You are actually the dumb ass who should actually read the article before slamming me:
Community interest (Score:5, Interesting)
by Signal 11 (signal11@mediaone.net?Subject=Slashdot comment)
It's a rare person indeed who draws such an intense response from the geeks and slashdotters amongst us - I'd like to know why you keep posting and commenting even though so many people are outwardy hostile towards you...
What draws you towards this community?
Katz:
I am very proud to be a rare person, and however you meant it, I thank you.
Why is it that I found Katz's articles boorish 2 years ago and even more boorish now? Because they are written by a simpleton. Calling himself a 'rare' person is idiotic and shows the elevated ego to which someone of Katz's 'stature' has risen.
The more Katz posted on/., the more I think/. is becoming my local fish wrap.
I have been using the 1.1.8 JDK from IBM for the past 3 months. It has been faster then Blackdown's and they have been fairly responsive in fixing big bugs. Overall, it's a thumbs up on Linux.
Dude, that is staggeringly offensive. What kind of person do you think I am?
I don't know what kind of person you are and my statement is not meant to be offensive. The fact is that Microsoft is in business to make money; thus, it is capitalistic by nature (check m-w.com for 'capitalistic'). I am sorry if you don't see this as a coder, but it is the truth. Your job is to help maximize the bottom line for your company.
I don't think folks who work at Microsoft are evil. I haven't assumed that you and your coworkers are "soulless idiots". I just disagree with B. Gates that "giving away" software is a Bad Idea (tm).
Is it unfair to assume that MS employees implicity agree with Gates on the point of given software away? Possibly, but as an employee do you not implicity have an obligation to defend the beliefs and ideals of your company (and its CEO/Chief Architect)? Maybe yes, maybe no.
So, whether you like it or not, as a MS employee you implicitly share the sentiments of B.G.
If you don't agree with your companies ideals, then why work there?
In OSS, that reward seems to be the incentive of converting newbies and defeating MS, but it's clearly not the overpowering drive that's enjoyed by, say, the KDE project.
The incentive for sharing source code freely (what you generalized as "OSS") is not to "defeat MS", but to share code so that folks can learn from each other and innovate faster - i.e., we do not have to "reinvent the wheel".
Given that you work for Microsoft and given the capitalistic culture of this company, it may be a stretch to imagine that folks write code for the fun of it!
In interviews of the major developers in the OSS community (Linus Torvalds, Larry Wall, Paul Vixie,...) none of them have said that the reason they wrote X program was to crush Microsoft. On the contrary, most of them said "I need a program that does X. That program either does not exist or is too expensive, so I'll just write it myself and share my efforts with others.
The "crush MS" sentiment is largely a product of media hype and those ignorant of the history and importance of OSS. Given the amount of work involved in writing things such as the GNU tools, BIND, PERL, and the Linux kernel, something as petty as "crush MS" would not have the motivation or staying power that has occurred over the past 25 years. Cheers!
Hmm. Let's see, mandate a particular development language for programs to be adopted by "medium-level" program designers.
Let's apply this "logic" to building skyscrapers: "Design applicants must use Legos (tm) because they are easier for use by new engineers."
My point: Not all languages have the same strengths or weaknesses. Mandating a particular language that may or may not map well into the problem domain is a Bad Idea (tm). Of course, GOOD SOFTWARE DESIGNERS already know that this is a Bad Idea (tm) and so they try to chose the best language for the problem.
The contest is not a bad idea, but the rules are illogical at best. I will be highly surprized if they can build a make or autoconf replacement by the end of this year. These are complex problems and "just using Python" will not make them easier. Cheers
My @home service has been great and largely trouble-free. I use it on Linux and have been very happy. Of course, I hope the UDP wakes the @home folks to their lax security.
Because just like the problem of Linux users accessing files / folders on NT servers and vice versa (the problem solved by SAMBA), Linux programmers will figure ways around the new IE features.
When Ma Bell broke up, everyone thought it was going to be low prices and better services for everyone.
Are you old enough to remember just how bad long distance sounded 15 years ago? If not, I'll tell you -- it sounded like you were talking to your buddy next door, using 2 tin cans and a string between them. Need more evidence, why did Sprint have the "pin drop" ads for the next 10 years?
What you fail to realize with your example of the break up of AT&T is the fact that competition has greatly improved the quality of phone service as well as greatly lowered the price. I don't know exactly how much long distance was when AT&T was a monopoly, but I can guarantee you it was not 0.07 per minute.
What is so difficult about understanding that free software means you have freedoms attached to it? You are not the first person to describe this sentiment. I would encourage you and others that have this sentiment to read the FSF web site. (www.fsf.org)
Long before the corrupted marketing term "open source" was "invented", the explanation of the FSF and GPL on the FSF web site convinced me that I have been unknowing victim of software "crimes of liberty" (not a FSF term). Consider that I pay for a sofware product that has a bug (all software has bugs, BTW). I cannot fix this bug myself (even though I am a programmer) and generally cannot expect or request that the company fix it for me within a reasonable amount of time. Further, said company generally will charge more money for the "upgrade". Morally, this is a crime. Why? It's dishonest. I paid money for a product with the expectation that said bug or feature is working correctly. Sure, accidents can happen and bugs are missed, but is this my fault? The company makes it my fault because they penalize me for it by charging me for an upgrade.
Take this scenario into the non-virtual world of products such as a cd player. If you purchase a cd player, take it home, and it does not work as you expect. What do you do? You return it! The manufacturer of the cd player doesn't charge you an upgrade fee! This is what great companies like Micro$oft have been doing to all of us for the past 15 years. Feels good, doesn't it?
I think secure network voting would increase voter participation in the U.S. Let's face it, people only vote if there are hyped up issues. But, if voting were secure and from the comfort of your own home, people would be inclined to do it. Just like the 'new messages' beckons you to read your email...
IMHO, Red Hat (NASDAQ:RHAT) is hardly a quality distribution. In my experiences with RHAT, it is buggy and always rushed out the door. 6.1 is a good example.
Just check out the RHAT 'errata' page on their web site. The Slackware maintainers do not have a fetish for installing the latest (and sometimes buggy) packages. Hence, Slackware is the most stable distribution around.
While RHAT, SuSE, Caldera, et al rushed out distributions based on the beta version of glibc (2.0.x), Slackware stood firm and waited until glibc was production (the 2.1.x versions). As it turns out, Slackware is the wiser because of the decision of the glibc maintainers to break compatibility between 2.0.x (beta) and 2.1.x (production). This forced RHAT users to quickly upgrade when 2.1 went live.
This is why I have run Slackware for the past 4 years. It is stable and reliable. Only the best packages make it into the distribution, unlike SuSE or RHAT.
This is why I think Slackware has the highest quality of any distribution. Later.
Actually, downloading the ISO image will use less total bandwidth than downloading the individual files because of all the extra GETs, etc..
Uhh, good try, but at least half of a Slackware ISO image is not needed for every kind of install. When I downloaded 4.0, I pulled all the directories in the slakware directory and 2 files that I dd'd onto install floppies. The total amount of disk space was about 300 MB. Clearly not the 650 MB max for a cdrom.
Thus, if you have experience with Slackware installs, you only have to pull what you really need. For example, the 30 other install kernels that are built for various types of hardware is not needed, but would be included in an iso image. Later
Slack 7.0 is glibc 2.1 based. In this case, no matter what distribution (Slackware, Red Hat, SuSE) you use, you are going to have to reinstall.
This is because mixing major release versions of the operating sytem libraries (libc5 and glibc2) causes a lot of pain. You'll try to incrementally update packages only to find that part of your system stops working.
...thread scheduling, for some reason, is in the Java language specification specified to be left unspecified.
AFAIK, the reason thread scheduling is left unspecified is that all the platforms that can run a JVM do not all have the same threading capabilities at the Operating System level.
At my company, we have implemented a complex time-series calc engine for financial data. It is implemented entirely in Java. We built it because there is no equivalent off-the-shelf application on the market. This application is way more complex than you can imagine and is definitely a "serious application".
Java is now our standard, enterprize development language. Legacy maintenance code is still in C, C++, and Perl. As the execution speed of Java increases, I do see Java replacing all of these.
I can honestly say that after coding in Java for the past 6 months (coding C the past 4 years), it is far quicker to implement a lot of stuff using Java than C. This is why Java has become our de facto development language.
Yes, this is like 1984, but no it won't be an awful thing, because the cameras will be privately owned and controlled by the owners of the cars.
This sounds too much like the US Government's argument for public-key encryption. Do you really believe that because you own your car's cameras that the goverment cannot just take it under the guise of 'public safety'.
This is why our freedoms in the U.S. continue to be eroded away. People are duped into thinking that new technology will save them from the evils of thinking for themselves. (Not meant to slam previous poster, just a fact of society).
What ever happened to common sense? I guess it's become uncommon. We are moving more toward 1984, IMHO.
The rationale for prohibiting the use of loans (e.g., a credit card such as Visa) for gambling is to protect compulsive gamblers from themselves. This law is an example of "the common good". In this case, society is better off by not letting gamblers borrow many than by the situation in the story.
The web sites should know better. I think what this woman did is detestable, but it is legal. This is the difference between something that is legal and something that is moral. Unfortunately, the U.S. legal system is not always a question of morality (c.f. O.J. Simpson...)
Opening up broadband will not weaken the cable companies any more than opening up the phone system to independent carriers weakened the local telephone monopolies.
I completely agree with your sentiment. The breakup of the powerful regional phone companies (the Baby Bells) has not been as successful. Here in Denver (the home of US West), we cannot get residential phone service from anyone other than US West. Business customers do have alternatives, such as ICG Communications. US West keeps moaning that "they built the phone system, so they own it; therefore, they should control access to it." Given this, it is not profitable (yet) for companies like ICG to even try to provide access to residential customers.
I am not sure if regulating competition and full access to the cable network won't cause the same result -- residential consumers are ignored for the sake of more lucrative business accounts.
Finally, it is a matter of principal if you want the Federal Government to have to regulate every little thing in our lives! Personally, I want less government intervention. Remember who pays for this stuff? We do -- it is our taxes!
Nowadays, companies like SCO and Sun just invest in Linux...
Point of fact: Sun has been a member of Linux International for at least 3 years (probably longer, but I remember them being a member then), so to characterize them as a "Johnny-come-lately" is debatable.
Now, Sun's latest acts of releasing Solaris source and Star Office source do probably qualify as open source(tm) bandwagon...
Slashdot Mirror
LOL!
You are actually the dumb ass who should actually read the article before slamming me:
--
Why is it that I found Katz's articles boorish 2 years ago and even more boorish now? Because they are written by a simpleton. Calling himself a 'rare' person is idiotic and shows the elevated ego to which someone of Katz's 'stature' has risen.
The more Katz posted on /., the more I think /. is becoming my local fish wrap.
--
Why is this newsworthy?
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I have been using the 1.1.8 JDK from IBM for the past 3 months. It has been faster then Blackdown's and they have been fairly responsive in fixing big bugs. Overall, it's a thumbs up on Linux.
--
I don't know what kind of person you are and my statement is not meant to be offensive. The fact is that Microsoft is in business to make money; thus, it is capitalistic by nature (check m-w.com for 'capitalistic'). I am sorry if you don't see this as a coder, but it is the truth. Your job is to help maximize the bottom line for your company.
I don't think folks who work at Microsoft are evil. I haven't assumed that you and your coworkers are "soulless idiots". I just disagree with B. Gates that "giving away" software is a Bad Idea (tm).
Is it unfair to assume that MS employees implicity agree with Gates on the point of given software away? Possibly, but as an employee do you not implicity have an obligation to defend the beliefs and ideals of your company (and its CEO/Chief Architect)? Maybe yes, maybe no.
So, whether you like it or not, as a MS employee you implicitly share the sentiments of B.G.
If you don't agree with your companies ideals, then why work there?
--
The incentive for sharing source code freely (what you generalized as "OSS") is not to "defeat MS", but to share code so that folks can learn from each other and innovate faster - i.e., we do not have to "reinvent the wheel".
Given that you work for Microsoft and given the capitalistic culture of this company, it may be a stretch to imagine that folks write code for the fun of it!
In interviews of the major developers in the OSS community (Linus Torvalds, Larry Wall, Paul Vixie,...) none of them have said that the reason they wrote X program was to crush Microsoft. On the contrary, most of them said "I need a program that does X. That program either does not exist or is too expensive, so I'll just write it myself and share my efforts with others.
The "crush MS" sentiment is largely a product of media hype and those ignorant of the history and importance of OSS. Given the amount of work involved in writing things such as the GNU tools, BIND, PERL, and the Linux kernel, something as petty as "crush MS" would not have the motivation or staying power that has occurred over the past 25 years. Cheers!
--
Hmm. Let's see, mandate a particular development language for programs to be adopted by "medium-level" program designers.
Let's apply this "logic" to building skyscrapers: "Design applicants must use Legos (tm) because they are easier for use by new engineers."
My point: Not all languages have the same strengths or weaknesses. Mandating a particular language that may or may not map well into the problem domain is a Bad Idea (tm). Of course, GOOD SOFTWARE DESIGNERS already know that this is a Bad Idea (tm) and so they try to chose the best language for the problem.
The contest is not a bad idea, but the rules are illogical at best. I will be highly surprized if they can build a make or autoconf replacement by the end of this year. These are complex problems and "just using Python" will not make them easier. Cheers
--
My @home service has been great and largely trouble-free. I use it on Linux and have been very happy. Of course, I hope the UDP wakes the @home folks to their lax security.
--
Yawn.
--
Because just like the problem of Linux users accessing files / folders on NT servers and vice versa (the problem solved by SAMBA), Linux programmers will figure ways around the new IE features.
--
Are you old enough to remember just how bad long distance sounded 15 years ago? If not, I'll tell you -- it sounded like you were talking to your buddy next door, using 2 tin cans and a string between them. Need more evidence, why did Sprint have the "pin drop" ads for the next 10 years?
What you fail to realize with your example of the break up of AT&T is the fact that competition has greatly improved the quality of phone service as well as greatly lowered the price. I don't know exactly how much long distance was when AT&T was a monopoly, but I can guarantee you it was not 0.07 per minute.
--
One word: SAMBA
--
What is so difficult about understanding that free software means you have freedoms attached to it? You are not the first person to describe this sentiment. I would encourage you and others that have this sentiment to read the FSF web site. (www.fsf.org)
Long before the corrupted marketing term "open source" was "invented", the explanation of the FSF and GPL on the FSF web site convinced me that I have been unknowing victim of software "crimes of liberty" (not a FSF term). Consider that I pay for a sofware product that has a bug (all software has bugs, BTW). I cannot fix this bug myself (even though I am a programmer) and generally cannot expect or request that the company fix it for me within a reasonable amount of time. Further, said company generally will charge more money for the "upgrade". Morally, this is a crime. Why? It's dishonest. I paid money for a product with the expectation that said bug or feature is working correctly. Sure, accidents can happen and bugs are missed, but is this my fault? The company makes it my fault because they penalize me for it by charging me for an upgrade.
Take this scenario into the non-virtual world of products such as a cd player. If you purchase a cd player, take it home, and it does not work as you expect. What do you do? You return it! The manufacturer of the cd player doesn't charge you an upgrade fee! This is what great companies like Micro$oft have been doing to all of us for the past 15 years. Feels good, doesn't it?
Free != open source
--
I think secure network voting would increase voter participation in the U.S. Let's face it, people only vote if there are hyped up issues. But, if voting were secure and from the comfort of your own home, people would be inclined to do it. Just like the 'new messages' beckons you to read your email...
--
Really? Then what is this link? According to the debian website, it is the release notes for the latest version, 2.1. http: //www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/release-note s/ch-whats-new.en.html
Look at the 9th line: Debian 2.1 ships with kernel version 2.0.36 for the Intel x86 architecture.
The link to the 'latest' release notes is right there on the Debian home page.
So, you think Slackware is lame? How about updating the kernel to something released in the past 9 months?
Debian...Is it a great distro with a lame, out of date web site or is it a lame distro with a lame web site?
--
IMHO, Red Hat (NASDAQ:RHAT) is hardly a quality distribution. In my experiences with RHAT, it is buggy and always rushed out the door. 6.1 is a good example.
Just check out the RHAT 'errata' page on their web site. The Slackware maintainers do not have a fetish for installing the latest (and sometimes buggy) packages. Hence, Slackware is the most stable distribution around.
While RHAT, SuSE, Caldera, et al rushed out distributions based on the beta version of glibc (2.0.x), Slackware stood firm and waited until glibc was production (the 2.1.x versions). As it turns out, Slackware is the wiser because of the decision of the glibc maintainers to break compatibility between 2.0.x (beta) and 2.1.x (production). This forced RHAT users to quickly upgrade when 2.1 went live.
This is why I have run Slackware for the past 4 years. It is stable and reliable. Only the best packages make it into the distribution, unlike SuSE or RHAT.
This is why I think Slackware has the highest quality of any distribution.
Later.
--
Uhh, good try, but at least half of a Slackware ISO image is not needed for every kind of install. When I downloaded 4.0, I pulled all the directories in the slakware directory and 2 files that I dd'd onto install floppies. The total amount of disk space was about 300 MB. Clearly not the 650 MB max for a cdrom.
Thus, if you have experience with Slackware installs, you only have to pull what you really need. For example, the 30 other install kernels that are built for various types of hardware is not needed, but would be included in an iso image. Later
--
Last I checked (today, actually), the "latest" Debian was running 2.0.36 kernel?
Hello?
--
Slack 7.0 is glibc 2.1 based. In this case, no matter what distribution (Slackware, Red Hat, SuSE) you use, you are going to have to reinstall.
This is because mixing major release versions of the operating sytem libraries (libc5 and glibc2) causes a lot of pain. You'll try to incrementally update packages only to find that part of your system stops working.
--
AFAIK, the reason thread scheduling is left unspecified is that all the platforms that can run a JVM do not all have the same threading capabilities at the Operating System level.
--
At my company, we have implemented a complex time-series calc engine for financial data. It is implemented entirely in Java. We built it because there is no equivalent off-the-shelf application on the market. This application is way more complex than you can imagine and is definitely a "serious application".
Java is now our standard, enterprize development language. Legacy maintenance code is still in C, C++, and Perl. As the execution speed of Java increases, I do see Java replacing all of these.
I can honestly say that after coding in Java for the past 6 months (coding C the past 4 years), it is far quicker to implement a lot of stuff using Java than C. This is why Java has become our de facto development language.
--
This sounds too much like the US Government's argument for public-key encryption. Do you really believe that because you own your car's cameras that the goverment cannot just take it under the guise of 'public safety'.
This is why our freedoms in the U.S. continue to be eroded away. People are duped into thinking that new technology will save them from the evils of thinking for themselves. (Not meant to slam previous poster, just a fact of society).
What ever happened to common sense? I guess it's become uncommon. We are moving more toward 1984, IMHO.
--
The rationale for prohibiting the use of loans (e.g., a credit card such as Visa) for gambling is to protect compulsive gamblers from themselves. This law is an example of "the common good". In this case, society is better off by not letting gamblers borrow many than by the situation in the story.
The web sites should know better. I think what this woman did is detestable, but it is legal. This is the difference between something that is legal and something that is moral. Unfortunately, the U.S. legal system is not always a question of morality (c.f. O.J. Simpson...)
--
I completely agree with your sentiment. The breakup of the powerful regional phone companies (the Baby Bells) has not been as successful. Here in Denver (the home of US West), we cannot get residential phone service from anyone other than US West. Business customers do have alternatives, such as ICG Communications. US West keeps moaning that "they built the phone system, so they own it; therefore, they should control access to it." Given this, it is not profitable (yet) for companies like ICG to even try to provide access to residential customers.
I am not sure if regulating competition and full access to the cable network won't cause the same result -- residential consumers are ignored for the sake of more lucrative business accounts.
Finally, it is a matter of principal if you want the Federal Government to have to regulate every little thing in our lives! Personally, I want less government intervention. Remember who pays for this stuff? We do -- it is our taxes!
--
Point of fact: Sun has been a member of Linux International for at least 3 years (probably longer, but I remember them being a member then), so to characterize them as a "Johnny-come-lately" is debatable.
Now, Sun's latest acts of releasing Solaris source and Star Office source do probably qualify as open source(tm) bandwagon...
--