging away on my dinky 4 color monitor. Uphill! Both ways!
Sigh... those were the days. I still have that computer too. I keep it around in case it becomes a collector's antique. And I'm 24 too.
I posted this before, but I made a typo so I'll post it again just for karma. Go ahead, mod me down :p
----
This is how it's going to be settled : IBM sends grim looking men in black suits to SCO, and a representative named "Smith" (who looks oddly familiar) confronts Darl Mcbride.
Smith: As you can see, we've had our eye on you for some time now, Mr. Mcbride. It seems that you've been living...two lives. In one life, you're Darl McBride, CEO of what used to be a respectable software company, you have a social security number, you pay your taxes, and you help your landlady carry out her garbage. The other life is lived in lawsuits, where you go around accusing everyone that they are guilty of virtually every computer crime we have a law for. One of these lives has a future, and one of them does not. I'm going to be as forthcoming as I can be, Mr. McBride. You're here because we need you to cut it out. We know that you think you can get your ailing company to be bought out. Now whatever you think you know about intelluctual property laws is irrelevant. You actions are considered by the open source community to be the annoying and disruptive. My colleagues believe that I am wasting my time with you but I believe that you wish to do the right thing. We're willing to wipe the slate clean, give you a fresh start and all that we're asking in return is your cooperation in dropping your stupid lawsuits against IBM.
Darl: Yeah. Wow, that sound like a really good deal. But I think I got a better one. How about I give you the finger... and we see you in court.
Smith: Um, Mr. Mcbride. You disappoint me.
Darl: You can't scare me with this Gestapo crap. We own UNIX IP rights. I want my lawyer.
Smith: And tell me, Mr. McBride, what good is your IP rights... if your company has violated so many of our patents.
(Smith drops a huge pile of legal papers on the desk with a thud)
Smith: You're going to help us, Mr. McBride whether you want to or not.
(Darl screams hysterically)
No, no, no... you don't get it. Managementy types love this kind of talk. "Five levels of involvement"... heh... good stuff. If it doesn't make sense, the better!
6. Continue with language specific criticisms; loose typing, OO not as strong as Java, et cetera.
The word "loose" was used correctly in a Slashdot comment! Quick, take a picture!