If the US public could be misled by Bush and his administration to go to war with Iraq, then I would hazard to guess that the judge in the SCO suit (if well picked) could easily be misled to side with SCO on this suit.
At the moment, most Americans don't seem to be sharp enough to figure out when they are being hoodwinked. I would say that this extends to our judicial system as well as the general public. When the judge hears the word "Linux", he's going to believe what SCO says:
Linux = Anything Unix-like that isn't SCO Unixware (including the GNU tools and XFree86)
Not:
Linux = The Linux Kernel
Keep it in minds folks. We'd all better start making the distinctions VERY clear.
Someone modded this insightful post down, so I repost it here for reconsideration:
America is once again getting fucked in the ass by big business. "It's bad unless it's OUR spam." That's Microsoft's take on it. If you think abuot this logically, you will realize that this all goes back to the problem of corporations being given the same "rights" as individuals. Corporations need to be accountable to the consumer. NOT the shareholders, NOT the CEOs, NOT the suits. Every time I see this kind of thing, it makes me feel that America has been so subverted by the corporate propaganda that things will never get better.
It's time to wake up people! Corporations DON'T care about your well being or mine. They only care about profit. If they have to poison the water, brainwash the public and abuse technology, that' just fine to them. But it's NOT fine to us. Do you honestly like bending over and lubing up everytime a corporation does this to you? Apparently a lot of Americans do. Fucking WAKE UP PEOPLE!!!!!! Don't you see what they've done to this country?! It's no longer "America, home of the free and the brave", it's now "America home of the bought and paid for".
If you agree with the sentiment (as I do), then mod the parent up. If I had mod points today, I would mod it up, but this is the least I can do.
Looks like you were correct. You were modded down. Seems like this isn't a safe subject to discuss. I still don't understand why though. I've brought it up a few times myself (not that I really care about either side of the argument) and each time was modded down. It doesn't make any sense. To me, it just seems that both parties are acting like vengeful geeks in the truest sense of the word.
Not sure why you "foed" me. But no matter. I always friend everyone. You know what they say: "Keep your friend close. Keep your enemies closer"
I would guess that you are either one of the Pro-Windows/Anti-Linux crowd. Or one of the pro-business/capitalist crowd. Or one of the anti GNU/Linux or anti-GPL crowd. If you aren't, then please enlighten me as to your reason for making me a foe.
You made some pretty good points here. Open source and Linux have always been ahead of the Windows crowd (maybe with the possible exceptions of games and professional audio-visual software). However, I think the reason this tends to escape them is that they can't use a lot of the functionality you mentioned until it's simple enough to use. While the OpenSSH tunnels might be very useful (I use them everyday myself), they are beyond the realm of most Windows users. Until you have a point and click interface to do this kind of thing, that functionality is pretty much useless (and non-existent) to them. The example you gave about fast user switching bears this out. You and I (and many other *nix heads here) know that you can launch multiple X servers to provide different users with desktops on the same system. But, the only way to switch around between them is to press Ctrl-Alt F7, F8, etc... In Windows XP the user just Clicks "Log Out" and then selects "Switch User" after which they are presented with a GDM-like interfact to select one of the other logged in users or go back to the account they just "Logged out" of. For the average user this is much more friendly than remembering to press Ctrl-Alt-Fn. It's not like it's hard to remember the key combo, but the average user is VERY LAZY.
Microsoft has found ways to take a lot of the same features and say "Hey look! This is new! We came up with it!" because they can rely on the fact that joe user isn't going to know that it's not new. The only thing that might ostensibly be new about it is that Microsoft might have made it somewhat "idiot proof". That's what we Linux coders need to keep in mind. The public is lazy.
I found an interesting AC post that people seem to have overlooked. If only I had mod points right now:
Bill Gates just doesn't "get it" does he? Microsoft doesn't push ANY new technology in terms of actual innovation. Now if he means "push" in the sense of a drug dealer, then he's being truthful.
Can you mount an ISO image with a plain vanilla instllation of Windows XP? No. But you can with the BSDs and GNU/Linux. It's built into most ditros as support for the ISO filesystem and loop devices.
Can you set up encrypted secure tunnels for specific ports, execute remote commands (encrypted again), and also transport remote desktop displays over the same mecahnism that does the tunnels and remote commands in a default installation of Windows XP? No. But you can with any OS that supports OpenSSH. Again, most distros come with this by default.
All the Windows XP wankers have been railing on about the Fast User Switching that Windows XP introduced. But you know what? We *nix users have had this feature for over a decade. Both at the command prompt and within the GUI by way of virtual terminals. I can have many users logged into their own desktops on the same machine with apps running and easily switch between them using Ctrl-Alt-F(n). Nothing new to us.
And as far as Remote desktop goes, *nix users have again had this since the earliest versions of X. Again over a decade. X was designed with this in mind from the start. And with Xnest, you can actually run a different user's desktop within your desktop on the same machine. You CAN'T do that with Windows XP.
Microsoft just got the "RUNAS" command. Hmmm... anyone familiar with su? And now with GUI alternatives, *nix has innovated much farther than Windows has. And still kept security job one.
What about the idea of not using drive letters and instead mounting to a folder. Windows 2000 introduced this. But Linux, the BSDs and other *nixes have had this from the very start.
VNC? Still came from the *nix world first since it is based completely on X. And we've had it longer than Microsoft.
What about things like esd (The Enlightened Sound server)? While you can share a remote desktop in Windows and even share the sound associate with it, you can't easily reconfig it to FOLLOW you from one machine to another one. I use VNC and esd together so I can log into a running desktop at any machine on my network and the audio will follow me. Again, how long has Open Source had this? for almost a decade (the lifespan of esd). Does Windows have this feature? No.
Need I point out anything else? I'm sorry, but the innovations all seem to come from open source first and then Windows plays catch up 5-10 years later.
The point is that bootable CDs as nice as they are should become a thing of the past. If anything, OSes should load over a LAN by now. (The network is the computer...)
Just work out a user friendly way to install from the internet. Older versions of RedHat used to install via FTP. Gentoo installs over the net. What "Joe Average" needs is a happy medium:
-They pop open IE in Windows and go to the "Install Linux" web site and start the procedure. -It brings down a self extracting tar.bz2 archive which expands to %TEMP%. -It also creates another file that stores the actual location of %TEMP% in Windowspeak. -It then executes a Windows based binary that will format a floppy, a bootable ZIP or Jaz disk or burn a CD-R/RW as bootable medium. -It also unpacks file that contains an ext2 filesystem to %TEMP%
When the floppy, Zip, Jaz or CD-R/RW are complete, the user is instructed to reboot with the new boot disk. When they do, they are first presented with a partition manager that allows them to resize their Windows partition and set up space for the Linux installation. Then the file with the ext2 filesystem is mounted and the real GUI based installation begins pulling the distro from the internet. (Network configuration, X with framebuffer support, etc... has already completed in the background)
Obviously this would only be suitable for people with high bandwidth, but that could be solved too... The installer should allow the user to pause the installation and shutdown so that they can do it in phases. When they reboot, the installer would see the partially installed system and allow them to continue from where the log indicates that the install left off.
That's the point of this article though: Where is the full featured, free, open source groupware package for Linux? There SHOULD really be one. Of course I think if anyone did such a thing, they should make it web based so that it can be centralized. I've looked at HORDE and IMP, but haven't had the time to try them yet. However, they seem promising.
I think this all comes down to how you use your computer. I use Linux and it satisfies every need I have in the way of computers. I use my computers for things that I consider useful or fun. Some of that is the typical stuff that any user would do: Web, E-mail, and Instant Messaging. Then there is stuff I do that the mid-level user would do: File Serving, Web Serving, Mail Serving, DNS, DHCP, WINS, NT Logon Server. And I do stuff that the advanced user would consider "fun": Streaming Audio (ogg with ssh enctyrption), Remote X Application serving (with ssh encryption), ssh tunneling of my internal web server, quake 3 server, etc... And finally, what I think a lot of Linux users use Linux for: Automation. I have custom scripts that run through my MP3/Ogg store and update multiple playlists (All songs, Sleep List, Wake List, Classical List, Jazz List, Electronica List, etc...) I also have scripts that I've set up that turn lights on and off througout the house with X10 modules. The lights are turned on at times that correspond with the seasons (earlier in the winter and later in the summer). Yet another script will launch the appropriate audio player for my Wake list to wake me up in the morning. During the week, it's set to wake me at 6:30AM and on the weekends at 10:00AM. I have yet another script that does nightly backups for me (have to back up those gigs of source code, videos and audio). I also play some games. I play a good amount of games under Linux using either WINE (for newer Windows Games), DOSBox (for some of my old DOS based favorites) and of course some native Linux games as well as the simpler time killers like SameGNOME, Skoosh, XBill, the Marble Madness clone Trackballs, and many others. I use the GIMP (Photoshop 3 Clone. Can't speak for newer versions since I stopped buying Photoshop at version 3) for a lot of web graphic creation and image editing along with Sodipodi (An awesome vector graphics package). And I use DIA for flowcharts and diagraming my network here at home.
For someone like me, Windows lacks a lot in many of these ways in terms of being able to make your own stuff. You can't script with the same level of flexibility in a plain vanilla Windows system as you can in a plain vanilla RedHat system. Windows doesn't come with a decent image editor that allows for layers, conversions of multiple formats, scripting and filters. Windows doesn't have much more than Solitaire when it comes to system default games. RedHat (via GNOME) has many more. Windows also doesn't come with an Office Suite like the latest versions of RedHat does. And Windows just plain sucks for most custom uses unless you spend a lot of money on applications and coding tools. At that point, Windows is just not that cost effective.
To make Windows bearable, these days I install Cygwin on every Windows box I have to deal with. The only thing keeping the lst two Windows boxes on my home network are pro audio software/hardware (Hopefully Ardour will amount to something although pro audio hardware support still needs to get better in Linux... damn closed specs!) and my work laptop (work won't allow me to use a Linux based Cisco VPN client). Fortunately, Cygwin's X server has made life very nice for me on both of those systems.
Too bad there are plenty of Americans who don't fit the stereotype but that the rest of the world is ignorant of. Unfortunately we tend to get shouted down by the idiot majority who define the "Ugly American" stereotype (Which is well deserved by about 90% of the population I might add). These are the idiots who voted for Bush thinking that he would actually make their lives better. When he hasn't yet... (No the tax cuts aren't going to help you unless you are rich) The idiots who think that great American television is reality TV, The Sopranos, Sex and the City and Talk TV. When there are plenty of really great programs on PBS that are much more cultured and truly representative of true American artistry. The same goes for movies. Excluding the blockbuster adventure films that come out every summer and the rest of the crap (Films that aspire to be "Jackass the Movie"), what's left? Pretty much nothing. Meanwhile, great films like Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle, Jim Jarmusch's Down By Law, Stanger then Paradise and Mytery Train are virtually unknown to the majority of the populace. Why is this?
There are two factors that cause this problem: 1. The unjustifiable and blind acceptance of greed in the form of an overzealous desire to make lots of money. 2. Fear of appearing different by making it obvious that you ARE inteligent. It's uncool to be smart right now. Look at Eminem, Kidd Rock and X-Tina. They exemplify the worst of American types and yet they are adored by many as heroes.
If you analyze our society as a whole, you will see that stupidity is rewarded and intelligence is, well... embarassing. I think the best example I've seen of this in a long time was when I saw two programs featuring "Robot Wars" on television. One was the original British programme that was hosted by the guy from Red Dwarf and the other was the American version (which I could only stomach for about five minutes). In the British version, the two teams were interviewed after the match. Both teams displayed an exhuberance about the fact that they got to build some cool machines and show them on the programme. The losing team even politely congratulated the victors with no apparent venom. The American version was very different. It exposed that horrid underside of American culture that still proves we are STILL teenagers in an adult world. The winners were still trash talking (The horrible "WE RULE!!!" syndrome that seems to afflict so many of my countrymen) the losing team and both sides were less interested in why they were there (to show off some cool robot desings) than just being on TV.
The saddest thing about the fact that Americans seem so driven to be "Winnners" and to "RULE" and to always side with the "winning team" is that this is the behavior of the insecure teenaged loser. There is no sincerity in the bonds that those types of teens make with peers. Think back to Jr. High/Middle School or whatever it's called in your part of the world. Remember those wormy little losers who nobody popular liked but they would always try to glom on to anyone who WAS popular and would make fun of anyone who was considered a loser? They actually expected to get in with the popular kids by making fun of losers even though they didn't stand a chance. Hehe... well, that seems to perfectly describe most Americans perfectly. Think about this. All those farmers and factory workers who voted for George W. Bush are just like this wormy kid. They think that if they side with the percieved winners (The neocons), that they will somehow be carried up to that magical place where the streets are paved with gold and wealth abounds. These are the same people who buy into the latenight ads on television that say that "YOU TOO CAN BE RICH!" by owning your own turnkey business. Only to be disappointed when the president cuts funding for farms or does something that affects their factory jobs or pay... or that get rich quick scheme put them in debt. Sadly, this is the typical American. The one who is suckere
Dont' like Eddie Izzard myself. Too mod. But I do like Peter Cook and oh what's his name... hrmmmm... the guy with the curly hair on Jonathan Creek. Oh well. Not all of us yanks are that limited.
OK. Think of it this way. Let's say the GNU project didn't exist and none of the GNU tools was available. You wouldn't have much of an OS with just the Linux kernel, would you? Sure, someone probably would have written what was needed, but it would have taken a lot longer for GNU/Linux to get where it is today. And chances are that most of those additions probably wouldn't have been made under as license like the GPL. They would probably all be BSD. Given that... what would the point be then? Linux (the kernel) is just a kernel with nothing that does anything in userspace for the average user. All that userspace stuff is handled by GNU and XFree86. Given all this, that means that if you want to refer to a distribution as something more acurate than just "Linux", it should probably really be "Linux featuring GNU and XFree86". The distinction MUST be made because none of these projects would be particularly useful in a free software context all by themselves. Before the Linux kernel, GNU was not praticularly relevant to anyone but the most technical user. Before GNOME, X was not particularly useful to anyone but the most technical user. Without X or GNU, the Linux kernel would be nothing more than something interesting to watch boot until it hit init. That's the way it is.
t's ignorant bile. Corporations are legal entities without which there could be no modern society, goods or services.
Who modded THE parent quoted above up as insightful? If corporations were accountable to their customers, there COULD be modern society, goods and services as well as ethical and moral reponsibility to the consumer. It's all about balancing priorities. Profit is well below human life in the gran scheme of things. I'm sorry, but if a corporation is going to have that much influence over my life, they'd damn well better have my interests in mind. That's why I only buy from companies that I can trust and respect. There ARE alternatives to the bigger businesses out there. If you share my views, then patronize them.
The signifigance in pointing out that Linux (the kernel) and GNU/Linux (The "OS") are separate would deflate anything that SCO had to say against any company that distributes a GNU/Linux distribution. If IBM did indeed do what SCO claims, then the issue only exists between IBM and SCO. (Much like the RIAA going after people sharing songs rather than downloading songs) The other point here is that even if SCO wins against the Linux kernel, the rest of what companies like Redhat and SuSE put into their distributions is still exempt. All they would have to do is either replace the Linux kernel with something else or work feverishly to replace the few lines of SCO code with something else therefore making Linux exempt as well. There really is a distinction between the kernel and the rest of the GNU software that make up a general impression of a Unix-like operating system. The GNU software was coded by different people and they started from scratch. It is completely untouched by SCOs claims. SCO however wants to blur this distinction to make those who are less knowledgable about the distinction fearful, uncertain and doubtful about GNU/Linux distributions. In a way, this whole SCO thing is actually quite useful in driving RMS's statements about GNU/Linux home. Kudos to RMS and the FSF for thinking this far ahead.
It took me a few years to understand that difference between Linux and GNU/Linux, but now that I do, I can see how beneficial it really is. As much as I hate politics and would rather avoid them, there are times when you can't. This is one of those times. In a perfect world without scoundrels like Microsoft and SCO, it wouldn't need to be this way, but it's not a perfect world. Embrace the GNU GPL. It guarantees YOU freedoms.
Just like people paying top dollar for Tommy Hillfucker T-shirts that cost a few cents at most to make? I guess it's not about who you know, but who you blow these days?
Wow. You are one of the first pretty reasonable folks I've seen post on Slashdot in a while with regard to the MCSE. I pretty much did the same thing you did. In fact I rarely even bring up the fact that I'm an MCSE because it really isn't worth anything other than the resume boosting you mention.
My personal take on the whole thing is that knowing a little bit about each OS and it's related applications is essential if you want to be relevant in the industry. You can specialize in one (I currently specialize in Unix), but you shouldn't close yourself off to other products regardless of how you feel about their licensing, the company that makes it, etc...
The point that he made was that copyright, patent and trademark ARE important. They just get thrown under the umbrella of IP which makes any reasonable disucssion of those topics impossible since they are vastly different. His suggestion was that they should be discussed independently with no mention of the cloudy subject of IP.
Is this anything like Lintilla's "Crisis Inducer" in the Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy radio series? After all, nothing but encroaching deafness could lead one to write such great musical masterpieces like Beethoven, correct?;P
As soon as I see a reviewer or a book talk about 'overcoming old-world ideas,' it enters the garbage pile.
You've just described the Oracle book I was reading yesterday. That book gave me bad vibes from the get go and now I have further evidence to prove I was right. The whole first chapter is just about the history of the company! How useful is that?! There really needs to be a big void between IT and businessmen. We really can't relate to each other's line of work.
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If the US public could be misled by Bush and his administration to go to war with Iraq, then I would hazard to guess that the judge in the SCO suit (if well picked) could easily be misled to side with SCO on this suit.
At the moment, most Americans don't seem to be sharp enough to figure out when they are being hoodwinked. I would say that this extends to our judicial system as well as the general public. When the judge hears the word "Linux", he's going to believe what SCO says:
Linux = Anything Unix-like that isn't SCO Unixware (including the GNU tools and XFree86)
Not:
Linux = The Linux Kernel
Keep it in minds folks. We'd all better start making the distinctions VERY clear.
And you may as well crawl under one... ;P
America is once again getting fucked in the ass by big business. "It's bad unless it's OUR spam." That's Microsoft's take on it. If you think abuot this logically, you will realize that this all goes back to the problem of corporations being given the same "rights" as individuals. Corporations need to be accountable to the consumer. NOT the shareholders, NOT the CEOs, NOT the suits. Every time I see this kind of thing, it makes me feel that America has been so subverted by the corporate propaganda that things will never get better.
It's time to wake up people! Corporations DON'T care about your well being or mine. They only care about profit. If they have to poison the water, brainwash the public and abuse technology, that' just fine to them. But it's NOT fine to us. Do you honestly like bending over and lubing up everytime a corporation does this to you? Apparently a lot of Americans do. Fucking WAKE UP PEOPLE!!!!!! Don't you see what they've done to this country?! It's no longer "America, home of the free and the brave", it's now "America home of the bought and paid for".
If you agree with the sentiment (as I do), then mod the parent up. If I had mod points today, I would mod it up, but this is the least I can do.
Looks like you were correct. You were modded down. Seems like this isn't a safe subject to discuss. I still don't understand why though. I've brought it up a few times myself (not that I really care about either side of the argument) and each time was modded down. It doesn't make any sense. To me, it just seems that both parties are acting like vengeful geeks in the truest sense of the word.
Not sure why you "foed" me. But no matter. I always friend everyone. You know what they say: "Keep your friend close. Keep your enemies closer"
I would guess that you are either one of the Pro-Windows/Anti-Linux crowd. Or one of the pro-business/capitalist crowd. Or one of the anti GNU/Linux or anti-GPL crowd. If you aren't, then please enlighten me as to your reason for making me a foe.
Either way, welcome to my friend's list.
You made some pretty good points here. Open source and Linux have always been ahead of the Windows crowd (maybe with the possible exceptions of games and professional audio-visual software). However, I think the reason this tends to escape them is that they can't use a lot of the functionality you mentioned until it's simple enough to use. While the OpenSSH tunnels might be very useful (I use them everyday myself), they are beyond the realm of most Windows users. Until you have a point and click interface to do this kind of thing, that functionality is pretty much useless (and non-existent) to them. The example you gave about fast user switching bears this out. You and I (and many other *nix heads here) know that you can launch multiple X servers to provide different users with desktops on the same system. But, the only way to switch around between them is to press Ctrl-Alt F7, F8, etc... In Windows XP the user just Clicks "Log Out" and then selects "Switch User" after which they are presented with a GDM-like interfact to select one of the other logged in users or go back to the account they just "Logged out" of. For the average user this is much more friendly than remembering to press Ctrl-Alt-Fn. It's not like it's hard to remember the key combo, but the average user is VERY LAZY.
Microsoft has found ways to take a lot of the same features and say "Hey look! This is new! We came up with it!" because they can rely on the fact that joe user isn't going to know that it's not new. The only thing that might ostensibly be new about it is that Microsoft might have made it somewhat "idiot proof". That's what we Linux coders need to keep in mind. The public is lazy.
Bill Gates just doesn't "get it" does he? Microsoft doesn't push ANY new technology in terms of actual innovation. Now if he means "push" in the sense of a drug dealer, then he's being truthful.
Can you mount an ISO image with a plain vanilla instllation of Windows XP? No. But you can with the BSDs and GNU/Linux. It's built into most ditros as support for the ISO filesystem and loop devices.
Can you set up encrypted secure tunnels for specific ports, execute remote commands (encrypted again), and also transport remote desktop displays over the same mecahnism that does the tunnels and remote commands in a default installation of Windows XP? No. But you can with any OS that supports OpenSSH. Again, most distros come with this by default.
All the Windows XP wankers have been railing on about the Fast User Switching that Windows XP introduced. But you know what? We *nix users have had this feature for over a decade. Both at the command prompt and within the GUI by way of virtual terminals. I can have many users logged into their own desktops on the same machine with apps running and easily switch between them using Ctrl-Alt-F(n). Nothing new to us.
And as far as Remote desktop goes, *nix users have again had this since the earliest versions of X. Again over a decade. X was designed with this in mind from the start. And with Xnest, you can actually run a different user's desktop within your desktop on the same machine. You CAN'T do that with Windows XP.
Microsoft just got the "RUNAS" command. Hmmm... anyone familiar with su? And now with GUI alternatives, *nix has innovated much farther than Windows has. And still kept security job one.
What about the idea of not using drive letters and instead mounting to a folder. Windows 2000 introduced this. But Linux, the BSDs and other *nixes have had this from the very start.
VNC? Still came from the *nix world first since it is based completely on X. And we've had it longer than Microsoft.
What about things like esd (The Enlightened Sound server)? While you can share a remote desktop in Windows and even share the sound associate with it, you can't easily reconfig it to FOLLOW you from one machine to another one. I use VNC and esd together so I can log into a running desktop at any machine on my network and the audio will follow me. Again, how long has Open Source had this? for almost a decade (the lifespan of esd). Does Windows have this feature? No.
Need I point out anything else? I'm sorry, but the innovations all seem to come from open source first and then Windows plays catch up 5-10 years later.
The point is that bootable CDs as nice as they are should become a thing of the past. If anything, OSes should load over a LAN by now. (The network is the computer...)
Just work out a user friendly way to install from the internet. Older versions of RedHat used to install via FTP. Gentoo installs over the net. What "Joe Average" needs is a happy medium:
-They pop open IE in Windows and go to the "Install Linux" web site and start the procedure.
-It brings down a self extracting tar.bz2 archive which expands to %TEMP%.
-It also creates another file that stores the actual location of %TEMP% in Windowspeak.
-It then executes a Windows based binary that will format a floppy, a bootable ZIP or Jaz disk or burn a CD-R/RW as bootable medium.
-It also unpacks file that contains an ext2 filesystem to %TEMP%
When the floppy, Zip, Jaz or CD-R/RW are complete, the user is instructed to reboot with the new boot disk. When they do, they are first presented with a partition manager that allows them to resize their Windows partition and set up space for the Linux installation. Then the file with the ext2 filesystem is mounted and the real GUI based installation begins pulling the distro from the internet. (Network configuration, X with framebuffer support, etc... has already completed in the background)
Obviously this would only be suitable for people with high bandwidth, but that could be solved too... The installer should allow the user to pause the installation and shutdown so that they can do it in phases. When they reboot, the installer would see the partially installed system and allow them to continue from where the log indicates that the install left off.
CDs need to go away as an installation medium.
That's the point of this article though: Where is the full featured, free, open source groupware package for Linux? There SHOULD really be one. Of course I think if anyone did such a thing, they should make it web based so that it can be centralized. I've looked at HORDE and IMP, but haven't had the time to try them yet. However, they seem promising.
I think this all comes down to how you use your computer. I use Linux and it satisfies every need I have in the way of computers. I use my computers for things that I consider useful or fun. Some of that is the typical stuff that any user would do: Web, E-mail, and Instant Messaging. Then there is stuff I do that the mid-level user would do: File Serving, Web Serving, Mail Serving, DNS, DHCP, WINS, NT Logon Server. And I do stuff that the advanced user would consider "fun": Streaming Audio (ogg with ssh enctyrption), Remote X Application serving (with ssh encryption), ssh tunneling of my internal web server, quake 3 server, etc... And finally, what I think a lot of Linux users use Linux for: Automation. I have custom scripts that run through my MP3/Ogg store and update multiple playlists (All songs, Sleep List, Wake List, Classical List, Jazz List, Electronica List, etc...) I also have scripts that I've set up that turn lights on and off througout the house with X10 modules. The lights are turned on at times that correspond with the seasons (earlier in the winter and later in the summer). Yet another script will launch the appropriate audio player for my Wake list to wake me up in the morning. During the week, it's set to wake me at 6:30AM and on the weekends at 10:00AM. I have yet another script that does nightly backups for me (have to back up those gigs of source code, videos and audio). I also play some games. I play a good amount of games under Linux using either WINE (for newer Windows Games), DOSBox (for some of my old DOS based favorites) and of course some native Linux games as well as the simpler time killers like SameGNOME, Skoosh, XBill, the Marble Madness clone Trackballs, and many others. I use the GIMP (Photoshop 3 Clone. Can't speak for newer versions since I stopped buying Photoshop at version 3) for a lot of web graphic creation and image editing along with Sodipodi (An awesome vector graphics package). And I use DIA for flowcharts and diagraming my network here at home.
For someone like me, Windows lacks a lot in many of these ways in terms of being able to make your own stuff. You can't script with the same level of flexibility in a plain vanilla Windows system as you can in a plain vanilla RedHat system. Windows doesn't come with a decent image editor that allows for layers, conversions of multiple formats, scripting and filters. Windows doesn't have much more than Solitaire when it comes to system default games. RedHat (via GNOME) has many more. Windows also doesn't come with an Office Suite like the latest versions of RedHat does. And Windows just plain sucks for most custom uses unless you spend a lot of money on applications and coding tools. At that point, Windows is just not that cost effective.
To make Windows bearable, these days I install Cygwin on every Windows box I have to deal with. The only thing keeping the lst two Windows boxes on my home network are pro audio software/hardware (Hopefully Ardour will amount to something although pro audio hardware support still needs to get better in Linux... damn closed specs!) and my work laptop (work won't allow me to use a Linux based Cisco VPN client). Fortunately, Cygwin's X server has made life very nice for me on both of those systems.
Too bad there are plenty of Americans who don't fit the stereotype but that the rest of the world is ignorant of. Unfortunately we tend to get shouted down by the idiot majority who define the "Ugly American" stereotype (Which is well deserved by about 90% of the population I might add). These are the idiots who voted for Bush thinking that he would actually make their lives better. When he hasn't yet... (No the tax cuts aren't going to help you unless you are rich) The idiots who think that great American television is reality TV, The Sopranos, Sex and the City and Talk TV. When there are plenty of really great programs on PBS that are much more cultured and truly representative of true American artistry. The same goes for movies. Excluding the blockbuster adventure films that come out every summer and the rest of the crap (Films that aspire to be "Jackass the Movie"), what's left? Pretty much nothing. Meanwhile, great films like Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle, Jim Jarmusch's Down By Law, Stanger then Paradise and Mytery Train are virtually unknown to the majority of the populace. Why is this?
There are two factors that cause this problem:
1. The unjustifiable and blind acceptance of greed in the form of an overzealous desire to make lots of money.
2. Fear of appearing different by making it obvious that you ARE inteligent. It's uncool to be smart right now. Look at Eminem, Kidd Rock and X-Tina. They exemplify the worst of American types and yet they are adored by many as heroes.
If you analyze our society as a whole, you will see that stupidity is rewarded and intelligence is, well... embarassing. I think the best example I've seen of this in a long time was when I saw two programs featuring "Robot Wars" on television. One was the original British programme that was hosted by the guy from Red Dwarf and the other was the American version (which I could only stomach for about five minutes). In the British version, the two teams were interviewed after the match. Both teams displayed an exhuberance about the fact that they got to build some cool machines and show them on the programme. The losing team even politely congratulated the victors with no apparent venom. The American version was very different. It exposed that horrid underside of American culture that still proves we are STILL teenagers in an adult world. The winners were still trash talking (The horrible "WE RULE!!!" syndrome that seems to afflict so many of my countrymen) the losing team and both sides were less interested in why they were there (to show off some cool robot desings) than just being on TV.
The saddest thing about the fact that Americans seem so driven to be "Winnners" and to "RULE" and to always side with the "winning team" is that this is the behavior of the insecure teenaged loser. There is no sincerity in the bonds that those types of teens make with peers. Think back to Jr. High/Middle School or whatever it's called in your part of the world. Remember those wormy little losers who nobody popular liked but they would always try to glom on to anyone who WAS popular and would make fun of anyone who was considered a loser? They actually expected to get in with the popular kids by making fun of losers even though they didn't stand a chance. Hehe... well, that seems to perfectly describe most Americans perfectly. Think about this. All those farmers and factory workers who voted for George W. Bush are just like this wormy kid. They think that if they side with the percieved winners (The neocons), that they will somehow be carried up to that magical place where the streets are paved with gold and wealth abounds. These are the same people who buy into the latenight ads on television that say that "YOU TOO CAN BE RICH!" by owning your own turnkey business. Only to be disappointed when the president cuts funding for farms or does something that affects their factory jobs or pay... or that get rich quick scheme put them in debt. Sadly, this is the typical American. The one who is suckere
Dont' like Eddie Izzard myself. Too mod. But I do like Peter Cook and oh what's his name... hrmmmm... the guy with the curly hair on Jonathan Creek. Oh well. Not all of us yanks are that limited.
OK. Think of it this way. Let's say the GNU project didn't exist and none of the GNU tools was available. You wouldn't have much of an OS with just the Linux kernel, would you? Sure, someone probably would have written what was needed, but it would have taken a lot longer for GNU/Linux to get where it is today. And chances are that most of those additions probably wouldn't have been made under as license like the GPL. They would probably all be BSD. Given that... what would the point be then? Linux (the kernel) is just a kernel with nothing that does anything in userspace for the average user. All that userspace stuff is handled by GNU and XFree86. Given all this, that means that if you want to refer to a distribution as something more acurate than just "Linux", it should probably really be "Linux featuring GNU and XFree86". The distinction MUST be made because none of these projects would be particularly useful in a free software context all by themselves. Before the Linux kernel, GNU was not praticularly relevant to anyone but the most technical user. Before GNOME, X was not particularly useful to anyone but the most technical user. Without X or GNU, the Linux kernel would be nothing more than something interesting to watch boot until it hit init. That's the way it is.
Who modded THE parent quoted above up as insightful? If corporations were accountable to their customers, there COULD be modern society, goods and services as well as ethical and moral reponsibility to the consumer. It's all about balancing priorities. Profit is well below human life in the gran scheme of things. I'm sorry, but if a corporation is going to have that much influence over my life, they'd damn well better have my interests in mind. That's why I only buy from companies that I can trust and respect. There ARE alternatives to the bigger businesses out there. If you share my views, then patronize them.
This isn't new. I've seen many trolls do it before. When I am in a trolling mood myself, I've even done it to pretty good effect.
The signifigance in pointing out that Linux (the kernel) and GNU/Linux (The "OS") are separate would deflate anything that SCO had to say against any company that distributes a GNU/Linux distribution. If IBM did indeed do what SCO claims, then the issue only exists between IBM and SCO. (Much like the RIAA going after people sharing songs rather than downloading songs) The other point here is that even if SCO wins against the Linux kernel, the rest of what companies like Redhat and SuSE put into their distributions is still exempt. All they would have to do is either replace the Linux kernel with something else or work feverishly to replace the few lines of SCO code with something else therefore making Linux exempt as well. There really is a distinction between the kernel and the rest of the GNU software that make up a general impression of a Unix-like operating system. The GNU software was coded by different people and they started from scratch. It is completely untouched by SCOs claims. SCO however wants to blur this distinction to make those who are less knowledgable about the distinction fearful, uncertain and doubtful about GNU/Linux distributions. In a way, this whole SCO thing is actually quite useful in driving RMS's statements about GNU/Linux home. Kudos to RMS and the FSF for thinking this far ahead.
It took me a few years to understand that difference between Linux and GNU/Linux, but now that I do, I can see how beneficial it really is. As much as I hate politics and would rather avoid them, there are times when you can't. This is one of those times. In a perfect world without scoundrels like Microsoft and SCO, it wouldn't need to be this way, but it's not a perfect world. Embrace the GNU GPL. It guarantees YOU freedoms.
Ummm... that's really:
To lack the lack of regard.
Just like people paying top dollar for Tommy Hillfucker T-shirts that cost a few cents at most to make? I guess it's not about who you know, but who you blow these days?
Welcome to my friends list L. VeGas
Wow. You are one of the first pretty reasonable folks I've seen post on Slashdot in a while with regard to the MCSE. I pretty much did the same thing you did. In fact I rarely even bring up the fact that I'm an MCSE because it really isn't worth anything other than the resume boosting you mention.
My personal take on the whole thing is that knowing a little bit about each OS and it's related applications is essential if you want to be relevant in the industry. You can specialize in one (I currently specialize in Unix), but you shouldn't close yourself off to other products regardless of how you feel about their licensing, the company that makes it, etc...
The point that he made was that copyright, patent and trademark ARE important. They just get thrown under the umbrella of IP which makes any reasonable disucssion of those topics impossible since they are vastly different. His suggestion was that they should be discussed independently with no mention of the cloudy subject of IP.
Is this anything like Lintilla's "Crisis Inducer" in the Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy radio series? After all, nothing but encroaching deafness could lead one to write such great musical masterpieces like Beethoven, correct? ;P
You've just described the Oracle book I was reading yesterday. That book gave me bad vibes from the get go and now I have further evidence to prove I was right. The whole first chapter is just about the history of the company! How useful is that?! There really needs to be a big void between IT and businessmen. We really can't relate to each other's line of work.
Thinking along those lines, the book should probably be run through this first. God I hate "business speak".