>This stuff is designed to control acoustics within a room, and requires a double wall / airspace barrier to be effective.
Wow, that's pretty insightful, seeing as how it says so in the article. Did you actually read it, or are you just betting that we haven't and so will be awed by your 1337 5k331z?
And it's the same as for email addresses. Protect it savagely.
My friends and family know my home 'phone number and my primary email address. The only company that knows my phone is my telco, and I made sure to tick the "Don't even think of publishing or sharing it" box. My primary email is postmaster@my.domain.com, which is an address that spammers (demonstrably) avoid (they like sales@ though). Companies that insist on having a home 'phone number for me, e.g. my credit card issuer, get given their own number, just as they get postmaster@their.domain.com or uce@ftc.gov for an email address if they have no legitimate reason for knowing it, or their.company@my.domain.com if I do need to hear from them. Funnily enough, I haven't had a single telemarketing call or piece of spam to my home phone or primary email address in three years since I decided on this policy, switched telcos and bought myself a domain.
>For example, whenever the IRS asks me why I didn't pay my taxes, I simply reply "I forgot!"
Ooh, no, you miss the important point. You can get away with anything you like as long as you are paying taxes / fines for illegal monopoly abuse / campaign contributions.
It's when you don't pay your money to Uncle Sam or his elected - and unelected - representatives that suddenly all that illegal stuff you've been doing starts to actually matter.
Anyone notice an irksome trend amongst retailers? "Sure, we sold you down the river, but we're not evil, we're just dumber than squirrels. Tough break, but I'm sure none of the five hundred spamhausen we sold your kid's details to will be as unscrupulous or idiotic as us!"
Since when did "We screwed up, but, meh." become an acceptable excuse?
Oh, wait, since Enron and Worldcomm. I forgot. Sorry, my bad.:(
...Linux developer. Why do you care about what Microsoft says or does? They're irrelevant. We don't use their products, and to compete with them, we'd have to become them by writing idiot proof apps written for idiots. If you want to write apps like that, do it on Windows, and make some money from the rubes.
...Linux user. You're irrelevant to linux either way. All you can do is whine for features. Please use Microsoft products.
...Microsoft user. Please stick with Microsoft products. Once you know how to develop, and are prepared to compile apps, fix bugs yourself, submit patches for them, or run your own forks, please feel free to skip the useless Linux user step and become a Linux developer.
How about we define ourselves in terms of what we are, rather than in terms of what we're not? Microsoft isn't the enemy, and it's irrelevant what they think. Anyone influences by what Bill says, well, they weren't going to be contributing to improving Linux for our mutual benefit anyway, were they?
You win the semantic argument. However, by calling BSD,a href="http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/free-software- for-freedom.html">free rather than Open, RMS shows that he can't even keep his own propaganda straight. I call cretin on him.
> Great, so a bunch of people make the OS, but nobody does anything with it. Sounds like a wonderful idea.
The people contributing to it use it. Look, I don't mind other people using it, but I'm challenging the assumption that it's an actively good thing, that it somehow benefits me.
How does it benefit me? Hardware and driver support, yes. Anything else? Anything?
>It means another customer for content production applications on Linux, to help ensure that these applications will continue to be produced
What commercial application did they buy? Quote it. From the article I read that they did most of the work in house. Say, where would I get my hands on the rendering tools they produced.
>It means another support contract for Red Hat or whoever is going to be supporting the render farm
Does it? Quote where it says that. I assume - and assert - that they did it in house. Prove me wrong.
>It means another job for a Linux sysadmin
Which benefits Linux - and therefore you and me - how exactly?
>It means more customers making sure that whatever hardware/software they buy works on Linux
Granted, good point.
>It means more publicity for your favorite OS
Which means more usage of the type above, i.e. usage, with absolutely no evidence of contribution back to linux either directly in terms of code or indirectly in paying money to people to write it.
Look, it's very simple. If every Microsoft user switched to linux tomorrow, how would that benefit linux? How would it directly contribute to improving it. Concrete examples, not just "Uh, because, mindshare." Hardware and driver support is the only one that I can think of.
If citizens of the United States are allowed privacy, a presumption of innocence, or the protection of due process, then the terrorists have already won.
Wait... that doesn't sound right. Which of us is smoking crack?
Have they created any patches? Have then released them?
If not, what have they contributed to linux (or GNU, or X or KDE or GNOME or...)? Anyone answering "credibility", please go on to explain how encouraging other studios to use linux farms without contributing back helps linux. Anyone thinking that this helps fund Red Hat, please quote where it says that they bought distros or support, rather than doing it in house.
Hearing about people using linux doesn't do anything for me. My mother could use it, but all that would accomplish would be to ensure that I spend all of my time doing tech support for her.
This is satire, right? If it takes you two days to figure out the right three minute operation to perform, then it takes you two days and three minutes to do it, not three minutes.
Congratulations on reenforcing the message that lunix geeks aren't worth supporting; anyone who values their time so cheaply isn't going to be in a position to buy top end hardware.
That's $100,000 a year in salaries plus equipment and overheads, not including providing support and training for their support staff. Say a generous $50 profit per card. You think that having lunix drivers will sell an extra 2000 cards per year? Actually more like 5000 with realistic profit and support figures?
This is the biggest lunix fanboi sight on teh intarweb. Reckon we'll see 50 (let alone 5000) 50 posts making a credible promise to buy ATI if they provided lunix drivers?
>It's ironic that people will go to illegal channels as the most efficient way to get that which is free and legal anyway
No, it's ironic that most people, including the justice department that brought the action against them, still use products from a company convicted of illegally leveraging a monopoly.
Most computer users don't know how to defrag their hard drive, and would be scared to carry out such a frightening sounding operation.
Remind me again why we want Linux to take off on Joe User's desktop? Isn't it hard enough giving free tech support for friends-and-families Windows installations without having to deal with setting up and fixing various Linux distros? In response to "Can I get product X for my machine", would you rather answer "Yes, plus a Dummies book for it" rather than "Not as such, but I'll spend four days finding an alternative, another two days installing it, then an indefinite amount of time trawling newsgroups and fora to give you free tech support for it."
Look, I'll spell it out. If you're not a software developer, then you're not contributing, and I don't want to support you, nor to have you bombard the developers of my favourite apps with appeals to make it idiot proof. I don't want idiot proof apps written for the benefit of Joe User. If I wanted that, I'd have stuck with Windows.
Remember when development was about innovation rather than litigation?
I'm sick of it. I'm sick of having to pay IP lawyers to review everything I do. I'm sick of seeing farcical lawsuits over copied binaries (c.f. Blizzard versus bnetd), when any competent engineer knows that decompiling a binary gives you an incomprehensible, unmaintainable clusterfuck that you'd be insane to use (errors and all) rather than implementing your own solution. I'm sick of hearing about David versus Goliath confrontations as though we're all supposed to be rooting for David. And most of all I'm sick of reading mealy mouthed legalese arguing (for twelve years!) over the exact meaning and applicability of sub-paragraph 67b/6, rather than a court simply asking what's right.
Somewhere between 90% and 98% of incumbents get reelected to the US Congress. As long as you avoid doing or saying anything controversial (best avoided by not saying anything at all), and if you keep taking those soft money campaign contributions to pay for your "Vote for Joe - the other guy is probably worse" campaigns, you have a job for life.
The only thing that will change that is revolution, not free speech.
Slashdot Mirror
>This stuff is designed to control acoustics within a room, and requires a double wall / airspace barrier to be effective.
Wow, that's pretty insightful, seeing as how it says so in the article. Did you actually read it, or are you just betting that we haven't and so will be awed by your 1337 5k331z?
And it's the same as for email addresses. Protect it savagely.
My friends and family know my home 'phone number and my primary email address. The only company that knows my phone is my telco, and I made sure to tick the "Don't even think of publishing or sharing it" box. My primary email is postmaster@my.domain.com, which is an address that spammers (demonstrably) avoid (they like sales@ though). Companies that insist on having a home 'phone number for me, e.g. my credit card issuer, get given their own number, just as they get postmaster@their.domain.com or uce@ftc.gov for an email address if they have no legitimate reason for knowing it, or their.company@my.domain.com if I do need to hear from them. Funnily enough, I haven't had a single telemarketing call or piece of spam to my home phone or primary email address in three years since I decided on this policy, switched telcos and bought myself a domain.
It is within your power to protect yourself.
>For example, whenever the IRS asks me why I didn't pay my taxes, I simply reply "I forgot!"
Ooh, no, you miss the important point. You can get away with anything you like as long as you are paying taxes / fines for illegal monopoly abuse / campaign contributions.
It's when you don't pay your money to Uncle Sam or his elected - and unelected - representatives that suddenly all that illegal stuff you've been doing starts to actually matter.
>If you really think increasing userbase doesn't help Linux, why did you install it?
So that I could change getpeer() and hack a netrek client. While I was there, I contributed a little.
>If you really think increasing userbase doesn't help Linux, why did you install it?
Quite right. Correlation equals cause. How foolish of me to actually question that. I forgot that this is a religion.
Anyone notice an irksome trend amongst retailers? "Sure, we sold you down the river, but we're not evil, we're just dumber than squirrels. Tough break, but I'm sure none of the five hundred spamhausen we sold your kid's details to will be as unscrupulous or idiotic as us!"
Since when did "We screwed up, but, meh." become an acceptable excuse?
Oh, wait, since Enron and Worldcomm. I forgot. Sorry, my bad. :(
Dear...
...Linux developer. Why do you care about what Microsoft says or does? They're irrelevant. We don't use their products, and to compete with them, we'd have to become them by writing idiot proof apps written for idiots. If you want to write apps like that, do it on Windows, and make some money from the rubes.
...Linux user. You're irrelevant to linux either way. All you can do is whine for features. Please use Microsoft products.
...Microsoft user. Please stick with Microsoft products. Once you know how to develop, and are prepared to compile apps, fix bugs yourself, submit patches for them, or run your own forks, please feel free to skip the useless Linux user step and become a Linux developer.
How about we define ourselves in terms of what we are, rather than in terms of what we're not? Microsoft isn't the enemy, and it's irrelevant what they think. Anyone influences by what Bill says, well, they weren't going to be contributing to improving Linux for our mutual benefit anyway, were they?
You win the semantic argument. However, by calling BSD ,a href="http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/free-software- for-freedom.html">free rather than Open, RMS shows that he can't even keep his own propaganda straight. I call cretin on him.
> Great, so a bunch of people make the OS, but nobody does anything with it. Sounds like a wonderful idea.
The people contributing to it use it. Look, I don't mind other people using it, but I'm challenging the assumption that it's an actively good thing, that it somehow benefits me.
How does it benefit me? Hardware and driver support, yes. Anything else? Anything?
>It means another customer for content production applications on Linux, to help ensure that these applications will continue to be produced
What commercial application did they buy? Quote it. From the article I read that they did most of the work in house. Say, where would I get my hands on the rendering tools they produced.
>It means another support contract for Red Hat or whoever is going to be supporting the render farm
Does it? Quote where it says that. I assume - and assert - that they did it in house. Prove me wrong.
>It means another job for a Linux sysadmin
Which benefits Linux - and therefore you and me - how exactly?
>It means more customers making sure that whatever hardware/software they buy works on Linux
Granted, good point.
>It means more publicity for your favorite OS
Which means more usage of the type above, i.e. usage, with absolutely no evidence of contribution back to linux either directly in terms of code or indirectly in paying money to people to write it.
Look, it's very simple. If every Microsoft user switched to linux tomorrow, how would that benefit linux? How would it directly contribute to improving it. Concrete examples, not just "Uh, because, mindshare." Hardware and driver support is the only one that I can think of.
If citizens of the United States are allowed privacy, a presumption of innocence, or the protection of due process, then the terrorists have already won.
Wait... that doesn't sound right. Which of us is smoking crack?
Have they created any patches? Have then released them?
If not, what have they contributed to linux (or GNU, or X or KDE or GNOME or...)? Anyone answering "credibility", please go on to explain how encouraging other studios to use linux farms without contributing back helps linux. Anyone thinking that this helps fund Red Hat, please quote where it says that they bought distros or support, rather than doing it in house.
Hearing about people using linux doesn't do anything for me. My mother could use it, but all that would accomplish would be to ensure that I spend all of my time doing tech support for her.
Linux needs contributors, not users.
>term used VERY loosely
I've been reading Slashdot for quite some time, and I'm pretty sure that's spelled "losely".
Confirmed, works as a plug and drool mass storage device. Cheap too.
This is satire, right? If it takes you two days to figure out the right three minute operation to perform, then it takes you two days and three minutes to do it, not three minutes.
Congratulations on reenforcing the message that lunix geeks aren't worth supporting; anyone who values their time so cheaply isn't going to be in a position to buy top end hardware.
>Ever since then, NVidia's cards have been loosing out to ATI... wonder why...
You're probably wondering because you're a cretin. Lern too spel.
That's $100,000 a year in salaries plus equipment and overheads, not including providing support and training for their support staff. Say a generous $50 profit per card. You think that having lunix drivers will sell an extra 2000 cards per year? Actually more like 5000 with realistic profit and support figures?
This is the biggest lunix fanboi sight on teh intarweb. Reckon we'll see 50 (let alone 5000) 50 posts making a credible promise to buy ATI if they provided lunix drivers?
>I could care less if it's open source or not
Could not care less. Couldn't care less. Do try and think about what you are typing.
> Alexander Stohr is an employee of ATI. And the drivers on the link are official, are an offical source of distribution.
And there are no infidels in Bahdhad. I tell you this truly, I do not believe it. We are burning them in their tanks.
>It's ironic that people will go to illegal channels as the most efficient way to get that which is free and legal anyway
No, it's ironic that most people, including the justice department that brought the action against them, still use products from a company convicted of illegally leveraging a monopoly.
Most computer users don't know how to defrag their hard drive, and would be scared to carry out such a frightening sounding operation.
Remind me again why we want Linux to take off on Joe User's desktop? Isn't it hard enough giving free tech support for friends-and-families Windows installations without having to deal with setting up and fixing various Linux distros? In response to "Can I get product X for my machine", would you rather answer "Yes, plus a Dummies book for it" rather than "Not as such, but I'll spend four days finding an alternative, another two days installing it, then an indefinite amount of time trawling newsgroups and fora to give you free tech support for it."
Look, I'll spell it out. If you're not a software developer, then you're not contributing, and I don't want to support you, nor to have you bombard the developers of my favourite apps with appeals to make it idiot proof. I don't want idiot proof apps written for the benefit of Joe User. If I wanted that, I'd have stuck with Windows.
Remember when development was about innovation rather than litigation?
I'm sick of it. I'm sick of having to pay IP lawyers to review everything I do. I'm sick of seeing farcical lawsuits over copied binaries (c.f. Blizzard versus bnetd), when any competent engineer knows that decompiling a binary gives you an incomprehensible, unmaintainable clusterfuck that you'd be insane to use (errors and all) rather than implementing your own solution. I'm sick of hearing about David versus Goliath confrontations as though we're all supposed to be rooting for David. And most of all I'm sick of reading mealy mouthed legalese arguing (for twelve years!) over the exact meaning and applicability of sub-paragraph 67b/6, rather than a court simply asking what's right.
Disney marketeers versus Disney lawyers? Put them in a pit, throw in some chainsaws, and I'd happily pay-per-view to watch it.
Somewhere between 90% and 98% of incumbents get reelected to the US Congress. As long as you avoid doing or saying anything controversial (best avoided by not saying anything at all), and if you keep taking those soft money campaign contributions to pay for your "Vote for Joe - the other guy is probably worse" campaigns, you have a job for life.
The only thing that will change that is revolution, not free speech.
How many of your incumbents are reelected? If you consider yourself an educated voter, you should know that.
(Hint: if it's less than 98%, you're ahead of USA Congress)
So, are you saying that RMS is a liar, or a cretin?