Think of Google's strengths: low powered non wintel servers delivering fast pages with high quality and low download times with caching and a nice inline sponsor system.
Google is everything that DotCom '99 WASN'T...it is neat, but without flash or fancy...in fact, the style of google is definitely lowtech (it looks the same on Lynx as it does in IE). Google really was the start of a new wave of successful content, and they're no doubt making tons of ducats leasing their machines and technology to anybody who needs to search...and it's actually GOOD. Hell, Google picked up my webpage AND I NEVER EVEN SUBMITTED IT. Neither did any of my linkers submit their pages...Google genuinely crawled to it, and even cached it (not a big hit...my front page is maybe 2k). Furthermore, surfers trust google because of it's high quality...it has no need to build a brand, because WoM has more than succeeded.
If Google goes IPO, and manages to remain of high quality, it means the beginning of a new Dot com boom -- one based on everything the original wasn't, and uncovering the type of quality necessary to bring the web into the age of frictionless content we've needed. No banner ads, no obtuse simulacrums of greatness, just the same basic faced technology that make the toaster or the 24 oz. drinking glass such insanely great inventions.
The arcade was never about deep, in depth gaming or a "feel" to the controls...it was about quick turn arounds of quarters from people who sucked at the games and long playtimes for people who were skilled at them. "Easy to learn, hard to master"...the watchwords of Chess and Centipede alike. If the arcade has one major feature, it's that the games were actually challenging -- try and get past level five of Space Invaders if you've never played before. The little tricks of pixels and timing loops are what made the arcade so much fun...somebody with the skill to notice EXACTLY where Tiger Heli can move without becoming imploded would have a clean run, and it was your job as a patzer to feed that machine with 2-bit pieces until you could approach his level of skill. Challenge in those games meant you *COULD* win it all for 25 cents, but you would have to try very very hard to do so...and maybe have a little luck on your side.
But of course, today, challenge and simplicity are no longer the hallmarks of great gaming. Games are sold for their graphics and style like comic books, control is a word used to define whether or not the objects on the screen even do what you tell them to do, and challenge is nowhere to be seen. There are, of course, exceptions -- but none of them in the Arcade. Many arcade games are One Play, No Matter What...games ending after five or ten minutes whether you do well or not. Daytona 2, for all its graphical insanity, misses the fun of an all-day Pole Position run, or getting through Radmobile on one play.
And most guilty of all of this is Midway. With Gauntlet Legends, they took a great game and turned into a graphical mess, with ugly coloured lights and washed out textures everywhere. The old block based movement of Gauntlet (resulting in perfect positioning being the key to vanquishing an enemy swarm) was replaced by a multi tiered mess, where some traps were just unavoidable. And of course, let's not forget the mess of Mortal Kombats that blackened the step of many an Aladdin's Castle in recent years...bloody messes with gameplay that included "Uppercut, punch punch punch, Freeze the guy, sweep him, then kill him in some horrible fashion," and very little else. Oh the wasted time and wasted change trying to make those games seem like they were actually fun, the whole time praying that the gaudy motion captured characters would turn into the ninjas from Samurai Shodown.
Midway lost the arcade feel...they don't understand what made people stuff a machine with quarters -- the arcade madness, they lost. Their pinball machines will be missed...but the rest will be sold cheap for their Jamma connectors and monitors.
If you're only into Linux for the "fame and fortune," I think you'll probably be let down. There are only a few "famous" programmers in the field of free software, and lots of famous names. We can't all be Richard Stallman or CmdrTaco.
However, the peer recognition of Linux isn't strictly glory -- it's dialectic. One meets with another on a topic, they strive for a solution. In the process, the need for human contact among two misunderstood specialists is releived. Isn't that why we post on slashdot?
Well, the best modellers in the world don't necesarily design for Revell, and the best mechanics aren't necessarily down at your local BF Goodrich. Programming is a skill, to be sure, but you don't have to put your skills to work for you, or necesarily charge people when you use them. I'm sure we all have skills or know people who do that are of a professional level, perhaps even a superb level, but don't have that particular job. How many of us slashdotters are accountants with hardware and networking skills, doctors with oratorial dictation skills, and so forth?
I may program now, and program well, for money. But I don't always want to be a snooty wage slave working for the corporate world, turning coding tricks for people richer than me. Someday, I want to teach (academia being a relatively level field)...but when I do turn in my ASP in a Nutshell book and swipe card, I'm sure as sin not turning in my programming skills. I'll probably just move them into another arena: freelance, shareware, open source free software. "Top tier engineers" aren't necesarily what free software needs -- an engineer once told me that you only have 8 years of programming time in the industry until you're technically just a product manager, telling younger programmers what to PEEK and where to POKE. Linux succeeds because the people who do the boring work(printer drivers, TCP/IP interfaces, and so on) are the ones who need it done...the incentive to do the work isn't "i need to get paid," but rather "i need to print something. It's survival-response programming, patch-the-inner-tube programming, and it's why Linux is often very terse in its interfaces...but still very efficient.
Ooh, a Madonna joke combined with a tax joke...I see somebody's giving the Onion a run for their money on that whole "topical, non-cliche humour" thing.
Yeah, I know...but occasionally when you're making a "Joke" you need to "generalize" and not "recant the Oxford fucking English Dictionary's apocryphal history of dialectic English." Actually, the reason I said "Middle English" rather than "Olde English" was because I wanted to specifically avoid the common misconception of Shakespeare(or Chaucer)-as-old-English that most of my students have had, and yet still make the point funny. I wholly realise the difference between them, and personally have no trouble differentiating between archaic, middle or old Englishes (having completed survey courses in The Faerie Queene, Beowulf in the original text [ you haven't lived until you've heard a Germanic Languages professor read the name "Hrothgar" in a stylized Danish English accent] and James Joyce, whose language is about as archaic as they get).
Don't fuck with a postgrad rhetorician minoring in lingustics...we may generalize a few facts to avoid belabored explanations in adjustment to common paradigms, but we are never wrong.
Actually, I memorized the DeCSS Perl Script. It was a lot easier than Mercutio's "Queen Mab" speech from "Romeo and Juliet," which I had to memorize back in High School -- that was 96 lines of Middle English, this was less than 2000 characters, and in a language I understood.
I'm waiting for the MPAA to declare my head, and everything in it, in violation of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, and force me to core dump and reformat it. After all, I'm taking away their profits...people can send me data files of their movies, I can decrypt them in my head and tell them the gist of the plot. I mean, what other reason is there to see a modern film? Cinematography? Acting? Meh. Our nation's greatest actresses are just thin blondes with giant hooters and sexy smiles and the artistic range of your average prom queen, and I can write up the appeal of every modern Hollywood film and post it to www.asstr.org.
My brain is a danger to the profitability of the motion picture industry, and must be stopped at all costs.
First: don't do palm, unless you want flawless scheduling, calendaring, contact listing, memo writing and a host of quick apps. Palm has vastly inferior processor speeds, very low upgradability and an OS that, while quick, lacks any real power to go beyond the 64k Personal Organizer level of functionality. In short, if you want neat, programmable, full colour, true internet & wireless networking -- in essence, a real computer in your pocket -- don't go palm.
Second -- don't go iPaq if you plan on using your organizer mostly indoors. The screen is just awful, though it excels outside. Me, I went Casio for the screen -- true 64k colour plane, beautifully backlit, and slightly larger than the iPaq -- but I can't see shit outside during the day. I have to duck under awnings when on the street, but luckily, i'm almost never on the street. Casio has great upgradability -- slip on an adapter and a wavelan card, you've got a wireless network. Slip in a compact flash modem, you're on the 'net from a hotel room. Connect to your cell over IR, and you're netted again. Memory, cameras, hard disks, all sorts of stuff is in the compact flash form factor, and unlike the iPaq you don't need a seperate sleeve to have the functionality -- there's a little door that hides your card when it's not plugged into the wall.
Of course, Casio was just my choice, and a lot of people will lead you to the iPaq for its slightly faster processor (hint: it doesn't really matter...my casio E-100, their first colour unit, does mp3 and mpeg well enough, and it's only 133 MHz). But I think the great screen, and the ability to push more than one button at once (the Compaq won't let you do this...kills gaming in MameCE) outweigh the slight advantage of the StrongARM.
Sorry for the high geek quotient in the previous message, I think the five cups of coffee injested since the news of GJC have kind of warped my perception of, well, anything. In my zeal, I forgot to paste a link to this HELL LEET COOL BITCHIN SWEET ASS new GNU tool...http://gcc.gnu.org/java/.
I can finally write in Java and not get made fun of by my elite C++ hax0r friends!
In case you weren't aware, GCJ is the first Gnu toolset for Java, and it's not just a nasty rehash of Sun's stuff...it's JRE, JIT and NATIVE CODE COMPILER rolled into one. They have an odious refutation of the Write Once Run Anywhere creedo which I don't necessarily agree with (the guy must be writing some pretty fierce code if he's had problems like he mentions, I've done distributed Java with the Swing libraries for about a year and never had a problem that wasn't related to Netscape sucking). What I care about, though, is the speed ups. Finally, all my keen little utility programs I've written in clean, attractive Java code (to do stuff like rename files, play music and so on) will run as fast as OS level stuff. I intend on compiling the sweet ass netbeans ide as soon as they get AWT working. Maybe I'll finally be able to get it to run as fast on my shitty Celeron windows machine as it does on my MACOS lappy.
GNU TOOLS FOR LINUX: BECAUSE LINUX USERS HAVE A RIGHT TO CLEAN, ATTRACTIVE, EFFICIENT OBJECT ORIENTED CODE, TOO.
If Katz is going to give shit about the greatest movie of all times, Super Mario Brothers (starring Dennis Hopper and John Leguizamo in a futuristic wonderworld and featuring a freighttrain plot that crosses dimensions and social rolls with such reckless abandon), we're going to have to throw down. Think I'll start by bouncing off his head, thereby turning him upside and making him kick his feet in the air.
There's far less cash in developing for Linux (due to points that you and others have raised) than in developing for mac, and THAT was my point. Desktop software for Linux may be a completely useless venture: there just aren't many types of applications left that don't already exist among the volumes of free software already available, and most of them are application niches best filled by companies with VERY proprietary, specialized systems -- Quark for publishing, Autodesk for CAD, Rational for relationship analysis (interesting side note: Where's the GNU relationship analysis software? This would be so fucking useful for concurrent development and a move to object orientation!). These kind of apps often call for their own specialized OS to maintain supportability with a small subset of uses...and this is what Linux is good for, being modular. I can see a world where software -- let's say for a db app or a order processing XML server -- is bundled with an OS already optimized for itself, with none of the security holes, driver contention or what have you associated with generic OSs. We're seeing this already with Colbalt's RAQs (only certified if you don't mess with the OS...but out of the box with MySQL, PHP, Perl and HTML running flawlessly, or close to it and SNAP servers (these guys run BSD for file serving so accurately we call them appliances).
In short: Linux development ISN'T like Mac development, because the Mac is simple to support (I can list the hardware contention issues with different modelled macs in ten minutes) and Linux is incredibly difficult. Linux isn't profittable because it is harder to support, has less need for desktop apps and fewer users to boot. Linux has a community devoted to making it be all it can be...the Mac community is comprised less of ardent programmer/supporters as it is with ardent product purchasers and artisans. This means Linux has nicer mp3 players, and the Mac nicer skins. And maybe I should shut up...it's 5:30 on a Friday and i'm tired, hot, and drunk.
A troll is a poster who posts solely for the shock of his post, to rile other users. I, on the other hand, have taken great care to defend my position on the grounds that so many./ers fit the model that my thesis mapped out. Sure, a lot of people took notice of the post -- and I wrote it in a callous manner to make it so -- but that has encouraged discussion, and is therefore important.
Linux, the operating system, is a subtle, full bodied server OS with traces of desktop OS and great ramifications for embedded use. I'm also a great fan of Solaris and have had great luck with Windows 2000 (seen 0 blue screens on my win box at work, and three kernel panics with OS-X. X also gets hit harder).
Sorry if it was a little less Zen than you're used to, but I didn't like the way the poster was bitching about a product closing its doors for lack of interest and saying he would have paid -- but didn't. Sounds pretty reactive to me, and so I brought up the fact that a lot of./ posters seem to take a similar stance whenever a company decides Linux development isn't for them. You have to admit -- it wasn't. The direction their product was going was opposite of where the Open Source / Linux community is going, and their product did what Linux users had already hacked their desktops into doing. So to say "I would have paid, if I hadn't already built it myself," is both stupid and defeatist -- it certainly doesn't encourage development in areas that Linux needs commercial apps (DVD, for example...you think you'll be able to get a license to decrypt CSS if you say you're going to open source your player, and let everybody see wossop?)
I'm sorry you bought Myth II...I don't suppose THAT'S my fault, too.
Um, i've mentioned this in several dozen posts, including the one you responded to that you obviously didn't read, but I'm not a windows user -- I'm a Mac user, and Java developer. I use a Windows machine at work, and I think 2000 is installed on my webserver, and both of these came preinstalled -- no option to save money by deselecting them. I paid for Microsoft Office 2k1 and have been relatively satisfied with it, got one free service pack bug fix (apparently, all patches and service packs for Microsoft software are free now -- just like with your LINUX!) for it recently which allowed me a lot of cool new features in Access 2k1.
Congratulations on spending your paycheck on linux...did you know you didn't have to do so? Apparently they give these things away for free on FTP sites now...so your buying the software as opposed to just freeloading was entirely your choice. But of course, nobody twisted my arm to buy 2k1 (backwards compatible with every file format MS has used since the pre-web days, but then again my old copy of office 97 without access used the same exact file format as the new one so it's not so important), either...i could have gone with Star Office or Corel (and, FWIW, i have a copy of Corel 2000 for PC Windows somewhere).
So, in essence, what you're saying is that it's okay to spend money on free software, but spending it on software that isn't free is somehow in error. As a developer, this kind of pisses me off, becuase it doesn't make any fucking sense. If I want to give away software, that's my perogative -- but it's not yours to demand that nobody should give me money for them unless I give it away, or make my source code available under draconian license forbidding me from ever saying "no i want to sell this now because i'm poor and supporting it anyway" and closing it off again. If argument instead is that MS products are overpriced, I'm inclined to agree (though I got very sensible student discounts on much of mine before I left college).
Anyway, maybe you should read the post, and find out a little about my politics, before calling me an "M$ troll" -- I assure you that while I may play devil's advocate often enough, I do not do so solely to rouse, i do it because I am not sold on Free (as in Caffeine) software any more than I'm sold on the shitty x86 architecture.
"When there is a large number of non-technical Linux users on the home desktop..."
I hate to burst the community's bubble, but this will never happen. It SHOULDN'T...because a large nubmer of non technical users on your OS means that the OS each of them is using has become in some way homogenized, in some way become closed (because your non-technical user does not have the necesary abilities to run a truly open system...just as non-technical cooks need boxed cakes). The instant you introduce a "non-technical user" to GNU-Linux base OS, one of two things happens: either the user ceases to be non-technical, or the OS ceases to be GNU-Linux. The OS they would be using would have to be homogenized -- stuck to one kernel, one set of libraries, one make system, one rpm system, one processor, one UI (or UI concept) -- or it would be impossible to provide the support necessary to run applications on the OS. And homogenization is the precise opposite of the GNU concept -- it's closed possibilities, it's freedom only to hang yourself. And like you say, the OS would have to be a preinstall...and in this respect, people do use Linux, or will, in embedded platforms, but this won't help the Redhat/Gnome/KDE people in any way (it'll just seem like a fancy appliance, no GNUs neded).
Face it, you don't want this...you want an elite operating system with choices and power. Let people have their windows, their macos, and let them buy software that's well supported and stop complaining about your great, powerful free shit with no warranties implied.
Congratulations...you've overcome the stereotype, and are managing to be one of the scant supporters of an OS that's as much a mindset as set of computer codes. But the problem is that many users do not follow your lead -- more, I'd argue, than users of BSD or Solaris or HPUX or MacOS or Windows or IRIX. GNU-Linux is GNU...it's all about freedom (of whatever). If you support it with money or dev time, and that's a big if, you're exercising your right to do so, but at the same time the guy who does nothing and pays nothing. Linux is the first OS designed to protect the rights of the freeloader, as an extension of extending the rights of the power user and patriotic programmer/professional.
Beleive me, I love the ideas of free software, and in fact have devoted some considerable time to porting Tomcat to OS-X. But if you were to breakdown the number of users of Linux who were in your demographic vs the ones who just wanted a great OS with everything available for free (or extremely cheap, I had a friend who bought a linux book for $5 that came with a CD with Red Hat 7.something on it rather than the $45 Red Hat 7.something package. Guess how much of the proceeds of that book went to Red Hat?), you'd no doubt discover the majority are in the latter area...maybe they paid for quake 3 or CnC, but they sure as heckfire didn't pay for the OS, the consecutive kernels, &tc.
I argue that Linux users pride themselves in freedom in all things. Would the majority pay for my kernel mod's C++ source if another did the same in perl, slower, for free? Some might, but most would not...free as in beer comes as an afterthought of a lack of stinginess in free as in speech software.
By the way, that was a thesis statement, not just a generalization, which is why you can argue an opposing viewpoint and neither of us is necesarily wrong. Generalizations aren't inherently bad, because people understand they aren't meant to be true for everyone. If they were true for everyone, they wouldn't be genralizations, they would be facts. And the facts are in support of the generalization in this case -- companies that sell products for GNU-Linux operating systems that have "free" parrellels experience fewer units sold per capita that companies that sell similar products on the Windows side (look at the sales of any image viewer on PC...they're often quite profitable, despite the fact that freeware viewers such as IrfanView are as good if not better). In fact, I'd argue that the paradigms for software between the two platforms are almost completely opposite: PC users assume that free software can't be as good as for-pay software, and Linux users often assume the opposite (this is a thesis, too). This is one of the problems Windows oriented companies have when moving people to Linux...free software sounds like a shitty idea to somebody who paid $400 for a piece of software to write letters to grandma and be interrupted by an animated office supply.
I bought a Volkswagen Passat, it was $19000 after my trade-in. It was pretty quick, but could have been quicker. So I dropped $400 on a performance chip, $150 on a new blow off valve, $50 on a filter charger, quality oil, a fuel pressure regulator and put nothing but great gas into it.
All in all, I'll say I've put about a hundred hours into making the car work the way I like it. My freelance rate is $40.hr. Does Volkswagen of America owe me $4000?
I'm a mac user, dummy, did you read the rest of the post?
Either way, i apologize for being so general as to use the term "Linux users never pay for anything"...but I was trying to be a bit reactive to what is essentially a complaint beyond the scope of Linux development. The OS is made free, and users -- at least, the class of users most vocal in the realm of Slashdot -- often complain when any development for their OS is closed, made available for fee only or stops production entirely. This is, you have to admit, a little silly under the paradigm that programmers should release everything free for modification and manipulation; if an app is closed, it was never GNU-Linux to begin with (the old Straight Edge philosophy that, if you aren't now, you never were). Freedom is a perfect example of a software company not understanding what Linux is -- a tremulous entity with no reliable reference installation and no absolute commonality of libraries. A windows company tried to bring their software, designed by programmers used to unhacked, straightforward platforms (so straightforward they apparently didn't account for advanced settings, advanced connections or advanced users), to a platform that is neither stragihtforward nor unhacked. And they gave up on it -- just like so many others have given up on the idea that Linux is a viable commercial platform, because it is so difficult to be sure what goes into it. Part of this is due to the lack of common libraries and APIs, something Linux users are proud of, and to a certain extent should be. Part of it is also that Linux users are too well informed to pay for a product that's already been built, for free, and requiring only a moderate amount of monkey wrenching before it works better than a commercial product with set abilities, set preferences and set failings.
If you buy commercial distros and don't hack them, if you rely on RedHat out of the box and never use Make or rpm or vi, you're a different type of user entirely (and, consequently, one who has no right to 'dis the windows crowd because you're essentially no different...same mindset, different OS).
Add this to the list of things apple dropped the ball on for OS-X -- the ability to customize the os colours and activities, DVD support, a "conservation" mode for the processor, burner support, full screen support for iTunes, the goddamn volume keys on the powerbook...but it's all worth it for that beautiful fucking dock. I love my dock so goddamn much it isn't even funny.
One user buying one package does nothing to change the fact that the platform is ABOUT not paying for software. And if you're buying Linux games, it's because games are a little different from standard software...hell, I own a copy of Tetris for five different machines, but I've never bought a browser or an MP3 player. "Freedom" is a software package that directly parellels free development work on Linux, and even if it is vastly superior, it's never going to make money when there's free, open source development work in the same arena.
And this is what MS is talking about when they consider open source a threat...open source programmers are doing the same work as MS' programmers and doing it for free. Ain't no company, no matter how big it is, that can compete with freedom (though Apple comes close with it's darling OS-X).
Slashdot Mirror
Think of Google's strengths: low powered non wintel servers delivering fast pages with high quality and low download times with caching and a nice inline sponsor system.
Google is everything that DotCom '99 WASN'T...it is neat, but without flash or fancy...in fact, the style of google is definitely lowtech (it looks the same on Lynx as it does in IE). Google really was the start of a new wave of successful content, and they're no doubt making tons of ducats leasing their machines and technology to anybody who needs to search...and it's actually GOOD. Hell, Google picked up my webpage AND I NEVER EVEN SUBMITTED IT. Neither did any of my linkers submit their pages...Google genuinely crawled to it, and even cached it (not a big hit...my front page is maybe 2k). Furthermore, surfers trust google because of it's high quality...it has no need to build a brand, because WoM has more than succeeded.
If Google goes IPO, and manages to remain of high quality, it means the beginning of a new Dot com boom -- one based on everything the original wasn't, and uncovering the type of quality necessary to bring the web into the age of frictionless content we've needed. No banner ads, no obtuse simulacrums of greatness, just the same basic faced technology that make the toaster or the 24 oz. drinking glass such insanely great inventions.
The arcade was never about deep, in depth gaming or a "feel" to the controls...it was about quick turn arounds of quarters from people who sucked at the games and long playtimes for people who were skilled at them. "Easy to learn, hard to master"...the watchwords of Chess and Centipede alike. If the arcade has one major feature, it's that the games were actually challenging -- try and get past level five of Space Invaders if you've never played before. The little tricks of pixels and timing loops are what made the arcade so much fun...somebody with the skill to notice EXACTLY where Tiger Heli can move without becoming imploded would have a clean run, and it was your job as a patzer to feed that machine with 2-bit pieces until you could approach his level of skill. Challenge in those games meant you *COULD* win it all for 25 cents, but you would have to try very very hard to do so...and maybe have a little luck on your side.
But of course, today, challenge and simplicity are no longer the hallmarks of great gaming. Games are sold for their graphics and style like comic books, control is a word used to define whether or not the objects on the screen even do what you tell them to do, and challenge is nowhere to be seen. There are, of course, exceptions -- but none of them in the Arcade. Many arcade games are One Play, No Matter What...games ending after five or ten minutes whether you do well or not. Daytona 2, for all its graphical insanity, misses the fun of an all-day Pole Position run, or getting through Radmobile on one play.
And most guilty of all of this is Midway. With Gauntlet Legends, they took a great game and turned into a graphical mess, with ugly coloured lights and washed out textures everywhere. The old block based movement of Gauntlet (resulting in perfect positioning being the key to vanquishing an enemy swarm) was replaced by a multi tiered mess, where some traps were just unavoidable. And of course, let's not forget the mess of Mortal Kombats that blackened the step of many an Aladdin's Castle in recent years...bloody messes with gameplay that included "Uppercut, punch punch punch, Freeze the guy, sweep him, then kill him in some horrible fashion," and very little else. Oh the wasted time and wasted change trying to make those games seem like they were actually fun, the whole time praying that the gaudy motion captured characters would turn into the ninjas from Samurai Shodown.
Midway lost the arcade feel...they don't understand what made people stuff a machine with quarters -- the arcade madness, they lost. Their pinball machines will be missed...but the rest will be sold cheap for their Jamma connectors and monitors.
If you're only into Linux for the "fame and fortune," I think you'll probably be let down. There are only a few "famous" programmers in the field of free software, and lots of famous names. We can't all be Richard Stallman or CmdrTaco.
However, the peer recognition of Linux isn't strictly glory -- it's dialectic. One meets with another on a topic, they strive for a solution. In the process, the need for human contact among two misunderstood specialists is releived. Isn't that why we post on slashdot?
Well, the best modellers in the world don't necesarily design for Revell, and the best mechanics aren't necessarily down at your local BF Goodrich. Programming is a skill, to be sure, but you don't have to put your skills to work for you, or necesarily charge people when you use them. I'm sure we all have skills or know people who do that are of a professional level, perhaps even a superb level, but don't have that particular job. How many of us slashdotters are accountants with hardware and networking skills, doctors with oratorial dictation skills, and so forth?
I may program now, and program well, for money. But I don't always want to be a snooty wage slave working for the corporate world, turning coding tricks for people richer than me. Someday, I want to teach (academia being a relatively level field)...but when I do turn in my ASP in a Nutshell book and swipe card, I'm sure as sin not turning in my programming skills. I'll probably just move them into another arena: freelance, shareware, open source free software. "Top tier engineers" aren't necesarily what free software needs -- an engineer once told me that you only have 8 years of programming time in the industry until you're technically just a product manager, telling younger programmers what to PEEK and where to POKE. Linux succeeds because the people who do the boring work(printer drivers, TCP/IP interfaces, and so on) are the ones who need it done...the incentive to do the work isn't "i need to get paid," but rather "i need to print something. It's survival-response programming, patch-the-inner-tube programming, and it's why Linux is often very terse in its interfaces...but still very efficient.
Ooh, a Madonna joke combined with a tax joke...I see somebody's giving the Onion a run for their money on that whole "topical, non-cliche humour" thing.
Yeah, I know...but occasionally when you're making a "Joke" you need to "generalize" and not "recant the Oxford fucking English Dictionary's apocryphal history of dialectic English." Actually, the reason I said "Middle English" rather than "Olde English" was because I wanted to specifically avoid the common misconception of Shakespeare(or Chaucer)-as-old-English that most of my students have had, and yet still make the point funny. I wholly realise the difference between them, and personally have no trouble differentiating between archaic, middle or old Englishes (having completed survey courses in The Faerie Queene, Beowulf in the original text [ you haven't lived until you've heard a Germanic Languages professor read the name "Hrothgar" in a stylized Danish English accent] and James Joyce, whose language is about as archaic as they get).
Don't fuck with a postgrad rhetorician minoring in lingustics...we may generalize a few facts to avoid belabored explanations in adjustment to common paradigms, but we are never wrong.
Actually, I memorized the DeCSS Perl Script. It was a lot easier than Mercutio's "Queen Mab" speech from "Romeo and Juliet," which I had to memorize back in High School -- that was 96 lines of Middle English, this was less than 2000 characters, and in a language I understood.
I'm waiting for the MPAA to declare my head, and everything in it, in violation of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, and force me to core dump and reformat it. After all, I'm taking away their profits...people can send me data files of their movies, I can decrypt them in my head and tell them the gist of the plot. I mean, what other reason is there to see a modern film? Cinematography? Acting? Meh. Our nation's greatest actresses are just thin blondes with giant hooters and sexy smiles and the artistic range of your average prom queen, and I can write up the appeal of every modern Hollywood film and post it to www.asstr.org.
My brain is a danger to the profitability of the motion picture industry, and must be stopped at all costs.
First: don't do palm, unless you want flawless scheduling, calendaring, contact listing, memo writing and a host of quick apps. Palm has vastly inferior processor speeds, very low upgradability and an OS that, while quick, lacks any real power to go beyond the 64k Personal Organizer level of functionality. In short, if you want neat, programmable, full colour, true internet & wireless networking -- in essence, a real computer in your pocket -- don't go palm.
Second -- don't go iPaq if you plan on using your organizer mostly indoors. The screen is just awful, though it excels outside. Me, I went Casio for the screen -- true 64k colour plane, beautifully backlit, and slightly larger than the iPaq -- but I can't see shit outside during the day. I have to duck under awnings when on the street, but luckily, i'm almost never on the street. Casio has great upgradability -- slip on an adapter and a wavelan card, you've got a wireless network. Slip in a compact flash modem, you're on the 'net from a hotel room. Connect to your cell over IR, and you're netted again. Memory, cameras, hard disks, all sorts of stuff is in the compact flash form factor, and unlike the iPaq you don't need a seperate sleeve to have the functionality -- there's a little door that hides your card when it's not plugged into the wall.
Of course, Casio was just my choice, and a lot of people will lead you to the iPaq for its slightly faster processor (hint: it doesn't really matter...my casio E-100, their first colour unit, does mp3 and mpeg well enough, and it's only 133 MHz). But I think the great screen, and the ability to push more than one button at once (the Compaq won't let you do this...kills gaming in MameCE) outweigh the slight advantage of the StrongARM.
www.wincecity.com
I was referring to MY code...it's efficient and object oriented, and now I can give it to you Linux chaps as well. Consider yourselves lucky.
This ego trip brought to you by a succesful compilation of the new GCC under Mac OSX.
Sorry for the high geek quotient in the previous message, I think the five cups of coffee injested since the news of GJC have kind of warped my perception of, well, anything. In my zeal, I forgot to paste a link to this HELL LEET COOL BITCHIN SWEET ASS new GNU tool...http://gcc.gnu.org/java/.
GNU & JAVA: The Network is the OS.
GNU JAVA COMPILER!
I can finally write in Java and not get made fun of by my elite C++ hax0r friends!
In case you weren't aware, GCJ is the first Gnu toolset for Java, and it's not just a nasty rehash of Sun's stuff...it's JRE, JIT and NATIVE CODE COMPILER rolled into one. They have an odious refutation of the Write Once Run Anywhere creedo which I don't necessarily agree with (the guy must be writing some pretty fierce code if he's had problems like he mentions, I've done distributed Java with the Swing libraries for about a year and never had a problem that wasn't related to Netscape sucking). What I care about, though, is the speed ups. Finally, all my keen little utility programs I've written in clean, attractive Java code (to do stuff like rename files, play music and so on) will run as fast as OS level stuff. I intend on compiling the sweet ass netbeans ide as soon as they get AWT working. Maybe I'll finally be able to get it to run as fast on my shitty Celeron windows machine as it does on my MACOS lappy.
GNU TOOLS FOR LINUX: BECAUSE LINUX USERS HAVE A RIGHT TO CLEAN, ATTRACTIVE, EFFICIENT OBJECT ORIENTED CODE, TOO.
If Katz is going to give shit about the greatest movie of all times, Super Mario Brothers (starring Dennis Hopper and John Leguizamo in a futuristic wonderworld and featuring a freighttrain plot that crosses dimensions and social rolls with such reckless abandon), we're going to have to throw down. Think I'll start by bouncing off his head, thereby turning him upside and making him kick his feet in the air.
There's far less cash in developing for Linux (due to points that you and others have raised) than in developing for mac, and THAT was my point. Desktop software for Linux may be a completely useless venture: there just aren't many types of applications left that don't already exist among the volumes of free software already available, and most of them are application niches best filled by companies with VERY proprietary, specialized systems -- Quark for publishing, Autodesk for CAD, Rational for relationship analysis (interesting side note: Where's the GNU relationship analysis software? This would be so fucking useful for concurrent development and a move to object orientation!). These kind of apps often call for their own specialized OS to maintain supportability with a small subset of uses...and this is what Linux is good for, being modular. I can see a world where software -- let's say for a db app or a order processing XML server -- is bundled with an OS already optimized for itself, with none of the security holes, driver contention or what have you associated with generic OSs. We're seeing this already with Colbalt's RAQs (only certified if you don't mess with the OS...but out of the box with MySQL, PHP, Perl and HTML running flawlessly, or close to it and SNAP servers (these guys run BSD for file serving so accurately we call them appliances).
In short: Linux development ISN'T like Mac development, because the Mac is simple to support (I can list the hardware contention issues with different modelled macs in ten minutes) and Linux is incredibly difficult. Linux isn't profittable because it is harder to support, has less need for desktop apps and fewer users to boot. Linux has a community devoted to making it be all it can be...the Mac community is comprised less of ardent programmer/supporters as it is with ardent product purchasers and artisans. This means Linux has nicer mp3 players, and the Mac nicer skins. And maybe I should shut up...it's 5:30 on a Friday and i'm tired, hot, and drunk.
A troll is a poster who posts solely for the shock of his post, to rile other users. I, on the other hand, have taken great care to defend my position on the grounds that so many ./ers fit the model that my thesis mapped out. Sure, a lot of people took notice of the post -- and I wrote it in a callous manner to make it so -- but that has encouraged discussion, and is therefore important.
./ posters seem to take a similar stance whenever a company decides Linux development isn't for them. You have to admit -- it wasn't. The direction their product was going was opposite of where the Open Source / Linux community is going, and their product did what Linux users had already hacked their desktops into doing. So to say "I would have paid, if I hadn't already built it myself," is both stupid and defeatist -- it certainly doesn't encourage development in areas that Linux needs commercial apps (DVD, for example...you think you'll be able to get a license to decrypt CSS if you say you're going to open source your player, and let everybody see wossop?)
Linux, the operating system, is a subtle, full bodied server OS with traces of desktop OS and great ramifications for embedded use. I'm also a great fan of Solaris and have had great luck with Windows 2000 (seen 0 blue screens on my win box at work, and three kernel panics with OS-X. X also gets hit harder).
Sorry if it was a little less Zen than you're used to, but I didn't like the way the poster was bitching about a product closing its doors for lack of interest and saying he would have paid -- but didn't. Sounds pretty reactive to me, and so I brought up the fact that a lot of
I'm sorry you bought Myth II...I don't suppose THAT'S my fault, too.
Um, i've mentioned this in several dozen posts, including the one you responded to that you obviously didn't read, but I'm not a windows user -- I'm a Mac user, and Java developer. I use a Windows machine at work, and I think 2000 is installed on my webserver, and both of these came preinstalled -- no option to save money by deselecting them. I paid for Microsoft Office 2k1 and have been relatively satisfied with it, got one free service pack bug fix (apparently, all patches and service packs for Microsoft software are free now -- just like with your LINUX!) for it recently which allowed me a lot of cool new features in Access 2k1.
Congratulations on spending your paycheck on linux...did you know you didn't have to do so? Apparently they give these things away for free on FTP sites now...so your buying the software as opposed to just freeloading was entirely your choice. But of course, nobody twisted my arm to buy 2k1 (backwards compatible with every file format MS has used since the pre-web days, but then again my old copy of office 97 without access used the same exact file format as the new one so it's not so important), either...i could have gone with Star Office or Corel (and, FWIW, i have a copy of Corel 2000 for PC Windows somewhere).
So, in essence, what you're saying is that it's okay to spend money on free software, but spending it on software that isn't free is somehow in error. As a developer, this kind of pisses me off, becuase it doesn't make any fucking sense. If I want to give away software, that's my perogative -- but it's not yours to demand that nobody should give me money for them unless I give it away, or make my source code available under draconian license forbidding me from ever saying "no i want to sell this now because i'm poor and supporting it anyway" and closing it off again. If argument instead is that MS products are overpriced, I'm inclined to agree (though I got very sensible student discounts on much of mine before I left college).
Anyway, maybe you should read the post, and find out a little about my politics, before calling me an "M$ troll" -- I assure you that while I may play devil's advocate often enough, I do not do so solely to rouse, i do it because I am not sold on Free (as in Caffeine) software any more than I'm sold on the shitty x86 architecture.
"When there is a large number of non-technical Linux users on the home desktop..."
I hate to burst the community's bubble, but this will never happen. It SHOULDN'T...because a large nubmer of non technical users on your OS means that the OS each of them is using has become in some way homogenized, in some way become closed (because your non-technical user does not have the necesary abilities to run a truly open system...just as non-technical cooks need boxed cakes). The instant you introduce a "non-technical user" to GNU-Linux base OS, one of two things happens: either the user ceases to be non-technical, or the OS ceases to be GNU-Linux. The OS they would be using would have to be homogenized -- stuck to one kernel, one set of libraries, one make system, one rpm system, one processor, one UI (or UI concept) -- or it would be impossible to provide the support necessary to run applications on the OS. And homogenization is the precise opposite of the GNU concept -- it's closed possibilities, it's freedom only to hang yourself. And like you say, the OS would have to be a preinstall...and in this respect, people do use Linux, or will, in embedded platforms, but this won't help the Redhat/Gnome/KDE people in any way (it'll just seem like a fancy appliance, no GNUs neded).
Face it, you don't want this...you want an elite operating system with choices and power. Let people have their windows, their macos, and let them buy software that's well supported and stop complaining about your great, powerful free shit with no warranties implied.
Congratulations...you've overcome the stereotype, and are managing to be one of the scant supporters of an OS that's as much a mindset as set of computer codes. But the problem is that many users do not follow your lead -- more, I'd argue, than users of BSD or Solaris or HPUX or MacOS or Windows or IRIX. GNU-Linux is GNU...it's all about freedom (of whatever). If you support it with money or dev time, and that's a big if, you're exercising your right to do so, but at the same time the guy who does nothing and pays nothing. Linux is the first OS designed to protect the rights of the freeloader, as an extension of extending the rights of the power user and patriotic programmer/professional.
Beleive me, I love the ideas of free software, and in fact have devoted some considerable time to porting Tomcat to OS-X. But if you were to breakdown the number of users of Linux who were in your demographic vs the ones who just wanted a great OS with everything available for free (or extremely cheap, I had a friend who bought a linux book for $5 that came with a CD with Red Hat 7.something on it rather than the $45 Red Hat 7.something package. Guess how much of the proceeds of that book went to Red Hat?), you'd no doubt discover the majority are in the latter area...maybe they paid for quake 3 or CnC, but they sure as heckfire didn't pay for the OS, the consecutive kernels, &tc.
I did that with my beetle :)
I argue that Linux users pride themselves in freedom in all things. Would the majority pay for my kernel mod's C++ source if another did the same in perl, slower, for free? Some might, but most would not...free as in beer comes as an afterthought of a lack of stinginess in free as in speech software.
By the way, that was a thesis statement, not just a generalization, which is why you can argue an opposing viewpoint and neither of us is necesarily wrong. Generalizations aren't inherently bad, because people understand they aren't meant to be true for everyone. If they were true for everyone, they wouldn't be genralizations, they would be facts. And the facts are in support of the generalization in this case -- companies that sell products for GNU-Linux operating systems that have "free" parrellels experience fewer units sold per capita that companies that sell similar products on the Windows side (look at the sales of any image viewer on PC...they're often quite profitable, despite the fact that freeware viewers such as IrfanView are as good if not better). In fact, I'd argue that the paradigms for software between the two platforms are almost completely opposite: PC users assume that free software can't be as good as for-pay software, and Linux users often assume the opposite (this is a thesis, too). This is one of the problems Windows oriented companies have when moving people to Linux...free software sounds like a shitty idea to somebody who paid $400 for a piece of software to write letters to grandma and be interrupted by an animated office supply.
"You, my dear sir, are wrong."
And you, sir, are pretty bitchy. Have trouble compiling your kernel this morning?
It makes me a generalizer, but that's okay...i set up the generalization the sentance before with "predominate attitude among."
I bought a Volkswagen Passat, it was $19000 after my trade-in. It was pretty quick, but could have been quicker. So I dropped $400 on a performance chip, $150 on a new blow off valve, $50 on a filter charger, quality oil, a fuel pressure regulator and put nothing but great gas into it.
All in all, I'll say I've put about a hundred hours into making the car work the way I like it. My freelance rate is $40.hr. Does Volkswagen of America owe me $4000?
Here's a picture: http://images.dasmegabyte.org/dasmb31337.jpg. It rocks.
I'm a mac user, dummy, did you read the rest of the post?
Either way, i apologize for being so general as to use the term "Linux users never pay for anything"...but I was trying to be a bit reactive to what is essentially a complaint beyond the scope of Linux development. The OS is made free, and users -- at least, the class of users most vocal in the realm of Slashdot -- often complain when any development for their OS is closed, made available for fee only or stops production entirely. This is, you have to admit, a little silly under the paradigm that programmers should release everything free for modification and manipulation; if an app is closed, it was never GNU-Linux to begin with (the old Straight Edge philosophy that, if you aren't now, you never were). Freedom is a perfect example of a software company not understanding what Linux is -- a tremulous entity with no reliable reference installation and no absolute commonality of libraries. A windows company tried to bring their software, designed by programmers used to unhacked, straightforward platforms (so straightforward they apparently didn't account for advanced settings, advanced connections or advanced users), to a platform that is neither stragihtforward nor unhacked. And they gave up on it -- just like so many others have given up on the idea that Linux is a viable commercial platform, because it is so difficult to be sure what goes into it. Part of this is due to the lack of common libraries and APIs, something Linux users are proud of, and to a certain extent should be. Part of it is also that Linux users are too well informed to pay for a product that's already been built, for free, and requiring only a moderate amount of monkey wrenching before it works better than a commercial product with set abilities, set preferences and set failings.
If you buy commercial distros and don't hack them, if you rely on RedHat out of the box and never use Make or rpm or vi, you're a different type of user entirely (and, consequently, one who has no right to 'dis the windows crowd because you're essentially no different...same mindset, different OS).
Add this to the list of things apple dropped the ball on for OS-X -- the ability to customize the os colours and activities, DVD support, a "conservation" mode for the processor, burner support, full screen support for iTunes, the goddamn volume keys on the powerbook...but it's all worth it for that beautiful fucking dock. I love my dock so goddamn much it isn't even funny.
One user buying one package does nothing to change the fact that the platform is ABOUT not paying for software. And if you're buying Linux games, it's because games are a little different from standard software...hell, I own a copy of Tetris for five different machines, but I've never bought a browser or an MP3 player. "Freedom" is a software package that directly parellels free development work on Linux, and even if it is vastly superior, it's never going to make money when there's free, open source development work in the same arena.
And this is what MS is talking about when they consider open source a threat...open source programmers are doing the same work as MS' programmers and doing it for free. Ain't no company, no matter how big it is, that can compete with freedom (though Apple comes close with it's darling OS-X).