I attended this conference and I generally had a good time but there is one point I must address, and this is not exclusive to just this linux conference.
Many companies attend these conferences to learn about the latest in linux technology and possibly invest in some of it. It is important at any conference to be professional and polite, but also to be well put together. I noticed many of the linux 'tech' guys were extremely ill dressed, including unwashed flannel sweaters and dirty hiking boots (worn indoors!). Aside from other journalists and a few company representatives, I did not see any dress shoes or ties in site. I mean, this isn't the same thing as lounging around one's apartment eating cheetoes and coding, this is supposed to be a professional conference! I dearly hope that linux guys will take note of this and possible dress more respectfully at the next event. Take a word of advice from a professional journalist: dress to impress.
Lets talk about Jon Carmack. Jon is the legendary programmer of such classic PC games as Wolfenstein, Doom, Duke nukem 3d, Quake 1, 2, and 3, unreal, and the upcoming doom3. Jon has single handedly created the genre known as the first-person-shooter. He has also popularized the Direct3d 3d format over Microsoft's competing Opengl format, as well as caused public interest in 3d cards when he first released accelerated quake for the s3 virge chipset. Jon carmack has redefined gaming on PC's.
Now stop for a moment and think... What would have happened if Albert Einstein had worked creating amazing pinball games instead of creating the theory of relativity? Humanity would suffer! Jon carmack is unfortunately doing JUST THIS, using his gifts at computer coding to create games instead of furthering the knowledge of humanity. Carmack could have been working for NASA or the US military, but instead he simply sits around coding violent computer games.
Is this a waste of a special and rare talent? Sadly, the answer is yes.
Unfortunately, it doesn't stop there. Not only is Jon carmack not contributing to society, he is causing it's downfall. What was the main reason for the mass murder of dozens of people in columbine? Doom. It's always the same story... Troubled youth plays doom or quake, he arms himself to the teeth, he kills his classmates. This has happened hundreds of times in the US alone. Carmack is not only wasting his talents and intelligence; he is single-handedly causing the deaths of many young men and women. How does he sleep at night?
Carmack is a classic example of a very talented and intelligent human being that is bent on total world destruction. Incredibly, he has made millions of dollars getting people hooked on psychotic games where they compete on the internet to see who can dismember the most people. I believe there is something morally wrong when millions of people have computerized murder fantasies, and we have Jon Carmack to thank. Carmack has used his superior intellect to create mayhem in society. Many people play games such as quake so much that their minds are permanently warped. A cousin of mine has been in therapy for 6 months after he lost a 'death match' and became catatonic.
It is unfortunate that most people do not realize how much this man has damaged all the things we have worked hard for in America. Jon has wasted his intelligence, caused the deaths of innocent children, and warped this country forever. To top it off, he got rich in the process and is revered by millions of computer users worldwide. Perhaps one day the US government will see the light and confine Jon Carmack somewhere with no computers so he can no longer use his intelligence to wreak havoc on society.
There are more serious technical issues for an online library. A real library has only a limited amount of books, and they can only be lent to limited amounts of people at once. An electronic library would have to follow the same principals, having time limits and user limits for each document. Otherwise they would be giving out works for free, and most are not intended to be distributed that way.
the site is already down after a slashdot ddos attack (aka slashdotting)...
It's an interesting site, but I doubt any of those artists make money, because the only art that pays is corporate art. Those artists will have trouble finding any paying jobs after making criminal anti-corporate art. Fun to look at though!
Personally I find people take online opinions too lightly.. For instance, if a lawyer named Joe Lawyer were selling items on ebay, and someone left slanderous bad feedback, a google search for "joe lawyer" could producer the page with the bad feedback. If someone was considering hiring Joe lawyer, but did a google search first, they might reconsider hiring him as a result of the bad feedback on ebay. Now if the feedback is warranted, it's a different situation, but the people who leave the negative feedback would have to provide concrete evidence that what they wrote was true, including official documentation (word of mouth doesn't count).
It is hard to patch up one's reputation after it has been slandered, and the Internet is a global medium that reaches the entire world! Personally I feel there should be more cases like this just to make a point: Online slander is illegal and cannot be tolerated!
DDOS attacks ruin the productivity of others. Whether it is microsoft, or any other site... Many people use WindowsXP in the world, much much more than the amount who use linux, and attacking the servers ruins the productivity of many businesses who rely on windowsXP to get work done.
Sure you could say "Microsoft is wrong for HAVING this activation feature", but that is incorrect. Attacking ANY company's network is wrong, and very illegal. How would you feel if the servers you get open-source applications from were made unusable because someone attacked the network they were hosted on? This is the same thing.
I hope the people who are responsible for this attack (which is technically terrorism) are thrown in jail. It will likely be a long sentence.
IBM basically created the entire desktop PC market even... if it weren't for them there would be NO affordable computer available for the public...
As for the devices, I have found that the portable windows based run very well as the OS is designed for the device, unlike linux. Even palm is moving to windows based portables, and they invented the entire market with the palm pilot.
Teaching kids linux in computer class in a country dominated by windows is like teaching kids French as a primary language in a country dominated by English speaking people.
Thanks to this school's twisted morals, these poor children will never know how to operate a "normal" computer, and will only know a tiny niche system called linux.
Children should be taught the fundamental computer applications such as Ms Word, Visual Basic, Internet Explorer, Excel, ect... not the hacked together "gnu" versions featured in linux.
It is a shame these kids are being taught everything wrong, and will unfortunately have to RELEARN how to use a computer after school. Terrible.
I managed to get a free copy of freebsd thanks to my status as a journalist, however I was sadly disappointed by this product.
I attempted to install freebsd on my IBM laptop, however I discovered my particular model was not compatible (which is odd, since it runs win2k just fine, which has many BSD elements in it). I decided to try it on my p4 system which I use for games occasionally. Unfortunately I discovered that BSD refused to be installed on my NTFS partition, and I was required to create a new partition! I have never had this problem with windows before and was baffled at the amount of work BSD forces one to take on just to get it installed! I decided to abort my attempt at reviewing BSD since it didn't seem to work on any of the systems I had! Furthermore I discovered that not only does Freebsd not run any new games, it doesn't even run Microsoft office, the standard office program! A truly terrible computer product!
I find this argument interesting, as people on slashdot continuously say windows is unstable, when it is actually the hardware drivers causing problems 99% of the time. So I think it's fair to say linux is unstable, even if it's the drivers fault. Video drivers are especially vulnerable. I mean how can an OS be stable if it is only working in text-mode anyway? Dos is stable too I'm sure compared to console linux..
The fact is, the same program, running on windows on linux... runs better on windows.
have you thought that maybe it is linux causing the instability and not the game ? Linux isn't exactly an OS built for games, otherwise there would be a lot more titles available.
If people are willing to send GPS signals through the airwaves that pass through our own bodies, we have the right to jam them. I personally would feel it right for me to jam the signal of any car with a gps navigation system because nobody gave anyone the right to send those signals through my person!
agreed... for some reason I no longer can post with +2 bonus even though my karma is excellent... Did this happen to any other users? Or am I being personally censored?
Hey Emile Frison, is that a banana in your pocket or are you just the director of the International Network for the Improvement of Banana and Plantain?
Unless you have free open-source software that can play the latest windows media player formats then your set up box WILL NOT have the same capabilities of the latest boxes being sold. Unfortunately such software would probably be in violation of the dmca... sorry.
The windows version really blows. It's slow and thegraphics are chunky. Like most programs originally coded for Mac, it was NOT ported to windows properly.
I enjoy playing snood on my g4 when I am not working on journalism but I have tried it on PCs a few times and it is a terrible mess. How snood became popular outside the Mac platform I will not know...
Slashdot Mirror
I am a big fan of oldskool ascii... ever since it first appeard in early ms-dos versions. The memories!
I attended this conference and I generally had a good time but there is one point I must address, and this is not exclusive to just this linux conference.
Many companies attend these conferences to learn about the latest in linux technology and possibly invest in some of it. It is important at any conference to be professional and polite, but also to be well put together. I noticed many of the linux 'tech' guys were extremely ill dressed, including unwashed flannel sweaters and dirty hiking boots (worn indoors!). Aside from other journalists and a few company representatives, I did not see any dress shoes or ties in site. I mean, this isn't the same thing as lounging around one's apartment eating cheetoes and coding, this is supposed to be a professional conference! I dearly hope that linux guys will take note of this and possible dress more respectfully at the next event. Take a word of advice from a professional journalist: dress to impress.
Lets talk about Jon Carmack. Jon is the legendary programmer of such classic PC games as Wolfenstein, Doom, Duke nukem 3d, Quake 1, 2, and 3, unreal, and the upcoming doom3. Jon has single handedly created the genre known as the first-person-shooter. He has also popularized the Direct3d 3d format over Microsoft's competing Opengl format, as well as caused public interest in 3d cards when he first released accelerated quake for the s3 virge chipset. Jon carmack has redefined gaming on PC's.
Now stop for a moment and think... What would have happened if Albert Einstein had worked creating amazing pinball games instead of creating the theory of relativity? Humanity would suffer! Jon carmack is unfortunately doing JUST THIS, using his gifts at computer coding to create games instead of furthering the knowledge of humanity. Carmack could have been working for NASA or the US military, but instead he simply sits around coding violent computer games.
Is this a waste of a special and rare talent? Sadly, the answer is yes.
Unfortunately, it doesn't stop there. Not only is Jon carmack not contributing to society, he is causing it's downfall. What was the main reason for the mass murder of dozens of people in columbine? Doom. It's always the same story... Troubled youth plays doom or quake, he arms himself to the teeth, he kills his classmates. This has happened hundreds of times in the US alone. Carmack is not only wasting his talents and intelligence; he is single-handedly causing the deaths of many young men and women. How does he sleep at night?
Carmack is a classic example of a very talented and intelligent human being that is bent on total world destruction. Incredibly, he has made millions of dollars getting people hooked on psychotic games where they compete on the internet to see who can dismember the most people. I believe there is something morally wrong when millions of people have computerized murder fantasies, and we have Jon Carmack to thank. Carmack has used his superior intellect to create mayhem in society. Many people play games such as quake so much that their minds are permanently warped. A cousin of mine has been in therapy for 6 months after he lost a 'death match' and became catatonic.
It is unfortunate that most people do not realize how much this man has damaged all the things we have worked hard for in America. Jon has wasted his intelligence, caused the deaths of innocent children, and warped this country forever. To top it off, he got rich in the process and is revered by millions of computer users worldwide. Perhaps one day the US government will see the light and confine Jon Carmack somewhere with no computers so he can no longer use his intelligence to wreak havoc on society.
There are more serious technical issues for an online library. A real library has only a limited amount of books, and they can only be lent to limited amounts of people at once. An electronic library would have to follow the same principals, having time limits and user limits for each document. Otherwise they would be giving out works for free, and most are not intended to be distributed that way.
In Switzerland, they actually let people VOTE on whether they want these acts or not.
Got to love America's "Democratic" government, passing laws without even letting the people know.
the site is already down after a slashdot ddos attack (aka slashdotting)...
It's an interesting site, but I doubt any of those artists make money, because the only art that pays is corporate art. Those artists will have trouble finding any paying jobs after making criminal anti-corporate art. Fun to look at though!
Personally I find people take online opinions too lightly.. For instance, if a lawyer named Joe Lawyer were selling items on ebay, and someone left slanderous bad feedback, a google search for "joe lawyer" could producer the page with the bad feedback. If someone was considering hiring Joe lawyer, but did a google search first, they might reconsider hiring him as a result of the bad feedback on ebay. Now if the feedback is warranted, it's a different situation, but the people who leave the negative feedback would have to provide concrete evidence that what they wrote was true, including official documentation (word of mouth doesn't count).
It is hard to patch up one's reputation after it has been slandered, and the Internet is a global medium that reaches the entire world! Personally I feel there should be more cases like this just to make a point: Online slander is illegal and cannot be tolerated!
DDOS attacks ruin the productivity of others. Whether it is microsoft, or any other site... Many people use WindowsXP in the world, much much more than the amount who use linux, and attacking the servers ruins the productivity of many businesses who rely on windowsXP to get work done.
Sure you could say "Microsoft is wrong for HAVING this activation feature", but that is incorrect. Attacking ANY company's network is wrong, and very illegal. How would you feel if the servers you get open-source applications from were made unusable because someone attacked the network they were hosted on? This is the same thing.
I hope the people who are responsible for this attack (which is technically terrorism) are thrown in jail. It will likely be a long sentence.
IBM basically created the entire desktop PC market even... if it weren't for them there would be NO affordable computer available for the public...
As for the devices, I have found that the portable windows based run very well as the OS is designed for the device, unlike linux. Even palm is moving to windows based portables, and they invented the entire market with the palm pilot.
Teaching kids linux in computer class in a country dominated by windows is like teaching kids French as a primary language in a country dominated by English speaking people.
Thanks to this school's twisted morals, these poor children will never know how to operate a "normal" computer, and will only know a tiny niche system called linux.
Children should be taught the fundamental computer applications such as Ms Word, Visual Basic, Internet Explorer, Excel, ect... not the hacked together "gnu" versions featured in linux.
It is a shame these kids are being taught everything wrong, and will unfortunately have to RELEARN how to use a computer after school. Terrible.
I managed to get a free copy of freebsd thanks to my status as a journalist, however I was sadly disappointed by this product.
I attempted to install freebsd on my IBM laptop, however I discovered my particular model was not compatible (which is odd, since it runs win2k just fine, which has many BSD elements in it). I decided to try it on my p4 system which I use for games occasionally. Unfortunately I discovered that BSD refused to be installed on my NTFS partition, and I was required to create a new partition! I have never had this problem with windows before and was baffled at the amount of work BSD forces one to take on just to get it installed! I decided to abort my attempt at reviewing BSD since it didn't seem to work on any of the systems I had! Furthermore I discovered that not only does Freebsd not run any new games, it doesn't even run Microsoft office, the standard office program! A truly terrible computer product!
I give FreeBSD 1/10
I find this argument interesting, as people on slashdot continuously say windows is unstable, when it is actually the hardware drivers causing problems 99% of the time. So I think it's fair to say linux is unstable, even if it's the drivers fault. Video drivers are especially vulnerable. I mean how can an OS be stable if it is only working in text-mode anyway? Dos is stable too I'm sure compared to console linux..
The fact is, the same program, running on windows on linux... runs better on windows.
have you thought that maybe it is linux causing the instability and not the game ? Linux isn't exactly an OS built for games, otherwise there would be a lot more titles available.
If people are willing to send GPS signals through the airwaves that pass through our own bodies, we have the right to jam them. I personally would feel it right for me to jam the signal of any car with a gps navigation system because nobody gave anyone the right to send those signals through my person!
agreed... for some reason I no longer can post with +2 bonus even though my karma is excellent... Did this happen to any other users? Or am I being personally censored?
my anus is bleeding! (inside joke people, search for "rejected" on the kazaa network)
Hey Emile Frison, is that a banana in your pocket or are you just the director of the International Network for the Improvement of Banana and Plantain?
20KiloDVD
I really wish slashdot would stop using non-scientific made-up measurements, educated people such as myself laugh at this nonsense.
Then again, I have noticed a trend of bad journalism on this site, which is unfortunate. Or maybe I should say a KILOTREND.
I always enjoy surfing the net while high.
nowadays most companies do not sell used systems anymore.. Since a simple format is not enough to protect sensitive data.
Where I work we generally destroy then throw away the entire computer when we no longer need it, the only thing part we keep is the monitor.
It's the safest way to go!
Unless you have free open-source software that can play the latest windows media player formats then your set up box WILL NOT have the same capabilities of the latest boxes being sold. Unfortunately such software would probably be in violation of the dmca... sorry.
yeah, you aren't allowed broadcasting music over the airwaves without a licence.
They must be rich if they can afford to have 80gigs worth of legal copies of their music...
if each album takes 80megs about.. then the hd can hold 1000 albums... 1000 albums at 20$ an album is 20,000$ !
Who can afford to spend that much on music?
The windows version really blows. It's slow and thegraphics are chunky. Like most programs originally coded for Mac, it was NOT ported to windows properly.
I enjoy playing snood on my g4 when I am not working on journalism but I have tried it on PCs a few times and it is a terrible mess. How snood became popular outside the Mac platform I will not know...
When I think of small and fast, I think of IE. It's a much smaller download than mozilla and it runs great.
IE on mac OS X just as good if not better than the windows version. It's good to finally see IE running well on a unix operating system.