It would seem hard for the Open Source community to run benchmarks because of resources necessary and tests that would need to be run.
Why can't we use Slashdot as a benchmark?
We have pretty well documented how Slashdot works, what it does.
We know the hardware and software. Rob knows the details, such as cached memory, hard disks, OS, settings, etc.
Why can't we arrange specific dates and times in the next week at which we try to Slashdot Slashdot? See how much load it takes, and what kind of pressure it deals with? Compare it also with daily logs and records. What does Slashdot regularly have to deal with?
This can also be applied to any other Linux servers out on the web that take a daily beating, no? And it would provide hard numbers, facts, and configuration info about Linux.
Hogfoot, from the deadabase website, has posted several responses in this thread to clarify things, and I thought it'd be useful to place them in the main forum for people to see.
1) They trade in live recordings, not in mp3s ripped off CDs, and I quote: the mp3's we are distributing are legal recordings of live performances...exactly what people have been trading ever since the Dead have been around.
2) Evidently the banners and profits are not the issue: We have been in contact with John Barlow and have given him access to our revenue information. Our costs to maintain the web/ftp servers are far greater than our income from banner advertising. I have also been informed that another website, similiar to our own, has received a threatening letter from the same law firm.
3) The band itself isn't involved in trying to shut them down, evidently, and they've been in contact with John Barlow: we have spoken with John Barlow, and from what we could gather..the band is in totaly favor of mp3's.
So further speculation should be perhaps that it is just upper management being 'misled' by the RIAA that this is piracy, when it was always sanctioned by the bad, or they fear loss of control of the music, or something...
This article is confusing. the little description there above the first paragraph says apple "is" going to open source it; the first paragraph says they are "expected to".
so are they or aren't they? does news.com have any actual news, or are they just reprinting rumors?
I would interpret the statements as Apple will release the source, but the date this will occur is expected to be this week.
The article even says as much: Apple Computer this week is expected to...
Maybe I jumped into this forum early, and none of the anti-User Friendly people have gotten a chance to post yet...
Making Linux easy to use is in no way related to making Linux not powerful.
For a lot of people, the computer and the OS is a means, a path, and not the objective. They use them as tools, much as you or I use cars, or toasters, or microwaves as tools to get us places, to make toast, or to cook food. Why would we need the mechanical knowledge and training to take apart and repair our vehicles if they break down? Why would we need to be able to rebuild the toaster if a wire inside snaps? Why should we know radar and electromagnetic wave theory to use our microwaves?
In the same way, no user should need to be able to recompile, debug, or rewrite Linux so they can use it. They don't need to be able to RTFM, or edit.rc files, or set security or quotas to use their computer.
If you don't want a Linux to be user friendly or useable, all it takes is to start your own fork, make your own distribution, and compile your own code to insure that you always have an obscure, powerful, difficult to use OS.
While you're at it, you can always go and take apart your car for fun too; you shouldn't be driving it if you can't break it down and fix it.
Me Too!!! I'm currently running NT4.0SP4, but the system has been up for like a whole week, and thought the error may be just some little dangly bit that never erased itself properly and that the problem would go away after I rebooted, say this weekend.
I guess it may be a more serious problem, perhaps an NT specific compatibility issue?
I hope this post gets moderated up some so more NT users will see this...
In my case I get "The instruction at "0x503371b0" referenced memory at "0x013751a8".
From M$ Developer Studio I get "Unhandled exception in apprunner.exe(npjava32.dll)0xC0000005: Access violation" Whatever that means...
I already have that problem witn Netscape 4.5 anyhow, so M4 can't be much worse; Currently running with 4 browser windows, sometimes as much as 7... One of them will hose itself and Netscape will suck up 99% CPU cycles, or Netscape will slow to a crawl, and if I kill one of them, all of them lock up and have to be forcibly killed.
And sometimes Netscape will hose itself and none of the links will work, unless you right click and open in a new window, and then when you close all the netscape windows, a little dangly bit is left in memory, which you have to forcibly remove before you can run netscape successfully again...
Good observation, in the article; Programmers like to tackle the 'cool' issues, and tend to ignore the more boring ones, like help systems and documentation...
Some of the posts in this thread already seem to be missing the point. Salon was not talking about the relative ease or difficulty of use and install of Linux, though that is surely an issue. They were targetting it's help system, or lack thereof.
In the normal capitalist market, as studied and practiced in the US, a simple way to get unenjoyed activities done is to compensate; to pay for it. In this case, who will pay for it? I would imagine an enterprising company like Corel, Caldera, or Red Hat, would or should soon step up to the bat, or the three of them together, and tackle a uniform and consistent complete help system. Who would pay for it? Anyone and everyone who wants to use Linux for its price, stability, and performance, but who don't already dabble, tinker, code, or play with it.
Or this is the chance for that small group of hacker/coder friends out there, reading Slashdot, reading this article, reading this post, to get together, write a powerful and useful help system, and then start giving out the documentation for recognition, or selling it to corporations and comapnies for 'official' support and such. Or even to just sell it to RedHat, Caldera, or Corel...
Would this idea violate the sensibilities of the Open Source crowd? I'm saying sell the service of documenting and collecting references and information, while maintaining all the info on their site in an HTML searchable format, but providing a more robust and integrated solution for sale...
I almost believe that MEEPT! is some public account that a select group of individuals have access to, and use occassionaly, to generate random non sequiturs in any given thread, such as commenting on the negatively impacting communist nature of the article, or the gay evil tendencies of a post, etc...
It doesn't make any sense, and I'm sure neither does this explanation.
It seems to change every other week, so no real documentation exists... A few weeks ago Rob and co were the only moderators; then a bunch, like 40, were drafted.
Then, when alignments and scoring became relatively stable, and automoderation system was implemented in which you were rewarded for good behavior by being allowed moderation powers... you had moderation points you could spend, on a daily basis, and you'd only get moderation power for a short time before it would be handed off to another Slashdot regular...
Then recently Rob changed the ranking system(different than a score someone has, but related. Higher score is higher rank.) I don't think anyone can get a negative score, but they can be ranked as low as negative one; First Post! and Meept!, for example. Anyhow, the rank was from -1 to 5; it got changed to -1 to 4, and evidently is now 0 to 2...
No one seems to know what their score is. No one knows really, except Rob, what the current system is since he's always seeming to be tweeking it.
Rob had set up a wat to calculate rank based on score, but since rank has changed twice already, that calculation system has also changed twice as well.
I really did like the system of -1 to 4, though I do agree that it was too easy to get into level 3... Took me one day of careful insiteful(not inciteful) comments to get to level 2, and the next day got me to level 3...
Positive feedback loop.
Moderators would see +2 or +3 first, and spend all their moderation points on them, barring those that spent killing the first post comments.
It did however lead to really good comments and such, because if people wanted to be heard about the common noise level, they took care to make really good comments... and it also discouraged poor comments because you knew less people would see it if it were lower...
This probably hurt ACs a lot, actually, and thus the change.
I like how clear and clean the forums became however, and an idea occurred to me; have a daily decay rate; the more you post, the lower your alignment gets... IE, it costs you a point for each post you make, so if you consistently make good powerful comments, your alignment will stabilize to some positive value. If you make very few, very powerful comments or very many very powerful comments, the result would be the same. Likewise, if you make a few good posts, and a bunch not so good, you won't start getting bumped into the high alignment range.
Another feature could be gradual decay of your alignment related to how often you post/visit Slashdot. This would not hurt consistenly good posters because they would be getting their points replenished daily by moderators anyhow, and still allow a person to fade back to anonymity if they didn't say anything for a while...
Two methods to deal with the positive feedback cycle...
I have to wonder who he is to have such influence to convince Cedant to use Linux, dispite the prevailing FUD and use of alternative solutions.
Maybe I'm wrong here; are there alternative solutions? What would have done if he couldn't convince the suits to use Linux? WindowsNT? Solaris? SCO?
If he had a tremendous struggle to get Linux accepted, perhaps he should write some sort of dissertation on how to fight FUD and what steps, what actions were necessary to win and get Linux installed as the OS of choice.
What do the suits want to hear? What do they need to be told? What convinces them the best?
Does this explain why some people have lost their former alignment values?
I'm curious if this has to do with the problem of moderators noticing most only highly ranked people... and thus moderating only the most visible, leaving all the 1's to stay at 1's, boosting 2's quickly into 3's, and forcing down all the bad first comments into -1's?
One way to solve this is to reset the rankings periodically; good posters should quickly recover their previous ranks... And it also allows new posters to rise along with the older crew.
Or perhaps it just became harder to go higher in alignment?
The film must run in the largest auditorium in the complex and cannot move to a smaller room for the minimum length of the run without permission from Fox;
Is this to ensure that Star Wars always gets the spotlight? Arrogance, or is he trying to ensure that the audience always enjoys the best screens the theatre may have? It seems like he's abusing his power just a bit in order for the viewers to have a good show...
Minimum runs are eight or 12 weeks--depending on the market--for theaters that open the film on its May 19 release date. A four-week run is available for theaters that start playing the film five weekends later, on June 18;
It seems he doesn't want a theatre to show Episode I for only 3 weeks to cash in on opening weekend fever, and to have it available for the length he expects it to run well; 8 weeks in smaller regions, 12 weeks in larger ones. Again, using his power to guarantee *everyone* can see and enjoy it? Very arrogant; perhaps its justified. Any alternative interpretations?
If an exhibitor commits to playing the film on two or three screens in a multiplex, the film must stay on those screens for the minimum run as well;
Is Lucas trying to prevent theatres from planning for a huge opening weekend and then scaling back the showing in the following weeks? I don't know if that's what he intends, or if it's good that he doesn't want it to happen.
In competitive zones--where more than one exhibitor has theaters--the film must play on at least three screens.
In a region big enough to support several theatres, is Lucas rationalizing that there is also a big enough population to force the showing on three screens? Is it 3 per chain, or 3 total in the area?
Interlocking, which allows theaters to use one print to present a film on two screens, is prohibited;
What is interlocking? Why would he want only 1 film shown per 1 reel? Are there quality issues he doesn't want to mar his masterpiece?
Exhibitors may not deduct additional security expenses from the film rental fees they charge Fox;
I guess he doesn't want theatres to justify paying less by arguing they had to provide more security or something... Perhaps this is a big problem? I have no clue.
Theaters are not to honor passes for the first eight weeks;
It sounds like he doesn't want people buying passes to circumnavigate standing in line and getting a Star Wars ticket, probably to guarantee that everyone who bought a Star Wars ticket will be able to see the show... Similar to his reasoning on not allowing pre-sales and to prevent scalping?
Payment is to be made within seven days (30-60 days is typical) for the first several weeks;
I wonder why one week refresh updates is so critical to Lucas; good demographic data? To prevent skimming of profits?
Paid on-screen advertising is prohibited for the first two weeks;
Evidently he doesn't want people to cash in and take advantage of the expected crowds for the movies, in the first two weeks. I think I like and agree with this at least.
No more than eight minutes of trailers are to run before the film. (Fox has attached 2-1/2 minutes of trailers to the beginning of the picture.);
Again, I guess he wants to limit the time wasted, so viewers can enjoy the picture. This would also limit trailers to only those with the biggest budgets, but I guess he doesn't want 15 minutes of trailers in front of his movies, cashing in on it's expected popularity. I guess.
Theaters can begin playing the two-hour, 11-minute film at 12:01 a.m. on May 19
I guess he doesn't want to cheat any of his audience by allowing theatres to show the film at earlier, more expensive, pre-release screenings or something. I'm sure quite a bit of people would pay higher to be the first, and to see it the day before everyone else!
Palm aligning themselves with ISPs, which give away free PalmPilot VII or something for 2 years of paid Internet access.
I really don't understand why some of them are giving away free PCs that probably cost then 600$, when a PalmPilot seems much more reasonable and useful, though I guess you can't sell advertisement through a Palm...
But it's like the programs where you get a cell phone for free, and are required to sign on for access for like 2 years or something...
I'm waiting for an iPalm. I wan clear smokey grey and black, with shiny chromey bits!
When are they going to get a voicePalm? Or a Palm with dictation capabilities? Or heck, I wonder about a Nintendo-3Com alliance, the gameBoyPalm; their screen size is very similar, and a PalmPilot with gameBoy functionality! Woohoo! Points to lost productivity!
Though it may also be one of the riskiest gambles you take. However, I can't imagine a viable alternative off the top of my head...
Is there any corporation or research unit that wants funding? Perhaps a Slashdot collective, and if each user of all 200,000 of us sends 10 dollars, we could get some sort of share or ownership of the technologies involved =)
They really do need support in the US, however, for the critical nature of their research. More crucial and important the nuclear weapons or even social security...
Still waiting for the problems with the moderation system to fix themselves =)
I've seen enough charts and statistics to know that one can almost get anything to look good if the right/wrong questions are asked.
I am ignorant of Linux, running WinNT. Having admitted that, I wonder, barring outright lying, what are some possible explanations for these results?
They use a Quad Xeon 400MHz system. Is there any problems with this? Does Linux support 4way SMP well? Does it support the Xeon well?
Would it, in otherwords, be more fair to test this on a single Xeon 400MHz system? Unless I get responses to the fact that Linux does indeed have robust and reliable 4way SMP... I was under the impression that it was a new thing..
It just seems, unless Linux is 4way SMP capable, that they just ran a test of a 4way system(NT) vs a 1way system(Linux)... Hopefully someone will give me a correct answer.
Another thing that occurs to me is the use of 8HD raid for data storage...
What is Linux's benchmark there?
What if mindcraft had run the tests on a P100 with only 16mb of memory? Who would have succeeded then? My point being(unless Linux really does suck), the choice of the hardware is as important in the high end as the low end.
They could have compared the two OSes across a range of hardware, rather than this specific setup, to see which one is the best solution for a setup, excepting that they were paid by M$ to run this test in the first place.
Sony needs to abandon PSX in order to compete against N64, Dreamcast, and N2k...
PSX will only slow it down when those machines unlease killer games on the market...
Backwards compatibility is a strong selling point, but it isn't actually in Sony's favor for half the world to write PSX games when everyone is buying and playing Dreamcast games... People will migrate to prettier, faster, cooler games, and Sony wants it to be with PSX2 by offering PSX compatibility...
However, with PC hardware and Mac hardware, PSX will be good enough, and still would deny Sony the licensing and marketing muscle when PSX2 is out, because the PSX1 would be dead were it not for the PCs and Macs...
That a backyard chemist will be able to brew their own virii and depopulate the world?
It would seem farfetched and difficult to envision... And evolutionary forces would say that man, with technology and civilization, would be able to survive such a disease... Worldwide instantaneous communications exist on the internet and television, quarantine should be able to do something...
Worse case, it'd be a post-apocalyptic world, but people would still survive, I think.
This is totally off topic, btw, but it's still a small forum and i didn't know who to contact, though I've sent email to CmdrTaco, this seemed... reasonable.
Is there something about the alignment system I missed? This morning I was set at 3 or so, and now all my posts are at 1. Is there some sort of decay system or reset system I didn't catch in all the changes Slashdot went through?
Emailing me is fine. I check often enough that a reply in Slashdot will also be caught. My score is also low enough that this post shouldn't clutter the Gnome article/thread too much
Wahh. My post level got set to 1. What happened? It was 3 this morn!
Anyhow, some issues: Why should a newbie care about compiling a kernel? Why should they *have* to deal with bash, csh, zsh, etc? Why should they deal with security? Why should they deal with services? Perhaps Linux isn't the best solution for these people, but the alternative is either MacOS or Windows.
In a similar vein, if you aren't a mechanic but own a car, why should you care about the suspension arms? The drivetrain? The number of valves and nature of the cams of your engine? How the ignition and safety lock features work?
It's nice for you to know some of these things, but you don't/shouldn't need to know any of these things to use your car.
Similarly, you shouldn't need to deal with all the above in your OS in order to use your computer...
To the best of my understanding of your post, I have an objection:
Misleading a newbie and making them further removed from their tools is like saying "We know finding a job is hard. Now you don't have to. Welfare for the common man."
To a certain market, the non computer literate, the PC is not the tool, the OS is not the tool, but the apps they use atop their OS atop their PC is their tool. Office. Netscape. Email. Games. Etc. Their OS is as important to them as the color of the paper in their morning newspapers. Just like many could care less the cylinders, valves, bore, and litres their car engines carry, as long as their car can be used to take them where they are needed, and look good while doing so.
Would you have us all understand our cars, our toasters, our TVs, our microwaves in a similar way to the way I or you may understand our PC?
I don't care how my toaster works, as long as I can set the toast level. Or how my microwave works, as long as it cooks meat, chicken, heats pre-made dinners, and leftovers, and makes my popcorn.
Come on now, M$ OSes have been 'training' their users since inception, rather than the users training their OS...
It crashes when you do this; you stop doing it. It slows down when you run this; you plan your activities around less usage of that program... GPFs pop up whenever this happens, so you stop making that happen.
It should be both ways; take the Palm, in which you are taught how to communicate with the OS, but are still free to use the OS the way you want to. The OS should adapt to the user at least as much as the user to the OS.. That's uesr friendly, I think.
I like your closing arguments though, and it is a win win situation because there will always be several distros of linux.
The netPC distro, for example, that is user-agnostic, only one user at a time, no settings for security or privacy or safety besides the defaults, no server or multi-user functionality, all for dumb clients for non-brilliant people.
The desktopPC, slightly more loose than the netPC distro, with ability for multiple user preferences, applications, and such. Still no server functionality, and security settings are at a minimum to prevent people from screwing with it; ownership of files, directories, etc...
and then you have your conventional serverPC distro, much like Linux is now, and then the superPC distro, for Supercomputers, and even your beoPC distros...
Slashdot Mirror
It would seem hard for the Open Source community to run benchmarks because of resources necessary and tests that would need to be run.
Why can't we use Slashdot as a benchmark?
We have pretty well documented how Slashdot works, what it does.
We know the hardware and software. Rob knows the details, such as cached memory, hard disks, OS, settings, etc.
Why can't we arrange specific dates and times in the next week at which we try to Slashdot Slashdot? See how much load it takes, and what kind of pressure it deals with? Compare it also with daily logs and records. What does Slashdot regularly have to deal with?
This can also be applied to any other Linux servers out on the web that take a daily beating, no? And it would provide hard numbers, facts, and configuration info about Linux.
Just my suggestion
AS
Hogfoot, from the deadabase website, has posted several responses in this thread to clarify things, and I thought it'd be useful to place them in the main forum for people to see.
1) They trade in live recordings, not in mp3s ripped off CDs, and I quote:
the mp3's we are distributing are legal recordings of live performances...exactly what people have been trading ever since the Dead have been around.
2) Evidently the banners and profits are not the issue:
We have been in contact with John Barlow and have given him access to our revenue information. Our costs to maintain the web/ftp servers are far greater than our income from banner advertising. I have also been informed that another website, similiar to our own, has received a threatening letter from the same law firm.
3) The band itself isn't involved in trying to shut them down, evidently, and they've been in contact with John Barlow:
we have spoken with John Barlow, and from what we could gather..the band is in totaly favor of mp3's.
So further speculation should be perhaps that it is just upper management being 'misled' by the RIAA that this is piracy, when it was always sanctioned by the bad, or they fear loss of control of the music, or something...
AS
This article is confusing. the little description there above the first paragraph says apple "is" going to open source it; the first paragraph says they are "expected to".
so are they or aren't they? does news.com have any actual news, or are they just reprinting rumors?
I would interpret the statements as Apple will release the source, but the date this will occur is expected to be this week.
The article even says as much:
Apple Computer this week is expected to...
So expect the source this week!
AS
Caldera's site only lists and mentions OpenLinux 1.2 and 1.3; where and what does the 2.2 moniker signify?
Perhaps 2.2 isn't officially out yet? If I were to look for it, where and what should I look for?
Curious, currently running WinNT, want to tinker more with Linux, Caldera's OpenLinux looks like an excellent place to start. Any clues, anyone?
AS
And this is part of the power of the Open Source model; free communication, open exchange of data...
I'll try the above, and see perhaps if some funky path problems perhaps may have screwed up Netscape or something...
I'm using Netscape 4.5, if that makes any difference...
AS
Maybe I jumped into this forum early, and none of the anti-User Friendly people have gotten a chance to post yet...
.rc files, or set security or quotas to use their computer.
Making Linux easy to use is in no way related to making Linux not powerful.
For a lot of people, the computer and the OS is a means, a path, and not the objective. They use them as tools, much as you or I use cars, or toasters, or microwaves as tools to get us places, to make toast, or to cook food. Why would we need the mechanical knowledge and training to take apart and repair our vehicles if they break down? Why would we need to be able to rebuild the toaster if a wire inside snaps? Why should we know radar and electromagnetic wave theory to use our microwaves?
In the same way, no user should need to be able to recompile, debug, or rewrite Linux so they can use it. They don't need to be able to RTFM, or edit
If you don't want a Linux to be user friendly or useable, all it takes is to start your own fork, make your own distribution, and compile your own code to insure that you always have an obscure, powerful, difficult to use OS.
While you're at it, you can always go and take apart your car for fun too; you shouldn't be driving it if you can't break it down and fix it.
AS
Me Too!!!
I'm currently running NT4.0SP4, but the system has been up for like a whole week, and thought the error may be just some little dangly bit that never erased itself properly and that the problem would go away after I rebooted, say this weekend.
I guess it may be a more serious problem, perhaps an NT specific compatibility issue?
I hope this post gets moderated up some so more NT users will see this...
In my case I get
"The instruction at "0x503371b0" referenced memory at "0x013751a8".
From M$ Developer Studio I get
"Unhandled exception in apprunner.exe(npjava32.dll)0xC0000005: Access violation"
Whatever that means...
AS
Hmm..
I already have that problem witn Netscape 4.5 anyhow, so M4 can't be much worse; Currently running with 4 browser windows, sometimes as much as 7... One of them will hose itself and Netscape will suck up 99% CPU cycles, or Netscape will slow to a crawl, and if I kill one of them, all of them lock up and have to be forcibly killed.
And sometimes Netscape will hose itself and none of the links will work, unless you right click and open in a new window, and then when you close all the netscape windows, a little dangly bit is left in memory, which you have to forcibly remove before you can run netscape successfully again...
AS
Good observation, in the article; Programmers like to tackle the 'cool' issues, and tend to ignore the more boring ones, like help systems and documentation...
Some of the posts in this thread already seem to be missing the point. Salon was not talking about the relative ease or difficulty of use and install of Linux, though that is surely an issue. They were targetting it's help system, or lack thereof.
In the normal capitalist market, as studied and practiced in the US, a simple way to get unenjoyed activities done is to compensate; to pay for it. In this case, who will pay for it? I would imagine an enterprising company like Corel, Caldera, or Red Hat, would or should soon step up to the bat, or the three of them together, and tackle a uniform and consistent complete help system. Who would pay for it? Anyone and everyone who wants to use Linux for its price, stability, and performance, but who don't already dabble, tinker, code, or play with it.
Or this is the chance for that small group of hacker/coder friends out there, reading Slashdot, reading this article, reading this post, to get together, write a powerful and useful help system, and then start giving out the documentation for recognition, or selling it to corporations and comapnies for 'official' support and such. Or even to just sell it to RedHat, Caldera, or Corel...
Would this idea violate the sensibilities of the Open Source crowd? I'm saying sell the service of documenting and collecting references and information, while maintaining all the info on their site in an HTML searchable format, but providing a more robust and integrated solution for sale...
AS
I almost believe that MEEPT! is some public account that a select group of individuals have access to, and use occassionaly, to generate random non sequiturs in any given thread, such as commenting on the negatively impacting communist nature of the article, or the gay evil tendencies of a post, etc...
It doesn't make any sense, and I'm sure neither does this explanation.
AS
It seems to change every other week, so no real documentation exists...
A few weeks ago Rob and co were the only moderators; then a bunch, like 40, were drafted.
Then, when alignments and scoring became relatively stable, and automoderation system was implemented in which you were rewarded for good behavior by being allowed moderation powers... you had moderation points you could spend, on a daily basis, and you'd only get moderation power for a short time before it would be handed off to another Slashdot regular...
Then recently Rob changed the ranking system(different than a score someone has, but related. Higher score is higher rank.) I don't think anyone can get a negative score, but they can be ranked as low as negative one; First Post! and Meept!, for example. Anyhow, the rank was from -1 to 5; it got changed to -1 to 4, and evidently is now 0 to 2...
No one seems to know what their score is. No one knows really, except Rob, what the current system is since he's always seeming to be tweeking it.
Rob had set up a wat to calculate rank based on score, but since rank has changed twice already, that calculation system has also changed twice as well.
AS
I really did like the system of -1 to 4, though I do agree that it was too easy to get into level 3... Took me one day of careful insiteful(not inciteful) comments to get to level 2, and the next day got me to level 3...
Positive feedback loop.
Moderators would see +2 or +3 first, and spend all their moderation points on them, barring those that spent killing the first post comments.
It did however lead to really good comments and such, because if people wanted to be heard about the common noise level, they took care to make really good comments... and it also discouraged poor comments because you knew less people would see it if it were lower...
This probably hurt ACs a lot, actually, and thus the change.
I like how clear and clean the forums became however, and an idea occurred to me; have a daily decay rate; the more you post, the lower your alignment gets... IE, it costs you a point for each post you make, so if you consistently make good powerful comments, your alignment will stabilize to some positive value. If you make very few, very powerful comments or very many very powerful comments, the result would be the same. Likewise, if you make a few good posts, and a bunch not so good, you won't start getting bumped into the high alignment range.
Another feature could be gradual decay of your alignment related to how often you post/visit Slashdot. This would not hurt consistenly good posters because they would be getting their points replenished daily by moderators anyhow, and still allow a person to fade back to anonymity if they didn't say anything for a while...
Two methods to deal with the positive feedback cycle...
AS
I have to wonder who he is to have such influence to convince Cedant to use Linux, dispite the prevailing FUD and use of alternative solutions.
Maybe I'm wrong here; are there alternative solutions? What would have done if he couldn't convince the suits to use Linux? WindowsNT? Solaris? SCO?
If he had a tremendous struggle to get Linux accepted, perhaps he should write some sort of dissertation on how to fight FUD and what steps, what actions were necessary to win and get Linux installed as the OS of choice.
What do the suits want to hear? What do they need to be told? What convinces them the best?
Just curious, I guess
AS
Does this explain why some people have lost their former alignment values?
I'm curious if this has to do with the problem of moderators noticing most only highly ranked people... and thus moderating only the most visible, leaving all the 1's to stay at 1's, boosting 2's quickly into 3's, and forcing down all the bad first comments into -1's?
One way to solve this is to reset the rankings periodically; good posters should quickly recover their previous ranks... And it also allows new posters to rise along with the older crew.
Or perhaps it just became harder to go higher in alignment?
AS
The film must run in the largest auditorium in the complex and cannot move to a smaller room for the minimum length of the run without permission from Fox;
Is this to ensure that Star Wars always gets the spotlight? Arrogance, or is he trying to ensure that the audience always enjoys the best screens the theatre may have? It seems like he's abusing his power just a bit in order for the viewers to have a good show...
Minimum runs are eight or 12 weeks--depending on the market--for theaters that open the film on its May 19 release date. A four-week run is available for theaters that start playing the film five weekends later, on June 18;
It seems he doesn't want a theatre to show Episode I for only 3 weeks to cash in on opening weekend fever, and to have it available for the length he expects it to run well; 8 weeks in smaller regions, 12 weeks in larger ones. Again, using his power to guarantee *everyone* can see and enjoy it? Very arrogant; perhaps its justified. Any alternative interpretations?
If an exhibitor commits to playing the film on two or three screens in a multiplex, the film must stay on those screens for the minimum run as well;
Is Lucas trying to prevent theatres from planning for a huge opening weekend and then scaling back the showing in the following weeks? I don't know if that's what he intends, or if it's good that he doesn't want it to happen.
In competitive zones--where more than one exhibitor has theaters--the film must play on at least three screens.
In a region big enough to support several theatres, is Lucas rationalizing that there is also a big enough population to force the showing on three screens? Is it 3 per chain, or 3 total in the area?
Interlocking, which allows theaters to use one print to present a film on two screens, is prohibited;
What is interlocking? Why would he want only 1 film shown per 1 reel? Are there quality issues he doesn't want to mar his masterpiece?
Exhibitors may not deduct additional security expenses from the film rental fees they charge Fox;
I guess he doesn't want theatres to justify paying less by arguing they had to provide more security or something... Perhaps this is a big problem? I have no clue.
Theaters are not to honor passes for the first eight weeks;
It sounds like he doesn't want people buying passes to circumnavigate standing in line and getting a Star Wars ticket, probably to guarantee that everyone who bought a Star Wars ticket will be able to see the show... Similar to his reasoning on not allowing pre-sales and to prevent scalping?
Payment is to be made within seven days (30-60 days is typical) for the first several weeks;
I wonder why one week refresh updates is so critical to Lucas; good demographic data? To prevent skimming of profits?
Paid on-screen advertising is prohibited for the first two weeks;
Evidently he doesn't want people to cash in and take advantage of the expected crowds for the movies, in the first two weeks. I think I like and agree with this at least.
No more than eight minutes of trailers are to run before the film. (Fox has attached 2-1/2 minutes of trailers to the beginning of the picture.);
Again, I guess he wants to limit the time wasted, so viewers can enjoy the picture. This would also limit trailers to only those with the biggest budgets, but I guess he doesn't want 15 minutes of trailers in front of his movies, cashing in on it's expected popularity. I guess.
Theaters can begin playing the two-hour, 11-minute film at 12:01 a.m. on May 19
I guess he doesn't want to cheat any of his audience by allowing theatres to show the film at earlier, more expensive, pre-release screenings or something. I'm sure quite a bit of people would pay higher to be the first, and to see it the day before everyone else!
AS
Anyone know exactly what they mean by supporting Linux?
Will they be officially sanctioning PalmPilot connectivity and support apps for Linux? Will there be more?
If such a large customer base is using Linux, do they plan to cash in on this by offering other Linux based products?
Does 3Com plan to support Linux on their net cards, hubs, routers, and other devices?
Anyone with a clue? Sorry =)
AS
Several things I think we really should see...
Palm aligning themselves with ISPs, which give away free PalmPilot VII or something for 2 years of paid Internet access.
I really don't understand why some of them are giving away free PCs that probably cost then 600$, when a PalmPilot seems much more reasonable and useful, though I guess you can't sell advertisement through a Palm...
But it's like the programs where you get a cell phone for free, and are required to sign on for access for like 2 years or something...
I'm waiting for an iPalm. I wan clear smokey grey and black, with shiny chromey bits!
When are they going to get a voicePalm? Or a Palm with dictation capabilities? Or heck, I wonder about a Nintendo-3Com alliance, the gameBoyPalm; their screen size is very similar, and a PalmPilot with gameBoy functionality! Woohoo! Points to lost productivity!
AS
Though it may also be one of the riskiest gambles you take. However, I can't imagine a viable alternative off the top of my head...
Is there any corporation or research unit that wants funding? Perhaps a Slashdot collective, and if each user of all 200,000 of us sends 10 dollars, we could get some sort of share or ownership of the technologies involved =)
They really do need support in the US, however, for the critical nature of their research. More crucial and important the nuclear weapons or even social security...
Still waiting for the problems with the moderation system to fix themselves =)
AS
I've seen enough charts and statistics to know that one can almost get anything to look good if the right/wrong questions are asked.
I am ignorant of Linux, running WinNT. Having admitted that, I wonder, barring outright lying, what are some possible explanations for these results?
They use a Quad Xeon 400MHz system. Is there any problems with this? Does Linux support 4way SMP well? Does it support the Xeon well?
Would it, in otherwords, be more fair to test this on a single Xeon 400MHz system? Unless I get responses to the fact that Linux does indeed have robust and reliable 4way SMP... I was under the impression that it was a new thing..
It just seems, unless Linux is 4way SMP capable, that they just ran a test of a 4way system(NT) vs a 1way system(Linux)... Hopefully someone will give me a correct answer.
Another thing that occurs to me is the use of 8HD raid for data storage...
What is Linux's benchmark there?
What if mindcraft had run the tests on a P100 with only 16mb of memory? Who would have succeeded then? My point being(unless Linux really does suck), the choice of the hardware is as important in the high end as the low end.
They could have compared the two OSes across a range of hardware, rather than this specific setup, to see which one is the best solution for a setup, excepting that they were paid by M$ to run this test in the first place.
AS
Sony needs to abandon PSX in order to compete against N64, Dreamcast, and N2k...
PSX will only slow it down when those machines unlease killer games on the market...
Backwards compatibility is a strong selling point, but it isn't actually in Sony's favor for half the world to write PSX games when everyone is buying and playing Dreamcast games... People will migrate to prettier, faster, cooler games, and Sony wants it to be with PSX2 by offering PSX compatibility...
However, with PC hardware and Mac hardware, PSX will be good enough, and still would deny Sony the licensing and marketing muscle when PSX2 is out, because the PSX1 would be dead were it not for the PCs and Macs...
AS
Are you being sarcastic here?
That a backyard chemist will be able to brew their own virii and depopulate the world?
It would seem farfetched and difficult to envision... And evolutionary forces would say that man, with technology and civilization, would be able to survive such a disease... Worldwide instantaneous communications exist on the internet and television, quarantine should be able to do something...
Worse case, it'd be a post-apocalyptic world, but people would still survive, I think.
AS
This is totally off topic, btw, but it's still a small forum and i didn't know who to contact, though I've sent email to CmdrTaco, this seemed... reasonable.
Is there something about the alignment system I missed? This morning I was set at 3 or so, and now all my posts are at 1. Is there some sort of decay system or reset system I didn't catch in all the changes Slashdot went through?
Emailing me is fine. I check often enough that a reply in Slashdot will also be caught. My score is also low enough that this post shouldn't clutter the Gnome article/thread too much
Sorry for the spam, as it were...
AS
Wahh. My post level got set to 1. What happened? It was 3 this morn!
Anyhow, some issues:
Why should a newbie care about compiling a kernel? Why should they *have* to deal with bash, csh, zsh, etc? Why should they deal with security? Why should they deal with services? Perhaps Linux isn't the best solution for these people, but the alternative is either MacOS or Windows.
In a similar vein, if you aren't a mechanic but own a car, why should you care about the suspension arms? The drivetrain? The number of valves and nature of the cams of your engine? How the ignition and safety lock features work?
It's nice for you to know some of these things, but you don't/shouldn't need to know any of these things to use your car.
Similarly, you shouldn't need to deal with all the above in your OS in order to use your computer...
AS
To the best of my understanding of your post, I have an objection:
Misleading a newbie and making them further removed from their tools is like saying "We know finding a job is hard. Now you don't have to. Welfare for the common man."
To a certain market, the non computer literate, the PC is not the tool, the OS is not the tool, but the apps they use atop their OS atop their PC is their tool. Office. Netscape. Email. Games. Etc. Their OS is as important to them as the color of the paper in their morning newspapers. Just like many could care less the cylinders, valves, bore, and litres their car engines carry, as long as their car can be used to take them where they are needed, and look good while doing so.
Would you have us all understand our cars, our toasters, our TVs, our microwaves in a similar way to the way I or you may understand our PC?
I don't care how my toaster works, as long as I can set the toast level. Or how my microwave works, as long as it cooks meat, chicken, heats pre-made dinners, and leftovers, and makes my popcorn.
AS
Come on now, M$ OSes have been 'training' their users since inception, rather than the users training their OS...
It crashes when you do this; you stop doing it. It slows down when you run this; you plan your activities around less usage of that program... GPFs pop up whenever this happens, so you stop making that happen.
It should be both ways; take the Palm, in which you are taught how to communicate with the OS, but are still free to use the OS the way you want to. The OS should adapt to the user at least as much as the user to the OS.. That's uesr friendly, I think.
I like your closing arguments though, and it is a win win situation because there will always be several distros of linux.
The netPC distro, for example, that is user-agnostic, only one user at a time, no settings for security or privacy or safety besides the defaults, no server or multi-user functionality, all for dumb clients for non-brilliant people.
The desktopPC, slightly more loose than the netPC distro, with ability for multiple user preferences, applications, and such. Still no server functionality, and security settings are at a minimum to prevent people from screwing with it; ownership of files, directories, etc...
and then you have your conventional serverPC distro, much like Linux is now, and then the superPC distro, for Supercomputers, and even your beoPC distros...
AS