Goofus would rather turn on his computer and be a corporate tool for Microsoft without giving a second thought to how much richer the world would be, intellectually speaking, if everyone spent a little more time actually learning how computers worked instead of learning MS specific pointy clickety stuff.
Gallant spends time learning about how to utilize the resources in his PC as efficiently as possible, sharing his knowledge with anyone who will listen and helping people to help themselved by using Linux as the primary operating system and open source applications for true productivity.
Goofus doesn't care how much bandwidth he uses while downloading internet pr0n with his insecure P2P client that has trojaned his system and turned his system into a spam bot while at the same time complaining about how slow his system is because it's over six months old.
Gallant is a polite internet citizen. "Wow. This ISO download of Fedora Core 5 is going to take me good long time to download. I've got 25 meg down available right now, but my neighbors on the cable system might need to download some things too. So I'll lower my downstream during daytime hours to half a meg and only go up to 2 megs between 2:00AM and 4:00AM".
Goofus thinks that pirating software is cool because it saves him money that he can use to fill the tank on his gas hog SUV. "Haw haw!! Adobe thinks that we're all suckers who will pay them what they ask for their crap program! I'll show them! I'm gonna fire up Kazaa and get it for free! I'm a revolutionary who's stickin' it to the man"!
Gallant respects software licensing: "No Jim Bob. You see, even though I no longer use Windows, I am well aware of Microsoft's licensing requirements and you can't just take that copy of Windows and install it again on your cousin's PC because it's a license violation. If your cousin wants Windows XP Pro, he's going to have to buy the legitimate upgrade copy from a valid retailer".
Goofus doesn't care about other people's property or privacy: "Hey... looks like that hot neighbor Jolene's PC is accessible in Network Neighborhood. Well, well, well... Let's have a looksee at what's ono her hard drive. Oooohhh... C:\Private\JPEGs\XXX\Me, Branden and Rand Partying. That looks like a keeper"!
Gallant warns his neighbors that their machines might be insecure: "Sorry to bother you Jenna, but I noticed that your computer is readily accesible to anyone else in the apartment complex. If you want I can show you how to make it secure". Jenna: "Why thanks Gallant! I'd like that. By the way, if you'd like I could make us something for dinner when you come over. It's the least I could do". Gallant scores.
Not entirely true. There is plenty of free (as in beer) software out there that I refuse to use on the grounds that it isn't socially beneficial. If I was simply in it for software that I didn't have to pay for, there is plenty of stuff in the Windows world that would suffice. But that's the other reason for going Linux. The software in the Linux/*BSD worlds is vastly superior to Windows software on many fronts. It might take a bit more work to get running, but the features available, if you're willing to work at it, are much more impressive than anything Microsoft Windows has to offer. Now... if Microsoft Windows finally paid attention to people like me who like to build things from the ground up with no restrictions whatsoever, then I might be interested. The chances of that happening are very slim.
Actually I am of the opinion that if you use Windows you should only use commercial software which is why I specified that I wouldn't use things like OpenOffice for Windows or GIMP for Windows in my original post. (Note the requirement of *commercial* apps).
Beyond that, I don't think that Windows 2000 Professional was the equivalent of RedHat 7.2 because of the limitations that it comes with. Namely the connection limits for file sharing and web serving. If I want unlimited web serving I need Windows 2000 Server with IIS. If I want to share files with more than 10 users, I need Windows 2000 Server. Ideally there should be NO limits other than the ones imposed by your hardware on what you can do with a machine. THat is my biggest issue with Microsoft and the strongest benefit of Linux.
When I set out to install Windows 98 and RedHat 7.2 (both contemporaries of each other in 1999 when I did this) I tallied up how much it would cost me to implement the same functionality in Windows using only commercial software on the Windows side that I had in RedHat for free. I came up with $6000 to bring Windows up to par with Redhat 7.2 at the time. I don't have the breakdown but I'm sure if I reproduced the experiment I would come up with a similar figure.
Here's what I roughly remember:
1. Throw out Windows 98 that came with the PC and install Windows 2000 Server - $600 2. Buy Adobe Photoshop to provide what GIMP does (at the time Photoshop Elements didn't exist) - $800 3. Install a decent software firewall from Norton - $99 4. Install Microsoft Office 2000 - $600 5. Install Xing! MP3 encoding/ripping software - $50 6. Install a development environment from Microsoft - $1500
There were quite a few other things I needed on that box at the time and I wasn't going to pirate or buy the software so I just wound up ditching Windows for Linux. But the total came up to about $5400 if I remember correctly. So tell me again why I would want to buy into something that I can get for free, legally elsehwere?;P Your serve...
It looks like Microsoft is headed down the same old road that the Unix zealots have gone down before: GUI network transparency a la X Windows. This is bad bad bad news. As everyone on Slashdot who knows always sez: "Get rid of network transparency. It makes GUIs slow because all GUI traffic needs to go over the network even for local appz!!"
The X Windows people made the horrible mistake of implementing network transparency in their GUI back in 1984. No one uses it. No one wants it. No one likes it. All it does is make GUIs slow. Instead they should have been working on making X Windows part of the kernel as is the rallying battle cry of the GUI experts on Slashdot. Can you imagine how things would be now if X Windows has been made part of the kernel and didn't have network transparency??
So now Microsoft has made the same horrible mistake in presenting remote GUI input and output via NETWORK TRANSPARENCY in their windowing system. This is bound to make things horrible and slow. The only benefit they have is that their GUI is part of the kernel as it should be. What are we going to do now? Oh woe is me. I shake my head.
Hehehe... I guess it depends on what you define as "old". I have a dual P II 450 with 768 Megs of RAM that I consider to be standard "entry level". I bought it in 1997/98 and it's been serving me well as an application server with Linux for quite a few years. This is the way computing is SUPPOSED to work. None of this stupid disposable crap. I am currently running RH 9 on it with all the latest apps like Firefox, OpenOffice 2.0, VNC4, etc... It performs at least as fast as a P4 1 Ghz system running Windows XP Pro. So much for the argument to run Windows...
I do all that stuff for free to "take the money out of the hands" of the people at the big boxes who would overcharge them for what amounts to nothing.
Just as a side not to those of you who are unaware, Xen is probably the coolest thing to ever happen to computing evar. It is a paravirutalization system. How many times have you fired up VMWare or VirtualPC and wished you didn't have to run as heavy of a Host OS? Well.. Xen is your answer. Xen is a special kernel all unto it's own that boots directly on x86 and presents a new virtual architecture to the guest OS. This new virtual architecture (think PPC vs. x86 vs. amd64) is called 'xen'. And when your OS is compiled to operate on top of the Xen kernel, you get EXACTLY what was mentioned above: a system that boots a very minimal "OS" that plays host to your VMs. Not only that but at speeds that are near native! So Redhat is making the right move by incorporating this into Fedora (and eventually their commercial offerings). Now, the only other thing that needs to be done is make Xen work for grandma. Then you'll never have to ever worry about fixing people's PCs ever again...
And it's also yet anothing silent but glaring admission my Microsoft that they are VERY concerned about what is happening in the Free/Open software world. Perhaps they realize that there are several fronts they can't compete on with FOSS and would rather expunge it from view instead of, oh I don't know... COMPETING? Personally, I think competition is overrated and would rather see a more centralized system of forced cooperation by a world government. But that's just me...;p Since a lot of you yahoos here are into "competition", what do you have to say for your capitalist masters Microsoft? (BTW... I'm not a commie either) And one last thing. Bill Gates... fuck you yet again.
Pish posh! The biggest problem *I* have with Slashdot is that everyone considers themselves an "expert" when they aren't. I am! I've said many things of great import over the years and like to think that I've had a fairly wide ranging influence over the readers. In fact, I even argue that some of the industry's so-called "experts" like John Dvorak have read my JEs and posts with relish and have used them as source material for their columns. Where else would Dvorak have come up with the idea that games development leads to GUI breakthroughs? I said that like... ten years ago on Slashdot. Back when it used to be called Usenet.
I don't submit any questions to the Mythbusters because I've already debunked all the myths. A few examples:
1. The American economy is improving. (Busted this myth in 2002) 2. The American economy is collapsing. (Busted this myth in 2004) 3. The moon launch was a fake. (Busted this myth in 1969 before I was even born) 4. The moon is real. (Busted this myth in a past life as a sea slug 40 million years ago) 5. Xenu the clam wasn't real (Busted that myth in 1995) 5. L.Ron Hubbard is a con man (Busted that myth in 1996) 5. Tom Cruise likes curly fries (Busted that myth in 2001) 5. President Bush doesn't eat babies (Busted in 2005)
And so you see, I have quite an illustrious body of work that shows "prior art" in the Myth Busting realm. So I claim ownership of all myth busting from here on out. Ask me the questions folks and I'll produce!!!;P
Microsoft Windows XP is considered by several "unbiased" experts who have been paid by Microsoft to be "secure and stable". So whta gives?;P hehehehe... amateurs...
When? It's already been done in the film Capricorn 7 (or something like that). The one where they proved that the space mission to the moon was faked. NASA built a real rocket and sent it up into space and then built a set to make it look like they landed on the moon. The moon never existed and was concocted by Thomas Edison as a cover for his light bulb development just before he invented the motion picture. You know his rendition of "The First Men in the Moon"? Well the prop that was used as the moon is what's been hanging in a (Low Earth Orbit) LEO until the 1968 moon launch. It wasn't suitable for landing though, so the Apollo had to carry enough supplies on it to build a landing surface in space behind the Edison prop. Glad I could share the truth with folks. I live for this stuff!
Now all our software will come with gunracks, "nekkid lady" sillouhette mudflaps, and singing bass easter eggs out the wazoo! I can't wait...;P (It's a joke folks. Take a breath, relax and laugh. God knows there's enough jokes about New Yorkers and "City Bwahs". Sad that I have to put that in here to avoid people taking offense.)
...I have to say that I am glad to see that the truth eventually prevails. I've been hearing my employees whining "linux this" and "linux that" for the past six year. But they never have anything to back themselves up when they are faced with a challenge. Just because Linux is the buzzword of the decade doesn't make it a viable business technology. Anytime the dirty L word ever comes up in meetings I smash it down the the heel of my boot by instantly asking the person who uttered it the following question: "You don't like your job here. Do you"? That usually silences them. But I always follow up with, "If Linux is so good. Then show me where the *working* alternatives to important development applications like PowerPoint, Photoshop and Macromedia Flash are". The response is usually a visibly annoyed grumble. And do you want to know why? BECAUSE THERE AREN'T ANY VIABLE ALTERNATIVES.
We produce an award winning database with a truly intuitive user interface that goes lightyears beyond anything that Linux's GUI has to offer. And I'm the one who draws up the mockups and gets things ready for the code monkeys to sling their stupid poo at. My typical devel/design cycle:
1. Watch The Matrix, Hackers, Virtuosity, The Minority Report and a few hours of the SciFi channel to spot new but unimplemented UI features 2. Fire up Photoshop and create mockups for each UI screen 3. Pull the mockup into PowerPoint and add the sound effects and MPEG1 videos (That's what wins awards in the DB world folks. Good special FX. Just felt the need to school you.) 4. Do a little more work in Flash to indicate what the pointer should look like in various parts of the UI at various times. 5. Turn it all over to the code jockeys so they can make the pointless stuff happen.
If my coders were using Linux they wouldn't be able to dissect my work and convert it to their pointless language. (We're a Visual Studio.Net shop now because that's all the rage with code cooks) They *might* be able to watch my PowerPoint stuff in OpenOffice.org but probably not considering that they don't have enough RAM to hold that bulky app and my presentations (which top out at about 600 megs typically. Per UI screen.). They *could* view my Flash presentation in their web browsers with the Flash player for Linux but they wouldn't be able to see the intricate timings that I coded into the presentation. And Photoshop? Don't make me laugh with your Gimp thing. I can't work with an application that refuses to use normal menus and plain English for filters. Not to mention there aren't enough filters for the kind of work I do. Where is Bryce for Linux? How am I supposed to make award winning UIs when I can't render a complex texture with a few button clicks? How am I supposed to make grand looking buttons when I don't have any kind of lighting control that is realistically flexible?
So your beloved Linux has nothing to offer this Fortune 1000 developer. It seems to be moored in the backwater ages when everything was CLI (which is dying out in case you didn't notce) and the world was encumbered by the albatross of elitist intellectuals who called themselves "programmers". What's so special about being able to type cryptic Unix and C commands and just to get 1+1=2? It's 2005 people! I shouldn't even NEED a keyboard anymore! I get so annoyed when an application makes me reach for the keyboard that I curse anyone who thinks it's a decent textual input device. Give me a 3d gyro mouse and a Dasher-like interface any day. But better yet, give me complete and total voice recognition. As a developer all I should have to do is tell my computer to build me an award winning DB app in Excel and then rake in the cash. Then I can finally cut the losses that I employ called "programmers".
Right you are. But the software is only as secure as the OS. And if the OS gets 0wn3d, then the security of the application doesn't matter. However, I'll also say that the abilities of the administrator of the Windows box also have a lot to do with it. I know that I could run an Apache web server on a Windows 2003 server and never get cracked.
Was it "piracy" when people videotaped hit TV shows in the 70s, 80s and 90s and then passed the tape around to family and friends? I don't think so. What about all those mix tapes EVERYONE made in college? Again, I don't think so. Why is the industry so worried about the same behavior in the digital realm? This is just stupid corporatist politics to try and enforce ARTIFICIAL restrictions where there should be none. I mean seriously... OK, some guy downloads the entire first season of the Sopranos from the net with P2P and doesn't buy the DVD box set. Do you HONESTLY think this guy was going to buy it in the first place??? Some people are idiots and will do anything they can to get something for free. But if the only option they have left (because in the future P2P has been killed and compression formats that approximate the quality of real distribution media are illegal to possess if you are a consumer) is to buy the thing they want. They WON'T buy it. They'll find another way to acquire it whether it's shoplifting or breaking into someone's house and taking it or if they're truly honest (like me) they won't buy it. Period. Meanwhile, the whole downloadable media experience is hampered by an industry's paranoia. Ridiculous.
There are plenty of people who will buy the media through the appropriate channels and that will make plenty of money for these companies. The problem is that they don't just want "plenty of money" they want increasing gains. That's NOT possible. It's not possible to force increasing profit. There is a point where you're done. You've hit the limit. There is only so much money in the world and people are only willing to allot only a bit of their own money to entertainment. I have nothing against these companies making money for the products they sell. I have something against them believing that they have a right to continually growing profits. They don't. End of story. If you disagree with me, go jump off a bridge right now. I don't care.
Re:Hmmm... Dvorak Must Have Been Reading My...
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Actually I went Atari --> Mac --> Windows --> *nix. I LOVED my ST for music procution and continued using it until 1994, when I was told to get a "real" computer. Too bad people didn't "get" that the ST WAS a real computer... Unfortunately, the ST software dried up as soon as I graduated. Thanks to living in a backwards place like America.
Hmmm... Dvorak Must Have Been Reading My...
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...posts on Slashdot for the past few years. I've stated MANY times that computers are NOT for business. The fact that they have been co-opted and philosophically monopolized by business is what keeps progress from happening. I remember way back when I made the move from Macintosh to Win31. The first thing I thought to myself was, "why isn't Microsoft paying attention to the people who really matter: the creative people like musicians and artists"? I went so far as to write them a letter saying that I understand their need to focus on the business angle, but in this day and age business is far less important than actually producing a REAL product. And the people who do that are creatives. I never got a response back. I still stuck with them until my horrendous experiences with Win95 and NT4. I was still hoping that they'd taken creative applications seriously and I found that music software designers were STILL having to create their own interfaces and APIs to tackle the job of making music on a PC. Completely counter to the way things should work. I found out that you only had access to 16 MIDI ports max in Win95 because they were still using the buggy 16-bit MIDI kludge from Win31. That, and my travails in trying to get NT4 working nicely with my pro audio gear are what made me realize that Microsoft didn't "get it".
Windows XP is a bit of on improvement but I've already moved completely to Linux and the Linux audio scene is FAR better than the Windows audio scene. So they lost me. All because they were willing to focus on boring things like spreadsheets and end-user DBs in Access. Completely idiotic. Dvorak is right. The REAL developments come from the gaming end of things because that's where I've seen most of the new and innovative features that actually MEAN something. Too bad MS. It was too little and way too late for a lot of us. Now we all use Linux. Good night.
Seeing that I'm not really into breasts as much as I'm into other things that I won't go into here... I tend to prefer the term "sweater meat" since it's much more apt.;P
Slashdot Mirror
...Goofus and Gallant!
Goofus would rather turn on his computer and be a corporate tool for Microsoft without giving a second thought to how much richer the world would be, intellectually speaking, if everyone spent a little more time actually learning how computers worked instead of learning MS specific pointy clickety stuff.
Gallant spends time learning about how to utilize the resources in his PC as efficiently as possible, sharing his knowledge with anyone who will listen and helping people to help themselved by using Linux as the primary operating system and open source applications for true productivity.
Goofus doesn't care how much bandwidth he uses while downloading internet pr0n with his insecure P2P client that has trojaned his system and turned his system into a spam bot while at the same time complaining about how slow his system is because it's over six months old.
Gallant is a polite internet citizen. "Wow. This ISO download of Fedora Core 5 is going to take me good long time to download. I've got 25 meg down available right now, but my neighbors on the cable system might need to download some things too. So I'll lower my downstream during daytime hours to half a meg and only go up to 2 megs between 2:00AM and 4:00AM".
Goofus thinks that pirating software is cool because it saves him money that he can use to fill the tank on his gas hog SUV. "Haw haw!! Adobe thinks that we're all suckers who will pay them what they ask for their crap program! I'll show them! I'm gonna fire up Kazaa and get it for free! I'm a revolutionary who's stickin' it to the man"!
Gallant respects software licensing: "No Jim Bob. You see, even though I no longer use Windows, I am well aware of Microsoft's licensing requirements and you can't just take that copy of Windows and install it again on your cousin's PC because it's a license violation. If your cousin wants Windows XP Pro, he's going to have to buy the legitimate upgrade copy from a valid retailer".
Goofus doesn't care about other people's property or privacy: "Hey... looks like that hot neighbor Jolene's PC is accessible in Network Neighborhood. Well, well, well... Let's have a looksee at what's ono her hard drive. Oooohhh... C:\Private\JPEGs\XXX\Me, Branden and Rand Partying. That looks like a keeper"!
Gallant warns his neighbors that their machines might be insecure: "Sorry to bother you Jenna, but I noticed that your computer is readily accesible to anyone else in the apartment complex. If you want I can show you how to make it secure". Jenna: "Why thanks Gallant! I'd like that. By the way, if you'd like I could make us something for dinner when you come over. It's the least I could do". Gallant scores.
Not entirely true. There is plenty of free (as in beer) software out there that I refuse to use on the grounds that it isn't socially beneficial. If I was simply in it for software that I didn't have to pay for, there is plenty of stuff in the Windows world that would suffice. But that's the other reason for going Linux. The software in the Linux/*BSD worlds is vastly superior to Windows software on many fronts. It might take a bit more work to get running, but the features available, if you're willing to work at it, are much more impressive than anything Microsoft Windows has to offer. Now... if Microsoft Windows finally paid attention to people like me who like to build things from the ground up with no restrictions whatsoever, then I might be interested. The chances of that happening are very slim.
Actually I am of the opinion that if you use Windows you should only use commercial software which is why I specified that I wouldn't use things like OpenOffice for Windows or GIMP for Windows in my original post. (Note the requirement of *commercial* apps).
Beyond that, I don't think that Windows 2000 Professional was the equivalent of RedHat 7.2 because of the limitations that it comes with. Namely the connection limits for file sharing and web serving. If I want unlimited web serving I need Windows 2000 Server with IIS. If I want to share files with more than 10 users, I need Windows 2000 Server. Ideally there should be NO limits other than the ones imposed by your hardware on what you can do with a machine. THat is my biggest issue with Microsoft and the strongest benefit of Linux.
When I set out to install Windows 98 and RedHat 7.2 (both contemporaries of each other in 1999 when I did this) I tallied up how much it would cost me to implement the same functionality in Windows using only commercial software on the Windows side that I had in RedHat for free. I came up with $6000 to bring Windows up to par with Redhat 7.2 at the time. I don't have the breakdown but I'm sure if I reproduced the experiment I would come up with a similar figure.
;P Your serve...
Here's what I roughly remember:
1. Throw out Windows 98 that came with the PC and install Windows 2000 Server - $600
2. Buy Adobe Photoshop to provide what GIMP does (at the time Photoshop Elements didn't exist) - $800
3. Install a decent software firewall from Norton - $99
4. Install Microsoft Office 2000 - $600
5. Install Xing! MP3 encoding/ripping software - $50
6. Install a development environment from Microsoft - $1500
There were quite a few other things I needed on that box at the time and I wasn't going to pirate or buy the software so I just wound up ditching Windows for Linux. But the total came up to about $5400 if I remember correctly. So tell me again why I would want to buy into something that I can get for free, legally elsehwere?
I only have this to say old buddy old pal...
;*
It's OK to show a man getting his balls kicked on TV. But it's not OK to show him getting them stroked. What do you have to say about that?
Not at all surprising based on how little you seem to know about PCs.
It looks like Microsoft is headed down the same old road that the Unix zealots have gone down before: GUI network transparency a la X Windows. This is bad bad bad news. As everyone on Slashdot who knows always sez: "Get rid of network transparency. It makes GUIs slow because all GUI traffic needs to go over the network even for local appz!!"
The X Windows people made the horrible mistake of implementing network transparency in their GUI back in 1984. No one uses it. No one wants it. No one likes it. All it does is make GUIs slow. Instead they should have been working on making X Windows part of the kernel as is the rallying battle cry of the GUI experts on Slashdot. Can you imagine how things would be now if X Windows has been made part of the kernel and didn't have network transparency??
So now Microsoft has made the same horrible mistake in presenting remote GUI input and output via NETWORK TRANSPARENCY in their windowing system. This is bound to make things horrible and slow. The only benefit they have is that their GUI is part of the kernel as it should be. What are we going to do now? Oh woe is me. I shake my head.
Hehehe... I guess it depends on what you define as "old". I have a dual P II 450 with 768 Megs of RAM that I consider to be standard "entry level". I bought it in 1997/98 and it's been serving me well as an application server with Linux for quite a few years. This is the way computing is SUPPOSED to work. None of this stupid disposable crap. I am currently running RH 9 on it with all the latest apps like Firefox, OpenOffice 2.0, VNC4, etc... It performs at least as fast as a P4 1 Ghz system running Windows XP Pro. So much for the argument to run Windows...
I do all that stuff for free to "take the money out of the hands" of the people at the big boxes who would overcharge them for what amounts to nothing.
Just as a side not to those of you who are unaware, Xen is probably the coolest thing to ever happen to computing evar. It is a paravirutalization system. How many times have you fired up VMWare or VirtualPC and wished you didn't have to run as heavy of a Host OS? Well.. Xen is your answer. Xen is a special kernel all unto it's own that boots directly on x86 and presents a new virtual architecture to the guest OS. This new virtual architecture (think PPC vs. x86 vs. amd64) is called 'xen'. And when your OS is compiled to operate on top of the Xen kernel, you get EXACTLY what was mentioned above: a system that boots a very minimal "OS" that plays host to your VMs. Not only that but at speeds that are near native! So Redhat is making the right move by incorporating this into Fedora (and eventually their commercial offerings). Now, the only other thing that needs to be done is make Xen work for grandma. Then you'll never have to ever worry about fixing people's PCs ever again...
And it's also yet anothing silent but glaring admission my Microsoft that they are VERY concerned about what is happening in the Free/Open software world. Perhaps they realize that there are several fronts they can't compete on with FOSS and would rather expunge it from view instead of, oh I don't know... COMPETING? Personally, I think competition is overrated and would rather see a more centralized system of forced cooperation by a world government. But that's just me... ;p Since a lot of you yahoos here are into "competition", what do you have to say for your capitalist masters Microsoft? (BTW... I'm not a commie either) And one last thing. Bill Gates... fuck you yet again.
Dude... what's with all the repition on item "5"? Did your key get stuck or something? Get over yourself...
Pish posh! The biggest problem *I* have with Slashdot is that everyone considers themselves an "expert" when they aren't. I am! I've said many things of great import over the years and like to think that I've had a fairly wide ranging influence over the readers. In fact, I even argue that some of the industry's so-called "experts" like John Dvorak have read my JEs and posts with relish and have used them as source material for their columns. Where else would Dvorak have come up with the idea that games development leads to GUI breakthroughs? I said that like... ten years ago on Slashdot. Back when it used to be called Usenet.
;P
I don't submit any questions to the Mythbusters because I've already debunked all the myths. A few examples:
1. The American economy is improving. (Busted this myth in 2002)
2. The American economy is collapsing. (Busted this myth in 2004)
3. The moon launch was a fake. (Busted this myth in 1969 before I was even born)
4. The moon is real. (Busted this myth in a past life as a sea slug 40 million years ago)
5. Xenu the clam wasn't real (Busted that myth in 1995)
5. L.Ron Hubbard is a con man (Busted that myth in 1996)
5. Tom Cruise likes curly fries (Busted that myth in 2001)
5. President Bush doesn't eat babies (Busted in 2005)
And so you see, I have quite an illustrious body of work that shows "prior art" in the Myth Busting realm. So I claim ownership of all myth busting from here on out. Ask me the questions folks and I'll produce!!!
Microsoft Windows XP is considered by several "unbiased" experts who have been paid by Microsoft to be "secure and stable". So whta gives? ;P hehehehe... amateurs...
When? It's already been done in the film Capricorn 7 (or something like that). The one where they proved that the space mission to the moon was faked. NASA built a real rocket and sent it up into space and then built a set to make it look like they landed on the moon. The moon never existed and was concocted by Thomas Edison as a cover for his light bulb development just before he invented the motion picture. You know his rendition of "The First Men in the Moon"? Well the prop that was used as the moon is what's been hanging in a (Low Earth Orbit) LEO until the 1968 moon launch. It wasn't suitable for landing though, so the Apollo had to carry enough supplies on it to build a landing surface in space behind the Edison prop. Glad I could share the truth with folks. I live for this stuff!
See here for the concept illustrated above. Same for all mods who mod my original post down... Learn it. Love it. Dismissed private!!
Huh? Whachoo talkin' bout Willis?? ;P Cheers!
It MUST be a slow Monday where you as as it's Tuesday for the rest of the world and even Wednesday in some parts! ;P
Now all our software will come with gunracks, "nekkid lady" sillouhette mudflaps, and singing bass easter eggs out the wazoo! I can't wait... ;P (It's a joke folks. Take a breath, relax and laugh. God knows there's enough jokes about New Yorkers and "City Bwahs". Sad that I have to put that in here to avoid people taking offense.)
...I have to say that I am glad to see that the truth eventually prevails. I've been hearing my employees whining "linux this" and "linux that" for the past six year. But they never have anything to back themselves up when they are faced with a challenge. Just because Linux is the buzzword of the decade doesn't make it a viable business technology. Anytime the dirty L word ever comes up in meetings I smash it down the the heel of my boot by instantly asking the person who uttered it the following question: "You don't like your job here. Do you"? That usually silences them. But I always follow up with, "If Linux is so good. Then show me where the *working* alternatives to important development applications like PowerPoint, Photoshop and Macromedia Flash are". The response is usually a visibly annoyed grumble. And do you want to know why? BECAUSE THERE AREN'T ANY VIABLE ALTERNATIVES.
.Net shop now because that's all the rage with code cooks) They *might* be able to watch my PowerPoint stuff in OpenOffice.org but probably not considering that they don't have enough RAM to hold that bulky app and my presentations (which top out at about 600 megs typically. Per UI screen.). They *could* view my Flash presentation in their web browsers with the Flash player for Linux but they wouldn't be able to see the intricate timings that I coded into the presentation. And Photoshop? Don't make me laugh with your Gimp thing. I can't work with an application that refuses to use normal menus and plain English for filters. Not to mention there aren't enough filters for the kind of work I do. Where is Bryce for Linux? How am I supposed to make award winning UIs when I can't render a complex texture with a few button clicks? How am I supposed to make grand looking buttons when I don't have any kind of lighting control that is realistically flexible?
We produce an award winning database with a truly intuitive user interface that goes lightyears beyond anything that Linux's GUI has to offer. And I'm the one who draws up the mockups and gets things ready for the code monkeys to sling their stupid poo at. My typical devel/design cycle:
1. Watch The Matrix, Hackers, Virtuosity, The Minority Report and a few hours of the SciFi channel to spot new but unimplemented UI features
2. Fire up Photoshop and create mockups for each UI screen
3. Pull the mockup into PowerPoint and add the sound effects and MPEG1 videos (That's what wins awards in the DB world folks. Good special FX. Just felt the need to school you.)
4. Do a little more work in Flash to indicate what the pointer should look like in various parts of the UI at various times.
5. Turn it all over to the code jockeys so they can make the pointless stuff happen.
If my coders were using Linux they wouldn't be able to dissect my work and convert it to their pointless language. (We're a Visual Studio
So your beloved Linux has nothing to offer this Fortune 1000 developer. It seems to be moored in the backwater ages when everything was CLI (which is dying out in case you didn't notce) and the world was encumbered by the albatross of elitist intellectuals who called themselves "programmers". What's so special about being able to type cryptic Unix and C commands and just to get 1+1=2? It's 2005 people! I shouldn't even NEED a keyboard anymore! I get so annoyed when an application makes me reach for the keyboard that I curse anyone who thinks it's a decent textual input device. Give me a 3d gyro mouse and a Dasher-like interface any day. But better yet, give me complete and total voice recognition. As a developer all I should have to do is tell my computer to build me an award winning DB app in Excel and then rake in the cash. Then I can finally cut the losses that I employ called "programmers".
Right you are. But the software is only as secure as the OS. And if the OS gets 0wn3d, then the security of the application doesn't matter. However, I'll also say that the abilities of the administrator of the Windows box also have a lot to do with it. I know that I could run an Apache web server on a Windows 2003 server and never get cracked.
Was it "piracy" when people videotaped hit TV shows in the 70s, 80s and 90s and then passed the tape around to family and friends? I don't think so. What about all those mix tapes EVERYONE made in college? Again, I don't think so. Why is the industry so worried about the same behavior in the digital realm? This is just stupid corporatist politics to try and enforce ARTIFICIAL restrictions where there should be none. I mean seriously... OK, some guy downloads the entire first season of the Sopranos from the net with P2P and doesn't buy the DVD box set. Do you HONESTLY think this guy was going to buy it in the first place??? Some people are idiots and will do anything they can to get something for free. But if the only option they have left (because in the future P2P has been killed and compression formats that approximate the quality of real distribution media are illegal to possess if you are a consumer) is to buy the thing they want. They WON'T buy it. They'll find another way to acquire it whether it's shoplifting or breaking into someone's house and taking it or if they're truly honest (like me) they won't buy it. Period. Meanwhile, the whole downloadable media experience is hampered by an industry's paranoia. Ridiculous.
There are plenty of people who will buy the media through the appropriate channels and that will make plenty of money for these companies. The problem is that they don't just want "plenty of money" they want increasing gains. That's NOT possible. It's not possible to force increasing profit. There is a point where you're done. You've hit the limit. There is only so much money in the world and people are only willing to allot only a bit of their own money to entertainment. I have nothing against these companies making money for the products they sell. I have something against them believing that they have a right to continually growing profits. They don't. End of story. If you disagree with me, go jump off a bridge right now. I don't care.
Actually I went Atari --> Mac --> Windows --> *nix. I LOVED my ST for music procution and continued using it until 1994, when I was told to get a "real" computer. Too bad people didn't "get" that the ST WAS a real computer... Unfortunately, the ST software dried up as soon as I graduated. Thanks to living in a backwards place like America.
...posts on Slashdot for the past few years. I've stated MANY times that computers are NOT for business. The fact that they have been co-opted and philosophically monopolized by business is what keeps progress from happening. I remember way back when I made the move from Macintosh to Win31. The first thing I thought to myself was, "why isn't Microsoft paying attention to the people who really matter: the creative people like musicians and artists"? I went so far as to write them a letter saying that I understand their need to focus on the business angle, but in this day and age business is far less important than actually producing a REAL product. And the people who do that are creatives. I never got a response back. I still stuck with them until my horrendous experiences with Win95 and NT4. I was still hoping that they'd taken creative applications seriously and I found that music software designers were STILL having to create their own interfaces and APIs to tackle the job of making music on a PC. Completely counter to the way things should work. I found out that you only had access to 16 MIDI ports max in Win95 because they were still using the buggy 16-bit MIDI kludge from Win31. That, and my travails in trying to get NT4 working nicely with my pro audio gear are what made me realize that Microsoft didn't "get it".
Windows XP is a bit of on improvement but I've already moved completely to Linux and the Linux audio scene is FAR better than the Windows audio scene. So they lost me. All because they were willing to focus on boring things like spreadsheets and end-user DBs in Access. Completely idiotic. Dvorak is right. The REAL developments come from the gaming end of things because that's where I've seen most of the new and innovative features that actually MEAN something. Too bad MS. It was too little and way too late for a lot of us. Now we all use Linux. Good night.
Seeing that I'm not really into breasts as much as I'm into other things that I won't go into here... I tend to prefer the term "sweater meat" since it's much more apt. ;P