Would it still be FUD if KDE advocates _wanted_ another MS? My RH-derived Linux (linuxppc) shipped with KDE built so securely into the system that you couldn't switch window managers and I'm still seeing people post forlorn pleas to c.s.l.p for help in removing the default, unkillable KDE install. Which is somewhat beside the point, but anyhow, if KDE advocates did _not_ want one uberdesktop, one uberdistribution, then it might be FUD to call RedHat another MS (as in, fear of it, uncertainty about using it, doubt of if it's the right thing). However if KDE people are already predominantly accustomed to Windows and want 'weak' strains of linux to die out leaving all the support and development on KDE and Red Hat, would 'Red Hat is the next MS' really be an attack on RH? Wouldn't it instead be sort of an argument that one shouldn't support any other distribution because they are all going to be Darwinned out of existence?
I'm running both Linux and BSD, both on Macs (BSD for the IIcx) which can also dualboot. Therefore, I must surely be deserving of being nibbled to death by yaks;) even worse, I have released GPLed software- but it runs on Macs! Aaaaaaa! *hides from herds of angry ex-Windows users with rocks* *hehehe*
The reason isn't about Apple. The reason begins with a prej and ends with ice- and it's about as warm and reassuring as the latter. ALL! vendors suck. Apple has done plenty of asinine things, just like everybody else. To hold them as an example of arch-evil just because they don't make PCs is completely preposterous. How forthcoming is Compaq or Packard Bell about the twisty details of their more strange variants of the basic theme of 'PC'? How forthcoming is Toshiba about the hardware of their laptops?
Are you fscking kidding?
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"Wait for them to get back into the power ring, we shall see how benevolent apple really is." Are you kidding? Apple spent _millions_ on an internet suite that was bundled with the OS. It was revolutionary, perhaps too revolutionary. It was called Cyberdog. I used it for over a year... you know what? They never did a fscking thing to push it over the other web browsers/Email programs/ftp etc etc etc vendors. They spent all that money and then just put the result out there and left it to twist in the wind... If you think for one second that Apple embraces and exterminates like MS does, you are just plain out of your fscking mind and, on top of that, have never even _asked_ anybody what the real truth of it is. Apple's sin is lack of promotion- for years they just ran around making 'cool stuf' (Cocoa? Colorsync? Applescript? OpenDoc? Cyberdog? Project X/HotSauce/MCF?) and did nothing to try and promote it. Meanwhile MS was ripping off companies and ramming their choices down everyone's throats (read Crushed By Microsoft: What I Learned for an example). Who do you think ended up winning? Now, who do you think really deserves your nasty fit of attitude? You are incredibly wrong and the record shows how wrong you are- if Apple was as you think they are, they would not have been whipped so bad in '97 and '98. It's anybody's guess as to whether they will get fully into your 'power ring' but it's well to remember that Apple's culture is one hell of a lot more like the Linux culture than MS's is. It was an internal gift economy- a playground for Apple programmers to play with nifty ideas while the marketshare collapsed and Rome burned around them. Jobs put in some backbone and some ruthlessness, but man, have some sense of proportion! Do you want a detailed account of all the different ways Apple completely didn't even bother to ruthlessly crush their competitors? God! I don't know whether to laugh or cry- you should talk to some of the OpenDoc guys who got caught holding the bag when _that_ 'cool stuff' ended up unpromoted, un-whipped-on-customers, un-forced-down-everyone's-throat... geez... talk to some people who know the truth, will you?
I have a problem with the narrowness
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...of this viewpoint. There is _no_ merit to any access to source code unless you get to own it and make your own versions of it etc etc yada yada? I'm sorry- that's too narrow a view for me. With all the history of proprietary software- hooks to punish DR-DOS, secret APIs, the repugnant history of Aladdin Stuffit products on the Mac platform which continues being a serious problem to this DAY, you're telling me the _only_ merit of source auditing is if you also get to own it? That's way too unparanoid a view, my friend;) I for one am greatly pleased to see Apple opening source- even if they allow _no_ copying! Because that means we can play watchdog on 'em, and I'm afraid you have to play watchdog on proprietary software. All too often vendors have turned treacherous. There have been lovely hostilities lately- most fascinatingly, Microsoft's practice of hunting out private information like Emails and embedding it silently and invisibly into Word files. Many people have discovered such information in their files. MS claims this is just through writing entire disk sectors to RAM, but do we have any proof that's all it is? No, because we can't audit what they're doing: they could be doing anything, they could be trawling HDs for sensitive data quite intentionally for all we know, and there's no way to be sure. Furthermore, there have been repeated tests that indicated that somewhere within the bowels of NT, it manages to give preferential treatment to IE for connections. How? Where? We don't know, we can't see, all we can see is the statistical data indicating that something is happening to cause this. Well, Apple don't play that game- in fact, Apple has so little to hide that it can pseudo-opensource its code. Whether or not it goes to a license that deserves full cooperation and shared work, this is crucially important because we NEED to be able to audit code that might critically affect our systems or those we work with.
He's a _boomer_, OK? They were _raised_ to believe they were an elite. Ever hear of a book called 'The Greening of America'? This is not about 20th century man: you're just reacting to a Boomer being a Boomer. At least now he's looking beyond the end of his own nose, which I heartily appreciate and encourage- having him celebrate us as the latest e-love generation can't hurt anybody. Makes for a heck of a useful twist on what might otherwise be a gen-X, fear-based sort of story (says the gen-X cynical writer geek;) ) Sure he's drunk with his own importance- you sum it up very nicely indeed- but you can't change him or all the Boomers like him, so you might as well at least be happy that he's including us in his little self-celebration;) look at the alternatives, he could still be extolling authors named Katz who become famous on the internet;) compared to that he's doing wonderfully, he's really looking outside himself and thinking about the world from within his frame of reference. That's a good thing...
"How many of you out there have sat down at your computer, logged in to the net and read a novel? Probably none."
Well then: Here ya go! Hope ya like it. Took ages to write... darn slashdot is so interesting it gets in the way of writing other novels (or at least finishing them;) )
One interesting note is that Katz is so familiar and at home in hacker culture that his title, 'A different kind of Enlightenment', clearly indicates that the default use is the window manager and the common-English use is the different kind, to hackers (and is ignored to such an extent that an article on it is merited!) That did impress me in a quiet way, and I'm the antithesis of the generic Katz booster. I always want _content_ from him, not feel-good or self aggrandizement. Well, this isn't primarily targetted to hackers- but this sort of article is downright useful and important in many ways. Somebody mentioned 'Internet 101', but Katz has written a first installment on 'Hackers (old-school) 101', and such a perception in the public eye could make it much easier to achieve many hacker and Linux and open source goals.
But it _is_ nice to have the historical perspective. The question is, will we sit around feeling special or go out and do something? It looks like hackers in general are too busy doing the latter to have much truck with the former, even in terms of being effusively praised like the Boomers were in the late 60s. Perhaps articles like these by Jon (outward-directed) will help other non-hackers interpret what they are seeing in a positive, non-threatening way. I hope so. In that case, Jon is not a leader so much as an interpreter- and the reason many hackers are upset by him is very simply because he's not speaking their language:)
I have a nice tech-support job. It pays sickeningly little 'cos I'm a Mac repairman and don't get enough work, but I'd rather be stuck with that than dive into political madness. Example? If (to reverse my usual bias) Gnome people got together and each wrote enough minor bugfixes to KDE to elect a steward who slapped on a $9999 licensing scheme to kill it as a choosable option, would that be appropriate? Hackers woefully underestimate politics- even when practicing it. Maybe those who are determined to make money coding need to figure out another line of work. There's a parallel to what might be happening- art and literature. Most writers don't make money writing. Should they, too, be guaranteed an income? Exactly what about programming makes it automatically merit a living wage? Perhaps the reality is that it's another form of art- which just happens to be profoundly important and affect countless people. In that case, establishing accountability (in the case of affecting people) is important, yet there is no guarantee that any one person will be a programming 'star', not even a direct correlation with skill. It'll be like the rest of the compositional arts, creating artworks, only more like building bridges for regular people to use. Hell, you could even make a case for pay-to-play. If you want to actually have your program used and trusted by kajillions of people, you gotta pay the source so it can be checked out to make sure it's not some hellish trojan;)
I would say it was the license to use if you were dismayed at the total collapse of quality in important software categories, figured that (given the opportunity) things would just keep getting worse until 'programmer' became a hangin' offense and we were all rounded up and shot, and figured the only way to fight this incredible backslide towards total irresponsibility was to have a revolution in which (if you won) the code would be forever open to public scrutiny.
Seriously- with all the talk about rights to make money and hide source, who's looking at the end result that's bringing about? Privacy issues everywhere, commercial app after commercial app going totally sour and stale and in some cases borderline criminal.
(usually I say Aladdin's Stuffit products for Mac, but now Intuit Quicken (also mac version) is forcing users into a version that does not pay bills and doublepays other ones and there is no recourse to the situation at all)
So what's wrong with deciding that since computers are so totally important, and since we depend on them so much, all the code must be open to auditing at all costs? That makes very good sense to me, as the alternative keeps getting more horrific. My software isn't that hot (it's OK) but I release it under the GPL, and my motivation is not primarily hatred of monied people. It's a pointed attempt to share what I got only with people who are _not_ galloping full tilt towards what I see as a cliff... and to totally cut dead, completely refuse to cooperate with, people who still think software is something private.
The time for software privacy is long gone- it's too dangerous, like private little nerve gas laboratories or missle bases owned by individuals. Flawed or evil software (evil == actively sabotages/damages your other software property for its own gain) is too dangerous and there must be auditing for it- the alternative is for programming to descend lower and lower in reputation until it's like lawyers and politicians, simply because unmoderated self-interest combined with secrecy allows incredible acts to be done in computer code, in virtual secrecy, and it's always some other vendor's fault, and people end up piecing together the damage only after it is too late.
The GPL is relentless in its refusal to compromise or bend the slightest amount to appease people who want to be able to do things like privacy invasion and planned obsolescence unhindered, and that's why I use it despite the slamming it gets. I see no alternatives that do what I want, nothing that really is willing to enforce the auditing I think needs to be pervasive.
You don't see medical equipment designed to break older versions, or heart pacemakers with special backdoors so the vendor can make it start to miss beats when a new heart pacemaker comes out. (Gee, looks like the new version is a good buy!) But more and more, this very equipment is being controlled by computers- often deeply proprietary computers such as NT boxes. Yet that computer equipment is allowed to be as treacherous as it could want, simply because it's computer equipment and the business is 'a jungle' so therefore there are no rules. Sometimes that's just not good enough- and so I feel strongly that there has to be openness and ability to audit exactly what is happening in computer code- and so I strongly advocate the GPL as the most uncompromising license I know of to accomplish this goal.
The irritating thing about this discussion is the assumption that we all have to have a 'desktop'. I sympathized a great deal with the fellow who wanted some assurance that WMs like WM were not going to be penalized- unfortunately the answer was basically, 'Don't worry- Window Maker has been assimilated!' What about the window managers which take an old school approach without paying attention to KDE? Are we looking at apps which penalize those in some cosmetic way, not at all (just adding hooks to KDE additions) or actual required functionality that forces you to use something that goes along with the KDE api? Again, the thing that gets me is this- if I want a desktop I have MacOS. It's not going to go bad on me, it doesn't typically crash or exhibit bugs on me, and yet I am also dualbooting Linux. If I wanted to play with the Windows notion of what a desktop is, I could just run a Windows emulator, of which there are several. I'm not remotely impressed with either KDE or Gnome's featuresets or what's being offered- isn't this rather going against the grain of what Unix grew from, and doing it in a relentlessly Windows-like way to boot? I'd really contest the assumption that this is in any way necessary. For years, secretaries and low paid clerical workers learned DOS, and didn't have too much trouble with it. Nobody figured that they were therefore brilliant computer geeks- they just learned to use the computer. Linux has the same potential for acceptance on its own terms, and doesn't seem to be trying for that at all- instead all the attention is largely on large-scale efforts to reproduce the way Windows works, evidently on the assumption that Microsoft's judgement and design sense is better than anyone else's out there, and that Windows is in fact the ultimate computer operating system that can only be imitated, never varied from. To innovate you evidently have to add more widgets to the total list of everything Windows already has, otherwise it doesn't count. I seriously contest that assumption. It's understandable- really, really huge sums of money have been spent in a concerted, over and under-the-table effort to put across the idea that that _is_ the truth. It's also a bad assumption and is blocking attempts to evolve newer interfaces, for example interfaces that take elements _out_ rather than just always adding more elements towards a baroque frenzy of incomprehensible helpfulness. I know I direct my attention towards having my Linux box be _different_ from my Mac side... I don't want a desktop, and the last thing I need is a taskbar- even on MacOS I can remember what I'm doing. I set up Linux with Window Maker and in fact took to using the clip for even more data hiding- now the startups for various apps are localized in workspaces. A GUI desktop is all very well but doing it properly is very complicated, and there is no reason to assume Windows is the canonical example of doing it properly... the obsessive interest in KDE and Gnome (regardless of how well or poorly they interoperate with each other and with other systems) suggests that nobody is willing to suggest that the desktop metaphor, in specific the _Windows_ desktop metaphor, isn't the only way people can use computers, and most notably is not necessarily the easiest approach for newbies! Well, consider it suggested... people need extensive training to run Windows boxes, and even then they are frightened venturers into the weird regions of their own computers. People do _not_ rush to Windows boxes and immediately prance merrily about operating controls- in fact the opposite happens, they get shellshocked and become pitiably nervous and spooked and require lots of reassurance when talked through things. It _is_ the interface that causes this behavior. Surely we can do better than that?
...because of this, MacOS recognizes and coexists with Unix partitions- including Linux. Forget the tendency of Windows boxes to consider Unix partitions raw and format them- _all_ the Apple stuff that linux will run on, uses MacOSes which are aware of what Unix partitions are, and will leave the Unix partitions alone and not mess with them. That's a big installed base of software which is unix-coexistence-friendly... no booby traps there. It thinks the linux partitions are A/UX.
Being the happy owner of 604e/200, IBM 2.1g HDs (fast/wide but on a narrow bus with adapters) and 64M ram, I have to say this: wheeeeeee:) Even previous gen stuff is a kick done this way- and it came in at under $1000 not counting monitor, and kicks PII/300s in bogomips;) [1]
[1] yes, I know bogomips are not an accurate benchmark. Pentium advocates have always been happy to throw around benchmarks like Office, why shouldn't I tease them with bogomips? It's a linux benchmark, too:)
Clown;P Whereupon, of course, it fails to do anything as the error message means 'failed to find startup disk'. One wonders how Doggin' ever manages to cope with a linux box, with such exultant cluelessness and refusal to think... feh. Pardon me: normally I put up with stupid people, but he doubleposted as well, and for some reason that pushed me into a chainsaw wielding frenzy: however, as I haven't got a chainsaw, I had to just make snippy posts to slashdot;) The really fun one is certain performas which are assembled in such a way that the CD-Rom can come forward and cause intermittent SCSI connections. The end result is that CD read speed becomes very slow and choppy. Cure: for maximum style points, place fingers along top edge of computer, intoning 'in the name of Jobs, HEAL!' while surreptitiously pressing CD-Rom inward with thumbs, seating the connector properly. Then say 'It should be all right now!' (...and it WAS...);)
The trouble is, most PC hardware is proprietary and incompatible, which is why people say things like 'never install linux alone'. This is foolishness- I installed linux alone on my Powermac and there were issues but none of them were showstoppers. LINUX IS NOT THAT HARD. It's PCs which are so hard. Linux is not that hard at all, I swear it. These reporters ought to try installing it on something like an old PCI powermac, or running LinuxPPC Live (if you want their experience to be of KDE only). *grin* now that I've stirred up the hornet's nest.... *grin* *grin* Seriously. LINUX IS NOT THAT HARD.PCs are just so incompatible, klugey, and deeply proprietary that most people have problems installing Linux on them, and need extensive resources to cope. Give the reporters NetWinders if you don't want them to be touching Macintoshes, but at all costs liberate Linux from the treacherous clutches of the PC! Linux is, and needs to be, a lot more than that pile of archaic kluge. We keep seeing articles on wizzy cases- somebody or lots of people ought to start putting together wild handcrafted linux boxen with unusual designs, quick, while the hype is big. It'd be a great way to separate Linux from the PC, and now is the time to strike. What's out there as far as circuit designers? Is it possible to buy many known-standards-compliant peripherals like keyboards and drives (not necessarily the cheapest ones!) and design a special mobo with a StrongARM chip on it or something, or several PPCs for a high-powered machine, or an Alpha or quad alpha or something? I keep returning to the NetWinder- what a great form factor, what a great energy consumption, can we have more Linux computers with a design like that?
I'm always disappointed when I follow these links for wizzy cases, except for the unbelievable carved wood ones (_those_ were mindblowing. Maple keyboards?) I liked the Shuttle ones simply because they look like scanners and not like PCs on crack;) hey, anything truly different in a feature on different cases is interesting. Time for somebody to make a totally round case, or even spherical. Roll it from place to place to transport!;) (I like the metal-framework PCs too, but all too often they are _shaped_ exactly the same as PCs. Come on guys, point the drives off in all directions, make it sculptural. I might have to make an art project out of my dualboot powermac to illustrate what I have in mind:) )
Katz's articles tend to be about Katz, and this is when they are most annoying. Thieme is writing about reality. Summary:
There's so much data in the world, and it's so conflicting, that people are increasingly desperate for ways of weeding out the nonsense and getting to a coherent picture of reality.
This is important because in a world where it's arguably possible for someone to literally drop a spy satellite on your head, or (my own example) actively marginalise your choice of information tool (such as linux maybe?), it's important to have a coherent picture of reality to know what is threatening you before it stomps you completely. Computer hackers (in the old school sense) are particularly well suited to making such a sensible picture of reality, because they are accustomed to making sense of a computer system, which you can't con- if your underlying assumptions are wrong, the computer program is almost certainly not going to work. This forces an examination of the underlying assumptions, which is also the best way to maintain a coherent picture of reality.
There- good summary? Hopefully it's a bit clearer than the actual article. It's a good article at bottom- that is why computer hackers can be more plugged in to reality than the mainstream media- and it also gives a bit of insight on why so many hackers are infuriated by vague ideamongering and confusion, as seen in some of the responses to Op/Ed pieces on slashdot itself. Hackers can react to muddying of their concept-spaces as if physically threatened- what they do requires that they understand how things work, and it's not an option for them to float merrily about in vague notions of philosophical meaninglessness. I too feel that I could write essays for slashdot- however, I figure it's not slashdot's job to legitimise me, so I've put mine up elsewhere. My URL is the site where I keep my stuff, and if you go to the Essays section, that's where you'll find my essays. I try to have them present a coherent picture of reality- that's what they're for;) some ('I, Borg') are even about linux! If anybody wants these or essays like them on Slashdot, they can ask CmdrTaco about it or just send a link, and he can run a story on it or not. I feel the author/editor separation has to be maintained at Slashdot in order for us to continue building a coherent picture of reality from it.:) I'm saying yes to this new writer- largely because he is writing about ideas in places where Katz basically wrote about himself. I figure I can get through the verbiage to the ideas, and there will actually be something there. I look forward to his next essay.
Please, please, let's not force a split in GPL... using it as a stick to beat Bad People with is a truly horrible idea. It is _important_ that the main idea the GPL conveys is to extend freedom of ideas and communication- withholding it only from those who would attempt to close that particular code. It's very clear in this. 'may' terminate? 'initiate' a patent infringement suit? 'open source' software? Man, that's so unclear it's solid fog. What you want is 'If you sue the author of any GPLed software for patent infringement, your license to use any GPLed software is revoked'. _That_ is clear. But I still don't want it because it's been damned hard enough to get people to appreciate the GPL already, without vengeful riders tacked on. Leave it _alone_.
I'll only call it Linux. On the other hand I _choose_ the GPL for licensing my software, and not by accident or out of some misguided attempt to be cool: I want the GPL taint, I support that part of the philosophy. And I also talk to people about the GNU philosophy quite often, and have told many people about it. I truly appreciate RMS, and I figure I can call Linux what I please because I'm already supporting Stallman, very seriously, and at some personal risk (I might be doing myself out of a future, but that's my risk to take, isn't it?)
I'm actually using it to _diminish_ my page download quota:) less sidebars, flat by default since I almost always load pages _twice_ to see the flat mode, etc. This is _very_ sweet, even with only the internal Slashdot info involved.:)
Just because Motorola can be _idiots_ doesn't change the fact that Intel desperately wants (out of their famous paranoia) to obliterate _all_ choice in the computer hardware industry. CPUs, chipsets, video cards, all will be Intel, or they might have to be _afraid_ or something. Should they manage to kill Motorola, AMD et al ad infinitum, they'll only turn to making it even more impossible for anybody to _ever_ produce an alternative. What does Motorola's competence have to do with that? Though, interestingly, even my 195Mhz 604e does 400 bogomips, evidently the same bogomark as a PII 300 and beating an Ultrasparc. Wheee:) The point is, Intel are ready and willing to fight as dirty as they can get away with and even a little (or a lot) more than that. They'll happily pull the MS ploy of buying people just to make sure other companies can't have them. They're probably cooking their books too since they're so paranoid and desperate. I know some insiders at Intel, and they are not _capable_ of doing good work anymore- the politics are absolutely disturbing there- all they're good for is killing other companies at this point. They should be blown out of the way so others can start developing products unmolested. They will _not_ be blown out of the way, probably. However, they must not be allowed to choke the industry to death, OK? Tell me how many chipsets and video cards AMD makes. Intel is big enough to begin strangling the rest of the industry, and that's just what they're trying to do- the fact that they can't maintain a work environment that is conducive to innovation, the fact that they are running out of steam and facing a collapse of their effectiveness, is not relevant. They'll still be able to use their resources as a destructive weapon for some time, and that's what they mustn't be allowed to do. Where is it written that 'among these rights to be held self-evident is the right of Intel to buy out, sabotage, steal from or otherwise obliterate any smaller competitor who frightens them by producing a better product?'
Slashdot Mirror
Would it still be FUD if KDE advocates _wanted_ another MS? My RH-derived Linux (linuxppc) shipped with KDE built so securely into the system that you couldn't switch window managers and I'm still seeing people post forlorn pleas to c.s.l.p for help in removing the default, unkillable KDE install.
Which is somewhat beside the point, but anyhow, if KDE advocates did _not_ want one uberdesktop, one uberdistribution, then it might be FUD to call RedHat another MS (as in, fear of it, uncertainty about using it, doubt of if it's the right thing). However if KDE people are already predominantly accustomed to Windows and want 'weak' strains of linux to die out leaving all the support and development on KDE and Red Hat, would 'Red Hat is the next MS' really be an attack on RH? Wouldn't it instead be sort of an argument that one shouldn't support any other distribution because they are all going to be Darwinned out of existence?
I'm running both Linux and BSD, both on Macs (BSD for the IIcx) which can also dualboot. Therefore, I must surely be deserving of being nibbled to death by yaks ;) even worse, I have released GPLed software- but it runs on Macs! Aaaaaaa! *hides from herds of angry ex-Windows users with rocks* *hehehe*
So basically, you're not elitist at all, just better than us young computer punks?
I am not sure I can believe you.
Apple Tech Info Library
Apple OS8 Developer Documentation
Apple OSX Server Developer Documentation
Apple Tech Info Archive For The Old 68K Stuff, Not To Mention All Kinds Of Other Stuff Up To And Including Pinouts For Those Weird Old Monitor Cables
The reason isn't about Apple. The reason begins with a prej and ends with ice- and it's about as warm and reassuring as the latter.
ALL! vendors suck. Apple has done plenty of asinine things, just like everybody else. To hold them as an example of arch-evil just because they don't make PCs is completely preposterous. How forthcoming is Compaq or Packard Bell about the twisty details of their more strange variants of the basic theme of 'PC'? How forthcoming is Toshiba about the hardware of their laptops?
"Wait for them to get back into the power ring, we shall see how benevolent apple really is."
Are you kidding? Apple spent _millions_ on an internet suite that was bundled with the OS. It was revolutionary, perhaps too revolutionary. It was called Cyberdog. I used it for over a year... you know what? They never did a fscking thing to push it over the other web browsers/Email programs/ftp etc etc etc vendors. They spent all that money and then just put the result out there and left it to twist in the wind...
If you think for one second that Apple embraces and exterminates like MS does, you are just plain out of your fscking mind and, on top of that, have never even _asked_ anybody what the real truth of it is.
Apple's sin is lack of promotion- for years they just ran around making 'cool stuf' (Cocoa? Colorsync? Applescript? OpenDoc? Cyberdog? Project X/HotSauce/MCF?) and did nothing to try and promote it. Meanwhile MS was ripping off companies and ramming their choices down everyone's throats (read Crushed By Microsoft: What I Learned for an example). Who do you think ended up winning? Now, who do you think really deserves your nasty fit of attitude?
You are incredibly wrong and the record shows how wrong you are- if Apple was as you think they are, they would not have been whipped so bad in '97 and '98. It's anybody's guess as to whether they will get fully into your 'power ring' but it's well to remember that Apple's culture is one hell of a lot more like the Linux culture than MS's is. It was an internal gift economy- a playground for Apple programmers to play with nifty ideas while the marketshare collapsed and Rome burned around them. Jobs put in some backbone and some ruthlessness, but man, have some sense of proportion! Do you want a detailed account of all the different ways Apple completely didn't even bother to ruthlessly crush their competitors? God! I don't know whether to laugh or cry- you should talk to some of the OpenDoc guys who got caught holding the bag when _that_ 'cool stuff' ended up unpromoted, un-whipped-on-customers, un-forced-down-everyone's-throat... geez... talk to some people who know the truth, will you?
...of this viewpoint. There is _no_ merit to any access to source code unless you get to own it and make your own versions of it etc etc yada yada? ;)
I'm sorry- that's too narrow a view for me. With all the history of proprietary software- hooks to punish DR-DOS, secret APIs, the repugnant history of Aladdin Stuffit products on the Mac platform which continues being a serious problem to this DAY, you're telling me the _only_ merit of source auditing is if you also get to own it?
That's way too unparanoid a view, my friend
I for one am greatly pleased to see Apple opening source- even if they allow _no_ copying! Because that means we can play watchdog on 'em, and I'm afraid you have to play watchdog on proprietary software. All too often vendors have turned treacherous. There have been lovely hostilities lately- most fascinatingly, Microsoft's practice of hunting out private information like Emails and embedding it silently and invisibly into Word files. Many people have discovered such information in their files. MS claims this is just through writing entire disk sectors to RAM, but do we have any proof that's all it is? No, because we can't audit what they're doing: they could be doing anything, they could be trawling HDs for sensitive data quite intentionally for all we know, and there's no way to be sure.
Furthermore, there have been repeated tests that indicated that somewhere within the bowels of NT, it manages to give preferential treatment to IE for connections. How? Where? We don't know, we can't see, all we can see is the statistical data indicating that something is happening to cause this.
Well, Apple don't play that game- in fact, Apple has so little to hide that it can pseudo-opensource its code. Whether or not it goes to a license that deserves full cooperation and shared work, this is crucially important because we NEED to be able to audit code that might critically affect our systems or those we work with.
He's a _boomer_, OK? They were _raised_ to believe they were an elite. Ever hear of a book called 'The Greening of America'? This is not about 20th century man: you're just reacting to a Boomer being a Boomer. At least now he's looking beyond the end of his own nose, which I heartily appreciate and encourage- having him celebrate us as the latest e-love generation can't hurt anybody. Makes for a heck of a useful twist on what might otherwise be a gen-X, fear-based sort of story (says the gen-X cynical writer geek ;) ) ;) look at the alternatives, he could still be extolling authors named Katz who become famous on the internet ;) compared to that he's doing wonderfully, he's really looking outside himself and thinking about the world from within his frame of reference. That's a good thing...
Sure he's drunk with his own importance- you sum it up very nicely indeed- but you can't change him or all the Boomers like him, so you might as well at least be happy that he's including us in his little self-celebration
Hope ya like it. Took ages to write... darn slashdot is so interesting it gets in the way of writing other novels (or at least finishing them
One interesting note is that Katz is so familiar and at home in hacker culture that his title, 'A different kind of Enlightenment', clearly indicates that the default use is the window manager and the common-English use is the different kind, to hackers (and is ignored to such an extent that an article on it is merited!) That did impress me in a quiet way, and I'm the antithesis of the generic Katz booster. I always want _content_ from him, not feel-good or self aggrandizement. Well, this isn't primarily targetted to hackers- but this sort of article is downright useful and important in many ways.
Somebody mentioned 'Internet 101', but Katz has written a first installment on 'Hackers (old-school) 101', and such a perception in the public eye could make it much easier to achieve many hacker and Linux and open source goals.
But it _is_ nice to have the historical perspective. The question is, will we sit around feeling special or go out and do something? It looks like hackers in general are too busy doing the latter to have much truck with the former, even in terms of being effusively praised like the Boomers were in the late 60s. :)
Perhaps articles like these by Jon (outward-directed) will help other non-hackers interpret what they are seeing in a positive, non-threatening way. I hope so. In that case, Jon is not a leader so much as an interpreter- and the reason many hackers are upset by him is very simply because he's not speaking their language
I have a nice tech-support job. It pays sickeningly little 'cos I'm a Mac repairman and don't get enough work, but I'd rather be stuck with that than dive into political madness. ;)
Example? If (to reverse my usual bias) Gnome people got together and each wrote enough minor bugfixes to KDE to elect a steward who slapped on a $9999 licensing scheme to kill it as a choosable option, would that be appropriate? Hackers woefully underestimate politics- even when practicing it.
Maybe those who are determined to make money coding need to figure out another line of work. There's a parallel to what might be happening- art and literature. Most writers don't make money writing. Should they, too, be guaranteed an income? Exactly what about programming makes it automatically merit a living wage? Perhaps the reality is that it's another form of art- which just happens to be profoundly important and affect countless people.
In that case, establishing accountability (in the case of affecting people) is important, yet there is no guarantee that any one person will be a programming 'star', not even a direct correlation with skill. It'll be like the rest of the compositional arts, creating artworks, only more like building bridges for regular people to use.
Hell, you could even make a case for pay-to-play. If you want to actually have your program used and trusted by kajillions of people, you gotta pay the source so it can be checked out to make sure it's not some hellish trojan
Seriously- with all the talk about rights to make money and hide source, who's looking at the end result that's bringing about? Privacy issues everywhere, commercial app after commercial app going totally sour and stale and in some cases borderline criminal. So what's wrong with deciding that since computers are so totally important, and since we depend on them so much, all the code must be open to auditing at all costs? That makes very good sense to me, as the alternative keeps getting more horrific. My software isn't that hot (it's OK) but I release it under the GPL, and my motivation is not primarily hatred of monied people. It's a pointed attempt to share what I got only with people who are _not_ galloping full tilt towards what I see as a cliff... and to totally cut dead, completely refuse to cooperate with, people who still think software is something private.
The time for software privacy is long gone- it's too dangerous, like private little nerve gas laboratories or missle bases owned by individuals. Flawed or evil software (evil == actively sabotages/damages your other software property for its own gain) is too dangerous and there must be auditing for it- the alternative is for programming to descend lower and lower in reputation until it's like lawyers and politicians, simply because unmoderated self-interest combined with secrecy allows incredible acts to be done in computer code, in virtual secrecy, and it's always some other vendor's fault, and people end up piecing together the damage only after it is too late.
The GPL is relentless in its refusal to compromise or bend the slightest amount to appease people who want to be able to do things like privacy invasion and planned obsolescence unhindered, and that's why I use it despite the slamming it gets. I see no alternatives that do what I want, nothing that really is willing to enforce the auditing I think needs to be pervasive.
You don't see medical equipment designed to break older versions, or heart pacemakers with special backdoors so the vendor can make it start to miss beats when a new heart pacemaker comes out. (Gee, looks like the new version is a good buy!) But more and more, this very equipment is being controlled by computers- often deeply proprietary computers such as NT boxes. Yet that computer equipment is allowed to be as treacherous as it could want, simply because it's computer equipment and the business is 'a jungle' so therefore there are no rules. Sometimes that's just not good enough- and so I feel strongly that there has to be openness and ability to audit exactly what is happening in computer code- and so I strongly advocate the GPL as the most uncompromising license I know of to accomplish this goal.
The irritating thing about this discussion is the assumption that we all have to have a 'desktop'. I sympathized a great deal with the fellow who wanted some assurance that WMs like WM were not going to be penalized- unfortunately the answer was basically, 'Don't worry- Window Maker has been assimilated!' What about the window managers which take an old school approach without paying attention to KDE? Are we looking at apps which penalize those in some cosmetic way, not at all (just adding hooks to KDE additions) or actual required functionality that forces you to use something that goes along with the KDE api?
Again, the thing that gets me is this- if I want a desktop I have MacOS. It's not going to go bad on me, it doesn't typically crash or exhibit bugs on me, and yet I am also dualbooting Linux. If I wanted to play with the Windows notion of what a desktop is, I could just run a Windows emulator, of which there are several. I'm not remotely impressed with either KDE or Gnome's featuresets or what's being offered- isn't this rather going against the grain of what Unix grew from, and doing it in a relentlessly Windows-like way to boot? I'd really contest the assumption that this is in any way necessary.
For years, secretaries and low paid clerical workers learned DOS, and didn't have too much trouble with it. Nobody figured that they were therefore brilliant computer geeks- they just learned to use the computer. Linux has the same potential for acceptance on its own terms, and doesn't seem to be trying for that at all- instead all the attention is largely on large-scale efforts to reproduce the way Windows works, evidently on the assumption that Microsoft's judgement and design sense is better than anyone else's out there, and that Windows is in fact the ultimate computer operating system that can only be imitated, never varied from. To innovate you evidently have to add more widgets to the total list of everything Windows already has, otherwise it doesn't count.
I seriously contest that assumption. It's understandable- really, really huge sums of money have been spent in a concerted, over and under-the-table effort to put across the idea that that _is_ the truth. It's also a bad assumption and is blocking attempts to evolve newer interfaces, for example interfaces that take elements _out_ rather than just always adding more elements towards a baroque frenzy of incomprehensible helpfulness.
I know I direct my attention towards having my Linux box be _different_ from my Mac side... I don't want a desktop, and the last thing I need is a taskbar- even on MacOS I can remember what I'm doing. I set up Linux with Window Maker and in fact took to using the clip for even more data hiding- now the startups for various apps are localized in workspaces. A GUI desktop is all very well but doing it properly is very complicated, and there is no reason to assume Windows is the canonical example of doing it properly... the obsessive interest in KDE and Gnome (regardless of how well or poorly they interoperate with each other and with other systems) suggests that nobody is willing to suggest that the desktop metaphor, in specific the _Windows_ desktop metaphor, isn't the only way people can use computers, and most notably is not necessarily the easiest approach for newbies!
Well, consider it suggested... people need extensive training to run Windows boxes, and even then they are frightened venturers into the weird regions of their own computers. People do _not_ rush to Windows boxes and immediately prance merrily about operating controls- in fact the opposite happens, they get shellshocked and become pitiably nervous and spooked and require lots of reassurance when talked through things. It _is_ the interface that causes this behavior.
Surely we can do better than that?
Isn't all of this simply a way to create increased dependence on Microsoft computers?
...because of this, MacOS recognizes and coexists with Unix partitions- including Linux. Forget the tendency of Windows boxes to consider Unix partitions raw and format them- _all_ the Apple stuff that linux will run on, uses MacOSes which are aware of what Unix partitions are, and will leave the Unix partitions alone and not mess with them. That's a big installed base of software which is unix-coexistence-friendly... no booby traps there. It thinks the linux partitions are A/UX.
It's basically BSD. If you don't like that, run a Linux on it. QED. If the linux isn't out for the next-gen PPC chips yet, wait two weeks ;)
Being the happy owner of 604e/200, IBM 2.1g HDs (fast/wide but on a narrow bus with adapters) and 64M ram, I have to say this: wheeeeeee :) ;) [1]
:)
Even previous gen stuff is a kick done this way- and it came in at under $1000 not counting monitor, and kicks PII/300s in bogomips
[1] yes, I know bogomips are not an accurate benchmark. Pentium advocates have always been happy to throw around benchmarks like Office, why shouldn't I tease them with bogomips? It's a linux benchmark, too
Clown ;P ;) ;)
Whereupon, of course, it fails to do anything as the error message means 'failed to find startup disk'. One wonders how Doggin' ever manages to cope with a linux box, with such exultant cluelessness and refusal to think... feh.
Pardon me: normally I put up with stupid people, but he doubleposted as well, and for some reason that pushed me into a chainsaw wielding frenzy: however, as I haven't got a chainsaw, I had to just make snippy posts to slashdot
The really fun one is certain performas which are assembled in such a way that the CD-Rom can come forward and cause intermittent SCSI connections. The end result is that CD read speed becomes very slow and choppy. Cure: for maximum style points, place fingers along top edge of computer, intoning 'in the name of Jobs, HEAL!' while surreptitiously pressing CD-Rom inward with thumbs, seating the connector properly. Then say 'It should be all right now!' (...and it WAS...)
The trouble is, most PC hardware is proprietary and incompatible, which is why people say things like 'never install linux alone'. This is foolishness- I installed linux alone on my Powermac and there were issues but none of them were showstoppers. LINUX IS NOT THAT HARD. It's PCs which are so hard. Linux is not that hard at all, I swear it. These reporters ought to try installing it on something like an old PCI powermac, or running LinuxPPC Live (if you want their experience to be of KDE only).
*grin* now that I've stirred up the hornet's nest.... *grin* *grin* Seriously. LINUX IS NOT THAT HARD. PCs are just so incompatible, klugey, and deeply proprietary that most people have problems installing Linux on them, and need extensive resources to cope. Give the reporters NetWinders if you don't want them to be touching Macintoshes, but at all costs liberate Linux from the treacherous clutches of the PC! Linux is, and needs to be, a lot more than that pile of archaic kluge.
We keep seeing articles on wizzy cases- somebody or lots of people ought to start putting together wild handcrafted linux boxen with unusual designs, quick, while the hype is big. It'd be a great way to separate Linux from the PC, and now is the time to strike. What's out there as far as circuit designers? Is it possible to buy many known-standards-compliant peripherals like keyboards and drives (not necessarily the cheapest ones!) and design a special mobo with a StrongARM chip on it or something, or several PPCs for a high-powered machine, or an Alpha or quad alpha or something? I keep returning to the NetWinder- what a great form factor, what a great energy consumption, can we have more Linux computers with a design like that?
I'm always disappointed when I follow these links for wizzy cases, except for the unbelievable carved wood ones (_those_ were mindblowing. Maple keyboards?) ;) hey, anything truly different in a feature on different cases is interesting. Time for somebody to make a totally round case, or even spherical. Roll it from place to place to transport! ;) (I like the metal-framework PCs too, but all too often they are _shaped_ exactly the same as PCs. Come on guys, point the drives off in all directions, make it sculptural. I might have to make an art project out of my dualboot powermac to illustrate what I have in mind :) )
I liked the Shuttle ones simply because they look like scanners and not like PCs on crack
There- good summary? Hopefully it's a bit clearer than the actual article. It's a good article at bottom- that is why computer hackers can be more plugged in to reality than the mainstream media- and it also gives a bit of insight on why so many hackers are infuriated by vague ideamongering and confusion, as seen in some of the responses to Op/Ed pieces on slashdot itself. Hackers can react to muddying of their concept-spaces as if physically threatened- what they do requires that they understand how things work, and it's not an option for them to float merrily about in vague notions of philosophical meaninglessness.
I too feel that I could write essays for slashdot- however, I figure it's not slashdot's job to legitimise me, so I've put mine up elsewhere. My URL is the site where I keep my stuff, and if you go to the Essays section, that's where you'll find my essays. I try to have them present a coherent picture of reality- that's what they're for
I'm saying yes to this new writer- largely because he is writing about ideas in places where Katz basically wrote about himself. I figure I can get through the verbiage to the ideas, and there will actually be something there. I look forward to his next essay.
Please, please, let's not force a split in GPL... using it as a stick to beat Bad People with is a truly horrible idea. It is _important_ that the main idea the GPL conveys is to extend freedom of ideas and communication- withholding it only from those who would attempt to close that particular code.
It's very clear in this.
'may' terminate? 'initiate' a patent infringement suit? 'open source' software? Man, that's so unclear it's solid fog.
What you want is 'If you sue the author of any GPLed software for patent infringement, your license to use any GPLed software is revoked'. _That_ is clear. But I still don't want it because it's been damned hard enough to get people to appreciate the GPL already, without vengeful riders tacked on. Leave it _alone_.
I'll only call it Linux. On the other hand I _choose_ the GPL for licensing my software, and not by accident or out of some misguided attempt to be cool: I want the GPL taint, I support that part of the philosophy. And I also talk to people about the GNU philosophy quite often, and have told many people about it.
I truly appreciate RMS, and I figure I can call Linux what I please because I'm already supporting Stallman, very seriously, and at some personal risk (I might be doing myself out of a future, but that's my risk to take, isn't it?)
I'm actually using it to _diminish_ my page download quota :) less sidebars, flat by default since I almost always load pages _twice_ to see the flat mode, etc. This is _very_ sweet, even with only the internal Slashdot info involved. :)
Just because Motorola can be _idiots_ doesn't change the fact that Intel desperately wants (out of their famous paranoia) to obliterate _all_ choice in the computer hardware industry. CPUs, chipsets, video cards, all will be Intel, or they might have to be _afraid_ or something. Should they manage to kill Motorola, AMD et al ad infinitum, they'll only turn to making it even more impossible for anybody to _ever_ produce an alternative. :)
What does Motorola's competence have to do with that? Though, interestingly, even my 195Mhz 604e does 400 bogomips, evidently the same bogomark as a PII 300 and beating an Ultrasparc. Wheee
The point is, Intel are ready and willing to fight as dirty as they can get away with and even a little (or a lot) more than that. They'll happily pull the MS ploy of buying people just to make sure other companies can't have them. They're probably cooking their books too since they're so paranoid and desperate. I know some insiders at Intel, and they are not _capable_ of doing good work anymore- the politics are absolutely disturbing there- all they're good for is killing other companies at this point.
They should be blown out of the way so others can start developing products unmolested. They will _not_ be blown out of the way, probably. However, they must not be allowed to choke the industry to death, OK? Tell me how many chipsets and video cards AMD makes. Intel is big enough to begin strangling the rest of the industry, and that's just what they're trying to do- the fact that they can't maintain a work environment that is conducive to innovation, the fact that they are running out of steam and facing a collapse of their effectiveness, is not relevant. They'll still be able to use their resources as a destructive weapon for some time, and that's what they mustn't be allowed to do.
Where is it written that 'among these rights to be held self-evident is the right of Intel to buy out, sabotage, steal from or otherwise obliterate any smaller competitor who frightens them by producing a better product?'