Moderators: Please read the whole thing before you "flame bait" me. Thanks.
Some guy in Redmond is playing a game on Linux, and this is news?
Why does the Free/Open Source community care about this story? So there's some clueless guy trying to do an install at Microsoft. Maybe he works in the cafeteria, who knows? The world is filled with clueless people doing "usability studies" with Linux. Why do we fall all over ourselves everytime the words "Microsoft" and "Linux" are linked together?
Microsoft is not the competition. Whatever Microsoft does with Linux, it doesn't change the facts about Linux. But every time we point out these type of stories, we reinforce the myth that somehow we need to be concerned about what's going on at Microsoft. We don't. Linux and free/open source stand on their own. We don't need to be compared to some software hause in Redmond. Once you start trying to compete on Microsoft's terms, you lose.
Man hasn't been back to the moon since the last Apollo mission, all because of funding. And let's face it, with the state of our school systems and all those nuclear bombs we need to buy:-) the funding for such projects is hard to justify.
So, while the Artemus project will probably turn out to be a failure (although somebody will make lots of money off it anyway, because the aforementioned P.T. Barnum said something about fools and money...), I think it underscores the fact that space exploration needs to be commercialized. Turn NASA into a regulatory body, and hand off space exploration to joint projects between Universities and corporations. If the world governments wants to be a partner on some of these projects, let them pay their share, and enjoy their share of the profits/losses.
You wrote: Finally a company, Sun, is doing exactly what hackers have been demanding all these years: letting them have a look at interesting technology, to learn from and satisfy their curiosity.
I seriously doubt Sun's motivation is to satisfy hacker's curiosity. I see their motivation as twofold: 1) Capitalize on the open source craze, and act as if they're a part of it. 2) Capitalize on the sheer body-count of open source developers to make their product better. Number 1) is just deceptive. The license doesn't sponsor a "community," it seeks to take the works of others and keep it as their own. Number 2) isn't necessarily bad in it's own right, it's how companies like Red Hat make money. But Sun wants to keep volunteer work as their own. They don't want to "share with their neighbor" (as RMS would say). That's not right, and it's the whole reason that licenses like the SCSL are a bad thing.
This isn't about open source evangelism and your imagined right to free computer hardware. It's about giving students and other interested people a tool to learn from, in a way that doesn't hurt Sun's business.
I think you mean "free computer software?" But again, Sun isn't releasing this as a learning tool. Now, if you learn from perusing it, great. But if you contribute to it, you have just given up your rights to software you created. You get nothing. You have no control over your work. And worst of all, you have no control over who benefits from your work. You work has effectively been shackled by Sun. Now, had you spent your time developing for a free/open source project, many, many more people could benefit from it.
Nobody loses anything from this. People interested in microprocessor design gain. Why are you complaining?
Everybody but Sun loses from this. Because every line of code contributed to the code base is sucked into Sun, never to be shared with anybody. If you contribute a nifty routine to a SCSL project, it can't be copied into a GPL work. It can't be shared.
Closed licenses that pretend to be open are, at best, misleading. They lull you into a false sense that you are "contributing." But instead, it takes away from you. If you want to contribute to the Sun codebase, at least go work for them and get paid for it. But don't for one second think that you're contributing to the community. You're not, and it's worse than that. You're taking away your talents and skills from a real community that could use them. And that's worse than nothing at all.
It's more than just rebooting a server. It's responding to the multitude of complaints from spamees, the time spent tracking the spammer down, the administrative time spent filing court documents, and then documenting the whole event.
Not to mention that if the fine for spamming were only, say $100, many spammers would happily pay that. Personally I think they got off light at $600.
Anyone else have a problem with Red Hat cutting Red Hat stories from their slashdot feed? They say the SEC requires it, but I think that's an excuse. They don't control Slashdot content, so I doubt they could be held liable for it.
What's next, cutting stories about rival Linux distributions because their shareholders require it?
"It's a nice little 'Slashdot as a weblog' piece apparently designed to stroke my ego. "
Hey Rob, you seem to do a pretty good job of stroking your own ego with "piece"es like this. And not everyone that mentions/. is out to court your favor.
Sheesh. (Sorry Rob, love/., hate this garbage)
Suggestion: Create a new "Back-patting" icon to put stories like this under, so I can filter properly.
> 1. Battle droids in a high tech galactic civilization where FTL travel is common have targeting systems inferior to those on a F-15.
Ah yes, but the *next* version of the Battle droid will have a much-improved targeting ability! And we have this great upgrade program...
> 2. Actually, their targeting systems are inferior to a spastic eight year old with a slingshot.
I think it's the Cute Field projected by Anakin. Nothing can get through!
> 3. After the Jedi Knights have proven they can deflect laser bolts with their light sabers, the battle droids never think to stop firing.
Must be using Civ II programmers...
> 4. Rather than having integral weapons systems, battle droids are cleverly designed to carry weapons that can be picked up and used against them by their opponents.
Well now, that actually makes sense. It's cheaper to replace a blaster than some custom designed component.
> 5. In the Star Wars universe, "Palantine" means "Clinton."
Or Nixon. Or Lawyer. Or Salesman...
> 6. A Phantom Menace character's level of annoying goofiness is directly proportional to the number of action figures of said character Lucasfilms hopes to sell to small children.
Luke figures must be off the chart!
> 7. The Planet Naboo has underwater Rastifarians, but not underwater ganja.
I dunno...it would explain a lot about Jar Jar!
> 8. Darth Maul has a black robe, a black shirt, black pants, red eyes, a red and black face, a red light saber, and horns, but for some reason left his "I'M EVIL!" T-shirt at home.
He's using subtlety!
> 9. The most futuristic starship in The Republic's fleet is an SR-71 Blackbird covered in chrome.
> 10. A light saber can evidently cut through anything.
Pity we couldn't test that on whatever-the-hell-Jar-Jar-is vertabrae.
> 11. If Annakin Skywalker built C3PO, you would think the droid might mention this to Luke Skywalker at some point during the first movie. ("Oh, by the way, your father built me and also happens to be Darth Vader. More tea?")
3P0's a knucklehead. He probably never put it together. Still, we'll have to wait for Episode III to debate that one.
> 12. Training for being a Queen's Decoy evidently doesn't
Training to be a Dark Lord of the Sith apparantly doesn't include acting lessons either.
> 13. Play-by-play sportscasters are the same no matter what galaxy you're in.
> 14. Even giant reptilian blobs like to have scantly clad human women in their entourage.
Can't fault him for that!
> 15. Yoda's mustache makes him look like a 300-year old Wilford Brimley
It's good to see that Yoda's acting gets better as he gets older.
> 16. If you took out all the scenes with direct equivalants in the first three Star Wars films, The Phantom Menace would be 15 minutes long.
If you took out all the scenes with direct equivalants in Return of the Jedi, The Phantom Menace would be 15 minutes long.
> 17. Most of those 15 minutes would be plot holes and special effects.
> 18. All giant starships are required by law to have one point in the ship where a chain reaction can be started by a single laser blast from a member of the Skywalker family.
But before he does it, you need to lose most of your pilots as fodder.
> 19. Using The Force allows Jedi Knights to jump as high as Jet Li did as Fong Sai Yuk, but with more justification.
> 20. Darth Maul's body falls and bounces exactly the way a lightweight dummy would.
[Spoiler Warning!!!] Fitting. You're an BSLFH (Bastard Sith Lord From Hell), you're trained to take on 2 Jedi's at once, you nail the best one, you've got the apprentice hanging in the power tube (because apparantly there's no such thing as guard rails and grates in the SW universe). So what do you do? Apparantly stand there and gloat! Because there's no way this guy is going to fly out of there, right?! Jeez, I'd have had my light sabre held like a baseball bat over the pit saying "hey batter batter batter batter!" just waiting for him to jump! He fell like a dummy because...well he is a dummy!
> So what? Being dependent on one code base is > bad. Choice is good. Just because something is > GPL-ed, or has an FSF stamp on it doesn't mean > other alternatives can't be better (for > whatever value of better you prefer; what's > better for one can mean worse for someone else).
Improving the codebase for the sake of improvement is a good thing. If you want to write a better compiler than gcc, then that advances the state of the technology (=good). But if you're writing a compiler for the *sole* purpose of not using gcc, then you're wheel-spinning (=bad). You are wasting a tremendous amount of resources that could have been better spent advancing the state of the technology.
I don't advocate that GNU/GPL tools are the best. In some cases they're not the best. Perl is a prime example. But I'd be crazy to set out and create a GPL version of Perl, for the sole purpose of avoiding Artistic License. That's really what we're talking about.
RMS isn't a lunatic. Eccentric, yes. Very. But behind every revolution there's an eccentric. By being so leftist, he pulls those leaning to the right back towards the middle. Like RMS or not, he serves an important purpose, and has been a major (positive) influence on what Linux is today.
And let me reiterate my earlier position: a GNU-Free distribution serves nobody. Reinventing a *massive* codebase (despite what TC will have you believe) is wheel-spinning. Putting out Yet Another Distribution is wheel-spinning, and further fragments the Free/Open/Linux community. And by encouraging these divisions, TC is essentially fragmenting the same community that RMS has been helping to create. So who's the real lunatic here?
Counting total lines of code is a completely bogus method of determining the "worth" or importance of a package. Tom of all people should understand this. The fact is that GNU software makes up an *important* percentage of Linux distributions. If compilers and other utilities had to be coded from scratch, instead of relying on many utilities that have been around years before the Linux kernel came about, Linux would be years behind.
I'm not arguing that it *should* be called GNU/Linux. Hell, I don't care what it's called (just don't call me late...never mind). But a new GNU-free distribution is just stupid. At a time when the Free/Open/Whatever community needs to work together more, a move towards fragmentation serves nobody's interests. Not Tom's, not the FSF's, and especially not the end user.
Let the FSF holler all they want. If distributors agree, they'll call it GNU/Linux. If they don't (and most of them don't seem to agree with the FSF), they'll call it whatever the heck they want.
Because PC vendors have traditionally cut costs everywhere they can. Your average PC buyer factors price heavily (sometimes too heavily) into the buying decision. Whereas Apple markets to...well, Apple users, who tend to be a bit more discerning. Heck, PC vendors would use fibre board for cases if they could get away with it.
I dunno about the funky case design and colors, but Apple has the right idea behind their Power Mac G3. The fold-down enclosure is something the PC world should have had a long time ago. Everything you need access to, right there in front of you on the door. Brilliant. So far (with very few exceptions, which are usually homebuilt), all I've seen in the PC world is beige cases with little bits of colored plastic. Yawn.
Slashdot Mirror
Moderators: Please read the whole thing before you "flame bait" me. Thanks.
Some guy in Redmond is playing a game on Linux, and this is news?
Why does the Free/Open Source community care about this story? So there's some clueless guy trying to do an install at Microsoft. Maybe he works in the cafeteria, who knows? The world is filled with clueless people doing "usability studies" with Linux. Why do we fall all over ourselves everytime the words "Microsoft" and "Linux" are linked together?
Microsoft is not the competition. Whatever Microsoft does with Linux, it doesn't change the facts about Linux. But every time we point out these type of stories, we reinforce the myth that somehow we need to be concerned about what's going on at Microsoft. We don't. Linux and free/open source stand on their own. We don't need to be compared to some software hause in Redmond. Once you start trying to compete on Microsoft's terms, you lose.
So, while the Artemus project will probably turn out to be a failure (although somebody will make lots of money off it anyway, because the aforementioned P.T. Barnum said something about fools and money...), I think it underscores the fact that space exploration needs to be commercialized. Turn NASA into a regulatory body, and hand off space exploration to joint projects between Universities and corporations. If the world governments wants to be a partner on some of these projects, let them pay their share, and enjoy their share of the profits/losses.
You wrote:
Finally a company, Sun, is doing exactly what hackers have been demanding all these years: letting them have a look at interesting technology, to learn from and satisfy their curiosity.
I seriously doubt Sun's motivation is to satisfy hacker's curiosity. I see their motivation as twofold: 1) Capitalize on the open source craze, and act as if they're a part of it. 2) Capitalize on the sheer body-count of open source developers to make their product better. Number 1) is just deceptive. The license doesn't sponsor a "community," it seeks to take the works of others and keep it as their own. Number 2) isn't necessarily bad in it's own right, it's how companies like Red Hat make money. But Sun wants to keep volunteer work as their own. They don't want to "share with their neighbor" (as RMS would say). That's not right, and it's the whole reason that licenses like the SCSL are a bad thing.
This isn't about open source evangelism and your imagined right to free computer hardware. It's about giving students and other interested people a tool to learn from, in a way that doesn't hurt Sun's business.
I think you mean "free computer software?" But again, Sun isn't releasing this as a learning tool. Now, if you learn from perusing it, great. But if you contribute to it, you have just given up your rights to software you created. You get nothing. You have no control over your work. And worst of all, you have no control over who benefits from your work. You work has effectively been shackled by Sun. Now, had you spent your time developing for a free/open source project, many, many more people could benefit from it.
Nobody loses anything from this. People interested in microprocessor design gain. Why are you complaining?
Everybody but Sun loses from this. Because every line of code contributed to the code base is sucked into Sun, never to be shared with anybody. If you contribute a nifty routine to a SCSL project, it can't be copied into a GPL work. It can't be shared.
Closed licenses that pretend to be open are, at best, misleading. They lull you into a false sense that you are "contributing." But instead, it takes away from you. If you want to contribute to the Sun codebase, at least go work for them and get paid for it. But don't for one second think that you're contributing to the community. You're not, and it's worse than that. You're taking away your talents and skills from a real community that could use them. And that's worse than nothing at all.
The Community source is not "better [than] nothing." Given that it's not completely open:
1) If people adopt and develop under SCSL, Sun has no incentive to open the license further.
2) If people don't adopt SCSL, Sun is likely to drop further free/open source involvement.
Either way, SCSL is a bad thing.
It's more than just rebooting a server. It's responding to the multitude of complaints from spamees, the time spent tracking the spammer down, the administrative time spent filing court documents, and then documenting the whole event.
Not to mention that if the fine for spamming were only, say $100, many spammers would happily pay that. Personally I think they got off light at $600.
http://www.etrade.com/redhatipo
Anyone else have a problem with Red Hat cutting Red Hat stories from their slashdot feed? They say the SEC requires it, but I think that's an excuse. They don't control Slashdot content, so I doubt they could be held liable for it.
What's next, cutting stories about rival Linux distributions because their shareholders require it?
"It's a nice little 'Slashdot as a weblog' piece apparently designed to stroke my ego. "
/. is out to court your favor.
/., hate this garbage)
Hey Rob, you seem to do a pretty good job of stroking your own ego with "piece"es like this. And not everyone that mentions
Sheesh. (Sorry Rob, love
Suggestion: Create a new "Back-patting" icon to put stories like this under, so I can filter properly.
> 1. Battle droids in a high tech galactic civilization where FTL travel is common have targeting systems inferior to those on a
F-15.
Ah yes, but the *next* version of the Battle droid will have a much-improved targeting ability! And we have this great upgrade program...
> 2. Actually, their targeting systems are inferior to a spastic eight year old with a slingshot.
I think it's the Cute Field projected by Anakin. Nothing can get through!
> 3. After the Jedi Knights have proven they can deflect laser bolts with their light sabers, the battle droids never think to stop
firing.
Must be using Civ II programmers...
> 4. Rather than having integral weapons systems, battle droids are cleverly designed to carry weapons that can be picked up and
used against them by their opponents.
Well now, that actually makes sense. It's cheaper to replace a blaster than some custom designed component.
> 5. In the Star Wars universe, "Palantine" means "Clinton."
Or Nixon. Or Lawyer. Or Salesman...
> 6. A Phantom Menace character's level of annoying goofiness is directly proportional to the number of action figures of said
character Lucasfilms hopes to sell to small children.
Luke figures must be off the chart!
> 7. The Planet Naboo has underwater Rastifarians, but not underwater ganja.
I dunno...it would explain a lot about Jar Jar!
> 8. Darth Maul has a black robe, a black shirt, black pants, red eyes, a red and black face, a red light saber, and horns, but for
some reason left his "I'M EVIL!" T-shirt at home.
He's using subtlety!
> 9. The most futuristic starship in The Republic's fleet is an SR-71 Blackbird covered in chrome.
> 10. A light saber can evidently cut through anything.
Pity we couldn't test that on whatever-the-hell-Jar-Jar-is vertabrae.
> 11. If Annakin Skywalker built C3PO, you would think the droid might mention this to Luke Skywalker at some point during the
first movie. ("Oh, by the way, your father built me and also happens to be Darth Vader. More tea?")
3P0's a knucklehead. He probably never put it together. Still, we'll have to wait for Episode III to debate that one.
> 12. Training for being a Queen's Decoy evidently doesn't
Training to be a Dark Lord of the Sith apparantly doesn't include acting lessons either.
> 13. Play-by-play sportscasters are the same no matter what galaxy you're in.
> 14. Even giant reptilian blobs like to have scantly clad human women in their entourage.
Can't fault him for that!
> 15. Yoda's mustache makes him look like a 300-year old Wilford Brimley
It's good to see that Yoda's acting gets better as he gets older.
> 16. If you took out all the scenes with direct equivalants in the first three Star Wars films, The Phantom Menace would be 15
minutes long.
If you took out all the scenes with direct equivalants in Return of the Jedi, The Phantom Menace would be 15 minutes long.
> 17. Most of those 15 minutes would be plot holes and special effects.
> 18. All giant starships are required by law to have one point in the ship where a chain reaction can be started by a single laser
blast from a member of the Skywalker family.
But before he does it, you need to lose most of your pilots as fodder.
> 19. Using The Force allows Jedi Knights to jump as high as Jet Li did as Fong Sai Yuk, but with more justification.
> 20. Darth Maul's body falls and bounces exactly the way a lightweight dummy would.
[Spoiler Warning!!!]
Fitting. You're an BSLFH (Bastard Sith Lord From Hell), you're trained to take on 2 Jedi's at once, you nail the best one, you've got the apprentice hanging in the power tube (because apparantly there's no such thing as guard rails and grates in the SW universe). So what do you do? Apparantly stand there and gloat! Because there's no way this guy is going to fly out of there, right?! Jeez, I'd have had my light sabre held like a baseball bat over the pit saying "hey batter batter batter batter!" just waiting for him to jump! He fell like a dummy because...well he is a dummy!
> So what? Being dependent on one code base is
> bad. Choice is good. Just because something is
> GPL-ed, or has an FSF stamp on it doesn't mean
> other alternatives can't be better (for
> whatever value of better you prefer; what's
> better for one can mean worse for someone else).
Improving the codebase for the sake of improvement is a good thing. If you want to write a better compiler than gcc, then that advances the state of the technology (=good). But if you're writing a compiler for the *sole* purpose of not using gcc, then you're wheel-spinning (=bad). You are wasting a tremendous amount of resources that could have been better spent advancing the state of the technology.
I don't advocate that GNU/GPL tools are the best. In some cases they're not the best. Perl is a prime example. But I'd be crazy to set out and create a GPL version of Perl, for the sole purpose of avoiding Artistic License. That's really what we're talking about.
RMS isn't a lunatic. Eccentric, yes. Very. But behind every revolution there's an eccentric. By being so leftist, he pulls those leaning to the right back towards the middle. Like RMS or not, he serves an important purpose, and has been a major (positive) influence on what Linux is today.
And let me reiterate my earlier position: a GNU-Free distribution serves nobody. Reinventing a *massive* codebase (despite what TC will have you believe) is wheel-spinning. Putting out Yet Another Distribution is wheel-spinning, and further fragments the Free/Open/Linux community. And by encouraging these divisions, TC is essentially fragmenting the same community that RMS has been helping to create. So who's the real lunatic here?
I'm not arguing that it *should* be called GNU/Linux. Hell, I don't care what it's called (just don't call me late...never mind). But a new GNU-free distribution is just stupid. At a time when the Free/Open/Whatever community needs to work together more, a move towards fragmentation serves nobody's interests. Not Tom's, not the FSF's, and especially not the end user.
Let the FSF holler all they want. If distributors agree, they'll call it GNU/Linux. If they don't (and most of them don't seem to agree with the FSF), they'll call it whatever the heck they want.
By the way, to get the FSF's viewpoint, read Linux and the GNU Project on the GNU website.
Because PC vendors have traditionally cut costs everywhere they can. Your average PC buyer factors price heavily (sometimes too heavily) into the buying decision. Whereas Apple markets to...well, Apple users, who tend to be a bit more discerning. Heck, PC vendors would use fibre board for cases if they could get away with it.
:-)
No flames please, I'm a Sparc man myself.
I dunno about the funky case design and colors, but Apple has the right idea behind their Power Mac G3. The fold-down enclosure is something the PC world should have had a long time ago. Everything you need access to, right there in front of you on the door. Brilliant. So far (with very few exceptions, which are usually homebuilt), all I've seen in the PC world is beige cases with little bits of colored plastic. Yawn.