US is a well-known international victim of import-tariff(look at how bad the deals with Japans), therefore US govt dare not interfere international trades like that.
Bollocks. Tell it to George W. Bush and the steel industry, would you? They'll go to bat against other countries for trying to protect the banana exports of our old colonies, while at the same time, imposing tariffs on steel imports.
Not that such hypocracy is anything new, or even a surprise, but I hate when people buy into the myth that the US stands for free trade. It's absolute bollocks.
Now if only we could abolish the tenure system so we could implement standardized qualification guidelines and periodic testing for the teachers, and require teachers to continue their education (Like nearly every other state licensed profession), that would solve a lot of problems, too.
Before you're ever going to be able to do this, you're first going to have to start paying teachers a decent salary and give them reasonable working conditions. At present, teachers in the UK earn a ludicrous sum of money to try and handle huge classes of kids, many of whom have no interest in being there. Their workload (in terms of teaching and administration) is phenomenal since the introduction of the National Curriculum, and they're leaving the profession in droves.
Sure, it would be wonderful if we could have a profession that was filled with committed, highly professional people who really wanted to do what they do -- and I know that many such teachers do exist. Indeed, I suspect you'd have to be such a person to even consider being a teacher today. There was a time when it was a cushy job with long holidays and short working hours, but I'm afraid those days are long gone and today schools have a problem even hiring and retraining the dross.
Computers have huge potential as educational tools.
In some sense, yes, but I don't believe they have any place in the classroom or as part of the curriculum. (Unless you happen to be studying IT as a subject.) Computers are extremely valuable when it comes to research, writing, homework and personal study. However, I don't want my kids sitting around waiting to use the class computer while the teacher works with one or two of them at a time. The computer's real place is in the home, and the teacher's job is to explain, provide context and enthuse students about the difficult subjects that they can't grasp on their own.
In short, I want teachers to teach -- not screw around installing and demonstrating software. My kids are more than capable of figuring that out on their own. I wish I could same for their ability to conjugate a French verb, master differential equations or explain the differences between the synthetic apriori and the analytic apriori.
I agree with the other posters - free and open source software reward the intellectual elite.
I'm not sure about *your* definition of the intellectual elite, but I can hardly see the major thinkers and philosophers of our era devoting their valuable time to trying to figure out how to install Debian or set up a PostGres database without the aid of a manual.
I think you meant to write 'open source software rewards those with slightly above average intelligence and an abundance of free time'.
That's a big fat heavy ugly motherfucker. I'd rather have my Tibook anyday. The screen may not be quite so big, but it's big enough and Linux isn't a problem.
You'd only actually be mocking me personally if I had some emotional investment in this, which I don't. I use Linux on my server. It does what I need it to do, for free. I'm not sure what's worthy of mockery about that?
Could Linux HAVE a sharper stake through its heart, could it BE more irrelevant.
Again, I fail to see how the existance of a body of fools among the user/advocacy is in any way a 'stake through the heart'. After all, Windows has always had such people among its users and that doesn't seem close to being dead any time soon.
Seriously, if this is your idea of effective and meaningful mockery (and posted on Xmas day as well), then you really are as profoundly in need of a life as the very Linux zealots you profess worthy of your scorn.
A commercial operating system is cheaper than a new card....
Really? Last time I looked, a wireless card cost around 70 quid. Win2k or XP pro cost about 200.
For server use, I can't recommend it for small companies, since there would be no local expert able to add a user or other simple task without my intervention.
Absolutely. Teaching someone to type in 'adduser' at the terminal is a *really* complex task that needs a highly skilled expert. You can't expect someone that manages a Win2k server to master such a complex skill without months and months of training...
But as I look at my jaggy fonts, and wonder just how I am going to upgrade my latest security patch, I understand why it still has a while to go before it becomes a mainstream product.
Sounds like you need to upgrade to RedHat 8. No jaggy fonts, and upgrading security patches is just as easy as in WinXP or 2000 (ie, point and click.)
If all you use a computer for is browsing, email, word processing and listening to mp3's, RedHat 8 does the job at least as well as both Windows and a Mac. It's only if you play games or have more specialist needs that it doesn't quite cut it.
I read that a bunch of students and unemployed hackers are cobbling together a color-matching system that totally blows Pantone away, in certain applications, once you get it installed and if you know exactly what you're doing.
And how exactly do these 'students and unemployed hackers' plan on manufacturing the ink?
The reason people use Pantone is because they know they can specify a colour on the screen, and that's how it will look when it is printed on the page. (More or less, once you've taken account of the different spectral properties of ink and paper and a CRT.)
Without some standardized system that matches the ink to the paper, you just don't have a colour matching system. I don't suppose there's any reason why you wouldn't be able to produce an OS CMYK system but that's not the same thing as the Pantone system and if you think a bunch of OS geeks are going to bury it, you're either trolling or sadly mistaken.
Mmmm. I like to think of myself as OS agnostic. My home network has four computers. A mac and a Windows 2000 workstation, a Tibook, and a server running Linux.
Now, I know that Windows 2000 server would also do what I need from my linux server. Both will handle the authentication for a heterogeneous network, and both work equally well as a file server in this context. Linux has some advantages as a webserver, as I think Apache is more stable and secure than the Microsoft offering. But Win2k server is probably stable and reliable enough these days, though I don't think there's any ease of use advantages as I definitely find it easier to configure a Linux server than a Win2k server.
Where it does win out though, is in cost. Cost of a Windows 2000 server -- 800 quid. Cost of a linux server. Free -- as in beer.
Sorry, but you're going to have to introduce a hell of a lot of functionality to overcome that advantage before I'll switch.
If you'd read his article closely, you'd see you're agreeing with him. He makes the point that nobody uses all of these damn features, but when it comes to sales, the spoils go to the company that has the most -- I suppose because anoraks like us want them in there 'just in case'.
If your point was correct, everyone would be running Walmart boxes with Linux.
I can't be upgrading to no 10.2.3 -- I've just waited months for them to come out with a version of Fink that's compatible with Jaguar. If this upgrade goes and breaks it again, I'll be gutted.
So does anyone know if this release is Fink compatible?
This certainly isn't my experience. I've *never* been able to install a copy of Mandrake in graphical mode on my server, whereas RedHat always goes on perfectly. (Sometimes text mode will work, other times it doesn't.)
But as far as user friendly desktop goes, for my money RedHat 8 beats Mandrake every which way (and I've been running both for at least the last three months.)
Also, there is 'Free as in love.' This means that you may well be able to download a copy from somewhere without paying for it, but don't be surprised if the experience leaves you with a nasty little infection that you may then unwittingly pass on to your nearest and dearest.
You can find examples of software that is 'free as in love' on Kazaa, iDonkey and your nearest 0-day-warez-site.
Coincidentally, I was talking to a friend an hour or two ago. He owns a medium-sized digital print shop -- one of the biggest in a city of 400,000 or so.
He was telling me that not a single one of his clients has upgraded to OSX because of the Quark factor. Sure, all Adobe's products are available under OSX now, including In Design, their supposed 'Quark Killer', but without the magic Quark, nobody who does design for print on Macs is prepared to upgrade.
And as for Linux making any inroads at all into this market -- forget about it. That's even further away than OSX.
Slashdot Mirror
Who, me? How do you deduce that from my question?
Ahem. I believe you meant to write "bite my red-raw, distended shiny metal ass".
i enforce the no $2 sand niggah policy
I understand sand niggah, but what's the $2 part all about? The hourly rate? The annual salary? The cost of hookers in that part of the world?
Enquiring minds want to know.
Did you even read those links?
I did, and I have to say that the boy scout story was possibly the best read I've ever seen linked from slashdot.
That kid would fit right in around here.
US is a well-known international victim of import-tariff(look at how bad the deals with Japans), therefore US govt dare not interfere international trades like that.
Bollocks. Tell it to George W. Bush and the steel industry, would you? They'll go to bat against other countries for trying to protect the banana exports of our old colonies, while at the same time, imposing tariffs on steel imports.
Not that such hypocracy is anything new, or even a surprise, but I hate when people buy into the myth that the US stands for free trade. It's absolute bollocks.
Now if only we could abolish the tenure system so we could implement standardized qualification guidelines and periodic testing for the teachers, and require teachers to continue their education (Like nearly every other state licensed profession), that would solve a lot of problems, too.
Before you're ever going to be able to do this, you're first going to have to start paying teachers a decent salary and give them reasonable working conditions. At present, teachers in the UK earn a ludicrous sum of money to try and handle huge classes of kids, many of whom have no interest in being there. Their workload (in terms of teaching and administration) is phenomenal since the introduction of the National Curriculum, and they're leaving the profession in droves.
Sure, it would be wonderful if we could have a profession that was filled with committed, highly professional people who really wanted to do what they do -- and I know that many such teachers do exist. Indeed, I suspect you'd have to be such a person to even consider being a teacher today. There was a time when it was a cushy job with long holidays and short working hours, but I'm afraid those days are long gone and today schools have a problem even hiring and retraining the dross.
Computers have huge potential as educational tools.
In some sense, yes, but I don't believe they have any place in the classroom or as part of the curriculum. (Unless you happen to be studying IT as a subject.) Computers are extremely valuable when it comes to research, writing, homework and personal study. However, I don't want my kids sitting around waiting to use the class computer while the teacher works with one or two of them at a time. The computer's real place is in the home, and the teacher's job is to explain, provide context and enthuse students about the difficult subjects that they can't grasp on their own.
In short, I want teachers to teach -- not screw around installing and demonstrating software. My kids are more than capable of figuring that out on their own. I wish I could same for their ability to conjugate a French verb, master differential equations or explain the differences between the synthetic apriori and the analytic apriori.
Working for Peanuts is ok. If I get to work with Marcie and Peppermint Patty... Can you say threesome?
And given that this is Slashdot, would we be right in assuming you look more like Pigpen than Charlie Brown?
I agree with the other posters - free and open source software reward the intellectual elite.
I'm not sure about *your* definition of the intellectual elite, but I can hardly see the major thinkers and philosophers of our era devoting their valuable time to trying to figure out how to install Debian or set up a PostGres database without the aid of a manual.
I think you meant to write 'open source software rewards those with slightly above average intelligence and an abundance of free time'.
You must place absolutely no value on your own time.
Hey, he's reading Slashdot isn't he? That's a given.
That's a big fat heavy ugly motherfucker. I'd rather have my Tibook anyday. The screen may not be quite so big, but it's big enough and Linux isn't a problem.
You clearly aren't viewing the right websites. I can forward you a couple of URL's that should get you hotter than a Mississippi whorehouse.
Actually, that's a great price for the XP upgrade. Any idea where I can find such OEM upgrades?
you don't realize when you're being mocked.
You'd only actually be mocking me personally if I had some emotional investment in this, which I don't. I use Linux on my server. It does what I need it to do, for free. I'm not sure what's worthy of mockery about that?
Could Linux HAVE a sharper stake through its heart, could it BE more irrelevant.
Again, I fail to see how the existance of a body of fools among the user/advocacy is in any way a 'stake through the heart'. After all, Windows has always had such people among its users and that doesn't seem close to being dead any time soon.
Seriously, if this is your idea of effective and meaningful mockery (and posted on Xmas day as well), then you really are as profoundly in need of a life as the very Linux zealots you profess worthy of your scorn.
A commercial operating system is cheaper than a new card....
Really? Last time I looked, a wireless card cost around 70 quid. Win2k or XP pro cost about 200.
For server use, I can't recommend it for small companies, since there would be no local expert able to add a user or other simple task without my intervention.
Absolutely. Teaching someone to type in 'adduser' at the terminal is a *really* complex task that needs a highly skilled expert. You can't expect someone that manages a Win2k server to master such a complex skill without months and months of training...
But as I look at my jaggy fonts, and wonder just how I am going to upgrade my latest security patch, I understand why it still has a while to go before it becomes a mainstream product.
Sounds like you need to upgrade to RedHat 8. No jaggy fonts, and upgrading security patches is just as easy as in WinXP or 2000 (ie, point and click.)
If all you use a computer for is browsing, email, word processing and listening to mp3's, RedHat 8 does the job at least as well as both Windows and a Mac. It's only if you play games or have more specialist needs that it doesn't quite cut it.
I read that a bunch of students and unemployed hackers are cobbling together a color-matching system that totally blows Pantone away, in certain applications, once you get it installed and if you know exactly what you're doing.
And how exactly do these 'students and unemployed hackers' plan on manufacturing the ink?
The reason people use Pantone is because they know they can specify a colour on the screen, and that's how it will look when it is printed on the page. (More or less, once you've taken account of the different spectral properties of ink and paper and a CRT.)
Without some standardized system that matches the ink to the paper, you just don't have a colour matching system. I don't suppose there's any reason why you wouldn't be able to produce an OS CMYK system but that's not the same thing as the Pantone system and if you think a bunch of OS geeks are going to bury it, you're either trolling or sadly mistaken.
Mmmm. I like to think of myself as OS agnostic. My home network has four computers. A mac and a Windows 2000 workstation, a Tibook, and a server running Linux.
Now, I know that Windows 2000 server would also do what I need from my linux server. Both will handle the authentication for a heterogeneous network, and both work equally well as a file server in this context. Linux has some advantages as a webserver, as I think Apache is more stable and secure than the Microsoft offering. But Win2k server is probably stable and reliable enough these days, though I don't think there's any ease of use advantages as I definitely find it easier to configure a Linux server than a Win2k server.
Where it does win out though, is in cost. Cost of a Windows 2000 server -- 800 quid. Cost of a linux server. Free -- as in beer.
Sorry, but you're going to have to introduce a hell of a lot of functionality to overcome that advantage before I'll switch.
About half the geeks I know are not virgins, myself included. I don't think that this stereotype holds too well anymore.
Here's a clue: the fact that only half of the geeks you know aren't virgins shows that the stereotype still fits perfectly.
Unless you happen to be no older than 13, that is.
yes, but better and more sex in the longrun.
Which particular study does this finding come from, and how did they measure the improvement in quality?
This wouldn't have been wishful thinking on your part by any chance, would it?
If you'd read his article closely, you'd see you're agreeing with him. He makes the point that nobody uses all of these damn features, but when it comes to sales, the spoils go to the company that has the most -- I suppose because anoraks like us want them in there 'just in case'.
If your point was correct, everyone would be running Walmart boxes with Linux.
I can't be upgrading to no 10.2.3 -- I've just waited months for them to come out with a version of Fink that's compatible with Jaguar. If this upgrade goes and breaks it again, I'll be gutted.
So does anyone know if this release is Fink compatible?
This certainly isn't my experience. I've *never* been able to install a copy of Mandrake in graphical mode on my server, whereas RedHat always goes on perfectly. (Sometimes text mode will work, other times it doesn't.)
But as far as user friendly desktop goes, for my money RedHat 8 beats Mandrake every which way (and I've been running both for at least the last three months.)
History won't get to laugh when RMS farts without shame in front of a room full of suits.
This is perfectly consistent with his message and philosophy. Intestinal gas wants to be free!
"Free as in beer" means gratis.
Also, there is 'Free as in love.' This means that you may well be able to download a copy from somewhere without paying for it, but don't be surprised if the experience leaves you with a nasty little infection that you may then unwittingly pass on to your nearest and dearest.
You can find examples of software that is 'free as in love' on Kazaa, iDonkey and your nearest 0-day-warez-site.
Coincidentally, I was talking to a friend an hour or two ago. He owns a medium-sized digital print shop -- one of the biggest in a city of 400,000 or so.
He was telling me that not a single one of his clients has upgraded to OSX because of the Quark factor. Sure, all Adobe's products are available under OSX now, including In Design, their supposed 'Quark Killer', but without the magic Quark, nobody who does design for print on Macs is prepared to upgrade.
And as for Linux making any inroads at all into this market -- forget about it. That's even further away than OSX.