Which is why efforts at AI programming will continue to require human interaction for the foreseeable future.
No kidding. And in related news, educating humans will require human intervention in the forseeable future.
Obvious, eh? Almost as obvious as the idea that the random mutations used in genetic programming are about as efficient as real random mutations. They get the job done eventually, but require a lot of screw-ups to make one improvement.
Even using DGA2 and all the other latest X speedups, the same program running on Linux is in my testing between 10 and 20 FPS slower than Windows *on the same hardware*.
10 to 20 FPS out of how many? Also, what hardware? Stats like this are pretty useless without more info. For example, I know very well that my Radeon will be slower in Linux that on Windows because the Linux drivers are presently rather poor (and the developers know it and are working on it). Unreal Tournament ran about twice as fast on my old Geforce DDR card.
Also, which program you're testing matters a lot. 10-20 frames in the "glxgears" program (for example) is nothing, at least on a fast CPU (I assume yours is faster than 400Mhz from what you said). I get 900+ FPS on a Duron 800, even with my "slow" Radeon card. Plus or minus 20 FPS wouldn't matter in the least.
Maybe the Green Party could start calling major polluters "Ecological Terrorists". Or the Libertarians could call the government "Legislative Terrorists". And how about banks which charge $1.50 for using their ATM and another $1.50 for the actual withdrawl? "Economic Terrorists" (or just "bloodsucking terrorists", expanding on the name we already gave them...).
A better question is, "Why Cleopatra?" How about a real ancient Egyptian ruler like Ramses or Nefertiti, or a modern one (Sadat?), not one who was most famous for handing the country over to the Romans?
(The answer: becuase they never made a movie about Nefertiti. Oh brother...)
In software terms, the same terms would be "fixed percent of sale price." The astute reader will observe that this allows continued distribution of free (gratis) software w/o royalty encumberance, even if it causes RMS to break out in a rash.
Is that a fixed percent of the price of the software product itself (i.e. The GIMP, which costs $0 to download) or of the price charged for distribution/resale (i.e. RedHat 7.1, which includes The GIMP, and costs $39.95)?
I would expect that if any benchmarks came out favoring Windows, and if they were reported here, they would be roundly and loudly shot down with 1) criticisms of the testing protocol, and/or 2) criticisms of the bias of the testing agency. Of course, the same criticisms are just as valid in this case, but of course they are here largely ignored (one poster so far excepted).
Likewise, we would expect people to say that we're all Linux bigots on SlashDot, and for these comments to be marked up despite their claims that such criticisms get marked down or ignored.
In other words, it's the same old story... both chapters of it:) So don't let your horse get up too high, there. Stay in the mud with the rest of us.
But then again, it runs Linux, so it must be good, eh?
You might want to look at the other comments. I don't think anyone has called it "good". In fact, it looks like a piece of crap from what people have been saying about it.
In short I find the open source community boring & backwards. Its contributions are very useful and I use them on a daily basis.
Funny, I think you've got it backwards. You do realize that most of us aren't researchers (read: theorists) and mainly want useful software, rather than theoretically advanced software. I prefer performance to knowing that all the software I'm running is object oriented, and I prefer usefulness to originality, especially to that sort of excessive originality which leads to software which is useless:)
Besides, the Open Source community strongly supports open standards. There's often a conflict between coding new concepts and sticking to the standards. If you're writing software for people to actually use, then the latter will usually win, especially since greater simplicity (for the sake of those who might want to hack the code) is often found in the latter case. That's why the Open Source community won't recreate Java. Whatever they make won't be a standard. (Of course, there's a next generation C++ with an ungodly name being developed right now, and I expect that Open Sourcers are working on that...) Like you said "Don't waste your time figuring out how to reinvent the wheel, I already have half a dozen."
Of course, most of us want cars, not just a bunch of wheels:) We want tools to do whatever it is that we need to do. So while I understand why a software researcher would care about the originality of the ideas coming from the Open Source community, most of said community have totally different types of needs. At work, I want good stimulus-presentation software, or the tools to write it (for Psychology research). At home, I want the Radeon driver to improve. Either of these goals will be significantly held back by too much emphasis on theory.
As a side note, I do work with some psychology researchers working in human interfaces and AI who are developing open source tools. Perhaps much of the theoretical development within the Open Source community is simply not as well publicized as the stuff IBM and Microsoft are working on? Theorietical research requires money, and two big sources of money are Corporations and Universities. Perhaps more Open Source research occurs at Universities, where the research is mainly publicized in academic journals?
My point was to bring up examples from history of the terrible consequences of ideologically driven revolutions conducted in the name of "the people," but based on a concept of justice decided on unilaterally by an enlightened few. Railing against The New York Times as a tool of the capitalists, and threatening that "it's all comin' down, baby" is a lot closer to the ideals of Maoist revolutions than to democratic ideals of freedom and participatory government.
I see your point, now that you're stating it clearly. I don't agree, though. Every revolution is an ideological one, and most large ones are "for the people". You don't think the American Revolution wasn't about political and economic ideals, and wasn't "for the people of the colonies"? (Whether or not that revolution actually was about the common folk is another issue)
And while I agree that arguing that the NYT is a tool of the capitalists sounds Maoist, I don't see how it's undemocratic. If we're all participants in government, shouldn't we have access to the least-adulterated information we can get? Is "the tyranny of The New York Times and their corporate fatcat sponsors" really freedom? Is it really sufficient for a participatory government? There's a real debate here.
If you want to ignore history, that's your prerogative, and you do so at your own peril, but the "troll" label is not supposed to be used to silence opinions you disagree with.
Liek I said before, there's a real debate here. Comparing someone to Pol Pot because they use the phrase "it's all comin' down, baby" is not participating in that debate. You did notice how the first paragraph intentionally mirrored the tone of the post being replied to, right? Are you sure the guy wasn't being satirical? Not even in part?
As for "troll", that is the word for exactly those people who launch into Pol Pot comparisons instead of actually debating against the opinion they disagree with. I didn't see any arguments by you for why the NYT isn't a "capitalist tool" just like this guy says. Considering that it is in fact supposed to make money (like all newspapers), the argument that it may alter its content to suit its sponsors isn't at all an inappropriate claim, and is one that's been made many times before in many, many situations. How many times have I heard complains about objectivity in reporting? Anyway, instead of discussing this, you decided that the guy was a Communist (in part by making assumptions about him, may I add) and attacked that, mainly through name-calling.
Then, when someone (me) points that out, you accuse them of "ignoring history" (as though you didn't present a one-sided version yourself) and of misusing the label "troll". I'm not a moderator, but your first reply did get one vote for "Troll" from someone who is, whereas the article you were replying to did not. Not only am I quite sure that I have correctly labelled your post a "troll", but I've even been backed up by a moderator. So much for that.
Perhaps your first reply should have sounded more like this second one (the one I'm replying to now). This second post states a point clearly and could lead to an interesting discussion. The first isn't even close. It got one vote for troll, and I continue to believe that it should be receive more. But your second post, or at least the first paragraph of your second post, is just fine.
How come this isn't maked down as a troll? I'm pretty sure that comparing someone (or their opinions) to Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge is up there with comparing them to Hitler and the Nazis, which I believe is the official definition of "troll" at this point:)
Uh oh. Does anyone know how to play online games like Unreal Tournament and Quake III without opening the appropriate UDP ports to incoming packets (from the game servers, of course)? Since UDP isn't stateful, I can't use connection tracking, can I?
I bet that if crackers do start scanning Linux boxes for this trojan, ports like 7777-7778 (UT) and 27015-27106 (QIII) will be primary targets.
I believe they already do something like this in San Francisco every year.
On April 1st, some San Franciscans participate in the "Leap of Faith". Much of San Francisco is built on landfill (filled in ocean - not actually a garbage dump, I think). Anyway, everybody lines up on the "land" side of the dividing line, and at the same time they all jump and land on the other side. If half of San Francisco goes down the tubes... Pat Buchanan will probably call it "The wrath of God".
Re:Very few mergers succeed. Combine two weaklings
on
HP Buys Compaq
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· Score: 1
Now Carly is going to take two companies, each weakened by current economic conditions, and combine them. Where exactly is the synergy? Two manufacturing organizations, neither the lowest cost nor highest quality in their market, and both in thrall to Intel? That's a good combination.
Well, both companies have been weakened by a decrease in PC sales, but they're both still profitable. I'm not convinced that they're weak companies. And cost-cutting through layoffs makes plenty of sense for companies which are merging exactly because of the overlap you mentioned. Whether or not a synergy will develop and the merger will work is hard to say, but this is not a case of two desparate companies trying to survive by merging. This is a case of two profitable companies trying to merge into a bigger player in their market.
And as a side note, no PC manufacturer is in thrall to Intel, and especially not these guys. AMD and VIA are too successful in the desktop market right now, and the company which owns both Alpha and PA-RISC doesn't need the Itanium. Besides Intel doesn't want to lose the second-biggest PC manufacturer's support either. Not that this new company would want to ditch Intel -- many people still buy Intel because it's the biggest brand name. I'm just saying that it's theoretically possible for "Hewlett Compaqard" to survive without Intel.
Yeah, you're right, Linux is very "tinkerish". I figure the point of most distros is to hide the tinkerishness with lots of GUIs and so on. It's a really interesting marketing question, though, whether a given distro has gone far enough for the "average user". If this thread tells us anything, it's that most of us are above-average users, and we really need some average and below-average users to get involved before we learn anything:)
I wonder if the major distros, even the distros which focus on "ease of use", do any testing on normal folks? I know that some of them let us download their betas, but then it ends up being only the very most experienced users who get to try them out. And anyway, that's mostly for bugfixing purposes. Who does the useability testing?
Man, don't be such a jerk. The guy has a very valid point. If you want some examples, let me give you some.
Yes, he does have a valid point, but he didn't back it up with any specific evidence. That's all I asked for. The reason being, of course, that many examples of things that are "too hard on Linux" are also too hard for the average user.
1. Recompiling the kernel to get a sound card or network card working that didn't come w/the distro.
2. Getting 3D-accell video working so you can play quake 3.
3. Setting up internet sharing on anything but Linux Mandrake.
Sure, I'll agree that those are all hard. Do you know what my Mom does when she wants to install a sound card or set up network sharing? Either a) she never, ever does; or b) she calls me. These are all perfect examples of things that the average user doesn't do. (I'm not convinced that 3d acceleration is so hard, but I've been using nVidia cards for a while now, and the instructions for those are pretty thorough, so perhaps I don't know about this one).
Now, if you want to say that Linux is too hard for moderately experienced users, then make that point. But I am sick of people saying that it's too hard to recompile the kernel when the average user can't even install that new sound card in the first place. You guys are talking about moderately experienced users, not the ladies I used to work with who thought that the mouse moving the cursor is cool, or my Mom who's never used a computer. You're talking about my brother, who plays some video games, has seen a computer opened up, and who might try installing new video card drivers to get a few more FPS. That or higher experience (he wouldn't even try IP Masquerading).
Of course, maybe you disagree with my assessment of the average user. But I really think the SlashDot crowd massively overestimates the demands that the average user makes on their computer, and doesn't realize that they do so:) That's why I asked for more details.
As a side note, both the ZDNet bit and the chess bit were jokes. Whay are you calling me a jerk when I'm not only poking fun at myself, but also replying to his article by making a point which is perfectly valid (even if certain people seem to disagree with it)? This is a discussion forum, and that was not a particularly harsh crack, nor an inappropriate comment.
I can't believe this wasn't in the manual. Did you buy a full version with a manual?
May I ask, what exactly are you doing that would require you to need this? You don't get to complain about needing to know until you tell us whay the average joe would need to know this! Why aren't you using the KDE or GNOME file managers, or any other file manager, to suit your needs?
Do you know how hard it is to explain to a new computer user why they have both a C: and D: drive? I've done it. Trust me, if you don't understand partitions, it's hard to learn. Do you know why most Windows machines have no B: drive? Did it ever matter? Did you ever try to explain it to someone?
Anyway, the solution:
/dev is just the "device" directory, where all your hard drives, floppy drives, etc are located. Better than putting them in C:\windows\desktop, right?
hd -- means a "standard" IDE hard drive
a -- the "first" one (master on first IDE cable)
1 -- partition number one
So no, it's not even the tiniest bit arbitrary. Your ide drives are "hd", scsi drives are "sd". They're given letters, like a, b, c, d, in order. Their partitions are numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, etc. Depending on where your drives are placed on the cables connecting them to your motherboard, and how your drives are partitioned, you may or may not have various of these. Also, something like "hda" refers to the whole drive, while "hda1" refers to partition 1. The partition name is optional.
The/dev filesystem no doubt contains tons of these for drives which don't exist (e.g./dev/hdf2). That's intentional, and perhaps somewhat annoying, and exactly like the B: drive situation in Windows. They're placeholders.
I'd recommend using something like diskdrake to take a look at your partitions so you'll understand them, but that's a Linux-Mandrake tool. I assume RedHat has something similar. Check the manual. You might try linking the primary partitions to more familiar names, like this. Go to the root directory, and as root...
At the prompt:
ln -s/dev/hda1 C
ln -s/dev/hda2 D
... and so on. Note that your OS may be installed on a partition other than the first.
Hmmm... perhaps the Linux distros should do this? You may have discovered a good idea after all, sir!
I'm not a completely naive Windows user... I mean, I read Slashdot, right? But when you have to spend 75% of your time reading websites and manuals and going back and forth to websites and trying to figure out the terminal.
Don't you just love those generic "It's too hard complaints"? Long on complains, low on details. This guy claims to know about Linux "because he reads SlashDot". Trust me, that's not enough. Do you have any idea how many people don't learn anything about Windows by reading ZDNet? Besides, I've read lots of books on playing chess, and I still suck, so trust me, reading isn't always enough.
Anyway, I always laugh a bit when a supposedly experienced computer user says "Most people can't use Linux because they can't do X and Y and Z..." then claims to be speaking for the average person. I laugh because I've seen lots of computer users who can't do anything other than point-and-click their way through the two or three applications they're familiar with. Sample complaint: "The average person can't secure their Linux box properly." Ha! Spoken as though the average person (or even the average tech at MicroSoft?!) can secure their Windows boxes properly! Trust me, some people can't even figure out hyperlinks ("Where did my homepage go which I pushed the button?).
Of course, this begs the question of how those people are going to install and start using Linux. But that's a marketing question. Some people might think that they're the same thing (you can't use Linux until you learn it from the get-go), but they're not. Getting the OS on people's computers is separate from how easy it is to use because most people use computers to such a limited degree, and Linux and Windows are so similar in so many ways (the WIMP interface, the programs available, etc) that transition between them for the average person would be relatively minor. Once the OS is installed, most people can do everything they're capable of with it. If the rest is hard to learn, so be it. How many average users can edit registry entries? Trust me, every OS has its obscure corners. They're obscure, i.e. most people need never look in them.
As a side note, there are lots of people who aren't as competent as they think they are who end up trying to do something unnecessary because they think they have to. I wouldn't assume that this person is one of them, since they were able to install an OS, but who knows, maybe RedHat's install program is just really good? So I have to ask, what were you trying to do exactly? What were you doing in the terminal which (supposedly) most people need to know how to do? We'll never know if what you're doing really was so hard and really does need improving unless you give us the details.
I find it curious that people complain that microsoft bundles products when most major linux distros do the same. I'm sure getting free office software or free network software makes people not want to buy the commercial alternatives. In this regard perhaps we should boycott all linux distros as they hurt commercial software makers (am I starting to sound like microsoft?):)
You seem to have forgotten what "monopoly" means. If every Linux distro had agreements to bundle a certain product (say, Apache) and leave out the competition (other web servers), and the former massively increased its market share because of it, that would still be legal. Since no Linux distro has a monopoly, they're not abusing their monopoly power to promote a particular piece of software.
MicroSoft has been found, in court, to have a monopoly. And guess what? They bundle lots of products with their OS. Server versions of their OS even come with the MS webserver (a personal version of BackOffice, if I recall), not to mention the MS web browser, the MS streaming media player, and so on. That is an abuse of monopoly power.
Of course, MS claims that web browsers, media viewers, and the like are "part of the OS". Linux users know better. "Linux" is the kernel and a few basic utilities. "Linux" is so little software that it can fit on a floppy. "Linux" along with a bunch of software is a "distribution", or "distro" for short. RedHat, Caldera, TurboLinux and others are selling "distros". Not that the additional software in a distro can hook deeply into the OS. Think about the "aurora" program for example - it changes the text-based boot process to a graphical one. You could even say that the set of kernel patches which are applied by various vendors are part of the "included software". Certainly they differ among Linux distros!
MS is also selling a distro. There's the Windows OS, and there are lots of bundled applications. The fact that there are "Home" and "Professional" versions of their OS proves that they're selling a distro. The fact that you can remove several things which they consider to be "part of the OS" (as shown in court!) also proves that they're selling a distro. They just don't realize it. Hell, I doubt they even know what a distro is! They just know their own project, if their sloppy attempts at FUD are any indication. This is why they think that just by bundling software, even software which affects the OS part in complex ways, they're just "extending the OS". Bull. They're creating a distro, and by bundling only their own software they are using their monopoly power to promote their own products (MSN, the BackOffice suite, their own proprietary file formats for all kinds of things).
This is a very partisan approach to the issue. Success for Linux in the market place is not tied to the financial success of it's most well-known distro. It may not even be linked to RedHat's success.
I also believe you have mis-understood the fundamental premise on which one company may choose to support another.
I don't think the original poster's argument had anything at all to do with RedHat. He mentioned RedHat and Mandrake as examples, but there's no argument at all for "One True Distro" in the original post. The original post also didn't say anything about why one company (IBM) would support another (SUSE).
The point of the original poster's argument is simply the old argument in favor of consolidation - fewer players means that each individual player will be more successful. Of SUSE's business is spread among the remaining Linux distros, then that's good for the remaining distros.
I think the counter-argument you're looking for should be an elaboration on this statement: "SUSE is stronger in particular (European) markets because it's well-suited to those markets and those markets may not want to switch to another Linux provider." If you're trying to argue that only SUSE, and not Mandrake, Caldera or any other distro can continue to penetrate European markets, then say that. It's a good argument. But you seem to have gone off track which this whole line of argument against a "One True Distro" style of thinking which simply wasn't present in the original post. And if you do make that argument, expect counter-arguments. I could see how Mandrake (a French distro) might want to see SUSE die so that it could expand its European presence, for example.
Slashdot Mirror
.us vs .them . What a typically American attitude ;)
Having multiple target platforms is a serious headache, and Linux just isn't a big enough market.
This is probably true, but it always makes me wonder why there are Mac ports of most games.
Having said that, if you're already planning to support two platforms, why not aim for multi-platform support from the beginning and include Linux?
Read the BBC's Q&A on the anthrax situation. Here's an intentionally leading and provocative quote:
What does this tell us about the source of the anthrax?
These findings suggest that US-based terrorists are behind the attacks, rather than extremists from abroad or a foreign government.
Which is why efforts at AI programming will continue to require human interaction for the foreseeable future.
No kidding. And in related news, educating humans will require human intervention in the forseeable future.
Obvious, eh? Almost as obvious as the idea that the random mutations used in genetic programming are about as efficient as real random mutations. They get the job done eventually, but require a lot of screw-ups to make one improvement.
I totally agree that 5GB is enough storage! At about 1MB/minute (an underestimate, I know), 5GB is, what, three days worth of music?
1MB/minute x 60 minutes/hour x 24 hours/day =
1440 MB/day.
~5000MB / 1440 MB/day = ~3.5 days worth of music.
Anyone want to explain how a person is going to need more than three days worth of music? Really, that's three days with no repeats
Even using DGA2 and all the other latest X speedups, the same program running on Linux is in my testing between 10 and 20 FPS slower than Windows *on the same hardware*.
10 to 20 FPS out of how many? Also, what hardware? Stats like this are pretty useless without more info. For example, I know very well that my Radeon will be slower in Linux that on Windows because the Linux drivers are presently rather poor (and the developers know it and are working on it). Unreal Tournament ran about twice as fast on my old Geforce DDR card.
Also, which program you're testing matters a lot. 10-20 frames in the "glxgears" program (for example) is nothing, at least on a fast CPU (I assume yours is faster than 400Mhz from what you said). I get 900+ FPS on a Duron 800, even with my "slow" Radeon card. Plus or minus 20 FPS wouldn't matter in the least.
Maybe the Green Party could start calling major polluters "Ecological Terrorists". Or the Libertarians could call the government "Legislative Terrorists". And how about banks which charge $1.50 for using their ATM and another $1.50 for the actual withdrawl? "Economic Terrorists" (or just "bloodsucking terrorists", expanding on the name we already gave them...).
Okay, fair enough. But still, that's what she's famous for, not for building the Pyramids or making peace with Israel.
A better question is, "Why Cleopatra?" How about a real ancient Egyptian ruler like Ramses or Nefertiti, or a modern one (Sadat?), not one who was most famous for handing the country over to the Romans?
(The answer: becuase they never made a movie about Nefertiti. Oh brother...)
In software terms, the same terms would be "fixed percent of sale price." The astute reader will observe that this allows continued distribution of free (gratis) software w/o royalty encumberance, even if it causes RMS to break out in a rash.
Is that a fixed percent of the price of the software product itself (i.e. The GIMP, which costs $0 to download) or of the price charged for distribution/resale (i.e. RedHat 7.1, which includes The GIMP, and costs $39.95)?
I would expect that if any benchmarks came out favoring Windows, and if they were reported here, they would be roundly and loudly shot down with 1) criticisms of the testing protocol, and/or 2) criticisms of the bias of the testing agency. Of course, the same criticisms are just as valid in this case, but of course they are here largely ignored (one poster so far excepted).
:) So don't let your horse get up too high, there. Stay in the mud with the rest of us.
Likewise, we would expect people to say that we're all Linux bigots on SlashDot, and for these comments to be marked up despite their claims that such criticisms get marked down or ignored.
In other words, it's the same old story... both chapters of it
But then again, it runs Linux, so it must be good, eh?
You might want to look at the other comments. I don't think anyone has called it "good". In fact, it looks like a piece of crap from what people have been saying about it.
A recent poll shows that 28 percent of Americans know what "crypto backdoors" are...
In short I find the open source community boring & backwards. Its contributions are very useful and I use them on a daily basis.
:)
:) We want tools to do whatever it is that we need to do. So while I understand why a software researcher would care about the originality of the ideas coming from the Open Source community, most of said community have totally different types of needs. At work, I want good stimulus-presentation software, or the tools to write it (for Psychology research). At home, I want the Radeon driver to improve. Either of these goals will be significantly held back by too much emphasis on theory.
Funny, I think you've got it backwards. You do realize that most of us aren't researchers (read: theorists) and mainly want useful software, rather than theoretically advanced software. I prefer performance to knowing that all the software I'm running is object oriented, and I prefer usefulness to originality, especially to that sort of excessive originality which leads to software which is useless
Besides, the Open Source community strongly supports open standards. There's often a conflict between coding new concepts and sticking to the standards. If you're writing software for people to actually use, then the latter will usually win, especially since greater simplicity (for the sake of those who might want to hack the code) is often found in the latter case. That's why the Open Source community won't recreate Java. Whatever they make won't be a standard. (Of course, there's a next generation C++ with an ungodly name being developed right now, and I expect that Open Sourcers are working on that...) Like you said "Don't waste your time figuring out how to reinvent the wheel, I already have half a dozen."
Of course, most of us want cars, not just a bunch of wheels
As a side note, I do work with some psychology researchers working in human interfaces and AI who are developing open source tools. Perhaps much of the theoretical development within the Open Source community is simply not as well publicized as the stuff IBM and Microsoft are working on? Theorietical research requires money, and two big sources of money are Corporations and Universities. Perhaps more Open Source research occurs at Universities, where the research is mainly publicized in academic journals?
My point was to bring up examples from history of the terrible consequences of ideologically driven revolutions conducted in the name of "the people," but based on a concept of justice decided on unilaterally by an enlightened few. Railing against The New York Times as a tool of the capitalists, and threatening that "it's all comin' down, baby" is a lot closer to the ideals of Maoist revolutions than to democratic ideals of freedom and participatory government.
I see your point, now that you're stating it clearly. I don't agree, though. Every revolution is an ideological one, and most large ones are "for the people". You don't think the American Revolution wasn't about political and economic ideals, and wasn't "for the people of the colonies"? (Whether or not that revolution actually was about the common folk is another issue)
And while I agree that arguing that the NYT is a tool of the capitalists sounds Maoist, I don't see how it's undemocratic. If we're all participants in government, shouldn't we have access to the least-adulterated information we can get? Is "the tyranny of The New York Times and their corporate fatcat sponsors" really freedom? Is it really sufficient for a participatory government? There's a real debate here.
If you want to ignore history, that's your prerogative, and you do so at your own peril, but the "troll" label is not supposed to be used to silence opinions you disagree with.
Liek I said before, there's a real debate here. Comparing someone to Pol Pot because they use the phrase "it's all comin' down, baby" is not participating in that debate. You did notice how the first paragraph intentionally mirrored the tone of the post being replied to, right? Are you sure the guy wasn't being satirical? Not even in part?
As for "troll", that is the word for exactly those people who launch into Pol Pot comparisons instead of actually debating against the opinion they disagree with. I didn't see any arguments by you for why the NYT isn't a "capitalist tool" just like this guy says. Considering that it is in fact supposed to make money (like all newspapers), the argument that it may alter its content to suit its sponsors isn't at all an inappropriate claim, and is one that's been made many times before in many, many situations. How many times have I heard complains about objectivity in reporting? Anyway, instead of discussing this, you decided that the guy was a Communist (in part by making assumptions about him, may I add) and attacked that, mainly through name-calling.
Then, when someone (me) points that out, you accuse them of "ignoring history" (as though you didn't present a one-sided version yourself) and of misusing the label "troll". I'm not a moderator, but your first reply did get one vote for "Troll" from someone who is, whereas the article you were replying to did not. Not only am I quite sure that I have correctly labelled your post a "troll", but I've even been backed up by a moderator. So much for that.
Perhaps your first reply should have sounded more like this second one (the one I'm replying to now). This second post states a point clearly and could lead to an interesting discussion. The first isn't even close. It got one vote for troll, and I continue to believe that it should be receive more. But your second post, or at least the first paragraph of your second post, is just fine.
How come this isn't maked down as a troll? I'm pretty sure that comparing someone (or their opinions) to Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge is up there with comparing them to Hitler and the Nazis, which I believe is the official definition of "troll" at this point :)
Uh oh. Does anyone know how to play online games like Unreal Tournament and Quake III without opening the appropriate UDP ports to incoming packets (from the game servers, of course)? Since UDP isn't stateful, I can't use connection tracking, can I?
I bet that if crackers do start scanning Linux boxes for this trojan, ports like 7777-7778 (UT) and 27015-27106 (QIII) will be primary targets.
I believe they already do something like this in San Francisco every year.
On April 1st, some San Franciscans participate in the "Leap of Faith". Much of San Francisco is built on landfill (filled in ocean - not actually a garbage dump, I think). Anyway, everybody lines up on the "land" side of the dividing line, and at the same time they all jump and land on the other side. If half of San Francisco goes down the tubes... Pat Buchanan will probably call it "The wrath of God".
Now Carly is going to take two companies, each weakened by current economic conditions, and combine them. Where exactly is the synergy? Two manufacturing organizations, neither the lowest cost nor highest quality in their market, and both in thrall to Intel? That's a good combination.
Well, both companies have been weakened by a decrease in PC sales, but they're both still profitable. I'm not convinced that they're weak companies. And cost-cutting through layoffs makes plenty of sense for companies which are merging exactly because of the overlap you mentioned. Whether or not a synergy will develop and the merger will work is hard to say, but this is not a case of two desparate companies trying to survive by merging. This is a case of two profitable companies trying to merge into a bigger player in their market.
And as a side note, no PC manufacturer is in thrall to Intel, and especially not these guys. AMD and VIA are too successful in the desktop market right now, and the company which owns both Alpha and PA-RISC doesn't need the Itanium. Besides Intel doesn't want to lose the second-biggest PC manufacturer's support either. Not that this new company would want to ditch Intel -- many people still buy Intel because it's the biggest brand name. I'm just saying that it's theoretically possible for "Hewlett Compaqard" to survive without Intel.
Yeah, you're right, Linux is very "tinkerish". I figure the point of most distros is to hide the tinkerishness with lots of GUIs and so on. It's a really interesting marketing question, though, whether a given distro has gone far enough for the "average user". If this thread tells us anything, it's that most of us are above-average users, and we really need some average and below-average users to get involved before we learn anything :)
I wonder if the major distros, even the distros which focus on "ease of use", do any testing on normal folks? I know that some of them let us download their betas, but then it ends up being only the very most experienced users who get to try them out. And anyway, that's mostly for bugfixing purposes. Who does the useability testing?
Man, don't be such a jerk. The guy has a very valid point. If you want some examples, let me give you some.
:) That's why I asked for more details.
Yes, he does have a valid point, but he didn't back it up with any specific evidence. That's all I asked for. The reason being, of course, that many examples of things that are "too hard on Linux" are also too hard for the average user.
1. Recompiling the kernel to get a sound card or network card working that didn't come w/the distro.
2. Getting 3D-accell video working so you can play quake 3.
3. Setting up internet sharing on anything but Linux Mandrake.
Sure, I'll agree that those are all hard. Do you know what my Mom does when she wants to install a sound card or set up network sharing? Either a) she never, ever does; or b) she calls me. These are all perfect examples of things that the average user doesn't do. (I'm not convinced that 3d acceleration is so hard, but I've been using nVidia cards for a while now, and the instructions for those are pretty thorough, so perhaps I don't know about this one).
Now, if you want to say that Linux is too hard for moderately experienced users, then make that point. But I am sick of people saying that it's too hard to recompile the kernel when the average user can't even install that new sound card in the first place. You guys are talking about moderately experienced users, not the ladies I used to work with who thought that the mouse moving the cursor is cool, or my Mom who's never used a computer. You're talking about my brother, who plays some video games, has seen a computer opened up, and who might try installing new video card drivers to get a few more FPS. That or higher experience (he wouldn't even try IP Masquerading).
Of course, maybe you disagree with my assessment of the average user. But I really think the SlashDot crowd massively overestimates the demands that the average user makes on their computer, and doesn't realize that they do so
As a side note, both the ZDNet bit and the chess bit were jokes. Whay are you calling me a jerk when I'm not only poking fun at myself, but also replying to his article by making a point which is perfectly valid (even if certain people seem to disagree with it)? This is a discussion forum, and that was not a particularly harsh crack, nor an inappropriate comment.
I can't believe this wasn't in the manual. Did you buy a full version with a manual?
/dev filesystem no doubt contains tons of these for drives which don't exist (e.g. /dev/hdf2). That's intentional, and perhaps somewhat annoying, and exactly like the B: drive situation in Windows. They're placeholders.
/dev/hda1 C
/dev/hda2 D
May I ask, what exactly are you doing that would require you to need this? You don't get to complain about needing to know until you tell us whay the average joe would need to know this! Why aren't you using the KDE or GNOME file managers, or any other file manager, to suit your needs?
Do you know how hard it is to explain to a new computer user why they have both a C: and D: drive? I've done it. Trust me, if you don't understand partitions, it's hard to learn. Do you know why most Windows machines have no B: drive? Did it ever matter? Did you ever try to explain it to someone?
Anyway, the solution:
/dev is just the "device" directory, where all your hard drives, floppy drives, etc are located. Better than putting them in C:\windows\desktop, right?
hd -- means a "standard" IDE hard drive
a -- the "first" one (master on first IDE cable)
1 -- partition number one
So no, it's not even the tiniest bit arbitrary. Your ide drives are "hd", scsi drives are "sd". They're given letters, like a, b, c, d, in order. Their partitions are numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, etc. Depending on where your drives are placed on the cables connecting them to your motherboard, and how your drives are partitioned, you may or may not have various of these. Also, something like "hda" refers to the whole drive, while "hda1" refers to partition 1. The partition name is optional.
The
I'd recommend using something like diskdrake to take a look at your partitions so you'll understand them, but that's a Linux-Mandrake tool. I assume RedHat has something similar. Check the manual. You might try linking the primary partitions to more familiar names, like this. Go to the root directory, and as root...
At the prompt:
ln -s
ln -s
... and so on. Note that your OS may be installed on a partition other than the first.
Hmmm... perhaps the Linux distros should do this? You may have discovered a good idea after all, sir!
I'm not a completely naive Windows user... I mean, I read Slashdot, right? But when you have to spend 75% of your time reading websites and manuals and going back and forth to websites and trying to figure out the terminal.
Don't you just love those generic "It's too hard complaints"? Long on complains, low on details. This guy claims to know about Linux "because he reads SlashDot". Trust me, that's not enough. Do you have any idea how many people don't learn anything about Windows by reading ZDNet? Besides, I've read lots of books on playing chess, and I still suck, so trust me, reading isn't always enough.
Anyway, I always laugh a bit when a supposedly experienced computer user says "Most people can't use Linux because they can't do X and Y and Z..." then claims to be speaking for the average person. I laugh because I've seen lots of computer users who can't do anything other than point-and-click their way through the two or three applications they're familiar with. Sample complaint: "The average person can't secure their Linux box properly." Ha! Spoken as though the average person (or even the average tech at MicroSoft?!) can secure their Windows boxes properly! Trust me, some people can't even figure out hyperlinks ("Where did my homepage go which I pushed the button?).
Of course, this begs the question of how those people are going to install and start using Linux. But that's a marketing question. Some people might think that they're the same thing (you can't use Linux until you learn it from the get-go), but they're not. Getting the OS on people's computers is separate from how easy it is to use because most people use computers to such a limited degree, and Linux and Windows are so similar in so many ways (the WIMP interface, the programs available, etc) that transition between them for the average person would be relatively minor. Once the OS is installed, most people can do everything they're capable of with it. If the rest is hard to learn, so be it. How many average users can edit registry entries? Trust me, every OS has its obscure corners. They're obscure, i.e. most people need never look in them.
As a side note, there are lots of people who aren't as competent as they think they are who end up trying to do something unnecessary because they think they have to. I wouldn't assume that this person is one of them, since they were able to install an OS, but who knows, maybe RedHat's install program is just really good? So I have to ask, what were you trying to do exactly? What were you doing in the terminal which (supposedly) most people need to know how to do? We'll never know if what you're doing really was so hard and really does need improving unless you give us the details.
I find it curious that people complain that microsoft bundles products when most major linux distros do the same. I'm sure getting free office software or free network software makes people not want to buy the commercial alternatives. In this regard perhaps we should boycott all linux distros as they hurt commercial software makers (am I starting to sound like microsoft?) :)
You seem to have forgotten what "monopoly" means. If every Linux distro had agreements to bundle a certain product (say, Apache) and leave out the competition (other web servers), and the former massively increased its market share because of it, that would still be legal. Since no Linux distro has a monopoly, they're not abusing their monopoly power to promote a particular piece of software.
MicroSoft has been found, in court, to have a monopoly. And guess what? They bundle lots of products with their OS. Server versions of their OS even come with the MS webserver (a personal version of BackOffice, if I recall), not to mention the MS web browser, the MS streaming media player, and so on. That is an abuse of monopoly power.
Of course, MS claims that web browsers, media viewers, and the like are "part of the OS". Linux users know better. "Linux" is the kernel and a few basic utilities. "Linux" is so little software that it can fit on a floppy. "Linux" along with a bunch of software is a "distribution", or "distro" for short. RedHat, Caldera, TurboLinux and others are selling "distros". Not that the additional software in a distro can hook deeply into the OS. Think about the "aurora" program for example - it changes the text-based boot process to a graphical one. You could even say that the set of kernel patches which are applied by various vendors are part of the "included software". Certainly they differ among Linux distros!
MS is also selling a distro. There's the Windows OS, and there are lots of bundled applications. The fact that there are "Home" and "Professional" versions of their OS proves that they're selling a distro. The fact that you can remove several things which they consider to be "part of the OS" (as shown in court!) also proves that they're selling a distro. They just don't realize it. Hell, I doubt they even know what a distro is! They just know their own project, if their sloppy attempts at FUD are any indication. This is why they think that just by bundling software, even software which affects the OS part in complex ways, they're just "extending the OS". Bull. They're creating a distro, and by bundling only their own software they are using their monopoly power to promote their own products (MSN, the BackOffice suite, their own proprietary file formats for all kinds of things).
This is a very partisan approach to the issue. Success for Linux in the market place is not tied to the financial success of it's most well-known distro. It may not even be linked to RedHat's success.
I also believe you have mis-understood the fundamental premise on which one company may choose to support another.
I don't think the original poster's argument had anything at all to do with RedHat. He mentioned RedHat and Mandrake as examples, but there's no argument at all for "One True Distro" in the original post. The original post also didn't say anything about why one company (IBM) would support another (SUSE).
The point of the original poster's argument is simply the old argument in favor of consolidation - fewer players means that each individual player will be more successful. Of SUSE's business is spread among the remaining Linux distros, then that's good for the remaining distros.
I think the counter-argument you're looking for should be an elaboration on this statement: "SUSE is stronger in particular (European) markets because it's well-suited to those markets and those markets may not want to switch to another Linux provider." If you're trying to argue that only SUSE, and not Mandrake, Caldera or any other distro can continue to penetrate European markets, then say that. It's a good argument. But you seem to have gone off track which this whole line of argument against a "One True Distro" style of thinking which simply wasn't present in the original post. And if you do make that argument, expect counter-arguments. I could see how Mandrake (a French distro) might want to see SUSE die so that it could expand its European presence, for example.