I read this and I think that my sentiment can best be summed up with the following quote:
"If the vendors started doing everything right, we would be out of a job. Let's hear it for OSI and X! With those babies in the wings, we can count on being employed until we drop, or get smart and switch to gardening, paper folding, or something. "
-- C. Philip Wood
Come one people. Real sysadmins will always be in demand.
The problem is that what companies like TWC really want is for you to pay a user fee. They don't want to admit that anyone "owns" any part of their product except them.
This issue feels more like a restriction of our freedom than a protection of their right to free enterprise. Imagine the grocery store trying to "crackdown" on the sharing of a gallon of milk, or Papa John's "saying no way" to the sharing of pizza. It's absurd, especially considering that I don't use ALL of the bandwith all by myself.
In that particular context, I was indeed thinking of a "hick" or "redneck" as something bad (uneducated, perhaps some other criteria). If you consider being a hick or redneck necessarily a good thing, then perhaps the point is moot. Essentially, the few comments I read when this story was first posted use the word "redneck" in a negative connotation, thus my post.
In any case, the REAL point is that linux is for everyone, not just smug uber-nerds*, and that linux nerds should promote this Wal-Mart thing as progress in the right direction.
* I don't care for the use of the word geek, so I use nerd. Compare the dictionary.com versions of the definitions of each, and see which one is lacking a particular sense.
You know, I've a couple of posts around/. lately talking about how great the/. community is..caring and helpful, but in the few posts I see here so far, all I see it snobbery. Just because someone lives near a Wal-Mart or goes to a Wal-Mart to buy stuff (even if it's a computer), doesn't make that person a hick or a red-neck.
Maybe you people should be glad that Wal-Mart is embracing something other than Windows, instead of being so damn smug. Get off your high horse and join the movement, or shut the f*** up.
I'm glad someone brought this subject up. Here's how I figure it. Whatever God is, he is to us as we are to computers. Don't understand? Think of it this way: We made computers and we say they can't think, at least in the capacity that we think. We say, "Oh, it's just a machine." Maybe that's what the Creator (whoever the Creator is) is thinking about us.
Let me add to that by saying that this sort of thing was destined to happen in some form or another, just as generations 'happen,' although I don't mean 'destined' in a Calvinist sense.
Linux has become political. Period. The part that really annoys me is how pretentious Linux and the whole OpenSource movement had become. The high profile of Linux as the next great challenger to Darth Gates and his evil Windows empire, had caused too many non-technical punditsto wax eloquent about the state of OSes and IT in general. Oy veh!
I know that this is an oversimplified answer, and that it would never happen, and that this kind of an assinine thing to say (at least some will perceive it that way), but I think the answer to the whole problem is very simple. How about the next time (and there will be a next time) the violence occurrs, instead of trying to point the blame at the media, society, or at some other geek students, we just execute the person, who did the shooting, on national TV. I do seem to recall a certain North Carolina Sheriff making quit a bit of headway in the adopt-a-pet department by euthanizing the little mutts on TV. Perhaps this can be a deterrent if done correctly. Of course, this will never happen, and the popular kids will keep on trying to ruin the geeks (although I prefer the term Nerd). Meanwhile, I'll keep in being the Nerd I always was and I'll keep on earning 10 times what the popular kids are earning as bank tellers, teachers, etc.
This Interix thing is kind of compelling. Here Microsoft is sweating the whole Linux thing, and then they go and do what every company who followed their lead for ten years did. This is a nice thing to see, i.e. Micro$oft mutating to a kind of Unix. This is ironic to me because as a Unix project manager, I was discussing today with a collegue my childhood belief that every operating system was basically the same and how when Windows came out, I viewed it as the freak that it was. One one hand I could understand why Microsoft has held onto it's precious Windows non-Unix (specifically non-command line) interface. On the other hand, I was wondering why, if Microsoft is all about the benjamins, why they didn't just download, muck up, and sell their own Linux distro. Sure it would have been pure blashphemy, and Torvalds might have killed himself, but that's what capitalism is all about, right?
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I read this and I think that my sentiment can best be summed up with the following quote:
"If the vendors started doing everything right, we would be out of a job. Let's hear it for OSI and X! With those babies in the wings, we can count on being employed until we drop, or get smart and switch to gardening, paper folding, or something. "
-- C. Philip Wood
Come one people. Real sysadmins will always be in demand.
The problem is that what companies like TWC really want is for you to pay a user fee. They don't want to admit that anyone "owns" any part of their product except them.
This issue feels more like a restriction of our freedom than a protection of their right to free enterprise. Imagine the grocery store trying to "crackdown" on the sharing of a gallon of milk, or Papa John's "saying no way" to the sharing of pizza. It's absurd, especially considering that I don't use ALL of the bandwith all by myself.
In that particular context, I was indeed thinking of a "hick" or "redneck" as something bad (uneducated, perhaps some other criteria). If you consider being a hick or redneck necessarily a good thing, then perhaps the point is moot. Essentially, the few comments I read when this story was first posted use the word "redneck" in a negative connotation, thus my post.
In any case, the REAL point is that linux is for everyone, not just smug uber-nerds*, and that linux nerds should promote this Wal-Mart thing as progress in the right direction.
* I don't care for the use of the word geek, so I use nerd. Compare the dictionary.com versions of the definitions of each, and see which one is lacking a particular sense.
You know, I've a couple of posts around /. lately talking about how great the /. community is..caring and helpful, but in the few posts I see here so far, all I see it snobbery. Just because someone lives near a Wal-Mart or goes to a Wal-Mart to buy stuff (even if it's a computer), doesn't make that person a hick or a red-neck.
Maybe you people should be glad that Wal-Mart is embracing something other than Windows, instead of being so damn smug. Get off your high horse and join the movement, or shut the f*** up.
That's all I have to say about that.
I'm glad someone brought this subject up. Here's how I figure it. Whatever God is, he is to us as we are to computers. Don't understand? Think of it this way: We made computers and we say they can't think, at least in the capacity that we think. We say, "Oh, it's just a machine." Maybe that's what the Creator (whoever the Creator is) is thinking about us.
Let me add to that by saying that this sort of thing was destined to happen in some form or another, just as generations 'happen,' although I don't mean 'destined' in a Calvinist sense.
You are a knob.
Fact checking is invaluable. You rule.
Linux has become political. Period. The part that really annoys me is how pretentious Linux and the whole OpenSource movement had become. The high profile of Linux as the next great challenger to Darth Gates and his evil Windows empire, had caused too many non-technical punditsto wax eloquent about the state of OSes and IT in general. Oy veh!
I know that this is an oversimplified answer, and that it would never happen, and that this kind of an assinine thing to say (at least some will perceive it that way), but I think the answer to the whole problem is very simple.
How about the next time (and there will be a next time) the violence occurrs, instead of trying to point the blame at the media, society, or at some other geek students, we just execute the person, who did the shooting, on national TV. I do seem to recall a certain North Carolina Sheriff making quit a bit of headway in the adopt-a-pet department by euthanizing the little mutts on TV. Perhaps this can be a deterrent if done correctly. Of course, this will never happen, and the popular kids will keep on trying to ruin the geeks (although I prefer the term Nerd). Meanwhile, I'll keep in being the Nerd I always was and I'll keep on earning 10 times what the popular kids are earning as bank tellers, teachers, etc.
Oops! Thanks for chekcing my work! :)
When the hell did that matter? Like so many of us are actively writing in POSIX compliant C. Duh. Please stop before you give me a headache.
This Interix thing is kind of compelling. Here Microsoft is sweating the whole Linux thing, and then they go and do what every company who followed their lead for ten years did. This is a nice thing to see, i.e. Micro$oft mutating to a kind of Unix.
This is ironic to me because as a Unix project manager, I was discussing today with a collegue my childhood belief that every operating system was basically the same and how when Windows came out, I viewed it as the freak that it was.
One one hand I could understand why Microsoft has held onto it's precious Windows non-Unix (specifically non-command line) interface. On the other hand, I was wondering why, if Microsoft is all about the benjamins, why they didn't just download, muck up, and sell their own Linux distro. Sure it would have been pure blashphemy, and Torvalds might have killed himself, but that's what capitalism is all about, right?
Well, if you want to get downright mathematical - OS X is only 10% more Unixy than OS 9. But I digress.