[... omit all useful context...] your post makes me think that your closest encounter with technology is staring at Lara Croft's boobs on your playstation
This key bit of knowledge allows me to extrapolate certain key scenes from the Two Towers:
Frodo discovers that Arwen is his sister, hence clearing the way for Aragorn. And to think that he kissed her. Eeeuw.
Cute low-tech nature-loving freedom-fighters defeat the Uruk-hai stormtroopers by dropping trees on them. Like that's believable!
Pippin gets even more annoying: "Meesa think Strider doosna know about second breakfast"
And... of course... at the very end...
Gollum is kicking Frodo's ass ("and now, young Bagginsses... you will die") on the ledge above the volcano, when Sauron comes out of nowhere, grabs Gollum and hurls him into the abyss! Then dies from inexplicable lightning injuries.
I think Lucas has a good plaigarism case against Tolkien.
My favorite bit of A Deepness in the Sky was the concept of programmer-archeologist. Imagine debugging a computer program that's 5,000 years in the making.
Their mainframes were probably running... Solaris.;)
Why does it seem that so many people in the current Linux community *think* that it's about marketing and money, though? *sigh*
Isn't corporate acceptance one of the key points of OSS, especially Linux?
I mean, if it were *just* about technical cleverness, the story would be over. Okay, Linux is clever. Film at eleven.
But there's also the crusade out there to *prove* to "them" that Linux can hack it in the enterprise, that it stacks up against Solaris and Windows NT. Space in server rooms is at a premium, and it's a victory for open source whenever a rack slot gets filled with a linux or bsd box.
There's also the cherished open source community belief that "sharing" and openness comprise a valid business model. In light of that, marketing and dollars are extremely important. The marketplace is a democracy, and every dollar is a vote.
With your current little debacle in the Middle East, I would have thought the idea of ridding yourselves of dependance on gas/petrol would be a good incentive.
But then the US would have to find somewhere else to go to war with:)
I'm sure that when we finally move over to bio-generated fuels, and the Middle East realizes with shock and horror that nobody cares about them anymore (heh heh), someone else will be glad to step up and be the next global villain.
The cynics amongst us will claim that this is an artifact of the Smoke-Filled Room Conspiracy "manufacturing" enemies to feed the military-industrial complex or distract the populace. There is something to that.
But don't forget that the enemy du jour is always terribly sincere. The Communists certainly battled the US/the-free-world for world domination on a number of fronts. The militant muslims chanting "Death to America" in the streets aren't just kidding around either. Historically, someone always steps up. If nobody seems to be volunteering, Germany is always good for another round.;)
So here's the question... who's next? Are these guys already sharpening knives, or will they not bother to hate (what boils down to) the West until militant Islam is "dealt with"?
A friend of mine had a job in a pastry factory. As a pastry aligner.
That's right; sometimes the pastries on the conveyor belt were not properly aligned to slot neatly into the box. Someone had to be on call to prevent a sticky box overflow exception.
The morals of many large US based corporations are bound by the desire and appeal of the "Almighty Buck". i.e. as long as it generates revenue, it's morally correct for the company to do so.
Er... Excuse me?
Are you saying this only is true for American corporations? Ever hear of Krupp? Ever hear of DeBeers? Ever hear of Mitsubishi, creator of the Zero fighter?
While I admit that it is easy, fun, and bound to bring mighty cheers and backslaps from other slashkids, this assumption that America is the source of all venality is stupid.
Corporations the world over have done some very, very Bad Things. I imagine it might be worth looking at the psychological effect of being able to hide behind the Faceless Corporation and how that somehow makes it easier for an individual to suppress his own honor or morals.
(Sigh)... But no, it's way easier to say Americans suck and are ignorant, everyone else is lily-pure, ethically aware, and much, much more sophisticated. You will now be returned to your normal slashdot programming.
that spam actually works... If scumbags like this can make millons it's because there are enough clueless users that actually buy the shit they advertise.
There's been a lot of talk here lately, sneering at media companies with "outdated business models". Well guess what folks:
I think we have found out what the updated business model is. Whoops.
Well yes, but now you run in the horrible paradoxal loop !!
Suppose MS say that they shouldn't be trusted. Assume you think it's right, so you don't trust'em, so you believe THAT sentence is false ! Therefore MS should be trusted. So of course you must trust'em, and believe they shouldn't trusted... And so on & on !
[Blinkenlights machine shudders and dies in a cascade of sparks and clouds of billowing smoke]
Evil Space Scientist: You win this time, Kirk. But I'll be back. Mua ha ha ha ha!
Unfortunately, unlike with computers you don't have the comfort of chroot and/or virtual machines.
They have a procedure they call pullroot to (ahem) weed out bad plants, and they surely grow them in a sandbox. I mean, how plain do they have to say it?
Re:How sad would you rate Trekkie fans ?
on
Ask William Shatner
·
· Score: 5, Funny
You appear to have a healthy level of distain for "Trekkies" who become obsessed with the series. Where does this stem from, and what would you recommend that these people do instead.
I know everybody *hates* VB, and sneers at the people who use it (the more thoughtful amongst the slashcrowd sneer at people who use *only* VB, but whatever).
I have never, ever understood this. When I graduated from college, I was still twitching and gibbering from writing Motif apps for assignments. The real reason Unix people prefer command-line tools is that Motif apps are just not worth it to develop.;)
Then I spent a little time writing Windows apps against the good ol' C api. That sucked too. Remember those massive switch statements in your event handler?
Then they came out with VB 1.0. It was jaw-droppingly awesome. Don't any of you remember, ALL YOU HAD TO DO WAS DRAW YOUR @#$(*&(@*#& WINDOWS AND THE APP WAS THERE. Double-click on a button, and open an editor to write its callback function.
And you know what, it's still true! Sure, if you're writing a device driver it's not going to help much. Sure, sure, obey Joel's law and call out to C where appropriate, but if you need a good solid UI for your program, why the heck not?
People complain about how any moron can slap together a crappy VB program that kind of works. Isn't that kind of the point? Wouldn't Linux, or *BSD, or (ahem) GEOS have benefitted hugely from VB or something like it?
It wouldn't be so bad if MS just continued to improve their core (kinda like every other OS on the planet does), but it seems that with every revision or so they replace core functionality, radically change
look and feel, interfaces, API's, management tools, etc.
I think you've hit on the bedrock reason that Windows is such a pain in the butt [1]. They have made a *consumer product* out of the OS, and marketed it on the flash and glitz of the UI, instead of marketing solely on the "boring" stuff like uptime, reliability, etc.
This strategy has been huge for Microsoft, and won them some big dollars -- I'm thinking of the release of windows 95 -- but once you start marketing your OS in this way, you almost *have* to introduce big changes every couple years so you can market those.
Side note: That is what scares the bejabbers out of me w.r.t. Apple. Now that they've picked the case form factor as one of their major selling points, they're essentially *committed* to coming up with a revolutionary exterior design every few years. That's hard to keep up.
Disclaimer: These are just my silly ideas.
[1] Another pain in the butt factor is the compromises they've had to make to maintain backwards-compatibility. This is a mixed blessing, but I don't see any way out of it so I don't complain too hard.
[...] But Chinese are no more enemies than Russians were under the Soviets. Most Chinese are moral and peaceloving [...]
No doubt that your average Joe in China is honest, moral, etc. But do not forget that his government does like to spread, for lack of a better word, FUD about the good ol' US of A. This something to consider before assuming that the yokels of Whereverstan secretly like us. They may not be getting the real story.
One of the secrets to Microsoft's success was to de-commoditize the OS; remember the hoopla surrounding Windows 95, the songs, the celebrities, the massive lines outside of Fry's? They turned the win32 api into a gala multimedia event. It was so successful, that it took this Gelernter chap to remind us that all an OS is is a hardware abstraction layer.
Point being, the OS is *supposed* to be invisible to the user, and nearly irrelevant.
This is why Netscape had to be crushed -- they wanted to make the browser the platform.
This is why Java had to be crushed -- they wanted to implement "write-once-run-anywhere". (There is a whole career-field of experts dedicated to figuring out why a HARDWARE VENDOR like Sun would push this, but that's a different post;)
I'll go out on a limb here and suggest that the Be OS idea was right... store everything in a database, potentially allowing any number of front-ends. Let's separate data from the display layer, and let people run their "Windows skin" or "Unix skin". Why not?
I'd like to see an ANSI standard Operating System. Hmm...
Final disclaimer: These are my silly ideas. Please treat them gently, as they are only half-baked.
Yeah, I can't see why the rest of the world hates the west, can you? We turn war into a fuckin' video game, and relegate them to attacking us with swords while riding their camels.
Don't be so sure that the U.S. Army is done with the good ol' cavalry charge.
I know it's the natural evolution of war, but it also seems like the natural evolution of capitalism applied to the battlefield. He with the most money to make the best toys wins, and he who doesn't hopes for an aid package to be sent to his widow.
Slashdot Mirror
- Frodo discovers that Arwen is his sister, hence clearing the way for Aragorn. And to think that he kissed her. Eeeuw.
- Cute low-tech nature-loving freedom-fighters defeat the Uruk-hai stormtroopers by dropping trees on them. Like that's believable!
- Pippin gets even more annoying: "Meesa think Strider doosna know about second breakfast"
And... of course... at the very end...Gollum is kicking Frodo's ass ("and now, young Bagginsses
I think Lucas has a good plaigarism case against Tolkien.
God bless you Kirk, you space-dog you.
I mean, if it were *just* about technical cleverness, the story would be over. Okay, Linux is clever. Film at eleven.
But there's also the crusade out there to *prove* to "them" that Linux can hack it in the enterprise, that it stacks up against Solaris and Windows NT. Space in server rooms is at a premium, and it's a victory for open source whenever a rack slot gets filled with a linux or bsd box.
There's also the cherished open source community belief that "sharing" and openness comprise a valid business model. In light of that, marketing and dollars are extremely important. The marketplace is a democracy, and every dollar is a vote.
(gasp)
And that's all I have to say about that.
The cynics amongst us will claim that this is an artifact of the Smoke-Filled Room Conspiracy "manufacturing" enemies to feed the military-industrial complex or distract the populace. There is something to that.
But don't forget that the enemy du jour is always terribly sincere. The Communists certainly battled the US/the-free-world for world domination on a number of fronts. The militant muslims chanting "Death to America" in the streets aren't just kidding around either. Historically, someone always steps up. If nobody seems to be volunteering, Germany is always good for another round.
So here's the question... who's next? Are these guys already sharpening knives, or will they not bother to hate (what boils down to) the West until militant Islam is "dealt with"?
This is mostly tongue-in-cheek, but...
A friend of mine had a job in a pastry factory. As a pastry aligner.
That's right; sometimes the pastries on the conveyor belt were not properly aligned to slot neatly into the box. Someone had to be on call to prevent a sticky box overflow exception.
"Not on my watch," he'd tell me.
He would then weep bitter tears.
Are you saying this only is true for American corporations? Ever hear of Krupp? Ever hear of DeBeers? Ever hear of Mitsubishi, creator of the Zero fighter?
While I admit that it is easy, fun, and bound to bring mighty cheers and backslaps from other slashkids, this assumption that America is the source of all venality is stupid.
Corporations the world over have done some very, very Bad Things. I imagine it might be worth looking at the psychological effect of being able to hide behind the Faceless Corporation and how that somehow makes it easier for an individual to suppress his own honor or morals.
(Sigh)... But no, it's way easier to say Americans suck and are ignorant, everyone else is lily-pure, ethically aware, and much, much more sophisticated. You will now be returned to your normal slashdot programming.
I heard there are some cheating users who hack the Sim client to write bots to ... er ... watch TV and, um, get snacks? ... with superhuman efficiency...
Oh never mind.
I think we have found out what the updated business model is. Whoops.
Evil Space Scientist: You win this time, Kirk. But I'll be back. Mua ha ha ha ha!
I know everybody *hates* VB, and sneers at the people who use it (the more thoughtful amongst the slashcrowd sneer at people who use *only* VB, but whatever).
;)
I have never, ever understood this. When I graduated from college, I was still twitching and gibbering from writing Motif apps for assignments. The real reason Unix people prefer command-line tools is that Motif apps are just not worth it to develop.
Then I spent a little time writing Windows apps against the good ol' C api. That sucked too. Remember those massive switch statements in your event handler?
Then they came out with VB 1.0. It was jaw-droppingly awesome. Don't any of you remember, ALL YOU HAD TO DO WAS DRAW YOUR @#$(*&(@*#& WINDOWS AND THE APP WAS THERE. Double-click on a button, and open an editor to write its callback function.
And you know what, it's still true! Sure, if you're writing a device driver it's not going to help much. Sure, sure, obey Joel's law and call out to C where appropriate, but if you need a good solid UI for your program, why the heck not?
People complain about how any moron can slap together a crappy VB program that kind of works. Isn't that kind of the point? Wouldn't Linux, or *BSD, or (ahem) GEOS have benefitted hugely from VB or something like it?
This strategy has been huge for Microsoft, and won them some big dollars -- I'm thinking of the release of windows 95 -- but once you start marketing your OS in this way, you almost *have* to introduce big changes every couple years so you can market those.
Side note: That is what scares the bejabbers out of me w.r.t. Apple. Now that they've picked the case form factor as one of their major selling points, they're essentially *committed* to coming up with a revolutionary exterior design every few years. That's hard to keep up.
Disclaimer: These are just my silly ideas.
[1] Another pain in the butt factor is the compromises they've had to make to maintain backwards-compatibility. This is a mixed blessing, but I don't see any way out of it so I don't complain too hard.
One of the secrets to Microsoft's success was to de-commoditize the OS; remember the hoopla surrounding Windows 95, the songs, the celebrities, the massive lines outside of Fry's? They turned the win32 api into a gala multimedia event. It was so successful, that it took this Gelernter chap to remind us that all an OS is is a hardware abstraction layer.
;)
Point being, the OS is *supposed* to be invisible to the user, and nearly irrelevant.
This is why Netscape had to be crushed -- they wanted to make the browser the platform.
This is why Java had to be crushed -- they wanted to implement "write-once-run-anywhere". (There is a whole career-field of experts dedicated to figuring out why a HARDWARE VENDOR like Sun would push this, but that's a different post
I'll go out on a limb here and suggest that the Be OS idea was right... store everything in a database, potentially allowing any number of front-ends. Let's separate data from the display layer, and let people run their "Windows skin" or "Unix skin". Why not?
I'd like to see an ANSI standard Operating System. Hmm...
Final disclaimer: These are my silly ideas. Please treat them gently, as they are only half-baked.
I can see you explaining to your wife... "Eet eez for zee cheap Apples, cheri, not zee -- how you say -- parleurs de massage on Times Square"
Disclaimer