HP has been in Microsoft's back pocket for years. They have tried their best to help Microsoft keep their hegemonic hold on the industry by doing everything in their power to undermine Sun's vision of Java. They are members of all working groups, in concert with Microsoft, that are at odds with Sun. They released a clean room version of Java that did not adhere to Sun's standards. They insist this was done because they had problems with Sun's licensing. Hogwash. They were acting on orders from Bill.
HP is not a friend of Open Source. They represent the coming wave of cynical, manipulative corporate entities that wil try to present themselves in a friendlier light. HP has had a dismal financial year and is trying to right its boat. I, for one, will not support them in any of their endeavors.
I would like to have a cup of coffee with you and Richard Stallman. My heroes used to be sports stars and actors but I believe you guys are making a true difference. And you guys are cool too. Not like that mean Tom Christiansen:(
It's interesting that you call slashdot a community. I agree with your statement. I had a running argument with someone (Signal 11 perhaps?) who disagreed. He seemed to think that slashdot was just a website. I'm glad to see that there others who agree with me.
You are a scholar and a gentleman and you make a lot of sense. Tom C's ranting appears to have ulterior motives because I don't think he makes the case against the GPL. Maybe RMS dissed him at a luncheon?
At any rate, we all have freedom of choice. Work with the licenses wiht which you feel most comfortable.
You are making presumptions about the legal system which have yet to be demonstrated. Who is to say that any court will accept any plaintext that was not produced under the aegis of the court system as a decrypted version of the ciphertext in question? Is that any different than hearsay? I suspect that the court would demand that the ciphertext be decrypted under the presence of court appointed administrators.
As an example, DNA testing is sent to court approved labs. I have yet to see a court allow a lawyer walk in with his own DNA tested evidence by an unkown testing entity.
I know it is the modus operandi here to adopt the most paranoid stance with regard to data privacy and any actions that would seem to undermine it, but people need to stop and think before voicing their opinions. It seems that most people grab the first thing that jumps in their mind and jot down a couple of lengthy paragraphs in the hope that their words can reinforce their shallow thinking.
by Christopher B. Brown Considerable improvements have gone into the "back end," apt-get; while there has been some experimentation with gnome-apt and console-apt, there doesn't seem to yet be anything that unambiguously improves on dselect in terms of functionality. With the things that have been learned from those attempts, is there likely to be some sort of dselect-ng?
Wichert: I really hope so. The reason that we don't have a super-glitchy-totally-awesome apt frontend at the moment is that we have nobody who is willing and able to invest the time and effort into making it. Unlike a commercial distribution, we can't just say `oh, this would be cool. You there! Write this for us and we'll give you some money.' Somebody has to decide for himself that it is an interesting project and make it. We can only encourage people to do something and be very thankful when they do.
This is the exact reason why a Redhat is needed. Now that they have the market capitalization they don't need to wait until someone wants to work on a particular project. They have talented people on the payroll that they can assign to work on needed technology. The Open Source attitude has been very successful to date, particularly because of the attitude expressed by Wichert that solutions arise from need and interest, but to grow Linux so that it can truly compete with MS and others, it needs to support technologies quickly. No more of this USB in the 2.3 kernel stuff or Firewire being supported who knows when. Linux needs to take off its training wheels and go play with the big boys. Adopting a big business attitude that can coexist peacefully with its Open Source origins will get it there and is Linux's greatest challenge.
Let's not forget the brick and mortar joints that are legitimizing Linux to the mainstream audience by stocking its shelves with Linux OS's, applications and games.
I just got back from CompUsa and was amazed at the number of Linux boxen I saw displayed. The change in just 2 months is very refreshing. Linux doesn't have its own aisle, or its own mini-store like Apple, but I think it's on its way to becoming just another thing you pick up, which is what we're all after. And they even had a lot of FreeBSD boxen too! I've never used FreeBSD but I think I may pick it up a distro soon.
Until the posters get their heads out of their arses...
this'll be just a shell of what it used to be...
...who has been reading since the second or third month this place was around, and is vaguely sad for what once was.
People like you irritate me. You sound like an old man with all that whining. What, this place isn't cool anymore because it's popular? You don't feel special enough anymore, is that it? Face it fella, things change. I too remember Slashdot from the old days. In fact, I remember asking myself who the Anonymous Coward guy was and marveling at his prodigious ability to post comments!
The feel and mood of slashdot has changed to accomodate the hustle and bustle of the increased traffic. It's never going to go back to that charming little website that a handful of people knew about. Wishing for that just makes you seem awfully childish. This isn't the only pitstop on the metaverse. If this one doesn't do it for you, move on.
Magazines, especially those that purport to give unbiased information but in reality bow down to the advertiser dollars (pick any Ziff-Davis zine), are especially vulnerable today when anyone can utilize a search engine or peruse usenet postings to get the real scoop.
Just because information is found on the web doesn't mean that it's better, though. Just take a look at those rigged Linux vs Windows security tests that were put out months ago. I forget the particular magazine but the bonehead who wrote up the stories neglected to apply requisite security patches to his Redhat box because they were too numerous and were not found in a standard place. His boss had been on the hotseat for similar incidents in the past. Once the unfairness of the testing was pointed out by the vociferous linux community, they were forced to rerun the tests.
If you are in the business of providing content, you better make sure come correct or your audience will move on.
I wonder if Charlton Heston is in this movie. I can hear him now. "Get your bloody hands off that compiler, you goddamn, dirty, stinking product manager !"
I noticed that were several comments floated by some of the Microsoft mouthpieces stating that this demo proved the viability of Win2000 as an OS that can handle broadband networks/applications. Exactly what does Win2000's TCP/IP stack have anything to do with this demo? Are they trying to imply that any other OS' stack wouldn't fare well in a similar demo? It doesn't sound right to me but I don't know much about Win2000's stack.
What? Planning is something you do? Okay. How about this equally juvenile thought -- Hating is something you do. Both "actions" require that you think. Please, if you're going to argue, come with something better than this.
That's carrying things to an absurd extreme - murder is a completely different thing than petty vandalism and their punishments should reflect that.
No,no,no,no,no. You're not serious are you? Do you think that I was advocating that murder be treated the same as vandalism? Let me spell it out for you. I was talking about the gradations of punishment for the same crime. In other words, all murder should be treated the same; all robbery should be treated the same. Isn't the "action" the same for each of those crimes. Murder deprives someone of their life. Robbery deprives someone of their property.
...and here I've always thought that the purpose of the death penalty was either to apply the most grievous possible punshment to those who commit the most heinous crimes or to ensure that those who have (repeatedly) killed innocents are deprived of the opportunity to do so again.
Don't be naive. The death penalty is only to satiate the victim's family's thirst for revenge and to punish black people who have the nerve to kill white people (90% of people receiving death penalty fit that profile so please don't point me to the Byrd murderers.) Any punishment that is arbitrarily applied can never be considered equitable. Since you are concerned about equity, I assume that you will attempt to abolish the death penatly so that true justice, which "is personified as wearing a blindfold and holding a balance" is served.
well, then you think incorrectly. I do not believe that "cop killers" are any different from any other kind of killer.
I hope you have been conveying your feelings to your representatives. I suspect you haven't though.
"Evil" is whatever you think it to be. There's no objective definition of evil, so this is nothing more than your opinion. My opinion is different, but I won't attempt to claim that I know the right way to think.
Because you don't care to express your opinion about the "objective definition" of evil, it does not preclude me or anyone else from doing so. I gather that you have a problem with The Hague trying people for war crimes then. I personally don't. I believe that Hitler was evil and was guilty of war crimes. If you want to engage in a pedantic discourse on the semantics of greed you are more than free to do so. Do not try to pull me into your quasi-intellectual ploy, however.
I don't see that killing out of prejudice is inherently worse than killing out of greed or jealousy.
I do and so do many people around the world, hence the Hague Court. Let me quote you: "this is nothing more than your opinion. My opinion is different, but I won't attempt to claim that I know the right way to think."
Sure, the punishment should be mitigated by the motivation for the action, but lets not go off the deep end and make up arbitrary rules saying that this is somehow a different kind of action.
Like the arbitrary rules that say premeditated murder is deserving of more punishment than a spur of the moment murder? In my book, the end result of either crime is the same kind of action.
Gore's statements about hate crimes was nothing more than (yet another) lame attempt at pandering to people for the sake of garnering votes, this time pandering to the political correctness crowd.
I guess sentencing Nazi's for war crimes is politically correct too, if we are to use your line of reasoning. I find that whenever conservatives run of ammunition in their argument, they throw the pc label around, much like they did with liberal. The use of the term pc, if you want to know how I feel, is tantamount to pandering.
A white man " got into a bar fight with someone who was perhaps asian, and I killed him, that could be seen as a hate crime and I could be held to that belief... when in fact it could have been a random event that took place, and led to rage and violence...
That is absurd. No one in their right mind would classify that as a hate crime. If, prior to going out, you called up your buddy and said let's go get a gook tonight, and then proceeded to go out and kill an asian, that would be classified as a hate crime.
Of course hate is hate. I don't understand what that means. Murder is also murder. Why aren't all murders treated equally? I have yet to see someone satisfactorily reconcile their indifference towards the current inequity of punishment for murder to their reluctance to support hate crime laws.
Premeditated vs. other murder is still a question of a person's actions. Hate crime laws attempt to punish people for their attitudes.
I'm sorry, you've lost me here. Why is premeditated murder considered more heinous if the punishment is just for the "person's actions"? If we're just punishing based on the end result then all murders should be have the same punishment.
There's also the matter of inequity intoduced by hate crime laws themselves. If a white man kills a random person who just happens to be black, in many cases, the crime-believing prosecutor would try to bill that as a hate crime. If, OTOH, a black man decides to kill someone solely because they're white, that would generally not be construed as a hate crime.
Please don't bring equity into this discussion. Equity does not come into play at all in justice. Do you think everyone who has committed a premeditated murder has received the same punishment? No, of course not. Once again, as I've mentioned before, if you are so concerned about inequity, let's abolish any laws that call for gradations of punishment.
Hate crime laws attempt to punish an offender's motivation...
No. Hate crime laws attempt to send a message to society, in the same way that the dealth penalty does. Is it the answer? No. The implementation may not be perfect, but let's not forget the message.
In no way am I calling anyone a bigot. I am truly interested in understanding why people are so concerned about providing harsher sentencing for hate crimes when they show no concern about sentencing disparity that exists today (premeditated murder, cop killing, etc.)
But are you accusing the previous poster of being some kind of bigot?
No. I'm actually trying to understand why people, when discussing hate crime punishment, speak about treating everyone equally under the law when that is just a pipe dream.
I also think it's disengenous to claim that you are concerned about punishing someone for what he "thinks" rather than the crime. That is hogwash. No one is going around rounding up bigots and mysoginists. We don't have enough jail space...heck, we don't have enough space period, to house all of those people. If you want to play semantics, aren't we really guilty of punishing thought for someone who premeditates murder? The only thing that differentiates premeditated murder and any other murder is the amount of thought that went into the planning.
If we're going to debate the issue, let's do it honestly. That's all I'm asking.
cannot comprehend how some can argue that if someone murders me, or my wife, or my niece, in any of the same ways that Al listed (prior to the quoted line), the murderers should be treated less harshly simply because the three of us chose not to lead an openly gay lifestyle.
Do you have a problem with cop killers getting the dealth penalty when the majority of murderers just face jail time? I don't think so because you realize this in no way marginalizes anyone else's murder.
Hate crime is an insidious evil that deserves special scrutiny. The hypocritical nature of people often comes out when discussing this issue. I wonder why.
How, exactly, could "hate crime" legistlation possibly affect these crimes?
Okay, two can play that game. I'll answer your question if you can answer mine:
Why is premeditated murder considered more reprehensible than other murders? Why are cop murderers more likely to face the death penalty than someone who drives a cab?
You're looking for equity in a system where there is none. We have already acknowledged gradations of criminilality with proportional punishment. Why do you have a problem with elevating hate crime to the lofty status of premeditated murder or cop killing? Is it because it serves to protect people that you feel don't deserve extra protection in the law? If so, I hope you are beseeching your congressmen/senator to overturn the laws in use now that provide disparity in dispensing justice.
Slashdot Mirror
It's too early in the morning (EST) for the usual dosage of John Katzian dystopia. Perhaps I'll give it a try after my three martini lunch.
HP has been in Microsoft's back pocket for years. They have tried their best to help Microsoft keep their hegemonic hold on the industry by doing everything in their power to undermine Sun's vision of Java. They are members of all working groups, in concert with Microsoft, that are at odds with Sun. They released a clean room version of Java that did not adhere to Sun's standards. They insist this was done because they had problems with Sun's licensing. Hogwash. They were acting on orders from Bill.
HP is not a friend of Open Source. They represent the coming wave of cynical, manipulative corporate entities that wil try to present themselves in a friendlier light. HP has had a dismal financial year and is trying to right its boat. I, for one, will not support them in any of their endeavors.
Do you expect any less from Roblimo? How that guy ever was declared a journalist is beyond me. He makes John Katz look like Edward R Murrow.
Me thinks the percentage of people spending time on this site who are nuts is probably 80%. Gritsboy, Statue Man and ESR come to mind.
I would like to have a cup of coffee with you and Richard Stallman. My heroes used to be sports stars and actors but I believe you guys are making a true difference. And you guys are cool too. Not like that mean Tom Christiansen :(
It's interesting that you call slashdot a community. I agree with your statement. I had a running argument with someone (Signal 11 perhaps?) who disagreed. He seemed to think that slashdot was just a website. I'm glad to see that there others who agree with me.
You are a scholar and a gentleman and you make a lot of sense. Tom C's ranting appears to have ulterior motives because I don't think he makes the case against the GPL. Maybe RMS dissed him at a luncheon?
At any rate, we all have freedom of choice. Work with the licenses wiht which you feel most comfortable.
You are making presumptions about the legal system which have yet to be demonstrated. Who is to say that any court will accept any plaintext that was not produced under the aegis of the court system as a decrypted version of the ciphertext in question? Is that any different than hearsay? I suspect that the court would demand that the ciphertext be decrypted under the presence of court appointed administrators.
As an example, DNA testing is sent to court approved labs. I have yet to see a court allow a lawyer walk in with his own DNA tested evidence by an unkown testing entity.
I know it is the modus operandi here to adopt the most paranoid stance with regard to data privacy and any actions that would seem to undermine it, but people need to stop and think before voicing their opinions. It seems that most people grab the first thing that jumps in their mind and jot down a couple of lengthy paragraphs in the hope that their words can reinforce their shallow thinking.
Wichert: I really hope so. The reason that we don't have a super-glitchy-totally-awesome apt frontend at the moment is that we have nobody who is willing and able to invest the time and effort into making it. Unlike a commercial distribution, we can't just say `oh, this would be cool. You there! Write this for us and we'll give you some money.' Somebody has to decide for himself that it is an interesting project and make it. We can only encourage people to do something and be very thankful when they do.
This is the exact reason why a Redhat is needed. Now that they have the market capitalization they don't need to wait until someone wants to work on a particular project. They have talented people on the payroll that they can assign to work on needed technology. The Open Source attitude has been very successful to date, particularly because of the attitude expressed by Wichert that solutions arise from need and interest, but to grow Linux so that it can truly compete with MS and others, it needs to support technologies quickly. No more of this USB in the 2.3 kernel stuff or Firewire being supported who knows when. Linux needs to take off its training wheels and go play with the big boys. Adopting a big business attitude that can coexist peacefully with its Open Source origins will get it there and is Linux's greatest challenge.
Someone mark this guy up as informative.
That's just a stereotype. Don't perpetuate it. Indians do other things well too. And not all of them are programmers.
Let's not forget the brick and mortar joints that are legitimizing Linux to the mainstream audience by stocking its shelves with Linux OS's, applications and games.
I just got back from CompUsa and was amazed at the number of Linux boxen I saw displayed. The change in just 2 months is very refreshing. Linux doesn't have its own aisle, or its own mini-store like Apple, but I think it's on its way to becoming just another thing you pick up, which is what we're all after. And they even had a lot of FreeBSD boxen too! I've never used FreeBSD but I think I may pick it up a distro soon.
Reading /. used to mean articles...
...who has been reading since the second or third month this place was around, and is vaguely sad for what once was.
This used to be a great site...
Until the posters get their heads out of their arses...
this'll be just a shell of what it used to be...
People like you irritate me. You sound like an old man with all that whining. What, this place isn't cool anymore because it's popular? You don't feel special enough anymore, is that it? Face it fella, things change. I too remember Slashdot from the old days. In fact, I remember asking myself who the Anonymous Coward guy was and marveling at his prodigious ability to post comments!
The feel and mood of slashdot has changed to accomodate the hustle and bustle of the increased traffic. It's never going to go back to that charming little website that a handful of people knew about. Wishing for that just makes you seem awfully childish. This isn't the only pitstop on the metaverse. If this one doesn't do it for you, move on.
Magazines, especially those that purport to give unbiased information but in reality bow down to the advertiser dollars (pick any Ziff-Davis zine), are especially vulnerable today when anyone can utilize a search engine or peruse usenet postings to get the real scoop.
Just because information is found on the web doesn't mean that it's better, though. Just take a look at those rigged Linux vs Windows security tests that were put out months ago. I forget the particular magazine but the bonehead who wrote up the stories neglected to apply requisite security patches to his Redhat box because they were too numerous and were not found in a standard place. His boss had been on the hotseat for similar incidents in the past. Once the unfairness of the testing was pointed out by the vociferous linux community, they were forced to rerun the tests.
If you are in the business of providing content, you better make sure come correct or your audience will move on.
I wonder if Charlton Heston is in this movie. I can hear him now. "Get your bloody hands off that compiler, you goddamn, dirty, stinking product manager !"
I noticed that were several comments floated by some of the Microsoft mouthpieces stating that this demo proved the viability of Win2000 as an OS that can handle broadband networks/applications. Exactly what does Win2000's TCP/IP stack have anything to do with this demo? Are they trying to imply that any other OS' stack wouldn't fare well in a similar demo? It doesn't sound right to me but I don't know much about Win2000's stack.
The next Odd day will be 1-1-3111 - which is well over a thousand years away, which we will never see
Walt Disney is scheduled to be taken off ice then. That should coincide with the opening of Disney Solar System on Pluto.
Planning is something you do. It is an action.
...and here I've always thought that the purpose of the death penalty was either to apply the most grievous possible punshment to those who commit the most heinous crimes or to ensure that those who have (repeatedly) killed innocents are deprived of the opportunity to do so again.
What? Planning is something you do? Okay. How about this equally juvenile thought -- Hating is something you do. Both "actions" require that you think. Please, if you're going to argue, come with something better than this.
That's carrying things to an absurd extreme - murder is a completely different thing than petty vandalism and their punishments should reflect that.
No,no,no,no,no. You're not serious are you? Do you think that I was advocating that murder be treated the same as vandalism? Let me spell it out for you. I was talking about the gradations of punishment for the same crime. In other words, all murder should be treated the same; all robbery should be treated the same. Isn't the "action" the same for each of those crimes. Murder deprives someone of their life. Robbery deprives someone of their property.
Don't be naive. The death penalty is only to satiate the victim's family's thirst for revenge and to punish black people who have the nerve to kill white people (90% of people receiving death penalty fit that profile so please don't point me to the Byrd murderers.) Any punishment that is arbitrarily applied can never be considered equitable. Since you are concerned about equity, I assume that you will attempt to abolish the death penatly so that true justice, which "is personified as wearing a blindfold and holding a balance" is served.
well, then you think incorrectly. I do not believe that "cop killers" are any different from any other kind of killer.
I hope you have been conveying your feelings to your representatives. I suspect you haven't though.
"Evil" is whatever you think it to be. There's no objective definition of evil, so this is nothing more than your opinion. My opinion is different, but I won't attempt to claim that I know the right way to think.
Because you don't care to express your opinion about the "objective definition" of evil, it does not preclude me or anyone else from doing so. I gather that you have a problem with The Hague trying people for war crimes then. I personally don't. I believe that Hitler was evil and was guilty of war crimes. If you want to engage in a pedantic discourse on the semantics of greed you are more than free to do so. Do not try to pull me into your quasi-intellectual ploy, however.
I don't see that killing out of prejudice is inherently worse than killing out of greed or jealousy.
I do and so do many people around the world, hence the Hague Court. Let me quote you: "this is nothing more than your opinion. My opinion is different, but I won't attempt to claim that I know the right way to think."
Sure, the punishment should be mitigated by the motivation for the action, but lets not go off the deep end and make up arbitrary rules saying that this is somehow a different kind of action.
Like the arbitrary rules that say premeditated murder is deserving of more punishment than a spur of the moment murder? In my book, the end result of either crime is the same kind of action.
Gore's statements about hate crimes was nothing more than (yet another) lame attempt at pandering to people for the sake of garnering votes, this time pandering to the political correctness crowd.
I guess sentencing Nazi's for war crimes is politically correct too, if we are to use your line of reasoning. I find that whenever conservatives run of ammunition in their argument, they throw the pc label around, much like they did with liberal. The use of the term pc, if you want to know how I feel, is tantamount to pandering.
A white man " got into a bar fight with someone who was perhaps asian, and I killed him, that could be seen as a hate crime and I could be held to that belief... when in fact it could have been a random event that took place, and led to rage and violence...
That is absurd. No one in their right mind would classify that as a hate crime. If, prior to going out, you called up your buddy and said let's go get a gook tonight, and then proceeded to go out and kill an asian, that would be classified as a hate crime.
Of course hate is hate. I don't understand what that means. Murder is also murder. Why aren't all murders treated equally? I have yet to see someone satisfactorily reconcile their indifference towards the current inequity of punishment for murder to their reluctance to support hate crime laws.
Premeditated vs. other murder is still a question of a person's actions. Hate crime laws attempt to punish people for their attitudes.
I'm sorry, you've lost me here. Why is premeditated murder considered more heinous if the punishment is just for the "person's actions"? If we're just punishing based on the end result then all murders should be have the same punishment.
There's also the matter of inequity intoduced by hate crime laws themselves. If a white man kills a random person who just happens to be black, in many cases, the crime-believing prosecutor would try to bill that as a hate crime. If, OTOH, a black man decides to kill someone solely because they're white, that would generally not be construed as a hate crime.
Please don't bring equity into this discussion. Equity does not come into play at all in justice. Do you think everyone who has committed a premeditated murder has received the same punishment? No, of course not. Once again, as I've mentioned before, if you are so concerned about inequity, let's abolish any laws that call for gradations of punishment.
Hate crime laws attempt to punish an offender's motivation...
No. Hate crime laws attempt to send a message to society, in the same way that the dealth penalty does. Is it the answer? No. The implementation may not be perfect, but let's not forget the message.
In no way am I calling anyone a bigot. I am truly interested in understanding why people are so concerned about providing harsher sentencing for hate crimes when they show no concern about sentencing disparity that exists today (premeditated murder, cop killing, etc.)
But are you accusing the previous poster of being some kind of bigot?
No. I'm actually trying to understand why people, when discussing hate crime punishment, speak about treating everyone equally under the law when that is just a pipe dream.
I also think it's disengenous to claim that you are concerned about punishing someone for what he "thinks" rather than the crime. That is hogwash. No one is going around rounding up bigots and mysoginists. We don't have enough jail space...heck, we don't have enough space period, to house all of those people. If you want to play semantics, aren't we really guilty of punishing thought for someone who premeditates murder? The only thing that differentiates premeditated murder and any other murder is the amount of thought that went into the planning.
If we're going to debate the issue, let's do it honestly. That's all I'm asking.
cannot comprehend how some can argue that if someone murders me, or my wife, or my niece, in any of the same ways that Al listed (prior to the quoted line), the murderers should be treated less harshly simply because the three of us chose not to lead an openly gay lifestyle.
Do you have a problem with cop killers getting the dealth penalty when the majority of murderers just face jail time? I don't think so because you realize this in no way marginalizes anyone else's murder.
Hate crime is an insidious evil that deserves special scrutiny. The hypocritical nature of people often comes out when discussing this issue. I wonder why.
How, exactly, could "hate crime" legistlation possibly affect these crimes?
Okay, two can play that game. I'll answer your question if you can answer mine:
Why is premeditated murder considered more reprehensible than other murders? Why are cop murderers more likely to face the death penalty than someone who drives a cab?
You're looking for equity in a system where there is none. We have already acknowledged gradations of criminilality with proportional punishment. Why do you have a problem with elevating hate crime to the lofty status of premeditated murder or cop killing? Is it because it serves to protect people that you feel don't deserve extra protection in the law? If so, I hope you are beseeching your congressmen/senator to overturn the laws in use now that provide disparity in dispensing justice.