I'm going to tell RMS that you didn't call it GNU/Linux! You'll be sorry when the jackbooted thugs break into your mom's basement and beat you to within an inch of your life, all the time yelling, "GNU/Linux! GNU/Linux! GNU/Linux!"
Who's scared of the BSA, governemnt, multinational corporations, the CIA, or terrorists? You should be scared of the FSF!
You think getting the occasional CDROM from AOL is bad? Try getting 20 or 30 CDROMs from MSN, all at once. It happened to me about a week ago. I guess the post office got confused and delivered all the MSN CDROMs destined for my neighborhood to my house. It was in a bulk package, with my name and address on the top.
At least I know the names of all the single women in my neighborhood now.
And if you break copyright law, you will accept your punishment without whining? Maybe you should be punished for the mental anguish your music and software piracy caused Lars Ulrich and Bill Gates, respectively.
Works for me. I didn't pay taxes until I was over 25. 'Course, I didn't have a job, either. The tricky part is finding a girlfriend with an apartment, car, and job. Jobs are for people who aren't very good at sex.
What happened to you? I've bought some cheap stuff from OWC, and I didn't have any problems. I always thought they were a good company, but if they've screwed you, I won't buy from them any more.
Have you ever tried playing with old PowerMac hardware? It's loads of fun! I love buying old PowerMacs (7500, 8500, 9500, etc) and sticking USB, Firewire, and SCSI cards in them. Half the time, they fall over and die after a week, but it's worth it just for the fun of making ancient hardware do something while it screams, "I REFUSE TO DO THIS!"
As to whether or not what we're doing is innovative or cutting edge: Have you looked at what we are doing? What we are doing is nothing short of offering a fundamentally different way of looking at "Linux distributions": as platforms for building precisely tuned solutions as opposed to the one-size-fits-all products that traditional distributions give us. Sounds pretty innovative to me, but I will admit a bit of bias.:-)
So, basically, you're changing the Linux paradigm by leveraging your knowledge of blah blah blah.
Now is the time on Slashdot when we say, "I told you so!"
I told you so!
I refuse to buy Tivo, ReplayTV, or other service-based products. I'd rather throw my money at something that doesn't continually drain my checkbook. I don't own a car, either.
You'd be amazed how cheap my living expenses are, especially considering that almost all my electronic devices have power-saving modes.
The only reason this article was posted is because the Slashdot "editors" know that they'll get a zillion posts complaining about the patent office. One or two of these Slashbots are bound to click on the banner ads. Even if they don't, those ad impressions will generate a few cents.
In other words, the story is a troll.
Is it just me, or does every submission on Slashdot have more links than actual words now? What the hell is up with these people? Why is O'Reilly mentioned in this submission? Why are there so many links? Why does anyone care about this stupid patent?
Very good post. I'm about as liberal as they come, but I totally agree with you here. Our country may make policy decisions I disagree with, but they don't walk into these policies blind.
War with Iraq is not something I like, but the worst case scenario is not as bad as many people make it out to be. What bothers me most of all is the precedent being set. Oh well.
No sense in crying over spilt milk. Might as well get with the program and make the best of the situation, that's what I say.
Windows 2.x: 5.0 (points off for being a very dumb GUI) Windows 3.x: 6.0 (points off for being a dumb GUI) Windows 95: 6.5 (points off for being an inferior clone of OS/2) Windows 98: 7.0 (points off for being an inferior clone of OS/2) Windows XP: 7.5 (points off for being garish and treating me like an idiot) MacOS 8.6: 6.0 (points off for being bland and ugly) MacOS 9.0: 6.0 (points off for being bland and ugly) MacOS X: 8.0 (points off for being slightly confusing) CDE: 6.5 (points off for being a bland copy of Win95) KDE 1.x: 7.0 (not bad for a first try) KDE 2.x: 7.5 (good GUI... not great) KDE 3.x: 7.5 (good GUI... not great) Gnome 1.x: 6.5 (ehh) Gnome 2.x: 6.5 (ehh) OS/2 1.x: 6.0 (way too bland) OS/2 2.x: 7.5 (very good GUI, but still a little bland) OS/2 3.x: 8.5 (excellent GUI, finally not bland) AmigaOS: 8.5 (excellent GUI. R.I.P. Commodore)
You can tell that I like object oriented desktops. OS/2 3.x was a great example of this. I'd rank it as high as AmigaOS. I'm not so fond of Gnome. If you like Gnome, then add a full point to it. I like KDE, but I think it needs to become more object oriented. If you like KDE as is, add a full point to it. I like OS/X, but I wish that it wasn't so Apple-centric. The first time I ever seriously used an Apple computer was a B&W PowerMac. A lot of the terminology was foreign to me, and I found the famously intuitive interface to be confusing at times. And why is there only one button on the mouse? Eek. Well, anyways, with some more time, I'll probably end up giving OS X an 8.5 or 9.0. I just need more time to familiarize myself with it.
I miss the old Amiga and OS/2 desktops. They were very functional, elegant, easy to use, and both were ahead of their time. There wouldn't be a Windows 95 without OS/2 2.0, and there wouldn't be a Windows 98 without OS/2 3.0. Microsoft stole the Windows interface from OS/2, not MacOS (which was incredibly ugly at the time).
Maybe I need to spend some more time in Gnome and KDE. I don't use them for anything but Mozilla/Konqueror. Why else would I use a GUI in UNIX? Gimme a CLI or gimme... well... just gimme a CLI. I've been using UNIX since the days of dumb terminals and serial consoles, and the idea of using a GUI is something I'm still trying to get my head around. It just feels wrong somehow...
If I had to choose the perfect GUI, I'd probably go with AmigaOS or OS/2. Next would be MacOS X.
Well, it's black. That counts for something. I've actually never seen a NeXT cube up close.
I know it's probably considered incredibly lame by Slashdot standards, butI like black Antec cases. They are huge, well-designed, include lots of room for expansion, and are rated for dual Xeons (or dual Athlon MPs, if you swing that way). That's some wicked stuff. Well, to someone who has no life, at least.
Aw, damn... that should have been "think of it this way".
I don't understand why Slashdot doesn't allow you to edit posts. Stupid Slashdot. And now I have to sit here for two minutes before I can post again. Well, maybe I'll tell you a story.
Once upon a time, there was a very evil girlfriend. How evil was she? She spread lies about the poor computer geek in her Live Journal. The poor computer stumbled upon this journal one day, and he was very hurt. "Why," he cried, "would you say these things about me?" The evil girlfriend replied, "Well, from a certain perspective, they are true." The poor geek was not amused by this Jedi bullshit, so he told off the evil girlfriend and swore off dating for a full year. After a year of no sex, he began to doubt that his resolution was really all that wise. Fortunately, he discovered an extremely horny girl who had many perverted fantasies. And he lived happily ever after, getting much kinky sex.
Information wants to be free, right? Allinformation, that is, except for personally identifiable information and your personal information. That information doesn't want to be free. It wants to be secret. So, some information wants to be free, but not all of it. Also, not all source code wants to be free. It wants to be free on its own terms, or free to some people and not to others. Also, some source code wants to redefine the word 'free' to mean something else. And then there's the information that just plain can't be free, because people's lives depend on it being secret(police informants, undercover cops, locations of safe houses, military secrets, and so on).
Now, try to do anything while you've got this being screamed into your ear. Of course, your other ear is getting the same treatment, but from a different point of view ("Why do I have to release everything I write into the public domain? Fuck that! I want copyrights!"). And then there's the long, long line of other people, waiting to scream their political views into your ears.
No, I wouldn't really like doing this, either. No matter what you do, someone is going to demonize you. Support abortion? You're a baby killer. Don't support abortion? You're misogynistic. Support the death penalty? You're contributing to human rights abuses in America. Don't support the death penalty? You're soft on crime.
I hate politicians, too, but making politics out to be some sort of game where you just wait for all the cash and babes to come rolling in is kind of silly. Be a DJ or pro sports athlete if you want that. It'd be a lot easier than constantly dealing with zealots screaming that you're sending the country into a downward spiral every time you make a decision.
Our politicians have become ineffective and wishy-washy because we scream at them and demonize them so much. Maybe if we all backed off a little bit, they wouldn't be scared to death of making decisions.
My cynical side says that nothing could ever make a politician honest, but my optimistic side is ever hopeful that we'll someday have a crooked policitian who has the will to stick to his guns on an issue.
I looked at their web site once before, and I don't see any proof that the x86 servers there support any feature that Slashbots have been raving about. There is no Xeon motherboard that supports hotswap CPUs or memory. I really think I would have seen this if it existed, as I like to keep up on such things. Intel, Supermicro, Asus, etc are still making commodity motherboards. Who is this mystery manufacturer who is pumping out Xeon motherboards with hotswap CPUs and memory? What chipset is this mystery motherboard using?
Those who would sacrifice essential liberty for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. These tags have the potential to invade your mind. Big brother can more easily read your thoughts, and will force you to obey his rules. If you wear certain clothes, they might turn you into a mindless Republican zombie. These RFID tags just have too much potential to control our thoughts. I certainly won't be taking off my tin foil hat any time soon.
-- Phil Coleman, Board Member, Crazy Ass Paranoid Guys And Conspiracy Freaks
I don't remember... I set my filter very high, then add a substantial bonus to friends, friends of friends, fans, and funny moderation. Then, when I get really bored, I go back and read at -1.
I add a lot of people, usually because they say something particularly intelligent about a topic I like (semiconducters, DEC Alphas, Linux, C programming, heavy metal... the usual stuff).
You're right, of course, and some of my friends and I did the same thing... but none of us were good enough to pull off what you did. Ahhh, the good old days. Wait. Ahhhh, the bad old days. That's better.
I didn't mean that as flamebait, but I think I'm incapable of writing anything else once I see that big Slashdot banner on my screen. It compels me. It tells me to do things. I try to resist, but I'm just not strong enough! Damn that banner! Damn it to hell!
I've heard of Jabber, but I have no experience with it. I've been meaning to check it out (especially now that I'm thinking about trying to reinvent the wheel), but I always get side-tracked with something else.
Thanks for the suggestion. It could be very popular with Win32 users if someone sold support and a retail box. If some (most?) of the money went back to the Jabber developers, this could be a very mutually beneficial arrangement. Maybe the Jabber developers could even get hired by this company.
Well, anyways, I'm just trying to come up with ideas. I want to move my friends over to a better IM client, but they're all on Win32, and there's no way they'd ever switch to Linux or MacOS X. I need for them to have a slick, easy Win32 client.
My big problem is that Trillian Pro isn't portable. I can't run it on my Linux PC, and I certainly can't run it on my DEC Alpha. I'd really, really like to be able to do that.
The second problem is that Trillian Pro only adopts other protocols, crashing or not working when the protocol changes. That's not their fault. But I don't want to have to constantly upgrade Trillian whenever someone else changes their protocol specification. I'd like for them to implement an open protocol in addition to the legacy protocols. Once the open protocol acheives critical mass, the legacy protocols can be abandoned.
My third problem is that Trillian went from being a hobbyist effort to a commercial product. It shows. Instead of a dialogue popping up saying, "I'm sorry, but the AIM protocol has been changed. This requires an update to the AIM module. Click here to update this module now.", I get a crash. "Huh," I say to myself. "I'll just start it up again, and see if it happens again." Yep. It silently crashes. So, I decide to go to www.trillian.cc and download a newer version. That fixed it. But what if I was a computer illiterate person who had no idea what was wrong? This is not professionally written software.
My last problem is that Trillian isn't a real company -- who do you call for technical support? Who do you contact for site licenses, and how much do they cost? Do they sell corporate versions that are customizable?
Like I said, Trillian isn't really what I'm looking for. It sounds like it, at first, but then you realize it's just another hobbyist Win32 program that's trying to become commercial. I don't want that. I want something that has been designed from the start to be user friendly, easy to use, and cuddles the user. I don't need this, but my friends do. They can't handle it when a Win32 program crashes back to the desktop.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm going to tell RMS that you didn't call it GNU/Linux! You'll be sorry when the jackbooted thugs break into your mom's basement and beat you to within an inch of your life, all the time yelling, "GNU/Linux! GNU/Linux! GNU/Linux!"
Who's scared of the BSA, governemnt, multinational corporations, the CIA, or terrorists? You should be scared of the FSF!
You think getting the occasional CDROM from AOL is bad? Try getting 20 or 30 CDROMs from MSN, all at once. It happened to me about a week ago. I guess the post office got confused and delivered all the MSN CDROMs destined for my neighborhood to my house. It was in a bulk package, with my name and address on the top.
At least I know the names of all the single women in my neighborhood now.
And if you break copyright law, you will accept your punishment without whining? Maybe you should be punished for the mental anguish your music and software piracy caused Lars Ulrich and Bill Gates, respectively.
Works for me. I didn't pay taxes until I was over 25. 'Course, I didn't have a job, either. The tricky part is finding a girlfriend with an apartment, car, and job. Jobs are for people who aren't very good at sex.
What happened to you? I've bought some cheap stuff from OWC, and I didn't have any problems. I always thought they were a good company, but if they've screwed you, I won't buy from them any more.
Have you ever tried playing with old PowerMac hardware? It's loads of fun! I love buying old PowerMacs (7500, 8500, 9500, etc) and sticking USB, Firewire, and SCSI cards in them. Half the time, they fall over and die after a week, but it's worth it just for the fun of making ancient hardware do something while it screams, "I REFUSE TO DO THIS!"
So, basically, you're changing the Linux paradigm by leveraging your knowledge of blah blah blah.
Sounds like a bunch of marketing speak to me.
Come back when you're really selling something.
Hey, didn't you write King's Quest? Now you're posting on Slashdot? I guess it's true what they've been saying about Sierra!
p.s. Your web site says "./" when linking to "slashdot.org". You might want to fix that.
Bob the Angry Flower has some words for you.
Now is the time on Slashdot when we say, "I told you so!"
I told you so!
I refuse to buy Tivo, ReplayTV, or other service-based products. I'd rather throw my money at something that doesn't continually drain my checkbook. I don't own a car, either.
You'd be amazed how cheap my living expenses are, especially considering that almost all my electronic devices have power-saving modes.
The only reason this article was posted is because the Slashdot "editors" know that they'll get a zillion posts complaining about the patent office. One or two of these Slashbots are bound to click on the banner ads. Even if they don't, those ad impressions will generate a few cents.
In other words, the story is a troll.
Is it just me, or does every submission on Slashdot have more links than actual words now? What the hell is up with these people? Why is O'Reilly mentioned in this submission? Why are there so many links? Why does anyone care about this stupid patent?
Back to reading about lesbian monkeys...
Very good post. I'm about as liberal as they come, but I totally agree with you here. Our country may make policy decisions I disagree with, but they don't walk into these policies blind.
War with Iraq is not something I like, but the worst case scenario is not as bad as many people make it out to be. What bothers me most of all is the precedent being set. Oh well.
No sense in crying over spilt milk. Might as well get with the program and make the best of the situation, that's what I say.
Elbereth's ratings:
Windows 2.x: 5.0 (points off for being a very dumb GUI)
Windows 3.x: 6.0 (points off for being a dumb GUI)
Windows 95: 6.5 (points off for being an inferior clone of OS/2)
Windows 98: 7.0 (points off for being an inferior clone of OS/2)
Windows XP: 7.5 (points off for being garish and treating me like an idiot)
MacOS 8.6: 6.0 (points off for being bland and ugly)
MacOS 9.0: 6.0 (points off for being bland and ugly)
MacOS X: 8.0 (points off for being slightly confusing)
CDE: 6.5 (points off for being a bland copy of Win95)
KDE 1.x: 7.0 (not bad for a first try)
KDE 2.x: 7.5 (good GUI... not great)
KDE 3.x: 7.5 (good GUI... not great)
Gnome 1.x: 6.5 (ehh)
Gnome 2.x: 6.5 (ehh)
OS/2 1.x: 6.0 (way too bland)
OS/2 2.x: 7.5 (very good GUI, but still a little bland)
OS/2 3.x: 8.5 (excellent GUI, finally not bland)
AmigaOS: 8.5 (excellent GUI. R.I.P. Commodore)
You can tell that I like object oriented desktops. OS/2 3.x was a great example of this. I'd rank it as high as AmigaOS. I'm not so fond of Gnome. If you like Gnome, then add a full point to it. I like KDE, but I think it needs to become more object oriented. If you like KDE as is, add a full point to it. I like OS/X, but I wish that it wasn't so Apple-centric. The first time I ever seriously used an Apple computer was a B&W PowerMac. A lot of the terminology was foreign to me, and I found the famously intuitive interface to be confusing at times. And why is there only one button on the mouse? Eek. Well, anyways, with some more time, I'll probably end up giving OS X an 8.5 or 9.0. I just need more time to familiarize myself with it.
I miss the old Amiga and OS/2 desktops. They were very functional, elegant, easy to use, and both were ahead of their time. There wouldn't be a Windows 95 without OS/2 2.0, and there wouldn't be a Windows 98 without OS/2 3.0. Microsoft stole the Windows interface from OS/2, not MacOS (which was incredibly ugly at the time).
Maybe I need to spend some more time in Gnome and KDE. I don't use them for anything but Mozilla/Konqueror. Why else would I use a GUI in UNIX? Gimme a CLI or gimme... well... just gimme a CLI. I've been using UNIX since the days of dumb terminals and serial consoles, and the idea of using a GUI is something I'm still trying to get my head around. It just feels wrong somehow...
If I had to choose the perfect GUI, I'd probably go with AmigaOS or OS/2. Next would be MacOS X.
Bob the Angry Flower has a few words for you.
How much does it cost to have your site get announced/advertised on the Slashdot front page?
Junkbuster can't kill those ads. It's an ingenious idea.
Uh... 2 GHz is fast enough?
For most people, 600 MHz is fast enough.
Well, it's black. That counts for something. I've actually never seen a NeXT cube up close.
I know it's probably considered incredibly lame by Slashdot standards, butI like black Antec cases. They are huge, well-designed, include lots of room for expansion, and are rated for dual Xeons (or dual Athlon MPs, if you swing that way). That's some wicked stuff. Well, to someone who has no life, at least.
Aw, damn... that should have been "think of it this way".
I don't understand why Slashdot doesn't allow you to edit posts. Stupid Slashdot. And now I have to sit here for two minutes before I can post again. Well, maybe I'll tell you a story.
Once upon a time, there was a very evil girlfriend. How evil was she? She spread lies about the poor computer geek in her Live Journal. The poor computer stumbled upon this journal one day, and he was very hurt. "Why," he cried, "would you say these things about me?" The evil girlfriend replied, "Well, from a certain perspective, they are true." The poor geek was not amused by this Jedi bullshit, so he told off the evil girlfriend and swore off dating for a full year. After a year of no sex, he began to doubt that his resolution was really all that wise. Fortunately, he discovered an extremely horny girl who had many perverted fantasies. And he lived happily ever after, getting much kinky sex.
Well, this of it this way.
Information wants to be free, right? Allinformation, that is, except for personally identifiable information and your personal information. That information doesn't want to be free. It wants to be secret. So, some information wants to be free, but not all of it. Also, not all source code wants to be free. It wants to be free on its own terms, or free to some people and not to others. Also, some source code wants to redefine the word 'free' to mean something else. And then there's the information that just plain can't be free, because people's lives depend on it being secret(police informants, undercover cops, locations of safe houses, military secrets, and so on).
Now, try to do anything while you've got this being screamed into your ear. Of course, your other ear is getting the same treatment, but from a different point of view ("Why do I have to release everything I write into the public domain? Fuck that! I want copyrights!"). And then there's the long, long line of other people, waiting to scream their political views into your ears.
No, I wouldn't really like doing this, either. No matter what you do, someone is going to demonize you. Support abortion? You're a baby killer. Don't support abortion? You're misogynistic. Support the death penalty? You're contributing to human rights abuses in America. Don't support the death penalty? You're soft on crime.
I hate politicians, too, but making politics out to be some sort of game where you just wait for all the cash and babes to come rolling in is kind of silly. Be a DJ or pro sports athlete if you want that. It'd be a lot easier than constantly dealing with zealots screaming that you're sending the country into a downward spiral every time you make a decision.
Our politicians have become ineffective and wishy-washy because we scream at them and demonize them so much. Maybe if we all backed off a little bit, they wouldn't be scared to death of making decisions.
My cynical side says that nothing could ever make a politician honest, but my optimistic side is ever hopeful that we'll someday have a crooked policitian who has the will to stick to his guns on an issue.
I looked at their web site once before, and I don't see any proof that the x86 servers there support any feature that Slashbots have been raving about. There is no Xeon motherboard that supports hotswap CPUs or memory. I really think I would have seen this if it existed, as I like to keep up on such things. Intel, Supermicro, Asus, etc are still making commodity motherboards. Who is this mystery manufacturer who is pumping out Xeon motherboards with hotswap CPUs and memory? What chipset is this mystery motherboard using?
I call bullshit and marketing.
I think by "meme" he means "me! me! look at me!"
Those who would sacrifice essential liberty for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. These tags have the potential to invade your mind. Big brother can more easily read your thoughts, and will force you to obey his rules. If you wear certain clothes, they might turn you into a mindless Republican zombie. These RFID tags just have too much potential to control our thoughts. I certainly won't be taking off my tin foil hat any time soon.
-- Phil Coleman, Board Member, Crazy Ass Paranoid Guys And Conspiracy Freaks
I don't remember... I set my filter very high, then add a substantial bonus to friends, friends of friends, fans, and funny moderation. Then, when I get really bored, I go back and read at -1.
I add a lot of people, usually because they say something particularly intelligent about a topic I like (semiconducters, DEC Alphas, Linux, C programming, heavy metal... the usual stuff).
You're right, of course, and some of my friends and I did the same thing... but none of us were good enough to pull off what you did. Ahhh, the good old days. Wait. Ahhhh, the bad old days. That's better.
I didn't mean that as flamebait, but I think I'm incapable of writing anything else once I see that big Slashdot banner on my screen. It compels me. It tells me to do things. I try to resist, but I'm just not strong enough! Damn that banner! Damn it to hell!
I've heard of Jabber, but I have no experience with it. I've been meaning to check it out (especially now that I'm thinking about trying to reinvent the wheel), but I always get side-tracked with something else.
Thanks for the suggestion. It could be very popular with Win32 users if someone sold support and a retail box. If some (most?) of the money went back to the Jabber developers, this could be a very mutually beneficial arrangement. Maybe the Jabber developers could even get hired by this company.
Well, anyways, I'm just trying to come up with ideas. I want to move my friends over to a better IM client, but they're all on Win32, and there's no way they'd ever switch to Linux or MacOS X. I need for them to have a slick, easy Win32 client.
My big problem is that Trillian Pro isn't portable. I can't run it on my Linux PC, and I certainly can't run it on my DEC Alpha. I'd really, really like to be able to do that.
The second problem is that Trillian Pro only adopts other protocols, crashing or not working when the protocol changes. That's not their fault. But I don't want to have to constantly upgrade Trillian whenever someone else changes their protocol specification. I'd like for them to implement an open protocol in addition to the legacy protocols. Once the open protocol acheives critical mass, the legacy protocols can be abandoned.
My third problem is that Trillian went from being a hobbyist effort to a commercial product. It shows. Instead of a dialogue popping up saying, "I'm sorry, but the AIM protocol has been changed. This requires an update to the AIM module. Click here to update this module now.", I get a crash. "Huh," I say to myself. "I'll just start it up again, and see if it happens again." Yep. It silently crashes. So, I decide to go to www.trillian.cc and download a newer version. That fixed it. But what if I was a computer illiterate person who had no idea what was wrong? This is not professionally written software.
My last problem is that Trillian isn't a real company -- who do you call for technical support? Who do you contact for site licenses, and how much do they cost? Do they sell corporate versions that are customizable?
Like I said, Trillian isn't really what I'm looking for. It sounds like it, at first, but then you realize it's just another hobbyist Win32 program that's trying to become commercial. I don't want that. I want something that has been designed from the start to be user friendly, easy to use, and cuddles the user. I don't need this, but my friends do. They can't handle it when a Win32 program crashes back to the desktop.
But you do make some good points.