Elaborate on the Microsoft TCP/IP comment, please.
If you mean the stack, then I can use Open Source C (gcc port to M$/OS/2, etc.), code alternatives to the stubs that Microsoft, must, by definition, leave Open, in order to be interoperable with the rest of the world (even they can't afford to write off those not on Windows...remember, they're an INTERNET Company now!).
But I believe the majority of desktops communicating via TCP/IP use SOCKS and that doesn't belong to M$, its owned by some Austrailian company or other, and not "Open" either (sigh!)
I can see using M$'s libs for only M$ code, and then they have every right to ask to "review" the result, as you saved some precious time by re-using their "prior art."
I, personally dislike using any libs not "open," or that I don't write myself, especially communications protocols, as I don't trust "Black Box" comms....but use the M$ libs and MFC if you want or need to. Others of us will continue to use other tools and take more time, but wind up with better optimized, and more secure product...THAT is the major benefit of the maturity of the models we use now (such as the TCP/IP communications protocols, etc.)
Remember that all of this was developed originally over 20 years ago by the US Government and its contractors and then "given" to the world because of statutory requirements...if the "prior art" is public and allowed to mature, and adopted as "Standard," even M$ cannot "steal" the product. The code may "fork," but the community, by its efforts can isolate the branch and allow it to die. It is only when we allow M$, IBM, Sun, HP, et. al. to define the standards with proprietary, "closed" code that we run the risk of losing the war by capitulation. This is one of the most unsettling aspects of, for instance, Java.
I agree that software SHOULD be free, and most of the best stuff, the stuff that survives, is...but, there must be a model for rapid development of "Free" software that supports the best of us in their work. It remains to be seen whether this is an answer. It is certainly not THE answer. The market will decide
RE: "Open Source has become just another buzzword, everybodies talking about it. But besides Netscape, which `corporation' has actually gave us any interesting source code (not hidden behind 1,0000 lines of legal crap)? "
Check Freshmeat, but here are three:
http://cvw.mitre.org (The Mitre Corporation) http://openmap.bbn.com (BBN/GTE) and, of course, http://www.sendmail.com (you didn't qualify your definition of the size of "corporation).
Not to mention IBM's donation to the Apache Foundation, and the various beginning-to-be-profitable Linux/*nix distributors (XFree86 and SUSE, Gnome/Enlightenment and Red Hat Labs (not to mention RPM's) and Sun and its sponsorship of the Java community (through the Java Fund and others).
Don't forget that jsut because the underlying art isn't "free or open," doen't mean the derivatives can't be...so then we need to count LiteStep (ACKK! M$loth!), X (???) and even AT&T itself (Unix begat BSD begat Minix begat Linux...ad infiniteum).
Re:No moderation (RANT_MODE=1)
on
Slashdot Notes
·
· Score: 2
RE: "...editorial policy."
Tough to do, especially if Rob and Co. "want a life," as expressed in the post. Think about what a community this is:
1. Lets folks post anonymously. 2. Allows us a single point of contact AND a healthy(?) sampling of the funky, the humourous and the genuinely interesting and intellectually stimulating sites that otherwise might not be seen in the "new" commercially dominated world of the Websphere. 3. Archives our thoughts responsibly and maintains them in an intelligent way. 4. Allows the new and the veteran of this space we are beginning to explore a place to experiment with new methods and processes of communication. 5. Advances the "New Media," while giving us a tailor-made and fully personally customizable interface that looks like PBS to some (All things nerdish considered...?) (television/radio metaphor, even has a "Cartoon Channel and MTV!) and a newspaper or magazine to others (Look, ma! The Funnies!)... 6. Succeeds where Netscape/AOL, DejaNews, Yahoo, and others of the "portal" ilk fail miserably...by creating individual and group spaces in which we can explore this new way of thinking and communicating without a constant barrage of ads, offers and spam-bait...in fact they go out of their way to defend us from the SpamLords. 7. Acts as a Fair Witness to the Revolution we are experiencing and helps those commercial interests who don't "get it" to join with us...in the process enriching all of us (even some of us monetarily) 8. Contributes to the demise of the PHB.
...and they do all this for 60K+ of us (and rising) with a system so well automated that it SEEMS PERSONAL!
This is not a flame, but I believe that the apparent "personal touch" of the system Rob and Co. have devised often masks their hard work and the human touch that makes Slashdot/. and not "Portal.com."
"Editorial" policy takes people, not machines, I think the/.bots and their human directors do as well a job as can be expected of a non-profit (and probably unprofitable) organization. We have seen the "death-by-burnout" of far too many sites to take this jewel for granted. The "moderation" method strives (at least from the vantage point of this old code-monkey) to automate what must be a laborious and sometimes labor-intensive job and bring some sense of sanity and human-size scale to this giant (24/7) job, in an artful and pleasing way so that we don't have to suffer the fools (gladly or otherwise) if we don't want to. It is to/.'s credit that they are asking us how they can improve this process and make it better still! Would the NYT, Wired, Yahoo!, Netscape/AOL or the other Portal.com sites even deign to notice us, let alone ask these questions of their customers? They haven't yet.
Finally, I did not mean this to be such a long post, but I feel that so obvious a labor of love quite often today goes unappreciated until it is no more...as the song said:
"...Don't it always seem to go, That you don't know what you've got 'Til it's gone..."
So, as is not too frequently said here, thanks Rob, and the rest of the "behind the scenes" Krewe...THANKS! We really do appreciate your work, your intellectual skills, your caring and the human touch that you strive to give us in the/. community!
THANKS!
(RANT_MODE=0)
SLASHDOT (GPL, LGPL, BSD, or TM?) Project? (#2)
on
Slashdot Notes
·
· Score: 1
Sorry, missed and hit by mistake...
Really, though, with the postings/announcements recently from the commercial side, and this large a community, how about a Project to bring the "SLASH kernel" to fruition?
I would be willing to donate server space and time (say 10 hours a week) if someone(s) would help set up the CVS/RCS/Bugzilla/webtools to track the project...say SLASH 1.0 in 60 days?
I did 27 years...was _paid_ to be weird...paid to work out...sent to some of the best schools in the world...learned a trade (besides my Primary NEC--which might as well have been "Homicidal Maniac" for all the translation to the civilian world it had)...make beaucoup bucks and most importantly got out of the little mud puddle that was my home town (incidentally, a former "sister city" of Littleton)...
My point was that it isn't for everyone... many of my shipmates (including my brother) were "lost at sea" or worse...I remember one young D&D'er in the early '80s who disappeared in the Straits, along with 300 pounds of tie-down chains: He was in the Computer/Data Systems Division...
From your talk of "the Regiment" I take it you were either a Ranger or a memeber of the British or one of the Commonwealth forces...If so, I didn't mean to denigrate the Armed Foorces of any state..._My_ time in the Navy was the best in my life too...I could do what I was best at and not have to worry about ostracization, because my aggressiveness, my braininess and, yes, my homocidal _RAGE_ against what was done to me in my teens was rewarded, not punished...Eight years later, my brother enlisted in an _ENTIRELY_ different Navy (today's Navy) and wound up _SEVERELY_ damaged...My point was that to join the service when you don't fit in in high school is a _HELL_ of a gamble...It could mean your life...
My second point was that no one in the US is talking abbout holding the school authorities (who spent more than 8 waking hours a day, every day with these young men) _CRIMINALLY NEGLIGENT_...also, we might consider these little Podunks like Littleton...these mud puddles...these cess-pits of conformity and miscegenation...these "family friendly" small towns that Moms and Dads move to out of Fear for Their Childrens' Well Being...the problems can be worse in Littleton than in the Bronx, or LA, or the South Side of Chicago...the authorities (up to and including the Mayor and the Police Chief) and certainly the school authorities, including the teachers and administrators are primarily to blame...the real violence here was done not to the 13 victimes, but to the young men and their peers that felt pressed to exact their revenge this way...who knows, if they had waited a few weeks, there might have been a war for them to temper their anger on, as there was for me...
Despite the TV ads and the words the recruiters give out, the Armed Forces is not an escape from the hell of High School, for those that turn 16 - 18...for nerds it is a descent into a totally different hell...one that can damage you for life or kill you for real... My brother was "different" and took that out...he came out with a DD, and is COMPLETELY non-functioning now...I was luckier, I had Vietnam and they were looking for homicidal maniacs, so I got to take out my anger on innocents and the Enemy...been out 10 years and only now getting my head together, but I could always "pass," even in High School... Letters like this make me wonder whether the problems of homelessness, drug abuse, etc. are actually responses to the pain and suffering the American/Anglican system imposes on our youth in High School...I agree with the posts here, I just wish we could hold the school teachers and authorities up to the District level CRIMINALLY CULPABLE...my wife was a school teacher, until she quit in disgust...she used to say that if the Russians had done to our children what we did in the schools, we would have called it an act of war. Dead Mike
Compaq/DEC WAS there...Jon "maddog" Hall can do everything he does for the community because Compaq/DEC pays him to help evangelize the Linux O/S...as Linus discussed in his speech, the Linux O/S has been '64-bit' for quite some time now...Linus spoke to this at some length during his keynote...Jon gets to do what he does (Chairman of Linux International, "the entire office staff," and 'Chief Defender of the Faith) because management at Compaq allows him to and, in addition, pays him for his not-inconsiderable skills as a *nix engineer and sysadmin...this, even tho they have a competing 64-bit *nix O/S (True64)...also Compaq was in the MS solutions booth and sponsored much of the 'behind the scenes' of the 1st Annual Linux Global Summit...some of the buzz at the show vis-a-vis the Alpha was VERY interesting and may have a tremendous impact on Linux' penetration into the corporate Data Center...don't fault Compaq, they have bigger things to pay attention to right now...
Actually, the observation is germane...Apache was ported to Linux AFTER ports to commercial server OS's (INCLUDING NT! Read the CVS trees) and by a separate sub-group. It still shows some problems with memory leakages and some consistent I/O errors under heavy load, if you implement the binaries or the standard source on your server. IMHO, the ZEUS applet web server on Ultra-SPARC machines (especially with the ability to run Java servlets, rather than Perl/other scripts environments, with their back-end CPU loading)pounds the tar out of Apache in a commercial environment BEFORE you consider SMP issues. Apache and IIS are the most used primarily because they are FREE, not for any technical reasons. It also helps to remember that all the modern servers derive most of their code from MOZILLA/Netscape, and that IIS has more than a little "cloned code" from Apachhe source. Iguess that that is one of the disadvantages of Open Source: the Enemy is free to take advantage of your work, too. Dead Mike
This is the BEST... I know this'll show me up as a newbie, but "all the myriad ways" of/. goodness that are now possible take me back to the old command-line CompuServe days of forum/BBS life (and FIDO!!! on packet radio!!!) If I want to be fully enlightened, I can see the community in all its flaming goodness...if I am pressed for time, I can rank by score/set filter in many different ways to get just the level of heat I need to start my day... This is the bomb! I wonder if Lotus is watching...this is what Notes _SHOULD_ have been... Way cool, Taco buddy...you got my vote for Chairman of the Joint Cheese!!!Two more joss sticks in the "Temple to Rob"!!!
Slashdot Mirror
Elaborate on the Microsoft TCP/IP comment, please.
If you mean the stack, then I can use Open Source C (gcc port to M$/OS/2, etc.), code alternatives to the stubs that Microsoft, must, by definition, leave Open, in order to be interoperable with the rest of the world (even they can't afford to write off those not on Windows...remember, they're an INTERNET Company now!).
But I believe the majority of desktops communicating via TCP/IP use SOCKS and that doesn't belong to M$, its owned by some Austrailian company or other, and not "Open" either (sigh!)
I can see using M$'s libs for only M$ code, and then they have every right to ask to "review" the result, as you saved some precious time by re-using their "prior art."
I, personally dislike using any libs not "open," or that I don't write myself, especially communications protocols, as I don't trust "Black Box" comms....but use the M$ libs and MFC if you want or need to. Others of us will continue to use other tools and take more time, but wind up with better optimized, and more secure product...THAT is the major benefit of the maturity of the models we use now (such as the TCP/IP communications protocols, etc.)
Remember that all of this was developed originally over 20 years ago by the US Government and its contractors and then "given" to the world because of statutory requirements...if the "prior art" is public and allowed to mature, and adopted as "Standard," even M$ cannot "steal" the product. The code may "fork," but the community, by its efforts can isolate the branch and allow it to die. It is only when we allow M$, IBM, Sun, HP, et. al. to define the standards with proprietary, "closed" code that we run the risk of losing the war by capitulation. This is one of the most unsettling aspects of, for instance, Java.
I agree that software SHOULD be free, and most of the best stuff, the stuff that survives, is...but, there must be a model for rapid development of "Free" software that supports the best of us in their work. It remains to be seen whether this is an answer. It is certainly not THE answer. The market will decide
RE: "Open Source has become just another buzzword, everybodies talking about it. But besides Netscape, which `corporation' has actually gave us any interesting source code (not hidden behind 1,0000 lines of legal crap)? "
Check Freshmeat, but here are three:
http://cvw.mitre.org (The Mitre Corporation)
http://openmap.bbn.com (BBN/GTE)
and, of course,
http://www.sendmail.com (you didn't qualify your definition of the size of "corporation).
Not to mention IBM's donation to the Apache Foundation, and the various beginning-to-be-profitable Linux/*nix distributors (XFree86 and SUSE, Gnome/Enlightenment and Red Hat Labs (not to mention RPM's) and Sun and its sponsorship of the Java community (through the Java Fund and others).
Don't forget that jsut because the underlying art isn't "free or open," doen't mean the derivatives can't be...so then we need to count LiteStep (ACKK! M$loth!), X (???) and even AT&T itself (Unix begat BSD begat Minix begat Linux...ad infiniteum).
What OS?
AAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!! It's NT!
(Follow the URL)
RE: "...editorial policy."
/. and not "Portal.com."
/.bots and their human directors do as well a job as can be expected of a non-profit (and probably unprofitable) organization. We have seen the "death-by-burnout" of far too many sites to take this jewel for granted. The "moderation" method strives (at least from the vantage point of this old code-monkey) to automate what must be a laborious and sometimes labor-intensive job and bring some sense of sanity and human-size scale to this giant (24/7) job, in an artful and pleasing way so that we don't have to suffer the fools (gladly or otherwise) if we don't want to. It is to /.'s credit that they are asking us how they can improve this process and make it better still! Would the NYT, Wired, Yahoo!, Netscape/AOL or the other Portal.com sites even deign to notice us, let alone ask these questions of their customers? They haven't yet.
/. community!
Tough to do, especially if Rob and Co. "want a life," as expressed in the post. Think about what a community this is:
1. Lets folks post anonymously.
2. Allows us a single point of contact AND a healthy(?) sampling of the funky, the humourous and the genuinely interesting and intellectually stimulating sites that otherwise might not be seen in the "new" commercially dominated world of the Websphere.
3. Archives our thoughts responsibly and maintains them in an intelligent way.
4. Allows the new and the veteran of this space we are beginning to explore a place to experiment with new methods and processes of communication.
5. Advances the "New Media," while giving us a tailor-made and fully personally customizable interface that looks like PBS to some (All things nerdish considered...?) (television/radio metaphor, even has a "Cartoon Channel and MTV!) and a newspaper or magazine to others (Look, ma! The Funnies!)...
6. Succeeds where Netscape/AOL, DejaNews, Yahoo, and others of the "portal" ilk fail miserably...by creating individual and group spaces in which we can explore this new way of thinking and communicating without a constant barrage of ads, offers and spam-bait...in fact they go out of their way to defend us from the SpamLords.
7. Acts as a Fair Witness to the Revolution we are experiencing and helps those commercial interests who don't "get it" to join with us...in the process enriching all of us (even some of us monetarily)
8. Contributes to the demise of the PHB.
...and they do all this for 60K+ of us (and rising) with a system so well automated that it SEEMS PERSONAL!
This is not a flame, but I believe that the apparent "personal touch" of the system Rob and Co. have devised often masks their hard work and the human touch that makes Slashdot
"Editorial" policy takes people, not machines, I think the
Finally, I did not mean this to be such a long post, but I feel that so obvious a labor of love quite often today goes unappreciated until it is no more...as the song said:
"...Don't it always seem to go,
That you don't know what you've got
'Til it's gone..."
So, as is not too frequently said here, thanks Rob, and the rest of the "behind the scenes" Krewe...THANKS! We really do appreciate your work, your intellectual skills, your caring and the human touch that you strive to give us in the
THANKS!
(RANT_MODE=0)
Sorry, missed and hit by mistake...
Really, though, with the postings/announcements recently from the commercial side, and this large a community, how about a Project to bring the "SLASH kernel" to fruition?
I would be willing to donate server space and time (say 10 hours a week) if someone(s) would help set up the CVS/RCS/Bugzilla/webtools to track the project...say SLASH 1.0 in 60 days?
I did 27 years...was _paid_ to be weird...paid to work out...sent to some of the best schools in the world...learned a trade (besides my Primary NEC--which might as well have been "Homicidal Maniac" for all the translation to the civilian world it had)...make beaucoup bucks and most importantly got out of the little mud puddle that was my home town (incidentally, a former "sister city" of Littleton)...
My point was that it isn't for everyone... many of my shipmates (including my brother) were "lost at sea" or worse...I remember one young D&D'er in the early '80s who disappeared in the Straits, along with 300 pounds of tie-down chains: He was in the Computer/Data Systems Division...
From your talk of "the Regiment" I take it you were either a Ranger or a memeber of the British or one of the Commonwealth forces...If so, I didn't mean to denigrate the Armed Foorces of any state..._My_ time in the Navy was the best in my life too...I could do what I was best at and not have to worry about ostracization, because my aggressiveness, my braininess and, yes, my homocidal _RAGE_ against what was done to me in my teens was rewarded, not punished...Eight years later, my brother enlisted in an _ENTIRELY_ different Navy (today's Navy) and wound up _SEVERELY_ damaged...My point was that to join the service when you don't fit in in high school is a _HELL_ of a gamble...It could mean your life...
My second point was that no one in the US is talking abbout holding the school authorities (who spent more than 8 waking hours a day, every day with these young men) _CRIMINALLY NEGLIGENT_...also, we might consider these little Podunks like Littleton...these mud puddles...these cess-pits of conformity and miscegenation...these "family friendly" small towns that Moms and Dads move to out of Fear for Their Childrens' Well Being...the problems can be worse in Littleton than in the Bronx, or LA, or the South Side of Chicago...the authorities (up to and including the Mayor and the Police Chief) and certainly the school authorities, including the teachers and administrators are primarily to blame...the real violence here was done not to the 13 victimes, but to the young men and their peers that felt pressed to exact their revenge this way...who knows, if they had waited a few weeks, there might have been a war for them to temper their anger on, as there was for me...
Dead Mike
Despite the TV ads and the words the recruiters give out, the Armed Forces is not an escape from the hell of High School, for those that turn 16 - 18...for nerds it is a descent into a totally different hell...one that can damage you for life or kill you for real... My brother was "different" and took that out...he came out with a DD, and is COMPLETELY non-functioning now...I was luckier, I had Vietnam and they were looking for homicidal maniacs, so I got to take out my anger on innocents and the Enemy...been out 10 years and only now getting my head together, but I could always "pass," even in High School... Letters like this make me wonder whether the problems of homelessness, drug abuse, etc. are actually responses to the pain and suffering the American/Anglican system imposes on our youth in High School...I agree with the posts here, I just wish we could hold the school teachers and authorities up to the District level CRIMINALLY CULPABLE...my wife was a school teacher, until she quit in disgust...she used to say that if the Russians had done to our children what we did in the schools, we would have called it an act of war. Dead Mike
Compaq/DEC WAS there...Jon "maddog" Hall can do everything he does for the community because Compaq/DEC pays him to help evangelize the Linux O/S...as Linus discussed in his speech, the Linux O/S has been '64-bit' for quite some time now...Linus spoke to this at some length during his keynote...Jon gets to do what he does (Chairman of Linux International, "the entire office staff," and 'Chief Defender of the Faith) because management at Compaq allows him to and, in addition, pays him for his not-inconsiderable skills as a *nix engineer and sysadmin...this, even tho they have a competing 64-bit *nix O/S (True64)...also Compaq was in the MS solutions booth and sponsored much of the 'behind the scenes' of the 1st Annual Linux Global Summit...some of the buzz at the show vis-a-vis the Alpha was VERY interesting and may have a tremendous impact on Linux' penetration into the corporate Data Center...don't fault Compaq, they have bigger things to pay attention to right now...
Actually, the observation is germane...Apache was ported to Linux AFTER ports to commercial server OS's (INCLUDING NT! Read the CVS trees) and by a separate sub-group. It still shows some problems with memory leakages and some consistent I/O errors under heavy load, if you implement the binaries or the standard source on your server. IMHO, the ZEUS applet web server on Ultra-SPARC machines (especially with the ability to run Java servlets, rather than Perl/other scripts environments, with their back-end CPU loading)pounds the tar out of Apache in a commercial environment BEFORE you consider SMP issues. Apache and IIS are the most used primarily because they are FREE, not for any technical reasons. It also helps to remember that all the modern servers derive most of their code from MOZILLA/Netscape, and that IIS has more than a little "cloned code" from Apachhe source. Iguess that that is one of the disadvantages of Open Source: the Enemy is free to take advantage of your work, too. Dead Mike
This is the BEST... I know this'll show me up as a newbie, but "all the myriad ways" of /. goodness that are now possible take me back to the old command-line CompuServe days of forum/BBS life (and FIDO!!! on packet radio!!!) If I want to be fully enlightened, I can see the community in all its flaming goodness...if I am pressed for time, I can rank by score/set filter in many different ways to get just the level of heat I need to start my day... This is the bomb! I wonder if Lotus is watching...this is what Notes _SHOULD_ have been... Way cool, Taco buddy...you got my vote for Chairman of the Joint Cheese!!!Two more joss sticks in the "Temple to Rob"!!!