Hi there, I'm DesScorp, and I'd like to welcome you to the real world. You're argument is flawed, mainly because you're assuming that all people seeking power are doing it for personal gain or for abuse. People like that DO exist. But you're assuming ambition is a bad thing here. Most people seeking power also do it thinking that "I can do a better job than that other guy". I WANT that kind of confidence in someone holding a position of power. I don't want some fool chosen by lottery, because you can't make someone want responsibility in a position of power. It has to be desired, then earned. Someone has to step up to the plate at election time and run for the office. Wouldn't you rather have someone that actually WANTS the job? I don't know of any other way to do it in a democracy, do you?
While I'm glad the court didn't make a blanket judgement compelling businesses to maintain dual website versions, we DO need to consider ways in which to make the web more accessable to the disabled in order to more completely fulfill its promise. Kudos to the judge for making this decision though. Another heavy handed mandate was not what is needed for this problem.
I very much enjoyed your post. I don't agree with all of your points, but you nailed the gist of it: anarchy is NOT a reasonable form of government. It's tyranny in that it's the law of the jungle replacing the rule of law. It never ceases to amaze me how one man's wasteful program is another man's vital public service. I think that, overall, the Founders were pretty bright guys. And if they wanted EVERYTHING to be dictated by a market, there would be no postal service, no census bureau, no govermental services at all. They didn't go that route. I'm a rabid capitalist, but I recognize that in a civilized society, some things should be publicly available to all. You can debate what they are, and at what level services should be provided, but it's foolish to just say "let the market handle it".
Sorry, but your post comes off as an assinine troll. Define "for the people"? North Carolina has a heavily religeous and right tilting population. I'd say he's done plenty for the people, being that they keep putting him into office. If you don't like him, fine. But he got in by winning elections, not by military coup, or trickery, or anything else. More voters selected him than the other guy, period. Unless you're one of the conspiracy crowd that belives in Black Helicopters and the Global Zionist Conspiracy, you have to blame the voters as much as you blame Helms. He's expressing their will. Change the public's mind, and you'll change the politicians as a result.
...is that the case goes to court, and the judge throws it out WITH PREDJUDICE, meaning the merits of the case are so unworthy that there's no right to appeal. Let's hope horseshit like this gets nipped in the bud pronto-like.
Couldn't law enforcement nail them for using this kind of method? Assuming the spammers in question could be found, of course? This isn't a case where you visit a website, and an affiliate's popup ad appears. The argument could be made that if you visit a site voluntarily, you can't hold them accountable for popups. And while mail spam is annoying, it's legal if certain procedures are followed (but that's another rant entirely). It seems to me that THIS method is so intrusive as to warrant prosecution. Unfortunately, even if I'm right, it's pissing in the wind to hope for any legal redress. If the internet ever dies, it won't be because of government tyranny or the RIAA. It'll die because people will become so fed up with the spam and porn shoveled at them, they'll just turn it off.
You might see some contraction in the industry, but you wont see the dissapearance of your local multiplex anytime soon. Would you rather see the next Lord of the Rings flick on
1- A huge theater screen with booming THX speakers
or
2- Your 27' television
Hmmmm, yeah, I chose number 1 as well. Face it, unless you're just plain El Cheapo, you still go to the movies for the ones you REALLY want to see. And unless you've got LOTS of cash flowing in, you probably don't have a "home theater" with all of the goodies. Sorry, but I agree with an earlier post. I don't think Lucas knows this YoYo is going around saying this.
I get the impression a LOT of/. regs are vets. I'm a Navy vet myself, calling Big E home for years. Salut to everyone who knows what a WestPac is, get's the scuttlebut, and (for your older guys) hears the "smoking lamp is on" call over the 1-MC.
I'll agree with you, and I'll even go further. I've thought for a few months now that the Federal Government, including the military and all various Federal agencies, should develop their own Unix OS. Call it Govnix maybe. You could have an ultra-secure military variant. Milnix, perhaps?
I know everyone here thinks that a GPL'd system like Linux should be adopted, but face it, that's not going to happen. The GPL is now a no-no in goverment circles. Ask the NSA. And as much as we exalt the penguin here, Linux is nowhere near secure enough for military use anyway, even the NSA secure version that was developed.
So that leaves you with two choices. Go to an outside contractor, or roll your own. If you go with an outside contractor, you either have to pick a single vendor, or go with multiple vendors. Both paths have strengths and weaknesses, but you'd probably pick the multiple vendor option. Do you really want to hand one company the responsibility for Federal IT? Clearly not. I'm not comfortable with any one company, be it Sun, IBM, or Microsoft running the show. So if you do go multiple vendor, you just increased the complexity of your project by an order of magnitude.
That leaves rolling your own. To me, this is the obvious choice. You start with Unix as your OS platform. It's very mature, well known, and there's lots of expertise on it out there, both inside and outside of government circles. And you wouldn't even neccessarily have to write a system from the ground up completely. You could quite literally buy the rights to a current proprietary system, and modify it for the goverment's needs. While this will rankle open source advocates, obviously you'd keep the guts of the system fairly limited to authorized personnel. Sorry, but I agree with Gene Spafford on this one. It's more important to have a trained staff looking for bugs than to have the code open sourced, especially with national security questions. As for what you'd buy, SCO has two traditional Unix operating systems they sell in addition to their Linux distro. They could probably be persuaded to sell one of them. Unixware would finally find a proper home. There are lots of other options here too.
And what about other software? For office productivity stuff, You could probably develop your own apps, but that isn't as neccessary. Like it or not, MS's.doc format has become the word processing standard, so you'd probably use that binary format, maybe adopting OpenOffice, or developing your own variant. For databases, as long as it's written to the SQL standard, there are various options here as well. You could probably buy an existing database as well, and modify it.
Then it just becomes a matter of implementing it government wide. A unified platform would reduce costs in the long run, in maintenance and training, and would be easier to secure. Currently, the Navy seems to be adopting Microsoft operating systems, even for shipboard controls. This is a bad move. Of course, MS would lobby furiously against the homegrown solution (as would other companies. Sun would argue that SunOne is "all you need"), but I think this would be our best bet.
I'm dissapointed that no one is addressing one of the central theme's of his op-ed; is geekdom developing an orthodoxy? If so, how severe is the "punishement" (in terms of getting flamed, shunned, "cast out", if you will)? For myself, I think that some people would LIKE for geeks to have a "Little Red Book" of orthdoxy, and that some are even pushing for it (RMS comes to mind here). Thankfully, I think that too many people would resist this. Even if you agree with many of the said principles, I think the idea of tolerating no dissent would rankle a lot in this bunch. In fact, it may just be my opinion, but I think I'm seeing a LOT of dissent on slashdot of late. For every contetious issue, there seems to be a lot a counter-responses where posters refuse to follow the accepted geek wisdom on an issue. I'm GLAD to see this, because I agree with one statement in the op-ed; monocultures always die. If dissent is not allowed, sooner or later, your culture is going down. Trolling should always be flamed, but at the very least, people should have a right to an opinion.
Let's see....the issue should be tackled by giving the industry and the US Government the finger, moving offshore and going "Now what are you going to do about it?". You don't think the US can exert pressure on other countries? Trade is a two way street. How eager would, oh, say Guatamala be to protect something like Napster if it meant sanctions on other forms of trade? One of Napsters biggest problems was the attitude of users, specifically the "I'm going to do it anyway, and I don't care what the industry or the law says. You can't stop me". When you poke a bear, you shouldn't be terribly surprised if it attacks.The ONLY way to address your fair use and file sharing issues is through the law. It's not easy, cheap, or quick, but it's the only lasting solution. Things like these offshore schemes are only going to fail in the long run, and hurt your cause as well.
The antitdote to spam has been staring us in the face all along. How do you combat hordes of greedy unscrupulous spammers? Get hordes of greedy unscrupulous lawyers to go after fat cash settlements. Paging Mr. Dershowitz......
"...of course by community they mean the few guys they personally know and who make money using their MS knowledge..."
Ummm....few guys? Even if you think Microsoft is Satan's little cabal on Earth, you're a fool if you don't realize that MS has a huge pool of developers on their side, most of which are not directly on the MS payroll. Are you really THAT naive to think that MS has no public supporters in the dev community? A LOT of developers have hitched their wagons to MS's success. You may not like them, but you have to acknowledge them.
Scott McNeally long ago openly stated that it's his aim to put lots of IT workers out of a job. He thinks IT takes up too many resources in terms of staff and manpower. Sun has long stated a goal of making systems that run with a minimum of personnel. This is attractive to budget minded CFO's that see a golden opportunity to save money (and take home a nice bonus) for bringing the axe down on IT personnel. However, I agree with the other posts in here. No matter how much self-administration and redundancy you build into a system, you're always going to need more staff than you think.
For a really good intro to physics, you'd be hard pressed to beat Asimov's book. Barnes and Noble has the three-in-one volume for under 10 bucks, and it's hardcover.
Just chuck the whole "United Linux" campaign. That's all it is, a marketing device. What these companies should do instead is promote and advertise adherence to the Linux Standard Base. LSB, and its' piece of public mindshare, will be the key to gaining developer and customer trust.
Ok, Slashdotters. Time to fess up and be honest Wardriving, though harmless in and of itself, is shady business. It's the electronic equivalent of casing a store or residence in order to rob it later. I realize the vast majority of wardrivers do nothing with the info they find, and right now it's more of a fad than anything (especially for kids that fantasize about being Mad Haxorz with Big Skillz, or whatever they hell they're calling it this week), but deep down, face it. You KNOW you're up to no good. The very essence of Wardriving is LOOKING FOR VULNERABILITIES. Only two kinds of people really give a damn about this kind of information. Serious security researchers, and net scum looking to break into networks. Now, like everyone else, I'm getting damn tired of seeing my liberties slip away in new laws and regulations. But if there was half an ounce of honesty here, we'd all admit to each other that by doing stupid shit like Wardriving, we're begging the government and public to be alarmed and put further restrictions on what we do. So to you people that deface webpages, spread virii, and wardrive looking networks to break into, why don't you do us a favor and go fuck yourselves. You are why the word "hacker" evokes fear and loathing.
While I welcome any insight or debate into the GPL and CopyLefting, frankly, I'm not getting anything new here. And the fact that he studied under Lawrence Lessig is going to imply some bias on his part, considering Lessig's positions. Frankly, other than speculation and name calling, there's not much real analysis out there on the issue of licensing in open source. What I'd like to see is some expert opposing viewpoints, starting a real debate on the legality of the issue. I've yet to see an article from the other side of the opinion fence regarding the GPL's legality, and this is strange, considering Microsoft's attack against the license, and the fear among many in the Open Source movement that it's unenforcable. How about it, Slashdot? How about some legal opinions from people other than Lessig or his students, pro AND con? That would be an interesting debate.
Switch to OSX from Linux? OSX is an incredible OS, but as long as I have to buy proprietary Apple hardware, and pay full price for minor upgrades, Apple can forget getting any of my money. Don't get me wrong.....technically, Apple got it right with OSX. But I still like the freedom of building my own machines as I need them. Apples are great for people that need convienience most of all, and have lots of cash to burn. The rest of us will continue to roll our own.
Sorry, but the arguement that rote learning is evil and useless is bullshit. Rote learning isn't good for EVERYTHING, but in some subjects, it's neccessary, especially for young minds. It's got it's place. In most of the countries where schoolchildren regularly beat the piss out of US children in math and science scores, rote learning is the preffered method of teaching, at least in most of the math classes. All learning is NOT going to be fun and fascinating. There are neccessary things to learn in ANY education that are going to be just plain boring and tedious. We've gotten this idea that all classroom instruction should be creative and "personaly fullfilling", when a lot of the bedrock knowledge neccessary for things like theoretical physics must come from hard, repetitive memorization. I had both kinds of instruction, and it seems the class always did better when we had to memorize the principles first, then "drill till it kills". Once that solid foundation is laid, THEN you can better understand the theoretical.
I mostly agree with the article. I'm using KDE right now, but it's getting too Windows-like. The Windows interface isn't neccessarily bad, but when I went to Linux, I wanted something different. And the ever-increasing complexity of the GUI is destroying two of the cardinal virtues of Linux; speed and efficiency. It used to be that you could run a good Linux distro on older hardware, and it would perform better than Windows on comparible hardware. No more. In the race to become "as good as Windows", hardware requirements are roughly the same now. I'm of the mind that, if my hardware lasts, I should be able to use it, and not buy newer and faster hardware just to be able to run "common" software. Mozilla is a good example here. The foremost browser of the Linux communtiy requires a 266, or at least recommends it as the minumum hardware. I'm getting ready to install and try FVWM, as it's supposedly more lightweight. And it looks simple, clean, and well, different from anything MS or Apple makes. I hope enough of you developers out there are listening. How about focused, lighweight apps that do one job, and do it well? As opposed to apps that try to pack Mucho features in at the cost of size, complexity, and performance?
It's human nature to take things like uptime for granted. The only time workers even realize they have a sysadmin is when the network goes down. Then he's "that f*cking idiot over in IT". Sysadmins are even hated for the things they do right, such as restricting dangerous practices on the network. I wouldn't be looking for any cakes or presents anytime soon.
Slashdot Mirror
Hi there, I'm DesScorp, and I'd like to welcome you to the real world. You're argument is flawed, mainly because you're assuming that all people seeking power are doing it for personal gain or for abuse. People like that DO exist. But you're assuming ambition is a bad thing here. Most people seeking power also do it thinking that "I can do a better job than that other guy". I WANT that kind of confidence in someone holding a position of power. I don't want some fool chosen by lottery, because you can't make someone want responsibility in a position of power. It has to be desired, then earned. Someone has to step up to the plate at election time and run for the office. Wouldn't you rather have someone that actually WANTS the job? I don't know of any other way to do it in a democracy, do you?
While I'm glad the court didn't make a blanket judgement compelling businesses to maintain dual website versions, we DO need to consider ways in which to make the web more accessable to the disabled in order to more completely fulfill its promise. Kudos to the judge for making this decision though. Another heavy handed mandate was not what is needed for this problem.
I very much enjoyed your post. I don't agree with all of your points, but you nailed the gist of it: anarchy is NOT a reasonable form of government. It's tyranny in that it's the law of the jungle replacing the rule of law. It never ceases to amaze me how one man's wasteful program is another man's vital public service. I think that, overall, the Founders were pretty bright guys. And if they wanted EVERYTHING to be dictated by a market, there would be no postal service, no census bureau, no govermental services at all. They didn't go that route. I'm a rabid capitalist, but I recognize that in a civilized society, some things should be publicly available to all. You can debate what they are, and at what level services should be provided, but it's foolish to just say "let the market handle it".
Ha ha ha...good thing you caught the Dole factoid...I was about to call you on it :P
Sorry, but your post comes off as an assinine troll. Define "for the people"? North Carolina has a heavily religeous and right tilting population. I'd say he's done plenty for the people, being that they keep putting him into office. If you don't like him, fine. But he got in by winning elections, not by military coup, or trickery, or anything else. More voters selected him than the other guy, period. Unless you're one of the conspiracy crowd that belives in Black Helicopters and the Global Zionist Conspiracy, you have to blame the voters as much as you blame Helms. He's expressing their will. Change the public's mind, and you'll change the politicians as a result.
...is that the case goes to court, and the judge throws it out WITH PREDJUDICE, meaning the merits of the case are so unworthy that there's no right to appeal. Let's hope horseshit like this gets nipped in the bud pronto-like.
Couldn't law enforcement nail them for using this kind of method? Assuming the spammers in question could be found, of course? This isn't a case where you visit a website, and an affiliate's popup ad appears. The argument could be made that if you visit a site voluntarily, you can't hold them accountable for popups. And while mail spam is annoying, it's legal if certain procedures are followed (but that's another rant entirely). It seems to me that THIS method is so intrusive as to warrant prosecution. Unfortunately, even if I'm right, it's pissing in the wind to hope for any legal redress. If the internet ever dies, it won't be because of government tyranny or the RIAA. It'll die because people will become so fed up with the spam and porn shoveled at them, they'll just turn it off.
I thought that was Bill Gates? Or John Ashcroft? Damnit, make up your mind. Pick one Satan and stick with him.
And what the hell is a "terrosist"?
You might see some contraction in the industry, but you wont see the dissapearance of your local multiplex anytime soon. Would you rather see the next Lord of the Rings flick on
1- A huge theater screen with booming THX speakers
or
2- Your 27' television
Hmmmm, yeah, I chose number 1 as well. Face it, unless you're just plain El Cheapo, you still go to the movies for the ones you REALLY want to see. And unless you've got LOTS of cash flowing in, you probably don't have a "home theater" with all of the goodies. Sorry, but I agree with an earlier post. I don't think Lucas knows this YoYo is going around saying this.
I get the impression a LOT of /. regs are vets. I'm a Navy vet myself, calling Big E home for years. Salut to everyone who knows what a WestPac is, get's the scuttlebut, and (for your older guys) hears the "smoking lamp is on" call over the 1-MC.
I'll agree with you, and I'll even go further. I've thought for a few months now that the Federal Government, including the military and all various Federal agencies, should develop their own Unix OS. Call it Govnix maybe. You could have an ultra-secure military variant. Milnix, perhaps?
.doc format has become the word processing standard, so you'd probably use that binary format, maybe adopting OpenOffice, or developing your own variant. For databases, as long as it's written to the SQL standard, there are various options here as well. You could probably buy an existing database as well, and modify it.
I know everyone here thinks that a GPL'd system like Linux should be adopted, but face it, that's not going to happen. The GPL is now a no-no in goverment circles. Ask the NSA. And as much as we exalt the penguin here, Linux is nowhere near secure enough for military use anyway, even the NSA secure version that was developed.
So that leaves you with two choices. Go to an outside contractor, or roll your own. If you go with an outside contractor, you either have to pick a single vendor, or go with multiple vendors. Both paths have strengths and weaknesses, but you'd probably pick the multiple vendor option. Do you really want to hand one company the responsibility for Federal IT? Clearly not. I'm not comfortable with any one company, be it Sun, IBM, or Microsoft running the show. So if you do go multiple vendor, you just increased the complexity of your project by an order of magnitude.
That leaves rolling your own. To me, this is the obvious choice. You start with Unix as your OS platform. It's very mature, well known, and there's lots of expertise on it out there, both inside and outside of government circles. And you wouldn't even neccessarily have to write a system from the ground up completely. You could quite literally buy the rights to a current proprietary system, and modify it for the goverment's needs. While this will rankle open source advocates, obviously you'd keep the guts of the system fairly limited to authorized personnel. Sorry, but I agree with Gene Spafford on this one. It's more important to have a trained staff looking for bugs than to have the code open sourced, especially with national security questions. As for what you'd buy, SCO has two traditional Unix operating systems they sell in addition to their Linux distro. They could probably be persuaded to sell one of them. Unixware would finally find a proper home. There are lots of other options here too.
And what about other software? For office productivity stuff, You could probably develop your own apps, but that isn't as neccessary. Like it or not, MS's
Then it just becomes a matter of implementing it government wide. A unified platform would reduce costs in the long run, in maintenance and training, and would be easier to secure. Currently, the Navy seems to be adopting Microsoft operating systems, even for shipboard controls. This is a bad move. Of course, MS would lobby furiously against the homegrown solution (as would other companies. Sun would argue that SunOne is "all you need"), but I think this would be our best bet.
They forgot to add 10 as well; so hard to remember, that pesky reserved powers clause.....
I'm dissapointed that no one is addressing one of the central theme's of his op-ed; is geekdom developing an orthodoxy? If so, how severe is the "punishement" (in terms of getting flamed, shunned, "cast out", if you will)? For myself, I think that some people would LIKE for geeks to have a "Little Red Book" of orthdoxy, and that some are even pushing for it (RMS comes to mind here). Thankfully, I think that too many people would resist this. Even if you agree with many of the said principles, I think the idea of tolerating no dissent would rankle a lot in this bunch. In fact, it may just be my opinion, but I think I'm seeing a LOT of dissent on slashdot of late. For every contetious issue, there seems to be a lot a counter-responses where posters refuse to follow the accepted geek wisdom on an issue. I'm GLAD to see this, because I agree with one statement in the op-ed; monocultures always die. If dissent is not allowed, sooner or later, your culture is going down. Trolling should always be flamed, but at the very least, people should have a right to an opinion.
Let's see....the issue should be tackled by giving the industry and the US Government the finger, moving offshore and going "Now what are you going to do about it?". You don't think the US can exert pressure on other countries? Trade is a two way street. How eager would, oh, say Guatamala be to protect something like Napster if it meant sanctions on other forms of trade? One of Napsters biggest problems was the attitude of users, specifically the "I'm going to do it anyway, and I don't care what the industry or the law says. You can't stop me". When you poke a bear, you shouldn't be terribly surprised if it attacks.The ONLY way to address your fair use and file sharing issues is through the law. It's not easy, cheap, or quick, but it's the only lasting solution. Things like these offshore schemes are only going to fail in the long run, and hurt your cause as well.
The antitdote to spam has been staring us in the face all along. How do you combat hordes of greedy unscrupulous spammers? Get hordes of greedy unscrupulous lawyers to go after fat cash settlements. Paging Mr. Dershowitz......
"...of course by community they mean the few guys they personally know and who make money using their MS knowledge..."
Ummm....few guys? Even if you think Microsoft is Satan's little cabal on Earth, you're a fool if you don't realize that MS has a huge pool of developers on their side, most of which are not directly on the MS payroll. Are you really THAT naive to think that MS has no public supporters in the dev community? A LOT of developers have hitched their wagons to MS's success. You may not like them, but you have to acknowledge them.
Scott McNeally long ago openly stated that it's his aim to put lots of IT workers out of a job. He thinks IT takes up too many resources in terms of staff and manpower. Sun has long stated a goal of making systems that run with a minimum of personnel. This is attractive to budget minded CFO's that see a golden opportunity to save money (and take home a nice bonus) for bringing the axe down on IT personnel. However, I agree with the other posts in here. No matter how much self-administration and redundancy you build into a system, you're always going to need more staff than you think.
For a really good intro to physics, you'd be hard pressed to beat Asimov's book. Barnes and Noble has the three-in-one volume for under 10 bucks, and it's hardcover.
Just chuck the whole "United Linux" campaign. That's all it is, a marketing device. What these companies should do instead is promote and advertise adherence to the Linux Standard Base. LSB, and its' piece of public mindshare, will be the key to gaining developer and customer trust.
Ok, Slashdotters. Time to fess up and be honest Wardriving, though harmless in and of itself, is shady business. It's the electronic equivalent of casing a store or residence in order to rob it later. I realize the vast majority of wardrivers do nothing with the info they find, and right now it's more of a fad than anything (especially for kids that fantasize about being Mad Haxorz with Big Skillz, or whatever they hell they're calling it this week), but deep down, face it. You KNOW you're up to no good. The very essence of Wardriving is LOOKING FOR VULNERABILITIES. Only two kinds of people really give a damn about this kind of information. Serious security researchers, and net scum looking to break into networks. Now, like everyone else, I'm getting damn tired of seeing my liberties slip away in new laws and regulations. But if there was half an ounce of honesty here, we'd all admit to each other that by doing stupid shit like Wardriving, we're begging the government and public to be alarmed and put further restrictions on what we do. So to you people that deface webpages, spread virii, and wardrive looking networks to break into, why don't you do us a favor and go fuck yourselves. You are why the word "hacker" evokes fear and loathing.
While I welcome any insight or debate into the GPL and CopyLefting, frankly, I'm not getting anything new here. And the fact that he studied under Lawrence Lessig is going to imply some bias on his part, considering Lessig's positions. Frankly, other than speculation and name calling, there's not much real analysis out there on the issue of licensing in open source. What I'd like to see is some expert opposing viewpoints, starting a real debate on the legality of the issue. I've yet to see an article from the other side of the opinion fence regarding the GPL's legality, and this is strange, considering Microsoft's attack against the license, and the fear among many in the Open Source movement that it's unenforcable. How about it, Slashdot? How about some legal opinions from people other than Lessig or his students, pro AND con? That would be an interesting debate.
Switch to OSX from Linux? OSX is an incredible OS, but as long as I have to buy proprietary Apple hardware, and pay full price for minor upgrades, Apple can forget getting any of my money. Don't get me wrong.....technically, Apple got it right with OSX. But I still like the freedom of building my own machines as I need them. Apples are great for people that need convienience most of all, and have lots of cash to burn. The rest of us will continue to roll our own.
Sorry, but the arguement that rote learning is evil and useless is bullshit. Rote learning isn't good for EVERYTHING, but in some subjects, it's neccessary, especially for young minds. It's got it's place. In most of the countries where schoolchildren regularly beat the piss out of US children in math and science scores, rote learning is the preffered method of teaching, at least in most of the math classes. All learning is NOT going to be fun and fascinating. There are neccessary things to learn in ANY education that are going to be just plain boring and tedious. We've gotten this idea that all classroom instruction should be creative and "personaly fullfilling", when a lot of the bedrock knowledge neccessary for things like theoretical physics must come from hard, repetitive memorization. I had both kinds of instruction, and it seems the class always did better when we had to memorize the principles first, then "drill till it kills". Once that solid foundation is laid, THEN you can better understand the theoretical.
I mostly agree with the article. I'm using KDE right now, but it's getting too Windows-like. The Windows interface isn't neccessarily bad, but when I went to Linux, I wanted something different. And the ever-increasing complexity of the GUI is destroying two of the cardinal virtues of Linux; speed and efficiency. It used to be that you could run a good Linux distro on older hardware, and it would perform better than Windows on comparible hardware. No more. In the race to become "as good as Windows", hardware requirements are roughly the same now. I'm of the mind that, if my hardware lasts, I should be able to use it, and not buy newer and faster hardware just to be able to run "common" software. Mozilla is a good example here. The foremost browser of the Linux communtiy requires a 266, or at least recommends it as the minumum hardware. I'm getting ready to install and try FVWM, as it's supposedly more lightweight. And it looks simple, clean, and well, different from anything MS or Apple makes. I hope enough of you developers out there are listening. How about focused, lighweight apps that do one job, and do it well? As opposed to apps that try to pack Mucho features in at the cost of size, complexity, and performance?
It's human nature to take things like uptime for granted. The only time workers even realize they have a sysadmin is when the network goes down. Then he's "that f*cking idiot over in IT". Sysadmins are even hated for the things they do right, such as restricting dangerous practices on the network. I wouldn't be looking for any cakes or presents anytime soon.