Wow, it's not every day that I get a response from an honest-to-Bob editor. In fact, it was four days ago that this happened:) Sorry about my late reply.
I agree with your points on free software. Was that rant a long time in coming or something? Not sure how I set that off, but I'm not arguing with that. Makes sense to me.
The only thing that I'm trying to say is that/. would be a great voice for change and for what's "right" (at least somewhat in my opinion of right and wrong, and maybe yours too). But the voice is only powerful if it's consistent, and right now it's not too consistent.
It's OK with me if you guys like it that way; it's not my job to tell you how to spend your time one way or the other. And in reading back over the posts, it looks like I was a little off the topic to suggest that the editorial voice should be more consistent. I've just read the "slashdot as a whole is hypocritical" thing one too many times, I guess. I can see that it would be tough to herd geeks into thinking and speaking the same way, and I don't envy anyone who tries.
But this does happen to be my viewpoint - that your (editors as a group) great articles exposing the DMCA are undermined by your weekend movie reviews, etc., etc. The lack of a coherent message is OK if you're just reporting the facts, but by adding (often opposing) editorial viewpoints (both implicit and explicit) throughout the various stories, the overall impression turns out to be more schizophrenic than just incoherent.
Not necessary a bad thing; no value judgements here. But there is a potential, IMHO, for something more, at the expense of some of the wide-ranging editorial freedom that y'all now enjoy.
Anyway, not that I'm going to convince anyone here, but I thought I'd spew out my stream of consciousness for a while. If anybody ever reads this I'll be pretty impressed.
Well, there are some changes in global warming/cooling that are related to vegetation changes; for example, replacing forest with desert would increase the albedo of the area, reflecting more heat back into space, and thus cooling the earth a little more (not considering other factors like the lowered C02 consumption, etc.). Vast changes of the terrain of the planet probably would affect global temperatures one way or the other, but I'm not sure that we've really had an impact yet that way. Probably the biggest changes in terms of terrain alone (affecting albedo, etc.) over the last few thousand years were the ice sheets growing and shrinking, and the desertification in northern Africa.
Or so I reason from my vast experience playing SimEarth, at least:)
Good point. Funny how the rest of the computing world, which is actually slightly concerned with portability, knows not to dump binary data structures to disk, but the world's biggest software company doesn't. Oh wait, I forgot - this is "innovation", right?
I'm trying to not attribute to malice what could first be attributed to stupidity, but the quantity of stupidity I'm being asked to comprehend is just frickin' mind-boggling. Frankly, Occam's Razor suggests that malice is indeed a more likely motivation here.
Wrong. Tech support is already fobbed off to OEMs; Dell fields calls for Windows problems on your OEM Dell install of Windows. Buying an OEM version of Windows doesn't entitle you to any support from Microsoft directly. So it's the OEM's problem if they break something inside windows. Likewise it's the OEM's responsibility to document it, etc. Let the market decide if they like OEM Windows versus Microsoft brand Windows (now with two scoops of apps!), the same way the market decides between the different app bundles that Linux distro makers provide.
You have a good point that Microsoft's image is on the line if other people release broken modular windows. But I think they should have thought of that before they used non-modular Windows (including IE, Media Player, etc.) to bludgeon competitors into submission. If you live by the sword, you can't bitch that in the interests of justice somebody takes your sword away.
When getting Windows software should you get a self-extracting.exe, a.zip file, a.msi file, or what? This is really confusing too. Not to mention that they all can come over the 'net, on a floppy, or on a CDROM.
Windows distributions would be no harder to manage than Linux distributions; you use the Windows update site/automatic updater that came with the OS, and you'd be just fine. Plus, since your targetted distribution wouldn't have all the Windows software under the sun, your exposure to new security problems would be diminished - just like security holes in X don't affect those who don't run X on their Linux servers.
Is it a better solution for everybody? Probably not. Should the OEMs be able to offer it as a solution to their customers? Why not?
When they buy it from Compaq, it will have all of those apps. The difference is that Compaq will pick the apps that best suit its customers - for example, Mozilla instead of or in addition to IE, etc. It's a straw man to say that "consumers don't want to install apps" - nobody is suggesting that at all. The argument here is to restore the modularity to Windows that Microsoft removed when they were trying to strong-arm an OS monopoly into an apps monopoly.
P.S. I hear there's another IIS bug out; you might want to guard your web server before somebody else crashes it for you:)
Spec documents tell more of the truth in some circumstances than others - for example, in the telecom industry over-the-air protocols are pretty well nailed down, because there's a ton of expense on the part of third parties if the spec changes or is ambiguous. The problem in this case is that there's been no pressure on Microsoft to make the spec completely defined and available, and no standardization effort to take the format away from just one vendor.
Maximum number of Microsoft articles per day exceeded. Core dumped.
I mean, really - I like to keep up on this case as much as the next guy, but we're up to what, four articles today? And the night's still young. How 'bout at least containing all the trial-related stuff into one wrap-up article per day, at least, and saving the "Microsoft eats small children for breakfast" filler ones that aren't breaking news for more of the off days?
The problem with GNU/Government is the Douglas Adams Paradox: anyone who seeks political power is exactly the sort of person whom you don't want to have it. Also, people contributing to Free Software generally agree with the goal of the project, but people have different ideas of the goal of government in the first place.
I don't want them to push my agenda, necessarily. Although that would be nice:)
I do want them to have a consistent agenda, though, because for better or for worse/. is a big component of the voice of the tech community, and it influences a lot of people every day.
I have no problem with free speech; Rob & Co can do whatever they want with their site that they have so graciously allowed me to post on for free. I don't want to tell them what to say or do, or enforce any sort of conformity of opinion or speech. But I'm pointing out that most "real" interest groups have a focused message that they communicate and that makes it more effective. If/. (and its readers/posters) wants to aspire to the mantle of leading boycotts and being an effective force for change, the message needs to be more well-defined.
If/. doesn't want to do that, then that's OK. But that means that/. won't be the force of change that at least some of its readers and editors seem to want it to be.
I will point out that the difference in "choice of content" is night-and-day between/. and k5. The current size of the/. submission queue means that there will always be a story that an editor is comfortable running, so other users' submissions can be disregarded. Until/. has a user-operated submission queue like k5, the content selection will remain squarely in the hands of a few editors. You can't really call/. user-centered publishing at this point, although maybe it was when it started.
One final note: Organic web shooters? Raimi's on crack. Spiderman was Marvel's answer to
Batman: a character who used his mind to figure out how to defeat his enemies. Nowhere is there
a better reminder of that than in the fact that the webshooters where an invention.
I think that's backwards, isn't it? Bruce Wayne was an ordinary (ultra-rich) guy who depended on technology to do everything, because he wasn't super-human at all. He wasn't bitten by a radioactive bat or anything, you know.
On the other hand, Peter Parker may not be as super-human as Superman, but he has super powers due to his spider bite. Maybe Raimi's taking that a little further than it was in the comic books, but it's not much of a stretch to go from "spidey-sense" to organic webshooters; both are just a spider super-power. Whereas anything that Batman wants to be able to do, he has to build himself.
I agree that there is no/. collective agreement on these issues, and really you can't fault thousands of people for not agreeing to the exact same positions.
But the onus on the editors is a little stronger - they are always making editorial comments about non-free software, restrictive legislation, civil liberties on the 'net, etc. Yet they also support the latest DVDs, movie reviews every weekend, and playing non-free games on their Windows partitions that they sometimes forget that they have.
So while you can't really expect the/. readership to agree on anything, I think it is more reasonable to expect the/. editorial staff to put forward a cohesive editorial policy on what they support and what they oppose. They have a "bully pulpit", but right now the message from that pulpit is sadly inconsistent. Until that changes, we won't be seeing any/.-launched boycotts doing any real good in the world.
Most of the AP articles I've read in the business section of the local paper (who have no local business writers, so they get it all from the AP) seem to be slanted in Microsoft's direction somewhat. For example, whenever the states make a mistake, it's a bigger story than when Microsoft makes a mistake. I don't know if this is just because it's in the business section of the paper, or if it's the local editors trimming it, or what.
There is an exchange equivalent that runs on Linux: http://www.bynari.net/bynari/insightent.html. It's not OSS, but it runs on OSS, so at least you don't have to buy Windows. This particular page reads like they want to sell you the whole box, but it must be possible to buy just the server software.
I could see the newsgroup filtering work in a couple reasonable ways. For example, you could "filter" a newsgroup by just not showing messages which match the filter. And you could implement delete by either just not showing the message, or possibly issuing a cancel for it (making this choice a user preference).
Probably 90% of the user confusion between mail and news could be resolved by just using different icons and/or color schemes, so that people associate simple clues like that with the functionality that is available to them through the interface.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, it's not every day that I get a response from an honest-to-Bob editor. In fact, it was four days ago that this happened :) Sorry about my late reply.
I agree with your points on free software. Was that rant a long time in coming or something? Not sure how I set that off, but I'm not arguing with that. Makes sense to me.
The only thing that I'm trying to say is that /. would be a great voice for change and for what's "right" (at least somewhat in my opinion of right and wrong, and maybe yours too). But the voice is only powerful if it's consistent, and right now it's not too consistent.
It's OK with me if you guys like it that way; it's not my job to tell you how to spend your time one way or the other. And in reading back over the posts, it looks like I was a little off the topic to suggest that the editorial voice should be more consistent. I've just read the "slashdot as a whole is hypocritical" thing one too many times, I guess. I can see that it would be tough to herd geeks into thinking and speaking the same way, and I don't envy anyone who tries.
But this does happen to be my viewpoint - that your (editors as a group) great articles exposing the DMCA are undermined by your weekend movie reviews, etc., etc. The lack of a coherent message is OK if you're just reporting the facts, but by adding (often opposing) editorial viewpoints (both implicit and explicit) throughout the various stories, the overall impression turns out to be more schizophrenic than just incoherent.
Not necessary a bad thing; no value judgements here. But there is a potential, IMHO, for something more, at the expense of some of the wide-ranging editorial freedom that y'all now enjoy.
Anyway, not that I'm going to convince anyone here, but I thought I'd spew out my stream of consciousness for a while. If anybody ever reads this I'll be pretty impressed.
Well, there are some changes in global warming/cooling that are related to vegetation changes; for example, replacing forest with desert would increase the albedo of the area, reflecting more heat back into space, and thus cooling the earth a little more (not considering other factors like the lowered C02 consumption, etc.). Vast changes of the terrain of the planet probably would affect global temperatures one way or the other, but I'm not sure that we've really had an impact yet that way. Probably the biggest changes in terms of terrain alone (affecting albedo, etc.) over the last few thousand years were the ice sheets growing and shrinking, and the desertification in northern Africa.
Or so I reason from my vast experience playing SimEarth, at least :)
Good point. Funny how the rest of the computing world, which is actually slightly concerned with portability, knows not to dump binary data structures to disk, but the world's biggest software company doesn't. Oh wait, I forgot - this is "innovation", right?
I'm trying to not attribute to malice what could first be attributed to stupidity, but the quantity of stupidity I'm being asked to comprehend is just frickin' mind-boggling. Frankly, Occam's Razor suggests that malice is indeed a more likely motivation here.
Wrong. Tech support is already fobbed off to OEMs; Dell fields calls for Windows problems on your OEM Dell install of Windows. Buying an OEM version of Windows doesn't entitle you to any support from Microsoft directly. So it's the OEM's problem if they break something inside windows. Likewise it's the OEM's responsibility to document it, etc. Let the market decide if they like OEM Windows versus Microsoft brand Windows (now with two scoops of apps!), the same way the market decides between the different app bundles that Linux distro makers provide.
You have a good point that Microsoft's image is on the line if other people release broken modular windows. But I think they should have thought of that before they used non-modular Windows (including IE, Media Player, etc.) to bludgeon competitors into submission. If you live by the sword, you can't bitch that in the interests of justice somebody takes your sword away.
When getting Windows software should you get a self-extracting .exe, a .zip file, a .msi file, or what? This is really confusing too. Not to mention that they all can come over the 'net, on a floppy, or on a CDROM.
Windows distributions would be no harder to manage than Linux distributions; you use the Windows update site/automatic updater that came with the OS, and you'd be just fine. Plus, since your targetted distribution wouldn't have all the Windows software under the sun, your exposure to new security problems would be diminished - just like security holes in X don't affect those who don't run X on their Linux servers.
Is it a better solution for everybody? Probably not. Should the OEMs be able to offer it as a solution to their customers? Why not?
When they buy it from Compaq, it will have all of those apps. The difference is that Compaq will pick the apps that best suit its customers - for example, Mozilla instead of or in addition to IE, etc. It's a straw man to say that "consumers don't want to install apps" - nobody is suggesting that at all. The argument here is to restore the modularity to Windows that Microsoft removed when they were trying to strong-arm an OS monopoly into an apps monopoly.
P.S. I hear there's another IIS bug out; you might want to guard your web server before somebody else crashes it for you :)
Spec documents tell more of the truth in some circumstances than others - for example, in the telecom industry over-the-air protocols are pretty well nailed down, because there's a ton of expense on the part of third parties if the spec changes or is ambiguous. The problem in this case is that there's been no pressure on Microsoft to make the spec completely defined and available, and no standardization effort to take the format away from just one vendor.
Maximum number of Microsoft articles per day exceeded. Core dumped.
I mean, really - I like to keep up on this case as much as the next guy, but we're up to what, four articles today? And the night's still young. How 'bout at least containing all the trial-related stuff into one wrap-up article per day, at least, and saving the "Microsoft eats small children for breakfast" filler ones that aren't breaking news for more of the off days?
Disgruntled but still reading the article,
The problem with GNU/Government is the Douglas Adams Paradox: anyone who seeks political power is exactly the sort of person whom you don't want to have it. Also, people contributing to Free Software generally agree with the goal of the project, but people have different ideas of the goal of government in the first place.
I thought he was from Virginia, and not from Chicago? Did you vote for him early too? :)
And we would've gotten away with it, too, if it wasn't for you darn kids!
I don't want them to push my agenda, necessarily. Although that would be nice :)
I do want them to have a consistent agenda, though, because for better or for worse /. is a big component of the voice of the tech community, and it influences a lot of people every day.
I have no problem with free speech; Rob & Co can do whatever they want with their site that they have so graciously allowed me to post on for free. I don't want to tell them what to say or do, or enforce any sort of conformity of opinion or speech. But I'm pointing out that most "real" interest groups have a focused message that they communicate and that makes it more effective. If /. (and its readers/posters) wants to aspire to the mantle of leading boycotts and being an effective force for change, the message needs to be more well-defined.
If /. doesn't want to do that, then that's OK. But that means that /. won't be the force of change that at least some of its readers and editors seem to want it to be.
I will point out that the difference in "choice of content" is night-and-day between /. and k5. The current size of the /. submission queue means that there will always be a story that an editor is comfortable running, so other users' submissions can be disregarded. Until /. has a user-operated submission queue like k5, the content selection will remain squarely in the hands of a few editors. You can't really call /. user-centered publishing at this point, although maybe it was when it started.
Think that the users can still introduce alternate content through their posts? Read Slashdot Moderation: Exercising Agreement
I think that's backwards, isn't it? Bruce Wayne was an ordinary (ultra-rich) guy who depended on technology to do everything, because he wasn't super-human at all. He wasn't bitten by a radioactive bat or anything, you know.
On the other hand, Peter Parker may not be as super-human as Superman, but he has super powers due to his spider bite. Maybe Raimi's taking that a little further than it was in the comic books, but it's not much of a stretch to go from "spidey-sense" to organic webshooters; both are just a spider super-power. Whereas anything that Batman wants to be able to do, he has to build himself.
God, I can't believe I'm nitpicking this stuff :)
Hell, those crimes just make them eligible for high office in the U.S. :)
If you have digital cable, your cable company already knows that you watch ESPN.
P.S. There is no spoon.
I agree that there is no /. collective agreement on these issues, and really you can't fault thousands of people for not agreeing to the exact same positions.
But the onus on the editors is a little stronger - they are always making editorial comments about non-free software, restrictive legislation, civil liberties on the 'net, etc. Yet they also support the latest DVDs, movie reviews every weekend, and playing non-free games on their Windows partitions that they sometimes forget that they have.
So while you can't really expect the /. readership to agree on anything, I think it is more reasonable to expect the /. editorial staff to put forward a cohesive editorial policy on what they support and what they oppose. They have a "bully pulpit", but right now the message from that pulpit is sadly inconsistent. Until that changes, we won't be seeing any /.-launched boycotts doing any real good in the world.
Yep, really the only thing that's interesting any more is the question of whether Gov. Ryan will end up in jail before his term is up, or just after.
Probably because "we didn't pay for that". Never mind that it's a perfectly nice clock algorithm, the best that money can buy :)
You can use windows terminal services and rdesktop, rather than PCAnywhere. Or just use VNC or TightVNC.
Most of the AP articles I've read in the business section of the local paper (who have no local business writers, so they get it all from the AP) seem to be slanted in Microsoft's direction somewhat. For example, whenever the states make a mistake, it's a bigger story than when Microsoft makes a mistake. I don't know if this is just because it's in the business section of the paper, or if it's the local editors trimming it, or what.
There is an exchange equivalent that runs on Linux: http://www.bynari.net/bynari/insightent.html. It's not OSS, but it runs on OSS, so at least you don't have to buy Windows. This particular page reads like they want to sell you the whole box, but it must be possible to buy just the server software.
Can't you get a KDE theme for Gnome? I thought that I'd seen one of those somewhere.
I could see the newsgroup filtering work in a couple reasonable ways. For example, you could "filter" a newsgroup by just not showing messages which match the filter. And you could implement delete by either just not showing the message, or possibly issuing a cancel for it (making this choice a user preference).
Probably 90% of the user confusion between mail and news could be resolved by just using different icons and/or color schemes, so that people associate simple clues like that with the functionality that is available to them through the interface.
Thanks - that was what I was aiming for. Although either would be a sufficiently-loaded question, I would think.