Of course it's not a dog. It's not like they're wrapping it in fur and passing it off as a new, improved canine. It's no more a real, live animal than a Tamagochi or a Volkswagen, and I doubt anyone at Sony thinks for a minute these things will replace real dogs.
That doesn't mean I wouldn't love to have one, though (and, for the record, I have a real, live, dog, two ferrets, and a couple parrots at home). I'm not going to expect a robotic dog to get ecstatically, bump-into-furniture happy when I come home from a road trip, but I'm a geek, dammit. I think robots are cool. I want one.
Interesting that this essay should show up right on the tails of Rob's on flaming.
The man's right, but I believe he's fighting an unwinnable battle, at least as long as Linux remains anything less than the most widely-used OS on the planet.
Proponents of alternative operating systems have, for years, been jumping into flame wars over how ours is the best, yours sucks, and who's keeping ours from #1? Many of us have seen this played out by Amiga users, or Mac users, or NeXT users, ad nauseum. I'm utterly convinced that (as I've seen suggested by ESR, Katz, and others) the geek culture is overflowing with young men whose testosterone levels have gotten way too high, and who will use any excuse to lash out at anyone that looks like a good target.
Why does Linux and other free software attract people like that? Several reasons that I can think of (not necessarily in any order):
1. They love software they can hack on, either to improve their skills, or just for the sheer hell of it.
2. It's free. These aren't people with huge budgets.
3. It's not mainstream. That's probably what attracted me to Linux in the first place. Using fringe software provides a feeling of superiority (look at those poor bastards who don't know any better), attention from the unwashed masses (What is that you're running?), and a chance to be an expert in something relatively few people know much about. It's all about a feeling of power, really. Unfortunately, once some people feel they've got power, they don't know what to do with it -- they just need to use it however they can. Often, it means becoming a bully, picking on every little shortcoming they perceive in another. Other times, they look for a big, visible public target and aim there, in an effort to show everyone how powerful they are.
There are really only a couple cures that I know of: new toys, or maturity. If a shinier new toy comes along, some will move on to that, and find other targets to attack. Others will simply grow up, and learn to deal with people on a rational level, learning to contruct rather than destroy. It just takes a little time.
Unfortunately, we're going to have people like this around as long as Linux is still the shiniest toy in the toybox. It's just the way it works.
Rowan, you've made some valid points. Quite a few of them, in fact. I've got to admit, though, that they weren't easy to find.
I confess that I'm probably a bit more critical of others' writing than most (life's hell when you were a double Comp Sci/Englsh Lit major), but I hope you're open to a little constructive criticism.
Focus, my man! I think you tried to make too many points too quickly, and I often had a difficult time figuring out where one point ended and another began. I know it can be difficult to have a lot of things to say, and a limited space to say them. You're sure to lose readers, though, if you try to cram too many of them together at once.
As an example, CmdrTaco's title for your article was "Essay on the GNU Community," but that was only a small section at the end. I'd be very hard-pressed to come up with a title that fit the entire article... and that should be a sign you're trying to say too much. Select a topic, and write about that topic. You can always write more later.
You've got several distinct ideas there (and more than a few major complaints) which could easily be articles of their own. Think them out, come to conclusions where you can, and take some time to decide if they might be worthy of their own article. If they're not, see if they help make the main point if the article you're writing. If they don't, throw them away -- they're only cluttering things up.
Don't get me wrong... I'm all for Gnome. I run it myself -- KDE's just not my thing. I've got to admit, though, that I've found at least 20 different ways to crash various parts of Gnome without even trying.
A few examples off the top of my head:
Changing the panel background bitmap Re-theming the clockmail applet Doing almost anything with gmc
I'm with you on that one... as someone who works for a company that sells and supports Compaqs, I've taken to snagging any extra rails that pop up after drive replacements, etc., and keeping them in my laptop bag. After the first time I tried to install a drive that didn't come directly from Compaq, I learned my lesson.
Funny how people just assume that since "foo" is often coupled with "bar," that the FUBAR acronym is the origin. That's not the case.
You'll find references to "foo" (and I think the "Foo Fighters" explanation may be the closest to the truth) long before you see it coupled with "bar." If you were looking for another word to couple with "foo," though, "bar" would be an obvious choice. However, assuming that the origin of "foo" is "FUBAR" because of the association is like saying that the origin of the word "slash" is from "Slashdot."
They may get used a lot together, but foo is _not_ derived from FUBAR.
O.K., so the idea sounds a little hokey on the surface, but if there's anyone that could pull it off, it's Stan Lee.
I've been lucky enough to talk to him a couple of times, and the guy is still sharp as a tack even though he's like a billion years old. He's also got a major interest in the Internet -- the times I got to meet him were when he'd drop by the web production company I used to work at, and he wanted to know how everything worked, and what could be done with the technology. He just absorbed it all like a little grinning sponge.
The man is a legend in his business, and he's still got a lot of good years in him. I wish him luck.
Actually, the article calls E a "graphical user interface replacement for Linux's X-windows." I read that as meaning it's a replacement for X's interface, not X itself. O.K., so it's still not technically accurate (X itself not having it's own GUI), and it's of questionable grammatical merit, but it's not THAT bad a mistake.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know where you get your definition from, but where I come from there's nothing good about fear, uncertainty, or doubt.
You definitely do NOT have to say anything nice to sling FUD. It's not in the definition.
I don't know which server you're using for TrueType, but I can get 'em in any size I want in X, including within my browser using xfstt.
I don't do drugs and I very rarely ever drink. Well, 11.75 months out of the year, anyway.
There is the anual trip I make with a SysAdmin friend, and I've taken stuff with her I never even knew existed.
Then I get home, put on the tie, and it's clean and sober for another year.
Unix geeks are the devil's flunkies. I'm sure of it.
And your point would be...?
.net info. They have those, too.
It's not like they won't be selling
Of course it's not a dog. It's not like they're wrapping it in fur and passing it off as a new, improved canine. It's no more a real, live animal than a Tamagochi or a Volkswagen, and I doubt anyone at Sony thinks for a minute these things will replace real dogs.
That doesn't mean I wouldn't love to have one, though (and, for the record, I have a real, live, dog, two ferrets, and a couple parrots at home). I'm not going to expect a robotic dog to get ecstatically, bump-into-furniture happy when I come home from a road trip, but I'm a geek, dammit. I think robots are cool. I want one.
I don't think there's anything sinister about it.
Interesting that this essay should show up right on the tails of Rob's on flaming.
The man's right, but I believe he's fighting an unwinnable battle, at least as long as Linux remains anything less than the most widely-used OS on the planet.
Proponents of alternative operating systems have, for years, been jumping into flame wars over how ours is the best, yours sucks, and who's keeping ours from #1? Many of us have seen this played out by Amiga users, or Mac users, or NeXT users, ad nauseum. I'm utterly convinced that (as I've seen suggested by ESR, Katz, and others) the geek culture is overflowing with young men whose testosterone levels have gotten way too high, and who will use any excuse to lash out at anyone that looks like a good target.
Why does Linux and other free software attract people like that? Several reasons that I can think of (not necessarily in any order):
1. They love software they can hack on, either to improve their skills, or just for the sheer hell of it.
2. It's free. These aren't people with huge budgets.
3. It's not mainstream. That's probably what attracted me to Linux in the first place. Using fringe software provides a feeling of superiority (look at those poor bastards who don't know any better), attention from the unwashed masses (What is that you're running?), and a chance to be an expert in something relatively few people know much about. It's all about a feeling of power, really. Unfortunately, once some people feel they've got power, they don't know what to do with it -- they just need to use it however they can. Often, it means becoming a bully, picking on every little shortcoming they perceive in another. Other times, they look for a big, visible public target and aim there, in an effort to show everyone how powerful they are.
There are really only a couple cures that I know of: new toys, or maturity. If a shinier new toy comes along, some will move on to that, and find other targets to attack. Others will simply grow up, and learn to deal with people on a rational level, learning to contruct rather than destroy. It just takes a little time.
Unfortunately, we're going to have people like this around as long as Linux is still the shiniest toy in the toybox. It's just the way it works.
Rowan, you've made some valid points. Quite a few of them, in fact. I've got to admit, though, that they weren't easy to find.
I confess that I'm probably a bit more critical of others' writing than most (life's hell when you were a double Comp Sci/Englsh Lit major), but I hope you're open to a little constructive criticism.
Focus, my man! I think you tried to make too many points too quickly, and I often had a difficult time figuring out where one point ended and another began. I know it can be difficult to have a lot of things to say, and a limited space to say them. You're sure to lose readers, though, if you try to cram too many of them together at once.
As an example, CmdrTaco's title for your article was "Essay on the GNU Community," but that was only a small section at the end. I'd be very hard-pressed to come up with a title that fit the entire article... and that should be a sign you're trying to say too much. Select a topic, and write about that topic. You can always write more later.
You've got several distinct ideas there (and more than a few major complaints) which could easily be articles of their own. Think them out, come to conclusions where you can, and take some time to decide if they might be worthy of their own article. If they're not, see if they help make the main point if the article you're writing. If they don't, throw them away -- they're only cluttering things up.
Don't get me wrong... I'm all for Gnome. I run it myself -- KDE's just not my thing. I've got to admit, though, that I've found at least 20 different ways to crash various parts of Gnome without even trying.
A few examples off the top of my head:
Changing the panel background bitmap
Re-theming the clockmail applet
Doing almost anything with gmc
I'm with you on that one... as someone who works for a company that sells and supports Compaqs, I've taken to snagging any extra rails that pop up after drive replacements, etc., and keeping them in my laptop bag. After the first time I tried to install a drive that didn't come directly from Compaq, I learned my lesson.
Funny how people just assume that since "foo" is often coupled with "bar," that the FUBAR acronym is the origin. That's not the case.
You'll find references to "foo" (and I think the "Foo Fighters" explanation may be the closest to the truth) long before you see it coupled with "bar." If you were looking for another word to couple with "foo," though, "bar" would be an obvious choice. However, assuming that the origin of "foo" is "FUBAR" because of the association is like saying that the origin of the word "slash" is from "Slashdot."
They may get used a lot together, but foo is _not_ derived from FUBAR.
O.K., so the idea sounds a little hokey on the surface, but if there's anyone that could pull it off, it's Stan Lee.
I've been lucky enough to talk to him a couple of times, and the guy is still sharp as a tack even though he's like a billion years old. He's also got a major interest in the Internet -- the times I got to meet him were when he'd drop by the web production company I used to work at, and he wanted to know how everything worked, and what could be done with the technology. He just absorbed it all like a little grinning sponge.
The man is a legend in his business, and he's still got a lot of good years in him. I wish him luck.
Actually, the article calls E a "graphical user
interface replacement for Linux's X-windows." I read that as meaning it's a replacement for X's interface, not X itself. O.K., so it's still not technically accurate (X itself not having it's own GUI), and it's of questionable grammatical merit, but it's not THAT bad a mistake.