I don't expect to take the blame for stupidity. How about this: I go around to all the stores in my city, looking for the highest price on tube socks. When I finally find a place that sells socks for $5/pair (when all the other stores are selling them for 75 cents/pair), I buy them. Then I set up a smear campaign, saying that that company is owned by Satan, rapes small children, etc. *OR* I could just not do something stupid!
Dude, the guy didn't say that they "somehow shouldn't be a crime". Did you even bother reading his post? He said that it should be treated differently. In fact, I believe he said that we should work on developing laws specifically for these kinds of cases. Does that sound like he's saying they should be legal to you? How do I wish to plead? What do/you/ think, stupid?
Uh there are some MP3s on CDs which are not held under copyright. Though Napster would not really be very useful for trading them. Actually Napster isn't very useful for much at all:)
First of all, iCraveTV *is* only rebroadcasting content that is being sent over public airwaves, in their entirety. They did not alter any content or take anything that is not being broadcast over the airwaves. This is allowed under Canadian law as long at there is no time delay.
Secondly, this is nowhere equivalent to copying a CD. This is equivalent to copying a free CD that is publically available through the airwaves. A better analogy would be copying a free newspaper. Free newspapers typically make their money from advertisment (duh) just as television stations do. Free newspapers are not sold. Television is not sold. Advertising is sold.
And as you said, "Nothing is stopping anyone from streaming PUBLIC television", which is exactly what they're doing. If it wasn't legal, there would be no cable companies in Canada. All Canadian cable companies do (besides licencing crappy channels like golf channels, etc.) is rebroadcast publically available content in its entirety. This is no different from what iCraveTV does (except, of course, iCraveTV has no crappy golf channels).
As for making money off it, I don't think they should be treated any differently from cable companies or TV manufacturers. Shaw, Rogers (Canadian cable companies), Sony, RCA, etc. all give you advertisements when you're watching TV, but they don't intrude on NBC's or CBC's or anyone else's ads (without licencing). If you have a Sony TV, most likely it has a Sony logo just below the screen. If you're watching iCraveTV, most likely it has banner ads just around or behind the "screen". BFD.
Where have you been? A significant amount of the posts to Slashdot now are talking about Slashdot: "Slashdot sucks"; "Slashdot doesn't post stories like they used to"; "is this really news for nerds?"; "that's what freshmeat is for"; "Andover controls all the content on Slashdot now"; "I think Rob is getting paid off by VA Linux"; "why aren't there more stories on BSD?"; "is anyone else annoyed by that jamie guy?"; "where did that jamie guy come from?"; "I think I'm going to have to start ignoring stories by that jamie guy"; "you'd think Slashdot would at least be able to verify the stories before posting them"; "wasn't this posted just last week? Hemos could at least check the archives before posting"; "is Slashdot slow today or is just me?"; "why has Slashdot been so slow lately"; "I think the speed of Slashdot over the last while tells you something about the power of Apache and/or Linux". That's just a *very* small sampling too, I could go on for hours. To say that the posters never talk about or appreciate Slashdot is false; they just have nothing positive to say:).
There is nothing wrong with little-endian. I remember a long ways back on lkml when some people were trying to convince Linus that the IA64 port should by big-endian. They came up will all sorts of reasoning, such is it would make it easier to look at hex dumps. The point is that it doesn't matter (BTW Linus I believe made up his mind to use little-endian in order to get better IA32 compatibility). Little-endian makes no less sense than big-endian. Arabic numerals make no more sense than some sort of numeral system that uses little-endian (is there a numeral system that uses little-endian). The only thing wrong with either system is the people who think that one is better than the other.
No, 0x2dL is 2d 00 00 00 in little-endian. 00 2d 00 00 is middle-endian (aka "PDP-endian" or "fucked-endian").
Re:coming next week...
on
Muppets Sold
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· Score: 1
The imitator is named hemos., not hemos. And if you banned hemos., someone would crop up with heemos, |-|emos, Hem0s, hemos-, hemos,, _hemos, hemos_, ad infinitum. Eventually you'd end up with either a giant regex or a giant list of literal names. Either one would be about 10k long and would only "kind of" work. It would be a full-time job to keep up with the imitators, because, believe or not, the imitators have intelligence, whereas your giant regex does not.
It's a lot of trouble to go through to solve a problem that isn't even a problem. Personally, I find hemos. funny on occasion. Sometimes I wish he'd be the one posting the stories instead of the real Hemos:). If you ask me, we need more trolls and fewer whiners and karma whores. At least the trolls actually add something interesting to the discussion.
I think it could have a positive effect. Suddenly people (developers, users, etc.) have to start looking at *shudder* supporting standards like FHS. Really, if hell is going to come to Earth because ABIT has a driver that Red Hat doesn't have in their distro, then really, Linux is just a pile of garbage. Of course that wouldn't happen because it's such a silly example:). There are things that would break compatibility (e.g. Foobar Linux decides that the C language is deprecated and neither libc.so nor/usr/include should be part of the distro) but I think we've already reached a consensus on things like that, and distros who don't play fair can just go to Hell (actually if I'm not mistaken, a valid C library is required for POSIX compliance). The other immediate one, which I touched on before, is if/usr/bin is now/binaries, but that's not so dreadful, and the FHS covers that anyway. No one ever claimed that any Unices (Linux included) was supposed to be binary compatible, just source compatible.
Anyway, for someone like me, who runs a "heavily modified" Slackware 4.0 system, I'd rather see 9.35e14 Linux distributions that force application developers to follow sane standards, rather than see one dominant distro, and applications start using/dev/k00l_music instead of/dev/snd, because Red Hat is doing it. Actually/dev is another matter entirely. AFAIC, there is no excuse for *any* executable to be touching *anything* in/dev directly other than/bin/sh when I tell it to.
I would just like to mention that I don't like Propaganda. Of course since it's on Slashdot, I have to read it and post about it. Since this is on Slashdot, I'll also have to keep reading everything posted on here relating to Propaganda, just so I can mention that it doesn't interest me.
On a related topic, I have no interest in politics whatsoever. That's why I subscribe to all the political magazines and newspapers I can. Then every week I send letters to the editor saying how politics don't interest me and how I found the articles boring because they talked about politics instead of more interesting things.
I hope that Slashdot stops posting articles about Propaganda, because I don't really find the Propaganda themes that attractive. If you ask me, Slashdot is critically overrun with people who find things interesting that I don't. The only way I can think to remedy this is to post a few messages to each thread I find interesting in order to explicitly state my apathy towards it.
I'm looking for anyone with exactly the same tastes as me to join my crusade to make all publications, especially Slashdot, publish only things that interest me. Anyone willing to join me in my crusade must do the following: (a) never ignore anything. If you find something that is boring or uninteresting, read up on and then write letters/post messages to anyone willing (or unwilling!) to listen about how boring you find it. (b) read all Jon Katz articles religiously. Set up a script to alarm you as soon as Jon Katz posts an article. Immediately read his article and then post a message about how much you dislike his article and him personally. To save time, use prewritten messages. (c) get an account at Slashdot, and set it up so the only articles you see are on subjects you find boring. That way you don't have to waste time reading stuff that you're already interested in! (d) do a little karma whoring on the side. Post at least 25 messages to each article posted on Slashdot. The more times you post, the more likely you are to get karma! You can use that karma to your advantage by being able to post your "is this really news for nerds?" posts at a score of 2!
Well my guess is that a large percentage of the people who spend their time doing these themes do it because that's what their good it. Sure it would be might be more useful for them to be coding instead, but maybe they suck at coding. Or maybe they just don't like it. Cool themes made by talented people is just one of those little extras in life. I for one like "subdued" eye candy. I like some transparent windows, but only about 10% transparent. I spent a lot of time making tiles and icons. Mind you maybe the fact that I only spend about 5% of my time in X allows me to keep that "novelty" feeling and so I never get tired of it:).
Anyway I'd kill for one of those Mac boxen with Aqua. Oh if only Macs weren't so damned expensive:).
When something (such as tax forms) are aimed at the entire population, they should be able to be used (or filled out, etc.) by the entire population. If something is aimed at a specific population, it should be able to be used by that specific population.
The way you go on you'd think that you'd want Linux to be able to be used by the entire population. With very few exceptions, I think *nothing* should be targetted at the entire population -- not cars or shoes or buildings or operating systems. Linux should be targetted at the kinds of people that will find Linux useful. This does not generally mean accountants or secretaries or "Joe Users". This means people who will find Unix useful, such as system or network administrators, as well as students for some odd reason.
For me the thing that is most lacking in the free software world is a non-Unix operating system. Look at all the decent/usable free operating systems we have right now: Linux, BSD, uhh...is that it? While it would be definitely nice for non-Unix users to enjoy free software, crippling Unix is not the way to go about it. A user-friendly Unix would either be impossible or impractical.
IMO people who go on moaning about how Linux is "hard for newbies" or "not ready for primetime" are idiots. People don't go around complaining about how military tanks are "too large" or "not ready for the average consumer". Expecting Unix to be usable by a non-geeks is about as logical as expecting to take a tank down to the mall to buy groceries. We tried it with CDE, we tried it with OpenStep, we tried it with KDE and Gnome, and guess what, they all suck ass. The only way they'll ever become usable by "Joe User" is if you remove ever last remaining remnant of "Unixness", in which case I'd start wondering why you're using Linux at all.
You make it sound like Microsoft staying in business is a bad thing. IMO the only thing worse than Windows having 80% market share is any other operating system (such as Linux) having 80% market share. If the company would be better off using Microsoft products, then why would anyone (who's not a sadist) tell them to use anything but Microsoft products? The *last* thing that should be proposed is getting the Linux community to bend over backwards to produce Microsoft knock-offs.
My dream is for many operating systems (BSD, Linux, Windows, BeOS, MacOS, GNU (aka "the HURD"), Eros, etc.) to all have 5-30% market share. Then, god forbid, each operating system would be have its own strengths and weaknesses, instead of trying to cater to 80% of the population. I mean have we learned nothing? Microsoft decides that there are people that like MacOS better than Windows, so the logical thing is to become a MacOS knockoff! What a great idea!
Um most GPL'd software has and probably always will be commercial software. Perhaps you've blocked out of your memory the time when RMS charged 150USD for a copy of Emacs on tape? In fact the FSF is still charging quite a bit for software -- 70USD for the latest GNU Source Code CD-ROM set (for individuals). Mind you a lot of GPL'd software isn't commercial, but I'd wager that most of it is being sold in one form or another.
What the hell are you smoking? Now this *is* a personal attack.
I never called a human being "ignorant" or "inflammatory"; I called your post ignorant and inflammatory, because it was.
I've never heard Microsoft claim that Win2K was a completely new product; somehow I doubt even Microsoft lackees would believe that. Right on their Windows 2000 "Product Guide" in plain view -- "Built on NT technology". They've actually used that phrase on at least 4 pages in their "Product Guide", and I'm sure there are many more. Guess what, Linux is built on Linux technology! It's also built on BSD technology! Oh, the horror!
Secondly, your claim that Windows 95/98 sits on top of DOS in some manner is a little misleading. It's true that Windows 95/98 could never run without DOS, but that's because they use it to bootstrap. They do not in any form "sit on top" of it while running. Note that this again isn't a point that Microsoft is denying. Microsoft has never said "you might as well get rid of COMMAND.COM, because Windows won't use it".
Yes Windows NT and Windows 95/98 (and Windows 3.1, and Windows...) are horrendous products. However, I don't see any reason to spread lies about them or about Microsoft. It seems that whenever someone discovers a flaw in a Microsoft product (as if it's some sort of great feat), there's some rumour that spreads around saying that Microsoft denies it. It's just not true. "Windows 95 does not sit on top of DOS", "Windows 2000 is a completely new operating system, not using any code or ideas from NT", "640kB ought to be enough for anyone", etc. Guess what, neither Bill Gates nor anyone else from Microsoft has ever said anything close to any of those.
While I'm on a rant, I might as well clear the air about another thing that annoys me about Microsoft bashers. Windows 95 was never designed to be a real operating system. Yes, it offered multitasking and dynamic libraries, big whoop. Yes, Microsoft made a big deal in their marketing about the way people were going to change the way they saw computers, etc. etc., big whoop. Windows 95 is nothing more than a glorified DOS and was never meant to be anything but. Guess what, it did change the way *most* people saw and used computers. For computer users, it was a step backwards, but that's not most people. It did it's job arguably well, and for most people, who were used to using DOS, the $100 or whatever it was well worth it.
Microsoft makes horrible products. They arguably make the worst software in the history of software, with the exception of Netscape. A lot of the people who work there (even in high authority it would seem) are stupid and clueless. However, a lot aren't. With few exceptions, Microsoft does not purposefully deceive anyone. IMO, they're a victim of their own "success". They're trying to make a product for 80% of the population, which just can't be done.
If you can find any references to Microsoft saying that (a) Windows 2000 is not based on Windows NT; or (b) Windows 95/98 do not use DOS to boostrap, I'd like to see them. Otherwise just shut the fuck up and stop spreading lies.
Um APM is important for desktop users. My moniter uses 85W in regular-mode (which I understand is even below average for a 15") and 5W in sleep-mode. Believe me, power saving is important on the desktop:).
So learning to think for one's self involves adopting the obviously ignorant and inflammatory comment of a random Slashdot poster, does it? I know if I wanted to learn to think for myself with respect to the design of Microsoft products, effectively anonymous Slashdot posters would be my first source! One might wonder how believing something with no evidence or reasoning of any kind would lead to thinking for one's self, but I guess anything goes when it comes to Microsoft bashing!
Mind you the sad part is is that anonymous Slashdot posters are as just about as close to impartial reviews as one can get today. Every publication on Earth seems to either owned by Microsoft or Disney...unique perspectives seem to be a thing of the past. Still, even ZDnet reviews of W2K offer *some* reasoning to their stories.
Um I think you carried the analogy pretty poorly. To try and use your analogy:
Some immigrants (e-commerce sitse) moved onto an island by the thousands and set up houses. The natives of the island don't like it, so they've set up baracades in front of a couple of the biggest houses.
Of course the people involved haven't given any manifesto or anything so this is still speculation. My guess is that they're bothering the big e-commerce sites simply because they're the big e-commerce sites, not because they're trying to prove something about security (such as leaving your door open). And they're certainly not lighting their houses on fire and/or nuking them. If they were to stop right now, things would carry on as if it had never happened (with the exception of the media reports).
No, surely it wouldn't be possible to do something similar to converting graphics to ANSI text on-the-fly. Surely it wouldn't be possible to do exactly the same thing the aalib is doing -- the same library in fact that text-mode Quake is based on! It even says on the page itself -- BASED ON AALIB!! NO, OF COURSE IT WOULDN'T BE POSSIBLE! IT WOULDN'T BE POSSIBLE TO CREATE A LIBRARY LIKE THE ONE BY JAN HUBICKA AVAILABLE AT http://www.ta.jcu.cz/aa/aalib/, THE LIBRARY MADE BY THE SAME MAN WHO MADE A CERTAIN GAME CALLED -- KOULES!! RING A BELL!*!L?!? OF COURSE IT WOULDN'T BE POSSIBLE TO CREATE A LIBRARY THAT "works on a terminal of any kind, [is] fast and portable, [and] gives to you standard API." OR ONE THAT "gives to your old hardware more power!" ONE THAT USES ANSI COLOURS TO PROPERLY SHADE THE GRAPHICS WHEN EQUIPPED WITH A CAPABLE TERMINAL?!
Har har I'm just kiddin' ya; a library like that actually already exists.
Umm, no. You need another controlling chip on there besides, not to mention all that other icky NIC circuitry. $95 for the chip will probably translate into $400 or $500 for a NIC. Hubs and switches will probably be Way Too Expensive.
I was under the impression that trin00 was installed by compromising (mostly) Solaris boxen with buffer overruns. Consequently, almost no one is running it intentionally. Someone here is a bit ignorant, either the moderator or me. Hope it's not me:)
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Notice how no one brought up Linux but you? The X-Box will be competing against Dreamcast and PSX2, not Linux.
I don't expect to take the blame for stupidity. How about this: I go around to all the stores in my city, looking for the highest price on tube socks. When I finally find a place that sells socks for $5/pair (when all the other stores are selling them for 75 cents/pair), I buy them. Then I set up a smear campaign, saying that that company is owned by Satan, rapes small children, etc. *OR* I could just not do something stupid!
Dude, the guy didn't say that they "somehow shouldn't be a crime". Did you even bother reading his post? He said that it should be treated differently. In fact, I believe he said that we should work on developing laws specifically for these kinds of cases. Does that sound like he's saying they should be legal to you? How do I wish to plead? What do /you/ think, stupid?
Uh there are some MP3s on CDs which are not held under copyright. Though Napster would not really be very useful for trading them. Actually Napster isn't very useful for much at all :)
You're missing the point.
First of all, iCraveTV *is* only rebroadcasting content that is being sent over public airwaves, in their entirety. They did not alter any content or take anything that is not being broadcast over the airwaves. This is allowed under Canadian law as long at there is no time delay.
Secondly, this is nowhere equivalent to copying a CD. This is equivalent to copying a free CD that is publically available through the airwaves. A better analogy would be copying a free newspaper. Free newspapers typically make their money from advertisment (duh) just as television stations do. Free newspapers are not sold. Television is not sold. Advertising is sold.
And as you said, "Nothing is stopping anyone from streaming PUBLIC television", which is exactly what they're doing. If it wasn't legal, there would be no cable companies in Canada. All Canadian cable companies do (besides licencing crappy channels like golf channels, etc.) is rebroadcast publically available content in its entirety. This is no different from what iCraveTV does (except, of course, iCraveTV has no crappy golf channels).
As for making money off it, I don't think they should be treated any differently from cable companies or TV manufacturers. Shaw, Rogers (Canadian cable companies), Sony, RCA, etc. all give you advertisements when you're watching TV, but they don't intrude on NBC's or CBC's or anyone else's ads (without licencing). If you have a Sony TV, most likely it has a Sony logo just below the screen. If you're watching iCraveTV, most likely it has banner ads just around or behind the "screen". BFD.
Where have you been? A significant amount of the posts to Slashdot now are talking about Slashdot: "Slashdot sucks"; "Slashdot doesn't post stories like they used to"; "is this really news for nerds?"; "that's what freshmeat is for"; "Andover controls all the content on Slashdot now"; "I think Rob is getting paid off by VA Linux"; "why aren't there more stories on BSD?"; "is anyone else annoyed by that jamie guy?"; "where did that jamie guy come from?"; "I think I'm going to have to start ignoring stories by that jamie guy"; "you'd think Slashdot would at least be able to verify the stories before posting them"; "wasn't this posted just last week? Hemos could at least check the archives before posting"; "is Slashdot slow today or is just me?"; "why has Slashdot been so slow lately"; "I think the speed of Slashdot over the last while tells you something about the power of Apache and/or Linux". That's just a *very* small sampling too, I could go on for hours. To say that the posters never talk about or appreciate Slashdot is false; they just have nothing positive to say :).
There is nothing wrong with little-endian. I remember a long ways back on lkml when some people were trying to convince Linus that the IA64 port should by big-endian. They came up will all sorts of reasoning, such is it would make it easier to look at hex dumps. The point is that it doesn't matter (BTW Linus I believe made up his mind to use little-endian in order to get better IA32 compatibility). Little-endian makes no less sense than big-endian. Arabic numerals make no more sense than some sort of numeral system that uses little-endian (is there a numeral system that uses little-endian). The only thing wrong with either system is the people who think that one is better than the other.
No, 0x2dL is 2d 00 00 00 in little-endian. 00 2d 00 00 is middle-endian (aka "PDP-endian" or "fucked-endian").
The imitator is named hemos., not hemos. And if you banned hemos., someone would crop up with heemos, |-|emos, Hem0s, hemos-, hemos,, _hemos, hemos_, ad infinitum. Eventually you'd end up with either a giant regex or a giant list of literal names. Either one would be about 10k long and would only "kind of" work. It would be a full-time job to keep up with the imitators, because, believe or not, the imitators have intelligence, whereas your giant regex does not.
:). If you ask me, we need more trolls and fewer whiners and karma whores. At least the trolls actually add something interesting to the discussion.
It's a lot of trouble to go through to solve a problem that isn't even a problem. Personally, I find hemos. funny on occasion. Sometimes I wish he'd be the one posting the stories instead of the real Hemos
I think it could have a positive effect. Suddenly people (developers, :). There are things that would break compatibility (e.g. Foobar Linux decides that the C language is deprecated and neither libc.so nor /usr/include should be part of the distro) but I think we've already reached a consensus on things like that, and distros who don't play fair can just go to Hell (actually if I'm not mistaken, a valid C library is required for POSIX compliance). The other immediate one, which I touched on before, is if /usr/bin is now /binaries, but that's not so dreadful, and the FHS covers that anyway. No one ever claimed that any Unices (Linux included) was supposed to be binary compatible, just source compatible.
/dev/k00l_music instead of /dev/snd, because Red Hat is doing it. Actually /dev is another matter entirely. AFAIC, there is no excuse for *any* executable to be touching *anything* in /dev directly other than /bin/sh when I tell it to.
users, etc.) have to start looking at *shudder* supporting standards like
FHS. Really, if hell is going to come to Earth because ABIT has a driver that Red Hat doesn't have in their distro, then really, Linux is just a pile of garbage. Of course that wouldn't happen because it's such a silly example
Anyway, for someone like me, who runs a "heavily modified" Slackware 4.0 system, I'd rather see 9.35e14 Linux distributions that force application developers to follow sane standards, rather than see one dominant distro, and applications start using
I would just like to mention that I don't like Propaganda. Of course since it's on Slashdot, I have to read it and post about it. Since this is on Slashdot, I'll also have to keep reading everything posted on here relating to Propaganda, just so I can mention that it doesn't interest me.
On a related topic, I have no interest in politics whatsoever. That's why I subscribe to all the political magazines and newspapers I can. Then every week I send letters to the editor saying how politics don't interest me and how I found the articles boring because they talked about politics instead of more interesting things.
I hope that Slashdot stops posting articles about Propaganda, because I don't really find the Propaganda themes that attractive. If you ask me, Slashdot is critically overrun with people who find things interesting that I don't. The only way I can think to remedy this is to post a few messages to each thread I find interesting in order to explicitly state my apathy towards it.
I'm looking for anyone with exactly the same tastes as me to join my crusade to make all publications, especially Slashdot, publish only things that interest me. Anyone willing to join me in my crusade must do the following:
(a) never ignore anything. If you find something that is boring or uninteresting, read up on and then write letters/post messages to anyone willing (or unwilling!) to listen about how boring you find it.
(b) read all Jon Katz articles religiously. Set up a script to alarm you as soon as Jon Katz posts an article. Immediately read his article and then post a message about how much you dislike his article and him personally. To save time, use prewritten messages.
(c) get an account at Slashdot, and set it up so the only articles you see are on subjects you find boring. That way you don't have to waste time reading stuff that you're already interested in!
(d) do a little karma whoring on the side. Post at least 25 messages to each article posted on Slashdot. The more times you post, the more likely you are to get karma! You can use that karma to your advantage by being able to post your "is this really news for nerds?" posts at a score of 2!
Well my guess is that a large percentage of the people who spend their time doing these themes do it because that's what their good it. Sure it would be might be more useful for them to be coding instead, but maybe they suck at coding. Or maybe they just don't like it. Cool themes made by talented people is just one of those little extras in life. I for one like "subdued" eye candy. I like some transparent windows, but only about 10% transparent. I spent a lot of time making tiles and icons. Mind you maybe the fact that I only spend about 5% of my time in X allows me to keep that "novelty" feeling and so I never get tired of it :).
:).
Anyway I'd kill for one of those Mac boxen with Aqua. Oh if only Macs weren't so damned expensive
You had me up until the tax form analogy.
When something (such as tax forms) are aimed at the entire population, they should be able to be used (or filled out, etc.) by the entire population. If something is aimed at a specific population, it should be able to be used by that specific population.
The way you go on you'd think that you'd want Linux to be able to be used by the entire population. With very few exceptions, I think *nothing* should be targetted at the entire population -- not cars or shoes or buildings or operating systems. Linux should be targetted at the kinds of people that will find Linux useful. This does not generally mean accountants or secretaries or "Joe Users". This means people who will find Unix useful, such as system or network administrators, as well as students for some odd reason.
For me the thing that is most lacking in the free software world is a non-Unix operating system. Look at all the decent/usable free operating systems we have right now: Linux, BSD, uhh...is that it? While it would be definitely nice for non-Unix users to enjoy free software, crippling Unix is not the way to go about it. A user-friendly Unix would either be impossible or impractical.
IMO people who go on moaning about how Linux is "hard for newbies" or "not ready for primetime" are idiots. People don't go around complaining about how military tanks are "too large" or "not ready for the average consumer". Expecting Unix to be usable by a non-geeks is about as logical as expecting to take a tank down to the mall to buy groceries. We tried it with CDE, we tried it with OpenStep, we tried it with KDE and Gnome, and guess what, they all suck ass. The only way they'll ever become usable by "Joe User" is if you remove ever last remaining remnant of "Unixness", in which case I'd start wondering why you're using Linux at all.
You make it sound like Microsoft staying in business is a bad thing. IMO the only thing worse than Windows having 80% market share is any other operating system (such as Linux) having 80% market share. If the company would be better off using Microsoft products, then why would anyone (who's not a sadist) tell them to use anything but Microsoft products? The *last* thing that should be proposed is getting the Linux community to bend over backwards to produce Microsoft knock-offs.
My dream is for many operating systems (BSD, Linux, Windows, BeOS, MacOS, GNU (aka "the HURD"), Eros, etc.) to all have 5-30% market share. Then, god forbid, each operating system would be have its own strengths and weaknesses, instead of trying to cater to 80% of the population. I mean have we learned nothing? Microsoft decides that there are people that like MacOS better than Windows, so the logical thing is to become a MacOS knockoff! What a great idea!
Um most GPL'd software has and probably always will be commercial software. Perhaps you've blocked out of your memory the time when RMS charged 150USD for a copy of Emacs on tape? In fact the FSF is still charging quite a bit for software -- 70USD for the latest GNU Source Code CD-ROM set (for individuals). Mind you a lot of GPL'd software isn't commercial, but I'd wager that most of it is being sold in one form or another.
What the hell are you smoking? Now this *is* a personal attack.
...) are horrendous products. However, I don't see any reason to spread lies about them or about Microsoft. It seems that whenever someone discovers a flaw in a Microsoft product (as if it's some sort of great feat), there's some rumour that spreads around saying that Microsoft denies it. It's just not true. "Windows 95 does not sit on top of DOS", "Windows 2000 is a completely new operating system, not using any code or ideas from NT", "640kB ought to be enough for anyone", etc. Guess what, neither Bill Gates nor anyone else from Microsoft has ever said anything close to any of those.
I never called a human being "ignorant" or "inflammatory"; I called your post ignorant and inflammatory, because it was.
I've never heard Microsoft claim that Win2K was a completely new product; somehow I doubt even Microsoft lackees would believe that. Right on their Windows 2000 "Product Guide" in plain view -- "Built on NT technology". They've actually used that phrase on at least 4 pages in their "Product Guide", and I'm sure there are many more. Guess what, Linux is built on Linux technology! It's also built on BSD technology! Oh, the horror!
Secondly, your claim that Windows 95/98 sits on top of DOS in some manner is a little misleading. It's true that Windows 95/98 could never run without DOS, but that's because they use it to bootstrap. They do not in any form "sit on top" of it while running. Note that this again isn't a point that Microsoft is denying. Microsoft has never said "you might as well get rid of COMMAND.COM, because Windows won't use it".
Yes Windows NT and Windows 95/98 (and Windows 3.1, and Windows
While I'm on a rant, I might as well clear the air about another thing that annoys me about Microsoft bashers. Windows 95 was never designed to be a real operating system. Yes, it offered multitasking and dynamic libraries, big whoop. Yes, Microsoft made a big deal in their marketing about the way people were going to change the way they saw computers, etc. etc., big whoop. Windows 95 is nothing more than a glorified DOS and was never meant to be anything but. Guess what, it did change the way *most* people saw and used computers. For computer users, it was a step backwards, but that's not most people. It did it's job arguably well, and for most people, who were used to using DOS, the $100 or whatever it was well worth it.
Microsoft makes horrible products. They arguably make the worst software in the history of software, with the exception of Netscape. A lot of the people who work there (even in high authority it would seem) are stupid and clueless. However, a lot aren't. With few exceptions, Microsoft does not purposefully deceive anyone. IMO, they're a victim of their own "success". They're trying to make a product for 80% of the population, which just can't be done.
If you can find any references to Microsoft saying that (a) Windows 2000 is not based on Windows NT; or (b) Windows 95/98 do not use DOS to boostrap, I'd like to see them. Otherwise just shut the fuck up and stop spreading lies.
Um APM is important for desktop users. My moniter uses 85W in regular-mode (which I understand is even below average for a 15") and 5W in sleep-mode. Believe me, power saving is important on the desktop :).
So learning to think for one's self involves adopting the obviously ignorant and inflammatory comment of a random Slashdot poster, does it? I know if I wanted to learn to think for myself with respect to the design of Microsoft products, effectively anonymous Slashdot posters would be my first source! One might wonder how believing something with no evidence or reasoning of any kind would lead to thinking for one's self, but I guess anything goes when it comes to Microsoft bashing!
Mind you the sad part is is that anonymous Slashdot posters are as just about as close to impartial reviews as one can get today. Every publication on Earth seems to either owned by Microsoft or Disney...unique perspectives seem to be a thing of the past. Still, even ZDnet reviews of W2K offer *some* reasoning to their stories.
THEY'D PROBABLY START USING WINDOWS THEN!! CAN YOU EVEN IMAGINE?!@#
Um I think you carried the analogy pretty poorly. To try and use your analogy:
Some immigrants (e-commerce sitse) moved onto an island by the thousands and set up houses. The natives of the island don't like it, so they've set up baracades in front of a couple of the biggest houses.
Of course the people involved haven't given any manifesto or anything so this is still speculation. My guess is that they're bothering the big e-commerce sites simply because they're the big e-commerce sites, not because they're trying to prove something about security (such as leaving your door open). And they're certainly not lighting their houses on fire and/or nuking them. If they were to stop right now, things would carry on as if it had never happened (with the exception of the media reports).
Yes, I know. I just need to show my love for aalib and Koules.
No, surely it wouldn't be possible to do something similar to converting graphics to ANSI text on-the-fly. Surely it wouldn't be possible to do exactly the same thing the aalib is doing -- the same library in fact that text-mode Quake is based on! It even says on the page itself -- BASED ON AALIB!! NO, OF COURSE IT WOULDN'T BE POSSIBLE! IT WOULDN'T BE POSSIBLE TO CREATE A LIBRARY LIKE THE ONE BY JAN HUBICKA AVAILABLE AT http://www.ta.jcu.cz/aa/aalib/, THE LIBRARY MADE BY THE SAME MAN WHO MADE A CERTAIN GAME CALLED -- KOULES!! RING A BELL!*!L?!? OF COURSE IT WOULDN'T BE POSSIBLE TO CREATE A LIBRARY THAT "works on a terminal of any kind, [is] fast and portable, [and] gives to you standard API." OR ONE THAT "gives to your old hardware more power!" ONE THAT USES ANSI COLOURS TO PROPERLY SHADE THE GRAPHICS WHEN EQUIPPED WITH A CAPABLE TERMINAL?!
Har har I'm just kiddin' ya; a library like that actually already exists.
Umm, no. You need another controlling chip on there besides, not to mention all that other icky NIC circuitry. $95 for the chip will probably translate into $400 or $500 for a NIC. Hubs and switches will probably be Way Too Expensive.
I was under the impression that trin00 was installed by compromising (mostly) Solaris boxen with buffer overruns. Consequently, almost no one is running it intentionally. Someone here is a bit ignorant, either the moderator or me. Hope it's not me :)
in this market i people use the office software that came with their
computers...</i>
i people? is that what imac users are called?
sorry, bad joke i know.