Your saying as an isp, if your getting an attack...i should have no right to choose that you are bad for my business or have the right to remove you from the systems that other clients you are damaging. that is absurd...
No, that is not what I am saying. What I am saying is that you have no right to blame a DoS target for damage to your business when clearly it is the ones performing the DoS who are doing all of the damage.
close to saying that your going to come into my house and live...pay me FAR little money then its worth...eat my food and throw a party that gets the cops called on me...then saying "you cannot kick me out" does that make ANY sence??
Not in the least. But again, I'm not saying that. Let's modify your scenario a bit. Let's say you take in a paying guest. Furthermore, let's say this guest is black (for reasons which will shortly become apparent). Said guest pays reasonable rates, is pleasant to be around, and doesn't do anything to bother anyone.
Now, let's say the Ku Klux Klan catches wind that you have this guest, and starts burning crosses on your lawn and harassing you for taking in a black boarder. Is that the fault of your guest? Of course not. It's the fault of the KKK. Should you kick the guest out? Nope; in addition to not being fair, it's also probably what the KKK wants you to do, so you'd just be accomplishing the goals of a group of scumbags for them. What should you do instead? Go after the KKK, who are really at fault. Call in the police on harassment charges (or worse, if they get worse than that). It's the only fair way to fix the problem. Sure, it's not as easy or expensive, but quick-fixes like kicking out the guest never work out in the end (what happens when your next guest runs afoul of a similar group of assholes through no fault of their own?)
And if you were an administrator, you would know how easy it is to find out who is getting attacked. as to how do you know if your getting attacked...i have the systems setup to page me on attack....
Ah, but that's not what I asked. You're tracing an attack to your network; that part is easy. But now, try figuring out who is actually being attacked. This is much harder, particularly when most of your customers are dialups and almost all have dynamic IP's.
how else would i know? ohhhh...the fact that my whole network is down because a dialup ran off at the mouth im sorry to see that your comments are so short sighted
Hold on here. You presume too much. How do you know that a dialup is being attacked? Remember, it's nearly impossible to reliably track a dialup user across connections unless you have a copy of the logs and account information used to log in (and if someone outside the ISP has a copy of those, then DoS attacks should be the least of your worries).
Furthermore, a DoS attack is nothing more than pings or SYN packets. Therefore you have no way of knowing why you are being attacked on that basis alone. You have no way of knowing that "a dialop ran off at the mouth"; to presume this is rather against the very ideals on which this country was formed.
meep meep
Is this some pathetic attempt to imitate MEEPT!!? If so, your technique needs a LOT of work.
The ISP shouldn't have any right to do this. I know all too well what this guy is going through. It's the classic example of the nerd who gets beaten up by a gang of bullies at school, but the school only suspends the nerd.
But there are a few things about this case that I don't understand. First, how did the ISP know to whom these attacks were targeted? Second, how did they ascertain why the attacks were taking place, and how did they figure this out (particularly after knowing who the target was) without also getting at least some idea of who was carrying out the attack?
I don't know. Something sounds fishy about this. Don't get me wrong; the ISP was wrong to suspend the account and the people who carried out the DoS should go to jail, but I think there's more to this than we know here (a link would have been quite helpful).
Think about it. Sane people don't tend to attack others for no reason at all. Sometimes, such as with racists (if they could be called "sane," that is), the reason is imagined rather than real, and it's a damn poor excuse for a reason, but it's a reason nonetheless. If these DoS'ers were simply attacking this guy for a religious site, I'd imagine we'd see a rash of DoS attacks on sites of that religion (again, information as to the religion in question would have been really helpful here). That doesn't seem to have been occurring. Something must have passed between the target and the attackers beforehand. Whether or not the target deliberately provoked the attackers I don't know. But something had to have happened over the course of this dialogue that made the attackers decide to carry out a DoS. Is that the target's fault? Perhaps, but it's not likely. All of this would have been so much easier if the original poster had provided more information, or any kind of link to more info on the case.
fact is, they chose the name "barbie" because they are trying to associate themselves with the good will created by the Barbie doll company.
Please, feel free to explain. Because I've looked over this story ten times and I have no idea whatsoever as to how these people are trying to "associate themselves with the good will created by the Barbie doll company."
How would Slashdotters like it if someone set up a "linux" site devoted to Microsoft Windows?
I'd imagine most of us would be pretty pissed off. But does this give us the right to censor them? Hardly. Free speech can be a pain sometimes, but it's the only fair way.
Should anyone be allowed to "redefine" what trademarks mean, may the richest man win?
Certainly not. But corporations try to do this all the time; witness the E-Toys vs. etoy fight.
You can't sell soda named Coca Cola and write on the can, "this is not real Coca Cola".
No. You could, however, make a drink called "NotCoke" or something along those lines.
Incidentally, look at the end of any television show made by Worldvision. I'm not sure if they make anything anymore, but there's still quite a bit of their stuff in syndication. Anyway, they do a little thing on the end of all their shows. Take a look at the text on the bottom of the screen. It starts something like "Worldvision is not affiliated with World Vision International..." Just something to think about, since this is obviously legal. Otherwise they wouldn't be doing it; either they simply would never have tried or they'd have been sued and stopped by the other World Vision (or, conversely, they'd have sued the other World Vision and forced them to change names).
And before you say "but Worldvision and World Vision are clearly different..." note that Mattel has never made any product whatsoever that they called "The Barbies."
The only real difference, as I said, is how the two licenses define "stealing code."
The GPL defines code theft as hoarding the code, making modifications and not releasing them as the original code was released to you. It grants you additional rights, but these are only means of preventing said theft.
Microsoft's EULA, by contrast, defines code theft as using it in any capacity other than a certain narrow range (the Win95 and 98 licenses don't even let you run servers on them for more than 5 users). It takes away rights, even those normally granted under typicl copyright, but again they're only a means to preventing you from "stealing" the code.
Both very different licenses, but still similar in many ways. Just opposite ends of the same pole.
The one that loses is the one that has the fewest users and a declining userbase. Since both DEs have their own API, a DE can lose the battle if nobody develops for that API. If most people start using KDE, then few people will bother to develop for GTK/GNOME, thus GNOME will have lost the battle.
Correct. However you conveniently ignore the fact that the reverse can also occur. Will it? I don't know. But it's about as likely as your scenario is.
Speed and resource usage. KDE 2.0 is by far faster than any version of GNOME, and takes a significant amount less memory.
Have you by any chance used Gnome 1.2? Didn't think so. Go use it. Then come back and say that again. Or don't, if you suddenly find that statement you made holds no water whatsoever.
This disparity will only widen in the future, since the general GNOME infrastructure will grow quite a bit in 2.0, while KDE's probably won't grow much beyond 2.0 since the basic functionality is in place.
You're some sort of psychic, I take it? It seems to me as though Gnome and KDE are making the exact same types of changes along their paths to 2.0. New file managers, component architectures, themeability on KDE's side, etc. Gnome's added a 1.2 step, but what's the harm in that?
Couple this with the fact that DCOP/KParts is far superior to Bonobo in terms of speed and resource usage (though maybe not as flexible in a distrubuted environment) KDE bowls GNOME over in the speed/resource usage deparment.
And you speak from... how much experience? As I thought, none. Go use it, then come back when you can make arguments and back them up. If you can't back up your arguments, you're just flaming.
KDE still has a much tighter integration between apps than GNOME does. It only takes a cursory look at Corel Linux to show what a little ingenuity and KDE can do to make Linux almost as friendly as Windows for the desktop user.
Ah, and thus we get to the whole crux of your argument, and the real reasn you're posting: "KDE is better because I'm a Corelite." Let's see your examples. I hve no doubt they probably exist, but where are they? You're certainly not too cooperative in pointing them out. Why not?
KDE has far better apps and much more developer support.
According to whom? KDE has StarOffice, but other than that every KDE app I've seen has a Gnome analog. For the most part, the revere is also true.
Sure the KDE libraries can be loaded, but with the increased bloat in both 2.0 level libraries, people will increasingly wish to not have to load the libraries twice.
Again, you conveniently ignore the fact that the people could just as well choose Gnome as KDE.
As such, they will stick to the DE that has the most/best apps.
Which is...? Your answer is conspicuously absent. As if you realized that since you have near-zero experience with Gnome, particularly recent versions, you just might be wrong. Use them, if only for a little while, so you can make a real comparison in that regard.
And please don't forget that even if you are correct, that means little. Remember, people stuck with Windows, which hardly has the "best" apps (the single possible exception being Excel, and both Linux DE's have spreadsheets which are coming along quite nicely in that regard).
KDE is more familer. Diehard Linuxites call it being too Windowy, but it is a big strength for the rest of us who grew up on the start menu and Explorer.
For better or for worse, Gnome is just as Windowsy as KDE. And both are getting even more Windowsy as the versions progress. It's quite sad, really. You'd think the Open-Source community could do better, interface-wise. It's been done. NeXT had a better GUI which was almost completely original. So did MacOS. Win9x and OSX are fusions of these two; Win9x took the worst of both and added some decidedly anticompetitive elements. It'll be interesting to see if OSX has it done right (I admit I don't like some of what I see, but I'll reserve judgement until I've actually used the thing).
These factors, coupled with increasing support for KDE from the business community will allow KDE to become the dominant Linux desktop.
Show me your "growing support from the business community." I don't see it. I saw StarOffice getting KDE integration back when it was still proprietary (versus the pseudo-proprietary Community-Source liense it's under now). Oh, and Corel bundles it with their system. That's all I ever saw. If there's more I'd be glad to hear about it, but I simply don't see it anywhere.
However they seem to think that putting the biggest, most memory hogging features into the DE will automatically make it better.
Give an example of a "big, memory-hogging" feature Gnome has that doesn't make it better.
Software size and quality seems to not be a very top priority, and software speed seems to be an even lower priority.
Depends. Everyone knows that Gnome 1.0 was released too early; I can't dispute that claim. It was underfeatured and unstable. The stability got fixed quite some time ago. 1.2 adds more of the features. Not all of them yet; a few are still in development (Bonobo and Nautilus, most notably).
Speed... well, I'm not so sure. A lot of that seems to have to do with Imlib. Everything that I've seen that replaced it wuth gdk-pixbuf seemed to get a big kick in the pants, speed-wise.
Of course, you can't expect phenomenal speed when you're drawing your entire GUI with pixmaps. That's a large reason of why Gnome feels so slow for a lot of people. Switch out Sawfish for Window Maker and the Pixmap themes for GTKStep and you've suddenly got a much faster desktop. I like Sawfish myself, and used it for several months, but as of this moment it just doesn't seem to be able to touch Window Maker for speed and stability, though Window Maker's icons do get in the way on a Gnome desktop. Things may have changed with the developmental gdk-pixbuf versions of Sawfish; I intend to try it out as soon as I manage to compile the thing.
Either way, this is what's wrong with the state of discussion on Slashdot. People don't debate anymore; they just flame. They'll spout drivel like this post's parent, which say a lot but prove nothing, and thus are no better than "Gnome sucks! No, KDE sux0rz! No way, Gnome 0wnZ KDE! No, KDE is ph4r m0r3 k-r4d @nd l33t! No, you must PH3AR GNOME!" What happened to people not jut making their point, but backing it up? OK, so Gnome sucks NINJA ass; why? OK, so maybe KDE sucks big fat naked petrified donkey dick; why? The point is, unless we get into real discussion, and point out the relative strengths and weaknesses of the two systems, neither one is going to truly improve. They'll just get stuck in an endless feature war, neither one getting the features users really want. They'll just try to one-up the other, and the end result won't be any better than Win2K.
There's a very large difference between copyrights and patents.
Copyright means, under normal circumstances, that you cannot lift the code outright and use it in your own stuff. It's possible that the book you mention does allow you to use the code in your own stuff. In fact, I'd put money on that assertion. Check the book out; it should say.
Patents are different. Patents protect more than a person's work. Let's say I one-up Amaon and write a "no-click system" for e-commerce (impossible with current technology, I know, but it makes for a handy example). You can't lift my code, because it's copyrighted. However, you cannot write any no-click system at all, due to the patent. This is simply unethical practice, as it's applied to discourage competition in the marketplace.
What is software? Software is code, in both object and source form. Code is copyrightable, and this is good; it lets you protect your work from those who would steal it, by whatever you define "stealing" to be (the GPL and Microsoft's standard EULA differ only in their definition of what stealing code is; other than this they do exactly the same thing).
But patents, copyrights, and trademarks were always meant to be mutually exclusive. Can you copyright a car? Hardly; that's a patent's job. Can you patent a specific word, perhaps "Microsoft"? Again, no; that's what a trademark is for. Why, then, should you be able to patent something which is copyrightable? There is no difference between that example and any of the others.
He's right. Anonymity does not equal privacy. But privacy implies anonymity, for without anonymity you can't do anything and have it be truly private.
Therefore anonymity is necessary, for to take it away is to also take away privacy, thus violating what he himself says is a right.
Would he prefer to do away with cash as well? Think about it: cash has no identifying features, except possibly fingerprints left on the money (and this can be dealt with as well). I can buy things with cash to make anonymous real-world transactions. Is this the same as wearing a ski mask while robbing a bank? I don't think so; in fact they're as close to opposites as I can think of.
For that matter, is wearing a ski mask equal to anonymity? Again, hardly. You can still get clues as to size, gender, race (ski masks don't hide all a person's skin, even on the face), and that's only visual cues. You also can get clues to a person's personality and education level through tone of voice and word choice. You can also get an idea of where the person comes from by voice, just by listening to regional accents (some can mask this more easily than others, though). Smell gives you general hygeine (does the person stink?) You can even get ideas as to recent and even not-so-recent injuries just from the way the person moves.
It takes a lot more than a ski mask to become anonymous. That's why anonymity is so precious; it's hard to obtain, and once earned it's something you've got to fight for. Corporations hate it, because it makes their sole goal in life (making money) that much harder; they have to resort to "inefficient" mass marketing rather than invading our privacy to use direct-marketing methods. Law enforcement hates it because it means they have to use fair, lawful means to apprehend criminals. Governments hate it because people you don't know about are harder to control; islands of chaos to an organization that is all about order.
All of those are reasons why we have to fight for our anonymity. Seagrams wants to declare war on the Internet (which, by attackng anonymity, is exactly what he is doing), that's fine. I say it's time to declare war on Seagrams, in the form of a complete boycott (don't even pirate their stuff; especially don't pirate their stuff). They say piracy's costing them billions, let's see what they see when they get a whiff of what really costs them money: unethical behavior.
I don't see this post as the work of a Troll. It was well thought out, incredibly funny and entertaining, where as Troll posts, well, aren't.
That's just it. This post was an old-school troll. Sadly, those are a dying breed. The new-schoolers that now get the undeserved title of "troll" were once called lameasses. Still should be, in my opinion. The FIRST POST!ers, NINJA-man, the porn guy, the goatse.cx linkers, and all of the current crop of naked and petrified guys, the JonKatz slanderers... there was a time when no one would have called them trolls. They were just lame assholes. No, the real trolls were different. The original naked and petrified guy, MEEPT!, the guy who writes the long poems... they're a dying breed (OOG seems to be the last of them; why couldn't he just do his posts in all lowercase if the lameness filter nails him for all caps)?
I long for the days when trolls were trolls, not puerile adolescents (assuming they've even reached that stage of development, which is doubtful at least mentally if not physically).
It seems to me that even if a post is off topic, if it has other redeeming qualities (such as being hilarious) it's worthwhile. After all, that's why there's the Funny moderation.
No, the Funny moderation is ther for posts which can be hilarious and ontopic. Things like that one response to the NSA adopting Linux ("The NSALinux Public License: we could give you the source, but then we'd have to kill you.")
And, oddly enough, since you've responded to a post that was off topic, isn't your post off topic as well? And mine is doubly so... just something to think about.
Actually, you're right. We should both be burning Karma here. But that doesn't change the fact that the parent is too.
It's so rare that we find a truly creative, and even insightful, troll. But it's still trolling. This is not the appropriate place for it, and it should be modded down as Offtopic (can anyone here possibly deny that this is offtopic?)
Perhaps we should set up a Troll Board for the trolls; every once in a while they do turn out a true gem, even if they're as close to the proverbial million monkeys on a million typewriters as we'll ever see in this world. On the Troll Board, the "regular" rules of Slashdot don't apply. But troll anywhere else, instant bitchslap. This gives the trolls a place to troll, while keeping Slashdot free for its intended purpose: technical discussion.
It's all well and good to present things in whatever context you want. But that doesn't change the fact that what happened, happened.
I could understand how Jews, whether from Germany or someplace else, would feel when they see people having the above mentioned flag presented. What possible interpretations of that presentation are there if not support for Nazism?
Plenty. The swastika existed long before Hitler twisted it (metaphorically and literally; the arms used to point the other way). Back then, it was a symbol of good fortune. I believe it was Hindu in origin, actually. Should such a symbol be blasted out of general sight simply because a madman perverted its meaning? I don't think so.
Every group out there has a symbol of some kind; it's almost a requirement. There are groups out there that would kill all men; do I get offended when I see their logos? Hardly. I'm more secure in myself than that. Some people aren't, I realize, but those people need help.
The Holocaust was a terrible period in history. One of the worst, from a moral perspective. It has also been over for fifty years. The Nazis have been scattered to the winds, existing only as small pockets of lunatics who have no chance of ever coming into power again. Far better to get the news of what they did spread as far and wide as possible, educate people about why it was so horrific. The saying goes that those who don't learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. Trite, but true. Look at the Balkans, where old hatreds were loosed after the Soviet Union's breakup, leading to Milosevic's "ethnic cleansing." In Rwanda, we've seen the same thing. This is because people haven't yet learned the lessons of the Holocaust. Hiding the truth won't teach them a damn thing. Particularly when it's the truth about people who did twist the truth at every opportunity; Hitler himself once said that "people will believe one big lie more readily than many little lies." It's how he managed to take and keep power; he twisted history and reality for his own ends. And that is what the governments of France and Germany are doing now. They're twisting history to make themselves look better, with no thought of the final effects.
I feel they are being quite heavy-handed about the whole thing, but as the copyright holder (i.e. its their music), they can treat it pretty much any way they want. If they think of it as a commodity, so what? They aren't breaking the law.
You are correct. But still, it's hypocritical to blast the fans for doing it when they do it too. The problem is, of course, that if they were truly honest about their intentions (making money) far fewer people would care. They have to paint themselves as starving artists who "just do it for the fans" when everyone with half a brain knows that isn't any more true than their accusations that Napster was intended to promote piracy.
So yeah, they have a right to sue pirates. Not under the arguments they're using for suing, but they have the right to sue anyway.
Look: copyrights are, in principle, good. The fact is, everyone has the right to share his stuff on his own terms, so long as said terms are fair. Copyright is a balancer in that. It defines some things which must be included for the terms to be considered fair (fair use, and expiration after a set time). But it also makes sure those terms are kept. It's used by the GPL to enforce its terms (I'll share this with you, but in return you have to share it too.)
This is why UCITA and DMCA are bad; they allow corporations to set unfair terms (no negative reviews, no reverse-engineering for compatibility, no right to see the terms before agreeing with them, etc.)
However, that's a double-edged sword. Look at the standard terms for a CD. OK, you've bought the CD. You can play it as much as you want. You have the full terms of fair use. You can even play it for your friends, so long as you don't try to make money off of it. You can even lend it to a friend. The only thing you can't do is make a copy of the music and give it to a friend (or give said friend the original and keep the copy for yourself). This seems fair enough; you paid your dues, they should have to pay theirs. Now, the price-fixing the RIAA does is highly unethical, and they need a DoJ slapdown in the worst way because of it, but that's another issue that this post isn't meant to address.
This said, I don't like what Metallica is doing. They certainly have the right to be suing over piracy, but the arguments they are using are extremely hypocritical (saying they're disgusted at the fans "treating their music as a commodity" when that's just what they do themselves). Let's face it, it's all about the money, and they ought to be honest about it. Of course, that'd be terrible PR, but it's still the truth.
As for RIAA, MPAA, etc, they're just plain scared. The Internet and computing technology, particularly as the infrastructure thereof matures, is going to render them obsolete. Right now, software exists that allows a person at home to theoretically make movies with special effects surpassing what many Hollywood films had not even ten years ago. Sound processing software exists for recording music, and CD burners and duplication firms exist to distribute it. With a decent Website and e-commerce software (some of which is Open-Source), I could publish and sell a book without ever going to a major publishing house.
That's why MPAA is so worked up. They aren't afraid of people using DeCSS to decrypt DVD's; they're afraid of people doing the opposite: making their own DVD's. Without going through them. It's why RIAA is so worked up; artists could use MP3 or related formats to distribute their music. Without going through them. In short, they're very quickly becoming obsolete, relics of the past which will die out as technology evolves and "natural" selection drives them out. They had a chance, once: had they embraced the technology early on they could well have enjoyed their dominant position even as smaller companies and individuals came into their own. But this can't happen; they sat on their hands for too long and now it may well be too late.
People have said in defense of piracy that "you can't stop the technology." They're not right to defend piracy with that argument, but the statement is still correct. You can't stop it. All you can do is embrace it. Problem is that RIAA pushed MP3 away for too long, and MPAA is doing the same with similar technologies. It may well no longer embrace back. And that's their fault, not that of the technology. The corporations had their chance. They blew it. And now they're going to reap what they've sown, and it won't taste good. I only pity the innocents who had nothing to do with it, but are going to feel the fallout because a few fatcat execs were too scared to take the plunge.
you must have no life to speak of that you take one website in the endless sea of websites so seriously, like a religion.
While I do admit to taking Slashdot seriously, I certainly don't consider it a religion.
I don't know you, nor would I want to. I can just picture you hitting refresh all day, hoping for that +5 insightful, and the day that Bruce Perens or someone "famous" responds to one of your posts, you feel all warm and fuzzy.
Oh, please; I'm not like that. I don't try for +5 Insightfuls; I get enough of them anyway. And as for "famous" respondents, I don't recall ever actually getting a famous one. I've gotten quite a bit of e-mail feedback, only two of which weren't positive: one being in response to my assertion that Napster was never intended for illegal purposes (quite an insightful post, though with some flawed logic), and one which was basically an e-mail troll.
I would advise that you get a life outside of Slashdot.
I have one, thank you very much. Quite a fulfilling one at that.
It is obvious that through all of the trouble that you have gone through with that "Taking back Slashdot", that you are in need of counseling. I am not trolling here, notice the lack of profanity or inflammatory language.
Oh, geez; I make one post about trolling and one sig linking to it, and all the trolls hate me for it. Gee, I wonder why?
And you're right; this isn't a troll. Nor is it a flame. And I do admit to using both profanity and inflammatory language in the parent of this post, to make a point.
I don't mean to be a killjoy. I like posts that can put a humorous bent on the topic at hand, and I'm one of OOG's biggest fans (where has he been lately anyway?) But there's a time and place for trolls, and it's not Slashdot. You want that, go to hotgrits.org; it runs Slash, parodies Slashdot, and actually has a few funny posts. And better yet, they belong there; it's a forum created just for the trolls. Not a technical discussion site where they only get in the way and annoy people.
You really think that. So it's so much worse to take fair and reasonable precautions to try improving the signal-to-noise ratio than to turn over Slashdot to a bunch of prepubescent morons who have nothing better to do with their pathetic little lives than spam a technical discussion site with puerile humor,attempts to change the subject, and just plain meaningless crap? Note, by the way, that not only are all of my examples from this discussion, but they are three of the first four posts to this discussion. And you say Slashdot isn't declining.
It seems the moderation has gotten way too politically correct.
Not that I've seen. I have yet to see an truly insightful, well-thought-out post that hasn't been modersted up quite high in the end. And no, I haven't agreed with all of them. No, they haven't all been politically correct (hell, many of the posts I do couldn't be called politically correct).
The quality of posts that get moderated up to +5 (in particular +5 funny) is really getting more and more lame.
You mean they haven't all been tasteless crap. Boo hoo hoo.
It's not the trolls' fault, it's the moderation system.
Oh, yeah. The moderators force the trolls to troll. Like we tie the trolls up, guard then with NINJAS and torture them with pr0n of Natalie Portman naked and petrified, and threaten to pour steaming hot grits down their pants if they don't troll. Suuuuuuuuuuuuuure.
the "1984 version" of Slashdot that you get at high thresholds is truly bland. Personally, I would rather read some truly amusing posts and take my chances with being offended or whatever you think the post is going to do to me.
What do you want, a humor site? Go here if you want that. Or better yet, go here.
Some of those posts obviously took some effort and creativity too... they deserve some recognition.
I know of only one troll that could possibly have taken any effort or creativity: the original naked and petrified post. The rest are just idiotic drivel, badly-written porn (I could write better stories than that, about the same subject matter, without any pr0n elements, in ten minutes), or slander (libel?) against JonKatz.
And even with that troll, it wasn't in the appropriate place. There is a time and a place for everything, even for trolls. Slashdot ain't it.
I think everyone should be able to vote on a post... let the score reflect the total of all votes applied to it. people can judge it by that and choose to ignore it or not, as they see fit.
We've got that already. It's called moderation. It picks people at random, yes, and it doesn't let known troublemakers mod, but it's quite fair.
I think free-speech has all but vanished on this site.
Free speech vanishing? Hardly. You can still say whatever you want. And we can also tell you to go fuck yourself. You have the fundamental rights to speak, to hear, and to not hear, but you have no fundamental right to be heard. You are given that right when someone listens to you. And if no one wants to listen, you can still prattle on all you want, while we simply build and move around you. But don't scream censorship when no one wants to hear you. That's just because we all think it's bullshit. And if we all think it's bullshit, there's a very large probability that it is.
"Bitchslapping," and "lameness filtering" ARE interfering with the communications of Slashdot's users.
Never heard these terms mentioned in connection with this site before. What is this "bitch-slapping" and "lameness filtering," as defined by Slashdot?
I've certainly never seen my communications interrupted or interfered with. Nor anyone else's.
Rob Malda almost seems like he's in a panic. He will do anything to eliminate the "trolling"... no matter how it may interfere with the operations of the site.
But does it interfere with this site's operations? Absolutely not. I have yet to see any moderation-related change which has interfered with actual technical discussion on Slashdot. Flamers, trolls, and spammers get filtered down (and I, like you, browse at -1 just to make certain of this), yes. But actual intelligent discussion? Hardly.
Is this Malda's site? Sure is. Will it generate any income when people no longer read it? Nope.
And you think Slashdot's readership is declining? Not that I've seen. And the people I do see leaving are all blaming it on trolls, not moderation.
Rob, you'd better wake up and smell the coffee... take an objective look at what moderation is doing. It's not good.
Maybe, maybe not. But regardless, it's better than the alternative: a site on which technical discussion can no lnger take place because it's been overrun by assholes.
I can't believe Russel wouldn't get it. But he doesn't. Still thinking in the one-realm system.
Look. Our would could be considered to be split into two realms: the physical and the nonphysical. Each realm (and, by extension, the things in it) play by their own sets of rules, and the rules from one realm don't apply in the other. One property of the physical realm is that physical objects can contain representations of nonphysical objects, while the reverse isn't really true. A book, for example, is clearly a physical object, while a story is not physical. But a book can contain a written representation of a story, while a story can't really contain a book (OK, so a book can appear from a story, but try taking any book from your bookshelf and actually putting that book into a story; it doesn't hold).
Why is this important? Let's take the most basic physical economic law: supply and demand. According to this, supply is inversely proportional to demand. Supply goes up, demand goes down. Supply goes down, demand goes up. Simple, no?
Now, let's apply this to any nonphysical object; a piece of software is a handy example, but a song or a story will do. Supply is infinite. Nonphysical objects are simply that way; subtract 1 from 1 and you still have 1. However, demand is quite clearly nonzero; look at how many people use software or listen to music or enjoy stories. This violates one of the founding principles of modern economics.
As long as these nonphysical objects are constrained to physical containers, you're in the free and clear with using the physical system of economics. You have to muddy the waters a bit with various types of law, but it's still quite doable. Look at how many books and CD's are sold today and you can see that it's viable. For the time being, at least.
But with the rise of the Internet, nonphysical things are no longer constrained to physical representations. I no longer need the book to tell the story; if I write one I can publish it myself. If I make music, I no longer need the CD, record, tape, or what have you. If I write software, I no longer need the media for it. So the laws of physical economics no longer apply.
Does this mean that nonphysical things can no longer be sold? Of course not. It does mean that you can't use physical economics for these things; it just doesn't work that way. It takes a "new" type of economics, non-physical economics. The laws are out there, waiting to be discovered. Of course they haven't been discovered yet; there's never been a need for them, so no one has thought about them. But now that it's possible to deal with nonphysical things in an entirely nonphysical way, we do need these.
Physical economics will always be there, of course. Human beings are inherently physical, and we need many physical things to sustain our existence, so that system of economics is not going anywhere. But to try applying those laws where they do not apply is outright ridiculous.
Is the "Free Software" system right? It might be. Then again, it might not; it's only one approach to the problem. It's also misinterpreted a lot, thanks to Richard Stallman's hideously poor word choice when he named the movement; it connotes that software cannot be sold when he in fact has no objections to the selling of software at all. He wouldn't do it himself, but doesn't consider it immoral. Read the GNU Manifesto again if you got the impression that he thinks all software should cost nothing.
Is the current "proprietary" system right? Probably not. While it worked well before the rise of the Internet, it's now starting a downward spiral, thanks to new systems (such as Open-Source) and what is termed "piracy" under the physical system (the very mechanics of which are impossible under the physical system anyway).
But noth could be wrong. Perhaps a new economic paradigm will rise. I simply don't know. Nor, really, does anybody, because no one's figured out how to deal with nonphysical economics yet. Given time it'll straighten itself out. But I doubt it will come all that coon, and until it does the bickering will continue with no real progress being made.
However, with the availability of Photoshop, Lightwave/3D Studio (which do not run on Macs), etc. for the PC has rendered (no pun intended) the Mac inferior.
Strange. Very strange indeed. I know where I can get all of these for MacOS.
With the selection of PC 3D cards being far superior to that of Mac cards, I do not see the Mac regaining much market share in the professional graphics market.
You know nothing about graphics, apparently. 3D cards have absolutely nothing to do with professional 3D graphics. Professional 3D graphics use raytracing renderers, which deliver the best quality you can get but are very slow. 3D cards use scanline renderers, which are much faster but give lesser quality (however, the quality is still easily enough for games). But because that's not used in professional 3D graphics, the fastest 3D card in the world makes no difference at all for pro stuff.
By building an Intel/AMD machine out of used/new parts that I can buy on Ebay, I can build a dual PIII Xeon for a fraction of what the high end Macs are selling for.
And you'll get what you pay for: questionable hardware reliability and zero support. Building one's own computer is a very effective cost-cutting measure, but there are things that really are better left to the pros even if they are doable by amateurs.
The fact is that the performance of a comparably priced Intel/AMD machine will almost always be superior to that of the Mac.
Not true in the least. To get the performance of a high-end Mac, you need a high-end PC. Further, the things you'll require as add-ons, and let's not forget the added costs in time when it comes to setup, render them much more expensive in the end. You don't see the cost right away, of course, because the "sticker price" is lower.
It should also be noted that the average useful life of a Mac is four years (and personally, most of the Macs I've seen tend to last seven). The average useful life of a PC is only two. So in the time you use a single Mac, you'll have on average bought two, and often three, PC's. Macs may be more expensive, but they aren't that much more so.
That is the benefit of having an open system architecture.
Ah, but there are many disadvantages also. Hardware is very different from software; openness doesn't have the same benefits and drawbacks as it does with software. Point one: the multiplicity of useless drivers. If I want to use a video card in a Mac, I plug it in and it works. Ditto for projectors, input devices, et cetera, even when made by many different companies. You can't do that in any other OS I know. USB was a step in the right direction, but it's still not enough. This is the disadvantage from having a too-open platform, one where no standards were ever defined.
Yes, having an open hardware platform has its advantages. But there are some very severe disadvantages also, ones which I don't believe the advantages outweigh, as they do for software. Just think, for a moment, at the Linux Kernel. The source download not tops twelve megabytes, most of it drivers. With only a little standards support, the driver set could have been streamlined, probably cutting the sive of the download by at least a third if not by half, with all the variety of devices we see today.
And let's not even go into IRQ's and such. That was simply an idea gone wrong, which Apple fixed in their PCI implementation.
You know, you're right. Macs' sticker prices are higher than those of PC's. But the fact is, they're better hardware, and they're worth more. I'd be willing to bet that well over 95% of the people who gripe over the Macs' price point have never even owned one, and it's probably closer to 99%. Once you've owned one, you understand. It really is worth the money.
OK, look. I'm a conservative, just as you seem to be. The reason I don't mention the Lunatic Liberal Left is that really, they're working for the same goals as the Radical Religious Right. The only difference is that the left either doesn't know it, or they've over-rationalized it.
But if you'll notice, the values they espouse are the same as the ones the Radical Religious Right espouses. Look at the criteria they want to use for censorship; they're basically identical. The right wants to "save" America, while the left wants to "save" the children; what's the difference? They may argue on particulars, but they're working for the same general thing. At least the right is open about it, if you could call that a Good Thing, which is why I mentioned them.
Besides, while I don't like either group, I have a particular beef with the right. Among other things, it's megalomaniac loonies like them that give my religion a bad name, and I'm tired of being feared simply because of the diety I choose to worship.
No one's got it right. Not one nation there has a truly intelligent view.
Look at the corporate-run United States. We have our free speech (much to the Radical Religious Right's chagrin) but no right to privacy.
Then check out Europe. Most of the nations there view privacy as a fundamental right, but can and do restrict free speech. Sure, it's against things like racism, but it's still wrong to censor anything, because the second one voice is silenced it sets a precedent by which all other voices are by definition jeopardized.
France is no more intelligent than the US in that regard. Sure, they have different views on nudity (whereas many Americans consider all nudity to be pr0n, it takes more than that to be consdered pornographic just about anywhere else). But they do ban other forms of speech. Yes, hate speech is a terrible thing. I have the distinct displeasure of living near a whole family of racists, so I know how bad it can get. But if no one has the right to censor me, then no one has the right to censor them either. And yes, it is annoying to have to put up with them (while I might not be the target of their race hate, I am still distrusted on religious grounds). But it's the only fair way.
The Declaration lists "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" as inalienable rights. Note that happiness is not a right, only the pursuit of it is. In other words, you certainly have the right to try to be happy. But if you fail, your rights haven't been violated just because you aren't happy. This is something we as Americans seem to forget often; I'm guilty of it sometimes too. But the fact is, even in a truly fair system we're all different people, so we all have to put up with crap from others at some point.
I'm sure I'll run up against the Radical Religious Right and the Terminally Insecure, I mean Politically Correct, for this. But if we're going to be fair, and the people do want fairness, then no censorship can be allowed at all. Privacy must be inviolable without a warrant issued by a court of law. Intellecctual property must be maintained, but so must fair use of that property.
And in the end, some things will result from this that people won't like. You might run across something that offends you, or -God forbid- you might have to do your job as a parent and keep your own eyes on your own kids. Law enforcement, restricted again by law to using only the means they're legally allowed to use anyway by the Constitution, probably won't be as good at catching The Bad Guy. Piracy will still take place. But it is worth it, because the alternative is worse: a Big Brother state with mandatory pay-per-use media across all channels, perpetual copyrights and patents, and no concept of fair use whatsoever.
You can't invent more CPU speed by dedicating one machine to filtering packets. The same amount of CPU speed could be used to serve pages.
Quite true, however by dedicating one machine to security you free up the others to serve pages. Remember, Linux is multitasking, so every app running slows down the others a little bit. By freeing the page-servers themselves from having to worry about security, you let them do their task more efficiently. That speeds up the process more than simply throwing more servers at the problem.
You can't create CPU speed out of thin air, no. But you can make the process more efficient and speed things up that way.
...but I know you're going to be pissed off when you see this was modded to Flamebait and accuse Slashdot of censorship when this is simply not the case. So let me tell you why I agree with the moderators (obviously, thanks to the silly limitation on modding and posting in the same thread, I couldn't have modded it myself).
First, you exaggerate. Yes, Slashdot has problems every once in a while, as it moves to a new server. Every program I've seen has problems like this when you move the program. Note that I'm talking about moving as opposed to a simple reinstall. I'm talking about yanking a hard drive and slapping it into another machine, which is probably at least analogous to what the Slashdot guys did if not the exact thing. And with sites like this, that is necessary if you want to keep the archives intact.
Second, you don't cite a single example of how Slashdot doesn't "work." We all know examples, yes, such as when moving to a new server. But you never give any examples. You only throw an argument out there without supporting it. No matter what the argument is, that's a flame.
Third, you talk about "Slashdot's inability to scale to high loads." I'm assuming you're talking about the distributed Denial-of-Service attack Slashdot has been undergoing recently. I would hardly fault Slashdot for crumbling under such an attack; every site out there crumbles just as badly. That's how powerful these attacks really are.
Fourth, you don't know what you're arguing about; You talk about "Slashdot's unmaintainable PEARL code." You have obviously never even read the code. How do I know this? You don't even seem to know what Perl is, otherwise you would have at the absolute least spelled and capitalized it right. Even had you read the code, with no knowledge of Perl you would be in no position to decide whether or not it was unmaintainable. Spouting arguments with obviously no knowledge of what you're talking about is another characteristic of flames.
While we're at it, you talk about a product's "stability and performance" (I can only assume you meant the Forums software) but never cite numbers. Last I checked, Forums was less stable than Slashdot. It should also be known that Slashdot was proprietary, or essentially proprietary thanks to releases that didn't keep up with updates, for a long time, so it hasn't had the benefits of being Open-Source for all that long.
And finally, you're offtopic. The discussion here is about Forums, not Slash. If you want to talk about Slash, use the Slashdot-centric forums where they talk about this, or better yet go to Slashcode.org and talk about it there.
So please, spare us the flames, and don't get pissed off when they're modded down.
Aw, hasoo got da snifoos cause da big nasty Swashdotter is pwoving you wong?
Honestly, you needn't be so defensive or hostile.
You see, every goddamned PC in the world also has OpenGL in some form or another. Well, not every goddamned PC in the world, but as many as support D3D (not every goddamned PC is the words is brainless enough to "upgrade" every day; well over a third of the goddamned Wintel PC's out there still use Win3.1). And OpenGL has the backing of a lot more companies than Microsoft alone.
As for fucknuts who think Linux is a real OS and insist on using it, I assure you that there are more than two or three of us, and at least our OS has never been called -and subsequently proven to be- a threat to national security (check the latest article at www.infowarrior.org to see what I'm talking about). Surely an OS of such low quality as to be called a threat to national security could not possibly be called a real OS. Besides which, there are a lot of us fucknuts out there who don't use Linux or Windows.
By the way, you call me "you stupid fuck" and "you goddamned fuck." Please make up your mind; which kind of fuck am I? It's a lot easier to understand where you're coming from if I can figure out precisely which what sort of fuck you are accusing me of being.
According to the GPL's preamble, any patented code used in GPL'd code must be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all. Therefore, paradoxically enough, patents which are licensed only to GPL users may in fact violate the GPL.
I could be wrong; this is only in the preamble, rather than the body of the license proper (in fact, because of this, I am probably wrong). But it's something to think about. This does run somewhat counter to the GPL's philosophy, and that's not something which should just be ignored.
However, I do see what the patent holder is trying to do here. And I think it's good that finally we have some patents usable only in Open-Source software. I would make it so that the code is usable to anyone so long as the code was under any license which meets the OSD, but this is a good start.
Sure, you can write your own proprietary engine to do exactly what you want it to do. And it will only take you three times as long to bring that to market.
Why? Direct3D is not a gaming engine. It's only a renderer. If you're going to talk about engines, the Unreal engine is proprietary. So is the Quake engine. So are all other 3D gaming engines out there, with the possible exception of Crystal Space.
And D3D is proprietary all the same. OpenGL is porderline; you can get non-proprietary implementations but the standard itself is proprietary. Ditto for QD3D.
Thats three times the salary, three times the rent, three times all expenses for the same profit only to have the chance to get that other 15% of the market. The math says no.
Your logic says no, not the math. This doesn't even work, since you assumed D3D was a gaming engine, which it is not. So your math is completely invalid anyway, because the premise was incorrect.
Your math is incorrect anyway. Increasing the marker 15% increases revenue, so the chances of the profit being the same are nil. Your multiplier of 3 is also laughably huge.
Let me give you an example using the Quake3 codebase. Now, as we all know, Quake3 consists of several million lines of code. I don't know the exact number, but let's take a conservative estimate of two million. How much of that is platform specific? According to Id, less than ten thousand lines. That's not even one percent of the codebase.
So let's look at the real numbers. Design your app right, increase your costs and such by less than one percent, and consequently open up an extra 15% of a market which is showing signs of shifting away from the 85% you would have had otherwise? This seems like a very wise maneuver to me.
But whenever I'm given the choice of say writing an object oriented wrapper for a database or just using something that already exists, I'm going to to just use that which already exists. Sure we could write our own database, but the cost associated with writing a proprietary database is phenomenal when I can pay someone else who has already developed, tested, and put into actual use their own database.
Dammit, get it through your head: D3D is not a gaming engine. The Unreal engine is proprietary, and will remain so regardless of whether or not it is tied to one renderer (unless of course you know something I don't about possible Epic plans to Open-Source the Unreal engine; last I heard there were none whatsoever).
Now instead of having 30 developers and 2 years to get this application done, we only need 5 developers and 2 months. Thats serious numbers.
Laughable, though, since you have no idea what you're talking about anyway. D3D is a renderer, not an engine. It is quite possible to uncouple an engine from its renderer, and do so in such a way that you can implement every single feature present with one renderer in another. The advantages cannot be denied. Portability, Support for a broader range of devices, adaptability to a changing marketplace (what happens if for some reason D3D suddenly falls out of favor? If you went with D3D you're screwed). The ability to take better advantage of each possible device (one card does GL better than D3D? You're out of luck on a renderer-dependent engine).
Honestly, it surprises me how many people here are actually coders and still don't get it. This math is not difficult; all it takes is a willingness to design a program correctly. Sure, you can't take shortcuts that way, but in the end the payoffs are greater.
You claim that by using D3D, you can develop features on Windows that would not be possible on Linux or Mac.
I don't believe that. No matter the API, 3D is 3D. So let's hear it. Exactly what features can you do in D3D that you can't do in OpenGL or even QuickDraw3D?
Honest question, folks. I don't see any advantage to D3D, other than that a bunch of paying but technically-clueless Windows gamers might see this as some great "feature." Or perhaps grants from Microsoft for making your engine platform-dependent (not a prudent move when that company's future is, at the moment, quite uncertain).
Slashdot Mirror
Your saying as an isp, if your getting an attack...i should have no right to choose that you are bad for my business or have the right to remove you from the systems that other clients you are damaging. that is absurd...
No, that is not what I am saying. What I am saying is that you have no right to blame a DoS target for damage to your business when clearly it is the ones performing the DoS who are doing all of the damage.
close to saying that your going to come into my house and live...pay me FAR little money then its worth...eat my food and throw a party that gets the cops called on me...then saying "you cannot kick me out" does that make ANY sence??
Not in the least. But again, I'm not saying that. Let's modify your scenario a bit. Let's say you take in a paying guest. Furthermore, let's say this guest is black (for reasons which will shortly become apparent). Said guest pays reasonable rates, is pleasant to be around, and doesn't do anything to bother anyone.
Now, let's say the Ku Klux Klan catches wind that you have this guest, and starts burning crosses on your lawn and harassing you for taking in a black boarder. Is that the fault of your guest? Of course not. It's the fault of the KKK. Should you kick the guest out? Nope; in addition to not being fair, it's also probably what the KKK wants you to do, so you'd just be accomplishing the goals of a group of scumbags for them. What should you do instead? Go after the KKK, who are really at fault. Call in the police on harassment charges (or worse, if they get worse than that). It's the only fair way to fix the problem. Sure, it's not as easy or expensive, but quick-fixes like kicking out the guest never work out in the end (what happens when your next guest runs afoul of a similar group of assholes through no fault of their own?)
And if you were an administrator, you would know how easy it is to find out who is getting attacked. as to how do you know if your getting attacked...i have the systems setup to page me on attack....
Ah, but that's not what I asked. You're tracing an attack to your network; that part is easy. But now, try figuring out who is actually being attacked. This is much harder, particularly when most of your customers are dialups and almost all have dynamic IP's.
how else would i know? ohhhh...the fact that my whole network is down because a dialup ran off at the mouth im sorry to see that your comments are so short sighted
Hold on here. You presume too much. How do you know that a dialup is being attacked? Remember, it's nearly impossible to reliably track a dialup user across connections unless you have a copy of the logs and account information used to log in (and if someone outside the ISP has a copy of those, then DoS attacks should be the least of your worries).
Furthermore, a DoS attack is nothing more than pings or SYN packets. Therefore you have no way of knowing why you are being attacked on that basis alone. You have no way of knowing that "a dialop ran off at the mouth"; to presume this is rather against the very ideals on which this country was formed.
meep meep
Is this some pathetic attempt to imitate MEEPT!!? If so, your technique needs a LOT of work.
The ISP shouldn't have any right to do this. I know all too well what this guy is going through. It's the classic example of the nerd who gets beaten up by a gang of bullies at school, but the school only suspends the nerd.
But there are a few things about this case that I don't understand. First, how did the ISP know to whom these attacks were targeted? Second, how did they ascertain why the attacks were taking place, and how did they figure this out (particularly after knowing who the target was) without also getting at least some idea of who was carrying out the attack?
I don't know. Something sounds fishy about this. Don't get me wrong; the ISP was wrong to suspend the account and the people who carried out the DoS should go to jail, but I think there's more to this than we know here (a link would have been quite helpful).
Think about it. Sane people don't tend to attack others for no reason at all. Sometimes, such as with racists (if they could be called "sane," that is), the reason is imagined rather than real, and it's a damn poor excuse for a reason, but it's a reason nonetheless. If these DoS'ers were simply attacking this guy for a religious site, I'd imagine we'd see a rash of DoS attacks on sites of that religion (again, information as to the religion in question would have been really helpful here). That doesn't seem to have been occurring. Something must have passed between the target and the attackers beforehand. Whether or not the target deliberately provoked the attackers I don't know. But something had to have happened over the course of this dialogue that made the attackers decide to carry out a DoS. Is that the target's fault? Perhaps, but it's not likely. All of this would have been so much easier if the original poster had provided more information, or any kind of link to more info on the case.
fact is, they chose the name "barbie" because they are trying to associate themselves with the good will created by the Barbie doll company.
Please, feel free to explain. Because I've looked over this story ten times and I have no idea whatsoever as to how these people are trying to "associate themselves with the good will created by the Barbie doll company."
How would Slashdotters like it if someone set up a "linux" site devoted to Microsoft Windows?
I'd imagine most of us would be pretty pissed off. But does this give us the right to censor them? Hardly. Free speech can be a pain sometimes, but it's the only fair way.
Should anyone be allowed to "redefine" what trademarks mean, may the richest man win?
Certainly not. But corporations try to do this all the time; witness the E-Toys vs. etoy fight.
You can't sell soda named Coca Cola and write on the can, "this is not real Coca Cola".
No. You could, however, make a drink called "NotCoke" or something along those lines.
Incidentally, look at the end of any television show made by Worldvision. I'm not sure if they make anything anymore, but there's still quite a bit of their stuff in syndication. Anyway, they do a little thing on the end of all their shows. Take a look at the text on the bottom of the screen. It starts something like "Worldvision is not affiliated with World Vision International..." Just something to think about, since this is obviously legal. Otherwise they wouldn't be doing it; either they simply would never have tried or they'd have been sued and stopped by the other World Vision (or, conversely, they'd have sued the other World Vision and forced them to change names).
And before you say "but Worldvision and World Vision are clearly different..." note that Mattel has never made any product whatsoever that they called "The Barbies."
The only real difference, as I said, is how the two licenses define "stealing code."
The GPL defines code theft as hoarding the code, making modifications and not releasing them as the original code was released to you. It grants you additional rights, but these are only means of preventing said theft.
Microsoft's EULA, by contrast, defines code theft as using it in any capacity other than a certain narrow range (the Win95 and 98 licenses don't even let you run servers on them for more than 5 users). It takes away rights, even those normally granted under typicl copyright, but again they're only a means to preventing you from "stealing" the code.
Both very different licenses, but still similar in many ways. Just opposite ends of the same pole.
The one that loses is the one that has the fewest users and a declining userbase. Since both DEs have their own API, a DE can lose the battle if nobody develops for that API. If most people start using KDE, then few people will bother to develop for GTK/GNOME, thus GNOME will have lost the battle.
Correct. However you conveniently ignore the fact that the reverse can also occur. Will it? I don't know. But it's about as likely as your scenario is.
Speed and resource usage. KDE 2.0 is by far faster than any version of GNOME, and takes a significant amount less memory.
Have you by any chance used Gnome 1.2? Didn't think so. Go use it. Then come back and say that again. Or don't, if you suddenly find that statement you made holds no water whatsoever.
This disparity will only widen in the future, since the general GNOME infrastructure will grow quite a bit in 2.0, while KDE's probably won't grow much beyond 2.0 since the basic functionality is in place.
You're some sort of psychic, I take it? It seems to me as though Gnome and KDE are making the exact same types of changes along their paths to 2.0. New file managers, component architectures, themeability on KDE's side, etc. Gnome's added a 1.2 step, but what's the harm in that?
Couple this with the fact that DCOP/KParts is far superior to Bonobo in terms of speed and resource usage (though maybe not as flexible in a distrubuted environment) KDE bowls GNOME over in the speed/resource usage deparment.
And you speak from... how much experience? As I thought, none. Go use it, then come back when you can make arguments and back them up. If you can't back up your arguments, you're just flaming.
KDE still has a much tighter integration between apps than GNOME does. It only takes a cursory look at Corel Linux to show what a little ingenuity and KDE can do to make Linux almost as friendly as Windows for the desktop user.
Ah, and thus we get to the whole crux of your argument, and the real reasn you're posting: "KDE is better because I'm a Corelite." Let's see your examples. I hve no doubt they probably exist, but where are they? You're certainly not too cooperative in pointing them out. Why not?
KDE has far better apps and much more developer support.
According to whom? KDE has StarOffice, but other than that every KDE app I've seen has a Gnome analog. For the most part, the revere is also true.
Sure the KDE libraries can be loaded, but with the increased bloat in both 2.0 level libraries, people will increasingly wish to not have to load the libraries twice.
Again, you conveniently ignore the fact that the people could just as well choose Gnome as KDE.
As such, they will stick to the DE that has the most/best apps.
Which is...? Your answer is conspicuously absent. As if you realized that since you have near-zero experience with Gnome, particularly recent versions, you just might be wrong. Use them, if only for a little while, so you can make a real comparison in that regard.
And please don't forget that even if you are correct, that means little. Remember, people stuck with Windows, which hardly has the "best" apps (the single possible exception being Excel, and both Linux DE's have spreadsheets which are coming along quite nicely in that regard).
KDE is more familer. Diehard Linuxites call it being too Windowy, but it is a big strength for the rest of us who grew up on the start menu and Explorer.
For better or for worse, Gnome is just as Windowsy as KDE. And both are getting even more Windowsy as the versions progress. It's quite sad, really. You'd think the Open-Source community could do better, interface-wise. It's been done. NeXT had a better GUI which was almost completely original. So did MacOS. Win9x and OSX are fusions of these two; Win9x took the worst of both and added some decidedly anticompetitive elements. It'll be interesting to see if OSX has it done right (I admit I don't like some of what I see, but I'll reserve judgement until I've actually used the thing).
These factors, coupled with increasing support for KDE from the business community will allow KDE to become the dominant Linux desktop.
Show me your "growing support from the business community." I don't see it. I saw StarOffice getting KDE integration back when it was still proprietary (versus the pseudo-proprietary Community-Source liense it's under now). Oh, and Corel bundles it with their system. That's all I ever saw. If there's more I'd be glad to hear about it, but I simply don't see it anywhere.
However they seem to think that putting the biggest, most memory hogging features into the DE will automatically make it better.
Give an example of a "big, memory-hogging" feature Gnome has that doesn't make it better.
Software size and quality seems to not be a very top priority, and software speed seems to be an even lower priority.
Depends. Everyone knows that Gnome 1.0 was released too early; I can't dispute that claim. It was underfeatured and unstable. The stability got fixed quite some time ago. 1.2 adds more of the features. Not all of them yet; a few are still in development (Bonobo and Nautilus, most notably).
Speed... well, I'm not so sure. A lot of that seems to have to do with Imlib. Everything that I've seen that replaced it wuth gdk-pixbuf seemed to get a big kick in the pants, speed-wise.
Of course, you can't expect phenomenal speed when you're drawing your entire GUI with pixmaps. That's a large reason of why Gnome feels so slow for a lot of people. Switch out Sawfish for Window Maker and the Pixmap themes for GTKStep and you've suddenly got a much faster desktop. I like Sawfish myself, and used it for several months, but as of this moment it just doesn't seem to be able to touch Window Maker for speed and stability, though Window Maker's icons do get in the way on a Gnome desktop. Things may have changed with the developmental gdk-pixbuf versions of Sawfish; I intend to try it out as soon as I manage to compile the thing.
Either way, this is what's wrong with the state of discussion on Slashdot. People don't debate anymore; they just flame. They'll spout drivel like this post's parent, which say a lot but prove nothing, and thus are no better than "Gnome sucks! No, KDE sux0rz! No way, Gnome 0wnZ KDE! No, KDE is ph4r m0r3 k-r4d @nd l33t! No, you must PH3AR GNOME!" What happened to people not jut making their point, but backing it up? OK, so Gnome sucks NINJA ass; why? OK, so maybe KDE sucks big fat naked petrified donkey dick; why? The point is, unless we get into real discussion, and point out the relative strengths and weaknesses of the two systems, neither one is going to truly improve. They'll just get stuck in an endless feature war, neither one getting the features users really want. They'll just try to one-up the other, and the end result won't be any better than Win2K.
There's a very large difference between copyrights and patents.
Copyright means, under normal circumstances, that you cannot lift the code outright and use it in your own stuff. It's possible that the book you mention does allow you to use the code in your own stuff. In fact, I'd put money on that assertion. Check the book out; it should say.
Patents are different. Patents protect more than a person's work. Let's say I one-up Amaon and write a "no-click system" for e-commerce (impossible with current technology, I know, but it makes for a handy example). You can't lift my code, because it's copyrighted. However, you cannot write any no-click system at all, due to the patent. This is simply unethical practice, as it's applied to discourage competition in the marketplace.
What is software? Software is code, in both object and source form. Code is copyrightable, and this is good; it lets you protect your work from those who would steal it, by whatever you define "stealing" to be (the GPL and Microsoft's standard EULA differ only in their definition of what stealing code is; other than this they do exactly the same thing).
But patents, copyrights, and trademarks were always meant to be mutually exclusive. Can you copyright a car? Hardly; that's a patent's job. Can you patent a specific word, perhaps "Microsoft"? Again, no; that's what a trademark is for. Why, then, should you be able to patent something which is copyrightable? There is no difference between that example and any of the others.
He's right. Anonymity does not equal privacy. But privacy implies anonymity, for without anonymity you can't do anything and have it be truly private.
Therefore anonymity is necessary, for to take it away is to also take away privacy, thus violating what he himself says is a right.
Would he prefer to do away with cash as well? Think about it: cash has no identifying features, except possibly fingerprints left on the money (and this can be dealt with as well). I can buy things with cash to make anonymous real-world transactions. Is this the same as wearing a ski mask while robbing a bank? I don't think so; in fact they're as close to opposites as I can think of.
For that matter, is wearing a ski mask equal to anonymity? Again, hardly. You can still get clues as to size, gender, race (ski masks don't hide all a person's skin, even on the face), and that's only visual cues. You also can get clues to a person's personality and education level through tone of voice and word choice. You can also get an idea of where the person comes from by voice, just by listening to regional accents (some can mask this more easily than others, though). Smell gives you general hygeine (does the person stink?) You can even get ideas as to recent and even not-so-recent injuries just from the way the person moves.
It takes a lot more than a ski mask to become anonymous. That's why anonymity is so precious; it's hard to obtain, and once earned it's something you've got to fight for. Corporations hate it, because it makes their sole goal in life (making money) that much harder; they have to resort to "inefficient" mass marketing rather than invading our privacy to use direct-marketing methods. Law enforcement hates it because it means they have to use fair, lawful means to apprehend criminals. Governments hate it because people you don't know about are harder to control; islands of chaos to an organization that is all about order.
All of those are reasons why we have to fight for our anonymity. Seagrams wants to declare war on the Internet (which, by attackng anonymity, is exactly what he is doing), that's fine. I say it's time to declare war on Seagrams, in the form of a complete boycott (don't even pirate their stuff; especially don't pirate their stuff). They say piracy's costing them billions, let's see what they see when they get a whiff of what really costs them money: unethical behavior.
I don't see this post as the work of a Troll. It was well thought out, incredibly funny and entertaining, where as Troll posts, well, aren't.
That's just it. This post was an old-school troll. Sadly, those are a dying breed. The new-schoolers that now get the undeserved title of "troll" were once called lameasses. Still should be, in my opinion. The FIRST POST!ers, NINJA-man, the porn guy, the goatse.cx linkers, and all of the current crop of naked and petrified guys, the JonKatz slanderers... there was a time when no one would have called them trolls. They were just lame assholes. No, the real trolls were different. The original naked and petrified guy, MEEPT!, the guy who writes the long poems... they're a dying breed (OOG seems to be the last of them; why couldn't he just do his posts in all lowercase if the lameness filter nails him for all caps)?
I long for the days when trolls were trolls, not puerile adolescents (assuming they've even reached that stage of development, which is doubtful at least mentally if not physically).
It seems to me that even if a post is off topic, if it has other redeeming qualities (such as being hilarious) it's worthwhile. After all, that's why there's the Funny moderation.
No, the Funny moderation is ther for posts which can be hilarious and ontopic. Things like that one response to the NSA adopting Linux ("The NSALinux Public License: we could give you the source, but then we'd have to kill you.")
And, oddly enough, since you've responded to a post that was off topic, isn't your post off topic as well? And mine is doubly so... just something to think about.
Actually, you're right. We should both be burning Karma here. But that doesn't change the fact that the parent is too.
It's so rare that we find a truly creative, and even insightful, troll. But it's still trolling. This is not the appropriate place for it, and it should be modded down as Offtopic (can anyone here possibly deny that this is offtopic?)
Perhaps we should set up a Troll Board for the trolls; every once in a while they do turn out a true gem, even if they're as close to the proverbial million monkeys on a million typewriters as we'll ever see in this world. On the Troll Board, the "regular" rules of Slashdot don't apply. But troll anywhere else, instant bitchslap. This gives the trolls a place to troll, while keeping Slashdot free for its intended purpose: technical discussion.
It's all well and good to present things in whatever context you want. But that doesn't change the fact that what happened, happened.
I could understand how Jews, whether from Germany or someplace else, would feel when they see people having the above mentioned flag presented. What possible interpretations of that presentation are there if not support for Nazism?
Plenty. The swastika existed long before Hitler twisted it (metaphorically and literally; the arms used to point the other way). Back then, it was a symbol of good fortune. I believe it was Hindu in origin, actually. Should such a symbol be blasted out of general sight simply because a madman perverted its meaning? I don't think so.
Every group out there has a symbol of some kind; it's almost a requirement. There are groups out there that would kill all men; do I get offended when I see their logos? Hardly. I'm more secure in myself than that. Some people aren't, I realize, but those people need help.
The Holocaust was a terrible period in history. One of the worst, from a moral perspective. It has also been over for fifty years. The Nazis have been scattered to the winds, existing only as small pockets of lunatics who have no chance of ever coming into power again. Far better to get the news of what they did spread as far and wide as possible, educate people about why it was so horrific. The saying goes that those who don't learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. Trite, but true. Look at the Balkans, where old hatreds were loosed after the Soviet Union's breakup, leading to Milosevic's "ethnic cleansing." In Rwanda, we've seen the same thing. This is because people haven't yet learned the lessons of the Holocaust. Hiding the truth won't teach them a damn thing. Particularly when it's the truth about people who did twist the truth at every opportunity; Hitler himself once said that "people will believe one big lie more readily than many little lies." It's how he managed to take and keep power; he twisted history and reality for his own ends. And that is what the governments of France and Germany are doing now. They're twisting history to make themselves look better, with no thought of the final effects.
I feel they are being quite heavy-handed about the whole thing, but as the copyright holder (i.e. its their music), they can treat it pretty much any way they want. If they think of it as a commodity, so what? They aren't breaking the law.
You are correct. But still, it's hypocritical to blast the fans for doing it when they do it too. The problem is, of course, that if they were truly honest about their intentions (making money) far fewer people would care. They have to paint themselves as starving artists who "just do it for the fans" when everyone with half a brain knows that isn't any more true than their accusations that Napster was intended to promote piracy.
So yeah, they have a right to sue pirates. Not under the arguments they're using for suing, but they have the right to sue anyway.
And thus another debate begins.
Look: copyrights are, in principle, good. The fact is, everyone has the right to share his stuff on his own terms, so long as said terms are fair. Copyright is a balancer in that. It defines some things which must be included for the terms to be considered fair (fair use, and expiration after a set time). But it also makes sure those terms are kept. It's used by the GPL to enforce its terms (I'll share this with you, but in return you have to share it too.)
This is why UCITA and DMCA are bad; they allow corporations to set unfair terms (no negative reviews, no reverse-engineering for compatibility, no right to see the terms before agreeing with them, etc.)
However, that's a double-edged sword. Look at the standard terms for a CD. OK, you've bought the CD. You can play it as much as you want. You have the full terms of fair use. You can even play it for your friends, so long as you don't try to make money off of it. You can even lend it to a friend. The only thing you can't do is make a copy of the music and give it to a friend (or give said friend the original and keep the copy for yourself). This seems fair enough; you paid your dues, they should have to pay theirs. Now, the price-fixing the RIAA does is highly unethical, and they need a DoJ slapdown in the worst way because of it, but that's another issue that this post isn't meant to address.
This said, I don't like what Metallica is doing. They certainly have the right to be suing over piracy, but the arguments they are using are extremely hypocritical (saying they're disgusted at the fans "treating their music as a commodity" when that's just what they do themselves). Let's face it, it's all about the money, and they ought to be honest about it. Of course, that'd be terrible PR, but it's still the truth.
As for RIAA, MPAA, etc, they're just plain scared. The Internet and computing technology, particularly as the infrastructure thereof matures, is going to render them obsolete. Right now, software exists that allows a person at home to theoretically make movies with special effects surpassing what many Hollywood films had not even ten years ago. Sound processing software exists for recording music, and CD burners and duplication firms exist to distribute it. With a decent Website and e-commerce software (some of which is Open-Source), I could publish and sell a book without ever going to a major publishing house.
That's why MPAA is so worked up. They aren't afraid of people using DeCSS to decrypt DVD's; they're afraid of people doing the opposite: making their own DVD's. Without going through them. It's why RIAA is so worked up; artists could use MP3 or related formats to distribute their music. Without going through them. In short, they're very quickly becoming obsolete, relics of the past which will die out as technology evolves and "natural" selection drives them out. They had a chance, once: had they embraced the technology early on they could well have enjoyed their dominant position even as smaller companies and individuals came into their own. But this can't happen; they sat on their hands for too long and now it may well be too late.
People have said in defense of piracy that "you can't stop the technology." They're not right to defend piracy with that argument, but the statement is still correct. You can't stop it. All you can do is embrace it. Problem is that RIAA pushed MP3 away for too long, and MPAA is doing the same with similar technologies. It may well no longer embrace back. And that's their fault, not that of the technology. The corporations had their chance. They blew it. And now they're going to reap what they've sown, and it won't taste good. I only pity the innocents who had nothing to do with it, but are going to feel the fallout because a few fatcat execs were too scared to take the plunge.
you must have no life to speak of that you take one website in the endless sea of websites so seriously, like a religion.
While I do admit to taking Slashdot seriously, I certainly don't consider it a religion.
I don't know you, nor would I want to. I can just picture you hitting refresh all day, hoping for that +5 insightful, and the day that Bruce Perens or someone "famous" responds to one of your posts, you feel all warm and fuzzy.
Oh, please; I'm not like that. I don't try for +5 Insightfuls; I get enough of them anyway. And as for "famous" respondents, I don't recall ever actually getting a famous one. I've gotten quite a bit of e-mail feedback, only two of which weren't positive: one being in response to my assertion that Napster was never intended for illegal purposes (quite an insightful post, though with some flawed logic), and one which was basically an e-mail troll.
I would advise that you get a life outside of Slashdot.
I have one, thank you very much. Quite a fulfilling one at that.
It is obvious that through all of the trouble that you have gone through with that "Taking back Slashdot", that you are in need of counseling. I am not trolling here, notice the lack of profanity or inflammatory language.
Oh, geez; I make one post about trolling and one sig linking to it, and all the trolls hate me for it. Gee, I wonder why?
And you're right; this isn't a troll. Nor is it a flame. And I do admit to using both profanity and inflammatory language in the parent of this post, to make a point.
I don't mean to be a killjoy. I like posts that can put a humorous bent on the topic at hand, and I'm one of OOG's biggest fans (where has he been lately anyway?) But there's a time and place for trolls, and it's not Slashdot. You want that, go to hotgrits.org; it runs Slash, parodies Slashdot, and actually has a few funny posts. And better yet, they belong there; it's a forum created just for the trolls. Not a technical discussion site where they only get in the way and annoy people.
You really think that. So it's so much worse to take fair and reasonable precautions to try improving the signal-to-noise ratio than to turn over Slashdot to a bunch of prepubescent morons who have nothing better to do with their pathetic little lives than spam a technical discussion site with puerile humor, attempts to change the subject, and just plain meaningless crap? Note, by the way, that not only are all of my examples from this discussion, but they are three of the first four posts to this discussion. And you say Slashdot isn't declining.
It seems the moderation has gotten way too politically correct.
Not that I've seen. I have yet to see an truly insightful, well-thought-out post that hasn't been modersted up quite high in the end. And no, I haven't agreed with all of them. No, they haven't all been politically correct (hell, many of the posts I do couldn't be called politically correct).
The quality of posts that get moderated up to +5 (in particular +5 funny) is really getting more and more lame.
You mean they haven't all been tasteless crap. Boo hoo hoo.
It's not the trolls' fault, it's the moderation system.
Oh, yeah. The moderators force the trolls to troll. Like we tie the trolls up, guard then with NINJAS and torture them with pr0n of Natalie Portman naked and petrified, and threaten to pour steaming hot grits down their pants if they don't troll. Suuuuuuuuuuuuuure.
the "1984 version" of Slashdot that you get at high thresholds is truly bland. Personally, I would rather read some truly amusing posts and take my chances with being offended or whatever you think the post is going to do to me.
What do you want, a humor site? Go here if you want that. Or better yet, go here.
Some of those posts obviously took some effort and creativity too... they deserve some recognition.
I know of only one troll that could possibly have taken any effort or creativity: the original naked and petrified post. The rest are just idiotic drivel, badly-written porn (I could write better stories than that, about the same subject matter, without any pr0n elements, in ten minutes), or slander (libel?) against JonKatz.
And even with that troll, it wasn't in the appropriate place. There is a time and a place for everything, even for trolls. Slashdot ain't it.
I think everyone should be able to vote on a post... let the score reflect the total of all votes applied to it. people can judge it by that and choose to ignore it or not, as they see fit.
We've got that already. It's called moderation. It picks people at random, yes, and it doesn't let known troublemakers mod, but it's quite fair.
I think free-speech has all but vanished on this site.
Free speech vanishing? Hardly. You can still say whatever you want. And we can also tell you to go fuck yourself. You have the fundamental rights to speak, to hear, and to not hear, but you have no fundamental right to be heard. You are given that right when someone listens to you. And if no one wants to listen, you can still prattle on all you want, while we simply build and move around you. But don't scream censorship when no one wants to hear you. That's just because we all think it's bullshit. And if we all think it's bullshit, there's a very large probability that it is.
"Bitchslapping," and "lameness filtering" ARE interfering with the communications of Slashdot's users.
Never heard these terms mentioned in connection with this site before. What is this "bitch-slapping" and "lameness filtering," as defined by Slashdot?
I've certainly never seen my communications interrupted or interfered with. Nor anyone else's.
Rob Malda almost seems like he's in a panic. He will do anything to eliminate the "trolling"... no matter how it may interfere with the operations of the site.
But does it interfere with this site's operations? Absolutely not. I have yet to see any moderation-related change which has interfered with actual technical discussion on Slashdot. Flamers, trolls, and spammers get filtered down (and I, like you, browse at -1 just to make certain of this), yes. But actual intelligent discussion? Hardly.
Is this Malda's site? Sure is. Will it generate any income when people no longer read it? Nope.
And you think Slashdot's readership is declining? Not that I've seen. And the people I do see leaving are all blaming it on trolls, not moderation.
Rob, you'd better wake up and smell the coffee... take an objective look at what moderation is doing. It's not good.
Maybe, maybe not. But regardless, it's better than the alternative: a site on which technical discussion can no lnger take place because it's been overrun by assholes.
I can't believe Russel wouldn't get it. But he doesn't. Still thinking in the one-realm system.
Look. Our would could be considered to be split into two realms: the physical and the nonphysical. Each realm (and, by extension, the things in it) play by their own sets of rules, and the rules from one realm don't apply in the other. One property of the physical realm is that physical objects can contain representations of nonphysical objects, while the reverse isn't really true. A book, for example, is clearly a physical object, while a story is not physical. But a book can contain a written representation of a story, while a story can't really contain a book (OK, so a book can appear from a story, but try taking any book from your bookshelf and actually putting that book into a story; it doesn't hold).
Why is this important? Let's take the most basic physical economic law: supply and demand. According to this, supply is inversely proportional to demand. Supply goes up, demand goes down. Supply goes down, demand goes up. Simple, no?
Now, let's apply this to any nonphysical object; a piece of software is a handy example, but a song or a story will do. Supply is infinite. Nonphysical objects are simply that way; subtract 1 from 1 and you still have 1. However, demand is quite clearly nonzero; look at how many people use software or listen to music or enjoy stories. This violates one of the founding principles of modern economics.
As long as these nonphysical objects are constrained to physical containers, you're in the free and clear with using the physical system of economics. You have to muddy the waters a bit with various types of law, but it's still quite doable. Look at how many books and CD's are sold today and you can see that it's viable. For the time being, at least.
But with the rise of the Internet, nonphysical things are no longer constrained to physical representations. I no longer need the book to tell the story; if I write one I can publish it myself. If I make music, I no longer need the CD, record, tape, or what have you. If I write software, I no longer need the media for it. So the laws of physical economics no longer apply.
Does this mean that nonphysical things can no longer be sold? Of course not. It does mean that you can't use physical economics for these things; it just doesn't work that way. It takes a "new" type of economics, non-physical economics. The laws are out there, waiting to be discovered. Of course they haven't been discovered yet; there's never been a need for them, so no one has thought about them. But now that it's possible to deal with nonphysical things in an entirely nonphysical way, we do need these.
Physical economics will always be there, of course. Human beings are inherently physical, and we need many physical things to sustain our existence, so that system of economics is not going anywhere. But to try applying those laws where they do not apply is outright ridiculous.
Is the "Free Software" system right? It might be. Then again, it might not; it's only one approach to the problem. It's also misinterpreted a lot, thanks to Richard Stallman's hideously poor word choice when he named the movement; it connotes that software cannot be sold when he in fact has no objections to the selling of software at all. He wouldn't do it himself, but doesn't consider it immoral. Read the GNU Manifesto again if you got the impression that he thinks all software should cost nothing.
Is the current "proprietary" system right? Probably not. While it worked well before the rise of the Internet, it's now starting a downward spiral, thanks to new systems (such as Open-Source) and what is termed "piracy" under the physical system (the very mechanics of which are impossible under the physical system anyway).
But noth could be wrong. Perhaps a new economic paradigm will rise. I simply don't know. Nor, really, does anybody, because no one's figured out how to deal with nonphysical economics yet. Given time it'll straighten itself out. But I doubt it will come all that coon, and until it does the bickering will continue with no real progress being made.
However, with the availability of Photoshop, Lightwave/3D Studio (which do not run on Macs), etc. for the PC has rendered (no pun intended) the Mac inferior.
Strange. Very strange indeed. I know where I can get all of these for MacOS.
With the selection of PC 3D cards being far superior to that of Mac cards, I do not see the Mac regaining much market share in the professional graphics market.
You know nothing about graphics, apparently. 3D cards have absolutely nothing to do with professional 3D graphics. Professional 3D graphics use raytracing renderers, which deliver the best quality you can get but are very slow. 3D cards use scanline renderers, which are much faster but give lesser quality (however, the quality is still easily enough for games). But because that's not used in professional 3D graphics, the fastest 3D card in the world makes no difference at all for pro stuff.
By building an Intel/AMD machine out of used/new parts that I can buy on Ebay, I can build a dual PIII Xeon for a fraction of what the high end Macs are selling for.
And you'll get what you pay for: questionable hardware reliability and zero support. Building one's own computer is a very effective cost-cutting measure, but there are things that really are better left to the pros even if they are doable by amateurs.
The fact is that the performance of a comparably priced Intel/AMD machine will almost always be superior to that of the Mac.
Not true in the least. To get the performance of a high-end Mac, you need a high-end PC. Further, the things you'll require as add-ons, and let's not forget the added costs in time when it comes to setup, render them much more expensive in the end. You don't see the cost right away, of course, because the "sticker price" is lower.
It should also be noted that the average useful life of a Mac is four years (and personally, most of the Macs I've seen tend to last seven). The average useful life of a PC is only two. So in the time you use a single Mac, you'll have on average bought two, and often three, PC's. Macs may be more expensive, but they aren't that much more so.
That is the benefit of having an open system architecture.
Ah, but there are many disadvantages also. Hardware is very different from software; openness doesn't have the same benefits and drawbacks as it does with software. Point one: the multiplicity of useless drivers. If I want to use a video card in a Mac, I plug it in and it works. Ditto for projectors, input devices, et cetera, even when made by many different companies. You can't do that in any other OS I know. USB was a step in the right direction, but it's still not enough. This is the disadvantage from having a too-open platform, one where no standards were ever defined.
Yes, having an open hardware platform has its advantages. But there are some very severe disadvantages also, ones which I don't believe the advantages outweigh, as they do for software. Just think, for a moment, at the Linux Kernel. The source download not tops twelve megabytes, most of it drivers. With only a little standards support, the driver set could have been streamlined, probably cutting the sive of the download by at least a third if not by half, with all the variety of devices we see today.
And let's not even go into IRQ's and such. That was simply an idea gone wrong, which Apple fixed in their PCI implementation.
You know, you're right. Macs' sticker prices are higher than those of PC's. But the fact is, they're better hardware, and they're worth more. I'd be willing to bet that well over 95% of the people who gripe over the Macs' price point have never even owned one, and it's probably closer to 99%. Once you've owned one, you understand. It really is worth the money.
OK, look. I'm a conservative, just as you seem to be. The reason I don't mention the Lunatic Liberal Left is that really, they're working for the same goals as the Radical Religious Right. The only difference is that the left either doesn't know it, or they've over-rationalized it.
But if you'll notice, the values they espouse are the same as the ones the Radical Religious Right espouses. Look at the criteria they want to use for censorship; they're basically identical. The right wants to "save" America, while the left wants to "save" the children; what's the difference? They may argue on particulars, but they're working for the same general thing. At least the right is open about it, if you could call that a Good Thing, which is why I mentioned them.
Besides, while I don't like either group, I have a particular beef with the right. Among other things, it's megalomaniac loonies like them that give my religion a bad name, and I'm tired of being feared simply because of the diety I choose to worship.
No one's got it right. Not one nation there has a truly intelligent view.
Look at the corporate-run United States. We have our free speech (much to the Radical Religious Right's chagrin) but no right to privacy.
Then check out Europe. Most of the nations there view privacy as a fundamental right, but can and do restrict free speech. Sure, it's against things like racism, but it's still wrong to censor anything, because the second one voice is silenced it sets a precedent by which all other voices are by definition jeopardized.
France is no more intelligent than the US in that regard. Sure, they have different views on nudity (whereas many Americans consider all nudity to be pr0n, it takes more than that to be consdered pornographic just about anywhere else). But they do ban other forms of speech. Yes, hate speech is a terrible thing. I have the distinct displeasure of living near a whole family of racists, so I know how bad it can get. But if no one has the right to censor me, then no one has the right to censor them either. And yes, it is annoying to have to put up with them (while I might not be the target of their race hate, I am still distrusted on religious grounds). But it's the only fair way.
The Declaration lists "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" as inalienable rights. Note that happiness is not a right, only the pursuit of it is. In other words, you certainly have the right to try to be happy. But if you fail, your rights haven't been violated just because you aren't happy. This is something we as Americans seem to forget often; I'm guilty of it sometimes too. But the fact is, even in a truly fair system we're all different people, so we all have to put up with crap from others at some point.
I'm sure I'll run up against the Radical Religious Right and the Terminally Insecure, I mean Politically Correct, for this. But if we're going to be fair, and the people do want fairness, then no censorship can be allowed at all. Privacy must be inviolable without a warrant issued by a court of law. Intellecctual property must be maintained, but so must fair use of that property.
And in the end, some things will result from this that people won't like. You might run across something that offends you, or -God forbid- you might have to do your job as a parent and keep your own eyes on your own kids. Law enforcement, restricted again by law to using only the means they're legally allowed to use anyway by the Constitution, probably won't be as good at catching The Bad Guy. Piracy will still take place. But it is worth it, because the alternative is worse: a Big Brother state with mandatory pay-per-use media across all channels, perpetual copyrights and patents, and no concept of fair use whatsoever.
You can't invent more CPU speed by dedicating one machine to filtering packets. The same amount of CPU speed could be used to serve pages.
Quite true, however by dedicating one machine to security you free up the others to serve pages. Remember, Linux is multitasking, so every app running slows down the others a little bit. By freeing the page-servers themselves from having to worry about security, you let them do their task more efficiently. That speeds up the process more than simply throwing more servers at the problem.
You can't create CPU speed out of thin air, no. But you can make the process more efficient and speed things up that way.
...but I know you're going to be pissed off when you see this was modded to Flamebait and accuse Slashdot of censorship when this is simply not the case. So let me tell you why I agree with the moderators (obviously, thanks to the silly limitation on modding and posting in the same thread, I couldn't have modded it myself).
First, you exaggerate. Yes, Slashdot has problems every once in a while, as it moves to a new server. Every program I've seen has problems like this when you move the program. Note that I'm talking about moving as opposed to a simple reinstall. I'm talking about yanking a hard drive and slapping it into another machine, which is probably at least analogous to what the Slashdot guys did if not the exact thing. And with sites like this, that is necessary if you want to keep the archives intact.
Second, you don't cite a single example of how Slashdot doesn't "work." We all know examples, yes, such as when moving to a new server. But you never give any examples. You only throw an argument out there without supporting it. No matter what the argument is, that's a flame.
Third, you talk about "Slashdot's inability to scale to high loads." I'm assuming you're talking about the distributed Denial-of-Service attack Slashdot has been undergoing recently. I would hardly fault Slashdot for crumbling under such an attack; every site out there crumbles just as badly. That's how powerful these attacks really are.
Fourth, you don't know what you're arguing about; You talk about "Slashdot's unmaintainable PEARL code." You have obviously never even read the code. How do I know this? You don't even seem to know what Perl is, otherwise you would have at the absolute least spelled and capitalized it right. Even had you read the code, with no knowledge of Perl you would be in no position to decide whether or not it was unmaintainable. Spouting arguments with obviously no knowledge of what you're talking about is another characteristic of flames.
While we're at it, you talk about a product's "stability and performance" (I can only assume you meant the Forums software) but never cite numbers. Last I checked, Forums was less stable than Slashdot. It should also be known that Slashdot was proprietary, or essentially proprietary thanks to releases that didn't keep up with updates, for a long time, so it hasn't had the benefits of being Open-Source for all that long.
And finally, you're offtopic. The discussion here is about Forums, not Slash. If you want to talk about Slash, use the Slashdot-centric forums where they talk about this, or better yet go to Slashcode.org and talk about it there.
So please, spare us the flames, and don't get pissed off when they're modded down.
Aw, hasoo got da snifoos cause da big nasty Swashdotter is pwoving you wong?
Honestly, you needn't be so defensive or hostile.
You see, every goddamned PC in the world also has OpenGL in some form or another. Well, not every goddamned PC in the world, but as many as support D3D (not every goddamned PC is the words is brainless enough to "upgrade" every day; well over a third of the goddamned Wintel PC's out there still use Win3.1). And OpenGL has the backing of a lot more companies than Microsoft alone.
As for fucknuts who think Linux is a real OS and insist on using it, I assure you that there are more than two or three of us, and at least our OS has never been called -and subsequently proven to be- a threat to national security (check the latest article at www.infowarrior.org to see what I'm talking about). Surely an OS of such low quality as to be called a threat to national security could not possibly be called a real OS. Besides which, there are a lot of us fucknuts out there who don't use Linux or Windows.
By the way, you call me "you stupid fuck" and "you goddamned fuck." Please make up your mind; which kind of fuck am I? It's a lot easier to understand where you're coming from if I can figure out precisely which what sort of fuck you are accusing me of being.
According to the GPL's preamble, any patented code used in GPL'd code must be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all. Therefore, paradoxically enough, patents which are licensed only to GPL users may in fact violate the GPL.
I could be wrong; this is only in the preamble, rather than the body of the license proper (in fact, because of this, I am probably wrong). But it's something to think about. This does run somewhat counter to the GPL's philosophy, and that's not something which should just be ignored.
However, I do see what the patent holder is trying to do here. And I think it's good that finally we have some patents usable only in Open-Source software. I would make it so that the code is usable to anyone so long as the code was under any license which meets the OSD, but this is a good start.
Sure, you can write your own proprietary engine to do exactly what you want it to do. And it will only take you three times as long to bring that to market.
Why? Direct3D is not a gaming engine. It's only a renderer. If you're going to talk about engines, the Unreal engine is proprietary. So is the Quake engine. So are all other 3D gaming engines out there, with the possible exception of Crystal Space.
And D3D is proprietary all the same. OpenGL is porderline; you can get non-proprietary implementations but the standard itself is proprietary. Ditto for QD3D.
Thats three times the salary, three times the rent, three times all expenses for the same profit only to have the chance to get that other 15% of the market. The math says no.
Your logic says no, not the math. This doesn't even work, since you assumed D3D was a gaming engine, which it is not. So your math is completely invalid anyway, because the premise was incorrect.
Your math is incorrect anyway. Increasing the marker 15% increases revenue, so the chances of the profit being the same are nil. Your multiplier of 3 is also laughably huge.
Let me give you an example using the Quake3 codebase. Now, as we all know, Quake3 consists of several million lines of code. I don't know the exact number, but let's take a conservative estimate of two million. How much of that is platform specific? According to Id, less than ten thousand lines. That's not even one percent of the codebase.
So let's look at the real numbers. Design your app right, increase your costs and such by less than one percent, and consequently open up an extra 15% of a market which is showing signs of shifting away from the 85% you would have had otherwise? This seems like a very wise maneuver to me.
But whenever I'm given the choice of say writing an object oriented wrapper for a database or just using something that already exists, I'm going to to just use that which already exists. Sure we could write our own database, but the cost associated with writing a proprietary database is phenomenal when I can pay someone else who has already developed, tested, and put into actual use their own database.
Dammit, get it through your head: D3D is not a gaming engine. The Unreal engine is proprietary, and will remain so regardless of whether or not it is tied to one renderer (unless of course you know something I don't about possible Epic plans to Open-Source the Unreal engine; last I heard there were none whatsoever).
Now instead of having 30 developers and 2 years to get this application done, we only need 5 developers and 2 months. Thats serious numbers.
Laughable, though, since you have no idea what you're talking about anyway. D3D is a renderer, not an engine. It is quite possible to uncouple an engine from its renderer, and do so in such a way that you can implement every single feature present with one renderer in another. The advantages cannot be denied. Portability, Support for a broader range of devices, adaptability to a changing marketplace (what happens if for some reason D3D suddenly falls out of favor? If you went with D3D you're screwed). The ability to take better advantage of each possible device (one card does GL better than D3D? You're out of luck on a renderer-dependent engine).
Honestly, it surprises me how many people here are actually coders and still don't get it. This math is not difficult; all it takes is a willingness to design a program correctly. Sure, you can't take shortcuts that way, but in the end the payoffs are greater.
Allow me to anwser this - they could make a product people actually want.
And this cannot be done in OpenGL or QD3D? Please, explain why. Because from a programmer's perspective, I don't see it.
You claim that by using D3D, you can develop features on Windows that would not be possible on Linux or Mac.
I don't believe that. No matter the API, 3D is 3D. So let's hear it. Exactly what features can you do in D3D that you can't do in OpenGL or even QuickDraw3D?
Honest question, folks. I don't see any advantage to D3D, other than that a bunch of paying but technically-clueless Windows gamers might see this as some great "feature." Or perhaps grants from Microsoft for making your engine platform-dependent (not a prudent move when that company's future is, at the moment, quite uncertain).