Slashdot desperately needs to learn some basic
reporting skills. Verifying information is the
main one. Don't get me wrong, I'm not asking
CmdrTaco to start wearing pants during work
hours or leaving the Geek Compound; I just wish
someone there would pick up the phone or send
some e-mail once in a while before posting a story. I don't think it's sunk in with you
guys how much clout you have. If you mail someone and say, "Hi, I'm Rob Malda of Slashdot,
and I understand you may be violating the GPL.
Care to comment?", you will get a response--probably a very hurried one along the
lines of "Sorry, there's been a misunderstanding, here is a comprehensive explanation, and for Bob's sake don't call us GPL violators on Slashdot!"
Vovida, OS VoIP Beer recipe: free! #Source Cold pints: $2 #Product
It seems they're not on-line, but when I was visiting
some friends in Wichita they pointed out the Friends
University of Central Kansas. That's right, they were
a Quaker institution. Who knows what they were
thinking when they chose the name? They must have
been quite contrite at the offense it gives
(much like our friends at the soon-to-be-renamedBeaver College).
On the other hand, imagine the fun students could
have, e.g., at football games: "Who're we cheering for?"
"FUCK U.!" "What did you say?" "FUCK U.!" "I can't
hear you..." et cetera, et cetera.;)
Vovida, OS VoIP Beer recipe: free! #Source Cold pints: $2 #Product
It may be a bit of a pain, but I think it is time for programmers
to start taking responsibility for their software. This means
providing support services that many customers desperately
want--especially corporate customers, who will pay big
bucks for the favor. I see this as a reliable way for free
software to make money without "selling out" on its principles.
If you ask me--and I am a programmer by trade--most
programmers have lived too long in the ivory tower,
shielded from the actual needs of users by corporate
bureaucracy. Have you ever called a big company like
Sun for technical support? It's absolutely worthless,
because support tasks are assigned to the least skilled
employees, and they are explicitly tasked with shielding
engineers from user questions.*
Of course, the original authors of the software do not have
to be the ones offering the support services; that could
be done by a separate cadre of workers from a Professional
Services Department. This seems to work well for things
like initial installation and configuration, systems administration,
maintenance and upgrades, and for problems arising from user error.
Insofar as you can find competent people willing to do this
work, it is a good idea, because it does save programmers'
time. When you get down to bugs in the actual software, though,
it really helps to get support straight from the horse's mouth.
This is, of course, exactly the support model that free software
projects have adopted through mailing lists and IRC channels.
In my work in the industry, I've found that most hackers take pride in their creations and
genuinely want to make them better, and that they do this
best (and most time-efficiently!) when they can communicate
directly with end-users. I'm proud to say that my company
takes this approach with its BSD-licensed products. Mainly
we use free, public mailing lists for this purpose.
As a software engineer, I'm willing to put my
money where my mouth is. Support may not be fun,
but it is vital to the usability of software, and it really
does help you find bugs and fix them. I agree wholeheartedly
with Eric Raymond: The software industry is a services
industry that thinks it is a manufacturing industry. Support
is what most people will really pay for, and it pays for
free software development.
* I would like to put in a good word for SGI: They make engineers
handle sophisticated support questions and even go on the road
to give technical details about new products. In my
previous work as a systems administrator, I found them
to be far and away the best Unix vendors for support,
Red Hat included. (We worked with DUNIX, HP-UX,
IRIX, Solaris, and Linux.) I hope they survive as a
Linux and free software company and continue this
tradition of excellence.
Vovida, OS VoIP Beer recipe: free! #Source Cold pints: $2 #Product
They say you can use any language you like,
functional or not, but look carefully at this
quotation from the contest page:
Although the precise task chosen will not be revealed until the contest begins, algorithmic cleverness matters. Performance may matter. Programming
languages that help programmers to build complex systems quickly may allow contestants to attempt particularly sophisticated implementations in
the 72 hours allotted for programming.
In other words, the criteria for winning are
completely subjective. The judges can make whatever arbitrary decision they choose and
back it up with subjective talk about "sophistication" and "cleverness", without
having to take performance into account at all.
So what kind of programs do you think are going
to win a contest called the International Conference on Functional Programming Contest? Hmmmn, maybe programs in functional languages? Let's look at past
years' results:
From 1999:
The Judges are sure that the choice of language played a role in this team's ability to produce a top entry in a mere 24 hours, and they are pleased to pronounce that
Haskell is a fine programming tool for many applications.
(italics theirs), and again:
There is no doubt in the Judges' minds that
Objective CAML is the programming tool of choice for discriminating hackers.
(italics and formatting theirs). Lest you think the contest used to be biased, look at the results from 1998. These ones have a refreshing touch of objectivity, since the challenge was to produce a chess program, and
entries were judged by playing each other. Still, look at these glowing elegies of functional programming:
We have no hesitation in recommending Cilk as "the programming language of choice for
discriminating hackers,"
(So their tastes are fickle as well as
biased.) Though the second-place prize had several strong contenders in non-functional languages like C, all the praise went to another functional program:
The competition for second prize was much fiercer, and, in fact, the second round of games among the six finalists produced a three-way tie for second
place, between Brad Kuszmaul's Alpha Beta Soupa ST entry (written in C), Lennart Augusston's la entry (written in C), and the ENS Camlist team's
OCaml entry.
The contest judges resolved the tie by playing a final round of games between the three teams vying for second place -- and the clear winner was the
ENS Camlist team, who handily won all four of their tie-breaking games (defeating the other two entries both as X and as O).
So C held its own, thought OCaml came out in
the end. Still, as you would expect by now, all of the praise is reserved for OCaml:
We note that this OCaml entry beat out 23 C and C entries, many of these being highly tuned programs
produced by extremely competent programmers skilled in game-playing algorithms. This is a strong statement as to the performance of compiled
OCaml software.
Is it really? The games were not timed. Furthermore, we know from the nature of the contest that performance is not an issue; only winning counts. Is this just a sloppy use of language, or an unsubstantiated statement that
shows again the judges' bias?
Of course, they take some extra time to pile more praise on functional languages in the third-place winner, and on the remaining entry:
It would only be stating the obvious to say that OCaml is "a fine
language for many programming tasks" -- including some not traditionally held to be the domain of functional programming.
and, of the functional programming language J,
used by a single entry that won an honorable mention:
Without a doubt, "a bunch of extremely cool hackers" -- and an extremely cool programming language.
So there you have it. I think these comments show a strong enough bias toward functional programming, and against C in particular, that I would not trust the judges. I am not saying
that FP is necessary worse than other programming
paradigms or languages; in fact, I happen to
think that functional programming is a cool idea.
Tools like OCaml may in fact be superior to C
(and my personal favorite, Perl). However, I
don't see this contest as anything approaching
a fair test of whether that is true.
I definitely wouldn't waste my efforts entering
this contest with anything but an FP language--
which hesitance, of course, perpetuates the bias of the contest.
Judge for yourself, but I say this is a self-
congratulation-fest for functional programmers
and a dubious test of the true value of FP.
Vovida, OS VoIP Beer recipe: free! #Source Cold pints: $2 #Product
Remember that scene where the Major General and
his daughters are exhorting the cops to "Go
to battle, go to glory, though ye die in combat
gory?" The cops keep dancing around chanting,
"We go, we go (yes, we really, really go),
Tarantella, Tarantella, we go, we go," trying
to postpone their departure to "die in combat
gory".
Seems like the perfect metaphor for SCO to me. ;)
Vovida, OS VoIP Beer recipe: free! #Source Cold pints: $2 #Product
Damian Conway wrote a Perl module that lets you
write your Perl scripts in Latin, sans punctuation. The basic idea is that Latin
uses word endings and not word order to indicate
syntactic properties like number and case of
nouns and number and person of verbs. Hence
you can write position-independent code in
Latin. Lingua::Romana::Perligata is basically
a proof of concept and an exploration of how
computer languages might be different if they
had been made by speakers of inflected natural
languages. It's also a pretty impressive use
of source filters.
Damian gave a talk on the module at the O'Reilly
Perl Conference, but unfortunately neither the
talk nor the module is available on-line.
He said he was going to post the module to
CPAN, too... Maybe it's time to bug him about
that.
Anyway, a person who attended the conference faxed me his paper for the speech; if you're interested, e-mail me (after de-spam-proofing my address), and I will fax it to you.
Vovida, OS VoIP Beer recipe: free! #Source Cold pints: $2 #Product
I worked last summer as an intern at
IBM's Almaden Research Center. Even though this is a "pure"
research facility, and even though my team's product had been
in development since (if I recall correctly) 1994 without being integrated
into a commercial product, the Powers That Be wouldn't let
us release the code--at all. Then again, I recently read that
the product (WBI) was made into a transcoding
engine, which is probably reaping IBM some bucks.
So maybe they were being shrewd anyway.
The point is, IBM is interested in open source only insofar
as it makes money. While I was there, I attended a seminar on open-
source software run by one of IBM's hot intellectual property
lawyers, where he did nothing but warn us about the "viral"
nature of the GPL and LGPL and advise us about how to
circumvent it.
Vovida, OS VoIP Beer recipe: free! #Source Cold pints: $2 #Product
Another thing: I notice that most of your employees (the Officers listed on your Web page, at any rate) have a background in electronic currency and/or electronic gambling. This would seem to temper, if not belie, the idealistic image you are trying to project. Are you planning to do lots of banking and gambling on Havenco? If so, do you consider such activity to be inconsistent with your idealistic aims, or is it just a way to finance them, or do you see it as working just fine with your ideals, without any conflict?
I'm not saying that gambling and money-laundering are immoral, but they aren't on the pure altruistic level of free speech, either. Then again, Havenco makes no bones about being a for-profit company... look at those rates!
Vovida, OS VoIP Beer recipe: free! #Source Cold pints: $2 #Product
************************************************** ****************************** * This system is for authorized use only. * ************************************************ ********************************
This system is for authorized use only. Any resemblance to any operating system living or dead is purely coincidental. All trademarks are copyleft ()) their respective authors. All rights reversed.
I like it. Yes, you could make a good guess as to my operating system (Linux) based on the content, but you could find that out with a TCP/IP stack fingerprinting tool like nmap anyway.
I used to work at a university, where we were constantly bombarded by script kiddie attacks. Back then, I used this/etc/issue:
************************************************ ******************************** * This system is for authorized use only, r0dent! * ************************************************ ********************************
Then again, I doubt anyone ever saw it, since the only service I ran was ssh.;)
By the way, those messages are padded with enough spaces to make the middle asterisk line up on the right. Methinks we just stumbled across a very subtle Slash bug.
Vovida, OS VoIP Beer recipe: free! #Source Cold pints: $2 #Product
Thanks, Robin, for being so steafastly honest with us. I am amazed at the whole Andover crew for handling this fiasco in such a calm and thoughful way. Don't feel bad for not being able to divulge more details of your legal deliberations; we understand the sensitivity of the situations, and we trust that you will reveal them as soon as you can. Since Andover bought Slashdot, its behavior and yours behavior have never led us to believe otherwise.
Another thing: I can't speak for the rest of Slashdot's readership, but I won't fault you if you back down from this legal challenge. What Microsoft is doing is reprehensible, but Microsoft's actions will not be the subject of this trial. The subject will be copyright violation by Andover, and I don't think the courts will be sympathetic. It would be far better to settle in this case, and then sue Microsoft for this hypocritical attempt to strangle open standards, than to bring up all those issues on the defensive. I hope you can find legal grounds to do the former.
Good luck. Are greatest hopes are with you. Just please don't do anything rash; don't go down in a flame of glory. We want Slashdot to be around for a long, long time, and we don't want to see VA in financial trouble for funding this legal battle. Slashdot is of more use as a living advocate than as a dead martyr.
Well, there are my words of advice (legally uninformed, I'm afraid) and encouragement. I figure you can use all the encouragement you can get. Good luck. I trust you to do the right thing.
Vovida, OS VoIP Beer recipe: free! #Source Cold pints: $2 #Product
I agree. Don't try to fight Microsoft on copyright grounds; you'll lose. As Bruce Perens aptly points out in this Technocrat editorial, the last thing the free software movement needs is to be associated with copyright violation.
The Napster association is bad enough. If Slashdot does not yank the copyrighted material, not only will Andover lose, but the mainstream press will have a heyday calling all proponents of free software a bunch of thieving zealots. Imagine the impact this will have on the DeCSS case, let alone the future of commercial free-software development.
Slashdot has long been a thorn in the side of Redmond; let's not give MS such a cheap chance to destroy this rival. Nothing would make MS so happy as an excuse to take Andover to court and bleed it dry of funds. Now, the comments explaining how to circumvent the NDA are another thing; in my book, they count as legitimate reverse engineering. Legally testing that legitimacy might be a good thing.
Vovida, OS VoIP Beer recipe: free! #Source Cold pints: $2 #Product
I, too, enjoyed this article format immensely. Please keep up the good work! This kind of reportage brings Slashdot's content much closer to investigative journalism (as opposed to mere portalling, to verb a word). It also places Slashdot miles ahead of most TV and print news, which seems to have an attention span of about a week.:(
Many thanks. Please stick to this format--maybe make a new story category for it, with a nifty icon.
Actually, here's an idea: Make a new category and start a contest for the best icon. I promise to make lots of contributions.:)
Vovida, OS VoIP Beer recipe: free! #Source Cold pints: $2 #Product
In the same vein, I would like to ask why you choose to air your articles on Slashdot. They are written from a non-technical point of view for a non-technical audience wholly unfamiliar with their subjects: Weblogs, the DVD controversy, the Linux revolution itself. Clearly, the Slashdot audience finds your articles insultingly simplistic. We are already familiar with these issues, often in more detail (technical and historical) than you, and by and large we are annoyed to have our opinions simplified and read back to us.
I have two questions. First, do you agree with me in seeing your posts as popular digests of our culture, intended for a lay audience? Second, if you do agree, why do you persist in using Slashdot as a forum?
I will be very interested to read your answers. Perhaps the basis of your friction with Slashdot is, after all, just a confusion about audiences. Thanks for having the courage to offer an interview. I hope it leads to some kind of dialog that clears up the Katz-Slashdot controversy.
Vovida, OS VoIP Beer recipe: free! #Source Cold pints: $2 #Product
Better yet, go to Lemuria's Become a Doe page and "turn yourself in" as one of the 500 unnamed defendants who have posted the code, buying a shirt with the code and donating $5.00 to the EFF. You get your Doe number printed on the shirt. Naturally, the edition is limited to 500.;)
As of Sunday, I'm Doe number 191, so there are plenty more identities to go around.;)
Vovida, OS VoIP Beer recipe: free! #Source Cold pints: $2 #Product
I would definitely say there's something to them. I learned about the last two companies I've worked for at successive LinuxWorld Expos. (The first job was an internship, so it lasted only one Expo;).) I hadn't even heard of Vovida till I attended the August LWE. If you want just any job, tech advertising sites and recruiter are a way to go. If you are a fanatic like me,;) and you won't work for a company that doesn't do Linux and/or open-source software, those conventions are really useful.
Remember, we're still a fairly small part of the software industry at large. It's not always easy for Linux geeks and Linux companies to find each other.
Good luck! Maybe I'll see your anonymous face at the next LWE in San Jose.:)
Vovida, OS VoIP Beer recipe: free! #Source Cold pints: $2 #Product
Now, that's an interesting point! I wonder if that would work. I'm almost tempted to install Windows just to find out. Nah, then the government would have to give money to Microsoft.;)
This reminds me of something I read on the GNU site. Under their list of ways you can help the FSF, they mention making tax-free donations. Because the FSF is part of the United Way, you can get many employers to donate matching funds if you "give at the office". The page added (paraphrased), "We especially appreciate matching funds from Microsoft employees.";)
Vovida, OS VoIP Beer recipe: free! #Source Cold pints: $2 #Product
There are plenty of practical reasons why installing Windows to get more full-featured software is not worth it. First of all, you need to buy a copy of Windows. That's, what, like $100 bucks now? It will probably continue to get more expensive in the future, as Microsoft continues its price squeeze. Then there's the opportunity cost of re-partitioning your hard drive, installing Windows, re-installing Linux, and restoring all your files from backups. If you don't want to go through that hassle, you can buy a hard drive, but that costs money, too. Then you need to pay for the tax software. Finally, you have to deal with the everyday maintenance of Windows, defragging your hard drive, rebooting when it crashes and probably losing data from the tax program, et cetera.
In short, the total cost in time and money is probably higher than the benefit you get from the more full-featured application.
Despite what Microsoft wants you to think, the total cost of ownership of Windows can easily become higher than that of Linux.
Cheers,
Vovida, OS VoIP Beer recipe: free! #Source Cold pints: $2 #Product
No shit. As I said, it's a verb. O.K., more precisely, it's a verb phrase in the present progressive tense, containing two auxiliary verbs, as you point out--but a verb phrase is still a verb. So Hemos can be *verb* about *subject* (well, O.K., gramatically he can be *verb* only about object*, but I'm pretty sure he meant "subject" in the sense of "topic" in this case).
So there.:P
Vovida, OS VoIP Beer recipe: free! #Source Cold pints: $2 #Product
Slashdot Mirror
Vovida, OS VoIP
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
On the other hand, imagine the fun students could have, e.g., at football games: "Who're we cheering for?" "FUCK U.!" "What did you say?" "FUCK U.!" "I can't hear you..." et cetera, et cetera. ;)
Vovida, OS VoIP
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
Of course, the original authors of the software do not have to be the ones offering the support services; that could be done by a separate cadre of workers from a Professional Services Department. This seems to work well for things like initial installation and configuration, systems administration, maintenance and upgrades, and for problems arising from user error. Insofar as you can find competent people willing to do this work, it is a good idea, because it does save programmers' time. When you get down to bugs in the actual software, though, it really helps to get support straight from the horse's mouth. This is, of course, exactly the support model that free software projects have adopted through mailing lists and IRC channels. In my work in the industry, I've found that most hackers take pride in their creations and genuinely want to make them better, and that they do this best (and most time-efficiently!) when they can communicate directly with end-users. I'm proud to say that my company takes this approach with its BSD-licensed products. Mainly we use free, public mailing lists for this purpose.
As a software engineer, I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is. Support may not be fun, but it is vital to the usability of software, and it really does help you find bugs and fix them. I agree wholeheartedly with Eric Raymond: The software industry is a services industry that thinks it is a manufacturing industry. Support is what most people will really pay for, and it pays for free software development.
Vovida, OS VoIP
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
In a break with Slashdot tradition, I admit I was wrong and retract my post.
Also, I pledge that I will hereforth wait no less than twelve (12) hours after smoking crack before posting to Slashdot.
Vovida, OS VoIP
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
So what kind of programs do you think are going to win a contest called the International Conference on Functional Programming Contest? Hmmmn, maybe programs in functional languages? Let's look at past years' results: From 1999:
(italics theirs), and again: (italics and formatting theirs). Lest you think the contest used to be biased, look at the results from 1998. These ones have a refreshing touch of objectivity, since the challenge was to produce a chess program, and entries were judged by playing each other. Still, look at these glowing elegies of functional programming: (So their tastes are fickle as well as biased.) Though the second-place prize had several strong contenders in non-functional languages like C, all the praise went to another functional program: So C held its own, thought OCaml came out in the end. Still, as you would expect by now, all of the praise is reserved for OCaml: Is it really? The games were not timed. Furthermore, we know from the nature of the contest that performance is not an issue; only winning counts. Is this just a sloppy use of language, or an unsubstantiated statement that shows again the judges' bias?Of course, they take some extra time to pile more praise on functional languages in the third-place winner, and on the remaining entry:
and, of the functional programming language J, used by a single entry that won an honorable mention:So there you have it. I think these comments show a strong enough bias toward functional programming, and against C in particular, that I would not trust the judges. I am not saying that FP is necessary worse than other programming paradigms or languages; in fact, I happen to think that functional programming is a cool idea. Tools like OCaml may in fact be superior to C (and my personal favorite, Perl). However, I don't see this contest as anything approaching a fair test of whether that is true. I definitely wouldn't waste my efforts entering this contest with anything but an FP language-- which hesitance, of course, perpetuates the bias of the contest.
Judge for yourself, but I say this is a self- congratulation-fest for functional programmers and a dubious test of the true value of FP.
Vovida, OS VoIP
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
Seems like the perfect metaphor for SCO to me.
;)
Vovida, OS VoIP
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
Damian gave a talk on the module at the O'Reilly Perl Conference, but unfortunately neither the talk nor the module is available on-line. He said he was going to post the module to CPAN, too... Maybe it's time to bug him about that.
Anyway, a person who attended the conference faxed me his paper for the speech; if you're interested, e-mail me (after de-spam-proofing my address), and I will fax it to you.
Vovida, OS VoIP
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
Vovida, OS VoIP
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
The point is, IBM is interested in open source only insofar as it makes money. While I was there, I attended a seminar on open- source software run by one of IBM's hot intellectual property lawyers, where he did nothing but warn us about the "viral" nature of the GPL and LGPL and advise us about how to circumvent it.
Vovida, OS VoIP
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
Vovida, OS VoIP
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
I'm not saying that gambling and money-laundering are immoral, but they aren't on the pure altruistic level of free speech, either. Then again, Havenco makes no bones about being a for-profit company... look at those rates!
Vovida, OS VoIP
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
* This system is for authorized use only. *
***********************************************
This system is for authorized use only. Any resemblance to any operating
system living or dead is purely coincidental. All trademarks are copyleft ())
their respective authors. All rights reversed.
I like it. Yes, you could make a good guess as to my operating system (Linux) based on the content,
but you could find that out with a TCP/IP stack
fingerprinting tool like nmap anyway.
I used to work at a university, where we were
constantly bombarded by script kiddie attacks.
Back then, I used this
***********************************************
* This system is for authorized use only, r0dent! *
***********************************************
Then again, I doubt anyone ever saw it, since the
only service I ran was ssh.
By the way, those messages are padded with enough spaces to make the middle asterisk line up on the
right. Methinks we just stumbled across a very
subtle Slash bug.
Vovida, OS VoIP
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
Another thing: I can't speak for the rest of Slashdot's readership, but I won't fault you if you back down from this legal challenge. What Microsoft is doing is reprehensible, but Microsoft's actions will not be the subject of this trial. The subject will be copyright violation by Andover, and I don't think the courts will be sympathetic. It would be far better to settle in this case, and then sue Microsoft for this hypocritical attempt to strangle open standards, than to bring up all those issues on the defensive. I hope you can find legal grounds to do the former.
Good luck. Are greatest hopes are with you. Just please don't do anything rash; don't go down in a flame of glory. We want Slashdot to be around for a long, long time, and we don't want to see VA in financial trouble for funding this legal battle. Slashdot is of more use as a living advocate than as a dead martyr.
Well, there are my words of advice (legally uninformed, I'm afraid) and encouragement. I figure you can use all the encouragement you can get. Good luck. I trust you to do the right thing.
Vovida, OS VoIP
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
The Napster association is bad enough. If Slashdot does not yank the copyrighted material, not only will Andover lose, but the mainstream press will have a heyday calling all proponents of free software a bunch of thieving zealots. Imagine the impact this will have on the DeCSS case, let alone the future of commercial free-software development.
Slashdot has long been a thorn in the side of Redmond; let's not give MS such a cheap chance to destroy this rival. Nothing would make MS so happy as an excuse to take Andover to court and bleed it dry of funds. Now, the comments explaining how to circumvent the NDA are another thing; in my book, they count as legitimate reverse engineering. Legally testing that legitimacy might be a good thing.
Vovida, OS VoIP
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
Vovida, OS VoIP
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
Many thanks. Please stick to this format--maybe make a new story category for it, with a nifty icon.
Actually, here's an idea: Make a new category and start a contest for the best icon. I promise to make lots of contributions. :)
Vovida, OS VoIP
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
I have two questions. First, do you agree with me in seeing your posts as popular digests of our culture, intended for a lay audience? Second, if you do agree, why do you persist in using Slashdot as a forum?
I will be very interested to read your answers. Perhaps the basis of your friction with Slashdot is, after all, just a confusion about audiences. Thanks for having the courage to offer an interview. I hope it leads to some kind of dialog that clears up the Katz-Slashdot controversy.
Vovida, OS VoIP
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
As of Sunday, I'm Doe number 191, so there are plenty more identities to go around. ;)
Vovida, OS VoIP
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
Remember, we're still a fairly small part of the software industry at large. It's not always easy for Linux geeks and Linux companies to find each other.
Good luck! Maybe I'll see your anonymous face at the next LWE in San Jose. :)
Vovida, OS VoIP
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
Vovida, OS VoIP
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
This reminds me of something I read on the GNU site. Under their list of ways you can help the FSF, they mention making tax-free donations. Because the FSF is part of the United Way, you can get many employers to donate matching funds if you "give at the office". The page added (paraphrased), "We especially appreciate matching funds from Microsoft employees." ;)
Vovida, OS VoIP
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
In short, the total cost in time and money is probably higher than the benefit you get from the more full-featured application.
Despite what Microsoft wants you to think, the total cost of ownership of Windows can easily become higher than that of Linux.
Cheers,
Vovida, OS VoIP
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
So there. :P
Vovida, OS VoIP
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
Vovida, OS VoIP
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
Vovida, OS VoIP
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product