Funny(+1) isn't enough anymore. We need Funny(+1) and Funny(-1), depending on the situation. They could be represented as "Funny (laugh with)" and "Funny (laugh at)". To balance the extra option, merge the Troll(-1) and Flamebait(-1), because they're Redundant(-1).
Yes, it's quite possible that IBM is just generating hype. But this hype, while not the best that IBM could be doing for Linux, certainly isn't doing any harm. IBM is lending legitimacy to Linux in the eyes of the PHBs who don't realize that they might not really want Linux to succeed.
IBM? Sure, they want the hype, but they also are afraid of being left behind. If Linux is a commercial success, the established companies (Redhat, Caldera, SuSe, etc.) are going to be rolling in profits. The intelligent suits in IBM want to catch the wave; to marketing, perception is reality, so it's hard for us to tell for sure whether IBM is serious.
Microsoft, on the other hand, doesn't even want the public to know that they consider Linux to be a serious competitor, so they dismiss it as a toy and FUD it heavily in the hope that they can defeat it. This isn't going to happen, because if ever you could say that Microsoft is out of its league, this is the time.
In terms of revenue, Microsoft is tiny compared to IBM. Microsoft's power lies in its dominance. When that power is removed (at some point in the not-too-distant future), Microsoft will be forced to stop growing and to focus, becoming more like IBM or Sun is today. There will be no single company to succeed Microsoft in dominating the industry. Simply put, the success of Linux and other Free Software and Open Source Software will make it very difficult for a single company to dominate even one field, never mind several dozen (i.e. Microsoft). So long as we remain vigilant, we will never have another IBM or Microsoft.
Why is it that a 16 MB machine can run Win95, IE, and Word97 at the same time, while a 24 MB Linux box bogs down with KDE, Netscape, and kedit!? I'd like to wipe an entire lab (this is a school setting) or Windows boxen and stick in 30 kickstart disks, but I just can't get as much performance out of them as I should be able to.
What am I doing wrong? (More interestingly, what should I be doing?) How do I squeeze usability out of old hardware, when most of the users barely can use Win32?
Maybe a Beowulf cluster of clueless journalists...
on
MTV Profiles "Hackers"
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· Score: 1
Thing is, we all know that the most the 3l337-haxor AOL kiddies will do is get telnet accounts, ping each other, WinNuke each other, download canned cracks, etc, etc. But they're mostly harmless. Just bandwidth hogs and arrogant adolescents.
We need to fork off a separate network just for script kiddies. The only allowed TCP packets are SYN fragments, all hosts have open root logins via telnet, ports 137-139 have unpassworded root shells (oh wait, this is already the case), all HTTP transfers must consist of annoying animated GIFs, and Microsoft provides a GUI front-end to ping -f.:)
Yes, and you know why we order CDs of distros? Because distros are huge, and in many cases (i.e. no network) the only reasonable way to install is off a CD. A browser is not very large, and can easily be downloaded.
With Mozilla still a season or two away, but quite a real project, how is Opera going to compete? Their selling points--stability, standards, customizability, etc.--worked so long as their major competitors were MSIE and Navigator. Mozilla, which was built with the open source philosophy of doing the Right Thing, and is developing with a speed that a closed source effort like Opera just can't match, is going to blow away the competition.
Will Opera give distros discounts to bundle Opera with their boxed versions? Will they count on being lighter than Mozilla? How will they differentiate themselves? What can they possibly do that Mozilla can't match?
As much as I like Opera, I wouldn't give much for their chances.
RedHat isn't turning into Microsoft. Trying to compete with your competitors, is, well, competition. RedHat isn't trying to dominate every portion of your computer -- or even any portion. Throwing together a distro isn't rocket science, and RedHat knows that it's impossible to dominate the market.
Let's look at an example. I own RedApple, which sells apple piesixs. I make all my apple piesix recipes freely and openly available, on the condition that anyone who sells a modified apple piesix without making a special deal with me has to give the recipe to anyone who buys it.
Of course, apple piesixs ingredients are also all distributed under similar licenses, and anyone with some culinary expertise can put an apple piesix recipe together in a short time. So all that RedApple has over the upstarts a recipe that reflects more time in planning.
And what if a competitor sells cooked piesixs for $2, or offers to squeeze them through extra-wide phone lines straight to your house for free? I've got to make money, don't I? So I offer support and consulting, to help you deploy Official RedApple Apple Piesix in your large dining room. I advertise and raise awareness not only about my brand, but about apple piesixs in general, and put apple piesix on stove tops and tables that used to use RottenNOP.
All this time I continue to give back to the apple piesix community with new and improved recipes, even while some of my competitors are turning profits by including proprietary crusts. Yet because RedApple now has a ticker symbol and an insane market value, I'm now more evil than satan himself.
Rather than international space (did you mean the portions of the universe outside of Earth's atmosphere? the whole universe is governed by international treaties), adapting the law of the high seas to the Internet would make more sense. Each nation has sovreignity over the actions of its own citizens, but can't interfere with any other countries' citizens. It's unreasonable to expect countries to set aside their national borders (a monopoly on sovreignity is profitable), but countries should acknowledge that they have no influence over other countries. If they want to firewall off their entire country (China), require registration of Internet users (Iraq), or mandate filtering software (Saudi), they have the right to do that. (Whether the government has a right to exist is another question entirely.) Just as they don't have any right to force us to do anything, we don't have any right to force them to declare a zone of anarchy that extends into their boundaries.
::shrug:: In an ideal world... well, this isn't one and there's no use pretending it is.
To those of us whose idea of an elegant OS is Unix, that paperclip seems really stupid, and we laugh at it. But not every user can sit down in front of an unfamilier UI and get their work done.
I like the paperclip. It saves me time. I can show a user how to use it to find the answers to their questions without asking me. Being able to type "How do I change the margins?" and get an answer is very useful if you need that sort of help. Think of it as a cute/annoying first-person graphical front-end to searcheable help files.
Believe it or not, Microsoft actually does spend some time researching UI intuitivity.
A) Never publicly announce release dates until the product is in the final stages of testing. Even so, don't be specific until FedEx comes to pick up your GM.
B) Internally, keep target dates for different stages of the project, and update them weekly to reflect your progress. Try to make them accurate estimations for your marketers to plan by, rather than deadlines for your developers to meet. Make sure your marketers understand that there may be unforseen delays, so that they don't start hyping a product too soon.
I actually stole that from someone (name begins with a 'k' perhaps? sorry, whoever you are) in a comment a while back. It wasn't exactly like I have it, and it wasn't called Gates's Law, but I thought it would be funnier if people started repeating it as Gates' Law.:)
The whole "War on Drugs", DARE, "Just Say No", and government-funded propaganda aimed at youth sickens me. Essentially, it's the two major parties cooperating to fund bipartisan (no, Americans, "bipartisan" does not mean universal) political advertising. The drug war is just a political and propaganda tool that the government uses to further the enslavement of the middle class and the dehumanization of the lower class. It's part of the political platform of those two parties, and as such shouldn't be funded with government money.
I'd like to suggest cloning a Dust Puppy. This would have many practical advanatages: - code AIs for you - fun at lan parties (plays a mean game of Quake) - gets along well with sentient computers and RPN calculators - doesn't like sushi
Disclaimer: I'm not terribly knowledgeable about this.
Having two mammoths isn't enough to sustain a reproducing population. The bare minimum amount of unique genomes necessary to breed a single baby mammoths (from two mammoths) is 1, and it must be male so that you have a Y chromosome. However, the offspring will be inbred, and suffer from all sorts of horrible problems such that they are unlikely to reach the age of reproduction. Even if you have two unique mammoth genomes, the second generation will inbreed.
The figure I seem to remember for mammals is 500 unique genomes to sustain a population, and that's really the minimum. For a species that's been extinct for tens of thousands of years, I'd guess we'd need much more than that. The wider the gene pool, the more likely that natural selection will be able to pick genes that might have been rare at the time, but now would be helpful to our woolly friends.
So in other words, a single mammoth might be a neat little trick, and we might learn something from it, but don't expect to see them wandering in your national park of choice any time soon.
Actually, that's a good example of why security through obscurity doesn't work. Think what would have happened if they hadn't even had the source code available!
Slashdot Mirror
Damn! I knew it! After all that work, and the network lives only in my mind! I suppose I could call it a virtual private network.
"Why not get the Linux source code instead?"
"Fine, hack into the ftp.us.kernel.org mainframe instead."
Funny(+1) isn't enough anymore. We need Funny(+1) and Funny(-1), depending on the situation. They could be represented as "Funny (laugh with)" and "Funny (laugh at)". To balance the extra option, merge the Troll(-1) and Flamebait(-1), because they're Redundant(-1).
I always suspected that evolution isn't quite working too well... bah! I'll move to Kansas and be safe!
No, because he hasn't posted a /. comment. Unless he has a wireless connection of some sort, of course.
IBM? Sure, they want the hype, but they also are afraid of being left behind. If Linux is a commercial success, the established companies (Redhat, Caldera, SuSe, etc.) are going to be rolling in profits. The intelligent suits in IBM want to catch the wave; to marketing, perception is reality, so it's hard for us to tell for sure whether IBM is serious.
Microsoft, on the other hand, doesn't even want the public to know that they consider Linux to be a serious competitor, so they dismiss it as a toy and FUD it heavily in the hope that they can defeat it. This isn't going to happen, because if ever you could say that Microsoft is out of its league, this is the time.
In terms of revenue, Microsoft is tiny compared to IBM. Microsoft's power lies in its dominance. When that power is removed (at some point in the not-too-distant future), Microsoft will be forced to stop growing and to focus, becoming more like IBM or Sun is today. There will be no single company to succeed Microsoft in dominating the industry. Simply put, the success of Linux and other Free Software and Open Source Software will make it very difficult for a single company to dominate even one field, never mind several dozen (i.e. Microsoft). So long as we remain vigilant, we will never have another IBM or Microsoft.
Sorry, I'm rambling, so I'll stop.
B) Are the default rpms built for RH?
What am I doing wrong? (More interestingly, what should I be doing?) How do I squeeze usability out of old hardware, when most of the users barely can use Win32?
could run a Chimpanzee simulator. :)
We need to fork off a separate network just for script kiddies. The only allowed TCP packets are SYN fragments, all hosts have open root logins via telnet, ports 137-139 have unpassworded root shells (oh wait, this is already the case), all HTTP transfers must consist of annoying animated GIFs, and Microsoft provides a GUI front-end to ping -f. :)
Find a copy of Mosaic. Now that had a configurable cache. :)
Yes, and you know why we order CDs of distros? Because distros are huge, and in many cases (i.e. no network) the only reasonable way to install is off a CD. A browser is not very large, and can easily be downloaded.
Will Opera give distros discounts to bundle Opera with their boxed versions? Will they count on being lighter than Mozilla? How will they differentiate themselves? What can they possibly do that Mozilla can't match?
As much as I like Opera, I wouldn't give much for their chances.
Let's look at an example. I own RedApple, which sells apple piesixs. I make all my apple piesix recipes freely and openly available, on the condition that anyone who sells a modified apple piesix without making a special deal with me has to give the recipe to anyone who buys it.
Of course, apple piesixs ingredients are also all distributed under similar licenses, and anyone with some culinary expertise can put an apple piesix recipe together in a short time. So all that RedApple has over the upstarts a recipe that reflects more time in planning.
And what if a competitor sells cooked piesixs for $2, or offers to squeeze them through extra-wide phone lines straight to your house for free? I've got to make money, don't I? So I offer support and consulting, to help you deploy Official RedApple Apple Piesix in your large dining room. I advertise and raise awareness not only about my brand, but about apple piesixs in general, and put apple piesix on stove tops and tables that used to use RottenNOP.
All this time I continue to give back to the apple piesix community with new and improved recipes, even while some of my competitors are turning profits by including proprietary crusts. Yet because RedApple now has a ticker symbol and an insane market value, I'm now more evil than satan himself.
I like the paperclip. It saves me time. I can show a user how to use it to find the answers to their questions without asking me. Being able to type "How do I change the margins?" and get an answer is very useful if you need that sort of help. Think of it as a cute/annoying first-person graphical front-end to searcheable help files.
Believe it or not, Microsoft actually does spend some time researching UI intuitivity.
A) Never publicly announce release dates until the product is in the final stages of testing. Even so, don't be specific until FedEx comes to pick up your GM.
B) Internally, keep target dates for different stages of the project, and update them weekly to reflect your progress. Try to make them accurate estimations for your marketers to plan by, rather than deadlines for your developers to meet. Make sure your marketers understand that there may be unforseen delays, so that they don't start hyping a product too soon.
Could be any. It was just a generic example, I believe. Lots of games are rushed like that.
I actually stole that from someone (name begins with a 'k' perhaps? sorry, whoever you are) in a comment a while back. It wasn't exactly like I have it, and it wasn't called Gates's Law, but I thought it would be funnier if people started repeating it as Gates' Law. :)
If someone attempts to sell me illegal drugs, I'm encouraged to report them, right? So should I report the company that tries to sell me Windows? :)
The whole "War on Drugs", DARE, "Just Say No", and government-funded propaganda aimed at youth sickens me. Essentially, it's the two major parties cooperating to fund bipartisan (no, Americans, "bipartisan" does not mean universal) political advertising. The drug war is just a political and propaganda tool that the government uses to further the enslavement of the middle class and the dehumanization of the lower class. It's part of the political platform of those two parties, and as such shouldn't be funded with government money.
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
I'd like to suggest cloning a Dust Puppy. This would have many practical advanatages:
- code AIs for you
- fun at lan parties (plays a mean game of Quake)
- gets along well with sentient computers and RPN calculators
- doesn't like sushi
Having two mammoths isn't enough to sustain a reproducing population. The bare minimum amount of unique genomes necessary to breed a single baby mammoths (from two mammoths) is 1, and it must be male so that you have a Y chromosome. However, the offspring will be inbred, and suffer from all sorts of horrible problems such that they are unlikely to reach the age of reproduction. Even if you have two unique mammoth genomes, the second generation will inbreed.
The figure I seem to remember for mammals is 500 unique genomes to sustain a population, and that's really the minimum. For a species that's been extinct for tens of thousands of years, I'd guess we'd need much more than that. The wider the gene pool, the more likely that natural selection will be able to pick genes that might have been rare at the time, but now would be helpful to our woolly friends.
So in other words, a single mammoth might be a neat little trick, and we might learn something from it, but don't expect to see them wandering in your national park of choice any time soon.
Actually, that's a good example of why security through obscurity doesn't work. Think what would have happened if they hadn't even had the source code available!