Something about Wired magazine over the last few years ( in fact almost since its beginning ) has me convinced they are none other than the branch offices on this planet of that most successful of books, you guessed it the Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy.
On Ursa Minor Beta, as you will all no doubt recall, the HHGTTG had its offices, and in fact they created an entirely artificial universe in their offices so that they could do field research in the day, and not miss all the great parties that happened in the evenings.
"damn clever of course, but its got nothing to do with the real galaxy, has it?"
Anyone get the impression that someone over at Wired had a few too many goofballs and decided they should do the same thing? How many times have I read material that sounded like some journalist who's entire education in technology consisted of misquoted marshal mcluhan, neuromancer and microserfs blabbing on about the dijerati or some other completely wired-created buzzword designed to impress the warehouse loft crowd and nobody else. When was the last time I read a wired article that DIDN'T sound like that? 1996?
Who actually thinks that wired's design advice has anything to do with anything other than something they invented to make themselves feel like their avant-garde.
@nal spelling is for the clinically 31337
on
"e-mail" vs "email"
·
· Score: 1
I think this is an important issue facing us all, because I've got e-commerce and i-culture stuffed so far up my @$$ I need a full duplex enema.
Further more the Web is a proper noun and should always be capitalized, and all you trekkies should just stop splitting your infinitives, ok? It's "to go boldly" not "to boldly go" !
Does anyone need any further evidence that wired magazine is about as in touch with computer culture as a micro manager with a copy of microsurfs.
"Look at me everybody, I'm writing about pop culture, aren't I hip and cool, don't you want to network with me in starbucks? I'm a wired writer and I need attention dammit ! Look at me !"
I found myself stumbling into the middle of the above quoted conversation on the crystal space mailing list, and must say I found it quite annoying. Mostly because it was dominating the mailing list with philosophical debates that seemed off topic, ie not to do with 3d engine development.
However, I think that there is a tendency within the Free Software movement to over-zealously guard some precious "sacred spirit" of free software, as though without vigilant guardians it will be lost to human apathy.
Now don't get me wrong here, I'm not saying that I think this is necessarily a bad thing. I have a great deal of respect for people who are vigilant in fighting for the integrity of free software.
Let's be honest with ourselves about this whole thing shall we? Free Software is really a revolutionary thing, certainly on the scale at which we are seeing it grow and flourish. It is revolutionary in a number of ways.
Firstly because never before has such a large scale social movement ever existed - I mean one in which skilled craftsmen ( software engineers in this case ) have given away for free not only their work, but also their knowledge and skills. And not only giving it away for free, but offering support and aid to those who wish to learn this knowledge. And this is occuring not only as a few isolated incidents, but as a large and powerfully growing community.
Secondly when you put this movement into the social context of a society in which knowledge is becoming more and more the domain of corporate property, and where everything from the culture that nurtures and raises us to the basic components of our own biological structure can be bought and sold for corporate profit, such a movement is not only refreshing but a desperately needed sobering and balancing force.
Thirdly, it is a revolution in the sense that it really challenges traditional capitalist philosophy that people won't do anything ( or at least anything of value ) without monetary compensation. The failure of communism in eastern europe was often held to be proof in practice of this tenet of capitalist theology, and I think that what the free software community has already accomplished demonstrates that this isn't necessarily true, and gives us hope that perhaps there is a better way of organizing ourselves than through the allmighty Dollar.
So I think that this movement really is an important one. Not only important, but I think it really reflects a very mature attitude, especially when you contrast it with the immense background of corporate bickering and squabbling over copyrights, patents and trademarks. This kind of bickering really seems childish and immature, and I find a refreshingly sober attitude prevalent within the free software culture which really recognizes that "I am not my works", that giving away ones works, and one's skills and knowledge to those who want to learn and create doesn't diminish you in any way, and that there doesn't need to be any golem-like "ooh, my precious" fondling and greedily accounting for every byte of knowledge ever spat out of one's brain. ( or as is so often the case, the brains of one's cubicle slaves ) Or rather that if one is truly in one's works that this is the best way to become larger and spread. ( A la ghost in the shell? =)
Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked here.
What I wanted to get at is that I think there is truly something wonderful to the free software philosophy, and I think that a lot of other people feel this way. I also think that the free software movement, despite its astounding growth over the last number of years, is still relatively young and fragile, and it would be very easy for a laid back attitude to destroy the whole thing. Therefore I think it is really important to have people who are not willing to let apathy, indifference and laziness ( one of the programmer's virtues afterall ) kill what really is our chance as a community to make a big impact on the world.
So I do want to say that I have a lot of respect for those who are willing to make themselves thorny and unpleasant in order to push the rest of us out of our apathy and hold us all to a higher standard.
However, I also think that demanding a "pure" dogma of nothing-less-than-totally-for-free-software is both ridiculous, and is itself against the very spirit of freedom that we're trying to expand here. I do not believe that someday all software will be free, nor do I believe that someday there will be a total lack of software companies and for-profit intellectual property organizations.
It is quite a paradox to say that you are going to enforce rules on freedom. Freedom is by definition the ability of individuals to operate within their personal responsability to themselves and others without needing to be chained to any strictures of behaviour. Freedom can't be enforced, it can't be mandated or policed, to do so is a paradox. It is just as paradoxical as it was for the communist states to try to put the common man in charge of the state via a totalitarian government. Not that I'm comparing anyone in the free software movement to communist dictators, I'm just drawing out the furthest example of such a paradox.
When it comes down to the heart of the free software movement, the objective is to put power back into the hands of the average person. In this case it is power in the sense of knowledge being power, and keeping the essential knowledge about the machines that are more and more running our lives ( or at least playing strong parts in them ) freely available to the common man. However you can't accomplish this task if you then want to turn around and police what the common man does with this knowledge, that detracts from the basic concept of the free use of this information.
To quote Benjamin Franklin:
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety". ie if you sacrifice freedom for security, you essentially shoot yourself in the foot, and lose both.
Not only is it a conceptual paradox, but in actual practice you rob yourself of the security of greater freedom. A police state in the name of freedom is not only a conceptual paradox, but the actual state of security is less than one in which people are given greater freedom. A society of scared paranoid people is bound to be a lot less safe to live in than one in which people feel secure in their own liberty. Likewise the free software movement gains strength by allowing its resources to be used in any way at all - even for the pursuit of profit. It DOES NOT lose strength for this. It does lose strength if we begin to enforce rules of stricture on the use of the software, even if these rules are intended only to keep such softare free.
It's something of an act of faith one must make in human nature. We have to trust to the good faith of our own kind that by giving such freedom away the body of free software will continue to grow on the good intentions of individuals, and we will not see the gradual sapping away of all the code into private projects. This is how the free software movement has worked this far, and this is where it gets its amazing power. If, on the other hand we demand strict regulations on the use of free software that it can never be used for purposes other than purely free open ones, I'm fairly certain we will see the gradual loss of interest, the chasing away of new talent, and the project will lose much in the long run.
Naturally there is no assurance that one can have from trusting in human nature, you just have to make the leap of faith that people are well intentioned on the whole. So far I think this has been the real fuel behind the whole movement, and to risk that now would be more fatal than anything that programmer laziness could do.
What we really need is the courage to stand by our principles.
"Destroy their servers and fire them," says Jeff Shapiro, director of technology for the Kingsport, Tenn., public schools.
...
Reality shudders a bit and suddenly Shapiro is wearing a black cloak and a shiny black plastic helmet. The evil Sith Lord then turns and returns to his meditation chamber where he contemplates his plan to turn not only his estranged jedi son, but indeed all the children of Tennessee to the dark side.
Suddenly a report from his fleet admirale comes in - some rebel spies have installed Linux on a deathstar console in the computer room of the local public school. Holstering his lightsaber, Darth Shapiro takes a shuttle down to the location where the insidious rebels are being held. "It is pointless to resist, soon the rebellion will be crushed and all you Linux users will be one of us!"
...
Anyone else find this guy's perspective just a touch wacked? Maybe I was mistaken, but I was under the impression that the whole point of having IT departments in any organization was to help other employees and users of the organization to do their work more efficiently? not to be the software police. If someone finds it easier to use linux than IT dept. policy software isn't this a good thing? aren't productive happy employees a good thing? maybe I made a mistake somewhere - perhaps the real point of IT is as a shelter for those poor tortured control freaks who failed in successful careers with the thought police and ended up in public education instead and need to take some kind of petty sadistic revenge upon others to fill their hollow lives with anything even remotely resembling purpose. Oops - getting a bit personal here am I? How about firing people - that's not very personal is it?
no shit?
you're a sharp one - be careful you might cut yourself.
Strawmen and Impossible beings
on
Is UNIX An OS?
·
· Score: 1
Wow! I can't help having my head spin around
by how amazingly lousy this Every is at thinking let alone critical thinking.
He's created one of the most classic cases of a strawman argument I've ever seen. You want an easy opponent to attack? Well then just dress up a straw man to look like your opponent and wow the masses with your skill and daring!
I don't know where he got his impression of Unix, but "nothing but a kernel and a shell" is not the operating system I know by that name. Not only does he make Unix out to be something a lot simpler than it is - he describes it as something that doesn't even exist. There is no current distribution of Unix in the world that doesn't come with the utilities and applications he demands of a modern operating system, so we must conclude that what he talks about when he refers to Unix is a thing which does not exist.
I must agree with his impeccable logic here - non existant things make for very lousy operating systems, last time I installed a non-existant thing on my computer it didn't do anything at all. I can tell you I was not impressed.
By this same logic I could perfectly well argue that smurfs make for a very lousy OS - they just don't exist, so they can't possibly have all the things we demand of a good distribution these days. Hell, a smurf doesn't even have a kernel or a shell, just a floppy white hat. I tell you, if you IT managers go with an all-smurf solution, you'll live to regret it.
Thanks for the good laugh there Every, why don't you give that scarecrow of yours another stab - I'm sure macWeek will pay through the nose for it.
Slashdot Mirror
LOL - I laughed until I stopped =)
I vote for drunk and somewhat retarded
Something about Wired magazine over the last few years ( in fact almost since its beginning ) has me convinced they are none other than the branch offices on this planet of that most successful of books, you guessed it the Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy.
On Ursa Minor Beta, as you will all no doubt recall, the HHGTTG had its offices, and in fact they created an entirely artificial universe in their offices so that they could do field research in the day, and not miss all the great parties that happened in the evenings.
"damn clever of course, but its got nothing to do with the real galaxy, has it?"
Anyone get the impression that someone over at Wired had a few too many goofballs and decided they should do the same thing? How many times have I read material that sounded like some journalist who's entire education in technology consisted of misquoted marshal mcluhan, neuromancer and microserfs blabbing on about the dijerati or some other completely wired-created buzzword designed to impress the warehouse loft crowd and nobody else. When was the last time I read a wired article that DIDN'T sound like that? 1996?
Who actually thinks that wired's design advice has anything to do with anything other than something they invented to make themselves feel like their avant-garde.
I think this is an important issue facing us all, because I've got e-commerce and i-culture stuffed so far up my @$$ I need a full duplex enema.
Further more the Web is a proper noun and should always be capitalized, and all you trekkies should just stop splitting your infinitives, ok? It's "to go boldly" not "to boldly go" !
Does anyone need any further evidence that wired magazine is about as in touch with computer culture as a micro manager with a copy of microsurfs.
"Look at me everybody, I'm writing about pop culture, aren't I hip and cool, don't you want to network with me in starbucks? I'm a wired writer and I need attention dammit ! Look at me !"
I found myself stumbling into the middle of the above quoted conversation on the crystal space mailing list, and must say I found it quite annoying. Mostly because it was dominating the mailing list with philosophical debates that seemed off topic, ie not to do with 3d engine development.
However, I think that there is a tendency within the Free Software movement to over-zealously guard some precious "sacred spirit" of free software, as though without vigilant guardians it will be lost to human apathy.
Now don't get me wrong here, I'm not saying that I think this is necessarily a bad thing. I have a great deal of respect for people who are vigilant in fighting for the integrity of free software.
Let's be honest with ourselves about this whole thing shall we? Free Software is really a revolutionary thing, certainly on the scale at which we are seeing it grow and flourish. It is revolutionary in a number of ways.
Firstly because never before has such a large scale social movement ever existed - I mean one in which skilled craftsmen ( software engineers in this case ) have given away for free not only their work, but also their knowledge and skills. And not only giving it away for free, but offering support and aid to those who wish to learn this knowledge. And this is occuring not only as a few isolated incidents, but as a large and powerfully growing community.
Secondly when you put this movement into the social context of a society in which knowledge is becoming more and more the domain of corporate property, and where everything from the culture that nurtures and raises us to the basic components of our own biological structure can be bought and sold for corporate profit, such a movement is not only refreshing but a desperately needed sobering and balancing force.
Thirdly, it is a revolution in the sense that it really challenges traditional capitalist philosophy that people won't do anything ( or at least anything of value ) without monetary compensation. The failure of communism in eastern europe was often held to be proof in practice of this tenet of capitalist theology, and I think that what the free software community has already accomplished demonstrates that this isn't necessarily true, and gives us hope that perhaps there is a better way of organizing ourselves than through the allmighty Dollar.
So I think that this movement really is an important one. Not only important, but I think it really reflects a very mature attitude, especially when you contrast it with the immense background of corporate bickering and squabbling over copyrights, patents and trademarks. This kind of bickering really seems childish and immature, and I find a refreshingly sober attitude prevalent within the free software culture which really recognizes that "I am not my works", that giving away ones works, and one's skills and knowledge to those who want to learn and create doesn't diminish you in any way, and that there doesn't need to be any golem-like "ooh, my precious" fondling and greedily accounting for every byte of knowledge ever spat out of one's brain. ( or as is so often the case, the brains of one's cubicle slaves ) Or rather that if one is truly in one's works that this is the best way to become larger and spread. ( A la ghost in the shell? =)
Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked here.
What I wanted to get at is that I think there is truly something wonderful to the free software philosophy, and I think that a lot of other people feel this way. I also think that the free software movement, despite its astounding growth over the last number of years, is still relatively young and fragile, and it would be very easy for a laid back attitude to destroy the whole thing. Therefore I think it is really important to have people who are not willing to let apathy, indifference and laziness ( one of the programmer's virtues afterall ) kill what really is our chance as a community to make a big impact on the world.
So I do want to say that I have a lot of respect for those who are willing to make themselves thorny and unpleasant in order to push the rest of us out of our apathy and hold us all to a higher standard.
However, I also think that demanding a "pure" dogma of nothing-less-than-totally-for-free-software is both ridiculous, and is itself against the very spirit of freedom that we're trying to expand here. I do not believe that someday all software will be free, nor do I believe that someday there will be a total lack of software companies and for-profit intellectual property organizations.
It is quite a paradox to say that you are going to enforce rules on freedom. Freedom is by definition the ability of individuals to operate within their personal responsability to themselves and others without needing to be chained to any strictures of behaviour. Freedom can't be enforced, it can't be mandated or policed, to do so is a paradox. It is just as paradoxical as it was for the communist states to try to put the common man in charge of the state via a totalitarian government. Not that I'm comparing anyone in the free software movement to communist dictators, I'm just drawing out the furthest example of such a paradox.
When it comes down to the heart of the free software movement, the objective is to put power back into the hands of the average person. In this case it is power in the sense of knowledge being power, and keeping the essential knowledge about the machines that are more and more running our lives ( or at least playing strong parts in them ) freely available to the common man. However you can't accomplish this task if you then want to turn around and police what the common man does with this knowledge, that detracts from the basic concept of the free use of this information.
To quote Benjamin Franklin:
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety". ie if you sacrifice freedom for security, you essentially shoot yourself in the foot, and lose both.
Not only is it a conceptual paradox, but in actual practice you rob yourself of the security of greater freedom. A police state in the name of freedom is not only a conceptual paradox, but the actual state of security is less than one in which people are given greater freedom. A society of scared paranoid people is bound to be a lot less safe to live in than one in which people feel secure in their own liberty. Likewise the free software movement gains strength by allowing its resources to be used in any way at all - even for the pursuit of profit. It DOES NOT lose strength for this. It does lose strength if we begin to enforce rules of stricture on the use of the software, even if these rules are intended only to keep such softare free.
It's something of an act of faith one must make in human nature. We have to trust to the good faith of our own kind that by giving such freedom away the body of free software will continue to grow on the good intentions of individuals, and we will not see the gradual sapping away of all the code into private projects. This is how the free software movement has worked this far, and this is where it gets its amazing power. If, on the other hand we demand strict regulations on the use of free software that it can never be used for purposes other than purely free open ones, I'm fairly certain we will see the gradual loss of interest, the chasing away of new talent, and the project will lose much in the long run.
Naturally there is no assurance that one can have from trusting in human nature, you just have to make the leap of faith that people are well intentioned on the whole. So far I think this has been the real fuel behind the whole movement, and to risk that now would be more fatal than anything that programmer laziness could do.
What we really need is the courage to stand by our principles.
Just a few thoughts off the top of my head.
"Destroy their servers and fire them," says Jeff Shapiro, director of technology for the Kingsport, Tenn., public schools.
...
Reality shudders a bit and suddenly Shapiro is wearing a black cloak and a shiny black plastic helmet. The evil Sith Lord then turns and returns to his meditation chamber where he contemplates his plan to turn not only his estranged jedi son, but indeed all the children of Tennessee to the dark side.
Suddenly a report from his fleet admirale comes in - some rebel spies have installed Linux on a deathstar console in the computer room of the local public school. Holstering his lightsaber, Darth Shapiro takes a shuttle down to the location where the insidious rebels are being held. "It is pointless to resist, soon the rebellion will be crushed and all you Linux users will be one of us!"
...
Anyone else find this guy's perspective just a touch wacked? Maybe I was mistaken, but I was under the impression that the whole point of having IT departments in any organization was to help other employees and users of the organization to do their work more efficiently? not to be the software police. If someone finds it easier to use linux than IT dept. policy software isn't this a good thing? aren't productive happy employees a good thing? maybe I made a mistake somewhere - perhaps the real point of IT is as a shelter for those poor tortured control freaks who failed in successful careers with the thought police and ended up in public education instead and need to take some kind of petty sadistic revenge upon others to fill their hollow lives with anything even remotely resembling purpose. Oops - getting a bit personal here am I? How about firing people - that's not very personal is it?
no shit?
you're a sharp one - be careful you might cut yourself.
Wow! I can't help having my head spin around
by how amazingly lousy this Every is at thinking let alone critical thinking.
He's created one of the most classic cases of a strawman argument I've ever seen. You want an easy opponent to attack? Well then just dress up a straw man to look like your opponent and wow the masses with your skill and daring!
I don't know where he got his impression of Unix, but "nothing but a kernel and a shell" is not the operating system I know by that name. Not only does he make Unix out to be something a lot simpler than it is - he describes it as something that doesn't even exist. There is no current distribution of Unix in the world that doesn't come with the utilities and applications he demands of a modern operating system, so we must conclude that what he talks about when he refers to Unix is a thing which does not exist.
I must agree with his impeccable logic here - non existant things make for very lousy operating systems, last time I installed a non-existant thing on my computer it didn't do anything at all. I can tell you I was not impressed.
By this same logic I could perfectly well argue that smurfs make for a very lousy OS - they just don't exist, so they can't possibly have all the things we demand of a good distribution these days. Hell, a smurf doesn't even have a kernel or a shell, just a floppy white hat. I tell you, if you IT managers go with an all-smurf solution, you'll live to regret it.
Thanks for the good laugh there Every, why don't you give that scarecrow of yours another stab - I'm sure macWeek will pay through the nose for it.