Ok this from the daemon (correct spelling) of typographical errors... [Daemon as in Unix background program NOT demon as in biblical evil being] Anyway:) It is posable the problem is in Slashdot not the poster... Keep in mind ANY CGI has to do some filtering and transformation to keep crackers from sending garbage...
Re:Whoops... (why not public domain?)
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GPL for Books?
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· Score: 1
"Theft" of public domain is legaly mearly "conversion" to a commertal product and is perfictly legal. This allows a person to basicly take an existing public domain program or text remove all refrences to the original auther and clame it as his own. Having made that clame users of the original public domain version must prove it is public domain and not taken from the comertal version. Becouse the auther retains no rights he may not sue as his rights have not been violated. If the auther retains rights he may sue a converter. The conversion becomes theft and users rights to the original version are preversed.
This is just from retainning righst... the GPL dictates what rights you do or do not have.. in short it's "You can give it away.. you can sell it.. you may NOT restrict others from doing the same" a book GPL should probably say something similer
This isn't the same as one click shopping or the other stuff we've seen on slashdot. There is real inginuity in this one. A REAL invention... But this invention still breaks down into math and logic. It's patentable by the old rules.. By the old rules I mean... about 90% of all the patents we see today would have NEVER been granted 30 years ago. Today however we see a lot of garbage. This one however had the patent been filed 30 years ago it would have been granted and hold in the corts.
So why do I say it's a bad patent? Ok this is the kind of bad patent we have lived with for a long time. It's manifest in the intelect. If you build an engen thats a phisical reality.. build a CPU thats a phisical reality, a soda, a disolvent, a new wepon of mass distruction.. but things like this manifest in the intectect. The real work is wiring it into a chip or coding it into software not coming up with a neat new logic...
However there are FAR greater prioritys than dwelling on 30+ year old flaws in the patent office.
Here in the United States the local TV cable company would set aside a TV channel that would brodcast a TV guide... This was in the late 1970s to early 1980s.. After the Channel F died and before I got my first Vic20 I use to record that channel to video tape when I was bord. I know this was like before 1979 becouse it was like at least a few years before I got my first computer in 1979...
A very long time ago..... prior art? Now I wonder if those video tapes survived all thies years? I've probably recorded over all that nonsence by now anyway....
This post dose kinda illistrate what people think of Unix, and computers and our cracker friend here... People make it sound like he came close to causing the colapse of civilaisation as we know it... He is the Y2K bug incarnet... everyone thinks the world will end becouse of him but he's accually harmless.. Yet annoying... Just like the Y2K scare.. How many people have rooted Windows? Windows dosn't have a root account... That dosn't mean you can not take controll of Windows.. You just do it diffrently.. Thats probably why crackers call it "owning" not "rooting" becouse you CAN "own" a Windows computer.. just not "root" it.. Now add the minnor diffrence between "rooting" and "owning" to all the other strangeness of computers... If they don't see a CRT, keyboard and mouse they think it's not a computer... They don't realise how often they themselfs come into contact with computers today... They also don't realise how trival his hacks were vs the really extream efforts of corprate theafs. People will pay security guards huge amounts of money to deliver some company secret. The kind of secrets he got with a simple phone call...
Lets face it computers are EVERYWHERE... There is NO WAY he can NOT come into contact with one. If he drives he has the cars onboard computer, cross the streat and the crosswalk is computer controlled. lets look at the streat lights... Maby you had to deal with street lights that went out of sync.. only 5 seconds to cross the road before you got ran over.. or worse the walk sign says "walk" before the cross traffic gets a red or the cross traffic gets a green and the walk sight still says "walk"... also issues of a fast "green yellow red" switch time causing accadents as well as times when ALL LIGHTS are green. Also many citys need to control the folow of traffic to prevent traffic jams.. It gets all complex and statistical and it's run by computer... So when you push that big "WALK" button.. Yep.. now can Keven do that? No.. Walk into a store.. wops.. that security computer just scanned you to be shure your not walking out with stolen property (it dosn't know what direction your going).. computer.... Now he comes near a point of sale terminal.. Computer..... TV Cable.... Apartment uses newer power indicator... UPS wants you to sign for a pacage..
It'll take a volation for people to recognise what this means... If he can not come near a computer (if memory serves that was one of the requirements) he can not go outside... I'm using a Ricochet modem.. it works by sending signals vea short distence relays.. thies relays are small computers mounted on telephone polls(with citys permition)... He can not come into my city becouse we have those relays...
Forget the Point of sell terminals for a moment... walk into a convence store and a bunch of the gadgets on sale are computers...
My grandmother is a bit of a ludite.. she REFUSES to have a computer in her home.. so Kevens safe there right? Door bell and TV... thats all but thats enough... (Only one of the 2 TVs BTW.. The wide screen TV with all the neat features and digital cable box vs the older "solid state" TV).
Her Microwave uses a macanical timer so he dosn't have to worry about that but many use imbeded computer systems...
Even toys today use imbeded computers today...
Might as well say he can't come near indoor plumbing...
Now post 2 on this topic [a troll] also dose make an intresting point by example... People do not have any idea what this means... They see "Computer" and think Univac.. They forget the last 30 years of technology... I mean... consider this... He may not be free long... He's going it sit infront of a streaming video recording computer (profesional TV camra) and talk into a audio sample computer (A digital mike).... and not even know it....
Finnaly I'd like to suggest that Keven saved them money... If he hadn't exploted the security defects someone else would have... But what he did was wrong.. no one asked him to find defects.. he was basicly waisting his time and tallent... Now what is he going to do? Sell his skill to someone who can use it? Like a REAL theaf? Becouse he can't do anything else..
And they say Mac advocates are fanatics... They say the same thing of Linux fanatics.. only they call them Linux Zelots to reflect the extream nature of the worst Linux fanatic. There are also Amiga fanatics... not as many but they still exist... OS/2 supporters.. mostly they go ranting on IBMs handling of OS/2 rather than "The greatness that is OS/2" you get from Linux,Mac,Amiga fanatics.. Finnaly there are Windows fanatics.. They refuse to belive anyone using Windows dosn't love Windows.
It sounds like someone basicly is saying "Get lost" to Katz becouse he couldn't install Linux the first time. The Linux community is not tolerent of elitist however has few chances to flush them out Unlike Windows Linux repells newbes... so the Microsoft community gets to get rid of there elitists while ours lay dorment...
It is annoying that some people think they are hotstuff becouse THEY can install Linux the first time while people like Katz has problems..
It's quite likely Katz simply has hardware Linux dosn't like.. My computer has no problems with Linux ONLY becouse I put it together myself to run Linux.. any posable hardware issues were avoided just by not getting any hardware Linux dosn't support very well. The result? I can't run Windows... Some of my hardware was on discount becouse Windows dosn't like it... but works great on Linux...
An example of this... I compiled a biff [e-mail monitoring program to inform me I had new e-mail] it had a defect.. no IT ran perfictly but a program it called reported information diffrently on my system than it should and that created a bug... I fixed the bug... but the bug was unique to my system alone and would accually cause problems for ANYONE ELSE... It was easyer to fix in the non-buggy code than to track down why the other program was behaving the way it did and figure out how to make IT behave... Worse yet I could break a whole bunch of other programs if I fixed that bug.. It's the wrong way to fix the code but it got the job done... sence then I have been able to make everything "play nice" but I'm not even using that program anymore...
True if a clueless user dosn't recognise the defect is in his browser he may blame you for problems he experences.. However your not going to prevent this loss by telling the user you don't support his favoret browser.. Worse yet he MIGHT forgive you for a defect but not for the browser rejection.... If a clueful user runs into your website he will recognise the defect in his browser and put the blame where it belongs... He will NOT be so understanding if you tell him he has to use something else.
This isn't a unique problem.. many busness have illrational fears.. a single product (some times a Microsoft product but not allways) will have a defect and busness people fear it as if it were a wide spread problem.. Windows has GPFs so they fear Linux GPFs to spite the fact that none exist.
there is no easy way to address those fears. Often addressing them will just make the problem worse validating the original fear of it being a wide spread problem.
10 years form now some manager will be worrying about defects located only in MsIE6.2 when everyone is using NetZen 2.3 (NetZen was created long after MsIE develupment stopped.. yeah but the bug was fixed in 6.5 and NetZen is only in 2.3... But NetZen never HAD the bug.. Then why is it still 2.3 and not 6.5 if it dosn't have the bug)
The problem only HALF exists.. thats what makes it such a pain... Yes a bad Mozila clone with broken JavaScript COULD report itself as the codifyed Netscape 5.0... Or a Mosaic client could report it's MsIE 5.0... You just have to trust the user didn't tamper with the client... Konqueror lets you change this information from within the browser itself (no hexedit, no recomile..) Any Client can report false information if a user wants it to.. Information is on the net on how to get MsIE and Netscape to clame to be something else. Anyway if a user IS using a browser other than MsIE or Netscape chances are they allready have some clue... even knowing something else exists is a major bonus... A manager who knows Netscape and IE arn't all there is and that some browsers have problems with JavaScript allready have a clue.. you can educate him from there..
Anyway chances are a user not using MsIE is clueful enough to know when it's a browser defect... but if you reject a browser you WILL lose busness...
Re:First vacation station in the *solar system*?!?
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Getaway to Club Mir
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· Score: 1
The alien space stations are not built to handle humanoid life forms [humans and anything geneticly modifyed to be human like]. Also humans are not up to code for many alien worlds (the carbon dioxide? Biology was a long time ago... stuff we exhail.. poison to many.. also oxogen is banned as a controled substence on many worlds) Anyway we are banned on nearly all alien worlds due to our "Ugly tourest" habbit of disrespecting cultures we visit... The few worlds that havn't banned us... ummm... carbon based life forms are hard to find and very tasty... I think the only place a human could visit with out being on the menu, killed by the environment or cause an environmental disaster would be Keltos.. and Keltos hospitality ranks up with Vogon poitry... In the mean time the illegal oxogen trade is doing really well...
Yeah many hoops first... not even shure a movie will EVER be produced... But I hope it dose and it dose well. Yes I am a Katz fan but byond that I'd like to see OTHER Geek titles make it to the movie screen.
After Y2K the Movie.. based on strips from 1-1-1999 to 1-1-2000.. only instead of the alternet universe ending (that lets the commic continue) a happly ever after ending...
Sluggy Freelance The Movie.. A unique storyline made exclusively for the movie... Live action and lots of specal effects... exposions.. show off that lazer cannon... I wonder who'd play Riff and Torg... "Let me check my notes"... My suggestion.. go with all NEW tallent... no stars... hunrgy actors who have proven themselfs in theator for a long time...
User Friendly the movie: No opinion.. I stopped reading the strip but it dose have the cult folowing needed for a big cashin movie.. as long as Illiad retains artistic control it's shure to retain the charm that makes it populare and make it a smash hit.
Keven and Kelly/Heardthiners: The Movie Animated with Bill Kean in artistic control...
There are HUGE ammounts of strips that would made a sucessful move to the movie screen... a few that wouldn't... I don't think GPF would make a good movie for example simply becouse it's life is an ongoing commic strip. It's GREAT as a strip. You want to folow the lifes of the carricters... But for a movie it wouldn't work.. The storys arn't that intresting themselfs.. it's all the ongoing plots.. the stuff that never really resolves itself.. that makes GPF.. That stuff won't translate to a movie becouse the movie ends.. But GPF storys never really do end... The cult of the twisted pair is still around.. the Pookel/Ki storyline is still going.. Fred is still a profesor, Trudys still around... etc... It never ends just stops for a while and lets annother story resume. Dosn't work for a movie format but for a commic strip it's pritty smart.. and addicting...
Sluggy more than the rest sence it's just an ongoing action movie in commic strip form. I wonder what Goats the movie would look like... ohhh....
If so, how will software companies make money? Support? Donations? Highway robbery?:-) Support...
It is the one thing commertal software offers that open source dose not. However as of late open source support companys have been springing up. Eventually we won't be paying for the software we will be paying for the support. To be notifyed of bugs and bug fixes you'll have to pay to be on an update list. Oh well.. such as life
First VHS VCRs could copy videos for like 5 to 10 generations with out noticable loss. They could also brodcast signal if plugged in backwards (set signal out to cable or out antana). The signal was weakened to keep this from happening again. As a side effect the recording degrades faster.. now at 5th generation the recording is unviewable. The majority of piracy (software, music, video) is done from person to person.. with anolog mediums the signal loss reduces the damage done by illegal copying to nearly zero. The software industry dose not have this advantage. Digital mediums such as flopys, CDs etc are easly copyed and do not degrade each generation so person to person copying creates a problem as the 10th generation copy is as good as the original disk. The video and music industrys do not wish to have to deal with the kind of piracy the software industry has had to deal with. They don't want people to be able to copy at first condition quality movie DVDs and Music CDs.
However it's allready far far far to late. I can CREATE a digital quality recording from an original anolog medium. Not only do I recover all the loss from the anolog copying (a second generation copy) I can improve the quality slightly and copys will not degrade. Even if I just copy at second generation quality there is no visable loss in quality.. the loss won't show up before the third generation.. that generation NEVER COMES. I could dump the results back to video tape or place it on a JAZ or Recordable DVD and hand it out. It's not so bad as it could be. The software piracy problem became horrific once you could download software. Downloading music and movie files is still not viable but eventually that'll change.
I guess if your allowed to say a user can not reverse engenear software in a liccens your allows to say a user must boycott all software that asks this of it's users. RMS could go to work on an update to the GPL in paralel with this law.
I wonder if one could argue this is interfearing with inovation and internstate commerce.
1. You're karma whoring. Great, just what I love, moderator fishing. Perhaps you'll catch the big one, and get a five.
I would just like to point out that the ONLY reason ANYONE is accused of being a karma whore is the accuser disagrees with the accused. Generally the accused is someone who expresses pritty much the same opinion even when he is NOT being moderated... Thies are clearly the persons own honnest views.. The accuser is someone who not only has an unpopulare opinion but is compleatly indept at expressing it. I see this a lot. People with unpopulare opinions often abadon tact just so they can pretend they are of an OPPRESED opinion rather than one that is mearly unpopulare. This Karma whore nonsence is just one example of way way to blame an inability to express your views in a meaningful way.
The fact of the mater is.. if you post ANY opinion in such a tactless mannor you WILL be moderated down. We just don't see many populare opinion posts that do lack tact. We also don't see many well done unpopulare opinion posts.. Thies are the ones deserving of Mod 5 and they'd get it if people would just give them. If I really was a karma whole thats what I would do.. post a boat load of really well spoken unpopulare opinion posts... becouse it's more valuable to have the status que challanged.. Moderators eat that stuff up.. Becouse it's a good thing.... But I have my agenda... and I'll post my views as I see fit... If you agree with me I'll be glad to have your support if you disagree then challange me.. if all you can do is cry "Karma Whore" you are not going to be making any points with me...
They can add there own little slice to the Internet if they like but the'll never change whats allready here. When I came on the Internet it was allready making it's first moves to e-commerce.. But the term itself had yet to be coinned. Instead of Amazon we had books.com.. a telnet server instead of a website... Years later... ICQ did not replace IRC (as some predicted) Java did not replace HTML.... The Internet is still pritty much a Unix domain to spite all efforts by the leading maker of operating systems to change this. Why? And why can't the Internet be changed? It changes every day but all anyone can do is add to it... Only Andover/CmdrTaco can change/., Only Yahoo can change Yahoo, Only Zindophy can change Zindophys home page and if we don't like it we make an alternitive... (Note no one who complains about/. knows enough to make a functional alternitive or at least cares enough to try) It is unlikely that AoL/Time will be able to make functional alternitives to all the content on the Internet and if AoL isolates it's users from that content the existing user base will move to other on-line services that let them access the content they wish. (It seems unlikely that AoL users will switch to an ISP but there are plenty of user friendly OSP AoL clones that users can pick)
No AoL/Time alternitive to/., no replacement to Amazon (unfortunatly), No replacement to Ebay (if there was Yahoo auctions would be that replacment)...
AoL/Time can add content all they like.. if it's no better than the current trash it'll just stay in the corner. Lets hope AoL and Time don't think handing out CDs and ad campaigns can change the Internet.. we have to much spam as it is....
Although the CmdrTaco (tm) and Hemos (tm) action figures claim to support open-doll development, only an early version of their own schemata is available. How sad is that?
Snipped from a very funny post BTW:)
It's sad that people comment on this far to often. Let me try to srike this one dead.... As Cmder Taco has allready pointed out the code everyone wants is compleatly useless. It's all hardwired code and not useful to anyone but Andover... They are doing there best to port the whole mess to portable code but lets face it.. thats not an easy task... in the mean time they have Slashdot to run... and that's the priority..
It's not as if you could benifit from Slashdots code... if you want to set up your own slashdot you need to hardwire your own code to your system.
Secondly.... Support != Do... Slashdot has acted as the hub of the opensource community (amount other things) for a long time now. It will continue to do so for a long time to come. Thats the contrabution.. Also lets face it.. support could be nothing more than sitting back and shouting harray.. as some companys do.. support by just saying "We shall use open source becouse....." publicly is a great help and not to be looked down on. I'm conserned that companys seeking to dip into open source may get bit back by a few zelots who scream becouse they don't then automaticly open source everything... Many open source supporters don't supply much code back to the commen code pool.. if any... Do we want IBM to open source Os/2? Shure we'd love to have it but are we going to push IBM into it? No.. If IBM dosn't want to give away the OS/2 souce code then they can keep it. Same with slashdot... ID software... and anyone making an effort to give back in some small way...
Hu? At time of posting the artical in question has ZERO mods... It seems the poster saw the topic assumed it was or will be modded in a certen direction and posted acordingly... In short a rant on something that never happend.. yeah that happends on slashdot on occasion but it's usually vea a mistake by/. editors not arrogence of an AC..
Sort of... Your right about people using the same binarys. But it will optomise diffrently if optomised for a 486 vs a P2.. Thats not very wide varation. Also some people (like myself) recompile to pick what will be drivers what will be in kernel and what won't be supported at all.. That being.. conformed to needs prefrences and hardware. Also it dosn't stop with the kernel. Diffrent libarys may be used, even the core libary can be compiled diffrently. The system configuration.. etc.. it changes the defects in the system. A virus might be made to infect Linux but the defect used by the virus can be swapped out or may never have been installed.
I read the rant LONG before I saw the/. artical I missed the part about working at tech support for 4 years [my screw up]
Yeah I kinda took offence at the Linux soundcard thing becouse it wasn't true and far to many people have some amazingly strange ideas about Linux allready. I shouldn't have taken offence.
Sorry for ranking you over the coals BTW... You make a great strip.. Hay I don't allways find User Friendly funny... and as an on-line and print commic junky I often find commics I don't find funny. Usually I don't think anything of it.. One strip I find consistently offensive but it has a huge cult folowing... I just don't read it...
I guess the only real thing that ticked me off was the notion of one commic strip artists ranting about annother... It just strikes me as wrong.... I'm a hot head... can you tell?
Scott Kurtz dose not get the jokes in UserFriendly but that hardly makes them unfunny.
Look at the strips and you'll see they are jokes about people who are prepetually stupid. Illiad colects tech horror storys for his strip. It's not entirely fictional.
Kurtz dose not know what it's like to work at a helpdesk. It is far from the student teacher relationship he likens it to. Instead the help desk is the target of harrasment by users who would rather not use computers to start with.
He seems to think User Friendly is far fetched and not truely representive of what it's like to work at a helpdesk. However the reallity can be found by doing a websearch for "helldesk" the nickname for helpdesk given by it's victoms. Computer Stupiditys is a website full of examples. Rather than a commic strip this is just the storys from people who work at the helpdesk. There is annother website with audio recordings from accuall tech support calls and in some of thies the caller screams and yells and dosn't even let the poor tech talk.
Kurtz seems to believe thies are purely attacks on newbes. True newbes do need some help and thats what the help desk is for. The problem is far to often the caller dose not want help instead they want the computer to be byond reason or to conform to some bizzar idea of how computers work.
Some examples of the kind of calls the help desk gets: Screaming loon.. person will not calm down long enough for the tech to understand what they caller is trying to say... some times the caller just called to curse out the tech.. some times the tech didn't give the caller the answer they wanted.. some times the caller is just to paniced to be reasonable. The Expert.. Caller is a newbe with just enough knoladge to be dangerous.. he dosn't know computers but he thinks he dose. As a result he dosn't like answers that don't conform to his little world. Your fault.. User did something newbish.. after all we all make mistakes so it's just a matter of helpping the user fix the problem... Only the user dosn't want to fix the problem on HIS computer.. he's dead set the problem is on your end. All three: User did something stupid he knows it's on your end becouse he's an expert and he'll scream at you to fix it...
After all that it's comforting to read a commic strip like user friendly and see that your not the only person sitting at a hell desk.
While Scott Kurtz dosn't think making jokes about idiots is funny he thinks spreding Linux fud is. In one strip he mentioned how Linux is stable as long as you don't install a sound card... A sound card dosn't make Linux unstable... In the past a lot of sound cards didn't work on Linux... but dosn't work on Linux means just that... no sound card... it dosn't exist. Linux remains just as stable as ever.. However on Windows dosn't work means.. crash... Maybe this is funny to someone who uses Windows and dosn't know better but it's not funny to the person who acually knows what Kurtz is saying.
Slashdot Mirror
Ok this from the daemon (correct spelling) of typographical errors... :)
[Daemon as in Unix background program NOT demon as in biblical evil being]
Anyway
It is posable the problem is in Slashdot not the poster...
Keep in mind ANY CGI has to do some filtering and transformation to keep crackers from sending garbage...
"Theft" of public domain is legaly mearly "conversion" to a commertal product and is perfictly legal.
This allows a person to basicly take an existing public domain program or text remove all refrences to the original auther and clame it as his own. Having made that clame users of the original public domain version must prove it is public domain and not taken from the comertal version.
Becouse the auther retains no rights he may not sue as his rights have not been violated.
If the auther retains rights he may sue a converter. The conversion becomes theft and users rights to the original version are preversed.
This is just from retainning righst... the GPL dictates what rights you do or do not have.. in short it's "You can give it away.. you can sell it.. you may NOT restrict others from doing the same"
a book GPL should probably say something similer
This isn't the same as one click shopping or the other stuff we've seen on slashdot. There is real inginuity in this one. A REAL invention...
But this invention still breaks down into math and logic. It's patentable by the old rules..
By the old rules I mean... about 90% of all the patents we see today would have NEVER been granted 30 years ago. Today however we see a lot of garbage. This one however had the patent been filed 30 years ago it would have been granted and hold in the corts.
So why do I say it's a bad patent?
Ok this is the kind of bad patent we have lived with for a long time. It's manifest in the intelect. If you build an engen thats a phisical reality.. build a CPU thats a phisical reality, a soda, a disolvent, a new wepon of mass distruction.. but things like this manifest in the intectect. The real work is wiring it into a chip or coding it into software not coming up with a neat new logic...
However there are FAR greater prioritys than dwelling on 30+ year old flaws in the patent office.
Here in the United States the local TV cable company would set aside a TV channel that would brodcast a TV guide...
This was in the late 1970s to early 1980s.. After the Channel F died and before I got my first Vic20 I use to record that channel to video tape when I was bord.
I know this was like before 1979 becouse it was like at least a few years before I got my first computer in 1979...
A very long time ago..... prior art?
Now I wonder if those video tapes survived all thies years? I've probably recorded over all that nonsence by now anyway....
This post dose kinda illistrate what people think of Unix, and computers and our cracker friend here...
People make it sound like he came close to causing the colapse of civilaisation as we know it... He is the Y2K bug incarnet... everyone thinks the world will end becouse of him but he's accually harmless.. Yet annoying... Just like the Y2K scare..
How many people have rooted Windows? Windows dosn't have a root account... That dosn't mean you can not take controll of Windows.. You just do it diffrently.. Thats probably why crackers call it "owning" not "rooting" becouse you CAN "own" a Windows computer.. just not "root" it..
Now add the minnor diffrence between "rooting" and "owning" to all the other strangeness of computers...
If they don't see a CRT, keyboard and mouse they think it's not a computer... They don't realise how often they themselfs come into contact with computers today...
They also don't realise how trival his hacks were vs the really extream efforts of corprate theafs.
People will pay security guards huge amounts of money to deliver some company secret. The kind of secrets he got with a simple phone call...
Lets face it computers are EVERYWHERE...
There is NO WAY he can NOT come into contact with one.
If he drives he has the cars onboard computer, cross the streat and the crosswalk is computer controlled.
lets look at the streat lights... Maby you had to deal with street lights that went out of sync.. only 5 seconds to cross the road before you got ran over.. or worse the walk sign says "walk" before the cross traffic gets a red or the cross traffic gets a green and the walk sight still says "walk"... also issues of a fast "green yellow red" switch time causing accadents as well as times when ALL LIGHTS are green.
Also many citys need to control the folow of traffic to prevent traffic jams.. It gets all complex and statistical and it's run by computer...
So when you push that big "WALK" button.. Yep.. now can Keven do that? No..
Walk into a store.. wops.. that security computer just scanned you to be shure your not walking out with stolen property (it dosn't know what direction your going).. computer....
Now he comes near a point of sale terminal.. Computer.....
TV Cable.... Apartment uses newer power indicator... UPS wants you to sign for a pacage..
It'll take a volation for people to recognise what this means...
If he can not come near a computer (if memory serves that was one of the requirements) he can not go outside...
I'm using a Ricochet modem.. it works by sending signals vea short distence relays.. thies relays are small computers mounted on telephone polls(with citys permition)... He can not come into my city becouse we have those relays...
Forget the Point of sell terminals for a moment... walk into a convence store and a bunch of the gadgets on sale are computers...
My grandmother is a bit of a ludite.. she REFUSES to have a computer in her home.. so Kevens safe there right? Door bell and TV... thats all but thats enough...
(Only one of the 2 TVs BTW.. The wide screen TV with all the neat features and digital cable box vs the older "solid state" TV).
Her Microwave uses a macanical timer so he dosn't have to worry about that but many use imbeded computer systems...
Even toys today use imbeded computers today...
Might as well say he can't come near indoor plumbing...
Now post 2 on this topic [a troll] also dose make an intresting point by example... People do not have any idea what this means... They see "Computer" and think Univac.. They forget the last 30 years of technology...
I mean... consider this... He may not be free long... He's going it sit infront of a streaming video recording computer (profesional TV camra) and talk into a audio sample computer (A digital mike).... and not even know it....
Finnaly I'd like to suggest that Keven saved them money... If he hadn't exploted the security defects someone else would have...
But what he did was wrong.. no one asked him to find defects.. he was basicly waisting his time and tallent...
Now what is he going to do? Sell his skill to someone who can use it? Like a REAL theaf?
Becouse he can't do anything else..
And they say Mac advocates are fanatics...
They say the same thing of Linux fanatics.. only they call them Linux Zelots to reflect the extream nature of the worst Linux fanatic.
There are also Amiga fanatics... not as many but they still exist...
OS/2 supporters.. mostly they go ranting on IBMs handling of OS/2 rather than "The greatness that is OS/2" you get from Linux,Mac,Amiga fanatics..
Finnaly there are Windows fanatics.. They refuse to belive anyone using Windows dosn't love Windows.
:)
It sounds like someone basicly is saying "Get lost" to Katz becouse he couldn't install Linux the first time.
The Linux community is not tolerent of elitist however has few chances to flush them out
Unlike Windows Linux repells newbes... so the Microsoft community gets to get rid of there elitists while ours lay dorment...
It is annoying that some people think they are hotstuff becouse THEY can install Linux the first time while people like Katz has problems..
It's quite likely Katz simply has hardware Linux dosn't like..
My computer has no problems with Linux ONLY becouse I put it together myself to run Linux.. any posable hardware issues were avoided just by not getting any hardware Linux dosn't support very well.
The result? I can't run Windows... Some of my hardware was on discount becouse Windows dosn't like it... but works great on Linux...
An example of this...
I compiled a biff [e-mail monitoring program to inform me I had new e-mail] it had a defect.. no IT ran perfictly but a program it called reported information diffrently on my system than it should and that created a bug...
I fixed the bug... but the bug was unique to my system alone and would accually cause problems for ANYONE ELSE... It was easyer to fix in the non-buggy code than to track down why the other program was behaving the way it did and figure out how to make IT behave... Worse yet I could break a whole bunch of other programs if I fixed that bug..
It's the wrong way to fix the code but it got the job done... sence then I have been able to make everything "play nice" but I'm not even using that program anymore...
I'd mod you up :)
It dose seem like the most.. creative abuse of moderation I've seen...
I'm in compleate agreement with you...
Busness needs to start addressing it's own fears.
True if a clueless user dosn't recognise the defect is in his browser he may blame you for problems he experences.. However your not going to prevent this loss by telling the user you don't support his favoret browser..
Worse yet he MIGHT forgive you for a defect but not for the browser rejection....
If a clueful user runs into your website he will recognise the defect in his browser and put the blame where it belongs... He will NOT be so understanding if you tell him he has to use something else.
This isn't a unique problem.. many busness have illrational fears.. a single product (some times a Microsoft product but not allways) will have a defect and busness people fear it as if it were a wide spread problem.. Windows has GPFs so they fear Linux GPFs to spite the fact that none exist.
there is no easy way to address those fears. Often addressing them will just make the problem worse validating the original fear of it being a wide spread problem.
10 years form now some manager will be worrying about defects located only in MsIE6.2 when everyone is using NetZen 2.3 (NetZen was created long after MsIE develupment stopped.. yeah but the bug was fixed in 6.5 and NetZen is only in 2.3... But NetZen never HAD the bug.. Then why is it still 2.3 and not 6.5 if it dosn't have the bug)
The problem only HALF exists.. thats what makes it such a pain... Yes a bad Mozila clone with broken JavaScript COULD report itself as the codifyed Netscape 5.0... Or a Mosaic client could report it's MsIE 5.0... You just have to trust the user didn't tamper with the client... Konqueror lets you change this information from within the browser itself (no hexedit, no recomile..)
Any Client can report false information if a user wants it to.. Information is on the net on how to get MsIE and Netscape to clame to be something else.
Anyway if a user IS using a browser other than MsIE or Netscape chances are they allready have some clue... even knowing something else exists is a major bonus...
A manager who knows Netscape and IE arn't all there is and that some browsers have problems with JavaScript allready have a clue.. you can educate him from there..
Anyway chances are a user not using MsIE is clueful enough to know when it's a browser defect... but if you reject a browser you WILL lose busness...
The alien space stations are not built to handle humanoid life forms [humans and anything geneticly modifyed to be human like].
Also humans are not up to code for many alien worlds (the carbon dioxide? Biology was a long time ago... stuff we exhail.. poison to many.. also oxogen is banned as a controled substence on many worlds)
Anyway we are banned on nearly all alien worlds due to our "Ugly tourest" habbit of disrespecting cultures we visit...
The few worlds that havn't banned us... ummm... carbon based life forms are hard to find and very tasty...
I think the only place a human could visit with out being on the menu, killed by the environment or cause an environmental disaster would be Keltos.. and Keltos hospitality ranks up with Vogon poitry...
In the mean time the illegal oxogen trade is doing really well...
Yeah many hoops first... not even shure a movie will EVER be produced...
But I hope it dose and it dose well.
Yes I am a Katz fan but byond that I'd like to see OTHER Geek titles make it to the movie screen.
After Y2K the Movie.. based on strips from 1-1-1999 to 1-1-2000.. only instead of the alternet universe ending (that lets the commic continue) a happly ever after ending...
Sluggy Freelance The Movie.. A unique storyline made exclusively for the movie... Live action and lots of specal effects... exposions.. show off that lazer cannon... I wonder who'd play Riff and Torg...
"Let me check my notes"...
My suggestion.. go with all NEW tallent... no stars... hunrgy actors who have proven themselfs in theator for a long time...
User Friendly the movie: No opinion.. I stopped reading the strip but it dose have the cult folowing needed for a big cashin movie.. as long as Illiad retains artistic control it's shure to retain the charm that makes it populare and make it a smash hit.
Keven and Kelly/Heardthiners: The Movie
Animated with Bill Kean in artistic control...
There are HUGE ammounts of strips that would made a sucessful move to the movie screen... a few that wouldn't...
I don't think GPF would make a good movie for example simply becouse it's life is an ongoing commic strip. It's GREAT as a strip. You want to folow the lifes of the carricters...
But for a movie it wouldn't work.. The storys arn't that intresting themselfs.. it's all the ongoing plots.. the stuff that never really resolves itself.. that makes GPF.. That stuff won't translate to a movie becouse the movie ends.. But GPF storys never really do end... The cult of the twisted pair is still around.. the Pookel/Ki storyline is still going.. Fred is still a profesor, Trudys still around... etc... It never ends just stops for a while and lets annother story resume. Dosn't work for a movie format but for a commic strip it's pritty smart.. and addicting...
Sluggy more than the rest sence it's just an ongoing action movie in commic strip form.
I wonder what Goats the movie would look like... ohhh....
If so, how will software companies make money? Support? Donations? Highway robbery? :-)
Support...
It is the one thing commertal software offers that open source dose not. However as of late open source support companys have been springing up.
Eventually we won't be paying for the software we will be paying for the support. To be notifyed of bugs and bug fixes you'll have to pay to be on an update list.
Oh well.. such as life
First VHS VCRs could copy videos for like 5 to 10 generations with out noticable loss.
They could also brodcast signal if plugged in backwards (set signal out to cable or out antana).
The signal was weakened to keep this from happening again. As a side effect the recording degrades faster.. now at 5th generation the recording is unviewable.
The majority of piracy (software, music, video) is done from person to person.. with anolog mediums the signal loss reduces the damage done by illegal copying to nearly zero.
The software industry dose not have this advantage. Digital mediums such as flopys, CDs etc are easly copyed and do not degrade each generation so person to person copying creates a problem as the 10th generation copy is as good as the original disk.
The video and music industrys do not wish to have to deal with the kind of piracy the software industry has had to deal with. They don't want people to be able to copy at first condition quality movie DVDs and Music CDs.
However it's allready far far far to late. I can CREATE a digital quality recording from an original anolog medium. Not only do I recover all the loss from the anolog copying (a second generation copy) I can improve the quality slightly and copys will not degrade. Even if I just copy at second generation quality there is no visable loss in quality.. the loss won't show up before the third generation.. that generation NEVER COMES.
I could dump the results back to video tape or place it on a JAZ or Recordable DVD and hand it out. It's not so bad as it could be. The software piracy problem became horrific once you could download software. Downloading music and movie files is still not viable but eventually that'll change.
I guess if your allowed to say a user can not reverse engenear software in a liccens your allows to say a user must boycott all software that asks this of it's users.
RMS could go to work on an update to the GPL in paralel with this law.
I wonder if one could argue this is interfearing with inovation and internstate commerce.
1. You're karma whoring. Great, just what I love, moderator fishing. Perhaps you'll catch the big one, and get a five.
I would just like to point out that the ONLY reason ANYONE is accused of being a karma whore is the accuser disagrees with the accused.
Generally the accused is someone who expresses pritty much the same opinion even when he is NOT being moderated... Thies are clearly the persons own honnest views..
The accuser is someone who not only has an unpopulare opinion but is compleatly indept at expressing it. I see this a lot. People with unpopulare opinions often abadon tact just so they can pretend they are of an OPPRESED opinion rather than one that is mearly unpopulare.
This Karma whore nonsence is just one example of way way to blame an inability to express your views in a meaningful way.
The fact of the mater is.. if you post ANY opinion in such a tactless mannor you WILL be moderated down. We just don't see many populare opinion posts that do lack tact.
We also don't see many well done unpopulare opinion posts.. Thies are the ones deserving of Mod 5 and they'd get it if people would just give them.
If I really was a karma whole thats what I would do.. post a boat load of really well spoken unpopulare opinion posts... becouse it's more valuable to have the status que challanged.. Moderators eat that stuff up.. Becouse it's a good thing....
But I have my agenda... and I'll post my views as I see fit... If you agree with me I'll be glad to have your support if you disagree then challange me.. if all you can do is cry "Karma Whore" you are not going to be making any points with me...
They can add there own little slice to the Internet if they like but the'll never change whats allready here. /., Only Yahoo can change Yahoo, Only Zindophy can change Zindophys home page and if we don't like it we make an alternitive... (Note no one who complains about /. knows enough to make a functional alternitive or at least cares enough to try)
/., no replacement to Amazon (unfortunatly), No replacement to Ebay (if there was Yahoo auctions would be that replacment)...
When I came on the Internet it was allready making it's first moves to e-commerce.. But the term itself had yet to be coinned.
Instead of Amazon we had books.com.. a telnet server instead of a website...
Years later... ICQ did not replace IRC (as some predicted) Java did not replace HTML....
The Internet is still pritty much a Unix domain to spite all efforts by the leading maker of operating systems to change this.
Why? And why can't the Internet be changed?
It changes every day but all anyone can do is add to it... Only Andover/CmdrTaco can change
It is unlikely that AoL/Time will be able to make functional alternitives to all the content on the Internet and if AoL isolates it's users from that content the existing user base will move to other on-line services that let them access the content they wish. (It seems unlikely that AoL users will switch to an ISP but there are plenty of user friendly OSP AoL clones that users can pick)
No AoL/Time alternitive to
AoL/Time can add content all they like.. if it's no better than the current trash it'll just stay in the corner. Lets hope AoL and Time don't think handing out CDs and ad campaigns can change the Internet.. we have to much spam as it is....
Although the CmdrTaco (tm) and Hemos (tm) action figures claim to support open-doll development, only an early version of their own schemata is available. How sad is that?
:)
....." publicly is a great help and not to be looked down on.
Snipped from a very funny post BTW
It's sad that people comment on this far to often.
Let me try to srike this one dead....
As Cmder Taco has allready pointed out the code everyone wants is compleatly useless.
It's all hardwired code and not useful to anyone but Andover...
They are doing there best to port the whole mess to portable code but lets face it.. thats not an easy task... in the mean time they have Slashdot to run... and that's the priority..
It's not as if you could benifit from Slashdots code... if you want to set up your own slashdot you need to hardwire your own code to your system.
Secondly....
Support != Do...
Slashdot has acted as the hub of the opensource community (amount other things) for a long time now. It will continue to do so for a long time to come. Thats the contrabution..
Also lets face it.. support could be nothing more than sitting back and shouting harray.. as some companys do.. support by just saying "We shall use open source becouse
I'm conserned that companys seeking to dip into open source may get bit back by a few zelots who scream becouse they don't then automaticly open source everything...
Many open source supporters don't supply much code back to the commen code pool.. if any...
Do we want IBM to open source Os/2? Shure we'd love to have it but are we going to push IBM into it? No.. If IBM dosn't want to give away the OS/2 souce code then they can keep it.
Same with slashdot... ID software... and anyone making an effort to give back in some small way...
Hu? At time of posting the artical in question has ZERO mods... /. editors not arrogence of an AC..
It seems the poster saw the topic assumed it was or will be modded in a certen direction and posted acordingly...
In short a rant on something that never happend.. yeah that happends on slashdot on occasion but it's usually vea a mistake by
It got modded up "Funny" so much latter when it DID get modded up the moderators recognised the joke :)
And I want the first pose on slashdot.org.mars
Sort of...
Your right about people using the same binarys.
But it will optomise diffrently if optomised for a 486 vs a P2.. Thats not very wide varation.
Also some people (like myself) recompile to pick what will be drivers what will be in kernel and what won't be supported at all.. That being.. conformed to needs prefrences and hardware.
Also it dosn't stop with the kernel. Diffrent libarys may be used, even the core libary can be compiled diffrently. The system configuration.. etc.. it changes the defects in the system. A virus might be made to infect Linux but the defect used by the virus can be swapped out or may never have been installed.
I read the rant LONG before I saw the /. artical
I missed the part about working at tech support for 4 years [my screw up]
Yeah I kinda took offence at the Linux soundcard thing becouse it wasn't true and far to many people have some amazingly strange ideas about Linux allready. I shouldn't have taken offence.
Sorry for ranking you over the coals BTW... You make a great strip..
Hay I don't allways find User Friendly funny... and as an on-line and print commic junky I often find commics I don't find funny. Usually I don't think anything of it.. One strip I find consistently offensive but it has a huge cult folowing... I just don't read it...
I guess the only real thing that ticked me off was the notion of one commic strip artists ranting about annother...
It just strikes me as wrong....
I'm a hot head... can you tell?
Scott Kurtz dose not get the jokes in UserFriendly but that hardly makes them unfunny.
Look at the strips and you'll see they are jokes about people who are prepetually stupid. Illiad colects tech horror storys for his strip. It's not entirely fictional.
Kurtz dose not know what it's like to work at a helpdesk. It is far from the student teacher relationship he likens it to. Instead the help desk is the target of harrasment by users who would rather not use computers to start with.
He seems to think User Friendly is far fetched and not truely representive of what it's like to work at a helpdesk. However the reallity can be found by doing a websearch for "helldesk" the nickname for helpdesk given by it's victoms.
Computer Stupiditys is a website full of examples. Rather than a commic strip this is just the storys from people who work at the helpdesk.
There is annother website with audio recordings from accuall tech support calls and in some of thies the caller screams and yells and dosn't even let the poor tech talk.
Kurtz seems to believe thies are purely attacks on newbes. True newbes do need some help and thats what the help desk is for. The problem is far to often the caller dose not want help instead they want the computer to be byond reason or to conform to some bizzar idea of how computers work.
Some examples of the kind of calls the help desk gets:
Screaming loon.. person will not calm down long enough for the tech to understand what they caller is trying to say... some times the caller just called to curse out the tech.. some times the tech didn't give the caller the answer they wanted.. some times the caller is just to paniced to be reasonable.
The Expert.. Caller is a newbe with just enough knoladge to be dangerous.. he dosn't know computers but he thinks he dose. As a result he dosn't like answers that don't conform to his little world.
Your fault.. User did something newbish.. after all we all make mistakes so it's just a matter of helpping the user fix the problem...
Only the user dosn't want to fix the problem on HIS computer.. he's dead set the problem is on your end.
All three: User did something stupid he knows it's on your end becouse he's an expert and he'll scream at you to fix it...
After all that it's comforting to read a commic strip like user friendly and see that your not the only person sitting at a hell desk.
While Scott Kurtz dosn't think making jokes about idiots is funny he thinks spreding Linux fud is.
In one strip he mentioned how Linux is stable as long as you don't install a sound card...
A sound card dosn't make Linux unstable...
In the past a lot of sound cards didn't work on Linux... but dosn't work on Linux means just that... no sound card... it dosn't exist. Linux remains just as stable as ever..
However on Windows dosn't work means.. crash...
Maybe this is funny to someone who uses Windows and dosn't know better but it's not funny to the person who acually knows what Kurtz is saying.
In short... pot.. kettle.. black...
Maybe LinuxOne hired Sam :) :)
Ok now that is far fetched but it was to funny to pass up