Huh? There's no difference in performance ssh'ing into a Unix or a Windows machine. In fact, sometimes I will have the Unix apps running on my Windows desktop be MORE responsive than the native WindowsSP apps.
If you aquaintance found a "premier" Linux to be much slower, then she either had a badly misconfigured system or was using the wrong remote client. Don't blame the hammer because it won't saw wood.
Technology people are getting "dumber" in some ways. Some of the new geeks, hackers and gurus are blithering idiots. Like the XML evangelist who can't edit XML files in a text editor, and who requires a special tool. Or the web developer who can't make a webpage without the assistant of FrontPage.
I think the dividing line between old farts and upstart pups is the user interface. When embedded developers are unable to write C code without a full blown IDE, something's wrong. I'm not saying that an IDE is bad, it's just that at some point you need to know how to do arithmetic with pencil and paper before being issued a calculator.
It gets worse when you talk to the special interests. If one bill increases spending five billion and another increases it four billion, and the second will be escoriated as a heartless attempt by Republicans to starve [children|elderly|poor] for the benefit of the wealthiest 1%. It doesn't matter if it's after-school sports or New Orleans levees, if not every dollar asked for is approved then it's an intolerable budget cut.
p.s. Not that I'm defending Republicans. Their mantra of "small government" went out the window the instant they got control over all three branches of government. Sheesh.
Who the hell needs fast graphics? At work? Fiddling with word processors and spreadsheets? I agree that Sun Rays would suck start a Harley if used at home to play games, but that's not what they're designed for.
Certainly the timesheet database needs to be centralized. But does the GUI need to be HTML? Gaagh! We've spent the past twenty years coming up with good GUIs, and now we have to replace it all with a damned web page. It's several huge steps backwards. The idea that some people want to replace everything from the kernel on up with a web page is sickening.
Why the fsck do we need a web-based text editor?!?! Isn't remote access to the text file sufficient?
What Sun doesn't understand, and what you don't seem to understand either, is that client side processing is cheap. For example, why do you need a web based text editor when your existing PC can handle it just fine? Why buy a $500 thin client when a $200 PC has a hundred times the functionality?
My work has a network with a bunch of aging Sun Solaris workstations and a bunch of Dell Windows systems. Due to the lack of brain activity in our IT department, we've decided that web applications are the way to go. The result: half the web apps can't be used by the Sun workstations because they require the Internet Explorer (someone experimented with the IE for Solaris, but the results were unreliable), and the other half of the web apps are clearly inferior (slower, nastier interface, etc) to the local client versions.
JS wants thin clients because he wants centralized control. It's a valid viewpoint, but it's only applicable to a few situations. It sounds great to IT because they only have to install the text editor once. But the users will hate it, and the user is king, no matter how godlike IT thinks it is.
Yesterday, Friday evening, as everyone is trying finish out their timesheets so they can go home for the weekend, the online timesheet webapp crashes. If that's the future of computing, you can keep it.
As an employee of a huge multinational corporation based out of Europe, I have to relate the following rumor. The vice president of the China group was let go (fired) a couple of years ago because he was caught trying to marry a fifth wife while visiting the US. He claimed he didn't do anything wrong as each of his earlier four wives were each in different countries.
I don't see Microsoft rushing to contribute back to the TCP/IP stack they used under the BSD license.
But neither are they preventing anyone from using the BSD licensed TCP/IP stack. One of the more popular arguments against the BSD license is that it's "a license to steal." But nothing has been stolen! I still have my copy safe and sound!
And FreeBSD isn't Linux in terms of success.
No, but Apache is. It's hugely successful in comparison to Linux (or IIS). Yet it's under a BSD-style license. Microsoft hasn't stolen it, nobody has stolen it. It's still there completely free for all comers just as it always has been.
You say IBM wouldn't be keen to contribute back code under a BSD license, yet IBM is a member of Apache! They *ARE* contributing back code that's under a BSD-like license!
What if ESR (or someone similar) got a hold of the FSF, and in line with their (IMHO deluded) libertarian beliefs that companies will ultimately not just screw everyone over and exploit their code given the chance, release a version of the GPL that is closer in spirit to the BSD-license?
In that case, companies would ultimately screw everyone over by exploiting their code. Just look at FreeBSD for example. Oh wait, bad example. Look at Apache instead. Ohe wait, another bad example. I'm sure there's an example out there of the utter anguish and despair that would happen if the GPL were more free.
But you are in essence correct. Freedom is too valuable to give to everyone. We need to lock it away so only we can have it.
Replace words referring to the internet with words referring to cable television, and then reread your post. Why should we trust government to with the internet when they've done such a crappy job with cable? Hell, one main reason people want government wifi is to get out from the cable monopolies that *government* created.
Government isn't the solution to government problems.
they're owned by the communities, local ones. not by the government.
Most "community" wifi networks are owned by the government and operated either by the government or a government appointed monopoly. It might not be the national, state or county government, but it sure as hell is the local city government.
I'm glad the community wifi in your town is private and out of the hands of government. But I know my own city council too well. When they say "community wifi" they mean "taxpayer funded city employee maintained welfare to techies so councilmen will feel warm and fuzzy."
I cannot understand why people think this is a good policy. It's welfare for techies. Who is going to be using these new taxpayer funded networks? The very people most able to afford broadband access! Do you really think the poor are going to be flocking down to BestBuy to pick up laptops so they can take advantage of this "free" service? Hah! This is a giveaway to the rich! If this is truly for the poor and needy, then why not give them $20 a month to go shop for online access?
But beyond that, I can't understand why *slashdot* readers are creaming their pants over this topic. If it were anything else they would be bitching at government intrusion into our lives. We're worried about the government snooping on our networks, yet we're clamouring for government owned networks? There's a whole section on Slashot called "YRO", yet no one seems to realize that government operated wifi networks are a huge threat to your rights online.
Tax supported wifi networks are "free market"? I think you need a dictionary. It's one thing to argue that wifi networks need to be government owned and/or taxpayer funded, but to claim that they are "free market" is preposterous.
If you want to protect the rights of Dutch/European IP owners in the US, go right ahead! I don't think it's a concern, as I haven't seen that big of a black market in Dutch/European software on the street corners in New York, but if that's what you want to do I won't stop you.
Rest assured, that the US isn't sending people abroad to tell opthers what it can or cannot do with Dutch/European IP. If that was your concern, it was misplaced.
I was going to post about my visit with my mother and the argument we had over computers. Then I saw your post.
My mother gives people legal advice without being a lawyer: "Save your money, here's a website that will make a durable power of attorney for you that you can print out and sign."
My mother gives medical advice without being a physician: "Here, take these pills for your cold, they really helped my thyroid problem."
My mother knows next to nothing about cars, but that doesn't stop her: "My check engine light came on, could you replace my alternator while you're down this weekend?"
Building codes: "You don't need a building permit, it's just a porch!"
My mother seems to know everything. Thanks to the wonderful technology of email forwarding, she now knows even more! "Barbara sent me this mail about how to prevent identity theft, so I scraped my signature off of all my credit cards and peeled off those magnetic strips."
The small-scale, endless noisy squabbles result in a terribly unfocused, continually shifting landscape that never gets anything done.
Sounds good to me! That last thing you want with large blundering inept governments is to have them do stuff. It's like a herd of bulls. If you own a china shop you would rather have them sitting immobile rather than running around doing stuff.
Why shouldn't you be able to hire someone to speak for you? If you hire a taxi to drive you, hire a lawyer to defend you, hire a security guard to carry a gun for you, then why can't you hire someone to speak for you?
I can give $1001 to help aid hurricane victims, but I can't give $1001 to aid a candidate who promises to fix the city, state and national screwups that magnified that disaster? Where's the sense in that?
Every notice that most people bitching about the the lack of freedom for the press are doing it via a blog or a comment in a blog? It's sort of like all the people standing on soapboxes on street corners bitching about not having any freedom of speech. Or like protests demanding the right to protest.
It's the same in large cities. There is a divide between urbandom and ruraldom that is as old as the Roman Empire. The closer you get to the center of a large metropolis the more you will find people leaning to the left, while the further away you get from the city the more you will find people leaning to the right.
Slashdot Mirror
Huh? There's no difference in performance ssh'ing into a Unix or a Windows machine. In fact, sometimes I will have the Unix apps running on my Windows desktop be MORE responsive than the native WindowsSP apps.
If you aquaintance found a "premier" Linux to be much slower, then she either had a badly misconfigured system or was using the wrong remote client. Don't blame the hammer because it won't saw wood.
Technology people are getting "dumber" in some ways. Some of the new geeks, hackers and gurus are blithering idiots. Like the XML evangelist who can't edit XML files in a text editor, and who requires a special tool. Or the web developer who can't make a webpage without the assistant of FrontPage.
I think the dividing line between old farts and upstart pups is the user interface. When embedded developers are unable to write C code without a full blown IDE, something's wrong. I'm not saying that an IDE is bad, it's just that at some point you need to know how to do arithmetic with pencil and paper before being issued a calculator.
It gets worse when you talk to the special interests. If one bill increases spending five billion and another increases it four billion, and the second will be escoriated as a heartless attempt by Republicans to starve [children|elderly|poor] for the benefit of the wealthiest 1%. It doesn't matter if it's after-school sports or New Orleans levees, if not every dollar asked for is approved then it's an intolerable budget cut.
p.s. Not that I'm defending Republicans. Their mantra of "small government" went out the window the instant they got control over all three branches of government. Sheesh.
But anything that needs fast graphics...
Who the hell needs fast graphics? At work? Fiddling with word processors and spreadsheets? I agree that Sun Rays would suck start a Harley if used at home to play games, but that's not what they're designed for.
...and a large monitor, full size keyboard, and ergonomic mouse or trackball.
Certainly the timesheet database needs to be centralized. But does the GUI need to be HTML? Gaagh! We've spent the past twenty years coming up with good GUIs, and now we have to replace it all with a damned web page. It's several huge steps backwards. The idea that some people want to replace everything from the kernel on up with a web page is sickening.
Why the fsck do we need a web-based text editor?!?! Isn't remote access to the text file sufficient?
Microsoft hates Freedom! Microsoft hates America! Microsoft supports Fascism!
And no, this isn't a troll, because it's supported by the facts of Microsoft's actions.
In other news, the Free Software community continues to ponder why the general public still views them as blithering moonbats.
What Sun doesn't understand, and what you don't seem to understand either, is that client side processing is cheap. For example, why do you need a web based text editor when your existing PC can handle it just fine? Why buy a $500 thin client when a $200 PC has a hundred times the functionality?
My work has a network with a bunch of aging Sun Solaris workstations and a bunch of Dell Windows systems. Due to the lack of brain activity in our IT department, we've decided that web applications are the way to go. The result: half the web apps can't be used by the Sun workstations because they require the Internet Explorer (someone experimented with the IE for Solaris, but the results were unreliable), and the other half of the web apps are clearly inferior (slower, nastier interface, etc) to the local client versions.
JS wants thin clients because he wants centralized control. It's a valid viewpoint, but it's only applicable to a few situations. It sounds great to IT because they only have to install the text editor once. But the users will hate it, and the user is king, no matter how godlike IT thinks it is.
Yesterday, Friday evening, as everyone is trying finish out their timesheets so they can go home for the weekend, the online timesheet webapp crashes. If that's the future of computing, you can keep it.
As an employee of a huge multinational corporation based out of Europe, I have to relate the following rumor. The vice president of the China group was let go (fired) a couple of years ago because he was caught trying to marry a fifth wife while visiting the US. He claimed he didn't do anything wrong as each of his earlier four wives were each in different countries.
I don't see Microsoft rushing to contribute back to the TCP/IP stack they used under the BSD license.
But neither are they preventing anyone from using the BSD licensed TCP/IP stack. One of the more popular arguments against the BSD license is that it's "a license to steal." But nothing has been stolen! I still have my copy safe and sound!
And FreeBSD isn't Linux in terms of success.
No, but Apache is. It's hugely successful in comparison to Linux (or IIS). Yet it's under a BSD-style license. Microsoft hasn't stolen it, nobody has stolen it. It's still there completely free for all comers just as it always has been.
You say IBM wouldn't be keen to contribute back code under a BSD license, yet IBM is a member of Apache! They *ARE* contributing back code that's under a BSD-like license!
What if ESR (or someone similar) got a hold of the FSF, and in line with their (IMHO deluded) libertarian beliefs that companies will ultimately not just screw everyone over and exploit their code given the chance, release a version of the GPL that is closer in spirit to the BSD-license?
In that case, companies would ultimately screw everyone over by exploiting their code. Just look at FreeBSD for example. Oh wait, bad example. Look at Apache instead. Ohe wait, another bad example. I'm sure there's an example out there of the utter anguish and despair that would happen if the GPL were more free.
But you are in essence correct. Freedom is too valuable to give to everyone. We need to lock it away so only we can have it.
Too bad his followers don't know that.
Replace words referring to the internet with words referring to cable television, and then reread your post. Why should we trust government to with the internet when they've done such a crappy job with cable? Hell, one main reason people want government wifi is to get out from the cable monopolies that *government* created.
Government isn't the solution to government problems.
they're owned by the communities, local ones. not by the government.
Most "community" wifi networks are owned by the government and operated either by the government or a government appointed monopoly. It might not be the national, state or county government, but it sure as hell is the local city government.
I'm glad the community wifi in your town is private and out of the hands of government. But I know my own city council too well. When they say "community wifi" they mean "taxpayer funded city employee maintained welfare to techies so councilmen will feel warm and fuzzy."
I cannot understand why people think this is a good policy. It's welfare for techies. Who is going to be using these new taxpayer funded networks? The very people most able to afford broadband access! Do you really think the poor are going to be flocking down to BestBuy to pick up laptops so they can take advantage of this "free" service? Hah! This is a giveaway to the rich! If this is truly for the poor and needy, then why not give them $20 a month to go shop for online access?
But beyond that, I can't understand why *slashdot* readers are creaming their pants over this topic. If it were anything else they would be bitching at government intrusion into our lives. We're worried about the government snooping on our networks, yet we're clamouring for government owned networks? There's a whole section on Slashot called "YRO", yet no one seems to realize that government operated wifi networks are a huge threat to your rights online.
the only truly free market
Tax supported wifi networks are "free market"? I think you need a dictionary. It's one thing to argue that wifi networks need to be government owned and/or taxpayer funded, but to claim that they are "free market" is preposterous.
Wow. My post gets modded as troll, but the parent post talking about napalming judges gets modded +5 insightful.
Someone remind me again why I came back to Slashdot.
No one uses bmp except Microsoft.
I don't think I really want to live in this country (USA) any more.
Do you need anyone to drive you to the border?
If you want to protect the rights of Dutch/European IP owners in the US, go right ahead! I don't think it's a concern, as I haven't seen that big of a black market in Dutch/European software on the street corners in New York, but if that's what you want to do I won't stop you.
Rest assured, that the US isn't sending people abroad to tell opthers what it can or cannot do with Dutch/European IP. If that was your concern, it was misplaced.
I was going to post about my visit with my mother and the argument we had over computers. Then I saw your post.
My mother gives people legal advice without being a lawyer: "Save your money, here's a website that will make a durable power of attorney for you that you can print out and sign."
My mother gives medical advice without being a physician: "Here, take these pills for your cold, they really helped my thyroid problem."
My mother knows next to nothing about cars, but that doesn't stop her: "My check engine light came on, could you replace my alternator while you're down this weekend?"
Building codes: "You don't need a building permit, it's just a porch!"
My mother seems to know everything. Thanks to the wonderful technology of email forwarding, she now knows even more! "Barbara sent me this mail about how to prevent identity theft, so I scraped my signature off of all my credit cards and peeled off those magnetic strips."
The small-scale, endless noisy squabbles result in a terribly unfocused, continually shifting landscape that never gets anything done.
Sounds good to me! That last thing you want with large blundering inept governments is to have them do stuff. It's like a herd of bulls. If you own a china shop you would rather have them sitting immobile rather than running around doing stuff.
Why shouldn't you be able to hire someone to speak for you? If you hire a taxi to drive you, hire a lawyer to defend you, hire a security guard to carry a gun for you, then why can't you hire someone to speak for you?
I can give $1001 to help aid hurricane victims, but I can't give $1001 to aid a candidate who promises to fix the city, state and national screwups that magnified that disaster? Where's the sense in that?
Every notice that most people bitching about the the lack of freedom for the press are doing it via a blog or a comment in a blog? It's sort of like all the people standing on soapboxes on street corners bitching about not having any freedom of speech. Or like protests demanding the right to protest.
It's the same in large cities. There is a divide between urbandom and ruraldom that is as old as the Roman Empire. The closer you get to the center of a large metropolis the more you will find people leaning to the left, while the further away you get from the city the more you will find people leaning to the right.