>No, I equated the average Unix supporter to someone who will slam me without reason. I have found this to be the case, in general
I find the avrage (insert person class) is a decent person and at worse a human being.
Something my sister showed me.. People NEVER slam with out reason. It may not be a good reason but there is a reason.
>(2) POSIX imposes the Unix worldview upon the programmer, You find me an operating system that dosn't impose a "single world view"... No operating system is a utopia... The fewer restrictions the fewer features... The more features the more restrictions. To code with no restrictions at all what so ever... break out a rom burnner...
I think you can find horrific flaws in anything if you try hard enough... Unix isn't perfict and in many cases a diffrent operating system dose the job better... But for any "perfict operating system" I will find you flaws... Linux advocacy over Windows is often a bit overstated. "World domination" is a gole that will NEVER happen for Linux. It's a target.. nothing more.. Like when you puch you aim PAST the target... When you run a race you don't slow down untill you cross the finish line. World domination... a goal well byond what Linux advocates want.. What dose urk me is some times people turn and attack Linux becouse Linux is the WRONG os for them. Instead of going after Microsoft.. Instead of targetting world domination themselfs... Apple has a game plan and Linux has a game plan they both are after that "total market" goal.
I personally use Linux however when I threaton to buy a computer for my lady friend I threaton to buy her a Mac. Ok I occasionally threaton to install Linux on it but she knows I am joking about that...
A perfict os.. find an operating system that protects everything drives everything controlls everything and dosn't let any application take over the system and at the same time lets any given application take over the system.. all while not slowing the system down... Dose EVERYTHING and dosn't do anything that is unnessisary. Every posable feature automaticly available with out confusing the user. Dosn't crash isn't big uses minimal procesing power runs on an 8 bit chip while being a 64 bit os... I think you get the idea... some things are simply imposable. With Unix everything is a file.. with Mac everything is an Icon.. other operating systems have there own style. Each is ideal for SOME things but in no way works for everything.
Why not talk about how BeOS or MacOs could beat Microsoft? Well there is this small issue that it dosn't translate into action... Linux is a big community effor.. so is BSD.. MacOs and BeOS are property and I assure you that the same "how do we crush Microsoft" chats on Slashdot are going on at Apple and Be Inc.
Any given operating system when pushed on a user who is better off using something else.. sucks.. In short Unix and Windows both do suck... But understand.. It's not becouse the operating system is of poor quality...
A system that can do anything waists resorces being prepaired to do anything...
Most systems CAN do anything but require you DO something first before it accually has that feature. It would be a waist it have every posable feature active on any given system.
Ok Windows is preinstalled on PCs so any given PC user has paid for Windows (unless they built the PC themselfs) but why would this apply to Unix? Surely you must go out of your way to install Unix or buy a machine designed to run Unix. You don't get Unix suffed down your shorts... do you?
Rember unlike Windows Unix is first and formost a multi-user system. While a Linux PC is most likely used by one user most Unix boxes are set up expecting at least 4 users (4 users and 1 admin so 5 terminals). This means at least 4 users got no say. Often it's a great deal more than just 4 users. In todays computing environments however a personal system is the prefeared method. Each user may pick his own environment his own wallpaper his own operating system. Ideally.... However far to often the ideal dose not translate into reality and a user who would be better off using Unix or Mac gets stuck with Windows becouse someone else some place else is affrade of anything else. Such a person should have never been given the job of office lan admin. Anyone who is affrade of a Sun Sparc in the network sould be replaced....
In short... any operating system potentally sucks... if I pimp Linux to a newbe then Linux sucks.. if a salesmen whines "But EVERYONE uses Windows..." then Windows sucks... If a Mac user says "Linux? Bah.. I use Mac.." then Mac Sucks.. if a Solarus user says "Your just a wanabe techie becouse you don't use Solarus" then Solarus sucks... of a BSD person says "BSD is better" BSD Sucks... If my sister says "Commodore 64s are the best system out" she is joking..
Basicly no system is ideal for all people and while usually people don't care about an operating system that dosn't work for them. But thats only becouse they'll never use it. As long as a person can pick the system that is best suted for them then everything is cool. Any time someone takes that choice away the system they are pimping.. simply put... sucks...
On any given forum a person expressing an opinion that is unpopulare on that forum is likely to not use tact and instead act in outrage. Most people who know better than to insult also know they are better off not expressing the opinion where it is not populare to start with.
Quite a few posters on Slashdot DO NOT know how to post an unpopulare opinion and I have seen far to many "Bill Gates made the Internet" and "Linux SUX" type nonsense passing itself off as valid comments.
Be aware that whatever you say will be read and understood by a real thinking breathing human being. You can not simply punch information in and expect people to swallow... So many posts critical of open source forget that we are accually familure with the subject and are pritty insulting...
Here is the deal... They acted like Nazis but as it turns they weren't. They played Doom however game players are typicly no-violent.. the person who wouldn't kill a fly in real life needs to blow it all off with vertual killing sprees...
They were geeks... nope not even sligtly...
What do we know? Very little.. almost nothing...
They planned this a long time ago.. Not 2 weeks before the killing, not 6 months...
We can imagin the teasing was the trigger. But the it could be just as likely the teasing was simply a result of the planning. They were werd BECOUSE they were psyco.
So this couldn't have been stopped? No one knew they were psyco only diffrent and had someone stopped and talked to them they would realise this isn't your typical "geek" and gotten help.
The fact that they were treated badly is sad.. However the primary issue here is more than once they were diffrent people wanted to go on a geek witch hunt... find the next killer. Ohh becouse geeks are killers... well two are.. well accually they arn't geeks at all but we want them to be so we can harrass the real geeks some more.
What caused this psycotic outrage? Who knows... it started far to long ago... any clue faded...
Had people attempted to be decent they'd know something was wrong and gotten help... Had the parents of the killers gotten involved in there kids lifes they might notice the killer obsesion...
The basic idea here is to deal with people as people. Not as objects or icons. No more acting as if your program... 10 if tragaty then hunt down anyone vagely simmiler to media bies 20 if signs of psycotic behavure surface then ignore it...
I think they just got into the Killer theme to prepair themselfs.. to plan this day for YEARS.
It really bothers me when I see Windows in use at government locations. The idea is the lowest bidder gets the contract as long as the lowest bidder fits the specs. One thing about this is it's clear open source software is not given a look. Free will beat any bid any company can give. It also means a larg slize of closed source software was also passed over. Theoreticly the popularity of software is not taken into account. Linux has no advantage over BSD in this market. As we are aware there are a huge amount of imbeded, desktop and server operating systems out there many of whom are far supereor to Windows at a lower cost. Yet Microsoft consistently gets the bid... It bugs me... How can the requirements fit Windows and not fit Solarus? Why dose Windows CE get the bid over PalmOS or Geoworks?
I don't expect to walk into city offices one day and see Linux but I'd like to walk into city offices one day and see something that dose the job (unless the job is waisting taxpayer money).
It's understandable why SCO went in fighting... SCO is positioned as a Unix vender... Linux threatons this market.. plain and simple..
Sun however is positioned as a hardware vender. Linux or Unix dosn't matter Sun is in a good position.
Sun however recently desided that they live or die with Unix... SCO seems to believe Unix is lost and it's time to align with Linux...
SCO may not be sereous about Linux... and SCO may be remaking themselfs from ground up.. It's hard to tell If SCO is sereous.. I'd like this to be a wakeup call for Sun...
>If the geek world becomes an all whiz-bang mouthing and no true substance, i'd thank #1 to fucking/., and fucking Perl mongers.
And not ZenToe? Ohh come on.. I feel left out... Id has kids going on killing sprees Slashdot is distorying the geeks TV warps your mind and McDonalds is a generic evil.. Everyone is distroying the world but me... Come on... What evil shall we attribute to ZenToe? I wana be evil tooo...
GIF Copyright Compuserve... Unisys waited for Compuserve to stop upgrading the GIF format before they made the patent known.. This way Compuserve won't update the GIF format to not include the Unisys patent.
Yes people the moderators have a sense of hummor:) It's the avrage Slashdot reader who dosn't... This post is proof... Mod 2 Funny... and a bunch of people leap on it screaming "Your wrong"... Silly humans...
Oh yeah lets continue the theme...
You know ASCII text isn't patented? Thats right no patent so...... oh no... I just accententally post a virus...
(this is a virus)
Oh no now your computer has been infected with an ASCII virus and whats worse is I MUST post it as my computer is infected and the virus will erase all my porn if I don't...
Yeah thats all I have.. 10 gigs of PORN... all of it specal... so I have to keep it protected... so I'm posting this virus.. don't post or you'll pass on the virus... Hehe:) Yeah I'm full of it... so Thht
Unisys isn't anywhere near the same issue as Amazon. Unisys was issued a patent and DID NOT enforce it for YEARS. Instead they let the patented item..LZH compression.. be used for nearly 10 years before making it known they have a patent... They waited for the patentted technology to be commen practace before enforcing it...
The Amazon issue is Amazon got a questionable patent so no one else could get it. Ok fair enough.. then Amazon enforces it.. The argument your making applys to Amazon but not Unisys as Unisys sat on the patent...
Also the Unisys issue cancles this argument... Amazon could have sat on the patent the way Unisys did.
Not quite... Unisys was slick.. Compuserve used what they (and the whole world) believed to be a public domain compression.
Compuserve premoted GIFs with LZH compression compleatly unaware of the patent... No other company premoted GIFs...
Originally the web used Unix graphic file formats.. the web standards people of the time (The W3 didn't exist yet) belived they needed to switch from Unix graphic formats to PC formats to make it easyer to move PCs into the internet as Unix could easlly access PC formats but not visa versa.
By then GIF was allready a standard...
Sence then Netscape came into existence and Compuserve stopped working on the GIF format.. THEN Unisys shows up and says "Hay by the way we own that" By then GIFs were in major use and no Compuserve to switch from lzh to something else.
At that point people were allready using 28.8k baud... What really stinks is lzh has been used in CP/M, Unix and Dos for years... Unisys never said a word. "Oh yeah that technology you have been using for 10 years.. we patented it... pay up" What really stinks is that it's quite likely LZH predates the Unisys patent however 10 years later no one ever rembers where it came from...
Oh yeah and about "From 1200 baud modem to DSL" People were using 2400 baud before Compuserve started premoting GIFs and 14.4k before Netscape and 28.8k before Unisys revealed the patent...
Slashdot is less advocating than it is informing (Where dose advocacy end and informming start? not an easy question...)
Also Slashdot uses a lot of transparencys. Quite a few browsers don't support PNGs at all and at least one dosn't support transparencys...
As such switching to PNGs isn't an option for Slashdot at this time. But websites who don't have to bend to what is currently supported CAN burn all gifs...
This story is helpful as it's a prompting to provide PNG support...
However unless I miss my guess Slashdot takes the approch I do and simply not compress the gif images to start with...
Ohh sorry Unisys our GIFs arn't compressed to start with... take your compression patent fee and stuff it
Yeah a lot of telemarketers don't get proper trainning... Nither do telemarketter shop managers... The job is horrable...
Oh amd if you THINK your hurtting the guy on the phone? Look you can drive him to quit and that is a GOOD thing... he can take the experence and get a real job... or even a better crummy one The job stinks horrably.. I mean it...
I did telemarketing for a while (a bit of a messed up operation where my boss ended up running from the police).. The short story is the operation was lagit at first but degraded over time... eventually his boss showed up with the police...
It's NOT rude to hang up on a telemarketer...
He isn't going to get a sale from you so it's rude of you to waist his time. Now if he is presistent then he is being rude... A lot of telemarketters arn't trainned to be polite instead they try to latch on. Thats the wrong way around things. It works but it's the least effective method. Ideally you make the sales on the bulk of calls. Just like spam.... Spammers however don't hang on to people... They spam over 10,000 e-mail addresses and get almost 100 replys.. Telemarketting gets a bit of a better return rate...
So yes... slam the phone down.. ideally say "don't call me again" and hang up. What ever you do DO NOT let the telemarketer monopolise your time.. it's just polite:) PS. You develup a thick skin affer a while... The job sucks and it's even worse when your boss turns into a con artist.... I cought more flack becouse of him... stupid idiot
CmdrTaco occasionally mentions the garbage he gets in his inbox. Spam and general insanity. Both into the submitions inbox and to his e-mail inbox. Slashdot is big.... I guess CmdrTaco gets a bunch of BS from people who also send e-mail to the FBI asking about the X Files.
From the trolls I have read I believe what is happening is some people live in a fantacy world where advertising (such as banner ads) can not pay for an on-line service (like Slashdot). Somehow in the same world TV dosn't have TV ads paying for TV shows and free newspapers (paid for by ads) don't exist. They see Andover stock dropping and proclame Slashdot dead.. Forgetting Slashdot is a hobby and would stay around no matter what happend to Andover.
I also know a person who thinks the United states is in truble if Microsoft stock drops below $20 a share.
Stock prices are based on the preceved value. That value is usually based on the companys reported income and the companys dividens. Andover is currently operating at a loss and has no dividens.
Stocks are also based on what people THINK the companys future will look like.
There is also the "Lesser fool" stocks where people buy based only on what they think SOMEONE ELSE will pay for them and not based on the company at all.
A lot of people would like to cast Linux stock in general and Andover stock directly as being "Lesser fool" driven. However the reality is the stock market accually believes Linux has a very strong future and is willing to invest in it.
I think Cmdr Taco is correct.. This sort of thing isn't "News for nerds"....
It reminds me of when a political commintator said the judge in the Microsoft case dosn't understand the market. The problem with that comment is HE dosn't understand the tech market and really has no busness commenting on it.
I go to Slashdot for tech news to political strife and to finnantual news sources for stock market information. I don't want stock market assements from Slashdot, tech reports from a political pundent or socal comminary from stock market reports. Not any more than I'd want legal advice from my doctor.
CmdrTaco is dead on when he says this isn't stuff for Slashdot... I totally agree...
On my own forum any topic is allowed.. that is any RANT.. No news for nerds.. no stuff that matters.. just "Anything that bugs you"... Thats what it is there for...
A place for everything and everything in it's place:) Admittedly there is some crossover:)
Re:Great! I get to re-install NeXT Step...
on
Carmack Speaks
·
· Score: 1
Not to mention Doom and Quake original.
That was kinda intresting... Doom was out for Linux before it had a Windows port. :)
Anywhoo... ID looked at Linux a long long long time ago and said "That would be a cool operating system to run our game"... (Our game "Doom" not "our games" as ID produced many but Doom was the first Linux port) That is thinking ahead:)
It was probably an easy port... I was told Doom was made originally on the NeXT and ported to Dos (the Doom Operating System) to reach the widest market posable. Then they made a Mac version and finnaly a Linux version. That was when Linux was "that hacker Unix thingy" Solarus didn't exist yet and Windows still had to compeate with OS/2 and Mac (It was allready "preinstalled" and allready had significant marketshare)
Sadly my box wasn't letting me install Linux... (A technical problem with my box it probably would have similer problems with Windows) So my only exposure to Linux was from a friend of mine.. That was then....:) That box has been scrapped... Today my computer happly runs Linux... But not Windows...
Open source is not a magic solution by any means. With closed source a person slips a backdoor into the code it is unlikely to be spotted at all. By the time it is spotted (even if hours after the release) there is a very small chance the person who accually inserted the code will ever be identifyed. If he is he will be quitely handled or worse it may just be ignored. He may not even be an employee anymore and instead inserting new backdoors into products from a diffrent company.
With open source you know who is responsable for the code. If he dose let back doors slip into his code he has done a poor job in the first place. If he slips the code intentionally even worse.
One of the elements that make open source work is the gate keepers.. the code mainatinners. We do have to trust them a tad. What keeps the code from becomming progressivly worse instead of progressivly better is someone is looking at the code making sure the new code is good.
Part of that job is to look for back doors and potental security defects. Failling that he faces the public... A slashdot post.. and a flood of hate mail. Oh and did I mention.. he'll be very unpopulare.
It's not a magical solution to backdoors however... Open source back doors can not be installed by "just anyone" it must pass inspection by the code maintainer. Obscure code sould NEVER pass inspection even if it looks innocent it is not maintainable and therefor should not go in the code. If the maintainer inserted the code we know who to blame. If he simply let code slip we know who to blame for that. If he starts writing incryptic phrases into the code like "Dance with the chicken slut" we'll know about that as well.
This turns out to be a false alarm... just a minnor defect.. not a major back door.
Right now the republicans would like to cast the current situation in the stockmarket as the results of a democrat witch hunt of Microsoft. There is political worrys that a Microsoft breakup COULD sereously hurt the United States economy. That fear is not unfounded.
What is missing here is exactly HOW one company became such a central figure in the United States economy. Clearly if you crush any given company it would hurt that company but not send shockwaves accrost the stock market effecting all others in the same market. If anything the market should RISE not DIP with the loss of a major compeditor. But companys are so tied into Microsoft now (as they must be to survive) that if Microsoft falls they are injured.
Normally companys can (and often do) switch computers and operating systems every few years. Some upgrade once a year and some even once every 6 months. (This whole upgrade madness is what spawned Unix in the first place)
So this should signal a buyup of Macs, Linux based systems and Sun Sparcs. Easyer said than done. Microsoft has put an effort into making sure the only upgrade path a given company has is to the next version of Microsofts product line.
This is why the market is in such a panic. EVERYONE is tied into Microsoft becouse of tricks and traps. They can not easly back out. Many of them now see this and don't know what to do.
Harsh action against Microsoft at this time is warented however. Even if it means companys will be hurt when they must take drastic mesures to get databanks ported from Microsofts product line to a standard format that can then be used on a *nix or Mac system.
However in the short term this is an election year and the Democrats don't want to go to battle with "The vice presedent who crashed the economy" while the republicans would love to make Microsoft into an innocent victom.
It may also mean for political reasons a soft landing is needed. Otherwise we may see a republican presedent doing what he thinks is best for the economy and that would be "Restore Microsoft".... a bad bad situation...
Sence most of us know what good code runs like and what what bad code runs like most of us can identify bad code just by the results.
It's like knowing whats wrong with a car by the way an engen sounds. The person who wants you to believe the car is ok will clame it can not be done the person who wants to do the job right won't rely on the way the car sounds in the first place.
You can not fix the code or even come close by running it but having run the code one knows for certen something is wrong and just how much wrong of it is wrong. But you havn't a chance in hack of pinpointing what is wrong with out the code.
It's Bill Gates of borg... It looks like the Lacutus of Borg with Bill Gates head on it. The thing to the side of Bill Gates head is a pointer (one presumes an optic implant is "on the way"). It's what Cptn Pacard had when he was a borg. Other borg don't need that as they have the optic implant.. Think of it as the laser dot on a gun.. Where ever the dot is that is what your pointing at.
I guess it's harder and harder for people to figure it out sence we havn't seen a borg with such a device for many years now.
Each new generation of Windows (and some upgrade patches) offer a new user interface.
This seems to be the reverse of "It's not a bug it's a feature" now we say "It's not a feature it's a bug". The user has total control of his computer if he wants a consistent user interface he can have it. If he likes it can be totally consistent with a StarTrek console.
I suspect the users who don't want themes and skins are the same users who let technology drag them around by there teath. Thies users use Windows becouse it is preinstalled. They may not like certen things but they do nothing about it. They don't switch to a prgram with a consistent UI they don't refuse to install patchs. They don't do anything when things don't go there way. To them if one program dose it they ALL do it. Just stick them on Linux and they'll clame every operating system has cryptic and obscure commands.
I don't care to bother with users who won't do anything for themselfs. Thies are the users who picked Windows over MacOs in the first place. Why? Becouse someone told them it was the standard. Tell them CP/M is the standard and lets move on with the real users.
Slashdot Mirror
>Gresham's Law states, in fact, that bad software drives out the good, not the other way around. Sorry
There are allways pesimists...
I chouse not to live by someone elses self imposed limitations.
If the above were true then nothing worthwhile exists....
>No, I equated the average Unix supporter to someone who will slam me without reason. I have found this to be the case, in general
I find the avrage (insert person class) is a decent person and at worse a human being.
Something my sister showed me.. People NEVER slam with out reason. It may not be a good reason but there is a reason.
>(2) POSIX imposes the Unix worldview upon the programmer,
You find me an operating system that dosn't impose a "single world view"...
No operating system is a utopia... The fewer restrictions the fewer features... The more features the more restrictions.
To code with no restrictions at all what so ever... break out a rom burnner...
I think you can find horrific flaws in anything if you try hard enough...
Unix isn't perfict and in many cases a diffrent operating system dose the job better...
But for any "perfict operating system" I will find you flaws...
Linux advocacy over Windows is often a bit overstated. "World domination" is a gole that will NEVER happen for Linux. It's a target.. nothing more.. Like when you puch you aim PAST the target... When you run a race you don't slow down untill you cross the finish line. World domination... a goal well byond what Linux advocates want..
What dose urk me is some times people turn and attack Linux becouse Linux is the WRONG os for them. Instead of going after Microsoft.. Instead of targetting world domination themselfs...
Apple has a game plan and Linux has a game plan they both are after that "total market" goal.
I personally use Linux however when I threaton to buy a computer for my lady friend I threaton to buy her a Mac. Ok I occasionally threaton to install Linux on it but she knows I am joking about that...
A perfict os.. find an operating system that protects everything drives everything controlls everything and dosn't let any application take over the system and at the same time lets any given application take over the system.. all while not slowing the system down...
Dose EVERYTHING and dosn't do anything that is unnessisary. Every posable feature automaticly available with out confusing the user. Dosn't crash isn't big uses minimal procesing power runs on an 8 bit chip while being a 64 bit os...
I think you get the idea... some things are simply imposable.
With Unix everything is a file.. with Mac everything is an Icon.. other operating systems have there own style. Each is ideal for SOME things but in no way works for everything.
Why not talk about how BeOS or MacOs could beat Microsoft? Well there is this small issue that it dosn't translate into action...
Linux is a big community effor.. so is BSD.. MacOs and BeOS are property and I assure you that the same "how do we crush Microsoft" chats on Slashdot are going on at Apple and Be Inc.
Any given operating system when pushed on a user who is better off using something else.. sucks..
In short Unix and Windows both do suck...
But understand.. It's not becouse the operating system is of poor quality...
A system that can do anything waists resorces being prepaired to do anything...
Most systems CAN do anything but require you DO something first before it accually has that feature. It would be a waist it have every posable feature active on any given system.
Ok Windows is preinstalled on PCs so any given PC user has paid for Windows (unless they built the PC themselfs) but why would this apply to Unix? Surely you must go out of your way to install Unix or buy a machine designed to run Unix. You don't get Unix suffed down your shorts... do you?
Rember unlike Windows Unix is first and formost a multi-user system. While a Linux PC is most likely used by one user most Unix boxes are set up expecting at least 4 users (4 users and 1 admin so 5 terminals).
This means at least 4 users got no say. Often it's a great deal more than just 4 users.
In todays computing environments however a personal system is the prefeared method. Each user may pick his own environment his own wallpaper his own operating system. Ideally....
However far to often the ideal dose not translate into reality and a user who would be better off using Unix or Mac gets stuck with Windows becouse someone else some place else is affrade of anything else.
Such a person should have never been given the job of office lan admin.
Anyone who is affrade of a Sun Sparc in the network sould be replaced....
In short... any operating system potentally sucks... if I pimp Linux to a newbe then Linux sucks.. if a salesmen whines "But EVERYONE uses Windows..." then Windows sucks... If a Mac user says "Linux? Bah.. I use Mac.." then Mac Sucks.. if a Solarus user says "Your just a wanabe techie becouse you don't use Solarus" then Solarus sucks... of a BSD person says "BSD is better" BSD Sucks... If my sister says "Commodore 64s are the best system out" she is joking..
Basicly no system is ideal for all people and while usually people don't care about an operating system that dosn't work for them. But thats only becouse they'll never use it.
As long as a person can pick the system that is best suted for them then everything is cool. Any time someone takes that choice away the system they are pimping.. simply put... sucks...
On any given forum a person expressing an opinion that is unpopulare on that forum is likely to not use tact and instead act in outrage.
Most people who know better than to insult also know they are better off not expressing the opinion where it is not populare to start with.
Quite a few posters on Slashdot DO NOT know how to post an unpopulare opinion and I have seen far to many "Bill Gates made the Internet" and "Linux SUX" type nonsense passing itself off as valid comments.
Be aware that whatever you say will be read and understood by a real thinking breathing human being. You can not simply punch information in and expect people to swallow...
So many posts critical of open source forget that we are accually familure with the subject and are pritty insulting...
Here is the deal... They acted like Nazis but as it turns they weren't.
They played Doom however game players are typicly no-violent.. the person who wouldn't kill a fly in real life needs to blow it all off with vertual killing sprees...
They were geeks... nope not even sligtly...
What do we know?
Very little.. almost nothing...
They planned this a long time ago.. Not 2 weeks before the killing, not 6 months...
We can imagin the teasing was the trigger. But the it could be just as likely the teasing was simply a result of the planning. They were werd BECOUSE they were psyco.
So this couldn't have been stopped?
No one knew they were psyco only diffrent and had someone stopped and talked to them they would realise this isn't your typical "geek" and gotten help.
The fact that they were treated badly is sad..
However the primary issue here is more than once they were diffrent people wanted to go on a geek witch hunt... find the next killer. Ohh becouse geeks are killers... well two are.. well accually they arn't geeks at all but we want them to be so we can harrass the real geeks some more.
What caused this psycotic outrage?
Who knows... it started far to long ago... any clue faded...
Had people attempted to be decent they'd know something was wrong and gotten help...
Had the parents of the killers gotten involved in there kids lifes they might notice the killer obsesion...
The basic idea here is to deal with people as people. Not as objects or icons. No more acting as if your program...
10 if tragaty then hunt down anyone vagely simmiler to media bies
20 if signs of psycotic behavure surface then ignore it...
I think they just got into the Killer theme to prepair themselfs.. to plan this day for YEARS.
It really bothers me when I see Windows in use at government locations.
The idea is the lowest bidder gets the contract as long as the lowest bidder fits the specs.
One thing about this is it's clear open source software is not given a look. Free will beat any bid any company can give.
It also means a larg slize of closed source software was also passed over.
Theoreticly the popularity of software is not taken into account. Linux has no advantage over BSD in this market.
As we are aware there are a huge amount of imbeded, desktop and server operating systems out there many of whom are far supereor to Windows at a lower cost.
Yet Microsoft consistently gets the bid...
It bugs me... How can the requirements fit Windows and not fit Solarus?
Why dose Windows CE get the bid over PalmOS or Geoworks?
I don't expect to walk into city offices one day and see Linux but I'd like to walk into city offices one day and see something that dose the job (unless the job is waisting taxpayer money).
It's understandable why SCO went in fighting...
SCO is positioned as a Unix vender... Linux threatons this market.. plain and simple..
Sun however is positioned as a hardware vender. Linux or Unix dosn't matter Sun is in a good position.
Sun however recently desided that they live or die with Unix...
SCO seems to believe Unix is lost and it's time to align with Linux...
SCO may not be sereous about Linux... and SCO may be remaking themselfs from ground up.. It's hard to tell
If SCO is sereous.. I'd like this to be a wakeup call for Sun...
>If the geek world becomes an all whiz-bang mouthing and no true substance, i'd thank #1 to fucking /., and fucking Perl mongers.
And not ZenToe?
Ohh come on.. I feel left out...
Id has kids going on killing sprees Slashdot is distorying the geeks TV warps your mind and McDonalds is a generic evil..
Everyone is distroying the world but me...
Come on... What evil shall we attribute to ZenToe? I wana be evil tooo...
Wops :) Sorry...
GIF Copyright Compuserve...
Unisys waited for Compuserve to stop upgrading the GIF format before they made the patent known..
This way Compuserve won't update the GIF format to not include the Unisys patent.
Yes people the moderators have a sense of hummor :) It's the avrage Slashdot reader who dosn't...
:) Yeah I'm full of it... so Thht
This post is proof...
Mod 2 Funny... and a bunch of people leap on it screaming "Your wrong"...
Silly humans...
Oh yeah lets continue the theme...
You know ASCII text isn't patented? Thats right no patent so...... oh no... I just accententally post a virus...
(this is a virus)
Oh no now your computer has been infected with an ASCII virus and whats worse is I MUST post it as my computer is infected and the virus will erase all my porn if I don't...
Yeah thats all I have.. 10 gigs of PORN... all of it specal... so I have to keep it protected...
so I'm posting this virus.. don't post or you'll pass on the virus...
Hehe
Unisys isn't anywhere near the same issue as Amazon. ..LZH compression.. be used for nearly 10 years before making it known they have a patent...
Unisys was issued a patent and DID NOT enforce it for YEARS. Instead they let the patented item
They waited for the patentted technology to be commen practace before enforcing it...
The Amazon issue is Amazon got a questionable patent so no one else could get it.
Ok fair enough.. then Amazon enforces it..
The argument your making applys to Amazon but not Unisys as Unisys sat on the patent...
Also the Unisys issue cancles this argument... Amazon could have sat on the patent the way Unisys did.
Not quite...
Unisys was slick.. Compuserve used what they (and the whole world) believed to be a public domain compression.
Compuserve premoted GIFs with LZH compression compleatly unaware of the patent...
No other company premoted GIFs...
Originally the web used Unix graphic file formats.. the web standards people of the time (The W3 didn't exist yet) belived they needed to switch from Unix graphic formats to PC formats to make it easyer to move PCs into the internet as Unix could easlly access PC formats but not visa versa.
By then GIF was allready a standard...
Sence then Netscape came into existence and Compuserve stopped working on the GIF format..
THEN Unisys shows up and says "Hay by the way we own that"
By then GIFs were in major use and no Compuserve to switch from lzh to something else.
At that point people were allready using 28.8k baud...
What really stinks is lzh has been used in CP/M, Unix and Dos for years... Unisys never said a word.
"Oh yeah that technology you have been using for 10 years.. we patented it... pay up"
What really stinks is that it's quite likely LZH predates the Unisys patent however 10 years later no one ever rembers where it came from...
Oh yeah and about "From 1200 baud modem to DSL" People were using 2400 baud before Compuserve started premoting GIFs and 14.4k before Netscape and 28.8k before Unisys revealed the patent...
This isn't quite as simple as done...
Slashdot is less advocating than it is informing (Where dose advocacy end and informming start? not an easy question...)
Also Slashdot uses a lot of transparencys. Quite a few browsers don't support PNGs at all and at least one dosn't support transparencys...
As such switching to PNGs isn't an option for Slashdot at this time. But websites who don't have to bend to what is currently supported CAN burn all gifs...
This story is helpful as it's a prompting to provide PNG support...
However unless I miss my guess Slashdot takes the approch I do and simply not compress the gif images to start with...
Ohh sorry Unisys our GIFs arn't compressed to start with... take your compression patent fee and stuff it
Yeah a lot of telemarketers don't get proper trainning...
Nither do telemarketter shop managers...
The job is horrable...
Oh amd if you THINK your hurtting the guy on the phone? Look you can drive him to quit and that is a GOOD thing... he can take the experence and get a real job... or even a better crummy one
The job stinks horrably.. I mean it...
>Is this rude to the telemarketers? Fuck 'em;
:)
I did telemarketing for a while (a bit of a messed up operation where my boss ended up running from the police)..
The short story is the operation was lagit at first but degraded over time... eventually his boss showed up with the police...
It's NOT rude to hang up on a telemarketer...
He isn't going to get a sale from you so it's rude of you to waist his time.
Now if he is presistent then he is being rude...
A lot of telemarketters arn't trainned to be polite instead they try to latch on. Thats the wrong way around things. It works but it's the least effective method.
Ideally you make the sales on the bulk of calls.
Just like spam....
Spammers however don't hang on to people... They spam over 10,000 e-mail addresses and get almost 100 replys..
Telemarketting gets a bit of a better return rate...
So yes... slam the phone down.. ideally say "don't call me again" and hang up. What ever you do DO NOT let the telemarketer monopolise your time.. it's just polite
PS. You develup a thick skin affer a while... The job sucks and it's even worse when your boss turns into a con artist.... I cought more flack becouse of him... stupid idiot
CmdrTaco occasionally mentions the garbage he gets in his inbox. Spam and general insanity.
:) :)
Both into the submitions inbox and to his e-mail inbox.
Slashdot is big....
I guess CmdrTaco gets a bunch of BS from people who also send e-mail to the FBI asking about the X Files.
From the trolls I have read I believe what is happening is some people live in a fantacy world where advertising (such as banner ads) can not pay for an on-line service (like Slashdot). Somehow in the same world TV dosn't have TV ads paying for TV shows and free newspapers (paid for by ads) don't exist.
They see Andover stock dropping and proclame Slashdot dead.. Forgetting Slashdot is a hobby and would stay around no matter what happend to Andover.
I also know a person who thinks the United states is in truble if Microsoft stock drops below $20 a share.
Stock prices are based on the preceved value.
That value is usually based on the companys reported income and the companys dividens.
Andover is currently operating at a loss and has no dividens.
Stocks are also based on what people THINK the companys future will look like.
There is also the "Lesser fool" stocks where people buy based only on what they think SOMEONE ELSE will pay for them and not based on the company at all.
A lot of people would like to cast Linux stock in general and Andover stock directly as being "Lesser fool" driven.
However the reality is the stock market accually believes Linux has a very strong future and is willing to invest in it.
I think Cmdr Taco is correct.. This sort of thing isn't "News for nerds"....
It reminds me of when a political commintator said the judge in the Microsoft case dosn't understand the market. The problem with that comment is HE dosn't understand the tech market and really has no busness commenting on it.
I go to Slashdot for tech news to political strife and to finnantual news sources for stock market information.
I don't want stock market assements from Slashdot, tech reports from a political pundent or socal comminary from stock market reports.
Not any more than I'd want legal advice from my doctor.
CmdrTaco is dead on when he says this isn't stuff for Slashdot... I totally agree...
On my own forum any topic is allowed.. that is any RANT.. No news for nerds.. no stuff that matters.. just "Anything that bugs you"... Thats what it is there for...
A place for everything and everything in it's place
Admittedly there is some crossover
Not to mention Doom and Quake original.
:)
:)
That was kinda intresting... Doom was out for Linux before it had a Windows port.
:)
Anywhoo... ID looked at Linux a long long long time ago and said "That would be a cool operating system to run our game"...
(Our game "Doom" not "our games" as ID produced many but Doom was the first Linux port)
That is thinking ahead
It was probably an easy port...
I was told Doom was made originally on the NeXT and ported to Dos (the Doom Operating System) to reach the widest market posable.
Then they made a Mac version and finnaly a Linux version.
That was when Linux was "that hacker Unix thingy" Solarus didn't exist yet and Windows still had to compeate with OS/2 and Mac (It was allready "preinstalled" and allready had significant marketshare)
Sadly my box wasn't letting me install Linux...
(A technical problem with my box it probably would have similer problems with Windows)
So my only exposure to Linux was from a friend of mine..
That was then....
That box has been scrapped...
Today my computer happly runs Linux...
But not Windows...
Open source is not a magic solution by any means.
With closed source a person slips a backdoor into the code it is unlikely to be spotted at all.
By the time it is spotted (even if hours after the release) there is a very small chance the person who accually inserted the code will ever be identifyed.
If he is he will be quitely handled or worse it may just be ignored. He may not even be an employee anymore and instead inserting new backdoors into products from a diffrent company.
With open source you know who is responsable for the code. If he dose let back doors slip into his code he has done a poor job in the first place. If he slips the code intentionally even worse.
One of the elements that make open source work is the gate keepers.. the code mainatinners. We do have to trust them a tad.
What keeps the code from becomming progressivly worse instead of progressivly better is someone is looking at the code making sure the new code is good.
Part of that job is to look for back doors and potental security defects.
Failling that he faces the public... A slashdot post.. and a flood of hate mail.
Oh and did I mention.. he'll be very unpopulare.
It's not a magical solution to backdoors however... Open source back doors can not be installed by "just anyone" it must pass inspection by the code maintainer. Obscure code sould NEVER pass inspection even if it looks innocent it is not maintainable and therefor should not go in the code.
If the maintainer inserted the code we know who to blame. If he simply let code slip we know who to blame for that. If he starts writing incryptic phrases into the code like "Dance with the chicken slut" we'll know about that as well.
This turns out to be a false alarm... just a minnor defect.. not a major back door.
Trolls like to annoy people...
:)
Spammers like to make contact with lots of people
I prepose a service to Spammers and Trolls a like.
A website with contact information for known spammers so trolls can talk to them about hot grits or the like.
Muahahaha
Go for it peoples
Right now the republicans would like to cast the current situation in the stockmarket as the results of a democrat witch hunt of Microsoft.
There is political worrys that a Microsoft breakup COULD sereously hurt the United States economy.
That fear is not unfounded.
What is missing here is exactly HOW one company became such a central figure in the United States economy.
Clearly if you crush any given company it would hurt that company but not send shockwaves accrost the stock market effecting all others in the same market. If anything the market should RISE not DIP with the loss of a major compeditor.
But companys are so tied into Microsoft now (as they must be to survive) that if Microsoft falls they are injured.
Normally companys can (and often do) switch computers and operating systems every few years. Some upgrade once a year and some even once every 6 months.
(This whole upgrade madness is what spawned Unix in the first place)
So this should signal a buyup of Macs, Linux based systems and Sun Sparcs.
Easyer said than done.
Microsoft has put an effort into making sure the only upgrade path a given company has is to the next version of Microsofts product line.
This is why the market is in such a panic. EVERYONE is tied into Microsoft becouse of tricks and traps. They can not easly back out. Many of them now see this and don't know what to do.
Harsh action against Microsoft at this time is warented however. Even if it means companys will be hurt when they must take drastic mesures to get databanks ported from Microsofts product line to a standard format that can then be used on a *nix or Mac system.
However in the short term this is an election year and the Democrats don't want to go to battle with "The vice presedent who crashed the economy" while the republicans would love to make Microsoft into an innocent victom.
It may also mean for political reasons a soft landing is needed. Otherwise we may see a republican presedent doing what he thinks is best for the economy and that would be "Restore Microsoft".... a bad bad situation...
Sence most of us know what good code runs like and what what bad code runs like most of us can identify bad code just by the results.
It's like knowing whats wrong with a car by the way an engen sounds. The person who wants you to believe the car is ok will clame it can not be done the person who wants to do the job right won't rely on the way the car sounds in the first place.
You can not fix the code or even come close by running it but having run the code one knows for certen something is wrong and just how much wrong of it is wrong. But you havn't a chance in hack of pinpointing what is wrong with out the code.
It's Bill Gates of borg...
It looks like the Lacutus of Borg with Bill Gates head on it.
The thing to the side of Bill Gates head is a pointer (one presumes an optic implant is "on the way"). It's what Cptn Pacard had when he was a borg.
Other borg don't need that as they have the optic implant..
Think of it as the laser dot on a gun.. Where ever the dot is that is what your pointing at.
I guess it's harder and harder for people to figure it out sence we havn't seen a borg with such a device for many years now.
Each new generation of Windows (and some upgrade patches) offer a new user interface.
This seems to be the reverse of "It's not a bug it's a feature" now we say "It's not a feature it's a bug".
The user has total control of his computer if he wants a consistent user interface he can have it. If he likes it can be totally consistent with a StarTrek console.
I suspect the users who don't want themes and skins are the same users who let technology drag them around by there teath. Thies users use Windows becouse it is preinstalled.
They may not like certen things but they do nothing about it. They don't switch to a prgram with a consistent UI they don't refuse to install patchs. They don't do anything when things don't go there way. To them if one program dose it they ALL do it. Just stick them on Linux and they'll clame every operating system has cryptic and obscure commands.
I don't care to bother with users who won't do anything for themselfs. Thies are the users who picked Windows over MacOs in the first place. Why? Becouse someone told them it was the standard.
Tell them CP/M is the standard and lets move on with the real users.