The idea that D&D is off topic for slashdot is ridiculous.
When you look at the popularity of rpg's in the computerati versus the general population, it's clear that there is more than coincidence at work.
It's interesting too when you consider that E Gary Gygax was an insurance adjuster. It's all about the numbers. Gamers and open-source computer geeks are both romantic math amateurs.
Access to the lines that are required for DSL service are regulated, or else Ruby Ranch wouldn't have had the leverage to get Qwest to give them access to the lines.
The great thing about a co-op like the Ruby Ranch ISP, is that it can operate independent of the profit motive. Qwest might be interested in profits, but its customers just want broadband access.
From their FAQ, it really sounds like the biggest obstacle was the lack of cooperation from Qwest.
The Phone companies forget that they are public utilities. They are given certain privileges, not least of which is monopoly power, not so that they can turn a profit, but so that their service can do good for the community. The profit motive is just an incidental factor to encourage them to invest in providing that service.
Hats off to Ruby Ranch for having the moxie to get the thing done. I wish I could get 1.5Mbit SDSL for $60/month.
It's fine that you are interested in the legal issues of intellectual property. I happen to have a particular interest in the economic aspects of said topic.
That is one reason I find open-source model so compelling. From an economic point-of-view, it is a new paradigm of software development. It is also a fairly simple and elegant solution that does not get bogged down in itself. The system itself is of tangential interest. It is interesting to specialists such as myself. But at its heart it is interesting because non-specialists can easily apply it to get stuff done. When Linus Torvalds was developing Linux as open-source, he wasn't really doing it for idealistic reasons. He was just a computer hacker trying to get a cool massive hack hacked.
The problem with the GPL is that it is starting to take itself too seriously. You, personally, might have a special interest in its arcane intricacies, but for the end-user, it has become cumbersome.
The fact that people have to take obscure and confusing tests and still be confused by the GPL does not suggest that those people are idiots. The end user is not made to serve the GPL. The GPL is meant to serve the end user. Confusion means that it is broken. Even from a legal point of view, the GPL is untested.
It's fine for you to enjoy the ins and outs of copyright law. It is a shame if it is necessary for every creator of intellectual property to become an expert in it. I don't mean to say people should not have a basic understanding of these issues. But the legal framework involved has become so confusing as to be counterproductive.
Getting back to the original subject, the GPL quiz, it is poorly written and indicative of sloppy legal thinking. Bad contracts and laws can be just as frustrating as bad code. It is especially frustrating when you don't want to parse legalisms as a requirement to parse computer code.
In every other objection you have, you are dead wrong.
A basic knowledge of the law is necessary to live in a civilized society.
My point, which you failed to understand, is that when legal considerations become so pervasive and convoluted, so that one must be a specialist,i.e. a lawyer, to properly understand them, the law is no longer helpful, but a detriment and distraction to the task at hand, in this case computer programming.
The law is not an end in itself, but is supposed to be a tool to allow us to live our lives peacefully.
You and I obviously have different points of views. You see computing as a symbol to be used in political action. I just see computing as something intellectually interesting in and of itself, of which the social, legal, economic and political aspects play a smallish part.
Your bringing up the Skylarov case only strngthens my point. Skylarov's problem was not an ignorance of the law, as he deliberately tried to present his ideas in what he thought was a legal manner. Skylarov got caught up in a confusing and malicious legal fight, when all he wanted to do was investigate some interesting encryptation problems.
I like what the FSF and GNU stand for. I just wonder if they are taking the wrong approach, by piling legalisms on legalisms.
The point is not to get hackers to become lawyers. The point should be to get the lawyers off of the hackers' backs.
It is not shameful to be ignorant of the law when the laws in question are deliberately obscure.
What really amazes me about slackware is that it really does seem to be a one-man show. This is reassuring to me. It's good to know that there really is one authoritative voice on at leat one distro. It lacks bells and whistles and requires some expertise, which is why I couldn't stick with it, but philosophically, it appeals to me.
Some of you boys have a weird fetish on this Gates guy.
I read that interview, and he really doesn't say anything too shocking.
All he basically says is that most users don't complain about real bugs, not in a strict technical sense. He does open the possibility that some people don't know how to use their software. Big Whoop.
He then goes on to say that MS never markets its new versions on bug fixes, but on new features. Again, big whoop.
Whoever posted the interview doesn't know the difference between bad design and a technical bug.
I don't know why I'm even bothering (this is the second Gates basher I've taken on in this topic). It's just that the stupid, uninformed, deliberately-misleading MS bashing is starting to get dull.
There are plenty of legitimate MS bashing arguments. But how about moving on?
I'm all for Microsoft bashing, but this is assinine.
BG and PA came from privileged backgrounds, but so have plenty of people who didn't manage to build multibillion empires.
Sure, their family's wealth may have given them an extra cushion (as well as a chance to play with some swell DEC's in high school), but their achievements were on their own in ways that money didn't buy.
In business, Bill Gates may be an asshole, but he also has a legitimate claim as a pioneer in personal computing. The Gates and Allen did write the first programming language for the first personal computer.
And Linux Torvalds wrote linux when he had barely a pot to piss in, while living with his mother and sister.
The real expertise in a program like quicken is not on the programming end. Balancing books is a pretty trivial algorithm.
Where the real value of Quicken lies in the financial and legal expertise that it describes. For this they need the expertise of accountants and lawyers and economists etc..
If you want to develop a good open-source personal finance program, you need to find some good accountants (and tax lawyers, and financial advisers, etc) to help out in distilling their expertise, working with the programmers.
And because laws and finance are such ever-changing areas, especially at the margins, constant updating is necessary.
One big hurdle with open-source financial programs (please keep responding flames articulate) is a lack of accountability as well. When I buy turbotax, I know there is a company behind it that must take some responsibility with the program. Just for that reason, a good lawyer or accountant may be hesitant to contribute on open-source. If the software fucks up, he may be professionally liable.
I do wish at least a polished proprietary financial and tax software were available on Linux. My guess is that Linux just doesn't have the market penetration yet to justify the port.
Because of the need for updates, I even think that proprietary software might have some viability on a limited, non-transfereable, open source basis.
I haven't tried gnucash, but if intuit came out with quicken and turbotax for Linux, I would be one step closer to wiping my windows partition. Incidentally, I still wouldn't buy the linux version right away, because I still need the windows partition for other things, and my windows quicken works fine.
No, I tried most of the suggestions regarding adsl and they didn't seem to do the trick. Well, I tried most of them. Getting a script to work at startup is currently beyond my ability.
I wish that I could get this thing to work as well as windows. I really do. But I can't. Most of it is probably due to my own incompetence. That much is granted.
SO what does that make you? A linux drone?
I can get windows to work "out of the box". I can't do that with linux. I know, I know, I should join some user's group and take some compsci courses.
I would like there to be an alternative to windows. My brief and shallow experience has been unsatisfactory in finding that. It's not a big deal. I expect it to get better.
One thing I have noticed is that these linux desktops. like gnome and kde, really seem to suffer from even worse "feature-bloat" than windows. Again, just my opinion.
Hey, if microsoft wants to throw a few bucks my way for guerrilla marketing purposes, I would probably not say no, if they paid me enough. But what I'm posting are my opinions and experiences.
For instance, when I tried doing the su trick, it didn't work. What's funny is, even logged in as root, I can only open adsl in gnome, not kde.
I'm working in gnome right now because kde is trashed, and I can't fix it and looking at newsgroups all I see is a bunch of posts saying "yeah there's a problem."
Hmmm.... maybe I am a drone. I'm certainly a neophyte when it comes to amateur (and I mean that in the best sense) computing.
But hey, tell me this, when you telnet into nyplgate.nypl.org, are there any screens that get stuck for you? They do for me and they don't in windows and it is particularly frustrating because I figured linux should be a champ when it came to text-based apps.
Would I like everything to work just right? Yes. Would I like it to be easy? yes. Has it been so far? No. It has been a pain in the ass, but a learning experience.
All of my problems so far have shown me that the biggest weakness with linux, and open-source in general, is a question of "quality assurance". And that makes sense. QA is a dull boring busineess that people only do if they are paid to do it.
I guess that I've ranted enough. It's nice to know there's a fan out there looking over past posts.
I've been playing around with Linux as a desktop machine at home, mostly because I want to learn Linux as a server tool. For that purpose, Linux is great because, on the desktop, so many things don't work that it is forcing me to learn the sytem.
Among the most annoying problems, so far:
A lack of a one-touch installation tool.
No built in java support in browsers.
KDE is now unusuable becuase the "kicker" panel has a bug that makes it unusable, and consumes all cpu cycles to boot.
Telnet won't work properly. I have to connect to the NYPL's telnet at nyplgate.nypl.org quite frequently. Unlike Windows, Linux's telnet won't display the screens properly and frequently hangs.
Connecting via ADSL is quirky.
Lack of high-end products like Adobe Photoshop, Quicken, Turbo Tax.
These are just a few of the lovely issues I am having. In my case, it is not so bad as it forces me to get more into the guts of my system, which is my main goal. Unfortunately, I still will need to depend on my windows machine for productive work.
Don't believe the hype. Linux is not ready for the desktop. Windows is worth the extra $50-$200 per desktop alone if nothing less than to avoid the headache factor.
And BTW, I would love for some advice on all the problems I am having.
This first post is really not very impressive. The story is already in third place with only 15 comments. Not much competition. A good first post always is followed by some late claimers to the first post, who in fact are not first.
So overall, this was a fairly weak and uninspired first post.
A better challenge is fp'ing on a popular topic, like Microsoft bashing.
On the other hand. It is a good first try, and sometimes the mood just hits you, as it did me in my own unchallenging first fp
Whatever the strategy, it still strikes me as a losing one.
When ISO's are so easily downloadable for free, or disks ordered for $5 from a third party, then trying to get people to change distros because of cost seems counterintuitive. Why pay $40 for a distro that can be had online for free or $10? For the $10 rebate? Hah!
I think the Register article was pretty clear in pointing out that Red Hat is not exactly going out of its way to tout this.
For what it's worth, I've been scouting out a hosting provider, and just about everyone uses Red Hat. Hell, in his biography, Linus Torvalds himself talked of using Suse at home and RH at work.
And Mandrake will probably be going bankrupt in the near future. Their finances just don't look too healthy. This is probably a good thing. Linux market share is just too low to support multiple distros, especially on the desktop.
On the other hand, competition does engender inventiveness.
Oh hell, it would just be nice to see some more support from software vendors for Linux. It would be nice to run quicken and turbotax and photoshop on a linux desktop. Hell, I'd just like to be able to install things more easily.
End of rant. I got more but I figure this is enough for now.
I don't think anyone was reading this post on slashdot because they were interested in movie history. If this was posted on a old-movie-buff website, I would more understand the links.
It's true that one doesn't have to follow the links on the page. Nevertheless, they are still distracting. And they are distracting from the main point of interest for this audience: the change in the corporate culture of a pioneering tech firm.
We wouldn't be interested in this speech if it weren't about the recent HP Compaq merger..
Hyperlinking is a useful tool. And in this case it was used poorly.
Packards remarks were clearly aimed criticizing the new HP Compaq. They are only incidentally connected to the old movies linked to in the post.
Adding the links do nothing to help give additional meaning to Packard's remarks. It was a short and graceful speech that is marred with the hyperlinked transcription.
I guess we can go back and forth on this for a long time. Could you tell me how any of those links actually helped in giving a better understanding to Packard's speech? Please be specific. If you can't, then I think it is fair to say that the links are useless, and worse, distracting.
I found the linking confusing and unnecessary as well. This was not a speech about movie history. It was a speech using movie and entertainment history as a context for a technology business story.
I don't think anyone reading this story was doing so for Packard's insights on old-time movies.
Slashdot Mirror
The idea that D&D is off topic for slashdot is ridiculous.
When you look at the popularity of rpg's in the computerati versus the general population, it's clear that there is more than coincidence at work.
It's interesting too when you consider that E Gary Gygax was an insurance adjuster. It's all about the numbers. Gamers and open-source computer geeks are both romantic math amateurs.
Access to the lines that are required for DSL service are regulated, or else Ruby Ranch wouldn't have had the leverage to get Qwest to give them access to the lines.
The great thing about a co-op like the Ruby Ranch ISP, is that it can operate independent of the profit motive. Qwest might be interested in profits, but its customers just want broadband access.
From their FAQ, it really sounds like the biggest obstacle was the lack of cooperation from Qwest.
The Phone companies forget that they are public utilities. They are given certain privileges, not least of which is monopoly power, not so that they can turn a profit, but so that their service can do good for the community. The profit motive is just an incidental factor to encourage them to invest in providing that service.
Hats off to Ruby Ranch for having the moxie to get the thing done. I wish I could get 1.5Mbit SDSL for $60/month.
Don't forget that debian woody should be going stable soon.
All your base are up your nose with a rubber hose.
Boy, that felt good.
MS '98 telnet is better than telnet on RH 7.2 .
At least in my limited experience.
Can't work at nyplgate.nypl.org through RH, but I can through MS.
It's fine that you are interested in the legal issues of intellectual property. I happen to have a particular interest in the economic aspects of said topic.
That is one reason I find open-source model so compelling. From an economic point-of-view, it is a new paradigm of software development. It is also a fairly simple and elegant solution that does not get bogged down in itself. The system itself is of tangential interest. It is interesting to specialists such as myself. But at its heart it is interesting because non-specialists can easily apply it to get stuff done. When Linus Torvalds was developing Linux as open-source, he wasn't really doing it for idealistic reasons. He was just a computer hacker trying to get a cool massive hack hacked.
The problem with the GPL is that it is starting to take itself too seriously. You, personally, might have a special interest in its arcane intricacies, but for the end-user, it has become cumbersome.
The fact that people have to take obscure and confusing tests and still be confused by the GPL does not suggest that those people are idiots. The end user is not made to serve the GPL. The GPL is meant to serve the end user. Confusion means that it is broken. Even from a legal point of view, the GPL is untested.
It's fine for you to enjoy the ins and outs of copyright law. It is a shame if it is necessary for every creator of intellectual property to become an expert in it. I don't mean to say people should not have a basic understanding of these issues. But the legal framework involved has become so confusing as to be counterproductive.
Getting back to the original subject, the GPL quiz, it is poorly written and indicative of sloppy legal thinking. Bad contracts and laws can be just as frustrating as bad code. It is especially frustrating when you don't want to parse legalisms as a requirement to parse computer code.
End Rant.
can we pump the exhaust fumes from our coal-burning plant into your house?
You are correct. I misspelled "afficionados".
,i.e. a lawyer, to properly understand them, the law is no longer helpful, but a detriment and distraction to the task at hand, in this case computer programming.
In every other objection you have, you are dead wrong.
A basic knowledge of the law is necessary to live in a civilized society.
My point, which you failed to understand, is that when legal considerations become so pervasive and convoluted, so that one must be a specialist
The law is not an end in itself, but is supposed to be a tool to allow us to live our lives peacefully.
You and I obviously have different points of views. You see computing as a symbol to be used in political action. I just see computing as something intellectually interesting in and of itself, of which the social, legal, economic and political aspects play a smallish part.
Your bringing up the Skylarov case only strngthens my point. Skylarov's problem was not an ignorance of the law, as he deliberately tried to present his ideas in what he thought was a legal manner. Skylarov got caught up in a confusing and malicious legal fight, when all he wanted to do was investigate some interesting encryptation problems.
I like what the FSF and GNU stand for. I just wonder if they are taking the wrong approach, by piling legalisms on legalisms.
The point is not to get hackers to become lawyers. The point should be to get the lawyers off of the hackers' backs.
It is not shameful to be ignorant of the law when the laws in question are deliberately obscure.
Jesus Fuck.
Since when did legal studies become the main concern for computer afficianados?
That quiz has to be a goof. I think Microsoft hacked into FSF's servers to scare people away from open-source.
There is something very, very wrong here.
These legalisms are paralyzing to a fertile, inquisitive mind.
so true. I would love to see slashdot release the logs of user agents. My guess is that IE has at least 80%.
What really amazes me about slackware is that it really does seem to be a one-man show.
This is reassuring to me. It's good to know that there really is one authoritative voice on at leat one distro.
It lacks bells and whistles and requires some expertise, which is why I couldn't stick with it, but philosophically, it appeals to me.
Fucking Crap.
Some of you boys have a weird fetish on this Gates guy.
I read that interview, and he really doesn't say anything too shocking.
All he basically says is that most users don't complain about real bugs, not in a strict technical sense. He does open the possibility that some people don't know how to use their software. Big Whoop.
He then goes on to say that MS never markets its new versions on bug fixes, but on new features. Again, big whoop.
Whoever posted the interview doesn't know the difference between bad design and a technical bug.
I don't know why I'm even bothering (this is the second Gates basher I've taken on in this topic).
It's just that the stupid, uninformed, deliberately-misleading MS bashing is starting to get dull.
There are plenty of legitimate MS bashing arguments. But how about moving on?
I'm all for Microsoft bashing, but this is assinine.
BG and PA came from privileged backgrounds, but so have plenty of people who didn't manage to build multibillion empires.
Sure, their family's wealth may have given them an extra cushion (as well as a chance to play with some swell DEC's in high school), but their achievements were on their own in ways that money didn't buy.
In business, Bill Gates may be an asshole, but he also has a legitimate claim as a pioneer in personal computing. The Gates and Allen did write the first programming language for the first personal computer.
And Linux Torvalds wrote linux when he had barely a pot to piss in, while living with his mother and sister.
Money didn't buy any of these people's success.
The real expertise in a program like quicken is not on the programming end. Balancing books is a pretty trivial algorithm.
Where the real value of Quicken lies in the financial and legal expertise that it describes. For this they need the expertise of accountants and lawyers and economists etc..
If you want to develop a good open-source personal finance program, you need to find some good accountants (and tax lawyers, and financial advisers, etc) to help out in distilling their expertise, working with the programmers.
And because laws and finance are such ever-changing areas, especially at the margins, constant updating is necessary.
One big hurdle with open-source financial programs (please keep responding flames articulate) is a lack of accountability as well. When I buy turbotax, I know there is a company behind it that must take some responsibility with the program. Just for that reason, a good lawyer or accountant may be hesitant to contribute on open-source. If the software fucks up, he may be professionally liable.
I do wish at least a polished proprietary financial and tax software were available on Linux. My guess is that Linux just doesn't have the market penetration yet to justify the port.
Because of the need for updates, I even think that proprietary software might have some viability on a limited, non-transfereable, open source basis.
I haven't tried gnucash, but if intuit came out with quicken and turbotax for Linux, I would be one step closer to wiping my windows partition. Incidentally, I still wouldn't buy the linux version right away, because I still need the windows partition for other things, and my windows quicken works fine.
hmmm....
interesting.
No, I tried most of the suggestions regarding adsl and they didn't seem to do the trick. Well, I tried most of them. Getting a script to work at startup is currently beyond my ability.
I wish that I could get this thing to work as well as windows. I really do. But I can't. Most of it is probably due to my own incompetence. That much is granted.
SO what does that make you? A linux drone?
I can get windows to work "out of the box". I can't do that with linux. I know, I know, I should join some user's group and take some compsci courses.
I would like there to be an alternative to windows. My brief and shallow experience has been unsatisfactory in finding that. It's not a big deal. I expect it to get better.
One thing I have noticed is that these linux desktops. like gnome and kde, really seem to suffer from even worse "feature-bloat" than windows. Again, just my opinion.
Hey, if microsoft wants to throw a few bucks my way for guerrilla marketing purposes, I would probably not say no, if they paid me enough. But what I'm posting are my opinions and experiences.
For instance, when I tried doing the su trick, it didn't work. What's funny is, even logged in as root, I can only open adsl in gnome, not kde.
I'm working in gnome right now because kde is trashed, and I can't fix it and looking at newsgroups all I see is a bunch of posts saying "yeah there's a problem."
Hmmm.... maybe I am a drone. I'm certainly a neophyte when it comes to amateur (and I mean that in the best sense) computing.
But hey, tell me this, when you telnet into nyplgate.nypl.org, are there any screens that get stuck for you? They do for me and they don't in windows and it is particularly frustrating because I figured linux should be a champ when it came to text-based apps.
Would I like everything to work just right? Yes.
Would I like it to be easy? yes. Has it been so far? No. It has been a pain in the ass, but a learning experience.
All of my problems so far have shown me that the biggest weakness with linux, and open-source in general, is a question of "quality assurance". And that makes sense. QA is a dull boring busineess that people only do if they are paid to do it.
I guess that I've ranted enough. It's nice to know there's a fan out there looking over past posts.
Peace,
Michel Evanchik
I've been playing around with Linux as a desktop machine at home, mostly because I want to learn Linux as a server tool. For that purpose, Linux is great because, on the desktop, so many things don't work that it is forcing me to learn the sytem.
Among the most annoying problems, so far:
A lack of a one-touch installation tool.
No built in java support in browsers.
KDE is now unusuable becuase the "kicker" panel has a bug that makes it unusable, and consumes all cpu cycles to boot.
Telnet won't work properly. I have to connect to the NYPL's telnet at nyplgate.nypl.org quite frequently. Unlike Windows, Linux's telnet won't display the screens properly and frequently hangs.
Connecting via ADSL is quirky.
Lack of high-end products like Adobe Photoshop, Quicken, Turbo Tax.
These are just a few of the lovely issues I am having. In my case, it is not so bad as it forces me to get more into the guts of my system, which is my main goal. Unfortunately, I still will need to depend on my windows machine for productive work.
Don't believe the hype. Linux is not ready for the desktop. Windows is worth the extra $50-$200 per desktop alone if nothing less than to avoid the headache factor.
And BTW, I would love for some advice on all the problems I am having.
I've often heard tell in the past that Matrox has better image quality in 2D (which is what I work in). Is this still the case?
This first post is really not very impressive. The story is already in third place with only 15 comments. Not much competition. A good first post always is followed by some late claimers to the first post, who in fact are not first.
So overall, this was a fairly weak and uninspired first post.
A better challenge is fp'ing on a popular topic, like Microsoft bashing.
On the other hand. It is a good first try, and sometimes the mood just hits you, as it did me in my own unchallenging first fp
Whatever the strategy, it still strikes me as a losing one.
When ISO's are so easily downloadable for free, or disks ordered for $5 from a third party, then trying to get people to change distros because of cost seems counterintuitive. Why pay $40 for a distro that can be had online for free or $10? For the $10 rebate? Hah!
I think the Register article was pretty clear in pointing out that Red Hat is not exactly going out of its way to tout this.
For what it's worth, I've been scouting out a hosting provider, and just about everyone uses Red Hat. Hell, in his biography, Linus Torvalds himself talked of using Suse at home and RH at work.
And Mandrake will probably be going bankrupt in the near future. Their finances just don't look too healthy. This is probably a good thing. Linux market share is just too low to support multiple distros, especially on the desktop.
On the other hand, competition does engender inventiveness.
Oh hell, it would just be nice to see some more support from software vendors for Linux. It would be nice to run quicken and turbotax and photoshop on a linux desktop. Hell, I'd just like to be able to install things more easily.
End of rant. I got more but I figure this is enough for now.
Racism and Anti-Semitism in Europe? Fascism?
You are coming perilously close to invoking Godwin's Law
I don't think anyone was reading this post on slashdot because they were interested in movie history. If this was posted on a old-movie-buff website, I would more understand the links.
It's true that one doesn't have to follow the links on the page. Nevertheless, they are still distracting. And they are distracting from the main point of interest for this audience: the change in the corporate culture of a pioneering tech firm.
We wouldn't be interested in this speech if it weren't about the recent HP Compaq merger..
Hyperlinking is a useful tool. And in this case it was used poorly.
Packards remarks were clearly aimed criticizing the new HP Compaq. They are only incidentally connected to the old movies linked to in the post.
Adding the links do nothing to help give additional meaning to Packard's remarks. It was a short and graceful speech that is marred with the hyperlinked transcription.
I guess we can go back and forth on this for a long time. Could you tell me how any of those links actually helped in giving a better understanding to Packard's speech? Please be specific. If you can't, then I think it is fair to say that the links are useless, and worse, distracting.
I found the linking confusing and unnecessary as well. This was not a speech about movie history. It was a speech using movie and entertainment history as a context for a technology business story.
I don't think anyone reading this story was doing so for Packard's insights on old-time movies.
The hyperlinks are annoying.
Hilarious.
Bugzilla is blocking links from slashdot!
Why don't you just get a new host? You should be able to get a decent shared host for $10-$20/month, with full reporting and other goodies.