What you are calling "multi-user" is what used to be called a Time Sharing System.
In fact, the earliest papers on Unix refer to it as a Time Sharing System.
Let's examine where the hardware has come:
I have over ten computers at home on my network, running a varety of OSes, including NetBSD, FreeBSD, Linux, various Windows.
I am almost always the sole user of all the machines. Do I need each machine to support multiple users?
No.
The 'many users/one machine' concept is obsolete.
It's one of the good things about BeOS that it gets a lot of the Unix goodness but shucks off the multi-user/group kludgework.
Re:"Imminent death of the net predicted!"
on
The End of Unix?
·
· Score: 2
Some people said USENET would die.
Yep. And we're all here making our comments. Not on USENET, where there are no moderators.
I download and archive select Usenet groups, and... umm... a lot of them are a total loss. The Linux groups have some of the highest traffic, but also the largest volume of clueless noise.
The real action has shifted to private forums like/. and listservers.
The bulk of the Usenet traffic these days is purely Binary attachments. The most popular NNTP clients on Windows machines strip off and throw away all 'text' content, keeping only the attachments. NewsBin, Pluckitt, etc.
Wow! You should post the source code to whatever version of the 'cat' command you're using in that script. I tried using what you typed on the eight feet of books my two editions of Encyclopaedia Britannica fill, and it didn't do a damm thing.
Perhaps the whole school districts should shut down and restart, to shuck off a few counterproductive Teacher's Unions. Disband the unions and make teaching into a profession again. Redistribute some of the money saved from not having to pay Union extortion as merit-based pay raises to the teachers.
So you're saying that there only needs to be one proponent from each "discipline of knowledge?" I guess if we're going to look at it that way, they shouldn't need ANY professors. Just throw a few PDFs of textbooks on the site and let it run itself. Of course, then it would have to compete with vending machines, i.e. all those retired cigarette machines could be retrofitted to dispense 'knowlege' (do you want the hard pack or the soft pack epistemology course?)
I for one think that in most subject areas there needs to be more than one faculty member representing the body of knowledge. I can think of a few chilling examples of professors (i.e. in the area of Psychology) who I wouldn't want representing the entire discipline they teach from within.
I wasn't meaning to attack the FSF for using the distribution of printed manuals as a fundraising activity. In fact, one of the ways I try to "pay" people who provide Free Software is by purchasing the books by the software authors. That means I have the Donald Knuth TeX books, Lamport's LaTeX book, the O'Reilly Perl books, etc.
If your company uses Free Software products, it's a proper gesture on your part to requisition books like these, because it puts bread on the table of the developers.
I guess "geeks" don't know their SI abbreviations, either that or this machine has a knife switch on the side that you toggle back and forth to run the CPU clock.
Correction: "They" want to eliminate anonymnity online. That's different than privacy.
Anonymnity is the freedom to wear a ski mask (even if you have obvious bulky items under your trench coat) when withdrawing money from your savings account.
Privacy is not having to go through a strip-search every time you enter the bank lobby.
Well, I know that the GNU Emacs Manual is available online, in (opaque!) Postscript format. I can't recall where I found it, but I know I printed it out a few years ago.
The distinction is blurred by the fact that many software tools can open and readily manipulate HTML documents, no matter how obfuscated they may be.
I can, for example, save a webpage using Netscape, as a *.HTML file, then open it with Microsoft Word 2000 and change it. Then, of course, I can open it again with Netscape to read it. It could also be opened with Star Office, or GNU Emacs for futher editing.
If it has to have been edited by a "Human" things become blurry fairly fast.
Is the intent perhaps to view the HTML format as purely a derivative format, and to make a distinction between "source" documents (i.e. SGML source, or plaintext before markup) and "binary" documents (rendered HTML, Postscript, or PDF)?
This seems to mesh well with RMS's criticism of companies like O'Reilly & Associates.
Basically, Stallman has criticized the commercial publishers who write and sell manuals for GNU software, because they "scratch the itch" for people willing to pay the bux for their books, but in effect remove the incentive to write good free documentation and manuals for the Free Software.
On the other hand, the FSF tries to generate income by selling books like Stallman's GNU Emacs manual, which is rather pricey.
Interesting stuff for a discussion, glad to see it on/.
Actually, I usually just telnet into the OS/2 boxes here at work to edit CVS labelling scripts. I use the vi editor to do so, as I can't bring up the OS/2 version of Emacs over the network. Every once in awhile I actually have to sit down and use the OS/2 box to move files around, but even then I usually use the OS/2 version of Midnight Commander.
You're really just here to spew out flamebait, though, aren't you? Sorry if I'm not getting angry enough.
It's shortsighted to equate a "homeless man on the streets of NYC" to a third world community.
A homeless man in NYC became homeless due to some personal deficiency. He's mentally ill, or can't (or won't) work for some reason. He's alone, not very connected to a community, etc.
A third world community, on the other hand, is generally robust and healthy, although poor. There will be smart people in the community; they won't all be social rejects. The community has a culture and a heritage.
It's just plain inaccurate to think that the poor of the USA are the same as the poor of a third world nation. I suspect that smart, able-bodied members of 'third world' communites would find the comparison offensive.
I thought I had heard rumors of "difficulties" that resulted in images of "Bob"s head being removed from the Slackware distro. It was mighty pink of me to make assumptions like that.
Since this is one of those rare occasions when Slackware gets mention on the Slashdot site, I think it would be a good time to talk about the origins of the name, and the spirit, of Slackware.
Slackware's name comes from JR "Bob" Dobbs and the Church of the Subgenius. I know that there haven't always been friendly relations between the Subgenius folks and the Slack distro, but it's still an important historical note to recognize.
The Subgenius must have Slack! etc. etc.
I just thought it worth mentioning, because Slackware has cool countercultural roots.
Keep up the good work Pat V. And thanks, from a fellow Minnesotan.
My experience has been that all sorts of venues distribute Slackware. I first started using it off the InfoMagic Linux Developer's Resource set ages ago. I downloaded 3.6, 4.0, and 7.0 iso's from somewhere. So "father FTP" distributes Slack, I guess, if you want to point fingers. CheapBytes is a good place to get Slack if you're bandwidth challanged.
We need to somehow get away from the assumption that's taken prevalence lately that Linux distros have to come in shrinkwrapped boxes with colored bitmaps on them.
And to people who say Slack is a server-only distribution: wrong! Some of us like a solid base distribution that we can install exactly what we want, and nothing else, onto.
Speaking of the 'desktop, I am sad to report that FVWM1 is more difficult to install on Slack, now that it's not included in/contrib. Yes, I prefer FVWM1 for my Window Manager. It's also what I use on my FreeBSD boxen (built, of course from the PORTS collection- no binary packages are allowed on my FreeBSD systems.
Umm, pardon me. I'm not that keen on Perl myself, but I do know that it runs on many more platforms than Linux. We've got it on OS/2 boxes and Solaris here at work, as well as Win32. I even noticed it on a hoary old machine that runs Windows 3.1 the other day (said hoary old machine really just hosts a TI DSP emulator).
I'd have to think hard to name a modern OS that Perl doesn't run on.
I suspect I won't be the only one responding to correct your ignorance.
I think I will start with this Linux CD. If I get going at it right away I can obliterate all mention of copyright, the GPL, and any of the creators of the software.
Then I'll package it all up and distribute it widely. Anybody want a free copy of this OS? I am calling it Freenix (but you are free to call it anything you like!), and no, you don't have to worry about copyrights. None of the code belongs to anybody. It's been liberated.
Oh, and if you, say, work for a company called Microsoft, don't worry! I don't know where any of this code came from, and either do you. Do whatever you want with it. If you want, you can call it a Microsoft product. That's what freedom is all about.
Go one better. Stop using the things. In the words of your grandfather, make your own entertainment - and license it the way you want.
Yes. This is the attitude to take. The problem is, 90-98% of the people who own recording equipment haven't ever attached a Microphone or a Camera to the machines. They just want to duplicate what somebody else already did.
We can banter for hours here about wether just duplicating someone else's work is theft or not. I don't think anybody will argue that it is a creative act.
Slashdot Mirror
What you are calling "multi-user" is what used to be called a Time Sharing System.
In fact, the earliest papers on Unix refer to it as a Time Sharing System.
Let's examine where the hardware has come:
I have over ten computers at home on my network, running a varety of OSes, including NetBSD, FreeBSD, Linux, various Windows.
I am almost always the sole user of all the machines. Do I need each machine to support multiple users?
No.
The 'many users/one machine' concept is obsolete.
It's one of the good things about BeOS that it gets a lot of the Unix goodness but shucks off the multi-user/group kludgework.
Some people said USENET would die.
/. and listservers.
Yep. And we're all here making our comments. Not on USENET, where there are no moderators.
I download and archive select Usenet groups, and... umm... a lot of them are a total loss. The Linux groups have some of the highest traffic, but also the largest volume of clueless noise.
The real action has shifted to private forums like
The bulk of the Usenet traffic these days is purely Binary attachments. The most popular NNTP clients on Windows machines strip off and throw away all 'text' content, keeping only the attachments. NewsBin, Pluckitt, etc.
Wow! You should post the source code to whatever version of the 'cat' command you're using in that script. I tried using what you typed on the eight feet of books my two editions of Encyclopaedia Britannica fill, and it didn't do a damm thing.
Perhaps the whole school districts should shut down and restart, to shuck off a few counterproductive Teacher's Unions. Disband the unions and make teaching into a profession again. Redistribute some of the money saved from not having to pay Union extortion as merit-based pay raises to the teachers.
So you're saying that there only needs to be one proponent from each "discipline of knowledge?" I guess if we're going to look at it that way, they shouldn't need ANY professors. Just throw a few PDFs of textbooks on the site and let it run itself. Of course, then it would have to compete with vending machines, i.e. all those retired cigarette machines could be retrofitted to dispense 'knowlege' (do you want the hard pack or the soft pack epistemology course?)
I for one think that in most subject areas there needs to be more than one faculty member representing the body of knowledge. I can think of a few chilling examples of professors (i.e. in the area of Psychology) who I wouldn't want representing the entire discipline they teach from within.
Run FreeBSD on the Alpha.
Run NetBSD on the Sparc.
You'll be happy you switched.
Yes, I have a copy of the FSF's GNU Emacs manual.
Sixth Edition, Version 18, March 1987.
I wasn't meaning to attack the FSF for using the distribution of printed manuals as a fundraising activity. In fact, one of the ways I try to "pay" people who provide Free Software is by purchasing the books by the software authors. That means I have the Donald Knuth TeX books, Lamport's LaTeX book, the O'Reilly Perl books, etc.
If your company uses Free Software products, it's a proper gesture on your part to requisition books like these, because it puts bread on the table of the developers.
(180 mHz processor,
.180 Hertz!
A 180 millihertz processor?
That's
I guess "geeks" don't know their SI abbreviations, either that or this machine has a knife switch on the side that you toggle back and forth to run the CPU clock.
some people can't even hit the toilet while peeing and that's right in front of them...
Sure, that's easy for you to say. Maybe you've uncovered the reason behind those famous $750 toilet seats....
(it had to be said, honest, it did...)
Correction: "They" want to eliminate anonymnity online. That's different than privacy.
Anonymnity is the freedom to wear a ski mask (even if you have obvious bulky items under your trench coat) when withdrawing money from your savings account.
Privacy is not having to go through a strip-search every time you enter the bank lobby.
They are very different things.
You know, you're right. It's not government's job. It's Pinkerton's job to enforce network security.
It's government's job to see to it that the Pinkerton employees have ergonomic rubber hoses and clubs, to prevent RSI.
Well, I know that the GNU Emacs Manual is available online, in (opaque!) Postscript format. I can't recall where I found it, but I know I printed it out a few years ago.
The distinction is blurred by the fact that many software tools can open and readily manipulate HTML documents, no matter how obfuscated they may be.
I can, for example, save a webpage using Netscape, as a *.HTML file, then open it with Microsoft Word 2000 and change it. Then, of course, I can open it again with Netscape to read it. It could also be opened with Star Office, or GNU Emacs for futher editing.
If it has to have been edited by a "Human" things become blurry fairly fast.
Is the intent perhaps to view the HTML format as purely a derivative format, and to make a distinction between "source" documents (i.e. SGML source, or plaintext before markup) and "binary" documents (rendered HTML, Postscript, or PDF)?
This seems to mesh well with RMS's criticism of companies like O'Reilly & Associates.
/.
Basically, Stallman has criticized the commercial publishers who write and sell manuals for GNU software, because they "scratch the itch" for people willing to pay the bux for their books, but in effect remove the incentive to write good free documentation and manuals for the Free Software.
On the other hand, the FSF tries to generate income by selling books like Stallman's GNU Emacs manual, which is rather pricey.
Interesting stuff for a discussion, glad to see it on
Actually, ORA's new book on Samba is freely downloadable from their website site.
But your point in being in this discussion is just to stir things up, isn't it?
Actually, I usually just telnet into the OS/2 boxes here at work to edit CVS labelling scripts. I use the vi editor to do so, as I can't bring up the OS/2 version of Emacs over the network. Every once in awhile I actually have to sit down and use the OS/2 box to move files around, but even then I usually use the OS/2 version of Midnight Commander.
You're really just here to spew out flamebait, though, aren't you? Sorry if I'm not getting angry enough.
It's shortsighted to equate a "homeless man on the streets of NYC" to a third world community.
A homeless man in NYC became homeless due to some personal deficiency. He's mentally ill, or can't (or won't) work for some reason. He's alone, not very connected to a community, etc.
A third world community, on the other hand, is generally robust and healthy, although poor. There will be smart people in the community; they won't all be social rejects. The community has a culture and a heritage.
It's just plain inaccurate to think that the poor of the USA are the same as the poor of a third world nation. I suspect that smart, able-bodied members of 'third world' communites would find the comparison offensive.
Ummm, Intel is giving free computers to all their employees, and that includes the many Intel employees who live in other countries.
OOps.
I thought I had heard rumors of "difficulties" that resulted in images of "Bob"s head being removed from the Slackware distro. It was mighty pink of me to make assumptions like that.
I'm glad to hear the good news that I was wrong.
Somehow it seems so discordian and cool.
Just like something a "Slack" distribution should be.
Hooray.
etc. etc.
Since this is one of those rare occasions when Slackware gets mention on the Slashdot site, I think it would be a good time to talk about the origins of the name, and the spirit, of Slackware.
Slackware's name comes from JR "Bob" Dobbs and the Church of the Subgenius. I know that there haven't always been friendly relations between the Subgenius folks and the Slack distro, but it's still an important historical note to recognize.
The Subgenius must have Slack! etc. etc.
I just thought it worth mentioning, because Slackware has cool countercultural roots.
Keep up the good work Pat V. And thanks, from a fellow Minnesotan.
My experience has been that all sorts of venues distribute Slackware. I first started using it off the InfoMagic Linux Developer's Resource set ages ago. I downloaded 3.6, 4.0, and 7.0 iso's from somewhere. So "father FTP" distributes Slack, I guess, if you want to point fingers. CheapBytes is a good place to get Slack if you're bandwidth challanged.
/contrib. Yes, I prefer FVWM1 for my Window Manager. It's also what I use on my FreeBSD boxen (built, of course from the PORTS collection- no binary packages are allowed on my FreeBSD systems.
We need to somehow get away from the assumption that's taken prevalence lately that Linux distros have to come in shrinkwrapped boxes with colored bitmaps on them.
And to people who say Slack is a server-only distribution: wrong! Some of us like a solid base distribution that we can install exactly what we want, and nothing else, onto.
Speaking of the 'desktop, I am sad to report that FVWM1 is more difficult to install on Slack, now that it's not included in
But anyhow. . .
Umm, pardon me. I'm not that keen on Perl myself, but I do know that it runs on many more platforms than Linux. We've got it on OS/2 boxes and Solaris here at work, as well as Win32. I even noticed it on a hoary old machine that runs Windows 3.1 the other day (said hoary old machine really just hosts a TI DSP emulator).
I'd have to think hard to name a modern OS that Perl doesn't run on.
I suspect I won't be the only one responding to correct your ignorance.
Yes. What a great idea.
I think I will start with this Linux CD. If I get going at it right away I can obliterate all mention of copyright, the GPL, and any of the creators of the software.
Then I'll package it all up and distribute it widely. Anybody want a free copy of this OS? I am calling it Freenix (but you are free to call it anything you like!), and no, you don't have to worry about copyrights. None of the code belongs to anybody. It's been liberated.
Oh, and if you, say, work for a company called Microsoft, don't worry! I don't know where any of this code came from, and either do you. Do whatever you want with it. If you want, you can call it a Microsoft product. That's what freedom is all about.
Go one better. Stop using the things. In the words of your grandfather, make your own entertainment - and license it the way you want.
Yes. This is the attitude to take. The problem is, 90-98% of the people who own recording equipment haven't ever attached a Microphone or a Camera to the machines. They just want to duplicate what somebody else already did.
We can banter for hours here about wether just duplicating someone else's work is theft or not. I don't think anybody will argue that it is a creative act.