'Discrimination' is another one of those words, like 'prejudice' which has gotten a bad rap. In Radio technology, an FM receiver has a 'discriminator' circuit. It's function is to separate the signal from the carrier wave. In gourmet cooking, having 'discriminating taste' means someone has the ability to tell good food from mediocre food. If my doctor can't discriminate between ordinary benign moles and possibly malignant 'melanoma' moles I'll switch to a new doctory, thank-you-very-much.
In the social realm, I discriminate any time I see a dubious looking creep walking down the sidewalk in my direction and I make sure my wallet is secure.
So yes, there's such a thing as discrimination, and by god there always will be.
As to your little anecdote about 'digging yourself out of a hole,' it just sounds plain insincere the way you put it, like you're a college-educated liberal who doesn't have a clue what poverty is about. Why do you imply only poor people have to work right out of high school? Does everybody else just sail into prosperity?
Anyhow, this is drifting far off topic. But don't just regurgitate liberal bullshit your social studies teacher taught you.
Oh, and economies are NOT all human inventions. Sure, plenty of theoreticians like Karl Marx have invent economic theories (many divorced entirely from reality), but nobody ever said 'hey, let's be Capitalists' and then proceeded to print leaflets. If you don't understand this it's a waste of time arguing with you. By the way, have YOU ever read any Political Economy? Most Americans have never heard of such a thing.
In case you hadn't noticed, poor people are poor because they're stupid, in large part. Minorities are minorities because there aren't very many of them.
And, of course, Politicians are rich and corrupt because they're good at segmenting people up into groups they can manipulate.
That won't ever change. Some would even say that it's to the degree that Hyphenated-Americans throw off the notion that they should have a separate identity that they become successful. There are plenty of successful 'minority' people in our society. Unfortunately, there's also a natural filtering process that leaves the dregs living in poverty.
Of course, there are also group of 'community organizers' making sure they have groups of sheeple/protesters they can steer around.
I don't know that I would call secured hardware that any Tom, Dick, & Harry can't kludge together a driver for should be called 'crippled.'
Yeah, I know. You threw together a CPU using a bunch of old TTL, and if you can't use the latest USB Speakers to play music on it, NOBODY should be allowed to.
In case you hadn't noticed, Dr. Hawking is an example to reinforce the other side's arguement. Vast numbers of people listen to his ideas and views, and this is specifically facilitated by the technology he uses.
It's just a tad luddite to run scampering from technology because certain people don't have access to it (which is itself a laughable concept. What have we been spending all the money wiring public libraries for? A geeks job program?) An inkpen is a piece of technology. There are a bunch of illiterate people in the ghetto don't know how to read and write. Does this mean than the fact that a signature is required at the polling place gives rise to a 'tyranny of the writing instrument' that shuts people out?
Ummm, RMS started GCC (lots of undergrads write C compilers as an excercise in programming), RMS started Emacs. I suspect one could dig in to count the lines of code and find that he's written a minority of the current codebase in either. Also, since he 'started' those programs, and nobody ever cites anything newer than those programs when hyping him as a uber-hacker, it's likely those are the last programs he's really contributed much to.
What he really has been good at is hyping the minimal code he's written and getting others to contribute to it's growth. Kind of what Linus also does well (but Linus stays actively involved in kernel development).
Hmmm, most people would also find it a little difficult to just plug in an IDE drive onto a system composed entirely of an 18 pin embedded controller. I don't think it's one of those 'voila!' things...
I suppose some sort of kludge could be devised using a whole lot of extra logic, but it sure wouldn't be 'tiny' any longer.
You've never written code for a tiny embedded controller, have you?
Except for the fact that you're really probably just planting flamebait with your comment:
Embedded controllers have a huge install base, and are used all over the place. This kind of project may be the wave of the future.
Plus, I don't get it with your attitude that Open Source is a big work camp and that hackers should just line up to do the 'good work' as designated by Open Source luminaries.
That's a fairly narrow and inaccurate description of how Linux started.
Linus Torvalds wanted to produce something big.
Andrew Tannenbaum had a pedagogical Operating System (sort of an ensigns training ship at the naval academy sort of thing) called Minix.
Linux didn't start because of this difference in objectives. The Linux/Minix 'struggle' was peripheral to the reasons Linus got started on his interesting experiment. Sure, if Minix had evolved into what Linus wanted he wouldn't have gotten started (he'd be 'just another Minix hacker' now,) but it's a mistake to claim that the conflict was in any way pivotal.
Some would even go so far as to say that the success of Linux was circumstantial. It started right at the point where the bandwidth explosion on the 'net got started. It was also the point in time where Microsoft's OS initiatives started orphaning perfectly good 386 boxes, which then became available 'for free' for hackers to tinker with.
No history can ever be distilled down to a single conflict. 'Great simplifiers' are usually demagogues.
Are you implying that the kind of hacker who converts his system over to an entire new filesystem is just going to plug in the latest RedHat CD and blissfully click on the 'Update' button?
Maybe someone else can come up with the particulars to back this up, but I thought the whole "Cathederal and Bazzaar" paper was originally conceived to take on the 'team-based' method of developement used for GNU Emacs (or GCC??). So, even Emacs isn't a 'Bazzaar' project.
Would you drive across a bridge that the workers made up as they went along?
Wouldn't you end up looking a few hundred yards down the river, notice the wreckage of previous builds hanging there and back off, looking for the ferry instead?
Yes, I know, I know. The 'reference design' is every other Unix that came before, and every OS textbook (though nobody will admit to owning a copy of Tannenbaum any longer) thats ever been published.
Unfortunately that amounts to 'looking backward' quite a bit more than a progressive software project should have to. We see in the issues that this discussion attempts to examine what happens when truly innovative people try to have their say in a project steeped in legacy.
The Linux kernel method could be the new great development model, if ESR's vision is accurate. Or it could be one of the last great skunkworks, a disaster nobody will ever want to repeat. Only time will tell.
I don't know anything at all about the latest Version 9 MacOS.
Very few of us do, if you look at marketing demographics. Even a lot (the majority?) of former MacOS users who have moved on.
It is notable that it took so long for them to add something as basic as the rudimetary Multiuser features that I hear cited.
It's interesting to note that there is still a Macintosh jihad. There doubtless always will be. Hell, there's still an Amiga jihad. I suppose the fact that I own a TRS-80 Model 100 and consider it one of the finest portable machines ever marketed means I should be out ranting anytime anybody says anything bad about it. (*sulk* how come nobody ever picks on it so I can get my dander up?)
My real power over my government is effectively nil without the resources to push ad campaigns.
Do you have a file of the letters to and from your governmental representatives advocating your concerns (without needing an advertising budget) to show us you have the right to make this claim? Or are you just blowing hot air, like those who you criticize?
I resent your insinuation that 'if I used Linux...' I've used Linux since 1993. I don't use it for everything (tried that for about a year, realized I was being an idiot and diversified). Heck, I even use the Mac these days. Of course, the only reason I boot up MacOS (and do so quite seldom) is to bootstrap NetBSD on that hardware.
Regarding your comment about lies fooling people: doesn't Apple hold the copyright on that slogan? Seems like it would be in their internal training material for Marketing. Yes, I've read my Guy Kawasaki, I've read "Infinite Loop." For some reason I was lucky, and spit out the Kool-Aide; it tasted funny.
The POSIX system on NT is weak, though. But you can get Interix as an upgrade/replacement.
It will be interesting to see if the "Microsoft Breakup" results in more diverse subsystems that run on the NT kernel. It wouldn't be out of the question for the POSIX subsystem to really take off, and others could be developes as well. (Interix was developed under NDA by people with access to the NT Kernel internals.)
Would it be hard to implement something like that? Seems to me that giving registered users the ability to blackhole some of these putzes would enhance the quality of your site.
On a unix system, do rm -rf/etc, on windows delete the registry, and on MacOS, trash the preferences folder.
Oh, puh-leese! First off, don't log on as Root. Go ahead and try to delete/etc. On NT, configure it so you don't run all the time with Administrator level priveledges. Try to delete the Registry.
Yikes? There's no protection whatsoever like that on the Mac? You mean your 7 year old daughter can just go in there and waste the whole system without knowing it???
I think the only sensible route for a small third-party developer is to develop for an operating system which is GPL'ed.
Maybe that's a realistic strategy for someone who wants to sell technical support (a la Red Hat.) I don't see how you'll sell more than one copy of anything to anybody, though, and a small shop will just perish.
I have a snappy NetBSD machine down in the lab here, a Slackware box beside it. I'm using my Window Manager of choice, Hummingbird Exceed, to deliver really great X Window System performance to my Windows 2000 machine. My Windows/X integration couldn't be finer. I can go down to the start menu and pop up a session to run LyX any time I like. Heck, since I've got Interix installed on this W2K box, I could go down to the lab and open up an Xterm to this machine too. All the basic X tools are installed on W2K/Interix, and I can build about anything else that I'd like. (but of course Interix could never rival the Packages system that NetBSD provides.) I haven't ported much software over to W2K using Interix, but most of what I have tried, has worked great.
What's the problem getting Windows/Unix integration? I wouldn't be without either platform.
Slashdot Mirror
We can wait 20, 50, 100 years. There's no rush, outer space isn't going away.
There are, of course some people who say 'trash the earth NOW, and let's get GOING' but really there's no rush.
I'm sorry, but people who want to rush into space generally really just want their tenure and their projects funded.
Or they're bored with Star Trek/Wars/whatever.
'Discrimination' is another one of those words, like 'prejudice' which has gotten a bad rap. In Radio technology, an FM receiver has a 'discriminator' circuit. It's function is to separate the signal from the carrier wave. In gourmet cooking, having 'discriminating taste' means someone has the ability to tell good food from mediocre food. If my doctor can't discriminate between ordinary benign moles and possibly malignant 'melanoma' moles I'll switch to a new doctory, thank-you-very-much.
In the social realm, I discriminate any time I see a dubious looking creep walking down the sidewalk in my direction and I make sure my wallet is secure.
So yes, there's such a thing as discrimination, and by god there always will be.
As to your little anecdote about 'digging yourself out of a hole,' it just sounds plain insincere the way you put it, like you're a college-educated liberal who doesn't have a clue what poverty is about. Why do you imply only poor people have to work right out of high school? Does everybody else just sail into prosperity?
Anyhow, this is drifting far off topic. But don't just regurgitate liberal bullshit your social studies teacher taught you.
Oh, and economies are NOT all human inventions. Sure, plenty of theoreticians like Karl Marx have invent economic theories (many divorced entirely from reality), but nobody ever said 'hey, let's be Capitalists' and then proceeded to print leaflets. If you don't understand this it's a waste of time arguing with you. By the way, have YOU ever read any Political Economy? Most Americans have never heard of such a thing.
There will always be a 'digital' divide.
In case you hadn't noticed, poor people are poor because they're stupid, in large part. Minorities are minorities because there aren't very many of them.
And, of course, Politicians are rich and corrupt because they're good at segmenting people up into groups they can manipulate.
That won't ever change. Some would even say that it's to the degree that Hyphenated-Americans throw off the notion that they should have a separate identity that they become successful. There are plenty of successful 'minority' people in our society. Unfortunately, there's also a natural filtering process that leaves the dregs living in poverty.
Of course, there are also group of 'community organizers' making sure they have groups of sheeple/protesters they can steer around.
I don't know that I would call secured hardware that any Tom, Dick, & Harry can't kludge together a driver for should be called 'crippled.'
Yeah, I know. You threw together a CPU using a bunch of old TTL, and if you can't use the latest USB Speakers to play music on it, NOBODY should be allowed to.
That's a great idea!
Let's expand it, though, and just abolish the Income Tax.
In case you hadn't noticed, Dr. Hawking is an example to reinforce the other side's arguement. Vast numbers of people listen to his ideas and views, and this is specifically facilitated by the technology he uses.
It's just a tad luddite to run scampering from technology because certain people don't have access to it (which is itself a laughable concept. What have we been spending all the money wiring public libraries for? A geeks job program?) An inkpen is a piece of technology. There are a bunch of illiterate people in the ghetto don't know how to read and write. Does this mean than the fact that a signature is required at the polling place gives rise to a 'tyranny of the writing instrument' that shuts people out?
And I haven't heard an outporing of support for changing the Linux configuration system to Python (though I love Python).
Depends on what you mean by 'linux configuration system.'
RedHat's config tools are wrapped up in thick syrupy layers of Python.
Ummm, RMS started GCC (lots of undergrads write C compilers as an excercise in programming), RMS started Emacs. I suspect one could dig in to count the lines of code and find that he's written a minority of the current codebase in either. Also, since he 'started' those programs, and nobody ever cites anything newer than those programs when hyping him as a uber-hacker, it's likely those are the last programs he's really contributed much to.
What he really has been good at is hyping the minimal code he's written and getting others to contribute to it's growth. Kind of what Linus also does well (but Linus stays actively involved in kernel development).
Hmmm, most people would also find it a little difficult to just plug in an IDE drive onto a system composed entirely of an 18 pin embedded controller. I don't think it's one of those 'voila!' things...
I suppose some sort of kludge could be devised using a whole lot of extra logic, but it sure wouldn't be 'tiny' any longer.
You've never written code for a tiny embedded controller, have you?
You're really pushing it, dude.
Face it: there are computers and embedded controllers all over the world that aren't in place solely so you can engage in IRC sessions.
But really, your subject heading is appropriate, as this whole thread is a waste of time.
Except for the fact that you're really probably just planting flamebait with your comment:
Embedded controllers have a huge install base, and are used all over the place. This kind of project may be the wave of the future.
Plus, I don't get it with your attitude that Open Source is a big work camp and that hackers should just line up to do the 'good work' as designated by Open Source luminaries.
That's a fairly narrow and inaccurate description of how Linux started.
Linus Torvalds wanted to produce something big.
Andrew Tannenbaum had a pedagogical Operating System (sort of an ensigns training ship at the naval academy sort of thing) called Minix.
Linux didn't start because of this difference in objectives. The Linux/Minix 'struggle' was peripheral to the reasons Linus got started on his interesting experiment. Sure, if Minix had evolved into what Linus wanted he wouldn't have gotten started (he'd be 'just another Minix hacker' now,) but it's a mistake to claim that the conflict was in any way pivotal.
Some would even go so far as to say that the success of Linux was circumstantial. It started right at the point where the bandwidth explosion on the 'net got started. It was also the point in time where Microsoft's OS initiatives started orphaning perfectly good 386 boxes, which then became available 'for free' for hackers to tinker with.
No history can ever be distilled down to a single conflict. 'Great simplifiers' are usually demagogues.
Are you implying that the kind of hacker who converts his system over to an entire new filesystem is just going to plug in the latest RedHat CD and blissfully click on the 'Update' button?
That's really, really funny to think about.
Maybe someone else can come up with the particulars to back this up, but I thought the whole "Cathederal and Bazzaar" paper was originally conceived to take on the 'team-based' method of developement used for GNU Emacs (or GCC??). So, even Emacs isn't a 'Bazzaar' project.
That's scary you know.
Would you drive across a bridge that the workers made up as they went along?
Wouldn't you end up looking a few hundred yards down the river, notice the wreckage of previous builds hanging there and back off, looking for the ferry instead?
Yes, I know, I know. The 'reference design' is every other Unix that came before, and every OS textbook (though nobody will admit to owning a copy of Tannenbaum any longer) thats ever been published.
Unfortunately that amounts to 'looking backward' quite a bit more than a progressive software project should have to. We see in the issues that this discussion attempts to examine what happens when truly innovative people try to have their say in a project steeped in legacy.
The Linux kernel method could be the new great development model, if ESR's vision is accurate. Or it could be one of the last great skunkworks, a disaster nobody will ever want to repeat. Only time will tell.
I don't know anything at all about the latest Version 9 MacOS.
Very few of us do, if you look at marketing demographics. Even a lot (the majority?) of former MacOS users who have moved on.
It is notable that it took so long for them to add something as basic as the rudimetary Multiuser features that I hear cited.
It's interesting to note that there is still a Macintosh jihad. There doubtless always will be. Hell, there's still an Amiga jihad. I suppose the fact that I own a TRS-80 Model 100 and consider it one of the finest portable machines ever marketed means I should be out ranting anytime anybody says anything bad about it. (*sulk* how come nobody ever picks on it so I can get my dander up?)
My real power over my government is effectively nil without the resources to push ad campaigns.
Do you have a file of the letters to and from your governmental representatives advocating your concerns (without needing an advertising budget) to show us you have the right to make this claim? Or are you just blowing hot air, like those who you criticize?
I resent your insinuation that 'if I used Linux...' I've used Linux since 1993. I don't use it for everything (tried that for about a year, realized I was being an idiot and diversified). Heck, I even use the Mac these days. Of course, the only reason I boot up MacOS (and do so quite seldom) is to bootstrap NetBSD on that hardware.
Regarding your comment about lies fooling people: doesn't Apple hold the copyright on that slogan? Seems like it would be in their internal training material for Marketing. Yes, I've read my Guy Kawasaki, I've read "Infinite Loop." For some reason I was lucky, and spit out the Kool-Aide; it tasted funny.
We could always both be wrong.
But no, reality isn't particularly 'diverse' much as some people would wish it so.
The POSIX system on NT is weak, though. But you can get Interix as an upgrade/replacement.
It will be interesting to see if the "Microsoft Breakup" results in more diverse subsystems that run on the NT kernel. It wouldn't be out of the question for the POSIX subsystem to really take off, and others could be developes as well. (Interix was developed under NDA by people with access to the NT Kernel internals.)
Rob, we need a killfile of some sort here.
Would it be hard to implement something like that? Seems to me that giving registered users the ability to blackhole some of these putzes would enhance the quality of your site.
(yes, I know, Off-topic)
On a unix system, do rm -rf /etc, on windows delete the registry, and on MacOS, trash the preferences folder.
/etc. On NT, configure it so you don't run all the time with Administrator level priveledges. Try to delete the Registry.
Oh, puh-leese! First off, don't log on as Root. Go ahead and try to delete
Yikes? There's no protection whatsoever like that on the Mac? You mean your 7 year old daughter can just go in there and waste the whole system without knowing it???
It's probably the most stable Mac OS version out there, greatly exceeding Windows, despite Windows' "protected memory," (or lack thereof.)
You're talking about Windows 9x, aren't you?
Windows 2000 is rock steady, NT 4.0 considerably less so, but definitely better MacOS. And what the hell? Still cooperative-multitasking??
(yes, we know MacOS 10 will be pre-emptive. Watch for the Apple marketing to finally admit it's a good thing after release...)
I think the only sensible route for a small third-party developer is to develop for an operating system which is GPL'ed.
Maybe that's a realistic strategy for someone who wants to sell technical support (a la Red Hat.) I don't see how you'll sell more than one copy of anything to anybody, though, and a small shop will just perish.
What do you mean?
I have a snappy NetBSD machine down in the lab here, a Slackware box beside it. I'm using my Window Manager of choice, Hummingbird Exceed, to deliver really great X Window System performance to my Windows 2000 machine. My Windows/X integration couldn't be finer. I can go down to the start menu and pop up a session to run LyX any time I like. Heck, since I've got Interix installed on this W2K box, I could go down to the lab and open up an Xterm to this machine too. All the basic X tools are installed on W2K/Interix, and I can build about anything else that I'd like. (but of course Interix could never rival the Packages system that NetBSD provides.) I haven't ported much software over to W2K using Interix, but most of what I have tried, has worked great.
What's the problem getting Windows/Unix integration? I wouldn't be without either platform.