For the same reason that the "Big Guys" don't: leverage.
This argument only holds true if you intend to patent. As others have pointed out, patenting is very expensive upfront, & extremely expensive to defend. For the average small software developer, patenting is unreasonable, & even with pooled patents, not every idea can be patented. Publishing is a good "poor man's patent", at least as far as preventing others from patenting it is concerned.
The same rationale applies to the second half of your post. It's a great idea, but not realistic in the vast majority of cases. For those truly great ideas, a comunal patent is fabulous. For the rest, publlishing gets the job done.
I can't help you with cases (I've been looking for one too) but, in the unlikely event that you live in the Seattle area, check out Boeing Surplus in Renton. I've seefull height racks (7'?) with doors in the neighborhood of $50. The ones I've seen were well worn, but still quite solid. Often they've included casters. Their stock changes constantly, & they won't quote stock over the phone, but if you can get down there, you'll usually find SOMETHING interesting.
I agree wholeheartedly. So much so that I named my dog after him. Unfortunately, he was so far ahead of his time that virtually all of his ideas still remain largely unimplemented. Perhaps one day he will take his rightful place as one of the worlds great humanitarians.
The problem is that he's apparently trying to re-write the English Language. My dictionary lists 27 definitions of the word free, one of which is "without charge". This software *is* free. Is it free in every possible sense? No, but it is free. Should Borland have released it as free (ie. Open Source)? Well, it would have been nice, but it's certainly hard to criticize them for what they have done. Maybe free isn't as good as free, but it's certainly better then not free...
Actually, it's a excellent name, but not necessarily because people will randomly punch it up. It's a great name due to it's ease of recognition.
A good example: Where do you go to order drugs online? Most likely, unless you're following a link, you'll go to drugstore.com. Because they have an easy to remember name, they get much more name recognition for their advertising $ then they would with a less obvious name.
That said, do I think it was worth $7.5 mil? Probably not, but then again, you never know...
Actually, had the protest remained peaceful, it still would have recieved worldwide coverage, but the coveraged would have focused on the message. Since it turned violent, the media will cover it as a riot & they won't actually have to talk about the protestoor's issues. Any plants may well be planted by the WTO itself as the riots sure got them what they wanted-- martial law in downtown seattle, and a discredited opposition.
Delegates also attacked... I was part of one of the blockades that remained peaceful, & saw more then one delegate try to physically force his way past the line. One guy who I have to assume was not overly bright (I can't absolutely confirm he was a delegate, but he appeared to be & was carrying wto credentials), after being turned away walked about twenty feet in front of our line & turned & charged head first into the line (three people deep with linked arms). When that didn't work he turned around, walked away, then turned & tried again...
Another delegate apparently pepper sprayed one of the blockades in a failed attempt to break through.
My favorite was the guy who got beligerent when we wouldn't let him pass. He said he was only trying to go see the new bond film at the theater around the corner. Once we pointed out to him that even if we let him pass, the squad of police in full riot gear immediately behind us wouldn't let him go any further, he decided that protesting would be more fun anyway, & he joined up.
It is true that only a very small percentage of the protesters were violent. A group of 20 to 30 anarchists in town from Eugene, OR was responsible for most of the vandalism, & add in a few troublemakers who are always join in when ever there's an opportunity to do so. Unfortunately, those few troublemakers gave the police the excuse they were looking for to escalate the situation. Had the police actually made even a token efffort to arrest those responsible, rather then simply attacking everyone, the entire situation could have been diffused without a problem.
Today, the city has instituted a "no protest zone" covering much of the downtown area & has pledged that anyone priotesting within that zone-- peaceful or otherwise-- will be summarily arrested, a policy that to me appears to be a clear violation of the first ammendment. Also, one of the main -peaceful- protest groups had all of their banners & communications equipment confiscated. The police claimed that the banners could be used as weapons (a shaky argument at best), but I can see absolutely no reason to sieze the radios that is not a clear first ammendment violation (the radios are used as safety equipment in addition to general organizational purposes).
Re:Pick this book up at Amazon?
on
The Big U
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· Score: 1
Several copies online from $200 to $500. See Bookfinder.
NEVER buy a used book from Amazon.com. They double the price & you don't really get any choice as to the copy you'll get. GO to bookfinder & you'll get a better copy for less money.
Alice doesn't transmit the key. She transmits a string of potential values to use in the key. Not until Bob recieves the values & they compare notes via the insecure channel do they decide upon the key. Because of this, any information that Eve recieved & didn't somehow retransmit would have no effect on the final key.
I suspect he meant that a RAM disk was irrelevent, not that it couldn't be spared. Since the site is only ~5MB, it would all be able to be cached in RAM by default.
You're halfway right. As I said, a work is copywritten whether or not it is registered. But, according to US law, you cannot sue until you've registered. You can register after the fact, but unless the violation occurs within the first three months, you cannot get *statutory* damages unless the work was registered prior to the offense. In any event, once you've registered, you can sue & recover actual damages + any profits the violator made on the copywritten work.
First, you own the copyright to the article, whether or not you note such. They are clearly in violation of the US Copyright law, so the bark letters that have been mentioned should work fine. Unfortunately, before you can actually sue for copyright infringement, you must register the copyright for a nominal fee (~$40 if I remember correctly), and because the copyright was not registered before the actual infringement, you can only collect actual damages (probably none in your case) plus any profits that Filemaker Today made as a result of your article. Had you registered it, you would have also been eligible for up to $100,000 in statutory damages. See The Copyright Website for more info on the Copyright law.
Second, a simple phrase such as:
"All material on this site is Copyright 1999, www.murrayc.com. Permission is hereby granted for non-commercial reproduction, provided that this notice remain attached. Please email for information on commercial reproduction (including advertiser-sponsored websites)."
That let's anyone use it as they wish for non-commercial purposes, but if someone wants to put it in their book or whatever, they must get you specific permission first.
Defaulting to disbelief is great in the event that the comment is particularly unbelievable. But the quote attributed to Uncle Bill is not particularly remarkable. It easily could have been an unintentional misstatement, or just as easily he could have truly meant it at the time. Remember, Bill Gates is generally not considered much of a visionary*, so it's not much of a stretch to doubt his foresight.
* Bill Gates is not a visionary. His strength is in finding technologies that others have invented & capitalizing on them. While this too requires a degree of foresight, it mostly requires a ruthless willingness to capitalize on the work of others.
Ummm... He said he was there. True, he could be lying, but it's probably in bad form to outright accuse him of such based solely on the fact that You don't know of an authoratative source.;-)
Re:2.0.38? What happened to the 2.2 tree?
on
Kernels Galore
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· Score: 1
BTW, remember that that was the FIFTH service pack. In theory, most of the bugs should be worked out in the first couple of updates, so this one should have fewer updates then the others, right? But we'll assume that each SP fixed the same number of bugs. That means, if each of the bugs had been fixed immediately rather than in service packs, we be at NT4.0.300 (5 * 60-- and that only counts the 60 updates to the base OS, not y2k, networking, shell, security, etc...)
Re:2.0.38? What happened to the 2.2 tree?
on
Kernels Galore
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· Score: 1
There's no such thing as bug-free software.
Certainly Linux has bugs, but there are differences. First, the bugs generally don't seem to effect daily operation. Most of the bugs, I believe, have been security related.
Second, when a bug is found in Linux, it's fixed. With Windows, you have to wait for the next service-pack, which could be months away. Because Linux bugs are fixed so promptly, it makes it look much more buggy then it is. Sure there have been, what, 12 upgrades to 2.2 so far? But how many bug fixes were in the most recent WinNT service pack? And as we get further along in the evolution of 2.2, the updates will get more & more scarce.
Prior to buying this book, I wasn't -really- impressed with any of the Tcl books I've read. Graphical Applications is a good intro, but is fairly slow moving-- I'd prefer a bunch of quick chapters to the few very long (often >50 pages) ones.
Practical programming is an excellent reference, but it's not written as a tutorial. If you prefer to learn from a tutorial, you'll probably be better off with something different. That said, anyone who's serious about Tcl should probably have it for more advanced topics.
While the Nutshell Book may not be a good -only- book for absolute beginners, it's definitely a great second book. My only complaint with it is a one of formatting-- on commands with subcommands (such as 'string length'), the subcommand should be bolded, or otherwise made to stand out a bit better. Otherwise, It's a great book, Personally, I'd give it 9 out of 10.
Re:That's a very poorly constructed argument.
on
New Cyberlaws
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· Score: 1
Oh well... If that post violates the law, then so will hundreds of others, say any post linking to the New York Times, which also presents drug news regularly.
This law will not pass, & if it does, will be overturned in all of about 5 minutes.
I wonder, has anyone asked themselves why our government seems so intent on passing laws that are blatantly unconstitutional? This is just the latest in a long string of these laws lately, such as the law allowing the ten commandments in schools.
It's somewhat ironic that the republicans are the ones screaming "Tax Cut!", but they are the ones responsible for nearly all of the waste when it comes to passing unconstitutional laws (each of which costs taxpayers many millions of dollars).
The ACLU had socialist tendencies up until say-- 1950? Even then, it was just because virtually all of the American left had socialist tendencies. Since then, even calling the ACLU leftist is absurd. How many Leftists would have argued for freeing Oliver North? The ACLU did, & won the case.
The ACLU has one mission, & one mission only: To defend the constitution of the united states. Many people seem to think that's a bad thing. While I can certainly understand how some people can be angered by some of the cases they accept (defending Nazi's right to march through Jewish neighborhoods, for example), they truly do their job for everyone benefit. It's a very slippery slope when you start down that path. If Nazi's can't march in Jewish neighborhoods, what's next, blacks can't march in predominantly white neighborhoods?
Re:That's a very poorly constructed argument.
on
New Cyberlaws
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· Score: 1
...a pretty good prohibition argument could be made on the following premise: You can't really keep people from smoking pot. But because of pot's extreme illegality, people are less likely to do dumb things (which generally involves leaving the living room couch) like driving or operating heavy machinerey. They're fearful of the law, and are thus content to sequester themselves.
Man, I always thought/.'ers were an intelligent lot...
This is a ludicrous argument. Think about it: Marijuana generally makes people lethargic & hungry. So let's make it illegal so we can encourage people to drink instead, that way they will be rowdy & violent instead!
If you'd like to make a intelligent argument on the subject of Marijuana, you really should educate yourself on the subject. I highly recommend the book 'Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts' by Lynn Zimmer & John Morgan (ISBN 0-9641568-4-9). It looks at virtually all the SCIENTIFIC evidence for & against Marijuana. You'll be amazed at how little you know. I've been -very- pro-legalization for years (and, no, I don't smoke), but even I was amazed at some of the outright lies that the government has been telling us for decades.
And check out Marijuana News for a look at some of what's really going on in the so-called drug war. (Note: the Marijuana News site -is- biased. Occasionally, they get a bit caught up in their own rhetoric (and of course the site is ugly!). Nonetheless, the site contains vast amounts of information. Read it with an open mind, though, and you will begin to question your governments motives in all of this.)
NOTE: I'm not meaning to single out this particular poster in my criticism. This comment is directed at everyone who is spouting rhetoric without really having a clue on the subject.
So, the first time you ever used a Windows machine, you were able to configure your ethernet within ten minutes-- without reading a manual? Sure went smoother then my first Networking experience with Windows which took three days and I'd been using Windows for 2 years (admittedly, part-- not all-- of the blame goes to the hardware vendor, though).
And of course, this wasn't Windows, but Unix.
Don't get me wrong, NeXT isn't perfect-- You still have to use text files for all but the simplest networks (at least as far as I can tell, I 've only spent probably minutes playing with it so far...), but it is a good ideal at which to aim.
I do not like consistency for the sake of consistency. I don't want all programs the same. Fvwm does fine by me for most things. Any enforced consistency would stifle new ideas.
Nonsense. You can certainly take consistency to far, but within reason, consistency encourages innovation. Saying "Ctrl-C always copies" doesn't mean that you can't innovate, it only means that users won't need to lose all their old habits every time they pick up a new application.
Remember, innovation is irrelevant if no one can figure out how your software works.
Now, if you REALLY want to be innovative, let me define my own consistency. Let me define system-wide command keys for the common functions (copy, paste, quit, etc...), etc. I don't mean by editing criptic config files, give me a GUI, make it simple & self-explanatory.
(Or how's this for innovative: I picked up a Color NeXTstation today for $40 bucks. Brought it home, set it up, plugged it in. Fiddled with the GUI for 5 minutes, until I found the Network control panel, entered a few numbers, & two minutes later I was telneting into my Linux box. I've never used NeXT before, & never opened the manual, but less then ten minutes after turning it on, I'd figured out how to network it. Now that's innovative.)
Without meaning any disrespect to FreeBSD or any other OS's out there, my point really was directed at what Linux has become. I actually don't belong to the Linus Religion. I think he deserves much credit, but I know that he isn't Linux.
But, he is directly responsible (with others) for what Linux has become. He's the figurehead behind which this movement has sprung up. For the first time in many years, there's a true threat to Microsoft's dominance (admittedly, it might not topple MS, but you've got to admit that MS is scared). I know that BSD is arguably better, but BSD will not topple Microsoft, not even in the server marketplace, let alone on the desktop.
Again, Linus as man of the Century is absurd. Linus as Man of the Year on the otherhand... He'd probably have my vote. Either him or Larry Flynt (Who'd've thought that a porn king could have such a direct & dramatic effect on the American political landscape?)
True, Benz invented the automobile, but Ford moved it from a toy for the rich to a tool for the masses. While Benz certainly deserves credit, he wouldn't get my vote.
Actually, Time has been known to choose inanimate objects as it's Man of the Year, so perhaps teh automobile is really the best choice by itself...
Slashdot Mirror
For the same reason that the "Big Guys" don't: leverage.
This argument only holds true if you intend to patent. As others have pointed out, patenting is very expensive upfront, & extremely expensive to defend. For the average small software developer, patenting is unreasonable, & even with pooled patents, not every idea can be patented. Publishing is a good "poor man's patent", at least as far as preventing others from patenting it is concerned.
The same rationale applies to the second half of your post. It's a great idea, but not realistic in the vast majority of cases. For those truly great ideas, a comunal patent is fabulous. For the rest, publlishing gets the job done.
I can't help you with cases (I've been looking for one too) but, in the unlikely event that you live in the Seattle area, check out Boeing Surplus in Renton. I've seefull height racks (7'?) with doors in the neighborhood of $50. The ones I've seen were well worn, but still quite solid. Often they've included casters. Their stock changes constantly, & they won't quote stock over the phone, but if you can get down there, you'll usually find SOMETHING interesting.
I agree wholeheartedly. So much so that I named my dog after him. Unfortunately, he was so far ahead of his time that virtually all of his ideas still remain largely unimplemented. Perhaps one day he will take his rightful place as one of the worlds great humanitarians.
The problem is that he's apparently trying to re-write the English Language. My dictionary lists 27 definitions of the word free, one of which is "without charge". This software *is* free. Is it free in every possible sense? No, but it is free. Should Borland have released it as free (ie. Open Source)? Well, it would have been nice, but it's certainly hard to criticize them for what they have done. Maybe free isn't as good as free, but it's certainly better then not free...
I don't think the majority involved were doing it for entertainment value... But most of us were having fun in the process of making a statement.
Of course I can't actually speak to the Bond guy's motives, but the more the merrier.
Actually, it's a excellent name, but not necessarily because people will randomly punch it up. It's a great name due to it's ease of recognition.
A good example: Where do you go to order drugs online? Most likely, unless you're following a link, you'll go to drugstore.com. Because they have an easy to remember name, they get much more name recognition for their advertising $ then they would with a less obvious name.
That said, do I think it was worth $7.5 mil? Probably not, but then again, you never know...
Actually, had the protest remained peaceful, it still would have recieved worldwide coverage, but the coveraged would have focused on the message. Since it turned violent, the media will cover it as a riot & they won't actually have to talk about the protestoor's issues. Any plants may well be planted by the WTO itself as the riots sure got them what they wanted-- martial law in downtown seattle, and a discredited opposition.
Delegates also attacked... I was part of one of the blockades that remained peaceful, & saw more then one delegate try to physically force his way past the line. One guy who I have to assume was not overly bright (I can't absolutely confirm he was a delegate, but he appeared to be & was carrying wto credentials), after being turned away walked about twenty feet in front of our line & turned & charged head first into the line (three people deep with linked arms). When that didn't work he turned around, walked away, then turned & tried again...
Another delegate apparently pepper sprayed one of the blockades in a failed attempt to break through.
My favorite was the guy who got beligerent when we wouldn't let him pass. He said he was only trying to go see the new bond film at the theater around the corner. Once we pointed out to him that even if we let him pass, the squad of police in full riot gear immediately behind us wouldn't let him go any further, he decided that protesting would be more fun anyway, & he joined up.
It is true that only a very small percentage of the protesters were violent. A group of 20 to 30 anarchists in town from Eugene, OR was responsible for most of the vandalism, & add in a few troublemakers who are always join in when ever there's an opportunity to do so. Unfortunately, those few troublemakers gave the police the excuse they were looking for to escalate the situation. Had the police actually made even a token efffort to arrest those responsible, rather then simply attacking everyone, the entire situation could have been diffused without a problem.
Today, the city has instituted a "no protest zone" covering much of the downtown area & has pledged that anyone priotesting within that zone-- peaceful or otherwise-- will be summarily arrested, a policy that to me appears to be a clear violation of the first ammendment. Also, one of the main -peaceful- protest groups had all of their banners & communications equipment confiscated. The police claimed that the banners could be used as weapons (a shaky argument at best), but I can see absolutely no reason to sieze the radios that is not a clear first ammendment violation (the radios are used as safety equipment in addition to general organizational purposes).
Several copies online from $200 to $500. See Bookfinder.
NEVER buy a used book from Amazon.com. They double the price & you don't really get any choice as to the copy you'll get. GO to bookfinder & you'll get a better copy for less money.
Actually, it's even simpler.
Alice doesn't transmit the key. She transmits a string of potential values to use in the key. Not until Bob recieves the values & they compare notes via the insecure channel do they decide upon the key. Because of this, any information that Eve recieved & didn't somehow retransmit would have no effect on the final key.
I suspect he meant that a RAM disk was irrelevent, not that it couldn't be spared. Since the site is only ~5MB, it would all be able to be cached in RAM by default.
You're halfway right. As I said, a work is copywritten whether or not it is registered. But, according to US law, you cannot sue until you've registered. You can register after the fact, but unless the violation occurs within the first three months, you cannot get *statutory* damages unless the work was registered prior to the offense. In any event, once you've registered, you can sue & recover actual damages + any profits the violator made on the copywritten work.
First, you own the copyright to the article, whether or not you note such. They are clearly in violation of the US Copyright law, so the bark letters that have been mentioned should work fine. Unfortunately, before you can actually sue for copyright infringement, you must register the copyright for a nominal fee (~$40 if I remember correctly), and because the copyright was not registered before the actual infringement, you can only collect actual damages (probably none in your case) plus any profits that Filemaker Today made as a result of your article. Had you registered it, you would have also been eligible for up to $100,000 in statutory damages. See The Copyright Website for more info on the Copyright law.
Second, a simple phrase such as: That let's anyone use it as they wish for non-commercial purposes, but if someone wants to put it in their book or whatever, they must get you specific permission first.
Defaulting to disbelief is great in the event that the comment is particularly unbelievable. But the quote attributed to Uncle Bill is not particularly remarkable. It easily could have been an unintentional misstatement, or just as easily he could have truly meant it at the time. Remember, Bill Gates is generally not considered much of a visionary*, so it's not much of a stretch to doubt his foresight.
* Bill Gates is not a visionary. His strength is in finding technologies that others have invented & capitalizing on them. While this too requires a degree of foresight, it mostly requires a ruthless willingness to capitalize on the work of others.
You believe he was on the panel?
;-)
Ummm... He said he was there. True, he could be lying, but it's probably in bad form to outright accuse him of such based solely on the fact that You don't know of an authoratative source.
BTW, remember that that was the FIFTH service pack. In theory, most of the bugs should be worked out in the first couple of updates, so this one should have fewer updates then the others, right? But we'll assume that each SP fixed the same number of bugs. That means, if each of the bugs had been fixed immediately rather than in service packs, we be at NT4.0.300 (5 * 60-- and that only counts the 60 updates to the base OS, not y2k, networking, shell, security, etc...)
There's no such thing as bug-free software.
Certainly Linux has bugs, but there are differences. First, the bugs generally don't seem to effect daily operation. Most of the bugs, I believe, have been security related.
Second, when a bug is found in Linux, it's fixed. With Windows, you have to wait for the next service-pack, which could be months away. Because Linux bugs are fixed so promptly, it makes it look much more buggy then it is. Sure there have been, what, 12 upgrades to 2.2 so far? But how many bug fixes were in the most recent WinNT service pack? And as we get further along in the evolution of 2.2, the updates will get more & more scarce.
(for a list of the updates in SP5 for WinNT, see the Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 5 Updates Catalog.)
Prior to buying this book, I wasn't -really- impressed with any of the Tcl books I've read. Graphical Applications is a good intro, but is fairly slow moving-- I'd prefer a bunch of quick chapters to the few very long (often >50 pages) ones.
Practical programming is an excellent reference, but it's not written as a tutorial. If you prefer to learn from a tutorial, you'll probably be better off with something different. That said, anyone who's serious about Tcl should probably have it for more advanced topics.
While the Nutshell Book may not be a good -only- book for absolute beginners, it's definitely a great second book. My only complaint with it is a one of formatting-- on commands with subcommands (such as 'string length'), the subcommand should be bolded, or otherwise made to stand out a bit better. Otherwise, It's a great book, Personally, I'd give it 9 out of 10.
Oh well... If that post violates the law, then so will hundreds of others, say any post linking to the New York Times, which also presents drug news regularly.
This law will not pass, & if it does, will be overturned in all of about 5 minutes.
I wonder, has anyone asked themselves why our government seems so intent on passing laws that are blatantly unconstitutional? This is just the latest in a long string of these laws lately, such as the law allowing the ten commandments in schools.
It's somewhat ironic that the republicans are the ones screaming "Tax Cut!", but they are the ones responsible for nearly all of the waste when it comes to passing unconstitutional laws (each of which costs taxpayers many millions of dollars).
The ACLU had socialist tendencies up until say-- 1950? Even then, it was just because virtually all of the American left had socialist tendencies. Since then, even calling the ACLU leftist is absurd. How many Leftists would have argued for freeing Oliver North? The ACLU did, & won the case.
The ACLU has one mission, & one mission only: To defend the constitution of the united states. Many people seem to think that's a bad thing. While I can certainly understand how some people can be angered by some of the cases they accept (defending Nazi's right to march through Jewish neighborhoods, for example), they truly do their job for everyone benefit. It's a very slippery slope when you start down that path. If Nazi's can't march in Jewish neighborhoods, what's next, blacks can't march in predominantly white neighborhoods?
...a pretty good prohibition argument could be made on the following premise: You can't really keep people from smoking pot. But because of pot's extreme illegality, people are less likely to do dumb things (which generally involves leaving the living room couch) like driving or operating heavy machinerey. They're fearful of the law, and are thus content to sequester themselves.
/.'ers were an intelligent lot...
Man, I always thought
This is a ludicrous argument. Think about it: Marijuana generally makes people lethargic & hungry. So let's make it illegal so we can encourage people to drink instead, that way they will be rowdy & violent instead!
If you'd like to make a intelligent argument on the subject of Marijuana, you really should educate yourself on the subject. I highly recommend the book 'Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts' by Lynn Zimmer & John Morgan (ISBN 0-9641568-4-9). It looks at virtually all the SCIENTIFIC evidence for & against Marijuana. You'll be amazed at how little you know. I've been -very- pro-legalization for years (and, no, I don't smoke), but even I was amazed at some of the outright lies that the government has been telling us for decades.
And check out Marijuana News for a look at some of what's really going on in the so-called drug war. (Note: the Marijuana News site -is- biased. Occasionally, they get a bit caught up in their own rhetoric (and of course the site is ugly!). Nonetheless, the site contains vast amounts of information. Read it with an open mind, though, and you will begin to question your governments motives in all of this.)
NOTE: I'm not meaning to single out this particular poster in my criticism. This comment is directed at everyone who is spouting rhetoric without really having a clue on the subject.
So, the first time you ever used a Windows machine, you were able to configure your ethernet within ten minutes-- without reading a manual? Sure went smoother then my first Networking experience with Windows which took three days and I'd been using Windows for 2 years (admittedly, part-- not all-- of the blame goes to the hardware vendor, though).
And of course, this wasn't Windows, but Unix.
Don't get me wrong, NeXT isn't perfect-- You still have to use text files for all but the simplest networks (at least as far as I can tell, I 've only spent probably minutes playing with it so far...), but it is a good ideal at which to aim.
I do not like consistency for the sake of consistency. I don't want all programs the same. Fvwm does fine by me for most things. Any enforced consistency would stifle new ideas.
Nonsense. You can certainly take consistency to far, but within reason, consistency encourages innovation. Saying "Ctrl-C always copies" doesn't mean that you can't innovate, it only means that users won't need to lose all their old habits every time they pick up a new application.
Remember, innovation is irrelevant if no one can figure out how your software works.
Now, if you REALLY want to be innovative, let me define my own consistency. Let me define system-wide command keys for the common functions (copy, paste, quit, etc...), etc. I don't mean by editing criptic config files, give me a GUI, make it simple & self-explanatory.
(Or how's this for innovative: I picked up a Color NeXTstation today for $40 bucks. Brought it home, set it up, plugged it in. Fiddled with the GUI for 5 minutes, until I found the Network control panel, entered a few numbers, & two minutes later I was telneting into my Linux box. I've never used NeXT before, & never opened the manual, but less then ten minutes after turning it on, I'd figured out how to network it. Now that's innovative.)
Without meaning any disrespect to FreeBSD or any other OS's out there, my point really was directed at what Linux has become. I actually don't belong to the Linus Religion. I think he deserves much credit, but I know that he isn't Linux.
But, he is directly responsible (with others) for what Linux has become. He's the figurehead behind which this movement has sprung up. For the first time in many years, there's a true threat to Microsoft's dominance (admittedly, it might not topple MS, but you've got to admit that MS is scared). I know that BSD is arguably better, but BSD will not topple Microsoft, not even in the server marketplace, let alone on the desktop.
Again, Linus as man of the Century is absurd. Linus as Man of the Year on the otherhand... He'd probably have my vote. Either him or Larry Flynt (Who'd've thought that a porn king could have such a direct & dramatic effect on the American political landscape?)
True, Benz invented the automobile, but Ford moved it from a toy for the rich to a tool for the masses. While Benz certainly deserves credit, he wouldn't get my vote.
Actually, Time has been known to choose inanimate objects as it's Man of the Year, so perhaps teh automobile is really the best choice by itself...