I'm quite glad to see people (RH included) earn a living by turning people on to Linux without trampling the rights of the developers. What makes me sizzle is the number of times someone asks for help understanding a problem and gets a reply like "download soandso.rpm and see if that fixes it". There are two problems here:
The notion that everyone runs Red Hat, or that everyone has rpm (or knows where to get rpm, or what rpm will do to his system, or what installing random upgrades from some other distro will do to his system) is false and annoying.
The notion that you fix problems by slapping in one upgrade after another until something works is both dangerous and esthetically offensive. I want to understand the problem and fix it, not just throw a rug over it. "Run the wizard and be happy" is the MS way, not my way.
Whatever you want to make of it, the fact is that RH has garnered a large share of the distro market. Whenever that happens, some people will just give up thinking and assume that vendor=market. I hope that RH does nothing to foster this view, but some will take it anyway and that is what bugs me.
*sigh* Another case of confusion over what "support" means. Probably the telco is really saying, "we're not ready to hold your hand if Netscape crashes or you can't figure out which button to push to collect your email, if you use Linux." But, who cares about that? Just sell me bandwidth, demonstrate that your equipment is functional, and get out of my house so *I* can set my machine up. If you can get the bits onto my LAN I can get them off again.
Telcos have had this problem for years, that they're fixated on controlling the whole communication process when they've got scads of customers who just want bandwidth and *prefer* to handle everything above Layer 1 themselves.
The point is that with X you get a choice, and with MS Windows you don't. If my application works better one way and your application works better the other way, we can both be happy.
Precisely. One powerful reason for choosing Linux (or *BSD or Solaris or VMS or...) is that it is *not* MS Windows and doesn't work the same way. I chose these alternatives because they work *my* way. I do not work Bill's way, and I never will.
After all, if I like MS Windows, why would I want another one? And if I DISlike MS Windows, why would I want another one?
Just as owning a hammer doesn't make one a carpenter, having a automagical page builder doesn't make one a graphic designer -- at least, not a competent one, judging by far too many ugly, painful, or downright illegible pages I've seen.
Yeah. I'm tired of losing hours of work either cleaning up the mess, or just plowing through all the warnings, etc. when a nasty virus hits. I'm tired of spending time maintaining virus scanning software which gives nothing that anyone would value if only everybody would spend his time doing useful things instead of wondering what he can break next.
And if some vandal accidentally sprayed his name on the side of a building, don't you think the police would grab him just as eagerly? PR is PR. Everybody needs to be seen doing a good job.
Down with vandalism, whether virtual or physical. Go stuff up your own computers, or learn how to do something worth having.
Looks like he found Linux' two strongest points: there's no central point of screwups ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hcontrol, and it's not hidden under a heaving mound of features.
I often but not always read his articles, and I have to say there's usually something in them worth my time. Even if I disagree, it's usually something worth the trouble of figuring out *why* I disagree.
As far as various authors talking about themselves a lot -- they say you should write about what you know, and most of us know more about ourselves than anything else. If done well, sound-bite biography can be charming, or at least amusing -- see Isaac Asimov's anthologies, where he talks briefly about how each story came to be and what was happening in his life that made him think that way. Introspection and reminiscence are valid and useful sources of raw material for writing. If some of us find that some writers' use of these sources gets in the way of what we think the story ought to be, then maybe we misunderstood the story. Or maybe constructive criticism will help the writer to a more mature style.
Let the man write. None of us is forced to read it.
Gee, our printers all speak SNMP. We can get all the info we want. If we want to switch trays, we prefix the job with the right PCL command and it's done.
Our JetDirect cards all speak PAP, LPR, NCP, and Telnet -- there's nothing around here that can't hit 'em.
I've still got the Slackware 1.2 (yes, one point two) disk set I made when I first got serious about Linux. In fact that's what my systems run. Of course I've replaced about 80% of the binaries by now. (Anybody know where to find sources for 'which'?)
Slashdot Mirror
- The notion that everyone runs Red Hat, or that everyone has rpm (or knows where to get rpm, or what rpm will do to his system, or what installing random upgrades from some other distro will do to his system) is false and annoying.
- The notion that you fix problems by slapping in one upgrade after another until something works is both dangerous and esthetically offensive. I want to understand the problem and fix it, not just throw a rug over it. "Run the wizard and be happy" is the MS way, not my way.
Whatever you want to make of it, the fact is that RH has garnered a large share of the distro market. Whenever that happens, some people will just give up thinking and assume that vendor=market. I hope that RH does nothing to foster this view, but some will take it anyway and that is what bugs me.*sigh* Another case of confusion over what "support" means. Probably the telco is really saying, "we're not ready to hold your hand if Netscape crashes or you can't figure out which button to push to collect your email, if you use Linux." But, who cares about that? Just sell me bandwidth, demonstrate that your equipment is functional, and get out of my house so *I* can set my machine up. If you can get the bits onto my LAN I can get them off again.
Telcos have had this problem for years, that they're fixated on controlling the whole communication process when they've got scads of customers who just want bandwidth and *prefer* to handle everything above Layer 1 themselves.
>The two big problems to be resolved are
Already well understood:
> 1) how do you get an object inside a warp bubble?
Wander into Main Engineering while your genius son is tinkering with the engines.
> 2) What happens to the object when the warp bubble collapses?
People start disappearing and nobody remembers that they ever existed.
(For the humor-impaired: ST:TNG "Remember Me")
The point is that with X you get a choice, and with MS Windows you don't. If my application works better one way and your application works better the other way, we can both be happy.
Precisely. One powerful reason for choosing Linux (or *BSD or Solaris or VMS or...) is that it is *not* MS Windows and doesn't work the same way. I chose these alternatives because they work *my* way. I do not work Bill's way, and I never will.
After all, if I like MS Windows, why would I want another one? And if I DISlike MS Windows, why would I want another one?
(Sorry, hit the wrong key)
Just as owning a hammer doesn't make one a carpenter, having a automagical page builder doesn't make one a graphic designer -- at least, not a competent one, judging by far too many ugly, painful, or downright illegible pages I've seen.
Yeah. I'm tired of losing hours of work either cleaning up the mess, or just plowing through all the warnings, etc. when a nasty virus hits. I'm tired of spending time maintaining virus scanning software which gives nothing that anyone would value if only everybody would spend his time doing useful things instead of wondering what he can break next.
And if some vandal accidentally sprayed his name on the side of a building, don't you think the police would grab him just as eagerly? PR is PR. Everybody needs to be seen doing a good job.
Down with vandalism, whether virtual or physical. Go stuff up your own computers, or learn how to do something worth having.
Looks like he found Linux' two strongest points: there's no central point of screwups ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hcontrol, and it's not hidden under a heaving mound of features.
I often but not always read his articles, and I have to say there's usually something in them worth my time. Even if I disagree, it's usually something worth the trouble of figuring out *why* I disagree.
As far as various authors talking about themselves a lot -- they say you should write about what you know, and most of us know more about ourselves than anything else. If done well, sound-bite biography can be charming, or at least amusing -- see Isaac Asimov's anthologies, where he talks briefly about how each story came to be and what was happening in his life that made him think that way. Introspection and reminiscence are valid and useful sources of raw material for writing. If some of us find that some writers' use of these sources gets in the way of what we think the story ought to be, then maybe we misunderstood the story. Or maybe constructive criticism will help the writer to a more mature style.
Let the man write. None of us is forced to read it.
Gee, our printers all speak SNMP. We can get all the info we want. If we want to switch trays, we prefix the job with the right PCL command and it's done.
Our JetDirect cards all speak PAP, LPR, NCP, and Telnet -- there's nothing around here that can't hit 'em.
I've still got the Slackware 1.2 (yes, one point two) disk set I made when I first got serious about Linux. In fact that's what my systems run. Of course I've replaced about 80% of the binaries by now. (Anybody know where to find sources for 'which'?)
Sorry, Adolf -- Ferdinand Porsche created the Volkswagen; you just got the German people to pay for it.