I'm currently listening to "Pulse Piece", by Birdsongs of the Mesozoic. Layers of distorted piano, organ, and percussion, with a pulse-like beat. I wonder what this clever technology would make of that? Rock? Jazz? Techno? (It predates techno by a good ten years)
Hell, i wonder what it would make of half the stuff i have ripped to mp3 here at work... Steve Tibbetts, David Torn, Erik Satie, Brian Eno, Jean-Michel Jarre, Klezmatics, Last Exit, Nordic stuff, Sonic Youth, etc...
The millions and millions of users out there have spoken and they say that they find it easier to click an icon rather than entering a command. Same holds true for drag-and-drop vs. commands.
gui easier than text? I completely disagree. Text is MUCH easier than gui, if you know what you're doing.
Right now, i'm running a Linux box with two desktops - one has four Eterms and Netscape. The other has four Eterms. I'm logged in as root on two different machines, plus local logins. I'm editing text, viewing text (less and man), and running commands. Really, X is just a way to get me a bunch of convenient terminals. I don't even use the mouse to switch back and forth! I can keyboard from one desktop to the other, one terminal to the other. This is fast, flexible, and efficient. Could i run multiple user ids on different machines easily using gui tools? I don't think so.
With text-based tools, i express myself to my computer using *language*, the most flexible and powerful tool ever invented by humans. With a gui, i can point at shapes and hope they do what i want. A chimp can do that.
Simple. If you just have to dig a pond *once*, then of course the shovel is easier. But if you dig ponds every single day, then the bulldozer is easier. Remember the formula T(l) + nT(d). Do you perform the task a lot? If so, then the time required to learn a better tool is paid for by the time saved using a better tool. Seems simple to me.
The problem with Windows is that everything is either easy, or *impossible* (or at least extremely difficult). I've worked for years with both, and i've spent far more time beating my head against a wall trying to get Windows to do even trivial tasks, if no Microsoft engineer thought of the task before i did. The joy of Unix is that i can easily combine tools to perform just about any specialized task i can think of.
Yeah, i'm a power user. I'm an experienced programmer. But AS A POWER USER, i consider Windows to be downright user-hostile. At this point, i would not take a job that required me to use Windows rather than Unix/Linux as my primary interface. I'm far, far more productive at my Linux box. --
Want ease of use? Conduct this little experiment, which i had to do for work purposes a while back... find me the name and length of the longest filename/path on your Windows box. This took me about three minutes in Linux (Unix), mostly waiting on the 'find' command to finish. Bonus points if you can do this in a reasonable amount of time in Windows without resorting to Perl or Unix workalike utility kits. Super extra bonus if you can do it without using a command prompt, but can get an authoritative answer from the gui. And, if you can't do this problem in either Windows or Unix, i'd suggest you aren't a sufficiently skilled computer user to really judge ease of use issues.
As for vi versus Notepad... well, a friend of mine has a good ease of use formula. The proper measure of ease of use is the total time spent doing a task. The formula for this is T(l) + nT(d), where T(l) is the time required to learn a task, T(d) is the time required to perform it, and n is the number of times it is performed. So for tasks you rarely do, T(l) dominates. But for tasks you do often (like, say, the several hours a day i spend in text editors), T(d) dominates.
The essence of this is that while vi is much harder to *learn* than Notepad, it is much more powerful as well, reducing use time. And if you spend several hours a day editing text (like most programmers do), the time to learn a more powerful editor is paid for many times over by the speed gain for complex tasks.
This is why i recommend to friends who use computers daily, even non-programmers, that they take the time to learn Linux. Not because it's more cool or politically correct, but because it's more *productive*. The learning curve in the short term is paid for by productivity in the long term.
I work at a Linux company. I love Free software. And, in many if not most cases, the Free stuff is better than the payware. So why are the DBA and i harping loudly to get Sybase in here, and complaining about MySQL's inadequacies? Because these are not "minor differences in quality". These are HUGE differences in feature sets, differences that drastically affect development time and maintenance. And quite frankly, no Free RDBMS offers anywhere near the *useful* features of the commercial products.
MySQL is great for some purposes - guestbooks, web logs, and other trivial tasks. But for more difficult tasks, it has serious scalability issues that we have to code around. I'm not some clueless manager terrified of GPL. I'm an experienced database developer. I understand what MySQL can and cannot do. And there are too many things it cannot do for the tasks we're trying to do. Sybase does those things, along with Oracle, Informix, DB2, even SQL Server (speaking of get what you pay for crap). Any experienced RDBMS developer/DBA who has worked on serious problems will tell you the same.
While we're knocking MySQL, let's bring up a few other inadequacies... lack of triggers, stored procedures, or referential integrity. Dropping transactions in the interest of performance i can understand, although that does prevent it from being a solid solution for e-commerce or anything else that needs real reliability on complex actions. But lack of stored procedures, triggers, and referential integrity (foreign keys) makes it *much* harder to write safe, reliable databases - you either write those checks into your code directly (or wrapper libraries), or you deal with data becoming inconsistent on a regular basis. They're pushing the work of maintaining a consistent database out of the engine and into programming and administration - this is bad practice.
But the kicker for us recently, though, was the date checking routines. They check that the year, month, and date are all valid, but *not in reference to each other*. So Feb. 31 is a valid date, as far as MySQL is concerned! Geez. No transactions, no stored procs, etc - those are valid design decisions, even if i don't agree with them. But the date handling is just plain flawed.
I wish PostgreSQL were a better solution. But we looked at it, and it has its own set of narrowminded shortcomings. For example, no cross-database joins, even on the same server! When asked how to do that, the developers respond that you should just put all your tables in a single database. Bwah? Oh, and you can't even switch databases on a single connect - you have to drop the connection and reconnect. This kills much of the usefulness of having transactions, and violates the development model that has been proven useful by every major commercial RDBMS.
Wonder why Sybase, Oracle, Informix, DB2, Ingres, and SQL Server get away with charging what they do? Because their products are worth it. I'd *love* it if the Free World would develop an Oracle killer - a Free RDBMS that does transactions, stored procs, triggers, referential integrity, flexible permissions, cross-server transactions, powerful dump/restore facilities, live failover, and all the other great things the commercial products do. But it ain't happening yet, and considering that MySQL does such a great job of impressing those who don't know jack shit about serious database programming, i don't have much hope for it.
Oh, i don't disagree with the "practical, real-world difference" being negligible. But a negligible difference in one sense (i.e. chilling effect working the same as an outright ban) is a significant difference in another sense (Congress wants to ban Napster!).
Slashdot at least *pretends* to be journalism. The editors shouldn't just quote factually incorrect statements willy-nilly (remember the "Borland's license prohibits open source" fiasco last week?).
You know, it boggles my mind how many Slashdot users seem to think that just because i questioned Slashdot's phrasing and tried to state PPI's position more clearly, that i somehow support the PPI position. What part of "I don't agree with PPI's position" didn't you people understand?
Give an individual enough rope, and they'll hang themselves. Give a group enough rope, and they'll form a lynch mob. --
Jeeezus, when are Slashdot's editors going to actually fact-check before posting these crap stories?
I don't agree with the PPI's position, but i at least *read* it. They aren't saying modify the DMCA to ban Napster and peer-to-peer file sharing. What they're saying, if Slashdot's editors and the foaming-at-the-mouth crowd would bother to read for content, is that service providers whose services mean serious risk of copyright infringement (i.e. Napster) should be required to get solid identifying information for users, should have to respond to challenges in a timely manner, and that judges should have broad powers to grant injunctions against them - and that THOSE things should be written into DMCA.
The problem with this approach, which PPI fails to understand (and Slashdot doesn't dig deep enough to understand) is that peer-to-peer data sharing doesn't require a company to centralize the information. Gnutella and Freenet technologies, as well as whatever comes next, allow such sharing with no central control. That sort of thing is pretty much impossible to regulate by law without stepping on the First Amendment in the US (depends on local laws in other countries), and is practically impossible to regulate *regardless* of laws, short of unplugging the 'net.
Napster will probably die. And as far as i'm concerned, they *should* die, because they really are attempting to make money on piracy. But the technology that spawned them will not and should not die, and the PPI (and probably Congress) can't understand this.
Sigh. You know, before this, i was willing to give Metallica the benefit of a doubt. No longer.
Fucking cowards.
If you were half the men you were back when you had to work for your "art", you'd have the guts to face your fans.
On the off chance that anyone from Metallica or their management is reading this... you've just lost a fan who has been with you for 15 years. I will not buy the music of a bunch of cowardly has-beens who will lash out at their own fans through the long arm of the Authority Figures you so boldly pretend to stand against, but don't have the guts to speak to those same fans face to face and answer our honest questions.
Has-beens.
If you ever really were what you posed to be at all, and not just puppets on strings.
Unfortunately, you're right. The only purpose of the proprietary extension to Kerberos is to hide important authentication functionality, in order to keep Free software from fully interoperating - more to the point, to keep Samba from being able to act as a Primary Domain Controller for W2K.
But at some point, they still need to do risk analysis... is the risk of having key parts of the DMCA thrown out for First Amendment violations worth the benefit of keeping Samba from being a domain controller?
Now that Microsoft has painted itself into a corner, here's what they can do... release their proprietary Kerberos extensions, and offer them to the standards committee. This way, they can back out of having to sue Slashdot, with all the awkwardness, bad press, and risk that presents, and maybe even earn a few brownie points in the community.
The cost is minimal... they lose a chance to "embrace and extend" a relatively minor technical standard. And the risk is tremendous... if this really does go to court, besides the fact that MS will be painted as jackbooted thugs even by the mainstream press, there is a significant chance that it could lead to a precendent-setting ruling that is not in MS' favor. Simple risk analysis says they should back off.
It'd be nice to see, just once, that Microsoft can learn from its legal mistakes. But more likely, the psychology of paranoia will drive them to even bigger and clumsier mistakes, until the drive to win at all costs destroys Microsoft, as surely as the tragic hero of a Greek drama.
Are you free to answer any way you please in this interview? Or has your label requested that your responses to our questions be reviewed by their lawyers before being posted back to Slashdot? And if so, did you agree to this?
I really need to feel like you guys are speaking your minds, and not just saying what the lawyers think is okay for you to say. No master pulling your strings...
I really wasn't sure if it was a joke or not. It's the sort of dark humor some people might think is funny.
Here's what i disagree with... the idea that corporations have any sort of "broad vision" (i think that was your term) at all! Corporations are even more narrowminded and senseless than governments! Most businesses are incapable of even making decisions to protect their own long-term health, much less the long-term health of society. One need look no further than Microsoft to see what happens when a corporation gets to do what it wants... the corporation will deliberately undermine growth and innovation in the industry to its own advantage.
Not that i think governments are much better than corporations, but they're a LITTLE better. There is an outside chance that they'll put public service first, at least. There is no such chance with a corporation. In fact, putting public interest ahead of profitability could be grounds for a shareholder lawsuit.
Here's a nice example for you... the other day, my six-year-old son hit a web site listed in a book he read. He played for a while, then asked for my help filling out a form. It turned out they were asking for his name, address, email, etc, and offering a chance at $5000 for signing up. And the information was *required* in order to play their cool kid-oriented games.
Mr AC, would you please care to explain how bribing my child to give up sensitive personal information to strangers counts as a wonderous technological innovation?
I beg to differ. I, for one, wrote a submission that neither praised nor bashed the article, just saying it was interesting. And, just before i came back and looked, i was grumbling to a colleague that the story (which i submitted almost six hours ago) was probably being spiked by the/. staff due to political incorrectness. It won't be the first time that's happened.
Inbreeding is only an issue if there are bad recessive genes. Heinlein himself addressed this at the end of _Time Enough for Love_, where Lazarus Long was finally jumped by his twin female clones.
Oh give me a clone Of my own flesh and bone With her Y chromosome changed to X And when she is grown My very own clone She will be of the opposite sex (hurray!)
Clone, clone of my own With her Y chromosome changed to X And when she is grown Since her mind is my own She'll be thinking of nothing but sex!
Slashdot Mirror
I'm currently listening to "Pulse Piece", by Birdsongs of the Mesozoic. Layers of distorted piano, organ, and percussion, with a pulse-like beat. I wonder what this clever technology would make of that? Rock? Jazz? Techno? (It predates techno by a good ten years)
Hell, i wonder what it would make of half the stuff i have ripped to mp3 here at work... Steve Tibbetts, David Torn, Erik Satie, Brian Eno, Jean-Michel Jarre, Klezmatics, Last Exit, Nordic stuff, Sonic Youth, etc...
--
Those users all had a choice, right?
--
gui easier than text? I completely disagree. Text is MUCH easier than gui, if you know what you're doing.
Right now, i'm running a Linux box with two desktops - one has four Eterms and Netscape. The other has four Eterms. I'm logged in as root on two different machines, plus local logins. I'm editing text, viewing text (less and man), and running commands. Really, X is just a way to get me a bunch of convenient terminals. I don't even use the mouse to switch back and forth! I can keyboard from one desktop to the other, one terminal to the other. This is fast, flexible, and efficient. Could i run multiple user ids on different machines easily using gui tools? I don't think so.
With text-based tools, i express myself to my computer using *language*, the most flexible and powerful tool ever invented by humans. With a gui, i can point at shapes and hope they do what i want. A chimp can do that.
--
Simple. If you just have to dig a pond *once*, then of course the shovel is easier. But if you dig ponds every single day, then the bulldozer is easier. Remember the formula T(l) + nT(d). Do you perform the task a lot? If so, then the time required to learn a better tool is paid for by the time saved using a better tool. Seems simple to me.
The problem with Windows is that everything is either easy, or *impossible* (or at least extremely difficult). I've worked for years with both, and i've spent far more time beating my head against a wall trying to get Windows to do even trivial tasks, if no Microsoft engineer thought of the task before i did. The joy of Unix is that i can easily combine tools to perform just about any specialized task i can think of.
Yeah, i'm a power user. I'm an experienced programmer. But AS A POWER USER, i consider Windows to be downright user-hostile. At this point, i would not take a job that required me to use Windows rather than Unix/Linux as my primary interface. I'm far, far more productive at my Linux box.
--
Want ease of use? Conduct this little experiment, which i had to do for work purposes a while back... find me the name and length of the longest filename/path on your Windows box. This took me about three minutes in Linux (Unix), mostly waiting on the 'find' command to finish. Bonus points if you can do this in a reasonable amount of time in Windows without resorting to Perl or Unix workalike utility kits. Super extra bonus if you can do it without using a command prompt, but can get an authoritative answer from the gui. And, if you can't do this problem in either Windows or Unix, i'd suggest you aren't a sufficiently skilled computer user to really judge ease of use issues.
As for vi versus Notepad... well, a friend of mine has a good ease of use formula. The proper measure of ease of use is the total time spent doing a task. The formula for this is T(l) + nT(d), where T(l) is the time required to learn a task, T(d) is the time required to perform it, and n is the number of times it is performed. So for tasks you rarely do, T(l) dominates. But for tasks you do often (like, say, the several hours a day i spend in text editors), T(d) dominates.
The essence of this is that while vi is much harder to *learn* than Notepad, it is much more powerful as well, reducing use time. And if you spend several hours a day editing text (like most programmers do), the time to learn a more powerful editor is paid for many times over by the speed gain for complex tasks.
This is why i recommend to friends who use computers daily, even non-programmers, that they take the time to learn Linux. Not because it's more cool or politically correct, but because it's more *productive*. The learning curve in the short term is paid for by productivity in the long term.
And THAT, Young Jedi, is ease of use.
--
Because if you don't C sharp, you'll B flat. :P
--
Again, this project is booting Linux right now and is in active development by a paid staff. It's just gonna get better. :}
--
I work at a Linux company. I love Free software. And, in many if not most cases, the Free stuff is better than the payware. So why are the DBA and i harping loudly to get Sybase in here, and complaining about MySQL's inadequacies? Because these are not "minor differences in quality". These are HUGE differences in feature sets, differences that drastically affect development time and maintenance. And quite frankly, no Free RDBMS offers anywhere near the *useful* features of the commercial products.
MySQL is great for some purposes - guestbooks, web logs, and other trivial tasks. But for more difficult tasks, it has serious scalability issues that we have to code around. I'm not some clueless manager terrified of GPL. I'm an experienced database developer. I understand what MySQL can and cannot do. And there are too many things it cannot do for the tasks we're trying to do. Sybase does those things, along with Oracle, Informix, DB2, even SQL Server (speaking of get what you pay for crap). Any experienced RDBMS developer/DBA who has worked on serious problems will tell you the same.
--
While we're knocking MySQL, let's bring up a few other inadequacies... lack of triggers, stored procedures, or referential integrity. Dropping transactions in the interest of performance i can understand, although that does prevent it from being a solid solution for e-commerce or anything else that needs real reliability on complex actions. But lack of stored procedures, triggers, and referential integrity (foreign keys) makes it *much* harder to write safe, reliable databases - you either write those checks into your code directly (or wrapper libraries), or you deal with data becoming inconsistent on a regular basis. They're pushing the work of maintaining a consistent database out of the engine and into programming and administration - this is bad practice.
But the kicker for us recently, though, was the date checking routines. They check that the year, month, and date are all valid, but *not in reference to each other*. So Feb. 31 is a valid date, as far as MySQL is concerned! Geez. No transactions, no stored procs, etc - those are valid design decisions, even if i don't agree with them. But the date handling is just plain flawed.
I wish PostgreSQL were a better solution. But we looked at it, and it has its own set of narrowminded shortcomings. For example, no cross-database joins, even on the same server! When asked how to do that, the developers respond that you should just put all your tables in a single database. Bwah? Oh, and you can't even switch databases on a single connect - you have to drop the connection and reconnect. This kills much of the usefulness of having transactions, and violates the development model that has been proven useful by every major commercial RDBMS.
Wonder why Sybase, Oracle, Informix, DB2, Ingres, and SQL Server get away with charging what they do? Because their products are worth it. I'd *love* it if the Free World would develop an Oracle killer - a Free RDBMS that does transactions, stored procs, triggers, referential integrity, flexible permissions, cross-server transactions, powerful dump/restore facilities, live failover, and all the other great things the commercial products do. But it ain't happening yet, and considering that MySQL does such a great job of impressing those who don't know jack shit about serious database programming, i don't have much hope for it.
--
Oh, i don't disagree with the "practical, real-world difference" being negligible. But a negligible difference in one sense (i.e. chilling effect working the same as an outright ban) is a significant difference in another sense (Congress wants to ban Napster!).
Slashdot at least *pretends* to be journalism. The editors shouldn't just quote factually incorrect statements willy-nilly (remember the "Borland's license prohibits open source" fiasco last week?).
You know, it boggles my mind how many Slashdot users seem to think that just because i questioned Slashdot's phrasing and tried to state PPI's position more clearly, that i somehow support the PPI position. What part of "I don't agree with PPI's position" didn't you people understand?
Give an individual enough rope, and they'll hang themselves. Give a group enough rope, and they'll form a lynch mob.
--
You're quoting me out of context. The complete quote is "They aren't saying modify the DMCA to ban Napster..."
Which is true.
--
Jeeezus, when are Slashdot's editors going to actually fact-check before posting these crap stories?
I don't agree with the PPI's position, but i at least *read* it. They aren't saying modify the DMCA to ban Napster and peer-to-peer file sharing. What they're saying, if Slashdot's editors and the foaming-at-the-mouth crowd would bother to read for content, is that service providers whose services mean serious risk of copyright infringement (i.e. Napster) should be required to get solid identifying information for users, should have to respond to challenges in a timely manner, and that judges should have broad powers to grant injunctions against them - and that THOSE things should be written into DMCA.
The problem with this approach, which PPI fails to understand (and Slashdot doesn't dig deep enough to understand) is that peer-to-peer data sharing doesn't require a company to centralize the information. Gnutella and Freenet technologies, as well as whatever comes next, allow such sharing with no central control. That sort of thing is pretty much impossible to regulate by law without stepping on the First Amendment in the US (depends on local laws in other countries), and is practically impossible to regulate *regardless* of laws, short of unplugging the 'net.
Napster will probably die. And as far as i'm concerned, they *should* die, because they really are attempting to make money on piracy. But the technology that spawned them will not and should not die, and the PPI (and probably Congress) can't understand this.
--
Sigh. You know, before this, i was willing to give Metallica the benefit of a doubt. No longer.
Fucking cowards.
If you were half the men you were back when you had to work for your "art", you'd have the guts to face your fans.
On the off chance that anyone from Metallica or their management is reading this... you've just lost a fan who has been with you for 15 years. I will not buy the music of a bunch of cowardly has-beens who will lash out at their own fans through the long arm of the Authority Figures you so boldly pretend to stand against, but don't have the guts to speak to those same fans face to face and answer our honest questions.
Has-beens.
If you ever really were what you posed to be at all, and not just puppets on strings.
--
Unfortunately, you're right. The only purpose of the proprietary extension to Kerberos is to hide important authentication functionality, in order to keep Free software from fully interoperating - more to the point, to keep Samba from being able to act as a Primary Domain Controller for W2K.
But at some point, they still need to do risk analysis... is the risk of having key parts of the DMCA thrown out for First Amendment violations worth the benefit of keeping Samba from being a domain controller?
--
Now that Microsoft has painted itself into a corner, here's what they can do... release their proprietary Kerberos extensions, and offer them to the standards committee. This way, they can back out of having to sue Slashdot, with all the awkwardness, bad press, and risk that presents, and maybe even earn a few brownie points in the community.
The cost is minimal... they lose a chance to "embrace and extend" a relatively minor technical standard. And the risk is tremendous... if this really does go to court, besides the fact that MS will be painted as jackbooted thugs even by the mainstream press, there is a significant chance that it could lead to a precendent-setting ruling that is not in MS' favor. Simple risk analysis says they should back off.
It'd be nice to see, just once, that Microsoft can learn from its legal mistakes. But more likely, the psychology of paranoia will drive them to even bigger and clumsier mistakes, until the drive to win at all costs destroys Microsoft, as surely as the tragic hero of a Greek drama.
--
Censorship is like
hitting Jello with hammer
Can't Microsoft see?
--
Are you free to answer any way you please in this interview? Or has your label requested that your responses to our questions be reviewed by their lawyers before being posted back to Slashdot? And if so, did you agree to this?
I really need to feel like you guys are speaking your minds, and not just saying what the lawyers think is okay for you to say. No master pulling your strings...
--
I really wasn't sure if it was a joke or not. It's the sort of dark humor some people might think is funny.
/||\
Here's what i disagree with... the idea that corporations have any sort of "broad vision" (i think that was your term) at all! Corporations are even more narrowminded and senseless than governments! Most businesses are incapable of even making decisions to protect their own long-term health, much less the long-term health of society. One need look no further than Microsoft to see what happens when a corporation gets to do what it wants... the corporation will deliberately undermine growth and innovation in the industry to its own advantage.
Not that i think governments are much better than corporations, but they're a LITTLE better. There is an outside chance that they'll put public service first, at least. There is no such chance with a corporation. In fact, putting public interest ahead of profitability could be grounds for a shareholder lawsuit.
Here's a nice example for you... the other day, my six-year-old son hit a web site listed in a book he read. He played for a while, then asked for my help filling out a form. It turned out they were asking for his name, address, email, etc, and offering a chance at $5000 for signing up. And the information was *required* in order to play their cool kid-oriented games.
Mr AC, would you please care to explain how bribing my child to give up sensitive personal information to strangers counts as a wonderous technological innovation?
__
(oO)
I disagree entirely too.
/||\
I think.
But first, clear something up for me... was this a JOKE?
__
(oO)
I beg to differ. I, for one, wrote a submission that neither praised nor bashed the article, just saying it was interesting. And, just before i came back and looked, i was grumbling to a colleague that the story (which i submitted almost six hours ago) was probably being spiked by the /. staff due to political incorrectness. It won't be the first time that's happened.
/||\
__
(oO)
Who'da thunk it?
/||\
__
(oO)
The reason he gets moderated up is because he's funny. Can you say the same for yourself?
/||\
__
(oO)
I imagine Signal 11 means the POSIX signal SIGSEGV (which causes "Segmentation fault").
/||\
RTFM.
__
(oO)
Inbreeding is only an issue if there are bad recessive genes. Heinlein himself addressed this at the end of _Time Enough for Love_, where Lazarus Long was finally jumped by his twin female clones.
:}
/||\
Now THAT is what i call a rich fantasy life.
__
(oO)
Oh give me a clone
/||\
Of my own flesh and bone
With her Y chromosome changed to X
And when she is grown
My very own clone
She will be of the opposite sex (hurray!)
Clone, clone of my own
With her Y chromosome changed to X
And when she is grown
Since her mind is my own
She'll be thinking of nothing but sex!
(written by Robert A Heinlein)
__
(oO)