I don't know about you, but I am not a child, and RMS is far from a father figure.
Richard Stallman, over the past 20 years, has done more than most of you put together will do in your entire lifetime and all you can do is complain and make fun of him for it.
I honor his achievements, but I mock him for his silliness. Right now his silliness far exceeds his accomplishments. He has only himself to blame for being mocked. I mean, think about the UTTER stupidity of pronouncing Gnu as "Gah-new". And now, he's gone beyond the stupidity of Gnu/Linux to wanting "Gah-new plus Linux".
He is a programmer, and a good one. But, as another poster said, he has no ability to see his own limitations. Heck, look at the shallowness of his political beliefs in this article.
Maybe it's better under Unix (I wouldn't be surprised). I've only used the Windows version, and it really, really sucks. I forget why I concluded that it only uses screen comparison, but it had to do with how it updated things, and some of the options it has.
I simply press the power switch and come back from hiber (very fast) and re-run vncviewer and bingo - my old (year old) desktop is back again. (I think most people have never ever had this experience of a persistent computer desktop that lasts in the months and even years).
Yes, people don't realize how much this rocks.
But you're wrong about VNC. Sure, it works... adequately. But you have to live with RDP for a while to see how much it sucks. RDP is sooooo much better. I'm pretty sure VNC works by comparing screen images, and RDP works by hooking into the low-level display protocols.
I have a wireless laptop that follows me around my house. It's only purpose is RDP into my home-office Win/XP machine. If the bandwidth was there, I'd love to eliminate the home-office machine and be able to get my desktop anywhere in the world from a "PC service provider". It totally makes sense -- let them worry about backups, hardware upgrades, etc.
Related to this, when is Linux going to get something like RDP? No, X11 isn't it. When you disconnect from X11, it blows away your desktop. VNC is closer, but boy does VNC suck compared to RDP. It's unbelievably slow. I know why it's slow, but that doesn't excuse the fact that it sucks.
I'd be pissed if I paid a wad of money, only to have Carmack post in his blog that if I hadn't given him the money, then he would have released it for free.
Allstate. I'm sure there are some horror stories out there, but typically home insurance claims are from random acts. Cancelling car insurance makes some amount of sense, since if someone files a claim, chances are they're more reckless than others.
But homeowner insurance, that doesn't really make business sense. In my case, I had flood damage from some big rains. Why would they cancel me? If they keep me, it's an opportunity to recoup some of the money I had just taken from them. It's not like the flood risk suddenly increased because I filed a claim.
Have you ever actually filed a home insurance claim? Thought not.
You're probably used to car insurance, which indeed are run by going-to-hell jerks. That's mainly because there's so much fraud in car insurance.
Home insurance is a whole different animal. When I had to file a home insurance claim, dude was offering to give me more money than I actually wanted. I actually turned down a full replacement of wallpaper in our kitchen -- he offered to replace it because one little corner had been damaged.
It might just be my insurance company, but I doubt it. It's just a different deal.
This bible is disproven when it contradicts physical evidence.
You say there is proof that the world is older than 10,000 years, but you fail to consider that God could have made everything look like its that old.
Sure, he might've. He might've created the universe three seconds ago. But why would he do that? Just to fool us into thinking he doesn't exist?
Then there's the question of the bible itself. Admit it -- you have never read the bible. Most people haven't. Even if you have the read bible (in the original language, of course, which is the only one that matters), that's probably not the original words, either.
So it's absurd to argue that the bible is the word of god when people don't even know what the bible actually says, or used to say. People don't even agree on what books comprise the bible!
Re:But you can prove the bible
on
Subatomic Darwinism
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· Score: 1, Insightful
I write down in a book that, at some point in the future, I will flip a quarter, and it will be heads. I flip the quarter, and it comes up heads! I predicted the future!
What? So, if someone believes that the earth goes around the sun, I'm supposed to give that person's beliefs the same respect that I might give someone with a nobel prize in physics?
Your example of Rommel is not reasonable. Rommel had a track record. RMS has a good track record of software development, but a terrible track record with his politics. All progress in Open Source has come despite his beliefs, not because of them.
You can consider him wrong, I'm sure he considers you wrong. Don't let your arrogance blind you to his integrity.
There are lots of people who have "integrity" that are wrong. It doesn't make them less wrong.
I know this is a joke, but while I support the metric system wholehearedly because of the rule of 10s, the Celsius system has no advantage over Fahrenheit in daily life, and in fact, F is actually a little better. The scale allows for finer graduations with integers. It actually worked out quite by accident that one degree in F is a pretty good interval that humans can effectively feel. You can feel a half-a-degree in C.
The only good thing about C is that zero is freezing, but who cares? It's not like 32 is hard to remember.
How about this then: they're not dead yet, but they will be.
The problem is that you can make that argument about any human. Someone's in a coma, they're never going to come out, why not do some experiments on them? They're going to die anyway, why let a perfectly good body go to waste?
Or even a newborn that's not wanted. A newborn isn't sentient (that takes another few months); if the parents don't want it, why not allow post-birth abortions?
Now, I recognize that a lot of embryos are going to be "flushed down the drain", and that it's not quite the same as the above, but that doesn't mean there aren't ethical considerations. If embryos are OK, what about two cells? 1024 cells? One week gestation? One month? Eight months, when the mother wants a late-term abortion?
I'm uncomfortable with drawing arbitrary lines on this. It just seems intrinsically wrong to experiment on a living cell with human potential.
This modern debate on embryonic stem cells is similar to the ban on using corpses for medical training and analysis in 16th century Europe.
Oh, please. A corpse is dead. An embryo is not. I'm not going to say that the ethics of this are exactly like the Nazis using Jews for experimentation (it's not), but it's closer to that than it is to corpses.
If you don't recognize the ethical implications of doing experiments on living humans, regardless of gestational state, then you don't understand the issues.
Even if you don't like the Titanic story, the sinking of the ship was pretty damn cool. The underwater sequences were well done, too, even if his goal of using real footage didn't work out (most of the footage was recreated).
What a weird thing to think. Why would they not just say "oh, I already use a Macintosh"; wouldn't that show their support for the platform more than saying they're thinking about switching?
No; the poll isn't about how many people already use the Mac. It's not enough that they already use a Mac, they want a perception that people are actively switching from the PC to the Mac.
I think you're not being exactly rational in your bias against OS X users.
Not all of them, certainly, but there is no doubt that there are a LOT of wacky Mac users. The platform attracts that type, for whatever reason. Spend some time in comp.sys.mac.advocacy some time. Those people are nuts.
Some number of those people are Apple users already, and I don't think they're above lying to pollsters in order to artificially inflate Mac popularity. The question is, how many? To be honest, I suspect most of this poll fall in that category.
A lot of Mac fans aren't exactly rational when it comes to the Mac.
I hope the NYTIMES keeps hounding on these issues. While i'm not a Game programmer I am a consultant and I get shafted left and right with abuses of power like this.
Oh, please, spare me the 'woe is me' crying. Companies owe you NOTHING. Absolutely NOTHING. Presumably you are an adult. You, as an entity, enter into an agreement with another entity to trade labor for money. No more, no less. If you think there should be more than that, then you are simply living a fantasy.
I hate to be so harsh, but seriously, grow up. Your employer is not your parents. Take some responsibility for your own life. If you don't like the way the ledger balances with whoever you are doing business with, then find someone else. It's just silly to act like you are a victim in the whole thing.
Please get current instead of making a fool of yourself on the Web; this problem have been solved a few years ago.
You don't understand. I don't WANT to go through all this bullshit. I just want to download a program, and run it. I don't want to update 200 other barely-related packages at the same time. I don't want to have to understand package management. I JUST want to download a program and run it.
Or, you can USE A PACKAGE MANAGER!!! This is MY biggest gripe about idiots that think they are "Power Users". Use a package manager and install the programs.
Oh, man. You hit a button... I F-ING HATE PACKAGE MANAGERS UNDER LINUX. I try and update program X. Oh oh, dependency. Chase that down. That creates two more dependencies. Chase those down. Soon it cascades into a total nightmare. And then, I frankly give up, and just download the source, recompiled it in parallel to the package, and just delete the package.
Funny how, under Windows, I NEVER have to do this. I download the binary, install it, life is good.
And, BTW, have you ever noticed that little pesky message on you beloved Windows "unable to locate foo.dll"?
Never. I just install programs, and they -- well, just work. Look, I like Linux, but it is seriously f-ed up when it comes to clean installing of applications.
which can and does cause earlier programs to suddenly fail, because they depended upon a particular DLL's quirks. It's called "DLL Hell".
Sorry, I've never had this happen in my life. Ever. It's simply not an issue that comes up all that often. And I think the weight of evidence is on my side... people download stuff for Windows all the time.
Maybe not the kernel, but one thing that I despise about Linux is the library dependency hell. I can download a binary onto Windows, and it just works. For a hell of a lot of binaries, I simply can't under Linux. I have to recompile the f-ing source for it to link to the right libraries.
Gah, I get irritated just thinking about it. I hate, hate, HATE this about Linux.
In other news, Linux is finally ready for the desktop!!
Oh wait, it still doesn't run the apps that regular end-users want. Oh well.
As an aside, I was reading a very funny Usenet discussion I had in *1996* (!!), where someone was saying that Linux was almost ready for the desktop, and I said (paraphrase), "I'll meet you back here in 10 years and I predict that we'll have an interesting Linux product, but it will lag behind the commercial market in critical ways."
Only eight years later, but yup. An interesting product that still can't do what normal users want to do.
(I'd post the real discussion -- it's pretty funny -- but it was under my real name, heh). You could cut and paste the discussion today and no one would know it was from 1996. It's hysterical.
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I don't know about you, but I am not a child, and RMS is far from a father figure.
Richard Stallman, over the past 20 years, has done more than most of you put together will do in your entire lifetime and all you can do is complain and make fun of him for it.
I honor his achievements, but I mock him for his silliness. Right now his silliness far exceeds his accomplishments. He has only himself to blame for being mocked. I mean, think about the UTTER stupidity of pronouncing Gnu as "Gah-new". And now, he's gone beyond the stupidity of Gnu/Linux to wanting "Gah-new plus Linux".
He is a programmer, and a good one. But, as another poster said, he has no ability to see his own limitations. Heck, look at the shallowness of his political beliefs in this article.
Maybe it's better under Unix (I wouldn't be surprised). I've only used the Windows version, and it really, really sucks. I forget why I concluded that it only uses screen comparison, but it had to do with how it updated things, and some of the options it has.
Yes, people don't realize how much this rocks.
But you're wrong about VNC. Sure, it works... adequately. But you have to live with RDP for a while to see how much it sucks. RDP is sooooo much better. I'm pretty sure VNC works by comparing screen images, and RDP works by hooking into the low-level display protocols.
RDP also sends over sounds, which is nice.
Related to this, when is Linux going to get something like RDP? No, X11 isn't it. When you disconnect from X11, it blows away your desktop. VNC is closer, but boy does VNC suck compared to RDP. It's unbelievably slow. I know why it's slow, but that doesn't excuse the fact that it sucks.
Not the smartest thing Carmack has ever posted.
But homeowner insurance, that doesn't really make business sense. In my case, I had flood damage from some big rains. Why would they cancel me? If they keep me, it's an opportunity to recoup some of the money I had just taken from them. It's not like the flood risk suddenly increased because I filed a claim.
You're probably used to car insurance, which indeed are run by going-to-hell jerks. That's mainly because there's so much fraud in car insurance.
Home insurance is a whole different animal. When I had to file a home insurance claim, dude was offering to give me more money than I actually wanted. I actually turned down a full replacement of wallpaper in our kitchen -- he offered to replace it because one little corner had been damaged.
It might just be my insurance company, but I doubt it. It's just a different deal.
This bible is disproven when it contradicts physical evidence.
You say there is proof that the world is older than 10,000 years, but you fail to consider that God could have made everything look like its that old.
Sure, he might've. He might've created the universe three seconds ago. But why would he do that? Just to fool us into thinking he doesn't exist?
Then there's the question of the bible itself. Admit it -- you have never read the bible. Most people haven't. Even if you have the read bible (in the original language, of course, which is the only one that matters), that's probably not the original words, either.
So it's absurd to argue that the bible is the word of god when people don't even know what the bible actually says, or used to say. People don't even agree on what books comprise the bible!
Therefore, I am God, and it is proven.
What? So, if someone believes that the earth goes around the sun, I'm supposed to give that person's beliefs the same respect that I might give someone with a nobel prize in physics?
Your example of Rommel is not reasonable. Rommel had a track record. RMS has a good track record of software development, but a terrible track record with his politics. All progress in Open Source has come despite his beliefs, not because of them.
You can consider him wrong, I'm sure he considers you wrong. Don't let your arrogance blind you to his integrity.
There are lots of people who have "integrity" that are wrong. It doesn't make them less wrong.
Why should I respect someone whose views are flat-out wrong?
The only good thing about C is that zero is freezing, but who cares? It's not like 32 is hard to remember.
How about this then: they're not dead yet, but they will be.
The problem is that you can make that argument about any human. Someone's in a coma, they're never going to come out, why not do some experiments on them? They're going to die anyway, why let a perfectly good body go to waste?
Or even a newborn that's not wanted. A newborn isn't sentient (that takes another few months); if the parents don't want it, why not allow post-birth abortions?
Now, I recognize that a lot of embryos are going to be "flushed down the drain", and that it's not quite the same as the above, but that doesn't mean there aren't ethical considerations. If embryos are OK, what about two cells? 1024 cells? One week gestation? One month? Eight months, when the mother wants a late-term abortion?
I'm uncomfortable with drawing arbitrary lines on this. It just seems intrinsically wrong to experiment on a living cell with human potential.
Uh, an embryo can continue growing, a corpse can't.
Are either of them anything more than a collection of cells that cannot think or feel?
A newborn can't think (its brain is still undeveloped). It can sort-of feel, but can't really process what it means to feel anything.
Is an embryo more alive because you consider it to have some mythical soul or because under the right conditions it may become alive?
Religion is irrelevent to these issues. The only question is whether we assign value to human life.
This modern debate on embryonic stem cells is similar to the ban on using corpses for medical training and analysis in 16th century Europe.
Oh, please. A corpse is dead. An embryo is not. I'm not going to say that the ethics of this are exactly like the Nazis using Jews for experimentation (it's not), but it's closer to that than it is to corpses.
If you don't recognize the ethical implications of doing experiments on living humans, regardless of gestational state, then you don't understand the issues.
Even if you don't like the Titanic story, the sinking of the ship was pretty damn cool. The underwater sequences were well done, too, even if his goal of using real footage didn't work out (most of the footage was recreated).
What a weird thing to think. Why would they not just say "oh, I already use a Macintosh"; wouldn't that show their support for the platform more than saying they're thinking about switching?
No; the poll isn't about how many people already use the Mac. It's not enough that they already use a Mac, they want a perception that people are actively switching from the PC to the Mac.
I think you're not being exactly rational in your bias against OS X users.
Not all of them, certainly, but there is no doubt that there are a LOT of wacky Mac users. The platform attracts that type, for whatever reason. Spend some time in comp.sys.mac.advocacy some time. Those people are nuts.
A lot of Mac fans aren't exactly rational when it comes to the Mac.
Oh, please, spare me the 'woe is me' crying. Companies owe you NOTHING. Absolutely NOTHING. Presumably you are an adult. You, as an entity, enter into an agreement with another entity to trade labor for money. No more, no less. If you think there should be more than that, then you are simply living a fantasy.
I hate to be so harsh, but seriously, grow up. Your employer is not your parents. Take some responsibility for your own life. If you don't like the way the ledger balances with whoever you are doing business with, then find someone else. It's just silly to act like you are a victim in the whole thing.
You don't understand. I don't WANT to go through all this bullshit. I just want to download a program, and run it. I don't want to update 200 other barely-related packages at the same time. I don't want to have to understand package management. I JUST want to download a program and run it.
Just like on, say, Windows.
Oh, man. You hit a button... I F-ING HATE PACKAGE MANAGERS UNDER LINUX. I try and update program X. Oh oh, dependency. Chase that down. That creates two more dependencies. Chase those down. Soon it cascades into a total nightmare. And then, I frankly give up, and just download the source, recompiled it in parallel to the package, and just delete the package.
Funny how, under Windows, I NEVER have to do this. I download the binary, install it, life is good.
And, BTW, have you ever noticed that little pesky message on you beloved Windows "unable to locate foo.dll"?
Never. I just install programs, and they -- well, just work. Look, I like Linux, but it is seriously f-ed up when it comes to clean installing of applications.
which can and does cause earlier programs to suddenly fail, because they depended upon a particular DLL's quirks. It's called "DLL Hell".
Sorry, I've never had this happen in my life. Ever. It's simply not an issue that comes up all that often. And I think the weight of evidence is on my side... people download stuff for Windows all the time.
Gah, I get irritated just thinking about it. I hate, hate, HATE this about Linux.
Oh wait, it still doesn't run the apps that regular end-users want. Oh well.
As an aside, I was reading a very funny Usenet discussion I had in *1996* (!!), where someone was saying that Linux was almost ready for the desktop, and I said (paraphrase), "I'll meet you back here in 10 years and I predict that we'll have an interesting Linux product, but it will lag behind the commercial market in critical ways."
Only eight years later, but yup. An interesting product that still can't do what normal users want to do.
(I'd post the real discussion -- it's pretty funny -- but it was under my real name, heh). You could cut and paste the discussion today and no one would know it was from 1996. It's hysterical.
I feel for the guy, but I feel like I'm reading about a Darwin Award in action. Jesus Christ.