let go. Hand the whole batch of code scot-free to some bundle of schmoes in a garage (preferably in America) who really want the distro to be something. They could even rename it Lycoris II, to be cute.
I am burned out on Mandrake's financial woes as well. I have wasted over 100 dollars in the past 6 months on them, and 9 broke functionaility across the board on me after a relatively good go with 8.2. It arrived late, and they were cryptic at best on how they were going to make it up to me... 6 months of MandrakeClub? So that they can use my MandrakeClub membership to beg me for more? I am NOT an unappreciative slob, but I will spend my money elsewhere, thank you. This death is a pity, but the knowledge can be best used elswhere by real business people.
plus games, controllers, a screwdriver, a new card every three weeks, a rosary to fend off bugs and crashes, the outside hope that Dad isn't on the thing & Mom isn't on the thing, a firm grasp of what havoc default installs of games bring to a home system, the ability to maze your way through menus and icons, friends who all truck over to your house to play or a VERY portable box that is suddenly over at Timmy's and can't seem to generate a spreadsheet for Dad, a grasp of what upgrading security patches does to your games, a nice, safe internet connection...
It would be developed right here, on this very website. It would be the product of open scrutiny by even casual users for ergonomics and hardware compatibility. It would have upgrades and changes dictated by "ask SlashDot" posts and "Cowboyneal" polls. You'd have to have a 90% advocacy in order to adopt a bugfix. The system would reward karma. The trashbin would be called the Troll, and there would be a universal minimally cleared signon called Anonymous Coward.
Actually, this analogy breaks down quite quickly. Asking for Linux standardization is not in effect making every car a Volvo. It is, however, making every car a thing that rolls forwards and backwards under its own power, stops predictably, has steering, carrying people helps. Face it, there are dead minimums of compatibility in cars. They are limited by width of roads, the need for adequate lights, emissions controls, etc. Linux needs the same things. By that I mean Linux needs some point to call LINUX, and let the modifiers start from there. Carrying the car analogy further, there are some wonderfully powerful cars out there, but not all of them are "Street-legal". It is so for OSes as well. Fine, you modify BSD to monitor your fridge for beverage hackers, but don't expect that flavor to have equal shoulder space with the vanilla desktop gets-things-done model. Linux needs a Taurus, a Camry, an (feel the pun flowing through you, Luke) Accord. It needs a flagship bang-minimum universal and singularly supported distro/flavor. It looks like Red Hat is the current champ. Sure, RH botches things up, but that doesn't mean that Suse or Mandrake or Debian or anyone else has to co-botch it up. They can move merrily along as the "better" distros. In the end, all this bickering will only last as long as people refuse to share credit and accept the burdens of uniformity. Because at the end of the day the software that people use is the one that wins. I use Mandrake, it does well. i do not plan to LAN my garage lights to it, I plan to surf and write and balance the odd checkbook with it. It's a Camry.
P.S. I drive a Mazda Protege MP3 with a CAI and Dunlop Zs, I burn pure premium in it, and bird-poop drives me ape.
What mystifies me...
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Mandrake News
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Is how so-called "upgrades" of Mandrake seem to be total rehashes. I ordered 9 from Mandrake and eventually got it (with appropriate apologies for its tardiness). I backed up my important stuff and decided to do a wipeout install just for fun. Nothing worked quite as well as 8.2 out-of-box. No printer, no sound, odd omissions of access to partitions, etc. After running the rabbits for a while, I gave up and reinstalled 8.2. Bingo, evrything worked. Upgraded packages to 9, and everything still worked. What had Mandrake forgotten about from 8.2 to 9? It is these stuttering steps in development that hamper Linux' growth at times, I think. Anyway, I'm using 9 now and am happy, just weirded out.
We're removing the steering wheels and accelerator pedals from all the Tauruses. We're hoping that leaning into turns and shouts of "Giddyap!" will effect the same results, but without the bloat of steering wheels, which cut down the view of your fuel meter and accelerator pedals which just look dirty all the time.
Bill Ford Junior
Honestly, how are we EVER gonna get to HAL 9000 if DIY dorks like this one keep drop-kicking computer interfacing back to the punchcard era in the interest of "efficiency" and "privacy". If you mass up all the time I spend slogging through this GUI you'd get about eight minutes a week. Wow, THERE'S a decent visit to the john shot. The bulk of time people waste at the desktop is reading. Now, if we could design an interface that slams ideas into your head at mach five, we're onto something. As for privacy, who CARES what some carpal-tunnel farmhand thinks or does? "Oh, but we don't want our geek-friends coming over and changing the screen resolution..." So beat them up EVERY time they do it!
Point Click... it's like one step too long of a procedure, and I'm torn on which one to remove!
He went to a lot of trouble to get a mostly black screen. I get the same results with the power button on my monitor.
1. The controller and console are heavy in a truly aerobic fashion. 2. Games are priced right where kids can afford them if you don't miss a kidney. 3. If you promise to buy 3 1st party games inside your first year, Bill Gates will send you to college. 4. Large, boring game environments encourage outside play. 5. Underdeveloped countries have already discovered the X-Box's invaluable use as a cheap space heater for entire villages. 6. Trying to remember the point of Munch's Odyssey or Halo helps improve long-term memory skills. 7. Ballmer the Hedgehog. 8. Worthless guts can be taken out of the X-Box to convert it into a two-story playhouse complete with green skylight. 9. Billchanger on front works even on old wrinkled fives. 10. Nobody goes blind from SLEEPING in front of the TV too long.
Well, that holds water as long as we are willing to admit that because one tool is "good enough", then the makers of the "good enough" have some God-given right ro make mediocrity the sole choice in a given market. This is precisely what MS has been accused of (in court), and the very thing that the other "good enoughs" have to battle in various ways. Imagine if we all perpetually settled for the "good enoughs". Now, granted, you have to get off the bus somewhere, and I can see where MS has aided in the computerization of the home and office, but was that for the cause of productivity? Perhaps. Was it for the cause of profit? Definitely. Since the open source movement by its nature lacks the funding and subsequent advertising muscle that money-based software has, the balance must be made up in zeal and excellence. Where Linux lacks in excellence, it tends to catch up in zeal. If you want people to agree with you that Windows is "good enough", you have several million places to go for agreement. If you want to hear what might be better, you're going to have to find a zealot.
and my credit card just happened to pop into my hand. Wow. Seriously, I love drake for several reasons which have already been listed above, and I'm not gonna vote for drake in some silly poll that has Cowboy Neal in it. I'm voting with cold, hard, plastic, debt-generating credit!
I see thy doubts, friend, and they ex-POSE thee! Get thee behind me, SATAN, thou foul open grave of proprietary FILTH! I banish thee in the name of TUX! Let not thy infidelity and obfuscation be a stumblin' block to the newly converted, CAN I GET AN AMEN-A!
Friends, ig-NORE the sireen call of the pay-to-play heathen that lurk in the hedgerows, clinging to the darkness, roaring like a lion, SEEKING WHOM THEY MAY DEVOUR! Open thy hearts, OPEN THY SOURCE! Come to the cleansing fountain of forgiveness from closed-sources. Do not let these Philistines halt thy progress! Come into the LIGHT! COME INTO THE LIIIIIGHT!
So Linux and it's massive altruistic pool of endless talent and superior code can't knock a hole in chicken wire and hubris? Odd. Granted, illegal tactics may be the trump card, but unless you're going to counter that with something, you might as well just complain about the rain. Once again, what I see is a carping "it's not fair" attitude. I never said Gates and co. were fair or smarter or even supremely organized. They are, however, immeasurably bigger than any under-one-roof Linux offering that I can casually take note of. If you truly expect the entrenched powers-that-be to suddenly play fair, you're going to have to show them how playing unfair doesn't work anymore. Bullies stay bullies as long as their win record stays intact. I was merely stating that arguing over widget sets and other sniggery ad nauseum keeps Linux (or whichever of these open source programs) firmly in the column of "hobbyware", as far as the home desktop market measures it. Not everyone at Jif likes peanut butter, I would wager, but they set their differences aside and (hopefully) aren't tossing asparagus in at every opportunity. Certainly, MS is not some graceful beast cranking out flawless code, but how good can Linux be if it has more flavors than Baskin Robbins all largely competing for the same 3% of a pie? Counter with the "who rules on the server?" argument and I have to say congrats. So, Linux gets servers and MS gets the home users, end of story. "MONOPOLY!" Someone yells, and I have to repeat post one again. Microsoft bad, yes. So, who's better?
You'd think that the tremendous bit of free advertising Linux just got from NYT would satisfy some people. Like it or not, "mainstreaming" Linux is the only way to go now. The code is mature, the apps are there (if a bit varied and inbred), and there are literally millions of users who act as ad hoc customer service reps with relatively good results. The only thing lacking is a cohesive image that the average consumer can lock onto. ONE decent ad on TV showing some guy getting ahead in life because of Gaim or Evolution or Konqueror would make all the difference. Pointless pontificating about how people need to get behind Linux is ridiculous. Linux doesn't need polishing or research, it has that in spades. What it needs is shallow, vacuous P.R. Hate me for it, but Linux needs a sexy spokesmodel clicking happily away on Gnumeric while Howie Long asks her if she wants to borrow his cel-phone. Picture this: a full page ad in NYT with some lovely woman in an evening gown with just these words spaced evenly in the space beside her shapely frame. "Tonight she'll be using Linux at home... alone. www.(insert distro web-address here).com." BAM, somebody's gonna click on a link, my friend.
You know, the closer that I see Linux approaching MS parity in form and function, the more articles that I read declaring Linux' "real competition" being Solaris, MacOS X, etc. Am I high? How can you compete with your co-defeated marginal players? Why do it? I think that the majority of these opinions are cleverly designed ruses planted by trolls trying to make Microsoft's truest competitors beat each other to death. Then, when a publication the caliber of the NY Times (whatever caliber you assign to them will do) says, however marginally, that Linux is a threat to MS, so many people line up to point out how behind the, um, times they are. Microsoft wins not because of superior product or customer service, but rather on the power of the vain, factious, cowboy (no offense sir) mentality that sticks to Linux like a bad smell. Microsoft is not 30,000 people off thinking on their own, but one man thinking with 30,000 brains. He is not a guru or some neat guy, he's a billionaire with 300,000,000 plus private lines to the computer consumer market. The consumers may be sick of the geek, but they see no alternative (unless you take those Mac ads seriously). The rest of the computer world looks like an episode of Little Rascals. Cute, capable, plucky rebels trying to win the soapbox derby with two ladders strapped to three baby carriages. Granted, I've seen sparks of hope with Lindows, Lycoris, EOne, and the voices for tighter standardization, but unless 30,000 brains begin following one idea to completion (no matter how imperfect), the Linux commune-ity might as well be fighting the Nimitz with a tennis-ball cannon firing 100 shots a second. It's impressive, but ultimately comical. I propose everyone using Linux, no matter the flavor, send 100 dollars (or an equivalent in Yen or those big stone coins) to one place and call THAT Linux. Otherwise, we may just have to hand ourselves the dubious title of the toughest cripple at the street fight.
Like other projects I have seen (Lycoris, Lindows, Xandros), this strikes me as just another choice to make. If this or one of the other choices I have seen makes the Linux home desktop experience viable for the MS target market, great. The wonderful thing is that the hard-core users can STILL just bash away on their desktops at will (or even rule harder from the console). Hardware is getting cheaper, MS is slowly backing down on the whole evil empire thing, and voids will have to be filled. A unified KDE/Gnome set would be a boon to the Mom & Pop desktop environments, and the hackers can still build their own environment. It's open source, let RH paint it orange and make all the function keys bring up pictures of Sam Adams... it's their prerogative.
but, heck, I'M using Linux, and I am a certifiable computer moron. I haven't ever seen a Mac running outside of Circuit City. I have Linux on a would-be useless old Presario 1210 laptop that I still manage to use because Linux lets me. OS-X is great news, but the constant pony-up you have to do to stay Mac-plausible is a bit much. My next door neighbor has an old box that I will probably put Drake on inside of a week. Try to do that with the Macs. One thing Microsoft has done for the Linux community: they've made it easy to target what hardware to run on (howl at me, yellowdog fans!). By the way, with the successful supermounting of my digicam, I now boot over to my XP partition only to, um, well, hmm.... I don't anymore! You're telling me this stuff is FREE? WOOOO!
Time travel is impossible
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Time Travel
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· Score: 1
It's impossible not from a technological standpoint really, but it is impossible for just this: you cannot reinvent the universe. To take a packet of mass, be it a human being or a DeLorean, and project it either forward or backward in time, you are actually doing one other thing. You are adding mass to the universe at a given point in time and subtracting it from our present, which, if you were reading along diligently, you just wasted reading this sentence. You really should go out and play in the sun a little. If we can simply pop a decent-sized object (assuming the travel theory doesn't limit mass) such as a solar system back to the first few nanoseconds of the known universe as science now claims it occurred, then not only would mass be added that is already somewhere in there, but a chunk of WAY different physics appears as well, because the nanouniverse hasn't gotten around to having the physics that a current solar system takes for granted. Who knows? Perhaps the opposite is true as well. In the expanding universe model, you have to assume that physics is constantly changing with increases in distance. Project a huge chunk of mass forward several hundred billion years, and it's relative "heat" and "order" should be catastrophic to a physics that has cooled and dissapated. The concept that a Russian cosmonaut is already a time traveller by being a few billionths of a second ahead of the rest of us for his time on Mir is whimsical at best, and he is only considered a traveller because he is human. Are all the comets, asteroids, etc. "time travellers" as well just because they are moving rapidly? If they are, should any of them be "here" "now"? Of course they are here now. Any contraption or phenomena that can be claimed to remove something, literally subtract it from the universal constant of available mass, only to reinsert it elsewhen is either snake oil or vastly misunderstood in its function and results. On a side note: if there are any ladies out there who found this post "sexy", you can post below and we'll chat about it in a more personal manner.
I go to SlashDot, read an article, and in it is a bit of information I can actually USE to make my computing experience better? This happened too close to Easter, I'm going to church.
Re:Easy to scoff until your member...
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Soviet Moon Rocket
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· Score: 1
It's good to know that the assimilated aspirations of 5 billion people striving for identity in an increasingly callous species and putting aside their differences to establish themselves among the stars as true heirs of the future can still be placed conveniently on the scale of the male erection. I sure hope NASA knows precisely when you have an erection. Maybe that's the timer they use for major interplanetary launches.
"I boldly went where no man had gone before, and wow! You shoulda seen the women." - James T. Kirk
Pengows... no that sounds too much like something copyrighted.
Tekken 5, the OS wars! See Bill and Linus slug it out in 3-D.
Super-pane-of-glass-in-wooden-frame breakout!
SSXP... tricky!
Haunted Bill?
Spyware Hunter!
ThinkGeek Gear Solid 2: Sons of Puberty
Grand Theft Licensing Fees III
and a personal fave:
X-Box emulator kit (it's just a big ol' box with a space heater and a ceiling fan stuck in it, you slide the PS2 into the memory card slot. The controllers are deep-fried baseball mitts with lead bars in them.)
one more:
Final Fantasy XP - Forced upgrade!
Hey, anyone here gonna buy the PS2 Linux kit?
Yes, you can really judge character at times like these. I too was first lured to Linux as the "free" alternative, with naive thoughts of getting something for nothing. I learned, however, that in order for Linux to be truly free, it's gonna cost. I know that everyone wants the most bang for their buck, but come on! How cheap is it to get free software? What do you boy geniuses do? I know, you set up your free P4 RAMmed out box with it's free mouse and keyboard and scanner and printer, you plug it into free electricity from the wall socket, dial up ye olde FREE broadband ISP (remember those?)and surf to a freely-maintained server where you download free software to your free blank CD-RWs and sip your free caffeinated beverage while your free software flickers by on the free flatscreen monitor. Have a few minutes to kill? Fire up the free PS2 and play a little free SSX Tricky. Did you spot the little gag? Only one of these commodities didn't take your money with a good, firm yank. It was the "free" software. Get real, we know you can code on a piece of scrap paper and make it fold itself into origami shaped like a Cadillac Cien. Now, do it 400,000 times, for free. There comes a point where someone is going to have to spend money to scale the battlements that Microsoft has built for itself. We can count on IBM and SUN to pony up quite a bit, but it's the greedy fish like Red Hat and Mandrake who actually attempt to forward the cause of the next phase of Linux growth by having the audacity to make Linux distros that can actually look like a serious try when they sit on a corporate or home desktop. Mandrake skinned me for 24 dollars at Wal-Mart (thank goodness Wal-Mart doesn't take a cut of that). I took it home, and wowzers, it worked. The road's been far from glassy since then, but it's the first distro that I haven't uninstalled completely in abject disgust. I use it, every day. If I was to pay today for Microsoft's latest innovations, I'd be out around a cool two hundred give or take hardware upgrades and the earplugs to block out penguin-heads screaming "SELLOUT!" at me. Granted, I'm not going to keep throwing money at Mandrake, no one should. However, they admitted they needed money, they asked if we'd support them, and they promised to at least try to make this the last time they came begging. I've wasted more money in a day piddling around than Mandrake asks for in a year. I weighed it, found it worthy, and sent in the dough. I am sure that if I was brill enough, I could download software all day and eventually cook up a good distro, but I'd heap rather see if a few dollars and the focused labor of a few smart people can get it done more easily for me. In the meantime, you can support your favorite distro by eating their bandwidth, criticizing their betas, and occasionally buying a t-shirt with their name on it. If I've convinced anyone to help out the fine folks at Mandrake, maybe you could see you way clear to mail me ten bucks. Typing takes calories, my friends!
Man, you wasted a valuable opportunity to actually be mildly funny (here are some Prime examples, it's Prime time, let's see if you guys give me a Prime ribbing, etc.), but you just stuck with blandly lame. Ah, I guess we do turn out like our parents, after all.
Slashdot Mirror
let go. Hand the whole batch of code scot-free to some bundle of schmoes in a garage (preferably in America) who really want the distro to be something. They could even rename it Lycoris II, to be cute.
I am burned out on Mandrake's financial woes as well. I have wasted over 100 dollars in the past 6 months on them, and 9 broke functionaility across the board on me after a relatively good go with 8.2. It arrived late, and they were cryptic at best on how they were going to make it up to me... 6 months of MandrakeClub? So that they can use my MandrakeClub membership to beg me for more? I am NOT an unappreciative slob, but I will spend my money elsewhere, thank you. This death is a pity, but the knowledge can be best used elswhere by real business people.
plus games, controllers, a screwdriver, a new card every three weeks, a rosary to fend off bugs and crashes, the outside hope that Dad isn't on the thing & Mom isn't on the thing, a firm grasp of what havoc default installs of games bring to a home system, the ability to maze your way through menus and icons, friends who all truck over to your house to play or a VERY portable box that is suddenly over at Timmy's and can't seem to generate a spreadsheet for Dad, a grasp of what upgrading security patches does to your games, a nice, safe internet connection...
Console: plug, play, pack, port, plug, play...
I'll spend the 200 bucks every time
Kinda makes you mad when things aren't standardized, huh?
SLASHDOT Linux!
It would be developed right here, on this very website. It would be the product of open scrutiny by even casual users for ergonomics and hardware compatibility. It would have upgrades and changes dictated by "ask SlashDot" posts and "Cowboyneal" polls. You'd have to have a 90% advocacy in order to adopt a bugfix. The system would reward karma. The trashbin would be called the Troll, and there would be a universal minimally cleared signon called Anonymous Coward.
Actually, this analogy breaks down quite quickly. Asking for Linux standardization is not in effect making every car a Volvo. It is, however, making every car a thing that rolls forwards and backwards under its own power, stops predictably, has steering, carrying people helps. Face it, there are dead minimums of compatibility in cars. They are limited by width of roads, the need for adequate lights, emissions controls, etc. Linux needs the same things. By that I mean Linux needs some point to call LINUX, and let the modifiers start from there. Carrying the car analogy further, there are some wonderfully powerful cars out there, but not all of them are "Street-legal". It is so for OSes as well. Fine, you modify BSD to monitor your fridge for beverage hackers, but don't expect that flavor to have equal shoulder space with the vanilla desktop gets-things-done model. Linux needs a Taurus, a Camry, an (feel the pun flowing through you, Luke) Accord. It needs a flagship bang-minimum universal and singularly supported distro/flavor. It looks like Red Hat is the current champ. Sure, RH botches things up, but that doesn't mean that Suse or Mandrake or Debian or anyone else has to co-botch it up. They can move merrily along as the "better" distros. In the end, all this bickering will only last as long as people refuse to share credit and accept the burdens of uniformity. Because at the end of the day the software that people use is the one that wins. I use Mandrake, it does well. i do not plan to LAN my garage lights to it, I plan to surf and write and balance the odd checkbook with it. It's a Camry.
P.S. I drive a Mazda Protege MP3 with a CAI and Dunlop Zs, I burn pure premium in it, and bird-poop drives me ape.
Is how so-called "upgrades" of Mandrake seem to be total rehashes. I ordered 9 from Mandrake and eventually got it (with appropriate apologies for its tardiness). I backed up my important stuff and decided to do a wipeout install just for fun. Nothing worked quite as well as 8.2 out-of-box. No printer, no sound, odd omissions of access to partitions, etc. After running the rabbits for a while, I gave up and reinstalled 8.2. Bingo, evrything worked. Upgraded packages to 9, and everything still worked. What had Mandrake forgotten about from 8.2 to 9? It is these stuttering steps in development that hamper Linux' growth at times, I think. Anyway, I'm using 9 now and am happy, just weirded out.
We're removing the steering wheels and accelerator pedals from all the Tauruses. We're hoping that leaning into turns and shouts of "Giddyap!" will effect the same results, but without the bloat of steering wheels, which cut down the view of your fuel meter and accelerator pedals which just look dirty all the time.
Bill Ford Junior
Honestly, how are we EVER gonna get to HAL 9000 if DIY dorks like this one keep drop-kicking computer interfacing back to the punchcard era in the interest of "efficiency" and "privacy". If you mass up all the time I spend slogging through this GUI you'd get about eight minutes a week. Wow, THERE'S a decent visit to the john shot. The bulk of time people waste at the desktop is reading. Now, if we could design an interface that slams ideas into your head at mach five, we're onto something. As for privacy, who CARES what some carpal-tunnel farmhand thinks or does? "Oh, but we don't want our geek-friends coming over and changing the screen resolution..." So beat them up EVERY time they do it!
Point Click... it's like one step too long of a procedure, and I'm torn on which one to remove!
He went to a lot of trouble to get a mostly black screen. I get the same results with the power button on my monitor.
What's an X-box?
1. The controller and console are heavy in a truly aerobic fashion.
2. Games are priced right where kids can afford them if you don't miss a kidney.
3. If you promise to buy 3 1st party games inside your first year, Bill Gates will send you to college.
4. Large, boring game environments encourage outside play.
5. Underdeveloped countries have already discovered the X-Box's invaluable use as a cheap space heater for entire villages.
6. Trying to remember the point of Munch's Odyssey or Halo helps improve long-term memory skills.
7. Ballmer the Hedgehog.
8. Worthless guts can be taken out of the X-Box to convert it into a two-story playhouse complete with green skylight.
9. Billchanger on front works even on old wrinkled fives.
10. Nobody goes blind from SLEEPING in front of the TV too long.
Well, that holds water as long as we are willing to admit that because one tool is "good enough", then the makers of the "good enough" have some God-given right ro make mediocrity the sole choice in a given market. This is precisely what MS has been accused of (in court), and the very thing that the other "good enoughs" have to battle in various ways. Imagine if we all perpetually settled for the "good enoughs". Now, granted, you have to get off the bus somewhere, and I can see where MS has aided in the computerization of the home and office, but was that for the cause of productivity? Perhaps. Was it for the cause of profit? Definitely. Since the open source movement by its nature lacks the funding and subsequent advertising muscle that money-based software has, the balance must be made up in zeal and excellence. Where Linux lacks in excellence, it tends to catch up in zeal. If you want people to agree with you that Windows is "good enough", you have several million places to go for agreement. If you want to hear what might be better, you're going to have to find a zealot.
and my credit card just happened to pop into my hand. Wow. Seriously, I love drake for several reasons which have already been listed above, and I'm not gonna vote for drake in some silly poll that has Cowboy Neal in it. I'm voting with cold, hard, plastic, debt-generating credit!
WOO!
I see thy doubts, friend, and they ex-POSE thee! Get thee behind me, SATAN, thou foul open grave of proprietary FILTH! I banish thee in the name of TUX! Let not thy infidelity and obfuscation be a stumblin' block to the newly converted, CAN I GET AN AMEN-A!
Friends, ig-NORE the sireen call of the pay-to-play heathen that lurk in the hedgerows, clinging to the darkness, roaring like a lion, SEEKING WHOM THEY MAY DEVOUR! Open thy hearts, OPEN THY SOURCE! Come to the cleansing fountain of forgiveness from closed-sources. Do not let these Philistines halt thy progress! Come into the LIGHT! COME INTO THE LIIIIIGHT!
I neeed a nap.
So Linux and it's massive altruistic pool of endless talent and superior code can't knock a hole in chicken wire and hubris? Odd. Granted, illegal tactics may be the trump card, but unless you're going to counter that with something, you might as well just complain about the rain. Once again, what I see is a carping "it's not fair" attitude. I never said Gates and co. were fair or smarter or even supremely organized. They are, however, immeasurably bigger than any under-one-roof Linux offering that I can casually take note of. If you truly expect the entrenched powers-that-be to suddenly play fair, you're going to have to show them how playing unfair doesn't work anymore. Bullies stay bullies as long as their win record stays intact. I was merely stating that arguing over widget sets and other sniggery ad nauseum keeps Linux (or whichever of these open source programs) firmly in the column of "hobbyware", as far as the home desktop market measures it. Not everyone at Jif likes peanut butter, I would wager, but they set their differences aside and (hopefully) aren't tossing asparagus in at every opportunity. Certainly, MS is not some graceful beast cranking out flawless code, but how good can Linux be if it has more flavors than Baskin Robbins all largely competing for the same 3% of a pie? Counter with the "who rules on the server?" argument and I have to say congrats. So, Linux gets servers and MS gets the home users, end of story. "MONOPOLY!" Someone yells, and I have to repeat post one again. Microsoft bad, yes. So, who's better?
You'd think that the tremendous bit of free advertising Linux just got from NYT would satisfy some people. Like it or not, "mainstreaming" Linux is the only way to go now. The code is mature, the apps are there (if a bit varied and inbred), and there are literally millions of users who act as ad hoc customer service reps with relatively good results. The only thing lacking is a cohesive image that the average consumer can lock onto. ONE decent ad on TV showing some guy getting ahead in life because of Gaim or Evolution or Konqueror would make all the difference. Pointless pontificating about how people need to get behind Linux is ridiculous. Linux doesn't need polishing or research, it has that in spades. What it needs is shallow, vacuous P.R. Hate me for it, but Linux needs a sexy spokesmodel clicking happily away on Gnumeric while Howie Long asks her if she wants to borrow his cel-phone. Picture this: a full page ad in NYT with some lovely woman in an evening gown with just these words spaced evenly in the space beside her shapely frame. "Tonight she'll be using Linux at home... alone. www.(insert distro web-address here).com." BAM, somebody's gonna click on a link, my friend.
You know, the closer that I see Linux approaching MS parity in form and function, the more articles that I read declaring Linux' "real competition" being Solaris, MacOS X, etc. Am I high? How can you compete with your co-defeated marginal players? Why do it? I think that the majority of these opinions are cleverly designed ruses planted by trolls trying to make Microsoft's truest competitors beat each other to death. Then, when a publication the caliber of the NY Times (whatever caliber you assign to them will do) says, however marginally, that Linux is a threat to MS, so many people line up to point out how behind the, um, times they are. Microsoft wins not because of superior product or customer service, but rather on the power of the vain, factious, cowboy (no offense sir) mentality that sticks to Linux like a bad smell. Microsoft is not 30,000 people off thinking on their own, but one man thinking with 30,000 brains. He is not a guru or some neat guy, he's a billionaire with 300,000,000 plus private lines to the computer consumer market. The consumers may be sick of the geek, but they see no alternative (unless you take those Mac ads seriously). The rest of the computer world looks like an episode of Little Rascals. Cute, capable, plucky rebels trying to win the soapbox derby with two ladders strapped to three baby carriages. Granted, I've seen sparks of hope with Lindows, Lycoris, EOne, and the voices for tighter standardization, but unless 30,000 brains begin following one idea to completion (no matter how imperfect), the Linux commune-ity might as well be fighting the Nimitz with a tennis-ball cannon firing 100 shots a second. It's impressive, but ultimately comical. I propose everyone using Linux, no matter the flavor, send 100 dollars (or an equivalent in Yen or those big stone coins) to one place and call THAT Linux. Otherwise, we may just have to hand ourselves the dubious title of the toughest cripple at the street fight.
Like other projects I have seen (Lycoris, Lindows, Xandros), this strikes me as just another choice to make. If this or one of the other choices I have seen makes the Linux home desktop experience viable for the MS target market, great. The wonderful thing is that the hard-core users can STILL just bash away on their desktops at will (or even rule harder from the console). Hardware is getting cheaper, MS is slowly backing down on the whole evil empire thing, and voids will have to be filled. A unified KDE/Gnome set would be a boon to the Mom & Pop desktop environments, and the hackers can still build their own environment. It's open source, let RH paint it orange and make all the function keys bring up pictures of Sam Adams... it's their prerogative.
but, heck, I'M using Linux, and I am a certifiable computer moron. I haven't ever seen a Mac running outside of Circuit City. I have Linux on a would-be useless old Presario 1210 laptop that I still manage to use because Linux lets me. OS-X is great news, but the constant pony-up you have to do to stay Mac-plausible is a bit much. My next door neighbor has an old box that I will probably put Drake on inside of a week. Try to do that with the Macs. One thing Microsoft has done for the Linux community: they've made it easy to target what hardware to run on (howl at me, yellowdog fans!). By the way, with the successful supermounting of my digicam, I now boot over to my XP partition only to, um, well, hmm.... I don't anymore! You're telling me this stuff is FREE? WOOOO!
It's impossible not from a technological standpoint really, but it is impossible for just this: you cannot reinvent the universe. To take a packet of mass, be it a human being or a DeLorean, and project it either forward or backward in time, you are actually doing one other thing. You are adding mass to the universe at a given point in time and subtracting it from our present, which, if you were reading along diligently, you just wasted reading this sentence. You really should go out and play in the sun a little. If we can simply pop a decent-sized object (assuming the travel theory doesn't limit mass) such as a solar system back to the first few nanoseconds of the known universe as science now claims it occurred, then not only would mass be added that is already somewhere in there, but a chunk of WAY different physics appears as well, because the nanouniverse hasn't gotten around to having the physics that a current solar system takes for granted. Who knows? Perhaps the opposite is true as well. In the expanding universe model, you have to assume that physics is constantly changing with increases in distance. Project a huge chunk of mass forward several hundred billion years, and it's relative "heat" and "order" should be catastrophic to a physics that has cooled and dissapated. The concept that a Russian cosmonaut is already a time traveller by being a few billionths of a second ahead of the rest of us for his time on Mir is whimsical at best, and he is only considered a traveller because he is human. Are all the comets, asteroids, etc. "time travellers" as well just because they are moving rapidly? If they are, should any of them be "here" "now"? Of course they are here now. Any contraption or phenomena that can be claimed to remove something, literally subtract it from the universal constant of available mass, only to reinsert it elsewhen is either snake oil or vastly misunderstood in its function and results.
On a side note: if there are any ladies out there who found this post "sexy", you can post below and we'll chat about it in a more personal manner.
I go to SlashDot, read an article, and in it is a bit of information I can actually USE to make my computing experience better? This happened too close to Easter, I'm going to church.
It's good to know that the assimilated aspirations of 5 billion people striving for identity in an increasingly callous species and putting aside their differences to establish themselves among the stars as true heirs of the future can still be placed conveniently on the scale of the male erection. I sure hope NASA knows precisely when you have an erection. Maybe that's the timer they use for major interplanetary launches.
"I boldly went where no man had gone before, and wow! You shoulda seen the women." - James T. Kirk
Pengows... no that sounds too much like something copyrighted. Tekken 5, the OS wars! See Bill and Linus slug it out in 3-D. Super-pane-of-glass-in-wooden-frame breakout! SSXP... tricky! Haunted Bill? Spyware Hunter! ThinkGeek Gear Solid 2: Sons of Puberty Grand Theft Licensing Fees III and a personal fave: X-Box emulator kit (it's just a big ol' box with a space heater and a ceiling fan stuck in it, you slide the PS2 into the memory card slot. The controllers are deep-fried baseball mitts with lead bars in them.) one more: Final Fantasy XP - Forced upgrade! Hey, anyone here gonna buy the PS2 Linux kit?
Yes, you can really judge character at times like these. I too was first lured to Linux as the "free" alternative, with naive thoughts of getting something for nothing. I learned, however, that in order for Linux to be truly free, it's gonna cost. I know that everyone wants the most bang for their buck, but come on! How cheap is it to get free software? What do you boy geniuses do? I know, you set up your free P4 RAMmed out box with it's free mouse and keyboard and scanner and printer, you plug it into free electricity from the wall socket, dial up ye olde FREE broadband ISP (remember those?)and surf to a freely-maintained server where you download free software to your free blank CD-RWs and sip your free caffeinated beverage while your free software flickers by on the free flatscreen monitor. Have a few minutes to kill? Fire up the free PS2 and play a little free SSX Tricky. Did you spot the little gag? Only one of these commodities didn't take your money with a good, firm yank. It was the "free" software. Get real, we know you can code on a piece of scrap paper and make it fold itself into origami shaped like a Cadillac Cien. Now, do it 400,000 times, for free. There comes a point where someone is going to have to spend money to scale the battlements that Microsoft has built for itself. We can count on IBM and SUN to pony up quite a bit, but it's the greedy fish like Red Hat and Mandrake who actually attempt to forward the cause of the next phase of Linux growth by having the audacity to make Linux distros that can actually look like a serious try when they sit on a corporate or home desktop. Mandrake skinned me for 24 dollars at Wal-Mart (thank goodness Wal-Mart doesn't take a cut of that). I took it home, and wowzers, it worked. The road's been far from glassy since then, but it's the first distro that I haven't uninstalled completely in abject disgust. I use it, every day. If I was to pay today for Microsoft's latest innovations, I'd be out around a cool two hundred give or take hardware upgrades and the earplugs to block out penguin-heads screaming "SELLOUT!" at me. Granted, I'm not going to keep throwing money at Mandrake, no one should. However, they admitted they needed money, they asked if we'd support them, and they promised to at least try to make this the last time they came begging. I've wasted more money in a day piddling around than Mandrake asks for in a year. I weighed it, found it worthy, and sent in the dough. I am sure that if I was brill enough, I could download software all day and eventually cook up a good distro, but I'd heap rather see if a few dollars and the focused labor of a few smart people can get it done more easily for me. In the meantime, you can support your favorite distro by eating their bandwidth, criticizing their betas, and occasionally buying a t-shirt with their name on it. If I've convinced anyone to help out the fine folks at Mandrake, maybe you could see you way clear to mail me ten bucks. Typing takes calories, my friends!
This is what happens when someone uses a gui while logged in as root to their brains... yikes.
Man, you wasted a valuable opportunity to actually be mildly funny (here are some Prime examples, it's Prime time, let's see if you guys give me a Prime ribbing, etc.), but you just stuck with blandly lame. Ah, I guess we do turn out like our parents, after all.