I ask myself again and again why we think it is a good idea to blindfold children, and I can never come up with a better answer than, "... we're afraid of them seeing what we're afraid of seeing in ourselves." Why do we ban books? What are we afraid of? Might the words on the page, the pictures in magazines and on the internet control us?
Why should children need to have our hands over their eyes? Haven't we learned by now that children are far more perceptive than we are... that they are far better at teasing information out of even the smallest rivulets of a source. That they can find out what they want to know, regardless of how much banning and blocking and praying and moralizing we do.
Let children learn. Let them turn into adults who won't fear each other and themselves.
If you need to use msn.com, don't use Opera. If you like Opera, don't use msn.com. Nobody is forcing you to do anything.
Well, then, let's just say that MS decides that not only msn.com but all other subsidiary msn sites (hotmail, espn, what have you) will only correctly display in IE. Or maybe they'll go a little further and say that the sites will only load at all in IE. Your argument would allow that course of action as well. Now, I've got this hotmail account which I began free and multiple-browser compliant a few years ago. Now, to see my email or to forward any of it so that I don't have to use their shoddy service, I need a version of IE. That is coercion. And since I run on gnu/linux, I'm shit out of luck. That is abuse of power.
As long as you claim to be providing a public service (like free email or online news), it ought to be available to the public. If it's not going to be made available to everyone, then you should say what is changing and why. But MS does not now, nor indeed have not ever, cared about what is fair.
Regardless of what you personally think of Mitnick, and it appears quite obvious that you can't stand him, you and everyone else ought to care about how justice is brought to bear on criminals. Mitnick's treatment at the hands of the Justice Department is obscene, and he is quite correct to be furious about how his constitutionally protected rights were overlooked or blatantly ignored. I don't agree with what he did either, for the most part (and, from his statements, neither does he), but it wouldn't matter if he was a murderer, a rapist, a kidnapper, a shoplifter, a burglar, or a drunk-behind-the-wheel. We all have rights, and the stripping of the rights of one person can only open the door to the acceptance of the stripping of the rights of the rest. See: The USA PATRIOT Act
Along the lines of "people ought not to look at him as a celbrity, martyr, etc", think back to all the times you rooted for someone in a movie or a book or on the news that was doing "questionable" or even "bad" things. It's fun to stand behind criminals sometimes... fun to watch car chases and robberies in movies, fun to play games like Grand Theft Auto or Hitman or Quake...
Any time someone says "not acceptable" or "inappropriate" I immediately wonder what in the world there is out there to be so afraid of. Why carve out pieces of a work of art to make it suitable? Either see the art, or don't. Don't hack it up and present it pre-digested like it's anywhere near the same thing.
This is like taking an elementary school class to a Halocaust exhibition and covering their eyes at all the parts with blood and death and misery. They leave with worse than nothing--they leave with misunderstanding. And that ignorance leads straight to not appreciating. And that leads to not caring. And that leads...
Fuck that. Let people learn. Even children. Especially children.
I'm constantly running across sites that Mozilla just can't handle properly (or swiftly).
I can almost guarantee you that those sites were ones created using MS Frontpage.
Mozilla is standards-compliant. IE, MS for that matter, makes its own standards. Mozilla will show you what you are supposed to see... IE will show you what Microsoft tells it to.
I'm not understanding what exactly you're trying to say. How does Red Hat's apparent tweaking of a GPL'd system for usability reasons open them up to charges of being in-line with Microsoft? Even comparable?
You state that they are the MS of Linux like someone came down from on high and pronounced it for all to see. Last I checked, I couldn't:
1) download an absolutely free (as in speech, as in beer) operating system
2) sign up for automatic update-checking (without signing a privacy-undermining EULA)
3) download ANY software that goes into said OS, often in multiple versions, including cvs and beta
4) get all the code to any of the above to hack on if I want to
with Microsoft.
Just because they are the largest GNU/Linux company, and the most widely-known, doesn't equate them a priori with Microsoft.
B
ps-- That Aaa aaa BBB thing makes more sense to me... All A's should come before any B's.
I'm not sure it's Nader's inability to do a good job which has kept him from the presidency. I think it has a lot more to do with the fact that it's nearly impossible to get federal funding for any party other than democrat and republican in this sorry "democracy". Even the libertarians, who are the third-largest party in the US, can't get federal funds for TV spots and campaign information. This makes it look like the democrats and republicans are the only legitmate political parties.
This also stems from the idea that people will only vote for someone who they think has a good chance of winning. In the last election, people didn't vote for Nader because to vote for him would obviously just be a statement of principle and not a winning vote. And as we all know, there's very little principle in the US these days.
And BTW, he's right: explain to me exactly what the difference is anymore between democrats and republicans? All I can see is a different style of argument, which just turns into doing what the people who got you elected want. It's sad.
The problem is not Disney or any other corporation. The problem is not money. The problem is not republcans or democrats or lobbyists. These are all consequences. The problem is that hardly anyone in this country votes, which means that hardly anyone in this country cares. People can bitch and moan (see below, and, most likely, above) all they please, but if they don't go out and vote, it doesn't matter.
I very much wonder how many of you reading this or posting above and below actually research the issues, take a stand, and vote accordingly. And please,none of this, "there's no one worth voting for!" crap. Write someone in. Start petitions. Hold signs. March. But do something!
The goal of GNU/Linux is not to become the #2 desktop OS, or the #1. The goal of GNU/Linux is not to destroy M$. The goal of GNU/Linux is not to gain a world-wide user base and dominate the market.
These never were the goals, and they will never be the goals. Posting articles like this makes it look like this is some kind of war, which it is not. Who the hell cares if M$ owns the desktop? The point is not to be #1, it is to make good, free (as in speech) software, for the sake of making it. It is an artistic endeavor, not a business endeavor, or haven't you all even looked at gnu.org? As long as there are artists, there will be an audience that wants to see what is being created. And, beyond that, there is the joy of creating.
All of this talk of an OS battle completely misses the point.
I wonder if their numerous losses in the courts and the constant criticism have played into their newfound fair-game spirit. I'm not ready to drop my ideas about M$ just because they aim to create a feature-rich shell. More likely this is an effort counter opensource criticisms. Customer satisfaction is never M$s goal. Market domination, userbase, and thus profit are. If you read whitepapers leaked from M$, there is no nice-guy attitude from M$ about opensource. They are out to dominate and destroy it, because it is threatening to their profit-potential. As long as it wasn't threatening, it wasn't an issue. Now that it is a threat, it must be annhiliated. Competition is fine in M$s books, as long as M$ wins. Same ol' strategy.
Don't get me wrong, it's great that they recognize what a piece of crap command.exe is. And you're right, the present userbase will gain from this new shell. But don't think underlying motives have changed.
So this thing will be built as a shell, from the ground up, around chernobyl, right? (haven't actually read article, so please correct me) I'd heard somewhere that the biggest problem with raditation leakage was that it was beginning to get to groundwater under the plant. You can build as much containment over and around it as you want, but how do you control ground seepage?
Infantile amnesia is the result of primary repression which occurs at the dissolution of the Oedipus Complex. It is the result of the reorganization of the ego that occurs as the prototypes are created that guide the rest of our choices... it is the evidence of the development of the superego, and of the integrated self. It is the movement from the Pleasure Principle to the Reality Principle, and the symbolization of the Name-of-the-Father (Lacan).
I usually really like Dvorak's columns. I'm glad someone's out there on the edge, even if they're wrong from time to time or end up looking like they're trolling, which, because they're going against the grain, they appear to be.
But this article, coming from a guy who's had quite a bit of linux experience (using and reporting on) just seems to me to express very little understanding of what Linux is and, even more, about the nature of open-source.
The idea that one cannot innovate if one is tied to closely with the look of windows is just patently false. I think everyone'd agree that M$ has done a lot of interface things right with windows, even if they stole them from Apple. There is a reason that they built up this user-base, and it doesn't have completely to do with feature-creep. The UI is, for many users, intuitive, and, what's more important, it's familiar after all these years. So, if Linux uses the windows UI-base (though they really don't... not even close), what's the harm? As long as it's done without the security flaws, if it's intuitive and useful, who gives a damn?
Second, the idea that the aim of Linux is to replace M$ is also wrong. Linux is here, and always has been here, as a platform for more advanced users, as an experiment in open-source. Now, there are some companies who are beginning to shift toward replacing windows (see lindows), but the aim of the open-source movement is just to make a good product in the spirit of freedom. If we gain users because of that, which we should, fine. But if we don't it's not like the linux crowd is going to consider their OS a failure and return to M$. And linux will never become windows, even if it does borrow some nifty UI ideas, much as it does with Apple as well. We exist apart, maybe not completely, but for the most part.
The reason why people tolerate and even support the PATRIOT Act and the DMCA is because they have tolerated these "less important" agendas in the past. Big problems start by being little ones that people don't think they need to care about. People like Stallman are out there reminding us of the slippery slope that always exists where freedom is concerned. Promoting pragmatism, like the Golden Mean, is dangerous, and can lead right down that slope. More people ought to act like RMS... we need more of the spirit of Socrates, even if it annoys pragmatists. Evil comes in many forms.
I have a hard time seeing what you had going as anywhere near benevolent. Dictators work the same way. As long as there is no threat to them losing control of the power structure, they are nice and happy... but as soon as something happens which illegitimizes their power, they need revenge in order to reestablish it. You were a Warlord, or a Godfather... but not the law. Did you have courts? Or did you just try and convict on your own knowledge alone? Just because you allowed the rest of the world to exist as long as they were "nice" doesn't make you just.
1) do we really need all these.1 releases of phoenix?... You may not, and if so, fine, don't install them. But I'm glad they are releasing every.1 at the moment because it gives those of us who want to see the development a chance to do so. Look at how babies grow in the first year of life... this is still phoenix's infancy, and we should be watching as it takes its first steps.
2) I do not understand the description of the "fullscreen bug" post below. When I go to fullscreen, there is no window titlebar, because it is IN FULLSCREEN MODE. Why would you want to move a full-screen window around? Where would you move it to? When I exit in fullscreen and then start phoenix up again, and then go to fullscreen mode again, it looks the exact same. I have the option to minimize, close, or 'restore' the window in the upper right,which brings back the titlebar, and that works perfectly. What, exactly is the problem?
This is a fantastic browser so far... so much smooter than original mozilla or galeon, which I've loved for a long time now. The installation of new themes and extensions works almost flawlessly, excepting that occasionally replacing one theme with another results in only a half-success and requires more than one attempt. All of the new menu additions from the extensions site worked perfectly.
I am very impressed, considering this is still a.5 release. Rock on, Mozilla people. Keep these.1 releases coming.
This is how you know that you spend your time on too many forums. This guy has been posting this same message everywhere, always anonomously. I caught it the other day on gnomesupport and everyone there was talking about how he's off his rocker.
It's hard to put any kind of faith into someone who won't even post their name or drop a fake email address alongside their scathing, ill-informed piece of slander that they are spreading around like a virus. My theory is that it's some kid who was attempting to write code for gnome and was asked to leave because the quality of the code was around the same quality as the grammar and punctuation in this post. Don't buy this crap.
is that it IS a circle. I never said symbols are bad, or even insinuated such, apart from saying that it all seems rather childish, if inescapable. I AM admitting that I'm a symbol type, and in fact saying that everyone is. That's the whole point.
In the "...which just reiterates..." sentence, all I was saying was that the article, which says that Mac users love Apple and hate M$, isn't saying anything that people don't already know, and in fact have known "...since Apple became a company." My mistake was the typo (because=became)... sorry 'bout that.
The funny thing about zealots of any kind, even anarchists, is that they need a symbol to stand beside. I've often looked at the scrawled circle-with-letter-A anarchist emblem and thought, "...wait, don't they believe in the removal of structure? Why do you need a symbol, which automatically confers a structure upon your beliefs and your actions, if you believe in the absence of structure? It doesn't make any sense."
So when I read this article, which just reiterates what everyone of any mind has known since Apple because a company, I couldn't help but see the childishness of this phenomenon. M$ users hate Macs, Mac users hate M$, GNU/Linux users are like the anarchists... we (yeah, I'm one of them) see closed-source, proprietary systems as "evil" or what have you, and still we have our security-blankets in "GNU" and penguins and such... we are all part of the same system.
It really is an argument against the concept of indviduality, against an identity free from logos, based solely on ideas.
Re:Great news technically, but ...
on
239 MPG Car
·
· Score: 1
Please read the article. This car's frame is not aluminum... it is made of magnesium.
So your thoughts are probably more correct than you know, expense-wise...
On the "gas is good, aluminum is bad" idea, I don't know how much better rusting steel is for the environment either... or iron for that matter. And I'm willing to bet that magnesium, being worth more than steel or iron or aluminum, is going to be salvaged more... and thus that cars made from it will end up less on the scrap-heap and more in recycling programs.
Of course, very little of this applies to the US, not matter how lightweight, safe, fuel-efficient, or environment-friendly the product is. We are the country that was raised on "The Dukes of Hazzard", remember?:)
MS Office is king because it kicks ass. It has no equal.
Office is king because Windows is king. Windows is king 1)because of Microsoft's business practices and 2)because of their gigantic bankroll gained through those practices. There is nothing about either Windows or Office as king that has anything to do with the quality of the product. That's like saying McDonalds became successful for selling high-quality food. Or that AOL is king because they are a top-quality ISP. As to some of your other comments, I think both OpenOffice's spreadsheet program AND gnumeric are on a level field with Excel. Maybe not as flashy, but I guarantee you that 90% of Excel users don't use more than 50-60% of the features. Just because something is huge and complex, doesn't mean it's higher-quality. As to.rtf, try saving your table-heavy and graphics-centric word document in.rtf and then opening it in Abiword or OO or whatever. You are going to get corruption. Just because the file will save and open again isn't the point. The real argument here, of course, is: What are the drawbacks of open standards? There are none. The rest is all money.
It seems to me, after reading a lot of the comments posted below, that many people have a more-than-favorable opinion of open-source software and GNU/Linux in specific as an OS. But what a lot of these people seem to be saying is that the lack of as many interesting, exciting applications for linux is what is keeping them on Microsoft's side. My comment, then, is, simply, that there will not be more applications for linux if people just sit around and wait for them to magically appear. Open-source technology follows the demands of the market in a way that proprietary technology does not. Unless there are more users, the software offerings will not be much better. What needs to happen is not a re-statement that, "...only the increase of apps will draw me from Microsoft!", but the conviction that, "...well, if I go open-source and start demanding that applications be written for my platform, then they will come... and, what's more, I can perhaps contribute to them!" This "someone else's responsibility" crap is getting really, really old. There are only so many apps on windows because so many people use it as their OS. If more people switched to what they believe, honestly, is a better platform, the apps would follow. If only these people had some balls.
Running RH 8.0 (RH since 6.2), and very happy with the apps already offered... and wishing that more people would stand up for principle instead of convenience.
0% liberty = 100% safety. Yessir, those slaves were pretty safe and secure, all right. Just basking in the satisfaction that a caring government carried their welfare in the hollow of its hand.
Slashdot Mirror
B
Why should children need to have our hands over their eyes? Haven't we learned by now that children are far more perceptive than we are... that they are far better at teasing information out of even the smallest rivulets of a source. That they can find out what they want to know, regardless of how much banning and blocking and praying and moralizing we do.
Let children learn. Let them turn into adults who won't fear each other and themselves.
B
Well, then, let's just say that MS decides that not only msn.com but all other subsidiary msn sites (hotmail, espn, what have you) will only correctly display in IE. Or maybe they'll go a little further and say that the sites will only load at all in IE. Your argument would allow that course of action as well. Now, I've got this hotmail account which I began free and multiple-browser compliant a few years ago. Now, to see my email or to forward any of it so that I don't have to use their shoddy service, I need a version of IE. That is coercion. And since I run on gnu/linux, I'm shit out of luck. That is abuse of power.
As long as you claim to be providing a public service (like free email or online news), it ought to be available to the public. If it's not going to be made available to everyone, then you should say what is changing and why. But MS does not now, nor indeed have not ever, cared about what is fair.
B
Along the lines of "people ought not to look at him as a celbrity, martyr, etc", think back to all the times you rooted for someone in a movie or a book or on the news that was doing "questionable" or even "bad" things. It's fun to stand behind criminals sometimes... fun to watch car chases and robberies in movies, fun to play games like Grand Theft Auto or Hitman or Quake...
B
This is like taking an elementary school class to a Halocaust exhibition and covering their eyes at all the parts with blood and death and misery. They leave with worse than nothing--they leave with misunderstanding. And that ignorance leads straight to not appreciating. And that leads to not caring. And that leads...
Fuck that. Let people learn. Even children. Especially children.
B
I can almost guarantee you that those sites were ones created using MS Frontpage.
Mozilla is standards-compliant. IE, MS for that matter, makes its own standards. Mozilla will show you what you are supposed to see... IE will show you what Microsoft tells it to.
B
You state that they are the MS of Linux like someone came down from on high and pronounced it for all to see. Last I checked, I couldn't:
1) download an absolutely free (as in speech, as in beer) operating system
2) sign up for automatic update-checking (without signing a privacy-undermining EULA)
3) download ANY software that goes into said OS, often in multiple versions, including cvs and beta
4) get all the code to any of the above to hack on if I want to
with Microsoft.
Just because they are the largest GNU/Linux company, and the most widely-known, doesn't equate them a priori with Microsoft.
B
ps-- That Aaa aaa BBB thing makes more sense to me... All A's should come before any B's.
This also stems from the idea that people will only vote for someone who they think has a good chance of winning. In the last election, people didn't vote for Nader because to vote for him would obviously just be a statement of principle and not a winning vote. And as we all know, there's very little principle in the US these days.
And BTW, he's right: explain to me exactly what the difference is anymore between democrats and republicans? All I can see is a different style of argument, which just turns into doing what the people who got you elected want. It's sad.
B
Isn't that essentially a consequence of a ruling against Skylink?
There are few things I hate more than the DMCA.
B
I very much wonder how many of you reading this or posting above and below actually research the issues, take a stand, and vote accordingly. And please,none of this, "there's no one worth voting for!" crap. Write someone in. Start petitions. Hold signs. March. But do something!
B
These never were the goals, and they will never be the goals. Posting articles like this makes it look like this is some kind of war, which it is not. Who the hell cares if M$ owns the desktop? The point is not to be #1, it is to make good, free (as in speech) software, for the sake of making it. It is an artistic endeavor, not a business endeavor, or haven't you all even looked at gnu.org? As long as there are artists, there will be an audience that wants to see what is being created. And, beyond that, there is the joy of creating. All of this talk of an OS battle completely misses the point.
B
Don't get me wrong, it's great that they recognize what a piece of crap command.exe is. And you're right, the present userbase will gain from this new shell. But don't think underlying motives have changed.
B
B
Infantile amnesia is the result of primary repression which occurs at the dissolution of the Oedipus Complex. It is the result of the reorganization of the ego that occurs as the prototypes are created that guide the rest of our choices... it is the evidence of the development of the superego, and of the integrated self. It is the movement from the Pleasure Principle to the Reality Principle, and the symbolization of the Name-of-the-Father (Lacan).
But this article, coming from a guy who's had quite a bit of linux experience (using and reporting on) just seems to me to express very little understanding of what Linux is and, even more, about the nature of open-source.
The idea that one cannot innovate if one is tied to closely with the look of windows is just patently false. I think everyone'd agree that M$ has done a lot of interface things right with windows, even if they stole them from Apple. There is a reason that they built up this user-base, and it doesn't have completely to do with feature-creep. The UI is, for many users, intuitive, and, what's more important, it's familiar after all these years. So, if Linux uses the windows UI-base (though they really don't... not even close), what's the harm? As long as it's done without the security flaws, if it's intuitive and useful, who gives a damn?
Second, the idea that the aim of Linux is to replace M$ is also wrong. Linux is here, and always has been here, as a platform for more advanced users, as an experiment in open-source. Now, there are some companies who are beginning to shift toward replacing windows (see lindows), but the aim of the open-source movement is just to make a good product in the spirit of freedom. If we gain users because of that, which we should, fine. But if we don't it's not like the linux crowd is going to consider their OS a failure and return to M$. And linux will never become windows, even if it does borrow some nifty UI ideas, much as it does with Apple as well. We exist apart, maybe not completely, but for the most part.
The reason why people tolerate and even support the PATRIOT Act and the DMCA is because they have tolerated these "less important" agendas in the past. Big problems start by being little ones that people don't think they need to care about. People like Stallman are out there reminding us of the slippery slope that always exists where freedom is concerned. Promoting pragmatism, like the Golden Mean, is dangerous, and can lead right down that slope. More people ought to act like RMS... we need more of the spirit of Socrates, even if it annoys pragmatists. Evil comes in many forms.
B
I have a hard time seeing what you had going as anywhere near benevolent. Dictators work the same way. As long as there is no threat to them losing control of the power structure, they are nice and happy... but as soon as something happens which illegitimizes their power, they need revenge in order to reestablish it. You were a Warlord, or a Godfather... but not the law. Did you have courts? Or did you just try and convict on your own knowledge alone? Just because you allowed the rest of the world to exist as long as they were "nice" doesn't make you just.
2) I do not understand the description of the "fullscreen bug" post below. When I go to fullscreen, there is no window titlebar, because it is IN FULLSCREEN MODE. Why would you want to move a full-screen window around? Where would you move it to? When I exit in fullscreen and then start phoenix up again, and then go to fullscreen mode again, it looks the exact same. I have the option to minimize, close, or 'restore' the window in the upper right,which brings back the titlebar, and that works perfectly. What, exactly is the problem?
This is a fantastic browser so far... so much smooter than original mozilla or galeon, which I've loved for a long time now. The installation of new themes and extensions works almost flawlessly, excepting that occasionally replacing one theme with another results in only a half-success and requires more than one attempt. All of the new menu additions from the extensions site worked perfectly.
I am very impressed, considering this is still a .5 release. Rock on, Mozilla people. Keep these .1 releases coming.
It's hard to put any kind of faith into someone who won't even post their name or drop a fake email address alongside their scathing, ill-informed piece of slander that they are spreading around like a virus. My theory is that it's some kid who was attempting to write code for gnome and was asked to leave because the quality of the code was around the same quality as the grammar and punctuation in this post. Don't buy this crap.
In the "...which just reiterates..." sentence, all I was saying was that the article, which says that Mac users love Apple and hate M$, isn't saying anything that people don't already know, and in fact have known "...since Apple became a company." My mistake was the typo (because=became)... sorry 'bout that.
So when I read this article, which just reiterates what everyone of any mind has known since Apple because a company, I couldn't help but see the childishness of this phenomenon. M$ users hate Macs, Mac users hate M$, GNU/Linux users are like the anarchists... we (yeah, I'm one of them) see closed-source, proprietary systems as "evil" or what have you, and still we have our security-blankets in "GNU" and penguins and such... we are all part of the same system.
It really is an argument against the concept of indviduality, against an identity free from logos, based solely on ideas.
So your thoughts are probably more correct than you know, expense-wise...
On the "gas is good, aluminum is bad" idea, I don't know how much better rusting steel is for the environment either... or iron for that matter. And I'm willing to bet that magnesium, being worth more than steel or iron or aluminum, is going to be salvaged more... and thus that cars made from it will end up less on the scrap-heap and more in recycling programs.
Of course, very little of this applies to the US, not matter how lightweight, safe, fuel-efficient, or environment-friendly the product is. We are the country that was raised on "The Dukes of Hazzard", remember? :)
Office is king because Windows is king. Windows is king 1)because of Microsoft's business practices and 2)because of their gigantic bankroll gained through those practices. There is nothing about either Windows or Office as king that has anything to do with the quality of the product. That's like saying McDonalds became successful for selling high-quality food. Or that AOL is king because they are a top-quality ISP. As to some of your other comments, I think both OpenOffice's spreadsheet program AND gnumeric are on a level field with Excel. Maybe not as flashy, but I guarantee you that 90% of Excel users don't use more than 50-60% of the features. Just because something is huge and complex, doesn't mean it's higher-quality. As to .rtf, try saving your table-heavy and graphics-centric word document in .rtf and then opening it in Abiword or OO or whatever. You are going to get corruption. Just because the file will save and open again isn't the point. The real argument here, of course, is: What are the drawbacks of open standards? There are none. The rest is all money.
Running RH 8.0 (RH since 6.2), and very happy with the apps already offered... and wishing that more people would stand up for principle instead of convenience.
0% liberty = 100% safety. Yessir, those slaves were pretty safe and secure, all right. Just basking in the satisfaction that a caring government carried their welfare in the hollow of its hand.