Re:Yet another ignorant but nice story about Linux
on
The Linux Uprising
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
ESR's figures include all the inhouse stuff that isn't part of the market. Which is irrelevant to discussions of the market.
Um, not it's not. That in-house stuff is one of the major sources of open source. Consider, for example, Samba, which started out as an in-house project to serve files from a Un*x machine to windows machines. He released it because releasing it was the easiest way to get free support on the software.
Therefore, they cut costs using closed-source freeware just as much as they do using open-source freeware.
Good point, but there's just not a lot of high-quality closed-source freeware. There are too few incentives to improve the quality of closed-source freeware. You don't get the large collection of brains that you get with open source, and the very few people who work on the software are probably not getting much money to do so.
Anyway, feel free to prove me wrong. Point out one or two really stable closed-source-freeware operating systems and we'll take it from there.:-)
Yet another ignorant but nice story about Linux
on
The Linux Uprising
·
· Score: 1
This is starting to become a refrain: "I'm glad they like Linux, but their ignorance concerns me."
My favorite bogus line: Companies invest to create software, sell it, and pour a good part of the proceeds into building more. Pure drivel. As ESR has pointed out, the overwhelming majority of software is never intended for commercial distribution. Companies invest to create software and use it, not sell it. Their investment is much cheaper if they go the open source route.
Yes, like many people, I have pondered that if I could go back to about 1979, buying Microsoft stock would be near the top of my list.
But often I envision going happily along until about 1983, then Microsoft goes out of business. A voice booms down from the sky: "Did you think I was going to put you back down in the same timeline???"
Are the claims that successful traders better than average proven with any kind of experimentation? Did he, for example, take 20 successful traders ("successful" being objectively determined according to some plainly stated critera) and a control group of 20 random people, had them play the market for a year, then compare the results?
I'm just as suspicious of claims that it's all luck as I am that it's all skill.
Allow me to take this opportunity to state that the whole nerd mythology is a load of crap. The stereotype of the smart but bullied science nerd is no more accurate than the universe of other racial, sexual, whateverual stereotypes out there.
Speaking as a former member of the bottom rung of the high school social ladder, here's how things were in my high school:
The jocks weren't stupid: both of our valedictorians were jocks
The popular kids weren't all jerks: in fact many of them were popular because they were, gasp, nice people who happened to have mastered the baffling rules of high school social life
Many of the unpopular kids were jerks: in fact, some of the worst bullies I had the misfortune of knowing were roundly disliked.
Let's not forget the artsy types: forget the artsy girl in the paint-splattered overalls and square glasses who catches the quarterback's eye. The kids I knew who excelled in the arts also excelled in social life and in other endeavors.
Mix-n-Match: In fact, there were almost no patterns. There were smart/popular/nice people, stupid/popular/nice people, smart/popular/jerks... pick one from each menu and I could probably remember an example. I'll admit there were a few general rules (I never knew an unpopular football player) but generally it all boiled down to how well you could handle yourself in the tough social situations.
It's all just stereotypes, folks. The many complaints we have here in/. about how society perceives technology and technologists are largely based on these stereotypes.
I tried suggesting to
Rick Boucher's campaign committee that a lot of people would like to contribute to his campaign if only they could do so electronically. Unfortunately there was no response.
A hypothetical question for you: if one of our students were the author of the essay How to Ruin American Enterprise, and had turned it in to you as a paper, how would you grade it? Would you feel that the essay had enough concrete examples? Would you feel that it addressed possible opposing points of view, showing where those points of view were incorrect? Would you feel that it presented a balanced, considered opinion, or would you possibly feel that the essay strayed too much into unsubstantiated zealousness.
If you would have given this paper a good grade, I'd like to sign up for one of your classes: I need the "Easy A".
he was pardoned, doesn't that just mean that the king ^H^H^H^H president decided he'd suffered enough and should be let free?
There are many reasons for pardons, the "suffered enought" reason being just one of them. Sometimes people are pardoned because the chief executive was convinced that they aren't really guilty. Sometimes they are pardoned because it is decided that the law was wrong and nobody should have been convicted under it. Sometimes people are pardoned simply because they contributed a lot of money to Clinton's reelection fund.
MS Systems have to be upgraded anyway
on
Largo Loving Linux
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· Score: 3, Interesting
You've got an insightful point, but I still must disagree. Keep in mind that Microsoft builds planned obselescence into their systems, so most MS shops need to upgrade anyway. I work for the Rescue Mission of Roanoke, and as you can imagine we're not a rich organization. We desperately need to upgrade our old systems, and Linux is simply the cheaper and more cost-effective way to do it.
As someone who also has a degree in marketing, let me start by agreeing with everything you say. Marketing is not a dirty word. "Marketing" is simply the process of bringing together a product and a consumer. Trying to change the consumer's viewpoint (i.e. through advertising and pushy sales) is really not that effective. Just ask the people who produced the IBM PC Jr. Producing a product that meets the needs of the consumer is by far the more effective part of marketing.
Concerning the marketing of open source, I would like to add to your list of Things That Need to Happen this simple concept: it's the job of all Open Source advocates, every one of us, to be sensitive to the needs of the users, to listen to them carefully, and to address their needs even when we may not agree with them. Too often the sys admin or consultant begins the relationship by trying to dictate what's going to be done. (This is a habit of both the open source and Closed Source worlds, but the dictator meets less resistance when he pushes something familiar like Microsoft.)
So my point is this: when you advocate Open Source, you personally are the face of the movement. Start not by talking, but by listening. Meet challenges not with rules and force, but with caring and discussion, you'll have a much better chance of winning your users over to our side.
Without planning it or expecting it to happen, I got a new job developing open source software last month.
My wife Starflower and I have been volunteering for the Rescue Mission of Roanoke, a Christian organization that provides meals, shelter, and other needed services to the homeless in the Roanoke area. It's a great place and Starflower and I are very proud to help out there.
One evening I was having dinner with Joy, the director of the mission, and she mentioned that her computer had crashed a dozen times that day. Out of habit I said that that sort of thing doesn't happen in Linux. She got very interested and said that I was the fourth person to say that, so tell her more about this Linux thing. Well, I gave her the standard pitch, talking about the value and quality of open source in general and Linux in particular. I told her about LTSP and how the mission could make life a lot easier with a set of thin clients and one good server. I talked about how great and helpful the open source community is. I even mentioned that Larry Wall (I'm doing the database project in Perl) is an evangelical Christian. Joy was very interested in all of this.
The following week, I presented a
requirements document for a new database system using Apache, PostGres and Perl. I call the system Joyis, and you're welcome to read through the document yourself.
My intention was to develop the system on a volunteer basius. The management team had a better idea: they offered me a full time job on the spot. I accepted on the spot. I'll be developing Joyis for the next couple months, then migrating the entire mission to a completely open source infrastructure: Linux, LTSP, OpenOffice.org, Evolutions, and of course, Joyis.
The pay ain't much, but we can get by on it. On the plus side, I get to spend all my time in my favorite development environments, working my own hours, and creating a system that will actually help people and make the world a better place. When I'm done, Joyis will be released open source so that other homeless organization can use it. Keep an eye on SourceForge for the first release in a month or so.
There'll be no flame from me. I've heard lots of great things about PeachTree. The reasons for wanting to stick to Linux aren't political, however. Virtually every else at the mission will benefit from a changeover to Linux. If accounting can't go with Linux, it's going to be a big pain, so we're definitely very interested in bringing accounting over as well.
The BBC chooses the police box as the disguise for the Tardis for the exact specific reason that it is already common and well-known. Then they try to get trademark protection on it.
I use a home-grown browser object for testing my web apps. The object is designed to work like a web browser: you can load a page, go back in the history, check for the existence of certain objects on the page, "click" on links, fill out forms and "click" on submit buttons.
Whenever I write a web app I begin by creating a script just for that app that uses the browser object. As I add features, I add routines to the script that check that the features work. When I change anything, all I have to do is run the test script.
I don't have the Browser object on CPAN yet, but if you email me at miko at idocs dot com, I'll be happy to send you the package. Put WWW::Browser in the subject line.
:-)
Re:award winning, no less
on
Haiku vs Spam
·
· Score: 2
It's important to distinguish between communism and communes. Communism is a form of government. Communes are social arrangements within a larger society that may or may not have a communist government. Yes, the two words have a common origin, and the two concepts have a lot in common, but they're still not the same thing.
it's actually possible to have a democratic government and a communist economic model
No, it's not, not even theoretically. The first thing Communism says is that people don't have the right to engage in business dealings amongst themselves. You are simply prohibited from the freedom of doing with your own property what you want. Right of property is one of the cornerstones of democracy.
I agree with the historians who say that basically Marx was a crackpot with a great slogan. None of his "predictions" ever came true: the Russion Revolution wasn't even in the kind of industrialized, capitalist society that he said would be the precursor to Communism. He tapped into the general discontent and said he had the answer: that's enough for most revolutionaries.
Slashdot Mirror
Um, not it's not. That in-house stuff is one of the major sources of open source. Consider, for example, Samba, which started out as an in-house project to serve files from a Un*x machine to windows machines. He released it because releasing it was the easiest way to get free support on the software.
-Miko
Good point, but there's just not a lot of high-quality closed-source freeware. There are too few incentives to improve the quality of closed-source freeware. You don't get the large collection of brains that you get with open source, and the very few people who work on the software are probably not getting much money to do so.
Anyway, feel free to prove me wrong. Point out one or two really stable closed-source-freeware operating systems and we'll take it from there. :-)
My favorite bogus line: Companies invest to create software, sell it, and pour a good part of the proceeds into building more. Pure drivel. As ESR has pointed out, the overwhelming majority of software is never intended for commercial distribution. Companies invest to create software and use it, not sell it. Their investment is much cheaper if they go the open source route.
But often I envision going happily along until about 1983, then Microsoft goes out of business. A voice booms down from the sky: "Did you think I was going to put you back down in the same timeline???"
I'm just as suspicious of claims that it's all luck as I am that it's all skill.
Speaking as a former member of the bottom rung of the high school social ladder, here's how things were in my high school:
- The jocks weren't stupid: both of our valedictorians were jocks
- The popular kids weren't all jerks: in fact many of them were popular because they were, gasp, nice people who happened to have mastered the baffling rules of high school social life
- Many of the unpopular kids were jerks: in fact, some of the worst bullies I had the misfortune of knowing were roundly disliked.
- Let's not forget the artsy types: forget the artsy girl in the paint-splattered overalls and square glasses who catches the quarterback's eye. The kids I knew who excelled in the arts also excelled in social life and in other endeavors.
- Mix-n-Match: In fact, there were almost no patterns. There were smart/popular/nice people, stupid/popular/nice people, smart/popular/jerks... pick one from each menu and I could probably remember an example. I'll admit there were a few general rules (I never knew an unpopular football player) but generally it all boiled down to how well you could handle yourself in the tough social situations.
It's all just stereotypes, folks. The many complaints we have here in... Open Source advocates get some time at Microsoft's government conferences.
I tried suggesting to Rick Boucher's campaign committee that a lot of people would like to contribute to his campaign if only they could do so electronically. Unfortunately there was no response.
... still sometimes remembered as "the kid who chewed gum during Nixon's resignation".
A hypothetical question for you: if one of our students were the author of the essay How to Ruin American Enterprise, and had turned it in to you as a paper, how would you grade it? Would you feel that the essay had enough concrete examples? Would you feel that it addressed possible opposing points of view, showing where those points of view were incorrect? Would you feel that it presented a balanced, considered opinion, or would you possibly feel that the essay strayed too much into unsubstantiated zealousness.
If you would have given this paper a good grade, I'd like to sign up for one of your classes: I need the "Easy A".
-Miko
There are many reasons for pardons, the "suffered enought" reason being just one of them. Sometimes people are pardoned because the chief executive was convinced that they aren't really guilty. Sometimes they are pardoned because it is decided that the law was wrong and nobody should have been convicted under it. Sometimes people are pardoned simply because they contributed a lot of money to Clinton's reelection fund.
You've got an insightful point, but I still must disagree. Keep in mind that Microsoft builds planned obselescence into their systems, so most MS shops need to upgrade anyway. I work for the Rescue Mission of Roanoke, and as you can imagine we're not a rich organization. We desperately need to upgrade our old systems, and Linux is simply the cheaper and more cost-effective way to do it.
Concerning the marketing of open source, I would like to add to your list of Things That Need to Happen this simple concept: it's the job of all Open Source advocates, every one of us, to be sensitive to the needs of the users, to listen to them carefully, and to address their needs even when we may not agree with them. Too often the sys admin or consultant begins the relationship by trying to dictate what's going to be done. (This is a habit of both the open source and Closed Source worlds, but the dictator meets less resistance when he pushes something familiar like Microsoft.)
So my point is this: when you advocate Open Source, you personally are the face of the movement. Start not by talking, but by listening. Meet challenges not with rules and force, but with caring and discussion, you'll have a much better chance of winning your users over to our side.
-miko
Me neither, especially since I'm already talking with my contacts in the press and outlining the press kits. (yes, really)
and thanks for the encouragement :-)
Miko
B.S. Marketing, R.B. Pamplin College of Business, 1992
My wife Starflower and I have been volunteering for the Rescue Mission of Roanoke, a Christian organization that provides meals, shelter, and other needed services to the homeless in the Roanoke area. It's a great place and Starflower and I are very proud to help out there.
One evening I was having dinner with Joy, the director of the mission, and she mentioned that her computer had crashed a dozen times that day. Out of habit I said that that sort of thing doesn't happen in Linux. She got very interested and said that I was the fourth person to say that, so tell her more about this Linux thing. Well, I gave her the standard pitch, talking about the value and quality of open source in general and Linux in particular. I told her about LTSP and how the mission could make life a lot easier with a set of thin clients and one good server. I talked about how great and helpful the open source community is. I even mentioned that Larry Wall (I'm doing the database project in Perl) is an evangelical Christian. Joy was very interested in all of this.
The following week, I presented a requirements document for a new database system using Apache, PostGres and Perl. I call the system Joyis, and you're welcome to read through the document yourself.
My intention was to develop the system on a volunteer basius. The management team had a better idea: they offered me a full time job on the spot. I accepted on the spot. I'll be developing Joyis for the next couple months, then migrating the entire mission to a completely open source infrastructure: Linux, LTSP, OpenOffice.org, Evolutions, and of course, Joyis.
The pay ain't much, but we can get by on it. On the plus side, I get to spend all my time in my favorite development environments, working my own hours, and creating a system that will actually help people and make the world a better place. When I'm done, Joyis will be released open source so that other homeless organization can use it. Keep an eye on SourceForge for the first release in a month or so.
There'll be no flame from me. I've heard lots of great things about PeachTree. The reasons for wanting to stick to Linux aren't political, however. Virtually every else at the mission will benefit from a changeover to Linux. If accounting can't go with Linux, it's going to be a big pain, so we're definitely very interested in bringing accounting over as well.
That's a lot of nerve.
Do it! I'll sign the petition immediately.
Whenever I write a web app I begin by creating a script just for that app that uses the browser object. As I add features, I add routines to the script that check that the features work. When I change anything, all I have to do is run the test script.
I don't have the Browser object on CPAN yet, but if you email me at miko at idocs dot com, I'll be happy to send you the package. Put WWW::Browser in the subject line.
Fortunately, seventeen
Is just a stupid rule
That you can ignore
... like a banana?
It's important to distinguish between communism and communes. Communism is a form of government. Communes are social arrangements within a larger society that may or may not have a communist government. Yes, the two words have a common origin, and the two concepts have a lot in common, but they're still not the same thing.
No, it's not, not even theoretically. The first thing Communism says is that people don't have the right to engage in business dealings amongst themselves. You are simply prohibited from the freedom of doing with your own property what you want. Right of property is one of the cornerstones of democracy.
I agree with the historians who say that basically Marx was a crackpot with a great slogan. None of his "predictions" ever came true: the Russion Revolution wasn't even in the kind of industrialized, capitalist society that he said would be the precursor to Communism. He tapped into the general discontent and said he had the answer: that's enough for most revolutionaries.