First jumps to mind, the Linux core kernel was/not/ written by one person (Linux), if one looks at current development, there are many, many developers that have contributed parts to the core. Rik van Riel and Andrea Arcangeli (plus John Quintela and many others) work on the VM subsystem. Alan Cox works on almost everything:) The statement that Linus wrote the whole core is total BS - there have been many many contributors.
That's not what he's saying. He's saying that Linux has 1-3 central decision makers who have all say over what goes into the system. You can liken Linus to the Pope of the Church of Linux with people like Viro and Cox being Archbishops. The fact is that unless you get the approval of a small number of individuals, your patch doesn't go in in a successful Open Source project. This is to prevent crappy code from getting in. This is identical to the way it works in commercial companies. In fact, from what I've read, this makes Linux far more cathedral-like than Microsoft. Read the link provided by this old Slashdot story for more on that. Maybe that explains the creeping featuritis in MS software.
Now, the GUI issues. Apparently, he has never used GNOME or KDE....
Maybe he has. At least, I've used GNOME extensively, though I've never touched KDE. If it's anything like CDE, though I have serious issues with it.
The standard GNOME configuration provided with Red Hat gives you all sorts of chances to customize yourself into a corner, but does extremely little to address the key GUI needs of improving workflow and providing usability guidance to the user. The help program provided is of little practical use in learning how to move around, and the extreme level of customizability means that you will very rarely have any level of consistency in the behavior of mouse-focus and clickable actions from machine to machine.
The latter means that a user must relearn how to navigate the system each time they sit down at a differently configured machine. In Human-Computer Interface classes, they teach you that this is bad. Linux tries real hard to improve Ease of Use, which is important for frequent power-users, but they do it at the expense of Ease of Learning, which is important for inexpert users.
The high level of customizability means that every user is an inexpert the first time they sit down at someone else's configuration. Most GNOME setups don't provide good tooltips or other forms of help to let you learn this new system. Due to a lack of standards in application design, what one user learns from learning to use one application rarely applies to another application. This is also known as Bad HCI.
Pick a few simple tasks. How do you set a background in Red Hat's GNOME setup? Do you do it in the GNOME Control Panel, or do you do it in Enlightenment's configuration? If you do it in both, which has precedence? This is redundant and confusing functionality. This is what results from having no overseeing architect for all areas of design.
How do you launch an application? Ah, ah. No cheating and using the command line. Do it with the GUI. Now launch an application that is not part of the standard setup in the GNOME start menu clone. Was that honestly intuitive the first time you tried to figure out how to do it?
Open a file someone gave you. Can you do it without having to know what application to load first?
These are simple, common tasks that GNOME does inadequately because of no central overseer in the design of the system.
...and never heard of Eazel.
Oh, you mean vaporware. Sure... That's an example of a working, consistent GUI for Linux users today.
Not only that, but he fails to remember the overall crappiness of elder GUI's.
Like what? Smalltalk-80? Windows 1.0-3.11? Hmmmm... X11?
Mac OS 9 is the leader in modern GUIs. Find me something superior. Honestly. The closest competitor is the BeOS. Nothing in the Unix world comes even close.
He fails to see the original purpose of Linux (just a toy??)
Yes. Just a toy. Linus was a grad student who created a hobby project to better familiarize himself with the 386 archetecture and to provide himself with a hobbyist Unix for his PC. That it grew into something greater is a happy accident. The desire for security, stability, and networking came from the desire to make it a better clone of Unix, a commercial system which had figured out these issues first.
This is the only right way to design a system...
This is not the only correct way to design a system. You must first understand your users, a task that many Linux projects, often started by young, inexperienced college students, fail at. The Mac OS was designed for ground up with a different goal. Usability. This kind of hubris that "my needs are everyone's needs" is one of the core problems with Linux getting a good UI.
To be honest, most of the Mac OS's current instability came from the introduction of extensions into the archetecture. This was an attempt to give developers more access to and control of the system. Well, that and some bad code that seemed to get introduced in System 7. Mac OS 8 and 9 have a far more solid core than many give credit for. There are some lingering design limitations that came from trying to cram functionality into 128K of memory. They are paying the price today for being too clever back then. Unix has had 30 years to straighten itself out in a variety of backwards compatibility shattering ways. (I don't even want to get into what AIX alone has done to drive developers to dementia.)
The problem is that Apple isn't willing to risk insecure and buggy code like Microsoft was. They might be able to make all of the current Carbon codebase modern while leaving the older function in place in the same manner that Win32 does with Win16 and DOS calls. They aren't going to do that, though.
Of course, our talented (ahem) writer fails to point out that there is a good reason that MacOS X is being built on top of a BSD kernel.
He assumes that it's known. However, do you think that Linux as whole could shift to running the monolithic kernel over a capabilities-based microkernel for improved security reasons? No. Apple can afford to make this radical change precisely because of the Cathedral style of development.
That completely doesn't diminish his point. The weakness of OSS is HCI, which is the Mac's strong point. The fact that RMS had the utter gall to tell developers that focusing on UI was wrong shows how little the Open Source and Free Software movements seem to understand the user base.
Nothing gets my goat more than someone telling me that a flaw in a piece of GPL'ed software is nothing bad because I could always fix it myself. That kind of condenscending attitude towards the user is what hurts OSS the most.
That's not a bug, it's a feature. Giving developers an easy way out like a command line would not force them to write easy-to-use applications. That you couldn't be lazy was deliberate design.
2. You had to buy additional software, as far as I could tell, just to program the damn things.
This was in no way different from the mainframe and microcomputers of the day. This was also in no way different from subsequent PCs.
3. Apple didn't want you developing for the Mac unless you werre a commercial licenser.
Nonsense and lies. They did show preferential treatment to commercial houses, though, because they were more likely to invest the time to learn the system and make high-quality software than early hobbyists.
4. Hardware upgrades? Pshaw!
Hardware upgrades? On a C-64? On a TRS-80? On any of the bazillion CP/M machines of the day? Pshaw!
5. There were 15 books you had to read in their damn developer's guide.
Yeah, in the same way you have to learn the entire POSIX standard to write a UNIX app today. Riiight. The developer books were intelligently split up into various system sub-components so that you could learn what you needed to and move on.
It was shortly thereafter I switched to x86...
You're calling the Mac sealed, crappy-spec'ed, and proprietary? You're saying that when you switched to x86 in the 8086 to 286 days? That's the pot calling the kettle black.
Perhaps you were completely ignoring the one about the APIs, then. Yes, it's true. The "Inside Macintosh" series has kept ALL Mac OS APIs documented for nearly 15 years. Just because you can't read the source code doesn't mean that it's a closed system. At least you know what all the functional interfaces are and what they do is well documented. God forbid you actually have to use MSDN to figure out how to do something in Windows.
Oh, hey. I wonder why both links to his site are broken? Could it be because he's full of nonsense? You know, if you're lying, you're guilty of libel.
Having read some of his posts due to the link someone else provided, you can see that he has posted a long series of utter garbage in 3-5 minute increments. This could easily be categorized as a denial-of-service attack. I hope they honestly are taking him to court, and I hope they clean him out for it. This is a privately-owned forum, and they have every right to bar unwanted people from posting on it and from wasting their server resources. All those aritcles he flooded with nonsense have to be archived in full or manually trimmed. This is an abusive waste of Slashdot's resources, and we don't need his kind here.
See this poll for evidence. There's another one from 10/23/99, but it was screwed up a bit that had 10% of respondants claiming to be women.
Why are all the highly moderated comments written by men? Because the vast majority of all comments here, even in spite of the fact that articles like this seem to draw more women posters than usual, are written by men. It's all statistical sampling.
It's all a question of the sample group. Of course, I go to a college with a 4-to-1 male-to-female ratio. I'm also in Computer Science, a male dominated major. I would honestly have to say that my classes are under 10% female. Sometimes, it's worse, sometimes it's better. Of course, the classes that are better are ones also taken by non-CS majors. For example, my databases class was about 25% women, but it was only about 30% CS majors and the rest were of other majors, mostly management and industrial engineers.
I also work a co-op job to pay for school. In both companies I've worked for, women filled less than 10% of technical roles. Most women were in accounting, management, sales, and other non-geek roles. The engineering, quality assurance, technical support, and IT deparments were almost completely staffed by men.
You should check out this gender poll on Slashdot. Note that out of over 20000 respondants, only 5% clicked on female. It's not unsubstanitated. There are far less women in this field than men, much to the dismay of us men. We wish there were more girls interested in this area, but the linked story is probably right. If more women found computers to be an area of interest, many of us might have been less angsty in high school. <grin>
Good point, but his original argument was that him just not buying from them was sufficient. I'm not saying there's no point in resisting. He was saying that there was no need for the actions of the farmers because they could've just not eaten there. That's the "Real Protest." While I don't support the form of action they took, just not eating there would've gotten the message across to no one.
Advocacy is what is needed if you want to stop someone who you feel is oppressing you. IMO, though, their choice of a McDonalds was a bit screwy.
McDonalds only makes me vomit if I choose to buy it and eat it. MS Frontpage only drives me insane if I choose to buy it and use it. The gov't fucks me whether I ask them to or not.
Actually, a number of companies will mess with you whether you want them to or not. I'm a bit of an environmentalist and have seen records of a good bit of misbehavior by companies. Just check out the records on Superfund sites, particularly in Silicon Valley. There's a lot of things a company will do to screw with customers just to save a buck or two. Love Canal, the Ford Pinto, and the price squeezing behaviors of various monopolies like Standard Oil are all good historical examples of this.
I don't buy products from the paper mill in my hometown as far as I know, but the stench still comes to me whether I ask for it or not. Your argument is void.
And tell me who holds the gov't accountable for it's actions? More gov't. Isn't that convient...
The people affected by them, of course. Also, checks and balances come into play. Ultimately, in our society, the government is under much closer scrutiny than our businesses. Plus, if there are people abusing their position, they usually can't be in power for more than a few years and can be thrown out beforehand by a vote of the people.
Corporations only answer to their shareholders. It's easier to brush aside qualms about the company's questionable actions when it profits you or when you're kept ignorant of it. Government starts out with the goal of serving the people. Companies are just responsible for making money -- that's a lot less lofty height to fall from.
Sure, governments can do more to you and do it more directly, but there is more you can do in response. Try voting. It's an opportunity you don't get to take in the business world. "Voting with your dollars" is a misnomer. It implies your money is just as pure, free, and powerful as your vote at a poll booth. In reality, there'd be less people using Windows right now if that meant anything. I don't recall being forced to vote for someone I didn't like to get to vote for someone I did.
Anyway, why should you care if there is a McD's down the street anyway.
Oh, I don't... but I already said that if you were paying attention. I'm just pointing out that the original poster was foolish to think that not one guy not patroning their establishment made one whit of difference.
Honestly, people, do I have to surround my messages with <sarcasm></sarcasm> tags? I mean, "Ooo! Ooo!" isn't normally part of an evenly measured argument.
Everyone seems to be responding to me with exactly my point. No, you and I protesting McDonalds by not eating there does not shut them down. It only looses them 2 customers. In the mean time, there are millions more. The whole idea that people can control the actions of corporations by single-handedly not purchasing from them is ridiculous. That's why corporations are so dangerous. Without someone bigger bullying them around (i.e. the government), they have almost no accountability for their actions.
...and no, I don't think McDonalds should be closed because I don't like their food. I'm just pointing out that me not buying food from them hasn't hurt them badly. While there's nothing formal in the way of a boycott or protest in my actions, they are no different to McDonalds, Inc. than that of some guy who doesn't visit them because they're upset about some issue.
You know what? I fully support the editors. If this purported 'bitchslap' thing is real, then so be it. We need a tool to protect Slashdot from script kiddies (view Slashdot's most popular story) and generally prolific jackasses. If you honestly feel you need to fear the 'bitchslap,' then you should realize that you're not wanted here. Go away. Find other places to get your kicks annoying people.
If Slashdot is suing people abusing their message boards, so be it. They are a private company and there are many cases that establish that the First Amendment only applies to government censorship. For a personal favorite, look at AOL vs. Cyber Promotions. Cyber Promotions tried to establish that AOL was acting as a state governing body and could not filter SPAM from its network. The U.S. District Court of Appeals held that this argument (based on Marsh vs. Alabama) was nonsense. I am not a lawyer, by the way. I just had to research SPAM for a class recently.
I fully support Slashdot's rights to minimize the damages done by assholes to it's site. I've been reading this site for years, and trolls have been an increasing problem in picking out useful articles from bad. More often than not, there are too few moderator points to go around to handle what is little more than a content based denial-of-service attack. If the editors have added something to the system to handle aggressively assinine posters, then I support them fully. It's too bad there's nothing to prevent those jerks from posting anonymously or getting new users. We don't need them here.
I tell you what, you have prompted me to e-mail Rob Malda. I'm going to e-mail him my full support.
This form of direct action is actually quite common in France, it has not been long since French farmers stopped lorries carrying lamb entering France from the UK and burnt the (already slaughtered) contents.
I think this is a rather sad commentary on the country, then. Attacking and vandalising a McDonalds has no effect on the importing of cheese, and I honestly do not see how this can be considered a "direct" action. The French are often stereotyped as rabid nationalists, but this is only slightly contained anarchy. It's sad to see farmers so caught up on "the French way" that they resort to violence and property damage.
On the other hand, it does bear a certain resemblence to the Boston Tea Party.
You know, the real way to protest McDonalds opening in your neighbourhood is - don't eat there.
Yeah. That's worked so well with Amazon.com over their "One-Click Shopping" patent. Ooo! Ooo! I don't use Microsoft software. How much longer until they're gone?
You know, the odd thing is that I already don't eat McDonalds because I don't like the food. I wonder why the ones near me haven't closed yet?
For MacOS, there's NiftyTelnetSSH, which includes SCP support.
Now that's exactly what I've been looking for and have been unable to find. Thanks for the tip. Now I've got to try it out on our local servers. Hopefully this should work just fine.
Pushing people to use SSH isn't going to help too much when the majority of students will still have to send passwords in plaintext format over FTP. There is no real cross-platform replacement for FTP, AFAIK. I've heard mention of SFTP, but when I went looking for it, it seems it's someone's pet project for Unix machines only. I've become real bothered by this lately now that I'm getting in the habit of using SSH.
Actually, we could build something significantly better than the Snow Crash Multiverse with current standards (i.e. Ditch the major security holes everywhere)
Yeah, no kidding. Anyone else ever think it's funny how programs in the cyberpunk genre have complex GUIs for their security holes? I mean slashing through ICE with claws and blades? What the hell does THAT actually accomplish code-wise, especially when it's all done with generic interoperable third-party tools?
-- I wish I could turn off the auto +1 w/o enabling cookies and logging in...
But think about MacOS X - Are the XML files really going to be any more easily understood than the old UNIX/X config files ?
Hell, yes. Have you seen the browsing interface. It allows you to hierarchically browse through the data. If you still want to use 'vi' to do all you configuration, then it's not going to be any easier, but if you want to use the tools provided, it will make life simpler by letting you more easily find what is relevant to what you are wanting to change.
Alright. Back that up. Just what exactly is wrong with the PDF format? What better alternatives do you propose, and why are they better? It seems to be a nice enough substitute for PostScript in Apple's new rendering model.
BeOS has shown this kind of amazing performance in other fields too, like audio latency around 2 or 3 millseconds opposed to around 50ms in Windows.
Okay. Now you've piqued my interest. What exactly does this mean? I'm not familiar with the terminology nor exactly what kind of effect this has on your sound quality.
They've already ported that to Mac OS X. After all, it's just a matter of replacing code that uses depecated APIs. As others have mentioned, that's all MS is doing with Office. They are doing nothing towards porting to Unix.
A) It would have pissed off Microsoft, which would have ended Office and IE support for the Macintosh. This was quietly axed in the days of the $150 million dollar deal. While the money was chump change to both companies (Apple have over $1 billion in reserve at the time), the main parts of the deal had to do with keeping the Mac platform viable. A loss of the major productivity suite used by 90% of all people world-wide would have lost Apple any chance at survival in the future. Part of the agreement was reportedly this port of Office to Mac OS X.
B) No kidding. I mean, they get a lot of their competitive advantage with Office and other products from being able to weld the software and the OS as well as they do. There's no way they'd use anyone else's APIs. Just look at their SQL server and the file IO APIs added with service pack 3 to support it.
*Sigh* The POWER3 and POWER4 chips are based on the PowerPC, not the older POWER, architectures. PowerPC is the successor to the POWER ISA. The POWER3 and POWER4 are 64-bit implementations of the PowerPC ISA. In fact, the POWER3 is sometimes referred to as the PowerPC 630. Look it up on the web sometime. As an aside, the 64-bit PowerPC architecture is supposedly compatible with the 32-bit implementation. I don't honestly know what that's supposed to mean exactly, but that's what all IBM's literature claims.
Incidentally, the 601, which was used in early Macs and IBM workstations, was a transitional chip to help people move away from the POWER to the PowerPC architecture. It supported both ISAs, but later chips removed certain no longer used POWER instructions.
First of all... Why the hell would you want to run Mac OS X on the thing? Actually, I have to say the same about Linux unless it's drastically improved in the next year.
Hrmm... I don't know. Let me think. Could it be because we use those systems and the chip is FAST???? It's not about the marketing. It's about the raw power.
Besides, the only thing AIX is good for is giving sysadmins nightmares and giving your development team ulcers when they try to compile their code on the newest version of the OS. I swear. IBM changes their damn networking code's interfaces and function parameter data types so often you'd think they're trying to drive their customer base to suicide. There's a reason I pronounce is "Aches" sometimes. Oh, and don't get me started about SMIT and the seemingly deliberate effort to break shell scripts that run just fine across other systems by using non-standard command arguments.
Of course, IBM's attitude has always been that the standard is whatever IBM chooses it to be. Witness SNA, Microchannel, and their late forced entries into the microcomputer and personal computer markets.
Slashdot Mirror
First jumps to mind, the Linux core kernel was /not/ written by one person (Linux), if one looks at current development, there are many, many developers that have contributed parts to the core. Rik van Riel and Andrea Arcangeli (plus John Quintela and many others) work on the VM subsystem. Alan Cox works on almost everything :) The statement that Linus wrote the whole core is total BS - there have been many many contributors.
...and never heard of Eazel.
That's not what he's saying. He's saying that Linux has 1-3 central decision makers who have all say over what goes into the system. You can liken Linus to the Pope of the Church of Linux with people like Viro and Cox being Archbishops. The fact is that unless you get the approval of a small number of individuals, your patch doesn't go in in a successful Open Source project. This is to prevent crappy code from getting in. This is identical to the way it works in commercial companies. In fact, from what I've read, this makes Linux far more cathedral-like than Microsoft. Read the link provided by this old Slashdot story for more on that. Maybe that explains the creeping featuritis in MS software.
Now, the GUI issues. Apparently, he has never used GNOME or KDE....
Maybe he has. At least, I've used GNOME extensively, though I've never touched KDE. If it's anything like CDE, though I have serious issues with it.
The standard GNOME configuration provided with Red Hat gives you all sorts of chances to customize yourself into a corner, but does extremely little to address the key GUI needs of improving workflow and providing usability guidance to the user. The help program provided is of little practical use in learning how to move around, and the extreme level of customizability means that you will very rarely have any level of consistency in the behavior of mouse-focus and clickable actions from machine to machine.
The latter means that a user must relearn how to navigate the system each time they sit down at a differently configured machine. In Human-Computer Interface classes, they teach you that this is bad. Linux tries real hard to improve Ease of Use, which is important for frequent power-users, but they do it at the expense of Ease of Learning, which is important for inexpert users.
The high level of customizability means that every user is an inexpert the first time they sit down at someone else's configuration. Most GNOME setups don't provide good tooltips or other forms of help to let you learn this new system. Due to a lack of standards in application design, what one user learns from learning to use one application rarely applies to another application. This is also known as Bad HCI.
Pick a few simple tasks. How do you set a background in Red Hat's GNOME setup? Do you do it in the GNOME Control Panel, or do you do it in Enlightenment's configuration? If you do it in both, which has precedence? This is redundant and confusing functionality. This is what results from having no overseeing architect for all areas of design.
How do you launch an application? Ah, ah. No cheating and using the command line. Do it with the GUI. Now launch an application that is not part of the standard setup in the GNOME start menu clone. Was that honestly intuitive the first time you tried to figure out how to do it?
Open a file someone gave you. Can you do it without having to know what application to load first?
These are simple, common tasks that GNOME does inadequately because of no central overseer in the design of the system.
Oh, you mean vaporware. Sure... That's an example of a working, consistent GUI for Linux users today.
Not only that, but he fails to remember the overall crappiness of elder GUI's.
Like what? Smalltalk-80? Windows 1.0-3.11? Hmmmm... X11?
Mac OS 9 is the leader in modern GUIs. Find me something superior. Honestly. The closest competitor is the BeOS. Nothing in the Unix world comes even close.
He fails to see the original purpose of Linux (just a toy??)
Yes. Just a toy. Linus was a grad student who created a hobby project to better familiarize himself with the 386 archetecture and to provide himself with a hobbyist Unix for his PC. That it grew into something greater is a happy accident. The desire for security, stability, and networking came from the desire to make it a better clone of Unix, a commercial system which had figured out these issues first.
This is the only right way to design a system...
This is not the only correct way to design a system. You must first understand your users, a task that many Linux projects, often started by young, inexperienced college students, fail at. The Mac OS was designed for ground up with a different goal. Usability. This kind of hubris that "my needs are everyone's needs" is one of the core problems with Linux getting a good UI.
To be honest, most of the Mac OS's current instability came from the introduction of extensions into the archetecture. This was an attempt to give developers more access to and control of the system. Well, that and some bad code that seemed to get introduced in System 7. Mac OS 8 and 9 have a far more solid core than many give credit for. There are some lingering design limitations that came from trying to cram functionality into 128K of memory. They are paying the price today for being too clever back then. Unix has had 30 years to straighten itself out in a variety of backwards compatibility shattering ways. (I don't even want to get into what AIX alone has done to drive developers to dementia.)
The problem is that Apple isn't willing to risk insecure and buggy code like Microsoft was. They might be able to make all of the current Carbon codebase modern while leaving the older function in place in the same manner that Win32 does with Win16 and DOS calls. They aren't going to do that, though.
Of course, our talented (ahem) writer fails to point out that there is a good reason that MacOS X is being built on top of a BSD kernel.
He assumes that it's known. However, do you think that Linux as whole could shift to running the monolithic kernel over a capabilities-based microkernel for improved security reasons? No. Apple can afford to make this radical change precisely because of the Cathedral style of development.
That completely doesn't diminish his point. The weakness of OSS is HCI, which is the Mac's strong point. The fact that RMS had the utter gall to tell developers that focusing on UI was wrong shows how little the Open Source and Free Software movements seem to understand the user base.
Nothing gets my goat more than someone telling me that a flaw in a piece of GPL'ed software is nothing bad because I could always fix it myself. That kind of condenscending attitude towards the user is what hurts OSS the most.
1. There was no command line.
That's not a bug, it's a feature. Giving developers an easy way out like a command line would not force them to write easy-to-use applications. That you couldn't be lazy was deliberate design.
2. You had to buy additional software, as far as I could tell, just to program the damn things.
This was in no way different from the mainframe and microcomputers of the day. This was also in no way different from subsequent PCs.
3. Apple didn't want you developing for the Mac unless you werre a commercial licenser.
Nonsense and lies. They did show preferential treatment to commercial houses, though, because they were more likely to invest the time to learn the system and make high-quality software than early hobbyists.
4. Hardware upgrades? Pshaw!
Hardware upgrades? On a C-64? On a TRS-80? On any of the bazillion CP/M machines of the day? Pshaw!
5. There were 15 books you had to read in their damn developer's guide.
Yeah, in the same way you have to learn the entire POSIX standard to write a UNIX app today. Riiight. The developer books were intelligently split up into various system sub-components so that you could learn what you needed to and move on.
It was shortly thereafter I switched to x86...
You're calling the Mac sealed, crappy-spec'ed, and proprietary? You're saying that when you switched to x86 in the 8086 to 286 days? That's the pot calling the kettle black.
Perhaps you were completely ignoring the one about the APIs, then. Yes, it's true. The "Inside Macintosh" series has kept ALL Mac OS APIs documented for nearly 15 years. Just because you can't read the source code doesn't mean that it's a closed system. At least you know what all the functional interfaces are and what they do is well documented. God forbid you actually have to use MSDN to figure out how to do something in Windows.
If he, of all people, doesn't have multiple machines at his desk or house, then I will be shocked. Seriously shocked.
Oh, hey. I wonder why both links to his site are broken? Could it be because he's full of nonsense? You know, if you're lying, you're guilty of libel.
Having read some of his posts due to the link someone else provided, you can see that he has posted a long series of utter garbage in 3-5 minute increments. This could easily be categorized as a denial-of-service attack. I hope they honestly are taking him to court, and I hope they clean him out for it. This is a privately-owned forum, and they have every right to bar unwanted people from posting on it and from wasting their server resources. All those aritcles he flooded with nonsense have to be archived in full or manually trimmed. This is an abusive waste of Slashdot's resources, and we don't need his kind here.
That's what USENET's for, after all.
See this poll for evidence. There's another one from 10/23/99, but it was screwed up a bit that had 10% of respondants claiming to be women.
Why are all the highly moderated comments written by men? Because the vast majority of all comments here, even in spite of the fact that articles like this seem to draw more women posters than usual, are written by men. It's all statistical sampling.
It's all a question of the sample group. Of course, I go to a college with a 4-to-1 male-to-female ratio. I'm also in Computer Science, a male dominated major. I would honestly have to say that my classes are under 10% female. Sometimes, it's worse, sometimes it's better. Of course, the classes that are better are ones also taken by non-CS majors. For example, my databases class was about 25% women, but it was only about 30% CS majors and the rest were of other majors, mostly management and industrial engineers.
I also work a co-op job to pay for school. In both companies I've worked for, women filled less than 10% of technical roles. Most women were in accounting, management, sales, and other non-geek roles. The engineering, quality assurance, technical support, and IT deparments were almost completely staffed by men.
You should check out this gender poll on Slashdot. Note that out of over 20000 respondants, only 5% clicked on female. It's not unsubstanitated. There are far less women in this field than men, much to the dismay of us men. We wish there were more girls interested in this area, but the linked story is probably right. If more women found computers to be an area of interest, many of us might have been less angsty in high school. <grin>
Good point, but his original argument was that him just not buying from them was sufficient. I'm not saying there's no point in resisting. He was saying that there was no need for the actions of the farmers because they could've just not eaten there. That's the "Real Protest." While I don't support the form of action they took, just not eating there would've gotten the message across to no one.
Advocacy is what is needed if you want to stop someone who you feel is oppressing you. IMO, though, their choice of a McDonalds was a bit screwy.
McDonalds only makes me vomit if I choose to buy it and eat it. MS Frontpage only drives me insane if I choose to buy it and use it. The gov't fucks me whether I ask them to or not.
Actually, a number of companies will mess with you whether you want them to or not. I'm a bit of an environmentalist and have seen records of a good bit of misbehavior by companies. Just check out the records on Superfund sites, particularly in Silicon Valley. There's a lot of things a company will do to screw with customers just to save a buck or two. Love Canal, the Ford Pinto, and the price squeezing behaviors of various monopolies like Standard Oil are all good historical examples of this.
I don't buy products from the paper mill in my hometown as far as I know, but the stench still comes to me whether I ask for it or not. Your argument is void.
And tell me who holds the gov't accountable for it's actions? More gov't. Isn't that convient...
The people affected by them, of course. Also, checks and balances come into play. Ultimately, in our society, the government is under much closer scrutiny than our businesses. Plus, if there are people abusing their position, they usually can't be in power for more than a few years and can be thrown out beforehand by a vote of the people.
Corporations only answer to their shareholders. It's easier to brush aside qualms about the company's questionable actions when it profits you or when you're kept ignorant of it. Government starts out with the goal of serving the people. Companies are just responsible for making money -- that's a lot less lofty height to fall from.
Sure, governments can do more to you and do it more directly, but there is more you can do in response. Try voting. It's an opportunity you don't get to take in the business world. "Voting with your dollars" is a misnomer. It implies your money is just as pure, free, and powerful as your vote at a poll booth. In reality, there'd be less people using Windows right now if that meant anything. I don't recall being forced to vote for someone I didn't like to get to vote for someone I did.
Anyway, why should you care if there is a McD's down the street anyway.
Oh, I don't... but I already said that if you were paying attention. I'm just pointing out that the original poster was foolish to think that not one guy not patroning their establishment made one whit of difference.
Honestly, people, do I have to surround my messages with <sarcasm></sarcasm> tags? I mean, "Ooo! Ooo!" isn't normally part of an evenly measured argument.
Everyone seems to be responding to me with exactly my point. No, you and I protesting McDonalds by not eating there does not shut them down. It only looses them 2 customers. In the mean time, there are millions more. The whole idea that people can control the actions of corporations by single-handedly not purchasing from them is ridiculous. That's why corporations are so dangerous. Without someone bigger bullying them around (i.e. the government), they have almost no accountability for their actions.
...and no, I don't think McDonalds should be closed because I don't like their food. I'm just pointing out that me not buying food from them hasn't hurt them badly. While there's nothing formal in the way of a boycott or protest in my actions, they are no different to McDonalds, Inc. than that of some guy who doesn't visit them because they're upset about some issue.
You know what? I fully support the editors. If this purported 'bitchslap' thing is real, then so be it. We need a tool to protect Slashdot from script kiddies (view Slashdot's most popular story) and generally prolific jackasses. If you honestly feel you need to fear the 'bitchslap,' then you should realize that you're not wanted here. Go away. Find other places to get your kicks annoying people.
If Slashdot is suing people abusing their message boards, so be it. They are a private company and there are many cases that establish that the First Amendment only applies to government censorship. For a personal favorite, look at AOL vs. Cyber Promotions. Cyber Promotions tried to establish that AOL was acting as a state governing body and could not filter SPAM from its network. The U.S. District Court of Appeals held that this argument (based on Marsh vs. Alabama) was nonsense. I am not a lawyer, by the way. I just had to research SPAM for a class recently.
I fully support Slashdot's rights to minimize the damages done by assholes to it's site. I've been reading this site for years, and trolls have been an increasing problem in picking out useful articles from bad. More often than not, there are too few moderator points to go around to handle what is little more than a content based denial-of-service attack. If the editors have added something to the system to handle aggressively assinine posters, then I support them fully. It's too bad there's nothing to prevent those jerks from posting anonymously or getting new users. We don't need them here.
I tell you what, you have prompted me to e-mail Rob Malda. I'm going to e-mail him my full support.
This form of direct action is actually quite common in France, it has not been long since French farmers stopped lorries carrying lamb entering France from the UK and burnt the (already slaughtered) contents.
I think this is a rather sad commentary on the country, then. Attacking and vandalising a McDonalds has no effect on the importing of cheese, and I honestly do not see how this can be considered a "direct" action. The French are often stereotyped as rabid nationalists, but this is only slightly contained anarchy. It's sad to see farmers so caught up on "the French way" that they resort to violence and property damage.
On the other hand, it does bear a certain resemblence to the Boston Tea Party.
You know, the real way to protest McDonalds opening in your neighbourhood is - don't eat there.
Yeah. That's worked so well with Amazon.com over their "One-Click Shopping" patent. Ooo! Ooo! I don't use Microsoft software. How much longer until they're gone?
You know, the odd thing is that I already don't eat McDonalds because I don't like the food. I wonder why the ones near me haven't closed yet?
Reality is funny that way.
For MacOS, there's NiftyTelnetSSH, which includes SCP support.
Now that's exactly what I've been looking for and have been unable to find. Thanks for the tip. Now I've got to try it out on our local servers. Hopefully this should work just fine.
Pushing people to use SSH isn't going to help too much when the majority of students will still have to send passwords in plaintext format over FTP. There is no real cross-platform replacement for FTP, AFAIK. I've heard mention of SFTP, but when I went looking for it, it seems it's someone's pet project for Unix machines only. I've become real bothered by this lately now that I'm getting in the habit of using SSH.
I mean, even the URL points out that the story is from March 15, 1999.
"Pentium 5" is kind of redundant in some weird way. I'm just wondering how much longer it's going to take us to get back to P6.
Actually, we could build something significantly better than the Snow Crash Multiverse with current standards (i.e. Ditch the major security holes everywhere)
Yeah, no kidding. Anyone else ever think it's funny how programs in the cyberpunk genre have complex GUIs for their security holes? I mean slashing through ICE with claws and blades? What the hell does THAT actually accomplish code-wise, especially when it's all done with generic interoperable third-party tools?
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I wish I could turn off the auto +1 w/o enabling cookies and logging in...
But think about MacOS X - Are the XML files really going to be any more easily understood than the old UNIX/X config files ?
Hell, yes. Have you seen the browsing interface. It allows you to hierarchically browse through the data. If you still want to use 'vi' to do all you configuration, then it's not going to be any easier, but if you want to use the tools provided, it will make life simpler by letting you more easily find what is relevant to what you are wanting to change.
Alright. Back that up. Just what exactly is wrong with the PDF format? What better alternatives do you propose, and why are they better? It seems to be a nice enough substitute for PostScript in Apple's new rendering model.
BeOS has shown this kind of amazing performance in other fields too, like audio latency around 2 or 3 millseconds opposed to around 50ms in Windows.
Okay. Now you've piqued my interest. What exactly does this mean? I'm not familiar with the terminology nor exactly what kind of effect this has on your sound quality.
They've already ported that to Mac OS X. After all, it's just a matter of replacing code that uses depecated APIs. As others have mentioned, that's all MS is doing with Office. They are doing nothing towards porting to Unix.
A) It would have pissed off Microsoft, which would have ended Office and IE support for the Macintosh. This was quietly axed in the days of the $150 million dollar deal. While the money was chump change to both companies (Apple have over $1 billion in reserve at the time), the main parts of the deal had to do with keeping the Mac platform viable. A loss of the major productivity suite used by 90% of all people world-wide would have lost Apple any chance at survival in the future. Part of the agreement was reportedly this port of Office to Mac OS X.
B) No kidding. I mean, they get a lot of their competitive advantage with Office and other products from being able to weld the software and the OS as well as they do. There's no way they'd use anyone else's APIs. Just look at their SQL server and the file IO APIs added with service pack 3 to support it.
*Sigh* The POWER3 and POWER4 chips are based on the PowerPC, not the older POWER, architectures. PowerPC is the successor to the POWER ISA. The POWER3 and POWER4 are 64-bit implementations of the PowerPC ISA. In fact, the POWER3 is sometimes referred to as the PowerPC 630. Look it up on the web sometime. As an aside, the 64-bit PowerPC architecture is supposedly compatible with the 32-bit implementation. I don't honestly know what that's supposed to mean exactly, but that's what all IBM's literature claims.
Incidentally, the 601, which was used in early Macs and IBM workstations, was a transitional chip to help people move away from the POWER to the PowerPC architecture. It supported both ISAs, but later chips removed certain no longer used POWER instructions.
First of all... Why the hell would you want to run Mac OS X on the thing? Actually, I have to say the same about Linux unless it's drastically improved in the next year.
Hrmm... I don't know. Let me think. Could it be because we use those systems and the chip is FAST???? It's not about the marketing. It's about the raw power.
Besides, the only thing AIX is good for is giving sysadmins nightmares and giving your development team ulcers when they try to compile their code on the newest version of the OS. I swear. IBM changes their damn networking code's interfaces and function parameter data types so often you'd think they're trying to drive their customer base to suicide. There's a reason I pronounce is "Aches" sometimes. Oh, and don't get me started about SMIT and the seemingly deliberate effort to break shell scripts that run just fine across other systems by using non-standard command arguments.
Of course, IBM's attitude has always been that the standard is whatever IBM chooses it to be. Witness SNA, Microchannel, and their late forced entries into the microcomputer and personal computer markets.