Why waste your money on elaborate internet-connected electronics? There are plenty of things you can do to "enhance" your dream state.
1) Nicoderm Transdermal Patches. If worn during sleep, they have the tendency to cause very interesting and detailed dreams/nightmares. The only downside here is that you cant determine in advance which will happen. You could have an awesome dream, or, you could have a titanically bad nightmare. More interestingly, the number of patches you wear at night correlates directly with the vividness of the dream you have.
2) Self-Hypnosis. $4.95 and a self-help book from Borders will give you everything you need to know to make yourself a porn star during sleep. The content of your dreams is largely determined by what you think about just before you go to sleep. Entering a state of deep relaxation while concentrating on gonzo Roman orgies will do the trick most of the time.
3) Drugs. More adventurous and stupid people take drugs before going to sleep to produce interesting dreams. Drugs are bad, mmkay?
3) The monitor trick. Sleep with the back-end of a couple large computer monitors or TV's near your head. Turn the volume off, point the display away from you, and run a screenblanker on each display. The EMF produced by the monitors may be significant enough to affect brainwave patterns. Good for wacky dreams.
These fuckers dragged a Marine's body through the streets, and here you are, screaming "racist!! RACIST!!" on their behalf. Yeah, i'm such a bad boy. Boo fuckin hoo.
Since when is pointing out that some African tribesmen use clicks and grunts to communicate? Its true, is it not? Oh wait -- I'm sorry, I can't expect an overemotional dolt to understand logic. Nevermind.
It shouldn't be a problem, really. There are plenty of tin cans and string laying around to rebuild the network with. Those African bushmen who communicate with eachother using clicks and clucks might come in handy. Get one of them to whistle a tone, and make the other send data at 300 baud.:)
1) What difference does it make how you represent a heirarchical filesystem and its contents? Zippo. Infact, organizing them by document and folder is probably the most condusive way to go, since most people arent like us. The rest of the world thinks in real world terms. Only programmers are accustomed to thinking about such things in highly abstract terms. Grandma shouldn't need to develop a mental picture of a binary search tree in order to find her cookie recipe. The desktop metaphor is boring in most implementations, yes, but its certainly not dead
2) 3D interfaces are rediculous. Take the screenshot that accompanies the article -- Three desktops are presented to the user in the form of a room, with a screen on each wall. What the hell difference does it make if they're on the walls? Youre STILL USING a flat, two dimensional surface to interact with! And so long as you're still using a flat, two dimensional space to interact with, representing them in 3D is pointless. Workspaces need to follow a design similar to channels on a television. You'll notice that your living room has one TV in it, capable of displaying hundreds of different workspaces. You don't have hundreds of TVs mounted all over your walls, each tuned to a different channel. 3D workspaces may have a future, but as a modus to display was essentially amounts to a 2D workspace floating in a 3D scene, they are beyond pointless. They're ridiculous. As in, its ridiculous to improve the design of UIs by "pulling a CueCat." You're inventing a tool to solve a problem that doesn't exist by pushing "2D in 3D" interfaces.
3) The 2D GUI isnt dead. It just needs refinement and rationality in its design. Speaking of irrational and unrefined ideas, take your common everyday scrollbar. You have a device (a mouse) capable of smoothly vectoring along a curved path, and communicating that movement to the computer. However, your damn UI still wants to alter your view of a workspace or document according to explicit X or Y axes. You can scroll up and down, OR, you can scroll left and right.. But never both, an act which would be far more intuitive to the common user. It takes fine adjustment of two separate widgets (a vertical and horizontal scrollbar) to accomplish a task that could be easilly encompassed within one...while wasting a disproportionately large amount of screen real estate in the process. So, rather than whine about it, I decided to do something about it a few years back.
Scrollbars are dead, and we killed them. Been working with someone for the past week or so on (finally) delivering a proof of concept model for the infamous "scrollball" whitepaper I released 3 years ago after InSight collapsed. The model looks fantastic so far (hi Dibos!) and will probably be dumped on Savannah or Freshmeat in a week or so once we fumigate the code to drive the last of the bugs out.
Using unconcentrated radiation to kill cancer cells makes about as much sense as using a firecracker for a candle.
Cheers,
Re:This isn't a GPL issue, its an ego issue.
on
Free Software Leadership
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· Score: 3, Informative
If you read the email conversations between Cristoph and OpenOSX, its not the copyright Cristoph is whining about. He's whining about recognition. Right off the bat, that shows you what his priorities are.
Ugh...its apparently "Idiot Mac User Week" on /.
on
Free Software Leadership
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· Score: 4, Funny
This guy and the bonehead who blames UPS for his shitty packaging job should get together and go bowling. After all, they both have exactly what the other wants. One has a working computer system, but no fame. The other has fame, but a dead computer system.
Ummmmm, it's already been established that OpenOSX was in no way in violation of the GPL. Cristoph just got his ego bruised when he realised that releasing his code under the GPL does not automatically guarantee that he'll be given credit.
Two problems with this.
1) If he wanted to be given credit for his work that badly, he should have done his homework, and perhaps released his code under a BSD license, which guarantees that he'll be mentioned as the original author. It's not OpenOSX's fault he didn't use his head.
2) If he's in it for the fame and popularity, and not for the idea that the GPL ( and the entire open source movement ) represents, Cristoph should find another line of work -- And apparently, he has.
UPS doesn't offer insurance on packages shipped by people who want to ship as cheaply as possible. Thats exactly what he got -- A box shipped ascheaply as possible, ala no insurance.
Your "well packed" equiptment was apparently expensive enough for you to whine about, but not expensive enough to insure, and ship appropriately. What sort of idiot ships a fragile, ESD sensitive, vibration sensitive, humidity sensitive $2000 piece of equiptment via UNINSURED UPS Ground?! Its rediculous to assert that UPS doesn't insure internationally. Go look at their webpage! You just didn't want to pay extra to have it shipped the way you should have shipped it! You likely went as cheaply as possible, and subjected your machine to two or three weeks of abuse in the system when for a few bucks more, you could have done the job right!
If you actually looked at UPS's website, and saw their rates for an example journey from Montreal to Miami, you'de know how much your decision to go cheap cost you. You probably payed $78, the cheapest possible rate for a 25kg package measuring 40cm x 40cm x 40cm. For $40 more, you could have had it delivered in 3 days guaranteed and insured for $2000.
For every fuckup any shipping company makes, they do the job correctly a million times. You voluntarrily elected to subject your machine to the equivalent of "riding in the cattle car"...What did you expect?
In other words, it's not UPS's fault that youre a dumbass...And a cheap dumbass, at that.
Hasn't it occured to anyone that if a doctor is so error-prone, constantly nicking arteries of his patients, that he shouldn't be practicing surgery in the first place?
Just what the doctor ordered.. An electric steak-knife. Sorry, gang, but if a surgeon cant handle a scalpel with any degree of competence, you need to find a new surgeon, not a new scalpel.
Still no formal explanation..This is beginning to sound an awful lot like, "Dad, I totalled the car..A telephone pole jumped infront of my car, and I couldn't swerve around it in time! Honest, Dad!!"
Something tells me these guys made a titanically stupid mistake, and they're afraid of letting the cat out of the bag before they have a chance to circle the wagons and defend their multi-million dollar "oops".. See, its kinda hard to rebuild the detector when your funds have been cut due to findings of gross negligence.
Again, I move we refer to it as the "Special K" detector from now on.:)
What we have here is an ego conflict, and one guy whining about not getting credit. IMHO, OpenOSX has in no way violated the GPL -- If I remember correctly, the GPL does NOT make "giving credit to the original author" a manditory requirement of authorship. Sure, its a nice thing to do, but you're not obligated to do so. However, the GPL does make provision of the sourcecode upon request manditory, and OpenOSX has easilly exceeded this. They've bundled the source with the CD. No request necessary--its right there under your nose.
What happened here looks more like Fink's author had his feelings hurt when he realized people were using his work without giving him a pat on the head. Welcome to the open-source movement, Cristoph. Thats how it works. If you wanted to be assured of recieving some sort of acknowledgement of your efforts, you should have went with a BSD license, and not the GPL.
I might also add its terribly irresponsible (not to mention unprofessional) for Slashdot to assert that OpenOSX is guilty of GPL violations.
No, I don't use a Mac. I don't even have a stake in this whole argument.. I just don't like it when the facts are misrepresented. Read it for yourself.
No violence or foul language...I guess every Sylvester Stallone / Bruce Willis / Ahhnold Schwarzenegger movie you try and watch will consist of 3 minutes of scenes where they pick up a telephone and say, "Hello?". Hell, "Predator" will probably come out looking like a nature documentary.
Allrighty, step right up and pick the punchline that best matches this story:
#1: These photos are fake!! Theyre from the inside of Studio 54!! Look up in the balcony in the 4th image, you can see Liza Minelli smokin a bong!
#2: It should be easy to build another Super K detector. Just look for trailer parks...Super K's tend to spring up in low-income areas where Wal-Mart hasn't already established a commercial presence..
#3: So SuperK is handicapped...Does that make it "Special K" ?
hee hee
Re:The Reality Of How VA Views SourceForge
on
SourceForge Drifting
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Hi Mandolin,
The basic thoery was that in exchange for developers incorporating our components into their apps, we would then offer them space on the server to continue development. All the resources, speed and bandwidth they desired. Forgot to mention that when I wrote about how big the server was that VA gave us at the groundbreaking.
Essentially, thats all SourceForge is, in its current form. System 12 minus components, and lack of developmental control over the community as a result.
You wrote:
"Lastly, it disturbs me to see you pointing fingers at a for-profit company for scheming, when you make it sound as though many of said schemes came from you."
Thats correct, I do share in the blame partly. But you have to understand the climate within the community at the time; VA was precieved to be a friendly, charitable entity. By presenting them with an idea such as "you'll be able to guide the direction Linux application developers will take", we would have never guessed that VA would have taken hold of that and used it in a way that was detrimental to the community. It was so far out of question that we never even thought about it happening at the time.
I remember late in the summer of '99, I was home visiting my parents, and hung out in the garage with my Dad for a while. He had some concerns that I was putting alot of faith in VA to do what was right for everyone, and might be setting myself up for an enormous crash..That there is no such thing as a truly generous, thoughtful company. (Interestingly enough, he's 68 years old and is well-acquainted with the OSS movement..heh) It ruffled my feathers for my dad to call VA's integrity into question, in light of all that I had been provided with and participated within... We argued back and forth for a good half hour about how "VA would never do that, Dad. That would be suicidal in terms of public image.", and Dad kept coming back to the same line.."What IF!"..."Suppose things get worse for the company, son.. Suppose someone else starts calling the shots. You cant anticipate those things.."... And around and around we went. I defended VA, and Dad tried to keep my head out of the clouds.
Well, turns out Dad was right in the end. I was totally unprepared for what VA did to my group, and the post-mortem of events yeilds a picture of VA that I would have never believed to be true in a million years.
The span of 1998-2000 was an absolute lightspeed mindfuck, in my world....Just pure turmoil. The most i'd ever seen in my entire life. I dont think you need me to tell you how crazy those times were. It takes a tornado to get our heads stuck in our collective asses, and the whole Linux movement was a BIG one as far as tornadoes go.
As for VA...I'm glad people are finally beginning to realize that the Linux community would be a far better place without them. This article does a nice job of sealing it up.
Lets hope it brings prices on 802.11b gear down a little. I'm looking forward to doing some Wardriving in Chicago next summer.:)
Cheers,
The Reality Of How VA Views SourceForge
on
SourceForge Drifting
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· Score: 5, Interesting
The following post isn't meant to be a flame. I'm just sharing what I knew to be true about my own experiences with VA regarding System 12, the embryonic form of what later became SourceForge. Hell, we even came up with the name "SourceForge" back in May of '99..
To quote from the article:
Finally, VA Linux[1] has become rather underhanded in their attempts to grasp exclusive control of contributors' work.
What sold VA on our idea, originally, was that the company was ultimately going to be in a position to assert a great amount of influence over the design of people's apps in the end. In the months prior to System 12's inception, I was asked by Trae McCombs to provide what amounted to a "proposal" he could hand to the people calling the shots, to justify setting up a box for us and others on the team to work with. The details of that proposal went something like this:
System 12 was going to offer "components"... Nice bits and pieces of graphics, sounds, and code that could be fused into pre-existing Linux apps, and perhaps more importantly, used to build new ones from scratch. The idea was to make the Linux developer community dependant upon System 12. Originally, the primary benefit of this was that all Linux apps would have had a similar behavior and appearance, and i'm sure we'd all agree that such a thing was good--But later, a more interesting benefit emerged, in that we (as System 12) and VA, as our parent, would be able to dictate how people were to develop their apps by controlling the components these apps relied upon. We didn't want to view the project that way -- Asserting control was a secondary benefit. VA viewed it as a primary benefit.
Needless to say, Management at VA apparently liked the idea. They liked it enough to set up a dual P3/500 with 50GB of space on it, sitting on a wide open T1. An enormous machine by 1999 standards.
Essentially, VA would have been able to express their desires as a company via your apps. To this day, VA views SourceForge as a tool to advance the interests of the company. Suppose your code relied upon a component provided by System 12. At any point, VA could alter the structure of that component so as to make your code behave nicely with VA-produced software (ala Internet Explorer & Word), or more amusingly, run a banner ad at the bottom of your apps. This was our idea, and its the idea we sold VA on. System 12, the base predecessor to SourceForge, was designed to exert a measure of control over the direction of Linux application development, SO AS TO BENEFIT THE COMPANY. We wanted to become powerful enough as a central development resource that VA would have some interest in hiring us on as permanent employees versus community volunteers. That never happened. We got shoved off the map before we knew what hit us.
Rather than letting us continue development, they essentially co-opted us, and put pre-existing VA employees on the task of developing the idea. "Grow the garden to attract the bunnies, then lock the gate to the garden and sell rabbit meat." The gate got locked a month or so ago when VA announced they're moving SourceForge into proprietary waters.. Soon, (if not already) VA will trying to co-opt those who participated in the garden. I tried to warn you guys, but nobody listened. I got called insane instead, for suggesting VA had something other than purely altruistic motives. I used to be just as big a flag waver as you when it came to VA, but I learned my lesson fairly early on in the game. I'm afraid the rest of you are just now getting a taste of the same lesson we learned.
To milk the community for the gain of the company was part of the plan from Day 1, folks.
You would be VERY wise to move your project and your work off of SourceForge as soon as possible.
AIBO Not Ready For Prime Time?
on
New AIBO Demo'd
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· Score: 5, Funny
Lets not ignore the advances made in the new AIBO design:
o New leg-humping algorithm for extra comedy
o Now licks balls!
o Spent batteries now drop out of the AIBO's ass.
o New code revision allows the AIBO to shove his nose the crotch of anyone who comes over to visit.
o Will no longer try to assert its dominance over the vaccum cleaner.
Its not that witches weighed as much as a duck... Its just that the duck has a higher dispacement of water pound for pound than your typical witch does.;)
1992-Graduated H.S....barely. Had been into computers since the age of 4, and knew pretty much what I wanted to do with my life at that point.
1993-Got a job doing mindless help-desk work. $5.25/hr.
1994-Got a job working in a certification company as a student aide, barely better than mindless help-desk work. $5.25/hr.. Got a lucky break--The Senior Lab Coordinator vanished, and I got promoted into his position. $8.00/hr.
1995-Borrowed $50 from my Dad and bought UNIX Unleashed. Treated it like a Bible, and went off to a 4-year school.
1996-Soaked up some Assembly, C, and Java.
1997-Got a student job at the U as a Unix Admin. $12.50/hr, 35 hours a week ontop of school, no benefits. Took naps on the floor of my office when things got rough. Kept a jacket around for a blanket, and use something like a rolled up windsheild reflector as a pillow. (!) The reason I describe it that way is because when you land a job like that, you can consider it your first "real job". You need to soak up everything you can, and be ultra-committed to the position. As a UNIX admin, sometimes that means you sleep on the floor of your office. You don't go home until its fixed. Whenever you want to go home, just ask yourself, WWJD? Johaan, the Diesel Engineer in the movie "Das Boot"...Would Johaan go home? Hell no. Sure, Johaan flips out and has a mental breakdown halfway thru the film, but he pulls it together eventually.:) You can expect to do the same around this time in your career.
1998-Started racking up accolades. Wrote some white papers, got published a few times, had my work cited. Literally, try to find or get involved in things which equate with adding a line in your resume'.
1999-Left the $12.50/hr job to concentrate on school. Started doing remote *nix administration for VA, namely themes.org. Stayed sharp in the skills department. Avoided signing onto any dot-coms..A good move, considering how most employers consider "worked for a dot-com" to be a negative attribute on a resume' these days.
2000- Got a job at IBM. $23.50/hr, $33/hr overtime, and plenty of it. Sure, you'll go to work before sunrise and leave work after sunset, but you'll love it. I loved it.
Oh come on..don't be unfair now.:) Lopster has to be the single greatest tool i've ever seen for harvesting enormous quantities of _anything_. Its so well designed that it gives you faith that real coders still exist.
The kinds of people who end up dumping broadband fall into two categories.
1) "I cant find anything useful to do with it!"
2) "Oh, help me, my broadband service has been a nightmare!"
Both of which are fairly stupid conclusions. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean its not there--There are plenty of things on the net for which broadband is perfectly suited for. Here, i'll give you a real world example: I stopped watching TV news about a month and a half ago. Now, I just pull in feed via DSL from CNN and ABC News. I don't find much sense in 24 hour nonstop anthrax coverage, so I omit that crap from my feed. Tipped over vending machines have killed more people in the past 10 years than Anthrax has killed in the past 50 years. I'm surprised the nightly news isn't giving you stooges hourly vending machine updates.
Anyway, onto the second category. Broadband service providers by in large don't have their acts together, but thats not the technology's fault. Its the fault of the people handling it. We as Americans are far too impatient with such things. We just want to plug it in and see it go, and no form of broadband works that way. People who complain about broadband service are the same people who complain that their tires get dirty from off-roading. Wait until the damn road is paved, then travel on it.
For the record, i've had DSL for the past two years or so. I never had a problem with the technology end of it -- But I have had a problem with the human end of it. Namely, inept technical support, and billing, which is to be expected whenever theres a big rush to do anything.
Getting rid of broadband is like saying we should get rid of cars because they cost more to maintain than bicycles. No thanks.
Slashdot Mirror
Why waste your money on elaborate internet-connected electronics? There are plenty of things you can do to "enhance" your dream state.
1) Nicoderm Transdermal Patches. If worn during sleep, they have the tendency to cause very interesting and detailed dreams/nightmares. The only downside here is that you cant determine in advance which will happen. You could have an awesome dream, or, you could have a titanically bad nightmare. More interestingly, the number of patches you wear at night correlates directly with the vividness of the dream you have.
2) Self-Hypnosis. $4.95 and a self-help book from Borders will give you everything you need to know to make yourself a porn star during sleep. The content of your dreams is largely determined by what you think about just before you go to sleep. Entering a state of deep relaxation while concentrating on gonzo Roman orgies will do the trick most of the time.
3) Drugs. More adventurous and stupid people take drugs before going to sleep to produce interesting dreams. Drugs are bad, mmkay?
3) The monitor trick. Sleep with the back-end of a couple large computer monitors or TV's near your head. Turn the volume off, point the display away from you, and run a screenblanker on each display. The EMF produced by the monitors may be significant enough to affect brainwave patterns. Good for wacky dreams.
Cheers,
Ahh, how soon we forget....
These fuckers dragged a Marine's body through the streets, and here you are, screaming "racist!! RACIST!!" on their behalf. Yeah, i'm such a bad boy. Boo fuckin hoo.
Since when is pointing out that some African tribesmen use clicks and grunts to communicate? Its true, is it not? Oh wait -- I'm sorry, I can't expect an overemotional dolt to understand logic. Nevermind.
It shouldn't be a problem, really. There are plenty of tin cans and string laying around to rebuild the network with. Those African bushmen who communicate with eachother using clicks and clucks might come in handy. Get one of them to whistle a tone, and make the other send data at 300 baud.
1) What difference does it make how you represent a heirarchical filesystem and its contents? Zippo. Infact, organizing them by document and folder is probably the most condusive way to go, since most people arent like us. The rest of the world thinks in real world terms. Only programmers are accustomed to thinking about such things in highly abstract terms. Grandma shouldn't need to develop a mental picture of a binary search tree in order to find her cookie recipe. The desktop metaphor is boring in most implementations, yes, but its certainly not dead
2) 3D interfaces are rediculous. Take the screenshot that accompanies the article -- Three desktops are presented to the user in the form of a room, with a screen on each wall. What the hell difference does it make if they're on the walls? Youre STILL USING a flat, two dimensional surface to interact with! And so long as you're still using a flat, two dimensional space to interact with, representing them in 3D is pointless. Workspaces need to follow a design similar to channels on a television. You'll notice that your living room has one TV in it, capable of displaying hundreds of different workspaces. You don't have hundreds of TVs mounted all over your walls, each tuned to a different channel. 3D workspaces may have a future, but as a modus to display was essentially amounts to a 2D workspace floating in a 3D scene, they are beyond pointless. They're ridiculous. As in, its ridiculous to improve the design of UIs by "pulling a CueCat." You're inventing a tool to solve a problem that doesn't exist by pushing "2D in 3D" interfaces.
3) The 2D GUI isnt dead. It just needs refinement and rationality in its design. Speaking of irrational and unrefined ideas, take your common everyday scrollbar. You have a device (a mouse) capable of smoothly vectoring along a curved path, and communicating that movement to the computer. However, your damn UI still wants to alter your view of a workspace or document according to explicit X or Y axes. You can scroll up and down, OR, you can scroll left and right.. But never both, an act which would be far more intuitive to the common user. It takes fine adjustment of two separate widgets (a vertical and horizontal scrollbar) to accomplish a task that could be easilly encompassed within one...while wasting a disproportionately large amount of screen real estate in the process. So, rather than whine about it, I decided to do something about it a few years back.
Scrollbars are dead, and we killed them. Been working with someone for the past week or so on (finally) delivering a proof of concept model for the infamous "scrollball" whitepaper I released 3 years ago after InSight collapsed. The model looks fantastic so far (hi Dibos!) and will probably be dumped on Savannah or Freshmeat in a week or so once we fumigate the code to drive the last of the bugs out.
Cheers,
Using unconcentrated radiation to kill cancer cells makes about as much sense as using a firecracker for a candle.
Cheers,
If you read the email conversations between Cristoph and OpenOSX, its not the copyright Cristoph is whining about. He's whining about recognition. Right off the bat, that shows you what his priorities are.
This guy and the bonehead who blames UPS for his shitty packaging job should get together and go bowling. After all, they both have exactly what the other wants. One has a working computer system, but no fame. The other has fame, but a dead computer system.
Sounds like a beautiful friendship if you ask me.
Ummmmm, it's already been established that OpenOSX was in no way in violation of the GPL. Cristoph just got his ego bruised when he realised that releasing his code under the GPL does not automatically guarantee that he'll be given credit.
Two problems with this.
1) If he wanted to be given credit for his work that badly, he should have done his homework, and perhaps released his code under a BSD license, which guarantees that he'll be mentioned as the original author. It's not OpenOSX's fault he didn't use his head.
2) If he's in it for the fame and popularity, and not for the idea that the GPL ( and the entire open source movement ) represents, Cristoph should find another line of work -- And apparently, he has.
Cheers,
Judging from the photos, you packed your gear........well....like a Mac user.
Dumbass.
UPS doesn't offer insurance on packages shipped by people who want to ship as cheaply as possible. Thats exactly what he got -- A box shipped ascheaply as possible, ala no insurance.
Oh, boo fuckin hoo.
Your "well packed" equiptment was apparently expensive enough for you to whine about, but not expensive enough to insure, and ship appropriately. What sort of idiot ships a fragile, ESD sensitive, vibration sensitive, humidity sensitive $2000 piece of equiptment via UNINSURED UPS Ground?! Its rediculous to assert that UPS doesn't insure internationally. Go look at their webpage! You just didn't want to pay extra to have it shipped the way you should have shipped it! You likely went as cheaply as possible, and subjected your machine to two or three weeks of abuse in the system when for a few bucks more, you could have done the job right!
If you actually looked at UPS's website, and saw their rates for an example journey from Montreal to Miami, you'de know how much your decision to go cheap cost you. You probably payed $78, the cheapest possible rate for a 25kg package measuring 40cm x 40cm x 40cm. For $40 more, you could have had it delivered in 3 days guaranteed and insured for $2000.
For every fuckup any shipping company makes, they do the job correctly a million times. You voluntarrily elected to subject your machine to the equivalent of "riding in the cattle car"...What did you expect?
In other words, it's not UPS's fault that youre a dumbass...And a cheap dumbass, at that.
Hasn't it occured to anyone that if a doctor is so error-prone, constantly nicking arteries of his patients, that he shouldn't be practicing surgery in the first place?
Just what the doctor ordered.. An electric steak-knife. Sorry, gang, but if a surgeon cant handle a scalpel with any degree of competence, you need to find a new surgeon, not a new scalpel.
Cheers,
Still no formal explanation..This is beginning to sound an awful lot like, "Dad, I totalled the car..A telephone pole jumped infront of my car, and I couldn't swerve around it in time! Honest, Dad!!"
Something tells me these guys made a titanically stupid mistake, and they're afraid of letting the cat out of the bag before they have a chance to circle the wagons and defend their multi-million dollar "oops".. See, its kinda hard to rebuild the detector when your funds have been cut due to findings of gross negligence.
Again, I move we refer to it as the "Special K" detector from now on.
Cheers,
What we have here is an ego conflict, and one guy whining about not getting credit. IMHO, OpenOSX has in no way violated the GPL -- If I remember correctly, the GPL does NOT make "giving credit to the original author" a manditory requirement of authorship. Sure, its a nice thing to do, but you're not obligated to do so. However, the GPL does make provision of the sourcecode upon request manditory, and OpenOSX has easilly exceeded this. They've bundled the source with the CD. No request necessary--its right there under your nose.
What happened here looks more like Fink's author had his feelings hurt when he realized people were using his work without giving him a pat on the head. Welcome to the open-source movement, Cristoph. Thats how it works. If you wanted to be assured of recieving some sort of acknowledgement of your efforts, you should have went with a BSD license, and not the GPL.
I might also add its terribly irresponsible (not to mention unprofessional) for Slashdot to assert that OpenOSX is guilty of GPL violations.
No, I don't use a Mac. I don't even have a stake in this whole argument.. I just don't like it when the facts are misrepresented. Read it for yourself.
Cheers,
No violence or foul language...I guess every Sylvester Stallone / Bruce Willis / Ahhnold Schwarzenegger movie you try and watch will consist of 3 minutes of scenes where they pick up a telephone and say, "Hello?". Hell, "Predator" will probably come out looking like a nature documentary.
Sounds wacky to me. I'll pass.
Allrighty, step right up and pick the punchline that best matches this story:
#1: These photos are fake!! Theyre from the inside of Studio 54!! Look up in the balcony in the 4th image, you can see Liza Minelli smokin a bong!
#2: It should be easy to build another Super K detector. Just look for trailer parks...Super K's tend to spring up in low-income areas where Wal-Mart hasn't already established a commercial presence..
#3: So SuperK is handicapped...Does that make it "Special K" ?
hee hee
Hi Mandolin,
The basic thoery was that in exchange for developers incorporating our components into their apps, we would then offer them space on the server to continue development. All the resources, speed and bandwidth they desired. Forgot to mention that when I wrote about how big the server was that VA gave us at the groundbreaking.
Essentially, thats all SourceForge is, in its current form. System 12 minus components, and lack of developmental control over the community as a result.
You wrote:
"Lastly, it disturbs me to see you pointing fingers at a for-profit company for scheming, when you make it sound as though many of said schemes came from you."
Thats correct, I do share in the blame partly. But you have to understand the climate within the community at the time; VA was precieved to be a friendly, charitable entity. By presenting them with an idea such as "you'll be able to guide the direction Linux application developers will take", we would have never guessed that VA would have taken hold of that and used it in a way that was detrimental to the community. It was so far out of question that we never even thought about it happening at the time.
I remember late in the summer of '99, I was home visiting my parents, and hung out in the garage with my Dad for a while. He had some concerns that I was putting alot of faith in VA to do what was right for everyone, and might be setting myself up for an enormous crash..That there is no such thing as a truly generous, thoughtful company. (Interestingly enough, he's 68 years old and is well-acquainted with the OSS movement..heh) It ruffled my feathers for my dad to call VA's integrity into question, in light of all that I had been provided with and participated within... We argued back and forth for a good half hour about how "VA would never do that, Dad. That would be suicidal in terms of public image.", and Dad kept coming back to the same line.."What IF!"
Well, turns out Dad was right in the end. I was totally unprepared for what VA did to my group, and the post-mortem of events yeilds a picture of VA that I would have never believed to be true in a million years.
The span of 1998-2000 was an absolute lightspeed mindfuck, in my world....Just pure turmoil. The most i'd ever seen in my entire life. I dont think you need me to tell you how crazy those times were. It takes a tornado to get our heads stuck in our collective asses, and the whole Linux movement was a BIG one as far as tornadoes go.
As for VA...I'm glad people are finally beginning to realize that the Linux community would be a far better place without them. This article does a nice job of sealing it up.
Lets hope it brings prices on 802.11b gear down a little. I'm looking forward to doing some Wardriving in Chicago next summer.
Cheers,
The following post isn't meant to be a flame. I'm just sharing what I knew to be true about my own experiences with VA regarding System 12, the embryonic form of what later became SourceForge. Hell, we even came up with the name "SourceForge" back in May of '99..
To quote from the article:
Finally, VA Linux[1] has become rather underhanded in their attempts to grasp exclusive control of contributors' work.
What sold VA on our idea, originally, was that the company was ultimately going to be in a position to assert a great amount of influence over the design of people's apps in the end. In the months prior to System 12's inception, I was asked by Trae McCombs to provide what amounted to a "proposal" he could hand to the people calling the shots, to justify setting up a box for us and others on the team to work with. The details of that proposal went something like this:
System 12 was going to offer "components"... Nice bits and pieces of graphics, sounds, and code that could be fused into pre-existing Linux apps, and perhaps more importantly, used to build new ones from scratch. The idea was to make the Linux developer community dependant upon System 12. Originally, the primary benefit of this was that all Linux apps would have had a similar behavior and appearance, and i'm sure we'd all agree that such a thing was good--But later, a more interesting benefit emerged, in that we (as System 12) and VA, as our parent, would be able to dictate how people were to develop their apps by controlling the components these apps relied upon. We didn't want to view the project that way -- Asserting control was a secondary benefit. VA viewed it as a primary benefit.
Needless to say, Management at VA apparently liked the idea. They liked it enough to set up a dual P3/500 with 50GB of space on it, sitting on a wide open T1. An enormous machine by 1999 standards.
Essentially, VA would have been able to express their desires as a company via your apps. To this day, VA views SourceForge as a tool to advance the interests of the company. Suppose your code relied upon a component provided by System 12. At any point, VA could alter the structure of that component so as to make your code behave nicely with VA-produced software (ala Internet Explorer & Word), or more amusingly, run a banner ad at the bottom of your apps. This was our idea, and its the idea we sold VA on. System 12, the base predecessor to SourceForge, was designed to exert a measure of control over the direction of Linux application development, SO AS TO BENEFIT THE COMPANY. We wanted to become powerful enough as a central development resource that VA would have some interest in hiring us on as permanent employees versus community volunteers. That never happened. We got shoved off the map before we knew what hit us.
Rather than letting us continue development, they essentially co-opted us, and put pre-existing VA employees on the task of developing the idea. "Grow the garden to attract the bunnies, then lock the gate to the garden and sell rabbit meat." The gate got locked a month or so ago when VA announced they're moving SourceForge into proprietary waters.. Soon, (if not already) VA will trying to co-opt those who participated in the garden. I tried to warn you guys, but nobody listened. I got called insane instead, for suggesting VA had something other than purely altruistic motives. I used to be just as big a flag waver as you when it came to VA, but I learned my lesson fairly early on in the game. I'm afraid the rest of you are just now getting a taste of the same lesson we learned.
To milk the community for the gain of the company was part of the plan from Day 1, folks.
You would be VERY wise to move your project and your work off of SourceForge as soon as possible.
Lets not ignore the advances made in the new AIBO design:
o New leg-humping algorithm for extra comedy
o Now licks balls!
o Spent batteries now drop out of the AIBO's ass.
o New code revision allows the AIBO to shove his nose the crotch of anyone who comes over to visit.
o Will no longer try to assert its dominance over the vaccum cleaner.
o No longer attacks small children
Its not that witches weighed as much as a duck... Its just that the duck has a higher dispacement of water pound for pound than your typical witch does.
And yes, PROPAGANDA is still up,
Well, lets see..
1992-Graduated H.S....barely. Had been into computers since the age of 4, and knew pretty much what I wanted to do with my life at that point.
1993-Got a job doing mindless help-desk work. $5.25/hr.
1994-Got a job working in a certification company as a student aide, barely better than mindless help-desk work. $5.25/hr.. Got a lucky break--The Senior Lab Coordinator vanished, and I got promoted into his position. $8.00/hr.
1995-Borrowed $50 from my Dad and bought UNIX Unleashed. Treated it like a Bible, and went off to a 4-year school.
1996-Soaked up some Assembly, C, and Java.
1997-Got a student job at the U as a Unix Admin. $12.50/hr, 35 hours a week ontop of school, no benefits. Took naps on the floor of my office when things got rough. Kept a jacket around for a blanket, and use something like a rolled up windsheild reflector as a pillow. (!) The reason I describe it that way is because when you land a job like that, you can consider it your first "real job". You need to soak up everything you can, and be ultra-committed to the position. As a UNIX admin, sometimes that means you sleep on the floor of your office. You don't go home until its fixed. Whenever you want to go home, just ask yourself, WWJD? Johaan, the Diesel Engineer in the movie "Das Boot"...Would Johaan go home? Hell no. Sure, Johaan flips out and has a mental breakdown halfway thru the film, but he pulls it together eventually.
1998-Started racking up accolades. Wrote some white papers, got published a few times, had my work cited. Literally, try to find or get involved in things which equate with adding a line in your resume'.
1999-Left the $12.50/hr job to concentrate on school. Started doing remote *nix administration for VA, namely themes.org. Stayed sharp in the skills department. Avoided signing onto any dot-coms..A good move, considering how most employers consider "worked for a dot-com" to be a negative attribute on a resume' these days.
2000- Got a job at IBM. $23.50/hr, $33/hr overtime, and plenty of it. Sure, you'll go to work before sunrise and leave work after sunset, but you'll love it. I loved it.
Cheers,
Free Software is like sex. Its better when RMS isn't involved.
Oh come on..don't be unfair now.
The kinds of people who end up dumping broadband fall into two categories.
1) "I cant find anything useful to do with it!"
2) "Oh, help me, my broadband service has been a nightmare!"
Both of which are fairly stupid conclusions. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean its not there--There are plenty of things on the net for which broadband is perfectly suited for. Here, i'll give you a real world example: I stopped watching TV news about a month and a half ago. Now, I just pull in feed via DSL from CNN and ABC News. I don't find much sense in 24 hour nonstop anthrax coverage, so I omit that crap from my feed. Tipped over vending machines have killed more people in the past 10 years than Anthrax has killed in the past 50 years. I'm surprised the nightly news isn't giving you stooges hourly vending machine updates.
Anyway, onto the second category. Broadband service providers by in large don't have their acts together, but thats not the technology's fault. Its the fault of the people handling it. We as Americans are far too impatient with such things. We just want to plug it in and see it go, and no form of broadband works that way. People who complain about broadband service are the same people who complain that their tires get dirty from off-roading. Wait until the damn road is paved, then travel on it.
For the record, i've had DSL for the past two years or so. I never had a problem with the technology end of it -- But I have had a problem with the human end of it. Namely, inept technical support, and billing, which is to be expected whenever theres a big rush to do anything.
Getting rid of broadband is like saying we should get rid of cars because they cost more to maintain than bicycles. No thanks.
Cheers, and yes, PROPAGANDA is still running,