It's nice to see the mainstream press start to come out against the idiotic copy-protection war the RIAA is declaring on their best customers, music lovers.
I'm sorry, I can't let such a statement slide.
Think about it! If music lovers were the RIAA's best customers, how do you explain the preponderance of boy bands and Britney Spears? This is hardly music for the real connoisseur, yet it almost entirely fills the major label's profit ledgers.
The sad reality is that most people listen to their CDs in CD players, regardless of how many Slashdotters reply to this telling me something like "oh not me! I only listen to my CD collection on my computer using Linux!" The same goes for Windows. If people listen to CDs on computers, almost all of them will be doing it in Windows, because it dominates a large majority of the desktop and consumer PC market. As long as this market segment is catered to, no one will give a rats ass about the audiophile minority.
Well, Mr. DeRaadt would certainly make a better physical specimen than most of the Slashdot community, what with his active lifestyle and passion for mountain biking. With Slashdotters on the other hand, well, pretty much all the evidence you need is in the latest poll.
Windows works fine for my gaming needs. And, it has the added bonus of being written in a fast language like C++ and natively compiled. Sure, you can do 3D graphics in Java, but it won't be playable.
Besides, if you really need a reference on how well Windows serves as a gaming OS, ask CmdrTaco. He sure seems to like playing Diablo II and other such timewasters in M$ land.
X-Windows has to be the worst ever solution that anyone has come up with for remote desktop access. It was designed by committee from the beginning, and it shows. Just look at what real UNIX gurus have to say about it.
There probably is a decent solution out there for remote-control of a desktop, but X-windows ain't it.
Even though it is backed by CVS (and you could possibly get away with using just that), SourceForge OnSite (c) (sold by VA Software at a reasonable price) makes managing CVS and concurrent code development a snap! Just plug it in and code away with the knowledge that you are paying for the support services of one of the leading vendors of enterprise-grade Linux solutions.
I wouldn't, however, recommend working with anything from Microsoft. Benchmarks and real-life statistics have shown that their source control solutions are not only slower, but are also less stable and more likely to corrupt your source tree. I hope you have backups!
Yeah, except all the examples you cited are in the past, while what he cited began last week and is still happening. Or are you just trying to say that they are about 100 years behind the civilized world?
The article isn't deep or flawless, but hits on a major point: what students learn in school is key to what they go on to do.
I think the coding platform that real CS students use is largely irrelevant to what they go on to use in their jobs. If you are actually in a university (not a community college) learning computer science, chances are that you're learning mostly about algorithms, data structures and information theory, rather than memorizing how to use a specific language or environment.
True computer scientists have no trouble learning most new languages because the underlying fundamentals are the same. An algorithm is an algorithm is an algorithm, be it in C#, VB, Java or Perl.
Wow, the editorial incompetence here has been reaching dangerous levels as of late. How long, CmdrTaco, until Slashdot gets hit with a defamation lawsuit for posting outright lies about a company and portraying them as fact?
I'm sorry, but, although I am an Iranian-American, I know more than my fair share of American history. And I wouldn't trust anything that comes out of an institution with that vile individual's name on it, much less associate myself with it.
Woodrow Wilson, for those of you reading this from outside the U.S., was one of the most markedly racist presidents of the 20th century. Not only did he openly support the ideology and actions of the Ku Klux Klan, but the first ever screening of "The Birth Of A Nation," a blockbuster film of the era, was held at the White House. The Birth Of A Nation was essentially white supremicist revisionist history that portrayed the Reconstruction-era South as run by black tyrants who conspired to opress the white man and rape the white women. It was a true piece of filth, even considering the times.
As a non-white, non-Anglo-Saxon, and a Muslim, I cannot possibly condone anything that would spout forth from an office that bears this man's name. How many coloreds had to die at the hands of an angry white mob because of a president's explicit approval?
Umm... yeah, actually, it's been thriving for quite a while now. It's this silly little thing called "open source". You may have heard of it, it has allowed many companies around the world to make enormous profits by baiting individuals to write useful code for free. You know what they say, a sucker is born every minute.
A recurring theme that I'm seeing in this thread is that people are suspicious of Google's plans, because Google would essentially make a sizable profit off of some sucker's innovation just because a programmer didn't stop to think that he was giving away a valuable idea.
This opens up all kinds of interesting directions for discussion on this site in particular. One thing that stands out the most is the prevalent belief here in the moral superiority of Free software and open source in general. I am also reminded of the almost weekly rants against one patent or another and a general call for the abolition of intellectual property and the patent system. And yet, as soon as someone sees a corporation trying to profit off the work of people who give it to them for free, everyone crys foul.
Could it be that the people espousing open source are the very same people who have never come up with an innovative idea worth patenting in their life? Could it be that Linux is free because it is worthless and devoid of innovation?
Think about it in a different context. How many rich industrialists are Communists? How many of the people who advocate the "redistribution" of wealth have no wealth of their own?
I leave you with this tounge-in-cheek news clipping. I hope you can think this over.
In other news today...
IDC analysts have finished a 3 year study that reports startling results. The study reports that, if you write software and release it under the GPL, you have absolutely no claim to the profits a company makes through using your software. Luminaries in the open source community have called the findings an outrage. Slashdot poster IamTheRealMike was quoted as sputtering "But... but... information wants to be free... but... but... companies are making money off my work without paying me for it!". Security forces are bracing for widespread geek rioting as the entire belief system of Free software comes crashing down when geeks realize that they can be paid for writing software and patenting new and innovative ideas.
So now, instead of occasional 4 hour outage when someone screws up software upgrades, we get weekly crashes when some shmuck decides to upgrade to the latest "stable" kernel? Woo hoo! Go Linux!
Now I can edit GIFs and add GUIs to my database functions! This is great, now if only I can convince my boss that we need this. Oh, and also convince him to upgrade from the dual Xeon to the 8-way machine to handle all the overhead.
Sheesh, could they have made a more braindead move?
What is the fucking point? Why would anyone need a 3D window manager for their desktop? Of all the 3D managers that I've seen, none of them look at all easy to use, and most of them just come off as overly complex. And where the hell are you going to get the spare processor cycles to power this thing when you are doing something like, oh, say GIMP or PovRay in the background?
Plus, a mouse is a lousy way to navigate a 3D world. Someone would have to invent something a lot more intuitive before I decide to give this one a try.
Thank you for that trite and thoughtless comment. I'm glad that there is yet another person here who doesn't have anything original to add to the discussion.
You have no understanding of the GPL, do you? Companies are allowed to sell additional software with their distros, and they never have to give it away for free. You sir, are a cheapskate. You would demand that a company that spent a major amount of money on developing a comprehensive trusted system on your favorite OS just give away all their work for free. You must be unemployed or working outside of the software-engineering industry to hold such a view.
This is much different from Snort, but then again, you must be relying on michael's (as usual) braindead summary of the article and Linux distro in question. If he had actually done some research on it (like just about any journalist with anything approaching integrity would), he would have written that this distro will have many components of a truely "trusted" status operating system, such as a filesystem supporting mandatory access control lists, compartmentalization, and several other things that have nothing to do with "I checked this code a bazillion times for security holes and we're screwed if we want to add features" and everything to do with a design that tolerates coding errors and doesn't allow an attacker to take advantage of them.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sorry, I can't let such a statement slide.
Think about it! If music lovers were the RIAA's best customers, how do you explain the preponderance of boy bands and Britney Spears? This is hardly music for the real connoisseur, yet it almost entirely fills the major label's profit ledgers.
The sad reality is that most people listen to their CDs in CD players, regardless of how many Slashdotters reply to this telling me something like "oh not me! I only listen to my CD collection on my computer using Linux!" The same goes for Windows. If people listen to CDs on computers, almost all of them will be doing it in Windows, because it dominates a large majority of the desktop and consumer PC market. As long as this market segment is catered to, no one will give a rats ass about the audiophile minority.
Well, Mr. DeRaadt would certainly make a better physical specimen than most of the Slashdot community, what with his active lifestyle and passion for mountain biking. With Slashdotters on the other hand, well, pretty much all the evidence you need is in the latest poll.
Besides, if you really need a reference on how well Windows serves as a gaming OS, ask CmdrTaco. He sure seems to like playing Diablo II and other such timewasters in M$ land.
Where are all the beautiful women? I thought first post celebrities were popular with the ladies?
There probably is a decent solution out there for remote-control of a desktop, but X-windows ain't it.
I wouldn't, however, recommend working with anything from Microsoft. Benchmarks and real-life statistics have shown that their source control solutions are not only slower, but are also less stable and more likely to corrupt your source tree. I hope you have backups!
Yeah, except all the examples you cited are in the past, while what he cited began last week and is still happening. Or are you just trying to say that they are about 100 years behind the civilized world?
Holy shit, no one cares about that third-world shithole. I don't care if they have 1/8 of the world's population, that place is a toilet.
I think the coding platform that real CS students use is largely irrelevant to what they go on to use in their jobs. If you are actually in a university (not a community college) learning computer science, chances are that you're learning mostly about algorithms, data structures and information theory, rather than memorizing how to use a specific language or environment.
True computer scientists have no trouble learning most new languages because the underlying fundamentals are the same. An algorithm is an algorithm is an algorithm, be it in C#, VB, Java or Perl.
Wow, the editorial incompetence here has been reaching dangerous levels as of late. How long, CmdrTaco, until Slashdot gets hit with a defamation lawsuit for posting outright lies about a company and portraying them as fact?
Slashdot is the Mobius Strip of the Internet.
Ah, you are looking for shakedowns, my friend. Look up this girl named Darleen Shoftel in L.A. She'll fix you up good.
Yup. It's the gas chambers for this fucker.
Woodrow Wilson, for those of you reading this from outside the U.S., was one of the most markedly racist presidents of the 20th century. Not only did he openly support the ideology and actions of the Ku Klux Klan, but the first ever screening of "The Birth Of A Nation," a blockbuster film of the era, was held at the White House. The Birth Of A Nation was essentially white supremicist revisionist history that portrayed the Reconstruction-era South as run by black tyrants who conspired to opress the white man and rape the white women. It was a true piece of filth, even considering the times.
As a non-white, non-Anglo-Saxon, and a Muslim, I cannot possibly condone anything that would spout forth from an office that bears this man's name. How many coloreds had to die at the hands of an angry white mob because of a president's explicit approval?
My broadband is free, I leech off the local 802.11b.
You know, the biggest suckers of them all write whole operating systems for free.
Umm... yeah, actually, it's been thriving for quite a while now. It's this silly little thing called "open source". You may have heard of it, it has allowed many companies around the world to make enormous profits by baiting individuals to write useful code for free. You know what they say, a sucker is born every minute.
This opens up all kinds of interesting directions for discussion on this site in particular. One thing that stands out the most is the prevalent belief here in the moral superiority of Free software and open source in general. I am also reminded of the almost weekly rants against one patent or another and a general call for the abolition of intellectual property and the patent system. And yet, as soon as someone sees a corporation trying to profit off the work of people who give it to them for free, everyone crys foul.
Could it be that the people espousing open source are the very same people who have never come up with an innovative idea worth patenting in their life? Could it be that Linux is free because it is worthless and devoid of innovation?
Think about it in a different context. How many rich industrialists are Communists? How many of the people who advocate the "redistribution" of wealth have no wealth of their own?
I leave you with this tounge-in-cheek news clipping. I hope you can think this over.
In other news today...
IDC analysts have finished a 3 year study that reports startling results. The study reports that, if you write software and release it under the GPL, you have absolutely no claim to the profits a company makes through using your software. Luminaries in the open source community have called the findings an outrage. Slashdot poster IamTheRealMike was quoted as sputtering "But... but... information wants to be free... but... but... companies are making money off my work without paying me for it!". Security forces are bracing for widespread geek rioting as the entire belief system of Free software comes crashing down when geeks realize that they can be paid for writing software and patenting new and innovative ideas.
Better check those tags, buddy.
So now, instead of occasional 4 hour outage when someone screws up software upgrades, we get weekly crashes when some shmuck decides to upgrade to the latest "stable" kernel? Woo hoo! Go Linux!
Sheesh, could they have made a more braindead move?
Plus, a mouse is a lousy way to navigate a 3D world. Someone would have to invent something a lot more intuitive before I decide to give this one a try.
Thank you for that trite and thoughtless comment. I'm glad that there is yet another person here who doesn't have anything original to add to the discussion.
Personally, I was under the impression that they were doing this in the first place. Guess I was wrong.
Just my US $0.02...