While I'm not sure I would belive these statistics if they were taken in a large metro area... I would believe it of the people who lived in the area I grew up in... I doubt that many of them could figure out where Ohio was on an unmarked map... let alone someplace they've never been.
Heh, there was once a discussion there... and people argued over when the revolutionary war was fought and who fought in it!
"But when it's done, while Microsoft will still have most (if not all) of its power, it will be afraid to use it."
That's what everyone thought after the consent decree.
MS cannot be permitted to continue unharmed. Tehy don't get the sense of whats going on... and as long as they don't understand, more players will die... (My next bet is on RealAudio going the way of Netscape). MS has to be stopped... or at least hit hard enough that by the time they recover they'll have to fight for any space in the market.
Well, instead of just human targets, endangered species, or animals who end up in dangerous areas (for them or humans) could be stunned and transported to safety... Cool!
Mail Clients were designed to read mail.There's not a heck of a lot of "functionality" needed. Sure its nice to have a group calendar, but you can easily use one of several solutions for that (some of which are web based, so everyone, no matter what their OS can acess it easily). A calander is not part of a mail client.
Address Books are fine, but I get that in pretty much every mail client I use... many of which can use LDAP, so that multiple clients can work well together.
A mail client should first and foremost do its job... and do it well. After it gets that right, then perhaps it might look at some extra functionality. Otherwise, the functionality is a waste, designed only to overwhelm the user into beliving that they have something good.
Its amazing what can be done when people use things for what their intended to do, not fifty extra things that they were never intended to do.
Here's a perfect example of what's wrong with the way patents work....
First, we have a company attempting to patent P3P, and possibly suceeding....
Now we have these scientests patenting parts and pieces of things, with no whole product. How silly.... Why would someone patent part of a solution, esp. when the solution is gonna be very hard and quite possibly take a very long time. Not smart.
The entire idea of patents needs to be thrown out, and replaced with something that protects inventors... but doesn't result in silly issues like these beautiful examples. Patenting software should just be tossed out... let them copyright it or better yet GPL it. Parts of inventions should be tossed out... if you don't have something real, you shouldn't have a patent....
No doubt, none of this will happen (at least for awhile). Companies see patents as a way of protecting their interests, as well as their pocketbooks. Long live their deities, Almighty Dollar, Euro, and all the rest...
Oh, you are soooo wrong. Try it out... you'll find out why no one can tell you what its about. It's about nothing and everything, logic/music/art/computers/intelligence, and yet its not about these things, but merely uses things to explain itself. It's about self-reference, and yet it is self-reference.
The book really just makes you think... and think.... and re-think.
Because a friend told me about the book, I searched Columbus bookstores until I found the paperback 20th anniversary ed. It's great. As bedtime reading, I can't think of anything better. It leaves your brain drenched in new thoughts and ideas (and makes for interesting dreams). Continuing to streach your mind out of school can be difficult at times. It seems you get stuck in a rut and can't find a mental challenge anywhere. That's where I was when I found this book. Hofstader's book made me rethink the way I look at things, and remember the simple complexities of life.
Hackers are excellent coders, great engineers and rather intelligent. However, they tend not to make the best public figure for courting the business world. An article like this is perfect FUD fodder. Unstable "leaders" make for an unstable community.
We know that Bruce and Eric are not our lead developers or descision makers for our community, but an article like this doesn't convey that to Mr. Business Reader. In the beginning, the merits of our community were based on the stability of our code. Now the merits of our code will be based on our stability as a community. When we all sat in basements, bedrooms, labs and offices... flame wars were fine. Now that our "leaders" are the center of attention, I think flame wars need to be kept private, or not fought.
What's being discussed, at least most of the time isn't freedom. It's who's version of freedom is right. There's nothing wrong with discussing which freedom is best, as long as it doesn't make the community look like a bunch of self-serving whining misfits. Changing the world is good, but as Mark Twain said:
"Clothes make the man, naked people have little influence over soicity"
Until we have some "clothes" on, we won't change anything for the better. Our discussions, thoughts and ideals will perish with our movement. And our movement will perish if we don't present ourselves to the public as a unified community. Could you imagine the US "Founding Fathers" fighting and bickering over the design of the US highway system, or leaving and writing their own constitution before they won the war?
Or did Franklin want the Declaration of Independence called Franklin/Declaration of Independence, before the US of A became its own country?
We'll never know for sure how the FF felt toward each other... you see they kept it behind closed doors. Outside they were unified, no matter what may have been happening on the inside!
It's fine that we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the various ways to implement freedom... just do it in the privacy of our community. Don't do it for the world to see.
Do we really want to FOG ("F"SF/"O"SS/"G"NU) up our movement with petty bickering? We are on a threshold that may get us closer to the Open/Free source world than we've ever been. Will we let FOG become fodder for MS FUD? How does it look when our "fearless leaders" are arguing, fighting, quiting and starting their own groups, acting like a bunch of idiots in front of the media... (GNU/Linux corrections... Obi-Wan costumes)? If we want our ideals to spread, if we want to see a day when Microsoft will not dominate the world, then we must get our act together.
What do I mean? How many flames a day do you think ESR gets from people who have never written a line of code, maybe never even compiled their own kernel? Look at the comments posted here. How many posts come from people who have no understanding of what GNU has done for Free/Open software? Or,how many simply follow GNU without thought... and fight OSS without understanding?
How many times have those that set themselves up as our leaders (to the media, at least) embarassed the whole community? Once or twice is too many times. We're no longer in our comfortable basements/labs/cubicles hacking code. Our creations are being reviewed by the entire industry. And we ourselves are being put on a stage as it were... viewed under a microscope. Our actions can and will overshadow our code.
When it was faceless hackers writing the kernels, compilers, etc. the community was judged by the quality of their code. Now, our code will be judged by the quality of the community. In the real world, uptime and reliability don't apply to just systems, they apply to the business/vendor/community that produced those systems. Our community needs to be as tight and clean as our code!
Remember, MS is waiting for a chance to exploit one mistake into a major FUD-Fest. Let's not give them that chance.
Combining the Bill Gates comments and these two articles, I think someone should have enough ammo to launch a lawsuit for slander and Liable... I'm no lawyer but this is idiotic...
RedHat? Caldera? Opensource.org? anyone?
Even if the lawsuit got thrown out... at least the information would be placed in the publics eye....
Well, I must be on drugs... I sitting here in front of my linux box thinking that I'm looking at a GUI, but Bill says there is no GUI, so I must be looking at the best Text interface ever. How did I get that cool image from "Phantom Menace" as my background without a GUI?
And why the heck am I wasting drive space on the WindowMaker thing???????
What is this? Some kind of weird tree-hugger Utopia? People actually writing to standards? Everyone is supposed to do it their own way, right? So they can grab the market share, right? I mean anything else would be un-american, right? Oh, wait there's more to the world than the American Way? What?
(--regains senses--)
Oh, sorry, I slept near that new Gates book, it must have tried to poison me....
The fact is, people want standards, and until people deviated from standards, the WWW was a cool place to play. As long as Linus, Alan, and the Merry Men, keep a standard kernel and lib. the Linux World will just get better and better.
Silly "technical" writers are so used to the status quo of Big Business today, they can't see the shift that's happening, there's more profit to be made in an Open Source Standards world. IBM, HP and the others will catch on soon.
Absoultely... remember MS has done this in the past (Intuit remember). Let something slip and wahoo... everyone runs away.
Indeed, I think that as long as Star Office and Corel create and maintain filters that accurately read oriface97 files, we don't need no stinkin' MS Office.
PS- Anyone who figures out a lisp function that could read MS Office into XEmacs gets my vote for best hack of the year:-)
Two kernels and several releases ago, Linus brought forth, upon this world-network, a new Operating System, conceived in Open Source, and dedicated to the proposition that all software should be created stable, not to mention free, reliable and fast . Now we are engaged in a great software war, testing whether that Operating System, or any software so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure, with or without official tech support. We are met here on the World Wide Web, one of the great battlefields of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it as a monument to those who have gave their time, CPU's and source code so that Open Source Software might live. It is altogether fitting that we should do this. But in a larger sense we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow this webpage. The brave hackers and programmers, who have struggled here, on the web, have consecrated it far above our poor power to to add or detract. Search engines will little note nor long remember, what we type here, but can never forget what they did here, just look at their indices. It is for us, rather to be dedicated to the unfinished code, which they have thus far so nobly debugged. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored hackers we take increased devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these hackers shall not have coded in vain; that this industry shall have a new birth of Open Source, which means Freedom; and that this code of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from cyberspace.
Slashdot Mirror
While I'm not sure I would belive these statistics if they were taken in a large metro area... I would believe it of the people who lived in the area I grew up in... I doubt that many of them could figure out where Ohio was on an unmarked map... let alone someplace they've never been.
Heh, there was once a discussion there... and people argued over when the revolutionary war was fought and who fought in it!
"But when it's done, while Microsoft will still have most (if not all) of its power, it will be afraid to use it."
That's what everyone thought after the consent decree.
MS cannot be permitted to continue unharmed. Tehy don't get the sense of whats going on... and as long as they don't understand, more players will die... (My next bet is on RealAudio going the way of Netscape). MS has to be stopped... or at least hit hard enough that by the time they recover they'll have to fight for any space in the market.
I think Green or Black or Red Berets with the /. insignia would be very very cool
Well, instead of just human targets, endangered species, or animals who end up in dangerous areas (for them or humans) could be stunned and transported to safety... Cool!
Mail Clients were designed to read mail.There's not a heck of a lot of "functionality" needed. Sure its nice to have a group calendar, but you can easily use one of several solutions for that (some of which are web based, so everyone, no matter what their OS can acess it easily). A calander is not part of a mail client.
Address Books are fine, but I get that in pretty much every mail client I use... many of which can use LDAP, so that multiple clients can work well together.
A mail client should first and foremost do its job... and do it well. After it gets that right, then perhaps it might look at some extra functionality. Otherwise, the functionality is a waste, designed only to overwhelm the user into beliving that they have something good.
Its amazing what can be done when people use things for what their intended to do, not fifty extra things that they were never intended to do.
Here's a perfect example of what's wrong with the way patents work....
First, we have a company attempting to patent P3P, and possibly suceeding....
Now we have these scientests patenting parts and pieces of things, with no whole product. How silly.... Why would someone patent part of a solution, esp. when the solution is gonna be very hard and quite possibly take a very long time. Not smart.
The entire idea of patents needs to be thrown out, and replaced with something that protects inventors... but doesn't result in silly issues like these beautiful examples. Patenting software should just be tossed out... let them copyright it or better yet GPL it. Parts of inventions should be tossed out... if you don't have something real, you shouldn't have a patent....
No doubt, none of this will happen (at least for awhile). Companies see patents as a way of protecting their interests, as well as their pocketbooks. Long live their deities, Almighty Dollar, Euro, and all the rest...
Oh, you are soooo wrong. Try it out... you'll find out why no one can tell you what its about. It's about nothing and everything, logic/music/art/computers/intelligence, and yet its not about these things, but merely uses things to explain itself. It's about self-reference, and yet it is self-reference.
The book really just makes you think... and think.... and re-think.
Because a friend told me about the book, I searched Columbus bookstores until I found the paperback 20th anniversary ed. It's great.
As bedtime reading, I can't think of anything better. It leaves your brain drenched in new thoughts and ideas (and makes for interesting dreams).
Continuing to streach your mind out of school can be difficult at times. It seems you get stuck in a rut and can't find a mental challenge anywhere. That's where I was when I found this book.
Hofstader's book made me rethink the way I look at things, and remember the simple complexities of life.
;-)
Altavista is now owned by Compaq... What do you expect???
This is just another reason to support the Open Directory project!
http://dmoz.org
Hackers are excellent coders, great engineers and rather intelligent. However, they tend not to make the best public figure for courting the business world. An article like this is perfect FUD fodder. Unstable "leaders" make for an unstable community.
We know that Bruce and Eric are not our lead developers or descision makers for our community, but an article like this doesn't convey that to Mr. Business Reader. In the beginning, the merits of our community were based on the stability of our code. Now the merits of our code will be based on our stability as a community. When we all sat in basements, bedrooms, labs and offices... flame wars were fine. Now that our "leaders" are the center of attention, I think flame wars need to be kept private, or not fought.
Just my $0.02
Spies are already using them... With some of the new HMD's that Thad Starner and Steve Mann are using you don't even know they're wearing anything...
Industry uses camera/glasses already to take pics of stuff that they shouldn't. It's no big deal to ad a pc to the system.
BTW- From the sounds of it... they pretty much just built from the directions over at Steves site. !=big deal
I'm gonna hope for the April Fools emails..... Otherwise, I don't like the sound of it.
What's being discussed, at least most of the time isn't freedom. It's who's version of freedom is right. There's nothing wrong with discussing which freedom is best, as long as it doesn't make the community look like a bunch of self-serving whining misfits. Changing the world is good, but as Mark Twain said:
"Clothes make the man, naked people have little influence over soicity"
Until we have some "clothes" on, we won't change anything for the better. Our discussions, thoughts and ideals will perish with our movement. And our movement will perish if we don't present ourselves to the public as a unified community. Could you imagine the US "Founding Fathers" fighting and bickering over the design of the US highway system, or leaving and writing their own constitution before they won the war?
Or did Franklin want the Declaration of Independence called Franklin/Declaration of Independence, before the US of A became its own country?
We'll never know for sure how the FF felt toward each other... you see they kept it behind closed doors. Outside they were unified, no matter what may have been happening on the inside!
It's fine that we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the various ways to implement freedom... just do it in the privacy of our community. Don't do it for the world to see.
Do we really want to FOG ("F"SF/"O"SS/"G"NU) up our movement with petty bickering? We are on a threshold that may get us closer to the Open/Free source world than we've ever been. Will we let FOG become fodder for MS FUD? How does it look when our "fearless leaders" are arguing, fighting, quiting and starting their own groups, acting like a bunch of idiots in front of the media... (GNU/Linux corrections... Obi-Wan costumes)? If we want our ideals to spread, if we want to see a day when Microsoft will not dominate the world, then we must get our act together.
What do I mean? How many flames a day do you think ESR gets from people who have never written a line of code, maybe never even compiled their own kernel? Look at the comments posted here. How many posts come from people who have no understanding of what GNU has done for Free/Open software? Or,how many simply follow GNU without thought... and fight OSS without understanding?
How many times have those that set themselves up as our leaders (to the media, at least) embarassed the whole community? Once or twice is too many times. We're no longer in our comfortable basements/labs/cubicles hacking code. Our creations are being reviewed by the entire industry. And we ourselves are being put on a stage as it were... viewed under a microscope. Our actions can and will overshadow our code.
When it was faceless hackers writing the kernels, compilers, etc. the community was judged by the quality of their code. Now, our code will be judged by the quality of the community. In the real world, uptime and reliability don't apply to just systems, they apply to the business/vendor/community that produced those systems. Our community needs to be as tight and clean as our code!
Remember, MS is waiting for a chance to exploit one mistake into a major FUD-Fest. Let's not give them that chance.
Combining the Bill Gates comments and these two articles, I think someone should have enough ammo to launch a lawsuit for slander and Liable... I'm no lawyer but this is idiotic...
RedHat? Caldera? Opensource.org? anyone?
Even if the lawsuit got thrown out... at least the information would be placed in the publics eye....
Any thoughts?
Well, I must be on drugs... I sitting here in front of my linux box thinking that I'm looking at a GUI, but Bill says there is no GUI, so I must be looking at the best Text interface ever. How did I get that cool image from "Phantom Menace" as my background without a GUI?
And why the heck am I wasting drive space on the WindowMaker thing???????
Grrrrr............
Must be an error... Amazon has it for $18.00 US
What is this? Some kind of weird tree-hugger Utopia? People actually writing to standards? Everyone is supposed to do it their own way, right? So they can grab the market share, right? I mean anything else would be un-american, right? Oh, wait there's more to the world than the American Way? What?
(--regains senses--)
Oh, sorry, I slept near that new Gates book, it must have tried to poison me....
The fact is, people want standards, and until people deviated from standards, the WWW was a cool place to play. As long as Linus, Alan, and the Merry Men, keep a standard kernel and lib. the Linux World will just get better and better.
Silly "technical" writers are so used to the status quo of Big Business today, they can't see the shift that's happening, there's more profit to be made in an Open Source Standards world. IBM, HP and the others will catch on soon.
Absoultely... remember MS has done this in the past (Intuit remember). Let something slip and wahoo... everyone runs away.
:-)
Indeed, I think that as long as Star Office and Corel create and maintain filters that accurately read oriface97 files, we don't need no stinkin' MS Office.
PS- Anyone who figures out a lisp function that could read MS Office into XEmacs gets my vote for best hack of the year
I believe it's called I-ASP... look in /.'s archive, I seem to remember they had an article on it recently
A good Slashdot poll, how many real FSF contributers have degrees? How many kernel patches have come fro non-schooled hackers vs. educated hackers...
Colud be interesting!!!
Sorry, couldn't resist...
Two kernels and several releases ago, Linus brought forth, upon this world-network, a new Operating System, conceived in Open Source, and
dedicated to the proposition that all software should be created stable, not to mention free, reliable and fast . Now we are engaged in a great
software war, testing whether that Operating System, or any software so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure, with or without official tech support. We are met here on the World Wide Web, one of the great battlefields of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it as a monument to those who have gave their time, CPU's and source code so that Open Source Software might live. It is altogether fitting that we should do this. But in a larger sense we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow this webpage. The brave hackers and programmers, who have struggled here, on the web, have consecrated it far above our poor power to to add or detract. Search engines will little note nor long remember, what we type here, but can never forget what they did here, just look at their indices. It is for us, rather to be dedicated to the unfinished code, which they have thus far so nobly debugged. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored hackers we take increased devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these hackers shall not have coded in vain; that this industry shall have a new birth of Open Source, which means Freedom; and that this code of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from cyberspace.