Companies who run WinNT networks usually need a whole IS department to keep their computers running. These people carry beepers that go off at 2:00 in the morning because the servers crash.
A whole IS department? What does that mean? It could be 2 people.
And the pagers go off at 2 in the morning because the users forgot their password or some other such nonsense. There's as much anti-Microsoft FUD on here as there ever was Microsoft originating FUD. Which is not to say I'm a Microsoft apologist (I don't even spell it a funny way, like Micros~1 or Micro$oft), but the shortcomings of MS' products are overemphasized by (a) zealous linux users that have never actually used NT and (b) clueless NT admins who are clueless, not through any fault of their own, but because NT 4 has the Win95 interface, and is advertised as being supereasy to run and config.
I mean, come on, comparing sendmail/qmail/etc against Exchange? How about comparing it to IIS' SMTP service? [I've never used it so I don't know how well it does, but if you're gonna compare Exchange, compare it to Notes and Groupwise, not totally different products...]
Don't get me wrong, I hate Microsoft's business practices, I hate them for forcing Windows on me and away from my beloved PC-DOS / QEMM / Desqview.
And as far as 'linux/unix servers never crash' -- the only times MY NT servers (I didn't have a choice or they wouldn't be, but I make do) "crash" is from hardware failure. How is linux going to stop that?
Well, I'm glad that so many people have commented here. I mean, who cares if something previously freely available and useful just poofs away into a very expensive and non-free project? Let's talk about geek profiling and evolution and cruelty to penguins.
That being said, from what I can tell, most (if not all) of the Linux-SNA code was written by the one person. So if he wants to privatize it, well, it's only his work he's doing it to. But surely there most be a version of the old code floating around out there?
Speaking of which, what happens when a GPL project with multiple members wants to get taken commercial / closed by its "owner"? In most cases, I assume, development would fork, with the last free version going its way, and the non-free version going its own way. But what happens when there are no copies of the free code around?
(One also wonders what the IceLinux-Samba 'software' he sells really is...)
And if i got it straight, it implied that the machine could break a key in *two days*... So, given MS Excels limitations, and me not wanting to attempt to type in exponents, it would seem to me that a 546 bit RSA key would be breakable within only 94,136,269.5 years... YIKES... I'm scared
Well, as long as you're complaining about the scarcity of technical detail in the article -- what in the article said that this machine would take twice as long for each extra bit on the key? (I assume that's what your calculations are based on). Who says that rule applies to this sort of machine? Maybe each bit just requires adding an extra diode to solve it in the same time...
A company with little enough resources (manpower, money, etc) of its own will be "sponsoring" another vapororganization? Is it just me, or are there more and more of these things today -- a linux organization, or company, or whatever, that has done nothing except gain publicity just by existing? What have they ever produced? (I know Saturday's are slow, but really..)
I would like to formally announce a strategic partnership with my neighbor. Every other week, I'll mow his yard, and in the between weeks, he'll mow my lawn. Oh, and, uh, we'll also do linux consulting on our free weekends, and work to port Linux to the Lawnmower Architecture.
Huh? I saw it last night. I could have seen it two weeks ago, if I'd known what it was. I hadn't even heard of it until a few days ago, and I didn't read any reviews, just heard the basic premise from a friend. And, were I to write a review, I'm sure it would be inanely glowing and positive.
People who see it before everyone else are always eager to point that fact out by saying how great it was. (And it was damn good).
Point is, whether or not any of the fan sites are fake, I didn't see them, I saw the movie, and I liked it. And I'm not fake (I hope).
For his next exploit, he'll rig the 'rate it' votes on Deja!
Oh, wait... hrm.
(Really, putting in the same e-mail address for each vote? Duplicate information such as phone number, zip code, etc? Must not have put too much effort into it.)
ESR says RMS (wow, let the TLA's fly, and they're only regarding people...) is not a good "evangelist for the mainstream" (or some such approximation). That's because he's not trying to be! ESR is the one who's trying to use pretty words and silly-titled papers to change the image of the software in question (I think it's silly that now Open Source and Free Software are associated with rival.. camps). RMS isn't trying to be an evangelist to the mainstream! He's not trying to "adapt" Linux and other free software to the masses -- he's preaching the beliefs he's always had. Beliefs that don't appeal to the mainstream -- that's one of his strong points (in my opinion). He doesn't change his beliefs just to suit mainstream ideals. He's not trying to make himself "accepted" by the mainstream, he's just trying to make sure everyone knows about his beliefs.
And that is where they differ. ESR likes to lay claim to making "Open Source" popular, mainstream, written about in magazines, etc.
RMS does what he's always done, which is evangelize his beliefs that software should be free. And I respect him more for it.
(Plus, if RMS is an egomaniac it's because he so strongly believes in his views and finds it important to tell everyone about them. If ESR appears that way, it's cause he just wants attention, and needs to remind everyone how he made "Open Source" popular).
I mean, nothing against them, but the only time I've ever seen S3 cards are bundled with pre-built computers. (Actually, on motherboards. And granted, that's a lot of video cards/lil' onboard chips.) But who would buy an S3 if it wasn't bundled? Is it just because they're so cheap?
Why are you all so eager to label yourselves? Why do you WANT a word that will "sum up what you do"? So you can say, "I'm a whatever" and then can be dismissed as a generic incarnation of your label. I thought people on here were in favor of individuality, and not labelling people. Personally I'm amused everytime I see the slashdot mob vainly wail "It's not hacker! It's cracker!" as if they could change the common usage of language just by complaining enough. Language evolves. Get over it. Quit trying to associate yourself with your heroes by calling yourself a "hacker," then getting upset because the definition changed under you.
And, lastly, wasn't one of the rules of being a hacker that you didn't call YOURSELF a hacker, but only other people could place that label on you?
So whatever happened to RIP (RIP script?), that was supposed to kill ANSI?
To think, I could have been part of an 'i' group (MiRAGE, who later merged with another big 'i' group) when DREAM merged with them... But I was in a little 'i' group, and I got kicked out. [mumbles about Shihear Kallizad]
Ah, the days of WWIV, and Telegard, and Renegade, and all those Vision clones.. [they really were neat looking]. I actually registerd WWIV. I actually remember my registration number. [rambling on].
I can't think of anything serious. I mean, enough's been said, here and other places, about everyone who has to do a paper and just gets all their facts off the internet -- or, gets pre-written papers off a certain site. Hell, even I did it when I was in high school, and that was a few years back. (Well, not exclusively. But instead of having to BUY books to write reports on, I downloaded them from Project Gutenberg.)
There has been a LOT said about the topics he mentioned (intellectual property, standardization of protocols on the internet, etc) both on Slashdot already, and everywhere else. Asking for it to be all wrapped in a nice little package in one discussion seems to be getting a bit lazy. [As if the whole mode of research isn't lazy enough. Although secretly I'm jealous of the people I know who get paid to consult on 'virtual learning.']
Well, hey, this comment is a good example of a hazard of the internet (although not in the context you are referring to). Anonymity breeds impoliteness (read: flaming). Which is not to say this is a flame, it's merely somewhat critical. But criticisms flow ever so easier when one can hide behind a silly name...
Well, at least in true geek fashion, you're trying to debate the movie -- rather, the STORY, in technical terms. [Why was the world like this?] Which is what most geeks do if they want to pick at a movie. Whereas if they (we) like it, we just say "it's a movie. It wasn't OUR reality. Therefore, the same laws that apply to us don't apply to them. It was similar enough that we could identify with it. However, it was also similar enough that now we assume that their world is OUR world, and thus should have to abide by the same rules / laws of physics / telephony / etc." I mean, I watched the first scene, with the "tracing call" and moaned to myself.. Ever hear of ANI? But once you realize that what they are making is anything but a normal telephone call, you stop complaining. Well, I did, anyway.
So, is this a good thing, that instead of people being shunned as geeks, they're now fighting about being geeks, and getting angry when someone dares suggest that they're not a geek? Personally, I wouldn't get offended if someone said "you're not a geek!" That used to be good news, right?
Funny, the first thing we do at my workplace when the power goes out is start turning machines off. It (the UPS) can supply approximately 30-40 minutes for about 300 computers. So, yes, we don't worry about brief power outages, but then, what are we supposed to do, wait until there are 5 minutes left and THEN start powering them all down? [Especially since some of them take more than 10 minutes to shut down. Well, only one.]
Running a Slackware 96 system for quite a while, I've been constantly annoyed at finding software I want and then seeing it only comes in.RPMs. So one day I decided, ok, I'll just install RPM. So I started about doing this. After obtaining it, with some difficulty (after all, it comes preloaded, so there's not as much demand), I tried to install it, and found I needed glibc2. So, ok, fine, I'll upgrade to that. Found a FAQ, read it, got the binaries, started upgrading all my various utilities to the right level. Unfortunately, some of these utils could only be found as.RPMs! At this point I said to hell with it, and gave up. Granted, I'm sure that with enough perseverance I could have gotten things working. If it had worked smoothly, I wouldn't have learned anything anyway. But, for everyone who says that RPMs make everything so much easier than plain old tarballs, I can only reply, "for RedHat users.. and even then maybe not." When I was actually using a RedHat 5.2 system, even though I told it to install EVERYTHING, it seemed to not have c++. So I said, fine, I'll just re-install it via rpm. Only rpm already thought it was installed. So I had to force it to install with some strange flags (I don't recall, someone more familiar with redhat helped me out).
Of course, I'm sure that all my problems could have been resolved with enough time and perseverance. And I don't mind spending that amount of time on something I really want -- it's a learning experience anyway. But all I've found is that RPMs definitely do NOT, overall, make my linux life any easier, and in many cases tend to shut out non-RedHat people...
Should we respect George Lucas because he "laid down the law" and has Hollywood doing what he says, and makes the rule and makes others follow him?
Or should we say, "it's not his fault, he had no control over all this hype?"
Which one is it?
And this is the first time I've ever agreed with something Katz has written. I'm not sure how to feel about that (btw, gotta love those question marks for apostrophes... what HAS he been writing with?)
First, I don't see how anyone (and it doesn't look like many have, but still) could view this as RMS "selling out" or "throwing his ideals out the window for money." It was an award. Recognition of the work he's already done. It's not as if Microsoft paid him $10K for consulting work. What the hell would he do for them, anyway? Evangelize about NT? Even more people would ignore him and dismiss him as a crackpot than do now.
To those who are tired of his "ranting" about GNU/Linux and think it's based solely on his personal jealousy of Linus' popularity while people still say "RMS? Who's that?" and those who say "If only he knew how to play the game a little better, he might be more accepted" -- by his actions he is totally selfless. He is willing to sacrifice his dignity / self-respect in order to educate people. Which is definitely putting the good of the many above the good of one.
And at least a few people out there do respect him for it. So in our eyes, he hasn't sacrificed anything but mass market appeal -- and that only because he wants to educate people, make sure they don't forget where all this great FREE, OPEN software comes from, and keep people contributing to it.
[And don't take the subject too seriously, although I'm sure plenty of people will do so.]
So, when IP addresses are scarce, will the priveleged few "organizations" (be they companies or universities) with class A networks allocated to them resell parts of their address space at unreasonable prices? Will IANA force them to give back their unused address space? Or will it never occur?
[Like the first few posts, I agree that the article's contention that all your household devices need public IP addresses is silly -- they shouldn't, both for security's sake (someone's hacking my toaster!) and the fact that they only need to communicate to other household devices. And I still think it's kind of silly to predict that all your household devices will be network enabled and talking to each other. You think cabling is a problem now...]
Get flood of responses, some positive, some not-so-positive.
Write another article about all the responses, and get another flood of responses.
I call it yellow journalism in that it's journalism for the sake of selling papers (getting hits) rather than for information, enlightened commentary or whatever -- but who ever accused journalists of seeking after those?
Oh, and I don't agree with his major argument -- Windows is the dominant standard, so Linux and company should acknowledge this fact and plan for it.
[And speaking of installing operating systems (from scratch, not for dual-boot)] I installed RedHat, the first time ever (for a friend, keep it away from MY machine) without reading a manual, and just following the onscreen instructions. Meanwhile, the rare task of loading Windows 98 on a blank machine was complicated by the fact that it needs a FAT partition, already formatted, to install. If there are no partitions, it fails with an error, if the partition is there but not formatted, it quits later. Without anything to tell you WHY it failed, and what you need to do. Fortunately, I could guess what it wanted -- but just try that with a Linux product and you'll receive no end of criticism about user-un-friendliness. Well, compare an OS that almost always comes pre-installed to one that almost always has to be installed after-the-fact, and see which one's installation routine gets scrutinized more closely.
Isn't it just too conincidental that 'Destroying Your Computer' was the story immediately following this one?
Call me a cynic, but whenever I see a "new linux site" [blah, blah blah] being advertised on Slashdot, I think to myself: another content-free site hoping to use the popularity of linux and the slashdot effect to generate easy revenue.
Slashdot Mirror
Companies who run WinNT networks usually need a whole IS department to keep their computers running. These people carry beepers that go off at 2:00 in the morning because the servers crash.
A whole IS department? What does that mean? It could be 2 people.
And the pagers go off at 2 in the morning because the users forgot their password or some other such nonsense. There's as much anti-Microsoft FUD on here as there ever was Microsoft originating FUD. Which is not to say I'm a Microsoft apologist (I don't even spell it a funny way, like Micros~1 or Micro$oft), but the shortcomings of MS' products are overemphasized by (a) zealous linux users that have never actually used NT and (b) clueless NT admins who are clueless, not through any fault of their own, but because NT 4 has the Win95 interface, and is advertised as being supereasy to run and config.
I mean, come on, comparing sendmail/qmail/etc against Exchange? How about comparing it to IIS' SMTP service? [I've never used it so I don't know how well it does, but if you're gonna compare Exchange, compare it to Notes and Groupwise, not totally different products...]
Don't get me wrong, I hate Microsoft's business practices, I hate them for forcing Windows on me and away from my beloved PC-DOS / QEMM / Desqview.
And as far as 'linux/unix servers never crash' -- the only times MY NT servers (I didn't have a choice or they wouldn't be, but I make do) "crash" is from hardware failure. How is linux going to stop that?
Well, I'm glad that so many people have commented here. I mean, who cares if something previously freely available and useful just poofs away into a very expensive and non-free project? Let's talk about geek profiling and evolution and cruelty to penguins.
That being said, from what I can tell, most (if not all) of the Linux-SNA code was written by the one person. So if he wants to privatize it, well, it's only his work he's doing it to. But surely there most be a version of the old code floating around out there?
Speaking of which, what happens when a GPL project with multiple members wants to get taken commercial / closed by its "owner"? In most cases, I assume, development would fork, with the last free version going its way, and the non-free version going its own way. But what happens when there are no copies of the free code around?
(One also wonders what the IceLinux-Samba 'software' he sells really is...)
And if i got it straight, it implied that the machine could break a key in *two days*... So, given MS Excels limitations, and me not wanting to attempt to type in exponents, it would seem to me that a 546 bit RSA key would be breakable within only 94,136,269.5 years... YIKES... I'm scared
Well, as long as you're complaining about the scarcity of technical detail in the article -- what in the article said that this machine would take twice as long for each extra bit on the key? (I assume that's what your calculations are based on). Who says that rule applies to this sort of machine? Maybe each bit just requires
adding an extra diode to solve it in the same time...
A company with little enough resources (manpower, money, etc) of its own will be "sponsoring" another vapororganization? Is it just me, or are there more and more of these things today -- a linux organization, or company, or whatever, that has done nothing except gain publicity just by existing? What have they ever produced? (I know Saturday's are slow, but really..)
I would like to formally announce a strategic partnership with my neighbor. Every other week, I'll mow his yard, and in the between weeks, he'll mow my lawn. Oh, and, uh, we'll also do linux consulting on our free weekends, and work to port Linux to the Lawnmower Architecture.
[p.s. I am biased]
[p.p.s. They're still valid opinions]
Huh? I saw it last night. I could have seen it two weeks ago, if I'd known what it was. I hadn't even heard of it until a few days ago, and I didn't read any reviews, just heard the basic premise from a friend. And, were I to write a review, I'm sure it would be inanely glowing and positive.
People who see it before everyone else are always eager to point that fact out by saying how great it was. (And it was damn good).
Point is, whether or not any of the fan sites are fake, I didn't see them, I saw the movie, and I liked it. And I'm not fake (I hope).
For his next exploit, he'll rig the 'rate it' votes on Deja!
Oh, wait... hrm.
(Really, putting in the same e-mail address for each vote? Duplicate information such as phone number, zip code, etc? Must not have put too much effort into it.)
ESR says RMS (wow, let the TLA's fly, and they're only regarding people...) is not a good "evangelist for the mainstream" (or some such approximation). That's because he's not trying to be! ESR is the one who's trying to use pretty words and silly-titled papers to change the image of the software in question (I think it's silly that now Open Source and Free Software are associated with rival .. camps). RMS isn't trying to be an evangelist to the mainstream! He's not trying to "adapt" Linux and other free software to the masses -- he's preaching the beliefs he's always had. Beliefs that don't appeal to the mainstream -- that's one of his strong points (in my opinion). He doesn't change his beliefs just to suit mainstream ideals. He's not trying to make himself "accepted" by the mainstream, he's just trying to make sure everyone knows about his beliefs.
And that is where they differ. ESR likes to lay claim to making "Open Source" popular, mainstream, written about in magazines, etc.
RMS does what he's always done, which is evangelize his beliefs that software should be free. And I respect him more for it.
(Plus, if RMS is an egomaniac it's because he so strongly believes in his views and finds it important to tell everyone about them. If ESR appears that way, it's cause he just wants attention, and needs to remind everyone how he made "Open Source" popular).
I mean, nothing against them, but the only time I've ever seen S3 cards are bundled with pre-built computers. (Actually, on motherboards. And granted, that's a lot of video cards/lil' onboard chips.) But who would buy an S3 if it wasn't bundled? Is it just because they're so cheap?
Guess what? He (the AC) is right.
uhm.. Ever hear of AlterNic?
Obviously, the problem is that people are NOT going to get together, compile an open database, and switch to it. Not enough, anyway.
Why are you all so eager to label yourselves? Why do you WANT a word that will "sum up what you do"? So you can say, "I'm a whatever" and then can be dismissed as a generic incarnation of your label. I thought people on here were in favor of individuality, and not labelling people. Personally I'm amused everytime I see the slashdot mob vainly wail "It's not hacker! It's cracker!" as if they could change the common usage of language just by complaining enough. Language evolves. Get over it. Quit trying to associate yourself with your heroes by calling yourself a "hacker," then getting upset because the definition changed under you.
And, lastly, wasn't one of the rules of being a hacker that you didn't call YOURSELF a hacker, but only other people could place that label on you?
So whatever happened to RIP (RIP script?), that was supposed to kill ANSI?
To think, I could have been part of an 'i' group (MiRAGE, who later merged with another big 'i' group) when DREAM merged with them... But I was in a little 'i' group, and I got kicked out. [mumbles about Shihear Kallizad]
Ah, the days of WWIV, and Telegard, and Renegade, and all those Vision clones.. [they really were neat looking]. I actually registerd WWIV. I actually remember my registration number. [rambling on].
Please do my homework for me.
Signed,
Some lazy kid
[seriously, though...]
I can't think of anything serious. I mean, enough's been said, here and other places, about everyone who has to do a paper and just gets all their facts off the internet -- or, gets pre-written papers off a certain site. Hell, even I did it when I was in high school, and that was a few years back. (Well, not exclusively. But instead of having to BUY books to write reports on, I downloaded them from Project Gutenberg.)
There has been a LOT said about the topics he mentioned (intellectual property, standardization of protocols on the internet, etc) both on Slashdot already, and everywhere else. Asking for it to be all wrapped in a nice little package in one discussion seems to be getting a bit lazy. [As if the whole mode of research isn't lazy enough. Although secretly I'm jealous of the people I know who get paid to consult on 'virtual learning.']
Well, hey, this comment is a good example of a hazard of the internet (although not in the context you are referring to). Anonymity breeds impoliteness (read: flaming). Which is not to say this is a flame, it's merely somewhat critical. But criticisms flow ever so easier when one can hide behind a silly name...
http://support.dialogic.com/appnotes/a ni.htm was found via a quick search..
The technical detail is interesting (if you're a phone person).
Well, at least in true geek fashion, you're trying to debate the movie -- rather, the STORY, in technical terms. [Why was the world like this?] Which is what most geeks do if they want to pick at a movie. Whereas if they (we) like it, we just say "it's a movie. It wasn't OUR reality. Therefore, the same laws that apply to us don't apply to them. It was similar enough that we could identify with it. However, it was also similar enough that now we assume that their world is OUR world, and thus should have to abide by the same rules / laws of physics / telephony / etc." I mean, I watched the first scene, with the "tracing call" and moaned to myself.. Ever hear of ANI? But once you realize that what they are making is anything but a normal telephone call, you stop complaining. Well, I did, anyway.
So, is this a good thing, that instead of people being shunned as geeks, they're now fighting about being geeks, and getting angry when someone dares suggest that they're not a geek? Personally, I wouldn't get offended if someone said "you're not a geek!" That used to be good news, right?
[And I loved (not liked, loved) the Matrix.]
Funny, the first thing we do at my workplace when the power goes out is start turning machines off. It (the UPS) can supply approximately 30-40 minutes for about 300 computers. So, yes, we don't worry about brief power outages, but then, what are we supposed to do, wait until there are 5 minutes left and THEN start powering them all down? [Especially since some of them take more than 10 minutes to shut down. Well, only one.]
Thanks.. I knew there was a way to convert RPMs to tarballs, but didn't know the specifics... And I like Midnight Commander anyway!
Running a Slackware 96 system for quite a while, .RPMs. So one day I decided, ok, I'll just install RPM. So I started about doing this. After obtaining it, with some difficulty (after all, it comes preloaded, so there's not as much demand), I tried to install it, and found I needed glibc2. So, ok, fine, I'll upgrade to that. Found a FAQ, read it, got the binaries, started upgrading all my various utilities to the right level. Unfortunately, some of these utils could only be found as .RPMs! At this point I said to hell with it, and gave up. Granted, I'm sure that with enough perseverance I could have gotten things working. If it had worked smoothly, I wouldn't have learned anything anyway. But, for everyone who says that RPMs make everything so much easier than plain old tarballs, I can only reply, "for RedHat users.. and even then maybe not." When I was actually using a RedHat 5.2 system, even though I told it to install EVERYTHING, it seemed to not have c++. So I said, fine, I'll just re-install it via rpm. Only rpm already thought it was installed. So I had to force it to install with some strange flags (I don't recall, someone more familiar with redhat helped me out).
I've been constantly annoyed at finding software I want and then seeing it only comes in
Of course, I'm sure that all my problems could have been resolved with enough time and perseverance. And I don't mind spending that amount of time on something I really want -- it's a learning experience anyway. But all I've found is that RPMs definitely do NOT, overall, make my linux life any easier, and in many cases tend to shut out non-RedHat people...
Should we respect George Lucas because he "laid down the law" and has Hollywood doing what he says, and makes the rule and makes others follow him?
Or should we say, "it's not his fault, he had no control over all this hype?"
Which one is it?
And this is the first time I've ever agreed with something Katz has written. I'm not sure how to feel about that (btw, gotta love those question marks for apostrophes... what HAS he been writing with?)
First, I don't see how anyone (and it doesn't look like many have, but still) could view this as RMS "selling out" or "throwing his ideals out the window for money." It was an award. Recognition of the work he's already done. It's not as if Microsoft paid him $10K for consulting work. What the hell would he do for them, anyway? Evangelize about NT? Even more people would ignore him and dismiss him as a crackpot than do now.
To those who are tired of his "ranting" about GNU/Linux and think it's based solely on his personal jealousy of Linus' popularity while people still say "RMS? Who's that?" and those who say "If only he knew how to play the game a little better, he might be more accepted" -- by his actions he is totally selfless. He is willing to sacrifice his dignity / self-respect in order to educate people. Which is definitely putting the good of the many above the good of one.
And at least a few people out there do respect him for it. So in our eyes, he hasn't sacrificed anything but mass market appeal -- and that only because he wants to educate people, make sure they don't forget where all this great FREE, OPEN software comes from, and keep people contributing to it.
[And don't take the subject too seriously, although I'm sure plenty of people will do so.]
So, when IP addresses are scarce, will the priveleged few "organizations" (be they companies or universities) with class A networks allocated to them resell parts of their address space at unreasonable prices? Will IANA force them to give back their unused address space? Or will it never occur?
[Like the first few posts, I agree that the article's contention that all your household devices need public IP addresses is silly -- they shouldn't, both for security's sake (someone's hacking my toaster!) and the fact that they only need to communicate to other household devices. And I still think it's kind of silly to predict that all your household devices will be network enabled and talking to each other. You think cabling is a problem now...]
Write article about linux.
Get it on slashdot.
Get flood of responses, some positive, some not-so-positive.
Write another article about all the responses, and get another flood of responses.
I call it yellow journalism in that it's journalism for the sake of selling papers (getting hits) rather than for information, enlightened commentary or whatever -- but who ever accused journalists of seeking after those?
Oh, and I don't agree with his major argument -- Windows is the dominant standard, so Linux and company should acknowledge this fact and plan for it.
[And speaking of installing operating systems (from scratch, not for dual-boot)] I installed RedHat, the first time ever (for a friend, keep it away from MY machine) without reading a manual, and just following the onscreen instructions. Meanwhile, the rare task of loading Windows 98 on a blank machine was complicated by the fact that it needs a FAT partition, already formatted, to install. If there are no partitions, it fails with an error, if the partition is there but not formatted, it quits later. Without anything to tell you WHY it failed, and what you need to do. Fortunately, I could guess what it wanted -- but just try that with a Linux product and you'll receive no end of criticism about user-un-friendliness. Well, compare an OS that almost always comes pre-installed to one that almost always has to be installed after-the-fact, and see which one's installation routine gets scrutinized more closely.
My reaction entirely.
Free (as in beer) doesn't mean "because it's ad-supported."
Isn't it just too conincidental that 'Destroying Your Computer' was the story immediately following this one?
Call me a cynic, but whenever I see a "new linux site" [blah, blah blah] being advertised on Slashdot, I think to myself: another content-free site hoping to use the popularity of linux and the slashdot effect to generate easy revenue.
Persons under the age of 18 (including infants in strollers and backpacks) will not be admitted.
I can understand that, sorta, seeing as how this is for enterprise IT management... But infants in backpacks? Huh?