True, Linux Quake3 will run no faster. But most PC games are geared for the Microsoft platform - now they may be able to be seamlessly ported to the XBox. DirectX has been a very popular interface, such that even cycle-hungry games like Quake have been able to discard the stand-alone OS (remember the days where you needed a boot disk to play the best 20% of PC games?) If Linux hackers could come up with a interface as sucessful as DirectX, then Linux gaming would be in better shape. DirectX is a win, for the user, the game programmers, and, yes, Microsoft.
Whada ya mean "It's kind of sad that he now works for Microsoft"? Yes, that means he won't be working on Quake X, but Quake is doing fine on it's own. Yes, it means he may have to be a little secretive on what he is doing, but you know he's working, and that the results will be spectacular. When Penny Arcade has a hard time getting one of them to hate the XBox, you know Microsoft is doing well, and the gaming world should send another big thank-you card to Abrash.
Plus, if he can just spend a little time optimizing the DirectX code, then EVERY game benefits. You know that if he finds any new tricks, he'll report on them, and even the free software world will benefit. Check out this link at Dr. Dobb's journal for a taste of what he is doing at Microsoft, and why it is important.
Like he says in the article, the important thing is to do, not to think, and there's a lot of optimization to do at Microsoft.
I agree that you can't say you really understand what's going on until you try it out (apply E=mc² to real physics problems). But to say that we should stop reading these books, and instead read physics textbooks?
Have you looked at a physics textbook recently? Entry level books go about half the way - it takes a born-physicist to understand what is going on with only the textbook. It almost requires a teacher to demonstrate the math, to get feedback on what the student is doing wrong.
Plus, they are too expensive. Like most educational materials, it is overpriced, because people are buying them with government funding (schools), or are forced to buy them (college students). There appears to be little competition, or at least little competition that results in a better product.
Then, you say to truly appreciate this stuff, you need the equvalent of 3 years of a physics major. Calculus, Diff Eq., Quantum Mechanics - you could do it in two years, but probably not if you were working at the same time. In other words, only students can appreciate it.
I think you can transmit some of the wonder of physics in a format that the average person can understand. I believe you can even convey some of the theory to the mathematically inclined - some of the best authors have done it. But to say, don't study it unless you study the pure stuff - I can't agree with that. That leads to members of congress, who have been told they can't even comprehend particle physics, making funding decisions on the superconducting supercolider. We need the lower-level stuff to communicate the promise of science to the non-scientific public.
That being said, it is fairly ignorant to start speculating on practical uses when you don't understand the theory. Ignorant, or good engineering, depending on the result.
And, it's fairly unforgivable to use Imperial units to the exclusion of scientific units. I can forgive both being given, since I think in Imperial units most of the time, but doing physics in Imperial units? It gives me nightmares of thermodynamics classes.
I'm a little concerned with the "talk to your lawyer before signing a contract" line. I'm working my first job out of college, and I don't have a lawyer of my own, or really the money to hire one. Is a laywer necessary for every contract negotiation, or is it just paranoia, and may turn off the prospective employer?
I'm fairly certain that I don't actually have a contract, that I'm hire-at-will, or whatever, that means the company could fire me at any time without having to give cause - luckily, it is a sane, small company, where this simply means "as long as you do your job, you have job security". I think only the president and possibly the legal consul have actual contracts.
Thanks for doing the research. I'm glad that there is some flexibility, at least in Florida's law. I would be a bit worried if some 23 year old was going out with my 16 year old sister, but that's another matter entirely...
Hmmm - I'd still like a bit of reason in the system, rather than knee-jerk "if you were convicted, you don't get the job". For instance, if a 17-year-old has sex with a 16-year-old (or whatever the age of consent is), is that a sex crime? Should that stop the person from EVER having a job that involves children? Should that person have to go door to door, forever, saying that they are a sex criminal?
Of course, if I'm wrong about statatory rape, then my point is moot. Still, I've seen little good come out of absolute laws (three strikes, zero-tolerance school laws, etc), that I'm wary of opening that can of worms.
That being said, I think issues like universal health care, affordable housing, well-paid educators and child-care workers, and many other issues are more important than whether Amazon knows my book preferences, or my bank tells other I now onw a house.
I still think that, designed correctly, you would look at the PC. BeOS used to come on a platform with two processors. As a cool trick, there were lights on the front, like the equalizer indicators on a stereo, that indicated the load on each of the processors. These were popular enough that, when the BeOS was ported to other platforms, users created alternative displays for the new systems. You may even have a visual resource meter somewhere on your desktop, for the same effect.
Did it add a little cost? Yes. Was it cool? Yes. Did the users like it? Enough to port it to new systems, and enough that Microsoft uses a similar concept for their resource meter. You know something is successful when Microsoft steals it.
I think, for only a slight cost, some kind of cool addition could be made to the case. I like blinking lights, especially when they convey information, and when they are programable. Why do I have to look to the back of my computer to see if the network is on?
My car is a tool as well. I shop first for reliability, fuel efficiency, and value. But, when find a model I like, I can choose some extras, such as color. Fire-engine green is said to be the safest color (cars in that color have proportionally fewer accidents), so if I was being a pragmatist, my car would be that color. Instead, I choose one which better suits my taste. My brother, against advice, picked bright red. He gets pulled over for speeding a bit more, but the girls seem to like it.
As long as they are ugly, design will tend toward making cases smaller, easier to tuck away and forget about them. Cool cases will make statements, make them part of the home. Power users still pick the ugly ones, for practical reasons, but what if the case was the same on the outside, but for a little more (or even the same cost), you could get a custom color?
Can it happen? Well, users complained about how hard it was to get into the cases to add cards, etc, and now my Gateway is dead-easy to get into. There are two thumb screws, and the side pops right off. The only hard part is that I have to disconnect all the cords, and take the box out of its cabinet, because its too ugly to always be out in the open.
The problem with stylish cases is that they often limit your ability to upgrade. HP and Compaq often have proprietary motherboards, riser cards or power supplies that put a halt to any thought of upgrading in the future. The companies become the only place for upgrade parts, they know it and charge accordingly. I much prefer to stick with generic parts and retain the pleasure of being able to shop around for upgrades.
I agree. Motherboard design is one of the limiting factors - you have to go with some motherboard standard if you are going to have interchangable cases. HP and Compaq, through their designs, add a lot to the arguement, "Style=low value".
However, there is a case market out there, which makes me think there are some motherboard standards that are strong enough that you can design to them. Plus, the company in the story title offers mod kits for your case, where you punch out the hole and put in the window, etc., which can be used on the plain vanilla cases.
All that being said, the motherboard itself is one of the coolest parts of the machine. A nice green color, slightly tranlucent, and you can fool yourself into thinking you understand all the components (That's a capacitor... I think). If it wasn't for dust, and the accompaning fear that you may use Windex to clean the board, more manufacturers would make the motherboard visible, maybe with some cool backlighting...
Good to hear from you! I was hoping you would clear up whether the post was made with a Music topic or not.
Microsoft basically filed a claim that, based on comments the judge made after the trial, that he was biased and his judgement was impared. There are three explainations:
1. Microsoft is trying to create as many cases as possible. This way, as long as one is still pending, they can avoid the breakup. Or, at least put it off until the.NET strategy or whatever makes it irrelevant. If this is the case, it's using the courts (and costing the taxpayers money) in a somewhat unethical fashion.
2. Old-fashioned FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt), now applied to government and legal questions. Before, the American public could think, "A judge ruled that Microsoft is a monopoly!" This would impact stock price, consumer opinion, etc. Now, they have to think "A judge ruled that Microsoft is a monopoly, but the judge may be biased, and the decision hasn't been reviewed by a higher court, and the tech landscape has changed since then, and there's a new president who is pro-business..." End result - consumer opinion is put on hold, stock price stays somewhat steady, and Microsoft gets some breathing room.
3. They truly believe that he has to be biased. This would almost prove the judge's opinion that Microsoft is arrogant: "How can anyone rule against us? He must have been biased at the start!" All the have on him is an interview after the fact, unless he has some "friends" that will rat on him. I doubt there is enough evidence for this trial to go through. As far as I know, higher courts rule on the possible subjectiveness of the lower court by reviewing the case, and Microsoft case is more "the judge was flawed" then "the case was flawed", or so it seems.
Anyway, it's interesting.
Now, the slightly off-topic stuff. I was confused by the music topic, so I went to search for your name. The search engine ignores the character "_", so a search for "the_rev_matt" ended up as a search for "therevmatt". I then searched for "punitiveart", and found the three references. I looked at the web site, and was interested by what I saw (thanks for some good links).
Either you posted in a weird forum (which you didn't), or a Slashdot editor changed it to the Music topic. Either way, an editor should be in the position to go back and fix the problem, especially with the visual cue that something is wrong. Why didn't they?
It got me thinking, has the editiorial content gone down since I started reading, or do I just notice it more? There have been some strange behaviours, such as typos, links that were never checked, etc. Someone points this out (in an intollerant fashion, usually), and folks use that thread to complain about the declining quality on SlashDot. Perhaps off-topic, but I can argue that posting to a thread is on-topic, even if the original thread is off-topic (obviously, I have a bias, since I do it myself). However, the moderators browsing at earliest posts, no threads, don't see the thread, and mod it as off-topic. I see these in the meta-mod, and ocassionally mark them as unfair mods, sometimes taking a karma hit myself in the process.
Anyway, I've seen corrections and additions to stories, so I know it is possible. The question is, why don't they do it more often? Ocassionaly, they will change something, which will make a whole thread (the back-seat editor thread) stop making sense, so possible it's for consistancy. However, these do go into the archives, so I'd like to see some pro-active editing, to take out mistakes when they are noticed.
One of the things I like about SlashDot is the reasonable approximation of a water cooler. A story may or may not be interesting in itself, but the discussion is almost always interesting. Usually, the form is "On the subject of Linux, Kernel 2.4 was just officially released!". In my opinion, this one should have come out as, "Speaking of news, the DOJ filed a brief in the case where Microsoft accused Judge Jackson of being biased". Instead, it came out as, "On the subject of Music, the DOJ says that Jackson was not biased!" My responce may be "Duh! Of course they would say that", or "Huh? Music?". Lively, but off-topic discussion insues.
I've seen a lot of mistakes lately, so maybe a copy editor is sick, or I'm just noticing them more. One possible explanation, though, is that the mistakes are intentional, written in a code only a select few understand, blah blah blah. From there, it was simple enough to imagine a global conspiracy. Maybe you weren't even who you said you were, someone just stole your id (maybe the conspiracy searches for those who have several ids, and create a new one).
I've rambled on enough. Interesting website, congrats for adding content to this Internet thing, and thanks for being good-natured about it.
Did the DOJ sing its opinion that Jackson's not biased? If not, why the choice of category?
I was a bit confused myself. Other posts are of the opinion that this shouldn't have been front-page news, or that the title could have been done better.
Of course, when things don't quite make sense, the conspiracy theories start.
The person who submitted the story, the_rev_matt, does not appear to be a regular SlashDot poster. He does appear to have several incarnations, such as reverend_matt and The Reverend. One of those IDs, reverend_matt, has a email address of troll@punitiveart.com. This gentleman already confesses to some troll leanings.
The website, at www.punitiveart.com, is a slashdot-style website where the reverend posts stories of his own personal interest. The latest story was dated November 5, titled Men are Better Than Women. While the casual viewer may think that this is a right-wing rant, the post goes on to condemn misogyny. This individual has a history of using stealth tactics to get you to read his story.
It is possible, then, that he wanted the story printed, and used sly tactics, such as using a strange category and a flamebait title, to get the editor to post it.
However, I believe it to instead be a code signal. Others will see this post, the title, the subject, and know that they should prepare. They will then search the comments for a specific comment, from a specific user, and know the time is near. Finally, the comment will be moderated, in a strange fashion, one that will leave the meta-moderators scratching their heads, but those in the know will know that the next phase has commenced, and to unlease the virus/ detonate the bombs/ flee to the deserts/ write letters to the editor, or whatever the grand plan is.
Or, it could just be Slashdot editors screwing up again. It's become commonplace enough that it doesn't bother me anymore. Of course, maybe they want you to ignore it...
I read the CNN article, and it seems that the title was just a summary of the case presented by the justice department. The anti-trust case is now moving through the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, where Microsoft has alleged that Jackson was biased, based on statements he gave to the New Yorker magazine.
Now, CNN used just about the same headline, "U.S. denies judge who ordered Microsoft breakup was biased". Perhaps the headline "U.S. Justice Department Files Brief" would have been better, but the title was accurate. Flamebait for Slashdot, but accurate.
Perhaps a better title for the Slashdot story would have been "Microsoft Anti-Trust Case Continues". The story probably is not front-page news, but deserves to be posted somewhere - it will be interesting to see what happens in what may be the last days of this case (with a Bush nominee potentially yanking the DoJ off the case). Another interesting story would be how much Microsoft / Bill Gates contributed to the Republican campaign, and how it was done.
Your walls would be obsolete in 3 months! Would your lights go off when the OS crashed, or you had to upgrade the kernel? What would happen when the system got hacked? Would they run a single process in an infinite loop, causing a portion of the wall to catch on fire, or would they just replace your wallpaper with something ugly with lousy spelling?
I'd rather have computer furniture, like a coffee table. It could have built in remote, plug in through the floor, have some convenient USB ports, and a thick piece of glass on top to protect from beer spills. It could even have the processor near the surface, to act as a plate warmer!
2D scaling is a problem, when you start pushing theoretical limits. However, many of our speed increases are due to better designs as well as better techniques. I've seen some promising theoretical work in expanding into the third dimension, which may cause cooling problems but may also allow better designs.
I also imagine, due to cooling requirements, development may go the route of multiple cheaper processors rather than expensive Apollo project processors (processors that push the theoretical limits). When this happens, software will start to morph to take advantage of it, and I predict we will still see gains comparable to Moore's law.
Re:Bombs might be more likely, but not nuclear war
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There's even less to fear if you don't live in one of the major cities. I'm feeling pretty safe in Tulsa, OK. Who is going to bomb a city in Oklahoma? (Except, of course, for other Oklahomans.)
However, one nuke going off in NYC would still be disasterous. Millions would die, the economy would take a hit, many would leave, and there would be a higher change that your new next door neighbor is from New York, always bragging how superior the Big Apple is (before the bomb, obviously). And if it hit the West Coast? We sent all those folks west - we don't want them back!
Well, I'm not seeing many defending style, so I will. A disclaimer though - when I spend my computing dollars, I'll get a larger monitor, faster processor, and more memory before any stylistic considerations (and often, style doesn't make it onto the list).
The argument "Style over substance" is valid when marketing and design is used to make a sub-standard product look better simply by improving it's physical appearance. I cringe when relatives buy a poor performing PC, simply because it looked sexier than the alternatives.
But you don't have to sacrifice style for performance. The performance of a PC is not inversely proportional to how good it looks. Some of you have probably seen some pretty sexy looking heavy metal, and some of the highest performing notebooks also look pretty sharp.
We've all been duped by experience to trust that ugly=value. That's from the days when the big domestic guys were making pretty and expensive boxes, while the overseas guys were making ugly and cheap boxes. If you had tech skill, you passed on the pretty hand-holding models and went straight for the foreign boxes, with questionable configurations and lots of driver disks.
We no longer live in those times. You can buy an excellent PC over the Internet, that's fully functional. If you want to build one yourself, you can do that, but often the savings isn't worth the time (the people that know how to do it are worth quite a bit per hour).
So, why are PC's still ugly? Because we still buy them ugly, 'cause we think ugly=value=power. That's a larger factor than other considerations, especially since a little design may even help with cooling problems.
I much prefer my 1930's house with ivy and a little yard to a warehouse with a raised floor for easy cable access. I prefer my hardwood floors to 1/16 inch, easy to vacuum carpet. If prefer my home office, with a view of my yard and my dogs, to my cubicle at work (even though the cubicle is nice as cubicles go). I prefer my slashdot posts with nice formatting, well-thought out ideas, and most of the grammar and spelling checked to three-second post and links to naughty cx domains.
Why don't these ascetic tastes spill over into the PC domain? Mostly because the people that make them have bought into the style vs. substance war, and you can either buy an ugly but powerful system, or a pretty but brain-dead system. Well, you can have it both ways. To think otherwise is to still live in a world where people can be either intelligent but unattractive, or beautiful but dumb. Well, I have a little more hope for the world.
I'm slowly becoming a style convert, and my wife has helped a lot. It's not that expensive anymore, and it's becoming cheaper every day. You can still be a geek, too. Just run the wire through the walls rather than over the floors, and get some help when shopping for clothes.
Check out an organization that's trying to bring some design into our lives. They had a contest to design a better power meter, with some interesting results. (If anyone can find the slashdot article that first linked it, please tell me).
If you have doubts about the Wachowski brothers, check out Bound, a very interesting crime drama. It has a great feel, and Gina Gershon amd Jennifer Tilly as lovers doesn't hurt. It's well worth the rental cost.
They also have writing credits on Assasins, but I can't vouch for it. I seem to remember only being mildly interested when it was in theaters.
Yep, it looks like Home Depot is going Linux in a big way. Here's a story.
They are going through Red Hat, which is supporting the project pretty intensively. There's a large cost associated with that (the story quotes about $55,000), but probably less than the comparable Microsoft support. It looks like it started last May, and is a three-year program, involving back-store functions, floor terminals, and registers.
Now we just need the second part of the equation: demonstration that it's mission critical ready, and that it's profitable.
At the same time, this isn't really Microsoft's turf - I can imagine they would have needed a custom system, anyway, and employees won't really be using Star Office, or other office tools. They didn't mention moving to Linux boxes at headquarters, either.
I agree as well, the editors do a pretty good job of cancelling bad stories, even my own.
But, sometimes, bizarre stuff happens. For instance, if Jon Katz was a normal user, he'd get shouted down or routinely ignored. As it is, his posts are first page news by default.
When Linux 2.4 was "announced" (Linus posted it, so the developers knew, and waited to see how long it would take the mainstream users and the press to notice), it was done as a story in the Linux subtopic, not the main page. CmdrTaco even commented that he had to post it quick, or he'd get a ton of submissions. Well, he probably still got a ton of submissions, since most people assumed it was front page news,and when they didn't see it there, submitted the story. There were 772 comments to that story, which seems like critical mass to make it a front pager. If stories were moderated like comments, this may have gotten pushed to the front page. Of course, the great leader may have been making a selfish choice, to keep the bandwidth pipes open for himself, by limiting the SlashDot effect for a few hours...
Also, some mod to stories may help with commenting problems. I may have the most insightful comment in the world, but if I don't see the story in the first hour, the moderators won't see it. If you look at comment posts, most highly moderated comments are the first few, giving a definite advantage to quick posters, even those who may not think their idea out clearly. It seems like a recipe for trolls.
Anyway, some system that mods comments may help, by keeping a story alive. If there is a lot of activity in a story, it could be kept high on the list, and people would be inclined to read it again. I could imagine a system where stories get points based on activity. New stories could have such a high score that they start at the top, and lose points just for existing, so that all new stories start at the top. Old stories where people are still discussing it would rise to the top, based on story mods and new comments. Moderators would get fresh points to use on a story, when it reaches a certain threshhold.
Yes, it's not fully thought out, but a system where the users have more control over the stories may make for interesting discussions - or at least less knee-jerk posting.
I fully support this effort and other efforts. This is why:
Slashdot is where it is because of community. At first, it may have been the editors doing most of the work picking out cool stuff. Nerds of different flavors showed up because it was cool stuff, and started discussion groups. Soon, the editors didn't really need to start looking for cool stuff, the readers started submitting it. It's barely neccessary for me to look at ZDNet, Salon, or the AP wire, since SlashDot seems to always pick up on the best stories in a short amount of time.
Slashdot isn't entirely community driven, however. The editors do take some editorial liscense, deciding what is post worthy, what is front page news, editing submissions, etc. Occasionally, a story will only get posted because of the massive number of submissions, against the editor's tastes, but this is rare. The posters don't know what's going on - they just see a little "reject" flag next to their submission. This is probably one of the most frustrating parts for someone who is just starting that level of participation - no feedback from the editiors, besides a binary responce and a 6-month old FAQ.
This particular project doesn't seem to be "SlashCode, but with X!!!" Instead, he is making an effort to allow the community to decide how things are organized. I think it's a laudible experiment.
Just like voting systems, no post-and-moderate system will make everyone happy. This particular one may not even scale well. But we need the experiementers, and this one seems to have a good start.
What we could use is someone in the business community jumping on the bandwagon, and writing an open letter, that could be used at other places: "See! ABC company is doing it, and it works!"
For instance, what if an executive of a major firm tallied up the cost of Microsoft licenses, and showed that eliminating all the license costs would fund X number of jobs for new Linux/BSD administrators/techs, with $Y profit? It's hard to argue with numbers, especially when a profit can be shown. Make it an official report recommending a global change to Linux/BSD over the whole operation, in Z years.
Further, let this high-profile company make the change, create some open-source software that they found useful, standardize a desktop for their use, and show that it works, and is profitable - and other smart companies will try to do the same.
However, I have to guess, since this hasn't been done yet, that the price/profit curves haven't made it yet. Linux may be ready for the desktop, but the cost to convert over may be still too much, or no one has shown that it can be profitable and maintain productivity. It's still Microsoft's world, and they have most company's ears.
Hmmm. I have to admit, there may be biz applications where other techniques are more effective, faster, etc than OOP. But I find, as complexity increases, it is important to start thinking in terms of seperate, smaller units communicating through interfaces, or atomic peices being acted on by functions or procedures. I've worked with procedural code, some of it quite complex, and written by several people. The best procedural code, the code that was easiest to modify and had the least errors, worked under a small component model. On the other hand, the stream-of-consciouness code, where the structure of the data and code was not thought out, was the most error prone, the hardest to debug, and the most difficult to change.
If I had a OOP language like C++ availible on the machine (which only had Fortran), the "good" procedural stuff would have very easily translated into OOP, while the "bad" stuff would take quite a bit of work, requiring some reverse-engineering and redesigning. There were some parts, however, that appeared to work best in procedural code (possibly the scedulers), which we may have left alone.
This has been my (limited) experience, that as complexity increases, thinking in an object-oriented fashion makes code cleaner and easier to maintain. This is the problem, though - you have to demonstrate a complex system, that would neccessarily be harder to understand, to prove this point. It's not enough to show a "Hello, World!" program. Mininum requirements would be a program large enough to seperate into many modules, with at least 3 non-trivial components (for instance, text processing, a GUI interface, and file management), and, once a working program is completed, try to make a modificiation. Oh, and you'd have to do it once in an OOP language/style, and once in a procedural language/style.
It's too much to show in a quick example, and businesses don't have the resources to do both, just to prove it to themselves. It's a little like the Windows/Linux debate - neither arguement is convincing unless you try both, but who has the time in a business environment to experiment with operating systems/languages, in a fair and balanced way? If that's the case, then your business is probably in trouble, because you don't have enough work to do!
Sorry, never really look at the UIDs. I point out that he stated he was "posting anonymously to preserve my precious karma". Since he did NOT post anonymously, it seemed a bit like reverse psycology, daring the moderators to mod it up.
My only regret is that I responded not to the poster but to the comment - in the future, I'll try to address my comments to the poster rather than the SlashDot community at large.
If there's one thing that geeks may agree on, it is that it is much easier to show something than to explain it. You may have to back that geek in a corner and beat on him a while, but eventually, he may agree.
That's why we like open source (look at the code rather than document or talk about the code), and maybe why we like comics - it can be a great story, which shows you what it's talking about at the same time.
Scott McCloud's "informational" comics are usually long on ideas, but it slides easy, because of the pretty pictures, which complement the idea pretty well.
Anyway, here's a possible solution to the micropayment problem - what about an online newspaper? Not NYT, or the local rag, but a do-it-yourself content bundle. It acts a bit like a clearinghouse, where online content providers submit material, the newspaper brokers the deal between the user and the creator, and the user gets a tidy bill for the whole package.
Example - let's say I want my personalized start page thing. I get news from the AP wire, Yahoo! style, fun tech stuff from Slashdot, and a half-a-dozen internet comics. Yahoo! and Slashdot come free, but I get ads, unless I want to pay a nominal fee. The comics, for instance, are half-a-cent a day, so my daily paper comes to about $0.10. As more users are added, more options are added, and choices are cross-correlated, so that the server can offer advice as to what you may want.
What's the advantage over other mediums? I can decide exactly what I want (whereas now, I throw out the sports, home, and classifieds section of my paper), and I pay for it when my eyeballs hit it. I can access it anywhere (like a links webpage), and the creators get compensation either way, through advertisers or user-payments. And, if they want to jump to traditional medium, they have proof people would pay for the content.
It's just an idea, throwing it out there to get ripped to shreds...
I'm sorry, but you lose a little credibility when you start comparing something to communism or fascism. Yes, there may be problems with an OOP approach to everything, but such comparisons only draw away from your criticism.
Even so, I'm still reading the article, even down to the little soviet flag at the bottom.
BTW - there is a way to moderate the moderators on SlashDot. There is a meta-moderation tool, where you are presented with 10 comments and a moderation to the comment, and you decide whether the moderation was fair, not fair, or you decline to decide.
There's a FAQ, but there is also a bug. Although it is availible to anyone in the top 90% oldest accounts (10% youngest accounts are excluded), it doesn't appear as an option until you do it once. So go Meta-Moderate (M2), and then do it every day. You'll help keep out the evil moderators.
Slashdot Mirror
True, Linux Quake3 will run no faster. But most PC games are geared for the Microsoft platform - now they may be able to be seamlessly ported to the XBox. DirectX has been a very popular interface, such that even cycle-hungry games like Quake have been able to discard the stand-alone OS (remember the days where you needed a boot disk to play the best 20% of PC games?) If Linux hackers could come up with a interface as sucessful as DirectX, then Linux gaming would be in better shape. DirectX is a win, for the user, the game programmers, and, yes, Microsoft.
Plus, if he can just spend a little time optimizing the DirectX code, then EVERY game benefits. You know that if he finds any new tricks, he'll report on them, and even the free software world will benefit. Check out this link at Dr. Dobb's journal for a taste of what he is doing at Microsoft, and why it is important.
Like he says in the article, the important thing is to do, not to think, and there's a lot of optimization to do at Microsoft.
Have you looked at a physics textbook recently? Entry level books go about half the way - it takes a born-physicist to understand what is going on with only the textbook. It almost requires a teacher to demonstrate the math, to get feedback on what the student is doing wrong.
Plus, they are too expensive. Like most educational materials, it is overpriced, because people are buying them with government funding (schools), or are forced to buy them (college students). There appears to be little competition, or at least little competition that results in a better product.
Then, you say to truly appreciate this stuff, you need the equvalent of 3 years of a physics major. Calculus, Diff Eq., Quantum Mechanics - you could do it in two years, but probably not if you were working at the same time. In other words, only students can appreciate it.
I think you can transmit some of the wonder of physics in a format that the average person can understand. I believe you can even convey some of the theory to the mathematically inclined - some of the best authors have done it. But to say, don't study it unless you study the pure stuff - I can't agree with that. That leads to members of congress, who have been told they can't even comprehend particle physics, making funding decisions on the superconducting supercolider. We need the lower-level stuff to communicate the promise of science to the non-scientific public.
That being said, it is fairly ignorant to start speculating on practical uses when you don't understand the theory. Ignorant, or good engineering, depending on the result.
And, it's fairly unforgivable to use Imperial units to the exclusion of scientific units. I can forgive both being given, since I think in Imperial units most of the time, but doing physics in Imperial units? It gives me nightmares of thermodynamics classes.
I'm a little concerned with the "talk to your lawyer before signing a contract" line. I'm working my first job out of college, and I don't have a lawyer of my own, or really the money to hire one. Is a laywer necessary for every contract negotiation, or is it just paranoia, and may turn off the prospective employer?
I'm fairly certain that I don't actually have a contract, that I'm hire-at-will, or whatever, that means the company could fire me at any time without having to give cause - luckily, it is a sane, small company, where this simply means "as long as you do your job, you have job security". I think only the president and possibly the legal consul have actual contracts.
Thanks for doing the research. I'm glad that there is some flexibility, at least in Florida's law. I would be a bit worried if some 23 year old was going out with my 16 year old sister, but that's another matter entirely...
Hmmm - I'd still like a bit of reason in the system, rather than knee-jerk "if you were convicted, you don't get the job". For instance, if a 17-year-old has sex with a 16-year-old (or whatever the age of consent is), is that a sex crime? Should that stop the person from EVER having a job that involves children? Should that person have to go door to door, forever, saying that they are a sex criminal?
Of course, if I'm wrong about statatory rape, then my point is moot. Still, I've seen little good come out of absolute laws (three strikes, zero-tolerance school laws, etc), that I'm wary of opening that can of worms.
That being said, I think issues like universal health care, affordable housing, well-paid educators and child-care workers, and many other issues are more important than whether Amazon knows my book preferences, or my bank tells other I now onw a house.
I still think that, designed correctly, you would look at the PC. BeOS used to come on a platform with two processors. As a cool trick, there were lights on the front, like the equalizer indicators on a stereo, that indicated the load on each of the processors. These were popular enough that, when the BeOS was ported to other platforms, users created alternative displays for the new systems. You may even have a visual resource meter somewhere on your desktop, for the same effect.
Did it add a little cost? Yes. Was it cool? Yes. Did the users like it? Enough to port it to new systems, and enough that Microsoft uses a similar concept for their resource meter. You know something is successful when Microsoft steals it.
I think, for only a slight cost, some kind of cool addition could be made to the case. I like blinking lights, especially when they convey information, and when they are programable. Why do I have to look to the back of my computer to see if the network is on?
My car is a tool as well. I shop first for reliability, fuel efficiency, and value. But, when find a model I like, I can choose some extras, such as color. Fire-engine green is said to be the safest color (cars in that color have proportionally fewer accidents), so if I was being a pragmatist, my car would be that color. Instead, I choose one which better suits my taste. My brother, against advice, picked bright red. He gets pulled over for speeding a bit more, but the girls seem to like it.
As long as they are ugly, design will tend toward making cases smaller, easier to tuck away and forget about them. Cool cases will make statements, make them part of the home. Power users still pick the ugly ones, for practical reasons, but what if the case was the same on the outside, but for a little more (or even the same cost), you could get a custom color?
Can it happen? Well, users complained about how hard it was to get into the cases to add cards, etc, and now my Gateway is dead-easy to get into. There are two thumb screws, and the side pops right off. The only hard part is that I have to disconnect all the cords, and take the box out of its cabinet, because its too ugly to always be out in the open.
The problem with stylish cases is that they often limit your ability to upgrade. HP and Compaq often have proprietary motherboards, riser cards or power supplies that put a halt to any thought of upgrading in the future. The companies become the only place for upgrade parts, they know it and charge accordingly. I much prefer to stick with generic parts and retain the pleasure of being able to shop around for upgrades.
I agree. Motherboard design is one of the limiting factors - you have to go with some motherboard standard if you are going to have interchangable cases. HP and Compaq, through their designs, add a lot to the arguement, "Style=low value".
However, there is a case market out there, which makes me think there are some motherboard standards that are strong enough that you can design to them. Plus, the company in the story title offers mod kits for your case, where you punch out the hole and put in the window, etc., which can be used on the plain vanilla cases.
All that being said, the motherboard itself is one of the coolest parts of the machine. A nice green color, slightly tranlucent, and you can fool yourself into thinking you understand all the components (That's a capacitor... I think). If it wasn't for dust, and the accompaning fear that you may use Windex to clean the board, more manufacturers would make the motherboard visible, maybe with some cool backlighting...
Good to hear from you! I was hoping you would clear up whether the post was made with a Music topic or not.
.NET strategy or whatever makes it irrelevant. If this is the case, it's using the courts (and costing the taxpayers money) in a somewhat unethical fashion.
Microsoft basically filed a claim that, based on comments the judge made after the trial, that he was biased and his judgement was impared. There are three explainations:
1. Microsoft is trying to create as many cases as possible. This way, as long as one is still pending, they can avoid the breakup. Or, at least put it off until the
2. Old-fashioned FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt), now applied to government and legal questions. Before, the American public could think, "A judge ruled that Microsoft is a monopoly!" This would impact stock price, consumer opinion, etc. Now, they have to think "A judge ruled that Microsoft is a monopoly, but the judge may be biased, and the decision hasn't been reviewed by a higher court, and the tech landscape has changed since then, and there's a new president who is pro-business..." End result - consumer opinion is put on hold, stock price stays somewhat steady, and Microsoft gets some breathing room.
3. They truly believe that he has to be biased. This would almost prove the judge's opinion that Microsoft is arrogant: "How can anyone rule against us? He must have been biased at the start!" All the have on him is an interview after the fact, unless he has some "friends" that will rat on him. I doubt there is enough evidence for this trial to go through. As far as I know, higher courts rule on the possible subjectiveness of the lower court by reviewing the case, and Microsoft case is more "the judge was flawed" then "the case was flawed", or so it seems.
Anyway, it's interesting.
Now, the slightly off-topic stuff. I was confused by the music topic, so I went to search for your name. The search engine ignores the character "_", so a search for "the_rev_matt" ended up as a search for "therevmatt". I then searched for "punitiveart", and found the three references. I looked at the web site, and was interested by what I saw (thanks for some good links).
Either you posted in a weird forum (which you didn't), or a Slashdot editor changed it to the Music topic. Either way, an editor should be in the position to go back and fix the problem, especially with the visual cue that something is wrong. Why didn't they?
It got me thinking, has the editiorial content gone down since I started reading, or do I just notice it more? There have been some strange behaviours, such as typos, links that were never checked, etc. Someone points this out (in an intollerant fashion, usually), and folks use that thread to complain about the declining quality on SlashDot. Perhaps off-topic, but I can argue that posting to a thread is on-topic, even if the original thread is off-topic (obviously, I have a bias, since I do it myself). However, the moderators browsing at earliest posts, no threads, don't see the thread, and mod it as off-topic. I see these in the meta-mod, and ocassionally mark them as unfair mods, sometimes taking a karma hit myself in the process.
Anyway, I've seen corrections and additions to stories, so I know it is possible. The question is, why don't they do it more often? Ocassionaly, they will change something, which will make a whole thread (the back-seat editor thread) stop making sense, so possible it's for consistancy. However, these do go into the archives, so I'd like to see some pro-active editing, to take out mistakes when they are noticed.
One of the things I like about SlashDot is the reasonable approximation of a water cooler. A story may or may not be interesting in itself, but the discussion is almost always interesting. Usually, the form is "On the subject of Linux, Kernel 2.4 was just officially released!". In my opinion, this one should have come out as, "Speaking of news, the DOJ filed a brief in the case where Microsoft accused Judge Jackson of being biased". Instead, it came out as, "On the subject of Music, the DOJ says that Jackson was not biased!" My responce may be "Duh! Of course they would say that", or "Huh? Music?". Lively, but off-topic discussion insues.
I've seen a lot of mistakes lately, so maybe a copy editor is sick, or I'm just noticing them more. One possible explanation, though, is that the mistakes are intentional, written in a code only a select few understand, blah blah blah. From there, it was simple enough to imagine a global conspiracy. Maybe you weren't even who you said you were, someone just stole your id (maybe the conspiracy searches for those who have several ids, and create a new one).
I've rambled on enough. Interesting website, congrats for adding content to this Internet thing, and thanks for being good-natured about it.
Did the DOJ sing its opinion that Jackson's not biased? If not, why the choice of category?
I was a bit confused myself. Other posts are of the opinion that this shouldn't have been front-page news, or that the title could have been done better.
Of course, when things don't quite make sense, the conspiracy theories start.
The person who submitted the story, the_rev_matt, does not appear to be a regular SlashDot poster. He does appear to have several incarnations, such as reverend_matt and The Reverend. One of those IDs, reverend_matt, has a email address of troll@punitiveart.com. This gentleman already confesses to some troll leanings.
The website, at www.punitiveart.com, is a slashdot-style website where the reverend posts stories of his own personal interest. The latest story was dated November 5, titled Men are Better Than Women. While the casual viewer may think that this is a right-wing rant, the post goes on to condemn misogyny. This individual has a history of using stealth tactics to get you to read his story.
It is possible, then, that he wanted the story printed, and used sly tactics, such as using a strange category and a flamebait title, to get the editor to post it.
However, I believe it to instead be a code signal. Others will see this post, the title, the subject, and know that they should prepare. They will then search the comments for a specific comment, from a specific user, and know the time is near. Finally, the comment will be moderated, in a strange fashion, one that will leave the meta-moderators scratching their heads, but those in the know will know that the next phase has commenced, and to unlease the virus/ detonate the bombs/ flee to the deserts/ write letters to the editor, or whatever the grand plan is.
Or, it could just be Slashdot editors screwing up again. It's become commonplace enough that it doesn't bother me anymore. Of course, maybe they want you to ignore it...
I read the CNN article, and it seems that the title was just a summary of the case presented by the justice department. The anti-trust case is now moving through the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, where Microsoft has alleged that Jackson was biased, based on statements he gave to the New Yorker magazine.
Now, CNN used just about the same headline, "U.S. denies judge who ordered Microsoft breakup was biased". Perhaps the headline "U.S. Justice Department Files Brief" would have been better, but the title was accurate. Flamebait for Slashdot, but accurate.
Perhaps a better title for the Slashdot story would have been "Microsoft Anti-Trust Case Continues". The story probably is not front-page news, but deserves to be posted somewhere - it will be interesting to see what happens in what may be the last days of this case (with a Bush nominee potentially yanking the DoJ off the case). Another interesting story would be how much Microsoft / Bill Gates contributed to the Republican campaign, and how it was done.
Your walls would be obsolete in 3 months! Would your lights go off when the OS crashed, or you had to upgrade the kernel? What would happen when the system got hacked? Would they run a single process in an infinite loop, causing a portion of the wall to catch on fire, or would they just replace your wallpaper with something ugly with lousy spelling?
I'd rather have computer furniture, like a coffee table. It could have built in remote, plug in through the floor, have some convenient USB ports, and a thick piece of glass on top to protect from beer spills. It could even have the processor near the surface, to act as a plate warmer!
2D scaling is a problem, when you start pushing theoretical limits. However, many of our speed increases are due to better designs as well as better techniques. I've seen some promising theoretical work in expanding into the third dimension, which may cause cooling problems but may also allow better designs.
I also imagine, due to cooling requirements, development may go the route of multiple cheaper processors rather than expensive Apollo project processors (processors that push the theoretical limits). When this happens, software will start to morph to take advantage of it, and I predict we will still see gains comparable to Moore's law.
There's even less to fear if you don't live in one of the major cities. I'm feeling pretty safe in Tulsa, OK. Who is going to bomb a city in Oklahoma? (Except, of course, for other Oklahomans.)
However, one nuke going off in NYC would still be disasterous. Millions would die, the economy would take a hit, many would leave, and there would be a higher change that your new next door neighbor is from New York, always bragging how superior the Big Apple is (before the bomb, obviously). And if it hit the West Coast? We sent all those folks west - we don't want them back!
Well, I'm not seeing many defending style, so I will. A disclaimer though - when I spend my computing dollars, I'll get a larger monitor, faster processor, and more memory before any stylistic considerations (and often, style doesn't make it onto the list).
The argument "Style over substance" is valid when marketing and design is used to make a sub-standard product look better simply by improving it's physical appearance. I cringe when relatives buy a poor performing PC, simply because it looked sexier than the alternatives.
But you don't have to sacrifice style for performance. The performance of a PC is not inversely proportional to how good it looks. Some of you have probably seen some pretty sexy looking heavy metal, and some of the highest performing notebooks also look pretty sharp.
We've all been duped by experience to trust that ugly=value. That's from the days when the big domestic guys were making pretty and expensive boxes, while the overseas guys were making ugly and cheap boxes. If you had tech skill, you passed on the pretty hand-holding models and went straight for the foreign boxes, with questionable configurations and lots of driver disks.
We no longer live in those times. You can buy an excellent PC over the Internet, that's fully functional. If you want to build one yourself, you can do that, but often the savings isn't worth the time (the people that know how to do it are worth quite a bit per hour).
So, why are PC's still ugly? Because we still buy them ugly, 'cause we think ugly=value=power. That's a larger factor than other considerations, especially since a little design may even help with cooling problems.
I much prefer my 1930's house with ivy and a little yard to a warehouse with a raised floor for easy cable access. I prefer my hardwood floors to 1/16 inch, easy to vacuum carpet. If prefer my home office, with a view of my yard and my dogs, to my cubicle at work (even though the cubicle is nice as cubicles go). I prefer my slashdot posts with nice formatting, well-thought out ideas, and most of the grammar and spelling checked to three-second post and links to naughty cx domains.
Why don't these ascetic tastes spill over into the PC domain? Mostly because the people that make them have bought into the style vs. substance war, and you can either buy an ugly but powerful system, or a pretty but brain-dead system. Well, you can have it both ways. To think otherwise is to still live in a world where people can be either intelligent but unattractive, or beautiful but dumb. Well, I have a little more hope for the world.
I'm slowly becoming a style convert, and my wife has helped a lot. It's not that expensive anymore, and it's becoming cheaper every day. You can still be a geek, too. Just run the wire through the walls rather than over the floors, and get some help when shopping for clothes.
Check out an organization that's trying to bring some design into our lives. They had a contest to design a better power meter, with some interesting results. (If anyone can find the slashdot article that first linked it, please tell me).
If you have doubts about the Wachowski brothers, check out Bound, a very interesting crime drama. It has a great feel, and Gina Gershon amd Jennifer Tilly as lovers doesn't hurt. It's well worth the rental cost.
They also have writing credits on Assasins, but I can't vouch for it. I seem to remember only being mildly interested when it was in theaters.
Yep, it looks like Home Depot is going Linux in a big way. Here's a story.
They are going through Red Hat, which is supporting the project pretty intensively. There's a large cost associated with that (the story quotes about $55,000), but probably less than the comparable Microsoft support. It looks like it started last May, and is a three-year program, involving back-store functions, floor terminals, and registers.
Now we just need the second part of the equation: demonstration that it's mission critical ready, and that it's profitable.
At the same time, this isn't really Microsoft's turf - I can imagine they would have needed a custom system, anyway, and employees won't really be using Star Office, or other office tools. They didn't mention moving to Linux boxes at headquarters, either.
I agree as well, the editors do a pretty good job of cancelling bad stories, even my own.
But, sometimes, bizarre stuff happens. For instance, if Jon Katz was a normal user, he'd get shouted down or routinely ignored. As it is, his posts are first page news by default.
When Linux 2.4 was "announced" (Linus posted it, so the developers knew, and waited to see how long it would take the mainstream users and the press to notice), it was done as a story in the Linux subtopic, not the main page. CmdrTaco even commented that he had to post it quick, or he'd get a ton of submissions. Well, he probably still got a ton of submissions, since most people assumed it was front page news,and when they didn't see it there, submitted the story. There were 772 comments to that story, which seems like critical mass to make it a front pager. If stories were moderated like comments, this may have gotten pushed to the front page. Of course, the great leader may have been making a selfish choice, to keep the bandwidth pipes open for himself, by limiting the SlashDot effect for a few hours...
Also, some mod to stories may help with commenting problems. I may have the most insightful comment in the world, but if I don't see the story in the first hour, the moderators won't see it. If you look at comment posts, most highly moderated comments are the first few, giving a definite advantage to quick posters, even those who may not think their idea out clearly. It seems like a recipe for trolls.
Anyway, some system that mods comments may help, by keeping a story alive. If there is a lot of activity in a story, it could be kept high on the list, and people would be inclined to read it again. I could imagine a system where stories get points based on activity. New stories could have such a high score that they start at the top, and lose points just for existing, so that all new stories start at the top. Old stories where people are still discussing it would rise to the top, based on story mods and new comments. Moderators would get fresh points to use on a story, when it reaches a certain threshhold.
Yes, it's not fully thought out, but a system where the users have more control over the stories may make for interesting discussions - or at least less knee-jerk posting.
I fully support this effort and other efforts. This is why:
Slashdot is where it is because of community. At first, it may have been the editors doing most of the work picking out cool stuff. Nerds of different flavors showed up because it was cool stuff, and started discussion groups. Soon, the editors didn't really need to start looking for cool stuff, the readers started submitting it. It's barely neccessary for me to look at ZDNet, Salon, or the AP wire, since SlashDot seems to always pick up on the best stories in a short amount of time.
Slashdot isn't entirely community driven, however. The editors do take some editorial liscense, deciding what is post worthy, what is front page news, editing submissions, etc. Occasionally, a story will only get posted because of the massive number of submissions, against the editor's tastes, but this is rare. The posters don't know what's going on - they just see a little "reject" flag next to their submission. This is probably one of the most frustrating parts for someone who is just starting that level of participation - no feedback from the editiors, besides a binary responce and a 6-month old FAQ.
This particular project doesn't seem to be "SlashCode, but with X!!!" Instead, he is making an effort to allow the community to decide how things are organized. I think it's a laudible experiment.
Just like voting systems, no post-and-moderate system will make everyone happy. This particular one may not even scale well. But we need the experiementers, and this one seems to have a good start.
What we could use is someone in the business community jumping on the bandwagon, and writing an open letter, that could be used at other places: "See! ABC company is doing it, and it works!"
For instance, what if an executive of a major firm tallied up the cost of Microsoft licenses, and showed that eliminating all the license costs would fund X number of jobs for new Linux/BSD administrators/techs, with $Y profit? It's hard to argue with numbers, especially when a profit can be shown. Make it an official report recommending a global change to Linux/BSD over the whole operation, in Z years.
Further, let this high-profile company make the change, create some open-source software that they found useful, standardize a desktop for their use, and show that it works, and is profitable - and other smart companies will try to do the same.
However, I have to guess, since this hasn't been done yet, that the price/profit curves haven't made it yet. Linux may be ready for the desktop, but the cost to convert over may be still too much, or no one has shown that it can be profitable and maintain productivity. It's still Microsoft's world, and they have most company's ears.
Hmmm. I have to admit, there may be biz applications where other techniques are more effective, faster, etc than OOP. But I find, as complexity increases, it is important to start thinking in terms of seperate, smaller units communicating through interfaces, or atomic peices being acted on by functions or procedures. I've worked with procedural code, some of it quite complex, and written by several people. The best procedural code, the code that was easiest to modify and had the least errors, worked under a small component model. On the other hand, the stream-of-consciouness code, where the structure of the data and code was not thought out, was the most error prone, the hardest to debug, and the most difficult to change.
If I had a OOP language like C++ availible on the machine (which only had Fortran), the "good" procedural stuff would have very easily translated into OOP, while the "bad" stuff would take quite a bit of work, requiring some reverse-engineering and redesigning. There were some parts, however, that appeared to work best in procedural code (possibly the scedulers), which we may have left alone.
This has been my (limited) experience, that as complexity increases, thinking in an object-oriented fashion makes code cleaner and easier to maintain. This is the problem, though - you have to demonstrate a complex system, that would neccessarily be harder to understand, to prove this point. It's not enough to show a "Hello, World!" program. Mininum requirements would be a program large enough to seperate into many modules, with at least 3 non-trivial components (for instance, text processing, a GUI interface, and file management), and, once a working program is completed, try to make a modificiation. Oh, and you'd have to do it once in an OOP language/style, and once in a procedural language/style.
It's too much to show in a quick example, and businesses don't have the resources to do both, just to prove it to themselves. It's a little like the Windows/Linux debate - neither arguement is convincing unless you try both, but who has the time in a business environment to experiment with operating systems/languages, in a fair and balanced way? If that's the case, then your business is probably in trouble, because you don't have enough work to do!
Sorry, never really look at the UIDs. I point out that he stated he was "posting anonymously to preserve my precious karma". Since he did NOT post anonymously, it seemed a bit like reverse psycology, daring the moderators to mod it up.
My only regret is that I responded not to the poster but to the comment - in the future, I'll try to address my comments to the poster rather than the SlashDot community at large.
If there's one thing that geeks may agree on, it is that it is much easier to show something than to explain it. You may have to back that geek in a corner and beat on him a while, but eventually, he may agree.
That's why we like open source (look at the code rather than document or talk about the code), and maybe why we like comics - it can be a great story, which shows you what it's talking about at the same time.
Scott McCloud's "informational" comics are usually long on ideas, but it slides easy, because of the pretty pictures, which complement the idea pretty well.
Anyway, here's a possible solution to the micropayment problem - what about an online newspaper? Not NYT, or the local rag, but a do-it-yourself content bundle. It acts a bit like a clearinghouse, where online content providers submit material, the newspaper brokers the deal between the user and the creator, and the user gets a tidy bill for the whole package.
Example - let's say I want my personalized start page thing. I get news from the AP wire, Yahoo! style, fun tech stuff from Slashdot, and a half-a-dozen internet comics. Yahoo! and Slashdot come free, but I get ads, unless I want to pay a nominal fee. The comics, for instance, are half-a-cent a day, so my daily paper comes to about $0.10. As more users are added, more options are added, and choices are cross-correlated, so that the server can offer advice as to what you may want.
What's the advantage over other mediums? I can decide exactly what I want (whereas now, I throw out the sports, home, and classifieds section of my paper), and I pay for it when my eyeballs hit it. I can access it anywhere (like a links webpage), and the creators get compensation either way, through advertisers or user-payments. And, if they want to jump to traditional medium, they have proof people would pay for the content.
It's just an idea, throwing it out there to get ripped to shreds...
Check it out! OOP=Communism!!!
I'm sorry, but you lose a little credibility when you start comparing something to communism or fascism. Yes, there may be problems with an OOP approach to everything, but such comparisons only draw away from your criticism.
Even so, I'm still reading the article, even down to the little soviet flag at the bottom.
BTW - there is a way to moderate the moderators on SlashDot. There is a meta-moderation tool, where you are presented with 10 comments and a moderation to the comment, and you decide whether the moderation was fair, not fair, or you decline to decide.
There's a FAQ, but there is also a bug. Although it is availible to anyone in the top 90% oldest accounts (10% youngest accounts are excluded), it doesn't appear as an option until you do it once. So go Meta-Moderate (M2), and then do it every day. You'll help keep out the evil moderators.