It's good to see Dr. Torvalds finally recoginized. Redmond, by contrast, was founded by a Harvard dropout, and look what we wound up with. In fact the general belief is that if you want to be entrapranuarial (sp?) you shouldn't go to college. I hope Torvalds is the first of many exceptions to this "rule". We need quality technology leaders, not the crude brutes we seem saddled with.
This is just me replying to me, but I find it interesting that all replies to this thread (at least by me to others replying) is starting out with a score of 2. Is this a Bug or a Feature?
I won't argue with you that the whole thing is sick. None of the nations in my list can afford them, but they will anyway because that's the attitude of those in charge. We really can't afford them either because the money would be better spent on healthcare and education. One of the requirements of a successful democracy is a well-educated people, and strong minds need strong bodies.
As for Stalinism, keep in mind that the world's most successful Stalinist-like coporate entity resides in Redmond, Washington.
You mad a comment that you're not sure who the enemy is. Let me come up with a short list for you:
Mainland China, which fields one of the largest, if not the largest, standing armies in the world. They may not be the best, but their sheer numbers will make you stop and pause. They're still a threat to their own people, imprisoning desenters, and they have stated they will use force against Taiwan (and think how expensive your cheap computers would get, and how less successful the Internet revolution they drive would become).
North Korea, which despite being closed and near total starvation, has managed to launch two new ICBM missles, the second of which has the range to reach the West Coast. Everyone seems to think that Cuba is the only Stalinist regime left, but Korea makes Cuba look like a workers paradise.
Pakistan and India have been at it for a long time. Both have tested regional ICBMs capable of carrying nukes. They may not be a direct threat to us, but they can upset their region, which is bad enough.
Iraq still ain't our buds. And with holes in the embargo and no UN inspectors, it won't be long before we get a rude awakening from that part of the world.
What's left of the USSR is very unhealthy right now. A war with southern Muslums in Chechnia has heated up, with Muslums blowing up Russian apartment buildings full of people. We went through hell when we lost the Edward R. Murrow building in Kansas City, but they've lost the equivalent of four over the past few months. This type of terror and the economic and political instability are just the ingrediants needed for demagogues and dictators. Think of Berlin and Gernany before the Nazis and WWII.
We've had the Bomb since 1945, and ICBMS with Russia since the '50s. That technology has had a half century to percolate around the world, both as hardware and knowhow. Internationally, the world is as politically dangerous now as it ever was. And we need whatever it takes to protect our borders, and our way or life, including slashdot.
I will consider it in two roles, as a desktop and as a departmental application server for other Windows NT desktops. I will never put it out for anything else at this time. The article mentions other uses, such as email and communication infrastructure, but that can be easily filled with other offerings.
Because you should never say never, I reserve to spend the time (once every two years or so) re-evaluating NT just in case it decides to grow up. Next major evaluation is sometime in 2001, after the first Win2K service pack has come out.
And "conventionally obvious" varies from site to site. In my world, it's Unix/Solaris.
The idea that Unix is "resurgent" is laughable. Unix has always been with us. What has happened is that the big applications have always been on Unix, especially database applications built around Oracle. And when you really wanted solid performance, you run it on a mainframe from IBM/Hitachi/Amdahl. With all due respects to Unix, it has its own faults and limitations.
But then, all of a sudden, we got Windows NT. We were supposed to have a magical Posix layer when Windows NT 3.1 was first introduced. It was supposed to provide an "easy" migration path from Unix to Windows NT. The same Windows NT version that also provided OS/2 1.x support (and that was dropped when NT 4 was introduced).
Well, we've been working with Windows NT since 1992, and here we are seven years later and reality has finally begun to sink in. And that reality is Windows NT can't scale, can't run 24/7 for arbitrarily long lengths of time, and can't provide seamless interoperability. It's stuck on the desktop where Microsoft marketing shoved it down vendor's throats.
Microsoft's attempts over the years to move out into server apps has been checkered at best. The fact that it buys technology such as Interix is a tacit admission its in-house Unix efforts are lame and that companies have learned the hard way not to trust critical distributed systems to Windows NT.
My advice is this: If you want to run an app or system on a Unix-like OS, then run it on Unix. For low-end, non-critical uses evaluate at Windows NT or FreeBSD 3.x. For more critical apps (such as an ISP environment), pay the bucks and use BSDi or Solaris. For truly critical work (a nation-wide system running SAP, for example), then you're looking at very-high-end Unix servers and/or mainframes.
I don't know about you, but I won't make the mistake of choosing any OS/hardware platform strictly on politics or emotionalism. I'm going to be damn careful what I choose, because whatever it is, I'll have to live with it for a long time. And sometimes the best choice is the conventionally obvious choice.
I find it amusing that there is even a programming book with the word "Art" in the title. Everybody in industry wants to turn this into a "Science", and from there, into a mechanized form that can be stamped out that much fast by the code monkeys. Of course, if programming is accepted as an art form, I wonder where that puts Windows?
This brings to mind the science-fiction idea of storing human consciousness via mechanical means, and having that machine consciousness interact with the world (I'm thinking of Greg Bear's Eon series, for example). Would the billion neuron model be strong enough to start this line of enquiry, or is there still a lot about human neural mapping that we still don't understand?
A number of industry analysts have mentioned the cautionary tale of MicroUnity, another Silicon Valley chipmaker that shrouded itself in secrecy while rumors of its revolutionary chip swirled. MicroUnity burned through $200 million of venture capital and never shipped a product. "One of the bigger craters, as we say," notes Gwennap dryly.
Yes. Or to be more blunt, product talks, bullshit walks. Even if they don't state specifically what products they're working on, they could give enough points at what markets they're after.
Here's a question for you conspiracy specialists: Why would Linus Torvalds, Super Geek, essentially work for Paul Allen, midwife to the Great Satan Microsoft? Could it be the fact that Allen is the third richest man in the world? And how do strong Linux supporters really feel about Linus that close to Allen? Wouldn't that be considered a serious conflict of interest? Or is Gates, through Allen, hedging his bets by essentially financing Linux kernel development and direction in case Windows really does fail?
Re:Speaking of screwy moderation..
on
Moderation Ideas
·
· Score: 1
Thanks for the trolling check.
No, I think I hit some nerves, and the rating system was being used to punish rather than moderate. It's hard, but moderation should be narrowly, and unemotionally, applied. And I got the feeling it sure wasn't in this case.
I think that showing Karma to the world is a mistake. It should only be shown to the person it belongs to when they go to their 'page'. I'm beginning to wonder if a high Karma doesn't cause two effects, intimidation and resentment. Those easily intimidated (or swayed) by high Karma keep piling it on, while those resentful (or trying to be 'tough') go out of their way to drop a few points, or don't moderate at all.
Essentially, I'm with you that the moderation points are too high. I'm just curious about the 'psychology' of the whole process.
First, I don't envy you. It's a no-win situation, and it does indeed take the innocence of youth to put up with something like this.
Second, I'm still confused. I have a post here ( The heights of low taste ) that has been moderated more strangely than any other post I've ever made. It has 1 Troll, 2 Informative, 1 Overrated, and 1 Underrated. I can understand the over rating, but the troll moderation is somewhat curious. What rates as a troll message? And please don't say "your message":).
Third, I think the real-time meta-moderation next to each message would be a very nice touch, if you can make sure that an even number of meta moderation tokens are handed out fairly. Having the seperate page is just fine by me, as I can go off to the various threads and check context if I have a question. Like you, I've never looked at any of the moderated messages and thought the moderator subhuman based on their moderation, and it's been my experience that the number of moderations I disagree with is around 5-10%.
Finally, don't try to hard to make this perfect. It never will be, and trying will only make the system more convoluted, complex, and fragile. I really do have a life, and slashdot is nice to have and a lot of fun at times, but I can live without it. Just like I'm sure you can.
Is something like the volleyball playing bots, with wireless highspeed networking of a cam on every participating bot to a central server, streaming what the bots see to anyone who wants to see it. In fact it would be interesting to turn loose a bunch of them around Rob just to see what Rob is doing in real time. Of course, it would require some serious bandwidth to support hiqh-quality streaming video, but hey, it's slashdot. Anything's possible...
Before everybody goes and condemns IBM and RedHat, they should look at the document that IBM has published. This type of document from a major manufacturer would have been unheard-of just six months ago.
Somebody at IBM went to a lot of trouble to pull this together, pointing out the gotchas and the need to perform further mods to the distro (power management, for example) as well as some of the gotchas (suspend/resume problems with the built-in sound chip).
As far as the built-in modem is concerned, they admit to a lack of support and an attempt to evaluate future support. What more do you want? The great majority of buyers are still Windows users, and it works fine under Windows. If I wanted a modem, I'd more than likely add the additional PCMCIA services required by Linux and add a seperate PCMCIA modem.
I'd like to see a notebook-only Linux distribution that supports just the notebooks and their peculiarities. The IBM document, and other information on the web, would be an excellent starting point for pulling this together. The distro could focus just on that market to provide the best Linux experience to the grizzled veteran as well as the Linux newby.
And let's commend IBM and others for this type of work, rather than just picking and grousing at them for the holes. If we (the 'Linux community') keep this up, then where is the incentive for any help from IBM, or anybody else?
Thanks. And I'm beginning to appreciate the forum a little better. I've seen a number of comments on this thread, not all of them agreeing with my point of view, but what unites them all the is civility. I may have over-reacted to the catagory the original article was posted under, but not by much. I can take a view counter to mine a lot better when it's intelligently broached, and so far everybody here has posted with great etiquette.
I have no problem with the technology. I do have a problem with the context in which it is used/viewed. I have the same low opionion of its use as I do for all standard media frenzy that always takes place during a disaster. I'd like to think that the average slashdotter is better than that. I guess I was wrong.
Your explaination doesn't cut it, especially with this crowd. I remember in particular the Al Steven's obit, and the comments that came out of that. Until such time as slashdotters prove otherwise, I consider any interest in any natural disaster suspect. Prove me wrong by showing the concrete positive good that can come out of this groups viewing.
As a resident of Florida (Orlando), I don't know if I appreciate the morbid interest a web cam provides to the slash dot crew. I hope, that while you watching it, that you realise real people and real lives are about to get pounded. I've got friends and acquantances who stand a real good chance of loosing their homes to the storm surge projected on Florida's coasts. On the way in to work I've been watching the long lines of traffic from Melbourne and Daytona. They're shutting down Research Park near UCF (we leave at noon), and Orlando itself will essentially shut down around 4 pm.
Floyd is a big, crazy storm, class 4 trying to be a class 5. It might pass by and the only thing we get is a lot of wind and rain. But then again, it might not. Whatever happens, keep in mind that our experiences in Florida over the next 48 hours are not meant to be a form of cheap entertainment for slash dotters.
Re:"the Linux de facto standard desktop"?
on
KDE 1.1.2 is out
·
· Score: 1
No, it's not just the Windows crowd. It's those of us who have combed the depths of Unix/Linux, and want to get other work done now that we've done it. I appreciate KDE for what it provides, which is a highly organized graphical abstraction of my system. I appreciate that fact that KDE also provides an environment that lets the casual computer user make the most of the system without having to know every nuance of the system. They get on the system and use it the way we all get in our cars and just drive. It's those casual users with their needs that give me a living. I''m not looking to create a harmful, dependent Windows-like environment, but I do want Linux to be as easy to use as possible to increase the user base. I realize that KDE/Linux is not for everyone, and that's fine. I want to make a living, not a killing.
The ones that a number of companies are now hiring to system administration. They're buzzword compliant, but they haven't got a Clue as to what to do if it isn't NT, and I'm not even sure they know that either.
What concerns me about Corel's distribution is its financial health, and the rumor that it may be a buyout target of Adobe. If it is purchased, then Adobe is one of the worse possible vendors to support a Linux distribution.
It worries me quite a bit because of the few visuals (screen shots) of some of the work already done with the Corel distribution. And Corel is the only other distribution I'm aware of that is based on Debian.
Caldera has just announced their latest Linux distro. Weeks before it was S.u.S.E. Redhat is readying a release of Redhat 6.1. What do all these have in common? Competition.
This is why we need Linux. Everyone is taking the base software, including enhancements and bug fixes, and adding their own value to provide marketing differentiation. And instead of waiting months or years (Cairo -> WinNT5 -> Win2K), we have upgrades that occur in a regular and timely fashion. We have excitement, we have true innovation, but most of all we have choice within not just operating systems but even within Linux. I hope this continues for some time to come.
Slashdot Mirror
It's good to see Dr. Torvalds finally recoginized. Redmond, by contrast, was founded by a Harvard dropout, and look what we wound up with. In fact the general belief is that if you want to be entrapranuarial (sp?) you shouldn't go to college. I hope Torvalds is the first of many exceptions to this "rule". We need quality technology leaders, not the crude brutes we seem saddled with.
Why???????????
This is just me replying to me, but I find it interesting that all replies to this thread (at least by me to others replying) is starting out with a score of 2. Is this a Bug or a Feature?
You know, I'm beginning to think that the web-based Dan Quale Political Writing Course I took isn't turning out too well...
I won't argue with you that the whole thing is sick. None of the nations in my list can afford them, but they will anyway because that's the attitude of those in charge. We really can't afford them either because the money would be better spent on healthcare and education. One of the requirements of a successful democracy is a well-educated people, and strong minds need strong bodies.
As for Stalinism, keep in mind that the world's most successful Stalinist-like coporate entity resides in Redmond, Washington.
You're right, Oklahoma City.
You mad a comment that you're not sure who the enemy is. Let me come up with a short list for you:
Mainland China, which fields one of the largest, if not the largest, standing armies in the world. They may not be the best, but their sheer numbers will make you stop and pause. They're still a threat to their own people, imprisoning desenters, and they have stated they will use force against Taiwan (and think how expensive your cheap computers would get, and how less successful the Internet revolution they drive would become).
North Korea, which despite being closed and near total starvation, has managed to launch two new ICBM missles, the second of which has the range to reach the West Coast. Everyone seems to think that Cuba is the only Stalinist regime left, but Korea makes Cuba look like a workers paradise.
Pakistan and India have been at it for a long time. Both have tested regional ICBMs capable of carrying nukes. They may not be a direct threat to us, but they can upset their region, which is bad enough.
Iraq still ain't our buds. And with holes in the embargo and no UN inspectors, it won't be long before we get a rude awakening from that part of the world.
What's left of the USSR is very unhealthy right now. A war with southern Muslums in Chechnia has heated up, with Muslums blowing up Russian apartment buildings full of people. We went through hell when we lost the Edward R. Murrow building in Kansas City, but they've lost the equivalent of four over the past few months. This type of terror and the economic and political instability are just the ingrediants needed for demagogues and dictators. Think of Berlin and Gernany before the Nazis and WWII.
We've had the Bomb since 1945, and ICBMS with Russia since the '50s. That technology has had a half century to percolate around the world, both as hardware and knowhow. Internationally, the world is as politically dangerous now as it ever was. And we need whatever it takes to protect our borders, and our way or life, including slashdot.
I will consider it in two roles, as a desktop and as a departmental application server for other Windows NT desktops. I will never put it out for anything else at this time. The article mentions other uses, such as email and communication infrastructure, but that can be easily filled with other offerings.
Because you should never say never, I reserve to spend the time (once every two years or so) re-evaluating NT just in case it decides to grow up. Next major evaluation is sometime in 2001, after the first Win2K service pack has come out.
And "conventionally obvious" varies from site to site. In my world, it's Unix/Solaris.
The idea that Unix is "resurgent" is laughable. Unix has always been with us. What has happened is that the big applications have always been on Unix, especially database applications built around Oracle. And when you really wanted solid performance, you run it on a mainframe from IBM/Hitachi/Amdahl. With all due respects to Unix, it has its own faults and limitations.
/or mainframes.
But then, all of a sudden, we got Windows NT. We were supposed to have a magical Posix layer when Windows NT 3.1 was first introduced. It was supposed to provide an "easy" migration path from Unix to Windows NT. The same Windows NT version that also provided OS/2 1.x support (and that was dropped when NT 4 was introduced).
Well, we've been working with Windows NT since 1992, and here we are seven years later and reality has finally begun to sink in. And that reality is Windows NT can't scale, can't run 24/7 for arbitrarily long lengths of time, and can't provide seamless interoperability. It's stuck on the desktop where Microsoft marketing shoved it down vendor's throats.
Microsoft's attempts over the years to move out into server apps has been checkered at best. The fact that it buys technology such as Interix is a tacit admission its in-house Unix efforts are lame and that companies have learned the hard way not to trust critical distributed systems to Windows NT.
My advice is this: If you want to run an app or system on a Unix-like OS, then run it on Unix. For low-end, non-critical uses evaluate at Windows NT or FreeBSD 3.x. For more critical apps (such as an ISP environment), pay the bucks and use BSDi or Solaris. For truly critical work (a nation-wide system running SAP, for example), then you're looking at very-high-end Unix servers and
I don't know about you, but I won't make the mistake of choosing any OS/hardware platform strictly on politics or emotionalism. I'm going to be damn careful what I choose, because whatever it is, I'll have to live with it for a long time. And sometimes the best choice is the conventionally obvious choice.
I find it amusing that there is even a programming book with the word "Art" in the title. Everybody in industry wants to turn this into a "Science", and from there, into a mechanized form that can be stamped out that much fast by the code monkeys. Of course, if programming is accepted as an art form, I wonder where that puts Windows?
This brings to mind the science-fiction idea of storing human consciousness via mechanical means, and having that machine consciousness interact with the world (I'm thinking of Greg Bear's Eon series, for example). Would the billion neuron model be strong enough to start this line of enquiry, or is there still a lot about human neural mapping that we still don't understand?
We could use this in place of Al Gore, and nobody would know the difference. Except maybe its responses would be more intelligable.
A number of industry analysts have mentioned the cautionary tale of MicroUnity, another Silicon Valley chipmaker that shrouded itself in secrecy while rumors of its revolutionary chip swirled. MicroUnity burned through $200 million of venture capital and never shipped a product. "One of the bigger craters, as we say," notes Gwennap dryly.
Yes. Or to be more blunt, product talks, bullshit walks. Even if they don't state specifically what products they're working on, they could give enough points at what markets they're after.
Here's a question for you conspiracy specialists: Why would Linus Torvalds, Super Geek, essentially work for Paul Allen, midwife to the Great Satan Microsoft? Could it be the fact that Allen is the third richest man in the world? And how do strong Linux supporters really feel about Linus that close to Allen? Wouldn't that be considered a serious conflict of interest? Or is Gates, through Allen, hedging his bets by essentially financing Linux kernel development and direction in case Windows really does fail?
Thanks for the trolling check.
No, I think I hit some nerves, and the rating system was being used to punish rather than moderate. It's hard, but moderation should be narrowly, and unemotionally, applied. And I got the feeling it sure wasn't in this case.
I think that showing Karma to the world is a mistake. It should only be shown to the person it belongs to when they go to their 'page'. I'm beginning to wonder if a high Karma doesn't cause two effects, intimidation and resentment. Those easily intimidated (or swayed) by high Karma keep piling it on, while those resentful (or trying to be 'tough') go out of their way to drop a few points, or don't moderate at all.
Essentially, I'm with you that the moderation points are too high. I'm just curious about the 'psychology' of the whole process.
A number of comments, somewhat scattered.
:).
First, I don't envy you. It's a no-win situation, and it does indeed take the innocence of youth to put up with something like this.
Second, I'm still confused. I have a post here ( The heights of low taste ) that has been moderated more strangely than any other post I've ever made. It has 1 Troll, 2 Informative, 1 Overrated, and 1 Underrated. I can understand the over rating, but the troll moderation is somewhat curious. What rates as a troll message? And please don't say "your message"
Third, I think the real-time meta-moderation next to each message would be a very nice touch, if you can make sure that an even number of meta moderation tokens are handed out fairly. Having the seperate page is just fine by me, as I can go off to the various threads and check context if I have a question. Like you, I've never looked at any of the moderated messages and thought the moderator subhuman based on their moderation, and it's been my experience that the number of moderations I disagree with is around 5-10%.
Finally, don't try to hard to make this perfect. It never will be, and trying will only make the system more convoluted, complex, and fragile. I really do have a life, and slashdot is nice to have and a lot of fun at times, but I can live without it. Just like I'm sure you can.
Is something like the volleyball playing bots, with wireless highspeed networking of a cam on every participating bot to a central server, streaming what the bots see to anyone who wants to see it. In fact it would be interesting to turn loose a bunch of them around Rob just to see what Rob is doing in real time. Of course, it would require some serious bandwidth to support hiqh-quality streaming video, but hey, it's slashdot. Anything's possible...
Before everybody goes and condemns IBM and RedHat, they should look at the document that IBM has published. This type of document from a major manufacturer would have been unheard-of just six months ago.
Somebody at IBM went to a lot of trouble to pull this together, pointing out the gotchas and the need to perform further mods to the distro (power management, for example) as well as some of the gotchas (suspend/resume problems with the built-in sound chip).
As far as the built-in modem is concerned, they admit to a lack of support and an attempt to evaluate future support. What more do you want? The great majority of buyers are still Windows users, and it works fine under Windows. If I wanted a modem, I'd more than likely add the additional PCMCIA services required by Linux and add a seperate PCMCIA modem.
I'd like to see a notebook-only Linux distribution that supports just the notebooks and their peculiarities. The IBM document, and other information on the web, would be an excellent starting point for pulling this together. The distro could focus just on that market to provide the best Linux experience to the grizzled veteran as well as the Linux newby.
And let's commend IBM and others for this type of work, rather than just picking and grousing at them for the holes. If we (the 'Linux community') keep this up, then where is the incentive for any help from IBM, or anybody else?
I admit that I see your point though...
Thanks. And I'm beginning to appreciate the forum a little better. I've seen a number of comments on this thread, not all of them agreeing with my point of view, but what unites them all the is civility. I may have over-reacted to the catagory the original article was posted under, but not by much. I can take a view counter to mine a lot better when it's intelligently broached, and so far everybody here has posted with great etiquette.
I have no problem with the technology. I do have a problem with the context in which it is used/viewed. I have the same low opionion of its use as I do for all standard media frenzy that always takes place during a disaster. I'd like to think that the average slashdotter is better than that. I guess I was wrong.
Your explaination doesn't cut it, especially with this crowd. I remember in particular the Al Steven's obit, and the comments that came out of that. Until such time as slashdotters prove otherwise, I consider any interest in any natural disaster suspect. Prove me wrong by showing the concrete positive good that can come out of this groups viewing.
As a resident of Florida (Orlando), I don't know if I appreciate the morbid interest a web cam provides to the slash dot crew. I hope, that while you watching it, that you realise real people and real lives are about to get pounded. I've got friends and acquantances who stand a real good chance of loosing their homes to the storm surge projected on Florida's coasts. On the way in to work I've been watching the long lines of traffic from Melbourne and Daytona. They're shutting down Research Park near UCF (we leave at noon), and Orlando itself will essentially shut down around 4 pm.
Floyd is a big, crazy storm, class 4 trying to be a class 5. It might pass by and the only thing we get is a lot of wind and rain. But then again, it might not. Whatever happens, keep in mind that our experiences in Florida over the next 48 hours are not meant to be a form of cheap entertainment for slash dotters.
No, it's not just the Windows crowd. It's those of us who have combed the depths of Unix/Linux, and want to get other work done now that we've done it. I appreciate KDE for what it provides, which is a highly organized graphical abstraction of my system. I appreciate that fact that KDE also provides an environment that lets the casual computer user make the most of the system without having to know every nuance of the system. They get on the system and use it the way we all get in our cars and just drive. It's those casual users with their needs that give me a living. I''m not looking to create a harmful, dependent Windows-like environment, but I do want Linux to be as easy to use as possible to increase the user base. I realize that KDE/Linux is not for everyone, and that's fine. I want to make a living, not a killing.
The ones that a number of companies are now hiring to system administration. They're buzzword compliant, but they haven't got a Clue as to what to do if it isn't NT, and I'm not even sure they know that either.
What concerns me about Corel's distribution is its financial health, and the rumor that it may be a buyout target of Adobe. If it is purchased, then Adobe is one of the worse possible vendors to support a Linux distribution.
It worries me quite a bit because of the few visuals (screen shots) of some of the work already done with the Corel distribution. And Corel is the only other distribution I'm aware of that is based on Debian.
Caldera has just announced their latest Linux distro. Weeks before it was S.u.S.E. Redhat is readying a release of Redhat 6.1. What do all these have in common? Competition.
This is why we need Linux. Everyone is taking the base software, including enhancements and bug fixes, and adding their own value to provide marketing differentiation. And instead of waiting months or years (Cairo -> WinNT5 -> Win2K), we have upgrades that occur in a regular and timely fashion. We have excitement, we have true innovation, but most of all we have choice within not just operating systems but even within Linux. I hope this continues for some time to come.