Of course in the UK we've had a minimum wage for about 2 years, and are currently enjoying the lowest unemployment since the seventies...
bil
Re:Unions are for mindless myrmidons
on
Dial U for Union
·
· Score: 2
>Unions take away your right to individually bargain with your employer.
So you've never worked for a large company have you.
Large companies impose terms and conditions on its workers, if for no other reason then 100,000 people all individually negotiating contracts would be a nightmare to administer (and hugely expensive). If you dont like them, well you can either quit (not an option for most workers who need the money ) or try to renegotiate the contract for all workers at once, in which case a group that represents all of those workers has rather more moral authority (and thus chance of being listened to) then you by yourself.
So, work for who you want to, try to agree terms with your employer, but dont be suprised if they nod, agree, impose the conditions they want on you, and then laugh and show you the door when you threaten to quit...
bil
Re:This isn't a troll, and not that rare an opinio
on
Lord of the Geeks
·
· Score: 1
Out of interest would you car to name any of these "polished gems to Tolkien's crude chippings" ?
To be honest I would be disappointed if LOTR was the best fantasy novel ever written, to say that in the 40 years since it was written nobody had managed to do better would be bad. Tolkein invented the fantasy novel, surely the genre cant have gone downhill ever since!
You've just told a guy with a Rudolf Rocker quote in his sig that he's a communist! LOL!!! (Rudolf Rocker was a major Anarcho-communist writer/activist BTW)
>The cyber revolution will change government as much as the industrial one did. Which, while significant, isn't revolutionary.
Erm... yes it is, the rise of socialism and communism as political powers was as a direct result of the creation of an industrial working class as was the creation of the trade union movement. In fact the whole concept of "government for the people by the people", while devised before the industrial revolution, was made a reality as a result.
Ok the licence is only for certain OSes. They wrote it they can have that restriction. To say they cannot have that restriction is kinda like some strange philosophical paradox. "Your restrictions are not as good as mine even though the software is yours to do as you see fit." That is pretty weak.
They wrote it, they can have any restrictions they like but they can't call it open source because it dosn't fit the Open Source definition as set out by the OSI, nor does it fit the Free Software definition as set out by the FSF. Therefore calling Motif either Open Source or Free Software is at best misleading and at worst an outright lie, and thats the point RMS is making.
IRRC China loses 1 in 4, Russia about 1 in 15 and the US about 1 in 30 (I cant remember the ESA rate but its somewhere around NASAs) so a success rate of 1 in 3 is not that bad for a relativly untested system. Its quite a neat idea (espeacially for those countries that dont have land on/near the equator) so I hope they get it sorted.
A very fine book indeed, although to get the most out of it you really have to read all four of his books (although you could get away without The Cassini Division).
It might be worth remembering though that the words Libertarian and Socialist have slightly different meanings on this side of the pond (as anyone whos ever heard a Revolutionary Communist Party member describe himself as a "libertarian socialist" and being taken seriously, can attest to).
Doesn't unix encrypt its passwords with a one way function and store the encrypted version, then when you log in take the password you entered, encrypt it and compare the two encrypted versions?
If so then surely this bill means that all sys-admins are criminals, after all the he/she doesn't know the password (plain text version), and the algorithm is one way so theres no key to give (or way to decode it even if there was).
I may be wrong of course, I'm not a security (or even a unix) expert.
>Once again the ungrateful 15 year old long haired Linux zealots...
Ungrateful for what exactly? Oh and by the way not everybody who posts to slashdot is 15, or has long hair.
>Linux is doomed to failure unless it gets its marketing together.
Define failure. Not everyone define failure as "small market share" or as "not making huge profits." Some people define success as "making a great (not necessarilly popular) OS" or just "having fun", marketing will have no effect on these, and so Linux can succed without you. Sorry to break it to you like that.
>for most if not all people the fundamental issue is support.
No. For most if not all people the issue is ease of use. If a piece of software is easy to use and does what you want from it then what else do you really need? My parents use an old apple Mac that has not been supported for years, they don't care because it has an easy to use word processor.
>my advice is seldom wrong... >How likely is it that you have anything important to add to my posting ?
Just a touch arrogant there don't you think... Its amazing that a self declared "well respected and highly regarded expert in the science of Marketing" is so bad at marketing himself and his ideas.
Its very gracious of you to lower yourself to giving us the benefit of your expert advice but please go away and come back when you have something usefull to say.
The short haired 24yr old professional engineer, bil.
It definately has some problems (I'm having trouble with Javascript, and the News reader) but for Alpha software its excellent. If only it would display the pages I work on (which use javascript) it would become my browser of choice. Looks nice and displays www.microsoft.com without a problem (I had to test it out;) ) bil
>Don't paint them all as irrelevant, and don't tell those "upper middle class college students" they shouldn't be protesting; I'm glad some of them are actually daring to care.
Damn right.
For too long people have been spewing out this "because you're not suffering you have no right to an opinion on those who are" crap.
Just because I'm siting in a nice warm office getting paid well for my work does not stop those "Chinese slave labourers and Malaysian kids" from being human beings too, nor does it somehow take away my moral duty to do what I can to help them. Just because I dont know them does not make them worthless. Just because I dont share their suffering does not stop it being suffering. Just because they speak a foreign language does not mean that they don't deserve a future.
Congratuations to all those in Seattle (and London and anywhere else) for doing a good job, and to those who managed to get the protests headline news on every major news broadcast worldwide without whom we wouldn't be having this discussion...
Here in the UK there are laws that (IIRC) say somthing like a minor (ie 18) can not be bound by a contract (which is why you normally need a signature from a parent to open bank acounts etc). Could it be that Corel are trying to plug a hole that prevents minors being bound by an EULA ??
Or it could have been a MIG (man in gray) who has decided that it suits somebodies political agenda to damage the NSA by implying that they cant do their job properly....
Not sure exactly how much a report written in the 1890's by the Tsarist General staff can tell us about the attitude of the 20th century Soviet army who had been through two (very costly) world wars plus the russian civil war (with intervention from many foreign governments), plus IIRC invasions from both Japan and Poland.
Personnaly I hate to think what would have happened if either side thought they could get away with a first strike.
I've never heard a European government give lip service to "free trade". Generally the talk about things like "free trade with protection for the consumer", or "free trade within a regulated market" etc etc. We do not have a Libertarian government (or lack of one). You do hear them talk about protection of freedom from foreign powers however...
What, so everyone in the EU has to wear disguises to buy PCs and only use them from secret locations just to stop the US from spying on them???? Thanks for the suggestion but I dont fancy the idea of having to disguise myself just to keep my privacy intact from people who have no right to know if I own a PC, or for that matter know anything about me. I for one do not like the idea of a foreign government (or even a company) spying on me, even if I was a criminal that would be between me and my government, it has nothing to do with Intel, the NSA or anybody else in America.
And you think everybody in North America has so much money that it can afford a space program? By your logic no one would ever go into space because the money could be better used building another hospital, or raising welfare payments, or expanding a university or a million and one other things that governments do to make life better for their people. To say that China has its priorities wrong is to condem every space program, because they all act as money sinks for government funds that could be better spent elsewhere.
>...and space shuttles taking off from Sweden. Last time I looked there were none.
You're looking in the wrong place, the European Space Agency lauch Ariane from French Guiana (sp?) on the North coast of South America.
Just a thought but is the ESA the only space programme to involve more then one coutry?
Bil
Re:The humans rights violations are irksome
on
China Enters Space
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· Score: 1
>* The Soviet Union's status as a nuclear superpower was largely due to espionage. Fuchs, Rosenberg, and other sympathizers funneled information including plans for atomic devices to the NKVD; without this information, they would have been hard pressed to come close to the US.
Ahh one of the enduring myths of the cold war, if those dammed ruskies hadn't stolen our technology they would all still be living in caves...
Building nuclear weapons is not actually that hard, the really hard bit is working out that it is possible in the first place. Once the US had demonstrated that atomic weapons work (ie hiroshima) then it was only a matter of time before Soviet scientists managed to overcome the technical difficulties involved in the construction of one. Seeing as this was one of Stalins pet projects, and it had huge prestige and national security implications the resources put into it were huge and the bombs were built. America does not have a monopoly on talented scientists, nor does western style democracy lead naturally to technial superioity. Sorry to burst your bubble.
>* Much of the initial rocketry research was done by Nazi scientists working on the V series weapons; if memory serves, a few ended up in the States as researchers instead of war prisoners. That's about as far from the Communist ideal as you can get.
But the US isn't communist so why would they try to live up to the communist ideal? I dont understand your point.
bil
Re:Our Germans were better than their Germans
on
China Enters Space
·
· Score: 1
>Actually, you are wrong. The USA *did* have rocket technology during WWII; the reason they "acquistioned" German rocket scientists was to keep them from falling into Soviet hands.
Well technically the US had Robert Goddard, and the Germans had a missle capable of hitting London from Germany (the V2). A lot of countries had the beginnings of rocket technology during WWII but the Germans were the best at it, thus the scramble for German scientists after the war. I'm sure keeping them out of Soviet hands had something to do with it, but so did the US desire for the technology.
IIRC most of the US space program was based on WWII German work, and on that carried out by German scientists "recruited" into NASA at the end of the war.
Considering that the world today is becoming so heavily reliant on computers for every aspect of life, a trend that will only continue as we move into the 21st century, do you think that the domination of the computer industry by any one company or organization (no matter how well intentioned they may be) places too much power in the hands of a single, non-elected body? Could this power over the computerised world pose a threat to other institutions in the real world, such as other companies, whole industries, or even, potentially, entire governments? Should moves not be made now to prevent this possibility and protect our democratic institutions, even at the expense of inovation and the free market?
Good idea, I'd suggest that when a suitable article is posted on/. the comments are compiled by a specified person who will hack them together into an article (preferably somebody with writing/editing experiance). The response article should then be posted back on/. for a peer review, allowing mistakes to be corrected (if the compiler is a writer then some sort of technical review to ensure reliabilty would be useful) and any corrections or suggestions added in (this process of rewrite-review-rewrite should be repeated as often as is thought necesary). When the majority response is good then the article could be issued (under some sort of open license of course:) as a kind of "official response from the/. community" and preferably sent out to as many news sites as it can.
This process should ensure responses are well written, factually accurate, well referenced (by man pages etc), and represent some sort of majority view of the community. If all of this was done under internet time a response could be compiled, reviewed and sent out within 2-3 days at most, fast enough to still be a newsworthy item.
Any profits made should go to the FSF (or maybe the Linus Torvald Fund for research into a cure for RSI, worth a vote I think:)
bil
Re:nice, slashdot effect
on
GNUstep 0.6.0
·
· Score: 1
Post more stories. Or at least save up stories and post them all in one go, say every hour on the hour or something.
At the moment when a story is posted everyone imediately goes to the site, slashdotting it, however if say three (equally interesting) stories were posted at the same time then everyone would go off in different directions with each site getting one third of the slashdot effect, which they should (hopefully) be able to withstand. When people had finished reading they would move on to one of the other stories, but as most stories take (roughly) the same amount of time to read, everyone should swap round at roughly the same time, so the load on any one site would never get too high. Alternativly they would come back and post a comment, in which case they would stop being part of the slashdot effect until they'd finished, when hopefully things had quietened down a bit.
This wouldn't help much if one story was far more interesting then the others, so you might still have to mirror some sites, but hopefully not every single one:)
Slashdot Mirror
Of course in the UK we've had a minimum wage for about 2 years, and are currently enjoying the lowest unemployment since the seventies...
bil
>Unions take away your right to individually bargain with your employer.
So you've never worked for a large company have you.
Large companies impose terms and conditions on its workers, if for no other reason then 100,000 people all individually negotiating contracts would be a nightmare to administer (and hugely expensive). If you dont like them, well you can either quit (not an option for most workers who need the money ) or try to renegotiate the contract for all workers at once, in which case a group that represents all of those workers has rather more moral authority (and thus chance of being listened to) then you by yourself.
So, work for who you want to, try to agree terms with your employer, but dont be suprised if they nod, agree, impose the conditions they want on you, and then laugh and show you the door when you threaten to quit...
bil
Out of interest would you car to name any of these "polished gems to Tolkien's crude chippings" ?
To be honest I would be disappointed if LOTR was the best fantasy novel ever written, to say that in the 40 years since it was written nobody had managed to do better would be bad. Tolkein invented the fantasy novel, surely the genre cant have gone downhill ever since!
bil
You've just told a guy with a Rudolf Rocker quote in his sig that he's a communist! LOL!!! (Rudolf Rocker was a major Anarcho-communist writer/activist BTW)
No owners for bitpatterns!
bil
>The cyber revolution will change government as much as the industrial one did. Which, while significant, isn't revolutionary.
Erm... yes it is, the rise of socialism and communism as political powers was as a direct result of the creation of an industrial working class as was the creation of the trade union movement. In fact the whole concept of "government for the people by the people", while devised before the industrial revolution, was made a reality as a result.
bil
They wrote it, they can have any restrictions they like but they can't call it open source because it dosn't fit the Open Source definition as set out by the OSI, nor does it fit the Free Software definition as set out by the FSF. Therefore calling Motif either Open Source or Free Software is at best misleading and at worst an outright lie, and thats the point RMS is making.
bil
IRRC China loses 1 in 4, Russia about 1 in 15 and the US about 1 in 30 (I cant remember the ESA rate but its somewhere around NASAs) so a success rate of 1 in 3 is not that bad for a relativly untested system. Its quite a neat idea (espeacially for those countries that dont have land on/near the equator) so I hope they get it sorted.
bil
A very fine book indeed, although to get the most out of it you really have to read all four of his books (although you could get away without The Cassini Division).
It might be worth remembering though that the words Libertarian and Socialist have slightly different meanings on this side of the pond (as anyone whos ever heard a Revolutionary Communist Party member describe himself as a "libertarian socialist" and being taken seriously, can attest to).
Bil
Doesn't unix encrypt its passwords with a one way function and store the encrypted version, then when you log in take the password you entered, encrypt it and compare the two encrypted versions?
If so then surely this bill means that all sys-admins are criminals, after all the he/she doesn't know the password (plain text version), and the algorithm is one way so theres no key to give (or way to decode it even if there was).
I may be wrong of course, I'm not a security (or even a unix) expert.
bil
>Once again the ungrateful 15 year old long haired Linux zealots ...
Ungrateful for what exactly? Oh and by the way not everybody who posts to slashdot is 15, or has long hair.
>Linux is doomed to failure unless it gets its marketing together.
Define failure.
Not everyone define failure as "small market share" or as "not making huge profits." Some people define success as "making a great (not necessarilly popular) OS" or just "having fun", marketing will have no effect on these, and so Linux can succed without you. Sorry to break it to you like that.
>for most if not all people the fundamental issue is support.
No. For most if not all people the issue is ease of use. If a piece of software is easy to use and does what you want from it then what else do you really need? My parents use an old apple Mac that has not been supported for years, they don't care because it has an easy to use word processor.
>my advice is seldom wrong...
>How likely is it that you have anything important to add to my posting ?
Just a touch arrogant there don't you think...
Its amazing that a self declared "well respected and highly regarded expert in the science of Marketing" is so bad at marketing himself and his ideas.
Its very gracious of you to lower yourself to giving us the benefit of your expert advice but please go away and come back when you have something usefull to say.
The short haired 24yr old professional engineer, bil.
It definately has some problems (I'm having trouble with Javascript, and the News reader) but for Alpha software its excellent. If only it would display the pages I work on (which use javascript) it would become my browser of choice. Looks nice and displays www.microsoft.com without a problem (I had to test it out ;) ) bil
No, because ranting on /. doesn't change the world despite the fact that sometimes we might like to think it does.
bil
>Don't paint them all as irrelevant, and don't tell those "upper middle class college students" they shouldn't be protesting; I'm glad some of them are actually daring to care.
Damn right.
For too long people have been spewing out this "because you're not suffering you have no right to an opinion on those who are" crap.
Just because I'm siting in a nice warm office getting paid well for my work does not stop those "Chinese slave labourers and Malaysian kids" from being human beings too, nor does it somehow take away my moral duty to do what I can to help them.
Just because I dont know them does not make them worthless.
Just because I dont share their suffering does not stop it being suffering.
Just because they speak a foreign language does not mean that they don't deserve a future.
Congratuations to all those in Seattle (and London and anywhere else) for doing a good job, and to those who managed to get the protests headline news on every major news broadcast worldwide without whom we wouldn't be having this discussion...
bil
Here in the UK there are laws that (IIRC) say somthing like a minor (ie 18) can not be bound by a contract (which is why you normally need a signature from a parent to open bank acounts etc). Could it be that Corel are trying to plug a hole that prevents minors being bound by an EULA ??
bil
>Ted Turner had a visit from some MIB
Or it could have been a MIG (man in gray) who has decided that it suits somebodies political agenda to damage the NSA by implying that they cant do their job properly....
bil
Not sure exactly how much a report written in the 1890's by the Tsarist General staff can tell us about the attitude of the 20th century Soviet army who had been through two (very costly) world wars plus the russian civil war (with intervention from many foreign governments), plus IIRC invasions from both Japan and Poland.
Personnaly I hate to think what would have happened if either side thought they could get away with a first strike.
chris
I've never heard a European government give lip service to "free trade". Generally the talk about things like "free trade with protection for the consumer", or "free trade within a regulated market" etc etc. We do not have a Libertarian government (or lack of one). You do hear them talk about protection of freedom from foreign powers however...
bil
>Suppose I walk into a store with a disguise.
What, so everyone in the EU has to wear disguises to buy PCs and only use them from secret locations just to stop the US from spying on them???? Thanks for the suggestion but I dont fancy the idea of having to disguise myself just to keep my privacy intact from people who have no right to know if I own a PC, or for that matter know anything about me. I for one do not like the idea of a foreign government (or even a company) spying on me, even if I was a criminal that would be between me and my government, it has nothing to do with Intel, the NSA or anybody else in America.
Bil
And you think everybody in North America has so much money that it can afford a space program? By your logic no one would ever go into space because the money could be better used building another hospital, or raising welfare payments, or expanding a university or a million and one other things that governments do to make life better for their people. To say that China has its priorities wrong is to condem every space program, because they all act as money sinks for government funds that could be better spent elsewhere.
bil
>...and space shuttles taking off from Sweden. Last time I looked there were none.
You're looking in the wrong place, the European Space Agency lauch Ariane from French Guiana (sp?) on the North coast of South America.
Just a thought but is the ESA the only space programme to involve more then one coutry?
Bil
>* The Soviet Union's status as a nuclear superpower was largely due to espionage. Fuchs, Rosenberg, and other sympathizers funneled information including plans for atomic devices to the NKVD; without this information, they would have been hard pressed to come close to the US.
Ahh one of the enduring myths of the cold war, if those dammed ruskies hadn't stolen our technology they would all still be living in caves...
Building nuclear weapons is not actually that hard, the really hard bit is working out that it is possible in the first place. Once the US had demonstrated that atomic weapons work (ie hiroshima) then it was only a matter of time before Soviet scientists managed to overcome the technical difficulties involved in the construction of one. Seeing as this was one of Stalins pet projects, and it had huge prestige and national security implications the resources put into it were huge and the bombs were built. America does not have a monopoly on talented scientists, nor does western style democracy lead naturally to technial superioity. Sorry to burst your bubble.
>* Much of the initial rocketry research was done by Nazi scientists working on the V series weapons; if memory serves, a few ended up in the States as researchers instead of war prisoners. That's about as far from the Communist ideal as you can get.
But the US isn't communist so why would they try to live up to the communist ideal? I dont understand your point.
bil
>Actually, you are wrong. The USA *did* have rocket technology during WWII; the reason they "acquistioned" German rocket scientists was to keep them from falling into Soviet hands.
Well technically the US had Robert Goddard, and the Germans had a missle capable of hitting London from Germany (the V2). A lot of countries had the beginnings of rocket technology during WWII but the Germans were the best at it, thus the scramble for German scientists after the war. I'm sure keeping them out of Soviet hands had something to do with it, but so did the US desire for the technology.
IIRC most of the US space program was based on WWII German work, and on that carried out by German scientists "recruited" into NASA at the end of the war.
bil
Considering that the world today is becoming so heavily reliant on computers for
every aspect of life, a trend that will only continue as we move into the 21st century,
do you think that the domination of the computer industry by any one company or
organization (no matter how well intentioned they may be) places too much power in
the hands of a single, non-elected body? Could this power over the computerised
world pose a threat to other institutions in the real world, such as other companies,
whole industries, or even, potentially, entire governments? Should moves not be
made now to prevent this possibility and protect our democratic institutions, even at
the expense of inovation and the free market?
bil (but not that one!)
Good idea, I'd suggest that when a suitable article is posted on /. the comments are compiled by a specified person who will hack them together into an article (preferably somebody with writing/editing experiance). The response article should then be posted back on /. for a peer review, allowing mistakes to be corrected (if the compiler is a writer then some sort of technical review to ensure reliabilty would be useful) and any corrections or suggestions added in (this process of rewrite-review-rewrite should be repeated as often as is thought necesary). When the majority response is good then the article could be issued (under some sort of open license of course :) as a kind of "official response from the /. community" and preferably sent out to as many news sites as it can.
:)
This process should ensure responses are well written, factually accurate, well referenced (by man pages etc), and represent some sort of majority view of the community. If all of this was done under internet time a response could be compiled, reviewed and sent out within 2-3 days at most, fast enough to still be a newsworthy item.
Any profits made should go to the FSF (or maybe the Linus Torvald Fund for research into a cure for RSI, worth a vote I think
bil
Post more stories. Or at least save up stories and post them all in one go, say every hour on the hour or something.
:)
At the moment when a story is posted everyone imediately goes to the site, slashdotting it, however if say three (equally interesting) stories were posted at the same time then everyone would go off in different directions with each site getting one third of the slashdot effect, which they should (hopefully) be able to withstand. When people had finished reading they would move on to one of the other stories, but as most stories take (roughly) the same amount of time to read, everyone should swap round at roughly the same time, so the load on any one site would never get too high. Alternativly they would come back and post a comment, in which case they would stop being part of the slashdot effect until they'd finished, when hopefully things had quietened down a bit.
This wouldn't help much if one story was far more interesting then the others, so you might still have to mirror some sites, but hopefully not every single one
bil