Linux (and open source in general) is always touted as better than closed-source because there is such a large community of geeks who know the stuff well, so anyone looking for information can tap into the community of geeks to get answers, instead of calling an idiot tech rep for $$/hour.
Except that communities of geeks are notoriously unapproachable, and their willingness to part with their geekily gained information is low. If the responses to this Slashdot article are any indication, geeks are more interested in belittling others (including other geeks) than actually providing useful information.
Albeit the geekish hordes of/. are somewhat (though not much) more helpful than McAfee's removal instructions, which are to upgrade my version of a Windows virus checker. But SD really does not have a better answer for the concerned admin on what he should be looking for to ensure his system is safe.
I've never known an IT department that rated their own offices. NOC and server room, that's one thing, but not administrator workstations.
If you're not password-protecting your screens when you leave your desk, and taking other simple security measures, the security problem is your IT dept's dependency on walls, not your management.
Yes, and I recall it being woefully inadequate, highly subjective, socially distracting, and prone to favoritism. Computer-based learning has none of these limitations.
A teacher has to come up with a corpus aimed at the middle of the class's collective aptitude. Students sufficiently below that aptitude (and cant follow it) or above that aptitude (and are terminally bored with it) tend to lose out. Since the teacher has to provide the lesson en masse to the class, they have limited ability (largely due to time and the need to give nearly equal attention to each student) to provide a different lesson for the advanced or the lagging students. But computer-directed learning under aid of a teacher can be provided at a different level for each student, with the teacher able to assess and provide that direction instead of having to provide a Lowest Common Denominator direction to the class as a whole.
Quite probably the problem with your high school is that they were unable to break from the traditional model of teaching, seeing the computer as just a way to save paper on textbooks and quiz sheets, instead of an opportunity to change the way education is delivered to the student.
Books don't inexplicably refuse to open or spontaneously erase themselves.
Maybe not, but they get torn, thrown in the garbage or knocked in the sewer by bullies, and scribbled on. And they're harder to replace than an electronic document that everyone else in class has a copy of already. And when you get a used electronic document, it's as good as new, which is more that can be said for what's generally available at a used textbook sale.
Pretty much everything else you say is a problem of poor selection or of lack of demand. There is *some* good stuff out there, and nowadays people like Wikibooks are making an attempt at decent free material.
As far as concerns about being computer savvy, much of the lack of computer savviness, especially in the past, is the result of poor accessibility. Kids of today who grow up using computers (and VCRs, DVD players, digital cable, etc. etc.) are more computer and gadget savvy because those things are more available to them and are a universal part of their lives.
Giving computers to kids in developing nations will introduce them to an essential part of the modern world. Arguing that these kids *shouldn't* have computers is to argue that they should not be introduced to that world.
And besides, as anyone who has been to high school should be able to remember, those damned textbooks are freakin' heavy.
This laptop is being designed for folks for whom an information boom would be textbooks and teachers.
Why are electronic documents not suitable to alleviate the need for textbooks, and educational software not suitable to alleviate the need for teachers?
At least at $8/pop a downloaded movie would be cheaper than a store-bought one. Which is better than we can say for downloaded CDs (99c per song equals more than most CDs I'm willing to buy).
And $8 is only about twice what it costs to rent a DVD nowadays.
As I say... when you exert a power you have that affects other people, your actions should be accountable. And in general on a day-to-day basis they are, thanks (in theory) to police and criminal and civil laws. There is generally an avenue for redress for what you do to someone who is on an equal footing with you, and to some extent to someone who is on a lower footing than you.
Nobody ever thinks that *they* need to be held accountable for how their actions affect others. It's always *other people*, people with "real power", who need to be challengeable or redressable.
Accountability is an inconvenience, and a threat to the target's power. Few people *want* to be accountable; it means that you can be penalized for doing something wrong, and people always do wrong things, so its inevitable that accountability will lead to penalty of some sort (however minor); the fear is that an irrationally vigorous redressing will over-penalize you (and this does happen).
The point is... Everyone says that those with power need to be accountable for it, except when it comes to the power *they themselves* hold. GMs aren't powerful -- not *really* powerful -- so they don't see any need to be accountable. Of course, they *do* have *some* power, but it's never "enough" to require accountability. (I'm using GM here as a relevant example, but it's hardly the only valid one -- insert the term of the agent of power you most love to hate here -- site admins, police, CSRs, etc.)
There's an annoying norm of disproportionate contraries, particularly in the online world. A GM making a bad, misapplied, or abused decision on another player will retort to complaints with "it's only game"; in the grander scheme of things (and there is *always* a grander scheme of things, in everything, which most people forget when they apply this adage) it "doesn't really matter". Well, if the actions of a GM aren't such a big deal, then accountability of the GM shouldn't be a big deal, either. But clearly, it *is* such a big deal, to the GM. The use of their power is not important -- but the fear over the questioning of that use *is*.
There's always a touchy-feely reason not to challenge the admins, either. They're volunteers, or they work really hard, or they are really good people, or they "could have done worse". All of these are provided as reasons why the individual should not be able to challenge the people who exert power over them. What this implies, of course, is that being a volunteer, or working hard, or being lenient (while still being wrong) all become licenses to abuse or misapply power.
I guess I can't entirely blame the unfortunate empowered individuals for treating accountability as a personal insult or unfair restriction on them; they for whatever reason don't recognize that they have power and that any power should come with appropriately proportional checks on it. Of course, the people above them, both within the paradigm and within society, are always looking to avoid accountability as well. Sometimes the people succeed in compelling accountability upon them; but sometimes they don't. And rarely does it work in your favor to wilfully invite accountability. You have to do it due to principle and selfless benevolence, not entitlement and self-aggrandizement.
What really is disappointing is that even intelligent geeks can't be expected to believe in the universal application of principles like accountability of power. They're just as susceptible to the allure of power, however minor, as the common masses. So much for geeks inheriting the earth.
You know what's great, is that peer review a la "karma" has fucked up nearly every online reference project and turned it into a cabalized, niche project whose proponents insist is still widely used but in reality has about the same number of active users as Gopher.
One major flaw with these systems is that they end up rewarding for large corpuses of mediocre work over smaller corpuses of more meaningfully created work, resulting in a rank system where free-time-loaded high school and college students and others not having a productive use for their time rise more rapidly than more educated, experienced, sensible, and wise contributors.
Jason Scott of textfiles.com and I got into an aborted debate at WP between the time he posted his "why WP sucks" rant and then erased it all from existence (or something), and it came down to cabalism vs. collectivism.
Some feel that an inner circle of arbitrarily and subjectively chosen warders (based on some selection criteria the proponent personally deems as infallible) will result in higher quality work. Unfortunately, such bodies tend to become Old Boy Networks, stuck in antiquated, elitist, and/or closed-minded thinking, driving a project into further and further irrelevancy on the greater scale. WP tends to be affected by this sort of influence anyway, but it is illegitimate (or no more fundamentally legitimate than the converse) -- though it has crept into the body having the power to expel contributors.
At WP, when it so occurs that the continuted activity of a contributor is to be decided, there is no rigid, inhuman mathematical figure by which the jurors can have their decision simplified. Instead, the corpus of the contributor's work must be evaluated wholly. In the end it comes down to subjective assessment, and tendencies of value judgement have clearly formed, but the difference is that the decision-makers have to think about it, and handle each case uniquely, beyond a nice, disempowered "less than X" basis.
I wish that body was less of a kangaroo court, but I have to appreciate this, as well as the generally devolved form of article government. At any given time the content of a broadly-attended-to article may be intensely debated, forcing rethinking and defense of position (Jason Scott hated this, arguing that contributors should not have to spend time defending their work on its own merits). Content review on WP, then, is constant, provided that the article doesn't suffer from a) an influx of fanboys, b) an overwhelming multitude of subject areas and angles, or c) lack of interest.
Ultimately the best solution for one's problems with WP is for one to contribute, and when one has done so, to find more to contribute. But you have to have the interest in helping the project succeed rather than being predisposed to either having it fail, digging up its flaws to laugh at them, or having it elevate you and your work to an ostentatious level of specialness where your name appears in bold bright text across your contributions.
Despite the examples presented by the critics (who did nothing to improve them, despite clearly having better information or ideas), those critics would be (and seem to be) rather hard pressed to find better references on any of them. That is, "better" by an encompassing range of criteria -- such as price, reusability, lack of bias, clarity, comprehensiveness, or maintenance.
Geeks code Linux. Geeks don't understand non-geeks, so they write Linux for other geeks. So only geeks (like me) run Linux, and non-geeks don't understand Linux, so they don't run Linux.
When Linux gets out of its defensive DIY/techie ivory tower, more non-geeks will use it. Yes, you can still have all the power under the hood and put a cherry-red finish on top, and the power will be there when you're ready to use it, but not frighten you when you're not.
And if this comment is redundant, well, guess what, the article was redundant as well.
Most people have a computer powerful enough to handle it in their house, just need a tv tuner and software. True, it wouldn't be the best to use it as a pvr and primary desktop, but it could be a file or webserver.
In your world, most people, apparently, live in a cave. A cave with broadband and wifi, but effectively a cave nonetheless.
Most people do not have a spare 3GHz P4 1GB lying around with a 200GB disk.
Tivo = $99 + $13/mo (or less depending on deal) preinstalled, with free upgrades and built-in channel guide, one-touch recording, predictive suggestions, cable box interface, multiple in/outs, etc. Note that system, hard disk, and universal remote control are all included in price.
MythTV = whole new PC, nice big HD, lots of RAM, tuner card, hours installing and optimizing Linux and the server, no support, manual unsupported upgrades (both of kernel and server).
Sorry, until Tivo is $1000/pop or $100/mo it is going to beat out DIY solutions for the majority of people. Most people (even those who have the know-how) simply don't have the time or can justify the expense.
When asked about the possible ecological effects on marine life the military had no comment.
As much as I dislike the military's utter disdain for animal^H^H^H^H^H^H life, I have to admit that the ecological effects of the torpedo hitting the hull and sinking the (nuclear) submarine are probably at least as bad.
If you are running multiple installations under VMWare Workstation, where you are not running all instances at the same time, you may very well likely have installed more than N instances of an OS under an N processor box.
Do it just like you'd do it in CVS: create a BZ product specifically for the core/common codebase, in addition to the specific focused products. In that way, bugs that lie in in the common component or library (etc.) go into the common-code product.
So if you've got a central server component that a dozen actual products use, create a Core Components product with a "CoreServer" (or whatever) component, or a "product" specifically for that "CoreServer" component, and assign it by default to someone who works closest on that component. Then enter or move bugs for that core component into that BZ product.
...I just want to ride in the black helicopters, because that would be fucking leet.
Oh, and I hear the sunglasses are very chic.
</bierce>
I think it's great that we have paranoid conservatives who fear being rounded up for meat-eating and church-going, considering vegetarians can't eat more than bread and salad at 80% of restaurants, and a vocal athiest has no hope of winning public office -- in fact, they already officially can't do so in Texas; hell they can't even be Boy Scouts. I fully believe that being an athiest is currently on the list of DOHS "red flags".
But, whatever, some people want to hate and fear social minorities. Hey man, whatever you gotta tell yourself in order to justify stockpiling machine guns. Just remember to keep hiding in the cabin, watch out for the helicopters, pat down the tinfoil, and you'll be sufficiently far enough away from me.
Mail servers should be designed to ignore e-mails of a larger size than they can handle.
Which is fine, but by itself does nothing to help the problem and improve the underlying needs. Sending out an email which never gets there, or gets there without attachment, or bounces back with a proportionally cryptic message, may save the email server, but makes a corporate headache for the IT tech who still has to explain to the clueless and unwilling non-techie why their very important email attachment didn't make it upstairs on time.
Slashdot Mirror
Why do we need to launch satellites to get stereo views of the sun?
Can't we just take a picture, wait for Earth to revolve a couple degrees around the Sun, and then take another picture?
Yes the title is a troll. No, the point is not.
/. are somewhat (though not much) more helpful than McAfee's removal instructions, which are to upgrade my version of a Windows virus checker. But SD really does not have a better answer for the concerned admin on what he should be looking for to ensure his system is safe.
Linux (and open source in general) is always touted as better than closed-source because there is such a large community of geeks who know the stuff well, so anyone looking for information can tap into the community of geeks to get answers, instead of calling an idiot tech rep for $$/hour.
Except that communities of geeks are notoriously unapproachable, and their willingness to part with their geekily gained information is low. If the responses to this Slashdot article are any indication, geeks are more interested in belittling others (including other geeks) than actually providing useful information.
Albeit the geekish hordes of
BTW, Wordpress 1.5 is safe.
I've never known an IT department that rated their own offices. NOC and server room, that's one thing, but not administrator workstations.
If you're not password-protecting your screens when you leave your desk, and taking other simple security measures, the security problem is your IT dept's dependency on walls, not your management.
Have you been to school?
Yes, and I recall it being woefully inadequate, highly subjective, socially distracting, and prone to favoritism. Computer-based learning has none of these limitations.
A teacher has to come up with a corpus aimed at the middle of the class's collective aptitude. Students sufficiently below that aptitude (and cant follow it) or above that aptitude (and are terminally bored with it) tend to lose out. Since the teacher has to provide the lesson en masse to the class, they have limited ability (largely due to time and the need to give nearly equal attention to each student) to provide a different lesson for the advanced or the lagging students. But computer-directed learning under aid of a teacher can be provided at a different level for each student, with the teacher able to assess and provide that direction instead of having to provide a Lowest Common Denominator direction to the class as a whole.
Quite probably the problem with your high school is that they were unable to break from the traditional model of teaching, seeing the computer as just a way to save paper on textbooks and quiz sheets, instead of an opportunity to change the way education is delivered to the student.
Books don't inexplicably refuse to open or spontaneously erase themselves.
Maybe not, but they get torn, thrown in the garbage or knocked in the sewer by bullies, and scribbled on. And they're harder to replace than an electronic document that everyone else in class has a copy of already. And when you get a used electronic document, it's as good as new, which is more that can be said for what's generally available at a used textbook sale.
Pretty much everything else you say is a problem of poor selection or of lack of demand. There is *some* good stuff out there, and nowadays people like Wikibooks are making an attempt at decent free material.
As far as concerns about being computer savvy, much of the lack of computer savviness, especially in the past, is the result of poor accessibility. Kids of today who grow up using computers (and VCRs, DVD players, digital cable, etc. etc.) are more computer and gadget savvy because those things are more available to them and are a universal part of their lives.
Giving computers to kids in developing nations will introduce them to an essential part of the modern world. Arguing that these kids *shouldn't* have computers is to argue that they should not be introduced to that world.
And besides, as anyone who has been to high school should be able to remember, those damned textbooks are freakin' heavy.
This laptop is being designed for folks for whom an information boom would be textbooks and teachers.
Why are electronic documents not suitable to alleviate the need for textbooks, and educational software not suitable to alleviate the need for teachers?
And who can import a teacher for $100?
At least at $8/pop a downloaded movie would be cheaper than a store-bought one. Which is better than we can say for downloaded CDs (99c per song equals more than most CDs I'm willing to buy).
And $8 is only about twice what it costs to rent a DVD nowadays.
As I say... when you exert a power you have that affects other people, your actions should be accountable. And in general on a day-to-day basis they are, thanks (in theory) to police and criminal and civil laws. There is generally an avenue for redress for what you do to someone who is on an equal footing with you, and to some extent to someone who is on a lower footing than you.
Nobody ever thinks that *they* need to be held accountable for how their actions affect others. It's always *other people*, people with "real power", who need to be challengeable or redressable.
Accountability is an inconvenience, and a threat to the target's power. Few people *want* to be accountable; it means that you can be penalized for doing something wrong, and people always do wrong things, so its inevitable that accountability will lead to penalty of some sort (however minor); the fear is that an irrationally vigorous redressing will over-penalize you (and this does happen).
The point is... Everyone says that those with power need to be accountable for it, except when it comes to the power *they themselves* hold. GMs aren't powerful -- not *really* powerful -- so they don't see any need to be accountable. Of course, they *do* have *some* power, but it's never "enough" to require accountability. (I'm using GM here as a relevant example, but it's hardly the only valid one -- insert the term of the agent of power you most love to hate here -- site admins, police, CSRs, etc.)
There's an annoying norm of disproportionate contraries, particularly in the online world. A GM making a bad, misapplied, or abused decision on another player will retort to complaints with "it's only game"; in the grander scheme of things (and there is *always* a grander scheme of things, in everything, which most people forget when they apply this adage) it "doesn't really matter". Well, if the actions of a GM aren't such a big deal, then accountability of the GM shouldn't be a big deal, either. But clearly, it *is* such a big deal, to the GM. The use of their power is not important -- but the fear over the questioning of that use *is*.
There's always a touchy-feely reason not to challenge the admins, either. They're volunteers, or they work really hard, or they are really good people, or they "could have done worse". All of these are provided as reasons why the individual should not be able to challenge the people who exert power over them. What this implies, of course, is that being a volunteer, or working hard, or being lenient (while still being wrong) all become licenses to abuse or misapply power.
I guess I can't entirely blame the unfortunate empowered individuals for treating accountability as a personal insult or unfair restriction on them; they for whatever reason don't recognize that they have power and that any power should come with appropriately proportional checks on it. Of course, the people above them, both within the paradigm and within society, are always looking to avoid accountability as well. Sometimes the people succeed in compelling accountability upon them; but sometimes they don't. And rarely does it work in your favor to wilfully invite accountability. You have to do it due to principle and selfless benevolence, not entitlement and self-aggrandizement.
What really is disappointing is that even intelligent geeks can't be expected to believe in the universal application of principles like accountability of power. They're just as susceptible to the allure of power, however minor, as the common masses. So much for geeks inheriting the earth.
Ridiculous. By the same token, anyone who contributes to an open-source project is merely trying to prove they have 31337 coding skills.
So they'll also have to change it back when the stupid US version of the law gets pulled before its supposed to take effect.
Damn near every DST-aware invention is going to be screwed when this happens for those four extra weeks.
I think they should give us a three-week national holiday so that we don't have to deal with the chaos. Who's with me?
You know what's great, is that peer review a la "karma" has fucked up nearly every online reference project and turned it into a cabalized, niche project whose proponents insist is still widely used but in reality has about the same number of active users as Gopher.
One major flaw with these systems is that they end up rewarding for large corpuses of mediocre work over smaller corpuses of more meaningfully created work, resulting in a rank system where free-time-loaded high school and college students and others not having a productive use for their time rise more rapidly than more educated, experienced, sensible, and wise contributors.
Jason Scott of textfiles.com and I got into an aborted debate at WP between the time he posted his "why WP sucks" rant and then erased it all from existence (or something), and it came down to cabalism vs. collectivism.
Some feel that an inner circle of arbitrarily and subjectively chosen warders (based on some selection criteria the proponent personally deems as infallible) will result in higher quality work. Unfortunately, such bodies tend to become Old Boy Networks, stuck in antiquated, elitist, and/or closed-minded thinking, driving a project into further and further irrelevancy on the greater scale. WP tends to be affected by this sort of influence anyway, but it is illegitimate (or no more fundamentally legitimate than the converse) -- though it has crept into the body having the power to expel contributors.
At WP, when it so occurs that the continuted activity of a contributor is to be decided, there is no rigid, inhuman mathematical figure by which the jurors can have their decision simplified. Instead, the corpus of the contributor's work must be evaluated wholly. In the end it comes down to subjective assessment, and tendencies of value judgement have clearly formed, but the difference is that the decision-makers have to think about it, and handle each case uniquely, beyond a nice, disempowered "less than X" basis.
I wish that body was less of a kangaroo court, but I have to appreciate this, as well as the generally devolved form of article government. At any given time the content of a broadly-attended-to article may be intensely debated, forcing rethinking and defense of position (Jason Scott hated this, arguing that contributors should not have to spend time defending their work on its own merits). Content review on WP, then, is constant, provided that the article doesn't suffer from a) an influx of fanboys, b) an overwhelming multitude of subject areas and angles, or c) lack of interest.
Ultimately the best solution for one's problems with WP is for one to contribute, and when one has done so, to find more to contribute. But you have to have the interest in helping the project succeed rather than being predisposed to either having it fail, digging up its flaws to laugh at them, or having it elevate you and your work to an ostentatious level of specialness where your name appears in bold bright text across your contributions.
Despite the examples presented by the critics (who did nothing to improve them, despite clearly having better information or ideas), those critics would be (and seem to be) rather hard pressed to find better references on any of them. That is, "better" by an encompassing range of criteria -- such as price, reusability, lack of bias, clarity, comprehensiveness, or maintenance.
Yeah, and a 12 year old to show her how to use it all.
As I witnessed just last night.
PS: Who are these deep-pocketed middle-class people who are tossing $300 phones at their pre-teens? What goes through their heads?
Would that be Alferd Packer's recipe?
700 sq. mi! That's like, what, less than 1% of rural Oregon?
"Rural Oregon", now that's a redundancy in terms.
The bloody telecoms managed to fix this problem, why can't we?
Remember, there are some countries out there that don't have Freedom of Speech, Religion, Protest, Anonymity or many other things.
Well then, you'd think the U.S. would be happy to go along with them.
Geeks code Linux. Geeks don't understand non-geeks, so they write Linux for other geeks. So only geeks (like me) run Linux, and non-geeks don't understand Linux, so they don't run Linux.
When Linux gets out of its defensive DIY/techie ivory tower, more non-geeks will use it. Yes, you can still have all the power under the hood and put a cherry-red finish on top, and the power will be there when you're ready to use it, but not frighten you when you're not.
And if this comment is redundant, well, guess what, the article was redundant as well.
here's some...
Most people have a computer powerful enough to handle it in their house, just need a tv tuner and software. True, it wouldn't be the best to use it as a pvr and primary desktop, but it could be a file or webserver.
In your world, most people, apparently, live in a cave. A cave with broadband and wifi, but effectively a cave nonetheless.
Most people do not have a spare 3GHz P4 1GB lying around with a 200GB disk.
Tivo = $99 + $13/mo (or less depending on deal) preinstalled, with free upgrades and built-in channel guide, one-touch recording, predictive suggestions, cable box interface, multiple in/outs, etc. Note that system, hard disk, and universal remote control are all included in price.
MythTV = whole new PC, nice big HD, lots of RAM, tuner card, hours installing and optimizing Linux and the server, no support, manual unsupported upgrades (both of kernel and server).
Sorry, until Tivo is $1000/pop or $100/mo it is going to beat out DIY solutions for the majority of people. Most people (even those who have the know-how) simply don't have the time or can justify the expense.
When asked about the possible ecological effects on marine life the military had no comment.
As much as I dislike the military's utter disdain for animal^H^H^H^H^H^H life, I have to admit that the ecological effects of the torpedo hitting the hull and sinking the (nuclear) submarine are probably at least as bad.
If you are running multiple installations under VMWare Workstation, where you are not running all instances at the same time, you may very well likely have installed more than N instances of an OS under an N processor box.
Do it just like you'd do it in CVS: create a BZ product specifically for the core/common codebase, in addition to the specific focused products. In that way, bugs that lie in in the common component or library (etc.) go into the common-code product.
So if you've got a central server component that a dozen actual products use, create a Core Components product with a "CoreServer" (or whatever) component, or a "product" specifically for that "CoreServer" component, and assign it by default to someone who works closest on that component. Then enter or move bugs for that core component into that BZ product.
I vaguely remember desktop.com, which attempted to do the same thing, didn't it? I also remember it flopping horribly.
...I just want to ride in the black helicopters, because that would be fucking leet.
Oh, and I hear the sunglasses are very chic.
</bierce>
I think it's great that we have paranoid conservatives who fear being rounded up for meat-eating and church-going, considering vegetarians can't eat more than bread and salad at 80% of restaurants, and a vocal athiest has no hope of winning public office -- in fact, they already officially can't do so in Texas; hell they can't even be Boy Scouts. I fully believe that being an athiest is currently on the list of DOHS "red flags".
But, whatever, some people want to hate and fear social minorities. Hey man, whatever you gotta tell yourself in order to justify stockpiling machine guns. Just remember to keep hiding in the cabin, watch out for the helicopters, pat down the tinfoil, and you'll be sufficiently far enough away from me.
Mail servers should be designed to ignore e-mails of a larger size than they can handle.
Which is fine, but by itself does nothing to help the problem and improve the underlying needs. Sending out an email which never gets there, or gets there without attachment, or bounces back with a proportionally cryptic message, may save the email server, but makes a corporate headache for the IT tech who still has to explain to the clueless and unwilling non-techie why their very important email attachment didn't make it upstairs on time.