If you boycot some entity, it should be because you believe it will do some good. Not just in order to be consistent. Consistency shouldn't be its own goal.
So if the US Government really believe the Cuba boycot will help liberate the Cuban people (it hasn't worked very well until now), then they should continue the boycot, regardless of how they treat other totalitarian nations.
I happen to believe the best weapons of the US against communist totalitarian regimes are Disney, McDonald and soap operas (i.e. the american way of life). These generally follow the trade, so boycots are unlikely to be effective against that kind of countries.
Re:how soon before we have to call it...
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*BSD News
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· Score: 1
As soon as they replace the BSD utilities and C library with the GNU equivalent. Which would be apoproximately as pointeless as Tom Christiansens project to create a BSD/Linux.
Re:BSD subsidized by charity
on
*BSD News
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· Score: 1
It did sound to me like some pointless insult: "They are so poor they have to accept charity."
Freshmeat is full of insignificant updates to insignificant packages I don't care about. I want news about advances in the most significant free software projects, like Linux, gcc, apache and KDE. Stuff that matters.
Freshmeat is nice, I use it as a database when searching for something specific, but not as a general source of news for nerds.
I don't see how a new topic (which you could unselect) could fail to solve your problem, which appear to be that you get the news twice, once from slashdot and once from freshmeat.
It was not pornography. It was humor. Anyone who manage to get offended by it has serious problems, unrelated to slashdot.
Re:A for fileserver for NT????
on
NOS Crossroads
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· Score: 1
They went to length to explain that the bad Solaris performance was solely due to a slow `rename' operation, and that Solaris was `orders of magnitude' faster at everything else.
They also explained that the good NT performance didn't mean that NT excelled at anything in particular, it just wasn't really bad at any of the operations.
Apparently, they used a test methodology that emphasized the slowest component.
I guess the wysiwyg vs. text editors hides the real conflict, which is style vs. content.
On the text editors and content side, the style should be discrete and modest, in order not to draw attention from the content of the site.
On the wysiwyg and style side, the idea is that style should be so dominating, that the visitors never notice the lack of content.
This explains why the wysiwyg people think the text editor peoples home pages suck. They don't see the heavy stylistic elements designed to draw the attention, which is what they consider the goal of html. It works the other way too. The text editor people can't find the content on the wysiwyg peoples home pages, so they blame it on bad style.
Of course, on a good web page the style emphasises the content. Creating that kind of stuff requires different skills (which you can learn), but are not the least bit geeky. Geeks either threat the style as its own goal, or prefer to ignore it and focus on the content instead.
For a geek the advice must be: If you have any real content, use a text editor, and use html as a content markup language. If you want flash, learn html and related technologies, use a text editor, and implement the flash yourself.
There is a nerd tradition for hiding their opinions? Really?
Nope, slashdot is news for nerds, that is, people who are sufficiently intelligent to be able to deal with plainly stated opinions, and at the same time make up their own mind.
Go to the traditional media if you want reports for the masses, where opinions are hidden behind an illusion of objectivity.
Slashdot is news for nerds, what you seek is news for sheep.
I have been at Bell Labs. They do a lot of sharing and cooperation, which works wery much like in the free software community. Except that they don't care about the world outside the lab. They don't believe interesting ideas can start outside the lab, and they don't care whether their own ideas escape the lab.
There are no "sour grapes". KT simply doesn't care. He did exactly what he told, no more, and no less. Saw some practical deficiencies with a specific Linux version on some specific hardware, and saw that some of the code was ugly. Neither are the least bit unrealistic. Since this fits his general worldview about everything origining outside the labs, he made the conclusions stated in the article.
I think Netscape/Mozilla has made an amazing number of techinally sound decisions since they went Open Source(TM).
Like for example following and implementing standards, instead of their previous policy of "let's drink some beer, hack a couple of new tags (like `blink') into the code, and let someone else try to describe it".
The core of the discussion used to be about what we wanted from a Unix/X11 desktop:
- We want to replace proprietary software with free software.
- We want to replace bad/Microsoft software with good/non-Microsoft software.
KDE was (originally) fine with regard to the goals of the second group, but totally ignored the goals of the first group. With the new Qt license, the problem has gone away. KDE is no longer a threat to the first group, so we can now choose solely on technical merits.
I assume VA knows a lot more than me (or Dell or whatever) about which components works best with Linux, which drivers to install, and how to assemble the box. I could perhaps find out, but I bet it would be a lot more cost-efficient to pay VA to do the work instead.
Interesting that the weaknesses he pointed out are often seen as strength by others.
"No Roadmap" means "Market Driven". The Linux development is market driven, which means features being added is the one somebody needs. This is much more flexible than having to adhere to roadmaps.
"Reliability testing too expensive". This is another important reason Linux is such a success, as the open development model allows for a much cheaper and more extensive reliabilty testing than SCO.
No, people don't get "contaminated" from reading GPL'ed code. It is pure FUD. Ask the people who come with that ridiculous idea, whether they also want to forbid hiring people who worked at GPL'ed code as students.
You can only get "contaminated" by signing a NDA, not by reading any published code (GPL, proprietary, whatever). What you can't do is _copy_ the code into your proprietary products. That is what _copyright_ law say. Ideas and algorithms can't be copyrighted.
Why is it that whenever there are any kind of technical critisism of anything related to Apple, zealots spring forward and claim that the critisism must be causes by irrationel hate toward Apple?
*All* projects which tries to create their own Open Source(tm) compliant license, rather than using one of the already established licenses, are being critizised on/. It makes it harder to exchange code with other projects. But for some reason, the Apple zealots only see "critisism == bad", and activates their knee-jerk reaktions.
I'm not a Linux person, and no, innovation is not always good. Standard API's, standard protocols, stndard GUI's and standard licenses are to be prefered in most cases. Without standards, we wouldn't have the Internet.
yes, it's true; egcs is gcc. Some details
on
egcs to become gcc
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· Score: 1
Well, compared to gcc 2.8, gcc 3.0 will include at least one new language (Fortran), a working C++ compiler, the C++ library, a test suite, support for many more platforms, and code for major new optimization techniques (not yet fully utilized, though).
If this doesn't justify a new major version number, nothing does.
However, I _do_ think standards or reference implementations are more important in free software projects, than in the traditional commercial settings. When there are no real management, standards or references can be used to settle design arguments between developers.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think the "new" Iran can be said to be any worse than e.g. Saudi-Arabia.
If you boycot some entity, it should be because you believe it will do some good. Not just in order to be consistent. Consistency shouldn't be its own goal.
So if the US Government really believe the Cuba boycot will help liberate the Cuban people (it hasn't worked very well until now), then they should continue the boycot, regardless of how they treat other totalitarian nations.
I happen to believe the best weapons of the US against communist totalitarian regimes are Disney, McDonald and soap operas (i.e. the american way of life). These generally follow the trade, so boycots are unlikely to be effective against that kind of countries.
As soon as they replace the BSD utilities and C library with the GNU equivalent. Which would be apoproximately as pointeless as Tom Christiansens project to create a BSD/Linux.
It did sound to me like some pointless insult: "They are so poor they have to accept charity."
Freshmeat is full of insignificant updates to insignificant packages I don't care about. I want news about advances in the most significant free software projects, like Linux, gcc, apache and KDE. Stuff that matters.
Freshmeat is nice, I use it as a database when searching for something specific, but not as a general source of news for nerds.
I don't see how a new topic (which you could unselect) could fail to solve your problem, which appear to be that you get the news twice, once from slashdot and once from freshmeat.
It was not pornography. It was humor. Anyone who manage to get offended by it has serious problems, unrelated to slashdot.
They went to length to explain that the bad Solaris performance was solely due to a slow `rename' operation, and that Solaris was `orders of magnitude' faster at everything else.
They also explained that the good NT performance didn't mean that NT excelled at anything in particular, it just wasn't really bad at any of the operations.
Apparently, they used a test methodology that emphasized the slowest component.
I guess the wysiwyg vs. text editors hides the real conflict, which is style vs. content.
On the text editors and content side, the style should be discrete and modest, in order not to draw attention from the content of the site.
On the wysiwyg and style side, the idea is that style should be so dominating, that the visitors never notice the lack of content.
This explains why the wysiwyg people think the text editor peoples home pages suck. They don't see the heavy stylistic elements designed to draw the attention, which is what they consider the goal of html. It works the other way too. The text editor people can't find the content on the wysiwyg peoples home pages, so they blame it on bad style.
Of course, on a good web page the style emphasises the content. Creating that kind of stuff requires different skills (which you can learn), but are not the least bit geeky. Geeks either threat the style as its own goal, or prefer to ignore it and focus on the content instead.
For a geek the advice must be: If you have any real content, use a text editor, and use html as a content markup language. If you want flash, learn html and related technologies, use a text editor, and implement the flash yourself.
...so why am I not allowed to vote for candidates outside my own country?
Easy. Make it legal to for individuals to kill spammers. That way government does not need to become involved.
Hope this helps.
There is a nerd tradition for hiding their opinions? Really?
Nope, slashdot is news for nerds, that is, people who are sufficiently intelligent to be able to deal with plainly stated opinions, and at the same time make up their own mind.
Go to the traditional media if you want reports for the masses, where opinions are hidden behind an illusion of objectivity.
Slashdot is news for nerds, what you seek is news for sheep.
I have been at Bell Labs. They do a lot of sharing and cooperation, which works wery much like in the free software community. Except that they don't care about the world outside the lab. They don't believe interesting ideas can start outside the lab, and they don't care whether their own ideas escape the lab.
There are no "sour grapes". KT simply doesn't care. He did exactly what he told, no more, and no less. Saw some practical deficiencies with a specific Linux version on some specific hardware, and saw that some of the code was ugly. Neither are the least bit unrealistic. Since this fits his general worldview about everything origining outside the labs, he made the conclusions stated in the article.
I think Netscape/Mozilla has made an amazing number of techinally sound decisions since they went Open Source(TM).
Like for example following and implementing standards, instead of their previous policy of "let's drink some beer, hack a couple of new tags (like `blink') into the code, and let someone else try to describe it".
Maybe JWZ misses the old days, I don't!
The core of the discussion used to be about what we wanted from a Unix/X11 desktop:
- We want to replace proprietary software with free software.
- We want to replace bad/Microsoft software with good/non-Microsoft software.
KDE was (originally) fine with regard to the goals of the second group, but totally ignored the goals of the first group. With the new Qt license, the problem has gone away. KDE is no longer a threat to the first group, so we can now choose solely on technical merits.
IA64 is rumored to be quite different from current 64-bit architechtures.
Cool! I didn't know it had become free software!
I assume VA knows a lot more than me (or Dell or whatever) about which components works best with Linux, which drivers to install, and how to assemble the box. I could perhaps find out, but I bet it would be a lot more cost-efficient to pay VA to do the work instead.
Interesting that the weaknesses he pointed out are often seen as strength by others.
"No Roadmap" means "Market Driven". The Linux development is market driven, which means features being added is the one somebody needs. This is much more flexible than having to adhere to roadmaps.
"Reliability testing too expensive". This is another important reason Linux is such a success, as the open development model allows for a much cheaper and more extensive reliabilty testing than SCO.
It would work fine as an alternative to shareware. If the ads aren't put in where they are too annoying, I'd actually prefer this over shareware.
Some versions of "SuperZip" already worked that way.
Just keep in mind that it has nothing to do with free software or Open Source(tm) software. It is just a new way to finance proprietary software.
No, people don't get "contaminated" from reading GPL'ed code. It is pure FUD. Ask the people who come with that ridiculous idea, whether they also want to forbid hiring people who worked at GPL'ed code as students.
You can only get "contaminated" by signing a NDA, not by reading any published code (GPL, proprietary, whatever). What you can't do is _copy_ the code into your proprietary products. That is what _copyright_ law say. Ideas and algorithms can't be copyrighted.
Why is it that whenever there are any kind of technical critisism of anything related to Apple, zealots spring forward and claim that the critisism must be causes by irrationel hate toward Apple?
/. It makes it harder to exchange code with other projects. But for some reason, the Apple zealots only see "critisism == bad", and activates their knee-jerk reaktions.
*All* projects which tries to create their own Open Source(tm) compliant license, rather than using one of the already established licenses, are being critizised on
I'm not a Linux person, and no, innovation is not always good. Standard API's, standard protocols, stndard GUI's and standard licenses are to be prefered in most cases. Without standards, we wouldn't have the Internet.
Well, compared to gcc 2.8, gcc 3.0 will include at least one new language (Fortran), a working C++ compiler, the C++ library, a test suite, support for many more platforms, and code for major new optimization techniques (not yet fully utilized, though).
If this doesn't justify a new major version number, nothing does.
But we already know and understand these other licenses, including the traps and pitfalls that aren't obvious from the first reading.
He obviously read the Halloween document.
However, I _do_ think standards or reference implementations are more important in free software projects, than in the traditional commercial settings. When there are no real management, standards or references can be used to settle design arguments between developers.