Actually, the ad was sent via e-mail, which means that this is in the right topic, at least...
According to the article, people tried to opt-out of the e-mail list, and (surprise surprise) weren't, and then started e-mailing Motorola to complain.
Motorla is also apparently trying to sue the Florida-based spammers via "unsolicited e-mail statutes" as well as trademark infringement.
So yeah, the article and headline are completely misleading, although in the strictest sense "Pager Spam" is accurate, as it was spam regarding pagers...
However, you could use StarOffice 5.2 to read almost all of other peoples office stuff;
I need the annotation features in Word, which StarOffice seemed to be lacking - yeah, maybe I could view it, but I'd definately need to produce Word documents as well (including modification of other people's documents) making Office a basic requirement...
You don't have to use anything but Windows95 for your Internet Explorer testing.
Find a copy - I dare you:)
Not that it really matters, unless IE6 works with Win95, I'm pretty sure I'll have to use some IE6 specific stuff (read: P3P) in future development...
I would consider VMWare and loading Windows2k under it.
You do realize that involves purchasing Windows 2000 anyway? (Well, actually, I get it as part of a campus license agreement, but even at home I have need for Win2K; especially in the way I need it for development work with my job - telecommuting's fun.)
The XP copy that my Dad's beta testing at home currently is set to dual-boot between Win2K and WinXP Beta. Whether or not the final copy will I can't be sure (especially the home edition, *shudder*), and I haven't tried putting Linux onto the box (I'll ask him if I can as a test, I somehow doubt he'll let me muck around with his test box, though).
Except I need to ensure that my JavaScript and HTML works under Microsoft Internet Explorer...
And I need to view this Microsoft PowerPoint presentation...
And I need to open the design documents that are written in Microsoft Word.
Face it - I don't really have a choice. Once XP gets released, I'll probably give it a partition on my hard drive. Sure, I like Mandrake (enough to have actually paid for my copy of the distro), but that still doesn't really matter, considering that in order to interact with others in college I must use Microsoft products.
Especially when the previously mentioned "design documents" explain the required design of the project that counts for half of your grade...
I suppose I could go on the "move to open software" cursade, but even the most Linux-friendly professor I can think of taught his class about how the Linux kernel works using PowerPoint. He offered his notes for download off his webpage... which means I'd need PowerPoint to view them. (Actually, since other people in that class read Slashdot, I'll admit that he was cool enough to have copied the slides into PDF format, but still... the point stands that if he hadn't done that, I'd need to grab a Windows machine to view the class notes.)
Anyway, it's summer time, and I'm working for a company... on Windows. If I want to work at home, I'll need a Windows PC. If I want to send documents to other people here, I'll need Office.
Which means that as much as I'd love to get rid of any and all MS software, I can't - I'm stuck with it. Which is why the Ninth District court upheld the findings of fact, agreeing that Microsoft does indeed have a monopoly that practically people cannot escape from.
Because Hemos also has the "Update Story" button, and we lousy peons don't have an "Update Comment" button!
;)
(that being said, I would hope such a feature is never added)
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Re:Make a decision, folks
on
ORBS Forks
·
· Score: 2
The problem is that you need to think about censoring spam and censoring newsgroups/websites in different ways - one is a "push" model, the other is a "pull" model.
My main problem with spam is that I didn't ask for it - but I have to read through it anyway. (Well, not exactly - I can "just hit delete," but when I'm Next Messaging through my mailbox via pine via an ssh session, I wind up downloading the message anyway. Not to mention it takes up my resources (my disk quota on the mail server), as well as bandwidth that could have been better used.)
Pull is different - when I pull down Slashdot, I'm asking for everything I get. When I choose to read everything at -1, I'm choosing to read trolls, spam, flames, and trolls. (Like it's that much different from reading at +1 - although that usually filters out the spam.)
Despite the urban legends about children winding up on porn sites, usually you know full well what you're going into when you descide to read a webpage. Pulling down the content was your choice. However, being presented with ads for "HOT TEENAGE SLUTS" when checking your e-mail was not your choice - someone else pushed it at you.
Not to mention that the cost of spamming is mostly on the receiver's end, while a webpage or other pull based content's cost is on the creator's end. Spam wastes my resources, it wastes my ISP's resources, as well as wasting anyone who was trying to use bandwidth that the spam took up while in transit - all for something that the I did not request.
Pulling a webpage down, while it "wastes" bandwidth as well, is an action that I chose - so anything that comes my way is what I requested, whether I wanted it or not.
And that is why I find it perfectly justifiable to censor my mailbox, while at the same time wishing to keep people from censoring the Internet at large.
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[SPOILER] Re:What aliens?
on
Review: A.I.
·
· Score: 1
I seem to recall the ice-sculpture-thingy referring to itself as being decended from David's kind during the "let's revive a human to make him happy" scene.
You should also remember that the "aliens" were able to download David's memories (and then download them from each other) as well as restart the frozen robots (remember when the "alien" reaches its hand over David and David jumps to life (and then breaks the Blue Fairy), and again to resurrect Teddy)?
Not only that, but these "aliens" where excavating Earth to discover their origin and learn about their creators, if I recall some of the "alien's" dialog correctly.
Personally, I thought it was fairly clear after they rebuilt David's home that they were decended from the mecha of David's time.
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[SPOILER] Re:My take...
on
Review: A.I.
·
· Score: 1
A final
spoiler note: Despite what critics and IMDB commenters say, I'm absolutely against the notion that the beings at the end are aliens. They may be shaped like the "Close Encounters" creatures, but please! "Artificial Intelligence" is the name of the friggin' movie.
How can people possibly mistake those things for aliens? I'm pretty sure that at one point they even say they are decended from the mecha of David's time. Now while when they're introduced they look similar to ET-ish aliens, when they restart David and Teddy and then download his memories, it should be obvious that they are robots, or else they should require more time to know what to do...
Robots that look like walking ice sculptures, but robots none the less...
I have to post a "me too" to this, but really - the movie past that point is just... too weird.
I think that Spielberg wanted to take some of the edge off the movie, and so he tacked on a poorly written ending that tries to solve David's desires as listed in the review above.
It doesn't work though!
Although I would recommend sitting through the entire movie anyway just to look at the cool visuals after his plunge into the ocean, ignore everything thereafter and just be amazed by the pretty visual effects.
(Mini-spoiler below, it shouldn't really effect anything, but be warned...)
It really does come off as a masterpiece until the narrator mentioned in the parent moves the story an additional 2000 years into the future. At that point any vision about the movie is lost and it just stops making sense. Although it eventually brings everything into a almost-ok wrapped up ending, without anything really being satisfied.
The movie could have ended when David jumps into the ocean - or it could have ended again when the narrator pipes up again after his plunge. But it doesn't, and it loses its vision and direction.
...because that way when I write a mail filter to remove all harmful CSS e-mail virus attachments, I can call it... "DeCSS"!
>:)
(And I think it's stupid to try and reuse the CSS for something else, too. Especially when it'll probably wind up with both being used in similar applications - a CSScript that writes out a CSSheet for a web-based app...)
[W]hat Uematsu did was rearrange the letters in "Succession of Witches" and "Love" to make something that sounded truly Latin. Try it for yourself. All of the same letters are in there!
Fithos Lusec Wecos Vinosec
Succession of Witches Love
I think it's cool that he did that because that also portrays the prevalent theme of Final Fantasy VIII.
More information (like the words) can be found elsewhere.
You are correct, MandrakeUpdate is just a front end to urpmi. Found this out the hard way when I broke urpmi by installing Perl 5.6.1 - you see, urpmi is written in (mostly) Perl and none of it's libraries were moved to the new @INC.
So, if you're going to upgrade to Perl 5.6.1, make sure you copy the Locale::GetText library, as well as the rpmtools library and the urpmisomething library (can't remember, at work, using Win2K) from your Perl 5.6.0 $EPREFIX/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0/.
I probably should mention that if urpmi won't work, then MandrakeUpdate won't work at all, but it also won't display any errors which is most annoying.
Before someone flames this guy about openning OS/2 and how it's never going to happen, I'd like to point out that it's still a good question to ask. Now while it may still be supported via some very large contracts to some large companies, and there may be licensing issues preventing them from releasing any of it open, I'd still like to see an official answer to the question "Why not open OS/2?"
I remember using OS/2 back on an old 386 and loving it - man I miss OS/2. It was years ahead of Windows at the time, yet it lost to MS anyway. However, OS/2 most certainly isn't dead yet - it's just that I'm unwilling to shell out the ~$300 for it - it's not worth that much to me, and I really can't imagine it ever picking up any market share against Windows at that price - it seems that the price leaves it in it's legacy-only place - as well as helping to cement the reality that it will probably never be openned.
And what will be the Microserf's report to his boss about Slashdot's reaction? "Boss, we floated the shared-source balloon, and nobody seems to care -- they're awful concerned about a woman named Anne someone who doesn't even seem to exist." "Excellent. Deploy the death ray, oops I mean the we-share-our-source meme."
Um, like they'd give a damn about what people on Slashdot said. Wow, someone didn't get enough sleep after the weekend. (Of course, I didn't either, but that had nothing to do with Slashdot. Seeing as it wasn't up.) Don't forget - if anything, Microsoft is worried about what their partners, their consumers, and their third-party developers think about the Shared-Source idea.
Windows developers have been able to get Windows source for some time now - it ain't cheap, but if you need it - you can get it. (Of course, these are the places that already spend upwards of $2500 per developers annually - the charge for getting access to the Windows source is small change to them.)
The hobbiest developer has never really mattered to Microsoft - one of the reasons they've ignored Linux and BSD for so long. They don't care.
My reaction to shared source? Big deal. I don't really care - as a student, who works on mostly small projects, I could really care less that Microsoft is planning on expanding an already existing program and rebranding it as "Shared Source." However, things like a Slashdot story decrying someone and then disappearing pique my curiosity - what's up with the editors? What are they hiding?
So yeah, maybe some people are worried about Shared Source or care for whatever reason. I don't - it's MS trying to find a way to get the benifits of the "bazaar" while remaining in the "cathedral" to use that overly used metaphor. So?
My personal bet is that Taco was misinformed and there never was an "Anne Tomlinson." Don't forget, head-honcho Taco lives in Holland, Michigan, which is a distance from Waltham, Massachusetts. Anything he heard about it would have been second-hand - Taco isn't a primary source. (Unless he randomly was in the area for some reason - according to Yahoo! Maps! it's! a! sixteen! hour! drive! from Holland to Waltham. (Note: remove an spaces in the URL; there were none in the preview, but it's happened in the past - is this fixed in Slash 2.0?))
I think we do have a right to know if there really was a women from Cisco who quit over her dealings with the VA Linux crew - but probably nothing more than that. If Anne Tomlinson really exists, she's more than welcome to try and post her story as a comment - and the crew of Slashdot readers will probably not let it fall into the cracks...
Although the reality is that we cannot ever be sure that anyone who posts as "Anne Tomlinson" really is who the post claims she is... I would like a Slashdot editor to try and clear up this matter, though. Was there a women who quit? Or was Taco borrowing some of the $3 crack he sends to moderators?
Actually, I think that this probably is a result of consumer demand.
DVDs do indeed offer signifigant benifits over VHS - you never need to rewind a DVD, they are much sturdier, and last longer. People are moving to DVDs - if I'm going to buy a movie, it better be on DVD, since I don't have a VCR!
DVDs themselves often come with "extras" that VHS doesn't - like behind the scenes stuff, extra audio tracks, "Dolby Surround," and other things that make them more valuable to customers than a VHS tape. Simply put, I'll bet you that DVDs are winning on actual market merit, rather than being forced down consumers throats.
Especially since the average American consumer doesn't give a rat's tail about the rest of the world, and could care less about region coding, especially because most of the movies that they'd want are released in Region 1. So DVDs are probably going to take over VHS, because DVDs are a product who's time has come. They have the right features at the right price and are convenient to the consumer - a winning product in the marketplace.
Site.. can't.. take much more. I should have known better than to try to host this site off of the DSL line:). Time to look for a new host. Is there anyone out there who has extra server space/bandwidth with PHP support? If not I may have to go to something like Freeservers (yuck!).
Because that would harm CmdrTacos continuing attempts at destroying logical thinking.
If you check out the FAQ, you'll see that the Slashcrew has addressed this issue and has officially answered with were way to lazy.
Actually, he gives some BS answers about taking away ad revenue and needing to get permission... which boils down to Id actually have to do some work, like follow the link, if I were going to cache it.
I really have to wonder how many sites would rather allow Slashdot to cache the page instead of just linking to it - when the alternatives are no one views your site because it's been Slashdotted into oblivion or allow someone to mirror it so that people can view your work I have a feeling most people would be willing to allow Slashdot to mirror the content.
But that requires the editors actually following links and sending emails to the webmasters...
By the way, Linux is a strange anomoly. It was created because at the time what would become (Free|Open|Net)BSD (386BSD I believe is what it was called) was under assault from AT&T - they were sueing the kernel hackers because they believed that since the people working on the 386BSD had seen the Bell Labs UNIX source, they were "tainted" with IP and could not legally create a clone.
A lot of developers misunderstood the trial and instead moved to this fledgling UNIX clone called "Linux." If AT&T hadn't sued the BSD developers, BSD would have reigned supreme. It was only by a fluke, AT&T sueing, that Linux ever survived at all. (AT&T lost, but they did succeed in damaging the BSDs start.)
Anyway, why not upgrade to Win2K? I've upgraded from Mandrake 8.0 to Win2K - now I can run the software I need to *gasp* do my job. I still have the linux drive, but unless the quality of desktop software under Linux improves dramatically in the next few years I'm going to stay with Win2K - does everything I need it to do, and is relatively stable. (StarCraft manages to kill it on exit after playing a multiplayer game, I think that's because of some weird interaction between the IPX drivers and the network adapter drivers.)
That's not to say that I don't still have a spare box in the corner running Linux, but it's being used for an MP3 server via Samba. Of course, it could also be running any of the BSDs and it would work just as well. Only reason it's running Linux is because I had the CD. Linux works nicely as a server. I wouldn't want to use it as my desktop though.
Subjectively Quake III on my Windows machine kept on randomly unbinding the mouse wheel (plus for a while I had a cool bug where my mouse drivers would try and scroll ANY application if I clicked the middle mouse button - ditched the drivers, since I don't use the middle-mouse-scroll (click middle and drag to scroll - very annoying when all of a sudden your mouse drivers try and display a "scroll" box over Quake)).
But with UT it leaks massive memory, on the most current version. I can go 1280x1024x32bit under Windows fine, but I can't go much higher than 1024x786x16bit under Linux with UT. I've gotten Quake to run acceptably (30fps) at 1600x1200 under Linux and Windows, though.
I really think that UT Linux has some serious issues that need to be worked out, I don't even bother with it in Linux anymore.
WHAT?!? Quake is pretty sweet under Linux, assuming you go on a killing spree beforehand and knock out most of the other procs (or, if you're running a distro based on the SysV system, a service xxx stoping spree). Otherwise you'll find that randomly one process will grab too much CPU and slow you down a bit - but if you're gaming, you probably shouldn't have an HTTP server running at the same time.
But UT sucks goat balls - I finally gave up trying it from my normal account and created a special UT account with a.xinitrc file containing two characters: ut. Even running UT as the ONLY X program (after all, fullscreen apps don't need window managers or desktops or anything, really) with as few services as I could manage (I should really set up telinit 4 to run in "super-reduced network mode" or something), I still got a maximum run time of around 45 minutes before the program ran out of memory and started a mad swapping-spree. I've managed to do this on one map! (I was having fun on Facing Worlds sniping bots - it's the dumb things that are fun...) After 45 minutes, UT craps out my 256MB and causes me to spiral into a mad-swapping spree. Really annoying. Plus I can't get it to use 32-bit color under Linux (really an XFree config issue though).
And I'm using a GeForce (2 GTS) as well, although, on an AMD board (no ABIT though, all ASUS, so none of the incompatibility issues - except for a weird problem with the 3.x Win2K drivers, which meant I had to grab the 5.x Win2K drivers in 640x480x4(bit) mode.)
Which might explain why the W3C has dropped HTML as well... the current recommendation for webpages is now XHTML, which is based on XML as well and follows the same strict rules about tags (as XHTML is simply an application of XML, using the existing HTML tags in an XML document). The other fun side effect is that it is now legal to embed third party tags inside an XHTML document, via using the namespace XML extension.
The only drawback is that most (all?) browsers don't support XHTML really well yet - the best you can do is write XHTML that also happens to be simimlar to what browsers expect for HTML. (i.e., most browsers will choke on <BR/> so instead you have to use <BR/> since you must close the BR tag in XML - <BR></BR> might work, but I think NS interprets </BR> as a standard break.)
Ummm... I can't speak for you, but where I work, a lot of the development effort is with Java. Many technologies are becoming more Java-oriented.
However, I would agree that Java should not be the end-all language. However, the CS program at the college I go to starts with Java in the introductory courses and moves on to C/C++ (with optional assembly) for the more complicated courses. I think that this probably combines the best of both worlds - CS majors start on Java which covers up a lot of the complicated issues so that they can learn the basics of programming (conditional statements, object orientation, recursion, and the like) without having to worry about the annoying stuff (low-level I/O, memory management).
Once a CS major has been through the introductory courses that I skipped:) he then moves on to the C/C++ courses that I also skipped:). From here the CS course then gets into specific disciplines - procedure based programming, object orientation, Scheme, and Prolog are all taught at about the same time to give the CS majors a broader knowledge of programming. The final courses are on specifics, like operating systems, graphics, networking, and other stuff that can get complicated.
Basically, I don't think you should completely discount Java - a project I'm working on right now is written in Java. Oracle's most recent database tools are all in Java (that'd be the configuration utilities, not the actual DB itself - client side stuff, no server stuff). I'm doing some Java servlet/JSP/XSP stuff right now. Java has a very strong presence in the buisness world and you shouldn't discount its usefulness like that.
They developed the IBM PC, which was expressly designed to be cloned, hacked, modified
Bullshit! It was not meant to be cloned, hacked, or modified! Remember how Compaq got their start? By making a clean-room copy of the IBM BIOS. In the early days of the PC, IBM was just as tight about their hardware as Apple was. Eventually, though, other companies started copying them and the PC was born. That "commodity hardware" didn't really start until the mid to late 80s, after Compaq had successfully created a PC clone. (I think - my dates may be wrong.)
Eventually IBM had to let go of the PC, but it wasn't until after they were stung with anti-trust lawsuits.
Slashdot Mirror
According to the article, people tried to opt-out of the e-mail list, and (surprise surprise) weren't, and then started e-mailing Motorola to complain.
Motorla is also apparently trying to sue the Florida-based spammers via "unsolicited e-mail statutes" as well as trademark infringement.
So yeah, the article and headline are completely misleading, although in the strictest sense "Pager Spam" is accurate, as it was spam regarding pagers...
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I need the annotation features in Word, which StarOffice seemed to be lacking - yeah, maybe I could view it, but I'd definately need to produce Word documents as well (including modification of other people's documents) making Office a basic requirement...
You don't have to use anything but Windows95 for your Internet Explorer testing.
Find a copy - I dare you :)
Not that it really matters, unless IE6 works with Win95, I'm pretty sure I'll have to use some IE6 specific stuff (read: P3P) in future development...
I would consider VMWare and loading Windows2k under it.
You do realize that involves purchasing Windows 2000 anyway? (Well, actually, I get it as part of a campus license agreement, but even at home I have need for Win2K; especially in the way I need it for development work with my job - telecommuting's fun.)
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It sure seems to support dual booting, though.
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Except I need to ensure that my JavaScript and HTML works under Microsoft Internet Explorer...
And I need to view this Microsoft PowerPoint presentation...
And I need to open the design documents that are written in Microsoft Word.
Face it - I don't really have a choice. Once XP gets released, I'll probably give it a partition on my hard drive. Sure, I like Mandrake (enough to have actually paid for my copy of the distro), but that still doesn't really matter, considering that in order to interact with others in college I must use Microsoft products.
Especially when the previously mentioned "design documents" explain the required design of the project that counts for half of your grade...
I suppose I could go on the "move to open software" cursade, but even the most Linux-friendly professor I can think of taught his class about how the Linux kernel works using PowerPoint. He offered his notes for download off his webpage... which means I'd need PowerPoint to view them. (Actually, since other people in that class read Slashdot, I'll admit that he was cool enough to have copied the slides into PDF format, but still... the point stands that if he hadn't done that, I'd need to grab a Windows machine to view the class notes.)
Anyway, it's summer time, and I'm working for a company... on Windows. If I want to work at home, I'll need a Windows PC. If I want to send documents to other people here, I'll need Office.
Which means that as much as I'd love to get rid of any and all MS software, I can't - I'm stuck with it. Which is why the Ninth District court upheld the findings of fact, agreeing that Microsoft does indeed have a monopoly that practically people cannot escape from.
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(that being said, I would hope such a feature is never added)
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The problem is that you need to think about censoring spam and censoring newsgroups/websites in different ways - one is a "push" model, the other is a "pull" model.
My main problem with spam is that I didn't ask for it - but I have to read through it anyway. (Well, not exactly - I can "just hit delete," but when I'm Next Messaging through my mailbox via pine via an ssh session, I wind up downloading the message anyway. Not to mention it takes up my resources (my disk quota on the mail server), as well as bandwidth that could have been better used.)
Pull is different - when I pull down Slashdot, I'm asking for everything I get. When I choose to read everything at -1, I'm choosing to read trolls, spam, flames, and trolls. (Like it's that much different from reading at +1 - although that usually filters out the spam.)
Despite the urban legends about children winding up on porn sites, usually you know full well what you're going into when you descide to read a webpage. Pulling down the content was your choice. However, being presented with ads for "HOT TEENAGE SLUTS" when checking your e-mail was not your choice - someone else pushed it at you.
Not to mention that the cost of spamming is mostly on the receiver's end, while a webpage or other pull based content's cost is on the creator's end. Spam wastes my resources, it wastes my ISP's resources, as well as wasting anyone who was trying to use bandwidth that the spam took up while in transit - all for something that the I did not request.
Pulling a webpage down, while it "wastes" bandwidth as well, is an action that I chose - so anything that comes my way is what I requested, whether I wanted it or not.
And that is why I find it perfectly justifiable to censor my mailbox, while at the same time wishing to keep people from censoring the Internet at large.
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You should also remember that the "aliens" were able to download David's memories (and then download them from each other) as well as restart the frozen robots (remember when the "alien" reaches its hand over David and David jumps to life (and then breaks the Blue Fairy), and again to resurrect Teddy)?
Not only that, but these "aliens" where excavating Earth to discover their origin and learn about their creators, if I recall some of the "alien's" dialog correctly.
Personally, I thought it was fairly clear after they rebuilt David's home that they were decended from the mecha of David's time.
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How can people possibly mistake those things for aliens? I'm pretty sure that at one point they even say they are decended from the mecha of David's time. Now while when they're introduced they look similar to ET-ish aliens, when they restart David and Teddy and then download his memories, it should be obvious that they are robots, or else they should require more time to know what to do...
Robots that look like walking ice sculptures, but robots none the less...
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I think that Spielberg wanted to take some of the edge off the movie, and so he tacked on a poorly written ending that tries to solve David's desires as listed in the review above.
It doesn't work though!
Although I would recommend sitting through the entire movie anyway just to look at the cool visuals after his plunge into the ocean, ignore everything thereafter and just be amazed by the pretty visual effects.
(Mini-spoiler below, it shouldn't really effect anything, but be warned...)
It really does come off as a masterpiece until the narrator mentioned in the parent moves the story an additional 2000 years into the future. At that point any vision about the movie is lost and it just stops making sense. Although it eventually brings everything into a almost-ok wrapped up ending, without anything really being satisfied.
The movie could have ended when David jumps into the ocean - or it could have ended again when the narrator pipes up again after his plunge. But it doesn't, and it loses its vision and direction.
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>:)
(And I think it's stupid to try and reuse the CSS for something else, too. Especially when it'll probably wind up with both being used in similar applications - a CSScript that writes out a CSSheet for a web-based app...)
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More information (like the words) can be found elsewhere.
My mod points, please :)
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So, if you're going to upgrade to Perl 5.6.1, make sure you copy the Locale::GetText library, as well as the rpmtools library and the urpmisomething library (can't remember, at work, using Win2K) from your Perl 5.6.0 $EPREFIX/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0/.
I probably should mention that if urpmi won't work, then MandrakeUpdate won't work at all, but it also won't display any errors which is most annoying.
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I remember using OS/2 back on an old 386 and loving it - man I miss OS/2. It was years ahead of Windows at the time, yet it lost to MS anyway. However, OS/2 most certainly isn't dead yet - it's just that I'm unwilling to shell out the ~$300 for it - it's not worth that much to me, and I really can't imagine it ever picking up any market share against Windows at that price - it seems that the price leaves it in it's legacy-only place - as well as helping to cement the reality that it will probably never be openned.
Oh well.
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Um, like they'd give a damn about what people on Slashdot said. Wow, someone didn't get enough sleep after the weekend. (Of course, I didn't either, but that had nothing to do with Slashdot. Seeing as it wasn't up.) Don't forget - if anything, Microsoft is worried about what their partners, their consumers, and their third-party developers think about the Shared-Source idea.
Windows developers have been able to get Windows source for some time now - it ain't cheap, but if you need it - you can get it. (Of course, these are the places that already spend upwards of $2500 per developers annually - the charge for getting access to the Windows source is small change to them.)
The hobbiest developer has never really mattered to Microsoft - one of the reasons they've ignored Linux and BSD for so long. They don't care.
My reaction to shared source? Big deal. I don't really care - as a student, who works on mostly small projects, I could really care less that Microsoft is planning on expanding an already existing program and rebranding it as "Shared Source." However, things like a Slashdot story decrying someone and then disappearing pique my curiosity - what's up with the editors? What are they hiding?
So yeah, maybe some people are worried about Shared Source or care for whatever reason. I don't - it's MS trying to find a way to get the benifits of the "bazaar" while remaining in the "cathedral" to use that overly used metaphor. So?
--
I think we do have a right to know if there really was a women from Cisco who quit over her dealings with the VA Linux crew - but probably nothing more than that. If Anne Tomlinson really exists, she's more than welcome to try and post her story as a comment - and the crew of Slashdot readers will probably not let it fall into the cracks...
Although the reality is that we cannot ever be sure that anyone who posts as "Anne Tomlinson" really is who the post claims she is... I would like a Slashdot editor to try and clear up this matter, though. Was there a women who quit? Or was Taco borrowing some of the $3 crack he sends to moderators?
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DVDs do indeed offer signifigant benifits over VHS - you never need to rewind a DVD, they are much sturdier, and last longer. People are moving to DVDs - if I'm going to buy a movie, it better be on DVD, since I don't have a VCR!
DVDs themselves often come with "extras" that VHS doesn't - like behind the scenes stuff, extra audio tracks, "Dolby Surround," and other things that make them more valuable to customers than a VHS tape. Simply put, I'll bet you that DVDs are winning on actual market merit, rather than being forced down consumers throats.
Especially since the average American consumer doesn't give a rat's tail about the rest of the world, and could care less about region coding, especially because most of the movies that they'd want are released in Region 1. So DVDs are probably going to take over VHS, because DVDs are a product who's time has come. They have the right features at the right price and are convenient to the consumer - a winning product in the marketplace.
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I can't wait to see his face after today...
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If you check out the FAQ, you'll see that the Slashcrew has addressed this issue and has officially answered with were way to lazy.
Actually, he gives some BS answers about taking away ad revenue and needing to get permission... which boils down to Id actually have to do some work, like follow the link, if I were going to cache it.
I really have to wonder how many sites would rather allow Slashdot to cache the page instead of just linking to it - when the alternatives are no one views your site because it's been Slashdotted into oblivion or allow someone to mirror it so that people can view your work I have a feeling most people would be willing to allow Slashdot to mirror the content.
But that requires the editors actually following links and sending emails to the webmasters...
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By the way, Linux is a strange anomoly. It was created because at the time what would become (Free|Open|Net)BSD (386BSD I believe is what it was called) was under assault from AT&T - they were sueing the kernel hackers because they believed that since the people working on the 386BSD had seen the Bell Labs UNIX source, they were "tainted" with IP and could not legally create a clone.
A lot of developers misunderstood the trial and instead moved to this fledgling UNIX clone called "Linux." If AT&T hadn't sued the BSD developers, BSD would have reigned supreme. It was only by a fluke, AT&T sueing, that Linux ever survived at all. (AT&T lost, but they did succeed in damaging the BSDs start.)
Anyway, why not upgrade to Win2K? I've upgraded from Mandrake 8.0 to Win2K - now I can run the software I need to *gasp* do my job. I still have the linux drive, but unless the quality of desktop software under Linux improves dramatically in the next few years I'm going to stay with Win2K - does everything I need it to do, and is relatively stable. (StarCraft manages to kill it on exit after playing a multiplayer game, I think that's because of some weird interaction between the IPX drivers and the network adapter drivers.)
That's not to say that I don't still have a spare box in the corner running Linux, but it's being used for an MP3 server via Samba. Of course, it could also be running any of the BSDs and it would work just as well. Only reason it's running Linux is because I had the CD. Linux works nicely as a server. I wouldn't want to use it as my desktop though.
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But with UT it leaks massive memory, on the most current version. I can go 1280x1024x32bit under Windows fine, but I can't go much higher than 1024x786x16bit under Linux with UT. I've gotten Quake to run acceptably (30fps) at 1600x1200 under Linux and Windows, though.
I really think that UT Linux has some serious issues that need to be worked out, I don't even bother with it in Linux anymore.
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But UT sucks goat balls - I finally gave up trying it from my normal account and created a special UT account with a .xinitrc file containing two characters: ut. Even running UT as the ONLY X program (after all, fullscreen apps don't need window managers or desktops or anything, really) with as few services as I could manage (I should really set up telinit 4 to run in "super-reduced network mode" or something), I still got a maximum run time of around 45 minutes before the program ran out of memory and started a mad swapping-spree. I've managed to do this on one map! (I was having fun on Facing Worlds sniping bots - it's the dumb things that are fun...) After 45 minutes, UT craps out my 256MB and causes me to spiral into a mad-swapping spree. Really annoying. Plus I can't get it to use 32-bit color under Linux (really an XFree config issue though).
And I'm using a GeForce (2 GTS) as well, although, on an AMD board (no ABIT though, all ASUS, so none of the incompatibility issues - except for a weird problem with the 3.x Win2K drivers, which meant I had to grab the 5.x Win2K drivers in 640x480x4(bit) mode.)
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The only drawback is that most (all?) browsers don't support XHTML really well yet - the best you can do is write XHTML that also happens to be simimlar to what browsers expect for HTML. (i.e., most browsers will choke on <BR/> so instead you have to use <BR /> since you must close the BR tag in XML - <BR></BR> might work, but I think NS interprets </BR> as a standard break.)
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However, I would agree that Java should not be the end-all language. However, the CS program at the college I go to starts with Java in the introductory courses and moves on to C/C++ (with optional assembly) for the more complicated courses. I think that this probably combines the best of both worlds - CS majors start on Java which covers up a lot of the complicated issues so that they can learn the basics of programming (conditional statements, object orientation, recursion, and the like) without having to worry about the annoying stuff (low-level I/O, memory management).
Once a CS major has been through the introductory courses that I skipped :) he then moves on to the C/C++ courses that I also skipped :). From here the CS course then gets into specific disciplines - procedure based programming, object orientation, Scheme, and Prolog are all taught at about the same time to give the CS majors a broader knowledge of programming. The final courses are on specifics, like operating systems, graphics, networking, and other stuff that can get complicated.
Basically, I don't think you should completely discount Java - a project I'm working on right now is written in Java. Oracle's most recent database tools are all in Java (that'd be the configuration utilities, not the actual DB itself - client side stuff, no server stuff). I'm doing some Java servlet/JSP/XSP stuff right now. Java has a very strong presence in the buisness world and you shouldn't discount its usefulness like that.
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They developed the IBM PC, which was expressly designed to be cloned, hacked, modified
Bullshit! It was not meant to be cloned, hacked, or modified! Remember how Compaq got their start? By making a clean-room copy of the IBM BIOS. In the early days of the PC, IBM was just as tight about their hardware as Apple was. Eventually, though, other companies started copying them and the PC was born. That "commodity hardware" didn't really start until the mid to late 80s, after Compaq had successfully created a PC clone. (I think - my dates may be wrong.)
Eventually IBM had to let go of the PC, but it wasn't until after they were stung with anti-trust lawsuits.
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