(Crowd of people walking around in the front yard of a surburban house, looking at various bits of household junk)
Customer: (Looking around) Oh hey, what's this? It looks like some sort of oversized metal action figure!
Homeowner: That's a robot we've had down in the basement for a couple years now. Has an interesting history. Supposedly, it was thrown together by an unknown, but obviously brilliant computer scientist as a work project. Shame about what happened to him.
Supposedly after he'd finished building the thing, it got loose. There was this shotgun toting psycho of a woman who the police found raving and screaming about how it was trying to murder her and her kid. The police had a hell of a time taking her into custody; they've kept her sedated and locked up in a padded cell ever since.
Customer: Sounds like an amazing story! How much do you want for it?
Homeowner: (Slowly, pausing) $60 million.
Customer: WHAT?! But anyway...if anyone was even going to remotely consider paying that kind of money for it, it'd need to be able to do something beyond awesome! So give me a demonstration! How do I turn it on?
(Finds an old car battery and some jumper cables nearby, as other items for sale)
Hey, this'd work!
Homeowner: I'm not sure that's such a good idea...
Customer: It looks like just a kid's toy! Except a bit bigger of course. I'm sure it's perfectly safe!
(Applies cables to battery and T800, causing an explosion of sparks. The T800 rises up slowly from its' previous sitting position, its' eyes beginning to glow red)
This is the same old story. The business doesn't want to support a Linux client so they open the code they have and abandon it.
Yes, but doesn't it being open code, mean that you can then host it on Sourceforge etc, and then develop it yourself? If the company is giving you the source, they don't need to keep doing the development for you; you can take it in the direction you want.
I would also nominate PJ at Groklaw, for applying FOSS principles and practices to IP law.
Yes, Pamela is to be congratulated. Groklaw's single main purpose is allowing the translation of a neurotypical legal system, for a largely autistic audience.
That isn't meant as a troll, either, so please don't interpret it as one. Even the neurotypicals themselves generally find their legal system virtually impossible to comprehend, so I often wonder how on Earth we are supposed to cope with it.
I do believe that. And the last 20 years of UI design is evidence for me being right. There is incremental evolution, but all the radical concepts fell by the wayside. Good luck with that.
This is true. It also isn't good for development to be excessively radical. Radical development goes at a pace which does not allow human minds to be able to cope.
I still remain very adamantly convinced that the most effective form of user interface in existence, is made up of the group of text utilities that were devised during the 70s and early 80s. They work, they work well, and they also tend to work far more consistently and reliably than the newest GUI environments, as well.
One person I'd add is Keith Packard. He doesn't get much press coverage, but he is largely responsible for the fact that X.org is now feature-competitive with Apple's Quartz.
Yes, I haven't heard much mention of him either, I will admit. I'd heard the name, but that was about it.
Is he the Packard in the company name, "Hewlett Packard?"
"And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates." -- Deuteronomy, 6:6
Jordan Hubbard. He was the initial author of the ports system for FreeBSD. He was also, I believe, the leader of that project before going to work for Apple.
Marshall Kirk McKusick. Author of both the first and second filesystems for FreeBSD, and designer of the Beastie mascot.
Patrick Volkerding. He is the leader of the Slackware Linux project, which was the first Linux distribution I ever used, and still, I believe, the finest in existence.
William and Lynn Jolitz. The co-authors of the 386BSD project, and in that sense, Computer Science's answer to the Curies.
Bill Joy. Author of the original vi.
Bram Moolenaar. Founder and maintainer of the Vim project.
Gerard Beekmans. Founder of the Linux From Scratch project.
Linus Torvalds. I don't need to mention who Linus is. However, I'm also not mentioning him purely because it is politically correct to do so. I mention him here because I've looked through the code of his 0.1 Linux release. Linux might be a bloated horror now, but back then, it was poetry.
Bob Young, and Marc Ewing. The founders of Red Hat. Red Hat eventually abandoned the end user market for the enterprise sector, but they made a game try at creating an end user distribution first. Red Hat contributed a number of key programs to early Linux distributions, including the RPM package manager, and Anaconda hardware detection software. They also now largely fund the continued development of the GNU project.
Ulrich Drepper. I will admit that I think Glibc is a bloated mess, but Ulrich displayed courage in once drawing attention to the megalomania of Richard Stallman. For that, I admire him.
Daniel Robbins. Founder of both the Gentoo and Funtoo projects, and an awesome bash scripter.
Theo de Raadt. Leader of the OpenBSD project. Theo is an individual who understands what both the correct philosophy and methods are, behind developing software, and is not afraid to continue to follow said beliefs, irrespective of the project's detractors. His manner might, at times, emulate that of Erin Brockovich, but I still admire him despite that, and believe that his intelligence is matched only by his tenacity.
And now, the hall of shame:-
Richard Stallman. This is an individual who scarcely needs introduction on Slashdot, either; however I consider him the Magneto to Raymond's Xavier. The Free Software Foundation is the archetypical destructive cult, and Stallman has become as much a bane to Free and Open Source Software as he ever may have originally been a blessing. The savagery that I will likely be shown by his followers, for placing him here, will only further prove that point.
Bradley Kuhn. He has stated that his ideal is a scenario where the GPL is the only FOSS license in existence.
Ian Murdock. Founder of the Debian project, which is, after Stallman and his drone army, the single greatest source of emotional pain for me, where FOSS is concerned. His original intentions might have been good, but I continue to consider Debian a titanically bloated, excessively complex obscenity, in both technical and social terms. It is the worst Linux distributio
You slam Wikipedia, but it is generally considered reasonably accurate for non-contentious technical subjects, and compared to a set of search results from, say, 10 years ago, often goes into quite a bit of depth.
Sure. As long as a) the topic you're looking for is non-contentious, and b) you're a fashionable neo-atheist, Wikipedia is fine.
I've clicked on a few of those and confirmed they do indeed supply free, peer-reviewed, scientific papers online. Exactly how much depth do you require?
You've been to some different sites. Most of the ones I've seen along those lines were pay. Mind you, scientific papers aren't the sort of stuff that I spend a lot of my time seeking out, either...but occasionally I come across a research study that someone has cited, which is of interest.
The key question today is whether and how an individual can survive the over abundance of "free" without alienating himself. Humanity has changed irreversibly thanks to the Internet and IT, making knowledge accessible to all (mostly for free), but is this really a good thing (TM)?
The net has enormous breadth, but it's never had depth. You can get a *synopsis or summary* of pretty much anything, especially thanks to Wikipedia, but if you want truly in-depth information on most subjects, you're still going to have to get up out of your chair and look for a print book, in many cases.
Short, generic stuff with a copyright that nobody cares about, can be found online, yes. UNIX man pages and most cooking recipes are a good example of what I mean there. Longer, more in-depth books however, no. Book piracy is also still largely theoretical for the most part, as well. You can get some reference books on p2p, yes, but they're obsolete as soon as they are scanned, in terms of IT books at least, so there's not much point to them.
Wikipedia is also, as always, exceptionally untrustworthy. It is virtually impossible to find a biographical article that isn't biased in one direction or the other, (especially of living individuals) and as I've noted before, the site continues to display a strong atheistic/pseudo-rationalistic bias, as well.
OSX is a playtoy for those who deliberately do not want to understand the very thing they use daily, and even accept the grossly limitation of their freedoms too keep that state, done right.
Here we have the paradigmatic example, of what is holding Linux back. Individuals who voice opinions like the above.
OSX is vastly technically superior to Linux. This in no way can be honestly denied. I understand that you might be bitter and butthurt about that, but your bitterness isn't going to change anything. That's the first point.
The second point is that the Free Software Foundation is a cult, in a lot of the same ways that the Church of Scientology is, (except for perhaps the economic factor) and for just about anyone who hasn't been subjected to/accepted Stallman's mind control, his crap about (his own misuse/loading of the word) freedom has roughly the same amount of correspondence with reality, as Scientology's stuff about thetans and Xenu.
I've always found it incredibly ironic that Linux users are as strongly opposed to Scientology as they are, when you have apparently never realised that you have your own version of Hubbard in your midst, and many of you worship him every bit as fanatically as any Scientologist has ever worshipped LRH.
Do not bring up the FSF's perspective as though it is something that matters. It doesn't, and the only reason why you think it does, is your own indoctrination. If Stallman deserves any credit for the proliferation of FOSS, it is only in the sense that as a cult leader, he has been able to spawn an army of zealots (otherwise known as the Debian project, and to a lesser extent these days, Ubuntu's base) who attempt to ram Linux down the throat of anyone who will give them a hearing.
This is the address of a web site, which has some relevant people, who you can contact to get help. I sincerely hope that you choose to do so. Mind control in any form, is a form of slavery. Real freedom means the ability to make your own decisions.
If there's one thing I'm truly sick of seeing around here, it's the fact that it is always the most bitter, paranoid, and generally negative GNU/drones that get moderated the highest.
Do you really feel as though you're contributing anything positive, by continuing to spew this type of bile?
Gates wasn't anywhere near as technically oriented as most people think. He liked to consider himself a programmer, but in reality he was the ubermench of the suits, and in fact took the entire shorthair/bean counter/suit concept to its' ultimate logical conclusion, hence becoming a billionaire in the process.
Microsoft's bottom line hasn't benefitted from Gates leaving, because money (and/or control) were what he was primarily about.
However, despite the fact that I know that the Ubuntu Denial demographic won't like this opinion, there has been a noticeable correlation between the time when Bill became less active and ultimately retired, and the timeframe in which Windows has finally started to mature and become truly stable.
Ubuntu users/fans, the single biggest favour that you can do for yourselves at this stage in the game, is to recognise the honest truth, that Ubuntu has been schooled by Windows 7.
Ubuntu's single biggest problem right now, is the degree of continual denial that is being exhibited by its' users and advocates. The system has a lot of problems...and continuing to resist the idea that it does, and simply abuse anyone who tries to offer feedback, is not going to help the system improve.
The old talking points about stability at least, with Windows, are getting to the point where they are no longer true; although the security ones might still be.
I'm tempted to go back into the old routine here of citing specific issues, but whenever I do, I just get abuse in response; so I'm not going to do that again until I see some evidence that the denial has subsided. Shuttleworth himself glossing over problems and just engaging in spin whenever he is interviewed, also really isn't helping matters either.
Check the hardware support list, but looking at it, it supports DX2s/DX4s. AFAIK UNIX was never ported to i386 before the addition of the FPU, although I could be wrong about that.
The reason why I'm suggesting this is because, as well as being a particularly compact, high quality codebase, OpenBSD is, as you probably know, specifically oriented towards security. A firewall or software router is one of the only uses I can think of for a 486 these days.
If you were going to install NetBSD, you could possibly mess around with using the CPU as a controller for something weird, especially if you know how to actually rip the motherboard out and attach it to a robot chassis.;)
OpenBSD's internal fork of X is probably very tight I'm guessing as well, so you will possibly be able to run that. You almost certainly won't be able to play mp3s on it, and personally I wouldn't even try Dillo on it, either; use links.
The DX4 was the first machine with video playback, if memory serves.
Good luck with it, and have fun. If you can find a tight enough system for it, you'd probably be surprised at the number of uses you could find for it. It'll run ash, ed/vi, sed, and grep, at least; and who really needs more than that anyway, right?;)
Petrus4 has a history of blaming anything wrong in the Linux world or FOSS world at large as being Microsoft's fault. KDE sucks? Oh that's cause of Microsoft. Gnome sucks? Oh yeah, that's always Microsoft's fault. Lather, rinse, repeat for any other program/distro/etc that he dislikes.
I blame Microsoft for the current state of Linux for two reasons.
a) Their programming methodology, for the most part, is terrible. FOSS programmers view it as something to be emulated. Thus, they have emulated it, and bloated, excessively complex train wrecks like PulseAudio or GNOME are the result.
b) They've conditioned users into adopting a number of bad habits, so that said users force FOSS developers to support said bad habits in Linux.
One example is the expectation of unnecessary things like 3D compositing. It's superficial, almost purely aesthetic, and adds nothing in the way of practical usability; yet users compare Compiz with Aero and scream about how such is necessary, and that it doesn't matter if Compiz is unstable, because it's such a must-have feature.
Another example is a terminal aversion to the command line, which is viewed by users (and ultimately, users) as something which actually needs to be destroyed entirely. Have fun watching where that design decision leads.
This is something I've thought about for ten years. When people try out linux, or when techies try out linux, it's always on a spare machine which is inevitably worse for specs than their windows box. Inevitably they never fully make the switch.
Come on. We all know Tux was conceived at around 4 one morning while Linus was shagging Tove on their bathroom floor, while both were under the influence of alcohol and various other controlled substances, and thus forgot to use contraception. (Hint: Lighten up.;))
More seriously, the reason why people don't put Linux on their primary hardware, is because Linux is considered by them to be experimental, and thus potentially unsafe. They don't want to risk losing their data, by sharing their Windows drive with something that could potentially go berserk and destroy their partition table, for all they know. Given said lack of knowledge, it's a logical approach to take.
Incidentally, I dual boot, and I'm not intending to probably ever "fully make the switch," either. Dual booting is not a sin, and there are certain things for which Windows is still very useful.
XML needs replacing. I know you won't listen to me alone when I say that, however, but fortunately you don't have to. There's a replacement that you can read about here.
My own document format is a little less complex than YAML, but YAML is more thoroughly developed, and is intended to do more things.
2. It's XML. They can document it as well as they like; but said documentation is as long as I knew it was going to be. Anything written in XML is unavoidably difficult to read, by design. It isn't a format with which transparency is really possible.
3. If you're afraid of complex things, you really shouldn't be on the internet. I imagine you'd be happy living in a tent on the side of the mountain, but us societal folk like our technology.
This is garbage. The Internet's original application protocols are all (with the single exception of FTP) text-based.
I love technology, too. I just prefer it to be well designed. That means a couple of things.
a) That it's text based, and more purely text-based than XML. It doesn't need, at a fundamental level, to be anything other than text based, either. When I say that, I'm not saying that there shouldn't be support for multimedia; but protocols should be written in a purely textual way.
b) That it complies, broadly speaking, with what is written here.
Complexity also *is* a bad thing, yes. There was a time when computer programmers actually understood that. I'm not sure what's happened in the intervening few decades.
The waves are persistent, accessible to anyone who's added to them, and include the ability to track changes, so they ultimately work quite well as a medium for the non-tactical parts of an RPG.
IRC channels are entirely persistent. I regularly visit one that has existed for nearly 15 years now.
In terms of the ability to track changes, I'm assuming they mean something like CVS, but IRC can use date-stamped log files, as well.
IRC isn't less popular because it was a bad protocol. It's become somewhat less popular because corporations have marketed proprietary alternatives, and people have believed the claims about them supposedly being more capable, when in reality they aren't at all.
6. Another prejudice! Wooo! Some people would be ashamed to let the world know that they think that one, single word typed by one, single marketing droid determines the overall quality of the finished product... but not you! Fuck in-depth analysis! All you need is ONE WORD!
It might be a prejudice, but it's an accurate one. Go and find me a single case of the word, "richness," having been used, where the marketing droid in question actually bothers to define exactly what the word means. They never do. It's there purely to make what they're hyping sound good.
I really, really hope I was trolled, because knowing I wasted a bit of my time makes me feel MUCH better than knowing that someone as bitter and backwards as you is allowed to roam the internet.
I am in the ongoing process of attempting to learn to control my temper, and to avoid allowing quite so much bitterness to creep into what I write. Unfortunately, I didn't succeed in doing that in my last post. I'm hoping this one is a bit more clear.
Re:Privacy and the real-time web
on
D&D On Google Wave
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Now along comes wave. Google Wave is basically email on steroids, with a "wall / real time web" capability thrown in. You can be totally private or you can be totally public or any combo in between. Nice. And oh yes you also get media richness.
1. XML-based protocol? Check. 2. Obfuscated? Check. 3. Needlessly complex? Check. 4. Proprietary/commercially based? Check. (The better to "de-commoditise protocols," my dear)
5. Replaces a perfectly good, pre-existing protocol, when there's absolutely no sane reason (other than the aforementioned commercialism, of course) to do so? Check.
6. (The icing on the cake; this one ALWAYS shows up) Uses the brainless, meaningless, totally subjective, rage-inducing, corporate-suit-spawned "richness," argument in order to sell it to people who don't have the necessary intelligence to be able to see through this crap? Check.
Go ahead, call me a troll, mod me down, accuse me of beating up Santa Claus at Christmas, etc. I'm saying stuff you won't want to hear. If there's one thing that is a truly unforgiveable sin around here, it's voicing unpopular opinions.
I remember a time, only a few years ago, where even one crash in several hours of use would be seen as unacceptable for software at a major version number release.
I guess it's unavoidable, though. When you have a culture where SLOC alone is the sole metric of what is considered good software, instability is an inevitable result.
It's ironic. Microsoft could become insolvent tomorrow and vanish off the face of the Earth, and still, at this point, ultimately they would have won.
They've won by subverting FOSS developers' internal definition of what constitutes good software. Stability, correctness, minimalism...these are no longer seen as elements of sound development practice.
Instead, it's purely about pleasing the lowest common denominator of mindless end users. Whatever said demographic screams for the loudest, they get.
It's also about programmers wanting to be able to use the most visible possible metric as reason, on its' own, for them to flex their epeens; without realising that, given the relationship between code quantity and bugs, it's exactly the opposite approach to the one that they really ought to be taking.
I'm just unsure why trying (and failing, for the most part) to be a half-assed Windows clone is such a great thing for Linux to do.
Linux was originally a UNIX clone, before Mark Shuttleworth got hold of it. So to me it makes more sense for Linux to resemble BSD than Windows. Canonical have had to do some fairly unnatural things to force Linux to resemble Windows to the degree that they have.
Slashdot Mirror
(Crowd of people walking around in the front yard of a surburban house, looking at various bits of household junk)
Customer: (Looking around) Oh hey, what's this? It looks like some sort of oversized metal action figure!
Homeowner: That's a robot we've had down in the basement for a couple years now. Has an interesting history. Supposedly, it was thrown together by an unknown, but obviously brilliant computer scientist as a work project. Shame about what happened to him.
Supposedly after he'd finished building the thing, it got loose. There was this shotgun toting psycho of a woman who the police found raving and screaming about how it was trying to murder her and her kid. The police had a hell of a time taking her into custody; they've kept her sedated and locked up in a padded cell ever since.
Customer: Sounds like an amazing story! How much do you want for it?
Homeowner: (Slowly, pausing) $60 million.
Customer: WHAT?! But anyway...if anyone was even going to remotely consider paying that kind of money for it, it'd need to be able to do something beyond awesome! So give me a demonstration! How do I turn it on?
(Finds an old car battery and some jumper cables nearby, as other items for sale)
Hey, this'd work!
Homeowner: I'm not sure that's such a good idea...
Customer: It looks like just a kid's toy! Except a bit bigger of course. I'm sure it's perfectly safe!
(Applies cables to battery and T800, causing an explosion of sparks. The T800 rises up slowly from its' previous sitting position, its' eyes beginning to glow red)
Homeowner: ...
This is the same old story. The business doesn't want to support a Linux client so they open the code they have and abandon it.
Yes, but doesn't it being open code, mean that you can then host it on Sourceforge etc, and then develop it yourself? If the company is giving you the source, they don't need to keep doing the development for you; you can take it in the direction you want.
I said I'd heard the name. I also don't follow X intimately at all.
I'm not omniscient, ya know. ;)
I would also nominate PJ at Groklaw, for applying FOSS principles and practices to IP law.
Yes, Pamela is to be congratulated. Groklaw's single main purpose is allowing the translation of a neurotypical legal system, for a largely autistic audience.
That isn't meant as a troll, either, so please don't interpret it as one. Even the neurotypicals themselves generally find their legal system virtually impossible to comprehend, so I often wonder how on Earth we are supposed to cope with it.
I do believe that. And the last 20 years of UI design is evidence for me being right. There is incremental evolution, but all the radical concepts fell by the wayside. Good luck with that.
This is true. It also isn't good for development to be excessively radical. Radical development goes at a pace which does not allow human minds to be able to cope.
I still remain very adamantly convinced that the most effective form of user interface in existence, is made up of the group of text utilities that were devised during the 70s and early 80s. They work, they work well, and they also tend to work far more consistently and reliably than the newest GUI environments, as well.
Walk softly and carry a big gun, of course.
I still don't understand; but then again, such is the nature of Anonymous Cowards, I suppose. They are mysterious creatures. ;)
One person I'd add is Keith Packard. He doesn't get much press coverage, but he is largely responsible for the fact that X.org is now feature-competitive with Apple's Quartz.
Yes, I haven't heard much mention of him either, I will admit. I'd heard the name, but that was about it.
Is he the Packard in the company name, "Hewlett Packard?"
Code infrequently, carry a big axe.
What does this mean?
I meant to say, of course, that the OP is my list, in both categories. ;)
I either haven't heard of these people, or I don't care about them. Also, nearly everyone listed is either a CEO or board member of a corporation.
First, the hall of fame:-
"And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates."
-- Deuteronomy, 6:6
And now, the hall of shame:-
You slam Wikipedia, but it is generally considered reasonably accurate for non-contentious technical subjects, and compared to a set of search results from, say, 10 years ago, often goes into quite a bit of depth.
Sure. As long as a) the topic you're looking for is non-contentious, and b) you're a fashionable neo-atheist, Wikipedia is fine.
I've clicked on a few of those and confirmed they do indeed supply free, peer-reviewed, scientific papers online. Exactly how much depth do you require?
You've been to some different sites. Most of the ones I've seen along those lines were pay. Mind you, scientific papers aren't the sort of stuff that I spend a lot of my time seeking out, either...but occasionally I come across a research study that someone has cited, which is of interest.
Apparently this is a semi-underground site...which puts it out of the hands of most people, including myself.
Thanks, though. :) I'm actually surprised, given its' apparent nature, that someone would even mention it on Slashdot.
Now he should try asking that kid about The Beatles. He may well find that the infinite music is not a continuum.
Simple test to see if pirated music is truly infinite online.
As two examples, try finding either of these two albums:-
Serenity, by CultureBeat.
You Gotta Believe, by Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch.
The key question today is whether and how an individual can survive the over abundance of "free" without alienating himself. Humanity has changed irreversibly thanks to the Internet and IT, making knowledge accessible to all (mostly for free), but is this really a good thing (TM)?
The net has enormous breadth, but it's never had depth. You can get a *synopsis or summary* of pretty much anything, especially thanks to Wikipedia, but if you want truly in-depth information on most subjects, you're still going to have to get up out of your chair and look for a print book, in many cases.
Short, generic stuff with a copyright that nobody cares about, can be found online, yes. UNIX man pages and most cooking recipes are a good example of what I mean there. Longer, more in-depth books however, no. Book piracy is also still largely theoretical for the most part, as well. You can get some reference books on p2p, yes, but they're obsolete as soon as they are scanned, in terms of IT books at least, so there's not much point to them.
Wikipedia is also, as always, exceptionally untrustworthy. It is virtually impossible to find a biographical article that isn't biased in one direction or the other, (especially of living individuals) and as I've noted before, the site continues to display a strong atheistic/pseudo-rationalistic bias, as well.
OSX is a playtoy for those who deliberately do not want to understand the very thing they use daily, and even accept the grossly limitation of their freedoms too keep that state, done right.
Here we have the paradigmatic example, of what is holding Linux back. Individuals who voice opinions like the above.
OSX is vastly technically superior to Linux. This in no way can be honestly denied. I understand that you might be bitter and butthurt about that, but your bitterness isn't going to change anything. That's the first point.
The second point is that the Free Software Foundation is a cult, in a lot of the same ways that the Church of Scientology is, (except for perhaps the economic factor) and for just about anyone who hasn't been subjected to/accepted Stallman's mind control, his crap about (his own misuse/loading of the word) freedom has roughly the same amount of correspondence with reality, as Scientology's stuff about thetans and Xenu.
I've always found it incredibly ironic that Linux users are as strongly opposed to Scientology as they are, when you have apparently never realised that you have your own version of Hubbard in your midst, and many of you worship him every bit as fanatically as any Scientologist has ever worshipped LRH.
Do not bring up the FSF's perspective as though it is something that matters. It doesn't, and the only reason why you think it does, is your own indoctrination. If Stallman deserves any credit for the proliferation of FOSS, it is only in the sense that as a cult leader, he has been able to spawn an army of zealots (otherwise known as the Debian project, and to a lesser extent these days, Ubuntu's base) who attempt to ram Linux down the throat of anyone who will give them a hearing.
This is the address of a web site, which has some relevant people, who you can contact to get help. I sincerely hope that you choose to do so. Mind control in any form, is a form of slavery. Real freedom means the ability to make your own decisions.
If there's one thing I'm truly sick of seeing around here, it's the fact that it is always the most bitter, paranoid, and generally negative GNU/drones that get moderated the highest.
Do you really feel as though you're contributing anything positive, by continuing to spew this type of bile?
lol, where are all these microsoft advertising bots coming from?
It's like he copied and pasted that from a brochure!
The Ubuntu PR machine is no less delusional. The only difference with them is that, around here, they have social sanction.
Gates wasn't anywhere near as technically oriented as most people think. He liked to consider himself a programmer, but in reality he was the ubermench of the suits, and in fact took the entire shorthair/bean counter/suit concept to its' ultimate logical conclusion, hence becoming a billionaire in the process.
Microsoft's bottom line hasn't benefitted from Gates leaving, because money (and/or control) were what he was primarily about.
However, despite the fact that I know that the Ubuntu Denial demographic won't like this opinion, there has been a noticeable correlation between the time when Bill became less active and ultimately retired, and the timeframe in which Windows has finally started to mature and become truly stable.
Ubuntu users/fans, the single biggest favour that you can do for yourselves at this stage in the game, is to recognise the honest truth, that Ubuntu has been schooled by Windows 7.
Ubuntu's single biggest problem right now, is the degree of continual denial that is being exhibited by its' users and advocates. The system has a lot of problems...and continuing to resist the idea that it does, and simply abuse anyone who tries to offer feedback, is not going to help the system improve.
The old talking points about stability at least, with Windows, are getting to the point where they are no longer true; although the security ones might still be.
I'm tempted to go back into the old routine here of citing specific issues, but whenever I do, I just get abuse in response; so I'm not going to do that again until I see some evidence that the denial has subsided. Shuttleworth himself glossing over problems and just engaging in spin whenever he is interviewed, also really isn't helping matters either.
Check the hardware support list, but looking at it, it supports DX2s/DX4s. AFAIK UNIX was never ported to i386 before the addition of the FPU, although I could be wrong about that.
The reason why I'm suggesting this is because, as well as being a particularly compact, high quality codebase, OpenBSD is, as you probably know, specifically oriented towards security. A firewall or software router is one of the only uses I can think of for a 486 these days.
If you were going to install NetBSD, you could possibly mess around with using the CPU as a controller for something weird, especially if you know how to actually rip the motherboard out and attach it to a robot chassis. ;)
OpenBSD's internal fork of X is probably very tight I'm guessing as well, so you will possibly be able to run that. You almost certainly won't be able to play mp3s on it, and personally I wouldn't even try Dillo on it, either; use links.
The DX4 was the first machine with video playback, if memory serves.
Good luck with it, and have fun. If you can find a tight enough system for it, you'd probably be surprised at the number of uses you could find for it. It'll run ash, ed/vi, sed, and grep, at least; and who really needs more than that anyway, right? ;)
Petrus4 has a history of blaming anything wrong in the Linux world or FOSS world at large as being Microsoft's fault. KDE sucks? Oh that's cause of Microsoft. Gnome sucks? Oh yeah, that's always Microsoft's fault. Lather, rinse, repeat for any other program/distro/etc that he dislikes.
I blame Microsoft for the current state of Linux for two reasons.
a) Their programming methodology, for the most part, is terrible. FOSS programmers view it as something to be emulated. Thus, they have emulated it, and bloated, excessively complex train wrecks like PulseAudio or GNOME are the result.
b) They've conditioned users into adopting a number of bad habits, so that said users force FOSS developers to support said bad habits in Linux.
One example is the expectation of unnecessary things like 3D compositing. It's superficial, almost purely aesthetic, and adds nothing in the way of practical usability; yet users compare Compiz with Aero and scream about how such is necessary, and that it doesn't matter if Compiz is unstable, because it's such a must-have feature.
Another example is a terminal aversion to the command line, which is viewed by users (and ultimately, users) as something which actually needs to be destroyed entirely. Have fun watching where that design decision leads.
This is something I've thought about for ten years. When people try out linux, or when techies try out linux, it's always on a spare machine which is inevitably worse for specs than their windows box. Inevitably they never fully make the switch.
Come on. We all know Tux was conceived at around 4 one morning while Linus was shagging Tove on their bathroom floor, while both were under the influence of alcohol and various other controlled substances, and thus forgot to use contraception. (Hint: Lighten up. ;))
More seriously, the reason why people don't put Linux on their primary hardware, is because Linux is considered by them to be experimental, and thus potentially unsafe. They don't want to risk losing their data, by sharing their Windows drive with something that could potentially go berserk and destroy their partition table, for all they know. Given said lack of knowledge, it's a logical approach to take.
Incidentally, I dual boot, and I'm not intending to probably ever "fully make the switch," either. Dual booting is not a sin, and there are certain things for which Windows is still very useful.
1. Don't be fucking stupid.
I'm not.
XML needs replacing. I know you won't listen to me alone when I say that, however, but fortunately you don't have to. There's a replacement that you can read about here.
My own document format is a little less complex than YAML, but YAML is more thoroughly developed, and is intended to do more things.
2. It's XML. They can document it as well as they like; but said documentation is as long as I knew it was going to be. Anything written in XML is unavoidably difficult to read, by design. It isn't a format with which transparency is really possible.
3. If you're afraid of complex things, you really shouldn't be on the internet. I imagine you'd be happy living in a tent on the side of the mountain, but us societal folk like our technology.
This is garbage. The Internet's original application protocols are all (with the single exception of FTP) text-based.
I love technology, too. I just prefer it to be well designed. That means a couple of things.
a) That it's text based, and more purely text-based than XML. It doesn't need, at a fundamental level, to be anything other than text based, either. When I say that, I'm not saying that there shouldn't be support for multimedia; but protocols should be written in a purely textual way.
b) That it complies, broadly speaking, with what is written here.
Complexity also *is* a bad thing, yes. There was a time when computer programmers actually understood that. I'm not sure what's happened in the intervening few decades.
The waves are persistent, accessible to anyone who's added to them, and include the ability to track changes, so they ultimately work quite well as a medium for the non-tactical parts of an RPG.
IRC channels are entirely persistent. I regularly visit one that has existed for nearly 15 years now.
In terms of the ability to track changes, I'm assuming they mean something like CVS, but IRC can use date-stamped log files, as well.
IRC isn't less popular because it was a bad protocol. It's become somewhat less popular because corporations have marketed proprietary alternatives, and people have believed the claims about them supposedly being more capable, when in reality they aren't at all.
6. Another prejudice! Wooo! Some people would be ashamed to let the world know that they think that one, single word typed by one, single marketing droid determines the overall quality of the finished product... but not you! Fuck in-depth analysis! All you need is ONE WORD!
It might be a prejudice, but it's an accurate one. Go and find me a single case of the word, "richness," having been used, where the marketing droid in question actually bothers to define exactly what the word means. They never do. It's there purely to make what they're hyping sound good.
I really, really hope I was trolled, because knowing I wasted a bit of my time makes me feel MUCH better than knowing that someone as bitter and backwards as you is allowed to roam the internet.
I am in the ongoing process of attempting to learn to control my temper, and to avoid allowing quite so much bitterness to creep into what I write. Unfortunately, I didn't succeed in doing that in my last post. I'm hoping this one is a bit more clear.
Now along comes wave. Google Wave is basically email on steroids, with a "wall / real time web" capability thrown in. You can be totally private or you can be totally public or any combo in between. Nice. And oh yes you also get media richness.
1. XML-based protocol? Check.
2. Obfuscated? Check.
3. Needlessly complex? Check.
4. Proprietary/commercially based? Check. (The better to "de-commoditise protocols," my dear)
5. Replaces a perfectly good, pre-existing protocol, when there's absolutely no sane reason (other than the aforementioned commercialism, of course) to do so? Check.
6. (The icing on the cake; this one ALWAYS shows up) Uses the brainless, meaningless, totally subjective, rage-inducing, corporate-suit-spawned "richness," argument in order to sell it to people who don't have the necessary intelligence to be able to see through this crap? Check.
Go ahead, call me a troll, mod me down, accuse me of beating up Santa Claus at Christmas, etc. I'm saying stuff you won't want to hear. If there's one thing that is a truly unforgiveable sin around here, it's voicing unpopular opinions.
I remember a time, only a few years ago, where even one crash in several hours of use would be seen as unacceptable for software at a major version number release.
I guess it's unavoidable, though. When you have a culture where SLOC alone is the sole metric of what is considered good software, instability is an inevitable result.
It's ironic. Microsoft could become insolvent tomorrow and vanish off the face of the Earth, and still, at this point, ultimately they would have won.
They've won by subverting FOSS developers' internal definition of what constitutes good software. Stability, correctness, minimalism...these are no longer seen as elements of sound development practice.
Instead, it's purely about pleasing the lowest common denominator of mindless end users. Whatever said demographic screams for the loudest, they get.
It's also about programmers wanting to be able to use the most visible possible metric as reason, on its' own, for them to flex their epeens; without realising that, given the relationship between code quantity and bugs, it's exactly the opposite approach to the one that they really ought to be taking.
Or you could just run FreeBSD
Guess what I'm running right now? ;)
I'm just unsure why trying (and failing, for the most part) to be a half-assed Windows clone is such a great thing for Linux to do.
Linux was originally a UNIX clone, before Mark Shuttleworth got hold of it. So to me it makes more sense for Linux to resemble BSD than Windows. Canonical have had to do some fairly unnatural things to force Linux to resemble Windows to the degree that they have.