Silicon Valley attracted a whole lot of scum in the past decade. Some of us, who knew about Silicon Valley fifteen years ago, maybe even know the difference between TTL and CMOS logic gates, are a little pleased that some of that scum is now being hosed off the pavement.
It's not really 'revenge' or a manifestation of envy so much as the satisfaction of knowing that in the end everything generally does work out fairly.
Re:Interesting slant on the article.
on
Hi-Tech Repo Man
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· Score: 1
Nothing is more rewarding to a Reliabilty/QA guy than finding a major hardware/software bug on a Friday afternoon.
If I didn't borrow money to slight excess, I wouldn't have all those old Sparcstations off eBay. I wouldn't have that sack of discrete transistors or my Oscilloscopes.
Not everybody is a computer nerd who sits in front of a computer every day. Some of us are hybrid computer/hardware nerds.
Hell, you can buy Z8's at DigiKey for a lot less than that. Price depends on what on-chip peripherals you want, and stuff like that. Check the Zilog website. Or (and this isn't that bad an idea) salvage 'em off the circuit boards on many failed hard drives.
(this is a geek board, right? What's with the yuppie car thread in the first place??)
I thought Star Trek was about the USS Enterprise always managing to break the 'Prime Directive' by the end of each program, Captain Kirk getting laid, and the people in the red shirts in the landing party always getting killed.
If you want to run NT 3.51 (it's far superior to 4.0 in many regards) Symantec's last generation of PC Tools for Windows came out on it. They called it 'NT Tools' and it consisted of the same superior 'explorer' file manager (plus other stuff) that was part of PC Tools for Windows 3.1 but extended to NT. It looks like Win95's file manager. It has the added plus that it reaches out to FTP sites within the same 'file manager' frame. Kinda similar to how Midnight Commander seamlessly links out to FTP sites.
PC Tools for Windows 3 kept me from hating Windows 3.1 for a long time. Maybe it's why I stuck with it as long as I did (the first Yggdrasil Linux distro back in '93 did exert it's pull, of course...)
A lot of 'code that will be around forever' that I used to use on Linux back in the 1.2 days won't even build anymore, at least not in the forms I so carefully stowed away as source code in the confidence I'd be able to keep using it. Mostly I am referring to sound editing and manipulating tools that I used to like to fool around with, that were apparently the 'fun' projects of students who grew up. Linux multimedia seems to die with each major revision of the sound drivers, at least in my fairly humble opinion.
The number of shortcuts and features in the desktop interface are immense. I can copy paste out of a web browser, right click on the desktop to create a text file. Open the new textfile and paste in the text.
Then I can highlight the title of the block of text, copy it into the clipboard, close the file (still with 'generic' filename), highlight the icon for the file, press F-2, which turns the filename blue so it can be renamed, and right click to paste in the text out of the clipboard as the file's new name. The 'F-2' trick is something Microsoft (apparently) licensed from Symantec that first appeared in Central Point Software's 'PC-Tools for Windows' enhanced file manager for Windows 3.1.
I say apparently because Microsoft licensed a LOT from Symantec/Central Point back in that era. A lot of User Interface functionality they bring in comes from outside (the 'borg' thing).
Back to the main point: there's NO other file manager that comes even close to good old 'My Computer' and the Win desktop in terms of ease of use. Midnight Commander is another powerful contender, mainly because it runs on every OS I use anywhere (including the OS/2 boxes which I'm occasionally sentenced to use at work, and the build of it I smuggled into my ~/bin directory on Solaris.) Free software efforts under KDE and Gnome can try, hopefully they'll get there someday, but they're not there now.
Oh, and I suspect the people at Symantec have benefitted immensely from the Cross licensing of their code into Windows, though I don't know any of them personally to ask. (I'm just the dumb putz who still likes to write assembly code for 8 bit chips, after all).
On the matter of fvwm, I agree: it's the window manager I use on all my freenix machines (which are now all NetBSD except for one slack box). I'm kind of disappointed that fvwm1 is pretty much abandoned now, though, as I find.fvwmrc cleaner to maintain than.fvwm2rc. But that's just me being reactionary.
I use ONLY Opera on my Windows 2000 machine, and the exec's speech came throught without a single 'garbage character' in it. There's almost nothing I want to do that doesn't work with Opera these days, except for a few sites designed by boneheads who 'test' for a browser type and kick me off.
My point is that 'cost of software' includes the chimps that have to be kept around to keep it running. Hence there's no real savings at all, just a budget shift to people who have to constantly be scanning Usenet for emerging bugs, etc.
What's thinly veiled? My first sentence in the comment you replied to above reads:
some people assume that if you say something bad about Java...
I frankly admit I'm saying bad stuff about Java.
Re:How to sue Sony: FSF as Plaintiff or Class Acti
on
Sony Violating GPL?
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· Score: 2
If the creator of the software transferred the copyright to the FSF, then the FSF can file suit.
If the software was just released under the GPL but the creator held onto the copyright, then the creator is responsible for filing the suit.
This is why Stallman encourages people to transfer the copyright to the FSF, it facilitates them taking direct action. They've got the resources, etc, to carry through on the issue.
The thing I don't get is why some people assume that if you say something bad about Java, that it means you must be cheering on Microsoft.
We don't live in a Black/White world. The evidence that Java is proprietary is that Sun tried to push it as a formal standard but yanked it back every time a standards body tried to do the things that would make it a standard.
I agree that 'standards bodies' are not the only route to establishing a 'standard.' Perl and Python both could be termed as open-standard based languages. The fact that there are Java work-alikes just highlights the fact that Sun refuses to release the Java source code for free(dom) use. Why else would people have to produce re-implementations that end up forking the language in subtle ways?
No, the Clinton junta categorically proved that Executive Branch email is off-limits. Heck, they hired highly-paid experts to make sure it wouldn't see the light of day.
And President Bush has gone further, and just won't be using email at all.
Well, IBM openly published the commented source code for the BIOS in the PC, XT, and AT computers. And that was back at the product release, not fifteen years later.
All I am asking is that Apple publish the source code for the Macintosh ROM code, so data structures can be figured out and the 'hooks' for makeing alternative OSes boot properly on their obsolete hardware, years after they've made all their money from the code.
Slashdot Mirror
But it is platform independant,
Oh, really? Where do I download the LinuxPPC version? Where do I download the NetWinder (Linux StrongARM) version?
Actually, there is a difference.
Silicon Valley attracted a whole lot of scum in the past decade. Some of us, who knew about Silicon Valley fifteen years ago, maybe even know the difference between TTL and CMOS logic gates, are a little pleased that some of that scum is now being hosed off the pavement.
It's not really 'revenge' or a manifestation of envy so much as the satisfaction of knowing that in the end everything generally does work out fairly.
Nothing is more rewarding to a Reliabilty/QA guy than finding a major hardware/software bug on a Friday afternoon.
If I didn't borrow money to slight excess, I wouldn't have all those old Sparcstations off eBay. I wouldn't have that sack of discrete transistors or my Oscilloscopes.
Not everybody is a computer nerd who sits in front of a computer every day. Some of us are hybrid computer/hardware nerds.
Hell, you can buy Z8's at DigiKey for a lot less than that. Price depends on what on-chip peripherals you want, and stuff like that. Check the Zilog website. Or (and this isn't that bad an idea) salvage 'em off the circuit boards on many failed hard drives.
(this is a geek board, right? What's with the yuppie car thread in the first place??)
Nope.
Copyrights don't have to be earned.
The text you typed, right up there above this reply I am typing, is copyrighted by you. Automatically, by virtue of you typing it.
I can download MSIE for free.
I can do so on my SparcStation 10SX running NetBSD.
I thought Star Trek was about the USS Enterprise always managing to break the 'Prime Directive' by the end of each program, Captain Kirk getting laid, and the people in the red shirts in the landing party always getting killed.
Silly me.
Bill Gates, however, owns Da Vinci's lab notebook.
Cultural Imperialism! That's what you're engagin in!
It was clearly first said by the ancient Chinese scholar Chi Hua-Hua.
(rim-shot)
If you want to run NT 3.51 (it's far superior to 4.0 in many regards) Symantec's last generation of PC Tools for Windows came out on it. They called it 'NT Tools' and it consisted of the same superior 'explorer' file manager (plus other stuff) that was part of PC Tools for Windows 3.1 but extended to NT. It looks like Win95's file manager. It has the added plus that it reaches out to FTP sites within the same 'file manager' frame. Kinda similar to how Midnight Commander seamlessly links out to FTP sites.
PC Tools for Windows 3 kept me from hating Windows 3.1 for a long time. Maybe it's why I stuck with it as long as I did (the first Yggdrasil Linux distro back in '93 did exert it's pull, of course...)
A lot of 'code that will be around forever' that I used to use on Linux back in the 1.2 days won't even build anymore, at least not in the forms I so carefully stowed away as source code in the confidence I'd be able to keep using it. Mostly I am referring to sound editing and manipulating tools that I used to like to fool around with, that were apparently the 'fun' projects of students who grew up. Linux multimedia seems to die with each major revision of the sound drivers, at least in my fairly humble opinion.
That's easy: explorer.exe.
The number of shortcuts and features in the desktop interface are immense. I can copy paste out of a web browser, right click on the desktop to create a text file. Open the new textfile and paste in the text.
Then I can highlight the title of the block of text, copy it into the clipboard, close the file (still with 'generic' filename), highlight the icon for the file, press F-2, which turns the filename blue so it can be renamed, and right click to paste in the text out of the clipboard as the file's new name. The 'F-2' trick is something Microsoft (apparently) licensed from Symantec that first appeared in Central Point Software's 'PC-Tools for Windows' enhanced file manager for Windows 3.1.
I say apparently because Microsoft licensed a LOT from Symantec/Central Point back in that era. A lot of User Interface functionality they bring in comes from outside (the 'borg' thing).
Back to the main point: there's NO other file manager that comes even close to good old 'My Computer' and the Win desktop in terms of ease of use. Midnight Commander is another powerful contender, mainly because it runs on every OS I use anywhere (including the OS/2 boxes which I'm occasionally sentenced to use at work, and the build of it I smuggled into my ~/bin directory on Solaris.) Free software efforts under KDE and Gnome can try, hopefully they'll get there someday, but they're not there now.
Oh, and I suspect the people at Symantec have benefitted immensely from the Cross licensing of their code into Windows, though I don't know any of them personally to ask. (I'm just the dumb putz who still likes to write assembly code for 8 bit chips, after all).
On the matter of fvwm, I agree: it's the window manager I use on all my freenix machines (which are now all NetBSD except for one slack box). I'm kind of disappointed that fvwm1 is pretty much abandoned now, though, as I find .fvwmrc cleaner to maintain than .fvwm2rc. But that's just me being reactionary.
I use ONLY Opera on my Windows 2000 machine, and the exec's speech came throught without a single 'garbage character' in it. There's almost nothing I want to do that doesn't work with Opera these days, except for a few sites designed by boneheads who 'test' for a browser type and kick me off.
And we demand that code that goes into Public Domain go under this brilliant license, before it is made worthless.
How would it be made worthless if it were made public domain without going under 'this brilliant license?'
My notebook has a metal spiral binding, and is composed of a number of sheets of lined paper.
.... oh well, better stop pretending....
My lap has a beautiful woman sitting
And aren't Laplanders called 'laps' for short?
What the hell is a Magumbo?
My point is that 'cost of software' includes the chimps that have to be kept around to keep it running. Hence there's no real savings at all, just a budget shift to people who have to constantly be scanning Usenet for emerging bugs, etc.
What's thinly veiled? My first sentence in the comment you replied to above reads:
some people assume that if you say something bad about Java...
I frankly admit I'm saying bad stuff about Java.
If the creator of the software transferred the copyright to the FSF, then the FSF can file suit.
If the software was just released under the GPL but the creator held onto the copyright, then the creator is responsible for filing the suit.
This is why Stallman encourages people to transfer the copyright to the FSF, it facilitates them taking direct action. They've got the resources, etc, to carry through on the issue.
The thing I don't get is why some people assume that if you say something bad about Java, that it means you must be cheering on Microsoft.
We don't live in a Black/White world. The evidence that Java is proprietary is that Sun tried to push it as a formal standard but yanked it back every time a standards body tried to do the things that would make it a standard.
I agree that 'standards bodies' are not the only route to establishing a 'standard.' Perl and Python both could be termed as open-standard based languages. The fact that there are Java work-alikes just highlights the fact that Sun refuses to release the Java source code for free(dom) use. Why else would people have to produce re-implementations that end up forking the language in subtle ways?
Yes, Uncle Sam would need a lot of new admins. But imagine the savings in software costs.
Those two sentences contradict each other. Hence it makes absolutely no sense.
No, the Clinton junta categorically proved that Executive Branch email is off-limits. Heck, they hired highly-paid experts to make sure it wouldn't see the light of day.
And President Bush has gone further, and just won't be using email at all.
I paid a fee to file my taxes, too.
34 cents for a postage stamp.
Well, IBM openly published the commented source code for the BIOS in the PC, XT, and AT computers. And that was back at the product release, not fifteen years later.
All I am asking is that Apple publish the source code for the Macintosh ROM code, so data structures can be figured out and the 'hooks' for makeing alternative OSes boot properly on their obsolete hardware, years after they've made all their money from the code.
It doesn't seem like much to me.