Lets round up the stupidity here...
on
A New Kind of War
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· Score: 2
Lets jump right in with the first few lines...
As noxious as Washington talk shows generally are, this weekend's were significant. Watching all of the Talking Head shows out of D.C., I struggled to decipher the particular meaning, language and codes of that city's inhabitants.
Jon, incase someone forgot to tell you, the Government is basically saying they don't quite know off-hand how to handle a war of this type. Its being figured out as we go, its blueprint being changed by the hour as countries in the reigon ally themselves for us or against us. Its not a videogame. It involves tying together information from several different countries with several different motives, most of which dont speak the same language, Jon. The rules aren't silkscreened on the glass, and you don't have 3 lives.
George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Dick Cheney and others were on the tube all weekend, and they seemed to be sending the same signals and saying something important. They were talking about a "new kind of war," one that re-emphasized human analysis and intelligence gathering, but also offered a central role for many involved in security technology, from electronic ID to surveillance.
Yup, and you should be happy about that. You have nothing to worry about, provided you aren't doing anything illegal, in which case you probably deserve to get busted anyway. I could care less who monitors my telephone calls, government or otherwise. You're a fool if you have ever considered these sorts of communications "private" in the first place. See, the thing is, Jon, alot of sponges and leeches in this country hide under the blanket of "civil liberties". They want to continue committing low-level crimes like software piracy, copyright infringement, and other minor offenses under the auspices of "freedom". What they don't understand is that the notion of "freedom" does not translate to "You are free to rip someone off.". Don't associate yourselves with that crowd. Being sponges and leeches, they don't have the balls to make their way through life legitimately. They prefer to exploit rather than cooperate.
They were not talking about Desert Storm, but something radically different. As usual, the media offered much rhetoric, few details. And there are substantial concerns about privacy and civil liberties
Well, what did you expect, Jon? An hourly schedule of events in the reigon for the next 2 years downloadable to your Palm? For christ's sake, use your head, Jon. In wartime, the idea is, you don't want everyone (particularly the enemy) to know what you're up to.. They are intentionally being vague. Intelligent people realize this--Dumbasses get frustrated at the lack of disclosed detail. They fail to realize that they, their friends, and loved ones are more secure because of it. Loose lips sink ships, Jon.
People are wondering how this new kind of war might work, what it might look like. Some of you might have some ideas.
Alot of us have ideas about what it might look like, Jon. Mine looks like several giant glass craters dotting the landscape of Syria, Afghanistan, Egypt, Lybia, Jordan, Sudan, Iran, Iraq, and Pakistan, each of which measures two miles across. One thing's for sure.. Whatever it is, neither you or I really want to know. I don't wanna know what the military is planning to unleash on these people, because if I know about it, chances are our enemy knows about it too. The more secretive they are, they better off we'll be. They can turn the entire reigon into a parking lot for Disneyworld for all I care. Thats why I pay taxes--So I don't have to run around like a chicken with its head cut off terrified of everything that might happen. Thats one of the nice things about being American. I don't have to voice my own opinion about what I feel should happen, because the consensus of other people, with or without me, will eventually do what is right for all of us as a collective entity. Thats the whole nature of Democracy. Sure, it will be brutal, innocent people have been killed, but guess what--That shit happens, and it happens all the time. The trick is, just make sure it's not you that has to look at the business end of an AR-15.
I dont think any suit short of multiple layers of Kevlar (heh, like a hundred) is going to protect an astronaut from being killed by a fleck of paint going 20,000 MPH..Thats the main problem I think should be addressed. I'd be more concerned about physical safety than I would be about mobility.
If you ask me, George is just plannifying his strategery to get the economical situations back. Bush, like his father, has a keenly awarity of the severeness of the recent economical turning downward.
Part of the economical restimularity proposed by Bush's administration includes a provision for strengtherizing the stock market. The best way to accomplish this, obviously, is to redistributerate the nations wealth resources. This means we don't want to go after Microsoft. Once the stock market begins to redisconfigure its direction and go itself from its turning down of the economy, the economy will be better!
Leave George alone. He's the best thing to come along since Clinton.
I'm doing my part to try and improve things, and finding that nobody cares enough to help. Personally, I dont release jack squat until I can confirm to the best of my ability to test it that my code is clean, and solid. People who release anything less are either lazy or wreckless, IMHO..
A Hugo Award, hm? Not bad, considering the entire series is a massive rip-off of a book published back in 1984. There are way too many similarities between earlier books and Rowling's "Harry Potter" series. I also remember seeing some movie on TV not too long ago from the late 80's, that featured a kid playing a wizard-type character named, of all things, "Harry Potter". The whole thing stinks like rotten fish if you ask me.
Its called "boiling". I once heard it described on TV..Apparently, you take a liquid, and you make it so hot that liquids turn right into gas!! Since water boils at 212'F and sodium dissolves at around 800'F, all you'de have to do is take a bucket of seawater, put a heat source beneath it, and wait!
This article gets my Most Dumb-Ass Article Of 2001 nomination. Its so dumb-ass you'de think Hemos was the one who posted it. Oh wait... he did post it. Hrm.
I know this will probably earn me a -1 Flamebait moderation, but i've been thinking about something lately, regarding Slashdot.
What strikes me as particularly odd, is the fact that Slashdot chooses to embrace the cause of Mr. Sklyarov, despite the fact that he knowingly and willfully comitted an act of copyright infringement. This is a crime. While its not on par with grand theft or murder, it is a crime nonetheless. Not only did he commit a crime, but he also didn't find much harm in holding a lecture to inform and encourage others how to do the same. No matter how small a dent in some company's bottom line it made, it's still illegal..You can call it whatever you want, and make up elaborate dances to justify it, but its still a crime, enforced by law.. Laws that you and I have citizens helped create to protect the rights of our property.
Now, suppose the company being victimized was VA Linux Systems, OSDN, BSI, or perhaps more poigniantly, Slashdot. Slashdot holds numerous copyrights, each of which i'm sure they'de defend rigorously in court. If someone came along and decided to "pull a Dmitry" on Rob and Jeff, they would likely throw a fit, and let loose the dogs of war on whoever did it. They wouldn't embrace the offender as some sort of Robin Hood'ish cult hero.
Thats a double-standard i'm not quite comfortable with. Many would argue that the sheer numbers of readers here at Slashdot almost demand unbiased reporting, but, its their page, they can do what they want...And thats fine....But Slashdot's maintainers should realize that they're seting a dangerous precedent when you hold up one ethical ideal but practice quite another.
In other words, if you really want to see something funny, try violating one or more of Slashdot's copyrights. I'll bet you dollars to donuts Slashdot wont take up your cause, and run almost daily series of reports on how to defend and support you.
If tech journalists are corporate whores, then VA is guilty fo pimping their own whores with the worst of them. Some of you might recall this little story -- Linux.com's former Editor-In-Chief resigned from his post after VA tried to make him comprimise his professional ethics. In short, VA was going to their "business partners" and saying, "You pay us some money, and we'll make our editorial staff write something favorable about your product...We'll make it look like an unbiased editorial, and we'll pull one over on the whole Linux community in the process."
Real nice.
Anyway, Emmett basically told VA to fuck off, and walked away. And rightfully so--Anyone with half an ounce of professional integrity would have similarly told VA to do the same for trying to lie to the Linux community in the form of "unbiased editorials" that were little more than thinly veiled advertisements purchased by VA's business partners. Personal and professional integrity is worth way more than helping a desparate dot-bomb company postpone their death. You gotta have respect for a guy like that...Doing whats right and doing whats easy are often times two very different things. Emmett chose not to be a whore for VA, and he's doing fine. Can't say the same for VA these days..
Cheers,
I'm going to cry myself to sleep tonight.
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Sklyarov Indicted
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· Score: 1
I'm going to cry myself to sleep tonight because I cant believe how fucking whiney and pathetic the typical "haxx0r" is... Its like this, gang. Real "haxx0rs" dont get caught, not are they titannicaly stupid enough to hold a goddamn lecture on what they did..Second of all, the next time you start to bitch and moan about how your First Amendment rights are being jeopardized by those oooh-mean-and-nasty Big Brother corporations, ask yourself, "Gee, but havent I already violated their rights first?"
Get over it. He had a trial, and he was found guilty. A criminal went to jail, like thousands of others. Sorry -- You cant have a hero today, little Billy. End of story.
Yeah, this post is flamebait. But its also true. Go through what I just wrote line by line and tell me where i'm wrong before you mod me down.
A good review. I bought this book a while back to prepare for an upcoming Solaris certification test I was taking, and it helped out immensely. The good measure of a good reference book isn't its width -- Its wether or not you can open it up, and follow whats being discussed almost immediately without having to skip back 2 or 3 chapters to see what the heck theyre talking about. This is a well laid out book, and makes a comfortable amount of assumptions about the level of expertise the typical reader already has, and builds on it. Theres nothing I hate more than technical references that don't address the inconsistancies in how the OS presents a particular function to the user. It makes the learning process that much easier, without simply beating the reader over the head with "Here's what you do. Forget everything else, just do it like this and dont ask any questions".
Leave that crap for the math teachers.:)
Cheers,
The best birthday present I can think of..
on
Linux Is 10 Today
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· Score: 1, Troll
The best birthday present I can think to give the Linux community on its 10th birthday is the news that Slashdot casually forgot to mention that trading on VA Linux Systems' stock was halted yesterday during market trading. The quicker this company falls off the radar, the quicker the Linux community can go back to being the way it was before VA came along. Cooperative, fair, and fun, instead of competitive, corrupt, and stressful.
With that in mind, its easy to say that Linux has a bright future ahead. Here's to another 10..:)
The article is probably justified in being hard on Elementary School teachers. The following statement isn't meant to eliicit laughter: In my opinion, there is way, way too much emphasis on placing children into "categories" or "tracks" and way too little emphasis payed to developing each child's strengths. At least back when I was in Elementary School (circa '79-83) the emphasis on teaching was to make sure all the children performed the same, which is a nice way of saying "Ok, screw the smart kids, lets set the bar low and make sure everyone else reaches it."
More attention should be payed in identifying each child's own interests, no matter how fleeting they may seem to be, or how pointless the pursuit seems through an adult's eyes. The need to teach the basics, and provide guidance to children is obviously necessary, but approaching the task of teaching a group of children in the same way as a ranch hand approaches coralling a herd of cattle is a waste of the child's time, and a waste of the adults time.
Children tend to teach themselves when given the opportunity and the tools to do so. They learn by play. They learn the value of social rules, teamwork, organization, and creativity without any ounce of parental intervention. A good way to stifle a child's own built-in ability to learn those things is to demand they spend 10 years of their lives jumping through smaller and smaller hoops, and ending up basically unable to think for themselves upon graduation. The really nasty thing is, the quality of education is never constant. Shitty teachers produce shitty students, who in turn become shitty teachers and perpetuate the problem. Good teachers produce good students, some of whom go on to become good teachers themselves.
I learned more from my Elementary School's librarian than I ever did from any teacher during that time. Why? I wanted to learn things, and she let me know where to find them. I wanted to learn how to code, so she pointed me in the direction of the Apple ]['s we had back then.
The only thing I learned by doing "book reports" was that reading was an rigorously enforced activity that I had no direct say in.
" So PARC didn't invent the GUI. They didn't invent OO programming either, nor networking. However, they were the first to demonstrate a workinggeneral purpose GUI, the first to build real applications using OO techniques, and the first to build a working high speed LAN."
Wrong, wrong, and wrong. All three of PARC's supposed "innovations" were being done in the late 1950's and early 1960s. The first general-purpose GUI popped up around that time. So did "real applications using OO techniques", and "a working high speed LAN"... You're high on crack if you think PARC had anything to do with inventing any of these. Sure, they used them, but they had been around for years, and in some cases, decades.
"Back in the early-mid '80s, employeail, memos, project schedules, and presentations with people across the country in a GUI environment"
So was I. I had an Amiga and an email address in 1985;) All kidding aside, we're not talking about revolutionary, here. Hell, the "name@domain" convention appeared in 1972. Email has been around for nearly 40 years. Google for "Doug Englebart" and "NLS" circa 1962 if you're bored.
"Xerox were collaborating on email, memos, project schedules, and presentations with people across the country in a GUI environment"
Groupware was being done in the mid 1960s. Teleconferencing even. Again, google for Doug Englebart, and "human augmentation lab" if you're bored.
I don't mean to rub your nose in it or anything.. its just your facts are way, way off.
I was going to rip this article a new one, but i'm glad they got it right. What I would consider to be the first GUI was Sutherland's "Sketchpad" system from the early 60's. The military had similar sorts of things predating Sutherland, but nothing quite flexible enough to really be called a full blown GUI.
Anybody with their brains in the right place can tell you that the GUI was not invented by Xerox PARC. They may have done a great deal to push the idea, or perhaps simply been at the right place at the right time, but the basic idea of using graphics as a means to interact with a machine predates PARC by about 20 years.
If you really wanna have some fun, check out Doug Englebart's 1968 presentation that introduced the world to the mouse, chordboard and other interesting stuff. There are plenty of links to it, but here's a good one incase you cant find any. A while back, there was a site that offered his entire presentation in RealVideo format, IIRC..I wish someone would post a link to it, or perhaps a better (re: DivX, or straight MPEG) link... It almost brings tears to my eyes when I watch it.:)
Somebody turned me onto this page that talks about how a group of guys are making a mission out of setting up localized, free wireless access to the Internet, with the ultimate goal being able to fire up your laptop anywhere within your city and get on the net for free. All it takes is a couple hundred dollars (which isnt much when shared between 20 people who pitch in, initially) and a guy who controls anything as meager as a DSL line willing to "donate" some of his bandwidth to the antenna.
If anything, stuff like this will kill Bluetooth from a purely VHS vs. Beta sort of way. When it comes down to a fight between popular acceptance versus quality of technology, popular acceptance always wins.
Cheers,
IBM's Strange Affair With Linux
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IBM Wants Linux
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· Score: 2, Informative
Having worked in both places, and ridden both beasts, I can give people a qualified yes when it comes to wether or not IBM wants to very deeply embrace Linux. Why a "qualified yes"? I'll try to explain:
IMHO, for the year or so I worked at IBM as a contractor, Linux sort of went from a curious oddity the engineers tossed around on the floor to something that upper management decided would be good for the company to look into. Although I obviously cant speak for IBM as a whole, or even the division I worked in, it seemed pretty clear to me that IBM was trying to move as fast as possible in Linux' direction...As fast as any company of IBM's size can manage, as it were. My job there was to run-test (heh, or crash-test, depending on your POV) RAID subsystems, writing code basically meant to abuse the array to the point where it failed, and coughed up errors we felt might arise in the feild. We were doing alot of parallel testing on a variety of platforms, Linux included.
Unfortunately, I can tell you from my own personal observations that Linux as of 2.2 wasn't quite ready to handle the sort of stresses that are normally endured successfully by other platforms. Without getting into details (Ay, the spectre of my 6-month NDA looms above) management spent some time trying to determine if Linux was "ready for prime-time", and wasn't finding what it needed..In my little niche, at least. This was a while ago, and I hope that the situation has improved somewhat...but I cant help but get the feeling the same sort of thing was happening elsewhere within the company. It seemed everyone there wants to make inroads towards Linux, to sort of adopt it in a parent-child sort of way, but the Linux picture really hasnt fully gelled yet to where companies like IBM can bet their money on it with total confidence. Nonetheless, the demand is there folks..Customers are asking the company for solutions involving Linux, even on the big iron. IBM wants to embrace Linux, but Linux isn't maturing fast enough in the right areas. It would be wise for us to get hammering on the things that need to be addressed...By the time we actually get around to solidifying whats important (ie. a standardized GUI we can all use instead of two sibling projects who don't want to play in the same sandbox) and hammering out the better known weaknesses in Linux (The handling of SCSI devices, in particular) it may already be too late, unfortunately.
Then again, I might be assuming too much if I expect the typical Slashdot reader to understand that companies are not immune to customer dissatisfaction. I'm glad I was never associated with this company, but it doesn't seem like anyone's going to shed any tears over it.
The last place I worked, IBM Storage Systems Division here in Tucson, had a bunch of these class of machines.. The test cell where I worked (for most of the time) was a roughly square area lined with 13 RAID arrays usually loaded top to bottom with 15K 72GB drives down one side, 3 IBM SP/1s (The same boxes that handed Kasparov his ass a year or two ago..) about 10 RS/6000's of varying horsepower, and a couple desks. One of the racks had exclusively nothing but 16-port Brocades in them, and what seemed like a mile of fibrechannel cable spewing out of it. I remember one slow day in particular, a friend of mine at work sat there, looked around, and tried to figure out how much money the company had stuffed in our little 9 by 14-square test cell in order for us to conduct our testing on the arrays... At $86,000 a piece, the Brocade rack was the priciest piece of real-estate in the lab, weighing in at $1.12 million dollars, or about $300,000 per square foot of floor space. Just within eyesight, we were encased within close to $20 million dollars worth of hardware, not including cables and the small stuff.
The Whopper may be King in the Land of Burgers, but IBM is God when it comes big iron.;)
The study cited in this article refers to the number of people with Java skills, not the number of programs released. To quote:
"Java usage is even stronger outside North America, with almost 60 percent of developers expecting to spend some part of their programming time using Java."
This is one of those misleading statistics, like "Half of all marriages end in divorce".. What most people fail to realize is that the statement is not factually concise.. There are idiot-men and idiot-women who get married and divorced several times, which accounts for a disproportionately high "overall" divorce rate. The percentage of successful marriages is actually much higher, just the same as the number of coders actively writing in C all the time is much higher than the number of coders actively writing in Java all the time.
The record industry is going after these people that open up new channels of information.
Incorrect. The RIAA is going after people who are violating their copyrights, and their actions are governed under the same set of laws that govern our copyrights. Speaking as someone who, yes, has asserted copyright on a number of things, this is a very important sticking point.
The problem with this is that there is plenty of legal material being transferred as well.
Doesn't matter. A crime is being comitted. Community A is being ripped off knowingly and willfully by Community B, and that's illegal There really isn't any way of dancing around it.
One of my good friends writes and plays music in his own band, and if it weren't for mp3s there would be little chance of their work being distributed.
Also false. There are plenty of ways of getting the word out about your band that have absolutely nothing to do with the internet, let alone MP3 trading. Careers have been made with a handful of flyers and a staple gun, or selling casettes out of the back of your car, both of which are free and legal. Your friend's band chose a pretty poor method of "getting the word out" if they chose Napster, IMHO.
Yeah, people make that argument alot... That MP3 trading is "fair use"... I really don't think the people who wrote the original copyright by-laws would refer to widespread, global, profitless redistribution of their product to millions of people "fair use". I mean, making a dub for a couple friends at school, or maybe even lending out copies to a friend who's interested in a particular band, thats fair use. I'll agree.
But warehousing thousands (in some cases, tens of thousands) of songs and making them available to millions of people 24 hours a day exceeds the boundaries of the definition of "fair use". Thats unfair use in my book.
I like trading MP3s as much as the next guy. Buy call a friggin spade a spade, already. The fact that everybody does it doesn't magically make it legal, proper, or morally justifyable in any context.
You cannot justify theft in this country, or any country, by saying "Well, the owner who I stole from is still making millions of dollars!!". Trading MP3s constitutes copyright infringement, plain and simple. It is illegal. If you don't like it, call your elected officials and ask them to CHANGE THE LAWS. Even though we all engage in it knowingly, and the fact that we do doesn't somehow magically make it legal. It is STILL illegal, and to paint up these guys, or anyone, as some sort of Robin Hood character is rediculous.
Justifying theft by saying "Well, the RIAA is still making $500 million dollars more than they did last year!" is absolute bullshit. I made more than I did last year too, and if you tried to steal from me, i'd kick your ass..So why is it wrong when the RIAA does the same to protect its property?
Look, I dont like the RIAA either.. But trying to villify them for protecting what is rightfully theirs is the pinnacle of stupidity especially in light of the fact that we would be doing the same ourselves.
Mod me down or mod me up, I don't care. Thats just how I feel about it.
Slashdot Mirror
Amen. Well written, my friend.
Lets jump right in with the first few lines...
As noxious as Washington talk shows generally are, this weekend's were significant. Watching all of the Talking Head shows out of D.C., I struggled to decipher the particular meaning, language and codes of that city's inhabitants.
Jon, incase someone forgot to tell you, the Government is basically saying they don't quite know off-hand how to handle a war of this type. Its being figured out as we go, its blueprint being changed by the hour as countries in the reigon ally themselves for us or against us. Its not a videogame. It involves tying together information from several different countries with several different motives, most of which dont speak the same language, Jon. The rules aren't silkscreened on the glass, and you don't have 3 lives.
George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Dick Cheney and others were on the tube all weekend, and they seemed to be sending the same signals and saying something important. They were talking about a "new kind of war," one that re-emphasized human analysis and intelligence gathering, but also offered a central role for many involved in security technology, from electronic ID to surveillance.
Yup, and you should be happy about that. You have nothing to worry about, provided you aren't doing anything illegal, in which case you probably deserve to get busted anyway. I could care less who monitors my telephone calls, government or otherwise. You're a fool if you have ever considered these sorts of communications "private" in the first place. See, the thing is, Jon, alot of sponges and leeches in this country hide under the blanket of "civil liberties". They want to continue committing low-level crimes like software piracy, copyright infringement, and other minor offenses under the auspices of "freedom". What they don't understand is that the notion of "freedom" does not translate to "You are free to rip someone off.". Don't associate yourselves with that crowd. Being sponges and leeches, they don't have the balls to make their way through life legitimately. They prefer to exploit rather than cooperate.
They were not talking about Desert Storm, but something radically different. As usual, the media offered much rhetoric, few details. And there are substantial concerns about privacy and civil liberties
Well, what did you expect, Jon? An hourly schedule of events in the reigon for the next 2 years downloadable to your Palm? For christ's sake, use your head, Jon. In wartime, the idea is, you don't want everyone (particularly the enemy) to know what you're up to.. They are intentionally being vague. Intelligent people realize this--Dumbasses get frustrated at the lack of disclosed detail. They fail to realize that they, their friends, and loved ones are more secure because of it. Loose lips sink ships, Jon.
People are wondering how this new kind of war might work, what it might look like. Some of you might have some ideas.
Alot of us have ideas about what it might look like, Jon. Mine looks like several giant glass craters dotting the landscape of Syria, Afghanistan, Egypt, Lybia, Jordan, Sudan, Iran, Iraq, and Pakistan, each of which measures two miles across. One thing's for sure.. Whatever it is, neither you or I really want to know. I don't wanna know what the military is planning to unleash on these people, because if I know about it, chances are our enemy knows about it too. The more secretive they are, they better off we'll be. They can turn the entire reigon into a parking lot for Disneyworld for all I care. Thats why I pay taxes--So I don't have to run around like a chicken with its head cut off terrified of everything that might happen. Thats one of the nice things about being American. I don't have to voice my own opinion about what I feel should happen, because the consensus of other people, with or without me, will eventually do what is right for all of us as a collective entity. Thats the whole nature of Democracy. Sure, it will be brutal, innocent people have been killed, but guess what--That shit happens, and it happens all the time. The trick is, just make sure it's not you that has to look at the business end of an AR-15.
Cheers,
I dont think any suit short of multiple layers of Kevlar (heh, like a hundred) is going to protect an astronaut from being killed by a fleck of paint going 20,000 MPH..Thats the main problem I think should be addressed. I'd be more concerned about physical safety than I would be about mobility.
Cheers,
If you ask me, George is just plannifying his strategery to get the economical situations back. Bush, like his father, has a keenly awarity of the severeness of the recent economical turning downward.
Part of the economical restimularity proposed by Bush's administration includes a provision for strengtherizing the stock market. The best way to accomplish this, obviously, is to redistributerate the nations wealth resources. This means we don't want to go after Microsoft. Once the stock market begins to redisconfigure its direction and go itself from its turning down of the economy, the economy will be better!
Leave George alone. He's the best thing to come along since Clinton.
Cheers,
I'm doing my part to try and improve things, and finding that nobody cares enough to help. Personally, I dont release jack squat until I can confirm to the best of my ability to test it that my code is clean, and solid. People who release anything less are either lazy or wreckless, IMHO.
So whats your excuse?
Cheers,
A Hugo Award, hm? Not bad, considering the entire series is a massive rip-off of a book published back in 1984. There are way too many similarities between earlier books and Rowling's "Harry Potter" series. I also remember seeing some movie on TV not too long ago from the late 80's, that featured a kid playing a wizard-type character named, of all things, "Harry Potter". The whole thing stinks like rotten fish if you ask me.
Its called "boiling". I once heard it described on TV..Apparently, you take a liquid, and you make it so hot that liquids turn right into gas!! Since water boils at 212'F and sodium dissolves at around 800'F, all you'de have to do is take a bucket of seawater, put a heat source beneath it, and wait!
This article gets my Most Dumb-Ass Article Of 2001 nomination. Its so dumb-ass you'de think Hemos was the one who posted it. Oh wait... he did post it. Hrm.
Cheers,
I know this will probably earn me a -1 Flamebait moderation, but i've been thinking about something lately, regarding Slashdot.
What strikes me as particularly odd, is the fact that Slashdot chooses to embrace the cause of Mr. Sklyarov, despite the fact that he knowingly and willfully comitted an act of copyright infringement. This is a crime. While its not on par with grand theft or murder, it is a crime nonetheless. Not only did he commit a crime, but he also didn't find much harm in holding a lecture to inform and encourage others how to do the same. No matter how small a dent in some company's bottom line it made, it's still illegal..You can call it whatever you want, and make up elaborate dances to justify it, but its still a crime, enforced by law.. Laws that you and I have citizens helped create to protect the rights of our property.
Now, suppose the company being victimized was VA Linux Systems, OSDN, BSI, or perhaps more poigniantly, Slashdot. Slashdot holds numerous copyrights, each of which i'm sure they'de defend rigorously in court. If someone came along and decided to "pull a Dmitry" on Rob and Jeff, they would likely throw a fit, and let loose the dogs of war on whoever did it. They wouldn't embrace the offender as some sort of Robin Hood'ish cult hero.
Thats a double-standard i'm not quite comfortable with. Many would argue that the sheer numbers of readers here at Slashdot almost demand unbiased reporting, but, its their page, they can do what they want...And thats fine....But Slashdot's maintainers should realize that they're seting a dangerous precedent when you hold up one ethical ideal but practice quite another.
In other words, if you really want to see something funny, try violating one or more of Slashdot's copyrights. I'll bet you dollars to donuts Slashdot wont take up your cause, and run almost daily series of reports on how to defend and support you.
Cheers,
If tech journalists are corporate whores, then VA is guilty fo pimping their own whores with the worst of them. Some of you might recall this little story -- Linux.com's former Editor-In-Chief resigned from his post after VA tried to make him comprimise his professional ethics. In short, VA was going to their "business partners" and saying, "You pay us some money, and we'll make our editorial staff write something favorable about your product...We'll make it look like an unbiased editorial, and we'll pull one over on the whole Linux community in the process."
Real nice.
Anyway, Emmett basically told VA to fuck off, and walked away. And rightfully so--Anyone with half an ounce of professional integrity would have similarly told VA to do the same for trying to lie to the Linux community in the form of "unbiased editorials" that were little more than thinly veiled advertisements purchased by VA's business partners. Personal and professional integrity is worth way more than helping a desparate dot-bomb company postpone their death. You gotta have respect for a guy like that...Doing whats right and doing whats easy are often times two very different things. Emmett chose not to be a whore for VA, and he's doing fine. Can't say the same for VA these days..
Cheers,
I'm going to cry myself to sleep tonight because I cant believe how fucking whiney and pathetic the typical "haxx0r" is... Its like this, gang. Real "haxx0rs" dont get caught, not are they titannicaly stupid enough to hold a goddamn lecture on what they did..Second of all, the next time you start to bitch and moan about how your First Amendment rights are being jeopardized by those oooh-mean-and-nasty Big Brother corporations, ask yourself, "Gee, but havent I already violated their rights first?"
Get over it. He had a trial, and he was found guilty. A criminal went to jail, like thousands of others. Sorry -- You cant have a hero today, little Billy. End of story.
Yeah, this post is flamebait. But its also true. Go through what I just wrote line by line and tell me where i'm wrong before you mod me down.
A good review. I bought this book a while back to prepare for an upcoming Solaris certification test I was taking, and it helped out immensely. The good measure of a good reference book isn't its width -- Its wether or not you can open it up, and follow whats being discussed almost immediately without having to skip back 2 or 3 chapters to see what the heck theyre talking about. This is a well laid out book, and makes a comfortable amount of assumptions about the level of expertise the typical reader already has, and builds on it. Theres nothing I hate more than technical references that don't address the inconsistancies in how the OS presents a particular function to the user. It makes the learning process that much easier, without simply beating the reader over the head with "Here's what you do. Forget everything else, just do it like this and dont ask any questions".
Leave that crap for the math teachers.
Cheers,
The best birthday present I can think to give the Linux community on its 10th birthday is the news that Slashdot casually forgot to mention that trading on VA Linux Systems' stock was halted yesterday during market trading. The quicker this company falls off the radar, the quicker the Linux community can go back to being the way it was before VA came along. Cooperative, fair, and fun, instead of competitive, corrupt, and stressful.
With that in mind, its easy to say that Linux has a bright future ahead. Here's to another 10..
The article is probably justified in being hard on Elementary School teachers. The following statement isn't meant to eliicit laughter: In my opinion, there is way, way too much emphasis on placing children into "categories" or "tracks" and way too little emphasis payed to developing each child's strengths. At least back when I was in Elementary School (circa '79-83) the emphasis on teaching was to make sure all the children performed the same, which is a nice way of saying "Ok, screw the smart kids, lets set the bar low and make sure everyone else reaches it."
More attention should be payed in identifying each child's own interests, no matter how fleeting they may seem to be, or how pointless the pursuit seems through an adult's eyes. The need to teach the basics, and provide guidance to children is obviously necessary, but approaching the task of teaching a group of children in the same way as a ranch hand approaches coralling a herd of cattle is a waste of the child's time, and a waste of the adults time.
Children tend to teach themselves when given the opportunity and the tools to do so. They learn by play. They learn the value of social rules, teamwork, organization, and creativity without any ounce of parental intervention. A good way to stifle a child's own built-in ability to learn those things is to demand they spend 10 years of their lives jumping through smaller and smaller hoops, and ending up basically unable to think for themselves upon graduation. The really nasty thing is, the quality of education is never constant. Shitty teachers produce shitty students, who in turn become shitty teachers and perpetuate the problem. Good teachers produce good students, some of whom go on to become good teachers themselves.
I learned more from my Elementary School's librarian than I ever did from any teacher during that time. Why? I wanted to learn things, and she let me know where to find them. I wanted to learn how to code, so she pointed me in the direction of the Apple ]['s we had back then.
The only thing I learned by doing "book reports" was that reading was an rigorously enforced activity that I had no direct say in.
Some criticisms for you:
" So PARC didn't invent the GUI. They didn't invent OO programming either, nor networking. However, they were the first to demonstrate a workinggeneral purpose GUI, the first to build real applications using OO techniques, and the first to build a working high speed LAN."
Wrong, wrong, and wrong. All three of PARC's supposed "innovations" were being done in the late 1950's and early 1960s. The first general-purpose GUI popped up around that time. So did "real applications using OO techniques", and "a working high speed LAN"... You're high on crack if you think PARC had anything to do with inventing any of these. Sure, they used them, but they had been around for years, and in some cases, decades.
"Back in the early-mid '80s, employeail, memos, project schedules, and presentations with people across the country in a GUI environment"
So was I. I had an Amiga and an email address in 1985
"Xerox were collaborating on email, memos, project schedules, and presentations with people across the country in a GUI environment"
Groupware was being done in the mid 1960s. Teleconferencing even. Again, google for Doug Englebart, and "human augmentation lab" if you're bored.
I don't mean to rub your nose in it or anything.. its just your facts are way, way off.
Cheers,
I was going to rip this article a new one, but i'm glad they got it right. What I would consider to be the first GUI was Sutherland's "Sketchpad" system from the early 60's. The military had similar sorts of things predating Sutherland, but nothing quite flexible enough to really be called a full blown GUI.
Anybody with their brains in the right place can tell you that the GUI was not invented by Xerox PARC. They may have done a great deal to push the idea, or perhaps simply been at the right place at the right time, but the basic idea of using graphics as a means to interact with a machine predates PARC by about 20 years.
If you really wanna have some fun, check out Doug Englebart's 1968 presentation that introduced the world to the mouse, chordboard and other interesting stuff. There are plenty of links to it, but here's a good one incase you cant find any. A while back, there was a site that offered his entire presentation in RealVideo format, IIRC..I wish someone would post a link to it, or perhaps a better (re: DivX, or straight MPEG) link... It almost brings tears to my eyes when I watch it.
Somebody turned me onto this page that talks about how a group of guys are making a mission out of setting up localized, free wireless access to the Internet, with the ultimate goal being able to fire up your laptop anywhere within your city and get on the net for free. All it takes is a couple hundred dollars (which isnt much when shared between 20 people who pitch in, initially) and a guy who controls anything as meager as a DSL line willing to "donate" some of his bandwidth to the antenna.
If anything, stuff like this will kill Bluetooth from a purely VHS vs. Beta sort of way. When it comes down to a fight between popular acceptance versus quality of technology, popular acceptance always wins.
Cheers,
Having worked in both places, and ridden both beasts, I can give people a qualified yes when it comes to wether or not IBM wants to very deeply embrace Linux. Why a "qualified yes"? I'll try to explain:
IMHO, for the year or so I worked at IBM as a contractor, Linux sort of went from a curious oddity the engineers tossed around on the floor to something that upper management decided would be good for the company to look into. Although I obviously cant speak for IBM as a whole, or even the division I worked in, it seemed pretty clear to me that IBM was trying to move as fast as possible in Linux' direction...As fast as any company of IBM's size can manage, as it were. My job there was to run-test (heh, or crash-test, depending on your POV) RAID subsystems, writing code basically meant to abuse the array to the point where it failed, and coughed up errors we felt might arise in the feild. We were doing alot of parallel testing on a variety of platforms, Linux included.
Unfortunately, I can tell you from my own personal observations that Linux as of 2.2 wasn't quite ready to handle the sort of stresses that are normally endured successfully by other platforms. Without getting into details (Ay, the spectre of my 6-month NDA looms above) management spent some time trying to determine if Linux was "ready for prime-time", and wasn't finding what it needed..In my little niche, at least. This was a while ago, and I hope that the situation has improved somewhat...but I cant help but get the feeling the same sort of thing was happening elsewhere within the company. It seemed everyone there wants to make inroads towards Linux, to sort of adopt it in a parent-child sort of way, but the Linux picture really hasnt fully gelled yet to where companies like IBM can bet their money on it with total confidence. Nonetheless, the demand is there folks..Customers are asking the company for solutions involving Linux, even on the big iron. IBM wants to embrace Linux, but Linux isn't maturing fast enough in the right areas. It would be wise for us to get hammering on the things that need to be addressed...By the time we actually get around to solidifying whats important (ie. a standardized GUI we can all use instead of two sibling projects who don't want to play in the same sandbox) and hammering out the better known weaknesses in Linux (The handling of SCSI devices, in particular) it may already be too late, unfortunately.
Cheers,
I love you. By the way, saw your picture the other day. I rated you a 1.0
Cheers,
Looks like theres ample evidence to suggest that Covad was headed for bankruptcy anyway, regardless of their financial situation.
Then again, I might be assuming too much if I expect the typical Slashdot reader to understand that companies are not immune to customer dissatisfaction. I'm glad I was never associated with this company, but it doesn't seem like anyone's going to shed any tears over it.
The last place I worked, IBM Storage Systems Division here in Tucson, had a bunch of these class of machines.. The test cell where I worked (for most of the time) was a roughly square area lined with 13 RAID arrays usually loaded top to bottom with 15K 72GB drives down one side, 3 IBM SP/1s (The same boxes that handed Kasparov his ass a year or two ago..) about 10 RS/6000's of varying horsepower, and a couple desks. One of the racks had exclusively nothing but 16-port Brocades in them, and what seemed like a mile of fibrechannel cable spewing out of it. I remember one slow day in particular, a friend of mine at work sat there, looked around, and tried to figure out how much money the company had stuffed in our little 9 by 14-square test cell in order for us to conduct our testing on the arrays... At $86,000 a piece, the Brocade rack was the priciest piece of real-estate in the lab, weighing in at $1.12 million dollars, or about $300,000 per square foot of floor space. Just within eyesight, we were encased within close to $20 million dollars worth of hardware, not including cables and the small stuff.
The Whopper may be King in the Land of Burgers, but IBM is God when it comes big iron.
The study cited in this article refers to the number of people with Java skills, not the number of programs released. To quote:
"Java usage is even stronger outside North America, with almost 60 percent of developers expecting to spend some part of their programming time using Java."
This is one of those misleading statistics, like "Half of all marriages end in divorce".. What most people fail to realize is that the statement is not factually concise.. There are idiot-men and idiot-women who get married and divorced several times, which accounts for a disproportionately high "overall" divorce rate. The percentage of successful marriages is actually much higher, just the same as the number of coders actively writing in C all the time is much higher than the number of coders actively writing in Java all the time.
Lame article.
Really? Wow... Thanks... By the way, which company were you referring to?
Lets pick that one apart for fun....
The record industry is going after these people that open up new channels of information.
Incorrect. The RIAA is going after people who are violating their copyrights, and their actions are governed under the same set of laws that govern our copyrights. Speaking as someone who, yes, has asserted copyright on a number of things, this is a very important sticking point.
The problem with this is that there is plenty of legal material being transferred as well.
Doesn't matter. A crime is being comitted. Community A is being ripped off knowingly and willfully by Community B, and that's illegal There really isn't any way of dancing around it.
One of my good friends writes and plays music in his own band, and if it weren't for mp3s there would be little chance of their work being distributed.
Also false. There are plenty of ways of getting the word out about your band that have absolutely nothing to do with the internet, let alone MP3 trading. Careers have been made with a handful of flyers and a staple gun, or selling casettes out of the back of your car, both of which are free and legal. Your friend's band chose a pretty poor method of "getting the word out" if they chose Napster, IMHO.
Yeah, people make that argument alot... That MP3 trading is "fair use"... I really don't think the people who wrote the original copyright by-laws would refer to widespread, global, profitless redistribution of their product to millions of people "fair use". I mean, making a dub for a couple friends at school, or maybe even lending out copies to a friend who's interested in a particular band, thats fair use. I'll agree.
But warehousing thousands (in some cases, tens of thousands) of songs and making them available to millions of people 24 hours a day exceeds the boundaries of the definition of "fair use". Thats unfair use in my book.
I like trading MP3s as much as the next guy. Buy call a friggin spade a spade, already. The fact that everybody does it doesn't magically make it legal, proper, or morally justifyable in any context.
Cheers,
Enough is enough.
You cannot justify theft in this country, or any country, by saying "Well, the owner who I stole from is still making millions of dollars!!". Trading MP3s constitutes copyright infringement, plain and simple. It is illegal. If you don't like it, call your elected officials and ask them to CHANGE THE LAWS. Even though we all engage in it knowingly, and the fact that we do doesn't somehow magically make it legal. It is STILL illegal, and to paint up these guys, or anyone, as some sort of Robin Hood character is rediculous.
Justifying theft by saying "Well, the RIAA is still making $500 million dollars more than they did last year!" is absolute bullshit. I made more than I did last year too, and if you tried to steal from me, i'd kick your ass..So why is it wrong when the RIAA does the same to protect its property?
Look, I dont like the RIAA either.. But trying to villify them for protecting what is rightfully theirs is the pinnacle of stupidity especially in light of the fact that we would be doing the same ourselves.
Mod me down or mod me up, I don't care. Thats just how I feel about it.
Cheers,