Re:Its the squeeky wheel that gets the most attent
on
Interview With Linus
·
· Score: 2
Somebody's watched the movie Wall Street a few too many times and never read, the Wealth of Nations.
Re:Its the squeeky wheel that gets the most attent
on
Interview With Linus
·
· Score: 3
Whenever I've met someone of major technical merit in the Linux comunity (AC, Raph Levine, George and Marceij from Eazel, Taj from KDE) they've always been clear headed and non religious about their choice of OS. They don't really like Windows, but they're not `against it' per se and they don't have a problem with Windows users - they just prefer Linux for their own use.
One word: politics. Do you really believe that the major players in the Linux / free software community don't have complete overthrow of the proprietary software "regime" in the back of their minds when they say such things? It's only a matter of time. Cut the crap with that 'best tool for the job' business. And yes, greed is evil and wrong.
I never said you should pirate it. I said why would I spend the extra cash to go see it in theaters (as if it's some big deal in the first place) and support a company most all of us find quite disagreeable. Can someone in their right mind really donate to the FSF/EFF and then turn around and support this? Money talks.
The quote that most people remember as "money is the root of all evil" is actually a pretty bad misquote from the Bible. The original quote is, "the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil." This of course, changes the meaning of what the original author said entirely, but it's amazing how often people get it wrong.
Sleepycat's business model stops working if the Free Software revolution has taken place because no one would need a proprietary-compatible license.
Most definitely true. And someday, that WILL happen unless bad laws get in the way. So essentially, they are helping to support the Free Software revolution at the expense of those less enlightened. Kinda funny actually
I want an absolute truth as much as the next person, but human beings are imperfect, and can therefore never live according to an absolute truth.
I agree in part. In and of ourselves we have no way to find absolute truth. But if there is some form of divine intervention possible, that completely changes the picture and that possibility cannot be ignored. To do so would be making a huge assumption that if part of the absolute truth is the existance of a singular God, that he would not want to communicate with us somehow.
I was digging around the other day and found this piece. It's some pretty interesting philosophy regardless of viewpoint. Maybe a bit dry, but take for what it's worth if interested.
http://www.leaderu.com/truth/1truth14.html
What one person calls an "absolute truth" can be far above or far below what another person calls an "absolute truth" and therefore, we end up only have "relative truths."
So what you're saying is that there is no absolute truth.. but by making that statement, you are claiming an absolute truth by rejecting my view that there IS an absolute truth. One of us is right, the other is wrong. Our viewpoints are mutually exclusive.
The only thing that can come even close is religion, and you see where that's gotten us...
Unless.. there really is an absolute truth, in which case the world's religions may be judged by that truth and since they are in conflict, only ONE of them could be valid. If that is the case, the problem is not religion, but the existance of false religions which are causing the conflict with the truth.
Relativism is a form of close-mindedness in disguise.
This issue is far less complicated than people make it out to be. We don't live in an amoral vacuum--there are absolute rights and wrongs (goodness and evils) which define issues such as this. To deny the existance of an absolute truth and absolute moral standard is to declare one's own insanity by a mere logical fallacy. So given this construct, I think we all would agree that:
- Greed, the pursuit of excess beyond our own comfortable survival and at the expense of others, is wrong.
- Environmental gluttony, a form of greed of the earth's finite resources which as the human race we must respectfully steward, is wrong.
- Exploitation of human life for ones gain, yet another form of greed, is wrong.
- Constriction of human rights and freedoms for ones own gain or lust for power, such as performed by the Taliban or the riaa/mpaa/etc, is wrong.
So does this mean that "globalism" is good or bad? Neither. To generalize is to be an idiot. It's not globalism but the approach taken. If that approach is one of the philosophy that people matter and that ethics come before economics, there is nothing wrong with it. So for example, if a multinational corp. sets up business in a poverty stricken country and in the process of supporting itself, builds infrastructure in that country that improves the quality of life for its people--hence giving back to the community--this can only be seen as a very good thing. Does it usually happen this way? Probably not. But that doesn't mean it can't be done this way. So in the end, it all comes back to greed. It's as simple as that. So fight greed, not globalization.
- "But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil."
If you thought all along that the Open Source movement needed:
- big name corporate sponsors
- its very own news relay site
- a big centralized FTP/WEB hosting site
- software companies to pay its developers
..then you were missing the point all along.
Granted, all of these things have been very nice, but the fact is the VA leadership proved themselves incapable of reliably providing us with such services because they lacked entrepreneurial direction. (or they were just dot-com'ers looking to make a quick buck and high-tail.. who knows) Had they focused solely on top quality hardware at reasonable prices, they could have stayed in business for years, even if only marginally profitable until a truly brilliant idea came along. But apparently they weren't satisfied with this. Instead they just threw in the towel and blew out all their VC on worthless crap. Thanks but no thanks.
In light of the inevitable future and to prevent any major disturbances to Open Source developers worldwide, I suggest that we quickly, calmly, and intelligently find replacements for the services that SourceForge provided us before it disappears. Until the US internet infrastructure becomes more robust wrt bandwidth and switches over to IPv6, I suggest something of a large-and-permanent-node-only P2P network to share the load of a SF-style (but more lightweight) web interface for project hosting and management. Such a network would, as most of our major FTP sites, be hosted primarily in academia or by generous ISP's or corporate entities. From a security and reliability standpoint, I think this might not be such a bad idea anyhow. Any comments or takers?
The great thing about DOS was that it wasn't much of an operating system. (-:
Wrong place to ask..
on
WipOut Contest
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
With all the mindless, MS-brainwashed anti-Open Source FUD sentiment raging on Slashdot recently, I don't think this is the place to look for intelligent responses to this contest. Next thing you know, the same lamers will be clamoring for DRM because *nerd whine* "there's less money for me in open media"
Why would any Slashdotter care about a proprietary language and its proprietary compiler that is far inferior to Perl? Point us to an informative guide to educating newbies on a real scripting language at least. Or if there's no news to post, don't post it.
It's unbelievable how much you Slashdot FUD artists miss the point. Read my lips: collaboration! Of course General Motors will not spend $30mil and 3 years developing their OWN word processor. Nobody said they should. But if they're going to spend $10 million on MS Word licenses and it would only cost them $1 million to hire a few top programmers to add missing features to an existing 'almost there' Open Source package like OpenOffice or KWord, the best decision is quite obvious even from a purely greedy, hard business analyst's view. True, much of today's OSS was developed by altruistic hackers, but that doesn't mean it's going to STAY that way as the infrastructure solidifies.
1.) dot net is still vaporware and has no installed base, nor even a solid customer base--home user OR business--that wants to downgrade to (eXtermination of Privacy).
2.) People are satisfied with your so called "second class standards based Internet" and frankly most don't have the bandwidth for anything better even if it *was* an open standard.
3.) There is plenty time to build our own superior open architecture for any 'enhanced web' that the closed-source dinosaur world may dream up.
What kind of dark ages are you living in? Linux is not your father's Unix. We abandoned "Unix" 10 years ago. Ever use KDE or GNOME? I fail to see where ordinary users would require a console, although it may be beneficial to their productivity if they took the small amount of time required to learn a few commands.
This viewpoint is quite naive. There is no reason for closed source software (and in fact no way for it to survive) in a world that has fully embraced an infrastructure of free open code. Unfortunately, some people are still deluded by the notion that software has to be produced by a software company. Bullcrap. Read the article again until you see the point: the USERS are the developers. If you are a programmer for a closed source company, don't worry. You'll have plenty of jobs in the future helping to produce pieces of much higher quality software that people need. On the other hand, if you're the owner of a closed source based company, I'm afraid you're SOL. I suggest you start thinking of ways to adapt before you go the way of the Dodo in the next 5 years. Survival of the fittest doesn't play favorites to the underdog.
"The institute was formed in 1999 with a $45 million grant from the Army as a partnership among academics, video game makers and creative talent in Hollywood to design advanced ''virtual reality'' and simulation training systems for the military."
So because this project is being developed with public funds, they're going to release all the source code as public domain right? Or maybe that would make too much sense and that's just wishful thinking. Seriously.. think about it! How far could $45 mil go towards an Open Source project with the same goal? Imagine say.. a team of 150 quality programmers, mostly telecommuting, being paid $100,000/yr. for 2 years to work on such a project. And that leaves 15 million to buy some special hardware and rent an office building floor for meetings and coordinating activities. (and housing the CVS server of course.:-)
The only thing slowing the adoption of Open Source is bureaucracy.
For users, Open Source is a good thing hands down, no disadvantages whatsoever if properly embraced and implemented.
For ethical software businesses (ie. those who treat software as a service), Open Source is a good thing because it has the potential to help drive unethical software businesses out of the market, making more room for them instead.
For unethical software businesses (ie. those who treat software as a product), Open Source is a worst nightmare because it takes greed and throws it right out the window (and the massive profit margins with it)
And don't believe any of that BS about "nobody has made a profitable businesses around OSS." It's being done every day from big names like Redhat and Cygnus to thousands of freelance consultants who install free software for their clients and custom tailor it to their needs, releasing the changes back to the community.
Great.. now we'll have k1dd13z running around saying "|)00|)z!! p4j33rz0r |\/|y 31337 (0113c7i0|\| 0f 57013n 51454|)07 4((0u|\|7z!!!!!!!!"
But serious, there are better ways to keep/. going other than subscriptions. Target advertisements more (user preferences), reduce bandwidth by cleaning up your HTML and dumping unneeded images, let go of some staff (c'mon now../. can nearly run itself other than maintenance and posting stories), and put up a/. paypal donation box or something.
So they used mostly open source software, but not for the database engine. Is MySQL really that bad wrt. scalability? (Or has that changed with newer versions?) And what about PostgresQL? If it is the case that there are no viable open source solutions for highly scalable databases, why have there been no development efforts to produce more powerful database engines?
This is just a question. Use your mod points on good answers. (-:
What's the deal with the 'concept cars' (ie. plastic shells filled with gadgets) that these big auto companies dream up? They have no practical value, they're often infeasible aerodynamically or in some other engineering aspect, and they'll never see the assembly line.
Meanwhile, the world waits for an economically feasible low/zero-emission vehicle and our cities continue to be pumped full of noxious gasses. I'm about ready to go build one myself. (-:
Are these CIO's banding together to form collaborative Open Source development projects to meet their mutual software needs? If not, they sure as heck should be. It would do a lot more than complaining.
Slashdot Mirror
Somebody's watched the movie Wall Street a few too many times and never read, the Wealth of Nations.
Whenever I've met someone of major technical merit in the Linux comunity (AC, Raph Levine, George and Marceij from Eazel, Taj from KDE) they've always been clear headed and non religious about their choice of OS. They don't really like Windows, but they're not `against it' per se and they don't have a problem with Windows users - they just prefer Linux for their own use.
One word: politics. Do you really believe that the major players in the Linux / free software community don't have complete overthrow of the proprietary software "regime" in the back of their minds when they say such things? It's only a matter of time. Cut the crap with that 'best tool for the job' business. And yes, greed is evil and wrong.
I personally lost more than 100gb of data
Step 1: stand on your chair and scream "I am a total idiot for using a proprietary alternative operating system with no security"
Step 2 (optional): Sell all your Mac hardware and build yourself a (much faster) PC with commodity components
Step 3: Install Linux or FreeBSD
Step 4 (also optional): Let someone who knows what they're doing set your root password.
I never said you should pirate it. I said why would I spend the extra cash to go see it in theaters (as if it's some big deal in the first place) and support a company most all of us find quite disagreeable. Can someone in their right mind really donate to the FSF/EFF and then turn around and support this? Money talks.
The quote that most people remember as "money is the root of all evil" is actually a pretty bad misquote from the Bible. The original quote is, "the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil." This of course, changes the meaning of what the original author said entirely, but it's amazing how often people get it wrong.
Pixar represents Disney. Disney represents the SSSCA. Why should I pay to see this movie again?
Sleepycat's business model stops working if the Free Software revolution has taken place because no one would need a proprietary-compatible license.
Most definitely true. And someday, that WILL happen unless bad laws get in the way. So essentially, they are helping to support the Free Software revolution at the expense of those less enlightened. Kinda funny actually
I want an absolute truth as much as the next person, but human beings are imperfect, and can therefore never live according to an absolute truth.
I agree in part. In and of ourselves we have no way to find absolute truth. But if there is some form of divine intervention possible, that completely changes the picture and that possibility cannot be ignored. To do so would be making a huge assumption that if part of the absolute truth is the existance of a singular God, that he would not want to communicate with us somehow.
I was digging around the other day and found this piece. It's some pretty interesting philosophy regardless of viewpoint. Maybe a bit dry, but take for what it's worth if interested.
http://www.leaderu.com/truth/1truth14.html
What one person calls an "absolute truth" can be far above or far below what another person calls an "absolute truth" and therefore, we end up only have "relative truths."
So what you're saying is that there is no absolute truth.. but by making that statement, you are claiming an absolute truth by rejecting my view that there IS an absolute truth. One of us is right, the other is wrong. Our viewpoints are mutually exclusive.
The only thing that can come even close is religion, and you see where that's gotten us...
Unless.. there really is an absolute truth, in which case the world's religions may be judged by that truth and since they are in conflict, only ONE of them could be valid. If that is the case, the problem is not religion, but the existance of false religions which are causing the conflict with the truth.
Relativism is a form of close-mindedness in disguise.
This issue is far less complicated than people make it out to be. We don't live in an amoral vacuum--there are absolute rights and wrongs (goodness and evils) which define issues such as this. To deny the existance of an absolute truth and absolute moral standard is to declare one's own insanity by a mere logical fallacy. So given this construct, I think we all would agree that:
- Greed, the pursuit of excess beyond our own comfortable survival and at the expense of others, is wrong.
- Environmental gluttony, a form of greed of the earth's finite resources which as the human race we must respectfully steward, is wrong.
- Exploitation of human life for ones gain, yet another form of greed, is wrong.
- Constriction of human rights and freedoms for ones own gain or lust for power, such as performed by the Taliban or the riaa/mpaa/etc, is wrong.
So does this mean that "globalism" is good or bad? Neither. To generalize is to be an idiot. It's not globalism but the approach taken. If that approach is one of the philosophy that people matter and that ethics come before economics, there is nothing wrong with it. So for example, if a multinational corp. sets up business in a poverty stricken country and in the process of supporting itself, builds infrastructure in that country that improves the quality of life for its people--hence giving back to the community--this can only be seen as a very good thing. Does it usually happen this way? Probably not. But that doesn't mean it can't be done this way. So in the end, it all comes back to greed. It's as simple as that. So fight greed, not globalization.
- "But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil."
If you thought all along that the Open Source movement needed:
- big name corporate sponsors
- its very own news relay site
- a big centralized FTP/WEB hosting site
- software companies to pay its developers
..then you were missing the point all along.
Granted, all of these things have been very nice, but the fact is the VA leadership proved themselves incapable of reliably providing us with such services because they lacked entrepreneurial direction. (or they were just dot-com'ers looking to make a quick buck and high-tail.. who knows) Had they focused solely on top quality hardware at reasonable prices, they could have stayed in business for years, even if only marginally profitable until a truly brilliant idea came along. But apparently they weren't satisfied with this. Instead they just threw in the towel and blew out all their VC on worthless crap. Thanks but no thanks.
In light of the inevitable future and to prevent any major disturbances to Open Source developers worldwide, I suggest that we quickly, calmly, and intelligently find replacements for the services that SourceForge provided us before it disappears. Until the US internet infrastructure becomes more robust wrt bandwidth and switches over to IPv6, I suggest something of a large-and-permanent-node-only P2P network to share the load of a SF-style (but more lightweight) web interface for project hosting and management. Such a network would, as most of our major FTP sites, be hosted primarily in academia or by generous ISP's or corporate entities. From a security and reliability standpoint, I think this might not be such a bad idea anyhow. Any comments or takers?
FreeDOS, gcc-dos, dosemu, among others...
The great thing about DOS was that it wasn't much of an operating system. (-:
With all the mindless, MS-brainwashed anti-Open Source FUD sentiment raging on Slashdot recently, I don't think this is the place to look for intelligent responses to this contest. Next thing you know, the same lamers will be clamoring for DRM because *nerd whine* "there's less money for me in open media"
Slashdot: News for cowards, talk that fritters
Why would any Slashdotter care about a proprietary language and its proprietary compiler that is far inferior to Perl? Point us to an informative guide to educating newbies on a real scripting language at least. Or if there's no news to post, don't post it.
It's unbelievable how much you Slashdot FUD artists miss the point. Read my lips: collaboration! Of course General Motors will not spend $30mil and 3 years developing their OWN word processor. Nobody said they should. But if they're going to spend $10 million on MS Word licenses and it would only cost them $1 million to hire a few top programmers to add missing features to an existing 'almost there' Open Source package like OpenOffice or KWord, the best decision is quite obvious even from a purely greedy, hard business analyst's view. True, much of today's OSS was developed by altruistic hackers, but that doesn't mean it's going to STAY that way as the infrastructure solidifies.
You forget that:
1.) dot net is still vaporware and has no installed base, nor even a solid customer base--home user OR business--that wants to downgrade to (eXtermination of Privacy).
2.) People are satisfied with your so called "second class standards based Internet" and frankly most don't have the bandwidth for anything better even if it *was* an open standard.
3.) There is plenty time to build our own superior open architecture for any 'enhanced web' that the closed-source dinosaur world may dream up.
What kind of dark ages are you living in? Linux is not your father's Unix. We abandoned "Unix" 10 years ago. Ever use KDE or GNOME? I fail to see where ordinary users would require a console, although it may be beneficial to their productivity if they took the small amount of time required to learn a few commands.
This viewpoint is quite naive. There is no reason for closed source software (and in fact no way for it to survive) in a world that has fully embraced an infrastructure of free open code. Unfortunately, some people are still deluded by the notion that software has to be produced by a software company. Bullcrap. Read the article again until you see the point: the USERS are the developers. If you are a programmer for a closed source company, don't worry. You'll have plenty of jobs in the future helping to produce pieces of much higher quality software that people need. On the other hand, if you're the owner of a closed source based company, I'm afraid you're SOL. I suggest you start thinking of ways to adapt before you go the way of the Dodo in the next 5 years. Survival of the fittest doesn't play favorites to the underdog.
"free (as in beer and as in GPL)"
A and (A and B) = (A and B)
Therefore "free as in GPL" would suffice. (-:
"The institute was formed in 1999 with a $45 million grant from the Army as a partnership among academics, video game makers and creative talent in Hollywood to design advanced ''virtual reality'' and simulation training systems for the military."
:-)
So because this project is being developed with public funds, they're going to release all the source code as public domain right? Or maybe that would make too much sense and that's just wishful thinking. Seriously.. think about it! How far could $45 mil go towards an Open Source project with the same goal? Imagine say.. a team of 150 quality programmers, mostly telecommuting, being paid $100,000/yr. for 2 years to work on such a project. And that leaves 15 million to buy some special hardware and rent an office building floor for meetings and coordinating activities. (and housing the CVS server of course.
The only thing slowing the adoption of Open Source is bureaucracy.
For users, Open Source is a good thing hands down, no disadvantages whatsoever if properly embraced and implemented.
For ethical software businesses (ie. those who treat software as a service), Open Source is a good thing because it has the potential to help drive unethical software businesses out of the market, making more room for them instead.
For unethical software businesses (ie. those who treat software as a product), Open Source is a worst nightmare because it takes greed and throws it right out the window (and the massive profit margins with it)
And don't believe any of that BS about "nobody has made a profitable businesses around OSS." It's being done every day from big names like Redhat and Cygnus to thousands of freelance consultants who install free software for their clients and custom tailor it to their needs, releasing the changes back to the community.
Great.. now we'll have k1dd13z running around saying "|)00|)z!! p4j33rz0r |\/|y 31337 (0113c7i0|\| 0f 57013n 51454|)07 4((0u|\|7z!!!!!!!!"
/. going other than subscriptions. Target advertisements more (user preferences), reduce bandwidth by cleaning up your HTML and dumping unneeded images, let go of some staff (c'mon now.. /. can nearly run itself other than maintenance and posting stories), and put up a /. paypal donation box or something.
But serious, there are better ways to keep
So they used mostly open source software, but not for the database engine. Is MySQL really that bad wrt. scalability? (Or has that changed with newer versions?) And what about PostgresQL? If it is the case that there are no viable open source solutions for highly scalable databases, why have there been no development efforts to produce more powerful database engines?
This is just a question. Use your mod points on good answers. (-:
I don't need no steen'kin karma!
What's the deal with the 'concept cars' (ie. plastic shells filled with gadgets) that these big auto companies dream up? They have no practical value, they're often infeasible aerodynamically or in some other engineering aspect, and they'll never see the assembly line.
Meanwhile, the world waits for an economically feasible low/zero-emission vehicle and our cities continue to be pumped full of noxious gasses. I'm about ready to go build one myself. (-:
Are these CIO's banding together to form collaborative Open Source development projects to meet their mutual software needs? If not, they sure as heck should be. It would do a lot more than complaining.