Define troll! On slashdot, anyone who deviates from the pro-linux anti-copyright line is immediately labelled as a troll.
I certainly don't agree with the Linix bigots or the 'information-wants-to-be-free-so-i-can-steal-as-ma ny-cds-and-rip-them-to-mp3-without-paying' brigade.
So I guess in the 'slashdot' sense of the word I am a troll. However, in the Bhuddist sense, I am a teacher, pointing the student toward enlightenment which cannot be described, only experienced.
HOW DUMB DO YOU WANT AMRICANS TO BECOME ?
As if we are not dumb enough already. I don't have the attention span for much more of this crap. That's why I get my news on 'culture' from indymedia.
If I want to talk about cultural issues, I come here, or go to adequacy.org. Or at least I used to until some idiots decided it would be a good idea to DDOS it.
Are you trolling ? If so, then I apologise for biting.
The simple fact of the matter is, that Linux is for 'rocket scientist' types, and geeks. The ordinary man in the street simply cannot get past the first hurdle of Linux usage.
The moment you try to explaing 'fdisk' and 'lilo' to a non-technical user they run screaming back to their cosy Microsoft world.
But I think that's a good thing. I've been using Linux for years and years now, I switched from NetBSD 0.8 (which gives you a clue how long). I do not like the idea that Linux is dumbing itself down to compete with Windows.
I like my unix to look like UNIX dammit. That means 9 xterms, and tvtwm. Nothing more.
I mean, sure ogg vorbis is not encumbered by patents, and that is surely a good thing. But the whole purpose of MP3, Ogg Vorbis, ATRAC and all these other digital music compression algorithms is to make it easier/more cost effective for people to steal the music they want, rather than pay for it.
I am fed up to the back teeth of these criminal scum who ruthlessly and without any conscience whatsoever steal music and then brag about it on IRC.
Last week some guy was saying how he had about 40 Gigabytes of 'ripped' MP3s on his machine. By my calculations (assume a CD cost $14) that means he has stolen the equivalent of about $30000.
If he stole that from a bank he would quite rightly be in prison. Are we supposed to think it is a lesser crime, simply because he used a computer ?
You know, I've always disliked chess players. They think they're so goddamned smart simply because they memorized a few good openings, or because they can beat most people they know.
I used to be on my school chess team, and without doubt they were the most poorly-socialized group of people I have ever met (and I am in several Linux user groups!).
Scientists have proved that all it takes to be a good chess player is a good memory. So why do we treat these people as though playing chess is a sign of intelligence ?
If you ask me, its stupid. I'd rather play Magic - The Gathering, or D&D 3rd edition, both of which demand something chess players lack - an imagination. Tell me I'm wrong.
Mac fans should defect.
on
Mac Rants
·
· Score: 0, Troll
After all, it is very easy to build your own PC these days. Controversial news and discussion site adequacy.org has a story on its front page which describes how even the least tech-savvy person in the world can easily build their own dream PC.
And he makes it briefly, and in a semi-coherent fashion! This is a first. Been taking that journalism 101 course Jon ?
These kids, says Lewis, are destroying the "old priesthoods" of lawyers, investment gurus, academics and CEO's. Technology has "put afterburners on the egalitarian notion that anyone-can-do-anything, by enabling pretty much anyone to try anything -- especially in fields in which 'expertise' had always been a dubious proposition.
I kind of disagreee. There have always been child prodigies, they have always been discriminated against. But the idea that there is a new generation of hyper-smart teenagers just does not cut it with me.
For example, the controversial news and discussion site adequacy.org recently ran an article explaining how to build your own PC. It was instantly spammed and crapflooded by 15 year olds claiming they knew better than the adequacy expert. Which is fine, except that they didn't.
You know, you are absolutely right. You could even allow the humans to have more players on the pitch to counterbalance the superhuman forces of the robots. This idea has potential.
Here in England, professional soccer players often earn in excess of 50000GBP per week. Thats around $75000 a week.
Imagine if we could create a race of perfect robotic soccer players. It could render the human players obsolete.
It would be more entertaining to watch the robot players (especially if they have flamethrowers like on robot wars).
We could change the rules to make it more interesting, and all that money we now spend on inflated wages for soccer players could go to a worthy cause, like helping the homeless, or fighting gun crime in inner city areas.
I mean, its like, wherever you look, the same patterns pop up. At the microscopic level, or the macroscopic level. Amazing
Its this sort of technical link that keeps me coming back to slashdot, even though its not as good as it used to be, and it no longer seems to attract the 31337 intelligent posters of the good old days.
Oh well, nothing lasts forever.
Re:Does business always have to be this way ?
on
Dan Gillmor on WinXP
·
· Score: 1
I find it highly amusing that any pro-Microsoft view on slashdot is instantly marked as 'troll'. They really cannot handle alternative viewpoints here, can they ?
But on your point about the best product not winning, I think you need to look at it from another perspective. The product that succeeds in the marketplace is by definition the best product.
I think this is where slashdot readers go wrong. They are so full of indignant moral outrage, they cannot see the fact that for most Americans, Microsoft make the best software.
Does business always have to be this way ?
on
Dan Gillmor on WinXP
·
· Score: 1, Interesting
I am sick of businesses cluttering up the legal system with their petty squabbles.
If there is an OS out there that is actually better than XP, let it fight it out in the marketplace. This is the USA after all.
I hate microsoft products, but I use them all the time. This is because at this moment in the development of the information revolution, they are the best tools for the job.
If there is a better alternative, I am sure American consumers will vote with their wallets as they always have done.
Surely the last thing we need is for the lawyers($$$) to get involved ?
Did you know that JonKatz has actually been pre-emptively BANNED by the adequacy.org editors ?
I think that is the difference between crapflooder-friendly sites with no censorship, such as the ones you refer to, and high-quality editied sites like adequacy.org
Except that this is the least of your worries since loads of weapons grade plutonium has already been stolen from Russia.
My guess is that anyone wanting to steal plutonium to make nuclear missiles is likely a responsible organization (e.g. a government) since few others have the resources to manufacture a nuclear device.
Interestingly enough the controversial website adequacy.org has not addressed this subject yet.
Of course Micro$oft will do whatever it takes to try and get as much of the ruling overturned as it can. And even now, by dropping java, and developing its dotNet framework, it is laughing in the faces of the judicial system.
But this is kkkorporate Amerikkka we are dealing with, so it should come as no surprise.
Check out the Internet's most controversial website: adeqacy.org. Like a breath of fresh air, and trolling is not tolerated!!
The head on over to adequacy.org - the Internet's first troll-free discussion site.
adequacy.org maintains its 'troll-free' reputation by riding roughshod over the constitutional rights of its readership, censoring them whenever they step over some imaginary line.
I imagine Michael Sims would be very welcome there.
In fact this is what I meant. You pre load all the.dlls or.sos or whatever and just have them sit around. Hell you could do it predictivley based on previous patterns of usage. Surely nobody on this forum seriously thinks I mean to embed the actual application in the kernal ? That would be ridiculous.
Anyway perl in the kernal would probably be a good thing, but only if apache was also in the kernal. If perfomance matters that much, its probably time to buy a faster machine. On the other hand I have heard that there are versions of web servers and other applications which dispense with an operating system alltogether.
The OS integration means that people are not inclined to use additional resources starting up a browser when they esentially have IE loaded from start-up
This is what I have realised for a long time. Various things that Microsoft does could be learned from by the Linux kernal developers. Perhaps Alan Cox or Linus Torvalds should investigate whether or not it would be technically feasable to integrate Mozilla with the GNU/Linux kernal.
It makes sense to have the browser be part of the OS, since it is what most people use their PC's for all the time, might as well hide the overhead of starting it up by integrating it with the kernal.
Linux could easily start to make inroads on the desktop if it took the lead from Microsoft's very highly skilled geeks. (You can't patent putting the broswer in the OS, after all:-).
XML support could go in there too, and possibly word processing also. They could fork a separate distro for the propellorheads that did not want all the 'extras' in their kernal. (it could all be #ifdef'd in the kernel source.
I am not a tech savvy hacker so I don't know if there are any technical reasons why this cannot be done (put Mozilla in the GNU/Linux kernal) but surely the potential upside of this approach cannot be ignored.
France, The United Kingdom, Russia, the Ukraine, China, India, Pakistan, Iran and many many more nations also have plenty of nuclear bombs. Your rant sounds like that of a 'typical American'.
Your nuclear weapons were invented by GERMANS. Not ONE original invention has come from the USA by a native born American. It is always the USA buying the great ideas of Europeans.
I sincerely hope you are 'trolling', because if you really believe you Americans are safe when the whole of the rest of the world hates you to a man, then you really need to get a grip.
When the nuclear bombs fall on the USA, the rest of the world will shrug its shoulders and carry on, with the knowledge that the most hated race in the world (the Americans) are no more.
Slashdot Mirror
Templates are surely a bad thing ? There must be a better way to achive genericity than templates.
And don't mod me down as flamebait simply because I used the word 'fuck'. Where I come from, it is an accepted part of speech.
I certainly don't agree with the Linix bigots or the 'information-wants-to-be-free-so-i-can-steal-as-ma ny-cds-and-rip-them-to-mp3-without-paying' brigade.
So I guess in the 'slashdot' sense of the word I am a troll. However, in the Bhuddist sense, I am a teacher, pointing the student toward enlightenment which cannot be described, only experienced.
HOW DUMB DO YOU WANT AMRICANS TO BECOME ?
As if we are not dumb enough already. I don't have the attention span for much more of this crap. That's why I get my news on 'culture' from indymedia.
If I want to talk about cultural issues, I come here, or go to adequacy.org. Or at least I used to until some idiots decided it would be a good idea to DDOS it.
To sum up: SNES games are NOT culture.
The simple fact of the matter is, that Linux is for 'rocket scientist' types, and geeks. The ordinary man in the street simply cannot get past the first hurdle of Linux usage.
The moment you try to explaing 'fdisk' and 'lilo' to a non-technical user they run screaming back to their cosy Microsoft world.
But I think that's a good thing. I've been using Linux for years and years now, I switched from NetBSD 0.8 (which gives you a clue how long). I do not like the idea that Linux is dumbing itself down to compete with Windows.
I like my unix to look like UNIX dammit. That means 9 xterms, and tvtwm. Nothing more.
I am fed up to the back teeth of these criminal scum who ruthlessly and without any conscience whatsoever steal music and then brag about it on IRC.
Last week some guy was saying how he had about 40 Gigabytes of 'ripped' MP3s on his machine. By my calculations (assume a CD cost $14) that means he has stolen the equivalent of about $30000.
If he stole that from a bank he would quite rightly be in prison. Are we supposed to think it is a lesser crime, simply because he used a computer ?
I used to be on my school chess team, and without doubt they were the most poorly-socialized group of people I have ever met (and I am in several Linux user groups!).
Scientists have proved that all it takes to be a good chess player is a good memory. So why do we treat these people as though playing chess is a sign of intelligence ?
If you ask me, its stupid. I'd rather play Magic - The Gathering, or D&D 3rd edition, both of which demand something chess players lack - an imagination. Tell me I'm wrong.
These kids, says Lewis, are destroying the "old priesthoods" of lawyers, investment gurus, academics and CEO's. Technology has "put afterburners on the egalitarian notion that anyone-can-do-anything, by enabling pretty much anyone to try anything -- especially in fields in which 'expertise' had always been a dubious proposition.
I kind of disagreee. There have always been child prodigies, they have always been discriminated against. But the idea that there is a new generation of hyper-smart teenagers just does not cut it with me.
For example, the controversial news and discussion site adequacy.org recently ran an article explaining how to build your own PC. It was instantly spammed and crapflooded by 15 year olds claiming they knew better than the adequacy expert. Which is fine, except that they didn't.
The whole hilarious episode csn be viewed here
Point is, not whether kids have the knowledge, it is whether they have the maturity to deal with the responsibilities that knowledge brings.
You know, you are absolutely right. You could even allow the humans to have more players on the pitch to counterbalance the superhuman forces of the robots. This idea has potential.
Reactions like yours make my day :-)
Imagine if we could create a race of perfect robotic soccer players. It could render the human players obsolete.
It would be more entertaining to watch the robot players (especially if they have flamethrowers like on robot wars).
We could change the rules to make it more interesting, and all that money we now spend on inflated wages for soccer players could go to a worthy cause, like helping the homeless, or fighting gun crime in inner city areas.
Oh well, back to building my new PC
Its this sort of technical link that keeps me coming back to slashdot, even though its not as good as it used to be, and it no longer seems to attract the 31337 intelligent posters of the good old days.
Oh well, nothing lasts forever.
But on your point about the best product not winning, I think you need to look at it from another perspective. The product that succeeds in the marketplace is by definition the best product.
I think this is where slashdot readers go wrong. They are so full of indignant moral outrage, they cannot see the fact that for most Americans, Microsoft make the best software.
If there is an OS out there that is actually better than XP, let it fight it out in the marketplace. This is the USA after all.
I hate microsoft products, but I use them all the time. This is because at this moment in the development of the information revolution, they are the best tools for the job.
If there is a better alternative, I am sure American consumers will vote with their wallets as they always have done.
Surely the last thing we need is for the lawyers($$$) to get involved ?
But I can't help thinking the screens still a bit small. I think I'll stick with my nokia 9210 communicator.
Did you know that JonKatz has actually been pre-emptively BANNED by the adequacy.org editors ?
I think that is the difference between crapflooder-friendly sites with no censorship, such as the ones you refer to, and high-quality editied sites like adequacy.org
My guess is that anyone wanting to steal plutonium to make nuclear missiles is likely a responsible organization (e.g. a government) since few others have the resources to manufacture a nuclear device.
Interestingly enough the controversial website adequacy.org has not addressed this subject yet.
But this is kkkorporate Amerikkka we are dealing with, so it should come as no surprise.
Check out the Internet's most controversial website: adeqacy.org. Like a breath of fresh air, and trolling is not tolerated!!
adequacy.org maintains its 'troll-free' reputation by riding roughshod over the constitutional rights of its readership, censoring them whenever they step over some imaginary line.
I imagine Michael Sims would be very welcome there.
I believe you are wrong in fact, The United Kingdom has some of the strictest gun controls of any country anywhere in the world.
I on the other hand would LOVE to see just such a situation. Imagine an Internet free of moronic Microsoft users asking dumb questions...
Anyway perl in the kernal would probably be a good thing, but only if apache was also in the kernal. If perfomance matters that much, its probably time to buy a faster machine. On the other hand I have heard that there are versions of web servers and other applications which dispense with an operating system alltogether.
This is what I have realised for a long time. Various things that Microsoft does could be learned from by the Linux kernal developers. Perhaps Alan Cox or Linus Torvalds should investigate whether or not it would be technically feasable to integrate Mozilla with the GNU/Linux kernal.
It makes sense to have the browser be part of the OS, since it is what most people use their PC's for all the time, might as well hide the overhead of starting it up by integrating it with the kernal.
Linux could easily start to make inroads on the desktop if it took the lead from Microsoft's very highly skilled geeks. (You can't patent putting the broswer in the OS, after all
XML support could go in there too, and possibly word processing also. They could fork a separate distro for the propellorheads that did not want all the 'extras' in their kernal. (it could all be #ifdef'd in the kernel source.
I am not a tech savvy hacker so I don't know if there are any technical reasons why this cannot be done (put Mozilla in the GNU/Linux kernal) but surely the potential upside of this approach cannot be ignored.
Your nuclear weapons were invented by GERMANS. Not ONE original invention has come from the USA by a native born American. It is always the USA buying the great ideas of Europeans.
I sincerely hope you are 'trolling', because if you really believe you Americans are safe when the whole of the rest of the world hates you to a man, then you really need to get a grip.
When the nuclear bombs fall on the USA, the rest of the world will shrug its shoulders and carry on, with the knowledge that the most hated race in the world (the Americans) are no more.