Free (as in libre) software is not mutually exclusive with capitalism. Ask RedHat. Or IBM. Or any number of companies that develop free (again, libre) software and make a profit (or, at least get a return in dollars) while operating in a capitalist system.
The opponent here isn't capitalism. It's closed software and closed development methods.
Of course the US (and a number of other countries, I assume) wants to promote capitalism. But it can do that and also promote free software.
Don't know where this is going, but I'm afraid it might get significantly harder for humble college students such as myself to sample an artist's music before going out and buying a disc...
Give me a fucking break. File sharing on college campuses is about nothing more than getting free music. Ask the average kid with a new Dell on a wired campus what he or she does with that computer - well, they "download music and burn cds, duh". Most of these kids aren't even aware that this type of stuff is a violation of copyright (whether or not you agree with that is a different story altogether).
The "sampling music" argument is such bullshit it makes me cry inside. Admit it. You're getting something you used to have to pay a pretty penny for for free, have been for a few years now, and now it's being taken away, campus by campus, server by server. Don't expect this to change anytime soon - the recording industry probably has more resources to proctect their copyrights than some college kids crying about not getting their free music any more. Note that the same can be said for the movie "trading" that has increased in recent years.
The next person at my campus who talks about their "rights" being taken away when the RIAA comes in to shut down some kid's MP3 server gets a punch in the face.
A matter of semantics, I should have clarified. I am just about certain that he was the architect and the creator of the initial GLIDE implementation. I must admit that I used GLIDE rarely, and only around the time of the Voodoo 1 / 2, but it was clean and easy to use.
...that you are that geek. Prepare to get a broken nose.
ALERT! GEEK HUMOR! MASSIVE UNFUNNY DIRECT AHEAD!
on
Cisco to Acquire Linksys
·
· Score: -1, Flamebait
The good news is that those who bought a Linksys access point now have a Cisco access point for 1/2 of the price;)
Every slashdot news item with humor from the submitter (and "editors" as well) is unfunny. Geek humor makes me ill; the stupid fucking "smilies" just piss me off.
So, please, "Just the facts, m'am." No more lame atttempts at humor. I know this will go unheeded, though; geeks think they're so clever with humor - witness the unfunny fuckwads in my CS classes. The next time I hear some nasal voice interrupting a professor with "nehehehehenehee it's MicroTRASH nehehe" or finish a joke with "... his CPU wasn't even overclocked! nehenenehehe", I'm going to give the offending motherfucker a nosebleed.
He doesn't have to release code that he's been hacking away at.
Transparency Server
on
XFree86 Politics
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Now it's understandable why Keith Packard hasn't released any code related to his long-awaited transparency server - he's using it as leverage for a fork that would be led by himself.
Such is the way of open source. Fork, I say! I only hope that Keith's concerns are truly pragmatic and related to the software, rather than ego.
Here's a company that has enjoyed huge critical and financial success with it's products. Instead of giving away (with an appropriate license) their 13-year-old make-it-big game, they sell it. No box, $15. The price isn't rational, and it's easy to argue that they should simply give the game away as a "thanks" to their customers and fans.
Sure, I don't have a right to have the game for free. But it's my opinion it would be the proper thing to do. This will certainly sour some folks on id.
Here is a breakdown of what typical PBS funding is like. 34% private vs. 35% State and Federal. And let's not forget that much of the "private" portion comes from foundations and large lump-sum donations from wealthy folks. The pan-handling that goes on yearly (seasonly now?) on PBS accounts for very little of their income stream (although it's certainly necessary to make ends meet).
As for this fan-funded Farscape dream, it's complete bullshit. $100 or even $1000 here and there won't cover production costs for the show. People need to think before they start email campaigns and set up www.savemyshow.com sites.
Agree with all the above points. The moderation system is funamentally broken. Most of all, though, is the lack of fact-checking, source-checking, or for fuck's sake, SPELL CHECKING. These dolts clearly never got above a C in English.
Yeah, I had hoped that we would make it on the review list, but alas, no such luck. Nice looking machines, though.
This will not get you a review unit any sooner. Review units are sent to news sites that actually test machines; not to a "news" site that would use the machine and then post a three-sentence blurb on, which would be followed by 400 comments about goatse.cx and SOVIET RUSSIA, and one on-topic post complaining about the price of the product reviewed.
Call this flamebait, troll, whatever, but it's reality: slashdot isn't classified in the realm of a legitimate news site. It's a BBS, plain and simple.
In summary: go buy your own fucking laptop, Hemos.
I'm a lifelong Mainer. These articles touting the success of the Maine laptop program are only slightly substantive than an Apple press release.
The laptop program might be working in pockets in Maine, but it's akin to putting a new paint job on a delapitated vehicle that doesn't run. Maine's educational system is broken, and has been for quite some time; test scores are low, there isn't a standardized method of assesing performance of students throughout the state (don't tell me about the Maine Educational Assesment exams - they're fundamentally broken), and teacher pay and morale is low in almost all schools. Angus King, the previous governer, left the state holding the bag for the $37 mil proce tag, not to mention training for teachers, and a new curriculum to support the laptops. The state's education program is in dire need of funds for basics, such as books, buildings that aren't falling down around the students, competent teachers, etc. The news here in Maine for a while now has been how to get out of this laptop contract as cheap as possible. I'll give credit to Seymor Papert, and folks who would like to implement similar ideas, but until the most basic needs of students are met, laptops shouldn't be integrated into the curriculum.
I've spoken with a few teachers who deal with the laptops on a daily basis, and it's clear to them that the support network for the hardware itself is severly lacking. The issue of what to actually *use* the systems for seems to have been overlooked.
Bottom line: the money could have been better spent elsewhere. It's a valiant and forward-thinking idea, but not very pragmatic at the moment.
This is another fine example of no proofreading of poor written English by a slashdot "Editor".
It's offtopic, yes, but it's pertinent. I assume Taco isn't running Slashdot on a community service basis; get with the fucking program, and show some respect to the people that look at (and click on ) your ads (and subscribers as well), and at least proofread your posts. It's only a minor annoyance with a thread like this, but it's hard to take weightier subjects seriously on slashdot when the topics are full of grammar and spelling errors.
...that geek != smart. Geek simply implies someone who has at least the appearance of being smart, but who lacks social skills, and falls outside the "normal" social circles.
I'm a CS major. We're all geeks, in one way or another, in this major. The "stuffed-in-the-locker" geeks, though, are the ones who never let up, even when they're wrong. The ones with ridiculously unfunny comments at innappropriate times in class. The ones who fucking INSIST on using a laptop or handheld to take notes on, even though they're taking notes many times slower. These are the whiny fucks the world can do without. The prima-donna for no reason shits that can't code their way out of a freshman bubble sort assignment in Pascal, but who drop enough acronyms in a sentence to sound knowledgable. These are the wanna-be geeks, forever destined to the same position after college, because in the real world of software development, no one will put up with their useless shit.
That's the truth. If you don't like it, then you're one of the annoying geeks. Please grab the seat in the very back of class, stop clacking on the keyboard, and shut the fuck up. Or college is going to be just as painful as high school, you goddamn geek.
That's simply foolish. How could they not own all the code for their proprietary driver, which runs on their own hardware?
The issue here is that NVidia doesn't want to release specs, or source. Either way these drivers are closed, and it's wholly up to NVidia to release either or both. If they release on, they've released the other in effect.
I fully expect that they're "wrapper" scheme of tying drivers into the kernel would already be obsolete if not for the large NVidia user base. It's highly unpopular with kernel developers.
I know many "experienced" professional coders who can't write more than 30 lines of C++ without an IDE to check for syntax. This really shows a lack of basic knowledge of the language with which one is working.
Were I an employer, I'd much rather hire the interviewee who quickly gets to work on a whiteboard over the prospective hire that chokes when asked to write code without a terminal and IDE. It's a matter of productivity. Does anyone want programmers who are spending their time fixing one syntax or structure error per every 4 or 5 lines? Probably not. In this labor market especially it is essential to know your craft inside and out. For programmers, that means knowing your chosen language and it's quirks without a syntax checker.
It's not that you can't do the coding without a computer. It's that you're lost without the IDE to "remind" you of the language's syntax. Stop whining about exam setup, which is unlikely to change anytime soon, and learn your stuff thoroughly. You'll also be that much further ahead of your peers.
Slashdot Mirror
Free (as in libre) software is not mutually exclusive with capitalism. Ask RedHat. Or IBM. Or any number of companies that develop free (again, libre) software and make a profit (or, at least get a return in dollars) while operating in a capitalist system. The opponent here isn't capitalism. It's closed software and closed development methods. Of course the US (and a number of other countries, I assume) wants to promote capitalism. But it can do that and also promote free software.
Give me a fucking break. File sharing on college campuses is about nothing more than getting free music. Ask the average kid with a new Dell on a wired campus what he or she does with that computer - well, they "download music and burn cds, duh". Most of these kids aren't even aware that this type of stuff is a violation of copyright (whether or not you agree with that is a different story altogether).
The "sampling music" argument is such bullshit it makes me cry inside. Admit it. You're getting something you used to have to pay a pretty penny for for free, have been for a few years now, and now it's being taken away, campus by campus, server by server. Don't expect this to change anytime soon - the recording industry probably has more resources to proctect their copyrights than some college kids crying about not getting their free music any more. Note that the same can be said for the movie "trading" that has increased in recent years.
The next person at my campus who talks about their "rights" being taken away when the RIAA comes in to shut down some kid's MP3 server gets a punch in the face.
A matter of semantics, I should have clarified. I am just about certain that he was the architect and the creator of the initial GLIDE implementation. I must admit that I used GLIDE rarely, and only around the time of the Voodoo 1 / 2, but it was clean and easy to use.
Brian Hook didn't "apparently work on Glide" - he was the person responsible for initially implementing the GLIDE API.
You speak words of wisdom, my friend. Anyone who sends me a smilie in email will now get this text cut-and-pasted.
...that you are that geek. Prepare to get a broken nose.
The good news is that those who bought a Linksys access point now have a Cisco access point for 1/2 of the price ;)
Every slashdot news item with humor from the submitter (and "editors" as well) is unfunny. Geek humor makes me ill; the stupid fucking "smilies" just piss me off.
So, please, "Just the facts, m'am." No more lame atttempts at humor. I know this will go unheeded, though; geeks think they're so clever with humor - witness the unfunny fuckwads in my CS classes. The next time I hear some nasal voice interrupting a professor with "nehehehehenehee it's MicroTRASH nehehe" or finish a joke with "... his CPU wasn't even overclocked! nehenenehehe", I'm going to give the offending motherfucker a nosebleed.
He doesn't have to release code that he's been hacking away at.
Such is the way of open source. Fork, I say! I only hope that Keith's concerns are truly pragmatic and related to the software, rather than ego.
You also said "community". And "Linux". You must be "3R33T".
Sure, I don't have a right to have the game for free. But it's my opinion it would be the proper thing to do. This will certainly sour some folks on id.
How are the Ferrari's driving these days, Jon?
As for this fan-funded Farscape dream, it's complete bullshit. $100 or even $1000 here and there won't cover production costs for the show. People need to think before they start email campaigns and set up www.savemyshow.com sites.
Agree with all the above points. The moderation system is funamentally broken. Most of all, though, is the lack of fact-checking, source-checking, or for fuck's sake, SPELL CHECKING. These dolts clearly never got above a C in English.
This will not get you a review unit any sooner. Review units are sent to news sites that actually test machines; not to a "news" site that would use the machine and then post a three-sentence blurb on, which would be followed by 400 comments about goatse.cx and SOVIET RUSSIA, and one on-topic post complaining about the price of the product reviewed.
Call this flamebait, troll, whatever, but it's reality: slashdot isn't classified in the realm of a legitimate news site. It's a BBS, plain and simple.
In summary: go buy your own fucking laptop, Hemos.
The laptop program might be working in pockets in Maine, but it's akin to putting a new paint job on a delapitated vehicle that doesn't run. Maine's educational system is broken, and has been for quite some time; test scores are low, there isn't a standardized method of assesing performance of students throughout the state (don't tell me about the Maine Educational Assesment exams - they're fundamentally broken), and teacher pay and morale is low in almost all schools. Angus King, the previous governer, left the state holding the bag for the $37 mil proce tag, not to mention training for teachers, and a new curriculum to support the laptops. The state's education program is in dire need of funds for basics, such as books, buildings that aren't falling down around the students, competent teachers, etc. The news here in Maine for a while now has been how to get out of this laptop contract as cheap as possible. I'll give credit to Seymor Papert, and folks who would like to implement similar ideas, but until the most basic needs of students are met, laptops shouldn't be integrated into the curriculum.
I've spoken with a few teachers who deal with the laptops on a daily basis, and it's clear to them that the support network for the hardware itself is severly lacking. The issue of what to actually *use* the systems for seems to have been overlooked.
Bottom line: the money could have been better spent elsewhere. It's a valiant and forward-thinking idea, but not very pragmatic at the moment.
gott = gotta
This is another fine example of no proofreading of poor written English by a slashdot "Editor".It's offtopic, yes, but it's pertinent. I assume Taco isn't running Slashdot on a community service basis; get with the fucking program, and show some respect to the people that look at (and click on ) your ads (and subscribers as well), and at least proofread your posts. It's only a minor annoyance with a thread like this, but it's hard to take weightier subjects seriously on slashdot when the topics are full of grammar and spelling errors.
I'm a CS major. We're all geeks, in one way or another, in this major. The "stuffed-in-the-locker" geeks, though, are the ones who never let up, even when they're wrong. The ones with ridiculously unfunny comments at innappropriate times in class. The ones who fucking INSIST on using a laptop or handheld to take notes on, even though they're taking notes many times slower. These are the whiny fucks the world can do without. The prima-donna for no reason shits that can't code their way out of a freshman bubble sort assignment in Pascal, but who drop enough acronyms in a sentence to sound knowledgable. These are the wanna-be geeks, forever destined to the same position after college, because in the real world of software development, no one will put up with their useless shit.
That's the truth. If you don't like it, then you're one of the annoying geeks. Please grab the seat in the very back of class, stop clacking on the keyboard, and shut the fuck up. Or college is going to be just as painful as high school, you goddamn geek.
An excellent flamebait troll! My regards, sir!
Mod this up -> internalmemos.com is generally a legit source for memos.
The issue here is that NVidia doesn't want to release specs, or source. Either way these drivers are closed, and it's wholly up to NVidia to release either or both. If they release on, they've released the other in effect.
I fully expect that they're "wrapper" scheme of tying drivers into the kernel would already be obsolete if not for the large NVidia user base. It's highly unpopular with kernel developers.
Take the hook out and move on.
First First Post owns YOU!
If you want to look like a complete momo, submit a link to your inadequately prepared site to slashdot.
move along now....
I know many "experienced" professional coders who can't write more than 30 lines of C++ without an IDE to check for syntax. This really shows a lack of basic knowledge of the language with which one is working.
Were I an employer, I'd much rather hire the interviewee who quickly gets to work on a whiteboard over the prospective hire that chokes when asked to write code without a terminal and IDE. It's a matter of productivity. Does anyone want programmers who are spending their time fixing one syntax or structure error per every 4 or 5 lines? Probably not. In this labor market especially it is essential to know your craft inside and out. For programmers, that means knowing your chosen language and it's quirks without a syntax checker.
It's not that you can't do the coding without a computer. It's that you're lost without the IDE to "remind" you of the language's syntax. Stop whining about exam setup, which is unlikely to change anytime soon, and learn your stuff thoroughly. You'll also be that much further ahead of your peers.