One thing you need to remember: actresses don't run the studio system. Studio heads and movie producers do.
Young actresses like Natalie don't get to pick and choose as easily as established actresses - unless they're independently wealthy from other means like Andrea Corr.
Andrea turned down the "Doctor Zhivago" remake because, first of all, it was too raunchy for an Irish Catholic girl, and secondly, it was too big a role for a first role. She can afford to do this since she's worth at least 4 million pounds from being a rock star. She picked a little indie film, "The Boys and Girl From County Clare" as her first role, and got a "Best Actress in a Comedy Film" award from the HBO Comedy Film Festival - not bad for a first role. Now she has a indie 25-minute short ("The Bridge") being shown at film festivals and possibly being shopped around for an Oscar nomination. So far, she's not even on the public's radar screen as an actress, but is likely to have a very successful career since she CAN afford to pick and choose her roles.
Jodie Foster did a dozen or more bland, uninteresting movies until she got "The Accused" and "Silence of the Lambs." She almost quit the business before "Accused" - and wouldn't have minded, since she never wanted to be an actress anyway. In fact, she's basically retired today, doing just the odd sleep-walk-through-it thriller like "Panic Room" and the new "Flight Plan" movie to keep up her life style.
As an interesting aside, Jodie was the backup to Carrie Fisher for the original Star Wars films. If Fisher, Ford and Hamill hadn't worked out as a team, Lucas had a backup team, supposedly, according to a Carrie Fisher interview I read. Had Jodie gotten that role, it might have significantly changed her career path and put her on the same sort of track Portman is on.
Winona Ryder is another very talented young actress who managed to land several interesting roles early on, but has subsequently found it very hard to get anything interesting. "Girl, Interrupted" (which she produced) was a success, since she got good reviews and her co-star Angelina Jolie got a Best Supporting Oscar win. But everything since has been trashed by the critics and ignored by the public. Since the shoplifting affair (a rail-roading if ever I ever heard of one), she's had even less success getting serious roles.
In other words, where Natalie is concerned, people just have to wait and see. She's only 24 - she's got a good fifteen years of career left yet. Foster was going nowhere until 27 or 28.
All you need is one hacker (in China, in the Russian Mafiya, in bin Laden's cave, wherever) "not found out" and every piece of DRM media ever made will end up cracked and available everywhere. Even forcing ISPs to not transmit DRM-protected media won't help because after being cracked and encrypted, the media is not identifiable as being DRM data.
Do remember what the article said: the scheme IS A FAILURE ALREADY - it will just be a PITA for people until it's finally killed.
Only clueless Windows users are going to be seriously affected.
Point 1: No, the DRM is designed to prevent you from running unlicensed media, not fucking with your text files or anything else. Unless they write the DRM to check every single file on the system regardless of file extension or metadata to see if it is a file that is supposed to be protected by the DRM system.
Point 2: No, DRM has nothing to do with sending data over the network. It's intended to prevent running unlicensed media. There may be DRM for downloaded content, but it has nothing to do with the download per se.
Point 3: Yes, it is possible that a USB key ON THE DRM BOX won't work if they make every manufacturer have to agree to adhere to a DRM protocol. I suppose they could even make the CD drives and floppies and hard drives work that way. It will be ten years before everyone throws away their existing systems, and meanwhile every piece of DRM-protected media will be cracked and distributed via non-DRM-compliant hardware so that isn't going to work either.
I'm sure Windows trolls would love all this stuff to work perfectly and kill Linux and OSS, but it's not going to happen.
Angelina Jolie is like that, too. Straight out, no bullshit.
Anybody smart enough to realize their life is more important than anyone else's is obviously so far superior to the average moron that it's just icing on the cake that she's cute.
As for being self-centered (which personally I would prefer, but nobody's perfect), check this quote from an interview out:
'She described her recent involvement with FINCA, an organization that, in Natalie's words, "provides small loans to women in Third World countries so they can start their own businesses." FINCA's board of directors includes Queen Rania Al-Abdullah, the First Lady of Jordan. "I feel a connection," Natalie said, "because I absolutely admire her humanitarian work."
Natalie does more than simply lend her name and face to the cause. She has traveled to Guatemala and Uganda to meet with FINCA clients.
"In Judaism, it's all about the action, not the intention," she said. "It doesn't matter if you mean to do the right thing if you do all bad things. You need to learn how to do right things. Doing is what affects people. Meeting face-to-face, you see that these are people with absolutely nothing who, when given a kernel of hope, run with it and turn their lives around."'
So your remark demonstrates that you're both ignorant and mean-spirited. Particularly the Nazi remark, given the following facts:
'At 16, she made her Broadway debut, starring in The Diary of Anne Frank, the story of the 13-year-old Jewish girl who hid from the Nazis in Amsterdam before being sent to her death at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. It was an acting experience that, she said, changed her.
"Anne Frank's faith in humanity, even when she was starving and sick, had a huge influence on me," Natalie recalled. "It convinced me that people need to be constantly reminded of compassion." The role also connected with her personal family history. Her grandfather moved to Palestine from Poland in the 1930s, expecting his family to join him. His parents, however, were sent to Auschwitz while his 14-year-old brother hid with a Catholic family.
"Finally [the brother] just couldn't handle it anymore. He ran outside and was shot," she said. "Being in the play reminded me that history isn't just the past. It's alive in us." This concept is underscored by the fact that while Natalie felt the need to use a stage name to protect her privacy as a minor, she chose to borrow her late grandmother's surname. (The star's real name is Natalie Hershlag.)'
This makes your remark one of the dumber/. comments I've read recently - and that's hard to do, so you should be proud.
"Next up: Slashdot interview of Natalie Portman with questions from/.rs"
Which, being more intelligent than anybody on/., she would ignore completely, so the interview questions would be up on the list for a year before some editor noticed and quietly took them down.
Most of those interviews have been so completely useless that the whole concept should be dropped. Once Cringeley's NerdTV comes out, substitute that for these pointless/. interviews.
"If one simply ignores what isn't interesting, the direction Slashdot takes will be decided by others."
The problem is, if one does not ignore what isn't interesting, the additional comments posted will enable the direction Slashdot takes to be decided by others, also.
The bottom line: nobody controls/. except the trolls and the advertisers. Just like everywhere else. Get used to it, because you damn sure ain't going to change it. Start your own if you don't like it - I will.
"provided of course the editors ever actually read comments..."
Well, that eliminates your concept from serious consideration, doesn't it?
As for "start reporting on stuff that you really don't care about", exactly which articles am I supposed to care about? I see half the articles on the front page as crap I don't care about every single day. Obviously some nerds care about some of the more pointless technical hacks of weird devices, because those articles get several hundred comments.
If everybody complained about seeing articles they didn't like, the editors would have even less time to not read the dupes.
"I mean, you gotta honestly wonder if Taco (& the others) are really actively working on this site anymore."
Didn't Taco drop dead a few years ago? I guess that news wasn't "stuff that matters".
When Carrie Fisher was doing "script doctor" work for him on the "Young Indiana" series, she constantly got into screaming arguments with him (where words like "asshole" were exchanged, according to her) because she kept telling him, "George, people just do not talk like that!"
Which is why he doesn't get people to help him with that stuff.
Well, aside from the fact that Susan fucking Sarandon is STILL an MILF in her fifties (I'm in my fifties, so she still counts), Natalie IS a pretty and reasonably smart girl and a fairly talented actress.
Apparently this movie "Closer" made some impact (I didn't see it since it doesn't involve things exploding or people getting shot or sci-fi or monsters - although I did see "Hitch" without that stuff - mostly because of Eva Mendes, Amber Valletta and the off chance I might learn how to get a date...)
"But that doesn't negate the fact that the Odyssey people blatantly lied to us."
And of course, as Marcus Ranum's article "Stupid About Software" rants, the school immediately sued them for breach of contract?
Right.
Just like City College of San Francisco required Innovative Interfaces Inc. to supply the library with an integrated library system (cost: $100K) that would retrieve student data from the SCT Banner system to determine who was registered before providing library services. The library head supposedly put it in the contract - I explicitly asked about that since I knew the company, being a typical software company, would renege if the college didn't.
Sure enough, they reneged. Now our overworked DBA is writing code to suck data out of Banner and pass it to the library, and the library people are pissed off. And the two people who put the library barcode data in Banner to begin with - me and my boss - are cut out of the loop.
Ranum is right. It's completely irrelevant that some company "stands behind" software as opposed to OSS, because no company will sue a software company to recover costs incurred when the software turns out to be shit. All a software company has to do is delay until the client is committed to implementing the software. Then the costs of backing away from the project are more than the likelihood of winning a lawsuit. Works every time and every software company knows the drill.
Where I come from this is called "fraud". Apparently everywhere else it's called "business."
"...is this level of admin common in Windows environments?"
"No. You get what you pay for."
Which I guess actually means yes, right? Since all the Windows trolls constantly complain that no one can afford Linux admins since they "cost so much" which is supposedly why Linux TCO is higher than Windows - if you're dumb enough to believe ANYTHING Microsoft says.
The US secretly wants world and space domination. Don't trust them. They'll help you if it results in your dependence on them in the long term. So if you really want the US's help, go live there. There'll be plenty of Americans there to sort out your problem for you, I'm sure.
Yeah, the Chinese are really moving along. Sending pig sperm into space is going to get them control of the LaGrange Points.
You need to vote for anarchists with guns and bombs and nanotech.
The fucking big-L Libertarians are sucking up to the Republicans and Demos who are behind all this DRM crap. I just read a very nasty story about the Libertarian Party pulling some shit which has pissed off a lot of small-l libs. Read "Regime Libertarians" here.
What do they do about Internet Connection Sharing, port forwarding and router boxes that separate the Windows system from the Net? Even with Windows, I can share an Internet connection with another, possibly non-DRM-enabled box. What's to stop me downloading stuff to the DRM box, then simply shipping it over to the non-DRM box. It's all data. Are they going to prevent me from shipping DRM data over my own network? I mean, Longhorn could have code to check that every network box attached to it is DRM-enabled, but is it going to check that my USB key attached to those boxes is? I doubt it.
Can I put a cheap but Windows DRM-enabled box in front of my Linux boxes, then suck the data out of the Windows box? Since the ISP DRM can't even check a Linux box, odds are it's written for "the dominant platform Windows". If the ISPs don't like supporting Linux on their networks, I doubt they're going to write their DRM software to check Linux sitting behind a router or a shared Windows box.
Which pretty much defeats the entire DRM notion from the git-go.
Hell, I could get a box, put the Amiga OS on it, and really screw them up. Or one of the weird new experimental OS's, as long as it had some sort of Net connection software for it.
Sounds like this stuff is really intended to make *WINDOWS* users pay Microsoft and the RIAA for stuff since Windows users are already clueless sheep and there are more of them.
It will be impossible to limit media to Windows no matter what the encoding, since hackers can run it on a DRM box, record it and ship it as non-DRM-protected data to a non-DRM box, legally or illegally. So Linux users will get content no matter what, since they have the savvy to find it and get it.
So maybe this whole thing is just another attempt to suck money from clueless Microsoft users and ignore the Linux users altogether. Which is good for Linux users, both because we slip under the radar - and eventually Linux takes over the desktop when people get tired of being robbed by Bill Gates for nothing.
"the point is he shouldn't have to worry about making such a choice"
WHY?
Would you rather have ONE CURRENT distro that WON'T run on your older box??!
Can't you see that everything you said DEMANDS multiple distros?
The FACT that you HAVE to make a choice does NOT mean that you SHOULDN'T make one - it means you SHOULD have the OPPORTUNITY to make one.
Why that isn't obvious to everyone is a mystery to me (well, it isn't really a mystery - humans have no clue.)
Mandrake and Fedora don't have large repositories? That's news to me. Also everything in Linux land starts out as a Red Hat or Mandrake RPM. Then you say Debian has a larger repository but it's all old stuff. What's wrong with this picture?
You're worried about putting current KDE and GNOME on an older box? Get an older version of the two.
You don't know how the smaller windows managers will work on Ubuntu? ASK somebody.
Pick the right distro the first time? You missed my point completely. You don't HAVE to!
It sounds to me like you simply want a current distro that is the same as your current one so you don't have to learn anything new but that also runs on older hardware. I'm sure Windows users would like XP to run on a Pentium I, but it's not happening.
This is hardly a reason to call for dumping every distro except two or three or a dozen. You can't even handle choosing between two or three obviously. Again, where would you be if there was only ONE?
Here they are throwing out perfectly good PCs (that cost them $1-2K) and spending $400 on a new one because they think that's cheaper than spending $100-150 on spyware cleaning AND learning how to avoid the stuff in the future.
And then they stop using the PC to visit Web sites in order to avoid spyware.
So they just spent $400 for a reduced-usability machine.
Which will still get infected unless they stop going to ANY Web sites - since Web sites that do put on spyware don't advertise the fact, so there's no way the end user can tell. I had a client recently whose kids went to sports sites and sports shoe sites - not porn sites - they ended up with hundreds of spyware and trojans.
Obviously some people have way too much money and not enough brains.
And this doesn't count the umpteen more users who just reformat and reinstall Windows every time the machine slows down - which is at least every three months based on my clients experiences (before I got there and installed the necessary protection.)
As I see it, this is really an opening for Linux, since we're starting to see behavioral changes on the part of users based on the limitations of Windows. The Linux industry needs to start emphasizing the fact that there is virtually NO malware on Linux. Then we need to make sure that end users get their Linux either pre-installed on low-end machines or are educated to use Linux tech support guys when they have some minor hardware problems with their distro. Users need to be educated that spending fity or a hundred bucks to get set up right in the first place is worth it when they will never need reinstalling subsequently.
For those who think Linux program installation is a problem, which is worse? Having the odd program fail to install because of dependency problems, or having to back everything up and throw everything out every three months? You handle the former by educating the user to only use the repositories supported by his distro. For the casual user, this is more than good enough. The power user can learn to deal with dependencies.
Just because of malware ALONE, Linux is so superior to Windows there isn't even a comparison.
Unfortunately your entire argument - that consolidation will speed development - is completely wrong.
Why? Because as I say elsewhere, ninety percent of the distros are put out by people who are NOT DOING Linux "development". They're just selecting existing packages and tweaking desktop settings.
So it doesn't matter if you pare down Debian from 34 to 25. Nine more guys not selecting packages isn't going to do anything for the industry.
And "consolidation" isn't going to improve either market share or development because the number of distros is irrelevant to either of those situations for the same reasons I cite above and elsewhere.
The only thing that will speed Linux development is if developers stop trying to add pointless "features" in competition with Windows and tweaking the already pointless "features" on every Linux desktop and start concentrating on more "world-class" technology problems like desktop search or entirely new user interfaces based on agents or AI or something. Stop trying to match every little Windows feature and start trying to leapfrog Windows AND the Mac entirely.
And this has to be financed by the main distros and stop relying on some guy in a garage somewhere someday doing it while the fifty or five hundred guys working for you are tweaking the KDE panel.
Microsoft has 35-40,000 employees and haven't produced a fucking new advancement in computer science or computer use since they were founded (that they didn't borrow from somebody else like Apple or IBM). So I don't know why I think Linux developers can - maybe it's just faith that there's more motivation there.
"what could possibly be more important than a usable display?"
A usable hard disk.
Seven months ago, I was dual-booting Windows 2000 and XP (along with Red Hat 7.3). I had a 160GB hard drive for the Windows partitions, and a 60GB hard drive for the Linux.
I had installed the system originally with Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 pre-installed and then added Windows Service Pack 4. XP came with SP1 and I then installed SP2.
My partitions used up about 120GB of the 160GB. When they filled up, I moved and enlarged some partitions which proceeded to cross the 137GB barrier.
Windows 2000, since it had been initially installed with SP3, proceeded to corrupt the partition table, ruining both 2000 and XP. The fact that it had SP4 (which supposedly had LBA48 support - in fact SP3 was supposed to have it) installed LATER didn't matter. It still wrecked the partition table. And Windows XP, installed after 2000, did not detect or repair the partition table damage when it was installed.
I agree with you that no distro should hose the X server on an update. That's just stupid.
It's also stupid that no one bothered to check whether Fedora Core 2 would hose a dual-boot setup with Windows due to a change in the 2.6 kernel disk geometry reporting scheme which affected parted. The lame Fedora excuse was they didn't have any testers with Windows dual-boot systems.
Unfortunately this is the way the IT industry works. As Woody Allen said, "Nothing works and nobody cares."
Everybody is too focused on adding "features" and tweaking unimportant details to deal with basic reliability, security and system integrity issues - not to mention documentation.
Yes, Linux could be a lot better if people other than geek programmers with no clue about documentation or end user interface design would get involved. Not that I want MS-type "product managers" who are also clueless involved.
But the main distros need to hire some people with usability experience to test and tweak the distros so really stupid stuff doesn't sneak through. Also they need to start hiring people to write the goddamn KDE documentation that simply isn't there in the Help system right now.
As I have repeatedly said: 1) Windows is CRAP. 2) Linux is ALSO CRAP. 3) BUT Linux is FREE crap.
And when the last time her vanilla flavor connected to the Net, produced a spreadsheet or played a DVD.
Stupid comparison - a food and an OS. Not to mention the fact that no ice cream manufacturer only has two flavors - which is what "consolidation" means here. What's the difference between twenty flavors of ice cream and twenty different Linux distros? At least the twenty distros aren't all produced by one company making it even harder to choose.
I and you solved the ice cream flavor problem years ago - we picked the two or three we liked and forgot the rest. Occasionally we might be adventurous and try Neapolitan (actually I chose Neapolitan as my favorite because it has all three of the top flavors! Try that approach with Windows!)
Do the same with Linux distros.
Every Linux distro does the same things as every other Linux distro. The differences are insignificant to the casual user - especially if the casual user hasn't ever USED ANOTHER Linux distro than the one they settle on.
Remind me never to get any of the software you develop, 'cause you're obviously an idiot.
You don't need to "choose" a distro, dummy. Just grab ANY of the main ones. If you hear about one later that sounds better, throw it on. Meanwhile you can get your Linux experience with any of them. The differences simply aren't significant, ESPECIALLY for a casual user. And any power user can minimize any differences by borrowing stuff from the other distros.
The last time I installed Linux, I tried Fedora Core 3 but it gave me some little problem right after installation. Rather than waste time fixing it, I blew it off and put on Mandrake 10.1. Problem solved. (And as I recall I discovered the Fedora solution ten minutes after I installed the other one BY installing Mandrake.)
For a corporate user, these decisions are made for them and any problems resolved by ITS before they get it. For the home user, just do the same thing - throw one on, if it doesn't work adequately or you don't like the desktop background, try another. This is an ADVANTAGE Windows will never have. With Windows WYSIWYG - and that ain't gonna get any better.
Totally agree. We need a Linux and OSS industry marketing association. Every other industry has one.
The Big Three (Red Hat, Novell, Sun) and IBM could easily fund a small group of people to coordinate media presence and response to Microsoft FUD, trade journal bullshit, and provide information to counter corporate intertia.
Slashdot Mirror
One thing you need to remember: actresses don't run the studio system. Studio heads and movie producers do.
Young actresses like Natalie don't get to pick and choose as easily as established actresses - unless they're independently wealthy from other means like Andrea Corr.
Andrea turned down the "Doctor Zhivago" remake because, first of all, it was too raunchy for an Irish Catholic girl, and secondly, it was too big a role for a first role. She can afford to do this since she's worth at least 4 million pounds from being a rock star. She picked a little indie film, "The Boys and Girl From County Clare" as her first role, and got a "Best Actress in a Comedy Film" award from the HBO Comedy Film Festival - not bad for a first role. Now she has a indie 25-minute short ("The Bridge") being shown at film festivals and possibly being shopped around for an Oscar nomination. So far, she's not even on the public's radar screen as an actress, but is likely to have a very successful career since she CAN afford to pick and choose her roles.
Jodie Foster did a dozen or more bland, uninteresting movies until she got "The Accused" and "Silence of the Lambs." She almost quit the business before "Accused" - and wouldn't have minded, since she never wanted to be an actress anyway. In fact, she's basically retired today, doing just the odd sleep-walk-through-it thriller like "Panic Room" and the new "Flight Plan" movie to keep up her life style.
As an interesting aside, Jodie was the backup to Carrie Fisher for the original Star Wars films. If Fisher, Ford and Hamill hadn't worked out as a team, Lucas had a backup team, supposedly, according to a Carrie Fisher interview I read. Had Jodie gotten that role, it might have significantly changed her career path and put her on the same sort of track Portman is on.
Winona Ryder is another very talented young actress who managed to land several interesting roles early on, but has subsequently found it very hard to get anything interesting. "Girl, Interrupted" (which she produced) was a success, since she got good reviews and her co-star Angelina Jolie got a Best Supporting Oscar win. But everything since has been trashed by the critics and ignored by the public. Since the shoplifting affair (a rail-roading if ever I ever heard of one), she's had even less success getting serious roles.
In other words, where Natalie is concerned, people just have to wait and see. She's only 24 - she's got a good fifteen years of career left yet. Foster was going nowhere until 27 or 28.
Exactly my point.
All you need is one hacker (in China, in the Russian Mafiya, in bin Laden's cave, wherever) "not found out" and every piece of DRM media ever made will end up cracked and available everywhere. Even forcing ISPs to not transmit DRM-protected media won't help because after being cracked and encrypted, the media is not identifiable as being DRM data.
Do remember what the article said: the scheme IS A FAILURE ALREADY - it will just be a PITA for people until it's finally killed.
Only clueless Windows users are going to be seriously affected.
Point 1: No, the DRM is designed to prevent you from running unlicensed media, not fucking with your text files or anything else. Unless they write the DRM to check every single file on the system regardless of file extension or metadata to see if it is a file that is supposed to be protected by the DRM system.
Point 2: No, DRM has nothing to do with sending data over the network. It's intended to prevent running unlicensed media. There may be DRM for downloaded content, but it has nothing to do with the download per se.
Point 3: Yes, it is possible that a USB key ON THE DRM BOX won't work if they make every manufacturer have to agree to adhere to a DRM protocol. I suppose they could even make the CD drives and floppies and hard drives work that way. It will be ten years before everyone throws away their existing systems, and meanwhile every piece of DRM-protected media will be cracked and distributed via non-DRM-compliant hardware so that isn't going to work either.
I'm sure Windows trolls would love all this stuff to work perfectly and kill Linux and OSS, but it's not going to happen.
"I'm one of those Windows users, and I'm fairly certain I'm not just a sheep."
Well, guess what? Your certainty is misplaced.
The rest of your comment clearly demonstrate that.
Right - like all the P2P users are going to Gitmo.
Cuba's population would be rather out-numbered.
While I know it's the state's intention to make EVERYONE a criminal sooner or later, this isn't going to actually work.
See now, this is why I like her.
/. comments I've read recently - and that's hard to do, so you should be proud.
She doesn't bullshit.
Angelina Jolie is like that, too. Straight out, no bullshit.
Anybody smart enough to realize their life is more important than anyone else's is obviously so far superior to the average moron that it's just icing on the cake that she's cute.
As for being self-centered (which personally I would prefer, but nobody's perfect), check this quote from an interview out:
'She described her recent involvement with FINCA, an organization that, in Natalie's words, "provides small loans to women in Third World countries so they can start their own businesses." FINCA's board of directors includes Queen Rania Al-Abdullah, the First Lady of Jordan. "I feel a connection," Natalie said, "because I absolutely admire her humanitarian work."
Natalie does more than simply lend her name and face to the cause. She has traveled to Guatemala and Uganda to meet with FINCA clients.
"In Judaism, it's all about the action, not the intention," she said. "It doesn't matter if you mean to do the right thing if you do all bad things. You need to learn how to do right things. Doing is what affects people. Meeting face-to-face, you see that these are people with absolutely nothing who, when given a kernel of hope, run with it and turn their lives around."'
So your remark demonstrates that you're both ignorant and mean-spirited. Particularly the Nazi remark, given the following facts:
'At 16, she made her Broadway debut, starring in The Diary of Anne Frank, the story of the 13-year-old Jewish girl who hid from the Nazis in Amsterdam before being sent to her death at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. It was an acting experience that, she said, changed her.
"Anne Frank's faith in humanity, even when she was starving and sick, had a huge influence on me," Natalie recalled. "It convinced me that people need to be constantly reminded of compassion." The role also connected with her personal family history. Her grandfather moved to Palestine from Poland in the 1930s, expecting his family to join him. His parents, however, were sent to Auschwitz while his 14-year-old brother hid with a Catholic family.
"Finally [the brother] just couldn't handle it anymore. He ran outside and was shot," she said. "Being in the play reminded me that history isn't just the past. It's alive in us." This concept is underscored by the fact that while Natalie felt the need to use a stage name to protect her privacy as a minor, she chose to borrow her late grandmother's surname. (The star's real name is Natalie Hershlag.)'
This makes your remark one of the dumber
"Next up: Slashdot interview of Natalie Portman with questions from /.rs"
/., she would ignore completely, so the interview questions would be up on the list for a year before some editor noticed and quietly took them down.
/. interviews.
Which, being more intelligent than anybody on
Most of those interviews have been so completely useless that the whole concept should be dropped. Once Cringeley's NerdTV comes out, substitute that for these pointless
"If one simply ignores what isn't interesting, the direction Slashdot takes will be decided by others."
/. except the trolls and the advertisers. Just like everywhere else. Get used to it, because you damn sure ain't going to change it. Start your own if you don't like it - I will.
The problem is, if one does not ignore what isn't interesting, the additional comments posted will enable the direction Slashdot takes to be decided by others, also.
The bottom line: nobody controls
"provided of course the editors ever actually read comments..."
Well, that eliminates your concept from serious consideration, doesn't it?
As for "start reporting on stuff that you really don't care about", exactly which articles am I supposed to care about? I see half the articles on the front page as crap I don't care about every single day. Obviously some nerds care about some of the more pointless technical hacks of weird devices, because those articles get several hundred comments.
If everybody complained about seeing articles they didn't like, the editors would have even less time to not read the dupes.
"I mean, you gotta honestly wonder if Taco (& the others) are really actively working on this site anymore."
Didn't Taco drop dead a few years ago? I guess that news wasn't "stuff that matters".
Or maybe it was a dupe.
George Lucas' dialog is KNOWN for being bad.
When Carrie Fisher was doing "script doctor" work for him on the "Young Indiana" series, she constantly got into screaming arguments with him (where words like "asshole" were exchanged, according to her) because she kept telling him, "George, people just do not talk like that!"
Which is why he doesn't get people to help him with that stuff.
Well, aside from the fact that Susan fucking Sarandon is STILL an MILF in her fifties (I'm in my fifties, so she still counts), Natalie IS a pretty and reasonably smart girl and a fairly talented actress.
Apparently this movie "Closer" made some impact (I didn't see it since it doesn't involve things exploding or people getting shot or sci-fi or monsters - although I did see "Hitch" without that stuff - mostly because of Eva Mendes, Amber Valletta and the off chance I might learn how to get a date...)
"But that doesn't negate the fact that the Odyssey people blatantly lied to us."
And of course, as Marcus Ranum's article "Stupid About Software" rants, the school immediately sued them for breach of contract?
Right.
Just like City College of San Francisco required Innovative Interfaces Inc. to supply the library with an integrated library system (cost: $100K) that would retrieve student data from the SCT Banner system to determine who was registered before providing library services. The library head supposedly put it in the contract - I explicitly asked about that since I knew the company, being a typical software company, would renege if the college didn't.
Sure enough, they reneged. Now our overworked DBA is writing code to suck data out of Banner and pass it to the library, and the library people are pissed off. And the two people who put the library barcode data in Banner to begin with - me and my boss - are cut out of the loop.
Ranum is right. It's completely irrelevant that some company "stands behind" software as opposed to OSS, because no company will sue a software company to recover costs incurred when the software turns out to be shit. All a software company has to do is delay until the client is committed to implementing the software. Then the costs of backing away from the project are more than the likelihood of winning a lawsuit. Works every time and every software company knows the drill.
Where I come from this is called "fraud". Apparently everywhere else it's called "business."
"...is this level of admin common in Windows environments?"
"No. You get what you pay for."
Which I guess actually means yes, right? Since all the Windows trolls constantly complain that no one can afford Linux admins since they "cost so much" which is supposedly why Linux TCO is higher than Windows - if you're dumb enough to believe ANYTHING Microsoft says.
The US secretly wants world and space domination. Don't trust them. They'll help you if it results in your dependence on them in the long term. So if you really want the US's help, go live there. There'll be plenty of Americans there to sort out your problem for you, I'm sure.
Yeah, the Chinese are really moving along. Sending pig sperm into space is going to get them control of the LaGrange Points.
Idiot.
You need to vote for anarchists with guns and bombs and nanotech. The fucking big-L Libertarians are sucking up to the Republicans and Demos who are behind all this DRM crap. I just read a very nasty story about the Libertarian Party pulling some shit which has pissed off a lot of small-l libs. Read "Regime Libertarians" here.
About time.
The actor who played him died some time ago.
Now if we could just get Potter and that other idiot to die.
Hermione, however, needs to keep going. Emma Watson is going to be hot here very shortly.
Well, here's a question about that.
What do they do about Internet Connection Sharing, port forwarding and router boxes that separate the Windows system from the Net? Even with Windows, I can share an Internet connection with another, possibly non-DRM-enabled box. What's to stop me downloading stuff to the DRM box, then simply shipping it over to the non-DRM box. It's all data. Are they going to prevent me from shipping DRM data over my own network? I mean, Longhorn could have code to check that every network box attached to it is DRM-enabled, but is it going to check that my USB key attached to those boxes is? I doubt it.
Can I put a cheap but Windows DRM-enabled box in front of my Linux boxes, then suck the data out of the Windows box? Since the ISP DRM can't even check a Linux box, odds are it's written for "the dominant platform Windows". If the ISPs don't like supporting Linux on their networks, I doubt they're going to write their DRM software to check Linux sitting behind a router or a shared Windows box.
Which pretty much defeats the entire DRM notion from the git-go.
Hell, I could get a box, put the Amiga OS on it, and really screw them up. Or one of the weird new experimental OS's, as long as it had some sort of Net connection software for it.
Sounds like this stuff is really intended to make *WINDOWS* users pay Microsoft and the RIAA for stuff since Windows users are already clueless sheep and there are more of them.
It will be impossible to limit media to Windows no matter what the encoding, since hackers can run it on a DRM box, record it and ship it as non-DRM-protected data to a non-DRM box, legally or illegally. So Linux users will get content no matter what, since they have the savvy to find it and get it.
So maybe this whole thing is just another attempt to suck money from clueless Microsoft users and ignore the Linux users altogether. Which is good for Linux users, both because we slip under the radar - and eventually Linux takes over the desktop when people get tired of being robbed by Bill Gates for nothing.
"the point is he shouldn't have to worry about making such a choice"
WHY?
Would you rather have ONE CURRENT distro that WON'T run on your older box??!
Can't you see that everything you said DEMANDS multiple distros?
The FACT that you HAVE to make a choice does NOT mean that you SHOULDN'T make one - it means you SHOULD have the OPPORTUNITY to make one.
Why that isn't obvious to everyone is a mystery to me (well, it isn't really a mystery - humans have no clue.)
Mandrake and Fedora don't have large repositories? That's news to me. Also everything in Linux land starts out as a Red Hat or Mandrake RPM. Then you say Debian has a larger repository but it's all old stuff. What's wrong with this picture?
You're worried about putting current KDE and GNOME on an older box? Get an older version of the two.
You don't know how the smaller windows managers will work on Ubuntu? ASK somebody.
Pick the right distro the first time? You missed my point completely. You don't HAVE to!
It sounds to me like you simply want a current distro that is the same as your current one so you don't have to learn anything new but that also runs on older hardware. I'm sure Windows users would like XP to run on a Pentium I, but it's not happening.
This is hardly a reason to call for dumping every distro except two or three or a dozen. You can't even handle choosing between two or three obviously. Again, where would you be if there was only ONE?
It's ridiculous.
Here they are throwing out perfectly good PCs (that cost them $1-2K) and spending $400 on a new one because they think that's cheaper than spending $100-150 on spyware cleaning AND learning how to avoid the stuff in the future.
And then they stop using the PC to visit Web sites in order to avoid spyware.
So they just spent $400 for a reduced-usability machine.
Which will still get infected unless they stop going to ANY Web sites - since Web sites that do put on spyware don't advertise the fact, so there's no way the end user can tell. I had a client recently whose kids went to sports sites and sports shoe sites - not porn sites - they ended up with hundreds of spyware and trojans.
Obviously some people have way too much money and not enough brains.
And this doesn't count the umpteen more users who just reformat and reinstall Windows every time the machine slows down - which is at least every three months based on my clients experiences (before I got there and installed the necessary protection.)
As I see it, this is really an opening for Linux, since we're starting to see behavioral changes on the part of users based on the limitations of Windows. The Linux industry needs to start emphasizing the fact that there is virtually NO malware on Linux. Then we need to make sure that end users get their Linux either pre-installed on low-end machines or are educated to use Linux tech support guys when they have some minor hardware problems with their distro. Users need to be educated that spending fity or a hundred bucks to get set up right in the first place is worth it when they will never need reinstalling subsequently.
For those who think Linux program installation is a problem, which is worse? Having the odd program fail to install because of dependency problems, or having to back everything up and throw everything out every three months? You handle the former by educating the user to only use the repositories supported by his distro. For the casual user, this is more than good enough. The power user can learn to deal with dependencies.
Just because of malware ALONE, Linux is so superior to Windows there isn't even a comparison.
Unfortunately your entire argument - that consolidation will speed development - is completely wrong.
Why? Because as I say elsewhere, ninety percent of the distros are put out by people who are NOT DOING Linux "development". They're just selecting existing packages and tweaking desktop settings.
So it doesn't matter if you pare down Debian from 34 to 25. Nine more guys not selecting packages isn't going to do anything for the industry.
And "consolidation" isn't going to improve either market share or development because the number of distros is irrelevant to either of those situations for the same reasons I cite above and elsewhere.
The only thing that will speed Linux development is if developers stop trying to add pointless "features" in competition with Windows and tweaking the already pointless "features" on every Linux desktop and start concentrating on more "world-class" technology problems like desktop search or entirely new user interfaces based on agents or AI or something. Stop trying to match every little Windows feature and start trying to leapfrog Windows AND the Mac entirely.
And this has to be financed by the main distros and stop relying on some guy in a garage somewhere someday doing it while the fifty or five hundred guys working for you are tweaking the KDE panel.
Microsoft has 35-40,000 employees and haven't produced a fucking new advancement in computer science or computer use since they were founded (that they didn't borrow from somebody else like Apple or IBM). So I don't know why I think Linux developers can - maybe it's just faith that there's more motivation there.
"what could possibly be more important than a usable display?"
A usable hard disk.
Seven months ago, I was dual-booting Windows 2000 and XP (along with Red Hat 7.3). I had a 160GB hard drive for the Windows partitions, and a 60GB hard drive for the Linux.
I had installed the system originally with Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 pre-installed and then added Windows Service Pack 4. XP came with SP1 and I then installed SP2.
My partitions used up about 120GB of the 160GB. When they filled up, I moved and enlarged some partitions which proceeded to cross the 137GB barrier.
Windows 2000, since it had been initially installed with SP3, proceeded to corrupt the partition table, ruining both 2000 and XP. The fact that it had SP4 (which supposedly had LBA48 support - in fact SP3 was supposed to have it) installed LATER didn't matter. It still wrecked the partition table. And Windows XP, installed after 2000, did not detect or repair the partition table damage when it was installed.
I agree with you that no distro should hose the X server on an update. That's just stupid.
It's also stupid that no one bothered to check whether Fedora Core 2 would hose a dual-boot setup with Windows due to a change in the 2.6 kernel disk geometry reporting scheme which affected parted. The lame Fedora excuse was they didn't have any testers with Windows dual-boot systems.
Unfortunately this is the way the IT industry works. As Woody Allen said, "Nothing works and nobody cares."
Everybody is too focused on adding "features" and tweaking unimportant details to deal with basic reliability, security and system integrity issues - not to mention documentation.
Now YOU have a fairly decent point made here.
Yes, Linux could be a lot better if people other than geek programmers with no clue about documentation or end user interface design would get involved. Not that I want MS-type "product managers" who are also clueless involved.
But the main distros need to hire some people with usability experience to test and tweak the distros so really stupid stuff doesn't sneak through. Also they need to start hiring people to write the goddamn KDE documentation that simply isn't there in the Help system right now.
As I have repeatedly said:
1) Windows is CRAP.
2) Linux is ALSO CRAP.
3) BUT Linux is FREE crap.
And when the last time her vanilla flavor connected to the Net, produced a spreadsheet or played a DVD.
Stupid comparison - a food and an OS. Not to mention the fact that no ice cream manufacturer only has two flavors - which is what "consolidation" means here. What's the difference between twenty flavors of ice cream and twenty different Linux distros? At least the twenty distros aren't all produced by one company making it even harder to choose.
I and you solved the ice cream flavor problem years ago - we picked the two or three we liked and forgot the rest. Occasionally we might be adventurous and try Neapolitan (actually I chose Neapolitan as my favorite because it has all three of the top flavors! Try that approach with Windows!)
Do the same with Linux distros.
Every Linux distro does the same things as every other Linux distro. The differences are insignificant to the casual user - especially if the casual user hasn't ever USED ANOTHER Linux distro than the one they settle on.
Windows is WYSIWYG. Period.
Lame, very lame.
Remind me never to get any of the software you develop, 'cause you're obviously an idiot.
You don't need to "choose" a distro, dummy. Just grab ANY of the main ones. If you hear about one later that sounds better, throw it on. Meanwhile you can get your Linux experience with any of them. The differences simply aren't significant, ESPECIALLY for a casual user. And any power user can minimize any differences by borrowing stuff from the other distros.
The last time I installed Linux, I tried Fedora Core 3 but it gave me some little problem right after installation. Rather than waste time fixing it, I blew it off and put on Mandrake 10.1. Problem solved. (And as I recall I discovered the Fedora solution ten minutes after I installed the other one BY installing Mandrake.)
For a corporate user, these decisions are made for them and any problems resolved by ITS before they get it. For the home user, just do the same thing - throw one on, if it doesn't work adequately or you don't like the desktop background, try another. This is an ADVANTAGE Windows will never have. With Windows WYSIWYG - and that ain't gonna get any better.
Totally agree. We need a Linux and OSS industry marketing association. Every other industry has one.
The Big Three (Red Hat, Novell, Sun) and IBM could easily fund a small group of people to coordinate media presence and response to Microsoft FUD, trade journal bullshit, and provide information to counter corporate intertia.