I've noticed this too - similarly, when moderators come in, a lot of the time the posts that are good tend to go very, very high, and some posts that are OK but maybe not 5 material stay stuck at 1 or 2 because they're somewhat buried. It's not the moderators fault, just that whatever pops up first is what gets the most attention. Some moderators do look at things from the bottom up though so they can get a chance to see some things that maybe haven't gotten a fair shake, or a look at all.
The problem is compounded when you have an article that gets 500 replies because I don't think slashdot automagically inserts more moderation points into the pool on days where the comments are bit more nuts than other days.
Whenever I think about "Wow, wouldn't that be cool" on slashdot, I find that in 5 minutes you can come up with a list of 40 things that would be really cool. And if everybody did this, then Rob's todo list in plain text would be bigger than the whole slashdot database.:)
So sometimes I think there's a dilemma - suggesting features is a slippery slope, but at the same time, other features would be neat too. Whatever the case, Rob has already done a pretty fucking amazing job on slashdot, and either way I'm going to be happy.
I would actually like to know whether Katz is on payroll or not, but I don't think that we're going to find out.
I'm not even really sure that it's our business, but that doesn't stop me from being nosy.:) I do know that from the way it seemed, he came to slashdot under the auspices of donation of his writing, and while some of us would have argued that his writing wasn't worth the toilet paper it was printed out onto, he probably is getting paid at this juncture, since andover can doubtlessly afford it and they own the joint, not rob.
...Bar your windows, the Evil Open Source Longhaired Communist Anti-Business Hippies are on the way!! From the Propaganda Department of the United States of America, subdivision Microsoft, Inc.
Protect your children! These developers will stop at nothing to bring the flourishing networked economy to a grinding halt in the name of satanic flightless birds, and some crazy guy named after one of the Peanuts characters!!! (Linus)
Oh, and you just KNOW they're all *COMMIES*. How on earth could anybody give anything away for free, without being some kind of hippe beatnik pot smoking red commie pinko of a subversive! They're not AMERICANS like you or I - their hearts pump no blood like ours, but rather, a thick, vomitous black fluid that oozes and stinks of their evil intentions.
Resist this creeping evil! Do not be fooled by Open Source Programmers who mindlessly chatter about how they offer more stable and secure software than Microsoft. The very concept is absurd! Now shut up and listen to Mr. Paperclip.
(Warning: The above was a joke - if you didn't gather that, please look up the term LART and apply it to thyself)
Several hours after a Jon Katz article was first posted and there are 16 (????!!!!?!!?!) comments attached.
That is *truly* a first. Usually, while Katz is obviously not one of the more popular people with everybody, he sure does get the comments pumping.
Either everybody's gone completely apathetic on me, or Katz has gotten nixed off of people's story lists.
Although I'm not a huge Katz fan, (not really at all, actually) I always keep him listed as an author I want to see, mostly because the responses attached to the article keep my unheated apartment warm in the winter.
I've got an account with them, I admit, I bit on a slashdot banner because it looked interesting, and I think that the idea is fabulous. But no, I wouldn't put all of my information up on their machines.
Not that I don't trust them, I'm sure that they're honest, but if I was to put my personal information up on opendesk, then the security of my information would depend on the security of my box plus the security of their box, i.e. what was keeping my info from other people would be the weaker of the two computers security schemes.
I don't think some of this Active wallet stuff for online shopping is such a great idea for similar reasons. (You know, click this button, fill out the form, we'll keep your credit card and all your marketing info in our secret folder and automagically fill out online forms for you) If you think about it, it can't possibly be a good security idea since you're widening the scope of people who have access to the data.
Boy are they out of touch. I wonder what percentage of the CEOs that are railing against this horrific teenage sex are bastard sons of unwed teenage mothers in their own rite.
When companies put out press releases and such, you would assume that because of the diversity in opinions of the public as well as for other reasons, they would want their announcements/press releases to contain factual information. But instead you get emotionally charged garbage that it meant solely to further their agenda. Of course companies are going to try to further their agenda, but it shouldn't be by trying to manipulate the passions and biases of what they doubtlessly assume are the "ignorant unwashed masses"
Ahh, but you're forgetting about the fact that people who are out looking for mp3s are already criminals, and probably insane too!:)
The unfathomable depths of depravity that a person undoubtedly has to sink to in order to want to download such blatantly illegal material procludes the possibility of self control. How could such perversions of humanity, so low that they would want to rip off poor starving companies with their underpaid CEOs possibly have the self restraint needed to resist the evils of horrifying teenage sex? How can they be expected to stray away from the evils offered by the snake with the ripe, luscious red fruit of lasciviousness and towards the light of corporate holiness and honor? Those who do not know the corporate pledge of allegiance, ("Buy, possess, own, consume, rent, lease, buy, possess, own, consume, rent, lease, buy...") couldn't possibly have the restraint needed to click the back button.
(Warning-this was a joke. If you though I was serious with the above article, then you need a good LART.)
The fact that there are porn banners on web sites and that sometimes you have to click on them to get mp3s is one thing, but this article is another.
This is NOT what the article was saying. It was saying that users are forced into looking at "horrific teenage sex" in order to get mp3s. This is not the same thing - if it was just banners, then they should have said something.
Think about it-what's their motivation for making a statement like that? It was in their interests to keep the statement vague and general - not mentioning porn sites at all, or commerce, but rather just choosing to say that people were forced into seeing porn as if all people who distribute mp3s are people who are consciously trying to corrupt the people looking for mp3s.
What are they talking about? I read the article, and it says that not only are users exposed to porn, but "horrific pictures of teenage sex". They don't give any examples, or sites that do that, they simply assert this, and then have the article wander on to a history of mp3s.
Horrific teenage sex? Have any of these people EVER visited a porn site? If the pictures are that "horrific", it's probably something you'd have to pay an arm and a leg for given some of the strange "tastes" that are out there. Can anybody think of a single good reason why a site would want to FORCE you to look at porn before you could get MP3s? The only thing I can think of is banner ads that are a bit lewd, and I'm sure we've all seen a lot of seedy banner ads, but never ones that had "horrific teenage sex".
Is this just a ploy on the part of recording companies to convince parents that if their child has any mp3s on his drive that he must be becoming a morally depraved pervert? Jeez, if that were true, I would have been blind LONG ago.:)
I guess though, if you can't attack the consumers of the material your against, (i.e. the kids downloading MP3s) then you can attack those who have control over the consumers.
It's this type of misinformation and ignorance mixed with a healthy dose of dishonesty and selfish corporate interest that gives some large corporations the appearance of being chicken shit money grubbing scumfucks.
Now, I'd love to rant on for 10 pages about how diffusion of responsibility and passing the buck leads to unethical business decisions and press releases, but I guess I'm just content to take the 50 point karma hit that I'm already in for.
Makes sense - I'd rather go in for a touchup several times myself than be stuck with permanent walleye or whatever happends when the doc maybe does things a little wrong.
I believe the process involves burning off parts of the cornea and reshaping it so that it reflects light correctly, so it would make sense that you can burn more off but you can't put it back.
Although, I've heard that cornea donation from the dead (i.e. transplantation) has been considered - I'm not sure if it's actually been done. That would be cool though - you can use people's hearts and livers like spare fuel pumps in human bodies, why not their corneas?
Remember, hacking isn't just with computers. Probably the best piece of hacking/social engineering EVER was Orson Wells with the war of the worlds. Who else can claim that their hack affected MILLIONS of people all over the country?
Oh sure, I hear the naysayers saying that he probably didn't even mean to do it. But to me, that's immaterial. The hack of turning a regular radio show into a national panic is quite a hack, IMHO. It may not have been cool or good, but I would consider it a hack.
It cost him about $1,200 per eye, (it's done on a per eye basis) but I think it can probably get cheaper than that depending on where you go.
He LOVED it after he had had it done, although he did say that it felt very disgusting as it was actually happnening. (Peeling of the cornea, reshaping, and replacing, I believe)
He did have to go for a touch up operation about 6 months after he got it done originally, and that was a bit annoying but free.
I had a discussion with him the other day about it - he thinks it was worth it although I've heard of other people who have had to have touch up operations as well.
I'm betting that it would save money over the long term, and I'm considering it now myself, but coughing up the cash in the first place can be hard. (For some people, anyway.:)
I would think that it's extremely likely that "ol' Billy" keeps his nose extremely clean since he's a very high-profile rich person. Not to say that he doesn't exploit tax law to the hilt with workarounds and loopholes, but I severely doubt that he's doing anything that is out and out illegal. Also keep in mind that most of his money is on paper in Microsoft stock, and no matter what he does, he'll always get nailed with tax when he sells that stuff. The vast majority of his wealth isn't money - it's *potential* money in the form of stock.
Besides the fact that he is so high profile, you'd figure that at a certain point, there's just no friggin' point in going to the extra trouble to save yourself a few million. Sure, you can look at it as a total sum of money, $1,000,000 is a lot of money, but as a percentage of net worth, it's really not worth going to the trouble to save, since that effort spent on the phone with your accountant figuring out how to screw the gov't out of that extra $1,000,000 is time that could have been spent making the stock (where your real value is) more valuable. Remember that every time MS stock goes up $1, Bill goes up ~= $90,000,000:)
Well, I don't think your karma will take too much of a negative hit because of this one. (Unless you're a hardcore AC who loves negative karma)
It's definately worthwhile to point that out about JoeSoft's productions and how he can license it however he chooses. I don't think that stuff has ever been tested by public opinion or otherwise (i.e. I release foo-0.9 GPL'd, foo-1.0 is then non GPL'd commercial software, but is foo-1.0 infected by foo-0.9 because it's a derivative work? Is retroactive license changing allowed? Probably not) but I would always agree with the assertion that the developer always will assert control over the product he develops, except when it is a mutual development on the part of many people, where it gets murky...
Damn, what we really need is a GNU or non GNU legal coalition. Bite my tounge, I didn't just suggest that!
>It's obvious that Gnome and KDE are going two >seperate paths. Rather than
Yep, and that's one of the best things about the two projects. I got the feeling at the inception of GNOME that it was created to compete in a way with KDE. That's fine, and choice between two desktop systems is good, but I think it's wonderful if they diverge in what their core focus is at a certain point in time because not only does it give you choices, but it gives you choices spread across a field rather than clustered in one area of desktop useability.
I enjoy reading the reviews on slashdot quite a bit, but from time to time, I wonder why they are all positive. It's certainly not the case that all books that are read by slashdot readers are good.
Sometimes newspapers and such will never write a negative review mostly because they were sent free books for review and promotion by the publisher and it's somewhat implicit that they'll get a good review. I'm pretty sure that that's not the case on slashdot, but why do all the books get good reviews? Is it the old adage of "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything?"
I'm not accusing anybody of anything. (Sometimes it's a bit weird how whenever you say anything on slashdot that could possibly be taken the wrong way, you have to qualify it with 1 dozen disclaimers) I'm just wondering about it out loud and wondering if anybody else has any comment on what seems to be the trend.
I would personally like to see some high profile books that suck be mentioned as such, so I can avoid them.
You must now commence to pay me licensing fees for your existance, including retroactive fees for all this time that you've been living but not paying me my loot.
I agree with you, that's pretty damn silly to be able to patent something that's in existance already, but at the same time, you can patent processes, and they aren't really *things* at all.
It seems like the patent system has gone nuts. (That hasn't happened recently, but quite a while ago, in fact) it's original intention was to protect businesses I'd think, but at the same time to promote "innovation" and "creativity". I wonder if patenting all of this stuff on their part will require practically all DNA researchers to pay them a fee in order to study DNA.
Does this type of patent mean that I won't own the rights to my own blood cells' basic information? That would be scary. Maybe it's not that extreme yet, but never underestimate a corporate entity when it comes to chasing "The Almighty Buck" no matter what the cost in individual freedom.
Generally, the concept of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" is a shortsided, usually unethical way to look at things. IMHO it reeks of seeing the whole situation as a race to screw the other guy or be screwed, rather than to either go about your business separately, or cooporate towards a solution.
You have to be patient with the suits, or with the ironed T-shirts (is that what roblimo called them?) because they learn slowly, but are not impervious to good ideas.
I saw a booklet while I was in Germany once that was about american slang. It was written in the 1970s but was still being read by some germans as an instructional manual on american slang. One chapter was called "Fruit Slang" and contained such helpful slang sentences as:
1) Everyone knows that he's top banana 2) He's the big apple in this town. 3) He is such a grape
and more that I forget...they seem to revolve around stature, but I can't figure out where the hell #3 came from - I'm guessing that #2 came from someone who heard about New york's nickname while high on crack...and number one is "real" slang, it's just ancient, and was stupid even when it was current.:)
The first is thinking that it's a mudslinging campaign, the other is to realize that within commercial realms, mudslinging (and I think the choice of the word mudslinging is interesting here - if the ad had been from an "unpopular" company, then it would have been FUD) is inevitable, and seeing a commercial company "mudsling" within the community signifies that the company realizes that there is a market in linux, and their customer base in that area is increasing.
So, if you choose, you can see ads like these as a success story in a way for linux.
Don't sweat the small stuff - there has always been infighting in the linux community, the only difference now being that is *appears* as if a company has joined in too.
I think that in this case, both ESR and Bruce Perens are completely in the WRONG.
From BP's posts, it seems to be something that goes beyond regular hacker talk and disagreement, and into something personal.
As such, it's a personal matter, and I don't think it's appropriate for either one of them to talk about it in public. Let them get together and work it out themselves.
There's nothing to see here, move along, move along....
One of the things that you risk doing if you try to continually build a better wheel by redesigning licenses is adding more and more complexity.
We're all talking about licenses, ostensibly primarily as hackers, not as businesspeople. That may be a bit naive of me, since I don't know what percentage of/.'s readership is the hardcore suit type, but for sake of argument, I'm assuming that most of us are hackers here.
I personally despise working with the low-level details of how I can prevent myself from being ruthlessly exploited by consciousless corporations, and I don't enjoy reading, writing, or dealing with legalese, which licenses pretty much are by default. Of course, licenses are a necessary evil, but I'd prefer to avoid wading through legalese if given the chance.
The GPL, as licenses go, is rather simple. It has a conceptual framework of freedom, which it fleshes out with specific clauses in the dreaded legalese. (i.e. This work of text, hereafter referred to as "The Post", and so on) One of the problems that I see with complicated commercial licenses, whether they're technically open source, free software, or fuware, is that the more business interest a company has to protect, the more complicated and opaque the licenses get.
I like to think of myself as a hacker, and I like to worry about hackish things rather than legal things, which I frankly find rather boring. I look at the GPL, I see it, I know it guarantees me my freedom, I know it works, and I know it has the support of the FSF. Some may think RMS is crazy, but if push comes to shove, you can be damn sure that the FSF will fight like rabid wolves to protect the freedom of a package.
Slashdot Mirror
I've noticed this too - similarly, when moderators come in, a lot of the time the posts that are good tend to go very, very high, and some posts that are OK but maybe not 5 material stay stuck at 1 or 2 because they're somewhat buried. It's not the moderators fault, just that whatever pops up first is what gets the most attention. Some moderators do look at things from the bottom up though so they can get a chance to see some things that maybe haven't gotten a fair shake, or a look at all.
:)
The problem is compounded when you have an article that gets 500 replies because I don't think slashdot automagically inserts more moderation points into the pool on days where the comments are bit more nuts than other days.
Whenever I think about "Wow, wouldn't that be cool" on slashdot, I find that in 5 minutes you can come up with a list of 40 things that would be really cool. And if everybody did this, then Rob's todo list in plain text would be bigger than the whole slashdot database.
So sometimes I think there's a dilemma - suggesting features is a slippery slope, but at the same time, other features would be neat too. Whatever the case, Rob has already done a pretty fucking amazing job on slashdot, and either way I'm going to be happy.
I would actually like to know whether Katz is on payroll or not, but I don't think that we're going to find out.
:) I do know that from the way it seemed, he came to slashdot under the auspices of donation of his writing, and while some of us would have argued that his writing wasn't worth the toilet paper it was printed out onto, he probably is getting paid at this juncture, since andover can doubtlessly afford it and they own the joint, not rob.
I'm not even really sure that it's our business, but that doesn't stop me from being nosy.
...Bar your windows, the Evil Open Source Longhaired Communist Anti-Business Hippies are on the way!!
From the Propaganda Department of the United States of America, subdivision Microsoft, Inc.
Protect your children! These developers will stop at nothing to bring the flourishing networked economy to a grinding halt in the name of satanic flightless birds, and some crazy guy named after one of the Peanuts characters!!! (Linus)
Oh, and you just KNOW they're all *COMMIES*. How on earth could anybody give anything away for free, without being some kind of hippe beatnik pot smoking red commie pinko of a subversive! They're not AMERICANS like you or I - their hearts pump no blood like ours, but rather, a thick, vomitous black fluid that oozes and stinks of their evil intentions.
Resist this creeping evil! Do not be fooled by Open Source Programmers who mindlessly chatter about how they offer more stable and secure software than Microsoft. The very concept is absurd! Now shut up and listen to Mr. Paperclip.
(Warning: The above was a joke - if you didn't gather that, please look up the term LART and apply it to thyself)
Hmmm. I read this comment, and I think it's right on, but this one thing keeps popping to mind...
The truth HURTS, doesn't it???
Oh sure, maybe not as much as falling on a bicycle that doesn't have a seat, but it HURTS...
-- Naked Gun
Several hours after a Jon Katz article was first posted and there are 16 (????!!!!?!!?!) comments attached.
That is *truly* a first. Usually, while Katz is obviously not one of the more popular people with everybody, he sure does get the comments pumping.
Either everybody's gone completely apathetic on me, or Katz has gotten nixed off of people's story lists.
Although I'm not a huge Katz fan, (not really at all, actually) I always keep him listed as an author I want to see, mostly because the responses attached to the article keep my unheated apartment warm in the winter.
I don't think that's paranoid at all.
I've got an account with them, I admit, I bit on a slashdot banner because it looked interesting, and I think that the idea is fabulous. But no, I wouldn't put all of my information up on their machines.
Not that I don't trust them, I'm sure that they're honest, but if I was to put my personal information up on opendesk, then the security of my information would depend on the security of my box plus the security of their box, i.e. what was keeping my info from other people would be the weaker of the two computers security schemes.
I don't think some of this Active wallet stuff for online shopping is such a great idea for similar reasons. (You know, click this button, fill out the form, we'll keep your credit card and all your marketing info in our secret folder and automagically fill out online forms for you) If you think about it, it can't possibly be a good security idea since you're widening the scope of people who have access to the data.
Boy are they out of touch. I wonder what percentage of the CEOs that are railing against this horrific teenage sex are bastard sons of unwed teenage mothers in their own rite.
When companies put out press releases and such, you would assume that because of the diversity in opinions of the public as well as for other reasons, they would want their announcements/press releases to contain factual information. But instead you get emotionally charged garbage that it meant solely to further their agenda. Of course companies are going to try to further their agenda, but it shouldn't be by trying to manipulate the passions and biases of what they doubtlessly assume are the "ignorant unwashed masses"
Ahh, but you're forgetting about the fact that people who are out looking for mp3s are already criminals, and probably insane too! :)
The unfathomable depths of depravity that a person undoubtedly has to sink to in order to want to download such blatantly illegal material procludes the possibility of self control. How could such perversions of humanity, so low that they would want to rip off poor starving companies with their underpaid CEOs possibly have the self restraint needed to resist the evils of horrifying teenage sex? How can they be expected to stray away from the evils offered by the snake with the ripe, luscious red fruit of lasciviousness and towards the light of corporate holiness and honor? Those who do not know the corporate pledge of allegiance, ("Buy, possess, own, consume, rent, lease, buy, possess, own, consume, rent, lease, buy...") couldn't possibly have the restraint needed to click the back button.
(Warning-this was a joke. If you though I was serious with the above article, then you need a good LART.)
The fact that there are porn banners on web sites and that sometimes you have to click on them to get mp3s is one thing, but this article is another.
This is NOT what the article was saying. It was saying that users are forced into looking at "horrific teenage sex" in order to get mp3s. This is not the same thing - if it was just banners, then they should have said something.
Think about it-what's their motivation for making a statement like that? It was in their interests to keep the statement vague and general - not mentioning porn sites at all, or commerce, but rather just choosing to say that people were forced into seeing porn as if all people who distribute mp3s are people who are consciously trying to corrupt the people looking for mp3s.
It's a crock of shit.
What are they talking about? I read the article, and it says that not only are users exposed to porn, but "horrific pictures of teenage sex". They don't give any examples, or sites that do that, they simply assert this, and then have the article wander on to a history of mp3s.
:)
Horrific teenage sex? Have any of these people EVER visited a porn site? If the pictures are that "horrific", it's probably something you'd have to pay an arm and a leg for given some of the strange "tastes" that are out there. Can anybody think of a single good reason why a site would want to FORCE you to look at porn before you could get MP3s? The only thing I can think of is banner ads that are a bit lewd, and I'm sure we've all seen a lot of seedy banner ads, but never ones that had "horrific teenage sex".
Is this just a ploy on the part of recording companies to convince parents that if their child has any mp3s on his drive that he must be becoming a morally depraved pervert? Jeez, if that were true, I would have been blind LONG ago.
I guess though, if you can't attack the consumers of the material your against, (i.e. the kids downloading MP3s) then you can attack those who have control over the consumers.
It's this type of misinformation and ignorance mixed with a healthy dose of dishonesty and selfish corporate interest that gives some large corporations the appearance of being chicken shit money grubbing scumfucks.
Now, I'd love to rant on for 10 pages about how diffusion of responsibility and passing the buck leads to unethical business decisions and press releases, but I guess I'm just content to take the 50 point karma hit that I'm already in for.
Makes sense - I'd rather go in for a touchup several times myself than be stuck with permanent walleye or whatever happends when the doc maybe does things a little wrong.
I believe the process involves burning off parts
of the cornea and reshaping it so that it reflects light correctly, so it would make sense that you can burn more off but you can't put it back.
Although, I've heard that cornea donation from the dead (i.e. transplantation) has been considered - I'm not sure if it's actually been done. That would be cool though - you can use people's hearts and livers like spare fuel pumps in human bodies, why not their corneas?
D
Orson Wells. War of the Worlds.
Remember, hacking isn't just with computers. Probably the best piece of hacking/social engineering EVER was Orson Wells with the war of the worlds. Who else can claim that their hack affected MILLIONS of people all over the country?
Oh sure, I hear the naysayers saying that he probably didn't even mean to do it. But to me, that's immaterial. The hack of turning a regular radio show into a national panic is quite a hack, IMHO. It may not have been cool or good, but I would consider it a hack.
I had a friend who had laser vision correction.
:)
It cost him about $1,200 per eye, (it's done on a per eye basis) but I think it can probably get cheaper than that depending on where you go.
He LOVED it after he had had it done, although he did say that it felt very disgusting as it was actually happnening. (Peeling of the cornea, reshaping, and replacing, I believe)
He did have to go for a touch up operation about 6 months after he got it done originally, and that was a bit annoying but free.
I had a discussion with him the other day about it - he thinks it was worth it although I've heard of other people who have had to have touch up operations as well.
I'm betting that it would save money over the long term, and I'm considering it now myself, but coughing up the cash in the first place can be hard. (For some people, anyway.
I would think that it's extremely likely that "ol' Billy" keeps his nose extremely clean since he's a very high-profile rich person. Not to say that he doesn't exploit tax law to the hilt with workarounds and loopholes, but I severely doubt that he's doing anything that is out and out illegal. Also keep in mind that most of his money is on paper in Microsoft stock, and no matter what he does, he'll always get nailed with tax when he sells that stuff. The vast majority of his wealth isn't money - it's *potential* money in the form of stock.
:)
Besides the fact that he is so high profile, you'd figure that at a certain point, there's just no friggin' point in going to the extra trouble to save yourself a few million. Sure, you can look at it as a total sum of money, $1,000,000 is a lot of money, but as a percentage of net worth, it's really not worth going to the trouble to save, since that effort spent on the phone with your accountant figuring out how to screw the gov't out of that extra $1,000,000 is time that could have been spent making the stock (where your real value is) more valuable. Remember that every time MS stock goes up $1, Bill goes up ~= $90,000,000
Well, I don't think your karma will take too much of a negative hit because of this one. (Unless you're a hardcore AC who loves negative karma)
It's definately worthwhile to point that out about JoeSoft's productions and how he can license it however he chooses. I don't think that stuff has ever been tested by public opinion or otherwise (i.e. I release foo-0.9 GPL'd, foo-1.0 is then non GPL'd commercial software, but is foo-1.0 infected by foo-0.9 because it's a derivative work? Is retroactive license changing allowed? Probably not) but I would always agree with the assertion that the developer always will assert control over the product he develops, except when it is a mutual development on the part of many people, where it gets murky...
Damn, what we really need is a GNU or non GNU legal coalition. Bite my tounge, I didn't just suggest that!
God IS real.
Unless declared an integer.
(unfortunately not mine, although I don't know where I got it)
>It's obvious that Gnome and KDE are going two >seperate paths. Rather than
Yep, and that's one of the best things about the two projects. I got the feeling at the inception of GNOME that it was created to compete in a way with KDE. That's fine, and choice between two desktop systems is good, but I think it's wonderful if they diverge in what their core focus is at a certain point in time because not only does it give you choices, but it gives you choices spread across a field rather than clustered in one area of desktop useability.
I hope that made sense.
I enjoy reading the reviews on slashdot quite a bit, but from time to time, I wonder why they are all positive. It's certainly not the case that all books that are read by slashdot readers are good.
Sometimes newspapers and such will never write a negative review mostly because they were sent free books for review and promotion by the publisher and it's somewhat implicit that they'll get a good review. I'm pretty sure that that's not the case on slashdot, but why do all the books get good reviews? Is it the old adage of "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything?"
I'm not accusing anybody of anything. (Sometimes it's a bit weird how whenever you say anything on slashdot that could possibly be taken the wrong way, you have to qualify it with 1 dozen disclaimers) I'm just wondering about it out loud and wondering if anybody else has any comment on what seems to be the trend.
I would personally like to see some high profile books that suck be mentioned as such, so I can avoid them.
Oooh!!! Oooh!!! I'm going to patent *YOU*. :)
You must now commence to pay me licensing fees for your existance, including retroactive fees for all this time that you've been living but not paying me my loot.
I agree with you, that's pretty damn silly to be able to patent something that's in existance already, but at the same time, you can patent processes, and they aren't really *things* at all.
Hmm.
It seems like the patent system has gone nuts. (That hasn't happened recently, but quite a while ago, in fact) it's original intention was to protect businesses I'd think, but at the same time to promote "innovation" and "creativity". I wonder if patenting all of this stuff on their part will require practically all DNA researchers to pay them a fee in order to study DNA.
Does this type of patent mean that I won't own the rights to my own blood cells' basic information? That would be scary. Maybe it's not that extreme yet, but never underestimate a corporate entity when it comes to chasing "The Almighty Buck" no matter what the cost in individual freedom.
Generally, the concept of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" is a shortsided, usually unethical way to look at things. IMHO it reeks of seeing the whole situation as a race to screw the other guy or be screwed, rather than to either go about your business separately, or cooporate towards a solution.
You have to be patient with the suits, or with the ironed T-shirts (is that what roblimo called them?) because they learn slowly, but are not impervious to good ideas.
I saw a booklet while I was in Germany once that was about american slang. It was written in the 1970s but was still being read by some germans as an instructional manual on american slang. One chapter was called "Fruit Slang" and contained such helpful slang sentences as:
:)
1) Everyone knows that he's top banana
2) He's the big apple in this town.
3) He is such a grape
and more that I forget...they seem to revolve around stature, but I can't figure out where the hell #3 came from - I'm guessing that #2 came from someone who heard about New york's nickname while high on crack...and number one is "real" slang, it's just ancient, and was stupid even when it was current.
MDA
The first is thinking that it's a mudslinging campaign, the other is to realize that within commercial realms, mudslinging (and I think the choice of the word mudslinging is interesting here - if the ad had been from an "unpopular" company, then it would have been FUD) is inevitable, and seeing a commercial company "mudsling" within the community signifies that the company realizes that there is a market in linux, and their customer base in that area is increasing.
So, if you choose, you can see ads like these as a success story in a way for linux.
Don't sweat the small stuff - there has always been infighting in the linux community, the only difference now being that is *appears* as if a company has joined in too.
Nothing to see here, move along, move along.
David
I think that in this case, both ESR and Bruce Perens are completely in the WRONG.
From BP's posts, it seems to be something that goes beyond regular hacker talk and disagreement, and into something personal.
As such, it's a personal matter, and I don't think it's appropriate for either one of them to talk about it in public. Let them get together and work it out themselves.
There's nothing to see here, move along, move along....
David Allen
One of the things that you risk doing if you try to continually build a better wheel by redesigning licenses is adding more and more complexity.
/.'s readership is the hardcore suit type, but for sake of argument, I'm assuming that most of us are hackers here.
We're all talking about licenses, ostensibly primarily as hackers, not as businesspeople. That may be a bit naive of me, since I don't know what percentage of
I personally despise working with the low-level details of how I can prevent myself from being ruthlessly exploited by consciousless corporations, and I don't enjoy reading, writing, or dealing with legalese, which licenses pretty much are by default. Of course, licenses are a necessary evil, but I'd prefer to avoid wading through legalese if given the chance.
The GPL, as licenses go, is rather simple. It has a conceptual framework of freedom, which it fleshes out with specific clauses in the dreaded legalese. (i.e. This work of text, hereafter referred to as "The Post", and so on) One of the problems that I see with complicated commercial licenses, whether they're technically open source, free software, or fuware, is that the more business interest a company has to protect, the more complicated and opaque the licenses get.
I like to think of myself as a hacker, and I like to worry about hackish things rather than legal things, which I frankly find rather boring. I look at the GPL, I see it, I know it guarantees me my freedom, I know it works, and I know it has the support of the FSF. Some may think RMS is crazy, but if push comes to shove, you can be damn sure that the FSF will fight like rabid wolves to protect the freedom of a package.
David Allen