This is just so ridiculous that the only thing that keeps the sanity is that *eventually* SCO shit will tumble down - may not be weeks, but definitely a few months to a couple of years.
SCO press releases make the (former) Iraqi Information Minister look "forthcomingly honest" and makes Faux news "fair and balanced". Heck, it makes Steve Ballmer look sedated.
The TeX User's group in India have also done a lot of good work -- they have very fancy LaTeX manuals that they are providing for free (manuals as pdf, and also source latex files).
It is mostly how people handle it... For instance, someone like M$FT may say, "See, what if another SCO comes out with a law suit", and the linux folks can say, "Yes, exactly, last time such scum came at us, we trashed it, this is also another such scum supported by the likes of M$FT and SUNW".
In the end, people usually believe what they want to believe. Facts usually don't affect the clarity of wishes and illusions:)
The SCO stock is so much shorted that is has become diffcult to borrow the stock to short. Datek (Ameritrade now) did not let me short SCO for a long time (it doesn't let me even now, but I stopped trying).
Very funny coincedence -- when NOVL said they own the IP for UNIX, I sold SUN and tried to short SCO. Now, after the shit SUN pulled with SCO, I put that money yesterday into RHAT (small amount of money, so it is more like a fun story)
S
Re:There's one good thing about it.
on
Perl 1.0?
·
· Score: 1
Most people that use perl (nowadays) will tend to agree with me on this. If it has to be done quick and dirty, use perl and make good friends with CPAN. If you have the time and the project is bound to grow, use a different language.
I mostly disagree. A lot of advances in the abstraction of data (text templates, DBI abstraction, xml parsers, etc.) and modules from CPAN make a very compelling case for using Perl as a very good language for large projects too. Just that someone can write crappy code, doesn't make the language bad.
A good example: a lot of people that I know that write servlets use things like
or something in perl, like print OUT "<a href=\"$pageLink\">Welcome</a>"; or better, print OUT qq{<a href="$pageLink">Welcome</a>};
when some templating mechanisms are better used, such as velocity <a href="$pageLink">Welcome</a> or Text::Template <a href="$pageLink">Welcome</a> (hehe... same way in both perl and java)
Comparing how novices write in Perl with how seasoned developers write in java is comparing apples to oranges.
Except that in case of nigerian scam, the end user has to be dumb and greedy to lose money. For SCO extortion, one just have to be a clueless IT manager or an IT person with an axe to grind against Linux.
My coworker (windows guy) mentioned, "anyway we will have to pay money for SCO for Linux licenses".
However, it's too late. Enough WordPerfect code has been stolen for the OSS project, Open Office, that there's no way to put the genie back in the bottle and profit from our hard earned IP.
Do we have another SCO in the making? For the record, OpenOffice code is based on StarOffice (bought from some company by SUN, and later donated).
It is sad to see such a turn of events. The only thing that can make it worse is if some SCO like low lifes buy the company for a few pennies and start suing people at OpenOffice.org or KOffice.org.
Ofcourse, M$FT and even SUN will pay money to those companies to make sure "they respect IP rights."
Sorry about the rant. There is so much reason for outrage.
S
Re:Enough with the flames already
on
State of the Onion 7
·
· Score: 3, Informative
And another thing, the whole "You can't read Perl or figure out old programs" bit is getting old. You can do that in ANY language. You can also follow some generally accepted formatting rules and your code will look just fine and be readable by any halfway experienced coder.
I have written some code in Java and Perl for doing similar stuff (using text templates), and the perl code looks like someone is explaining in plain english. With perl5 and modules from CPAN , one can write very clean code.
The parent is a definite troll. The references to "recompilation of the kernel", and "four CDs to install" (when one can do a quick net-install, one would assume a sysad/IT "guru" of a "Fortune 100" company would know how to do net installs).
Regarding trimming down the UI, well said. The main apps at my work I use are xemacs, gnome-terminal, and mozilla. I found gnome to be too meomory hungry, so I just switched to fvwm and bingo, my memory use went down by about 100 meg. Moreover, whenever I need nautilus, I just start it. Or, if I need a full fledged KDE or GNOME, all I need to do is switch the WM.
The interface I use on the desktop is similar to what I used about six years ago, all with the latest applications easily accessible. It speaks a lot about how one can have a uniform no frills linux installations for payrolls, with optional fancy "toppings".
Heck, on Windows XP, I cannot even disable the MSN messenger!
US is not a truly capitalistic country (look at social security, farm subsidies, bailing out airlines, and even bailing out obnoxious hedge funds)...
Laissez faire ideals are things that can cause depression like the 30's. Without the government regulations, we wouldn't even have had a 40 hour week standard (even though many do way more than that).
The ideals of capitalism won't break down if MSFT is broken up -- MSFT itself has become like a government of its own, stifling free market. Breaking up MSFT can only do good to consumers, just like the breaking up of AT&T and Standard Oil did...
This may sound like a flamebait, but here is the reason... I use windows and cygwin at work (mainly tools such as xemacs, gcc, perl, jdk, mozilla, latex)... The underlying OS is more or less irrelevant it seems. Linux is nowhere in here, but GNU/OSS is everywhere. Of course, sometimes it is still way better to boot up in the linux partition (though some of our work *needs* to be done on windows).
In this context, may be it is the introduction of tools to youngsters is more important than the underlying OS. For instance, compare xemacs with wordpad or textpad or the latest $29 shareware text editor with obnoxious alerts about registering. May be show how it is better to write a "structured document" versus highlight and the standard way of selecting a font size and strength of some text in a document. May be show how tabbed browsing in mozilla or opera is good... Most of the die hard fans of systems such as emacs/mozilla/perl/latex are fans because these tools do things "better" in some way... If kids are shown that "there is more than one way to do it", they may really be ready to experiment with new software.
Did anyone else notice that the EFF Executive Director, the person who is trying to encourage file sharing, is named Shari Steele? I cannot think of a a better name for a person defending sharing, Except Mr. P. Too Pee, that is.
Unfortunately, there is also a Steele attached to the name, providing enough ammunition to the *AA.
S
"Today, more U.S. citizens use file-sharing software than voted for President Bush,"
So millions of people doing the wrong thing somehow makes it right. I don't think so.
A leap of logic there. It is not about right or wrong of "piracy" that is being discussed here. It is the number of people that would potentially be affected by the aggressive lobbying of RIAA/MPAA.
Sometimes the sales guys tell the customers exactly what the tech managers/VPs say. In cases where the tech manager does not know what he/she is talking about (and lacks the necessary brain cells to admit it), it becomes a nightmare.
In such cases, the people in the trenches know what is possible, what is not, and what needs minor tweaking, and what is incompatible with the architecture. However, if the tech manager is a dipshit all the feedback goes to waste.
In such cases, it is a dishonest engineer (or head engineer) that screws up everything. The sales guys are probably more honest in that scenario.
I was reading a book called "Complete Idiot's Guid to Time Management" and there was a section about this kind of stuff. Let me paraphrase.
There is a "revenge effect" from nature in the sense that some remedy used to fix a problem in fact worsens the problem. Highways were given as an example. Wider highways were meant to improve the traffic conditions, but when roads become wider, people move away from the hustle and bustle, into suburbs, and there is longer drive and more cars, and... in the end more traffic congestion.
I mean, its one thing to look at breast cancer treatment sites and another to look at big-tittied-lassies.com
I am sure the filters will not block Senator Hatch's recommended site: myutahsearch.com. And I assure you it is does not deal with health issues such as breast cancer
I believe sometimes the situation will be complex enough that "asking an adult" is not sufficient. For example, the person who is in charge of doing turing the filters may not be at work at that time, and the library staff will say, "come back in three hours":)
It happenned to me at my gym -- they have internet access. Once I needed to check something, and guess what, there were a couple of pop-ups that came up (I guess pop-ups can be very annoying once one is used to the luxuries of not flexible pop-up blocking thanks to the likes of Mozilla). I asked the folks to install Mozilla because only the admin has permission to install stuff there. The guy in charge was not there, so I left a courteous request, which was never acted upon.
In my case, I did not pursue it further, so may be one more nudge and they would have done it... However, imagine the following situation: a thickly accented, or non english speaking immigrant goes to the library and reqests deactivation of the filters (assuming that they even know about it). I am sure such a person will have a really tough time.
New discoveries? Is that like how buying a used car is "new to you"? Seems to me like they are just re-inventing the wheel.
Look at Mozilla from Netscape, Linux from old Unix, bash from sh... some times redoing things may result in better things. Better example yet, look at generic drugs that are just plain redoing of existing drugs.
If nothing else, China and India can make the technology less expensive..
Slashdot Mirror
This is just so ridiculous that the only thing that keeps the sanity is that *eventually* SCO shit will tumble down - may not be weeks, but definitely a few months to a couple of years.
SCO press releases make the (former) Iraqi Information Minister look "forthcomingly honest" and makes Faux news "fair and balanced". Heck, it makes Steve Ballmer look sedated.
S
The TeX User's group in India have also done a lot of good work -- they have very fancy LaTeX manuals that they are providing for free (manuals as pdf, and also source latex files).
S
It is mostly how people handle it... For instance, someone like M$FT may say, "See, what if another SCO comes out with a law suit", and the linux folks can say, "Yes, exactly, last time such scum came at us, we trashed it, this is also another such scum supported by the likes of M$FT and SUNW".
:)
In the end, people usually believe what they want to believe. Facts usually don't affect the clarity of wishes and illusions
S
If they call this the matrix, who will be neo? Osama? Saddam is Morpheus? Ms. Anthrax is Trinity?
All of slashdot will want to be in the orgy of Zeus?
S
"Playing fairly" is very different from "saying that they plan to play fairly". Need to look a little deeper into the assertions.
S
Laziness to type the extra symbol, and keeping with the /. tradition, a typo :)
I have the margin account -- the broker said that there were no shares to borrow.
S
The SCO stock is so much shorted that is has become diffcult to borrow the stock to short. Datek (Ameritrade now) did not let me short SCO for a long time (it doesn't let me even now, but I stopped trying).
Very funny coincedence -- when NOVL said they own the IP for UNIX, I sold SUN and tried to short SCO. Now, after the shit SUN pulled with SCO, I put that money yesterday into RHAT (small amount of money, so it is more like a fun story)
S
Most people that use perl (nowadays) will tend to agree with me on this. If it has to be done quick and dirty, use perl and make good friends with CPAN. If you have the time and the project is bound to grow, use a different language.
I mostly disagree. A lot of advances in the abstraction of data (text templates, DBI abstraction, xml parsers, etc.) and modules from CPAN make a very compelling case for using Perl as a very good language for large projects too. Just that someone can write crappy code, doesn't make the language bad.
A good example: a lot of people that I know that write servlets use things like
out.println("<a href=\"" + pageLink + "\">Welcome</a>");
or something in perl, like
print OUT "<a href=\"$pageLink\">Welcome</a>";
or better,
print OUT qq{<a href="$pageLink">Welcome</a>};
when some templating mechanisms are better used, such as velocity
<a href="$pageLink">Welcome</a>
or Text::Template
<a href="$pageLink">Welcome</a>
(hehe... same way in both perl and java)
Comparing how novices write in Perl with how seasoned developers write in java is comparing apples to oranges.
S
Except that in case of nigerian scam, the end user has to be dumb and greedy to lose money. For SCO extortion, one just have to be a clueless IT manager or an IT person with an axe to grind against Linux.
My coworker (windows guy) mentioned, "anyway we will have to pay money for SCO for Linux licenses".
S
Most educated indians can actually write way better in English than they can in their native language.
S
However, it's too late. Enough WordPerfect code has been stolen for the OSS project, Open Office, that there's no way to put the genie back in the bottle and profit from our hard earned IP.
Do we have another SCO in the making? For the record, OpenOffice code is based on StarOffice (bought from some company by SUN, and later donated).
S
It is sad to see such a turn of events. The only thing that can make it worse is if some SCO like low lifes buy the company for a few pennies and start suing people at OpenOffice.org or KOffice.org.
Ofcourse, M$FT and even SUN will pay money to those companies to make sure "they respect IP rights."
Sorry about the rant. There is so much reason for outrage.
S
I have written some code in Java and Perl for doing similar stuff (using text templates), and the perl code looks like someone is explaining in plain english. With perl5 and modules from CPAN , one can write very clean code.
S
The parent is a definite troll. The references to "recompilation of the kernel", and "four CDs to install" (when one can do a quick net-install, one would assume a sysad/IT "guru" of a "Fortune 100" company would know how to do net installs).
S
Regarding trimming down the UI, well said. The main apps at my work I use are xemacs, gnome-terminal, and mozilla. I found gnome to be too meomory hungry, so I just switched to fvwm and bingo, my memory use went down by about 100 meg. Moreover, whenever I need nautilus, I just start it. Or, if I need a full fledged KDE or GNOME, all I need to do is switch the WM.
The interface I use on the desktop is similar to what I used about six years ago, all with the latest applications easily accessible. It speaks a lot about how one can have a uniform no frills linux installations for payrolls, with optional fancy "toppings".
Heck, on Windows XP, I cannot even disable the MSN messenger!
S
US is not a truly capitalistic country (look at social security, farm subsidies, bailing out airlines, and even bailing out obnoxious hedge funds)...
Laissez faire ideals are things that can cause depression like the 30's. Without the government regulations, we wouldn't even have had a 40 hour week standard (even though many do way more than that).
The ideals of capitalism won't break down if MSFT is broken up -- MSFT itself has become like a government of its own, stifling free market. Breaking up MSFT can only do good to consumers, just like the breaking up of AT&T and Standard Oil did...
S
In this context, may be it is the introduction of tools to youngsters is more important than the underlying OS. For instance, compare xemacs with wordpad or textpad or the latest $29 shareware text editor with obnoxious alerts about registering. May be show how it is better to write a "structured document" versus highlight and the standard way of selecting a font size and strength of some text in a document. May be show how tabbed browsing in mozilla or opera is good... Most of the die hard fans of systems such as emacs/mozilla/perl/latex are fans because these tools do things "better" in some way... If kids are shown that "there is more than one way to do it", they may really be ready to experiment with new software.
S
Unfortunately, there is also a Steele attached to the name, providing enough ammunition to the *AA. S
A leap of logic there. It is not about right or wrong of "piracy" that is being discussed here. It is the number of people that would potentially be affected by the aggressive lobbying of RIAA/MPAA.
Sometimes the sales guys tell the customers exactly what the tech managers/VPs say. In cases where the tech manager does not know what he/she is talking about (and lacks the necessary brain cells to admit it), it becomes a nightmare.
In such cases, the people in the trenches know what is possible, what is not, and what needs minor tweaking, and what is incompatible with the architecture. However, if the tech manager is a dipshit all the feedback goes to waste.
In such cases, it is a dishonest engineer (or head engineer) that screws up everything. The sales guys are probably more honest in that scenario.
S
I was reading a book called "Complete Idiot's Guid to Time Management" and there was a section about this kind of stuff. Let me paraphrase.
... in the end more traffic congestion.
There is a "revenge effect" from nature in the sense that some remedy used to fix a problem in fact worsens the problem. Highways were given as an example. Wider highways were meant to improve the traffic conditions, but when roads become wider, people move away from the hustle and bustle, into suburbs, and there is longer drive and more cars, and
S
I mean, its one thing to look at breast cancer treatment sites and another to look at big-tittied-lassies.com
I am sure the filters will not block Senator Hatch's recommended site: myutahsearch.com. And I assure you it is does not deal with health issues such as breast cancer
S
I believe sometimes the situation will be complex enough that "asking an adult" is not sufficient. For example, the person who is in charge of doing turing the filters may not be at work at that time, and the library staff will say, "come back in three hours" :)
It happenned to me at my gym -- they have internet access. Once I needed to check something, and guess what, there were a couple of pop-ups that came up (I guess pop-ups can be very annoying once one is used to the luxuries of not flexible pop-up blocking thanks to the likes of Mozilla). I asked the folks to install Mozilla because only the admin has permission to install stuff there. The guy in charge was not there, so I left a courteous request, which was never acted upon.
In my case, I did not pursue it further, so may be one more nudge and they would have done it... However, imagine the following situation: a thickly accented, or non english speaking immigrant goes to the library and reqests deactivation of the filters (assuming that they even know about it). I am sure such a person will have a really tough time.
S
New discoveries? Is that like how buying a used car is "new to you"? Seems to me like they are just re-inventing the wheel.
Look at Mozilla from Netscape, Linux from old Unix, bash from sh... some times redoing things may result in better things. Better example yet, look at generic drugs that are just plain redoing of existing drugs.
If nothing else, China and India can make the technology less expensive..