Who was the interviewer? I smell a rat.
on
Bill Gates On Linux
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Who exactly conducted this interview? Think about this for a second: if you got to interview the richest man in the world, wouldn't you want your name on it? All I saw listed as the interviewer was "USA Today". (Beiser took the photo shown) Not only that, but:
1. It was a very short "interview".
2. Some of the questions had the tone of "devil's advocate", giving Gates the perfect opportunity to look like the good guy. (OS/2 question in particular)
3. There was no follow-up to anything, it was just question-answer, question-answer. So if this interview ever took place, it seems like it wasn't an interactive interview. (no big deal, just wanted to point it out)
My non-expert opinion? This was a canned PR interview that MS sent USA Today.
I think IBM is actually very smart in not doing anything at all while letting SCO run up legal bills and make more and more unwise threatening statement. Sooner or later, SCO will be deflated, and then the company actually will be totally bust.
Nooooo. I don't want to see this turn into a legal battle that IBM eventually wins based on the fact that it has more money and legal power. That would be a BAD thing. I want IBM to simply win this based on facts, not on legal ability. Don't get me wrong, I want SCO to have their ass handed to them. But it needs to be settled, so there is no doubt out there among the PHBs as to the validity of Linux and OSS. (that is really what this all boils down to)
They lose almost nothing, while they are sucking up to M$, possibly gaining much more with the obfuscated licensing. I assume M$ will gladly pay their losses, considering the press coverage this thing will get.
Yeah, right. ObSimpsons reference:
Homer: I reluctantly accept your proposal!
Bill Gates: Well everyone always does. Buy 'em out, boys!
[Gates' lackeys trash the room.]
Homer: Hey, what the hell's going on!
Bill Gates: Oh, I didn't get rich by writing a lot of checks! [insane laughter]
Remember to follow spec when making your own network cables. Running the wires straight through will cause issues (signal interference). You must have pins 3 and 6 on the same twisted pair, otherwise, the cables won't work after 30 feet or so...
I just used a pre-made cable as my wiring guide when I ran about 50 ft in my house. They worked on the first try. That was a first in my book, I was really surprised that happened.
Oh, here's my tip - mark the ends of each cable you run with hash marks, so you don't have to trace them back every time you forget which one is which.
He's saying it *didn't* come true?
on
Gates and Security
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· Score: 1, Insightful
Gates told a homeland-security conference on Wednesday afternoon that Orwell's dystopian vision of the future, in which Big Brother used technology as a form of social control, "didn't come true, and I don't believe it will."
So he is saying that technology is not used as a form of social control? Here in the US, our society (as it were) is controlled by corporations. OK, maybe not for the people living in shacks in Montana, but for everyone else, there isn't much of a society to speak of outside of what technology provides. Music, television, video games, etc. But I guess there are still the good old methods of control being used, like lies, FUD, misplaced patriotism, and threats of WMD.
When you have to maintain 24/7 and 3 9's reliability on limited staff, YES, you *have* to have vendor support. What if something fails that you can't figure out a solution for in less than hour? That's why you pay Microsoft (or Red Hat or IBM or whoever).
If you are striving for 3 9's reliability, what the F are you doing running NT? Or did you fudge the weekly reboot into the "scheduled" downtime as a maintenence thing?
If you don't have a "compound, you're not a "cult leader". And if you're not a "cult leader", you're not allocated any "devoted followers". And if you don't have any "devoted followers" how are you supposed to get a date?
Riiiiight. These are just like all of those Linux-powered touch-screen web pads I have been waiting 5 years for. *cough* freepad All of the "designs" look awesome, but until they produce an actual product, they can bite me. And just redesigning the website every year doesn't fool me.
(and I personally don't think that these watches are all that great looking)
It's true. But that's because Linux apps developers don't have to follow a strict template when submitting bug fixes. Some Open Source projects are strict for the code but not the comments
Who knows if they are strict in their coding? Only other developers.
To extend on my point, which I thought was kind of obvious, maybe Open Source developers should write up their bug fixes with a little more verbage to explain in English (or whatever their native language is) what the problem was and what the fix was.
I see notices here about new kernels being released, and there are links to the Changelogs. I have a bachelors in computer science, and those changelogs mean squat to me. I am betting they don't mean anything to 99% of the people out there either. How many people here do a diff on the code and figure out what changed? Now I know that the kernel is complex, and maybe there is no good way to explain in plain wording what is being fixed. But some of it can, and probably should be explained. Many apps that have a new release just have "bug fixes" listed.
I am not saying Windows does it perfectly, of course there is no way to verify their code actually does what their release notes say it does. But I can at least understand their release notes.
You can be all elitest and say "You are stupid if you can't figure it out", but do you honestly believe that it wouldn't be better if there were descriptions of the problem and the fix, along with the source code? What would be the cost of doing this? A little bit of time? Seems worth it to me.
Now I know it isn't popular with the kids these days to give credit to MS, but their bug reports are pretty extensive. They contain information about the problem, the cause, and the fix. Click any of the defects listed here to see what I mean.
I hate to say it, but when I read changelogs for many Linux apps (or the kernel), they simply say "Fixed bug in foo.c". That doesn't tell me a whole lot as an end-user.
Funny, just before seeing this posted, I had just finished reading a review of the 5600 at geek.com . Since the review posted is slashdotted, maybe you can check that one out.
From the chewbacca-defense-book-reviews
on
Hacking the XBox
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· Score: 5, Funny
Would someone please explain in the "other English" simply what the summary of this article is trying to state? I have unusally high reading comprehension skills, but that paragraph has withstood repeated attempts on my part to retrieve any useful information from it!
Yes, I can explain this review.
Ladies and gentlemen of the supposed jury, Chef's attorney would certainly want you to believe his client wrote Stinky Britches ten years ago, and they make a good case. Hell, I almost felt pity myself. But ladies and gentlemen of the supposed jury, I have one final thing I want you to consider. Ladies and gentlemen, (pulls down picture of Chewbacca) this is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk, but Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now think about it. That does not make sense...Why would a Wookiee, an eight-foot-tall Wookiee, want to live on Endor with a bunch of two-foot-tall Ewoks. That does not make sense. But more important, you have to ask yourself: What does this have to do with this case?...Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this case...It does not make sense. Look at me. I'm a lawyer defending a major record company and I'm talkin' about Chewbacca. Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen I am not making any sense. None of this makes sense. And so you have to remember when you're in that jury room deliberating and conjugating the Emancipation Proclamation, does it make sense? No. Ladies and gentlemen of the supposed jury, it does not make sense. If Chewbacca lives on Endor you must acquit.
Many IT decision-makers have a herd mentality (e.g. nobody was ever fired for buying Cisco routers). Open Source use passed a critical mass a while ago and enough of the herd is heading in that direction now that the obvious advantages outweigh the fear of the unknown. It's continued acceptance is a foregone conclusion at this point.
So what you are saying is that we need to change our herd mentality to a GNU/herd mentality?
What's wrong with this, supposedly, why does the article make it sound like "Oh no, more evil antics from the RIAA"!
They are doing the _right_ thing. Go after people breaking the law, not the entire service.
Newsbreak! You don't have the right to download free music!
Wrong, I do have the right, as long as the copyright holder says I can. It is a small nit to pick, but it needs to be stated.
There is plenty of music out there that the copyright owners WANT you to download and listen to. Let's not forget that. The RIAA wants you to believe that *ALL* downloading of music is illegal, it is most absolutely not. I downloaded a ton of songs taped from live shows of the band Clutch. Illegal? Hell no, it was from their site. pro-rock.com
I agree with you, the RIAA has the right to go after the copyright violaters. I just hope they do it correctly, and don't F it up. And "copyright violation" is not the same as "stealing", they are two very distinctly different things.
Copyright 2003 Richard Stallman. Verbatim copying and redistribution of this entire article are permitted without royalty in any medium provided this notice is preserved.
Heh. You could show me this article without the copyright notice, and I'd tell you immediately who wrote it.:-)
What we need are some designers - who are not technies or nerds - to sit down and completely redesign the interface from scratch. Forget the "windows" metaphor, forget "icons" and clicking with the mouse - really start from first principals.
Not going to happen. That is like asking Alexander Graham Bell to design a cell-phone. You have to go in with knowledge about the function of a product. If not you either get something that looks great but doesn't do anything, or a single-purpose device. Computers are neither of those.
If you've ever sat down with someone who hasn't used a computer much and watch them struggle to do the simplest things, you'll understand how bad current GUIs are. The trouble is people that use computers are so used to their bad design that they fail to notice it.
I have, and it is frustrating for everyone. But is it the design that is wrong, or the person? My mom didn't know anything much about computers until a year or two ago. She still struggles with the interface. My 8 year old neice picked it up very quickly. Don't blame the interface when the problem might be in the mind of the user. After all, in another generation there won't be anyone alive who remembers when there weren't computers.
For example, when I press the on button, I want it to turn on. Instantly. I don't want to have to wait several minutes for it to "warm up" like the old TVs used to. And when I press the off button, I want it to turn off. Instantly. And if I press the on button again, I want to see the same stuff on the screen as when I last switched it off. And that's just the functionality of the on-off button!
This is functionality, not design. Yeah, this would be a nice thing, but it has nothing to do with the interface design. You have to wait for the hardware behind the curtain to catch up to this idea. So you want a big, embedded computer. We'll probably get there some day, but it has nothing to do with UI design.
It's 2003 for christsakes. Why am I still using an interface that was designed in the 1970's, when computers had a tiny fraction of the power and functionality they currently have?
Umm, because the interface doesn't rely on the power and functionality of the device? So which is it? You want a super-powerful, multi-function computer that is instant-on that everyone intuitively knows how to operate? Gee, anything else? Maybe we could fit them on the head of a pin too. How about infinite storage?
I am all for forward thinking, but let's put a little more emphasis on the thinking part.
Okay... if I want a portable screen, I'll buy a laptop.
Sure the screens come in 17 inches... but come on, I don't know why portable screens would be so helpful.
Dude, it's called innovation. Just because you can't think of a use for this RIGHT NOW doesn't mean it isn't valid or that it won't be useful tomorrow. That's like saying in 1990 "I'll never fill up a 100MB hard drive!".
If people don't innovate, technology becomes stagnant. Maybe there is, and never will be any viable use for this device. But maybe the research that went into creating it will allow researchers to create an even thinner, more portable device. In fact, I am fairly certain it will.
If you create an empty Word document, it is 19K. That is more space than was available on the first computer that I programmed on in 1987. (16k) I have over 4x the amount of space in memory in my computer at home than I had disk drive space in 1992. (384MB vs 80MB) I can't wait to see what we have in another 10 years.
whoa whoa, everyone just CALM down...
on
Phish Moves To FLAC
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· Score: 5, Funny
Why is everyone here giving Phish so much...
.. (wait for it)..
FLAC?
badum-tchhh. Thank you, I'll be here all week, tip your moderators.
Pretending to extend the hand of friendship, SCO completely obliterated the anti-SCO message. Slick.
Gee, I wonder where I have heard this type of tactic before.
Somehow, I picture Billy talking to Darl several months ago, saying "You do not know the power of the dark side. Join me, and we can rule the galaxy as father and son."
Why filter content? Maybe this already exists, but why not do a password protection scheme instead of filtering? If someone tries to access a blocked site, they are presented with password dialog to gain access. If they want the password, they have to go to the librarian and get it.
Of course, it couldn't be one password for everything. I wonder if they could manage to have a password per site. When the dialog comes up, the user is given a number to give to the librarian, and they can in turn look up the password for that site. (and see what the site is if they so choose).
There may be holes in this idea, but it seems to me that they could be worked out. The idea behind filtering is a good one, but the facts are that it doesn't work that well.
I can't believe artists are bitching about this. Oh, sure, if they were the kind of artists who produced works-of-art albums. But come on. OK, I am not a Radiohead fan, but I understand that they are considered to be good. To each his own. But Madonna? She *IS* pop music. Pop music is making hit songs. Now I am not saying Madonna isn't an artist, because I think she is in her own way. Anything Madonna has to say can be said in a single song or video.
To these artists, I say - it is your industry. Deal with it. You created, or were a part of, the pop culture mentality. You taught us to listen to one song until we want to puke, and we are so violently sick of it that whatever the next "hit" song is, we will listen to it just to get the bad taste out of our ears. It isn't the fans you need to check, it is the record companies. They have created this sound-bite culture in your name, and you haven't said a damn word until now.
Slashdot Mirror
1. It was a very short "interview".
2. Some of the questions had the tone of "devil's advocate", giving Gates the perfect opportunity to look like the good guy. (OS/2 question in particular)
3. There was no follow-up to anything, it was just question-answer, question-answer. So if this interview ever took place, it seems like it wasn't an interactive interview. (no big deal, just wanted to point it out)
My non-expert opinion? This was a canned PR interview that MS sent USA Today.
Nooooo. I don't want to see this turn into a legal battle that IBM eventually wins based on the fact that it has more money and legal power. That would be a BAD thing. I want IBM to simply win this based on facts, not on legal ability. Don't get me wrong, I want SCO to have their ass handed to them. But it needs to be settled, so there is no doubt out there among the PHBs as to the validity of Linux and OSS. (that is really what this all boils down to)
Yeah, right. ObSimpsons reference:
Homer: I reluctantly accept your proposal!
Bill Gates: Well everyone always does. Buy 'em out, boys!
[Gates' lackeys trash the room.]
Homer: Hey, what the hell's going on!
Bill Gates: Oh, I didn't get rich by writing a lot of checks! [insane laughter]
I just used a pre-made cable as my wiring guide when I ran about 50 ft in my house. They worked on the first try. That was a first in my book, I was really surprised that happened.
Oh, here's my tip - mark the ends of each cable you run with hash marks, so you don't have to trace them back every time you forget which one is which.
So he is saying that technology is not used as a form of social control? Here in the US, our society (as it were) is controlled by corporations. OK, maybe not for the people living in shacks in Montana, but for everyone else, there isn't much of a society to speak of outside of what technology provides. Music, television, video games, etc. But I guess there are still the good old methods of control being used, like lies, FUD, misplaced patriotism, and threats of WMD.
If you are striving for 3 9's reliability, what the F are you doing running NT? Or did you fudge the weekly reboot into the "scheduled" downtime as a maintenence thing?
You got it stable? Yeah, and I have a magic-box powered Delorean I'd like to sell you.
Well, he doesn't have to be that slick. He is from Tennessee after all.
Hey maw, come look at this crazy batrey powrd cor! And brang the mattress money, we'z gonna make us an investment.
Does Linus have a compound?
(and I personally don't think that these watches are all that great looking)
Who knows if they are strict in their coding? Only other developers.
To extend on my point, which I thought was kind of obvious, maybe Open Source developers should write up their bug fixes with a little more verbage to explain in English (or whatever their native language is) what the problem was and what the fix was.
I see notices here about new kernels being released, and there are links to the Changelogs. I have a bachelors in computer science, and those changelogs mean squat to me. I am betting they don't mean anything to 99% of the people out there either. How many people here do a diff on the code and figure out what changed? Now I know that the kernel is complex, and maybe there is no good way to explain in plain wording what is being fixed. But some of it can, and probably should be explained. Many apps that have a new release just have "bug fixes" listed.
I am not saying Windows does it perfectly, of course there is no way to verify their code actually does what their release notes say it does. But I can at least understand their release notes.
You can be all elitest and say "You are stupid if you can't figure it out", but do you honestly believe that it wouldn't be better if there were descriptions of the problem and the fix, along with the source code? What would be the cost of doing this? A little bit of time? Seems worth it to me.
I hate to say it, but when I read changelogs for many Linux apps (or the kernel), they simply say "Fixed bug in foo.c". That doesn't tell me a whole lot as an end-user.
Funny, just before seeing this posted, I had just finished reading a review of the 5600 at geek.com . Since the review posted is slashdotted, maybe you can check that one out.
Yes, I can explain this review.
Ladies and gentlemen of the supposed jury, Chef's attorney would certainly want you to believe his client wrote Stinky Britches ten years ago, and they make a good case. Hell, I almost felt pity myself. But ladies and gentlemen of the supposed jury, I have one final thing I want you to consider. Ladies and gentlemen, (pulls down picture of Chewbacca) this is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk, but Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now think about it. That does not make sense...Why would a Wookiee, an eight-foot-tall Wookiee, want to live on Endor with a bunch of two-foot-tall Ewoks. That does not make sense. But more important, you have to ask yourself: What does this have to do with this case?...Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this case...It does not make sense. Look at me. I'm a lawyer defending a major record company and I'm talkin' about Chewbacca. Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen I am not making any sense. None of this makes sense. And so you have to remember when you're in that jury room deliberating and conjugating the Emancipation Proclamation, does it make sense? No. Ladies and gentlemen of the supposed jury, it does not make sense. If Chewbacca lives on Endor you must acquit.
So buy this book. The End.
Editors fail English? That's unpossible.
So what you are saying is that we need to change our herd mentality to a GNU/herd mentality?
Wrong, I do have the right, as long as the copyright holder says I can. It is a small nit to pick, but it needs to be stated.
There is plenty of music out there that the copyright owners WANT you to download and listen to. Let's not forget that. The RIAA wants you to believe that *ALL* downloading of music is illegal, it is most absolutely not. I downloaded a ton of songs taped from live shows of the band Clutch. Illegal? Hell no, it was from their site. pro-rock.com
I agree with you, the RIAA has the right to go after the copyright violaters. I just hope they do it correctly, and don't F it up. And "copyright violation" is not the same as "stealing", they are two very distinctly different things.
Heh. You could show me this article without the copyright notice, and I'd tell you immediately who wrote it. :-)
Not going to happen. That is like asking Alexander Graham Bell to design a cell-phone. You have to go in with knowledge about the function of a product. If not you either get something that looks great but doesn't do anything, or a single-purpose device. Computers are neither of those.
If you've ever sat down with someone who hasn't used a computer much and watch them struggle to do the simplest things, you'll understand how bad current GUIs are. The trouble is people that use computers are so used to their bad design that they fail to notice it.
I have, and it is frustrating for everyone. But is it the design that is wrong, or the person? My mom didn't know anything much about computers until a year or two ago. She still struggles with the interface. My 8 year old neice picked it up very quickly. Don't blame the interface when the problem might be in the mind of the user. After all, in another generation there won't be anyone alive who remembers when there weren't computers.
For example, when I press the on button, I want it to turn on. Instantly. I don't want to have to wait several minutes for it to "warm up" like the old TVs used to. And when I press the off button, I want it to turn off. Instantly. And if I press the on button again, I want to see the same stuff on the screen as when I last switched it off. And that's just the functionality of the on-off button!
This is functionality, not design. Yeah, this would be a nice thing, but it has nothing to do with the interface design. You have to wait for the hardware behind the curtain to catch up to this idea. So you want a big, embedded computer. We'll probably get there some day, but it has nothing to do with UI design.
It's 2003 for christsakes. Why am I still using an interface that was designed in the 1970's, when computers had a tiny fraction of the power and functionality they currently have?
Umm, because the interface doesn't rely on the power and functionality of the device? So which is it? You want a super-powerful, multi-function computer that is instant-on that everyone intuitively knows how to operate? Gee, anything else? Maybe we could fit them on the head of a pin too. How about infinite storage?
I am all for forward thinking, but let's put a little more emphasis on the thinking part.
Dude, it's called innovation. Just because you can't think of a use for this RIGHT NOW doesn't mean it isn't valid or that it won't be useful tomorrow. That's like saying in 1990 "I'll never fill up a 100MB hard drive!".
If people don't innovate, technology becomes stagnant. Maybe there is, and never will be any viable use for this device. But maybe the research that went into creating it will allow researchers to create an even thinner, more portable device. In fact, I am fairly certain it will.
If you create an empty Word document, it is 19K. That is more space than was available on the first computer that I programmed on in 1987. (16k) I have over 4x the amount of space in memory in my computer at home than I had disk drive space in 1992. (384MB vs 80MB) I can't wait to see what we have in another 10 years.
FLAC?
badum-tchhh. Thank you, I'll be here all week, tip your moderators.
I kill me.
Gee, I wonder where I have heard this type of tactic before.
Somehow, I picture Billy talking to Darl several months ago, saying "You do not know the power of the dark side. Join me, and we can rule the galaxy as father and son."
What? Oh, they do. Well .... woo-hoo.
No, really, I didn't see any list that showed what OS they run, or at least what OS they are based on.
Of course, it couldn't be one password for everything. I wonder if they could manage to have a password per site. When the dialog comes up, the user is given a number to give to the librarian, and they can in turn look up the password for that site. (and see what the site is if they so choose).
There may be holes in this idea, but it seems to me that they could be worked out. The idea behind filtering is a good one, but the facts are that it doesn't work that well.
To these artists, I say - it is your industry. Deal with it. You created, or were a part of, the pop culture mentality. You taught us to listen to one song until we want to puke, and we are so violently sick of it that whatever the next "hit" song is, we will listen to it just to get the bad taste out of our ears. It isn't the fans you need to check, it is the record companies. They have created this sound-bite culture in your name, and you haven't said a damn word until now.
Reap what you sow, motherfuckers.