2000: True to their planned schedule, Red Hat Linux 8.0 ships.
2002: True to their planned schedule, Microsoft Windows 2000 ships.
2004: True to their planned schedule, Amiga goes out of business.
2006: True to his planned schedule, ESR is imprisoned following the shooting of Bruce Perens.
2007: True to his planned schedule, Rob Malda, webmaster of the popular news, e-commerce, and online porn discussion site Slashdot.Org reveals on Slashdot's 10th anniversary that it was really bought out by the NSA to facilitate spying on everyone. Malda and Bates are never heard from again. Thanks to a strategically placed Slashdot Poll, neither is Jon Katz.
2008: The NSAndover(tm) Media Powerhouse buys out Microsoft. Bill Gates is never heard from again. Once again, thanks to a strategically placed Slashdot Poll, neither is Ballmer.
2009: Slashdot Magazine is launched. NSAndover's acquisition of Microsoft also netted them one of Microsoft's secret subsidiaries: ZDNet.
2010: Your favorite "I survived Y2K and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt" shirt finally wears out.
2011: NSAndoverSoft releases Windows 2000 Service Pack 361. Slashdot is integrated with the Operating System.
2012: Mick Jagger turns 69, to the delight of late night talk show hosts, starved for any joke they can get.
2014: Torvalds leaves Transmeta and gets a job at NSAndoverSoft's ZDNet division to replace Jesse Berst.
2015: Jesse Berst kicks his 20 year addiction to crack. NSAndoverSoft's ZDNet offers to take him back on staff. Mysteriously, he is hit by a bus and killed right outside their offices. Few people notice or care.
2018: HDVGA cards found to have fatal "exploding" flaw, everyone must switch back to 13-year-old "MSVGA" technology. Slashdot users complain that old 65535x65535 MSVGA screens "suck".
2020: ABC's semi-popular "20/20" night time show declares this "The year of 20/20". I wonder why.
2023: Hemos gets his damned nanties. Too bad nobody's seen or heard from him in over 15 years.
2025: Using a new combined technology derived from high-powered lasers, GPS, and Intel CPU IDs, the Slashdot "1st post" syndrome is eliminated. Permanently.
2026: Over 5,000 people found dead after a bug in Slashdot's perl leads to the flagging of an entire forum for "termination". NSAndoverSoft realizes its fatal mistake of keeping old volatile Microsoft programming crew on-board after the acquisition.
2030: drwiii dies from Microsoft poisoning at the age of 52. Nobody really notices or cares, except for the people that were reading this 31 years ago and were hoping for this timeline to go on for another 100 years. He is brought back to life thanks to Nanites(tm), and decides to make one more smart-assed journal entry before retiring to nice, sunny, warm Antarctica.
2031: Transmeta's Linux-powered toaster is finally released to the public. Having only spoken a total of 23 words to the public, CEO Dave Ditzel is never heard from again.
This is a bit off topic, but Walnut Creek CDROM just started shipping FreeBSD 3.3 CD sets yesterday. If you enjoy open computing, and want to expand your horizons while supporting a wonderful project, it may be worth your while to pick up an official copy of FreeBSD along with that shiny new Red Hat 6.1. (:
Three things could cause me to step down: (...) Two: Linux's market share going over 50%. (Cool down, BSD guys -- I'd be equally pleased to see some other open-source Unix win, it just doesn't seen very likely at this point). Three: a collapse in Microsoft's stock price. That would mean the end of effective FUD and countermarketing against open source.
I'm a bit confused by those last two reasons.. When you say you'd be equally pleased to see some other open-source Unix "win", does that mean that they are somehow in competition with each other? I've found that using the right tool for the job often works best. Linux for workstations, BSD for servers. If we were to use market share as an indicator of who "wins", I'd say Microsoft would win.
Next, I'm not sure how you interpret the destruction of Microsoft as being the end of FUD against openly-coded programs and operating systems. Microsoft serves a very important purpose for openly-coded operating systems and programs right now. Their "just good enough to push out the door" coding style is starting to piss off even their most rigid supporters, and the more people that Microsoft helps us to convert to open systems in that manner, the better. Remember, Microsoft is not a software company, it is a marketing company.
If Microsoft tanks, look for Sun to start spreading FUD against open systems. Why? Because they stand to profit from doing so.
Tracking where hits are coming from is usually the job of a Referer header, so this is probably a way to get dough out of ads or something. I just hope this doesn't mean Slashdot/Andover will "prefer" to use Wired story links over any other site's story links.
If all new PCs eventually have serial numbers, it's only a matter of time before node-locked software becomes commonplace (in the Microsoft world, at least).
This is interesting, because when I was in public school, our school ID number was in the form of "xxx-xx-xxxx", the same as an SSN. The number itself wasn't an SSN, however. You could get people's SSN (and much more) just by sneaking into the guidance counselor's office while he was out to lunch, logging on to his terminal with the username and password he had written down and hidden under his monitor, and pulling records from the school system's database using the school-issued ID number.
My friend once swiped what had to be at least 100 printed pages of student information, which included their phone numbers, addresses, and lots of other personal information. Just remember that the next time you register at a public school.
I used to carry a fake school ID that I made with the help of my trusty dot matrix printer, a picture of some teenage white kid i cut out of a magazine in art class, and the new lamination machine in the school's printing shop. Well, one day I got busted for cutting class. They set up a "sting operation" of sorts and caught about 10 people leaving out of a back door. They confiscated everyone's ID and made everyone stay in a staff conference room while they used the ID cards to notify our parents. I sat there for about 3 minutes until I realized that they had my fake ID, at which point I made a quick exit from the conference room, and then, the building. I really hope they didn't call the parents of the person with the ID number on my fake card, because the ID number was that of my friend's biology teacher, whose ID he managed to photocopy for me a few days prior to the making of the fake ID.
Oh yeah, that Bio teacher used to keep a stash of hard core pornography above one of the cabinets in his classroom. Using a master key that he took from one of the shop teachers, my friend managed to make off with like 3 magazines and a videotape full of porn one day before school started. Let's hear it for public schools!
I don't think I learned anything in that school. Fortunately.
A network computing device from Microsoft? That's not good.
If it catches on, or manages to somehow "obsolete" the Personal Computer, do you really think big bad Bill will let you run anything except Microsoft software on it?
If this were any other company I'd have laughed it off.. *cough* Oracle *cough* Sun *cough*.. but Microsoft is one of the few companies with the resources to pull it off.
I think what they mean by "encrypt and play" is that it'll convert from MP3 or WAV to it's own format. Therefore, I don't believe the hardware will play MP3 files directly, only via "conversion" with what will likely be a Windows-only supplied software package.
AOL's trying to ban someone from using a common phrase? Oh, please. Next thing you know we'll be seeing MP3s of the AOL catch phrase popping up everywhere.
People have been using that phrase for longer than AOL has been in existance. It'd be interesting if they tried to trademark the phrase "AOL Sucks". At that point I guess we wouldn't be able to say that in public without getting sued, either.
Slashdot Mirror
--
(:
--
m10.png - 66k PNG (1024x768)
--
--
I think I'll download it to see what neat new stuff they've packed into it.
--
2002: True to their planned schedule, Microsoft Windows 2000 ships.
2004: True to their planned schedule, Amiga goes out of business.
2006: True to his planned schedule, ESR is imprisoned following the shooting of Bruce Perens.
2007: True to his planned schedule, Rob Malda, webmaster of the popular news, e-commerce, and online porn discussion site Slashdot.Org reveals on Slashdot's 10th anniversary that it was really bought out by the NSA to facilitate spying on everyone. Malda and Bates are never heard from again. Thanks to a strategically placed Slashdot Poll, neither is Jon Katz.
2008: The NSAndover(tm) Media Powerhouse buys out Microsoft. Bill Gates is never heard from again. Once again, thanks to a strategically placed Slashdot Poll, neither is Ballmer.
2009: Slashdot Magazine is launched. NSAndover's acquisition of Microsoft also netted them one of Microsoft's secret subsidiaries: ZDNet.
2010: Your favorite "I survived Y2K and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt" shirt finally wears out.
2011: NSAndoverSoft releases Windows 2000 Service Pack 361. Slashdot is integrated with the Operating System.
2012: Mick Jagger turns 69, to the delight of late night talk show hosts, starved for any joke they can get.
2014: Torvalds leaves Transmeta and gets a job at NSAndoverSoft's ZDNet division to replace Jesse Berst.
2015: Jesse Berst kicks his 20 year addiction to crack. NSAndoverSoft's ZDNet offers to take him back on staff. Mysteriously, he is hit by a bus and killed right outside their offices. Few people notice or care.
2018: HDVGA cards found to have fatal "exploding" flaw, everyone must switch back to 13-year-old "MSVGA" technology. Slashdot users complain that old 65535x65535 MSVGA screens "suck".
2020: ABC's semi-popular "20/20" night time show declares this "The year of 20/20". I wonder why.
2023: Hemos gets his damned nanties. Too bad nobody's seen or heard from him in over 15 years.
2025: Using a new combined technology derived from high-powered lasers, GPS, and Intel CPU IDs, the Slashdot "1st post" syndrome is eliminated. Permanently.
2026: Over 5,000 people found dead after a bug in Slashdot's perl leads to the flagging of an entire forum for "termination". NSAndoverSoft realizes its fatal mistake of keeping old volatile Microsoft programming crew on-board after the acquisition.
2030: drwiii dies from Microsoft poisoning at the age of 52. Nobody really notices or cares, except for the people that were reading this 31 years ago and were hoping for this timeline to go on for another 100 years. He is brought back to life thanks to Nanites(tm), and decides to make one more smart-assed journal entry before retiring to nice, sunny, warm Antarctica.
2031: Transmeta's Linux-powered toaster is finally released to the public. Having only spoken a total of 23 words to the public, CEO Dave Ditzel is never heard from again.
--
Would you want your kids being programmed by the likes of MS and AOL?
--
--
--
And why's that? Because most of them don't know any better.
--
(...)
Two: Linux's market share going over 50%. (Cool down, BSD guys -- I'd be equally pleased to see some other open-source Unix win, it just doesn't seen very likely at this point).
Three: a collapse in Microsoft's stock price. That would mean the end of effective FUD and countermarketing against open source.
I'm a bit confused by those last two reasons.. When you say you'd be equally pleased to see some other open-source Unix "win", does that mean that they are somehow in competition with each other? I've found that using the right tool for the job often works best. Linux for workstations, BSD for servers. If we were to use market share as an indicator of who "wins", I'd say Microsoft would win.
Next, I'm not sure how you interpret the destruction of Microsoft as being the end of FUD against openly-coded programs and operating systems. Microsoft serves a very important purpose for openly-coded operating systems and programs right now. Their "just good enough to push out the door" coding style is starting to piss off even their most rigid supporters, and the more people that Microsoft helps us to convert to open systems in that manner, the better. Remember, Microsoft is not a software company, it is a marketing company.
If Microsoft tanks, look for Sun to start spreading FUD against open systems. Why? Because they stand to profit from doing so.
--
--
Of course, that's all just a guess on my part..
--
(:
--
It only became a "hoax" when the clueless media picked up on it and indirectly gave it credibility.
I'm sure most people here have seen it, but here's a neat story about "third-party" misinterpretation of McKusick's BSD daemon logo.
Still missing 2 images, hopefully they'll be up soon.
This could mean only one thing...
If all new PCs eventually have serial numbers, it's only a matter of time before node-locked software becomes commonplace (in the Microsoft world, at least).
This is true.
My friend once swiped what had to be at least 100 printed pages of student information, which included their phone numbers, addresses, and lots of other personal information. Just remember that the next time you register at a public school.
I used to carry a fake school ID that I made with the help of my trusty dot matrix printer, a picture of some teenage white kid i cut out of a magazine in art class, and the new lamination machine in the school's printing shop. Well, one day I got busted for cutting class. They set up a "sting operation" of sorts and caught about 10 people leaving out of a back door. They confiscated everyone's ID and made everyone stay in a staff conference room while they used the ID cards to notify our parents. I sat there for about 3 minutes until I realized that they had my fake ID, at which point I made a quick exit from the conference room, and then, the building. I really hope they didn't call the parents of the person with the ID number on my fake card, because the ID number was that of my friend's biology teacher, whose ID he managed to photocopy for me a few days prior to the making of the fake ID.
Oh yeah, that Bio teacher used to keep a stash of hard core pornography above one of the cabinets in his classroom. Using a master key that he took from one of the shop teachers, my friend managed to make off with like 3 magazines and a videotape full of porn one day before school started. Let's hear it for public schools!
I don't think I learned anything in that school. Fortunately.
If it catches on, or manages to somehow "obsolete" the Personal Computer, do you really think big bad Bill will let you run anything except Microsoft software on it?
If this were any other company I'd have laughed it off.. *cough* Oracle *cough* Sun *cough*.. but Microsoft is one of the few companies with the resources to pull it off.
I think what they mean by "encrypt and play" is that it'll convert from MP3 or WAV to it's own format. Therefore, I don't believe the hardware will play MP3 files directly, only via "conversion" with what will likely be a Windows-only supplied software package.
People have been using that phrase for longer than AOL has been in existance. It'd be interesting if they tried to trademark the phrase "AOL Sucks". At that point I guess we wouldn't be able to say that in public without getting sued, either.
Well THAT explains it...