Agreed! Can't be supporting the bad guys, even if it would be the cheap way to get good Quake performance. We'll just have to wait and see for sure what other manufacturers are supported by QIII when it ships.
I just hope that this doesn't lead to java forking. ..architecture-dependent java variants could really screw up the big opportunity for architecture-independent programming.
Agreed that losing sight of architecture-independance is bad. But a faster Java that is developed as an open source project, rather than as Sun's main PR tool? That could be great indeed.
Stallman is trying to explain what free software is. Raymond is trying to define what open source software is
Surely RMS is as much in the business of defining free software as ESR is. Who, other than a handful of academics, had discussed freedom and software issues before RMS began his campaigning? You could call RMS' work "explaining his view of how it should be," but that label fits ESR just as well. The two men do have a lot in common: both are highly motivated by personal feelings of what is right, and neither seems willing to change the approach he advocates based on what he hears from members of the community. I think that/.ers simply tend to see things more like RMS than like ESR, and so it's easier to view Stallman's work as "explaining".
Since most computer company's brand name line-up is already confusing, I imagine the barrier of adding a new brand name is pretty high. (Which is probaably why Dell doesn't do it.)
Actually, I'm typing this on a Dell Optiplex GX1 (whatever that's supposed to mean), and it sports both the intel swoosh and the m$ window.
...but here in the Real World, language is constantly evolving. Proper English doesn't have non-gender specific singular pronouns, so the language is changing so that "their" and related words have come to apply to one person of any gender. Ask a linguist if you want to hear the gritty details.
at least the idea of Linus moving to Russia and working on a zippy new chip is plausible... this article was just ridiculous.
It is nice to see some friendly ribbing from more mainstream media, though. Now all we need is for Billy boy to announce that all the bugs in windows NT have been fixed, and it will be a complete April 1st.
I just spent 15 minutes trying to put this very idea into words, but I like your version. I think that this is exactly why ESR runs into such opposition: members of the community hear Eric "speaking for them", but they strongly disagree with the things he is saying. Any "spokesman" for the open source world needs a big dose of humility. With the huge mishmash of opinions out there, how could anyone claim to "represent" open source? We need good, honest, informed reporting of the truth, not wheelin' and dealin' and speechifyin'
Depending on who you listen to, freedom and open process are the driving forces behind this big phenomenon that we all get so excited by. And that's precisely why there was an uproar over the proclamation that the Apple license was "Open Source".
Who said that the license qualified? Not the community. ESR said it was good enough for us, and we had better praise Apple for it. But that's not how it works. The "screaming at the top of one's lungs" came from members of the community who were concerned that ESR was trying to make our decisions for us, and that those decisions were wrong. To be a truly effective spokesman, ESR needs to recognize that there will be conflicts between his own beliefs and those of many in the open source community, and he needs to deal honestly with those conflicts. I don't think anyone expects ESR to do all of the things that he seems to feel are necessary; communicating the strengths and advantages of open source is more than enough.
I say this because you haven't read the article very closely before spouting off. The author clearly states that his rant focuses on clueless newbies, the sort who can't be bothered to think on their own and expect someone else to do it for them. If you are a newbie with a clue, i.e. the right attitude, then you will be able to figure out most everything from existing documentation, and the questions that you do ask will be new and exciting rather than stale and worn.
>>like I said I was sick of writing at the end of this article.
One of the widely-held rules of good writing: revise, revise, revise. It's natural to become fatigued in the middle of writing, but as long as you aren't pushing a deadline, you can just take a break. Come back fresh and turn it into something you can be proud to attach your name to. Read it out loud to check for clunky-sounding parts. Have a friend read it and then tell you what they thought you wrote - might not be what you intended to say. Read some good writing so that you have an idea of what your goal should be. If you do these things, then you can expect people to focus more on your ideas than on your presentation.
But juries are strange things, and behave unpredicatably. They could just as easily decide that the cop is a woman-hating pig who doesn't know the internet from a hill of beans.
I'm not saying that the american judicial system has a great track record in this sort of case, but every now and then a little justice slips through the cracks. It's worth prosecuting the bastard, especially if one of the cops involved thought she had a solid case.
Agreed. Exposure to Islands in the Clickstream from CUD suggests that it is sometimes insightful and sometimes vapid, which is OK. The same could be said for NETFUTURE. Perhaps Slashdot should consider just having links to these articles as they come out, along with a summary, so that we busy slackers can decide if a given article is worth blowing off more work/study/whatever to read.
Seriously though, Lloyd Wood's article did more for my grey matter than the last dozen Katz articles -- well researched, logically organized, thoughtful, to the point. Not controversial for the sake of drawing attention. Slashdot would do very well to feature this guy and anyone else who has a similar similar level of being clued in/being able to read and write.
"...the seats and sound system make it nice"!?! I thought we were talking about cars, not living rooms. Point being that many of us do in fact get passionate about the lower-level technical stuff (powertrain, OS).
Slashdot Mirror
And no, I won't tell you what it is or who I am, but if you use a web browser you'll catch the hint.
You wouldn't be referring to Netscape, would you? I seem to have heard a thing or two about crufty code in that piece of programming.
Not a flame, just a good-natured jab
Agreed! Can't be supporting the bad guys, even if it would be the cheap way to get good Quake performance. We'll just have to wait and see for sure what other manufacturers are supported by QIII when it ships.
I just hope that this doesn't lead to java forking. . .architecture-dependent java variants could really screw up the big opportunity for architecture-independent programming.
Agreed that losing sight of architecture-independance is bad.
But a faster Java that is developed as an open source project, rather than as Sun's main PR tool? That could be great indeed.
Stallman is trying to explain what free software is. Raymond is trying to define what open source software is
/.ers simply tend to see things more like RMS than like ESR, and so it's easier to view Stallman's work as "explaining".
Surely RMS is as much in the business of defining free software as ESR is. Who, other than a handful of academics, had discussed freedom and software issues before RMS began his campaigning?
You could call RMS' work "explaining his view of how it should be," but that label fits ESR just as well. The two men do have a lot in common: both are highly motivated by personal feelings of what is right, and neither seems willing to change the approach he advocates based on what he hears from members of the community. I think that
Since most computer company's brand name line-up is already confusing, I imagine the barrier of adding a new brand name is pretty high. (Which is probaably why Dell doesn't do it.)
Actually, I'm typing this on a Dell Optiplex GX1 (whatever that's supposed to mean), and it sports both the intel swoosh and the m$ window.
Right on about the confusing model names, though!
...but here in the Real World, language is constantly evolving. Proper English doesn't have non-gender specific singular pronouns, so the language is changing so that "their" and related words have come to apply to one person of any gender. Ask a linguist if you want to hear the gritty details.
...is that the server has already given up, so I can't read it. What are they running that thing on? Wouldn't be a mac, would it?
I especially liked the "sponsored by microsoft" tag that appeared on the byline.
When I say "nothing more", I mean with regards to Debian. Not a slam on RMS.
Last I checked, RMS was a user of Debian, and nothing more.
Of course, he's free to call it Debian GNU if that makes him happier.
at least the idea of Linus moving to Russia and working on a zippy new chip is plausible... this article was just ridiculous.
It is nice to see some friendly ribbing from more mainstream media, though. Now all we need is for Billy boy to announce that all the bugs in windows NT have been fixed, and it will be a complete April 1st.
I just spent 15 minutes trying to put this very idea into words, but I like your version. I think that this is exactly why ESR runs into such opposition: members of the community hear Eric "speaking for them", but they strongly disagree with the things he is saying. Any "spokesman" for the open source world needs a big dose of humility. With the huge mishmash of opinions out there, how could anyone claim to "represent" open source? We need good, honest, informed reporting of the truth, not wheelin' and dealin' and speechifyin'
Depending on who you listen to, freedom and open process are the driving forces behind this big phenomenon that we all get so excited by. And that's precisely why there was an uproar over the proclamation that the Apple license was "Open Source".
Who said that the license qualified? Not the community. ESR said it was good enough for us, and we had better praise Apple for it. But that's not how it works. The "screaming at the top of one's lungs" came from members of the community who were concerned that ESR was trying to make our decisions for us, and that those decisions were wrong. To be a truly effective spokesman, ESR needs to recognize that there will be conflicts between his own beliefs and those of many in the open source community, and he needs to deal honestly with those conflicts. I don't think anyone expects ESR to do all of the things that he seems to feel are necessary; communicating the strengths and advantages of open source is more than enough.
I say this because you haven't read the article very closely before spouting off. The author clearly states that his rant focuses on clueless newbies, the sort who can't be bothered to think on their own and expect someone else to do it for them. If you are a newbie with a clue, i.e. the right attitude, then you will be able to figure out most everything from existing documentation, and the questions that you do ask will be new and exciting rather than stale and worn.
>>like I said I was sick of writing at
the end of this article.
One of the widely-held rules of good writing: revise, revise, revise. It's natural to become fatigued in the middle of writing, but as long as you aren't pushing a deadline, you can just take a break. Come back fresh and turn it into something you can be proud to attach your name to. Read it out loud to check for clunky-sounding parts. Have a friend read it and then tell you what they thought you wrote - might not be what you intended to say. Read some good writing so that you have an idea of what your goal should be. If you do these things, then you can expect people to focus more on your ideas than on your presentation.
You describe one possible scenario, yes.
But juries are strange things, and behave unpredicatably. They could just as easily decide that the cop is a woman-hating pig who doesn't know the internet from a hill of beans.
I'm not saying that the american judicial system has a great track record in this sort of case, but every now and then a little justice slips through the cracks. It's worth prosecuting the bastard, especially if one of the cops involved thought she had a solid case.
Agreed. Exposure to Islands in the Clickstream from CUD suggests that it is sometimes insightful and sometimes vapid, which is OK. The same could be said for NETFUTURE. Perhaps Slashdot should consider just having links to these articles as they come out, along with a summary, so that we busy slackers can decide if a given article is worth blowing off more work/study/whatever to read.
Almost a catchy slogan, eh?
Seriously though, Lloyd Wood's article did more for my grey matter than the last dozen Katz articles -- well researched, logically organized, thoughtful, to the point. Not controversial for the sake of drawing attention. Slashdot would do very well to feature this guy and anyone else who has a similar similar level of being clued in/being able to read and write.
I disagree. I think this would be an "A" paper at least through the 10th grade, and possibly all the way through some of the weaker secondary schools.
Unfortunately this says more about schools than it does about the quality of the paper...
hinter == behind, so I would guess that it's saying that Microsoft is way behind in the Linux applications market.
True but doesn't quite capture the reality of the situation
hear hear. #1 reason that a BA will be the end of the line for me: it seems silly to pay some institution to put me to sleep.
Sad but true.
Griping about the ever-changing Word format, yes.
Wanting to be able to run word under linux, though, rather than just be able to do something with its files?
News to me.
"...the seats and sound system make it nice"!?! I thought we were talking about cars, not living rooms. Point being that many of us do in fact get passionate about the lower-level technical stuff (powertrain, OS).
Who cares indeed.
Kids these days have mighty high standards. Now, back when I was growing up, a 9" b&w tv was a big deal. But a 27" color tv is "shitty" now? Sheesh.
I always thought that journalists were expected to do a few minutes of research before writing stories. Guess I was wrong.