My "modern" understanding of "hacker" is just someone who is naturally inquisitive. If that involves breaking into systems and causing a nuisance, then it doesn't lose meaning.
To correct you, however. The term "hack" came from the 20s, describing newspaper reporters who spent until the early hours of the morning "hacking away" at a typewriter. The term "hack" is an onomatphoea (spelling?:-)) for the noise a typewriter makes.
Thanks for the "WhatRoute" info.. I'll try to get punters to install it next time they can't connect to the internet.
MacOS X does look interesting, but frankly I'm happy to struggle on with Linux, BSD, BeOS, even my old Amiga (and yes, I know the Amiga was just as bad for this, it's just the machine I grew up on. things changed). You're right, most users don't want a development environment, but what harm can bundling it on the CD do for those that DO?
Here's a real life example I went through:
(Mac error message) "Netscape has unexpectedly exit due to network error 2".
[two days of browsing newsgroups later..]
(translation) : "netscape has run out of memory, because virtual memory wasn't switched on".
well gee. that was helpful. I'm not sure whether that message came from netscape or opentransport, but it doesn't say alot, does it?
I don't think the writer understands at all why we use Linux/UNIX..
"The design and elegance of the Mac operating system can affordany moron to get work done in an efficient way and, if necessary, figure out what's wrong with it. This is contrary to all that the average Linux geek wants... The geeks look at a computer as a sacred mystical tool, and use allegorical and mythical terms to describe it..."
1) If a mac isn't doing what you expect then it gives you NO debugging information to "figure out what's wrong with it" - trust me.. I work on a help desk. How do you ping something from a mac? erm. there's a COMMERCIAL PACKAGE that can do it.. sheesh. So if it says "can't connect to mail host smtp.foo.com" I have no idea if it's a DNS problem or a TCP problem or an IP problem, and I'm trying to work this out through some 'kwit down the phone who bought a mac fooled into thinking it would be easy to use. The mostly monochrome desktop is far from "elegant" and the interface is too damn illogical.
2) The mythical terms stuff is garbage. As a die-hard GNU advocate I'd still be the first person happy to rename 'grep' as 'regexp-filter' or even 'search'.
I was originally drawn to unix 5 years ago just by seeing a solaris box and how much you configure FVWM to do what you want (you mean you can actually define your OWN button menus? wow!). I have stayed with linux after seeing the power of opensource and its mass ability to protect good technology from being beaten by FUD.
Sounds to me like the article was written by a mac advocate trying to get linux users to use macs.
If Apple shipped a complete development environment with their OS and stopped sueing people I might consider it.
I still use my amiga because it's still the only alternative I have to this smelly, noisy, oversized, overpriced, power hungry, unreliable, BIOS-dependant junk under my desk commonly known as a PC.
Linux is nice, but it's FAR from being a joy to use. Windows doesn't even come close. Every day you're downloading the latest drivers, waiting for the next update of something just so you can use your PC.. And what about what amigas were REALLY about.. GOOD GAMES? How fast is a "PC"? what graphics card does a "PC" have? How much memory does a "PC" have? How the hell are we supposed to write decent games on the things when the goalposts keep moving? There's about 18 different SDKs designed just to open a window on the PC.. by the time you've learned one API everyone's using the next.
Admittedly the days of blatting the palette registers at $dff180 and expecting it to work are gone, but there are limits. I also had an Atari ST which I loved. It doesn't HAVE to be an Amiga, but will somebody PLEASE bring out a decent desktop box that we can be productive on? All they need to do is put a keyboard on a PSX2 and I'll be there. Acorn's Phoebe looked promising but it arrived 3 years too late.
Funny you should mention sales weasels here.. we found netbus running on one guys machine, and asked him how it had got there after we had explicitly told him to disable word macros. He said "well I did! but then I opened an attachment and it said I had to turn them on to run it!".
Once apon a time, someone described Richard Stallman as a communist. "so what?" a few europeans might say, but for the american, the word translates to "satanist". It's a contradiction of the 5 commandments that have allowed america to be that country that every resident believes is the "greatest country in the world" in their vision.
Suddenly we're faced with this new concept : "generocity" as supposed to capitalism. Why make money from your work, when you can gain fame, and that wonderful feeling of GIVING? Rather than look out of your window seeing every soul as a potential profit, you look out of your window and see problems that can be solved with software. All we need now is government backing to ensure that opensource remains a balance for the impoverished and we needn't worry about those wars and stuff in the future.
Alternately we could buy the software of companies who stand in the way of worldwide development by restricting protocols and APIs
It's funny how this topic should come up.. I was pondering the other day about setting up a charity in England to provide free software, hardware, and technical consulting (no job too big or small) to charities who need the stuff to do their job but really can't afford it. I came up with the idea after hearing that my mums charity (the Rosemary foundation) had just bought a bunch of PC's, and not really knowing much about it ended up wasting money on kick-ass games machines because the vendor convinced them that this is what they need.
This is only an idea so far, but if anybody either a) knows of an existing charity that's already doing this b) is interested in helping
Slashdot Mirror
My "modern" understanding of "hacker" is just someone who is naturally inquisitive. If that involves breaking into systems and causing a nuisance, then it doesn't lose meaning.
:-)) for the noise a typewriter makes.
:-P
To correct you, however. The term "hack" came from the 20s, describing newspaper reporters who spent until the early hours of the morning "hacking away" at a typewriter. The term "hack" is an onomatphoea (spelling?
So there
Thanks for the "WhatRoute" info.. I'll try to get punters to install it next time they can't connect to the internet.
MacOS X does look interesting, but frankly I'm happy to struggle on with Linux, BSD, BeOS, even my old Amiga (and yes, I know the Amiga was just as bad for this, it's just the machine I grew up on. things changed). You're right, most users don't want a development environment, but what harm can bundling it on the CD do for those that DO?
Here's a real life example I went through:
(Mac error message) "Netscape has unexpectedly exit due to network error 2".
[two days of browsing newsgroups later..]
(translation) : "netscape has run out of memory, because virtual memory wasn't switched on".
well gee. that was helpful. I'm not sure whether that message came from netscape or opentransport, but it doesn't say alot, does it?
I don't think the writer understands at all why we use Linux/UNIX..
... The geeks look at a computer as a sacred mystical ..."
"The design and elegance of the Mac operating system can affordany moron to get work done in an efficient way and, if necessary, figure
out what's wrong with it. This is contrary to all that the average Linux geek wants
tool, and use allegorical and mythical terms to describe it
1) If a mac isn't doing what you expect then it gives you NO debugging information to "figure out what's wrong with it" - trust me.. I work on a help desk. How do you ping something from a mac? erm. there's a COMMERCIAL PACKAGE that can do it.. sheesh. So if it says "can't connect to mail host smtp.foo.com" I have no idea if it's a DNS problem or a TCP problem or an IP problem, and I'm trying to work this out through some 'kwit down the phone who bought a mac fooled into thinking it would be easy to use. The mostly monochrome desktop is far from "elegant" and the interface is too damn illogical.
2) The mythical terms stuff is garbage. As a die-hard GNU advocate I'd still be the first person happy to rename 'grep' as 'regexp-filter' or even 'search'.
I was originally drawn to unix 5 years ago just by seeing a solaris box and how much you configure FVWM to do what you want (you mean you can actually define your OWN button menus? wow!). I have stayed with linux after seeing the power of opensource and its mass ability to protect good technology from being beaten by FUD.
Sounds to me like the article was written by a mac advocate trying to get linux users to use macs.
If Apple shipped a complete development environment with their OS and stopped sueing people I might consider it.
can we go back to slagging off microsoft now? :-)
I still use my amiga because it's still the only alternative I have to this smelly, noisy, oversized, overpriced, power hungry, unreliable, BIOS-dependant junk under my desk commonly known as a PC.
Linux is nice, but it's FAR from being a joy to use. Windows doesn't even come close. Every day you're downloading the latest drivers, waiting for the next update of something just so you can use your PC.. And what about what amigas were REALLY about.. GOOD GAMES? How fast is a "PC"? what graphics card does a "PC" have? How much memory does a "PC" have? How the hell are we supposed to write decent games on the things when the goalposts keep moving? There's about 18 different SDKs designed just to open a window on the PC.. by the time you've learned one API everyone's using the next.
Admittedly the days of blatting the palette registers at $dff180 and expecting it to work are gone, but there are limits. I also had an Atari ST which I loved. It doesn't HAVE to be an Amiga, but will somebody PLEASE bring out a decent desktop box that we can be productive on? All they need to do is put a keyboard on a PSX2 and I'll be there. Acorn's Phoebe looked promising but it arrived 3 years too late.
Waiting to see what phase5/QNX produce.
Funny you should mention sales weasels here.. we found netbus running on one guys machine, and asked him how it had got there after we had explicitly told him to disable word macros. He said "well I did! but then I opened an attachment and it said I had to turn them on to run it!".
:-)
I'd rather die of alcohol addiction than net addiction :-)
"it's part of the heritage"
Once apon a time, someone described Richard Stallman as a communist. "so what?" a few europeans might say, but for the american, the word translates to "satanist". It's a contradiction of the 5 commandments that have allowed america to be that country that every resident believes is the "greatest country in the world" in their vision.
Suddenly we're faced with this new concept : "generocity" as supposed to capitalism. Why make money from your work, when you can gain fame, and that wonderful feeling of GIVING? Rather than look out of your window seeing every soul as a potential profit, you look out of your window and see problems that can be solved with software. All we need now is government backing to ensure that opensource remains a balance for the impoverished and we needn't worry about those wars and stuff in the future.
Alternately we could buy the software of companies who stand in the way of worldwide development by restricting protocols and APIs
It's funny how this topic should come up.. I was pondering the other day about setting up a charity in England to provide free software, hardware, and technical consulting (no job too big or small) to charities who need the stuff to do their job but really can't afford it. I came up with the idea after hearing that my mums charity (the Rosemary foundation) had just bought a bunch of PC's, and not really knowing much about it ended up wasting money on kick-ass games machines because the vendor convinced them that this is what they need.
This is only an idea so far, but if anybody either
a) knows of an existing charity that's already doing this
b) is interested in helping
then contact me at gilesc@ftech.net