I'm a HUGE opponent of censorship, but why does kernel source code need to swear, anyway? Every reference to "fuck" listed by Salon could be just as easily replaced by "screwed" or "screwed up" (for example, "This code screwed up by Torvalds" instead of "fucked by Torvalds", in one of their examples). Maybe we don't NEED to remove it, but I think it might enhance Linux's credibility a little, as well as removing any chance of source code being automatically censored by filters.
Overall, the Salon article was very good and very funny. Just wait until the censorware starts blocking anything matching "f?ck"... and we're not allowed to fsck our hard drives...:)
The developers of PHP3 say it's better than CGI scripts (under Apache and with mod_php3), because the mod_php3 module is loaded into memory only once. When you call a PHP3 page, on a server running mod_php3, it doesn't have to spend the time loading the interpreter, nor does it have to waste the memory loading multiple copies of the interpreter.
I'm not trying to say PHP3 is better; on the contrary, Zope's features look VERY cool. But how does it get around this "problem"?
Forgive me for being young, but what exactly *is* an "object database"? How does it differ from a traditional relational database? How does it differ from fields dimensioned as an "object" data type using programs like MS Access (and certainly other databases as well)?
I don't know if anyone's still reading this. If you are, I put a full summary of my notes from the "Which Rememdies? Appraising Microsoft II" conference online. They can be found at http://www.space-dye.com/remedies/. Hope this helps.
I was at the "Which Remedies? Appraising Microsoft II" conference yesterday, at which Liebowitz first introduced the results of his paper.
Liebowitz made the assumption that Microsoft would be split into three entities, each of which developing their own competing version of Windows, without any interoperability standards or agreements. Therefore, when companies introduce new applications, they'd have to port it to three different operating systems. Liebowitz (and, presumably, research assistants) directly contacted executives at a number of large software firms (he didn't say how many firms). He specifically refused to talk to assistants, but rather only to executives. He asked them how much they expected their R&D, tech support, and sales budgets to increase, if they had to support three OSs rather than one.
Liebowitz then multiplied these numbers by overall industry revenue figures. He determined that R&D costs would increase by 78%, technical support costs would rise 46%, and sales and marketing costs would rise by 5-10%. He then decided that his overall projections were too high, so he divided the end result by three. (I'm not making this up!). He finally came to the conclusion that software costs would rise about 6-and-a-half percent, or $30 billion.
He also said that Microsoft was a "temporary natural monopoly," which got a small hoot from the economists in the crowd. He said that in the computer industry, there is "sequential replacement of a dominant firm." First VisiCalc, then Lotus 1-2-3, then Excel. First CP/M, then MS-DOS, then Windows, then 32-bit Windows. However, Mark Cooper (Research Director, Consumer Federation of America) rebutted this. Cooper said that there may be sequential replacement of dominant products, but that Microsoft has ended up producing the dominant product in every industry. (i.e. going from MS-DOS to Windows to Windows 95 may reduce the MS-DOS monopoly, but not the Microsoft monopoly as a whole.)
That's pretty much what's interesting about Liebowitz's speech. If anyone wants me to put up the rest of my notes from the conference, let me know.
Personally, I don't like the angle of the ZDnet article. They interviewed two of the three pro-Microsoft panelists at the conference, yet left out any commentary from the other twelve panelists!
I have unfortunately met very few school administrators that actually care about the concerns of students. Of the many times my parents and I dealt with the school district administration (I'm now 19), I can say that there was only one administrator that really cared about the students. Many times we went to the administration with issues about teachers (including one who intentionally abandoned my best friend an hour away from home). We were always treated with hostility, as if we were "making a scene." We never had enough time to get our concerns addressed; instead, we ended up defending ourselves from personal attacks by the administration!
I don't think this was limited to my school district, either. A friend of our family is a teacher in another district, and she describes similar occurrences with her principal all the time. Fortunately, there are a lot of teachers who care about the students, but it's nearly impossible to get the administration to work in the student's best interest.
When I was entering high school, my parents and I were looking at my attending the Illinois Math and Science Academy. A public magnet school for gifted students across the state, IMSA placed a huge focus on (you guessed it) math and science, and I'm sure the campus was full of geeks, just like Slashdot:) It was a nine-month boarding school, with classes basically four days a week and an internship on the fifth.
A few weeks before I was planning on applying, a friend of the family was suspended from school. He came home and explained what had happened. According to him, there was an EXTREME amount of physical hazing at IMSA. He told horrific stories of things he had seen, things done to him, and things he (unfortunately) did to others. The administration consistently looked the other way, until this incident (I don't remember the specifics, but it was an extremely bad incident).
Since then, I've met others who loved the school, but his story convinced me not to apply. In retrospect, I'm glad I didn't (I found my niche on the debate team and never looked back). This just serves as a reminder that even within the "geek" class, the same problems are bound to come up as we're blaming on the "jocks" or "preps" or whomever.
Just wanted to comment about fraternities and sororities. I'm a brother of the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity at The George Washington University. In my experience, a few fraternities on this campus are the conformist cliques you described. But, in this respect, the non-Greek students are worse than the Greeks are!
I'm about as individual as it gets -- I'm a typical MIS geek. Our chapter prides itself on having a diverse group of individuals. I've gained far more out of the fraternity than I ever expected: leadership opportunities, a social outlet (as a typical MIS geek, social settings never used to be my strong suit), and most importantly, long-lasting friendships. The freshmen at this school are far more judgmental than anyone in my fraternity. I quickly realized that I had little in common with them, and luckily found the friendships in my fraternity just at the right time. Also, our chapter truly has no hazing, forced drinking (I still don't drink at all), or any of your other stereotypical frat images.
We shouldn't stereotype ANY groups as being "cliqueish," because it's the same thing as stereotyping juveniles as "prone to violence." Similarly, it does us no good to blame the "jocks" for the Littleton incident. The blame should go to anyone who treated them as an outcast. To do otherwise simply increases prejudice and stereotypes against the groups we happen to dislike.
When Red Hat released version 5.2, they were committed to removing all proprietary software from their distribution; hence the reason they wouldn't include KDE until the Qt license was changed. If they've included IBM Via Voice, does this go against their previous committment? Was Via Voice for Linux released Open Source? (I doubt it.) Or was it on the supplemental "proprietary applications" CD (like WordPerfect 7 and others in previous years)? If that's the case, I have no problem whatsoever.
I don't hate Red Hat! I'm a huge fan; I use it myself! And I'm NOT trying to start a distro war...:)
Anyone that understood the Katz article, I strongly recommend the writings of Mike E. Males. A doctoral student at the University of California at Irvine, Males wrote a 1996 book called The Scapegoat Generation: America's War on Adolescents that's probably the most persuasive book I've ever read. It's full of hard evidence pointing to the conclusion that we need to respect teenagers more!
For example, politicians point to the "teen pregnancy" problem time and time again. Yet the root of this problem aren't the teenage women becoming pregnant. Somewhere around 80% of children born to teenage mothers have fathers over the age of 18. The law says this is statuatory rape, that these young women don't have the ability to make decisions like this on their own; yet the lawmakers blame the teenagers for "teen pregnancy," rather than the adults raping them! Males uses strong and conclusive sociological research to back this up, as he does with all arguments in his book.
That book certainly tuned me into issues of juvenile rights, ageism and the divisions inside American society. I strongly recommend reading that book to anyone interested in the topic; it's an excellent rebuttal to American sociological myths.
In my opinion, JonKatz's article was the BEST article I've read on the Littleton, Colorado subject; the BEST article I've read by Katz; and the BEST news-related article I've read on Slashdot. A number of us gave Jon hell for his Linux newbie article... but this one was extremely well-written and hit a nerve with all of us.
Has JonKatz's article surpassed the Linux 2.2 announcement to become Slashdot's busiest article ever?
In my opinion, it was the BEST article I've read on the Littleton, Colorado subject; the BEST article I've read by JonKatz; and the BEST news-related article I've read on Slashdot. We all give JonKatz hell for articles like his Linux newbie article... but this one was extremely well-written and hit a nerve with all of us. (Probably us "geeks" and "nerds" moreso than others. As well as those of us like myself, fresh out of high school and into college.)
... which would KILL any compatibility with Linux, and any chance of me purchasing the unit. (Ditto if it's only offered in a USB model.)
Otherwise, I love the idea. I love the feel of my Microsoft Mouse and would not want to use anything different. At the same time, I'm in a dorm and my desk/mouse pad tend to get VERY dirty. I was thinking about getting a Mouse Systems optical mouse, but I'd rather stick with a Microsoft mouse.
Disclaimer: just because I like the Microsoft Mouse doesn't mean I'm a fan of Microsoft operating systems...:)
The choice of anonymizing the companies discussed on the list actually makes a lot of sense to me. Imagine if Microsoft decided it wanted to open-source Windows source code. The discussion would be colored over whether Microsoft and Windows are worthy of the Open Source(tm) definition, not whether the license itself allows for legitimate Open Source(tm) software.
By removing company and product names from the discussion, the discussion will focus on the licensing issues rather than extraneous discussion of company beliefs/actions/etc. I'm all for the idea... as well as the mailing list itself.
It is easy for a corporation to select MS products. In the good old days no one got fired for selecting IBM, these days no one gets fired for selecting MS products. This in my opinion has happend because of the "dummification" of the industry overall.
No offense to you -- you're not the one that set your organization's IT standards -- but maybe people SHOULD start being fired for selecting MS products. A large vulnerability was found in a Microsoft product, resulting in considerable downtime for certain companies. If, say, Applix or Star Divison software was responsible for the bug, employees would be reprimanded for choosing their software. Why shouldn't the same be true for Microsoft?
Also, remember, patches were available for Sendmail (the Pro and open source versions) within hours of the virus' discovery. Many of the anti-virus companies (Symantec, etc.) published updates within hours of discovery. AFAIK, the only thing Microsoft has done is acknowledge that the vulnerability will be present in Office 2000 as well.
Regarding the Linux operating system name controversy: most Slashdotters claim that the Linux operating system is only the kernel (and probably headers, modules and source). RMS's claim is that the operating system includes the utilities distributed with the kernel, including the shell, window manager, Emacs text editor and gcc compiler.
I notice a strong similarity here between RMS and Microsoft's position in the anti-trust trial. (That's probably the FIRST time a free software advocate has EVER agreed with Microsoft! ) Microsoft claims that its Windows operating system includes everything from the kernel, to the Notepad and Calculator applications, to the web browser. The DOJ's position is fairly ambiguous, except that the web browser is not part of the OS.
The way to resolve both of these issues (the Microsoft trial and the "GNU/Linux" controversy) is to develop a community definition of an "operating system." Does it include solely the kernel (the individual bzImage file)? All the components packaged together in a distribution? Is the line somewhere in between? If so, where?
Funny, at my old job we used to call the OS/2 Boot Manager "Boot Mangler." The ironic thing was that it was our OS/2 zealots who coined that name. Not only that, Boot Mangler seemed to work pretty darn well...
Come on, have you ever seen a Windows NT box boot in less than 86.4 seconds?
I used to work at a small local ISP running three Windows NT servers and one Linux server (installed by me, two months after I started working there). It took our NT boxes about four minutes, on average, to reboot after a crash. The boxes would be rebooted at least two to three times a week, unless I was adding IP addresses or software, at which point I would have to reboot them two to three times a day.
By contrast, our original Linux box NEVER "crashed". It was up for about four months, at which point I installed a new kernel, and then it stayed up another two months. The machine was only used for a couple of small applications, so we replaced it with a 486DX with 16MB of RAM. (Try that with Windows NT!) There was a memory leakage problem with one of our applications which required the 486 to be rebooted once a week.
Just another testimonial that Linux is 1000 times more stable than NT...
REALLY? LinuxWorld in Washington? I live here in Washington!
But... are there any discounts for college students? Compared to similar trade shows, this year's prices aren't unreasonable at all. Nonetheless, $150 (two days of conferences) is a lot for a student like me to shell out. I'd have no problem spending $15 for an exhibit pass, though. (Does the exhibit pass allow you to see anything else, i.e. the coveted Linus keynote?)
Anyway, I'm already looking forward to the show! Sign me up, I'll be there!
Slashdot Mirror
I'm a HUGE opponent of censorship, but why does kernel source code need to swear, anyway? Every reference to "fuck" listed by Salon could be just as easily replaced by "screwed" or "screwed up" (for example, "This code screwed up by Torvalds" instead of "fucked by Torvalds", in one of their examples). Maybe we don't NEED to remove it, but I think it might enhance Linux's credibility a little, as well as removing any chance of source code being automatically censored by filters.
:)
Overall, the Salon article was very good and very funny. Just wait until the censorware starts blocking anything matching "f?ck"... and we're not allowed to fsck our hard drives...
Ryan
Is this extremely slow and memory-intensive?
The developers of PHP3 say it's better than CGI scripts (under Apache and with mod_php3), because the mod_php3 module is loaded into memory only once. When you call a PHP3 page, on a server running mod_php3, it doesn't have to spend the time loading the interpreter, nor does it have to waste the memory loading multiple copies of the interpreter.
I'm not trying to say PHP3 is better; on the contrary, Zope's features look VERY cool. But how does it get around this "problem"?
Ryan
Forgive me for being young, but what exactly *is* an "object database"? How does it differ from a traditional relational database? How does it differ from fields dimensioned as an "object" data type using programs like MS Access (and certainly other databases as well)?
Thanks in advance,
Ryan
I don't know if anyone's still reading this. If you are, I put a full summary of my notes from the "Which Rememdies? Appraising Microsoft II" conference online. They can be found at http://www.space-dye.com/remedies/. Hope this helps.
I was at the "Which Remedies? Appraising Microsoft II" conference yesterday, at which Liebowitz first introduced the results of his paper.
Liebowitz made the assumption that Microsoft would be split into three entities, each of which developing their own competing version of Windows, without any interoperability standards or agreements. Therefore, when companies introduce new applications, they'd have to port it to three different operating systems. Liebowitz (and, presumably, research assistants) directly contacted executives at a number of large software firms (he didn't say how many firms). He specifically refused to talk to assistants, but rather only to executives. He asked them how much they expected their R&D, tech support, and sales budgets to increase, if they had to support three OSs rather than one.
Liebowitz then multiplied these numbers by overall industry revenue figures. He determined that R&D costs would increase by 78%, technical support costs would rise 46%, and sales and marketing costs would rise by 5-10%. He then decided that his overall projections were too high, so he divided the end result by three. (I'm not making this up!). He finally came to the conclusion that software costs would rise about 6-and-a-half percent, or $30 billion.
He also said that Microsoft was a "temporary natural monopoly," which got a small hoot from the economists in the crowd. He said that in the computer industry, there is "sequential replacement of a dominant firm." First VisiCalc, then Lotus 1-2-3, then Excel. First CP/M, then MS-DOS, then Windows, then 32-bit Windows. However, Mark Cooper (Research Director, Consumer Federation of America) rebutted this. Cooper said that there may be sequential replacement of dominant products, but that Microsoft has ended up producing the dominant product in every industry. (i.e. going from MS-DOS to Windows to Windows 95 may reduce the MS-DOS monopoly, but not the Microsoft monopoly as a whole.)
That's pretty much what's interesting about Liebowitz's speech. If anyone wants me to put up the rest of my notes from the conference, let me know.
Personally, I don't like the angle of the ZDnet article. They interviewed two of the three pro-Microsoft panelists at the conference, yet left out any commentary from the other twelve panelists!
Ryan
I have unfortunately met very few school administrators that actually care about the concerns of students. Of the many times my parents and I dealt with the school district administration (I'm now 19), I can say that there was only one administrator that really cared about the students. Many times we went to the administration with issues about teachers (including one who intentionally abandoned my best friend an hour away from home). We were always treated with hostility, as if we were "making a scene." We never had enough time to get our concerns addressed; instead, we ended up defending ourselves from personal attacks by the administration!
I don't think this was limited to my school district, either. A friend of our family is a teacher in another district, and she describes similar occurrences with her principal all the time. Fortunately, there are a lot of teachers who care about the students, but it's nearly impossible to get the administration to work in the student's best interest.
Ryan
When I was entering high school, my parents and I were looking at my attending the Illinois Math and Science Academy. A public magnet school for gifted students across the state, IMSA placed a huge focus on (you guessed it) math and science, and I'm sure the campus was full of geeks, just like Slashdot :) It was a nine-month boarding school, with classes basically four days a week and an internship on the fifth.
A few weeks before I was planning on applying, a friend of the family was suspended from school. He came home and explained what had happened. According to him, there was an EXTREME amount of physical hazing at IMSA. He told horrific stories of things he had seen, things done to him, and things he (unfortunately) did to others. The administration consistently looked the other way, until this incident (I don't remember the specifics, but it was an extremely bad incident).
Since then, I've met others who loved the school, but his story convinced me not to apply. In retrospect, I'm glad I didn't (I found my niche on the debate team and never looked back). This just serves as a reminder that even within the "geek" class, the same problems are bound to come up as we're blaming on the "jocks" or "preps" or whomever.
Ryan
Just wanted to comment about fraternities and sororities. I'm a brother of the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity at The George Washington University. In my experience, a few fraternities on this campus are the conformist cliques you described. But, in this respect, the non-Greek students are worse than the Greeks are!
I'm about as individual as it gets -- I'm a typical MIS geek. Our chapter prides itself on having a diverse group of individuals. I've gained far more out of the fraternity than I ever expected: leadership opportunities, a social outlet (as a typical MIS geek, social settings never used to be my strong suit), and most importantly, long-lasting friendships. The freshmen at this school are far more judgmental than anyone in my fraternity. I quickly realized that I had little in common with them, and luckily found the friendships in my fraternity just at the right time. Also, our chapter truly has no hazing, forced drinking (I still don't drink at all), or any of your other stereotypical frat images.
We shouldn't stereotype ANY groups as being "cliqueish," because it's the same thing as stereotyping juveniles as "prone to violence." Similarly, it does us no good to blame the "jocks" for the Littleton incident. The blame should go to anyone who treated them as an outcast. To do otherwise simply increases prejudice and stereotypes against the groups we happen to dislike.
Any LCA brothers on here? Drop me a message.
In ZAX,
Ryan
Could we get this thread moderated? Obvious flame bait.
Ryan
When Red Hat released version 5.2, they were committed to removing all proprietary software from their distribution; hence the reason they wouldn't include KDE until the Qt license was changed. If they've included IBM Via Voice, does this go against their previous committment? Was Via Voice for Linux released Open Source? (I doubt it.) Or was it on the supplemental "proprietary applications" CD (like WordPerfect 7 and others in previous years)? If that's the case, I have no problem whatsoever.
:)
I don't hate Red Hat! I'm a huge fan; I use it myself! And I'm NOT trying to start a distro war...
Ryan
Anyone that understood the Katz article, I strongly recommend the writings of Mike E. Males. A doctoral student at the University of California at Irvine, Males wrote a 1996 book called The Scapegoat Generation: America's War on Adolescents that's probably the most persuasive book I've ever read. It's full of hard evidence pointing to the conclusion that we need to respect teenagers more!
For example, politicians point to the "teen pregnancy" problem time and time again. Yet the root of this problem aren't the teenage women becoming pregnant. Somewhere around 80% of children born to teenage mothers have fathers over the age of 18. The law says this is statuatory rape, that these young women don't have the ability to make decisions like this on their own; yet the lawmakers blame the teenagers for "teen pregnancy," rather than the adults raping them! Males uses strong and conclusive sociological research to back this up, as he does with all arguments in his book.
That book certainly tuned me into issues of juvenile rights, ageism and the divisions inside American society. I strongly recommend reading that book to anyone interested in the topic; it's an excellent rebuttal to American sociological myths.
In my opinion, JonKatz's article was the BEST article I've read on the Littleton, Colorado subject; the BEST article I've read by Katz; and the BEST news-related article I've read on Slashdot. A number of us gave Jon hell for his Linux newbie article... but this one was extremely well-written and hit a nerve with all of us.
Ryan
Has JonKatz's article surpassed the Linux 2.2 announcement to become Slashdot's busiest article ever?
In my opinion, it was the BEST article I've read on the Littleton, Colorado subject; the BEST article I've read by JonKatz; and the BEST news-related article I've read on Slashdot. We all give JonKatz hell for articles like his Linux newbie article... but this one was extremely well-written and hit a nerve with all of us. (Probably us "geeks" and "nerds" moreso than others. As well as those of us like myself, fresh out of high school and into college.)
Ryan
... which would KILL any compatibility with Linux, and any chance of me purchasing the unit. (Ditto if it's only offered in a USB model.)
:)
Otherwise, I love the idea. I love the feel of my Microsoft Mouse and would not want to use anything different. At the same time, I'm in a dorm and my desk/mouse pad tend to get VERY dirty. I was thinking about getting a Mouse Systems optical mouse, but I'd rather stick with a Microsoft mouse.
Disclaimer: just because I like the Microsoft Mouse doesn't mean I'm a fan of Microsoft operating systems...
Ryan
The choice of anonymizing the companies discussed on the list actually makes a lot of sense to me. Imagine if Microsoft decided it wanted to open-source Windows source code. The discussion would be colored over whether Microsoft and Windows are worthy of the Open Source(tm) definition, not whether the license itself allows for legitimate Open Source(tm) software.
By removing company and product names from the discussion, the discussion will focus on the licensing issues rather than extraneous discussion of company beliefs/actions/etc. I'm all for the idea... as well as the mailing list itself.
Ryan
No offense to you -- you're not the one that set your organization's IT standards -- but maybe people SHOULD start being fired for selecting MS products. A large vulnerability was found in a Microsoft product, resulting in considerable downtime for certain companies. If, say, Applix or Star Divison software was responsible for the bug, employees would be reprimanded for choosing their software. Why shouldn't the same be true for Microsoft?
Also, remember, patches were available for Sendmail (the Pro and open source versions) within hours of the virus' discovery. Many of the anti-virus companies (Symantec, etc.) published updates within hours of discovery. AFAIK, the only thing Microsoft has done is acknowledge that the vulnerability will be present in Office 2000 as well.
Ryan
Regarding the Linux operating system name controversy: most Slashdotters claim that the Linux operating system is only the kernel (and probably headers, modules and source). RMS's claim is that the operating system includes the utilities distributed with the kernel, including the shell, window manager, Emacs text editor and gcc compiler.
I notice a strong similarity here between RMS and Microsoft's position in the anti-trust trial. (That's probably the FIRST time a free software advocate has EVER agreed with Microsoft! ) Microsoft claims that its Windows operating system includes everything from the kernel, to the Notepad and Calculator applications, to the web browser. The DOJ's position is fairly ambiguous, except that the web browser is not part of the OS.
The way to resolve both of these issues (the Microsoft trial and the "GNU/Linux" controversy) is to develop a community definition of an "operating system." Does it include solely the kernel (the individual bzImage file)? All the components packaged together in a distribution? Is the line somewhere in between? If so, where?
Ryan
It's gonna be a LONG 28 hours...
Ryan
Funny, at my old job we used to call the OS/2 Boot Manager "Boot Mangler." The ironic thing was that it was our OS/2 zealots who coined that name. Not only that, Boot Mangler seemed to work pretty darn well...
Ryan
Come on, have you ever seen a Windows NT box boot in less than 86.4 seconds?
I used to work at a small local ISP running three Windows NT servers and one Linux server (installed by me, two months after I started working there). It took our NT boxes about four minutes, on average, to reboot after a crash. The boxes would be rebooted at least two to three times a week, unless I was adding IP addresses or software, at which point I would have to reboot them two to three times a day.
By contrast, our original Linux box NEVER "crashed". It was up for about four months, at which point I installed a new kernel, and then it stayed up another two months. The machine was only used for a couple of small applications, so we replaced it with a 486DX with 16MB of RAM. (Try that with Windows NT!) There was a memory leakage problem with one of our applications which required the 486 to be rebooted once a week.
Just another testimonial that Linux is 1000 times more stable than NT...
Ryan
REALLY? LinuxWorld in Washington? I live here in Washington!
But... are there any discounts for college students? Compared to similar trade shows, this year's prices aren't unreasonable at all. Nonetheless, $150 (two days of conferences) is a lot for a student like me to shell out. I'd have no problem spending $15 for an exhibit pass, though. (Does the exhibit pass allow you to see anything else, i.e. the coveted Linus keynote?)
Anyway, I'm already looking forward to the show! Sign me up, I'll be there!
Ryan