I think it's because a lot of people actually think it's "Lunix." I even heard it again just late last week when I called a bookstore -- I asked for it by ISBN, and the guy, even though he was reading the title straight off the screen, still pronounced it "Lunix" every single time.
But I thought Linux was already so simple to install that everyone and their grandmothers could easily do it in 20 minutes.
Overlooking, of course, the fact that most members of Linus's own family don't use Linux, either -- I have a strong suspicion that they're being paid off by those masterminds of evil, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.
You want the lowest common denominator because you don't use Windows. However, there's a huge number of consumers out there who don't use anything but Windows and couldn't care less that the program they use doesn't work on Solaris. If a company puts out a lowest common denominator app for Windows, they run the risk of losing out to other companies' C++ or Java+WFC software which both looks and feels like all other Windows apps as well as gives native performance. Sure, they've broadened their market, but in the process they might have just lost 90% of it. Why do you think Corel JavaOffice and Netscape's JavaGator both died? It's because the respective companies knew that the consumer wouldn't put up with it. The customer is King, not the developer.
Sorry, but your rant doesn't have much to do with reality. I'm sure every OS-maker out there would _love_ it if Java apps both looked to the end user exactly like a native app as well as had the performance of a native app. The reason why all the OS vendors don't come up with their own Java implementations fine-tuned to use their specific system extensions isn't altruistic -- it's because there isn't a big enough market for Java apps tuned to those OSes. How many companies out there are going to make, for example, a Java app targeted at BeOS, when they can make it non-native and grab a much huger potential audience?
Here's where the difference is. If you code for Windows-specific extensions, you're not going to be able to get at 100% of the potential audience, but you will be able to get at 90% of it, which is still a huge number of people. So it comes down to a decision for developers: is it worth dumbing down our app to the lowest common denominator just to reach that extra 10% of the audience, or is it more important to make our app as appealing as it can be to the 90%? With all the different Windows apps out there, it's an important decision -- if we decide to use 100% pure Java, how much is our look-and-feel and performance going to suffer compared to all our competitors who are using C++ or Java with WFC or other Windows extensions? If it does suffer, it's quite possible that we threw away 90% of our target audience just to have a chance at the 10% we didn't have before.
This doesn't have anything to do with any evil monopoly rabblerousing. It has to do with each ISV's free choice as to whether or not they feel that 90% of the market is enough of a potential audience, or if they want to reduce their app to a lowest common denominator status that might end up appealling to no one in a highly competitive market.
Why doesn't he just read the questions here, instead of using Slashdot moderators as a intermediary. Not to mention that the Slashdot moderation system is in shambles, but that's a topic for another day.
'Til then, I'll just kick back and wait for some angry youth to ask, "Hey man, how can he call himself a hacker if he doesn't read/. himself?"
Micro$oft are an evil company who want to hurt computer users everywhere and Linux Tolvards. The Department of Justice are now fighting to save all of us from evil M$, so I'm not surprised to see all this FUD from you MicroShaft supporters. Face it, the Department of Justice are right and when we have World Domination they will make sure that all software are Open Source and GPLed.
I can't believe so many people willingly drink the Eric Raymond koolaid. One bullshit article after another for him, and people are begging for more.
His constant factual errors are bad enough, but what really makes his writing so terrible is the constant fake bluster he exudes. I honestly don't think that he believes a lot of what he writes -- it's as if he wants to puff himself to be some badass cartoon character, always foregoing reality and truth in search of an oh-so-pithy one-liner.
I've written before at Slashdot (sufficiently long ago enough that it's no longer in my User Info) that I think BSD usage will increase and that Linux will see a downturn. And I say this as someone who, while preferring NT and Sun machines, is both an owner (at home), an administrator (at work and home), and a fan of Linux, as well as someone who has never even touched or seen BSD except as a user. If not BSD, then something else, but a lot of people who actually use their computers as a means to get things done, and not as a religion or fetish, are both irritated with and embarrassed by the Linux zealots out there. Count me as one who is considering the switch as well. Plus, BSD will also unfortunately get a lot of the zealots who are currently an embarrassment to Linux -- who will in turn be an embarrasment to BSD -- because they won't feel so 31337 anymore when "the clueless" are able to install Linux.
Of course, most OSS software is free for a more fundamental reason: compared to other software, it's crap that nobody would actually shell out money for.
And no, I didn't say all of it -- there are some things like Sendmail, perl, and Apache that some people would happily pay for if they had to.
Punishing people outside the extent allowed by law would be injustice -- making examples out of some of the criminals, within the range of punishments that the law allows, isn't.
Furthermore, punishment should not be solely determined by the crime committed, because mitigating factors need to be taken into account, and that's why judges and juries are given the responsibility to choose a sentence from a range of possibilities.
Man A: Driving 90mph in a panicked state while trying to get his son, who is having trouble breathing, to a hospital, he accidently runs another car off the road, killing the driver. Charges: Manslaughter, reckless driving, speeding.
Man B: Driving 90mph while hot-rodding with another car, he loses control of his car and accidently hits another car coming in the opposite direction, killing the driver. Charges: Manslaughter, reckless driving, speeding.
I submit that if anyone thinks that the two men deserve identical sentences, they need to put down the keyboard, quit pretending that they're Mr. Spock or R2-D2, and go hang out with some people for a change.
Once again, don't willfully break the law unless you're prepared to face the possibility of receiving the maximum sentence for that crime.
First of all, every news source that I've seen (except for ZDnet, surprise surprise), has stated that Compaq isn't ending their Win64-Alpha development, only their Win32-Alpha support. Anyone who's bought an NT-Alpha box anytime recently isn't stuck at a dead-end -- if they want to upgrade, they'd move to Win64 when it's available and get themselves a nice performance boost since NT/Win would finally be utilizing the 64-bit architecture.
As for your point about Intel, they don't have Microsoft by the balls, because on the server end, Intel is struggling to get their 64-bit architecture to work. At this point, it's anybody's guess which will come out first: Win64 or Merced. As for the x86-compatible end, Intel potentially has a huge battle on its hands against AMD.
Lastly, Microsoft has very close relations with Compaq. If Compaq's move were going to jeopardize Microsoft, Microsoft easily has enough money to invest in Compaq to make sure that this particular division (NT-Win32-Alpha) stays afloat. You don't think Compaq actually announced this move without discussing it with Microsoft, do you?
Making examples out of criminals is A Good Thing, because there is always a decent amount of people who won't try the same thing, for fear that the same punishment will happen to them.
If you're afraid that you might be one of the few unlucky ones of which a prosecutor/judge/jury decides to make an example, here's a hint: Don't break the fucking law.
The bias is bad enough, but there's another reason why the current moderation will always be flawed: immediately giving inflated scores based on a user's recent history, but with a moving window used for averaging their scores. I've seen so many mediocre posts given scores of 2 lately that it's not even funny. (And no, I'm not talking about pro-Linux rah-rah crap getting moderated up, which is lame itself -- I'm just talking about your average run-of-the-mill posts that don't really have much to say)
Once someone reaches the plateau that is necessary for them to receive an immediate 2 on any post, it's a pretty sure bet that they'll never drop back down again, which (1) gives a false importance to everything they say, and (2) helps insure that their average will remain high. So, you end up seeing all these mediocre (and quite a few with outright factual misinformation)posts with scores of 2, since unless they're being inflammatory or stepping on the wrong advocacy toes, nobody's going to bother to waste their moderation points knocking down a so-so post.
Oh well, just thought I'd mention it. I don't really mind this post getting knocked down for being off-topic, since as someone who doesn't fawn over Linux, I don't have any plans to reach the 2-point posting plateau -- it would just be nice for when I'm trying to read other people's posts and would actually like to make use of the filtering here.
Oh yeah, and so that this isn't taken as mere rabblerousing, here's the solution: Reset every user's score back to +1 once a week or so -- people who say something interesting will still get other posts marked up for a short period of time, but we'd get rid of a lot of the deadwood who are just bumped up because they happened to say three interesting things in a row back in 1998, but who aren't really pulling their weight anymore.
Here in America, you don't the name pronounce Linus like "Lynn-us," you pronounce it like "Line-us." For God's sakes, man, didn't you ever watch Peanuts as a kid?
Not to mention that Linus doesn't pronounce his name like "Lynn-us" anyway, but more like "Leenus." Basically, if there's one pronunciation that doesn't fit, it's the "Lynn-ux" one -- if you want to make it sound like the guy's name in his native tongue, say "Leenux," just like Linus himself pronounces it. Alternatively, use the Anglicized version and say "Line-ux." "Lynn-us" should die already.
Not meant to flame you, since you seemed good-natured enough about it, although I'll take pleasure in tearing the head off of anyone who tries to berate me into pronouncing it the way they do, especially when (1) their choice doesn't really make sense, and (2) Linus himself is agnostic on how other people should pronounce it.
For Immediate Release: RED HAT FINALIZES DEAL WITH ANDOVER.NET, EXCHANGES RED HAT SHARES FOR SLASHDOT MODERATION POINTS
Damn, skimming through the posts on this topic, it looks like anyone who raises the possibility that Red Hat is overvalued at $60-$70/share gets their score whacked. I think I need to go back and read the Slashdot posting FAQ: I thought as long as we gave Linux the rah-rah treatment and trashed Microsoft, our posts were guaranteed an extra point or two -- now it looks like we have further requirements of kissing Red Hat ass and suspending any Wall Street knowledge.
I don't think that Cliff was so far off, but I take issue with part of the original poster's premise. Namely, where does he get the idea that the stereotypical view of geeks is one of them "being open minded about meeting new people and trying new things?" I don't mean it as a flame against him -- I thought he had a legitimate question -- but I'm not sure where that comes from.
Most people view geeks as pretty much the opposite: not open-minded at all about meeting new people, unless that person is some anonymous face typing at the other end of an internet connection. The "stereotypical view" of the geek is that of a person who spends almost all their time alone in front of their computer, avoiding "meeting new people and trying new things" as much as they can.
If the original poster had left it at "open-minded," I would've gone along with that being a stereotype -- but I think that's due to a "geek" ideal of having as many freedoms as possible, although I think that they tend to exercise those freedoms a lot less than most people do -- it's hard to exercise your freedoms when you're spending so much of your time in front of a computer instead of getting out and socializing, and I'd say that the lack of social skills really shows up a good deal in the number of immature and naive posts at Slashdot.
On the other hand, I've always been surprised by the fair amount of racism and gay bashing that I've seen for years from geeks -- mainly from script kiddie and hacker types. Thankfully, it doesn't seem to rear its head too often at Slashdot.
As their old status page states, they were frequently getting that amount. They did a much better job of documenting the system and network loads than the LinuxPPC guys did, although I'd still like to see more details. It'd be great if the LinuxPPC guys would list each days' averages, too.
The linuxppc box was much smaller than the W2k box.
Well, as most benchmarks have shown, Linux is best suited for weaker throwaway machines, while NT (at least version 4) does a much better job than Linux with more powerful boxes, so it's probably best that LinuxPPC fans can use box size as an excuse. (Of course, we're talking about Win2K, not NT4, so the above might not hold true, but I would expect to see a performance increase, at least by the time it's ready to ship).
The contest is still going. If you can provide a workable crack into a similarly configured system, you still get the box.
Yah, so I can go out and buy a PowerMac just so I can win an old one? No thanks. C'mon, for all intents and purposes, it's over. If a new one got cracked, they would just blame it on the new guy and say it never woulda happened to them.
As they mentioned, Microsoft can't do that, as W2K isn't purchaseable yet.
Uh, why would Microsoft do that? Unlike LinuxPPC, they're actually willing to host it and put their own bandwidth on the line. You make it sound like a bad thing that Microsoft is allowing people to still go at their machine, and a good thing that to do the same with LinuxPPC, you need to go out and get your own PowerMac. Again, no thanks.
Oh, and the linuxppc people never lied about anything going on.
And you know this, how? Hmmm...Monday: People couldn't connect because of a "self made ethernet cable." Mmhmm. Tuesday: Linux box runs out of memory. Wednesday: Supposed network (not machine) problems. Thursday: Contest over! Pretty convenient time to end it, if you ask me -- looks like things were starting to go downhill. I'm not really sure why you expect great honesty out of these guys, since I certainly see a lot of playing loose with the truth when it comes to Linux zealots, especially when you consider all the tacky trash-talking that they did.
As for Microsoft, they don't want to look bad either, but I don't see much reason for them to make up the power outage thing -- on their status page, they've been documenting the genuine problems that they've had: crashes, memory leaks, adding a new TCP/IP stack only to see the CPU immediately hit 100% utilization, etc. Like they've said, they're using this opportunity to try different things out and make improvements along the way, and be able to quickly see the effects. Sounds like a good idea. If they're trying to pretend that their beta OS is perfect and that it can't be stopped except for acts of God, they better get rid of that guy who's posting those status updates.
As for a UPS, I doubt they had one for that box -- it doesn't seem like they thought it would get such a response. After all, they started out with a 300 or 350Mhz box that had less RAM than the LinuxPPC one. And as for www.microsoft.com, I'm sure that www.windows2000test.com is very isolated from those machines.
After the first day or so (once everyone started finding out about the box), the Win2K status page reported frequently receiving over 6000 frames/sec (> 7000 datagrams/sec). The highest packets/sec that I see reported on the LinuxPPC status page is about 556. I'm not sure what number you're referring to on the Win2K status logs.
Seeing as the LinuxPPC group dropped out of the competition, blaming it on attacks upon other computers, while we haven't seen any such whines from the Win2K group (as if the Win2K box attackers haven't been trying the same tricks), I'm not at all convinced that the LinuxPPC box could've stood up to the attacks that the Win2K box has received. Did any but the most wacked-out zealots really believe that people would go after the Linux box the hardest?
For the Linux zealots: I hope every name that you were prepared to call the Win2K team had they dropped out, will now be applied to the LinuxPPC team. Quitters, babies, whatever. C'mmmmon, don't tell me you wouldn't have. Just look at all the yahoos who just about wet their pants just because someone toyed with the JavaScript in their Win2K guestbook posts.
C'mon, knock off the semantic games already. Sheesh, people, he's not barred from using every single thing that can remotely fall under the definition of a computer or having a computer inside of it. Let's have a little realism, please.
He used a computer to commit his crimes, so it doesn't seem surprising that he's not going to be able to use one for a while. People who write bomb threats are often forbidden from writing any kinds of letters to authorities, threatening or not, and pen and paper have other important uses than writing mail. I can buy the argument that barring him only from networked computers would have been sufficient, but I'm not sympathetic since it was his own decision to plead guilty instead of taking his case to a jury.
As far as I'm concerned, people who break into other people's property are plenty of an annoyance to society to send them to jail for a while, both to get them to knock it off and to dissuade other people from doing the same. And I'm definitely for throwing people away for a larger amount of time if they don't get the message and instead become repeat offenders, like Mitnick.
If I met him in the street, I'd probably just laugh at him. Other than that, as long as he's paid his debt to society, I'm willing to give him a fair shake. If he screws up again, I hope he gets more time, though.
As for the $4K restitution, your argument doesn't really hold up -- read the article again. First, the government was only seeking $1.5 million. Second, the judge believed that "the damages were much larger" (whether she means much larger than the $4K or much larger than the $1.5M, I can't tell), but she knew that he wouldn't be able to pay that much.
In her ruling, she said, "I want something that he can be ordered to pay, no matter what, because I'll know he has the ability to pay. I want to make a restitution order that is much, much larger. But I can't be sure he can pay it, and any non-payment is going to be a violation of the terms of his release." (Emphasis mine.)
I bet the law's not the only one that's fucked Kevin for a good long time. If he's looking for a job but is unable to use a computer, perhaps he should consider the exhilarating world of male prostitution. After all, he's spent five years behind bars, so he probably gives better blow jobs than Monica Lewinsky.
Guilty or not, no man should deserve to go through what he has to go through.
Yeah, five years is just soooooo damn long, even if the criminals are guilty. Let's empty the jails now!
If he had been trialed fairly in front of a jury of his peers (and, does such a thing exist for Mitnick? Where are you going to find 12 hackers to judge him?
Oh gawd. You really think that's what a jury of one's peers means? I guess you think there should've been 12 football players on the O.J. jury, ya dumb dunce.
Even when he is a free man, we must not forget what had happened.
Yes! You're finally catching on! See Kevin break the law. See Kevin go to jail. See Kevin's ass get raped on a regular basis. Now if everyone would not forget that, and would prefer that the same thing doesn't happen to them, maybe they won't break the law in the future. If they haven't gotten the message yet, I'm not going to be crying any tears when they become some convict's bitch.
Subject: CrackThisBox Update
The Scoop: Well, it looks like Microsoft has now released their superuser password, too, and the guys at LinuxPPC have installed a GuestBook of their own.
There, now that wasn't too painful, was it? And so easily accomplished without resorting to childish things like saying that one of the two organizations is stealing ideas (as if either were brand new), or outright lies like "Win2K lacks any remote administration tool like telnet," if you are indeed the person who made that remark.
And next time, please don't wuss out and blame political correctness-persecution instead of owning up to what you did. There are a lot of real cases of people getting screwed by the joke that is political correctness. Yours isn't one of 'em -- you were just spreading bad information.
As for your "Trying to please everyone is hard" remark, I didn't realize that there was a huge pent-up demand for incorrect information here. Who exactly would have been "displeased" if you had just reported the facts and left the rest out? Thanks, but this site's already got enough misinformation as it is.
You could very well be right, but everything that I've seen has talked about "Kool" being the original word (Do a web search on "KDE" AND "Kool"). I've never seen any clarification from the KDE team, though.
"If you steal the secret of nuclear weapons of the USA, just because you have a PhD in Physics and happen to be fond of this, you still go directly to jail, regardless of the damage you have not done."
Unless, while at the same time you were stealing those secrets, your cohorts in China were using big bucks to bribe the most corrupt president and Dept. of Justice in U.S. history. In that case, maybe you'll lose your job, but you'll be well taken care of, and definitely don't have to worry about jail time. Just ask Wen Ho Lee, Charlie Trie, John Huang, or Johnnie Chung.
Cheers, ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Oh yeah, I just remembered that the U.S. media seems to be pretty unwilling to report on this story...
Slashdot Mirror
It shoulda at least been a Score 2: Funny! Damn moderators are always screwin' me! :P
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
I think it's because a lot of people actually think it's "Lunix." I even heard it again just late last week when I called a bookstore -- I asked for it by ISBN, and the guy, even though he was reading the title straight off the screen, still pronounced it "Lunix" every single time.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
But I thought Linux was already so simple to install that everyone and their grandmothers could easily do it in 20 minutes.
Overlooking, of course, the fact that most members of Linus's own family don't use Linux, either -- I have a strong suspicion that they're being paid off by those masterminds of evil, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.
:)
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
You want the lowest common denominator because you don't use Windows. However, there's a huge number of consumers out there who don't use anything but Windows and couldn't care less that the program they use doesn't work on Solaris. If a company puts out a lowest common denominator app for Windows, they run the risk of losing out to other companies' C++ or Java+WFC software which both looks and feels like all other Windows apps as well as gives native performance. Sure, they've broadened their market, but in the process they might have just lost 90% of it. Why do you think Corel JavaOffice and Netscape's JavaGator both died? It's because the respective companies knew that the consumer wouldn't put up with it. The customer is King, not the developer.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Sorry, but your rant doesn't have much to do with reality. I'm sure every OS-maker out there would _love_ it if Java apps both looked to the end user exactly like a native app as well as had the performance of a native app. The reason why all the OS vendors don't come up with their own Java implementations fine-tuned to use their specific system extensions isn't altruistic -- it's because there isn't a big enough market for Java apps tuned to those OSes. How many companies out there are going to make, for example, a Java app targeted at BeOS, when they can make it non-native and grab a much huger potential audience?
Here's where the difference is. If you code for Windows-specific extensions, you're not going to be able to get at 100% of the potential audience, but you will be able to get at 90% of it, which is still a huge number of people. So it comes down to a decision for developers: is it worth dumbing down our app to the lowest common denominator just to reach that extra 10% of the audience, or is it more important to make our app as appealing as it can be to the 90%? With all the different Windows apps out there, it's an important decision -- if we decide to use 100% pure Java, how much is our look-and-feel and performance going to suffer compared to all our competitors who are using C++ or Java with WFC or other Windows extensions? If it does suffer, it's quite possible that we threw away 90% of our target audience just to have a chance at the 10% we didn't have before.
This doesn't have anything to do with any evil monopoly rabblerousing. It has to do with each ISV's free choice as to whether or not they feel that 90% of the market is enough of a potential audience, or if they want to reduce their app to a lowest common denominator status that might end up appealling to no one in a highly competitive market.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Why doesn't he just read the questions here, instead of using Slashdot moderators as a intermediary. Not to mention that the Slashdot moderation system is in shambles, but that's a topic for another day.
'Til then, I'll just kick back and wait for some angry youth to ask, "Hey man, how can he call himself a hacker if he doesn't read /. himself?"
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Micro$oft are an evil company who want to hurt computer users everywhere and Linux Tolvards. The Department of Justice are now fighting to save all of us from evil M$, so I'm not surprised to see all this FUD from you MicroShaft supporters. Face it, the Department of Justice are right and when we have World Domination they will make sure that all software are Open Source and GPLed.
Go Linux!
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
I can't believe so many people willingly drink the Eric Raymond koolaid. One bullshit article after another for him, and people are begging for more.
His constant factual errors are bad enough, but what really makes his writing so terrible is the constant fake bluster he exudes. I honestly don't think that he believes a lot of what he writes -- it's as if he wants to puff himself to be some badass cartoon character, always foregoing reality and truth in search of an oh-so-pithy one-liner.
I've written before at Slashdot (sufficiently long ago enough that it's no longer in my User Info) that I think BSD usage will increase and that Linux will see a downturn. And I say this as someone who, while preferring NT and Sun machines, is both an owner (at home), an administrator (at work and home), and a fan of Linux, as well as someone who has never even touched or seen BSD except as a user. If not BSD, then something else, but a lot of people who actually use their computers as a means to get things done, and not as a religion or fetish, are both irritated with and embarrassed by the Linux zealots out there. Count me as one who is considering the switch as well. Plus, BSD will also unfortunately get a lot of the zealots who are currently an embarrassment to Linux -- who will in turn be an embarrasment to BSD -- because they won't feel so 31337 anymore when "the clueless" are able to install Linux.
The King is dead. Long live the King...
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Ahh, I see..."It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is."
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Of course, most OSS software is free for a more fundamental reason: compared to other software, it's crap that nobody would actually shell out money for.
And no, I didn't say all of it -- there are some things like Sendmail, perl, and Apache that some people would happily pay for if they had to.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Punishing people outside the extent allowed by law would be injustice -- making examples out of some of the criminals, within the range of punishments that the law allows, isn't.
Furthermore, punishment should not be solely determined by the crime committed, because mitigating factors need to be taken into account, and that's why judges and juries are given the responsibility to choose a sentence from a range of possibilities.
I submit that if anyone thinks that the two men deserve identical sentences, they need to put down the keyboard, quit pretending that they're Mr. Spock or R2-D2, and go hang out with some people for a change.
Once again, don't willfully break the law unless you're prepared to face the possibility of receiving the maximum sentence for that crime.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
First of all, every news source that I've seen (except for ZDnet, surprise surprise), has stated that Compaq isn't ending their Win64-Alpha development, only their Win32-Alpha support. Anyone who's bought an NT-Alpha box anytime recently isn't stuck at a dead-end -- if they want to upgrade, they'd move to Win64 when it's available and get themselves a nice performance boost since NT/Win would finally be utilizing the 64-bit architecture.
As for your point about Intel, they don't have Microsoft by the balls, because on the server end, Intel is struggling to get their 64-bit architecture to work. At this point, it's anybody's guess which will come out first: Win64 or Merced. As for the x86-compatible end, Intel potentially has a huge battle on its hands against AMD.
Lastly, Microsoft has very close relations with Compaq. If Compaq's move were going to jeopardize Microsoft, Microsoft easily has enough money to invest in Compaq to make sure that this particular division (NT-Win32-Alpha) stays afloat. You don't think Compaq actually announced this move without discussing it with Microsoft, do you?
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Making examples out of criminals is A Good Thing, because there is always a decent amount of people who won't try the same thing, for fear that the same punishment will happen to them.
If you're afraid that you might be one of the few unlucky ones of which a prosecutor/judge/jury decides to make an example, here's a hint: Don't break the fucking law.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
The bias is bad enough, but there's another reason why the current moderation will always be flawed: immediately giving inflated scores based on a user's recent history, but with a moving window used for averaging their scores. I've seen so many mediocre posts given scores of 2 lately that it's not even funny. (And no, I'm not talking about pro-Linux rah-rah crap getting moderated up, which is lame itself -- I'm just talking about your average run-of-the-mill posts that don't really have much to say)
Once someone reaches the plateau that is necessary for them to receive an immediate 2 on any post, it's a pretty sure bet that they'll never drop back down again, which (1) gives a false importance to everything they say, and (2) helps insure that their average will remain high. So, you end up seeing all these mediocre (and quite a few with outright factual misinformation)posts with scores of 2, since unless they're being inflammatory or stepping on the wrong advocacy toes, nobody's going to bother to waste their moderation points knocking down a so-so post.
Oh well, just thought I'd mention it. I don't really mind this post getting knocked down for being off-topic, since as someone who doesn't fawn over Linux, I don't have any plans to reach the 2-point posting plateau -- it would just be nice for when I'm trying to read other people's posts and would actually like to make use of the filtering here.
Oh yeah, and so that this isn't taken as mere rabblerousing, here's the solution: Reset every user's score back to +1 once a week or so -- people who say something interesting will still get other posts marked up for a short period of time, but we'd get rid of a lot of the deadwood who are just bumped up because they happened to say three interesting things in a row back in 1998, but who aren't really pulling their weight anymore.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Here in America, you don't the name pronounce Linus like "Lynn-us," you pronounce it like "Line-us." For God's sakes, man, didn't you ever watch Peanuts as a kid?
Not to mention that Linus doesn't pronounce his name like "Lynn-us" anyway, but more like "Leenus." Basically, if there's one pronunciation that doesn't fit, it's the "Lynn-ux" one -- if you want to make it sound like the guy's name in his native tongue, say "Leenux," just like Linus himself pronounces it. Alternatively, use the Anglicized version and say "Line-ux." "Lynn-us" should die already.
Not meant to flame you, since you seemed good-natured enough about it, although I'll take pleasure in tearing the head off of anyone who tries to berate me into pronouncing it the way they do, especially when (1) their choice doesn't really make sense, and (2) Linus himself is agnostic on how other people should pronounce it.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
For Immediate Release: RED HAT FINALIZES DEAL WITH ANDOVER.NET, EXCHANGES RED HAT SHARES FOR SLASHDOT MODERATION POINTS
Damn, skimming through the posts on this topic, it looks like anyone who raises the possibility that Red Hat is overvalued at $60-$70/share gets their score whacked. I think I need to go back and read the Slashdot posting FAQ: I thought as long as we gave Linux the rah-rah treatment and trashed Microsoft, our posts were guaranteed an extra point or two -- now it looks like we have further requirements of kissing Red Hat ass and suspending any Wall Street knowledge.
I know, I know, I shoulda RTFM.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
I don't think that Cliff was so far off, but I take issue with part of the original poster's premise. Namely, where does he get the idea that the stereotypical view of geeks is one of them "being open minded about meeting new people and trying new things?" I don't mean it as a flame against him -- I thought he had a legitimate question -- but I'm not sure where that comes from.
Most people view geeks as pretty much the opposite: not open-minded at all about meeting new people, unless that person is some anonymous face typing at the other end of an internet connection. The "stereotypical view" of the geek is that of a person who spends almost all their time alone in front of their computer, avoiding "meeting new people and trying new things" as much as they can.
If the original poster had left it at "open-minded," I would've gone along with that being a stereotype -- but I think that's due to a "geek" ideal of having as many freedoms as possible, although I think that they tend to exercise those freedoms a lot less than most people do -- it's hard to exercise your freedoms when you're spending so much of your time in front of a computer instead of getting out and socializing, and I'd say that the lack of social skills really shows up a good deal in the number of immature and naive posts at Slashdot.
On the other hand, I've always been surprised by the fair amount of racism and gay bashing that I've seen for years from geeks -- mainly from script kiddie and hacker types. Thankfully, it doesn't seem to rear its head too often at Slashdot.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
When did the box get this?
As their old status page states, they were frequently getting that amount. They did a much better job of documenting the system and network loads than the LinuxPPC guys did, although I'd still like to see more details. It'd be great if the LinuxPPC guys would list each days' averages, too.
The linuxppc box was much smaller than the W2k box.
Well, as most benchmarks have shown, Linux is best suited for weaker throwaway machines, while NT (at least version 4) does a much better job than Linux with more powerful boxes, so it's probably best that LinuxPPC fans can use box size as an excuse. (Of course, we're talking about Win2K, not NT4, so the above might not hold true, but I would expect to see a performance increase, at least by the time it's ready to ship).
The contest is still going. If you can provide a workable crack into a similarly configured system, you still get the box.
Yah, so I can go out and buy a PowerMac just so I can win an old one? No thanks. C'mon, for all intents and purposes, it's over. If a new one got cracked, they would just blame it on the new guy and say it never woulda happened to them.
As they mentioned, Microsoft can't do that, as W2K isn't purchaseable yet.
Uh, why would Microsoft do that? Unlike LinuxPPC, they're actually willing to host it and put their own bandwidth on the line. You make it sound like a bad thing that Microsoft is allowing people to still go at their machine, and a good thing that to do the same with LinuxPPC, you need to go out and get your own PowerMac. Again, no thanks.
Oh, and the linuxppc people never lied about anything going on.
And you know this, how? Hmmm...Monday: People couldn't connect because of a "self made ethernet cable." Mmhmm. Tuesday: Linux box runs out of memory. Wednesday: Supposed network (not machine) problems. Thursday: Contest over! Pretty convenient time to end it, if you ask me -- looks like things were starting to go downhill. I'm not really sure why you expect great honesty out of these guys, since I certainly see a lot of playing loose with the truth when it comes to Linux zealots, especially when you consider all the tacky trash-talking that they did.
As for Microsoft, they don't want to look bad either, but I don't see much reason for them to make up the power outage thing -- on their status page, they've been documenting the genuine problems that they've had: crashes, memory leaks, adding a new TCP/IP stack only to see the CPU immediately hit 100% utilization, etc. Like they've said, they're using this opportunity to try different things out and make improvements along the way, and be able to quickly see the effects. Sounds like a good idea. If they're trying to pretend that their beta OS is perfect and that it can't be stopped except for acts of God, they better get rid of that guy who's posting those status updates.
As for a UPS, I doubt they had one for that box -- it doesn't seem like they thought it would get such a response. After all, they started out with a 300 or 350Mhz box that had less RAM than the LinuxPPC one. And as for www.microsoft.com, I'm sure that www.windows2000test.com is very isolated from those machines.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
After the first day or so (once everyone started finding out about the box), the Win2K status page reported frequently receiving over 6000 frames/sec (> 7000 datagrams/sec). The highest packets/sec that I see reported on the LinuxPPC status page is about 556. I'm not sure what number you're referring to on the Win2K status logs.
Seeing as the LinuxPPC group dropped out of the competition, blaming it on attacks upon other computers, while we haven't seen any such whines from the Win2K group (as if the Win2K box attackers haven't been trying the same tricks), I'm not at all convinced that the LinuxPPC box could've stood up to the attacks that the Win2K box has received. Did any but the most wacked-out zealots really believe that people would go after the Linux box the hardest?
For the Linux zealots: I hope every name that you were prepared to call the Win2K team had they dropped out, will now be applied to the LinuxPPC team. Quitters, babies, whatever. C'mmmmon, don't tell me you wouldn't have. Just look at all the yahoos who just about wet their pants just because someone toyed with the JavaScript in their Win2K guestbook posts.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
C'mon, knock off the semantic games already. Sheesh, people, he's not barred from using every single thing that can remotely fall under the definition of a computer or having a computer inside of it. Let's have a little realism, please.
He used a computer to commit his crimes, so it doesn't seem surprising that he's not going to be able to use one for a while. People who write bomb threats are often forbidden from writing any kinds of letters to authorities, threatening or not, and pen and paper have other important uses than writing mail. I can buy the argument that barring him only from networked computers would have been sufficient, but I'm not sympathetic since it was his own decision to plead guilty instead of taking his case to a jury.
As far as I'm concerned, people who break into other people's property are plenty of an annoyance to society to send them to jail for a while, both to get them to knock it off and to dissuade other people from doing the same. And I'm definitely for throwing people away for a larger amount of time if they don't get the message and instead become repeat offenders, like Mitnick.
If I met him in the street, I'd probably just laugh at him. Other than that, as long as he's paid his debt to society, I'm willing to give him a fair shake. If he screws up again, I hope he gets more time, though.
As for the $4K restitution, your argument doesn't really hold up -- read the article again. First, the government was only seeking $1.5 million. Second, the judge believed that "the damages were much larger" (whether she means much larger than the $4K or much larger than the $1.5M, I can't tell), but she knew that he wouldn't be able to pay that much.
In her ruling, she said, "I want something that he can be ordered to pay, no matter what, because I'll know he has the ability to pay. I want to make a restitution order that is much, much larger. But I can't be sure he can pay it, and any non-payment is going to be a violation of the terms of his release." (Emphasis mine.)
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
I bet the law's not the only one that's fucked Kevin for a good long time. If he's looking for a job but is unable to use a computer, perhaps he should consider the exhilarating world of male prostitution. After all, he's spent five years behind bars, so he probably gives better blow jobs than Monica Lewinsky.
Fry Kevin.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Yeah, five years is just soooooo damn long, even if the criminals are guilty. Let's empty the jails now!
Oh gawd. You really think that's what a jury of one's peers means? I guess you think there should've been 12 football players on the O.J. jury, ya dumb dunce.
Yes! You're finally catching on! See Kevin break the law. See Kevin go to jail. See Kevin's ass get raped on a regular basis. Now if everyone would not forget that, and would prefer that the same thing doesn't happen to them, maybe they won't break the law in the future. If they haven't gotten the message yet, I'm not going to be crying any tears when they become some convict's bitch.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
There, now that wasn't too painful, was it? And so easily accomplished without resorting to childish things like saying that one of the two organizations is stealing ideas (as if either were brand new), or outright lies like "Win2K lacks any remote administration tool like telnet," if you are indeed the person who made that remark.
And next time, please don't wuss out and blame political correctness-persecution instead of owning up to what you did. There are a lot of real cases of people getting screwed by the joke that is political correctness. Yours isn't one of 'em -- you were just spreading bad information.
As for your "Trying to please everyone is hard" remark, I didn't realize that there was a huge pent-up demand for incorrect information here. Who exactly would have been "displeased" if you had just reported the facts and left the rest out? Thanks, but this site's already got enough misinformation as it is.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
You could very well be right, but everything that I've seen has talked about "Kool" being the original word (Do a web search on "KDE" AND "Kool"). I've never seen any clarification from the KDE team, though.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Unless, while at the same time you were stealing those secrets, your cohorts in China were using big bucks to bribe the most corrupt president and Dept. of Justice in U.S. history. In that case, maybe you'll lose your job, but you'll be well taken care of, and definitely don't have to worry about jail time. Just ask Wen Ho Lee, Charlie Trie, John Huang, or Johnnie Chung.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Oh yeah, I just remembered that the U.S. media seems to be pretty unwilling to report on this story...