Legitimate means they arbitrarily decide if its legitimate.
The stuff the kid down the block records in his garage and gives to anyone who will listen, is in their minds illegitimate. If he sells a billion copies, he doesnt get a platinum disc, unless of course, he signs up with an RIAA approved label.
My take is this. 90%? So what? What about the other 10%? The RIAA, by their own admission, don't speak for everyone. We don't have a "majority rules" democracy in the US. 90% doesn't mean any more than 2%.
The installer for OpenOffice is easy. By contrast, I'd say the later installers for MSOffice are counter-intuitive and try to install everything to 'run from CD' by default. Which leaves you with a machine that constantly asks for the Office CD for no good reason at all.
I was just speaking generally, see my other post in this thread about my anecdote about the kid who tried to make "configuring SaMBa sound as simple as shitting down a stove pipe"
My only point is that OSS is hurt by idealogues and zealots often more than it's helped.
I'm only coming from personal experience, in particular an experience we had at work with SaMBa.
We had this paper tiger straight from the "newbie factory" of the local college. We had a task for a particular client, which boiled down to a fileserver with a big shared folder for images (photos).
So, this kid starts immediately frothing at the mouth about linux and SaMBa. He lied (probably out of ignorance) about how it's completely seamless on a Win2k network. He ranted about how much we'll save by not having to pay to liscense another copy of Win2k for the client.
Well, he got the marketing types convinced. Next thing I know, we're (we as in ME, I do the work around here) knee deep in all the kludges, hacks and nonsense involved in getting the SaMBa box to work exactly as we wanted it to, logging onto the Win2k domain, retrieving user lists, faking NTFS security, etc.
The management, the client, everyone involved became increasingly frustrated.
Long story short, we pissed away countless man-hours before finally acquiescing and just installing another Win2k pro box, which took all of 5 minutes to configure.
The kid has since left, and now about 6 months later, I have other projects that scream for the likes of linux, SaMBa, MySQL. Noone in this office wants to hear it, and think I've become some sort of zealot.
To me, it's just a matter of the right tool for the right job. SaMBa wasn't the right tool for that task, but it is for others. But the frenzied ideology has basically driven it out of this office, at least for the time being.
It's just an anecdotal example of how one well-meaning zealot can do much more damage than good. It happens to be one of my pet peeves.
So, in the meantime, I continue to advocate OSS solutions where they're practical. And its slowly but surely working. I was actually allowed to use a spare pentium box and CoyoteLinux to replace a buggy router in our testing 'bullpen'.
I guess I don't see OSS as 'a cause'. I try to think through problems logically and practically. Sometimes OSS is a logical, practical solution. Sometimes not. I just hate my options being slowly limited as people in the 'industry' line up on one side of the imaginary fence of the other.
Re:An excellent example...
on
Open Source TV
·
· Score: 2
I'm a trolling god!
I bet that sucked a good half hour out of your otherwise productive friday.:D
"play up what a nightmare Microsoft malware is, and how easy and free OS software is"
No, I'd say use your head and give some insightful advice, rather than spout off like a ranting zealot. Don't "play up" anything. Give the truth.
Don't lie about how easy it is to install and configure the OSS equivalents. Don't pretend they're going to be 100% compatible. And in gods name, stop with the "microsoft owns your soul" rants. Once that user realises you lied, there goes your credibility, your 'stroke'. Next time they'll ask for advice from the kid at the counter of the local Office Depot.
If OSS is going to 'empower' people, it won't be through a bunch of FUD and politics. Let it sink or swim on its own virtues.
This isn't a message directed at you, but rather to all who want to actually help open source be taken seriously.
"That decision -- still left largely up in the air by Microsoft engineers -- may leave millions of users of Word 97 without a fix. All versions of Word are susceptible to the flaw, but the problem is most severe in Word 97."
Up in the air. May. Key words and phrases that denote that no final decision to "screw" users of '97 have been made.
Of course, 'bugged' documents could easily be captured by any number of third party virus scanning suites, which I would surely hope any use in an office environment who opens e-mails with reckless abandon would use.
Requiring the laptops pretty much sucks and further pushes post-secondary education into the hands of the haves.
University texts have long been a scam. One class on OS theory/design I took had a book on the M68k processor as required reading. It cost us all 80 bucks each, as being a first print, there were no used copies to be found. We didn't crack it once all semester.
But what a coincidence! The author was none other than the professor teaching the course.
Some of the 'minimum requirements' that schools require for their laptops are brutal. Alot of the time you can only realistically meet them at the campus Computer Shoppe, another shocking coincidence.
I'm not talking about required equipment for computer science, but they're starting to force the crap on everyone.
Now you have to buy a 2 grand laptop instead of a 500 dollar desktop, because its ever-so-important that your english lit TA be able to AIM you the reading assignments. Bah.
"ProFTPD offers good security features such as change root environment and a fine granular access configuration....
It's only functionality on the Kolab server is the legacy mode to enable Windows clients to publish their free-busy lists via anonymous FTP on the server."
Anonymous ftp access? Kiddies, start your pub-scanners!
You'd think komputer konsultants kould kode up a more sekure solution.
They do say its disabled by default, but since we all know there will be "legacy" systems around for years, they'll have plenty of wide-open boxes. Why FTP anyways?
Re:Grammar police...
on
ChronoSpace
·
· Score: -1, Offtopic
Insightful, considering the article was criticizing the flaws of another writer.
Being PBS, don't we already have the rights to watch this stuff no cost and commercial free?
Isn't that what PBS is for?
Or does the GPL liscense mean I can superimpose robots and WWII fighter planes and elmo and call it my own show, so long as I distribute it with the actual source? Can I change the dialogue? Can MS exec's dub over "Linux sucks! We suck!" and distribute it with their marketing?
What exactly is the news here, besides the 'GPL' geek buzzword(acronymn)?
Then how do you know that the code you audited is the code on the box?
The 'conspiracy theorists' won't believe anything. They won't believe man landed on the moon, they believe the WTC was downed by the American military. They wouldn't believe the code made public was the code used.
There are just people you can't convince of anything, the way I see it there's no point in trying to appease them in the first place.
Myself, I'd wonder if some zealot for sticking in a Gore*=Gore+1 instead of Gore=Gore+1. Opening the code to independent review from all parties would be good enough. I believe most 'bad things' are the result of at most a handful of nutballs with an agenda, that would be the most likely scenario.
Michael isn't. But, it seems he'd be satisfied so long as Tux was there in the corner of the screen to reassure him. To him, corporations like Microsoft are the boogeyman.
The next rung on the nut-job ladder wouldn't be convinced no matter what happens. His logic would make him suspiscious by the very action of opening the process to his review.
We shouldn't be wasting effort trying to appease the lunatic fringe.
Yeah but Bond has always been full of colourful adversaries, neat-o gadgets, and cool action sequences. Star Trek (the newer TV incarnations) has the same baddies (Ferengi/Romulan/Klingon/Q), the same gadgets (phaser/transporter) and no cool action sequences to speak of.
The movies of course, have some $ to throw into special effects, so you know if you sit still long enough somethings likely to explode.
The original series, although there were repeaters (klingons), had them exploring 'strange new worlds' and 'boldly going where no man has gone before'. At least the baddies would change.
NOW, Police Academy was art at its highest. HOW DARE YOU. Steve Guttenberg was a hero (dead at 54, and will truly be missed, but thats for another post) Plus the guy made all those noises. VROOM VROOM BEEP WAKAKA
Not 6 plots, 6 conflicts on which to base the story. Man v Man, Man v Himself, Man v Nature, with either man or the other winning, of course the concept of a 'tie' would make for 9 conflicts..
The plot is the specific details of the plot. The events, setting, resolution make up the plot.
Anyone who has taken a "hardcore writing course" (btw, thats an oxymoron) would know that.
Hmm, not gonna bother register for the NYT
on
Star Trek: Pick A Plot
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
.. not for this drivel, at least.
5 plots? I can sum up 99% of 'em with this:
I stopped being a fan a couple years into TNG.
It just became apparent that anything the 'franchise' does is just drying to squeeze a little more milk out of the cash cow. It's hardly good science fiction anymore.
1) Big problem (alien, wormhole, time-loop, computer malfunction) presents itself.
2) Bunch of yammering and melodrama and crappy dialogue, of the hollywood breed, which they no doubt think is interesting.
3) 5 minutes into the end of the show Geordi (or whoever) goes 'I got it!' and yammers out some nonsense techno-babble which solves the problem.
They could at least throw in a bunch of cool special effects, something.
IMO the franchise has been coasting on nostalgia for years, god only knows how long it will last, though.
Thats not to say that there's much better on TV. I plan on watching Smackdown! tonight, it's as intellectual as anything else on the toob.
Slashdot Mirror
Legitimate means they arbitrarily decide if its legitimate.
The stuff the kid down the block records in his garage and gives to anyone who will listen, is in their minds illegitimate. If he sells a billion copies, he doesnt get a platinum disc, unless of course, he signs up with an RIAA approved label.
My take is this. 90%? So what? What about the other 10%? The RIAA, by their own admission, don't speak for everyone. We don't have a "majority rules" democracy in the US. 90% doesn't mean any more than 2%.
The installer for OpenOffice is easy. By contrast, I'd say the later installers for MSOffice are counter-intuitive and try to install everything to 'run from CD' by default. Which leaves you with a machine that constantly asks for the Office CD for no good reason at all.
I was just speaking generally, see my other post in this thread about my anecdote about the kid who tried to make "configuring SaMBa sound as simple as shitting down a stove pipe"
My only point is that OSS is hurt by idealogues and zealots often more than it's helped.
I'm only coming from personal experience, in particular an experience we had at work with SaMBa.
We had this paper tiger straight from the "newbie factory" of the local college. We had a task for a particular client, which boiled down to a fileserver with a big shared folder for images (photos).
So, this kid starts immediately frothing at the mouth about linux and SaMBa. He lied (probably out of ignorance) about how it's completely seamless on a Win2k network. He ranted about how much we'll save by not having to pay to liscense another copy of Win2k for the client.
Well, he got the marketing types convinced. Next thing I know, we're (we as in ME, I do the work around here) knee deep in all the kludges, hacks and nonsense involved in getting the SaMBa box to work exactly as we wanted it to, logging onto the Win2k domain, retrieving user lists, faking NTFS security, etc.
The management, the client, everyone involved became increasingly frustrated.
Long story short, we pissed away countless man-hours before finally acquiescing and just installing another Win2k pro box, which took all of 5 minutes to configure.
The kid has since left, and now about 6 months later, I have other projects that scream for the likes of linux, SaMBa, MySQL. Noone in this office wants to hear it, and think I've become some sort of zealot.
To me, it's just a matter of the right tool for the right job. SaMBa wasn't the right tool for that task, but it is for others. But the frenzied ideology has basically driven it out of this office, at least for the time being.
It's just an anecdotal example of how one well-meaning zealot can do much more damage than good. It happens to be one of my pet peeves.
So, in the meantime, I continue to advocate OSS solutions where they're practical. And its slowly but surely working. I was actually allowed to use a spare pentium box and CoyoteLinux to replace a buggy router in our testing 'bullpen'.
I guess I don't see OSS as 'a cause'. I try to think through problems logically and practically. Sometimes OSS is a logical, practical solution. Sometimes not. I just hate my options being slowly limited as people in the 'industry' line up on one side of the imaginary fence of the other.
I'm a trolling god!
:D
I bet that sucked a good half hour out of your otherwise productive friday.
(just joking.. or am I?)
"play up what a nightmare Microsoft malware is, and how easy and free OS software is"
No, I'd say use your head and give some insightful advice, rather than spout off like a ranting zealot. Don't "play up" anything. Give the truth.
Don't lie about how easy it is to install and configure the OSS equivalents. Don't pretend they're going to be 100% compatible. And in gods name, stop with the "microsoft owns your soul" rants. Once that user realises you lied, there goes your credibility, your 'stroke'. Next time they'll ask for advice from the kid at the counter of the local Office Depot.
If OSS is going to 'empower' people, it won't be through a bunch of FUD and politics. Let it sink or swim on its own virtues.
This isn't a message directed at you, but rather to all who want to actually help open source be taken seriously.
"That decision -- still left largely up in the air by Microsoft engineers -- may leave millions of users of Word 97 without a fix. All versions of Word are susceptible to the flaw, but the problem is most severe in Word 97."
Up in the air. May. Key words and phrases that denote that no final decision to "screw" users of '97 have been made.
Of course, 'bugged' documents could easily be captured by any number of third party virus scanning suites, which I would surely hope any use in an office environment who opens e-mails with reckless abandon would use.
I don't see it going so far as saying 'radically' changed.
It says some jibber jabber about AIMing the teacher because the students are too scared to put their hands up with the wrong answer.
That's hardly radical.
Giving your opinions, right or wrong, and then taking your lumps and learning from it is an important part of education.
Wireless is neat and convenient, but hardly necessary for a good university education.
I never said you did.
Many schools do, and its wrong because there's no cause for it. Now, more will, citing the 'gee-whizness' of wireless as a good reason.
Universities shouldn't be in the business of forcing any product on students without a valid educational reason.
It's like requiring SegWay scooters because they 'revolutionize' walking from class to class.
Just an opportunistic rant, don't be offended.
Requiring the laptops pretty much sucks and further pushes post-secondary education into the hands of the haves.
University texts have long been a scam. One class on OS theory/design I took had a book on the M68k processor as required reading. It cost us all 80 bucks each, as being a first print, there were no used copies to be found. We didn't crack it once all semester.
But what a coincidence! The author was none other than the professor teaching the course.
Some of the 'minimum requirements' that schools require for their laptops are brutal. Alot of the time you can only realistically meet them at the campus Computer Shoppe, another shocking coincidence.
I'm not talking about required equipment for computer science, but they're starting to force the crap on everyone.
Now you have to buy a 2 grand laptop instead of a 500 dollar desktop, because its ever-so-important that your english lit TA be able to AIM you the reading assignments. Bah.
We're wired here, too!
I thought you said you were wireless?
From the kroupware koncept:
...
"ProFTPD offers good security features such as change root environment and a fine granular access configuration.
It's only functionality on the Kolab server is the legacy mode to enable Windows clients to publish their free-busy lists via anonymous FTP on the server."
Anonymous ftp access? Kiddies, start your pub-scanners!
You'd think komputer konsultants kould kode up a more sekure solution.
They do say its disabled by default, but since we all know there will be "legacy" systems around for years, they'll have plenty of wide-open boxes. Why FTP anyways?
Insightful, considering the article was criticizing the flaws of another writer.
Thank you for proving my point for me.
No, why buy something just to tinker with it?
I was talking about all the highschool/college kids who can now more easily dissect and play with the linux kernel, in an 'approved' way.
Still wondering why I got modded down as "troll". Offtopic, overrated or redundant make more sense.
Oh well, I guess the elitist mentality of the linux zealot doesn't like the concept of "weekend warriors" daring to play with the same toys as him.
But PBS is inherently owned by the public, so any copyrights they hold, I hold.
It's not Open Source, but for all intents and purposes, it's the same thing.
You can't get busted, AFAIK, for trading Nova episodes online
Being PBS, don't we already have the rights to watch this stuff no cost and commercial free?
Isn't that what PBS is for?
Or does the GPL liscense mean I can superimpose robots and WWII fighter planes and elmo and call it my own show, so long as I distribute it with the actual source? Can I change the dialogue? Can MS exec's dub over "Linux sucks! We suck!" and distribute it with their marketing?
What exactly is the news here, besides the 'GPL' geek buzzword(acronymn)?
I'd imagine there are alot of "weekend warriors" who would dabble more, and possibly contribute, but hold back not wanting to screw up their system.
Maybe linux development will speed up a bit.
Should have drowned the wife in a pool, just like the real life Kirk.
funny sure, but did he not commit a felony by providing the 'fake passport'?
Then how do you know that the code you audited is the code on the box?
The 'conspiracy theorists' won't believe anything. They won't believe man landed on the moon, they believe the WTC was downed by the American military. They wouldn't believe the code made public was the code used.
There are just people you can't convince of anything, the way I see it there's no point in trying to appease them in the first place.
Myself, I'd wonder if some zealot for sticking in a Gore*=Gore+1 instead of Gore=Gore+1. Opening the code to independent review from all parties would be good enough. I believe most 'bad things' are the result of at most a handful of nutballs with an agenda, that would be the most likely scenario.
Michael isn't. But, it seems he'd be satisfied so long as Tux was there in the corner of the screen to reassure him. To him, corporations like Microsoft are the boogeyman.
The next rung on the nut-job ladder wouldn't be convinced no matter what happens. His logic would make him suspiscious by the very action of opening the process to his review.
We shouldn't be wasting effort trying to appease the lunatic fringe.
yes i contradicted myself by slamming scooby doo and praising cartoon network in the same post
so i'll take the liberty of flaming myself.
I hope he can see this, because I'm doing it as hard as i can. (Moonenite - Aqua Team Hunger Force)
Scooby Doo: I would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for those lousy kids and their dog!
Friends: 20-something "hipster" losers make sarcastic comments
Every other sitcom: See "friends"
If you want originality you gotta start watching cartoon network. I'm serious. Esp. the Adult Swim (both the Anime and 'funny' incarnations)
Aqua Team Hunger Force Assemble!
Yeah but Bond has always been full of colourful adversaries, neat-o gadgets, and cool action sequences. Star Trek (the newer TV incarnations) has the same baddies (Ferengi/Romulan/Klingon/Q), the same gadgets (phaser/transporter) and no cool action sequences to speak of.
The movies of course, have some $ to throw into special effects, so you know if you sit still long enough somethings likely to explode.
The original series, although there were repeaters (klingons), had them exploring 'strange new worlds' and 'boldly going where no man has gone before'. At least the baddies would change.
NOW, Police Academy was art at its highest. HOW DARE YOU. Steve Guttenberg was a hero (dead at 54, and will truly be missed, but thats for another post) Plus the guy made all those noises. VROOM VROOM BEEP WAKAKA
I reiterate, how dare you.
Not 6 plots, 6 conflicts on which to base the story. Man v Man, Man v Himself, Man v Nature, with either man or the other winning, of course the concept of a 'tie' would make for 9 conflicts..
The plot is the specific details of the plot. The events, setting, resolution make up the plot.
Anyone who has taken a "hardcore writing course" (btw, thats an oxymoron) would know that.
.. not for this drivel, at least.
5 plots? I can sum up 99% of 'em with this:
I stopped being a fan a couple years into TNG.
It just became apparent that anything the 'franchise' does is just drying to squeeze a little more milk out of the cash cow. It's hardly good science fiction anymore.
1) Big problem (alien, wormhole, time-loop, computer malfunction) presents itself.
2) Bunch of yammering and melodrama and crappy dialogue, of the hollywood breed, which they no doubt think is interesting.
3) 5 minutes into the end of the show Geordi (or whoever) goes 'I got it!' and yammers out some nonsense techno-babble which solves the problem.
They could at least throw in a bunch of cool special effects, something.
IMO the franchise has been coasting on nostalgia for years, god only knows how long it will last, though.
Thats not to say that there's much better on TV. I plan on watching Smackdown! tonight, it's as intellectual as anything else on the toob.