I'm not sure quite what to think of this trend. I'm not convinced it's an entirely bad thing. The latest FSF offer for a manual is probably the only way such a manual will get written. Frankly the people with the knowledge to write it don't want to spend all that programming time writing documentation. That's unfortunate, but it's how it is. So in order to get such documentation someone will probably have to pay for it, as the FSF is offering to do.
How else would we get the documentation? Perhaps FSF could hire a single writer instead of a bounty, but it's mostly the same thing.
On the other hand... What happens if 8 people spend the next 3 months writing the manual. One of the 8 gets there first and collects the $20k (assuming all 8 are equal quality; though I'm not sure that provision exists in FSF's offer)... Will those 7 likely work on other offers? It seems a pretty quick way to burn bridges.
Oh well, some thoughts anyways. What do you all think?
I personally alwayss thought the SETI project was a little far fetched anyways. I'd rather spend my CPU time with distributed.net hoping to change stupid laws. The odds are a lot better, anyways (: Of course everyone should run what they want; but why not give SETI some time to settle down, work all the bugs out, and apologize for calling *nix users cheaters (:
We're driving in from Missouri tommorow but won't be in until late... Anyone going to be standing in line anyways and mind getting 4 extra tickets? Doesn't matter what night or time (: Ah well, it was worth a shot.
Let's take a look at this honestly. I think, when pressed, few people would contend that Linux can scale as well as NT when price is not an option. (As pointed out by a previous poster, so what? Use Solaris if you need that enterprise level performance now!).
Linux has an advantage in a few key areas:
Entry level-Mid duty servers
Adaptability [range of use]
Price [don't push it; no one looking at enterprise level solutions cares]
Lots of others that I'm not going to address here (:
So let's look at these points and see how we might take advantage of them.
Entry-level / Mid-duty Servers: Linux may well win this section of the benchmark. If not, it will be close. The addition of NT clients to the file serving test makes the test a bit more fair. Let's be a little reasonable about the test though and measure more than throughput. Request lag and reliability should be measured... Let's stick both boxes in a closet for a month serving some randomized requests and see who comes out alive (:... Should we use Apache? I don't know. If we just want to measure throughput or pure number of connections maybe not; so don't! Why do we have to?
Adaptability / Range of use: Again, Linux rules here. Show me an NT box that can serve mail, web requests, smb traffic, ftp, etc and run on a PII/256mb... Now turn it into a firewall as well (: Push these points!!!!
Price: What to say? How about we just include the cost of the solution with the benchmark (:
Now my next point. Let's do the test. Let's accept the results. And then lets come back in 6 months with a better product! If linux gets creamed somewhere, fix it and test again. Show how quickly linux can adapt and repair itself. Hopefully NT will have been slaughtered in some category as well; I'll bet it won't change in 6 months.
Anyways. I'm getting sick of "FUD! FUD! FUD!" every time we see criticism. Let's take that criticism and use it!
Always check out DVDPricesearch.net. You can usually find some good deals, and always keep your eyes out for coupons...
I think I pay, on average, $12/disk with shipping included, without spending too much time trying...
As for special features -- most special editions have some great stuff.. I always enjoy audio commentary tracks and "deleted scenes"... Kudos to "Good Will Hunting" for including Audio Commentary about the deleted scenes, as well...
So whats the latest on Kevin Smith movies and DVD?
It's completely ridiculous. Even more ridiculous is the fact that "onOpen" macros are fairly widely used... I'm taking a (expletive deleted) accounting class where we have to use (multiple expletives deleted) MS Excel for a bunch of spreadsheets... The professor decided it was important to each all the business majors how to "program". So they spent 2 weeks on VBA, the assignment over that section was to write a fairly complex "on open" macro, and now all future assignments must include an "on open" macro that explains what the worksheet does. IMNSHO the professor ought to be slapped. I've emailed him twice already about crap like this, but he's clueless... That class is the only time I've used an MS product all semester, and I'll be glad when it's over.
...it's because we need to learn not to pull this kind of immature crap in public any more. The stakes are too high now; when we squabble like children, the trade and even the mainstream press will pick up on it and nail us as a bunch of fractious flakes who can't even be trusted on the playground without a keeper...
To me this is the most important paragraph of that essay. I respect ESR, and I generally try to avoid discussions centering on him or RMS because I think they rarely lead to anything positive, and they often serve just to incite flames. (Maybe Rob just wants to do a trial by fire of the new moderators? (: )
That being said, the whole community (slashdot 'kiddies' and all) needs to grow up. The cold hard fact is that our favorite os _won't_ even be trusted by techies, much less PHBs if we let the community splinter badly. We're not there yet (or even close), but I'd sure hate to see that happen.
Read Rob's essay on flamewars... Think about things before you say them. Realize that people like ESR dedicate their LIFE to linux, and that no one will put up with this stuff very long.
Can the community stand to lose Linus? Do you want to try?
I love the new slashdot, it's moderation done right
That being said, I'm still a little concerned about moderation. It seems to me, from watching a number of threads lately, that negative comments (even some bug reports or requests), especially when they come from AC's are demoted or ignored... THeresponse to those comments, even if the response is only a "positive" flame (Ie, "Rob Rules, you suck cuz you're an AC") get promoted... It's not unusual to see a whole thread, where the first thoughtful (negative) post is a -1 or 0 but the responses, no matter how banal (as long as they're positive) get promoted... It's just a moderator issue, but it's the biggest remaining problem I see....
I chose my options, and went to save user and it complained that my browser (netscape 4.5) didn't save a cookie properly or I was behind a firewall. It can, and I'm not (:
I'd also like to second the idea of boxes on the left side or below the stories so the page isn't unneccessarily long...
Also, is there a checkbox for userfriendly? I didn't see one...
It ought to be illegal to post stories containing 2 or more of the following on the front page of/.: 1) Linux vs. Bill 2) Opensource vs. CLosed Source 3) KDE & Gnome 4) Interview with [linux/rms/esr/etc]
Put simply, there are some things that you simply can't teach yourself. I'll glady grant that anyone can teach themselves a computing application or language in far less than 4 years. I'll even grant that I've wasted some time and money in classes that I will never use, and more time and money in classes that I may not use often in my life.
But the cold hard fact is that skipping college will cost you. You won't learn the theory. You won't have professors or even fellow students with more knowledge or different experience to point you in a certain direction or critique your work. You won't know how to work effectively in a team.
How are you going to teach yourself to write above a 12th grade level? Classic literature? Economics? Philosophy? Biology? Mangement? Political science? Perhaps you think those are all irrelevant, and that all you need to know is (Insert industry buzzwords here), you're wrong.
I don't resent that there are people my age (21) who already have $100k in the bank. I don't resent that there are people who never went to college who are far more advanced in a particular area than I will ever be. I do realize that I'm not a genius, that I can't teach myself everything, and that there are subjects not directly related to CS that will help me in my career. Oh, being in an academic setting means I've now got 2 years of true sys admin experience and a year of database programming under my belt, to say nothing of the industry contacts I've made.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure quite what to think of this trend. I'm not convinced it's an entirely bad thing. The latest FSF offer for a manual is probably the only way such a manual will get written. Frankly the people with the knowledge to write it don't want to spend all that programming time writing documentation. That's unfortunate, but it's how it is. So in order to get such documentation someone will probably have to pay for it, as the FSF is offering to do.
How else would we get the documentation? Perhaps FSF could hire a single writer instead of a bounty, but it's mostly the same thing.
On the other hand... What happens if 8 people spend the next 3 months writing the manual. One of the 8 gets there first and collects the $20k (assuming all 8 are equal quality; though I'm not sure that provision exists in FSF's offer)... Will those 7 likely work on other offers? It seems a pretty quick way to burn bridges.
Oh well, some thoughts anyways. What do you all think?
I personally alwayss thought the SETI project was a little far fetched anyways. I'd rather spend my CPU time with distributed.net hoping to change stupid laws. The odds are a lot better, anyways (: Of course everyone should run what they want; but why not give SETI some time to settle down, work all the bugs out, and apologize for calling *nix users cheaters (:
We're driving in from Missouri tommorow but won't be in until late... Anyone going to be standing in line anyways and mind getting 4 extra tickets? Doesn't matter what night or time (: Ah well, it was worth a shot.
Linux has an advantage in a few key areas:
So let's look at these points and see how we might take advantage of them.
Entry-level / Mid-duty Servers:
Linux may well win this section of the benchmark. If not, it will be close. The addition of NT clients to the file serving test makes the test a bit more fair. Let's be a little reasonable about the test though and measure more than throughput. Request lag and reliability should be measured... Let's stick both boxes in a closet for a month serving some randomized requests and see who comes out alive (:... Should we use Apache? I don't know. If we just want to measure throughput or pure number of connections maybe not; so don't! Why do we have to?
Adaptability / Range of use:
Again, Linux rules here. Show me an NT box that can serve mail, web requests, smb traffic, ftp, etc and run on a PII/256mb... Now turn it into a firewall as well (: Push these points!!!!
Price:
What to say? How about we just include the cost of the solution with the benchmark (:
Now my next point. Let's do the test. Let's accept the results. And then lets come back in 6 months with a better product! If linux gets creamed somewhere, fix it and test again. Show how quickly linux can adapt and repair itself. Hopefully NT will have been slaughtered in some category as well; I'll bet it won't change in 6 months.
Anyways. I'm getting sick of "FUD! FUD! FUD!" every time we see criticism. Let's take that criticism and use it!
My $0.02.
Always check out DVDPricesearch.net. You can usually find some good deals, and always keep your eyes out for coupons...
I think I pay, on average, $12/disk with shipping included, without spending too much time trying...
As for special features -- most special editions have some great stuff.. I always enjoy audio commentary tracks and "deleted scenes"... Kudos to "Good Will Hunting" for including Audio Commentary about the deleted scenes, as well...
So whats the latest on Kevin Smith movies and DVD?
It's completely ridiculous. Even more ridiculous is the fact that "onOpen" macros are fairly widely used... I'm taking a (expletive deleted) accounting class where we have to use (multiple expletives deleted) MS Excel for a bunch of spreadsheets... The professor decided it was important to each all the business majors how to "program". So they spent 2 weeks on VBA, the assignment over that section was to write a fairly complex "on open" macro, and now all future assignments must include an "on open" macro that explains what the worksheet does. IMNSHO the professor ought to be slapped. I've emailed him twice already about crap like this, but he's clueless... That class is the only time I've used an MS product all semester, and I'll be glad when it's over.
To throw my $0.015 into the ring...
...it's because we need to learn not to pull this kind of immature crap in public any more. The stakes are too high now; when we squabble like children, the trade and even the mainstream press will pick up on it and nail us as a bunch of fractious flakes who can't even be trusted on the playground without a keeper...
To me this is the most important paragraph of that essay. I respect ESR, and I generally try to avoid discussions centering on him or RMS because I think they rarely lead to anything positive, and they often serve just to incite flames. (Maybe Rob just wants to do a trial by fire of the new moderators? (: )
That being said, the whole community (slashdot 'kiddies' and all) needs to grow up. The cold hard fact is that our favorite os _won't_ even be trusted by techies, much less PHBs if we let the community splinter badly. We're not there yet (or even close), but I'd sure hate to see that happen.
Read Rob's essay on flamewars... Think about things before you say them. Realize that people like ESR dedicate their LIFE to linux, and that no one will put up with this stuff very long.
Can the community stand to lose Linus? Do you want to try?
I love the new slashdot, it's moderation done right
That being said, I'm still a little concerned about moderation. It seems to me, from watching a number of threads lately, that negative comments (even some bug reports or requests), especially when they come from AC's are demoted or ignored... THeresponse to those comments, even if the response is only a "positive" flame (Ie, "Rob Rules, you suck cuz you're an AC") get promoted... It's not unusual to see a whole thread, where the first thoughtful (negative) post is a -1 or 0 but the responses, no matter how banal (as long as they're positive) get promoted... It's just a moderator issue, but it's the biggest remaining problem I see....
I chose my options, and went to save user and it complained that my browser (netscape 4.5) didn't save a cookie properly or I was behind a firewall. It can, and I'm not (:
I'd also like to second the idea of boxes on the left side or below the stories so the page isn't unneccessarily long...
Also, is there a checkbox for userfriendly? I didn't see one...
Keep up the good work, the vast majority of the linux community appreciates what you do!
It ought to be illegal to post stories containing 2 or more of the following on the front page of
1) Linux vs. Bill
2) Opensource vs. CLosed Source
3) KDE & Gnome
4) Interview with [linux/rms/esr/etc]
Oh well, I'll read it later I guess.
Put simply, there are some things that you simply can't teach yourself. I'll glady grant that anyone can teach themselves a computing application or language in far less than 4 years. I'll even grant that I've wasted some time and money in classes that I will never use, and more time and money in classes that I may not use often in my life.
But the cold hard fact is that skipping college will cost you. You won't learn the theory. You won't have professors or even fellow students with more knowledge or different experience to point you in a certain direction or critique your work. You won't know how to work effectively in a team.
How are you going to teach yourself to write above a 12th grade level? Classic literature? Economics? Philosophy? Biology? Mangement? Political science? Perhaps you think those are all irrelevant, and that all you need to know is (Insert industry buzzwords here), you're wrong.
I don't resent that there are people my age (21) who already have $100k in the bank. I don't resent that there are people who never went to college who are far more advanced in a particular area than I will ever be. I do realize that I'm not a genius, that I can't teach myself everything, and that there are subjects not directly related to CS that will help me in my career. Oh, being in an academic setting means I've now got 2 years of true sys admin experience and a year of database programming under my belt, to say nothing of the industry contacts I've made.