At my bank, they ask what was the drill instructors name if I was in the military... how the hell do I know, all I remember is 'fuckhead'
So use that as the question and Fuckwit as the answer. No problem. It's not as though anybody is going to check to see if the answer is a proper name or anything.
Right away, you see the problem with this approach. The GP wrote "fuckhead", and within 5 seconds of reading this, you already forgot that it was "fuckhead" and wrote "Fuckwit" instead. Not only did you get the word wrong, but you capitalized the "F" when the GP did not.
Actually, now that I think about it, there's no reason that there has to be any logical or rational connection between the question and answer, just as long as you remember what it is. I mean, is anybody at your bank going to complain if your answer to the question, "What city did you grow up in?" is, "Judy Garland," and if so, why?
Your bank isn't going to complain, but your future-self is going to. I got a bank account as a teenager, and one of the security questions was "What is your dream job". 10 years later, they asked me what I had put as my dream job. I completely blanked out. I remember I wanted to make videogames when I was a kid, so I tried "video game programmer", "videogame programmer", "game programmer", "game developer" and they were all rejected. Well, I was also in a rock band for a while, so I tried "rock star", "musician", etc. Nothing worked. In the end, I had to visit the bank in person, which meant taking some hours off of work, which was inconvenient because we were in an overtime crunch period.
And this was for a question that I assumed I had answered earnestly (as opposed to "growing up in Judy Garland"); except it was merely a question that didn't really have a great significance to me, and so my answer likely changed with time. So unless you really have a strong memory associated with "growing up in Judy Garland" (perhaps because of some sort of inside joke), it's probably best not to try to be "clever" with these security questions.
Unless your time is worth more than $2000/hr, better locked and inconvenienced than compromised.
You can't just look at the gain/loss of the two alternatives and decide which is better merely from that. You also have to take into account the probability, and multiply the gain/lost by the probability.
For example, if you make $40/h, and you access your bank account 5 times a month, and it takes you an extra 60 seconds, because of the inconvenience of the added "security" questions, and if you still have a good 30 years of employment left, then over your life, the questions would have cost you $1200, and that's assuming you never get a raise. The security questions are always there, so you have a 100% chance of being inconvenienced each time you try to access your account.
Most people don't get their bank accounts broken into, even without security questions. Let's be pessimistic and imagine 1 out of 1000 people who don't have security questions get hacked. Let's say the security questions are really secure (i.e. not merely "what is your maiden's name") and they actually halve the chance of getting hacked, even though you post a lot of your personal information such as your favorite color, or your dog's name on Facebook. If you only ever keep about $5000 in your bank, then the security question have lowered your risk from 0.1% (i.e. $5) to 0.05% (i.e. $2.50)
As part of a secure programming course I recently took, we were instructed to overwrite keys with zeros when done using them. It's that simple - you don't leave the key in memory for any longer than you need it.
When the machine is powered down, your application's exit routine zeros all of the memory, and then free()s it. Nothing that good programming practices can't address.
You're assuming that when you write code to zero out the keys, the CPU will actually zero out the keys. One situation in which this assumption may be false is if you're using an optimizing compiler which statically analyzes your source code, and sees a "write to memory" instruction, for which that write will never be read. Since no one is ever going read that value you just wrote, it may decide it's not worth writing in the first place, and optimize it out.
Then there's all sorts of OS-level optimizations which may intefere with zeroing memory. For example, the OS may temporarily put your program's memory space to a paging file, because it's running another process which needs a lot of RAM. Then, when it's your program's turn to run again, it'll load the contents of the page file back into memory. Your program says to zero out the memory, and it does so, and simply marks the pagefile as being "dirty" (i.e. containing garbage data), but does not bother to actually zero it out (not yet anyway, it may do so later on, when it's used up all the other dirty pages, and needs a new page to write upon).
Finally, in relation to the Crysis real world gameplay versus the AT benchmark score, I thought it was common knowledge that the game would be slower when actually playing it because you likely have physics,AI,logic,sound calculations to do that you don't in timedemo mode. What is the big deal here?
There's no reason you couldn't write a benchmark/demo which actually performs the physics/AI/logic/sound calculations, as opposed to pre-calculating that ahead of time. Even if your AI or physics code contains calls to a pseudo-random number generator, you could always use a fixed seed to ensure that the benchmark will always perform the same set of calculations each time it's run (i.e. the AI always makes the same decisions, the physical reactions always have the exact same "random noise", etc.).
Yes, I did have indexing turned off. And boy am I regretting not mentioning that, since I've gotten the same question (or sometimes in the form of an accusation "You have to turn off indexing to reproduce the bug, dummy") like 10 times.
If you just keeping hitting letters, it just
merrily keeps adding threads. I creamed his machine by typing
"zoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo".
So where does Microsoft even go to find programmers this stupid? Elbonia? How do you screw up an operating system this badly and still make money with it?
I just tried to duplicate the above bug (I typed "zooooooooooooooooooooo" into the Start menu search box), and it ran just fine for me. Did you try duplicating the bug yourself? Are you sure your friend wasn't just making stuff up for comedic effect?
you are expected to know what RMS believes if you are reading this site.
Yes, exactly. It's the "RMS" part that's important, not the "I like OLPC more than Thinkpads" which is important. Hence the messenger is more important than the message. The more you talk about RMS (the messenger), and less you talk about what people's feelings are towards various laptops (the messenger), the more you're supporting my argument that in this case, everyone is paying more attention to the messenger than the message.
I understand every point you're trying to make, and I agree with most of them. The only issue where we differ is that you seem to believe that {the fact that the only reason we care when someone says "I like OLPC better than Thinkpads" is when that someone is RMS, or someone equally important} is not evidence for {We care who it is who is actually saying "I like OLPC better than Thinkpads"}.
As you can see, the message isn't about RMS, the message is about what RMS believes
Again, let's look at the title of the post: "Richard Stallman on OLPC". You claim that the message isn't about RMS, but about what he believes. And yet, the title gives no indication what this "belief" might be, and if the title mentioned an arbitrary name other than RMS, it would have never made it to Slashdot. You won't see an article called "Fred Nguyen on OLPC" on Slashdot, for example.
Let's read the article summary. It says RMS says he's going to switch from his Thinkpad to the OLPC. Now assuming I had no idea who the hell RMS is, why would I give a damn what laptop some guy is going to switch to? Why haven't you asked ME what laptop I'm switching to? The reason is you don't care at all.
This has nothing to do with the message, which is "I like OLPC better than Thinkpad". This has everything to do with the messenger, which is RMS. If you actually cared about the message, how come your posts keeps rambling on and on about RMS, and never bothers to ask people what laptops they are using? Surely, if you cared about the message of "OLPC is better than Thinkpad" and did not care about the messenger at all, then any other Slashdot reader's feelings about OLPC vs Thinkpad is just as valuable as RMS's feelings.
But you didn't perform this informal survey. Because you don't care what other Slashdot readers think. You only care when it's RMS, or possibly Linus, or Bill Gates, or some other "important" person speaking. You care about the messenger, not the message.
we care what RMS believes because he's got such a freaky world view
Exactly, you care about what RMS believes, not because of what the belief is itself, but because RMS fascinates you, and you wish to learn more about his beliefs, even before knowing what those beliefs will be. I don't know how to make it any more clear to you that you are placing more value to his beliefs simply because of who he is, not because of what he is saying.
The way you phrased your assertion, you're saying that anything RMS believes, you will care about. If you really didn't care about the messenger and only cared about the message, then you would say something along the lines of "we care about beliefs which are insightful, regardless of who spoke them, and we abhor inane comments, even if they were made by RMS". But of course, you think can't imagine RMS saying anything inane, because he has such a "freaky world view".
The message is: XO free enough for RMS.. I figured that was obvious to everyone.
Two issues:
(1) I know what the message was, and posted what the message was in the post you replied to.
(2) You got the message wrong, and you didn't even have to RTFA to find out you got the message wrong: in the Slashdot summary, it says Stallman doesn't like how the WiFi drivers are not free.
Re:Ah, RM "Proprietary is Never Good" Stallman...
on
Richard Stallman on OLPC
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Yes, he says proprietary is never good and, you know what? He is right.
Good for whom? The post you replied to (but failed to quote) gives the examples of cars and airplanes. While I'm willing to believe that Stallman avoids riding in cars at all costs (perhaps opting for bicycles instead), there's no way he could go around the world giving speeches without having been in an airplane. And you know what? The vast majority of the software that an airplane (or an airliner, for that matter) uses is proprietary.
If Stallman is willing to fly around in an airplane using proprietary software, despite his stance that proprietary software is "evil", then it must be because that proprietary software isn't so evil that it is worth foregoing the convenience of air travel that they provide.
Sometimes having a bunch of hobbyist collaborate on some software is enough (e.g. in the case of Linux). Other times, you need a huge amount of capital, investors, and management to coordinate everything (e.g. almost every industry which open source has not yet penetrated to a significant degree, such as aviation, automobiles, computer hardware, etc.) In these industries, it will always be the underdogs that want to push open source: "Our airplane software isn't quite as good as the other people's, so we have nothing to lose by releasing our software, and if we can somehow trick the others into opening their software, then everyone will be using whatever the best software is, thus leveling the playing field. We don't want to compete on software, only on other things". The top dogs will, of course, resist this: "Our airplane software is better than all of our competitors, and we'd like to keep it that way."
Whenever you use terms like "never", "always", "good", or "evil", check yourself: You may have an overly simplified view of reality.
Why do you focus on the messenger and not the message?
Just what exactly is the message here? It's: "I like the XO laptop better than my Thinkpad." If this message were coming from an anonymous reader, do you think it would have made it on Slashdot? No. It's here because Stallman said it. The reason we're focusing on the messenger is because that's exactly how this whole article is set up: With the focus on the messenger. Hell, the title of the post is "Richard Stallman on OLPC". Notice how the title mentions the messenger, but does not mention the message at all.
You can't blame Stallman, he was asked a question and he answered it.
Strawman: Nobody is blaming Stallman for the inane Slashdot article. People are blaming Slashdot (and geek culture in general) for the inane Slashdot article. The post you quoted mentions Linus in a similar light. Do you really think the GPP was blaming Stallman for things Linus said? The complaint here isn't that Stallman should have said something more interesting or anything like that, but that we shouldn't put so much value on something someone says just because of the mere fact that that someone is Stallman. That's paying more attention to the messenger than the message.
And he said he was going to BUY an OLPC and use it in preference to his ThinkPad, a pretty ringing endorsement. But 90% of the posts seem to be about either his comments on the "unfree" wifi driver, or his beard.
Assuming your statistics are correct, perhaps that's an indication that there are 9 times more people who care about Stallman's stance on unfree drivers or his personal hygiene than what laptop he's endorsing. Think about that for a moment, and what that means when sorting out the relative importance of the following items: {Stallman's stance on unfree drivers, Stallman's beard, what laptop(s) Stallman endorses}.
Again, not his fault for the weird way he is reported.
a company which makes 20 billion profit a year with 100000 employees cannot make a stable operating system, where as a couple of guys in their mother's basement (linux programmers) can.
There are several problems with your (implied) argument. I'll only address one for now: You seem to be assuming that what most computer users want from their OS is stability, as opposed to, simply being the same as else's (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect)
Using a bridge-building analogy, in my opinion the software development phase is akin to designing the bridge. You've got to present what you want it to look like and how you want it to function in a visually appealing way but the exact details aren't your concern, that's up to the engineer to figure out. In the software world, the computer plays the role of the engineer. It's up to the computer to figure out how to implement what you've described.
If you think programmers/software developers/software engineers/whatever you want to call them simply describe what a program looks like and how it should function in a visually appealing way, but leaving the exact details up to the computer to figure out, you've clearly never done any programming.
Give away the free single player game, then charge for the online, either once or as a subscription
This would essentially kill adventure games (Monkey Island, Maniac Mansion, etc.), and single player, story oriented RPGs (e.g. Chrono Trigger) -- two of my favorite genres.
Has anyone ever made a decent (massively?) multiplayer adventure game? (This is not rhetorical, but a genuine inquiry of curiosity)
b) In what universe would Apple refuse to fix the problem?
In this one. It wouldn't be the first time people have asked Apple to fix a given bug or add a new feature, and have that request ignored. People have been asking for Ogg Vorbis support on iPod and iTunes for a while now (http://www.petitiononline.com/appl1435/petition.html). So many people have asked for this, that Apple has officially written a response to this request, their response being "not enough people want this feature". (http://gizmodo.com/archives/open-letter-to-apple-ogg-for-us-please-015547.php)
Since Apple won't fix this problem, people have resorted to hacking their iPods to play ogg vorbis, though this of course voids your warranty.
Quit giving M$ your money. There is no longer any reason to do so.
Except, of course, for running programs which only run on Windows.
Even my kids can do system administration on Ubuntu.
You say that as if "lack of knowledge on how to perform system administration" was the sole barrier keeping people from switching from Windows to Linux.
XP SP2 was an exception [to the general rule that SP do not contain new features, nor updates to existing features and only contain security fixes].
You're wrong: Windows XP SP1 added a new version of Windows Messenger, a new GUI for Set Program Access And Defaults, USB 2.0 support,.NET Framework, enabling technologies for new devices such as Tablet PCs, "Freestyle" PCs, and "Mira" display hardware.
Point OS X releases include new features and updates old ones, while MS Service packs do neither of those. Service packs are just bundles of all the security updates since the last service pack.
IMHO that's not true. Windows XP SP2 added a whole range of new features (for instance in the wireless networking area), and other service packs have done so too.
Mod parent up. Grandparent is ignorant when they claimed that Windows service packs do not contain any new features.
The reason I use Firefox instead of Opera is the same reason I use Windows instead of Linux: The former supports the plugins/applications that I want to run, while the latter doesn't.
Everyone always makes excuses for using Windows. The only thing Linux doesn't have that Windows does is support for most games out of the box. Linux gaming leaves a lot to be desired. But for application support, most OSS software is heads above the other stuff even on Windows.
When you phrase it as "makes excuses", you make it sound like people objectively should be using Linux, but they're weaseling out of this moral duty by coming up with reasons which deep down inside, they know is false. That's simply not the case, and if you're intent is to advocate Linux usage (and I'm not saying that IS your intent, I'm just giving advice conditional on this being your intent), then you'll never be convincing as long as that is your mindset.
As for OSS software, they may be "better" when disregarding the effects of vendor lock-in and the network effect, but these two situations are precisely why many Windows users tend to stick with Windows. To elaborate a bit, note that vendor lock-in does not merely refer to undocumented file formats, but even the exact workflow and user interface that a given application presents to its users. Whether you like it or not, some people are "experts" at, specifically, Microsoft Office, and not office suite softwares in general.
Honestly, any application that runs on Windows but doesn't have an equivalent on Linux because it's a legacy, closed source, or commercial application is kind of the way of the past anyway. But I understand that people still need to run these things. But what I don't understand is why if you actually want to run Linux you don't use the following options:
But that's just it: I don't really want to run Linux anyway. I mean, I'm open to the idea. If Linux were exactly like Windows, except it were freely downloadable, I'd probably switch to Linux. That means if Linux exhibited the same security flaws and bugs as Windows, was closed source, and was programmed by a supposedly "evil" corporation, I'd still switch to it, because switching would be completely painless (due to the similarity to the two OSes), and I'd gain the benefit of not needing to pay for the OS anymore.
For every change that exists between Linux and Windows, that's slightly one more headache me, as a switcher, would have to worry about, and that Linux would need to compensate for via being better in some way or another. Of course, some of these changes are more costly than others. Not using NTFS? Not that big a deal, as my partitioning tools seem to support EXT3 and other Linux-ish file systems as well. Not using the Windows style directory structure of "C:\Program Files" and a "My Documents" folder? Well, that's a bit more annoying, because it means I have to learn what the customs and standards are for a new OS, which differs from the customs and standards of the OS I'm used to. A bunch of text config files, instead of a single registry? That's about the same level of annoyance as the change in directory structure, so again Linux had better be offering at least some minor gains in exchange for this learning curve. Doesn't natively run any of vast library of my Windows program? That's a huge annoyance, and practically a deal breaker for me.
Wine - Which supports a lot of Windows legacy applications
I'm going to preface my response to this with this notice. Recall that while I'm open to the idea of switching to Linux, I don't particularly want to do it. Using Linux is not in itself an end or a goal for me. If it'll make my life easier, great, I'll switch. But otherwise, I'm going to use whatever tools make my life easier, and if that means using Windows, so be it. A lot of OSS and Linu
Not only are most of Firefox's "unique" features copied from Opera, but Opera is also a remarkably fast and lightweight browser with most stuff built right in. It also happens to work in most variations of Linux including Sugar and it's used on the Nintendo Wii. Not to sound like a fanboy, but it's a far superior browser to anything else I've found. Other than the source, I'm not sure I see the big deal with Firefox.
The reason I use Firefox instead of Opera is the same reason I use Windows instead of Linux: The former supports the plugins/applications that I want to run, while the latter doesn't. Specifically, the plugins I use in Firefox are:
AdBlock
BugMeNot
DownloadHelper
FireBug
FireFTP
FlashBlock
Forecastfox
Foxytunes
IeTab
NukeAnythingEnhanced
PDF Download
RetailMeNot
SnapLinks
SplitBrowser
TamperData
UserAgentSwitcher
VideoDownloader
WebDeveloper
Now before you pick a random plugin, e.g. "DownloadHelper", and make a guess as to what it does based on its name, and then claim "You can download files in Opera too, and you don't even need a plugin to do it!", you really should find out what the plugin actually does.
I'm happy with Firefox, and I don't have any incentive to switch to Opera. I'm open to switching, but I need a reason, as switching takes energy and effort. If you want me to switch, then you need to provide me with an incentive. So not only would Opera need to duplicate all of the functionality I have with my existing plugins, but it would need to offer something additional to make the switch worthwhile.
Windows Vista? Ummmm this is entirely misrepresented here. Yes, some people might be upset that they have to plunk down $200 for vista, but think about it. That's not a problem with apple and no one focuses that gripe at apple. That's all the fault of Windows being way too expensive. It's that or they start bundling windows and making the mac $200 more, which I don't want.
OEM versions of Windows are WAY WAY cheaper than $200, you know? (which is what Apple would be paying for the OS if it came pre-installed) - they could charge $50 extra and probably break even or even make a tenny-weeny profit. Even if they did that, they would probably still charge an extra $200 and laugh to the bank.
Mod parent up. People who looking for alternatives to Windows typically like having lots of choices, and so the grand-parent's implication that Apple shouldn't sell a Vista bundle because he doesn't it want it is somewhat hypocritical. There's no reason Apple couldn't a package which includes Vista, and another package which doesn't. It would make a segment of Apple's customers happier, and it would make Microsoft happier. I'm guessing the main reasons Apple doesn't do it are:
It would seem to contradict their ad campaign which claims that no one wants Vista.
It would imply that Apple has an "official" hardware configuration for running Vista, and it might seem slower compared to, say, an HP or Dell hardware configuration for running Vista.
Because the General Public License (GPL) is not universally interpreted the same way by everyone, we can't give anyone a legal opinion about how our language relates to the GPL or other OSS licenses, but based on feedback from the open source community we believe that a broad audience of developers can implement the specification(s).
I don't get warm and fuzzy feelings reading this and I think that's the idea...
No, the idea is not to alienate you, but to cover their asses. If you read the FAQ for OSS licenses, like GPL or BSD, you'll also see some verbiage along the lines of "This FAQ is designed to make it easier to understand the lawyerese, but if the license and this FAQ contradict each other, in the end, the the license itself has the final say, and you should consult a lawyer if you have any doubts about anything". Microsoft's verbiage above is the same thing.
Slashdot Mirror
At my bank, they ask what was the drill instructors name if I was in the military... how the hell do I know, all I remember is 'fuckhead'
So use that as the question and Fuckwit as the answer. No problem. It's not as though anybody is going to check to see if the answer is a proper name or anything.
Right away, you see the problem with this approach. The GP wrote "fuckhead", and within 5 seconds of reading this, you already forgot that it was "fuckhead" and wrote "Fuckwit" instead. Not only did you get the word wrong, but you capitalized the "F" when the GP did not.
Actually, now that I think about it, there's no reason that there has to be any logical or rational connection between the question and answer, just as long as you remember what it is. I mean, is anybody at your bank going to complain if your answer to the question, "What city did you grow up in?" is, "Judy Garland," and if so, why?
Your bank isn't going to complain, but your future-self is going to. I got a bank account as a teenager, and one of the security questions was "What is your dream job". 10 years later, they asked me what I had put as my dream job. I completely blanked out. I remember I wanted to make videogames when I was a kid, so I tried "video game programmer", "videogame programmer", "game programmer", "game developer" and they were all rejected. Well, I was also in a rock band for a while, so I tried "rock star", "musician", etc. Nothing worked. In the end, I had to visit the bank in person, which meant taking some hours off of work, which was inconvenient because we were in an overtime crunch period.
And this was for a question that I assumed I had answered earnestly (as opposed to "growing up in Judy Garland"); except it was merely a question that didn't really have a great significance to me, and so my answer likely changed with time. So unless you really have a strong memory associated with "growing up in Judy Garland" (perhaps because of some sort of inside joke), it's probably best not to try to be "clever" with these security questions.
Unless your time is worth more than $2000/hr, better locked and inconvenienced than compromised.
You can't just look at the gain/loss of the two alternatives and decide which is better merely from that. You also have to take into account the probability, and multiply the gain/lost by the probability.
For example, if you make $40/h, and you access your bank account 5 times a month, and it takes you an extra 60 seconds, because of the inconvenience of the added "security" questions, and if you still have a good 30 years of employment left, then over your life, the questions would have cost you $1200, and that's assuming you never get a raise. The security questions are always there, so you have a 100% chance of being inconvenienced each time you try to access your account.
Most people don't get their bank accounts broken into, even without security questions. Let's be pessimistic and imagine 1 out of 1000 people who don't have security questions get hacked. Let's say the security questions are really secure (i.e. not merely "what is your maiden's name") and they actually halve the chance of getting hacked, even though you post a lot of your personal information such as your favorite color, or your dog's name on Facebook. If you only ever keep about $5000 in your bank, then the security question have lowered your risk from 0.1% (i.e. $5) to 0.05% (i.e. $2.50)
So would you rather get $1200, or $2.50?
You're assuming that when you write code to zero out the keys, the CPU will actually zero out the keys. One situation in which this assumption may be false is if you're using an optimizing compiler which statically analyzes your source code, and sees a "write to memory" instruction, for which that write will never be read. Since no one is ever going read that value you just wrote, it may decide it's not worth writing in the first place, and optimize it out.
Then there's all sorts of OS-level optimizations which may intefere with zeroing memory. For example, the OS may temporarily put your program's memory space to a paging file, because it's running another process which needs a lot of RAM. Then, when it's your program's turn to run again, it'll load the contents of the page file back into memory. Your program says to zero out the memory, and it does so, and simply marks the pagefile as being "dirty" (i.e. containing garbage data), but does not bother to actually zero it out (not yet anyway, it may do so later on, when it's used up all the other dirty pages, and needs a new page to write upon).
Yes, I did have indexing turned off. And boy am I regretting not mentioning that, since I've gotten the same question (or sometimes in the form of an accusation "You have to turn off indexing to reproduce the bug, dummy") like 10 times.
I did shut off indexing. Searching for "Zoooooooooooooooooooooo" worked fine (0 results, as expected, since I don't have any files with that name).
Yes.
Yes, exactly. It's the "RMS" part that's important, not the "I like OLPC more than Thinkpads" which is important. Hence the messenger is more important than the message. The more you talk about RMS (the messenger), and less you talk about what people's feelings are towards various laptops (the messenger), the more you're supporting my argument that in this case, everyone is paying more attention to the messenger than the message.
I understand every point you're trying to make, and I agree with most of them. The only issue where we differ is that you seem to believe that {the fact that the only reason we care when someone says "I like OLPC better than Thinkpads" is when that someone is RMS, or someone equally important} is not evidence for {We care who it is who is actually saying "I like OLPC better than Thinkpads"}.
Again, let's look at the title of the post: "Richard Stallman on OLPC". You claim that the message isn't about RMS, but about what he believes. And yet, the title gives no indication what this "belief" might be, and if the title mentioned an arbitrary name other than RMS, it would have never made it to Slashdot. You won't see an article called "Fred Nguyen on OLPC" on Slashdot, for example.
Let's read the article summary. It says RMS says he's going to switch from his Thinkpad to the OLPC. Now assuming I had no idea who the hell RMS is, why would I give a damn what laptop some guy is going to switch to? Why haven't you asked ME what laptop I'm switching to? The reason is you don't care at all.
This has nothing to do with the message, which is "I like OLPC better than Thinkpad". This has everything to do with the messenger, which is RMS. If you actually cared about the message, how come your posts keeps rambling on and on about RMS, and never bothers to ask people what laptops they are using? Surely, if you cared about the message of "OLPC is better than Thinkpad" and did not care about the messenger at all, then any other Slashdot reader's feelings about OLPC vs Thinkpad is just as valuable as RMS's feelings.
But you didn't perform this informal survey. Because you don't care what other Slashdot readers think. You only care when it's RMS, or possibly Linus, or Bill Gates, or some other "important" person speaking. You care about the messenger, not the message.
Exactly, you care about what RMS believes, not because of what the belief is itself, but because RMS fascinates you, and you wish to learn more about his beliefs, even before knowing what those beliefs will be. I don't know how to make it any more clear to you that you are placing more value to his beliefs simply because of who he is, not because of what he is saying.
The way you phrased your assertion, you're saying that anything RMS believes, you will care about. If you really didn't care about the messenger and only cared about the message, then you would say something along the lines of "we care about beliefs which are insightful, regardless of who spoke them, and we abhor inane comments, even if they were made by RMS". But of course, you think can't imagine RMS saying anything inane, because he has such a "freaky world view".
Two issues:
(1) I know what the message was, and posted what the message was in the post you replied to.
(2) You got the message wrong, and you didn't even have to RTFA to find out you got the message wrong: in the Slashdot summary, it says Stallman doesn't like how the WiFi drivers are not free.
Good for whom? The post you replied to (but failed to quote) gives the examples of cars and airplanes. While I'm willing to believe that Stallman avoids riding in cars at all costs (perhaps opting for bicycles instead), there's no way he could go around the world giving speeches without having been in an airplane. And you know what? The vast majority of the software that an airplane (or an airliner, for that matter) uses is proprietary.
If Stallman is willing to fly around in an airplane using proprietary software, despite his stance that proprietary software is "evil", then it must be because that proprietary software isn't so evil that it is worth foregoing the convenience of air travel that they provide.
Sometimes having a bunch of hobbyist collaborate on some software is enough (e.g. in the case of Linux). Other times, you need a huge amount of capital, investors, and management to coordinate everything (e.g. almost every industry which open source has not yet penetrated to a significant degree, such as aviation, automobiles, computer hardware, etc.) In these industries, it will always be the underdogs that want to push open source: "Our airplane software isn't quite as good as the other people's, so we have nothing to lose by releasing our software, and if we can somehow trick the others into opening their software, then everyone will be using whatever the best software is, thus leveling the playing field. We don't want to compete on software, only on other things". The top dogs will, of course, resist this: "Our airplane software is better than all of our competitors, and we'd like to keep it that way."
Whenever you use terms like "never", "always", "good", or "evil", check yourself: You may have an overly simplified view of reality.
This would essentially kill adventure games (Monkey Island, Maniac Mansion, etc.), and single player, story oriented RPGs (e.g. Chrono Trigger) -- two of my favorite genres.
Has anyone ever made a decent (massively?) multiplayer adventure game? (This is not rhetorical, but a genuine inquiry of curiosity)
In this one. It wouldn't be the first time people have asked Apple to fix a given bug or add a new feature, and have that request ignored. People have been asking for Ogg Vorbis support on iPod and iTunes for a while now (http://www.petitiononline.com/appl1435/petition.html). So many people have asked for this, that Apple has officially written a response to this request, their response being "not enough people want this feature". (http://gizmodo.com/archives/open-letter-to-apple-ogg-for-us-please-015547.php)
Since Apple won't fix this problem, people have resorted to hacking their iPods to play ogg vorbis, though this of course voids your warranty.
Except, of course, for running programs which only run on Windows.
You say that as if "lack of knowledge on how to perform system administration" was the sole barrier keeping people from switching from Windows to Linux.
You're wrong: Windows XP SP1 added a new version of Windows Messenger, a new GUI for Set Program Access And Defaults, USB 2.0 support, .NET Framework, enabling technologies for new devices such as Tablet PCs, "Freestyle" PCs, and "Mira" display hardware.
Mod parent up. Grandparent is ignorant when they claimed that Windows service packs do not contain any new features.
When you phrase it as "makes excuses", you make it sound like people objectively should be using Linux, but they're weaseling out of this moral duty by coming up with reasons which deep down inside, they know is false. That's simply not the case, and if you're intent is to advocate Linux usage (and I'm not saying that IS your intent, I'm just giving advice conditional on this being your intent), then you'll never be convincing as long as that is your mindset.
As for OSS software, they may be "better" when disregarding the effects of vendor lock-in and the network effect, but these two situations are precisely why many Windows users tend to stick with Windows. To elaborate a bit, note that vendor lock-in does not merely refer to undocumented file formats, but even the exact workflow and user interface that a given application presents to its users. Whether you like it or not, some people are "experts" at, specifically, Microsoft Office, and not office suite softwares in general.
But that's just it: I don't really want to run Linux anyway. I mean, I'm open to the idea. If Linux were exactly like Windows, except it were freely downloadable, I'd probably switch to Linux. That means if Linux exhibited the same security flaws and bugs as Windows, was closed source, and was programmed by a supposedly "evil" corporation, I'd still switch to it, because switching would be completely painless (due to the similarity to the two OSes), and I'd gain the benefit of not needing to pay for the OS anymore.
For every change that exists between Linux and Windows, that's slightly one more headache me, as a switcher, would have to worry about, and that Linux would need to compensate for via being better in some way or another. Of course, some of these changes are more costly than others. Not using NTFS? Not that big a deal, as my partitioning tools seem to support EXT3 and other Linux-ish file systems as well. Not using the Windows style directory structure of "C:\Program Files" and a "My Documents" folder? Well, that's a bit more annoying, because it means I have to learn what the customs and standards are for a new OS, which differs from the customs and standards of the OS I'm used to. A bunch of text config files, instead of a single registry? That's about the same level of annoyance as the change in directory structure, so again Linux had better be offering at least some minor gains in exchange for this learning curve. Doesn't natively run any of vast library of my Windows program? That's a huge annoyance, and practically a deal breaker for me.
I'm going to preface my response to this with this notice. Recall that while I'm open to the idea of switching to Linux, I don't particularly want to do it. Using Linux is not in itself an end or a goal for me. If it'll make my life easier, great, I'll switch. But otherwise, I'm going to use whatever tools make my life easier, and if that means using Windows, so be it. A lot of OSS and Linu
The reason I use Firefox instead of Opera is the same reason I use Windows instead of Linux: The former supports the plugins/applications that I want to run, while the latter doesn't. Specifically, the plugins I use in Firefox are:
Now before you pick a random plugin, e.g. "DownloadHelper", and make a guess as to what it does based on its name, and then claim "You can download files in Opera too, and you don't even need a plugin to do it!", you really should find out what the plugin actually does.
I'm happy with Firefox, and I don't have any incentive to switch to Opera. I'm open to switching, but I need a reason, as switching takes energy and effort. If you want me to switch, then you need to provide me with an incentive. So not only would Opera need to duplicate all of the functionality I have with my existing plugins, but it would need to offer something additional to make the switch worthwhile.
Mod parent up. People who looking for alternatives to Windows typically like having lots of choices, and so the grand-parent's implication that Apple shouldn't sell a Vista bundle because he doesn't it want it is somewhat hypocritical. There's no reason Apple couldn't a package which includes Vista, and another package which doesn't. It would make a segment of Apple's customers happier, and it would make Microsoft happier. I'm guessing the main reasons Apple doesn't do it are: