I found that the key phrases in this entire article were at the very end.
Forget the antitrust trial. Ladies and gentlemen,we have a competition.
Perhaps this test and all the media hype around it have nothing to do with MicroSoft trying to squash Linux, but just to generate the illusion of competition.
Perhaps after the trial is over, we will see them take out their big guns.
I have been trying to get my college to start using Linux on the desktops for some time now, with almost no success. We have all Linux servers, and the geeks use it, but we can't make any sort of dent in the regular desktop users.
I was rather pleased to see how Gnome was coming along because I don't rather fancy the look of KDE, although that is what I have been using for the computer labs because it is the most complete system at this point.
Raster is correct in that E and Gnome are two different beasts. That is the problem. In giving out Red Hat 6.0 CDs to Linux newbies, I have found that they all get incredibly confused by the fact that the level of complexity of Gnome is compounded by a factor of two because of the fact that one must configure the window manager and gnome (sorta like matching your shirt and trousers).
I think that Red Hat was trying to push E towards being "Gnome's window manager" simply because that is what the most people out here would really really like to see. Gnome fills in the gaps that E leaves rather well, and truth be known, I think that a total integration would make the most sense. Insisting that Gnome be "non window manager specific" is just plain insane on their parts: it NEEDS to be or will forever have that dual configuation hell.
Despite what might be best for Red Hat, or what the most people want, absorbing E into Gnome most certainly isn't Rasterman would want. I can see why he would feel this way. People do open source software not for the money, but for the glory. There is precious little glory having your work buried into another project.
So, unfortunately, this shows one of the major weaknesses of Open Source. Because the modivation is notority, it lends itself to programmers whose egos can dictate more than what might be good for the community. Raster meantions that he is motivated by user input, but from what I have seen with the people I have tried to introduce Linux to, an integrated Gnome/E would be the most preferable path to take. While really really pretty, Enlightenment has always been the least usable window manager in any incarnation.
Admittedly, I don't know what might have gone on inside Red Hat, so I apologise to Rasterman if these comments have sounded overly critical, and certainly neither I nor anyone else should have the right to dictate the course of your life. But I must say that I am disappointed to see that we are less likely to see a more integrated Gnome/E and very disappointed that the change could not have been done in a more gentlemanly manner.
Surely this will provide a dividing line for the community and a oil tankers worth of fuel for the flame war that will follow.
Owning an Amiga anytime in the last decade has put you automatically into the soap opera of ups and downs that Amiga has experienced.
When it first came out, and for a good while, Amiga was hands down the BEST damn home computer you could buy. It did things that lesser operating systems STILL can't do, or have just recently added.
The soap opera was bad enough with Commodore, but when Commodore went belly up, it just got worse. Passed from owner to owner, each holding out some hope of a new product. The fact is that the Amiga remains stuck in the same form it was when Commodore went under.
The Amiga Soap Opera is mainly one of broken promises. Like Amiga STILL doesn't have a Java enabled browser, even though one has been "almost done" for like years. Escom never did anything they promised. Now Gateway has let all the original dates slip by that they promised to make this or that available. Now we see napkin drawings and are supposed to get excited?
I think it is important for all true Amigians to realise that whatever Gateway is making, it isn't an Amiga. I mean, if they are going to start over from scratch and create a machine based on QNX instead of AmigaOS, why the hell are they calling it an Amiga?
IF they get anything off the ground, my guess it will be some intel based system with standard hardware and a sorta Amiga looking GUI. Won't run anything from anyone. Will somehow stay in existance defying logic and common sense, cause, well, that is just what Amiga does.
The truth of the matter is that the Amiga is well and truely dead. Let her rest in peace. Let her go, my fellow Amigans. Whatever Gateway might possibly make won't have AmigaOS, won't have any sort of special graphical co-processors, won't have Amiga programs that can run on it. It will be some cheap hooker with a wig thrown on to look like the long dead love.
At this point, I have no clue WHY Gateway spent good money on technology they will never use and a name that everyone has forgotten. It defies common sense and logic.
But, that is what the Amiga has done best anyway...
Rest in Peace, Amiga.
How is Mandrake different from Red Hat now
on
Distro News
·
· Score: 1
I don't mean this as a criticism, just wanted to know: now that Red Hat has KDE included in it as well, what is the major reason that one would want to use Mandrake over Red Hat. The KDE integration seemed to be their major selling point over Red Hat, otherwise pretty much the same distro.
Those who think that having guns around is some sort of god given right tell us that guns are somehow no different than the thousands of other things that can be used to harm another person.
Lets break it down to the core. While pipes, baseball bats, knives etc have various purposes, one of which might be to harm some one, a firearm is created with one purpose and one purpose ONLY: to make killing as easy as possible. PERIOD.
Yes, if some one wants to kill bad enough they will find a way, but guns make it so damn easy to kill. You have to want to kill enough to move your index finger a few mm.
Guns raise the level of violence to an automatic deadly level. A conflict that might have ended in a broken nose without guns can so easily end in death.
We defend having these things with all the insane arguements you see here because we like that power. It makes you feel powerful to know you can take a life so easily.
That is what these boys wanted. They wanted the power. They felt powerless. Guns gave them this feeling of power.
Some say that they feel that guns make them feel more protected. It is a false sense of security, however, for the truth of the matter is that a gun in the home is MORE LIKELY TO ACCIDENTALLY HARM someone in that home than EVER be used to protect it. You say BS? The person who teaches gun safety at VMI (who could be more qualified or careful?) shot and killed his 7 year old son accidentally when cleaning a gun.
No, easy access to guns aren't all the problem, but it is sure the hell a HUGE part of it. We Americans need to wake up and realise how insane we are for having a society saturated with these things whose ONLY PURPOSE is to make killing as easy as possible.
Have you noticed in all the talk about video games and black trenchcoats there are two words that the media seems terrified to mention: GUN CONTROL.
All this talk of Doom and Quake have diverted us from one of the discussion of something that could have been done to keep things like this from happening. Namely, keeping people from being able to have easy acess to weapons of mass distruction.
The NRA lobby is extremely powerful and they not only control much legislation, but also seem to be able to command puplic opinion. People talk as if having the means to kill a large number of people quickly and easily readily at hand is some sort of god given right.
In a civilised society, it is not. Lets stop pointing fingers at ridiculous things like video games and start to point them at the NRA and other groups that have seen to it that if you want, you can get ahold of enough weapons to do the sort of things that these boys did.
"The establishment" -- whatever that means -- has learned their lessons from Vietnam in how they will allow a war to be covered. We don't see frightening images from front lines anymore. We see the press conference images that the military wants us to see. During the "Gulf War" we saw nightly images of some general or another showing tapes of "smart bombs" hitting targets and patriot missles hitting Scuds. Never mind that the patriot BARELY works at all and that plenty of innocents were killed by the bombing, we are presented images of nice clean "surgical" warfare where hypothetically only the bad guys are killed.
What is a shame is that people go flocking to CNN for the "official" government spoon fed fare and we don't see a proliferation of alternative means of news being used on the internet.
I think that very soon gone will be the days of stories like the CIA drug operations and soon all we will see on the net is "E-commerce" sites that we go to via the approved "web portals". Witness the "Linux revolution" being played out in the press. When I look at the mainstream press cover linux, what do I see? Red Hat, and sometimes Caldera being covered, with Linus as a sanitised folk hero and RMS as a nut. I have yet to see a review of FreeBSD, Debian or any other totally free project... even Gnone fits in only in that it will become part of commercial offerings.
Even Slashdot, I hate to say, has really become just yet another way of supporting commercial interests. "Look at the neat new gadgets you can buy" or links to approved official sites. Those ZD people must love all the traffic slashdot funnels to them. Less attention is given to non-profit sites run by members of our "community".
Anyway, it just saddens me how well what Mills would call "the power elite" has become at not squashing revolutionary new movements, but how well they can embrace them and make them their own. The enviromental movement, Open Source software, the "free" internet... they either control or are in the process of taking total control of all of these things...
That the media are the puppet of big business. This article could have been written by some one at a recording industry company. CNN, or any of the major media outlets, are simply the mouthpiece for big business, and they hate MP3s. And we used to chuckle at Pravda meaning "Truth". Do we think we have a free press?
But in organizing along these bogus lines, they just hope to make it harder for the DOJ to do a REAL restructuring along the lines of consumer (Win9X), commercial (NT) office packages and internet packages. The only real thing they separated is the MSN group, the Edsel of MicroSoft...
I think that this would be less of a bru-haha if Katz was ONE of the slashdot regular feature writers and not seemingly the ONLY regular feature writer. Yes, I realise that others have written articles, it just seems that Katz's stuff are the only really regular writer we see. If this was balanced by having a few others that were just as regularly featured, I think it would be less of an issue.
To see my published works, go to (perhaps the gaudiest web page you will ever see) The Common Commode Page
These were featured on the bathroom walls at my college, and think would make me uniquely qualified to be a feature writer for/.
I don't know what little Universe you are living in, but for people on a limited budget, Solaris is not anywhere near the same cost as far as hardware goes. Solaris is pig dog slow on Intel stuff compared to Linux. If you have to go with small to mid sized equipment, Linux will save you a bundle.
And don't arrogantly assume that some one would choose Linux simply for "religious" reasons. My college choose Linux for stablity/cost reasons. As long as Solaris runs so poorly on Intel boxes and Sun wants rediculous amounts of money for their boxes, we will never be able to afford to use Solaris.
There is a reason people have become so religious about Linux, and it ain't marketing, buddy.
But the availability of Office on Linux might make it possible for me to get my college to switch supported OS to Linux. The Information Technology Committee has been toying with this idea for all this year. Star Office on Windows machines has been a dismal failure with the users. The damn thing is so complicated that it has scared every user we got to test it and they went running back to Office.
I would never use it, or any other MicroSoft product, but if it helps us to replace windows...
If it helps to squash StarOffice, WordPerfect and the Open Source efforts, it is a bad thing. And lets be real, that is the ONLY reason MicroSoft would even be considering it.
I see the MicroSerfs quote this from M$ propaganda quite a bit... Whilst a Linux/Unix/etc person would say, "I have had this server up for X months" you hear the Gates servants uttering, "I haven't had any UNSCHEDULED DOWNTIME in X months." Now, lets look at what they are saying here. A computer that you, say, rebooted twice a day at scheduled times would fit into that "no unscheduled downtime" category, now wouldn't it?
Whining that "these Linux people are just spreading FUD about poor little MicroSoft" is sorta like when the Fundies claim that evolution is reallly the religion of "secular humanism" and that you should teach creation "science" instead.
Bow down to the one you serve, you're gonna get what you deserve.
Oh for (Deity of your choice)'s sake, grow up
on
Wired on RMS
·
· Score: 1
I think that there is just lots of plain ole jealousy here, and that is about it. RMS is mad that Linus managed to do what he has never been able to: get a working kernel. Even though started before Linux, HURD still amounts to nothing. I think the reason that Linus suceeded where he failed is because heading a huge project to design a kernel requires you work with PEOPLE. I remember the one time I met RMS, he didn't even look up from his computer with a group of people standing there in front of him, wanting to ask a question about the books he was selling. Linus, on the other hand, can actually communicate with people, and thus he was able to coordinate the momumental task of creating the Kernel which required the help of lots of people that listen to you, and you listen to them. RMS should stop whining and start to take a look at his own shortcommings and wonder WHY he failed at creating the kernel. He gets plenty of attention, and I think that everyone understands his contribution and is grateful for it. I think what everyone is not grateful for is the bad name he gives the Free Software movement everytime he shoots his mouth off about how he should get the credit, yadda yadda.
Richard, if you ever read this, PLEASE stop making yourself and us look like a fool by doing this constantly. Don't ruin the monumental and greatly appreciated accomplishments you have done by going down in history as the mad man who goes nuts cause he doesn't get enough press.
If Luke gets all the credit for slaying the evil Darth Gates using the tools you gave him, you should be happy that it was accomplished. The movement is MORE IMPORTANT than you, more important than Linus. You should keep that in mind and realise that it is OK if it is not you personally that wields the sword that brings him down.
They want you to pay half of the release price to get the alpha, and no where do I see a ftp site for free downloads like Red Hat, et al.
It looks like a windows install, it has a "registry" and they want you to PAY to debug it for them. This looks like one of many people that want to take Linux, make money from it and contribute nothing back.
If I am wrong with what I think I am reading, flame away. But if this is the way these people want to do business with OUR OS, I think we should squash them now. No matter how "pretty" their install program is, it isn't worth having people out there doing Linux business this way.
One of my favourite books is "Truth or Dare" by the rather radical author Starhawk. In this book, she outlines how the world works under the model of Power Over. Those with the military and monetary resources use this to create a society in which they have all the power and the rest of us feel powerless to do anything about this situation. The second type of power is power from within. This is what drives the Open Source hackers to hack. No one can take from them their power to create. The third type of power is power with - power gained because your peers respect you and listen to you. Linus has power with, not because he can fire you or shoot you, but because we respect him.
Make no mistake about it, Open Source is a Movement, a social and political movement as much as it is a technical movement. The reason that the Open Source community is seen as the ONLY threat to the dominate monopoly is that we don't play by the same rules as they. Things that are created with love and the model of power-with will always be superior to what the corporations can get their slaves to produce.
We have come to a turning point, however, in which we are actually being noticed. In the battles in history between those who follow the Power-Over model and those who follow the Power-With models (usually refered to as Patriarchial and Partnership models), admittedly the war-like patriarchs usually win. Even if they don't win outright, they win in a more subtle way: you have to become the enemy to defeat the enemy.
This is precisely what I DONT want to see happen to Linux. When we start to talk about and worry about market share and what IBM is porting to Linux and what shall become the "standard Linux desktop" and start to change the operating system so it fits into a Corporate world view, we are becomming the enemy.
I am very much wish for the open source movement to survive and flourish and give the world a new model in co-operation to follow. I have advocated it at my college and it now runs on all our servers and dual boots in our labs. I am hoping for a day when we can run our college on only open source software, that it becomes the new model for the development of new software.
But we must be mindful not to become the enemy. I think that we should be mindful of the points mentioned in this article and take them to heart.
I am so sick to death of every time a new kernel comes out that some one that thinks of themself as very important thinks that they have to have the thing before anyone else. First of all, if you really are that important, you would have known about it from mailing lists already. Second, how long could it take you to download a patch? I have NEVER had a problem downloading a patch. If you were as good as you like to think you are, you would know what mirror sites are best for you to use. Third, the kernel, especially when it gets to this stage, needs to be tried by people that aren't "experts" (not saying you are) so that we can see if there might be things that average users get stuck on.
And lastly, I am getting so I can't stand these people that post really stupid crap like this, and don't even have the nads to identify themselves. I am getting to the point where I would almost prefer Rob 86 ALL anonymous coward posts.
Slashdot Mirror
Forget the antitrust trial. Ladies and gentlemen,we have a competition.
Perhaps this test and all the media hype around it have nothing to do with MicroSoft trying to squash Linux, but just to generate the illusion of competition.
Perhaps after the trial is over, we will see them take out their big guns.
I was rather pleased to see how Gnome was coming along because I don't rather fancy the look of KDE, although that is what I have been using for the computer labs because it is the most complete system at this point.
Raster is correct in that E and Gnome are two different beasts. That is the problem. In giving out Red Hat 6.0 CDs to Linux newbies, I have found that they all get incredibly confused by the fact that the level of complexity of Gnome is compounded by a factor of two because of the fact that one must configure the window manager and gnome (sorta like matching your shirt and trousers).
I think that Red Hat was trying to push E towards being "Gnome's window manager" simply because that is what the most people out here would really really like to see. Gnome fills in the gaps that E leaves rather well, and truth be known, I think that a total integration would make the most sense. Insisting that Gnome be "non window manager specific" is just plain insane on their parts: it NEEDS to be or will forever have that dual configuation hell.
Despite what might be best for Red Hat, or what the most people want, absorbing E into Gnome most certainly isn't Rasterman would want. I can see why he would feel this way. People do open source software not for the money, but for the glory. There is precious little glory having your work buried into another project.
So, unfortunately, this shows one of the major weaknesses of Open Source. Because the modivation is notority, it lends itself to programmers whose egos can dictate more than what might be good for the community. Raster meantions that he is motivated by user input, but from what I have seen with the people I have tried to introduce Linux to, an integrated Gnome/E would be the most preferable path to take. While really really pretty, Enlightenment has always been the least usable window manager in any incarnation.
Admittedly, I don't know what might have gone on inside Red Hat, so I apologise to Rasterman if these comments have sounded overly critical, and certainly neither I nor anyone else should have the right to dictate the course of your life. But I must say that I am disappointed to see that we are less likely to see a more integrated Gnome/E and very disappointed that the change could not have been done in a more gentlemanly manner.
Surely this will provide a dividing line for the community and a oil tankers worth of fuel for the flame war that will follow.
When it first came out, and for a good while, Amiga was hands down the BEST damn home computer you could buy. It did things that lesser operating systems STILL can't do, or have just recently added.
The soap opera was bad enough with Commodore, but when Commodore went belly up, it just got worse. Passed from owner to owner, each holding out some hope of a new product. The fact is that the Amiga remains stuck in the same form it was when Commodore went under.
The Amiga Soap Opera is mainly one of broken promises. Like Amiga STILL doesn't have a Java enabled browser, even though one has been "almost done" for like years. Escom never did anything they promised. Now Gateway has let all the original dates slip by that they promised to make this or that available. Now we see napkin drawings and are supposed to get excited?
I think it is important for all true Amigians to realise that whatever Gateway is making, it isn't an Amiga. I mean, if they are going to start over from scratch and create a machine based on QNX instead of AmigaOS, why the hell are they calling it an Amiga?
IF they get anything off the ground, my guess it will be some intel based system with standard hardware and a sorta Amiga looking GUI. Won't run anything from anyone. Will somehow stay in existance defying logic and common sense, cause, well, that is just what Amiga does.
The truth of the matter is that the Amiga is well and truely dead. Let her rest in peace. Let her go, my fellow Amigans. Whatever Gateway might possibly make won't have AmigaOS, won't have any sort of special graphical co-processors, won't have Amiga programs that can run on it. It will be some cheap hooker with a wig thrown on to look like the long dead love.
At this point, I have no clue WHY Gateway spent good money on technology they will never use and a name that everyone has forgotten. It defies common sense and logic.
But, that is what the Amiga has done best anyway...
Rest in Peace, Amiga.
Appreciate any comments or insights.
Lets break it down to the core. While pipes, baseball bats, knives etc have various purposes, one of which might be to harm some one, a firearm is created with one purpose and one purpose ONLY: to make killing as easy as possible. PERIOD.
Yes, if some one wants to kill bad enough they will find a way, but guns make it so damn easy to kill. You have to want to kill enough to move your index finger a few mm.
Guns raise the level of violence to an automatic deadly level. A conflict that might have ended in a broken nose without guns can so easily end in death.
We defend having these things with all the insane arguements you see here because we like that power. It makes you feel powerful to know you can take a life so easily.
That is what these boys wanted. They wanted the power. They felt powerless. Guns gave them this feeling of power.
Some say that they feel that guns make them feel more protected. It is a false sense of security, however, for the truth of the matter is that a gun in the home is MORE LIKELY TO ACCIDENTALLY HARM someone in that home than EVER be used to protect it. You say BS? The person who teaches gun safety at VMI (who could be more qualified or careful?) shot and killed his 7 year old son accidentally when cleaning a gun.
No, easy access to guns aren't all the problem, but it is sure the hell a HUGE part of it. We Americans need to wake up and realise how insane we are for having a society saturated with these things whose ONLY PURPOSE is to make killing as easy as possible.
All this talk of Doom and Quake have diverted us from one of the discussion of something that could have been done to keep things like this from happening. Namely, keeping people from being able to have easy acess to weapons of mass distruction.
The NRA lobby is extremely powerful and they not only control much legislation, but also seem to be able to command puplic opinion. People talk as if having the means to kill a large number of people quickly and easily readily at hand is some sort of god given right.
In a civilised society, it is not. Lets stop pointing fingers at ridiculous things like video games and start to point them at the NRA and other groups that have seen to it that if you want, you can get ahold of enough weapons to do the sort of things that these boys did.
rvplayer for linux would play this thing!
What is a shame is that people go flocking to CNN for the "official" government spoon fed fare and we don't see a proliferation of alternative means of news being used on the internet.
I think that very soon gone will be the days of stories like the CIA drug operations and soon all we will see on the net is "E-commerce" sites that we go to via the approved "web portals". Witness the "Linux revolution" being played out in the press. When I look at the mainstream press cover linux, what do I see? Red Hat, and sometimes Caldera being covered, with Linus as a sanitised folk hero and RMS as a nut. I have yet to see a review of FreeBSD, Debian or any other totally free project... even Gnone fits in only in that it will become part of commercial offerings.
Even Slashdot, I hate to say, has really become just yet another way of supporting commercial interests. "Look at the neat new gadgets you can buy" or links to approved official sites. Those ZD people must love all the traffic slashdot funnels to them. Less attention is given to non-profit sites run by members of our "community".
Anyway, it just saddens me how well what Mills would call "the power elite" has become at not squashing revolutionary new movements, but how well they can embrace them and make them their own. The enviromental movement, Open Source software, the "free" internet... they either control or are in the process of taking total control of all of these things...
Sorry for rambling, gotta get to class..
That the media are the puppet of big business. This article could have been written by some one at a recording industry company. CNN, or any of the major media outlets, are simply the mouthpiece for big business, and they hate MP3s. And we used to chuckle at Pravda meaning "Truth". Do we think we have a free press?
But in organizing along these bogus lines, they just hope to make it harder for the DOJ to do a REAL restructuring along the lines of consumer (Win9X), commercial (NT) office packages and internet packages. The only real thing they separated is the MSN group, the Edsel of MicroSoft...
To see my published works, go to (perhaps the gaudiest web page you will ever see) The Common Commode Page
These were featured on the bathroom walls at my college, and think would make me uniquely qualified to be a feature writer for /.
I don't know what little Universe you are living in, but for people on a limited budget, Solaris is not anywhere near the same cost as far as hardware goes. Solaris is pig dog slow on Intel stuff compared to Linux. If you have to go with small to mid sized equipment, Linux will save you a bundle.
And don't arrogantly assume that some one would choose Linux simply for "religious" reasons. My college choose Linux for stablity/cost reasons. As long as Solaris runs so poorly on Intel boxes and Sun wants rediculous amounts of money for their boxes, we will never be able to afford to use Solaris.
There is a reason people have become so religious about Linux, and it ain't marketing, buddy.
But the availability of Office on Linux might make it possible for me to get my college to switch supported OS to Linux. The Information Technology Committee has been toying with this idea for all this year. Star Office on Windows machines has been a dismal failure with the users. The damn thing is so complicated that it has scared every user we got to test it and they went running back to Office.
I would never use it, or any other MicroSoft product, but if it helps us to replace windows...
If it helps to squash StarOffice, WordPerfect and the Open Source efforts, it is a bad thing. And lets be real, that is the ONLY reason MicroSoft would even be considering it.
I see the MicroSerfs quote this from M$ propaganda quite a bit... Whilst a Linux/Unix/etc person would say, "I have had this server up for X months" you hear the Gates servants uttering, "I haven't had any UNSCHEDULED DOWNTIME in X months." Now, lets look at what they are saying here. A computer that you, say, rebooted twice a day at scheduled times would fit into that "no unscheduled downtime" category, now wouldn't it?
Whining that "these Linux people are just spreading FUD about poor little MicroSoft" is sorta like when the Fundies claim that evolution is reallly the religion of "secular humanism" and that you should teach creation "science" instead.
Bow down to the one you serve, you're gonna get what you deserve.
I think that there is just lots of plain ole jealousy here, and that is about it. RMS is mad that Linus managed to do what he has never been able to: get a working kernel. Even though started before Linux, HURD still amounts to nothing. I think the reason that Linus suceeded where he failed is because heading a huge project to design a kernel requires you work with PEOPLE. I remember the one time I met RMS, he didn't even look up from his computer with a group of people standing there in front of him, wanting to ask a question about the books he was selling. Linus, on the other hand, can actually communicate with people, and thus he was able to coordinate the momumental task of creating the Kernel which required the help of lots of people that listen to you, and you listen to them. RMS should stop whining and start to take a look at his own shortcommings and wonder WHY he failed at creating the kernel. He gets plenty of attention, and I think that everyone understands his contribution and is grateful for it. I think what everyone is not grateful for is the bad name he gives the Free Software movement everytime he shoots his mouth off about how he should get the credit, yadda yadda.
Richard, if you ever read this, PLEASE stop making yourself and us look like a fool by doing this constantly. Don't ruin the monumental and greatly appreciated accomplishments you have done by going down in history as the mad man who goes nuts cause he doesn't get enough press.
If Luke gets all the credit for slaying the evil Darth Gates using the tools you gave him, you should be happy that it was accomplished. The movement is MORE IMPORTANT than you, more important than Linus. You should keep that in mind and realise that it is OK if it is not you personally that wields the sword that brings him down.
If it hadn't appeared on slashdot. I cringed when I saw it, knowing that this would happen....
They want you to pay half of the release price to get the alpha, and no where do I see a ftp site for free downloads like Red Hat, et al.
It looks like a windows install, it has a "registry" and they want you to PAY to debug it for them. This looks like one of many people that want to take Linux, make money from it and contribute nothing back.
If I am wrong with what I think I am reading, flame away. But if this is the way these people want to do business with OUR OS, I think we should squash them now. No matter how "pretty" their install program is, it isn't worth having people out there doing Linux business this way.
From 2.1.120 till now I had no problems compiling, now that 2.2.0 is out, I get
drivers/sound/sound.a(sb_ess.o): In function `ess_init':
sb_ess.o(.text+0xdfe): undefined reference to `esstype'
any one else have this problem????
Make no mistake about it, Open Source is a Movement, a social and political movement as much as it is a technical movement. The reason that the Open Source community is seen as the ONLY threat to the dominate monopoly is that we don't play by the same rules as they. Things that are created with love and the model of power-with will always be superior to what the corporations can get their slaves to produce.
We have come to a turning point, however, in which we are actually being noticed. In the battles in history between those who follow the Power-Over model and those who follow the Power-With models (usually refered to as Patriarchial and Partnership models), admittedly the war-like patriarchs usually win. Even if they don't win outright, they win in a more subtle way: you have to become the enemy to defeat the enemy.
This is precisely what I DONT want to see happen to Linux. When we start to talk about and worry about market share and what IBM is porting to Linux and what shall become the "standard Linux desktop" and start to change the operating system so it fits into a Corporate world view, we are becomming the enemy.
I am very much wish for the open source movement to survive and flourish and give the world a new model in co-operation to follow. I have advocated it at my college and it now runs on all our servers and dual boots in our labs. I am hoping for a day when we can run our college on only open source software, that it becomes the new model for the development of new software.
But we must be mindful not to become the enemy. I think that we should be mindful of the points mentioned in this article and take them to heart.
Can't you just give something away? Does it hurt you that much to not be raking in money off of people? You could do with the good karma.
The majority of people that view slashdot do so with MicroSloth machines, so why not advertise for things that you people can use?
I know that Rob is a minor deity in many people's eyes... but...
I am so sick to death of every time a new kernel comes out that some one that thinks of themself as very important thinks that they have to have the thing before anyone else. First of all, if you really are that important, you would have known about it from mailing lists already. Second, how long could it take you to download a patch? I have NEVER had a problem downloading a patch. If you were as good as you like to think you are, you would know what mirror sites are best for you to use. Third, the kernel, especially when it gets to this stage, needs to be tried by people that aren't "experts" (not saying you are) so that we can see if there might be things that average users get stuck on.
And lastly, I am getting so I can't stand these people that post really stupid crap like this, and don't even have the nads to identify themselves. I am getting to the point where I would almost prefer Rob 86 ALL anonymous coward posts.