Not to nitpick, but "killer" bees weren't artificially created or genetically engineered; they were just imported into the Western hemisphere from Africa, and are taking over because they're fiercer than the normal bees we have over here. It's still a huge problem, but not necessarily a genetic engineering issue.
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I'm pretty sure the enemy right now is either "hackers on the Internet", "child pornographers on the Internet", or maybe "Arab terrorists". No disrespect to folks of Arabian extraction (or the real hackers out there either) - this is the media stereotype of "the enemy", not, of course, the real enemy.
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Although I'd sign such a statement as quickly as anyone, I actually prefer the way you did it this time, Bruce. I agree with the viewpoint that the original Microsoft screed was aimed at CTOs/CIOs, and I think that you have a better chance of convincing those folks with a statement signed by luminaries they've actually heard of.
Yes, that's an undemocratic and somewhat elitest viewpoint, but that's the way upper execs think. After all, they already know (or can find out) that plenty of random people on the 'net like open source/free software and are using it every day. That's not going to be the deciding factor when they choose what to use for their businesses, though (unfortunate, but true).
Although there's no reason you couldn't run an open sign-up at the same time, and refer from the "short list" to the open list, but then feathers will get ruffled as people try to figure out why they weren't worthy of the short list.
Heck, maybe more important than including Linus, RMS, et al. would be to get big business users of open source/free software to sign something. Rather than being reactive to Microsoft's attacks, perhaps we (by which I mean mostly you, Bruce, since I imagine most of these people won't return my emails:) should go on the offensive, presenting an in-depth look at businesses that are significantly improving their operations with open source/free software. I know there's a bunch of testimonials littered about in various places (unixvsnt.org used to have a bunch, your writings have several I imagine, etc.) but it would be nice to combine them all together and beat the media about the head with the rolled-up newspaper of real users solving real problems without Microsoft.
Although I think this was a great comeback to Mundie's speech, I think in the long run this community needs to be less reactive, or else the Microsoft PR machine will be able to spin things the way they want fairly often, through virtue of always getting the first shot. A series of forward-looking investigations into why open source/free software works might even get Microsoft on the defensive, which would be the best thing to happen since the antitrust trial.
Just some thoughts, thanks as always for your sterling work on behalf of our fractured, feisty, but mostly good-hearted community.
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My wife uses Linux without ever touching the command line.
The only person who's forgetting something here is you - you're forgetting that Linux has changed since '97 or whenever you looked at it last. Although maybe you're writing from some future time when Windows no longer has a command line? Do drop us a line on how LNUX and RHAT turn out, will you? I'm sure ZicoKnows will be interested in that too:)
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Could be worse - they could spend millions trying Exchange before going back to their old system:)
Although according to the article their old system (some sort of Notes system) is no longer going to be supported, which helped motivate them to switch. I'd be nervous about trying to run a corporate email system on AOL, but I guess if AOL can use it internally, it must not be as bad as I would have thought.
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In a recent article about document version control, the allegation was made that Microsoft actually uses Rational's ClearCASE (a commercially available product) internally for large projects. I don't know if that's true or not. I would be surprised to see Microsoft using a proprietary system internally; surely if it's good enough for their projects, it's good enough for them to sell?
Of course, the whole ClearCASE thing might just be a rumor.
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Perl may look confusing, but there's nothing like having to work in VB for a week to make you miss the raw power Perl provides.
Some of these language changes disturb me too, but I trust Larry to ultimately make it fairly simple to transition from perl5-think to perl6-think. The transition will break a few things but it sounds like it will increase the power of the language by about as much as perl4 to perl5 did.
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As long as it's a democratic or representative One World government based on atheistic humanism, sign me up! Or is the point that the Illuminati would be running things? 'Cause other than that it sounds great.
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This knowledge is how they are catching the
Chinese-American researchers who they keep detaining for spying and disclosing state secrets and such.
Not to mention history professors that don't even have state secrets. Heaven forbid they bring information about China which is public knowledge out of the country.
How do you say "Vive le Revolution" in Mandarin?
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The documents include a secret 1993 CIA cable on the "Clipper" project...
So let me get this straight - in 1993 the CIA was still using the telegraph to communicate? Methinks they had bigger problems than the spread of cryptography:)
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I kind of have the opposite impression - NASA seems to prefer pre-planning everything and running under strict ground control where possible, whereas the Russians (thanks to their experiences on Mir) seem to have more of a can-do, fix-it attitude. Remember how NASA went on and on about how dangerous Mir was, but the Russians just shrugged and kept it together with chewing gum and determination?
Now, if NASA would really let its astronauts be hackers, that would be great. And it sounds from the article that they will be training more of the station crew for similar tasks, so maybe that will become the norm rather than the exception on the ISS.
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It really helps if you envision the level of spittle-emitting, jack-booted dictatorship on a different axis than the left/right political spectrum. It does seem to be pretty easy at both the far left and far right for things to devolve into totalitarianism, though.
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The problem with a full democracy is that it doesn't scale very well beyond the size of a small city-state. When you have the affairs of a whole nation to attend to, you can't poll every citizen on every single issue or we'd never get any real work done. Not to mention the amount of education which would be necessary in order for citizens to objectively assess contentious issues in medicine, law, and technology. Until we have a truly educated and involved citizenry, real democracy isn't going to be an option.
Representative government is like Linux. It sucks, but everything else sucks worse. What we need are representatives who are more accountable to the citizenry they supposedly serve.
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No. The primary aim of censorship is not to prevent adults from obtaining information, but to prevent children from
accessing inappropriate materials.
That's what you would like to believe, and if that were really the case maybe I wouldn't have so much of a problem with it either. But in fact most people who are in favor of censorship don't care who they are preventing from accessing information - it would be fine with them if no one could get to it. Think about it - if you think pornography is obscene, why would you want your fellow citizens viewing it any more than your children? If you think alternative religions are the work of the devil, why shouldn't you try to protect everyone and not just children from it?
I agree that the exposure of children to some things must be handled very carefully in an age-appropriate manner, and I would say that a parent is the appropriate person to do that. Whenever citizens get the government to enforce censorship, it always ends up infringing on the rights of adults. I don't think the goal of saving the children is worth the cost of censoring adult access to certain things, especially since we already have parents who are responsible for censoring their children anyway.
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...it's more the fact that Windows isn't the leader in any other category (all the others appear to be heavy-duty *nix). Although I imagine Microsoft will be coming right back with some results of their own. Thanks a bunch to whomever submitted this configuration for testing - does anyone know if it was sgi, or who?
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Sounds like a great plan to me. Except that using your profits from another industry to fund a below-cost entrance into a new market sounds suspiciously like what people are always getting after Microsoft for doing:)
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That is true, but it is also true of Netscape - there are pages which won't load with Netscape too. My favorite is when Netscape downloads the page just fine, but doesn't actually display it. You hit reload, and it re-downloads but still no display. I have to stop and restart Netscape to see the page.
Although I'll admit that Netscape on Solaris or Linux is a vast improvement over Netscape on HP-UX. The HP-UX version crashes left and right and often took 30 seconds or so to complete the core dump, preventing any use of the machine until it was done. It was so bad that I had made a symbolic link from ~/core to/dev/null. At least it only crashes once a day or so on Solaris and/or Linux.
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You can bet that Los Alamos and the NSA don't trust the out-of-box security of NT any more than they would for Linux. In both cases I'm sure they have a security administrator lock down the boxes, which kind of destroys the motivation to use NT because it requires less administration.
Really, anyone who relies on out-of-box security is asking for it; if you don't have someone on-site who's knowledgeable about security and the OS you're using, you'll eventually have problems.
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Good point - I was thinking in terms of "classical fantasy". I just retch to see every novelist who has to have elf-like creatures, wizard-like creatures, halfling-like creatures, dwarf-like creatures, etc. That's part of the reason I prefer sci-fi; but maybe I just haven't read the good fantasy that's out there.
Of course, some really good sci-fi almost becomes fantasy anyway, like Dan Simmons' Hyperion.
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Slashdot Mirror
Not to nitpick, but "killer" bees weren't artificially created or genetically engineered; they were just imported into the Western hemisphere from Africa, and are taking over because they're fiercer than the normal bees we have over here. It's still a huge problem, but not necessarily a genetic engineering issue.
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I'm pretty sure the enemy right now is either "hackers on the Internet", "child pornographers on the Internet", or maybe "Arab terrorists". No disrespect to folks of Arabian extraction (or the real hackers out there either) - this is the media stereotype of "the enemy", not, of course, the real enemy.
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Although I'd sign such a statement as quickly as anyone, I actually prefer the way you did it this time, Bruce. I agree with the viewpoint that the original Microsoft screed was aimed at CTOs/CIOs, and I think that you have a better chance of convincing those folks with a statement signed by luminaries they've actually heard of.
Yes, that's an undemocratic and somewhat elitest viewpoint, but that's the way upper execs think. After all, they already know (or can find out) that plenty of random people on the 'net like open source/free software and are using it every day. That's not going to be the deciding factor when they choose what to use for their businesses, though (unfortunate, but true).
Although there's no reason you couldn't run an open sign-up at the same time, and refer from the "short list" to the open list, but then feathers will get ruffled as people try to figure out why they weren't worthy of the short list.
Heck, maybe more important than including Linus, RMS, et al. would be to get big business users of open source/free software to sign something. Rather than being reactive to Microsoft's attacks, perhaps we (by which I mean mostly you, Bruce, since I imagine most of these people won't return my emails :) should go on the offensive, presenting an in-depth look at businesses that are significantly improving their operations with open source/free software. I know there's a bunch of testimonials littered about in various places (unixvsnt.org used to have a bunch, your writings have several I imagine, etc.) but it would be nice to combine them all together and beat the media about the head with the rolled-up newspaper of real users solving real problems without Microsoft.
Although I think this was a great comeback to Mundie's speech, I think in the long run this community needs to be less reactive, or else the Microsoft PR machine will be able to spin things the way they want fairly often, through virtue of always getting the first shot. A series of forward-looking investigations into why open source/free software works might even get Microsoft on the defensive, which would be the best thing to happen since the antitrust trial.
Just some thoughts, thanks as always for your sterling work on behalf of our fractured, feisty, but mostly good-hearted community.
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The only person who's forgetting something here is you - you're forgetting that Linux has changed since '97 or whenever you looked at it last. Although maybe you're writing from some future time when Windows no longer has a command line? Do drop us a line on how LNUX and RHAT turn out, will you? I'm sure ZicoKnows will be interested in that too :)
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Could be worse - they could spend millions trying Exchange before going back to their old system :)
Although according to the article their old system (some sort of Notes system) is no longer going to be supported, which helped motivate them to switch. I'd be nervous about trying to run a corporate email system on AOL, but I guess if AOL can use it internally, it must not be as bad as I would have thought.
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In a recent article about document version control, the allegation was made that Microsoft actually uses Rational's ClearCASE (a commercially available product) internally for large projects. I don't know if that's true or not. I would be surprised to see Microsoft using a proprietary system internally; surely if it's good enough for their projects, it's good enough for them to sell?
Of course, the whole ClearCASE thing might just be a rumor.
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
Perl may look confusing, but there's nothing like having to work in VB for a week to make you miss the raw power Perl provides.
Some of these language changes disturb me too, but I trust Larry to ultimately make it fairly simple to transition from perl5-think to perl6-think. The transition will break a few things but it sounds like it will increase the power of the language by about as much as perl4 to perl5 did.
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I just assumed there were some unescaped '<' and '>' characters in there that would make it make sense.
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As long as it's a democratic or representative One World government based on atheistic humanism, sign me up! Or is the point that the Illuminati would be running things? 'Cause other than that it sounds great.
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Not to mention history professors that don't even have state secrets. Heaven forbid they bring information about China which is public knowledge out of the country.
How do you say "Vive le Revolution" in Mandarin?
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So let me get this straight - in 1993 the CIA was still using the telegraph to communicate? Methinks they had bigger problems than the spread of cryptography :)
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I kind of have the opposite impression - NASA seems to prefer pre-planning everything and running under strict ground control where possible, whereas the Russians (thanks to their experiences on Mir) seem to have more of a can-do, fix-it attitude. Remember how NASA went on and on about how dangerous Mir was, but the Russians just shrugged and kept it together with chewing gum and determination?
Now, if NASA would really let its astronauts be hackers, that would be great. And it sounds from the article that they will be training more of the station crew for similar tasks, so maybe that will become the norm rather than the exception on the ISS.
Caution: contents may be quarrelsome and meticulous!
It really helps if you envision the level of spittle-emitting, jack-booted dictatorship on a different axis than the left/right political spectrum. It does seem to be pretty easy at both the far left and far right for things to devolve into totalitarianism, though.
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The problem with a full democracy is that it doesn't scale very well beyond the size of a small city-state. When you have the affairs of a whole nation to attend to, you can't poll every citizen on every single issue or we'd never get any real work done. Not to mention the amount of education which would be necessary in order for citizens to objectively assess contentious issues in medicine, law, and technology. Until we have a truly educated and involved citizenry, real democracy isn't going to be an option.
Representative government is like Linux. It sucks, but everything else sucks worse. What we need are representatives who are more accountable to the citizenry they supposedly serve.
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Very enlightening - I stand corrected.
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That's what you would like to believe, and if that were really the case maybe I wouldn't have so much of a problem with it either. But in fact most people who are in favor of censorship don't care who they are preventing from accessing information - it would be fine with them if no one could get to it. Think about it - if you think pornography is obscene, why would you want your fellow citizens viewing it any more than your children? If you think alternative religions are the work of the devil, why shouldn't you try to protect everyone and not just children from it?
I agree that the exposure of children to some things must be handled very carefully in an age-appropriate manner, and I would say that a parent is the appropriate person to do that. Whenever citizens get the government to enforce censorship, it always ends up infringing on the rights of adults. I don't think the goal of saving the children is worth the cost of censoring adult access to certain things, especially since we already have parents who are responsible for censoring their children anyway.
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...it's more the fact that Windows isn't the leader in any other category (all the others appear to be heavy-duty *nix). Although I imagine Microsoft will be coming right back with some results of their own. Thanks a bunch to whomever submitted this configuration for testing - does anyone know if it was sgi, or who?
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On the contrary, that's the first time that link's been on-topic in quite a while.
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Sounds like a great plan to me. Except that using your profits from another industry to fund a below-cost entrance into a new market sounds suspiciously like what people are always getting after Microsoft for doing :)
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And your point would be ... ? I don't think you can say that the PC is not a successful game platform, can you?
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Hmmm, I was thinking more of this, but yours works too :)
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That is true, but it is also true of Netscape - there are pages which won't load with Netscape too. My favorite is when Netscape downloads the page just fine, but doesn't actually display it. You hit reload, and it re-downloads but still no display. I have to stop and restart Netscape to see the page.
Although I'll admit that Netscape on Solaris or Linux is a vast improvement over Netscape on HP-UX. The HP-UX version crashes left and right and often took 30 seconds or so to complete the core dump, preventing any use of the machine until it was done. It was so bad that I had made a symbolic link from ~/core to /dev/null. At least it only crashes once a day or so on Solaris and/or Linux.
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You can bet that Los Alamos and the NSA don't trust the out-of-box security of NT any more than they would for Linux. In both cases I'm sure they have a security administrator lock down the boxes, which kind of destroys the motivation to use NT because it requires less administration.
Really, anyone who relies on out-of-box security is asking for it; if you don't have someone on-site who's knowledgeable about security and the OS you're using, you'll eventually have problems.
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Good point - I was thinking in terms of "classical fantasy". I just retch to see every novelist who has to have elf-like creatures, wizard-like creatures, halfling-like creatures, dwarf-like creatures, etc. That's part of the reason I prefer sci-fi; but maybe I just haven't read the good fantasy that's out there.
Of course, some really good sci-fi almost becomes fantasy anyway, like Dan Simmons' Hyperion.
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Or worse, pretend to be pr0n just to lure people in. That would be much worse - nobody's more impatient than when they're cruisin' for porn :)
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