They both have valid points. They both have posted using somewhat abrasive/inflamitory language. They have both wasted my bandwidth!!!!:-)
-Derek
P.S. About your email problem while sailing... maybe one of those "contestants" of CBS's Survivor show will figure out a way to do email. Tune in and find out!
Would someone please give me the executive summary of the last-mile problem? I have always assumed it has something to do with the last hop a line makes going into a residence (or whatever) and that it is a bandwidth bottleneck.
Agreed, but there is always a chance that when it starts to hurt to old national pride that maybe somebody will start investing more $$. After all, wasn't it mostly national pride that drove the race to the moon?
Personally, I think space exploration and travel will, in the not too distant future, become more and more a commercial venture. As soon as corporations begin to discover extraterrestrial valuables (whatever they may be) we'll begin to see a lot of them rushing up to space to stake their claim.
...maybe it was a way to say to the US Congress, "Look, we obviously can't produce good results on such a small budget. Give us the money that we need or else we'll make American technology look even more deficient."
One thing I didn't understand was why they wouldn't let the German team drink beer at the Winter '02 Olympics.
HUH!?!?!
It's probably because we (in Utah) want to keep them off balance so the American team can win!:-) If they are really having trouble "drinking beer" at the '02 Winter Games tell 'em to wander over to a bar or to the grocery store and buy some. If that doesn't work, may they can borrow some from one of the other teams.
if the battle in the courts right now over DVD is lost it WILL hurt. Yes, I know the code is out there and it can never be repealed but there is more going on than that!
If the courts rule that, according to the DMCA, the reverse engineering that was done to create the DeCSS code is illegal then nobody can ever use it to create a commercial DVD player (in the US) without 1) doing do illegally or 2) paying licensing fees. Not only that, but it also sets a strong legal precendent for reverse engineering other things like DVD audio.
Without being able to legally reverse engineer DVD's nobody is going to be able to make and sell DVD players or DVD content without paying some licensing fees. That hurts! It gives a tremendous amount of money and control the the media monguls who control DVD.
Ten years from now when DVD software still costs money or is in the underground it should start to be clear how "this will effect you." And heaven forbid you should actually be trying to break into the movie business with a startup company of your own without paying license fees to create your DVD's.
I think now is a great time to try and get this legislation changed. Certainly the sooner the better.
That is all. -Derek
P.S. This article explains it much better than I have.
Intel, Sun, Compaq, Apple, even AMD. All make great processors (Pentium, Sparc, alpha, Gwhatever, Athlon...) It's nice to see that you're looking at linux because now you not only have more choices in software, but in hardware too.
I remember sending an email response to Polly a year (or so) ago regarding some Linux related news. She seemed well informed and was _very_ polite and professional. It was a positive experience for me and it was interesting to read that she is still in touch with slashdot readers and others in the community.
I haven't been folowing her career or anything like that, but from my experience with her and from the email above, it seems like she does a great job researching her articles and getting a feel for our community's response.
As I was reading the burn-all-gifs www site, I came across this little gem of an email from unisys.
To:"'webmaster@burnallgifs.org'"
http://burnallgifs.org/ Is this the only way you've been able to get attention? Competition a bit tough there fella? The article above appears to have been written by a big crybaby.
This kindof attitude really lights my fires. Say goodbye to all my GIFs.
You are assumming a single image. Many blurry images of the same object can be combined to make a single clear image. The information is all there, it is just scattered across the set of images. Anyway, reading a wristwatch still stikes me as a bit of an exaggeration though.
-Derek
Put it on you "to read" list
on
Antarctica
·
· Score: 1
I finished this book a few weeks ago and I really enjoyed it. The descriptive writing brought me to a place that I'm never likey to visit and the story did a great job of bringing the people and places together. It was the first book by KSR that I have read and I'm looking forward to reading the Mars series as soon as I finish Cryptonomicon. (Sheesh, nobody warned me Crypto* was such a large book!)
I remember Katz original attemp to get his linux machine up and working, but that was a long time ago. He had some incredibly bad luck and I always wondered if he just gave up or finally got it working. I've been with Linux since the 1.x kernels, and I'm always interested in hearing the stories of non-technical (or at least non-UNIX) people's first installation. Especially since Linux is now so "user friendly", whatever that means. Thanks for the "rest of the story" Katz.
All legal arguments aside, it is obvious to me that Corel has missed to whole point of Open Source. Maybe ESR should email them another copy of the Cathedral and the Bazaar. (Release early, release often, given sufficient eyes all bugs are shallow, etc...)
I find it absolutely mind boggling that they are alienating a great deal of their user base (not to mention their developer base) for something that simply makes no sense anyway.
I am a big fan of Corel and I'll allow to make a few mistakes now and then. (Who wouldn't? OpenSource development is new territory.) But I'll be watching closely to see how this is handled.
I don't usually respond to off-topic posts but I wanted to throw my comments in on this one. I got my X10 stuff within two weeks. Sorry to hear that I'm the exception rather than the rule...
I also started getting more SPAM emails from them than I ever imagined possible. I think they send out nearly two messages a day. HEY X10, NOT A GREAT WAY TO MAKE FRIENDS! Of course I'll opt-out when I'm on the net and actually remember, but in the mean time, it sucks.
...except maybe hundreds of hours of voluntary work! Many of us donate a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to create something (or make it better) and freely donate it to the "greater good" of the whole hacker community. I find it offensive to think that someone is taking my work and making money off it without giving anything back to the community. (Does that make me a spoiled brat?) I don't mind someone making money from Linux, as long as they are a good member of the community.
That's the whole point of Miguel's letter. He is trying to point out that RedHat is a great member of the hacker community and continually donates to "Linux". He also seems to agree that an ISV who supports ONLY RH Linux 6.0 is a problem. Not only because they're locked into RH but also because they are locked into a kernel and platform.
Anyway, most of us are NOT spoiled brats! Most of us are thrilled to see companies making money by selling Linux distros, hardware, utils, and support. We just want to keep the things that made linux great in the first place, namely, power and freedom.
Nope, it's not just you. Here's the snippet of text that Fizgig is referring to. (In case some of you missed the second page of the article.)
Anderson said that at least two of the top 10 work groups have only reached the rankings because some of the members had cheated. "I don't want to name names," he said, "But it's fair to say the Unix and Linux crowds are causing most of the headaches. It seems to be the hacker mentality."
...if, by pulling the show, WB is really saying that TV is dangerous, then maybe we can hold them accountable for some of the violence in society. After all, haven't they already pumped out a good deal of damaging visual violence? Make them pay a cool million to educational/counseling programs for every hour of violent programming. Sounds fair to me.
Unfortunately, I don't believe WB is acting out of concern for society. It is simply a defensive measure to make sure they don't get caught up in litigation or in arguments between the "TV is harmful" and "freedom of speech" people. Who can blame them? The way society can all-of-a-sudden gang up again something, as rediculous as it is, can be very bad.
Some may say they're just being tactful and considerate. BAH! When was the last time the media was considerate? They weren't even tactful and considerate in their coverage of the actual shootings.
-Derek
P.S. PBS is the only one that produces regular quailty programming.
you simply can't run it without some symlinking because the redhat team puts the files in the wrong places
And THAT, ladies and gents, is the whole point of the article!! Who decides where the right and wrong places are? If people begin "supporting" only one distro, then linux will become RedHat Linux or OpenLinux or etc.... Each company will start trying to be the de facto standard. I think the author was right about encouraging use of the Linux Standards Base.
Anyone with their thresholds set too high (like to zero) missed out on a real chuckler here.
I really got a laugh out of the different GCC's. It reminded me of the "If OS's Were Airlines" text file that used to float around. Only I'm afraid this author was really serious. Scary.
It does look like it tries to be a little more impartial than most benchmarks have been lately. But I'm still very suspicious. I think in some cases they might have been comparing apples and oranges. It is really hard to put value behind an untrusted benchmark without all the nitty gritty details on things such as hardware, test methods, optimizations, etc... Oh well.
P.S. Here ( http://www.zdnet.com/ pcweek/stories/jumps/0,4270,401971,00.html) is an interesting quote from the article. Not something that is usually printed about Winbloze configuration. "Working with NT 4.0 did involve working with some parameters so complex that Linux seemed pleasant in comparison."
Slashdot Mirror
They both have valid points. They both have posted using somewhat abrasive/inflamitory language. They have both wasted my bandwidth!!!! :-)
-Derek
P.S. About your email problem while sailing... maybe one of those "contestants" of CBS's Survivor show will figure out a way to do email. Tune in and find out!
Hi,
Would someone please give me the executive summary of the last-mile problem? I have always assumed it has something to do with the last hop a line makes going into a residence (or whatever) and that it is a bandwidth bottleneck.
Thanks!
-Derek
Agreed, but there is always a chance that when it starts to hurt to old national pride that maybe somebody will start investing more $$. After all, wasn't it mostly national pride that drove the race to the moon?
Personally, I think space exploration and travel will, in the not too distant future, become more and more a commercial venture. As soon as corporations begin to discover extraterrestrial valuables (whatever they may be) we'll begin to see a lot of them rushing up to space to stake their claim.
-Derek
...maybe it was a way to say to the US Congress, "Look, we obviously can't produce good results on such a small budget. Give us the money that we need or else we'll make American technology look even more deficient."
I doubt it, but it is possible....
-Derek
It was much worse than the reviewers said. In fact, I am embarassed for not having walked out on it. If you must see it, rent it.
-Derek
One thing I didn't understand was why they wouldn't let the German team drink beer at the Winter '02 Olympics.
:-) If they are really having trouble "drinking beer" at the '02 Winter Games tell 'em to wander over to a bar or to the grocery store and buy some. If that doesn't work, may they can borrow some from one of the other teams.
HUH!?!?!
It's probably because we (in Utah) want to keep them off balance so the American team can win!
-Derek
if the battle in the courts right now over DVD is lost it WILL hurt. Yes, I know the code is out there and it can never be repealed but there is more going on than that!
If the courts rule that, according to the DMCA, the reverse engineering that was done to create the DeCSS code is illegal then nobody can ever use it to create a commercial DVD player (in the US) without 1) doing do illegally or 2) paying licensing fees. Not only that, but it also sets a strong legal precendent for reverse engineering other things like DVD audio.
Without being able to legally reverse engineer DVD's nobody is going to be able to make and sell DVD players or DVD content without paying some licensing fees. That hurts! It gives a tremendous amount of money and control the the media monguls who control DVD.
Ten years from now when DVD software still costs money or is in the underground it should start to be clear how "this will effect you." And heaven forbid you should actually be trying to break into the movie business with a startup company of your own without paying license fees to create your DVD's.
I think now is a great time to try and get this legislation changed. Certainly the sooner the better.
That is all.
-Derek
P.S. This article explains it much better than I have.
Intel, Sun, Compaq, Apple, even AMD. All make great processors (Pentium, Sparc, alpha, Gwhatever, Athlon ...) It's nice to see that you're looking at linux because now you not only have more choices in software, but in hardware too.
-Derek
I remember sending an email response to Polly a year (or so) ago regarding some Linux related news. She seemed well informed and was _very_ polite and professional. It was a positive experience for me and it was interesting to read that she is still in touch with slashdot readers and others in the community.
I haven't been folowing her career or anything like that, but from my experience with her and from the email above, it seems like she does a great job researching her articles and getting a feel for our community's response.
-Derek
As I was reading the burn-all-gifs www site, I came across this little gem of an email from unisys.
To:"'webmaster@burnallgifs.org'"
http://burnallgifs.org/
Is this the only way you've been able to get attention?
Competition a bit tough there fella? The article above appears to have been written by a big crybaby.
This kindof attitude really lights my fires. Say goodbye to all my GIFs.
-Derek
You are assumming a single image. Many blurry images of the same object can be combined to make a single clear image. The information is all there, it is just scattered across the set of images. Anyway, reading a wristwatch still stikes me as a bit of an exaggeration though.
-Derek
I finished this book a few weeks ago and I really enjoyed it. The descriptive writing brought me to a place that I'm never likey to visit and the story did a great job of bringing the people and places together. It was the first book by KSR that I have read and I'm looking forward to reading the Mars series as soon as I finish Cryptonomicon. (Sheesh, nobody warned me Crypto* was such a large book!)
-Derek
I remember Katz original attemp to get his linux machine up and working, but that was a long time ago. He had some incredibly bad luck and I always wondered if he just gave up or finally got it working. I've been with Linux since the 1.x kernels, and I'm always interested in hearing the stories of non-technical (or at least non-UNIX) people's first installation. Especially since Linux is now so "user friendly", whatever that means. Thanks for the "rest of the story" Katz.
-Derek
All legal arguments aside, it is obvious to me that Corel has missed to whole point of Open Source. Maybe ESR should email them another copy of the Cathedral and the Bazaar. (Release early, release often, given sufficient eyes all bugs are shallow, etc...)
I find it absolutely mind boggling that they are alienating a great deal of their user base (not to mention their developer base) for something that simply makes no sense anyway.
I am a big fan of Corel and I'll allow to make a few mistakes now and then. (Who wouldn't? OpenSource development is new territory.) But I'll be watching closely to see how this is handled.
-Derek
Linux may not be on everyone's machine, but we do have some active Linux users group. Check them out...
http://www.sllug.org
The Salt Lake Linux Users Group
http://www.plug.org
The Provo Linux Users Group
-Derek
just put one end of a wire in "spk out", the other end in "line in" and start recording...
Maybe you could even use a combination of a good mic and speakers...
Point is, if you can listen to music, you can record/copy/distribute music. Same thing goes for movies, software, and information in general.
The answer isn't encryption and copyrights. The answer is in new business models (and being the first one to do it.)
-Derek
Trust no one, Mr. Mulder.....
http://www.fbi.gov/foipa/ufo.htm
-Derek
I don't usually respond to off-topic posts but I wanted to throw my comments in on this one. I got my X10 stuff within two weeks. Sorry to hear that I'm the exception rather than the rule...
I also started getting more SPAM emails from them than I ever imagined possible. I think they send out nearly two messages a day. HEY X10, NOT A GREAT WAY TO MAKE FRIENDS! Of course I'll opt-out when I'm on the net and actually remember, but in the mean time, it sucks.
-Derek
"from people who pay nothing for a product"
...except maybe hundreds of hours of voluntary work! Many of us donate a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to create something (or make it better) and freely donate it to the "greater good" of the whole hacker community. I find it offensive to think that someone is taking my work and making money off it without giving anything back to the community. (Does that make me a spoiled brat?) I don't mind someone making money from Linux, as long as they are a good member of the community.
That's the whole point of Miguel's letter. He is trying to point out that RedHat is a great member of the hacker community and continually donates to "Linux". He also seems to agree that an ISV who supports ONLY RH Linux 6.0 is a problem. Not only because they're locked into RH but also because they are locked into a kernel and platform.
Anyway, most of us are NOT spoiled brats! Most of us are thrilled to see companies making money by selling Linux distros, hardware, utils, and support. We just want to keep the things that made linux great in the first place, namely, power and freedom.
That is all,
-Derek
Nope, it's not just you. Here's the snippet of text that Fizgig is referring to. (In case some of you missed the second page of the article.)
Anderson said that at least two of the top 10 work groups have only reached the rankings because some of the members had cheated.
"I don't want to name names," he said, "But it's fair to say the Unix and Linux crowds are causing most of the headaches. It seems to be the hacker mentality."
-Derek
...if, by pulling the show, WB is really saying that TV is dangerous, then maybe we can hold them accountable for some of the violence in society. After all, haven't they already pumped out a good deal of damaging visual violence? Make them pay a cool million to educational/counseling programs for every hour of violent programming. Sounds fair to me.
Unfortunately, I don't believe WB is acting out of concern for society. It is simply a defensive measure to make sure they don't get caught up in litigation or in arguments between the "TV is harmful" and "freedom of speech" people. Who can blame them? The way society can all-of-a-sudden gang up again something, as rediculous as it is, can be very bad.
Some may say they're just being tactful and considerate. BAH! When was the last time the media was considerate? They weren't even tactful and considerate in their coverage of the actual shootings.
-Derek
P.S. PBS is the only one that produces regular quailty programming.
you simply can't run it without some symlinking because the redhat team puts the files in the wrong places
And THAT, ladies and gents, is the whole point of the article!! Who decides where the right and wrong places are? If people begin "supporting" only one distro, then linux will become RedHat Linux or OpenLinux or etc.... Each company will start trying to be the de facto standard. I think the author was right about encouraging use of the Linux Standards Base.
One man's opinion anyway.
-Derek
See ya around. *sniff*
-Derek
Anyone with their thresholds set too high (like to zero) missed out on a real chuckler here.
I really got a laugh out of the different GCC's. It reminded me of the "If OS's Were Airlines" text file that used to float around. Only I'm afraid this author was really serious. Scary.
-Derek
It does look like it tries to be a little more impartial than most benchmarks have been lately. But I'm still very suspicious. I think in some cases they might have been comparing apples and oranges. It is really hard to put value behind an untrusted benchmark without all the nitty gritty details on things such as hardware, test methods, optimizations, etc... Oh well.
P.S. Here ( http://www.zdnet.com/ pcweek/stories/jumps/0,4270,401971,00.html) is an interesting quote from the article. Not something that is usually printed about Winbloze configuration. "Working with NT 4.0 did involve working with some parameters so complex that Linux seemed pleasant in comparison."