... must be no good. I mean, what has Red Hat ever done for anybody, let alone the open source community? You just know that, now that they're corporate, they've turned evil, or, more likely, since they set out to make money off of GPLd software that they were evil all along. </sarcasm>
Hey, before anyone flies off the handle (too late!) and asks "what can this group do that the FSF/SPI/LSB can't do?" (see, too late!) you need a bit more information as to what they're up to. A vague snippet of a press release does not a vision make. One thing I can think of is that the perception (yes, perception) of the GNU project as inherently anti-corporate might scare off potential open-source allies from that quarter. So un-knot your knickers, wait, and listen.
Hm. Maybe *viruses*, or *macros*... if writing macros for your MS-Office app counts, then I can indeed see why VB topped the poll. If every administrative assistant who writes a macro or two counts, then of course.
Performance Comparisons Processor Performance iMac 400MHz PowerPC G3 13.1 iMac 350MHz PowerPC G3 11.5 Pentium III-based PC 550 MHz 7.4 Celeron-based PC 500 MHz 6.7 K6-2-based PC 400 MHz 5.5
Oh, yes, certainly the new iMac is 2.5x faster at everything than the K6-2 400. These marketroids must be stopped!
And, I dunno about graphics boards, but they compared the iMac's Rage 128 to a Rage Pro Turbo-equipped Celeron system... how meaningful is that?
Note: this post should not be taken as an endorsement of the inherent superiority of the x86 architecture to that of the PPC -- I just hate these misleading benchmarks.
No, no, the name is spelled "Graham Chapman", but it's pronounced "Throat-Warbler Mangrove." Or was that "Bounder of Adventure?"... there's just too much of GC's work that was good to pack it all into one tribute post.
and the scary thing is, I'm a few days older than Python... at least that accounts for their impact on my sense of humour.
Sigh... thanks for all the great comedy (yah like the Pythons read/.!)
First off, congratulations Monsieur Katz. It must be hard to read all of the flames posted about your stories. Maybe now that you've clarified what you are and aspire to be and what you aren't and don't aspire to be, people will take the vitriol out of their comments on your stories.
Now for the criticism...
Writers are imprecise, uncertain and backwards-looking. Their relationship with technology is uncertain, a means, never an end.
I don't think you should be trying to speak for all writers. Some of us look forward, may be writing as a means to various further ends, and may be very much into precision. My personal bugbear is sloppy thinking; what I write I write to try and jar people out of bad habits of thought, and that's a task that demands precision.
I note, for the record, that you also like to make predictions about where trends are headed; your own work belies what you said here.
But again, congrats on freeing yourself from the "mainstream" OSs and striking out on a different path.
The SCSL is not a free or open license and it was never ment to be and it isn't Suns problem that people get it confused with various internet software movements.
Snarky answer: then we'll make it Sun's problem =)
Less snarky answer: waitaminit... Sun may not have originally intended the SCSL to be open source definition-compliant, but the fact is they seem to be making a lot of noise about "opening things up." Whoever originally caused the misperception that the SCSL is an "open source" license, Sun now looks like it wants to profit from the conflation, so yes, it is their fault.
IF you view Sun's moves recently as all mainly attempts to hurt MS and place itself at the top, this makes just so much sense. Whether or not the SCSL has enough of the advantages of the GPL and BSD licenses to make it as useful, it's still something Sun's done that MS hasn't. Having to send your changes back to Sun doesn't mean you can't mod the source for your needs, which has got to be an advantage.
I wonder how much it costs companies who sell precision equipment to the US as well as to the rest of the world to maintain two bookkeeping systems? This particular incident is splashy, but there is no doubt a day-to-day cost of living a double measurement life that we never think of. Definitely, the US should convert; the argument was already there, this is just a nice incident to pin the argument on.
I'm not so sure that the "typical" corporate type is going to be enthusiastic about having to check the RedHat website regularly for updates that might come in on a weekly or daily basis. I know his boss isn't going to be happy about having to let the person maintaining the server spend two hours a day crusing Usenet to keep up with the exploit-of-the-hour as it's announced to all the companies friends and foes.
err, stop me if I'm wrong, but couldn't you just run cron job every night to get the latest upgrades and install them? Or, if you can't do that because you might be installing all sorts of updates not related to security, get RH to put security-related updates into a particular directory and do it that way.
I don't think you'd need more than 50 lines of Perl to do the job...
Another point in the "Linux is not ready for Joe America" arguement. When's that LinuxLite coming out?:)
Well, I found this one filed under "Linux is not ready for Joe America if Joe America wants to set up his own web server and invite people to crack it for $1000."
The problem was a not entirely clufeul sysadmin (I won't say clueless, because they did take some security steps, just not enough).
the universe looks and acts the same no matter where you are
I suppose it depends on how big a neighborhood you take into consideration. The part of the universe around my neck doesn't much resemble the part of the universe about two feet in front of it, which is monitor-like. Of course there are *local* variations, they're pretty much inevitable. Matter clumps in some spots, not in others, so that principle is already "violated" (by which i mean, not really) in the sun's vicinity.
My proposed revision: Any sufficiently large chunk of space pretty much resembles any other similarly sized and shaped chunk of space, for an appropriate value of "sufficiently large"
A number of people have pointed out that you have a choice: of course you don't *need* to have all the toys that modern society makes available, and this is right as far as it goes; however, it ignores two things:
Societies are composed of interdependent beings, and
almost nobody is able to resist the pressure to "keep up with the Joneses."
The culprit, or perhaps a culprit (though the main one, IMNSHO) is the culture of consumption. The economies of most wealthier countries are based on consumption: if people don't spend enough on s**t they don't need, the economy goes to pieces. Economists apparently unaware of the second law of thermodynamics might go on about "sustainable development" or "sustainable growth", and people in the US might complain about gas prices (trust me, you have no right to), but nobody seems aware that the amount of available resources, starting with energy, are finite.
It's not as simple as turning off and dropping out... the change has to be pretty massive. For example: I have never fully understood the "need" for a cellphone for anyone but a stockbroker, an elected official, and a drug dealer, but once the competition's got it and makes herself available 24/7, you have to too or you fall behind. And even if you decide not to play that game, most people have to stop it or the dizzying spiral upward pulls nearly everyone along with it anyway.
I'd continue rambling on, but I suppose I'll stop here.
Nothing in here I didn't already know, and I am far from an expert. I thought from the title it might have info on how to *write* drivers (the O'Reilly book's probably a bit long in the tooth by now, correct me if I'm wrong about that).
None of this is to take away from the article itself; it was well written, and you shouldn't try to compile your own kernel without knowing what it tells you.
It should probably have been called a "Primer" instead of a "tutorial".
By saying "And what of it?" it would seem to me that you support censorship, which, in my opinion, this is a form of. [note: the following is quoted out of order] What if a group started to register NAACP related or tolerance related names in an attempt to block that information?
"Censorship" is a word that gets thrown around so much that it's become nearly meaningless. If I tell my kid sister to "shut up" I'm not practicing censorship; or, if I am, then I don't see anything particularly wrong with censorship as such.
If the racists tried to get "www.naacp.org" there'dn be a problem -- the NAACP has worked to put that acronym out there as a symbol of something (so, I suppose, has the KKK done with their batch of letters; but then the NAACP hasn't to my knowledge, engaged in practices that involve harming others like the KKK). If they tried to get "www.tolerance.org" I'd be sad, but I wouldn't think there should be legal blocks against it.
Interjection:For gosh sakes, are you saying that the domain name should be reserved for a racist? That racists "own" the word "nigger"? Talk about restricting freedom of speech!
(answering my own question: of course you're not... or if you are I'm wasting my breath...) But the NAACP doesn't owe racists anything; if they get to it first, hey, more power to 'em.
My main point: there is a world of difference between what the NAACP is doing here and state-sponsored censorship.
This does not outright prevent racists from "getting their message out." As others have pointed out, it only makes it a bit harder.
This is not a government agency that uses the force of law to prevent ideas from coming out.
[Me:]"The point is to not make things easy for racists; if they want to spread their views, they'll have to work harder at it because one obvious place they might go to on the web is unavailable to them."
I'm sure people would raise hell if microsoft started registering linux related websites in an attempt to block information about linux from being "easy" to get to. How is this really any different?
ummm... lessee:
MS is for-profit, NAACP is not
"Linux" is a registered trademark, "nigger" is not
MS is a monopolist (evidence of which I am aware suggests that this is so), the NAACP is not.
Just for starters. Now how about I ask you a question:
I've purchased a megaphone, and I use it to declaim against racism. Am I practicing "censorship" simply in virtue of the fact that I beat a racist who wanted it for the purpose of spouting his views to the store?
You're right, this kind of "squatting" in and of itself will not make the world... or, given the NAACP's locale and immediate aims, the US, more racially tolerant. But that's not the point. The point is to not make things easy for racists; if they want to spread their views, they'll have to work harder at it because one obvious place they might go to on the web is unavailable to them.
And why not? The assumption that a domain name has to get *used* by its owner isn't exactly obvious. And, given that there's a reason besides pure pettiness behind this move makes it all the less objectionable. The NAACP got there first, and they can do with their new domain names what they want to.
Microsoft lawyer John Warden criticized what he called the government's `astounding failures of proof,'' together with ``red herrings, lies, misstatements and omissions'' presented during 76 days of courtroom testimony.
Pity these guys who work for the Gates, at least on this score (they are raking in the dough, but man this has to hurt them when they realize they're whores in the worst sense of that word). They have to stand up in front of a judge who has seen their clients lie, and get caught incontrovertibly in that lie. Moreover, their witnesses have said such things as "I don't know what 'piss all over'" means, and so forth. Then, of course there are the astroturf campaigns. What can they say in reply? It seems like the only place to go is claim that your opponents are doing it, because the opponents are saying the opposite of what your client is saying.
What else can they come up with? "This case is motivated by jealousy." True, possibly: the DOJ might never have initiated proceedings had Ellison, Barksdale, McNealy, et al not pressured them to. But that of course has nothing to do with the merits of the case. Plenty of evidence points to the fact that MS has not only pursued the "top of the heap" location, but has used dirty tricks to stay there.
Their clients have treated the rest of the world with contempt; they have treated the judge with contempt, and they have treated consumers with contempt. What do you say to defend such a client? I, for one, am glad for the fact that IANAL.
Think of LT as a guy who (in concert with others... lots of others) showed what can be achieved through inspired use of the Internet.
Torvalds is at the center of "the Linux phenomenon," which, for better or for worse, is largely an internet phenomenon (at least in the public perception, and to a great extent, in fact). The OS is the poster child for the whole open source concept (never mind whether it was first, or whether other things deserve mention just yet). Did Linus Torvalds or his creation build the internet or the web? No, but that's not the only valuable thing one can do for the 'net (or for the computing world at large).
So at least an "honorable mention" for Linus (and while we're at it, RMS, ESR and lots of other acronymious folks) is in order... but we'll see whether something bigger and better comes out of Linux and, more generally, open source.
The Children's Television Workshop (CTW) filed suit against one inveterate slashdot poster known as "jabber" for confusing them with Henson Productions. CTW spokesman Elmo said "Where can we find out MORE about software patents?"
LUGs out there that are concerned with advocacy need to burn distros and advertise a quick and easy way to pick them up.
A proposal: Go to the people who run the computer shop on your campus (if such exists). Inform them of the existence of Cheapbytes, LSL, and linuxmall (add your favourite distributor of $1.99 Linux & BSD CDs). Get them to order 20 of the top three or four distros (that costs them like $50 per distro or so for a batch) from their favorite one, and sell them for $5 each.
yeah, that's the hard part. Print out some glowing reports about it and give them to the comp. shop manager. Or have someone give a presentation!
It's likely that all it will cost them is the display space, but surely they can set aside one of the seven MS shelves to display row upon row of Linux CDs. When they see the CDs move fast, they'll hop on the bandwagon quick.
I'm in the tech industry. I'm a poor geek boy. Wheres the justice?
Your problem is you think that hard work that actually involves touching a computer is what will be rewarded!
Forget that, what you need is a half-baked web-related idea, add "e" to the front of your company's name, practice smiling and exuding arrog^h^h^h^h^h confidence from every pore, and BLAMMO! Wealth, which is, of course, the true measure of human worth.
Actually, it makes me wonder whether some devoted fan of this whole "Mark of the Beast" thing has gotten tired of waiting for it to happen on its own and decided to go ahead and make it happen.
Slashdot Mirror
... must be no good. I mean, what has Red Hat ever done for anybody, let alone the open source community? You just know that, now that they're corporate, they've turned evil, or, more likely, since they set out to make money off of GPLd software that they were evil all along.
</sarcasm>
Hey, before anyone flies off the handle (too late!) and asks "what can this group do that the FSF/SPI/LSB can't do?" (see, too late!) you need a bit more information as to what they're up to. A vague snippet of a press release does not a vision make. One thing I can think of is that the perception (yes, perception) of the GNU project as inherently anti-corporate might scare off potential open-source allies from that quarter. So un-knot your knickers, wait, and listen.
Hm. Maybe *viruses*, or *macros* ... if writing macros for your MS-Office app counts, then I can indeed see why VB topped the poll. If every administrative assistant who writes a macro or two counts, then of course.
Err, that's FUD about vegetarianism, I think you should know. Carl Lewis (e.g.) is a vegetarian, and he's one of the greatest athletes of all time.
Oh, yes, certainly the new iMac is 2.5x faster at everything than the K6-2 400. These marketroids must be stopped!
And, I dunno about graphics boards, but they compared the iMac's Rage 128 to a Rage Pro Turbo-equipped Celeron system ... how meaningful is that?
Note: this post should not be taken as an endorsement of the inherent superiority of the x86 architecture to that of the PPC -- I just hate these misleading benchmarks.
No, no, the name is spelled "Graham Chapman", but it's pronounced "Throat-Warbler Mangrove." Or was that "Bounder of Adventure?" ... there's just too much of GC's work that was good to pack it all into one tribute post.
and the scary thing is, I'm a few days older than Python ... at least that accounts for their impact on my sense of humour.
Sigh ... thanks for all the great comedy (yah like the Pythons read /.!)
First off, congratulations Monsieur Katz. It must be hard to read all of the flames posted about your stories. Maybe now that you've clarified what you are and aspire to be and what you aren't and don't aspire to be, people will take the vitriol out of their comments on your stories.
Now for the criticism ...
I don't think you should be trying to speak for all writers. Some of us look forward, may be writing as a means to various further ends, and may be very much into precision. My personal bugbear is sloppy thinking; what I write I write to try and jar people out of bad habits of thought, and that's a task that demands precision.
I note, for the record, that you also like to make predictions about where trends are headed; your own work belies what you said here.
But again, congrats on freeing yourself from the "mainstream" OSs and striking out on a different path.
Snarky answer: then we'll make it Sun's problem =)
Less snarky answer: waitaminit ... Sun may not have originally intended the SCSL to be open source definition-compliant, but the fact is they seem to be making a lot of noise about "opening things up." Whoever originally caused the misperception that the SCSL is an "open source" license, Sun now looks like it wants to profit from the conflation, so yes, it is their fault.
IF you view Sun's moves recently as all mainly attempts to hurt MS and place itself at the top, this makes just so much sense. Whether or not the SCSL has enough of the advantages of the GPL and BSD licenses to make it as useful, it's still something Sun's done that MS hasn't. Having to send your changes back to Sun doesn't mean you can't mod the source for your needs, which has got to be an advantage.
We'll take it out of Michael Eisner's salary and options.
(pandering to the /. crowd)... now I see another argument for breaking up Microsoft and selling the parts off for public profit ...(/pander)
I wonder how much it costs companies who sell precision equipment to the US as well as to the rest of the world to maintain two bookkeeping systems? This particular incident is splashy, but there is no doubt a day-to-day cost of living a double measurement life that we never think of. Definitely, the US should convert; the argument was already there, this is just a nice incident to pin the argument on.
err, stop me if I'm wrong, but couldn't you just run cron job every night to get the latest upgrades and install them? Or, if you can't do that because you might be installing all sorts of updates not related to security, get RH to put security-related updates into a particular directory and do it that way.
I don't think you'd need more than 50 lines of Perl to do the job ...
Well, I found this one filed under "Linux is not ready for Joe America if Joe America wants to set up his own web server and invite people to crack it for $1000."
The problem was a not entirely clufeul sysadmin (I won't say clueless, because they did take some security steps, just not enough).
I suppose it depends on how big a neighborhood you take into consideration. The part of the universe around my neck doesn't much resemble the part of the universe about two feet in front of it, which is monitor-like. Of course there are *local* variations, they're pretty much inevitable. Matter clumps in some spots, not in others, so that principle is already "violated" (by which i mean, not really) in the sun's vicinity.
My proposed revision: Any sufficiently large chunk of space pretty much resembles any other similarly sized and shaped chunk of space, for an appropriate value of "sufficiently large"
A number of people have pointed out that you have a choice: of course you don't *need* to have all the toys that modern society makes available, and this is right as far as it goes; however, it ignores two things:
The culprit, or perhaps a culprit (though the main one, IMNSHO) is the culture of consumption. The economies of most wealthier countries are based on consumption: if people don't spend enough on s**t they don't need, the economy goes to pieces. Economists apparently unaware of the second law of thermodynamics might go on about "sustainable development" or "sustainable growth", and people in the US might complain about gas prices (trust me, you have no right to), but nobody seems aware that the amount of available resources, starting with energy, are finite.
It's not as simple as turning off and dropping out ... the change has to be pretty massive. For example: I have never fully understood the "need" for a cellphone for anyone but a stockbroker, an elected official, and a drug dealer, but once the competition's got it and makes herself available 24/7, you have to too or you fall behind. And even if you decide not to play that game, most people have to stop it or the dizzying spiral upward pulls nearly everyone along with it anyway.
I'd continue rambling on, but I suppose I'll stop here.
Nothing in here I didn't already know, and I am far from an expert. I thought from the title it might have info on how to *write* drivers (the O'Reilly book's probably a bit long in the tooth by now, correct me if I'm wrong about that).
None of this is to take away from the article itself; it was well written, and you shouldn't try to compile your own kernel without knowing what it tells you.
It should probably have been called a "Primer" instead of a "tutorial".
"Censorship" is a word that gets thrown around so much that it's become nearly meaningless. If I tell my kid sister to "shut up" I'm not practicing censorship; or, if I am, then I don't see anything particularly wrong with censorship as such.
If the racists tried to get "www.naacp.org" there'dn be a problem -- the NAACP has worked to put that acronym out there as a symbol of something (so, I suppose, has the KKK done with their batch of letters; but then the NAACP hasn't to my knowledge, engaged in practices that involve harming others like the KKK). If they tried to get "www.tolerance.org" I'd be sad, but I wouldn't think there should be legal blocks against it.
Interjection:For gosh sakes, are you saying that the domain name should be reserved for a racist? That racists "own" the word "nigger"? Talk about restricting freedom of speech!
(answering my own question: of course you're not ... or if you are I'm wasting my breath ...) But the NAACP doesn't owe racists anything; if they get to it first, hey, more power to 'em.
My main point: there is a world of difference between what the NAACP is doing here and state-sponsored censorship.
[Me:]"The point is to not make things easy for racists; if they want to spread their views, they'll have to work harder at it because one obvious place they might go to on the web is unavailable to them."
ummm ... lessee:
Just for starters. Now how about I ask you a question:
I've purchased a megaphone, and I use it to declaim against racism. Am I practicing "censorship" simply in virtue of the fact that I beat a racist who wanted it for the purpose of spouting his views to the store?
Hehe.. lets just hope the vermiscous K-nids don't show up ;)
You beat me to it, you bas**rd! =)
You're right, this kind of "squatting" in and of itself will not make the world ... or, given the NAACP's locale and immediate aims, the US, more racially tolerant. But that's not the point. The point is to not make things easy for racists; if they want to spread their views, they'll have to work harder at it because one obvious place they might go to on the web is unavailable to them.
And why not? The assumption that a domain name has to get *used* by its owner isn't exactly obvious. And, given that there's a reason besides pure pettiness behind this move makes it all the less objectionable. The NAACP got there first, and they can do with their new domain names what they want to.
Pity these guys who work for the Gates, at least on this score (they are raking in the dough, but man this has to hurt them when they realize they're whores in the worst sense of that word). They have to stand up in front of a judge who has seen their clients lie, and get caught incontrovertibly in that lie. Moreover, their witnesses have said such things as "I don't know what 'piss all over'" means, and so forth. Then, of course there are the astroturf campaigns. What can they say in reply? It seems like the only place to go is claim that your opponents are doing it, because the opponents are saying the opposite of what your client is saying.
What else can they come up with? "This case is motivated by jealousy." True, possibly: the DOJ might never have initiated proceedings had Ellison, Barksdale, McNealy, et al not pressured them to. But that of course has nothing to do with the merits of the case. Plenty of evidence points to the fact that MS has not only pursued the "top of the heap" location, but has used dirty tricks to stay there.
Their clients have treated the rest of the world with contempt; they have treated the judge with contempt, and they have treated consumers with contempt. What do you say to defend such a client? I, for one, am glad for the fact that IANAL.
Think of LT as a guy who (in concert with others ... lots of others) showed what can be achieved through inspired use of the Internet.
Torvalds is at the center of "the Linux phenomenon," which, for better or for worse, is largely an internet phenomenon (at least in the public perception, and to a great extent, in fact). The OS is the poster child for the whole open source concept (never mind whether it was first, or whether other things deserve mention just yet). Did Linus Torvalds or his creation build the internet or the web? No, but that's not the only valuable thing one can do for the 'net (or for the computing world at large).
So at least an "honorable mention" for Linus (and while we're at it, RMS, ESR and lots of other acronymious folks) is in order ... but we'll see whether something bigger and better comes out of Linux and, more generally, open source.
Dateline: Sesame Street
The Children's Television Workshop (CTW) filed suit against one inveterate slashdot poster known as "jabber" for confusing them with Henson Productions. CTW spokesman Elmo said "Where can we find out MORE about software patents?"
A proposal: Go to the people who run the computer shop on your campus (if such exists). Inform them of the existence of Cheapbytes, LSL, and linuxmall (add your favourite distributor of $1.99 Linux & BSD CDs). Get them to order 20 of the top three or four distros (that costs them like $50 per distro or so for a batch) from their favorite one, and sell them for $5 each.
It's likely that all it will cost them is the display space, but surely they can set aside one of the seven MS shelves to display row upon row of Linux CDs. When they see the CDs move fast, they'll hop on the bandwagon quick.
Your problem is you think that hard work that actually involves touching a computer is what will be rewarded!
Forget that, what you need is a half-baked web-related idea, add "e" to the front of your company's name, practice smiling and exuding arrog^h^h^h^h^h confidence from every pore, and BLAMMO! Wealth, which is, of course, the true measure of human worth.
God I love society's priorities =)
Actually, it makes me wonder whether some devoted fan of this whole "Mark of the Beast" thing has gotten tired of waiting for it to happen on its own and decided to go ahead and make it happen.
It really does make you wonder, what would Brian Boitano do?