That's allright. This is where the diversity of Linux distributions actually comes in handy. Programs you write on one distribution will work on another with, at worst, a recompile. There are plenty of distributions geared towards the programmer.
(Personally I've found Slackware hard to beat; everything it comes with is 'vanilla' and as the author intended it, and there's no superfluous user-friendly stuff to distract the programmer. And best of all: no dependency hell!)
Why wasn't the work done before it was launched so that it was immediately usable?
Why do slashdorks have a pathological sense of entitlement? Haven't their mommies taught them to be patient and wait politely when someone is about to do them a huge freaking favor?
You've had good responses but none so far have mentioned the most effective security measure you can take on a Windows XP system: don't let the user run under an Administrator account! Make an additional "restricted" user account for her under which she does the normal work, logging in to the admin one only as needed.
Programs that seem to require admin rights to run can often be beat into submission by adjusting the Access Control Lists of the files it needs to write to, or by using "Run As" (which I think is unfortunately only available on XP Pro systems).
That's easy! Just kill all spammers and we instantly all have 50%-60% more bandwidth. Problem solved! Anyone want this shovel?
That this was modded Insightful is frightening on several levels. I don't know what's worse - the idea that a vigilante death penalty for spammers is desirable, or the misconception that email, including spam, takes up a significant part of total Internet bandwidth consumption.
You are confused. Caching is fine. Searching is fine. Wholesale republication of cached pages without prior permission (i.e. Googles "cached version" link) is not fine.
Want proof? Try "caching" a prominent website on your own site and see how fast you get sued. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. If Google can republish cached pages and mere mortals cannot, that's class justice.
Which is not only completely impractical (very few sites would set the "cacheme" flag because almost nobody would know about it), but counter to the way the internet works. By default you have to assume that anything you post on the internet will be tracked by search engines, blogged about, cached, etc... That happens to _everything_ on the internet, it's the nature of the beast.
Yes, tracking, caching, being blogged about, etc. is normal, natural, and okay. But just because your website gets tracked, cached and talked about does not mean that the cache is automatically republished wholesale! I don't put my browser cache on the Internet either, do I? That kind of republication is a conscious, intentional act on the part of sites like Google and archive.org for which they have no prior permission.
Being able to opt out is not good enough. In your own words: it's completely impractical (very few sites would set the "nocache" flag because almost nobody would know about it).
Try "caching" cnn.com on your own website and see how fast you'll get sued. Mere mortals like you and me won't get away with that; only big companies (Google) and US government entities (archive.org) do. They have successfully placed themselves above the law. This is simply class justice.
Google offers free access to a complete cached copy of your site by default. You should not have to opt out of having your copyright violated, any more than you should have to opt out of getting spammed, getting mugged in the street, etc. That is putting the world upside down. The violator should not have committed the violation to begin with. Offering complete cached/archived copies of websites should only happen with explicit permission.
If the message was more about "hey you can really do what you want with this" and not "hey it's cheaper than Windows lol!" they'd be better off.
What are you talking about? The former is exactly what the FSF's message is. And they're getting ridiculed for it all over the place. The "Open Source" movement was started in order to obscure the FSF's message in order to make it palatable to the suits, and they are the ones your criticism would be appropriate for.
Yes, there are knee jerk reactionary "France Sucks" types, and I'm not one of them. But to
deny that there is a powerful (Powerful) anti--American sentiment which is alive and well among French
beaurocrats would be painfully naive at best.
It would also have precisely nothing at all to do with distributing open source software to French schoolkids on a memory stick – just like your original flamebait post.
You managed to fool the mods well this time, though. Hat off for some high-quality trolling.
It's rather bizarre that you use your ISP's email -- what if you have to change your ISP? Go with a GMail account; it's free, ISP neutral,
You only get that so-called "free" Gmail account in exchange for your privacy. I'd trust almost any ISP with my important data before I'd trust Google. And the idea that it's provider-independent is laughable; you're making yourself dependent on an advertising megacorporation as your email provider, and they don't even have any obligation to provide the service to you; their only obligation is to their shareholders.
and allows you to use SSL for everything.
Gmail lets you use SSL only with POP/SMTP and not for webmail.
Of course not all of them are like that... but there is a high concentration of jerks doing Open Source.
Let's see, we're talking about two groups of people here:
Programmers who donate their time and the product of same to the public at large out of the goodness of their hearts, without expecting monetary compensation in return.
End users who bitch when the product in question, to which they refuse to contribute anything at all, does not meet their expectations.
And you're saying group number one are the jerks? Your ideas are intriguing, and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Meanwhile, here's a hint to group number two: try showing some contents out of your wallet to the applicable group one member(s) if you don't like how their software works. I bet the chances of it getting fixed will instantly go up a thousand fold.
The whole reason programming languages exist is because we understand our everyday languages are not defined well enough.
That's exactly the same reason legalese exists. So how are you disagreeing with me, then?
By creating a language that is fixed and closed to interpretation we save ourselves a lot of headaches.
Bingo! Same with legalese.
If we are confused what code Does, we just run it. argument over.
If we are confused what legalese does, we just litigate it. Argument over.
If you want a comparison of nerds who like language, I would have thought you'd have mentioned Larry wall inventor of perl and a linguist. Considering the author's skill set, I think the legibility of perl code is no coincidence.
In fact, if I had my choice (and I don't - I don't/can't do code), I'd have the whole thing installable in a single sub-folder that could just be moved wherever, whenever I wanted.
Quoth wikipedia: "An operating system (OS) is a computer program that manages the hardware and software resources of a computer. At the foundation of all system software, the OS performs basic tasks such as controlling and allocating memory, prioritizing system requests, controlling input and output devices, facilitating networking, and managing files. It also may provide a graphical user interface for higher level functions."
Wikipedia, like you, is wrong. An operating system is the minimum software required to actually, er, operate the computer. You cannot manage files or launch applications or do anything at all with just a kernel. Linux, the kernel, for instance, won't even boot without (at minimum) the 'init' program and some kind of shell. And therefore a kernel is not a complete operating system but only the central part of it.
I asked my secretary to sign up an efax account a few days ago. They claim you can "try it for FREE in one month". And the stupid part, she puts down a credit card number there (It's free rigth?).
Seems to me the stupid part is when you gave her the credit card number to put down for something that's supposed to be "FREE".
Slashdot Mirror
That's OK, you can get it for free.
Is that you, Essjay?
The printer-friendly version is so much nicer to read on-screen.
That's allright. This is where the diversity of Linux distributions actually comes in handy. Programs you write on one distribution will work on another with, at worst, a recompile. There are plenty of distributions geared towards the programmer.
(Personally I've found Slackware hard to beat; everything it comes with is 'vanilla' and as the author intended it, and there's no superfluous user-friendly stuff to distract the programmer. And best of all: no dependency hell!)
Why do slashdorks have a pathological sense of entitlement? Haven't their mommies taught them to be patient and wait politely when someone is about to do them a huge freaking favor?
Because java doesn't insert itself magically into the apt repository the second Sun relicenses it. This takes work.
You've had good responses but none so far have mentioned the most effective security measure you can take on a Windows XP system: don't let the user run under an Administrator account! Make an additional "restricted" user account for her under which she does the normal work, logging in to the admin one only as needed.
Programs that seem to require admin rights to run can often be beat into submission by adjusting the Access Control Lists of the files it needs to write to, or by using "Run As" (which I think is unfortunately only available on XP Pro systems).
Nope, the problem was the slash at the end. (Although the space didn't belong there either.)
Unfortunately, your link is a 404.
Indeed. RMS, on the other hand... I wouldn't be surprised if he's a classical Asperger's syndrome case.
That this was modded Insightful is frightening on several levels. I don't know what's worse - the idea that a vigilante death penalty for spammers is desirable, or the misconception that email, including spam, takes up a significant part of total Internet bandwidth consumption.
You are confused. Caching is fine. Searching is fine. Wholesale republication of cached pages without prior permission (i.e. Googles "cached version" link) is not fine.
Want proof? Try "caching" a prominent website on your own site and see how fast you get sued. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. If Google can republish cached pages and mere mortals cannot, that's class justice.
Yes, tracking, caching, being blogged about, etc. is normal, natural, and okay. But just because your website gets tracked, cached and talked about does not mean that the cache is automatically republished wholesale! I don't put my browser cache on the Internet either, do I? That kind of republication is a conscious, intentional act on the part of sites like Google and archive.org for which they have no prior permission.
Being able to opt out is not good enough. In your own words: it's completely impractical (very few sites would set the "nocache" flag because almost nobody would know about it).
Try "caching" cnn.com on your own website and see how fast you'll get sued. Mere mortals like you and me won't get away with that; only big companies (Google) and US government entities (archive.org) do. They have successfully placed themselves above the law. This is simply class justice.
Google offers free access to a complete cached copy of your site by default. You should not have to opt out of having your copyright violated, any more than you should have to opt out of getting spammed, getting mugged in the street, etc. That is putting the world upside down. The violator should not have committed the violation to begin with. Offering complete cached/archived copies of websites should only happen with explicit permission.
What are you talking about? The former is exactly what the FSF's message is. And they're getting ridiculed for it all over the place. The "Open Source" movement was started in order to obscure the FSF's message in order to make it palatable to the suits, and they are the ones your criticism would be appropriate for.
It would also have precisely nothing at all to do with distributing open source software to French schoolkids on a memory stick – just like your original flamebait post.
You managed to fool the mods well this time, though. Hat off for some high-quality trolling.
"I am completely broke and unable to continue developing LiVES." What a nice demonstration of the open source software development model's effectiveness.
<AOL>Me, too.</AOL>
You only get that so-called "free" Gmail account in exchange for your privacy. I'd trust almost any ISP with my important data before I'd trust Google. And the idea that it's provider-independent is laughable; you're making yourself dependent on an advertising megacorporation as your email provider, and they don't even have any obligation to provide the service to you; their only obligation is to their shareholders.
Gmail lets you use SSL only with POP/SMTP and not for webmail.
Let's see, we're talking about two groups of people here:
And you're saying group number one are the jerks? Your ideas are intriguing, and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Meanwhile, here's a hint to group number two: try showing some contents out of your wallet to the applicable group one member(s) if you don't like how their software works. I bet the chances of it getting fixed will instantly go up a thousand fold.
That's exactly the same reason legalese exists. So how are you disagreeing with me, then?
Bingo! Same with legalese.
If we are confused what legalese does, we just litigate it. Argument over.
Legibility of perl code? That's very funny. :)
You'd think geeks, who have this affinity with coding, would like attempts to define language precisely, since this is what programming languages do.
Richard Stallman understood that writing legalese is like coding: he compared writing the GPL with writing a program. It's a damn good hack, too.
Hey presto, your wish has been granted. Have fun. :)
Wikipedia, like you, is wrong. An operating system is the minimum software required to actually, er, operate the computer. You cannot manage files or launch applications or do anything at all with just a kernel. Linux, the kernel, for instance, won't even boot without (at minimum) the 'init' program and some kind of shell. And therefore a kernel is not a complete operating system but only the central part of it.
Seems to me the stupid part is when you gave her the credit card number to put down for something that's supposed to be "FREE".