That's not a timeline
on
A Loki Timeline
·
· Score: 2, Funny
If I learned anything in second grade, it's that a timeline consists of a long line, with two dates at either end, and has other lines splintering off it with pictures and labels and stories.
It seems like any old joe thinks he can throw together a list of events and call it a timeline. Sheesh, they must've been eating paste that day.
-Erik
Better than pay-per-boot
on
Pay to Play
·
· Score: 2
Pay-per-play is actually a better idea than Microsoft's monthly subscription. As it is, gamers generally do, and always will pay for games on a regular basis. You can only play a game for so long and you get sick of it, then you buy another.
My roomate has about eight games for his PS2 that he's bought and kept over the last year and a half. That's like $25/month. For people like that, a $30/month fee that would allow you to play any game you want, whenever you want would be great. Want to play a couple of rounds of GT3? Download and play. Want to try out the new NFL2003? Go ahead. The stores save money on packaging, gamers get more game for less $$ and more control of the content.
This will never happen, though, because it prevents shitty companies from marketing the hell out of shitty games and convincing people to fork over their $$ for a lousy game. Most are too lazy to return it and the game company makes an easy buck.
Heh... I actually own both of those products. I bought VC a couple of years ago because that's the package we were using in the lab for the basic CS classes. I wanted to develop in my room on my own time, not before 12:00 in a lab all the way across campus.
I bought $5 burns of RH7.1 last summer because I wanted to give Linux a try, and I bought a boxed RH7.2 for about $60 at the campus bookstore last semester because I liked 7.1 and wanted to support RH.
Buying a RH7.2 box is a good way for an experienced Windows user (and therefore a likely candidate for VC) to explore the linux world. I'm not suprised at all that they are often bought by the same folks.
It's not just this... it's use the right tool for the right person. You would't let a 10 year old chop tomatoes with a full size chef's blade--even if that might be your best tool for the job.
Similarly you wouldn't expect someone with no computer experience to be able to sit down at a formatted computer with RedHat CDs and figure out how to browse the web. Linux isn't for the faint of heart, but for those of use who enjoy tinkering and would rather use our capitalistic muscle to support an open alternative than Microsoft, it's a good alternative.
So, in essence, what the "community" tells the rest of us, day in and day out, is "get lost and go back to Windows."
If by "community" you mean the kiddies on slashdot who think they're 31337 because they have an unused RedHat partition next to their warezed WinXP install then you're absolutely right. But in my experience, people in the newsgroups and on the mailing lists, and in LUGs around the world are interested in having new people discover linux.
Netscape lost their market because they stumbled . . . And they got blindsided by Microsoft. They have nobody to blame but themselves.
Then they're lucky as hell, 'cause to the court it's sure gonna look like all of that "stumbling" corresponds a little too well with Microsoft cutting off Netscape's sole revenue stream.
Maybe Netscape slipped and fell on the pavement, but Microsoft was standing there throwing rocks. Looks pretty incriminating to me.
...running Win2K, a G4 Titanium PowerBook and a Solaris boxen.
First of all, "boxen" is a ridiculous term. Second of all, if it is too be used, it should be used as a plural. As I understand, it is a play on the -en ending in German (and/or feasably other northern european languages) which is quite common.
It's a pain in the ass to do them, but your wrists will thank you in five years. Young coders might feel invincible now, but any sort of 40hr+ work week will make quick work of the nerves in your hands and arms no matter how young you are.
Not all nerds like to spend their weekends wrestling with their souped up, built-from scratch athlon box. Some of us value our time and are happy to pay a premium for... an OS that blows both XP and Linux out of the water.
You should be thanking the folks who think wrestling with a built-from-scratch box is a good use of their time. Steve Wozniak is such a guy, and if he hadn't wasted his time "wrestling" with built-from-scratch boxes, this iMac wouldn't exist.
In fact, I'm sure at least a couple of the engineers who squeezed all that stuff into that little machine had spent a weekend or two wrestling with a built from scratch box. Not that it's for everyone, but don't insinuate that it's a worthless way to spend one's time.
-Erik
Re:The Physics of Santa Claus
on
Merry Christmas
·
· Score: 2
This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to...
Why don't you take your massively parallel brain and sit and try to think of some other possibilities besides visiting all these homes serially?
What you linux kids need is a micropayment system or SOME kind of way to support your "Forget capitalism, I must give away the product of hours and hour of my work" attitude.
They need no such thing. They write AbiWord as a hobby because they enjoy it, not to make money, not to change the world, not to destroy Microsoft, to have fun doing a little coding on the side, making something of worth.
Have you ever stopped to think that maybe everyone writing software for Linux doesn't need their software to compete with commercial software or support their families? It's a great hobbyists operating system. If you want it to be something else, write your own word processor.
I hate to say it, but I can understand the position CmdrTaco et al are in. I run a web site for other college students that is actually quite useful. It lists events and stuff and has a bunch of convenient features. But it's such a chore at times to update it, I rarely have the energy to read it more than just to make sure my changes went into effect OK. I imagine the slashdotters are so sick of weeding through the emails all day that they don't have the energy to weed through the posts or even read the other articles.
$350 for five users is $70/user... the same as Evolution.
Plus, doesn't Outlook itself cost something? Evolution comes with Ximan GNOME Desktop, which from their web site appears like you can buy one copy for $50 and then install on as many desktops as you want... same with RH, which is like $180.
So for 5 users, that's about $600. Can you get five windows licenses, five outlook license and your 5 user client access pack for Exchange for that much?
Maybe I'm misunderstanding where the higher cost is in Evolution.
I am aware of a much broader world of philosophy (and biology) than they seem to be
I don't disagree, but I'd be interested to hear where you think they are being short-sighted.
I feel that they should keep their public discussions to the issues of which they have some understanding
Is it really that public? I doubt the linux-kernal ML is that widely read, and it's not like these guys *asked* for their conversation to be posted on slashdot.
I'd say that if there are philosophical and biological issues that are relevant to kernel development then the kernel hackers have a right to do their best to hack through them with their limited knowledge. It's not like a Ph.D. in this subject is going to post in lkml about this stuff.
If I only spoke about what I was an expert on, I'd never speak, and I'd learn much more slowly as a result. Sometimes it is best to hold your tongue. Other times you need to put your half-finished thought out there because the community needs it to be finished and you can't do it yourself. And sometimes even the experts get so comfortable in their field, they don't see a good, new idea until an "ignorant" suggests it as an under-understood idea.
If not, why would it be ethical to engineer them with those desires?
Even if it wasn't, why the hell would you fuck your kid up like that? What happens if these "desires" you instill in him/her are inherantly impossible to quench, or at least inherently difficult? Why start off your kid with such an uphill battle when there are so many others already?
It seems to me a person who would want to do that sort of thing to a kid lacks a certain basic appreciation for human life. If you would want to change yourself to be a genetically enhanced super-athelete--I mean really want it, not just as an intellectual exercise--then you have issues you need to work out before you are let loose with an impressionable young mind. And if you wouldn't wish it on yourself, why wish it on another?
Ironically, through WindowsXP's extreme registration requirements, it may be more of a hassle to install a stolen copy of windows than a legit copy of Linux
The fact is Microsoft's product activation is a joke. In the week or so after WinXP became available through illicit channels, there were some versions that "worked" and some that didn't. The ones that worked were corporate versions that didn't require activation (who wants to activate 1000 PCs?) I imagine by now most of the "broken" ISOs have filtered out of the stream, and all that's left are the "good" ones.
The fact is, there are Windows XP ISOs out there, free for the downloading that require you to type in a CD key. That's it. No activation. And because of our lovely open distribution channels, just one person had to upload one of these ISOs and now they are everywhere.
WPA is a hassle for legitimate users and a scare tactic for the kiddies who are too stupid to poke around and find an ISO that "works". I imagine in China, most folks will have no problem finding such a copy to burn.
This is brilliant! It's too bad that the cigarette companies doled out all that cash to various parties in their settlements. What a waste. They could've just sent a years worth of cigarettes to the nations poorest schools.
Where was this Michael Hausfeld fellow when we needed him?
I saw it last night, and there really wasn't. We were at the 10:15 showing, which means practically no kids in the theater. At most, a handful of people laughed at any particular joke. The timing was generally poor. Contrast this with 'For The Birds', the short in front of Monster Inc, which had kids and parents alike rolling in the isles for the duration.
The rest of the movie: casting, scenery, props, acting, photography, special effects all ranged from very good to top notch. Only the directing was lacking.
At first it seems like bandwidth is indeed the issue. But eventually we all get tired of the crap. What it comes down to eventually is not quantity of information but quality. If you are carrying on ten IM conversations, are any of them actually any good? My best IM conversations are not half as satisfying as the most mundane voice conversations I have.
And I do agree, that for tasks that require high data traffic (stock ticker) text is better than speech. But this hardly means audio is dead. If I am coding, I'd rather hear "Your girfriend is on the phone" than see it on the screen. I can process that information with a different part of my brain without interrupting my coding nearly as much. With a text message, I have to take my eyes off the code, and use the part of my brain that is used for reading.
In addition, while eating breakfast I'd rather hear "You need to leave in five minutes" than see it on the newspaper I'm reading. I can process that information quickly without interrupting my current task when it is in audio form.
-Erik
Re:People expect Linux to work like Microsoft.
on
Interview With Linus
·
· Score: 2
Pie menus are not undeniably better than linear ones. They 1) are less dense and 2) are slower to scan. Once you know where you are going they are faster, but lists are quite easy for people to poke through. The retraining you cite isn't nearly as critical as these.
I'm not saying they aren't better, just that they aren't undeniably so, as you seem to imply.
They are there, they're just subtle. When Sulley landed in the snow just outside of the town, you saw the snowflakes in his fur as it blew in the wind. In general, at any given moment, you can look at Sulley's fur and see something breathtaking.
Slashdot Mirror
If I learned anything in second grade, it's that a timeline consists of a long line, with two dates at either end, and has other lines splintering off it with pictures and labels and stories.
It seems like any old joe thinks he can throw together a list of events and call it a timeline. Sheesh, they must've been eating paste that day.
-Erik
Pay-per-play is actually a better idea than Microsoft's monthly subscription. As it is, gamers generally do, and always will pay for games on a regular basis. You can only play a game for so long and you get sick of it, then you buy another.
My roomate has about eight games for his PS2 that he's bought and kept over the last year and a half. That's like $25/month. For people like that, a $30/month fee that would allow you to play any game you want, whenever you want would be great. Want to play a couple of rounds of GT3? Download and play. Want to try out the new NFL2003? Go ahead. The stores save money on packaging, gamers get more game for less $$ and more control of the content.
This will never happen, though, because it prevents shitty companies from marketing the hell out of shitty games and convincing people to fork over their $$ for a lousy game. Most are too lazy to return it and the game company makes an easy buck.
-Erik
Heh... I actually own both of those products. I bought VC a couple of years ago because that's the package we were using in the lab for the basic CS classes. I wanted to develop in my room on my own time, not before 12:00 in a lab all the way across campus.
I bought $5 burns of RH7.1 last summer because I wanted to give Linux a try, and I bought a boxed RH7.2 for about $60 at the campus bookstore last semester because I liked 7.1 and wanted to support RH.
Buying a RH7.2 box is a good way for an experienced Windows user (and therefore a likely candidate for VC) to explore the linux world. I'm not suprised at all that they are often bought by the same folks.
-Erik
Use the right tool for the right job
It's not just this... it's use the right tool for the right person. You would't let a 10 year old chop tomatoes with a full size chef's blade--even if that might be your best tool for the job.
Similarly you wouldn't expect someone with no computer experience to be able to sit down at a formatted computer with RedHat CDs and figure out how to browse the web. Linux isn't for the faint of heart, but for those of use who enjoy tinkering and would rather use our capitalistic muscle to support an open alternative than Microsoft, it's a good alternative.
So, in essence, what the "community" tells the rest of us, day in and day out, is "get lost and go back to Windows."
If by "community" you mean the kiddies on slashdot who think they're 31337 because they have an unused RedHat partition next to their warezed WinXP install then you're absolutely right. But in my experience, people in the newsgroups and on the mailing lists, and in LUGs around the world are interested in having new people discover linux.
-Erik
Netscape lost their market because they stumbled . . . And they got blindsided by Microsoft. They have nobody to blame but themselves.
Then they're lucky as hell, 'cause to the court it's sure gonna look like all of that "stumbling" corresponds a little too well with Microsoft cutting off Netscape's sole revenue stream.
Maybe Netscape slipped and fell on the pavement, but Microsoft was standing there throwing rocks. Looks pretty incriminating to me.
-Erik
...running Win2K, a G4 Titanium PowerBook and a Solaris boxen.
First of all, "boxen" is a ridiculous term. Second of all, if it is too be used, it should be used as a plural. As I understand, it is a play on the -en ending in German (and/or feasably other northern european languages) which is quite common.
Eine Box, zwei Solarisboxen.
One box, two solaris boxen.
-Erik
As far as I can remember (it's been a few years),
"silberscheiben with music drauf" = silver discs with music on them
-Erik
Guess we're going to be needing these after all.
It's a pain in the ass to do them, but your wrists will thank you in five years. Young coders might feel invincible now, but any sort of 40hr+ work week will make quick work of the nerves in your hands and arms no matter how young you are.
Also check out this informative (if cute) prevention handbook.
-Erik
Not all nerds like to spend their weekends wrestling with their souped up, built-from scratch athlon box. Some of us value our time and are happy to pay a premium for ... an OS that blows both XP and Linux out of the water.
You should be thanking the folks who think wrestling with a built-from-scratch box is a good use of their time. Steve Wozniak is such a guy, and if he hadn't wasted his time "wrestling" with built-from-scratch boxes, this iMac wouldn't exist.
In fact, I'm sure at least a couple of the engineers who squeezed all that stuff into that little machine had spent a weekend or two wrestling with a built from scratch box. Not that it's for everyone, but don't insinuate that it's a worthless way to spend one's time.
-Erik
This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to...
Why don't you take your massively parallel brain and sit and try to think of some other possibilities besides visiting all these homes serially?
-Erik
What you linux kids need is a micropayment system or SOME kind of way to support your "Forget capitalism, I must give away the product of hours and hour of my work" attitude.
They need no such thing. They write AbiWord as a hobby because they enjoy it, not to make money, not to change the world, not to destroy Microsoft, to have fun doing a little coding on the side, making something of worth.
Have you ever stopped to think that maybe everyone writing software for Linux doesn't need their software to compete with commercial software or support their families? It's a great hobbyists operating system. If you want it to be something else, write your own word processor.
-Erik
PAY ATTENTION TO THE SITE YOU WORK FOR!
I hate to say it, but I can understand the position CmdrTaco et al are in. I run a web site for other college students that is actually quite useful. It lists events and stuff and has a bunch of convenient features. But it's such a chore at times to update it, I rarely have the energy to read it more than just to make sure my changes went into effect OK. I imagine the slashdotters are so sick of weeding through the emails all day that they don't have the energy to weed through the posts or even read the other articles.
-Erik
$350 for five users is $70/user ... the same as Evolution.
Plus, doesn't Outlook itself cost something? Evolution comes with Ximan GNOME Desktop, which from their web site appears like you can buy one copy for $50 and then install on as many desktops as you want... same with RH, which is like $180.
So for 5 users, that's about $600. Can you get five windows licenses, five outlook license and your 5 user client access pack for Exchange for that much?
Maybe I'm misunderstanding where the higher cost is in Evolution.
-Erik
I am aware of a much broader world of philosophy (and biology) than they seem to be
I don't disagree, but I'd be interested to hear where you think they are being short-sighted.
I feel that they should keep their public discussions to the issues of which they have some understanding
Is it really that public? I doubt the linux-kernal ML is that widely read, and it's not like these guys *asked* for their conversation to be posted on slashdot.
I'd say that if there are philosophical and biological issues that are relevant to kernel development then the kernel hackers have a right to do their best to hack through them with their limited knowledge. It's not like a Ph.D. in this subject is going to post in lkml about this stuff.
If I only spoke about what I was an expert on, I'd never speak, and I'd learn much more slowly as a result. Sometimes it is best to hold your tongue. Other times you need to put your half-finished thought out there because the community needs it to be finished and you can't do it yourself. And sometimes even the experts get so comfortable in their field, they don't see a good, new idea until an "ignorant" suggests it as an under-understood idea.
-Erik
If not, why would it be ethical to engineer them with those desires?
Even if it wasn't, why the hell would you fuck your kid up like that? What happens if these "desires" you instill in him/her are inherantly impossible to quench, or at least inherently difficult? Why start off your kid with such an uphill battle when there are so many others already?
It seems to me a person who would want to do that sort of thing to a kid lacks a certain basic appreciation for human life. If you would want to change yourself to be a genetically enhanced super-athelete--I mean really want it, not just as an intellectual exercise--then you have issues you need to work out before you are let loose with an impressionable young mind. And if you wouldn't wish it on yourself, why wish it on another?
-Erik
Ironically, through WindowsXP's extreme registration requirements, it may be more of a hassle to install a stolen copy of windows than a legit copy of Linux
The fact is Microsoft's product activation is a joke. In the week or so after WinXP became available through illicit channels, there were some versions that "worked" and some that didn't. The ones that worked were corporate versions that didn't require activation (who wants to activate 1000 PCs?) I imagine by now most of the "broken" ISOs have filtered out of the stream, and all that's left are the "good" ones.
The fact is, there are Windows XP ISOs out there, free for the downloading that require you to type in a CD key. That's it. No activation. And because of our lovely open distribution channels, just one person had to upload one of these ISOs and now they are everywhere.
WPA is a hassle for legitimate users and a scare tactic for the kiddies who are too stupid to poke around and find an ISO that "works". I imagine in China, most folks will have no problem finding such a copy to burn.
-Erik
This is brilliant! It's too bad that the cigarette companies doled out all that cash to various parties in their settlements. What a waste. They could've just sent a years worth of cigarettes to the nations poorest schools.
Where was this Michael Hausfeld fellow when we needed him?
-Erik
Ah yes, I forgot about that one. One of few, though, unfortunately.
-Erik
I saw it last night, and there really wasn't. We were at the 10:15 showing, which means practically no kids in the theater. At most, a handful of people laughed at any particular joke. The timing was generally poor. Contrast this with 'For The Birds', the short in front of Monster Inc, which had kids and parents alike rolling in the isles for the duration.
The rest of the movie: casting, scenery, props, acting, photography, special effects all ranged from very good to top notch. Only the directing was lacking.
-Erik
I have four words for you:
breadth of device support
-Erik
At first it seems like bandwidth is indeed the issue. But eventually we all get tired of the crap. What it comes down to eventually is not quantity of information but quality. If you are carrying on ten IM conversations, are any of them actually any good? My best IM conversations are not half as satisfying as the most mundane voice conversations I have.
And I do agree, that for tasks that require high data traffic (stock ticker) text is better than speech. But this hardly means audio is dead. If I am coding, I'd rather hear "Your girfriend is on the phone" than see it on the screen. I can process that information with a different part of my brain without interrupting my coding nearly as much. With a text message, I have to take my eyes off the code, and use the part of my brain that is used for reading.
In addition, while eating breakfast I'd rather hear "You need to leave in five minutes" than see it on the newspaper I'm reading. I can process that information quickly without interrupting my current task when it is in audio form.
-Erik
Pie menus are not undeniably better than linear ones. They 1) are less dense and 2) are slower to scan. Once you know where you are going they are faster, but lists are quite easy for people to poke through. The retraining you cite isn't nearly as critical as these.
I'm not saying they aren't better, just that they aren't undeniably so, as you seem to imply.
-Erik
It's too bad no one is developing a set of cross-platform configuration utilities for Linux and other Unix systems.
-Erik
Wow, that really is insighful. We Americans seem to be mono-moniaclically delusional about everything:
- There is no car but Ford, and Henry is its prophet.
- There is no kitchen tool but the food processor and Quisonart is its prophet.
- There is no underwear but tightey-whiteys and Hanes is its prophet.
Gee, hold on why I sell my car, throw out my kitchen utensils and buy all new underwear. I never knew these were religious issues.
-Erik
They are there, they're just subtle. When Sulley landed in the snow just outside of the town, you saw the snowflakes in his fur as it blew in the wind. In general, at any given moment, you can look at Sulley's fur and see something breathtaking.
-Erik