That song is actually kind of perfect in the Free Software context. If you know German or French, check this out: http://ingeb.org/Lieder/diegedan.html
Reminds me of a scene in the movie Dreiundzwanzig (23) where these two guys take out a joint in a train, smoke it, and start singing that song at the top of their voices.
[...] Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon,
back again
Moonshot, Woodstock, Watergate, punk rock
Begin, Reagan, Palestine, terror on the airline
Ayatollolah's in Iran, Russians in Afghanistan [...]
You have some good points, but essentially I have to disagree with you.
That is because there is a difference between software production and car-manufacturing. First off, the mentality of software being manufactured like cars is a wrong mentalitly; it is Microsoft's mentality, where information (i.e. the software), rather than being freely available, becomes a resource made accessible only to the bourgeousie (those who can afford to keep up with every new release of MS Windows, Office et cetera).
We all know the truth of George Bernhard Shaw's statement:
If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and
I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea
and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.
In other words, information is easily reproduced, redistributed, altered, reused, etc. There is nothing wrong with that; it does not harm the American Way (whatever that is) nor does it threaten civilization or humanity. In fact, free speech, free exchange of ideas and information is at the basis of our societies (speaking for the Europeans, most Americans, many Africans, Asians, and the Aussies).
Trying to block it is of course the natural reactionary response of the big corporations. It forces those who have made billions in the past decade or so to rethink the way they are doing business. Writing software is less like building a car though. It is more like writing a newspaper. And anybody who is somewhat critical towards the press realizes that newspapers that are made by a small interest group tend to disinform and spread propaganda, while newspapers that are made my a large group of individuals give a more acurate view from a broader perspective.
Similarly, if we could teach everybody to be as critical towards all their sources of information, including the software forges, we would take one giant step towards a less MS-dominated computing world.
Whatever you do: Stay away from MkLinux. Try anything before you try MkLinux! I have installed MkL on my Performa 5200 and it is a nightmare: no access to floppy (crash), kernel crash when I try to access the internal modem... IDE hang when running X (frequently!)... plus, the community seems to have died out, so support isn't great; the bug reports I sent in seem to have floated off into nirvana. I've invested a couple hundred for something more usable, because even though my MkL experience wasn't rewarding in a practical way, I did get more of an appreciation for Unices, strangely, and finally want to use it productively, not just for running DadaDodo and playing XBill...
I'd suggest Debian potato m68k. If you want the official binary set, they are giving one away for free at the Gravis Shop in Bonn (yes, that is in Germany). ( :
Apple's OS9 has had an extension called Speakable Items which is fun to play with
("Open file... I said 'Open file!' dangit!") but far from useful.
It's just the next step in making the usage of a computer more "user friendly" and thereby utterly inefficient. Typing vi kane/rosebud.text is so much faster than double-clicking on the folder kane and then on the file rosebud.text, and by far faster than saying "Show Speakable commands. Open folder Kane. Open folder Kane. Open folder Kane. Finally! Open file Rosebud dot text. Open file Rosebud dot text. Open file Rosebud period text..." Now, if you don't even use real language but only grunts, it becomes even worse. Talking about "Disneyfication"!
Or rather, alienation of the work process.
So you're the genius behind Audacity! I recently edited a 100Mbyte AIFF file in MacOS 8.6 (added a "hidden track" and did a bass boost) and was expecting it to crash at any minute, considering it was v.0.96. It didn't. I got the files merged and edited and saved within minutes. The Mac version has a beautiful intuitive and Aquaesque interface. Keep up the good work!
(I wrote a car racing program in C++ once... Unfortunately I think that Audacity takes a little more skill.)
What I'm wondering... if this gets through (let us pray que non), how they can be entirely sure they have "jurisdiction" to hack a machine. Maybe I'm just too illiterate as far as Internet infrastructure is concerned, but is it possible to be 100% positive where a machine you are hacking is located, whether it's in the U.S., three minutes into Canada or Mexico, in Costa Rica, in Iceland, in Bhutan...? Or is this y.a. U.S. law with effect on the whole world?
I am starting a new esoteric programming lanugage called sansChoice. It'll be a powerful, intuitive, interpreted, simple, no-point-oriented (NPO) helloworlding-language. An interpreter is already available in perl:
Maybe I'll start a SourceForge project; afterall, Hello World programs are the most popular by far, and this language finally makes it possible for anybody to write one.
"The EU could fine Microsoft a large sum in the anti-trust case which officially started in August. They might force the company to remove features from Windows. A classified document of the Commission which the Wall Street Journal got it's hands on implies that. The US-American economy newspaper reports that the Commission was unusually harsh in noting that MS tried to mislead the investigators and obstrucing down the trial. Because of that, the possible fine will be higher than it would have been had MS cooperated. The Commission could issue a fine as large as 10% of Microsoft's annual income; that would be 2.5 billion USD.
The investigators of the EU-Commission are of the opinion that MS illegally used it's dominant position in regard to Windows- and Office-software, to gain the upper hand in the rapidly expanding market for business and Internet software.Furthermore, Microsoft tried to crowd out audio and video software of competing companies with its Windows Media Player, the Wall Street Journal quotes the EU document. The Commission notes that the Redmonders purposely designed their operating system Windows 2000 and other applications so they would not support the software of their competitors. In the document the investigators suggest changes in the products to hinder such offenses in the future.
"Furthermore, the Commission attacked Microsoft's 'abusive and discrimminating licensing politics' as well as the company's refusal to lay open interfaces to competitors. This criticism was not aimed at the new Windows XP, but that could change soon.
"The presentation of 34 letters, in which Microsoft's customers supposedly offer their support for the company in the trial is regarded as an attempt to hinder the trial. Many of these letters had been written by Microsoft itself, in other cases the concerned customers didn't know that their letters were intended as evidence [in Microsoft's trial], the Commission noted."
If the large mass of people that create web content just stick to the technologies and W3C standards that are freely available now in future times, too, and don't even give new "standards" with patents (like, say, Odiferous Style Sheets) a big chance, then we won't have to fear them. It's not like we are all paying hundreds of bucks/euros/markkas/rubels for Flash vector animation software just because it's a de facto standard now, either, right? So why need we fear? What's free now will have to stay free, that's clear (I can't give something to somebody for free and then come back and say, "You owe me for that." That, clearly, is not legal.) So we'll just have to stick to the free things. And as we can see whenever we enter the virtual realms of various slashdotters, nice things can be done with those standards.
I'm not saying that I approve of the W3C getting tied up with corporate interests (that, as many have already said, would lead to a de-democratization of the Web), but it would not mean the end of free web development, as some imply.
Take a look at Eurolinux's statement on e-patents and sign their petition to ban them in Europe (or at least the EU).
They add a comment to all their GIFs, for example, stating that the American patents on GIFs do not apply to the GIF files on their Inet site, because they were created in Europe and are saved on servers and Europe, where e-patents by the very letter of the law are not allowed, Eurolinux claims.
Slashdot Mirror
Pixar ==> Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs ==> Apple/NeXT
Apple/NeXT ==> MacOS
MacOS ==> QuickTime
And don't forget to mention that a man we all love is the founder of Pixar.
That song is actually kind of perfect in the Free Software context. If you know German or French, check this out: http://ingeb.org/Lieder/diegedan.html
Reminds me of a scene in the movie Dreiundzwanzig (23) where these two guys take out a joint in a train, smoke it, and start singing that song at the top of their voices.
Whoa.
[...] Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon, back again Moonshot, Woodstock, Watergate, punk rock Begin, Reagan, Palestine, terror on the airline Ayatollolah's in Iran, Russians in Afghanistan [...]
(complete lyrics)
And as we speak, SP1 is already in the make, no doubt about it.
Gee, I agree.
That is because there is a difference between software production and car-manufacturing. First off, the mentality of software being manufactured like cars is a wrong mentalitly; it is Microsoft's mentality, where information (i.e. the software), rather than being freely available, becomes a resource made accessible only to the bourgeousie (those who can afford to keep up with every new release of MS Windows, Office et cetera).
We all know the truth of George Bernhard Shaw's statement:
In other words, information is easily reproduced, redistributed, altered, reused, etc. There is nothing wrong with that; it does not harm the American Way (whatever that is) nor does it threaten civilization or humanity. In fact, free speech, free exchange of ideas and information is at the basis of our societies (speaking for the Europeans, most Americans, many Africans, Asians, and the Aussies).Trying to block it is of course the natural reactionary response of the big corporations. It forces those who have made billions in the past decade or so to rethink the way they are doing business. Writing software is less like building a car though. It is more like writing a newspaper. And anybody who is somewhat critical towards the press realizes that newspapers that are made by a small interest group tend to disinform and spread propaganda, while newspapers that are made my a large group of individuals give a more acurate view from a broader perspective.
Similarly, if we could teach everybody to be as critical towards all their sources of information, including the software forges, we would take one giant step towards a less MS-dominated computing world.
(hoping that makes sense...)
I just don't understand why they were called PowerBooks back when they still ran with m68k processors and not the 601 etc. PowerPC processors...
This is worth a look-see for sure... pre-PB Macportables. Who'd've thought...
Try Mosfet in KDE for a beautiful Aquaesque appearance. Quite nice, actually, just a bit buggy in KDE 2.1*...
Whatever you do: Stay away from MkLinux. Try anything before you try MkLinux! I have installed MkL on my Performa 5200 and it is a nightmare: no access to floppy (crash), kernel crash when I try to access the internal modem... IDE hang when running X (frequently!)... plus, the community seems to have died out, so support isn't great; the bug reports I sent in seem to have floated off into nirvana. I've invested a couple hundred for something more usable, because even though my MkL experience wasn't rewarding in a practical way, I did get more of an appreciation for Unices, strangely, and finally want to use it productively, not just for running DadaDodo and playing XBill...
I'd suggest Debian potato m68k. If you want the official binary set, they are giving one away for free at the Gravis Shop in Bonn (yes, that is in Germany). ( :
This gets somewhat close to what you described.
It's just the next step in making the usage of a computer more "user friendly" and thereby utterly inefficient. Typing vi kane/rosebud.text is so much faster than double-clicking on the folder kane and then on the file rosebud.text, and by far faster than saying "Show Speakable commands. Open folder Kane. Open folder Kane. Open folder Kane. Finally! Open file Rosebud dot text. Open file Rosebud dot text. Open file Rosebud period text..." Now, if you don't even use real language but only grunts, it becomes even worse. Talking about "Disneyfication"! Or rather, alienation of the work process.
For more on Babbage I suggest reading Gibson and Sterling's excellent novel The Difference Machine (which Babbage invented).
So you're the genius behind Audacity! I recently edited a 100Mbyte AIFF file in MacOS 8.6 (added a "hidden track" and did a bass boost) and was expecting it to crash at any minute, considering it was v.0.96. It didn't. I got the files merged and edited and saved within minutes. The Mac version has a beautiful intuitive and Aquaesque interface. Keep up the good work!
(I wrote a car racing program in C++ once... Unfortunately I think that Audacity takes a little more skill.)
...yes, but a copyright owner that isn't backed by a multi-billion dollar industry.
What I'm wondering... if this gets through (let us pray que non), how they can be entirely sure they have "jurisdiction" to hack a machine. Maybe I'm just too illiterate as far as Internet infrastructure is concerned, but is it possible to be 100% positive where a machine you are hacking is located, whether it's in the U.S., three minutes into Canada or Mexico, in Costa Rica, in Iceland, in Bhutan...? Or is this y.a. U.S. law with effect on the whole world?
Do you thing the Python programming-language is Sixty Feet of Pure Terror, too? (I mean, this is Slashdot, afterall!)
print "sansChoice interpreter\n> ";chop($code = );print "\nHello world!\n";exit;
Maybe I'll start a SourceForge project; afterall, Hello World programs are the most popular by far, and this language finally makes it possible for anybody to write one.
Well, as a matter of fact there is an Unlambda interpreter written in INTERCAL. Just what the world needed...
Well, whatever you write, don't leave Charles Dickens out of it...
I'll try my very best...
"The EU could fine Microsoft a large sum in the anti-trust case which officially started in August. They might force the company to remove features from Windows. A classified document of the Commission which the Wall Street Journal got it's hands on implies that. The US-American economy newspaper reports that the Commission was unusually harsh in noting that MS tried to mislead the investigators and obstrucing down the trial. Because of that, the possible fine will be higher than it would have been had MS cooperated. The Commission could issue a fine as large as 10% of Microsoft's annual income; that would be 2.5 billion USD.
The investigators of the EU-Commission are of the opinion that MS illegally used it's dominant position in regard to Windows- and Office-software, to gain the upper hand in the rapidly expanding market for business and Internet software.Furthermore, Microsoft tried to crowd out audio and video software of competing companies with its Windows Media Player, the Wall Street Journal quotes the EU document. The Commission notes that the Redmonders purposely designed their operating system Windows 2000 and other applications so they would not support the software of their competitors. In the document the investigators suggest changes in the products to hinder such offenses in the future.
"Furthermore, the Commission attacked Microsoft's 'abusive and discrimminating licensing politics' as well as the company's refusal to lay open interfaces to competitors. This criticism was not aimed at the new Windows XP, but that could change soon.
"The presentation of 34 letters, in which Microsoft's customers supposedly offer their support for the company in the trial is regarded as an attempt to hinder the trial. Many of these letters had been written by Microsoft itself, in other cases the concerned customers didn't know that their letters were intended as evidence [in Microsoft's trial], the Commission noted."
copyright Verlag Heinz Heise
I'm not saying that I approve of the W3C getting tied up with corporate interests (that, as many have already said, would lead to a de-democratization of the Web), but it would not mean the end of free web development, as some imply.
They add a comment to all their GIFs, for example, stating that the American patents on GIFs do not apply to the GIF files on their Inet site, because they were created in Europe and are saved on servers and Europe, where e-patents by the very letter of the law are not allowed, Eurolinux claims.