I presume that you've never looked through the kernel code? At least the core kernel code is generally very clear and well written. Perhaps quoting the relevant section of linux/Documentation/CodingStyle would be helpful:
Comments are good, but there is also a danger of over-commenting. NEVER
try to explain HOW your code works in a comment: it's much better to
write the code so that the _working_ is obvious, and it's a waste of
time to explain badly written code.
Generally, you want your comments to tell WHAT your code does, not HOW.
Also, try to avoid putting comments inside a function body: if the
function is so complex that you need to separately comment parts of it,
you should probably go back to chapter 4 for a while. You can make
small comments to note or warn about something particularly clever (or
ugly), but try to avoid excess. Instead, put the comments at the head
of the function, telling people what it does, and possibly WHY it does
it.
This is generally what the kernel actually adheres too.
Moreover, there is a certain sort of self-selection that goes on: kernels are inherently difficult - if you can't figure out what the clean code in the kernel does, then you probably shouldn't bother anyway. It may sound harsh, but when all is said and done it's probably a good idea. The kernel is not the place for beginners. There's plenty of other good software for that.
Well, if you're not this paranoid, why not put on a firewall with the following rules:
All packets bound for the firewall itself are dropped.
All SYN packets bound for the important (confidential) machine are dropped.
All non-TCP/IP protocols bound for the important machine are dropped.
If you want to be extra-paranoid, all non-ACK packets bound for the important machine are dropped.
The above would have a reasonable level of paranoia satisfied, I believe. There are always kernel-level exploits in the firewall, but in some sense since the code will be so minimal, one should be able to prove it and have reasonable confidence, though it will of course cost a lot. Still, it's unlikely that you'll be able to gain root access on the firewall with mal-formed IP headers (DOS is another thing, but the object is to protect the data, not to continuous transmission service).
if you want absolute freedom, go kill yourself. Then you'll be completely free in the sense of having no restrictions at all.
Once you acknowledge that all who live are bound, discussing freedom becomes a matter of discussing how they should be bound, and to what they should be free.
The FSF takes the position that people should have certain things as freedoms, and other things, such s the ability to deprive people of those freedoms, they should not have as freedoms.
Neither the FSF or RMS ever claimed to want anarchy or complete freedom (i.e. no rules at all). Where on earth did you ever think that they did?
Hell, the abolitionists in the US wanted all people to be free in the sense of not being slaves - they didn't want people to be free in the sense of free to own slaves. Were they hypocrits?
Ok, so cygnus wasn't actually a profitable company? Wow, someone should tell them that they were actually losing money when they thought that they were very profitable. (note: this is in the past tense because I don't know anything about their financial situation now that they're owned by redhat.)
Historical note: for those who aren't aware, cygnus was the company that was very profitable supporting gcc (they were also the primary developers of gcc and were the ones who forked off egcs and then became the official custodians of gcc a few years ago).
And isn't redhat itself actually hovering right around profitability now?
And of course SUN's support division is poverty stricken, as we all know, and let's not even talk about the beggars in IBM's various support divisions.
Or is it that you're just morally opposed to paying for development of free software through support contracts?
Well, I have never seen my computer crash when doing 3D stuff (With the DRI) in a kernel crash (That I could tell). However, I have had my machine lock up hard. The difference? A hard lockup is most likely the result of some card locking the PCI bus.
Unfortunately, from what I understand, it is possible for a card to lock the PCI bus and not give it back to any other devices on it - essentially completely freezing one's system.
So while X will generally never kill your system, it is possible to lock up the hardware with it, and the kernel can't do anything with that.
Re:The better method?
on
God's Debris
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· Score: 1
The only people known to live in anarchy, that I can think of, are the waorani, of which there are 600 or 700. Prettymuch everyone else creates some sort of social structure, and have customs and traditions. The fact that they have small groups, or will fight to the death to preserve their customs and traditions over those being imposed does not say anything about anarchy versus structure, just about structure versus structure.
Moreover, people are not know to have been really identifiable as humans as we know them now until, what, 100,000, maybe 200,000 years ago? your claim about millions of years is somewhat difficult to main given that human beings haven't been around nearly that long.
As for why we hold the firm believe that humanity is flawed is because we hold that the truth is better than lies, courage better than cowardice, kindness better than anger, love better than hate, and life better than death.
Do you honestly believe that people aren't flawed? You must have really low standards.
Re:Organization is amoral.
on
God's Debris
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· Score: 1
Actually, for a long time having the same stuff was what people wanted - it made them like church. Recently, I think, that has changed. Unfortunately, now, it's not a matter of churches stubbornly holding on to the old hyms when people want to sing new hyms, it's that there's barely anyone around to sing at all. It's not a matter of some staunch traditionalist saying "If we get rid of this chair, Christ will no longer love us!", it's a matter of frequently not having money for new chairs. Or need. Frequently the old chairs will support people's weight and thus don't need to be supported.
The real reasons that people are bored vary quite a lot, of course, but I believe that it's because most people don't really know much about their own religion. They don't worship out of devotion, but out of habit, and lifeless habit is going to be boring no matter what. Though I admit putting TVs playing Rambo during church services would spice things up a bit.
No, what we need to make the church fresh is not to redecorate it in an art/deco style, but to actually teach the people what it is that they're practicing.
While it's great and all to blame all the evils of the world on *organized* religion, and to long for the panacea of completely disorganized religion, do try to remember that human beings cannot deal with anarchy for very long. There are no long-lived anarchies in the wordl - people cannot live with Chaos their entire lives.
That is why governments form. Of course anarchy would be a better political system than any organized government, but people cannot live that way for long.
It is very true that organized religions are a crutch for the masses. They also happen to be a crutch for the intellectually elite who aren't so filled with pride as to think themselves perfect. But be that as it may, the purpose of all organizations is to be a crutch.
People are weak. If one learns nothing else from the study of mankind it is that people are weak. They need crutches. And if even at times they don't, they will with time. A young man does not need a cain, but wait 60 years - a very short time - and he will not be able to walk without it.
Human beings, left to themselves, degenerate. We are not sufficient onto ourselves. Hence organizations - it allows people, all in various states of imperfection, to borrow each others strength to counteract their weaknesses.
All that we call organization can basically be summed up in the idea of everyone saying what they intend to do, and what they intend to expect (and allow) of others.
Of course organizations can and do great evil - that is precisely because they can do so much good. A rock cannot be moral or immoral, so far as we know. A moral worm and an immoral worm are difficult to tell apart - what could morality be for a worm? A good dog and a bad dog are distinguishable, but a dog cannot be either so good or so evil as a man. A dog cannot be an artist or a philosopher, a confessor, or even a surgeon. But by the same token, no dog will ever reach the depths of evil that Shakespeare's Iago achieved.
Good and evil are not two sides of the same coin if by that one means that they are both an inherent part of the same being, and the existence of one necessitates the existence of the other. However, they are two sides to the same coin if you are flipping that coin - if you mean that the possibility of the one necessitates the possibility of the other.
To be good, one needs free will, but free will allows for the possibility of evil. The more that one can be good, the more that one can be evil. That is why you should not dismiss organizations because they have brought so much evil in the world - it means that they can bring as much good into the world. And some of them even have.
Just look what what Mother Teresa of Calcutta did.
I honestly can't tell. I assume that it's sarcasm, but it is written somewhat like a troll, too.
Just curious
those who never study history...
on
Interview With Linus
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Hint: part os the world *are* against linux, from microsoft who wants to squash it by using their monopolistic strangelhold to the MPAA/RIAA (whichever or both, I don't remember) with their SSSCA which would make linux illegal. There are people who very much want to get rid of linux, and it would be in the best interests thereof if they were not allowed to succeed.
Kind of like Bin Laden and the US.
Wake up. Linux has (prettymuch declared) enemies. What you're advocating is the stance that the US took before world war II, and before the september 11th attacks.
Life doesn't work that way. You can't just retreat into your shell and ignore the world - if you do, someone in the world will come along and eat you (metaphorically speaking, of course). Those who don't adapt, die.
Essentially, closing your eyes doesn't mean other people can't see you, no matter how much you wish that it did.
You misunderstood. First off, Taco has made his choice a while ago. slashdot is not a news site, and I honestly doubt from what can be gathered as public information that Malda really even has all that much input into slashdot any more.
Why you're posting some comment about him having to choose, when if you've done any reasearch you'd know that he chose a long time ago, is beyond me. Despike the subtitle, slashdot is not a news site in the sense of an unbiased source of the most true information available. Of course they make the valid point that most news sources are biased but pretend not to be, so at least/. is being honest. There is something to that.
However, you really should look at the human aspect./. has been around too long to change any more without a change of leadership. So if you want to understand/., you have to understand what's going on. Otherwise, well, you might want to pick battles that weren't over a long time ago.
Moreover, one thing about people who do great or famous things - they can't rest on their laurals. If someone attains greatness, it becomes a burden because they then feel like a failure if they can't continue to achieve as much as they did previously. The mere fact that they once *did* something worthwhile does not mean that they still *are* doing something worth while, and they generally know it.
And you misunderstood my use of the phrase "Linux Elite" - I was talking about the great linux (and assosiated gnu) people, stallman, torvalds, cox, raymond, perens, etc. I.e. people who are now doing great things in and for the linux community. I mean the people who are elite because of their achievements, not l33t because of their pathetic hobbies.
What many of the/. fail to recognize is that very few people care very much about the slashdot editors. We all hope that you do well and are happy and all that, but your opinions aren't very relevent. People come to slashdot for the community, not for the (apparently randomly selected) club of editors.
It's your site so you get to do what you want, but if you want good discussion, sticking dumb polarizing messages that often shape discussion up at the top really doesn't help generate good discussion.
That's the problem. It's not whether or not you're biased - it's whether or not you want good discussion. Right now,/. sends the message loud and clear that what's wanted is controversy, not discussion.
Right now the editors use their positions as editors to inflate the value of their opinions. Basically, the editors so far are not competent at leading worthwhile discussions, so it would really be for the best if you resisted the temptation to get on your soapbox and just posted stories.
Especially considering how dumb and childish many of the editorials are, and the first comment that users can't turn off will inevitable set the tone.
And since you know that given any opinion and a large group of people, some people are going to disagree, so it's always flaimbait.
Hello, take a hint from the number of posts which say, effectively, "-1 (Flaimbait)" as a response to the story posted.
The slashdot editors troll all the time. Why are you surprised that trolling is the predominant type of post?
Basically, if you actually want good discussion, Jamie, you should spread around the message that editors should try to give a good start to the discussions. In many cases, that would be staying silent. Maybe institute a rule of thumb: if your editorial wouldn't get above a +3, don't post it.
You're the one who said that you want good discussion on/. - remember that you need signal in order to have a signal/noise ratio. Right now virtually everything is noise, even at +4. You might want to look into encouraging people to post worthwhile comments, as well as trying to figure out how to mod trolls into oblivion. (i.e. start with the most obvious trolls - the/. editors)
This is, of course, only if you actually want to promote discussion on slashdot. If you don't, it's your site and you can read through all of the bad "arguments" and whining and near-constant trolling to your hearts content. I hope that you enjoy whichever choice you make.
Besides, it's his changelog, he can do whatever he wants in it. If you don't like it, do the diff and post your own damn change log.
The DMCA was used in an absolutely absurd way to jail and prosecute Dmitry Skylarov. Why exactly would equally stupid things not happen in the future?
And besides, why is the only responsible thing to do to (possibly) break US law and then never again go to the united states. Why can't he just avoid breaking US law entirely, and leave himself the option of coming here and not being jailed?
Neither prison nor jail are pleasant. Neither is being tried for a crime. I wonder how you speak with such flippancy on these matters when it has be demonstrated the the current US legal system is not sane.
When you think about it, it's pretty scary how many things which are illegal but shouldn't be that people can be imprisoned for a long time.
Actually, the linux UIs are often much better than the windows UIs. You're just used to the windows UIs. Frankly, having had to do some work in excel recently, it's really pitiful how bad a product excel is, considering that microsoft supposedly actually spends money on a usability testing lab.
Anyhow, it's actually rather easy to switch users to linux. It's switching administrators that's the hard part.
It is, however, unfortunately true that most home users have to be both. Even this, though, is getting to be much less of an issue in the most recent Redhat or Mandrake distros.
The only real obstacle anymore is the fact that microsoft is still dominant and thus hardware generally only comes with windows drivers, and pre-packaged software and games are usually only for windows. This, unfortunately, will only really be solved by killing microsoft, which hopefully microsoft will finish in the next 3-5 years. It will probably take them longer, of course, but you never know.
If you've ever noticed stories about windows software, especially games, Taco frequently mentions, or at least used to mention, that he liked playing it. Basically, he ran windows all the time for games.
Taco is a huge hypocrit as far one can tell from the public, and all his anti-MS speach is just so much sound and fury, signifying nothing. It's almost guaranteed that he runs one of winXp, win2K, or winME. Maybe all three.
Taco doesn't troll the way he does because he's one of the linux elite. They don't troll except as private jokes among those they know. Taco is just an insecure guy who is famous because his website was in the right place at the right time. He hasn't earned his fame like linus or alan or Bruce or Eric or RMS. He's just as conspicuous, but noone can really point to anything worthwhile of even moderate difficulty that he's done himself. The slashdot code stopped being his a long time ago. He doesn't administrate the/. machines. Prettymuch all one call tell that he does is play windows games and troll as an editor on his child which has so completely outgrown him.
So really, pity Taco. If it weren't for the hugely negative impact he has on/., I'd probably cry for him. It's a pretty depressing situation, when you think about it.
...that the editors post all the time? Seriously? It used to be that the editors were reasonable, but nowadays they're worse than the trolls sometimes.
And it would greatly improve the quality of/. if the editors would stop giving their opinions of things in the story text and logged in as themselves and posted like a regular user. It would sure increase the respect that editors get.
Right now it honestly seems like the editors' job is primarily to insense flaim wars and troll posting to drive up banner views.
If you want to improve the quality of discussion, start by at least keeping flaims, trolls, and other things of similar quality out of the story blurbs. They're generally only one paragraph long - it shouldn't be too hard.
I must say, I'm impressed by how many biased sources that you cited. Well, actually, that the citation that you cited cited, but what the hell. You picked it.
"Not only do the controversial InfoWorld results fly in the face of Microsoft's published results..."
Personally, I feel that this one line discredits anything that the pundit in question could say about the subject. The most important benchmarks of a product are not those of the entity selling the product. It's absolutely absurd to even mention microsoft's benchmarks since they're very obviously biased (it's even worse because microsoft is a company known for lying). This demonstrates a complete lack of understanding as to how real knowledge is gained, i.e. no understanding of the scientific process at all.
"and actual real-world use"
This is better than asking microsoft, but it's still very subjective, and worse it gives no indication of whose real-world use is being referenced. Hell, if you ask the right people you can get real-world opinions that Christina Aguilera has a nice voice.
"hey refute every independent XP performance test performed to date."
As a minor nit, they can't refute *every* independent XP performance test, as they don't refute themselves. They refute every *other* independent XP test (unless someone claims that microsoft funded this test and decided to publish the results). This, however, is just a nit and not relevent. This part would be fine if it wasn't deprecated in the sentence that it was in. As it is, you seriously have to wonder at the intellectual prowess of those who consider the least important data to be the data that comes from independent tests.
"CNET/ZDNET, eTesting Labs, eWeek, PC Magazine, and PC World."
Well, ZFnet gets a large portion of its revenue from microsoft (in advertising), so calling them independent is a bit of stretch. eTesting Labs is owned by ZD, and thus they, if indirectly, stand to gain from pleasing microsoft. eWeek is a Ziff Davis company as well! PC Magazine is yet another ZD company. In point of fact the only company on this list that isn't a Ziff Davis company is PC World, who is owned by IDG. So all of these independent labs are owned by two companies. Honestly, when 4 out of 5 independent labs that you mention are all owned by the same company, it doesn't really reinforce your point very well.
"The InfoWorld results are also at odds with real-world XP use, which already includes hundreds of thousands of beta testers, tens of thousands of IT professionals and developers, and hundreds of thousands of enterprise customers."
How do we know this? Were these hundreds of thousands of people polled by an independent polling organization? Are these results publically available?
"'Microsoft has not received any indications that users are experiencing reduced performance compared with Windows 2000,' a company spokesperson said."
This is a joke, right? What exactly would microsoft say, "Yes, we have been getting a very large volume of complaints that the latest version of our product isn't even as good as the previous version"
"'We have had extensive feedback that Windows XP is better performing than Windows 9x.' Go figure."
This guy really should have listened to himself. The company spokesperson says that they've been hearing that the latest version of their software is better than their 4-6 year old products. Who would have thought that we'd live to see a thing like that happen. I bet, if you ask, that a Pepsi Co spokesperson would say that they've recieved extensive feedback that pepsi tastes better than coke. And it is not outside the realm of possibility that Goerge Bush would say that America is the greatest nation on the earth. Or that you could find a Ford spokesperson who would tell you that this year's model of the explorer is better than the one from four years ago. If you've missed the material point: any sane person could have told you that the spokesperson would say something more or less like this. Even if winXP got half the performance of win9.x, they'd almost certainly still be saying this.
"Looks like he hit that nail right on the head, huh?"
Yeah, I think that he did, in so far as he predicted that anti-microsoft sites would publish this. Of course, anyone could have told you this. As for the rest of it, what you quoted of his article is pretty worthless as far as actually convincing anyone of a point goes.
However, my point was simply to mention how badly this quote does in terms of making an argument and backing it up with convincing arguments. I know that/. doesn't have the highest S/N ratio any more, how are their enough people to think that your quote was good enough to be read at a +5? Grammar school children routinely write better material.
All this being said, the main point of my post is for the other people reading it: it's worthwhile actually checking the facts offered by people. For example, I wouldn't have guessed that 4 out of 5 of the "independent testers" mentioned above were all owned by the same company.
I guess that it just points out how much slashdot has changed - prettymuch any pro-microsoft post written in halfway decent english (i.e. without significant profanity) gets modded through the roof around here.
Heck, I'll probably get modded down for defying the majority around here by not praising micrsoft and/or claiming to be defying the majority when I'm actually towing the party line.
Well, if installing consists of "clicking a nice 'setup.exe' or 'setup.msi' icon and launching something from InstallShield or Microsoft Installer", then you're going to wait quite a long time indeed before you see that happening.
However, if debian's apt (which doesn't really qualify as getting a debian system is still non-trivial, though it's actually not that bad) or RedHat's rpmfind are enough, as you basically can just click on packages and say "install!" and it installs, then that is the current situation.
As an example of another version, ever try out one of Loki's products? Or the Ximian installer?
Virtually all free software packages out nowadays come either in debian's apt archive or as the necessary rpms to just download and install using the gui installer.
E.g. on debian, installing openSSH is:
apt-get install ssh
not very hard, I think. That is, however, a command-line instruction. Doesn't take too much getting used to, though.
On a recent Redhat, I believe that you just browse through rpmfind to locate the openssh rpms, then click install.
The standard idea for making money by open source software, if that's what you're trying to do, is to give it away as a loss leader and to sell support and feature enhancements and such. While not exactly what you describe, it's close. Making it pure software, Cygnus used this model and was quite profitable. They made prettymuch all of their work on gcc distributable, but they would generally have someone pay them to do the work. That is, someone would want a compiler for a given platform and then comission the cygnus people to port gcc to it, since gcc is such a high quality compiler and getting a gcc port was a lot cheaper than writing an equal-quality compiler from scratch. Then the port would go into gcc proper, generally, because the company in question wouldn't gain anything from keeping the source closed. They also made a decent revenue from people who bought support contracts on gcc, IIRC.
You're quite correct that almost noone is going to want to buy for $50 what they can get for free off of your website, and if that's your business model it's only a matter of time before you're going to fail.
However, that's only one of the many ways of making money from open source software, support and comission work being the obvious ones. However, as you point out, there's probably an even bigger market in people who indirectly make money from open source software, i.e., that it's only a component, possibly a small component, in what they're selling or doing. And this is one of the things that really gives open source its power. It doesn't need companies dedicated to developing open source software, though that does help, honestly.
"Where can I reconfigure my kernel, compile it, isntall it and reboot all by checking a few boxes and hitting a button ?"
You are kidding, right?
While you have, at the kernel of your message, a valid point (leaving off the fact that it's not even remotely new), you've listed a whole bunch of administrative functions. The average user doesn't need to do administrative functions.
And if you're in redhat, I believe that the redhat control center, or maybe it's called the command center, handles more or less all of these things. But how many average users need to:
*Partition disks
*Set the colour depth and resolution of your display (though gnome has a little panel applet for this that even an idiot could figure out how to add to their toolbar and use, and I'd imagine that KDE has the same thing)
*load and unload kernel modules that aren't configured by their distro to autoload when needed
*start and stop daemons? Do you really think that the average user runs their own http server?
*reconfigure and compile their kernel? These things are always provided by distros will virtually all modules compiled and configured to autoload.
*etc. what average user needs to do things in latin?:-)
Also, who exactly do you expect to install software for you? Is your computer supposed to guess what you want and install it for you? I don't quite understand how you expect new programs to get to your computer if you don't tell your computer that you want them there (i.e. install them)
However, much of what you request is already handled pretty well in recent distributions of redhat, and debian isn't for people who want such a unified tool (it's simply got a different audience). Moreover, you really should notice that right now there really aren't any user-friendly OSes (with the possible exception of MacOS, but I really don't know) by your criteria. Given this, why do you only point out that linux needs improvement in this area?
That's just because there's no "dumb" mod...
on
MS DOS: A Eulogy
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· Score: 1
...so that "troll" is the best approximation thereof.
The original poster claimed that microsoft's organization of files has no valid justification. The first responder claimed that linux's organization of executables (and libraries) was similarly unreasonable. The guy that you responded to then pointed out that there is in fact a reason for the organization, it just turns out that the guy in the middle didn't know it.
You just misunderstood just about everything posted in this thread, most likely because you have below-average mental facilities. However, you could just be a clever troll. It's not really relevent.
Anyhow, c:\windows is not the equivalent of/, c:\ is. More precisely, a:\ & b:\ & c:\ &... & z:\ (has windows added the ability to have more than 26 drives yet?) is the equivalent of/.
That being said, people can mount / over a network just fine - it was often done in the days when hard drives cost substantial amounts of money and people wanted to save disk space. When I was a freshman the computer science lab was set up this way with a bunch of sun workstations nfs mounting / from a linux server.
Virtually noone does it anymore as disk space is so cheap, but it also offers easier administration and greatly diminishes the number of things that can break. Workstations of this kind, like the sun sunray, might make a comback if microsoft office can be killed. As it stands it's probably most often used in things like POS terminals if they're not actually dumb terminals.
Still, for large installations (say hundres or thousands of users), a big centralized server with X terminals is still probably the best way to go in terms of administrative efficiency as well as reliability and monetary efficiency.
Slashdot Mirror
Auto Summarize.
I presume that you've never looked through the kernel code? At least the core kernel code is generally very clear and well written. Perhaps quoting the relevant section of linux/Documentation/CodingStyle would be helpful:
This is generally what the kernel actually adheres too.
Moreover, there is a certain sort of self-selection that goes on: kernels are inherently difficult - if you can't figure out what the clean code in the kernel does, then you probably shouldn't bother anyway. It may sound harsh, but when all is said and done it's probably a good idea. The kernel is not the place for beginners. There's plenty of other good software for that.
Well, if you're not this paranoid, why not put on a firewall with the following rules:
The above would have a reasonable level of paranoia satisfied, I believe. There are always kernel-level exploits in the firewall, but in some sense since the code will be so minimal, one should be able to prove it and have reasonable confidence, though it will of course cost a lot. Still, it's unlikely that you'll be able to gain root access on the firewall with mal-formed IP headers (DOS is another thing, but the object is to protect the data, not to continuous transmission service).
if you want absolute freedom, go kill yourself. Then you'll be completely free in the sense of having no restrictions at all.
Once you acknowledge that all who live are bound, discussing freedom becomes a matter of discussing how they should be bound, and to what they should be free.
The FSF takes the position that people should have certain things as freedoms, and other things, such s the ability to deprive people of those freedoms, they should not have as freedoms.
Neither the FSF or RMS ever claimed to want anarchy or complete freedom (i.e. no rules at all). Where on earth did you ever think that they did?
Hell, the abolitionists in the US wanted all people to be free in the sense of not being slaves - they didn't want people to be free in the sense of free to own slaves. Were they hypocrits?
Ok, so cygnus wasn't actually a profitable company? Wow, someone should tell them that they were actually losing money when they thought that they were very profitable. (note: this is in the past tense because I don't know anything about their financial situation now that they're owned by redhat.)
Historical note: for those who aren't aware, cygnus was the company that was very profitable supporting gcc (they were also the primary developers of gcc and were the ones who forked off egcs and then became the official custodians of gcc a few years ago).
And isn't redhat itself actually hovering right around profitability now?
And of course SUN's support division is poverty stricken, as we all know, and let's not even talk about the beggars in IBM's various support divisions.
Or is it that you're just morally opposed to paying for development of free software through support contracts?
...how the "GNU Network Object Model Environment" could somehow conflict with GNU?
Well, I have never seen my computer crash when doing 3D stuff (With the DRI) in a kernel crash (That I could tell). However, I have had my machine lock up hard. The difference? A hard lockup is most likely the result of some card locking the PCI bus.
Unfortunately, from what I understand, it is possible for a card to lock the PCI bus and not give it back to any other devices on it - essentially completely freezing one's system.
So while X will generally never kill your system, it is possible to lock up the hardware with it, and the kernel can't do anything with that.
The only people known to live in anarchy, that I can think of, are the waorani, of which there are 600 or 700. Prettymuch everyone else creates some sort of social structure, and have customs and traditions. The fact that they have small groups, or will fight to the death to preserve their customs and traditions over those being imposed does not say anything about anarchy versus structure, just about structure versus structure.
Moreover, people are not know to have been really identifiable as humans as we know them now until, what, 100,000, maybe 200,000 years ago? your claim about millions of years is somewhat difficult to main given that human beings haven't been around nearly that long.
As for why we hold the firm believe that humanity is flawed is because we hold that the truth is better than lies, courage better than cowardice, kindness better than anger, love better than hate, and life better than death.
Do you honestly believe that people aren't flawed? You must have really low standards.
Actually, for a long time having the same stuff was what people wanted - it made them like church. Recently, I think, that has changed. Unfortunately, now, it's not a matter of churches stubbornly holding on to the old hyms when people want to sing new hyms, it's that there's barely anyone around to sing at all. It's not a matter of some staunch traditionalist saying "If we get rid of this chair, Christ will no longer love us!", it's a matter of frequently not having money for new chairs. Or need. Frequently the old chairs will support people's weight and thus don't need to be supported.
The real reasons that people are bored vary quite a lot, of course, but I believe that it's because most people don't really know much about their own religion. They don't worship out of devotion, but out of habit, and lifeless habit is going to be boring no matter what. Though I admit putting TVs playing Rambo during church services would spice things up a bit.
No, what we need to make the church fresh is not to redecorate it in an art/deco style, but to actually teach the people what it is that they're practicing.
Well, at least it wouldn't hurt.
While it's great and all to blame all the evils of the world on *organized* religion, and to long for the panacea of completely disorganized religion, do try to remember that human beings cannot deal with anarchy for very long. There are no long-lived anarchies in the wordl - people cannot live with Chaos their entire lives.
That is why governments form. Of course anarchy would be a better political system than any organized government, but people cannot live that way for long.
It is very true that organized religions are a crutch for the masses. They also happen to be a crutch for the intellectually elite who aren't so filled with pride as to think themselves perfect. But be that as it may, the purpose of all organizations is to be a crutch.
People are weak. If one learns nothing else from the study of mankind it is that people are weak. They need crutches. And if even at times they don't, they will with time. A young man does not need a cain, but wait 60 years - a very short time - and he will not be able to walk without it.
Human beings, left to themselves, degenerate. We are not sufficient onto ourselves. Hence organizations - it allows people, all in various states of imperfection, to borrow each others strength to counteract their weaknesses.
All that we call organization can basically be summed up in the idea of everyone saying what they intend to do, and what they intend to expect (and allow) of others.
Of course organizations can and do great evil - that is precisely because they can do so much good. A rock cannot be moral or immoral, so far as we know. A moral worm and an immoral worm are difficult to tell apart - what could morality be for a worm? A good dog and a bad dog are distinguishable, but a dog cannot be either so good or so evil as a man. A dog cannot be an artist or a philosopher, a confessor, or even a surgeon. But by the same token, no dog will ever reach the depths of evil that Shakespeare's Iago achieved.
Good and evil are not two sides of the same coin if by that one means that they are both an inherent part of the same being, and the existence of one necessitates the existence of the other. However, they are two sides to the same coin if you are flipping that coin - if you mean that the possibility of the one necessitates the possibility of the other.
To be good, one needs free will, but free will allows for the possibility of evil. The more that one can be good, the more that one can be evil. That is why you should not dismiss organizations because they have brought so much evil in the world - it means that they can bring as much good into the world. And some of them even have.
Just look what what Mother Teresa of Calcutta did.
Oh I wish that I had mod points.
I haven't seen satire this good in a while. Thanks.
I just wanted to say that it's about time someone pointed this out. Thanks for doing it.
I honestly can't tell. I assume that it's sarcasm, but it is written somewhat like a troll, too.
Just curious
Hint: part os the world *are* against linux, from microsoft who wants to squash it by using their monopolistic strangelhold to the MPAA/RIAA (whichever or both, I don't remember) with their SSSCA which would make linux illegal. There are people who very much want to get rid of linux, and it would be in the best interests thereof if they were not allowed to succeed.
Kind of like Bin Laden and the US.
Wake up. Linux has (prettymuch declared) enemies. What you're advocating is the stance that the US took before world war II, and before the september 11th attacks.
Life doesn't work that way. You can't just retreat into your shell and ignore the world - if you do, someone in the world will come along and eat you (metaphorically speaking, of course). Those who don't adapt, die.
Essentially, closing your eyes doesn't mean other people can't see you, no matter how much you wish that it did.
You misunderstood. First off, Taco has made his choice a while ago. slashdot is not a news site, and I honestly doubt from what can be gathered as public information that Malda really even has all that much input into slashdot any more.
/. is being honest. There is something to that.
/. has been around too long to change any more without a change of leadership. So if you want to understand /., you have to understand what's going on. Otherwise, well, you might want to pick battles that weren't over a long time ago.
Why you're posting some comment about him having to choose, when if you've done any reasearch you'd know that he chose a long time ago, is beyond me. Despike the subtitle, slashdot is not a news site in the sense of an unbiased source of the most true information available. Of course they make the valid point that most news sources are biased but pretend not to be, so at least
However, you really should look at the human aspect.
Moreover, one thing about people who do great or famous things - they can't rest on their laurals. If someone attains greatness, it becomes a burden because they then feel like a failure if they can't continue to achieve as much as they did previously. The mere fact that they once *did* something worthwhile does not mean that they still *are* doing something worth while, and they generally know it.
And you misunderstood my use of the phrase "Linux Elite" - I was talking about the great linux (and assosiated gnu) people, stallman, torvalds, cox, raymond, perens, etc. I.e. people who are now doing great things in and for the linux community. I mean the people who are elite because of their achievements, not l33t because of their pathetic hobbies.
What many of the /. fail to recognize is that very few people care very much about the slashdot editors. We all hope that you do well and are happy and all that, but your opinions aren't very relevent. People come to slashdot for the community, not for the (apparently randomly selected) club of editors.
/. sends the message loud and clear that what's wanted is controversy, not discussion.
/. - remember that you need signal in order to have a signal/noise ratio. Right now virtually everything is noise, even at +4. You might want to look into encouraging people to post worthwhile comments, as well as trying to figure out how to mod trolls into oblivion. (i.e. start with the most obvious trolls - the /. editors)
It's your site so you get to do what you want, but if you want good discussion, sticking dumb polarizing messages that often shape discussion up at the top really doesn't help generate good discussion.
That's the problem. It's not whether or not you're biased - it's whether or not you want good discussion. Right now,
Right now the editors use their positions as editors to inflate the value of their opinions. Basically, the editors so far are not competent at leading worthwhile discussions, so it would really be for the best if you resisted the temptation to get on your soapbox and just posted stories.
Especially considering how dumb and childish many of the editorials are, and the first comment that users can't turn off will inevitable set the tone.
And since you know that given any opinion and a large group of people, some people are going to disagree, so it's always flaimbait.
Hello, take a hint from the number of posts which say, effectively, "-1 (Flaimbait)" as a response to the story posted.
The slashdot editors troll all the time. Why are you surprised that trolling is the predominant type of post?
Basically, if you actually want good discussion, Jamie, you should spread around the message that editors should try to give a good start to the discussions. In many cases, that would be staying silent. Maybe institute a rule of thumb: if your editorial wouldn't get above a +3, don't post it.
You're the one who said that you want good discussion on
This is, of course, only if you actually want to promote discussion on slashdot. If you don't, it's your site and you can read through all of the bad "arguments" and whining and near-constant trolling to your hearts content. I hope that you enjoy whichever choice you make.
of extradition?
Besides, it's his changelog, he can do whatever he wants in it. If you don't like it, do the diff and post your own damn change log.
The DMCA was used in an absolutely absurd way to jail and prosecute Dmitry Skylarov. Why exactly would equally stupid things not happen in the future?
And besides, why is the only responsible thing to do to (possibly) break US law and then never again go to the united states. Why can't he just avoid breaking US law entirely, and leave himself the option of coming here and not being jailed?
Neither prison nor jail are pleasant. Neither is being tried for a crime. I wonder how you speak with such flippancy on these matters when it has be demonstrated the the current US legal system is not sane.
When you think about it, it's pretty scary how many things which are illegal but shouldn't be that people can be imprisoned for a long time.
Actually, the linux UIs are often much better than the windows UIs. You're just used to the windows UIs. Frankly, having had to do some work in excel recently, it's really pitiful how bad a product excel is, considering that microsoft supposedly actually spends money on a usability testing lab.
Anyhow, it's actually rather easy to switch users to linux. It's switching administrators that's the hard part.
It is, however, unfortunately true that most home users have to be both. Even this, though, is getting to be much less of an issue in the most recent Redhat or Mandrake distros.
The only real obstacle anymore is the fact that microsoft is still dominant and thus hardware generally only comes with windows drivers, and pre-packaged software and games are usually only for windows. This, unfortunately, will only really be solved by killing microsoft, which hopefully microsoft will finish in the next 3-5 years. It will probably take them longer, of course, but you never know.
If you've ever noticed stories about windows software, especially games, Taco frequently mentions, or at least used to mention, that he liked playing it. Basically, he ran windows all the time for games.
/. machines. Prettymuch all one call tell that he does is play windows games and troll as an editor on his child which has so completely outgrown him.
/., I'd probably cry for him. It's a pretty depressing situation, when you think about it.
Taco is a huge hypocrit as far one can tell from the public, and all his anti-MS speach is just so much sound and fury, signifying nothing. It's almost guaranteed that he runs one of winXp, win2K, or winME. Maybe all three.
Taco doesn't troll the way he does because he's one of the linux elite. They don't troll except as private jokes among those they know. Taco is just an insecure guy who is famous because his website was in the right place at the right time. He hasn't earned his fame like linus or alan or Bruce or Eric or RMS. He's just as conspicuous, but noone can really point to anything worthwhile of even moderate difficulty that he's done himself. The slashdot code stopped being his a long time ago. He doesn't administrate the
So really, pity Taco. If it weren't for the hugely negative impact he has on
...that the editors post all the time? Seriously? It used to be that the editors were reasonable, but nowadays they're worse than the trolls sometimes.
/. if the editors would stop giving their opinions of things in the story text and logged in as themselves and posted like a regular user. It would sure increase the respect that editors get.
And it would greatly improve the quality of
Right now it honestly seems like the editors' job is primarily to insense flaim wars and troll posting to drive up banner views.
If you want to improve the quality of discussion, start by at least keeping flaims, trolls, and other things of similar quality out of the story blurbs. They're generally only one paragraph long - it shouldn't be too hard.
I must say, I'm impressed by how many biased sources that you cited. Well, actually, that the citation that you cited cited, but what the hell. You picked it.
/. doesn't have the highest S/N ratio any more, how are their enough people to think that your quote was good enough to be read at a +5? Grammar school children routinely write better material.
"Not only do the controversial InfoWorld results fly in the face of Microsoft's published results..."
Personally, I feel that this one line discredits anything that the pundit in question could say about the subject. The most important benchmarks of a product are not those of the entity selling the product. It's absolutely absurd to even mention microsoft's benchmarks since they're very obviously biased (it's even worse because microsoft is a company known for lying). This demonstrates a complete lack of understanding as to how real knowledge is gained, i.e. no understanding of the scientific process at all.
"and actual real-world use"
This is better than asking microsoft, but it's still very subjective, and worse it gives no indication of whose real-world use is being referenced. Hell, if you ask the right people you can get real-world opinions that Christina Aguilera has a nice voice.
"hey refute every independent XP performance test performed to date."
As a minor nit, they can't refute *every* independent XP performance test, as they don't refute themselves. They refute every *other* independent XP test (unless someone claims that microsoft funded this test and decided to publish the results). This, however, is just a nit and not relevent. This part would be fine if it wasn't deprecated in the sentence that it was in. As it is, you seriously have to wonder at the intellectual prowess of those who consider the least important data to be the data that comes from independent tests.
"CNET/ZDNET, eTesting Labs, eWeek, PC Magazine, and PC World."
Well, ZFnet gets a large portion of its revenue from microsoft (in advertising), so calling them independent is a bit of stretch. eTesting Labs is owned by ZD, and thus they, if indirectly, stand to gain from pleasing microsoft. eWeek is a Ziff Davis company as well! PC Magazine is yet another ZD company. In point of fact the only company on this list that isn't a Ziff Davis company is PC World, who is owned by IDG. So all of these independent labs are owned by two companies. Honestly, when 4 out of 5 independent labs that you mention are all owned by the same company, it doesn't really reinforce your point very well.
"The InfoWorld results are also at odds with real-world XP use, which already includes hundreds of thousands of beta testers, tens of thousands of IT professionals and developers, and hundreds of thousands of enterprise customers."
How do we know this? Were these hundreds of thousands of people polled by an independent polling organization? Are these results publically available?
"'Microsoft has not received any indications that users are experiencing reduced performance compared with Windows 2000,' a company spokesperson said."
This is a joke, right? What exactly would microsoft say, "Yes, we have been getting a very large volume of complaints that the latest version of our product isn't even as good as the previous version"
"'We have had extensive feedback that Windows XP is better performing than Windows 9x.' Go figure."
This guy really should have listened to himself. The company spokesperson says that they've been hearing that the latest version of their software is better than their 4-6 year old products. Who would have thought that we'd live to see a thing like that happen. I bet, if you ask, that a Pepsi Co spokesperson would say that they've recieved extensive feedback that pepsi tastes better than coke. And it is not outside the realm of possibility that Goerge Bush would say that America is the greatest nation on the earth. Or that you could find a Ford spokesperson who would tell you that this year's model of the explorer is better than the one from four years ago. If you've missed the material point: any sane person could have told you that the spokesperson would say something more or less like this. Even if winXP got half the performance of win9.x, they'd almost certainly still be saying this.
"Looks like he hit that nail right on the head, huh?"
Yeah, I think that he did, in so far as he predicted that anti-microsoft sites would publish this. Of course, anyone could have told you this. As for the rest of it, what you quoted of his article is pretty worthless as far as actually convincing anyone of a point goes.
However, my point was simply to mention how badly this quote does in terms of making an argument and backing it up with convincing arguments. I know that
All this being said, the main point of my post is for the other people reading it: it's worthwhile actually checking the facts offered by people. For example, I wouldn't have guessed that 4 out of 5 of the "independent testers" mentioned above were all owned by the same company.
I guess that it just points out how much slashdot has changed - prettymuch any pro-microsoft post written in halfway decent english (i.e. without significant profanity) gets modded through the roof around here.
Heck, I'll probably get modded down for defying the majority around here by not praising micrsoft and/or claiming to be defying the majority when I'm actually towing the party line.
Well, if installing consists of "clicking a nice 'setup.exe' or 'setup.msi' icon and launching something from InstallShield or Microsoft Installer", then you're going to wait quite a long time indeed before you see that happening.
However, if debian's apt (which doesn't really qualify as getting a debian system is still non-trivial, though it's actually not that bad) or RedHat's rpmfind are enough, as you basically can just click on packages and say "install!" and it installs, then that is the current situation.
As an example of another version, ever try out one of Loki's products? Or the Ximian installer?
Virtually all free software packages out nowadays come either in debian's apt archive or as the necessary rpms to just download and install using the gui installer.
E.g. on debian, installing openSSH is:
apt-get install ssh
not very hard, I think. That is, however, a command-line instruction. Doesn't take too much getting used to, though.
On a recent Redhat, I believe that you just browse through rpmfind to locate the openssh rpms, then click install.
The standard idea for making money by open source software, if that's what you're trying to do, is to give it away as a loss leader and to sell support and feature enhancements and such. While not exactly what you describe, it's close. Making it pure software, Cygnus used this model and was quite profitable. They made prettymuch all of their work on gcc distributable, but they would generally have someone pay them to do the work. That is, someone would want a compiler for a given platform and then comission the cygnus people to port gcc to it, since gcc is such a high quality compiler and getting a gcc port was a lot cheaper than writing an equal-quality compiler from scratch. Then the port would go into gcc proper, generally, because the company in question wouldn't gain anything from keeping the source closed. They also made a decent revenue from people who bought support contracts on gcc, IIRC.
You're quite correct that almost noone is going to want to buy for $50 what they can get for free off of your website, and if that's your business model it's only a matter of time before you're going to fail.
However, that's only one of the many ways of making money from open source software, support and comission work being the obvious ones. However, as you point out, there's probably an even bigger market in people who indirectly make money from open source software, i.e., that it's only a component, possibly a small component, in what they're selling or doing. And this is one of the things that really gives open source its power. It doesn't need companies dedicated to developing open source software, though that does help, honestly.
"Where can I reconfigure my kernel, compile it, isntall it and reboot all by checking a few boxes and hitting a button ?"
:-)
You are kidding, right?
While you have, at the kernel of your message, a valid point (leaving off the fact that it's not even remotely new), you've listed a whole bunch of administrative functions. The average user doesn't need to do administrative functions.
And if you're in redhat, I believe that the redhat control center, or maybe it's called the command center, handles more or less all of these things. But how many average users need to:
*Partition disks
*Set the colour depth and resolution of your display (though gnome has a little panel applet for this that even an idiot could figure out how to add to their toolbar and use, and I'd imagine that KDE has the same thing)
*load and unload kernel modules that aren't configured by their distro to autoload when needed
*start and stop daemons? Do you really think that the average user runs their own http server?
*reconfigure and compile their kernel? These things are always provided by distros will virtually all modules compiled and configured to autoload.
*etc. what average user needs to do things in latin?
Also, who exactly do you expect to install software for you? Is your computer supposed to guess what you want and install it for you? I don't quite understand how you expect new programs to get to your computer if you don't tell your computer that you want them there (i.e. install them)
However, much of what you request is already handled pretty well in recent distributions of redhat, and debian isn't for people who want such a unified tool (it's simply got a different audience). Moreover, you really should notice that right now there really aren't any user-friendly OSes (with the possible exception of MacOS, but I really don't know) by your criteria. Given this, why do you only point out that linux needs improvement in this area?
...so that "troll" is the best approximation thereof.
/, c:\ is. More precisely, a:\ & b:\ & c:\ & ... & z:\ (has windows added the ability to have more than 26 drives yet?) is the equivalent of /.
The original poster claimed that microsoft's organization of files has no valid justification. The first responder claimed that linux's organization of executables (and libraries) was similarly unreasonable. The guy that you responded to then pointed out that there is in fact a reason for the organization, it just turns out that the guy in the middle didn't know it.
You just misunderstood just about everything posted in this thread, most likely because you have below-average mental facilities. However, you could just be a clever troll. It's not really relevent.
Anyhow, c:\windows is not the equivalent of
That being said, people can mount / over a network just fine - it was often done in the days when hard drives cost substantial amounts of money and people wanted to save disk space. When I was a freshman the computer science lab was set up this way with a bunch of sun workstations nfs mounting / from a linux server.
Virtually noone does it anymore as disk space is so cheap, but it also offers easier administration and greatly diminishes the number of things that can break. Workstations of this kind, like the sun sunray, might make a comback if microsoft office can be killed. As it stands it's probably most often used in things like POS terminals if they're not actually dumb terminals.
Still, for large installations (say hundres or thousands of users), a big centralized server with X terminals is still probably the best way to go in terms of administrative efficiency as well as reliability and monetary efficiency.