Having worked in that very corporate ethic, I believe I'm (1) qualified to pass judgement based on my experiences and (2) free to eschew corporatism.
Let's rephrase that a little bit: "Having worked with black people, I believe I'm (1) qualified to pass judgement based on my experiences and (2) free to eschew working with black people."
But c'mon--just because I'm tired of lining the pockets of shareholders and corporate bigwigs, only to be discarded like so much used Kleenex, I'm comparable in some way to members of a hate group?
Yes. Making generalizations about a group of people with no basis in fact is wrong. Fine, I accept that you don't want to work in a corporate environment. It's not for everyone. But you went beyond that to make moral and value judgements against those people, as if someone who decides to be a CEO of a large corporation, while being paid a lot of money for the responsibility, is somehow wrong. And it isn't. They are paid exactly what they are worth, by definition.
And let me just deal with your statement a little bit. Of course the shareholders are going to be interested in making money, because they own the bloody corporation. The "bigwigs" didn't just line their own pockets, they lined yours, too. And if you find another job, you woudl discard them like a used Kleenex as well. You entered an agreement to do a certain amount of work for a certain amount of pay. What does it matter what anyone else in the company makes? Why do you feel the need to be envious of the deal someone else works out with the company? If you want to earn what they earn, no one is stopping you.
But back to the main subject, if you want to make a specific complaint against a specific company, or specific individual in that company, that's one thing but baseless generalizations just foster unreasonable hatred.
Again, if you don't want to work in that environment, that's fine. Work for a non-profit. Work for for a small company. Work for a non-publically traded company. But don't assume someone is greedy because they make more money than you.
Mark me down as Flamebait if you must, but I'm tired of seeing bigotry against business. It's no different than bigotry against any other group of people, and I think it needs to stop.
Instead of lining the pockets of greedy company owners/CEOs, I work for a non-profit organization which is there to support you, rather than hinder your progress.
Yeah, I hate those greedy company owners/CEOs that actually create jobs and grow the economy, while actually creating the technology that you want to teach about.
If you're looking for something that's not only fun, but honorable, check out your local colleges.
I'm glad this works for you, but I don't see the need to spread hatred and envy of people who choose different career paths.
This is also known as bigotry, no different than the vilest KKK member. But your bigotry is different, right? After all, we all know what "those" people are about.
...I can only assume that they have blinders on and do not want to admit that he has a point, at least from his point of view...
RMS always has a point "from his point of view". The question is whether he has a point from a reasonable/sane person's point of view.
It's not the amoount of software involved, it's the fact that it uses the GPL, and that the FSF was *the* pioneer in enforcing free software (as opposed to open source).
Even if I accept that GPL software is more "free" than other open source software (which I don't, it is clearly more restrictive therefore less free), I don't accept that every piece of GPL software has to pay homage to the FSF. If someone wants to do voluntarily give credit, that's fine, but it's pretty damn arrogant of RMS to insist on it.
I think they just want to bash RMS and the hell with needing a valid reason.
As they say, "as ye sow, so shall ye reap" or to put it another way, "what goes around comes around". RMS brings it on himself. You have to give him credit for giving a lot to his cause, but you also have to condemn him for damaging his cause. What's interesting about RMS is that clearly he is an intelligent guy, but he also seemingly is incapable of figuring out how to stop shooting himself in the foot.
Well, I can recognize his particular brand of genius, while also recognizing his particular brand of absolute, braindead stupidity.
What, are you looking for a job carrying jockstraps?
I don't think RMS wears any sort of underwear.
Hell, you don't even have the balls to use your real name online.
I hope you see how amusing that is.
Actually, I used to use my real name and e-mail on Slashdot, but I got tired of the l33t Script Kiddies attacking my box because they disagreed with my post. Who needs the hassle.
I will never, ever call Linux by that name. If I ever meet RMS, I won't use the term, either. He can correct me over and over (as he is notorious for doing), and I will never, ever EVER EVER use that idiotic term.
My goal is to not cave in to the "language police". The GNU component is only one component of a Linux distribution. The Kernel is called Linux. A distribution is typically called Linux. I am not confused by this. Most people are not confused by this.
I wonder what the goal is of dening the Free Software Foundation credit for things such as the GPL and kicking off gcc, etc.?
I wonder what RMS's goal is for denying other parties credit for things such as XFree86, Perl, etc. GNU's stuff is only piece. Certainly an important piece, but only one piece.
Read the beginning of the section. Does it say something like, "For purposes of this section, the Software means the FrontPage Web components, including the MSNBC news headline compone nt, the MSN MoneyCentral Stock Quote component, and the MSN Search component."?
I'm sure the poster is showing that particular section, but other agreements found on the web had language at the beginning of the section restricting the scope of following sections.
I'm still dubious on this until I see it for myself, in context.
Atheism means "without religious beliefs." It does not mean an absolute conviction that it is impossible for God to exist.
According to the dictionary, Atheism actively denies the existence of God, which I think regardless of the etymological derivation of the word, is pretty much the modern usage. Just check out alt.atheism if you don't believe me. There are some might strident folks in there.:)
I agree that the existence of God cannot be proven or disproven. Neither can the existence of ghosts, the Loch Ness Monster, the tooth fairy, or Bigfoot be proven,
Ghosts, the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot could all be proven to exist given one example. The Tooth Fairy, on the other hand, is in the same class as Santa Claus where we can actively trace the myth and determine that it was human created.
Just as there is "documented evidence" of the Greek gods, the Roman gods, and the Norse gods? Evidence is more than something written anonymously in a book.
The Greek gods, Roman gods and Norse gods are all steeped in clear mythical literature. In other words, there were never any claims that the literature was true. The difference is that the bible is claimed to be based on eyewitness accounts.
Trust me, I'm with you for the most part. I think the chance of God existing, at least as the Judeo-Christian faiths define God, is pretty close to zero. My only point is that when it comes to the question of whether there is a Supreme Being running the universe (independent of whether that being is described Judeo Christian beliefs), it's best to stay agnostic about it. Like I said, one visit to the looney bin known as alt.atheism should convince anyone that those people cling to their beliefs as tightly as the most rabid religious nut. They won't even consider that there might be "more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in their philosophy".:)
Personally, I think we should just define God as "that which created the universe", and be done with it. Then we can all believe in God, and never fight another religious war.
Atheism is not a religion. It is the rejection of "faith" -- which is the term for believing in something without real evidence. If you are unwilling to reject the notion of "God", why would you reject the notion of the Easter bunny, Santa Claus, or the tooth fairy?
Actually, the other guy is right. The only intellectually pure stance is Agnosticism, when you believe that the existence of God can neither be proven or disproven. Atheism takes it as an article of faith that God doesn't exist, without any proof. Certainly you can make intellectual cases for the non-existence, but you can also make the same cases for the existence.
As for Santa Claus et al, it's actually not the same. We have evidence for the non-existence of Santa Claus, since we can trace the myth and see where it came from. As for God, he's been around since the dawn of writing, particularly the Judeo-Christian God (at least 8000 years, I believe). Not to mention that there is at least some "documented" evidence (the resurrection of Christ).
Anyway, if you want to intellectually clean, pick Agnosticism.:)
Anyway, I really don't see your point; people keep saying "wow I've found out that I have great printing in Linux", and you keep answering them with "yes, but do you have good printing?
Exactly. I'm talking about printing. The whole chain. Across all the apps. On all printers, from the lowest piece of crap non-Postscript Epson to the highest Postscript-enabled printer.
I've got news for you and others: The end users don't care where in the chain things are broken. The app level, spooler or driver, things are broken. The question is whether Joe User can print his document from whatever application he's using.
It's not just the application's responsibility. Why do you think Windows has such relatively pain-free printing? It's because it supplies sophisticated printing mechanisms to the applications.
The point of printing photographs is that it just needs to send a single image to the print driver, and have the driver render the image. That's simple compared to the high level mechanisms that need to take a complex document and render that into a form that can be printed.
The hardest part is for the APPLICATION to properly generate the needed output for the drivers to properly understand. Long story short, if the driver can print complex and high quality images as well as complex documents in a given application, it should work for ALL applications that are able to produce proper printed output.
I'm talking about "printing". Let me repeat that: "printing". Not drivers, not filters, but "printing". It's not just an application problem, although that's certainly an important part of the chain. The reason Windows is able to work across a wide variety of printers and applications is because it has an entire framework to support printing within applications.
So again I ask the question: Will printing work for the business that this fool wrote the feasability study for? We simply don't know.
If it prints well today, who cares what it did back then.
Duh, because the idiot who wrote this "analysis" was hired to figure out feasability. It sucked a year or two ago, so it stands to reason that it might still suck now. We have some anecdotal evidence that it might work OK for some people, but we have zero comprehensive evidence. I think you don't understand how complicated printing really is.
I'm going to remain agnostic until I see some real evidence. A couple of printers for a couple of people does NOT mean it works across a broad variety of applications and broad variety of printers.
Actually, forget the above. I think I found where this came from. Take a look at this PDF that has the phrase. Unfortunately, the PDF reader sucks when it comes to selecting text. But I think this is the relevent part: "For purposes of this section, the Software means the FrontPage Web components, including the MSNBC news headline compone nt, the MSN MoneyCentral Stock Quote component, and the MSN Search component."
This section looks like it specifically about components that interface with MSNBC news sites or something like that. It's not clear exactly what this section is referring to.
In any case, it's not a broad "you can't create an anti-Microsoft web site with Frontpage".
Yes, unbelievable. Unbelievable that anyone would believe it. According to this page, you can't use the Frontpage logo on a site that disparage Microsoft.
In any case, stop trying to backpedal on an area that you clearly know nothing about.
I'm not backpedalling at all. I admit I haven't tried Linux printing in a year or two, but that doesn't excuse that the horrible, broken printing of the past. It's stupid to just assume that everything is going to just work.
Complex office document? Are you on crack? How about a 5X7 scanned photograph printed at 1440x720 resolution...it's incredible how good those gimp-print drivers are.
Um, printing a complex office document is FAR more complicated than printing a simple photograph. An office document has fonts, layout, embedded images, and even possibly embedded document objects. A photograph is just dumping bits to the printer.
Well, I'll take your word for the fact that the Linux printing fiasco may have finally been improved, but I would like to see how printing a complex office document does, rather than just a simple image.
In any case, it still doesn't excuse the fact that this nut didn't do any research or testing at all with regard to printing issues given the historical problems.
Notice it didn't mention the Feasibility of Actually switching from a Windows-based Operating System to one of Linux.
Huh? If you're answering the specific question for a client of "can I switch to Linux", then you are answering a feasibility question. And then he claims that "I was able to provide my client with a pertinent answer to this question".
He didn't provide his client jack. A "pertinent" answer would have to take into account what his client's office actually does.
Who cares exactly how accurate he was,
Um, probably his client cares, since presumably they forked over money for this "comparison". And I especially enjoy your Linux fanboy response of not caring how accurate a comparison test between Linux and Win2K is, as long is it comes to the "right" conclusion.
Again, he didn't address the actual feasibility of using Linux, he just said it was better.
Well, since -- as you admit -- his accuracy is somewhat suspect, his conclusion of "better" is fairly suspect, also.
*Cough* This is a great example of someone writing an article to match what they "already know".
Did he actually do an analysis of what his office needs for word processing? I don't see a list of required features. The alternatives are feature-poor, so we simply don't know.
Although he says that StarOffice is "fully compatible with Word/2000", other experience has shown otherwise. Did he test with some complex documents?
What about printing? Did he test with all the printer types in his office? If he is 100% Postscript that he has some chance, but if there are any low-end Epson color printers, his users could be in for a big surprise.
And on and on...
It's pretty obvious this guy has never done a feasibilty study in his life. I give it a D-.
Slashdot Mirror
Hear, hear. It's nice of Michael to give us such an insightful analysis of the mistakes we are currently making before a single shot has been fired.
Having worked in that very corporate ethic, I believe I'm (1) qualified to pass judgement based on my experiences and (2) free to eschew corporatism.
Let's rephrase that a little bit: "Having worked with black people, I believe I'm (1) qualified to pass judgement based on my experiences and (2) free to eschew working with black people."
But c'mon--just because I'm tired of lining the pockets of shareholders and corporate bigwigs, only to be discarded like so much used Kleenex, I'm comparable in some way to members of a hate group?
Yes. Making generalizations about a group of people with no basis in fact is wrong. Fine, I accept that you don't want to work in a corporate environment. It's not for everyone. But you went beyond that to make moral and value judgements against those people, as if someone who decides to be a CEO of a large corporation, while being paid a lot of money for the responsibility, is somehow wrong. And it isn't. They are paid exactly what they are worth, by definition.
And let me just deal with your statement a little bit. Of course the shareholders are going to be interested in making money, because they own the bloody corporation. The "bigwigs" didn't just line their own pockets, they lined yours, too. And if you find another job, you woudl discard them like a used Kleenex as well. You entered an agreement to do a certain amount of work for a certain amount of pay. What does it matter what anyone else in the company makes? Why do you feel the need to be envious of the deal someone else works out with the company? If you want to earn what they earn, no one is stopping you.
But back to the main subject, if you want to make a specific complaint against a specific company, or specific individual in that company, that's one thing but baseless generalizations just foster unreasonable hatred.
Again, if you don't want to work in that environment, that's fine. Work for a non-profit. Work for for a small company. Work for a non-publically traded company. But don't assume someone is greedy because they make more money than you.
Mark me down as Flamebait if you must, but I'm tired of seeing bigotry against business. It's no different than bigotry against any other group of people, and I think it needs to stop.
Instead of lining the pockets of greedy company owners/CEOs, I work for a non-profit organization which is there to support you, rather than hinder your progress.
Yeah, I hate those greedy company owners/CEOs that actually create jobs and grow the economy, while actually creating the technology that you want to teach about.
If you're looking for something that's not only fun, but honorable, check out your local colleges.
I'm glad this works for you, but I don't see the need to spread hatred and envy of people who choose different career paths.
This is also known as bigotry, no different than the vilest KKK member. But your bigotry is different, right? After all, we all know what "those" people are about.
RMS always has a point "from his point of view". The question is whether he has a point from a reasonable/sane person's point of view.
It's not the amoount of software involved, it's the fact that it uses the GPL, and that the FSF was *the* pioneer in enforcing free software (as opposed to open source).
Even if I accept that GPL software is more "free" than other open source software (which I don't, it is clearly more restrictive therefore less free), I don't accept that every piece of GPL software has to pay homage to the FSF. If someone wants to do voluntarily give credit, that's fine, but it's pretty damn arrogant of RMS to insist on it.
I think they just want to bash RMS and the hell with needing a valid reason.
As they say, "as ye sow, so shall ye reap" or to put it another way, "what goes around comes around". RMS brings it on himself. You have to give him credit for giving a lot to his cause, but you also have to condemn him for damaging his cause. What's interesting about RMS is that clearly he is an intelligent guy, but he also seemingly is incapable of figuring out how to stop shooting himself in the foot.
Well, I can recognize his particular brand of genius, while also recognizing his particular brand of absolute, braindead stupidity.
What, are you looking for a job carrying jockstraps?
I don't think RMS wears any sort of underwear.
Hell, you don't even have the balls to use your real name online.
I hope you see how amusing that is.
Actually, I used to use my real name and e-mail on Slashdot, but I got tired of the l33t Script Kiddies attacking my box because they disagreed with my post. Who needs the hassle.
In fact, I think I'm going to start calling it KDE/Linux. I would imagine that would REALLY irritate him.
I will never, ever call Linux by that name. If I ever meet RMS, I won't use the term, either. He can correct me over and over (as he is notorious for doing), and I will never, ever EVER EVER use that idiotic term.
My goal is to not cave in to the "language police". The GNU component is only one component of a Linux distribution. The Kernel is called Linux. A distribution is typically called Linux. I am not confused by this. Most people are not confused by this.
I wonder what the goal is of dening the Free Software Foundation credit for things such as the GPL and kicking off gcc, etc.?
I wonder what RMS's goal is for denying other parties credit for things such as XFree86, Perl, etc. GNU's stuff is only piece. Certainly an important piece, but only one piece.
Read the beginning of the section. Does it say something like, "For purposes of this section, the Software means the FrontPage Web components, including the MSNBC news headline compone nt, the MSN MoneyCentral Stock Quote component, and the MSN Search component."?
I'm sure the poster is showing that particular section, but other agreements found on the web had language at the beginning of the section restricting the scope of following sections.
I'm still dubious on this until I see it for myself, in context.
Atheism means "without religious beliefs." It does not mean an absolute conviction that it is impossible for God to exist.
According to the dictionary, Atheism actively denies the existence of God, which I think regardless of the etymological derivation of the word, is pretty much the modern usage. Just check out alt.atheism if you don't believe me. There are some might strident folks in there. :)
I agree that the existence of God cannot be proven or disproven. Neither can the existence of ghosts, the Loch Ness Monster, the tooth fairy, or Bigfoot be proven,
Ghosts, the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot could all be proven to exist given one example. The Tooth Fairy, on the other hand, is in the same class as Santa Claus where we can actively trace the myth and determine that it was human created.
Just as there is "documented evidence" of the Greek gods, the Roman gods, and the Norse gods? Evidence is more than something written anonymously in a book.
The Greek gods, Roman gods and Norse gods are all steeped in clear mythical literature. In other words, there were never any claims that the literature was true. The difference is that the bible is claimed to be based on eyewitness accounts.
Trust me, I'm with you for the most part. I think the chance of God existing, at least as the Judeo-Christian faiths define God, is pretty close to zero. My only point is that when it comes to the question of whether there is a Supreme Being running the universe (independent of whether that being is described Judeo Christian beliefs), it's best to stay agnostic about it. Like I said, one visit to the looney bin known as alt.atheism should convince anyone that those people cling to their beliefs as tightly as the most rabid religious nut. They won't even consider that there might be "more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in their philosophy". :)
Personally, I think we should just define God as "that which created the universe", and be done with it. Then we can all believe in God, and never fight another religious war.
Atheism is not a religion. It is the rejection of "faith" -- which is the term for believing in something without real evidence. If you are unwilling to reject the notion of "God", why would you reject the notion of the Easter bunny, Santa Claus, or the tooth fairy?
Actually, the other guy is right. The only intellectually pure stance is Agnosticism, when you believe that the existence of God can neither be proven or disproven. Atheism takes it as an article of faith that God doesn't exist, without any proof. Certainly you can make intellectual cases for the non-existence, but you can also make the same cases for the existence.
As for Santa Claus et al, it's actually not the same. We have evidence for the non-existence of Santa Claus, since we can trace the myth and see where it came from. As for God, he's been around since the dawn of writing, particularly the Judeo-Christian God (at least 8000 years, I believe). Not to mention that there is at least some "documented" evidence (the resurrection of Christ).
Anyway, if you want to intellectually clean, pick Agnosticism. :)
Anyway, I really don't see your point; people keep saying "wow I've found out that I have great printing in Linux", and you keep answering them with "yes, but do you have good printing?
Exactly. I'm talking about printing. The whole chain. Across all the apps. On all printers, from the lowest piece of crap non-Postscript Epson to the highest Postscript-enabled printer.
I've got news for you and others: The end users don't care where in the chain things are broken. The app level, spooler or driver, things are broken. The question is whether Joe User can print his document from whatever application he's using.
It's not just the application's responsibility. Why do you think Windows has such relatively pain-free printing? It's because it supplies sophisticated printing mechanisms to the applications.
The point of printing photographs is that it just needs to send a single image to the print driver, and have the driver render the image. That's simple compared to the high level mechanisms that need to take a complex document and render that into a form that can be printed.
The hardest part is for the APPLICATION to properly generate the needed output for the drivers to properly understand. Long story short, if the driver can print complex and high quality images as well as complex documents in a given application, it should work for ALL applications that are able to produce proper printed output.
I'm talking about "printing". Let me repeat that: "printing". Not drivers, not filters, but "printing". It's not just an application problem, although that's certainly an important part of the chain. The reason Windows is able to work across a wide variety of printers and applications is because it has an entire framework to support printing within applications.
So again I ask the question: Will printing work for the business that this fool wrote the feasability study for? We simply don't know.
I'm afraid Babe Didrikson Zaharias, awesome athlete though she was, is not much better.
If it prints well today, who cares what it did back then.
Duh, because the idiot who wrote this "analysis" was hired to figure out feasability. It sucked a year or two ago, so it stands to reason that it might still suck now. We have some anecdotal evidence that it might work OK for some people, but we have zero comprehensive evidence. I think you don't understand how complicated printing really is.
I'm going to remain agnostic until I see some real evidence. A couple of printers for a couple of people does NOT mean it works across a broad variety of applications and broad variety of printers.
Correction: read this.
It's not apparent exactly what the restriction applies to, but it's not broad.
Actually, forget the above. I think I found where this came from. Take a look at this PDF that has the phrase. Unfortunately, the PDF reader sucks when it comes to selecting text. But I think this is the relevent part: "For purposes of this section, the Software means the FrontPage Web components, including the MSNBC news headline compone nt, the MSN MoneyCentral Stock Quote component, and the MSN Search component."
This section looks like it specifically about components that interface with MSNBC news sites or something like that. It's not clear exactly what this section is referring to.
In any case, it's not a broad "you can't create an anti-Microsoft web site with Frontpage".
Yes, unbelievable. Unbelievable that anyone would believe it. According to this page, you can't use the Frontpage logo on a site that disparage Microsoft.
According to this page, you can't use the Frontpage logo on a site that disparage Microsoft. Which seems pretty reasonable to me.
Good lord! Lies about Microsoft on Slashdot? Nah, couldn't be.
In any case, stop trying to backpedal on an area that you clearly know nothing about.
I'm not backpedalling at all. I admit I haven't tried Linux printing in a year or two, but that doesn't excuse that the horrible, broken printing of the past. It's stupid to just assume that everything is going to just work.
Complex office document? Are you on crack? How about a 5X7 scanned photograph printed at 1440x720 resolution...it's incredible how good those gimp-print drivers are.
Um, printing a complex office document is FAR more complicated than printing a simple photograph. An office document has fonts, layout, embedded images, and even possibly embedded document objects. A photograph is just dumping bits to the printer.
You chose utterly the wrong argument here.
Well, I'll take your word for the fact that the Linux printing fiasco may have finally been improved, but I would like to see how printing a complex office document does, rather than just a simple image.
In any case, it still doesn't excuse the fact that this nut didn't do any research or testing at all with regard to printing issues given the historical problems.
Notice it didn't mention the Feasibility of Actually switching from a Windows-based Operating System to one of Linux.
Huh? If you're answering the specific question for a client of "can I switch to Linux", then you are answering a feasibility question. And then he claims that "I was able to provide my client with a pertinent answer to this question".
He didn't provide his client jack. A "pertinent" answer would have to take into account what his client's office actually does.
Who cares exactly how accurate he was,
Um, probably his client cares, since presumably they forked over money for this "comparison". And I especially enjoy your Linux fanboy response of not caring how accurate a comparison test between Linux and Win2K is, as long is it comes to the "right" conclusion.
Again, he didn't address the actual feasibility of using Linux, he just said it was better.
Well, since -- as you admit -- his accuracy is somewhat suspect, his conclusion of "better" is fairly suspect, also.
Indeed, since I was hit with a Linux virus about a year ago, which installed a IRC bot on my system.
*Cough* This is a great example of someone writing an article to match what they "already know".
Did he actually do an analysis of what his office needs for word processing? I don't see a list of required features. The alternatives are feature-poor, so we simply don't know.
Although he says that StarOffice is "fully compatible with Word/2000", other experience has shown otherwise. Did he test with some complex documents?
What about printing? Did he test with all the printer types in his office? If he is 100% Postscript that he has some chance, but if there are any low-end Epson color printers, his users could be in for a big surprise.
And on and on...
It's pretty obvious this guy has never done a feasibilty study in his life. I give it a D-.