You'd be absolutely right if physics, both newtonian and quantum, were right. As it is, the scientific community has already demonstrated that Newtonian physics is at a highly accurate method of approximating the behavior of physical bodies (but not exact.) While quantum physics give us signifigantly better results for smaller (sub-atomic) physical systems, it hasn't been proven correct by any stretch of the imagination, and there are still an unknown number of forces we have yet to isolate, let alone understand.
Physics does indeed say it won't work. The universe, however, has a habit of disregarding how we think it should work.
I've already made the switch from 7-digit to 10-digit dialing when I moved to France. It's really not all that hard of a thing to change, IMHO; there are even unexpected benefits to it (here, at least; for example, I know automatically that an '06' number is a mobile phone, and can automatically filter them the a mobile phone field in a database with no trouble at all.)
Is it worth giving up your privacy for a free binary, or paying fifty bucks for the binary?
I'd argue that if you want to use Opera for free, it is well worth giving up a small slice of one's privacy in return. I can think of several others, right off the top of my head:
Giving up one's privacy for the sake of getting to and from the grocery store;
Giving up one's privacy to let light stream into your house through the window;
Giving up one's privacy to go to the hospital and have that broken leg set in a cast;
Giving up one's privacy by walking across the street to greet your new neighbor;
Giving up one's privacy to enjoy a night at the bar with a group of good friends...
The list goes on. Taco, you should know more than any of us that absolute privacy is a myth. You're famous amongst geeks, and yet I rarely (if ever) hear you weigh the success of Slashdot against the loss of privacy it has caused you. It is quite common for one's privacy to be the lesser consideration in a decision, and if you want to use Opera for free, then sacrificing a sliver of your privacy to do so legitimately is not that great of a concern. Of course, you could always pay full price or pirate the full version to protect your privacy, or simply stick to Mozilla, as I suspect you will. (Personally, I agree--though it's no major sacrifice to give up that privacy, I'm not keen on using an app with integrated advertising when a completely free alternative exists...)
Even with the grammar and spelling errors, even with the repeat stories, even with the poorly checked links, this website is much more than I'm paying for it.
I agree completely with that statement; it's one of the fundamental reasons I love the whole concept of Free software and Open Source.
That said, one of the greatest problems I see with the Free mindset is that people use that freedom as an excuse for mediocrity. When one begins to excuse mediocrity, what happens to the drive to improve? If the Linux team responded to bug reports with a curt "Hey, you get what you pay for," what do you think the state of Linux would be today? If Slashdot really is the labor of love I percieve it to be, Taco et al. should be (and likely are) constantly searching for ways to make Slashdot even better. Excusing mediocrity does not contribute to the improvement of the site.
It's a mistake, treat it as such.
If I grab a paper grocery bag by one handle and pick it up, causing it to tear and spill it's contents, I've just made a mistake. I apologize to the guy next to me for dropping a can on his foot, gather my stuff, put it in a new bag, and carry it (by both handles) out of the store.
If I do this once or twice a year, it's no big deal. People do indeed make mistakes. However, if I do this every time I go to the grocery store, it becomes a problem. I'm not learning from my mistakes, I embarrass and delay myself every time I go to the store, and the store staff generally roll their eyes at me and make jokes about me behind my back.
On average, Slashdot makes at least one glaring error (spelling/grammar mistakes, recent reposts, gross editorial inaccuracies) on their front page blurbs on an almost daily basis, sometimes three or four times in the course of a single article blurb. This has been going on for months now. If Slashdot has been learning anything from these mistakes, it has yet to manifest itself on the site.
If I didn't care whether or not Slashdot looked foolish every time this sort of thing happened, I wouldn't be making noise about it. As it is, though, I really like Slashdot and want to see it get even better. This means helping to identify and point out the problems I see. One of the most glaring problems I can see is the general lack of editorial quality; thus I make a point of it when I see it. I consider it my contribution to the improvement of Slashdot.
I thank you, Slashdot team, for all of your obvious hard work and dedication to what I think is a really good geek news resource. That said, though, there are things that are in dire need of attention, and the editorial quality has been too low for too long for me and many others to keep quiet about it. Make it a rule that editors must spell-check every blurb before posting; make it a rule that editors must triple-read or quadruple-read posts before setting them live; make it a rule that editors must read and fully understand related links before commenting editorially on the submission. Build a SQL statement that queries against all the links in the story database to search for sites and articles that have already been posted in other stories. Restrict editorial comments and titles to stories posted under editorial sections. Make editorial quality a priority. If there really is a copy editor, as the FAQ claims, then that individual sure as heck isn't doing their job. At all.
I can think of precious few cases where Faster but Wrong is better than Slower but Right. Slashdot, do it Right first, Fast second.
Is antiailiased text really worth the extra processor/graphic cycles in most unix applications?
That depends entirely on the user and the role of the computer. Me, I like things pretty on my workstations, speedy on my servers; thus, I'd be inclined to take advantage of this on a workstation and ignore it (along with the rest of X, in many cases) for a server.
That said, there are apparently enough people out there that want anti-aliased fonts that they're being added to X, despite the added overhead. This is one of the great strengths of community-driven code: if enough users want something, the issue eventually gets addressed by the developer.
Slashdot Editors: methinks you may benefit from creating and using a centralized Slashdot link repository, which would contain the URL of every link posted to a Slashdot story. You could then run a simple SQL query against this repository to check each link in submitted stories for potential repeats. Not necessarily a 100% solution, but it would help reduce the number of repeat stories choosed...
Yeah, there is that, but that's still more of the "business" application (that is, the landlord is doing it, and that counts as a business.) Heck, I'd gladly pay $50/month for 5Mbps, but I'm not in much of a position to do that right now...
To everybody remarking about how expensive this is for Internet Access:
$1000/month for 100 Mbps is good. Can you find anywhere that offers 67 T1 connections for the same price?
Just to further clarify, this service is decidedly aimed at business applications. Again, businesses; not individual residential subscribers. If you, your friend, your housemates, or anyone else you know is even remotely considering purchasing one of these for home use, there is a Big Blue Room that they should really consider visiting once and a while.
Have you ever tried to disable all the pretty greased-window hallucinogenic effects in OS X? Well, let me tell you it's not possible to do, at least without tweaking things that Apple doesn't normally want you to tweak.
*chuckle* So the day has come to pass where Linux/KDE users can point at an Apple GUI and say that it's harder to configure than their own...
...Now KDE, on the other hand (along with Gnome, and just about anything else to do with Linux) can be customized to your heart's content, modified in any reasonable way, and most of all, not used at all if you don't feel like using it!
You are perfectly welcome to boot OS X straight to console. You can download and compile Darwin to basically the same end, and it's completely free, to boot.
That said, you're absolutely right. You can indeed turn off a great deal of the eye candy that comes with Aqua, and yes, some of it requires going a bit farther than the happy pop-up menus they provide. I challenge you, though, to run the perfect Linux/KDE environment, completely tuned to your own metrics, without going a bit farther than the happy pop-up menus provided...
I'd argue otherwise; I'd state that you assume the user already knows far more about the system than they actually do. A newbie is thrust into an environment that is completely and utterly foreign to them. Even if the pertinent information is readily available, there is such an overabundance of 'expert' information that it quickly and easily overwhelms an individual with anything less than genuine need to learn a system (i.e. CS students, people whose jobs rely on learning the system, etc.)
All the information necessary to use the basic command correctly is right there. Sure, all the stuff you mention above may be confusing at first glance, but all you have to do is actually read instead of letting your eyes glaze over, and when you come across a concept or phrase you don't understand, go look that up. It's not rocket science.
Of course it's not rocket science. If it were, not even a handful of the self-taught Unix/Linux geeks would exist. What I am saying is that it is not even remotely easy, and that drives a huge potential base of users away after struggling through man pages for only six hours (if even that.) Why insist that Bob Newbie subject himself to an hours' worth of hunting for a command to move file A to directory B ('cp' is not the most intuitive of mnemonics, regardless of how used to is we all are; 'man copy' returns a painfully technical synopsis of kernel copy functions;) when he could learn the same information quickly, easily, and in a (potentially) very friendly manner with a full one minute of a knowledgable users' time? Yeah, it's not rocket science. I sure as hell ain't easy, though.
This is why I am not an author of UNIX books - they'd be way too short. Chapter 1: log in. Chapter 2: type "man man" and hit return. Chapter 3: start reading.
I tried just that. I logged in (easy enough, most newbies understand the login/password concept readily enough) typed 'man man', and started reading. Some of the things I learned:
"man 'name'" displays the BSD manual pages entitled 'name'. Easy enough, and quite useful.
There are a buttload of options one can use with man, and I don't really know which ones are important, if any.
I should go back through and re-read "man man" later, after I try playing with it. It looks like a really powerful tool.
Armed with this information, I proceeded to do the following:
man dir(directory file format, extensive technical information on dirent.h)
man directory(directory operations. I'll try a few! Let's see, "opendir" seems like a good start.)
opendir(opendir: command not found.)
man folder(man: no entry for folder in the manual.)
help(yikes--some of that shot off my screen, and the rest looks pretty formidable. Upon close examination, it appears that help accepts arguments of it's own. We'll assume that the newbie understands arguments.)
help pattern(no help topics match 'pattern'. Try 'help help'. (Eureka!))
help help(OK, that explains what I saw the first time. It was a listing of all the builtin functions. I'll do 'help' again and start going through the different built-in functions...)
That's just painful. How much junk should a newbie have to try digging through to get to the meat of the system? Why must one's basic UNIX education be one of blood, sweat, tears, flames, and RTFM? Why not actually lend a hand and answer some of the seemingly insultingly simple questions posed?
We've discovered that our vote counting processes aren't exact, when it came down to a very close result. We need some improvements in the mechanics of vote-counting, but we also need significant improvements in election security. Right now, in most jurisdictions, it's very easy to vote multiple times. How many of you who voted were asked to produce an ID?
You point to the probablility of voter fraud in Florida, and yet you feel that the best solution is to drop everything and declare a winner now to keep us from having to wait longer? You would willingly validate fraudulent votes cast in a presidential election in the name of expedience? How on earth can you come to such a conclusion?
We have a result that's within the margin of error. For the good of the country, it should be closed here.
There is no permissible margin of error for an official election.
That said, this result doesn't fall anywhere near a reasonable estimate of a margin of error for the Florida balloting system. Given that the difference between the candidates is less than 1% of the total ballots cast but incontestably invalidated due to voter error (i.e. double-votes in the same race,) I cannot bring myself to say with a straight face that either candidate has won Florida. If you hold the current official tally against the total number of voters in Florida, you find that the difference is well below 0.02% of the total vote. How can you possibly consider this an acceptable margin of error, given the wild inaccuracies of the Florida balloting system?
Gore is no more entitled to the State of Florida than Bush is; though I'm not convinced that recounts are the answer, I'm equally unconvinced that declaring Bush victor toute suite is correct. The situation in Florida is a genuine tie, and neither candidate can justly claim victory. Thus, it should become a matter for the courts.
My hope is that more of this will be heard by Supreme Court. Of all the players in this affair, they are the least corruptable, the least partisan, and the most rational minds available to determine how to deal with this unfortunate and messy situation in Florida. I don't trust the elected officials of the state of Florida any farther than I can throw them, party lines aside. The Florida political scene has a long and proud tradition of corruption, and every player involved is doing a wonderful job of toeing their respective party lines. (Ironically, the Florida politician I have the most respect for is Jeb Bush, who has done as good a job as he can to remove himself from the picture.) I place a bit more faith in the Florida Supreme Court, but realize that there is a long standing vendetta between the Florida courts and the Florida legistlature that taints their actions to some degree. Similar situation at the national level--I challenge you to find more than a scant handful of party politicians who dare stray far from their respective mantras.
The group most capable of acting in an unbiased, non-partisan fashion is the Supreme Court. Though I don't pretend to claim perfection in the nation's highest court, it's easily the best group suited to determine this outcome. The Supreme Court is the body most likely to act with the best interest of the nation and the Constitution in mind, free of partisan restraints; each and every justice has devoted his or her life to the study of law and the sanctity of the American Constitution. I can think of no other group better suited to settle this conflict. So devoted are they to the proper resolution of this affair that they may very well disqualify themselves from making the determining judgement, should they deem that the Consitiution demands it.
It is unjust and wrong to win a national election on a margin of error; the result in Florida is not even contestably within the flawed Floridian voting system's "margin of error". Get past the details of which candidate is crying foul over which county's ballot invalidation; because of the failings of Florida's system, the two candidates have effectively tied in the state, and neither one can rightly claim victory. This is indeed a matter for the courts, and it is a matter which requires our utmost patience, diligence and attention.
Ending this proceeding for the sake of "getting it over with" is decidedly not in the best interest of our nation; the bitter partisan divisiveness it would engender would ultimately be far more destructive than having this play out in the courts. This is why we have courts. This is why Supreme Court justices are appointed for life. This matter is best settled by the branch of our government created to settle conflicts with the letter of the law. To think that either political party is even remotely capable of a fair, unbiased resolution on their own is purest naïveté.
Unfortunately, as the article states, this long arguement over Florida will continue as Gore continues to try and get extra recounts. Now, I am not really a supporter of either camp. I just want this to be over.
I'm pretty much in agreement with you, with one caveat: I don't just want this over. I want this done right. I'm not convinced that either side is particularly right, and there's enough poorly written law in the matter that I honestly believe it merits the court proceedings we're all being subject to.
To just want it over, though, is a tack that I try to avoid at all costs. Putting completion ahead of resolution tends to break more than it fixes.
Please notice that there is no "P" in our "Olymic Ool". Unless and until you can guarantee your "P" is only available within your trunks, you cannot put yourself in our Ool. Thank you!
Consider the following two lines from the parent post:
Once you learn a certain amount then it all falls into place.
Maybe this is elitist to some, but I don't think it is a good use of my time to explain the 'cp' command to someone.
Then how, pray tell, is a user supposed to learn a certain amount about Linux/BSD/whatever if teaching them how to use the 'cp' command is a waste of time? I assure you, if it's a waste of time to explain the 'cp' command to someone, then the odds of that person saying 'screw it' and going back over to Windows are painfully high.
Just out of curiosity, though, I decided to 'RTFM' for the cp command. My cp manpage contained a few of the following snippets:
This option also causes symbolic links to be copied, rather than followed, and special files to be created, rather than being copied as normal files.
Created directories have the same mode as the corresponding source directory, unmodified by the process's umask.
If the source file has its set-user-ID bit on and the user ID cannot be preserved, the set-user-ID bit is not preserved in the copy's permissions. If the source file has its set-group-ID bit on and the group ID cannot be preserved, the set-group-ID bit is not preserved in the copy's permissions. If the source file has both its set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits on, and either the user ID or group ID cannot be preserved, neither the set-user-ID nor set-group-ID bits are preserved in the copy's permissions.
In the second synopsis form, target_directory must exist unless there is only one named source_file which is a directory and the -R flag is specified.
If the destination file does not exist, the mode of the source file is used as modified by the file mode creation mask (umask, see csh(1)).
Symbolic links are always followed unless the -R flag is set, in which case symbolic links are not followed, by default. The -H or -L flags (in conjunction with the -R flag) cause symbolic links to be followed as described above. The -H, -L and -P options are ignored unless the -R option is specified. In addition, these options override each other and the command's actions are determined by the last one specified.
Walk in the park, no?
If users who want to switch to Linux are told to Read The Fine Manual for the "simple" things like cp, bash, and grep, then to come back later with "real" questions, they'll give up before they begin.
If anything, the people who always need their hands held are the ones that ceaselessly pester you about mid- to high-level. Newbies learn amazingly fast if given a reasonable amount of person-to-person attention and good guidance; there are few things as satisfying as watching a nervous first-time student grow to really enjoy themselves and get all gung-ho about what you've been teaching them. If you won't help those without a clue get started with some real, patient, human interaction, then odds are they'll go back to Windows and write the whole Linux scene off as an eletist geek haven. And, truth be told, if newbies are directed more often than not to RTFM, then that's exactly what the Linux scene is.
A resounding echo on the above post. (Figures that the last nes article I managed to read before the weekend was this one...) Here are some of the things I learned from my own experience in moving to France:
You do indeed need to secure a job (with signed contract) before you can get your work papers; furthermore, you cannot actually apply for the papers yourself, as that needs to be initiated by the company in question. This first step will take several months (3-6 or more, depending on the connections your company has.) After your company gets the proper paperwork from the labor ministry, you'll need to take your copy of the paperwork to the French consulate nearest you (there are several in the states; I had to go to Chicago to get mine). You cannot acquire the visa anywhere besides your home country. If you have a family, they'll need to go at this time, too. Set aside a few days to take care of this if you need to travel any distance, as problems are bound to occur. After you get your visa, you can then go to France and apply for your Carte de Sejour Travail, which officially allows you to work in France. This will take anywhere from two weeks (if you're insanely lucky or connected) to three months, and during this time you will not be able to legally work. Because of this, it's best that you have a fair little chunk of cash saved up in advance to cover rent and food for a few months. Once you've acquired your Carte du Sejour Travail, you can start work with your company; any family that has acoompanied you, however, will not be allowed to work and will also need to sign a form stating that they will not look for work, as well; the only exception to this for Americans is if your spouse/family member can get a student visa, which allows them to work part-time. (You'll also need to show that you'll be supporting your family, or else they can't even get the non-worker card.) You'll need buttloads of paperwork, in triplicate for the most part, and you'll also need to be able to prove that you have a residence in France, generally in the form of a utility bill addressed to you at your French address or a signed copy of your lease.
You'll need to pay French taxes and social security which are quite high, but fortunately you'll see serious returns on those taxes: The WHO rates France's healthcare system as the best in the world, and all essential care is covered by the state (and most employers offer really cheap supplimentary insurance to cover added costs, like lightweight casts and non-essential medical needs). The transit system (at least in Paris) is phenomenal; I spend exactly $25 a month in transportation fees, period. There are a bunch of other things, too, but suffice it to say that you see serious returns on the exorbitant taxes you pay.
That said, there are tons of IT jobs that need filling here. It's just virtually impossible for Americans to come fill them, and unless you can adjust to the European lifestyle (which, if you can, is considerably less expensive than the American lifestyle,) it's hard to live here. But it's definately worth it--I don't regret for a second all the blood, sweat, tears, and head-pounding I had to go through to get here. (I didn't speak a word of French when I was looking, either; that didn't stop me from getting over here, though. They need techs!)
Good luck; e-mail me if you want more specific information on any one thing.
Well, by your assessment of the situation, you shouldn't even care in the least whether the "movement" gets set back nine months or nine years. You really don't want idiots using computers, anyhow, so the whole concept of Linux advocacy is completely moot (since smart users know well enough to choose a good OS in the first place, right?)
What does it matter what the PeeCee luserz think? Let 'em bash Linux from here to Hell and back! We don't care! Yer all stupid! Neener neener!
This article raises some interesting points on the percieved confict of philosophy between Java and Linux. My concern, though, is that if the Linux Community Et Al. continues to snub Java, and Java continues to mature at the rate it has been maturing, will Linux be at a substantial disadvantage in terms of the maturity of Java on Linux and/or Sun's commitment to supporting Linux Java?
I mean, think about it this way. If the Linux community is snubbing Java now, just when we're starting to see viable server implementations, what will Sun's response be when the Linux developers start complaining in 2007 that Linux's Java runtimes and support are woefully inadequate, while Java runs like a charm on virtually everything else? How will Linux fare in the business world if Java becomes the language du jour for most programming needs and works well on everything but Linux?
Java is showing more and more promise, and is maturing quite quickly, despite all the jokes to the contrary. Yes, there are still a lot of things Sun needs to fix (Swing, graphics, and many other desktop/UI elements are still decidedly sub-par) but Java is getting better, and won't be going away anytime soon. If nobody in the Linux world cares to use Java, what will Sun care about supporting Linux, now and in the future?
$ man reality
Re:Programmers Make Computers Slower Year by Year
on
Netscape 6 Vs. 4.7x
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· Score: 2
This leads to the ridiculous situation that an old computer runs slower and slower as new software is loaded on it, until you finally have to buy a new one just to run at all.
Oh, please. There is an extremely simple somution to your problem. If you want your computing experience to fully benefit from the latest and greatest hardware upgrades, the answer is painfully simple.
Run older software on newer hardware.
There is no law or mandate anywhere that says you can't run an older, stable OS on your blazing new Thunderbird system. You'll be absolutely blown away by the performance, I assure you. You can read e-mail, surf the web, serve web pages and write and compile code on a wide variety of older, rock-solid systems. If you want a fast, virtually bulletproof web graphical web browser, use Netscape 3; even better, stick to Lynx, if you don't mind seeing the Web in all ASCII. There's nothing that says you must use the latest C compiler; there's no real reason to upgrade beyond Pine for reading one's mail, as attachments can be saved and viewed externally. It is perfectly sensible to run older software on newer hardware, and I have seen it done quite a number of times.
I'll say it again: run older software on newer hardware.
Now, if for some reason, you want to take advantage of some of the extra features that more modern operating systems and programs provide, I advise you swallow your rhetoric and buy a modern computer for the job. Just as there is no reason for you not to run older systems on newer hardware, there is absolutely no reason for software developers to not take advantage of the power available to them. If, for some reason, you feel compelled to use a newer program because it provides functionality above and beyond what you can achieve with older counterparts, you can bet that program uses some section of the "thick layers of software bureaucracy" you pan. (Fire BAD! bureacracy BAD!)
And finally a lot of people just don't know how to architect or code. I think we could all benefit from learning and writing some assembly, so we could really understand what our software is doing.
...you think that the answer to a lack of understanding of code architecture is simply to code in assembly? I assure you, merely coding in assembly will not somehow divinely imbue the ability to analyze and optimize code. If you have an idiot who writes a sort algorithm in C that takes N! time to complete, what magical aspect of assembly is going to impart the necessary skills to write it properly? Sound education in computational theory and systems architecture teaches people how to code well; all assembler does is let already bad coders take ten times as long to write code that's fifteen times less readable. Your archetypal pizza-faced, brainless VB coder will crank out absoulte crap for assembler, I assure you; in doing so, he/she will have taken several weeks to write the equivalent a single line worth of VB script, their program will crash and fail most gracelessly, memory will leak like a sieve, and the code itself will be so poorly written and organized that any attempt at fixing or upgrading it will be utterly hopeless. Assembly is not a cure-all.
New features should not come at the expense of performance
Do you ever actually read what you write? that's like saying education should not come at the expense of time! I challenge you--I bet you five hundred dollars--that you cannot write a new feature into any program that doesn't come at the expense of performance. How can somebody who purportedly codes in assembly spout such utter nonsense? Do you have any understanding whatsoever of the necessity behind the complexity of modern systems? Do you really believe that, if you just sat down and worked at it long enough, you could redesign the latest version of WordPerfect to be as computationally efficient as vi? Good freakin' luck.
Why does this happen?
One thing is because programmers are lazy, and if their code runs slow they assume the user will just get a faster machine.
Programmers are lazy, and write slow, lousy code because of it? Well, who the hell wrote your fast, stable Slackware distribution? Wandering minstrels? Yes, there are more bad programmers in the world today; the demand for programmers is so great that even if ten times as many "skilled programmers" existed today, we still couldn't come close to filling the need. Does that mean, as you so blithely put it, that programmers are lazy? No. Some programmers are lazy, just as some Slashdot posters are trolls. There do exist a good many highly talented and educated computer programmers in the world developing very advanced, modern systems and applications; they understand the need for the complexity and abstraction of modern systems in relation to real-world concerns.
If the needs of the computing world were performance and performance alone, your post would strike a resounding chord. As it stands, though, performance is but one factor amongst a sea of others, including things such as code readability, portability, robustness, maintainability, modularity, production time and production cost. If all you need out of your computer is performance, performance, and more performance, stick to older software and the hottest hardware. You can run a system at god-like speeds if you do this. Just remember, though, that the only reason you ever have to run that processor-sucking, machine killing modern system is if you want to use any of the wonderfully time and energy saving conveniences these disgustingly bloated travesties put at your fingertips. If you're unwilling to accept the fact that code becomes larger and slower in the name of ease of use and abstraction of complexity, though, well, you're out of luck.
Do tell me, though, when you finish that port of WordPerfect.
I still don't believe anything that comes out of an attorney's mouth, and I don't believe in a corporation that cares about me except as another contributor to the revenue stream.
Well, they were looking for a geek to fill the role, but as fate would have it, every single applicant either got their long, curly beard caught in the escalator, snagged a red suspender loop on a coat rack, or dropped one of their Spock ears in the storm drain outside the office, and thus never actually made it to the interview.
Oh, for a world where all geeks didn't have long beards, red suspenders, and Spock ears. Of course, that's just about as likely to exist as a world with just, trustworthy attorneys. Wishful thinking, nothing more.
I gotta think long and hard about contributing to online projects nowadays. In the 'good old days', before the web and before script kiddies, the 'net was a place where it was more rewarding to give than receive, and people respected and appreciated the contributions of other, and the DIDN'T SELL OUT AND USE THE GIFT FOR PERSONAL FINANCIAL GAME! Make no mistake, the good old days are VERY over.
I don't know that I've ever seen somebody so angry at a group of people for trying to make a living out of what they do. It's not like they came to your house and shat on your doorstep; they're taking their own work and trying to get something more tangible than props from the geek community.
In the 'good old days' of the Internet, a good job meant a long term position at the local university helping to maintain their systems--the pay was OK, and it meant you got to play with the Internet, which was fun, seeing as you could talk to all the other sysops at the other universities on LambdaMOO. Stock options? Six-figure salaries? The ability to dictate terms to your employer at will? Bwa-hahahaha! Aww, that's cute. Now go over to the science building--the circuit breaker probably got tripped again...
But hey, don't let me stop you gnawing on that hand you got there...
This looks like a good first draft. There are a number of big issues that this doesn't hit on (the quickest that comes to mind is that of non-competition) but it's a great foundation to build from. If nothing else, it's another step in the right direction for employees: getting armed with contracts and clauses of their own when entering into a workplace.
Name me a counter-example. Seriously: show me one case where the use of vulgarity (profanity is when you use the Lord's name in vain, not just ordinary cussin') serves to advance a cause that matters where the use of "respectable" language could not work better.
Actually, sacrilegious speech is but a subset of profanity; even "ordinary cussin'" falls in the realm of profanity. The phrase "I don't give a damn" is, indeed, a profane statement, as is swearing in the name of Allah; both are uttered as curses, and both are used simply to emphasize the speaker's conviction. Now, the severity of a profane statement varies greatly from word to word and amongst different audiences; at this point, however, one enters the realm of personal tastes and standards. Just as there are those who use "fuck" in every sentence without batting an eyelid, there do exist people (my great aunt included) who are scandalized by Rhett Butler's famous line of "I don't give a damn" in Gone With The Wind. This said, you'll forgive me if I do not consider your own standard to be definitive, or even representative of the community at large.
There aren't any. All profanity will do, however artfully you use it, is detract from your position among those who still care about it.
I disagree. Profanity detracts from your position among those who take an absolutist view similar to your own; I'd argue that for the vast majority of people, however, profanity is a part of their lexicon. As above, context and audience are everything.
As for your complaints against my elitism... My point was not my "elite" status. My point was that Slashdot has changed. Could it be perhaps that you interpreted it this way because you are insecure about your own status? (If I had wanted to portrary myself as somehow elite, I would have mentioned my 200+ karma.)
...and are you honestly the least bit surprised that Slashdot has changed as it shifted from 3,000 users to hundreds of thousands? You point to the Downfall Of Slashdot, link it directly to the influx of the "nouveau utilisateur", and proceed to lament the fact that it now caters to the tendentiousness of a whole bunch of other classes of user, too. (Don't think for a second that you're not fully and proudly airing your own tendency.) Spin it how you will, but in the end it boils down to elitism.
I think the "Your Rights Online" section has served to seriously weaken Slashdot's potential for social change. It has tended to present a host of "causes" which are simply not important. DeCSS -- sure, critical free speech issue. "Geeks Rights" in the aftermath of Columbine -- definitely. I think Slashdot really helped to raise the flag there, and probably saved a lot of kids a lot of suffering.
Using the "f word" in a domain name for an inside joke because someone is too lame to go to an alternative registrar? Oh spare me.
Since when has Slashdot been about evoking social change in and of itself? Yes, Slashdot has always played a central role in reporting major issues relating to the geek/nerd/techie community. It is not Slashdot's place, however, to set and push any given agenda (despite the fact that agendas do unfortunately sneak their way into news stories with alarming frequency; see some of my other posts for thoughts on this trend.) As for the issue at hand being unworthy of reporting, I must say that the event in and of itself is, in fact, a very silly thing, and does not merit a great deal of attention. Reading beyond the headline, however, it takes only seconds to grasp the broader picture: should it be the right of the registrar to determine the boundaries of taste (and thus act as the de facto censor) when giving out domain names? No matter how trivial the example, the underlying theme decidedly merits of discussion, and as such, a good many posts address just that. Just because the particular instance isn't the most earth shattering news to break on the front page doesn't mean that the underlying issue is equally trivial.
Every time you raise a ruckus over an issue, you use some "capital." If you raise a ruckus over an issue that doesn't matter, you may not have this "capital" when the issue does matter. This is why organizations like the NAACP and ACLU have lost much of their ability to affect social change. Slashdot is rapidly becoming a cry-baby website, and when the issue really does matter -- when there is another Columbine -- nobody will listen. And that is a shame.
Again, Slashdot is not a social activism site. It is a news reporting site. News is a fickle creature, and the world does not generate breaking stories on a daily basis; read through some of the fluff on any other major news site and try to tell me otherwise. To it's credit, Slashdot does an excellent job of keeping interesting, wide-ranging topics flowing through the site, with very little of the "ongoing story" demon that shackles itself to many major news providers (Elian Gonzalez, The Florida vote recounts, etc.) On the other hand, Slashdot has always had a problem with tainting it's source material in an attempt to appease it's readers, which is most evident in the unabashed and ongoing evisceration of All Things M$. Regardless of whether or not social commentary is warranted, it is not the place of Slashdot itself to make such commentary outside of the editorial articles (the community usually does a good enough job of that on their own, as well they should.)
If anything, it is this that is the bane of Slashdot's credibility. It is not Slashdot's place to dictate what we should or should not think about the news it reports; that is an exercise left to the reader. When I come to read Slashdot and see the editors themselves making snide remarks on poorly-proofread, factually inaccurate front page stories, that hurts it's credibility. I wholeheartedly believe that a move to make Slashdot an even more politically charged forum will only serve to push it back into the niche world, and whatever strength of reporting it has gained as a general technology/nerd news site will evaporate faster than you can say "closed source sucks". That is the issue Slashdot must contend with, not making themselves out to be even greater zealots than they already seem.
Or, to put it terms that brains limited to four letters might understand:
NEVER CRY WOLF!
Oops... That's right, 'never' has five letters. Just proves you can't say anything useful in four.
...and after going to such lengths to explain the importance of properly choosing one's speech to evoke respect and intelligence in the mind of the reader, you end with this snide quip. I continue to maintain that you are perfectly content to rest atop your ivory tower, taking the occasional shot at the masses below when the spirit so moves you.
Strangely enough, though, you found it necessary to respond to my post, even though my post contained the foulest of foul words used in a most shocking fashion. Surely, my banal idiocy doesn't merit this level of attention?
$ man reality
Re:GM food is not a good idea yet
on
Golden Rice
·
· Score: 4
The wholesale introduction of GM foods into our food chain is just too risky at the moment. It's a new technology and mistakes are part of the learning process, and will inevitably be made. If history has taught us anything, it's that no new advance comes without teething troubles. And given this, the last thing we should do is push for them to be used by the general public - a mistake now could cost millions of lives and contaminate other crops, making them tainted as well.
Well, if GM food isn't a good idea yet, somebody really should have let Gregor Mendel know that a while ago. Because you know what? He was genetically modifying food. Sure, he wasn't using fancy gene splicing techniques, but he was quite literally modifying the genetic structure of pea plants through rigorous cross-breeding, and he was doing so in a decidedly artifical manner.
Companies today like Pioneer have entire fields devoted to this same practice of aggressively cross-breeding various staples in efforts to yield more disease-resistant, larger, tastier foods. Why, oh why, do people not get just as worked up over aggressive cross-breeding as they do over laboratory-based genetic engineering? Is it our obsession with the whole natural = right, artificial = wrong? If so, just keep reminding yourself that glasses are extremely unnatural, whereas the Bubonic Plague is 100% pure Mother Earth.
We most certainly can afford a single mistake. We, as a species, have made more mistakes in our history than I can possibly count, and yet here we are. Somehow, nature forgave us for introducing things like horses to North America and tobacco to Europe, even though these things were -clearly- never intended to happen through any 'natural' means.
GM food is indeed quite ready now. We shouldn't let the FUD of a bunch of luddite crackpots, weepy Sally-Fieldsesque mothers and pseudo-scientists stop us.
Slashdot Mirror
Physics does indeed say it won't work. The universe, however, has a habit of disregarding how we think it should work.
$ man reality
$ man reality
I'd argue that if you want to use Opera for free, it is well worth giving up a small slice of one's privacy in return. I can think of several others, right off the top of my head:
- Giving up one's privacy for the sake of getting to and from the grocery store;
- Giving up one's privacy to let light stream into your house through the window;
- Giving up one's privacy to go to the hospital and have that broken leg set in a cast;
- Giving up one's privacy by walking across the street to greet your new neighbor;
- Giving up one's privacy to enjoy a night at the bar with a group of good friends...
The list goes on. Taco, you should know more than any of us that absolute privacy is a myth. You're famous amongst geeks, and yet I rarely (if ever) hear you weigh the success of Slashdot against the loss of privacy it has caused you. It is quite common for one's privacy to be the lesser consideration in a decision, and if you want to use Opera for free, then sacrificing a sliver of your privacy to do so legitimately is not that great of a concern. Of course, you could always pay full price or pirate the full version to protect your privacy, or simply stick to Mozilla, as I suspect you will. (Personally, I agree--though it's no major sacrifice to give up that privacy, I'm not keen on using an app with integrated advertising when a completely free alternative exists...)$ man reality
I agree completely with that statement; it's one of the fundamental reasons I love the whole concept of Free software and Open Source.
That said, one of the greatest problems I see with the Free mindset is that people use that freedom as an excuse for mediocrity. When one begins to excuse mediocrity, what happens to the drive to improve? If the Linux team responded to bug reports with a curt "Hey, you get what you pay for," what do you think the state of Linux would be today? If Slashdot really is the labor of love I percieve it to be, Taco et al. should be (and likely are) constantly searching for ways to make Slashdot even better. Excusing mediocrity does not contribute to the improvement of the site.
It's a mistake, treat it as such.
If I grab a paper grocery bag by one handle and pick it up, causing it to tear and spill it's contents, I've just made a mistake. I apologize to the guy next to me for dropping a can on his foot, gather my stuff, put it in a new bag, and carry it (by both handles) out of the store.
If I do this once or twice a year, it's no big deal. People do indeed make mistakes. However, if I do this every time I go to the grocery store, it becomes a problem. I'm not learning from my mistakes, I embarrass and delay myself every time I go to the store, and the store staff generally roll their eyes at me and make jokes about me behind my back.
On average, Slashdot makes at least one glaring error (spelling/grammar mistakes, recent reposts, gross editorial inaccuracies) on their front page blurbs on an almost daily basis, sometimes three or four times in the course of a single article blurb. This has been going on for months now. If Slashdot has been learning anything from these mistakes, it has yet to manifest itself on the site.
If I didn't care whether or not Slashdot looked foolish every time this sort of thing happened, I wouldn't be making noise about it. As it is, though, I really like Slashdot and want to see it get even better. This means helping to identify and point out the problems I see. One of the most glaring problems I can see is the general lack of editorial quality; thus I make a point of it when I see it. I consider it my contribution to the improvement of Slashdot.
I thank you, Slashdot team, for all of your obvious hard work and dedication to what I think is a really good geek news resource. That said, though, there are things that are in dire need of attention, and the editorial quality has been too low for too long for me and many others to keep quiet about it. Make it a rule that editors must spell-check every blurb before posting; make it a rule that editors must triple-read or quadruple-read posts before setting them live; make it a rule that editors must read and fully understand related links before commenting editorially on the submission. Build a SQL statement that queries against all the links in the story database to search for sites and articles that have already been posted in other stories. Restrict editorial comments and titles to stories posted under editorial sections. Make editorial quality a priority. If there really is a copy editor, as the FAQ claims, then that individual sure as heck isn't doing their job. At all.
I can think of precious few cases where Faster but Wrong is better than Slower but Right. Slashdot, do it Right first, Fast second.
$ man reality
(no disrespect intended)
$ man reality
That depends entirely on the user and the role of the computer. Me, I like things pretty on my workstations, speedy on my servers; thus, I'd be inclined to take advantage of this on a workstation and ignore it (along with the rest of X, in many cases) for a server.
That said, there are apparently enough people out there that want anti-aliased fonts that they're being added to X, despite the added overhead. This is one of the great strengths of community-driven code: if enough users want something, the issue eventually gets addressed by the developer.
$ man reality
$ man reality
$ man reality
$ man reality
$1000/month for 100 Mbps is good. Can you find anywhere that offers 67 T1 connections for the same price?
Just to further clarify, this service is decidedly aimed at business applications. Again, businesses; not individual residential subscribers. If you, your friend, your housemates, or anyone else you know is even remotely considering purchasing one of these for home use, there is a Big Blue Room that they should really consider visiting once and a while.
$ man reality
*chuckle* So the day has come to pass where Linux/KDE users can point at an Apple GUI and say that it's harder to configure than their own...
You are perfectly welcome to boot OS X straight to console. You can download and compile Darwin to basically the same end, and it's completely free, to boot.
That said, you're absolutely right. You can indeed turn off a great deal of the eye candy that comes with Aqua, and yes, some of it requires going a bit farther than the happy pop-up menus they provide. I challenge you, though, to run the perfect Linux/KDE environment, completely tuned to your own metrics, without going a bit farther than the happy pop-up menus provided...
$ man reality
I'd argue otherwise; I'd state that you assume the user already knows far more about the system than they actually do. A newbie is thrust into an environment that is completely and utterly foreign to them. Even if the pertinent information is readily available, there is such an overabundance of 'expert' information that it quickly and easily overwhelms an individual with anything less than genuine need to learn a system (i.e. CS students, people whose jobs rely on learning the system, etc.)
All the information necessary to use the basic command correctly is right there. Sure, all the stuff you mention above may be confusing at first glance, but all you have to do is actually read instead of letting your eyes glaze over, and when you come across a concept or phrase you don't understand, go look that up. It's not rocket science.
Of course it's not rocket science. If it were, not even a handful of the self-taught Unix/Linux geeks would exist. What I am saying is that it is not even remotely easy, and that drives a huge potential base of users away after struggling through man pages for only six hours (if even that.) Why insist that Bob Newbie subject himself to an hours' worth of hunting for a command to move file A to directory B ('cp' is not the most intuitive of mnemonics, regardless of how used to is we all are; 'man copy' returns a painfully technical synopsis of kernel copy functions;) when he could learn the same information quickly, easily, and in a (potentially) very friendly manner with a full one minute of a knowledgable users' time? Yeah, it's not rocket science. I sure as hell ain't easy, though.
This is why I am not an author of UNIX books - they'd be way too short. Chapter 1: log in. Chapter 2: type "man man" and hit return. Chapter 3: start reading.
I tried just that. I logged in (easy enough, most newbies understand the login/password concept readily enough) typed 'man man', and started reading. Some of the things I learned:
- "man 'name'" displays the BSD manual pages entitled 'name'. Easy enough, and quite useful.
- There are a buttload of options one can use with man, and I don't really know which ones are important, if any.
- I should go back through and re-read "man man" later, after I try playing with it. It looks like a really powerful tool.
Armed with this information, I proceeded to do the following:- man dir (directory file format, extensive technical information on dirent.h)
- man directory (directory operations. I'll try a few! Let's see, "opendir" seems like a good start.)
- opendir (opendir: command not found.)
- man folder (man: no entry for folder in the manual.)
- help (yikes--some of that shot off my screen, and the rest looks pretty formidable. Upon close examination, it appears that help accepts arguments of it's own. We'll assume that the newbie understands arguments.)
- help pattern (no help topics match 'pattern'. Try 'help help'. (Eureka!))
- help help (OK, that explains what I saw the first time. It was a listing of all the builtin functions. I'll do 'help' again and start going through the different built-in functions...)
That's just painful. How much junk should a newbie have to try digging through to get to the meat of the system? Why must one's basic UNIX education be one of blood, sweat, tears, flames, and RTFM? Why not actually lend a hand and answer some of the seemingly insultingly simple questions posed?$ man reality
You point to the probablility of voter fraud in Florida, and yet you feel that the best solution is to drop everything and declare a winner now to keep us from having to wait longer? You would willingly validate fraudulent votes cast in a presidential election in the name of expedience? How on earth can you come to such a conclusion?
We have a result that's within the margin of error. For the good of the country, it should be closed here.
There is no permissible margin of error for an official election.
That said, this result doesn't fall anywhere near a reasonable estimate of a margin of error for the Florida balloting system. Given that the difference between the candidates is less than 1% of the total ballots cast but incontestably invalidated due to voter error (i.e. double-votes in the same race,) I cannot bring myself to say with a straight face that either candidate has won Florida. If you hold the current official tally against the total number of voters in Florida, you find that the difference is well below 0.02% of the total vote. How can you possibly consider this an acceptable margin of error, given the wild inaccuracies of the Florida balloting system?
Gore is no more entitled to the State of Florida than Bush is; though I'm not convinced that recounts are the answer, I'm equally unconvinced that declaring Bush victor toute suite is correct. The situation in Florida is a genuine tie, and neither candidate can justly claim victory. Thus, it should become a matter for the courts.
My hope is that more of this will be heard by Supreme Court. Of all the players in this affair, they are the least corruptable, the least partisan, and the most rational minds available to determine how to deal with this unfortunate and messy situation in Florida. I don't trust the elected officials of the state of Florida any farther than I can throw them, party lines aside. The Florida political scene has a long and proud tradition of corruption, and every player involved is doing a wonderful job of toeing their respective party lines. (Ironically, the Florida politician I have the most respect for is Jeb Bush, who has done as good a job as he can to remove himself from the picture.) I place a bit more faith in the Florida Supreme Court, but realize that there is a long standing vendetta between the Florida courts and the Florida legistlature that taints their actions to some degree. Similar situation at the national level--I challenge you to find more than a scant handful of party politicians who dare stray far from their respective mantras.
The group most capable of acting in an unbiased, non-partisan fashion is the Supreme Court. Though I don't pretend to claim perfection in the nation's highest court, it's easily the best group suited to determine this outcome. The Supreme Court is the body most likely to act with the best interest of the nation and the Constitution in mind, free of partisan restraints; each and every justice has devoted his or her life to the study of law and the sanctity of the American Constitution. I can think of no other group better suited to settle this conflict. So devoted are they to the proper resolution of this affair that they may very well disqualify themselves from making the determining judgement, should they deem that the Consitiution demands it.
It is unjust and wrong to win a national election on a margin of error; the result in Florida is not even contestably within the flawed Floridian voting system's "margin of error". Get past the details of which candidate is crying foul over which county's ballot invalidation; because of the failings of Florida's system, the two candidates have effectively tied in the state, and neither one can rightly claim victory. This is indeed a matter for the courts, and it is a matter which requires our utmost patience, diligence and attention.
Ending this proceeding for the sake of "getting it over with" is decidedly not in the best interest of our nation; the bitter partisan divisiveness it would engender would ultimately be far more destructive than having this play out in the courts. This is why we have courts. This is why Supreme Court justices are appointed for life. This matter is best settled by the branch of our government created to settle conflicts with the letter of the law. To think that either political party is even remotely capable of a fair, unbiased resolution on their own is purest naïveté.
$ man reality
I'm pretty much in agreement with you, with one caveat: I don't just want this over. I want this done right. I'm not convinced that either side is particularly right, and there's enough poorly written law in the matter that I honestly believe it merits the court proceedings we're all being subject to.
To just want it over, though, is a tack that I try to avoid at all costs. Putting completion ahead of resolution tends to break more than it fixes.
$ man reality
$ man reality
Once you learn a certain amount then it all falls into place.
Maybe this is elitist to some, but I don't think it is a good use of my time to explain the 'cp' command to someone.
Then how, pray tell, is a user supposed to learn a certain amount about Linux/BSD/whatever if teaching them how to use the 'cp' command is a waste of time? I assure you, if it's a waste of time to explain the 'cp' command to someone, then the odds of that person saying 'screw it' and going back over to Windows are painfully high.
Just out of curiosity, though, I decided to 'RTFM' for the cp command. My cp manpage contained a few of the following snippets:
-
SYNOPSIS
... target_directory
- This option also causes symbolic links to be copied, rather than followed, and special files to be created, rather than being copied as normal files.
- Created directories have the same mode as the corresponding source directory, unmodified by the process's umask.
- If the source file has its set-user-ID bit on and the user ID cannot be preserved, the set-user-ID bit is not preserved in the copy's permissions. If the source file has its set-group-ID bit on and the group ID cannot be preserved, the set-group-ID bit is not preserved in the copy's permissions. If the source file has both its set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits on, and either the user ID or group ID cannot be preserved, neither the set-user-ID nor set-group-ID bits are preserved in the copy's permissions.
- In the second synopsis form, target_directory must exist unless there is only one named source_file which is a directory and the -R flag is specified.
- If the destination file does not exist, the mode of the source file is used as modified by the file mode creation mask (umask, see csh(1)).
- Symbolic links are always followed unless the -R flag is set, in which case symbolic links are not followed, by default. The -H or -L flags (in conjunction with the -R flag) cause symbolic links to be followed as described above. The -H, -L and -P options are ignored unless the -R option is specified. In addition, these options override each other and the command's actions are determined by the last one specified.
Walk in the park, no?cp [-R [-H | -L | -P]] [-fip] source_file target_file
cp [-R [-H | -L | -P]] [-fip] source_file
If users who want to switch to Linux are told to Read The Fine Manual for the "simple" things like cp, bash, and grep, then to come back later with "real" questions, they'll give up before they begin.
If anything, the people who always need their hands held are the ones that ceaselessly pester you about mid- to high-level. Newbies learn amazingly fast if given a reasonable amount of person-to-person attention and good guidance; there are few things as satisfying as watching a nervous first-time student grow to really enjoy themselves and get all gung-ho about what you've been teaching them. If you won't help those without a clue get started with some real, patient, human interaction, then odds are they'll go back to Windows and write the whole Linux scene off as an eletist geek haven. And, truth be told, if newbies are directed more often than not to RTFM, then that's exactly what the Linux scene is.
$ man reality
You do indeed need to secure a job (with signed contract) before you can get your work papers; furthermore, you cannot actually apply for the papers yourself, as that needs to be initiated by the company in question. This first step will take several months (3-6 or more, depending on the connections your company has.) After your company gets the proper paperwork from the labor ministry, you'll need to take your copy of the paperwork to the French consulate nearest you (there are several in the states; I had to go to Chicago to get mine). You cannot acquire the visa anywhere besides your home country. If you have a family, they'll need to go at this time, too. Set aside a few days to take care of this if you need to travel any distance, as problems are bound to occur. After you get your visa, you can then go to France and apply for your Carte de Sejour Travail, which officially allows you to work in France. This will take anywhere from two weeks (if you're insanely lucky or connected) to three months, and during this time you will not be able to legally work. Because of this, it's best that you have a fair little chunk of cash saved up in advance to cover rent and food for a few months. Once you've acquired your Carte du Sejour Travail, you can start work with your company; any family that has acoompanied you, however, will not be allowed to work and will also need to sign a form stating that they will not look for work, as well; the only exception to this for Americans is if your spouse/family member can get a student visa, which allows them to work part-time. (You'll also need to show that you'll be supporting your family, or else they can't even get the non-worker card.) You'll need buttloads of paperwork, in triplicate for the most part, and you'll also need to be able to prove that you have a residence in France, generally in the form of a utility bill addressed to you at your French address or a signed copy of your lease.
You'll need to pay French taxes and social security which are quite high, but fortunately you'll see serious returns on those taxes: The WHO rates France's healthcare system as the best in the world, and all essential care is covered by the state (and most employers offer really cheap supplimentary insurance to cover added costs, like lightweight casts and non-essential medical needs). The transit system (at least in Paris) is phenomenal; I spend exactly $25 a month in transportation fees, period. There are a bunch of other things, too, but suffice it to say that you see serious returns on the exorbitant taxes you pay.
That said, there are tons of IT jobs that need filling here. It's just virtually impossible for Americans to come fill them, and unless you can adjust to the European lifestyle (which, if you can, is considerably less expensive than the American lifestyle,) it's hard to live here. But it's definately worth it--I don't regret for a second all the blood, sweat, tears, and head-pounding I had to go through to get here. (I didn't speak a word of French when I was looking, either; that didn't stop me from getting over here, though. They need techs!)
Good luck; e-mail me if you want more specific information on any one thing.
$ man reality
What does it matter what the PeeCee luserz think? Let 'em bash Linux from here to Hell and back! We don't care! Yer all stupid! Neener neener!
$ man reality
I mean, think about it this way. If the Linux community is snubbing Java now, just when we're starting to see viable server implementations, what will Sun's response be when the Linux developers start complaining in 2007 that Linux's Java runtimes and support are woefully inadequate, while Java runs like a charm on virtually everything else? How will Linux fare in the business world if Java becomes the language du jour for most programming needs and works well on everything but Linux?
Java is showing more and more promise, and is maturing quite quickly, despite all the jokes to the contrary. Yes, there are still a lot of things Sun needs to fix (Swing, graphics, and many other desktop/UI elements are still decidedly sub-par) but Java is getting better, and won't be going away anytime soon. If nobody in the Linux world cares to use Java, what will Sun care about supporting Linux, now and in the future?
$ man reality
Oh, please. There is an extremely simple somution to your problem. If you want your computing experience to fully benefit from the latest and greatest hardware upgrades, the answer is painfully simple.
Run older software on newer hardware.
There is no law or mandate anywhere that says you can't run an older, stable OS on your blazing new Thunderbird system. You'll be absolutely blown away by the performance, I assure you. You can read e-mail, surf the web, serve web pages and write and compile code on a wide variety of older, rock-solid systems. If you want a fast, virtually bulletproof web graphical web browser, use Netscape 3; even better, stick to Lynx, if you don't mind seeing the Web in all ASCII. There's nothing that says you must use the latest C compiler; there's no real reason to upgrade beyond Pine for reading one's mail, as attachments can be saved and viewed externally. It is perfectly sensible to run older software on newer hardware, and I have seen it done quite a number of times.
I'll say it again: run older software on newer hardware.
Now, if for some reason, you want to take advantage of some of the extra features that more modern operating systems and programs provide, I advise you swallow your rhetoric and buy a modern computer for the job. Just as there is no reason for you not to run older systems on newer hardware, there is absolutely no reason for software developers to not take advantage of the power available to them. If, for some reason, you feel compelled to use a newer program because it provides functionality above and beyond what you can achieve with older counterparts, you can bet that program uses some section of the "thick layers of software bureaucracy" you pan. (Fire BAD! bureacracy BAD!)
And finally a lot of people just don't know how to architect or code. I think we could all benefit from learning and writing some assembly, so we could really understand what our software is doing.
New features should not come at the expense of performance
Do you ever actually read what you write? that's like saying education should not come at the expense of time! I challenge you--I bet you five hundred dollars--that you cannot write a new feature into any program that doesn't come at the expense of performance. How can somebody who purportedly codes in assembly spout such utter nonsense? Do you have any understanding whatsoever of the necessity behind the complexity of modern systems? Do you really believe that, if you just sat down and worked at it long enough, you could redesign the latest version of WordPerfect to be as computationally efficient as vi? Good freakin' luck.
Why does this happen? One thing is because programmers are lazy, and if their code runs slow they assume the user will just get a faster machine.
Programmers are lazy, and write slow, lousy code because of it? Well, who the hell wrote your fast, stable Slackware distribution? Wandering minstrels? Yes, there are more bad programmers in the world today; the demand for programmers is so great that even if ten times as many "skilled programmers" existed today, we still couldn't come close to filling the need. Does that mean, as you so blithely put it, that programmers are lazy? No. Some programmers are lazy, just as some Slashdot posters are trolls. There do exist a good many highly talented and educated computer programmers in the world developing very advanced, modern systems and applications; they understand the need for the complexity and abstraction of modern systems in relation to real-world concerns.
If the needs of the computing world were performance and performance alone, your post would strike a resounding chord. As it stands, though, performance is but one factor amongst a sea of others, including things such as code readability, portability, robustness, maintainability, modularity, production time and production cost. If all you need out of your computer is performance, performance, and more performance, stick to older software and the hottest hardware. You can run a system at god-like speeds if you do this. Just remember, though, that the only reason you ever have to run that processor-sucking, machine killing modern system is if you want to use any of the wonderfully time and energy saving conveniences these disgustingly bloated travesties put at your fingertips. If you're unwilling to accept the fact that code becomes larger and slower in the name of ease of use and abstraction of complexity, though, well, you're out of luck.
Do tell me, though, when you finish that port of WordPerfect.
$ man reality
Well, they were looking for a geek to fill the role, but as fate would have it, every single applicant either got their long, curly beard caught in the escalator, snagged a red suspender loop on a coat rack, or dropped one of their Spock ears in the storm drain outside the office, and thus never actually made it to the interview.
Oh, for a world where all geeks didn't have long beards, red suspenders, and Spock ears. Of course, that's just about as likely to exist as a world with just, trustworthy attorneys. Wishful thinking, nothing more.
$ man reality
I don't know that I've ever seen somebody so angry at a group of people for trying to make a living out of what they do. It's not like they came to your house and shat on your doorstep; they're taking their own work and trying to get something more tangible than props from the geek community.
In the 'good old days' of the Internet, a good job meant a long term position at the local university helping to maintain their systems--the pay was OK, and it meant you got to play with the Internet, which was fun, seeing as you could talk to all the other sysops at the other universities on LambdaMOO. Stock options? Six-figure salaries? The ability to dictate terms to your employer at will? Bwa-hahahaha! Aww, that's cute. Now go over to the science building--the circuit breaker probably got tripped again...
But hey, don't let me stop you gnawing on that hand you got there...
$ man reality
$ man reality
Actually, sacrilegious speech is but a subset of profanity; even "ordinary cussin'" falls in the realm of profanity. The phrase "I don't give a damn" is, indeed, a profane statement, as is swearing in the name of Allah; both are uttered as curses, and both are used simply to emphasize the speaker's conviction. Now, the severity of a profane statement varies greatly from word to word and amongst different audiences; at this point, however, one enters the realm of personal tastes and standards. Just as there are those who use "fuck" in every sentence without batting an eyelid, there do exist people (my great aunt included) who are scandalized by Rhett Butler's famous line of "I don't give a damn" in Gone With The Wind. This said, you'll forgive me if I do not consider your own standard to be definitive, or even representative of the community at large.
There aren't any. All profanity will do, however artfully you use it, is detract from your position among those who still care about it.
I disagree. Profanity detracts from your position among those who take an absolutist view similar to your own; I'd argue that for the vast majority of people, however, profanity is a part of their lexicon. As above, context and audience are everything.
As for your complaints against my elitism... My point was not my "elite" status. My point was that Slashdot has changed. Could it be perhaps that you interpreted it this way because you are insecure about your own status? (If I had wanted to portrary myself as somehow elite, I would have mentioned my 200+ karma.)
I think the "Your Rights Online" section has served to seriously weaken Slashdot's potential for social change. It has tended to present a host of "causes" which are simply not important. DeCSS -- sure, critical free speech issue. "Geeks Rights" in the aftermath of Columbine -- definitely. I think Slashdot really helped to raise the flag there, and probably saved a lot of kids a lot of suffering.
Using the "f word" in a domain name for an inside joke because someone is too lame to go to an alternative registrar? Oh spare me.
Since when has Slashdot been about evoking social change in and of itself? Yes, Slashdot has always played a central role in reporting major issues relating to the geek/nerd/techie community. It is not Slashdot's place, however, to set and push any given agenda (despite the fact that agendas do unfortunately sneak their way into news stories with alarming frequency; see some of my other posts for thoughts on this trend.) As for the issue at hand being unworthy of reporting, I must say that the event in and of itself is, in fact, a very silly thing, and does not merit a great deal of attention. Reading beyond the headline, however, it takes only seconds to grasp the broader picture: should it be the right of the registrar to determine the boundaries of taste (and thus act as the de facto censor) when giving out domain names? No matter how trivial the example, the underlying theme decidedly merits of discussion, and as such, a good many posts address just that. Just because the particular instance isn't the most earth shattering news to break on the front page doesn't mean that the underlying issue is equally trivial.
Every time you raise a ruckus over an issue, you use some "capital." If you raise a ruckus over an issue that doesn't matter, you may not have this "capital" when the issue does matter. This is why organizations like the NAACP and ACLU have lost much of their ability to affect social change. Slashdot is rapidly becoming a cry-baby website, and when the issue really does matter -- when there is another Columbine -- nobody will listen. And that is a shame.
Again, Slashdot is not a social activism site. It is a news reporting site. News is a fickle creature, and the world does not generate breaking stories on a daily basis; read through some of the fluff on any other major news site and try to tell me otherwise. To it's credit, Slashdot does an excellent job of keeping interesting, wide-ranging topics flowing through the site, with very little of the "ongoing story" demon that shackles itself to many major news providers (Elian Gonzalez, The Florida vote recounts, etc.) On the other hand, Slashdot has always had a problem with tainting it's source material in an attempt to appease it's readers, which is most evident in the unabashed and ongoing evisceration of All Things M$. Regardless of whether or not social commentary is warranted, it is not the place of Slashdot itself to make such commentary outside of the editorial articles (the community usually does a good enough job of that on their own, as well they should.)
If anything, it is this that is the bane of Slashdot's credibility. It is not Slashdot's place to dictate what we should or should not think about the news it reports; that is an exercise left to the reader. When I come to read Slashdot and see the editors themselves making snide remarks on poorly-proofread, factually inaccurate front page stories, that hurts it's credibility. I wholeheartedly believe that a move to make Slashdot an even more politically charged forum will only serve to push it back into the niche world, and whatever strength of reporting it has gained as a general technology/nerd news site will evaporate faster than you can say "closed source sucks". That is the issue Slashdot must contend with, not making themselves out to be even greater zealots than they already seem.
Or, to put it terms that brains limited to four letters might understand:
NEVER CRY WOLF!
Oops... That's right, 'never' has five letters. Just proves you can't say anything useful in four.
...and after going to such lengths to explain the importance of properly choosing one's speech to evoke respect and intelligence in the mind of the reader, you end with this snide quip. I continue to maintain that you are perfectly content to rest atop your ivory tower, taking the occasional shot at the masses below when the spirit so moves you.
Strangely enough, though, you found it necessary to respond to my post, even though my post contained the foulest of foul words used in a most shocking fashion. Surely, my banal idiocy doesn't merit this level of attention?
$ man reality
Well, if GM food isn't a good idea yet, somebody really should have let Gregor Mendel know that a while ago. Because you know what? He was genetically modifying food. Sure, he wasn't using fancy gene splicing techniques, but he was quite literally modifying the genetic structure of pea plants through rigorous cross-breeding, and he was doing so in a decidedly artifical manner.
Companies today like Pioneer have entire fields devoted to this same practice of aggressively cross-breeding various staples in efforts to yield more disease-resistant, larger, tastier foods. Why, oh why, do people not get just as worked up over aggressive cross-breeding as they do over laboratory-based genetic engineering? Is it our obsession with the whole natural = right, artificial = wrong? If so, just keep reminding yourself that glasses are extremely unnatural, whereas the Bubonic Plague is 100% pure Mother Earth.
We most certainly can afford a single mistake. We, as a species, have made more mistakes in our history than I can possibly count, and yet here we are. Somehow, nature forgave us for introducing things like horses to North America and tobacco to Europe, even though these things were -clearly- never intended to happen through any 'natural' means.
GM food is indeed quite ready now. We shouldn't let the FUD of a bunch of luddite crackpots, weepy Sally-Fieldsesque mothers and pseudo-scientists stop us.
$ man reality