Naw, it's the fault of the lawyers for insisting that contracts must be entered into before you can use the software your previously paid for. If we don't stop this trend now, pretty soon you'll have click-wrap Coca-Cola with a flip-top tab that says "By drinking this soda you agree never to buy Pepsi again."
Join the Great Slashdot Blackout [slashdot.org] April 21-27
Ummm, how can you reconcile that sig with your post dated 07:22 PM April 25th, 2002? I'm beginning to suspect that none of the MCAA bashers are going to boycott TAOTC either.
It's not the lawyers fault as much as it's the fault of, as the interviewer put it, the "litigious culture".
No, I think it's the lawyers. There is a litgious culture, but that's the result of the lawyers. I read a book once called "What They Don't Teach You At Harvard Law School", or something like that. It's basic premise was that lawyers are trained from day one to look for problems, but they are never taught how to look for solutions. So we have ended up with a legal culture that is geared to search for problems, but with no idea how to solve them except to sue.
Yesterday Sybase submitted a license for approval to the OSI. It was essentially the Apple APSL, with an additional clause requiring distributions to use click-wrap or use-wrap to indicate a manifestation of assent. (use-wrap: "by using this software, which you already have the legal right to use, you agree to...") Such a clause is completely unnecessary for Open Source Software, and I hope it doesn't get approved. I can envision only two rationales for this clause: 1) Sybase is petty, and doesn't want people using their free-beer software unless they bow before the all holy legal department; or 2) they think the clause is necessary simply because every other proprietary company has it.
Their stated rationale for the clause was that the Sprecht versus Netscape decision disallowed binding contractual obligations unless the recipient of the aforementioned unilateral imposition of terms was assented to by the user. Duh! Sybase just doesn't get it.
As a libertarian, I do not argue for zero taxation. Instead I argue for minimal taxation. There are legitimate functions of government, and they need to be financed. But that doesn't mean that the income tax (or scifi tax) is the way to do it. There was no income tax in the country prior to 1916. But guess what? There was still a government! There are some states today that don't have income taxes. Yet they still have state governments!
We have the ability to make things easier on the user. You seem to be suggesting that it doesn't matter, and that the user *should* be forced to manually maintain their computers on principle.
There is a world of difference between making things easy and making things simple. Windows has chosen to make things simple (aka simplistic, dumbed down).
Computers are complex by their very nature. You cannot eliminate this complexity. Your choices are to either make this complexity easier, through consistency, documentation and proper design, or by hiding the complexity away where no one can see it. The latter is what Microsoft has done (thought to be fair, it has done a little bit of work on the design department). But that hidden complexity is still there, waiting to jump out and bite the unwary user the first time they have a problem.
So I guess users should be forced to memorize refresh rates and command-line parameters to launch their GUIs as preemptive in high resolutions
I haven't set a refresh rate in years and I don't use any command line arguments to start my GUI. It sounds like you haven't use any sort of Unix for several years if you think that sort of stuff is still required. Get with the program.
Then I got into the real world and saw how silly and hindering such polarized viewpoints can be.
I am in the real world, and I am using FreeBSD on the desktop. I am every bit as productive as my coworkers on Windows2K.
It must be the memory, so that it avoids the horrendous swapping one gets on the typical 266Mhz with 16Megs.
I had a 100Mhz with 16M and Linux was very slow. Oh the GUI (windowmaker) was smooth and responsive, but once I loaded up Netscape and a couple of other apps, the latency was nasty. Then I upgraded it to 32Megs and all the problems went away.
If you're having problems with Linux (or *BSD) with 96 Megs, it sounds like you need to fix your configuration somewhere.
Actually these boxen are Solaris machines. They all used to be wide open. But we recently upgraded to Solaris8 and the default is not to secure the display. Oh well, I can still tweak with the LynxOS lab machines...
Do you have to agree to the EULA before you can legally aquire a copy of the software? If not, then the EULA is meaningless. By law you have the right to use any legally aquired software for any legal purpose, including installing it without agreeing to the EULA.
Any EULA that tells you that you must agree to it before you can install the software which you have legally aquired, is meaningless.
You're obviously a Mac user, because the Windows GUI is so full of numerous kludges, bugs, inconsistencies, slowdowns, crashes and poor GUI design, it makes KDE and GNOME look like the poster boys of software engineering.
Your attitude--"RTFM"--is why Linux is not a very widespread desktop OS amongst us more "common folk."
And the opposite attidute--"we don't need to stinkin' manuals"--is why the number solution to any Windows problem is to reinstall.
Incidentally, I learned to drive in two weeks.
Yeah, but I bet you didn't pass your driver's test without reading the manual.
You don't need to be an auto mechanic to know how to drive, but you should at least know how to change a tire. The common Windows perception is that you don't need to know how to maintain your car. If you get a blowout you'll just call up your neighbor Marge who knows even less about computers than you do. Unfortunately that doesn't work when your blowout occurs on I15 in the middle of the Mojave Desert.
Drivers need to know how to change tires, check their oil, fill up the fuel tank, somewhat understand what the gauges on the dash mean, how to signal for a left turn, what traffic signals mean, etc. A computer user is expected to know nothing at all.
For most of us the killer feature is network transparency.
Absolutely! Those sitting at home with single boxes connected to nothing but their ISP will never know the utter usefulness of this.
I'm running Adobe Framemaker 6 on my FreeBSD box. How? Easy. It's called network transparency. The application is actually running on my Solaris box, but being displayed on my FreeBSD screen. Ditto for Clearcase, ClearDDTS and Rational Rose. Screw that old horrible Sun monitor that makes your eyes wither into dust, I can use the glorious Sony Trinitron on the Dell GX240 instead!
Funny, last time I checked out Mandrake, it kept insisting that my Matrox G450+ was a cheap generic framebuffer device. Nothing I could do would convince it otherwise. I never did have the patience to dig deep enough to see where it kept overriding my manual settings. Frankly, if DrakX is what is going to save Linux, then Linux is doomed...
My Matrox G450+ works just fine under FreeBSD-4.5, using a stock XFree86-4.2.0. I get kernel accelerated OpenGL and the best 2D acceleration I have ever seen off of any card. And it worked out of the box! No drm-kmod or hal needed. No bizzare kernel configurations or init scripts. I just needed to copy the kernel modules out of/usr/X11R6/lib/modules/dri and into/modules. This is on an A7M266 mobo.
I agree. Tomorrow's version of XFree86 will come with ATI drivers. It will not come with current Nvidia drivers. For that you will have to wait until Nvidia gets around to it.
The entire IT industry has a serious attitude problem. Go dig ditches for a while, or pick cotton, or even flip burgers. You guys have one of the highest wage rates on the planet, yet you act like you've been assigned to shovel shit at the zoo.
Every job since the beginning of time had its downsides, and every one but the job of hermitting had to deal with lusers. But only the IT industry takes it personally. I think I could survive a week as a professional sysadmin. Could you survive a week as a professional software engineer?
p.s. Sysadmins are lusers as well. Two months ago I received two emails from IT. The first said "your Solaris machine will be upgraded remotely this Saturday. Please log out at the end of Friday, but do not power off the machine." The second said "the network will be down for maintenance this weekend. Please log off all machines by the end of Friday."
In 2003, the news media reported on the Faux Flu. It was dangerous they said. It would kill old people and children. It would cause everyone else to spends weeks in the hospital. It had all sorts of nasty symptoms, which I won't describe here.
The reporting was hyped all out of proportion. Every hour on the hour there was a public service announcement regarding it. Major troop movements in the Middle East were relegated to the back page in favor of reporting on some kid with a runny nose on page one.
The public went into a panic. People went and got their flu shots. The covered their mouths and noses when the coughed or sneezed. They didn't go into work when they had the sniffles. They stopped french kissing with strangers.
But there was no outbreak. A total of five people died of the Faux Flu. The people blamed the media for inciting panic. Newspaper subscriptions plummeted and Disney Megacorp had to sell off AOL/TW to stay afloat.
Then the Fu Flu hit the next year. No one believed the media. No one took their flu shots. Sneezing in crowded train stations was considered hip and cool, a way of telling the doommongers to bugger off.
Are there morons in the christian faith? Absolutely! There are morons in every faith. And there are moron agnostics and atheists to boot. It is the nature of some people to turn off their brains and believe any asinine crackpot theory presented to them. I know some people who manage to simultaneously believe multiple conflicting conspiracy theories.
It is not my place to judge whether or not someone is a "true" christian or not. But when I see people believe the words of Jack Chick more fervently than the words in the Bible, my suspicions are that they are not. There are a great many cults who call themselves a christian denomination when they most certainly are not. The foundation of christianity, regardless of flavor, is the words of Jesus Christ as recorded in the Bible. When I see someone spout about the evils of a UN Conspiracy with nary a reference to scripture, I suspect cultism.
That said, I still can't envision Jack Chick denouncing Mac OSX as a satanic plot, or Bob Jones University banning FreeBSD, or the Patriot Network placing the Open Source in their list of communist conspiracies. This is what I was referring to. Of course there are nutbags out there. But I don't know of any nutbags saying Apple, BSD, or Linux are satanic. But I do know of several hoaxes along those lines.
Slashdot Mirror
Naw, it's the fault of the lawyers for insisting that contracts must be entered into before you can use the software your previously paid for. If we don't stop this trend now, pretty soon you'll have click-wrap Coca-Cola with a flip-top tab that says "By drinking this soda you agree never to buy Pepsi again."
Join the Great Slashdot Blackout [slashdot.org] April 21-27
Ummm, how can you reconcile that sig with your post dated 07:22 PM April 25th, 2002? I'm beginning to suspect that none of the MCAA bashers are going to boycott TAOTC either.
It's not the lawyers fault as much as it's the fault of, as the interviewer put it, the "litigious culture".
No, I think it's the lawyers. There is a litgious culture, but that's the result of the lawyers. I read a book once called "What They Don't Teach You At Harvard Law School", or something like that. It's basic premise was that lawyers are trained from day one to look for problems, but they are never taught how to look for solutions. So we have ended up with a legal culture that is geared to search for problems, but with no idea how to solve them except to sue.
Yesterday Sybase submitted a license for approval to the OSI. It was essentially the Apple APSL, with an additional clause requiring distributions to use click-wrap or use-wrap to indicate a manifestation of assent. (use-wrap: "by using this software, which you already have the legal right to use, you agree to...") Such a clause is completely unnecessary for Open Source Software, and I hope it doesn't get approved. I can envision only two rationales for this clause: 1) Sybase is petty, and doesn't want people using their free-beer software unless they bow before the all holy legal department; or 2) they think the clause is necessary simply because every other proprietary company has it.
Their stated rationale for the clause was that the Sprecht versus Netscape decision disallowed binding contractual obligations unless the recipient of the aforementioned unilateral imposition of terms was assented to by the user. Duh! Sybase just doesn't get it.
Or taxing political candidates to fund alternative fuels research, since they're the ones causing global warming through all their hot air...
Why is it that the city in the US with the most strict gun control laws has the highest murder rate in the world?
As a libertarian, I do not argue for zero taxation. Instead I argue for minimal taxation. There are legitimate functions of government, and they need to be financed. But that doesn't mean that the income tax (or scifi tax) is the way to do it. There was no income tax in the country prior to 1916. But guess what? There was still a government! There are some states today that don't have income taxes. Yet they still have state governments!
We have the ability to make things easier on the user. You seem to be suggesting that it doesn't matter, and that the user *should* be forced to manually maintain their computers on principle.
There is a world of difference between making things easy and making things simple. Windows has chosen to make things simple (aka simplistic, dumbed down).
Computers are complex by their very nature. You cannot eliminate this complexity. Your choices are to either make this complexity easier, through consistency, documentation and proper design, or by hiding the complexity away where no one can see it. The latter is what Microsoft has done (thought to be fair, it has done a little bit of work on the design department). But that hidden complexity is still there, waiting to jump out and bite the unwary user the first time they have a problem.
So I guess users should be forced to memorize refresh rates and command-line parameters to launch their GUIs as preemptive in high resolutions
I haven't set a refresh rate in years and I don't use any command line arguments to start my GUI. It sounds like you haven't use any sort of Unix for several years if you think that sort of stuff is still required. Get with the program.
Then I got into the real world and saw how silly and hindering such polarized viewpoints can be.
I am in the real world, and I am using FreeBSD on the desktop. I am every bit as productive as my coworkers on Windows2K.
It must be the memory, so that it avoids the horrendous swapping one gets on the typical 266Mhz with 16Megs.
I had a 100Mhz with 16M and Linux was very slow. Oh the GUI (windowmaker) was smooth and responsive, but once I loaded up Netscape and a couple of other apps, the latency was nasty. Then I upgraded it to 32Megs and all the problems went away.
If you're having problems with Linux (or *BSD) with 96 Megs, it sounds like you need to fix your configuration somewhere.
God forbid you should use any hardware that's supported on more platforms that Linux.
Actually these boxen are Solaris machines. They all used to be wide open. But we recently upgraded to Solaris8 and the default is not to secure the display. Oh well, I can still tweak with the LynxOS lab machines...
Do you have to agree to the EULA before you can legally aquire a copy of the software? If not, then the EULA is meaningless. By law you have the right to use any legally aquired software for any legal purpose, including installing it without agreeing to the EULA.
Any EULA that tells you that you must agree to it before you can install the software which you have legally aquired, is meaningless.
meaning each of our lecturers wants the students to use a different window manager, and the students edit their .xsession and window manager configs
Students should be taught to follow orders! Damn them and their independent thinking!
You're obviously a Mac user, because the Windows GUI is so full of numerous kludges, bugs, inconsistencies, slowdowns, crashes and poor GUI design, it makes KDE and GNOME look like the poster boys of software engineering.
Your attitude--"RTFM"--is why Linux is not a very widespread desktop OS amongst us more "common folk."
And the opposite attidute--"we don't need to stinkin' manuals"--is why the number solution to any Windows problem is to reinstall.
Incidentally, I learned to drive in two weeks.
Yeah, but I bet you didn't pass your driver's test without reading the manual.
You don't need to be an auto mechanic to know how to drive, but you should at least know how to change a tire. The common Windows perception is that you don't need to know how to maintain your car. If you get a blowout you'll just call up your neighbor Marge who knows even less about computers than you do. Unfortunately that doesn't work when your blowout occurs on I15 in the middle of the Mojave Desert.
Drivers need to know how to change tires, check their oil, fill up the fuel tank, somewhat understand what the gauges on the dash mean, how to signal for a left turn, what traffic signals mean, etc. A computer user is expected to know nothing at all.
If you're running Windows XP on a 266Mhz and you're getting smooth responsive behavior, then please tell us what wonderful shit you've been smoking...
For most of us the killer feature is network transparency.
Absolutely! Those sitting at home with single boxes connected to nothing but their ISP will never know the utter usefulness of this.
I'm running Adobe Framemaker 6 on my FreeBSD box. How? Easy. It's called network transparency. The application is actually running on my Solaris box, but being displayed on my FreeBSD screen. Ditto for Clearcase, ClearDDTS and Rational Rose. Screw that old horrible Sun monitor that makes your eyes wither into dust, I can use the glorious Sony Trinitron on the Dell GX240 instead!
Funny, last time I checked out Mandrake, it kept insisting that my Matrox G450+ was a cheap generic framebuffer device. Nothing I could do would convince it otherwise. I never did have the patience to dig deep enough to see where it kept overriding my manual settings. Frankly, if DrakX is what is going to save Linux, then Linux is doomed...
Who cares about speed? I'm going to launch these suckers on everyone with an open display :-)
My Matrox G450+ works just fine under FreeBSD-4.5, using a stock XFree86-4.2.0. I get kernel accelerated OpenGL and the best 2D acceleration I have ever seen off of any card. And it worked out of the box! No drm-kmod or hal needed. No bizzare kernel configurations or init scripts. I just needed to copy the kernel modules out of /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/dri and into /modules. This is on an A7M266 mobo.
My G450+ works just fine with 4x AGP and OpenGL acceleration (without even having to use drm-kmod).
From my perspective, as an end user, even if the source WAS available, I couldn't do a damn thing with it anyway.
No, but someone else could. That makes all the difference in the world.
I agree. Tomorrow's version of XFree86 will come with ATI drivers. It will not come with current Nvidia drivers. For that you will have to wait until Nvidia gets around to it.
The entire IT industry has a serious attitude problem. Go dig ditches for a while, or pick cotton, or even flip burgers. You guys have one of the highest wage rates on the planet, yet you act like you've been assigned to shovel shit at the zoo.
Every job since the beginning of time had its downsides, and every one but the job of hermitting had to deal with lusers. But only the IT industry takes it personally. I think I could survive a week as a professional sysadmin. Could you survive a week as a professional software engineer?
p.s. Sysadmins are lusers as well. Two months ago I received two emails from IT. The first said "your Solaris machine will be upgraded remotely this Saturday. Please log out at the end of Friday, but do not power off the machine." The second said "the network will be down for maintenance this weekend. Please log off all machines by the end of Friday."
In 2003, the news media reported on the Faux Flu. It was dangerous they said. It would kill old people and children. It would cause everyone else to spends weeks in the hospital. It had all sorts of nasty symptoms, which I won't describe here.
The reporting was hyped all out of proportion. Every hour on the hour there was a public service announcement regarding it. Major troop movements in the Middle East were relegated to the back page in favor of reporting on some kid with a runny nose on page one.
The public went into a panic. People went and got their flu shots. The covered their mouths and noses when the coughed or sneezed. They didn't go into work when they had the sniffles. They stopped french kissing with strangers.
But there was no outbreak. A total of five people died of the Faux Flu. The people blamed the media for inciting panic. Newspaper subscriptions plummeted and Disney Megacorp had to sell off AOL/TW to stay afloat.
Then the Fu Flu hit the next year. No one believed the media. No one took their flu shots. Sneezing in crowded train stations was considered hip and cool, a way of telling the doommongers to bugger off.
And 1.3 billion people died.
Are there morons in the christian faith? Absolutely! There are morons in every faith. And there are moron agnostics and atheists to boot. It is the nature of some people to turn off their brains and believe any asinine crackpot theory presented to them. I know some people who manage to simultaneously believe multiple conflicting conspiracy theories.
It is not my place to judge whether or not someone is a "true" christian or not. But when I see people believe the words of Jack Chick more fervently than the words in the Bible, my suspicions are that they are not. There are a great many cults who call themselves a christian denomination when they most certainly are not. The foundation of christianity, regardless of flavor, is the words of Jesus Christ as recorded in the Bible. When I see someone spout about the evils of a UN Conspiracy with nary a reference to scripture, I suspect cultism.
That said, I still can't envision Jack Chick denouncing Mac OSX as a satanic plot, or Bob Jones University banning FreeBSD, or the Patriot Network placing the Open Source in their list of communist conspiracies. This is what I was referring to. Of course there are nutbags out there. But I don't know of any nutbags saying Apple, BSD, or Linux are satanic. But I do know of several hoaxes along those lines.