That is pretty cynical - people around these parts do tend to want to correlate every move Microsoft makes as having something to do with the antitrust trial.
See, people think they're conniving, backstabbing, predatory bastards. I agree, I just think that they're smarter than other people think. Most gigantic companies are like slobbering wolves, they'll do anything for a scrap of profit, no matter how demeaning or dangerous to themselves or others. What makes Microsoft so bad is that they're not like that. Companies that are stupid and go for profit regardless of long term consequences get squashed. By Microsoft. Microsoft is more of the patient wolf, still hungry for profit, still posessed only by the need for profit, (what are companies for, particularly publically traded ones) but they're smart enough to take short term hits in order to guarantee long term profit. They're smart enough to injure their opponent and then let them bleed to death rather than waste energy and possibly get injured themselves by ending the fight quickly.
Microsoft's gleaming white teeth swoop in out of nowhere to clamp down on the unsuspecting jugulars of nubile companies. They rip, tear, eviscerate, and slash their way to the heart of the company's business, impaling the very soul and spirit of the hapless competitor upon the iron halberd of market dominance.
What the hell am I talking about? I shouldn't post while under the influence of metaphors...:)
It's really not a testament to the strength of the GPL, even though I wish it was.
There are a myriad of reasons why somebody would not want to go to court over something, not just because they know they're wrong. After all, OJ taught us that America's real motto is "Freedom and Justice for all those who can afford it". If a company really wanted to fight it and win, I have no doubt that sufficient funds could pull it off.
But there are loads of other reasons why a company wouldn't want to do that. (Or an individual, which lacks the funds a company has). First, you've got the fact that the GPL holds the moral high ground, and you would be seen as stealing from people who give things away for free. Robbing what the public might see as the poor is bad PR form. Also, win or lose with regard to litigation, it's a very LONG and EXPENSIVE process. For something to be worth litigating over, not only does the individual have to have a lot of money, but the product itself has to have a large amount of value.
Dammit, I'm tired of this "Take over the world" mentality. I don't particularly care if linux has 2% or 20% of market share. I just like to use linux because as a developer, it kicks tremendous ass. Windows, on the other hand, might kick ass if you spent several thousand dollars on development tools, but it still wouldn't be as cool as linux.
For 99% of people, the computer is to get something done. If you can get your job done, and work with other people, then who cares what OS you're using? Just use the one you like most! For me, that happens to be Linux.
So basically, who cares if a bunch of hackers improve Windows? If it was GPL'd today, it would probably take 2 years of hacking at least before it even approached linux in terms of stability.
I don't think so. The WINE folks would have to comb through so many neck-deep piles of garbage in the code that they wouldn't know what to do with it. If the goal was to develop a windows-lookalike, I think it would be much easier to start from scratch and cut the cruft. Unfortunately, since WINE is trying to run applications that run specifically with that cruft, they'd probably have to surf the largest dumpster of source code that has ever existed - Windows.
What gets me about WINE is that it's probably not realistic to expect that everything will work perfectly ever, because there are so many programs in windows that actually DEPEND on legacy bugs in the windows API. For example, I've spoken with some lotus developers, and the cc:Mail that was originally developed for windows 3.1 that many corps still use depends on some bugs in the windows API. The kind of stuff Microsoft can't fix, because if they do, it will break applications.
What kind of project would PURPOSELY put bugs in their code? I think that that's what you're up against when you take on Windows.
I don't mean to slam the WINE guys, I think they're doing an abso-fuckin'-lutely fabulous job. They've got way more guts as coders than I'll ever have to take on that beast.:)
Something that I've seen missing from all of the candidate's web sites is their policy on the internet. How can you campaign on the internet and not discuss the issues pertaining to the very media you're putting your ideas out on? My previous impressions of Gore have been that his policies on the internet are not very similar to that of the internet populace.
Also, on a note about Gore, how can the internet populace vote for a candidate who is pro-censorship? What effect would Tipper Gore (former member of the PMRC) have on the White ouse?
He didn't say "MacOS" he said "MacOS 8". I think the current incarnation in 7.something, which would lead me to believe that the whole Darwin business is going to be MacOS 8. And that would make sense, since they'd be starting with a codebase that runs fine on x86 though.
But if the original poster wasn't talking about Darwin, then I'm with you on this one. WTF?:)
No, of course you wouldn't call it GNU/NT. It's not the fact that linux uses a lot of bundled GNU utilities or that GNU is all over the place in linux. That's why I added the comment in my post, "If you look at linux in terms of the GNU framework".
The GNU project was about creating an entire UNIX like system, which consists of tools, a compiler, and all the rest of that jazz. The kernel was the last piece they needed, and when linux came along as a GPL'd kernel, sure it was an independant project from GNU, but the people at GNU looked at it as the last piece of the puzzle just sliding into place, fitting perfectly with all the other pieces.
So why not GNU/NT? Because NT isn't GPL'd, it isn't UNIX like, you could distribute it with GPL'd utilities and use it that way, but that was never the point of NT, and because NT is about corporate profits, not about freedom. That's why you wouldn't call it GNU/NT no matter how many GPL'd utilities you used with it.
You've fallen prey to a fatal error - and that is once again, somebody has taken slashdot seriously.
People may accuse me for being an elitist, but...back in the day, when not only was the signal/noise ratio good, but there still was discernible signal on slashdot, back when people weren't constantly questioning the ethics of the people writing the damn stories because they hadn't been bought and sold 1000 times, and back in the day before the grits pouring, natalie worshipping people who inhabit these parts now, slashdot MIGHT have been worth taking seriously.
Since all of that stuff has long since happened, it's not worth taking seriously.
What I don't understand is this - you're sticking up for Jon Katz against the flamers as if it was hurting YOU personally. It shouldn't. And even if you were Jon Katz, it shouldn't hurt you personally. Remember all of the drawbacks of anonymity, and how AC's are the "emotional" equivalents of script kiddies - they strike out at anything that they can see, hoping that in one out of 1000 people that they'll actually make some headway.
These are just flames, messages posted on a board. If you lose sleep over them, that's when you should worry about whether they're true or not. Just brush them off, and don't feel the need to stick up for Jon Katz since he doesn't feel the need to stick up for himself.
I don't mean this to sound like a flame, but even if it does, I don't particularly care. Because I know that I'm a complete stranger to you, and that since this post isn't presenting any technical knowledge, you should feel very free to completely ingore it and think of me as just some random idiot.
If it makes you any happier, you should. Don't let this stuff get to you. Stick around slashdot long enough, and you'll be tarred and feathered with flames. But they don't have any basis in objective reality - they're just the knee-jerk reactions of some complete stranger that you will NEVER MEET in your entire life.
I think the problem with that is that the people who are really clueful are out *doing* what they love, and don't have time to sit down and write about it.
It's not meant as an insult to writers, but I do think that a certain amount of the old adage: "Those who can, do, those who can't, teach" is true.
My LUG is having that problem right now. A lot of the people in my LUG are absolute perl *wizards* but they're so damn busy coding and making wheelbarrow loads full of money at it that they don't have time to come sit down and TALK about linux.
Maybe it's the same with writers and linux. The people who are the ones that you'd really like to see write a weekly column, (like say, Linus or Alan Cox) are too damn busy doing what it is that put them in that spot of your admiration to enjoy your admiration by actually writing.:)
Boy is that true...I don't have anything against the man personally, but he can be wordy, and he does have a specific set of "soapboxes" that he likes to get up on when the opportunity shows itself.
I'm thinking though that Katz has set a record for the longest set of answers to an interview. There might be a longer interview elsewhere where the person got more questions, (like I think the l0pht interview was pretty long) but in general this seems like one of the longer ones.
I could of course be smoking crack on that one though, just that this one "feels" longer. (Whether that's an unintentional indictment of his writing style or not, I don't know)
I know that there are a lot of people out there that wonder about the opinions and personality of JonKatz. While I'm not particularly one of them, I did have to read this one anyway just to see what the answers to some of the questions from the other day were going to be.
Aside from the people who are interested in what he personally thinks about things, what was the purpose of this interview? I don't think anybody was misguided enough to think that this interview was going to unite everyone under one flag of either hating or loving Katz. Repeatedly in his answers, he pointed out that he's just another member of the slashdot community, just like anybody else that wants to be. I agree with him on that, he is a member of the slashdot community, and though I don't have to like it, I do have to accept it, because I don't think anybody deserves to be thrown out of slashdot.
But still, if he's just another average slashdot joe as he sometimes portrays himself, (the only difference being that his comments have a "moderation" so powerful that they show up on the main page) then what's the effective difference between interviewing him and interviewing some other prolific slashdot poster who has a large crowd of people who both love and hate him? (Just tossing out names, people like Signal 11, Foogle, Bruce Perens, Tom Christiansen, etc)
So, I'm not trying to flame, but I'm honestly curious - aside from quenching the curiosity of a few people who honestly want to know what it's like to be inside Jon Katz's head, what was the purpose of this interview???
(Oh, and what gives with the superscript 1's for the apostrophes?)
If the employer owned the machine, they can do whatever the hell they want with it. If the employee owned the machine, it should be illegal. (I didn't see in the article whether the employee definitively owned the machine or not - correct me if I'm wrong)
It's the same reason why when you work at an office, and they give you an email account and a computer, most real companies make you sign something that says "This is our equipment that we are letting you use, don't ever be fooled into thinking that you can't be monitored" -- in other words, generally speaking, when the company owns the machine, they give you fair warning that you have no privacy on their equipment. Even without the warning though it makes sense that they would have that right.
But all of that assumes that they in fact own the machines, which I'm not sure about. Please post below if you know.
Oh come on - it's not like this is a major ethical transgression on slashdot's part to announce that a new unannounced beta has been released.
In fact, it's their bloody job. This is news on the internet, which means that time on the scale of hours is critical. Sure, it would be "nice" of slashdot to coordinate everything with Redhat, but they can't do that.
I for one want to hear about these things as quickly as possible, because that's what slashdot is good at for me - speed. If I want to hear it after it's official and all the mirror sites have a copy, then I'll bloody well read a press release off of RedHat's site when they announce it.
Jeez, you think this guy is actually Bruce Perens? With that little period after his nick, you never can tell...
Jesus, this is a whole new frontier in trolling. Not only do trolls have to talk about grits, natalie portman, and other BS like that, but they have to try to assume somebody else's name (and I'm just waiting now for somebody to come on as "Uruk." and start posting this shit)
The problem with the web is that there isn't a kick/ban function.:(
I could just read between the lines seeing you lead on that hapless employee...going back again and again to the RPM issue, getting her to reiterate what she said (whether it was a lie or just simply a total lack of understanding with everything having to do with linux I'm not sure) and then asking her several times if they were running LinuxOne on their webserver...
I have no idea about the legality of taping conversations on the phone like that, but getting people to reiterate lies like that and eliciting things that can appear damaging to them later seems to me like what was intended when there were laws made about "entrapment"
That said, the phone conversation was funny as hell, and they deserve to be exposed. I feel bad for that sorry employee though, who obviously can't swallow her pride and say "I don't know" on any of the issues...RPM a programming language??? Might she somehow be thinking of.spec files? (Which isn't *really* programming anyway..)
Just tell me one thing man, ease my mind. Please tell me that you were saying "ly-nucks" instead of "lih-nucks" on the phone because you were playing the part of the dumb customer.:) (/me braces myself for a "linux" pronunciation holy war:)
I could just read between the lines seeing you lead on that hapless employee...going back again and again to the RPM issue, getting her to reiterate what she said (whether it was a lie or just simply a total lack of understanding with everything having to do with linux I'm not sure) and then asking her several times if they were running LinuxOne on their webserver...
I have no idea about the legality of taping conversations on the phone like that, but getting people to reiterate lies like that and eliciting things that can appear damaging to them later seems to me like what was intended when there were laws made about "entrapment"
That said, the phone conversation was funny as hell, and they deserve to be exposed. I feel bad for that sorry employee though, who obviously can't swallow her pride and say "I don't know" on any of the issues...RPM a programming language??? Might she somehow be thinking of.spec files? (Which isn't *really* programming anyway..)
Just tell me one thing man, ease my mind. Please tell me that you were saying "ly-nucks" instead of "lih-nucks" on the phone because you were playing the part of the dumb customer.:) (/me braces myself for a "linux" pronunciation holy war:)
"Don't buy from Amazon.com, but do waste their bandwidth by looking for books there."
I used to think that was a good idea, but it turns out that it's not. Amazon doesn't make all of its money off of book sales, it also makes money advertising and so on, so even when you just go to waste their bandwidth and take up resources, they're glad to have you do it, because it's one more hit they add to their hitcount. They then go out to advertisers and say "We had X hits/day which means that advertising costs $Y"
The bigger the $X, the bigger the $Y I would think.
Really though, they do make money without you ever buying anything. If websites couldn't do that, then slashdot would have never been bought by Andover, and Andover would have never been swallowed by VA.:)
They don't care man. The only credibility that they need is credibility with gullible people who like to gamble their money away on speculative stocks. And unfortunately, when you're in a good economy and foolish stock traders feel like they're bullet proof, all you need to gain credibility in those people's eyes is a buzzword.
And that buzzword is linux. VA and Redhat are great companies, and they actually have something to offer, but they did cash in on that buzzword. There's nothing shameful in making lots of money if you actually have something to offer like Redhat and VA.
But keep in mind that linuxone only needs to have 1/10th of their success in order to "succeed" in what they're doing.
I was fortunate enough to go to the expo on friday in new york, and I couldn't believe my eyes that Linux One actually showed up. I thought that they were strictly a screw-the-investor outfit, and that they wouldn't even bother trying to sell a profit seeing as how they are such pariahs in the linux community. I figured that they would just stick to screwing investors out of their money at the IPO.
But they were actually there! There was some guy who looked like he was in his late 50's (Caucasian male) who said that he was the VP of the company. I walked up to their booth, and I was just checking out what they had to offer, (mostly CD's and a few stickers and things, frankly they had one of the most boring booths there) and true to form, somebody walked up and said "This floppy that you gave me has program X on it" (I don't remember what program X was) "Program X is under the GPL, so I was wondering if I can get a source code floppy or CD for this program"
After much hemming and hawing, the VP of LinuxOne (if that's who he was) explained that he wasn't a technical guy, that he was just there to run the booth, and that he would talk to the more technical people. The guy at the booth gave him a hard time a while longer and eventually agreed to write down his email address for the LinuxOne guy to get in touch with him later. (Yeah, like that'll ever happen)
Doesn't it seem strange that Linux One would send somebody who didn't even know enough about linux software to realize that for a lot of packages, it's probably somewhat expected to have access to the source code? It's possible that this guy was playing dumb - but it sure didn't look like he was playing, if you get my drift. I can't believe that they would send somebody non-technical to the show, even if only to snowjob the show-goers.
When seeing people flame LinuxOne on slashdot, I read up on the company, and thought that they were a completely crappy, flighty company that seemed determined to crowbar the dollars out of hapless daytraders, but still, somewhere I had some drop of pity for them since it was possible that they were the victims of some gigantic misunderstanding.
They're not. I hate to say it, but short of whatever the Natalie Portman trolls have been saying, whatever negative thing that you've heard about Linux One is probably true. I certainly can't think of a single attack on them that I've ever heard that doesn't seem to be true.
"I don't really care if it's legal or not in their home country, I think it's morally wrong to force our opensource ideals onto companies by tactics slashdot would raise holy hell about if the rolls were reversed."
Your opinion has been registered. Fortunately, there are alternative concepts of "morality" and "ethics" that are out there today. The standard set of morals that would lead you to believe that what the person asking the question in this article was doing is wrong is not the root of the way that everybody thinks about things.
Economics is morality, and morality is economics. They're essentially indistinguishable, and this is one of those examples where it's a bit more evident than in other places.
That may be true in an extremely limited sense, but in general, it's not.
Set your threshold at -1, and post something pro-linux, and watch the flames of karma-whore, linux nazi, and the usual oatmeal/natalie portman BS fly.
There are other ways of teaching newbies to find stuff for themselves then cutting their heads off. Namely, "here's the resource, but more importantly, here's how I found it..."
GNU does not force people to use their utilities, no matter how you feel about the issue. The vast majority of UNIXen ship with their own proprietary utilities that you are free to use in leiu of GNU utilities. Whether or not you'd trust your box to programs that you have no knowledge of whatsoever is really up to you though.
Do you *honestly* think that RMS is out to get you? Because that's how it sounds. It sounds like you're scared of the GNU bogeyman that's riding into town and forcing you to use free software. That sounds like a persecution complex to me. And comparing GNU to microsoft? Do you have any idea of the difference in scale between GNU and microsoft?
If *I* were RMS, and I was against people making money doing what they love to do, I wouldn't have made it possible to make money selling GPL'd software. But RMS went out of his way to make it possible to sell GPL'd software at a profit. He didn't have to do that. While it's recommended that you charge for the media, there's nothing stopping you from selling deluxe distributions of gcc for $2,500 a pop. He's not anti-profit or anti-capitalist, as much as the people who would like to discredit him would love to slap the "commie" label on him. He's just pro-ethics, and against profit where it comes at the expense of freedom.
When you refer to the 20 year grudge, would you be referring to the other MIT programmers being hired away at high salaries? If so, I would question whether or not that's a grudge...as one of the best programmers in the department, he probably could have gone that route whenever he chose, but he simply chose not to, for ethical reasons.
GNU is not Microsoft, part of the essence of freedom is that you don't even have to choose freedom when it's offered to you on a plate via GNU. Chill out and realize that it's OK to disagree with GNU and go your own way, it is not however OK to spread FUD based off of your misconceptions about what GNU is about.
Just calm down man. It's just a slashdot thread. Remember, that this is the site that has people who fantasize about people naked and petrified. Don't take anything so seriously that you feel you need to give your 'papal indulgence' to those who transgress laws of etiquette.
This is not real life. This is the internet. Repeat that until you believe it, because it's true.
Slashdot Mirror
That is pretty cynical - people around these parts do tend to want to correlate every move Microsoft makes as having something to do with the antitrust trial.
:)
See, people think they're conniving, backstabbing, predatory bastards. I agree, I just think that they're smarter than other people think. Most gigantic companies are like slobbering wolves, they'll do anything for a scrap of profit, no matter how demeaning or dangerous to themselves or others. What makes Microsoft so bad is that they're not like that. Companies that are stupid and go for profit regardless of long term consequences get squashed. By Microsoft. Microsoft is more of the patient wolf, still hungry for profit, still posessed only by the need for profit, (what are companies for, particularly publically traded ones) but they're smart enough to take short term hits in order to guarantee long term profit. They're smart enough to injure their opponent and then let them bleed to death rather than waste energy and possibly get injured themselves by ending the fight quickly.
Microsoft's gleaming white teeth swoop in out of nowhere to clamp down on the unsuspecting jugulars of nubile companies. They rip, tear, eviscerate, and slash their way to the heart of the company's business, impaling the very soul and spirit of the hapless competitor upon the iron halberd of market dominance.
What the hell am I talking about? I shouldn't post while under the influence of metaphors...
It's really not a testament to the strength of the GPL, even though I wish it was.
There are a myriad of reasons why somebody would not want to go to court over something, not just because they know they're wrong. After all, OJ taught us that America's real motto is "Freedom and Justice for all those who can afford it". If a company really wanted to fight it and win, I have no doubt that sufficient funds could pull it off.
But there are loads of other reasons why a company wouldn't want to do that. (Or an individual, which lacks the funds a company has). First, you've got the fact that the GPL holds the moral high ground, and you would be seen as stealing from people who give things away for free. Robbing what the public might see as the poor is bad PR form. Also, win or lose with regard to litigation, it's a very LONG and EXPENSIVE process. For something to be worth litigating over, not only does the individual have to have a lot of money, but the product itself has to have a large amount of value.
Dammit, I'm tired of this "Take over the world" mentality. I don't particularly care if linux has 2% or 20% of market share. I just like to use linux because as a developer, it kicks tremendous ass. Windows, on the other hand, might kick ass if you spent several thousand dollars on development tools, but it still wouldn't be as cool as linux.
For 99% of people, the computer is to get something done. If you can get your job done, and work with other people, then who cares what OS you're using? Just use the one you like most! For me, that happens to be Linux.
So basically, who cares if a bunch of hackers improve Windows? If it was GPL'd today, it would probably take 2 years of hacking at least before it even approached linux in terms of stability.
Oh forget it, it's just too easy. :)
I don't think so. The WINE folks would have to comb through so many neck-deep piles of garbage in the code that they wouldn't know what to do with it. If the goal was to develop a windows-lookalike, I think it would be much easier to start from scratch and cut the cruft. Unfortunately, since WINE is trying to run applications that run specifically with that cruft, they'd probably have to surf the largest dumpster of source code that has ever existed - Windows.
:)
What gets me about WINE is that it's probably not realistic to expect that everything will work perfectly ever, because there are so many programs in windows that actually DEPEND on legacy bugs in the windows API. For example, I've spoken with some lotus developers, and the cc:Mail that was originally developed for windows 3.1 that many corps still use depends on some bugs in the windows API. The kind of stuff Microsoft can't fix, because if they do, it will break applications.
What kind of project would PURPOSELY put bugs in their code? I think that that's what you're up against when you take on Windows.
I don't mean to slam the WINE guys, I think they're doing an abso-fuckin'-lutely fabulous job. They've got way more guts as coders than I'll ever have to take on that beast.
Something that I've seen missing from all of the candidate's web sites is their policy on the internet. How can you campaign on the internet and not discuss the issues pertaining to the very media you're putting your ideas out on? My previous impressions of Gore have been that his policies on the internet are not very similar to that of the internet populace.
Also, on a note about Gore, how can the internet populace vote for a candidate who is pro-censorship? What effect would Tipper Gore (former member of the PMRC) have on the White ouse?
He didn't say "MacOS" he said "MacOS 8". I think the current incarnation in 7.something, which would lead me to believe that the whole Darwin business is going to be MacOS 8. And that would make sense, since they'd be starting with a codebase that runs fine on x86 though.
:)
But if the original poster wasn't talking about Darwin, then I'm with you on this one. WTF?
No, of course you wouldn't call it GNU/NT. It's not the fact that linux uses a lot of bundled GNU utilities or that GNU is all over the place in linux. That's why I added the comment in my post, "If you look at linux in terms of the GNU framework".
The GNU project was about creating an entire UNIX like system, which consists of tools, a compiler, and all the rest of that jazz. The kernel was the last piece they needed, and when linux came along as a GPL'd kernel, sure it was an independant project from GNU, but the people at GNU looked at it as the last piece of the puzzle just sliding into place, fitting perfectly with all the other pieces.
So why not GNU/NT? Because NT isn't GPL'd, it isn't UNIX like, you could distribute it with GPL'd utilities and use it that way, but that was never the point of NT, and because NT is about corporate profits, not about freedom. That's why you wouldn't call it GNU/NT no matter how many GPL'd utilities you used with it.
You've fallen prey to a fatal error - and that is once again, somebody has taken slashdot seriously.
People may accuse me for being an elitist, but...back in the day, when not only was the signal/noise ratio good, but there still was discernible signal on slashdot, back when people weren't constantly questioning the ethics of the people writing the damn stories because they hadn't been bought and sold 1000 times, and back in the day before the grits pouring, natalie worshipping people who inhabit these parts now, slashdot MIGHT have been worth taking seriously.
Since all of that stuff has long since happened, it's not worth taking seriously.
What I don't understand is this - you're sticking up for Jon Katz against the flamers as if it was hurting YOU personally. It shouldn't. And even if you were Jon Katz, it shouldn't hurt you personally. Remember all of the drawbacks of anonymity, and how AC's are the "emotional" equivalents of script kiddies - they strike out at anything that they can see, hoping that in one out of 1000 people that they'll actually make some headway.
These are just flames, messages posted on a board. If you lose sleep over them, that's when you should worry about whether they're true or not. Just brush them off, and don't feel the need to stick up for Jon Katz since he doesn't feel the need to stick up for himself.
I don't mean this to sound like a flame, but even if it does, I don't particularly care. Because I know that I'm a complete stranger to you, and that since this post isn't presenting any technical knowledge, you should feel very free to completely ingore it and think of me as just some random idiot.
If it makes you any happier, you should. Don't let this stuff get to you. Stick around slashdot long enough, and you'll be tarred and feathered with flames. But they don't have any basis in objective reality - they're just the knee-jerk reactions of some complete stranger that you will NEVER MEET in your entire life.
I think the problem with that is that the people who are really clueful are out *doing* what they love, and don't have time to sit down and write about it.
:)
:)
It's not meant as an insult to writers, but I do think that a certain amount of the old adage: "Those who can, do, those who can't, teach" is true.
My LUG is having that problem right now. A lot of the people in my LUG are absolute perl *wizards* but they're so damn busy coding and making wheelbarrow loads full of money at it that they don't have time to come sit down and TALK about linux.
Maybe it's the same with writers and linux. The people who are the ones that you'd really like to see write a weekly column, (like say, Linus or Alan Cox) are too damn busy doing what it is that put them in that spot of your admiration to enjoy your admiration by actually writing.
Sucks, don't it?
Boy is that true...I don't have anything against the man personally, but he can be wordy, and he does have a specific set of "soapboxes" that he likes to get up on when the opportunity shows itself.
I'm thinking though that Katz has set a record for the longest set of answers to an interview. There might be a longer interview elsewhere where the person got more questions, (like I think the l0pht interview was pretty long) but in general this seems like one of the longer ones.
I could of course be smoking crack on that one though, just that this one "feels" longer. (Whether that's an unintentional indictment of his writing style or not, I don't know)
I know that there are a lot of people out there that wonder about the opinions and personality of JonKatz. While I'm not particularly one of them, I did have to read this one anyway just to see what the answers to some of the questions from the other day were going to be.
Aside from the people who are interested in what he personally thinks about things, what was the purpose of this interview? I don't think anybody was misguided enough to think that this interview was going to unite everyone under one flag of either hating or loving Katz. Repeatedly in his answers, he pointed out that he's just another member of the slashdot community, just like anybody else that wants to be. I agree with him on that, he is a member of the slashdot community, and though I don't have to like it, I do have to accept it, because I don't think anybody deserves to be thrown out of slashdot.
But still, if he's just another average slashdot joe as he sometimes portrays himself, (the only difference being that his comments have a "moderation" so powerful that they show up on the main page) then what's the effective difference between interviewing him and interviewing some other prolific slashdot poster who has a large crowd of people who both love and hate him? (Just tossing out names, people like Signal 11, Foogle, Bruce Perens, Tom Christiansen, etc)
So, I'm not trying to flame, but I'm honestly curious - aside from quenching the curiosity of a few people who honestly want to know what it's like to be inside Jon Katz's head, what was the purpose of this interview???
(Oh, and what gives with the superscript 1's for the apostrophes?)
It seems to me that at least it's semi-clear.
If the employer owned the machine, they can do whatever the hell they want with it. If the employee owned the machine, it should be illegal. (I didn't see in the article whether the employee definitively owned the machine or not - correct me if I'm wrong)
It's the same reason why when you work at an office, and they give you an email account and a computer, most real companies make you sign something that says "This is our equipment that we are letting you use, don't ever be fooled into thinking that you can't be monitored" -- in other words, generally speaking, when the company owns the machine, they give you fair warning that you have no privacy on their equipment. Even without the warning though it makes sense that they would have that right.
But all of that assumes that they in fact own the machines, which I'm not sure about. Please post below if you know.
Oh come on - it's not like this is a major ethical transgression on slashdot's part to announce that a new unannounced beta has been released.
In fact, it's their bloody job. This is news on the internet, which means that time on the scale of hours is critical. Sure, it would be "nice" of slashdot to coordinate everything with Redhat, but they can't do that.
I for one want to hear about these things as quickly as possible, because that's what slashdot is good at for me - speed. If I want to hear it after it's official and all the mirror sites have a copy, then I'll bloody well read a press release off of RedHat's site when they announce it.
Jeez, you think this guy is actually Bruce Perens? With that little period after his nick, you never can tell...
:(
Jesus, this is a whole new frontier in trolling. Not only do trolls have to talk about grits, natalie portman, and other BS like that, but they have to try to assume somebody else's name (and I'm just waiting now for somebody to come on as "Uruk." and start posting this shit)
The problem with the web is that there isn't a kick/ban function.
This is one of those trolls who likes to slag other people by pretending to be them. Notice that little "." after his nick?
:)
Besides, if this *IS* Bruce Perens, then he's smoking crack.
I could just read between the lines seeing you lead on that hapless employee...going back again and again to the RPM issue, getting her to reiterate what she said (whether it was a lie or just simply a total lack of understanding with everything having to do with linux I'm not sure) and then asking her several times if they were running LinuxOne on their webserver...
.spec files? (Which isn't *really* programming anyway..)
:) (/me braces myself for a "linux" pronunciation holy war :)
I have no idea about the legality of taping conversations on the phone like that, but getting people to reiterate lies like that and eliciting things that can appear damaging to them later seems to me like what was intended when there were laws made about "entrapment"
That said, the phone conversation was funny as hell, and they deserve to be exposed. I feel bad for that sorry employee though, who obviously can't swallow her pride and say "I don't know" on any of the issues...RPM a programming language??? Might she somehow be thinking of
Just tell me one thing man, ease my mind. Please tell me that you were saying "ly-nucks" instead of "lih-nucks" on the phone because you were playing the part of the dumb customer.
I could just read between the lines seeing you lead on that hapless employee...going back again and again to the RPM issue, getting her to reiterate what she said (whether it was a lie or just simply a total lack of understanding with everything having to do with linux I'm not sure) and then asking her several times if they were running LinuxOne on their webserver...
.spec files? (Which isn't *really* programming anyway..)
:) (/me braces myself for a "linux" pronunciation holy war :)
I have no idea about the legality of taping conversations on the phone like that, but getting people to reiterate lies like that and eliciting things that can appear damaging to them later seems to me like what was intended when there were laws made about "entrapment"
That said, the phone conversation was funny as hell, and they deserve to be exposed. I feel bad for that sorry employee though, who obviously can't swallow her pride and say "I don't know" on any of the issues...RPM a programming language??? Might she somehow be thinking of
Just tell me one thing man, ease my mind. Please tell me that you were saying "ly-nucks" instead of "lih-nucks" on the phone because you were playing the part of the dumb customer.
"Don't buy from Amazon.com, but do waste their bandwidth by looking for books there."
:)
I used to think that was a good idea, but it turns out that it's not. Amazon doesn't make all of its money off of book sales, it also makes money advertising and so on, so even when you just go to waste their bandwidth and take up resources, they're glad to have you do it, because it's one more hit they add to their hitcount. They then go out to advertisers and say "We had X hits/day which means that advertising costs $Y"
The bigger the $X, the bigger the $Y I would think.
Really though, they do make money without you ever buying anything. If websites couldn't do that, then slashdot would have never been bought by Andover, and Andover would have never been swallowed by VA.
They don't care man. The only credibility that they need is credibility with gullible people who like to gamble their money away on speculative stocks. And unfortunately, when you're in a good economy and foolish stock traders feel like they're bullet proof, all you need to gain credibility in those people's eyes is a buzzword.
And that buzzword is linux. VA and Redhat are great companies, and they actually have something to offer, but they did cash in on that buzzword. There's nothing shameful in making lots of money if you actually have something to offer like Redhat and VA.
But keep in mind that linuxone only needs to have 1/10th of their success in order to "succeed" in what they're doing.
I was fortunate enough to go to the expo on friday in new york, and I couldn't believe my eyes that Linux One actually showed up. I thought that they were strictly a screw-the-investor outfit, and that they wouldn't even bother trying to sell a profit seeing as how they are such pariahs in the linux community. I figured that they would just stick to screwing investors out of their money at the IPO.
But they were actually there! There was some guy who looked like he was in his late 50's (Caucasian male) who said that he was the VP of the company. I walked up to their booth, and I was just checking out what they had to offer, (mostly CD's and a few stickers and things, frankly they had one of the most boring booths there) and true to form, somebody walked up and said "This floppy that you gave me has program X on it" (I don't remember what program X was) "Program X is under the GPL, so I was wondering if I can get a source code floppy or CD for this program"
After much hemming and hawing, the VP of LinuxOne (if that's who he was) explained that he wasn't a technical guy, that he was just there to run the booth, and that he would talk to the more technical people. The guy at the booth gave him a hard time a while longer and eventually agreed to write down his email address for the LinuxOne guy to get in touch with him later. (Yeah, like that'll ever happen)
Doesn't it seem strange that Linux One would send somebody who didn't even know enough about linux software to realize that for a lot of packages, it's probably somewhat expected to have access to the source code? It's possible that this guy was playing dumb - but it sure didn't look like he was playing, if you get my drift. I can't believe that they would send somebody non-technical to the show, even if only to snowjob the show-goers.
When seeing people flame LinuxOne on slashdot, I read up on the company, and thought that they were a completely crappy, flighty company that seemed determined to crowbar the dollars out of hapless daytraders, but still, somewhere I had some drop of pity for them since it was possible that they were the victims of some gigantic misunderstanding.
They're not. I hate to say it, but short of whatever the Natalie Portman trolls have been saying, whatever negative thing that you've heard about Linux One is probably true. I certainly can't think of a single attack on them that I've ever heard that doesn't seem to be true.
"I don't really care if it's legal or not in their home country, I think it's morally wrong to force our opensource ideals onto companies by tactics slashdot would raise holy hell about if the rolls were reversed."
Your opinion has been registered. Fortunately, there are alternative concepts of "morality" and "ethics" that are out there today. The standard set of morals that would lead you to believe that what the person asking the question in this article was doing is wrong is not the root of the way that everybody thinks about things.
Economics is morality, and morality is economics. They're essentially indistinguishable, and this is one of those examples where it's a bit more evident than in other places.
That may be true in an extremely limited sense, but in general, it's not.
Set your threshold at -1, and post something pro-linux, and watch the flames of karma-whore, linux nazi, and the usual oatmeal/natalie portman BS fly.
There are other ways of teaching newbies to find stuff for themselves then cutting their heads off. Namely, "here's the resource, but more importantly, here's how I found it..."
GNU does not force people to use their utilities, no matter how you feel about the issue. The vast majority of UNIXen ship with their own proprietary utilities that you are free to use in leiu of GNU utilities. Whether or not you'd trust your box to programs that you have no knowledge of whatsoever is really up to you though.
Do you *honestly* think that RMS is out to get you? Because that's how it sounds. It sounds like you're scared of the GNU bogeyman that's riding into town and forcing you to use free software. That sounds like a persecution complex to me. And comparing GNU to microsoft? Do you have any idea of the difference in scale between GNU and microsoft?
If *I* were RMS, and I was against people making money doing what they love to do, I wouldn't have made it possible to make money selling GPL'd software. But RMS went out of his way to make it possible to sell GPL'd software at a profit. He didn't have to do that. While it's recommended that you charge for the media, there's nothing stopping you from selling deluxe distributions of gcc for $2,500 a pop. He's not anti-profit or anti-capitalist, as much as the people who would like to discredit him would love to slap the "commie" label on him. He's just pro-ethics, and against profit where it comes at the expense of freedom.
When you refer to the 20 year grudge, would you be referring to the other MIT programmers being hired away at high salaries? If so, I would question whether or not that's a grudge...as one of the best programmers in the department, he probably could have gone that route whenever he chose, but he simply chose not to, for ethical reasons.
GNU is not Microsoft, part of the essence of freedom is that you don't even have to choose freedom when it's offered to you on a plate via GNU. Chill out and realize that it's OK to disagree with GNU and go your own way, it is not however OK to spread FUD based off of your misconceptions about what GNU is about.
Just calm down man. It's just a slashdot thread. Remember, that this is the site that has people who fantasize about people naked and petrified. Don't take anything so seriously that you feel you need to give your 'papal indulgence' to those who transgress laws of etiquette.
This is not real life. This is the internet. Repeat that until you believe it, because it's true.