Unfortunately it's not even about fair. With regards to security, Windows is provided "AS IS". Show me one place where Microsoft even makes the slightest guarantee about security. The product was never engineered to be secure and barring a complete rewrite it never will be. They're not dumb, they know it's not very secure, and they don't advertise it as such. They don't need to "disclaim liability", the courts need to prove why it should be assigned to them in the first place.
Of course, all of the open source licenses include similar liability clauses. "We're giving this away for free. Don't sue us. Don't use it for anything you're not prepared to have it break, or guarantee yourself that it will work."
The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena.
I hate to go against the ignorant horde of slashdotters, falling over each other to bash ID because they think it's just the idiot Religious Right's excuse to talk about God in public school...
But Intelligent Design is science. A bunch of scientists looked at the world, and had the thought that maybe, a lot of things about our universe are wayyy to complicated to just happen by chance. The odds on things just falling together as they do are a little long. They believe that a reasonable explanation for the universe is that there is some other intelligence somewhere that set it all up.
It's just a theory, to explain the way things are. It doesn't advocate a particular god or intelligence.
Just because you think it's a dumb idea, doesn't mean it's mythology. It's definately not ignorant of facts - it's a current theory, that a lot of PhDs follow.
Ahh, forget it. There are too many slashbots following the same line to ever have a reasonable discussion.
Actually... didn't MS get its start writing BASIC compilers??
I'm the first to disagree with anyone who says that Bill Gates isn't a very smart guy. He's got programming skills and incredible business smarts. However, he didn't write DOS, it was a clone of CP/M bought from another seattle company and then resold to IBM. story.
You are right of course, that each engineering marvel builds on something previously. If all the tech in the world were removed, we might know how to build cars and houses and put together computer systems, but we'd never know how to put together a hammer with stones and sticks, or fashion steel and silicone out of iron and sand. It would be interesting, wouldn't it? We'd have to start out with that old tech, to get back to this new stuff.
Anyways. idiots complain about Microsoft all the time, stupidly. But smart people do too - and there are plenty of good arguments against MS that don't require ignorance. The debate will continue. Hopefully Linux will get better, and the computing experience in general will get better. We'll see.
Hey look, its just a cut and paste of the latest trolls...rather than mod you down, i'll poke a few holes.
On my several-year-old system running linux 2.4, I can play fill my desktop with hi-res movies using mplayer. I'm talking upwards of 15 mpeg-2 and divx movies...on what? oh yeah, an athlon 1200. I wonder what your hot stuff Longhorn was running on - dual/quad processor xeons? Heh. Oh yeah, and I can play quake 3 in the background too - probably not at your framerate, but hey...
...mostly it's a function of the video card (and drivers) to do the scaling and the game rendering, while the CPU only does decoding (which can be in hardware too). Finally, you need ballsy disk bandwidth to get those bits off the disk. A new shiny OS won't do you squat.
Look, the point is that you cut and paste some crap about linux, and are really just trolling. Every point you make is pretty much lame and it's all pre-concocted, I've seen the same crap from other trolls. Seriously...why? If you want to question the groupthink, at least write your own opinions!
"Fairly simple solution that could be used; when you do the install, put the user's home dir on a mounted partition, and set the noexec flag on the partition..."
Yeah, except for those pesky login scripts that need to be executed... And anything customized users might have in/home/bin...
I've had bad nvidia drivers do that occasionally. Usually it is the NVIDIA drivers not handling what X gives it. W/O an NVIDIA card, my systems have been pretty much rock-solid. But with those stupid nvidia closed drivers...WHAM! dead systems every coule of weeks.
It's funny, talking about uptime being bad at a couple of weeks. back in the Microsoft world, I never would even think of leaving my systems up that long, for fear of viruses and just assuming that something would break in the meantime....
Ok, sure. Except, Mac Zealots, Red-Hat only companies, MS-only companies, Dell-only companies, my friends who only buy from Wal-Mart (because of value), my other friends who only buy HP, Ford Zealots, GM zealots, etc. etc. Brand loyalty is alive and well...I could go on and on. People (who you seem to regard as fickle and inferior) have a distinct sense of being wronged, and a keen awareness to being treated especially well. They're just like you-if you notice someone being especially good to you, you should take notice and return for business again, to thank them. But whatever-you seem to have a pretty low opinion of the world in general.
***
GOP? Contract with America, Hello? Nice stab at the Republicans...they've been at least as good as any other political party at doing what they said they'll do. Seriously, next time just pick a bunch of big companies that Slashbots typically don't like (Mc'D's, Microsoft, Ford, GM, Nike...) and bash them, just because you can...
***
Something about how Mag-Lites are marked up, over-sold items that really aren't worth it...
Ok. Except I bought a mag-lite because it was solid, had a good feel to it, a great reputation, and a lifetime guarantee. And I haven't needed to buy another one. Because this one is just plain solid. Does the Mag-Lite corp. make a cheap product that breaks, so i will come back to them and buy another? nope. They make something good and solid, because they can, and maybe they just happen to CARE.
I've gone through plenty of other lesser-quality flashlights. In fact, I bet i've spent more on crap flashlights than just the one good Mag-lite that works. And it's dependable, and solid. And thats why people buy them, and that's I recommend them. It's called respect. And they earn it, as does Dell, and Ferrari, and Swiss Army knives...
***
If you could create something from nothing, wouldn't everybody? If getting something for nothing was as easy as trying hard the world would be a very different place. But you can't. You never get something for nothing. Sure, you might be able to shave a little off the top with lots of ingenuity, but that won't be cost-effective either - ingenuity is *expensive*.
Yes. Ingenuity IS expensive. But if you put a little in, you might just get a lot out. For example. EVERY GOOD IDEA EVER. A lot of good ideas made a lot of people a lot of money throughout history, you can't deny it. Also, a lot of the people who worked hard, also made a pretty penny.
I think we just have different worldvies. You take the belief that people in general are stupid and fickle, that there is no justice (and hence no reward for hard work, honesty, and respect) and that it's basically a dog-eat-dog world, and that we shouldn't care for each other.
But there is justice. People do have respect. people aren't stupid, they remember when they get screwed on a deal.
I had a laptop I was working on for a buddy. The hard drive was not reading, and I was replacing it with a new one. However, before I did the deed, I figured I would see how well Mepis (another Live-CD a la Knoppix) worked on his Dell.
Not only did it boot, detect everything (including batter status and level), but it could read the drive! Apparently, it was defaulting to DMA mode when it booted, but Linux could read it in PIO (fallback from DMA).
So, I (slowly) recovered his data, and then swapped in the right drive. I considered making this my.sig: "Linux, it saves dead hardware!"...
Hey...another round of ameri-bashing. Actually, a lot of companies export crap. First off, they might just start out making crap, so they can't help but export it. Secondly, they just might not be clueful enough to make things un-offensive. But in no way are these things exclusively american. I've been getting crap from outside the US for a long time...But I don't bash every company in a given country just because one is bad.
Wait, what am I doing. You can't even spell and some of your sentences don't even make sense.
I think this is great for MS, great for the world, and great for linux, because without Linux, this would NEVER HAVE EVEN HAPPENED.
A) it will bring the wrath of the world down on them and
B) such an awakening to security would in fact cause people to pay attention and make virus writers' jobs harder.
Remember: the trick when infecting computers is to do your work WITHOUT the user noticing. These aren't viruses mean to damage, that is just a side effect. These viruses are spamhosts, actual money-making systems. That's why these viruses and bots exist: to make money. Not to be cool, or l33t, or cause damage.
I think the solution is to adapt one of these spambots to do the very thing you mention. As an outsider, you could care less whether or not you bots survive long enough to be spamhauses, you just want to make your point. Have them send out 10,000 infections, and then execute "formate c: --force" or whatever the command is.
So let's say you go to the store, and you buy a program. you just spent your money.
Then, you go home. you try your program out. and guess what? while it kinda works, it doesn't really work right, and most of all it works in some ways rather badly.
Guess what? you're screwed. Because you spent your money, for a program that you can't return. Because you checked it out. The problem is that you can't know whether or not your neat little program works before you go past the point where you can't return it any more.
Enter RMS and everyone else. we now have free software. If you hate a program, don't use it, and bash it on slashdot. Your vote matters. If you do like it, support it, contribute to the code, and maybe buy the creator a steak dinner once or twice. You have no obligation. And best of all, it's free.
And these complaints, this mavis beacon crap, or whatever...a program like that would be dead, no one would use it, and it would never hurt anyone. If it was truly useful, it would be rewritten with the bad security ideas cut right out.
Sometimes I lose faith in open source. And then I remember how crappy the Windows world has it..
You know, kerry + many libs said the same thing, soon after 9/11. look it up. Everyone was talking about the threats Iraq posed, WMD's, and Iraq's link to terrorists.
It's only in the companies best interest to make products of a high enough quality as percieved by the majority of the target purchasers as to justify procuerment. Any extra quality in the product is waste.
That's to get one sale. Most companies really like it when you come back to them for future purchases, which is why having extra quality, something to set your product above others, is always a good thing. If you can make your product that much better with a reasonably small amount of cost, then why not?
You can take a bit more joy from making a better product, you look like a better company, you get higher customer loyalty. For example, MAG-Lite flashlights are extremely well made. People buy them, and the company is succesful, because they made a great product, as opposed to just another flashlight.
I submit it's always a good decision to make a better product.
I don't mean to be overly critical of you...and I like Mandrake. But...
C'mon. seriously. Nothing is every bug free. That's just insane. Nothing, especially something as complicated as an ENTIRE OPERATING SYSTEM, is every completely, 100% bug free. That's just rediculous.
Part of the problem MDK has been having, and that their new release system is trying to fix, is that they have a substantially large user/tester ratio. In other words, too many users for the people who are willing to test. A release can go through forty betas and 10 RC's, and fix ALL reported bugs. But without good testers, it will ship and millions of bugs will be found because there wasn't a good variance of testers.
People expect their software to "just work". But without a lot of testing in a million configurations (especially as current and fast advancing as Mandrake is) that's difficult. Probably impossible.
nice. except you don't know that. Does everyone on the interweb know exactly what happens on all their servers? especially when someone might have broken in and erased their tracks? NOPE. NOPE. NOPE. NEVER EVER EVER ASSUME SECURITY.
Assume that you can be broken into. Assume that since you were vulnerable, it happened. you must PROVE that you weren't. Otherwise, you cannot trust your data.
How do we know that some unemployed researcher in hungaria didn't find this bug (or any other unreported bug), and use it to break into a bank somewhere, and make some cash? We don't. And given the number of potential hackers, I'd say that this bug WAS exploited, well before a patch. We just don't know, one way or the other.
Hackers are loser by definition? What are you smokin? Or are you just trolling? Well, for everyone else's benefit...
It entirely depends on your definition, of course. But I would say that many people describe the people who program the linux kernel as "kernel hackers."
Obviously not losers.
Now, if you're talking about the guys who read FullDisclosure or Bugtraq, study applications for bugs, and responsibly support them, then again, you're wrong. These people do us all a favor by finding open holes and then letting people know about them. THEY FIND BUGS. they report them, we all upgrade, and all is well.
If such people were gone, only badguys would find bugs. No one would know that systems were insecure. And we'd all be owned, silently, without notice. Maybe we'd never know.
Remember back when the concept of networking computers wasn't that old, say, around 20 years ago? remember how people created viruses, looked into how systems could be exploited, but the security research was stamped out - sysadmins figured it was better to be ignorant and have strong rules than to find out the holes and plug them - that was their security plan.
You've probably never even heard of the morris worm. You probably think we should all just close our doors and trust the megacorps to protect us from the badguys. This is a common logical error. You're not the only one. But if everyone agreed with you, you'd all be boned. And I'd probably being one of the ones breaking into your servers and stealing your lunch money.
He's self-nominated. He does a pretty good job. I agree with his statements about java, and most of the other stuff he's said. He has a way of taking concepts (especially open-source ideas) and stating them concisely and accurately.
What do you mean, cathedrals aren't built that way? They are designed and built by a core of people. Like a lot of engineering projects. The visual idea is very strong - it used to be you'd build a project with a few people designing, over a long time, with little input from users. It would end up somethign grand that everyone would marvel at.
ESR contrasts this with Linus's developement model, wherein he lets anyone contributed and he releases Linux often enough that people can be "rewarded" and excited by it. Read ESR's essay again...and if you still don't get it, I'm sorry for ya.
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately it's not even about fair. With regards to security, Windows is provided "AS IS". Show me one place where Microsoft even makes the slightest guarantee about security. The product was never engineered to be secure and barring a complete rewrite it never will be. They're not dumb, they know it's not very secure, and they don't advertise it as such. They don't need to "disclaim liability", the courts need to prove why it should be assigned to them in the first place.
Of course, all of the open source licenses include similar liability clauses. "We're giving this away for free. Don't sue us. Don't use it for anything you're not prepared to have it break, or guarantee yourself that it will work."
But Intelligent Design is science. A bunch of scientists looked at the world, and had the thought that maybe, a lot of things about our universe are wayyy to complicated to just happen by chance. The odds on things just falling together as they do are a little long. They believe that a reasonable explanation for the universe is that there is some other intelligence somewhere that set it all up.
It's just a theory, to explain the way things are. It doesn't advocate a particular god or intelligence.
Just because you think it's a dumb idea, doesn't mean it's mythology. It's definately not ignorant of facts - it's a current theory, that a lot of PhDs follow. Ahh, forget it. There are too many slashbots following the same line to ever have a reasonable discussion.
Which boiler room was that? IMDB had only two matches for movies named boiler room: This one.
:D
And this one.
Perhaps you mean one of his other fine films.
Anyways, Woo is a great director, and I'm not sure what you meant...go see The Killer...
Actually... didn't MS get its start writing BASIC compilers??
I'm the first to disagree with anyone who says that Bill Gates isn't a very smart guy. He's got programming skills and incredible business smarts. However, he didn't write DOS, it was a clone of CP/M bought from another seattle company and then resold to IBM. story.
You are right of course, that each engineering marvel builds on something previously. If all the tech in the world were removed, we might know how to build cars and houses and put together computer systems, but we'd never know how to put together a hammer with stones and sticks, or fashion steel and silicone out of iron and sand. It would be interesting, wouldn't it? We'd have to start out with that old tech, to get back to this new stuff.
Anyways. idiots complain about Microsoft all the time, stupidly. But smart people do too - and there are plenty of good arguments against MS that don't require ignorance. The debate will continue. Hopefully Linux will get better, and the computing experience in general will get better. We'll see.
given your sig, shouldn't your nick be "byoGNU/linux" ?
It's taken them 25 years to get an OS even remotely as stable as any UNIX variant you'd care to name.
Minix . Ha!
Hey look, its just a cut and paste of the latest trolls...rather than mod you down, i'll poke a few holes.
...mostly it's a function of the video card (and drivers) to do the scaling and the game rendering, while the CPU only does decoding (which can be in hardware too). Finally, you need ballsy disk bandwidth to get those bits off the disk. A new shiny OS won't do you squat.
On my several-year-old system running linux 2.4, I can play fill my desktop with hi-res movies using mplayer. I'm talking upwards of 15 mpeg-2 and divx movies...on what? oh yeah, an athlon 1200. I wonder what your hot stuff Longhorn was running on - dual/quad processor xeons? Heh. Oh yeah, and I can play quake 3 in the background too - probably not at your framerate, but hey...
Look, the point is that you cut and paste some crap about linux, and are really just trolling. Every point you make is pretty much lame and it's all pre-concocted, I've seen the same crap from other trolls. Seriously...why? If you want to question the groupthink, at least write your own opinions!
this is totally sweet. Thanks!
ps- I figured out the radar too.
"Fairly simple solution that could be used; when you do the install, put the user's home dir on a mounted partition, and set the noexec flag on the partition..."
/home/bin...
Yeah, except for those pesky login scripts that need to be executed... And anything customized users might have in
I've had bad nvidia drivers do that occasionally. Usually it is the NVIDIA drivers not handling what X gives it. W/O an NVIDIA card, my systems have been pretty much rock-solid. But with those stupid nvidia closed drivers...WHAM! dead systems every coule of weeks.
It's funny, talking about uptime being bad at a couple of weeks. back in the Microsoft world, I never would even think of leaving my systems up that long, for fear of viruses and just assuming that something would break in the meantime....
conusmer loyalty is a myth. Nobody cares anymore.
Ok, sure. Except, Mac Zealots, Red-Hat only companies, MS-only companies, Dell-only companies, my friends who only buy from Wal-Mart (because of value), my other friends who only buy HP, Ford Zealots, GM zealots, etc. etc. Brand loyalty is alive and well...I could go on and on. People (who you seem to regard as fickle and inferior) have a distinct sense of being wronged, and a keen awareness to being treated especially well. They're just like you-if you notice someone being especially good to you, you should take notice and return for business again, to thank them. But whatever-you seem to have a pretty low opinion of the world in general.
*** GOP? Contract with America, Hello? Nice stab at the Republicans...they've been at least as good as any other political party at doing what they said they'll do. Seriously, next time just pick a bunch of big companies that Slashbots typically don't like (Mc'D's, Microsoft, Ford, GM, Nike...) and bash them, just because you can...
*** Something about how Mag-Lites are marked up, over-sold items that really aren't worth it...
Ok. Except I bought a mag-lite because it was solid, had a good feel to it, a great reputation, and a lifetime guarantee. And I haven't needed to buy another one. Because this one is just plain solid. Does the Mag-Lite corp. make a cheap product that breaks, so i will come back to them and buy another? nope. They make something good and solid, because they can, and maybe they just happen to CARE.
I've gone through plenty of other lesser-quality flashlights. In fact, I bet i've spent more on crap flashlights than just the one good Mag-lite that works. And it's dependable, and solid. And thats why people buy them, and that's I recommend them. It's called respect. And they earn it, as does Dell, and Ferrari, and Swiss Army knives... ***
If you could create something from nothing, wouldn't everybody? If getting something for nothing was as easy as trying hard the world would be a very different place. But you can't. You never get something for nothing. Sure, you might be able to shave a little off the top with lots of ingenuity, but that won't be cost-effective either - ingenuity is *expensive*.
Yes. Ingenuity IS expensive. But if you put a little in, you might just get a lot out. For example. EVERY GOOD IDEA EVER. A lot of good ideas made a lot of people a lot of money throughout history, you can't deny it. Also, a lot of the people who worked hard, also made a pretty penny.
I think we just have different worldvies. You take the belief that people in general are stupid and fickle, that there is no justice (and hence no reward for hard work, honesty, and respect) and that it's basically a dog-eat-dog world, and that we shouldn't care for each other.
But there is justice. People do have respect. people aren't stupid, they remember when they get screwed on a deal.
I had a laptop I was working on for a buddy. The hard drive was not reading, and I was replacing it with a new one. However, before I did the deed, I figured I would see how well Mepis (another Live-CD a la Knoppix) worked on his Dell.
.sig: "Linux, it saves dead hardware!" ...
Not only did it boot, detect everything (including batter status and level), but it could read the drive! Apparently, it was defaulting to DMA mode when it booted, but Linux could read it in PIO (fallback from DMA).
So, I (slowly) recovered his data, and then swapped in the right drive. I considered making this my
Hey...another round of ameri-bashing. Actually, a lot of companies export crap. First off, they might just start out making crap, so they can't help but export it. Secondly, they just might not be clueful enough to make things un-offensive. But in no way are these things exclusively american. I've been getting crap from outside the US for a long time...But I don't bash every company in a given country just because one is bad.
Wait, what am I doing. You can't even spell and some of your sentences don't even make sense.
I think this is great for MS, great for the world, and great for linux, because without Linux, this would NEVER HAVE EVEN HAPPENED.
Virus writers won't do this because
A) it will bring the wrath of the world down on them and
B) such an awakening to security would in fact cause people to pay attention and make virus writers' jobs harder.
Remember: the trick when infecting computers is to do your work WITHOUT the user noticing. These aren't viruses mean to damage, that is just a side effect. These viruses are spamhosts, actual money-making systems. That's why these viruses and bots exist: to make money. Not to be cool, or l33t, or cause damage.
I think the solution is to adapt one of these spambots to do the very thing you mention. As an outsider, you could care less whether or not you bots survive long enough to be spamhauses, you just want to make your point. Have them send out 10,000 infections, and then execute "formate c: --force" or whatever the command is.
So let's say you go to the store, and you buy a program. you just spent your money.
Then, you go home. you try your program out. and guess what? while it kinda works, it doesn't really work right, and most of all it works in some ways rather badly.
Guess what? you're screwed. Because you spent your money, for a program that you can't return. Because you checked it out. The problem is that you can't know whether or not your neat little program works before you go past the point where you can't return it any more.
Enter RMS and everyone else. we now have free software. If you hate a program, don't use it, and bash it on slashdot. Your vote matters. If you do like it, support it, contribute to the code, and maybe buy the creator a steak dinner once or twice. You have no obligation. And best of all, it's free.
And these complaints, this mavis beacon crap, or whatever...a program like that would be dead, no one would use it, and it would never hurt anyone. If it was truly useful, it would be rewritten with the bad security ideas cut right out.
Sometimes I lose faith in open source. And then I remember how crappy the Windows world has it..
You know, kerry + many libs said the same thing, soon after 9/11. look it up. Everyone was talking about the threats Iraq posed, WMD's, and Iraq's link to terrorists.
It's only in the companies best interest to make products of a high enough quality as percieved by the majority of the target purchasers as to justify procuerment. Any extra quality in the product is waste.
That's to get one sale. Most companies really like it when you come back to them for future purchases, which is why having extra quality, something to set your product above others, is always a good thing. If you can make your product that much better with a reasonably small amount of cost, then why not?
You can take a bit more joy from making a better product, you look like a better company, you get higher customer loyalty. For example, MAG-Lite flashlights are extremely well made. People buy them, and the company is succesful, because they made a great product, as opposed to just another flashlight.
I submit it's always a good decision to make a better product.
If you know a part of the package but don't know the name of the package, you can also user urpmf:
so, I knew I wanted gvim. But gvim isn't the package name.
$ urpmf gvim vim-X11
Voila! I wanted vim-X11. Of course, man urpmi on a mandrakelinux box would have told you that anyways.
I don't mean to be overly critical of you...and I like Mandrake. But...
C'mon. seriously. Nothing is every bug free. That's just insane. Nothing, especially something as complicated as an ENTIRE OPERATING SYSTEM, is every completely, 100% bug free. That's just rediculous.
Part of the problem MDK has been having, and that their new release system is trying to fix, is that they have a substantially large user/tester ratio. In other words, too many users for the people who are willing to test. A release can go through forty betas and 10 RC's, and fix ALL reported bugs. But without good testers, it will ship and millions of bugs will be found because there wasn't a good variance of testers.
People expect their software to "just work". But without a lot of testing in a million configurations (especially as current and fast advancing as Mandrake is) that's difficult. Probably impossible.
If you google for "grim fandango belt problem" there are a couple of pages that address the difficulty. Here is one that might help ya.
nice. except you don't know that. Does everyone on the interweb know exactly what happens on all their servers? especially when someone might have broken in and erased their tracks? NOPE. NOPE. NOPE. NEVER EVER EVER ASSUME SECURITY.
Assume that you can be broken into. Assume that since you were vulnerable, it happened. you must PROVE that you weren't. Otherwise, you cannot trust your data.
How do we know that some unemployed researcher in hungaria didn't find this bug (or any other unreported bug), and use it to break into a bank somewhere, and make some cash? We don't. And given the number of potential hackers, I'd say that this bug WAS exploited, well before a patch. We just don't know, one way or the other.
Hackers are loser by definition? What are you smokin? Or are you just trolling? Well, for everyone else's benefit...
It entirely depends on your definition, of course. But I would say that many people describe the people who program the linux kernel as "kernel hackers."
Obviously not losers.
Now, if you're talking about the guys who read FullDisclosure or Bugtraq, study applications for bugs, and responsibly support them, then again, you're wrong. These people do us all a favor by finding open holes and then letting people know about them. THEY FIND BUGS. they report them, we all upgrade, and all is well.
If such people were gone, only badguys would find bugs. No one would know that systems were insecure. And we'd all be owned, silently, without notice. Maybe we'd never know.
Remember back when the concept of networking computers wasn't that old, say, around 20 years ago? remember how people created viruses, looked into how systems could be exploited, but the security research was stamped out - sysadmins figured it was better to be ignorant and have strong rules than to find out the holes and plug them - that was their security plan.
You've probably never even heard of the morris worm. You probably think we should all just close our doors and trust the megacorps to protect us from the badguys. This is a common logical error. You're not the only one. But if everyone agreed with you, you'd all be boned. And I'd probably being one of the ones breaking into your servers and stealing your lunch money.
HEY! I use linux for video games and l33t hax0r3d movies. I don't do porn, but I know that linux has some good web browsers and image viewers....
now, video games...
He's self-nominated. He does a pretty good job. I agree with his statements about java, and most of the other stuff he's said. He has a way of taking concepts (especially open-source ideas) and stating them concisely and accurately.
What do you mean, cathedrals aren't built that way? They are designed and built by a core of people. Like a lot of engineering projects. The visual idea is very strong - it used to be you'd build a project with a few people designing, over a long time, with little input from users. It would end up somethign grand that everyone would marvel at.
ESR contrasts this with Linus's developement model, wherein he lets anyone contributed and he releases Linux often enough that people can be "rewarded" and excited by it. Read ESR's essay again...and if you still don't get it, I'm sorry for ya.
nice. how does it go?
"Counted, counted, and you're time is up?"
I'm not sure..