Grr. I hate it when people remark about one generation or another has it easier.
So what exactly is "this generation" - are you referring to the book's authors, the Gen Xers? Or are you referring to the generation after them, today's teenagers now finishing high school and college? (Of which I am one) Or are you referring to people like some of my friends in high school?
I don't think any one generation has it easier than the other - the challenges simply change. Look at a friend of mine in his freshman year of high school; you wouldn't believe the backlash from Columbine. He is honestly afraid to speak his opinions about literature, religion, etc. and that's a fate far worse than any I can imagine; to not be able to speak his mind freely among his peers. I swear, walking in his school feels like reading 1984 again.
I think of Waiting for Godot (excuse me if don't get the quotation exactly right) - "Let us not speak of any generation then, for they are no happier or sadder than any before. Let us not speak of it at all.... It is true the population has increased."
It's kinda obvious, IMHO, when somebody misspells enterprise and waxes about non-programmed features, and states things that are clearly not true.
And, I would disagree that Windows is nothing more than a GUI on top of DOS; from a programming standpoint, DOS provided nothing more than file access functions and the most basic OS-related routines (who here still remembers INT 24h...) whereas Windows provides an abstraction layer - which you refer to as shit, but if you'd rather do VESA and BIOS calls and direct screen writes rather than GDI calls, for example, you need mental help. Much less some of the other things that Windows APIs do very nicely for us coders, such as TWAIN. Or using Windows sound routines rather than manipulating a DSP manually, and god help you if it's not 100% Sound Blaster compatible. For the coders, as much as we hate the instabilities and quirky behavior of Windows OSes, it's better than DOS by a long shot.
Granted, I'd rather be working in Linux on that I prefer its architecture over Windows, but that's me. For normal users you MIGHT be correct, if you don't do anything in Windows that you couldn't do before in DOS with a bit of elbow grease. For coders, Windows is still far and away better than DOS. (IMHO not as good as X though.)
but still very cool. Anybody know if this thing plugs into a standard port (USB, PS/2, etc.) or requires a separate card interface? CPU loads?
It would probably ruin my quake playing though - I'm a fast twitch player and it would make me get disoriented. My eyes will move way faster than my ears will let me. =)
Does anyone know what exact patent is the basis for this lawsuit, since it wasn't mentioned in the news posting? According to the press release it sounds pretty shallow and all-encompassing.
To be honest, it sounds like a revisit of the lawsuit against 3D Realms a few years back by somebody holding a patent on animated sprites moving on a computer screen. =P
Their TMS4000. 700MHz. ONE WATT. About a quarter of the transistors/logic gates of a P3.
For those not watching, Crusoe processors are long-word processing systems that load the whole of various instruction sets (x86, etc.) in software. Designed with mobility foremost, leading to low power and low heat output, targeted towards clients rather than server platforms.
More interesting is the idea (mentioned briefly by the monkey on stage) of Crusoe's software adjusting its performance and configuration to software. I drooool.
I think LinuxOne's massive IPO proves that the industry is already fanatic over anything with Linux on the name. But it's a good point anyways, especially with the squatting.
Has anyone considered using the/. effect against any squatters on linux-related domains? =oD
Maybe you haven't thought about this. That bit extends to more than just domain names. Linus has the ability to selectively choose who and who does not get the ability to use the term "Linux" (TM) in trademarked names of companies, products, titles, etc. While I personally would trust Linus' decision on said issue, it still automatically worries me. God knows what would have happened if other companies often in the press (M$, Nintendo, Apple, etc.) started doing the same thing.
One more thought - what about parody or comic site names?
"Our understanding of their position is that we cannot have an outright auction of domain names that contain the word Linux, and that those legitimate Linux consultancies or programming shops that are interested in any of our domain names that incorporate Linux® must approach Mr. Torvalds et al to make sure that the domain name is worthy to be granted a license..."
I'm sorry - that bit right there gives me shivers, plain and simple. This is, quite honestly, the first lawyerly bit surrounding Linux, GNU, or the GPL that has honest-to-god worried or scared me.
It's neither good or bad. It's good to see that people aren't scared about protecting the good name of Linux. It's bad because it makes Linux-using folks look like karma whoring fiends who are rabid about the.com industry - and that some people can have Linux in their name regardless of their value to the community (diverse ranges such as LinuxOne and LinuxToday) and some cannot. Who knows what might have been done with the names, positive or negative. And while I understand that Linus does have the trademark, was there any other reason besides trademark enforcement to block sales?
I get a sort of queasy feeling about it - there wasn't much to be gained by blocking them, and we might have gotten some bad repute as a result.
Here at University of Portland we have 10BaseT in the rooms also (I think there's 100 in a few spots, but not everywhere). At least in my res hall, though, performance is not exactly what we had hoped. My roommate and I can barely manage 100K / sec, it takes 10 or 15 minutes at times to get one 600MB backup from his machine to mine for burning.
The latency outside is also horrific; I have yet to see a ping below 300 to anywhere outside UP, and 500 to 600 is the norm for most of the day. To be perfectly honest, when I want to play any net games, I run a good old-fashioned phone line to my modem and play from my local ISP over 33.6, where I can at least get 150-180 to my favorite servers.
Also weird because last year, people were capable of sending files over ICQ in the 1000-1500 KB/sec range to UW, so something's changed bigtime.
Not me. It doesn't change anything - Gates just puts a memo on Ballmer's desk to sign for legal matters, before he does it anyways. Gates is still for all intents and purposes in charge of the company, since you know Ballmer won't contradict him. (Unless it'll prevent a breakup.)
More likely, this lets Gates be not quite as uberscrewed by the impending breakup (is anyone else moaning?), just partly screwed.
That is precisely, almost verbatim from the FAQ, what a Usenet Death Penalty IS.
Maybe you should read up on the subject before you attack; it saves you face, and reduces my stress level, thus reducing the amount of coffee I drink at work, thus increasing my life expectancy and saving my company money! WOW! *grin*
If you look at the history of the UDPs, we have yet to find a UDP that has lasted longer than five days.
We hurt millions of users for five days to remove billions of crossposted spam from millions of Usenet servers - and also as retaliation for @Home's little alias of abuse@home.com to/dev/null.
Have you ever run a Usenet server? Do you have any idea of the pure amount of GARBAGE from spam and advertisements that will suck up entire T3s 24/7? If you want a better analogy, this is little different than when Iraq invaded Kuwait and didn't respond to demands to stop; most of NATO got together and pounded on them.
Given the choice of massive spamming or blocking cable users from direct Usenet access (they can still use Deja) for a few days, I pick the block. Who knows, @Home might even clean up their act before the UDP goes into effect. Historically UDPs are usually released before the deadline for that very reason.
So it means that unless @Home cleans up their act, starting Tuesday of next week at 17:00pm, all participating Usenet servers (i.e. most ones out there) will dump all messages from @Home users into the bitbucket, not posting them.
@Home and all clients going through @Home Usenet servers become gagged until the upper echelon management finds out and orders an immediate change of policy on spam.
A UDP requires the participation of other USENET servers, but many, in fact most, servers are set up to automatically honor all UDPs by default.
How is this different from e-mail, HTTP, FTP, Gopher, etc?
Even then it is not 100% likely that you will be able to get that group that you want.
What newsgroups are carried are set by the system administrator for your ISP, and most wellbehaved ones will add ones if you ask for it. (Although you may want to rethink about asking for sex, warez binaries groups, etc.)
There are also some public servs that carry as many groups as possible, or cater to specific areas (binaries, portman, grits, etc.)
What people need to do is to simply delete the spam and just look at what's there. How hard is it to just delete it?
USENET postings cannot be deleted. With USENET, one person posts a message, and that message is then duplicated bit by bit to every server in existence that carries the newsgroup. So:
1) No centralized source to delete it from. 2) It can always be found on some odd server. 3) Same ethical/philosophical reasons that Slashdot doesn't allow moderators to delete postings.
Is it's presence that bad that it actually causes people to react like it was a cockroach or maybe a demon?
The headers must be downloaded when you spam off line; it takes time to download a million spam messages. Much less people like me who have to let my machine grab full text for me to read later.
It's a lot like e-mail spam, except messier and in such huge quantities as to compare CyberPromo (anyone remember Stanford?) to a landfill the size of Texas.
UUNet attempted to do the same thing two years ago when they got UDP'd. Their lawyers, and the government also, told them that they had no case.
We aren't attempting to destroy @Home, we're simply not carrying their packets on USENET - which we aren't obligated to do anyways. They could only sue us if we had a contract requiring us to carry any and all spam from them.
UUNet thought they were all that with lawyers too, and when they tried, the number of people supporting the UDP nearly doubled in anger.
I managed to get #1 with an Antec full-tower jobbie - you used to even pick those up at Fry's, the only case I've ever seen there that DIDN'T suck. Even came with a reliable 300W supply. Has slide-out sides and rear, removable front bays. I put in a dust filter myself, and replaced the intake fan with a gamma blower. I have yet to put in cable routing tubes, but perhaps that's something to do this weekend =) The USB, joystick, etc. ports in front can be done with a spare front bay faceplate and a few seconds with a high-speed rotary tool, if you don't mind some cables running from the ATX mobo slots outside back into the case. I already have cables running like that for a digitizer (which has a front bay mounting slot, thank god), so it would work fine for me.
LOL on the tax people - damn straight. Good points. Somebody moderate this up even a bit farther.
And it's ironic that every seems to think of having social skills or not having social skills. The fact that certain people don't get out as much doesn't mean they are utterly without social graces, or even shy. One of the more infamous "zone-out" hardcore programmers out there is John Carmack, whose work is absolutely stunning, but he manages to get by well enough to go out, not only have a g/f but get married, and respond to posters on/. every once in a while.
And besides... after seeing people around me, I often debate whether I want to be considered part of our current society anyways. Silence is compliance is association. Not that I have much choice; but I think there's a considerable difference between _social skills_ (which I define as being able to handle oneself with at least some grace in public situations and capable of communicating well with other people) and _social participation_ (idolizing outrageous and uncontrolled movie/music/sports stars, the world of brand names and fitting into the cliches).
IMHO it depends on how you take Illiad's humor. I see his work as not laughing at the less skilled computer users out there, more laughing at just computer life in general. I have yet to see a strip that has openly said, "This person is a moron for asking this question" unless it was something completely obvious - and don't go off on what's obvious and not, I know, I did tech support for my last ISP for two years.
Honestly, I don't think UF pokes fun at all at the users; I think it pokes fun at the staff, and makes light of their reactions. I actually have been called with some of the questions in UF, and I can say that I had much more.. err.. animated.. reactions once the customer was off the phone. There are people out there that will make you scream, wince, and have you swearing at the end of each day you will quit tomorrow, and then come in the next day to do it all over again.
And who said at the beginning of all this that having a bit of fun about it prevented us from helping people? Back at my last job I spent hours working through relatively simple TCP/IP problems on the phone, and then I laughed my head off. It's a sort of release from having to slow down our own thoughts and ways of doing things, to do things another way and another pace - without it I think all ISP workers would have started getting even with customers. (Another thing the UF characters have yet to do.)
I think people just need to calm down. It's a comic! Laugh, or don't laugh. It's not really offensive from my standpoint, and doesn't warrant an attack on any artist's principles.
Cuz that's the whole history of most GNU software and the Linux kernel - if it doesn't work for you (either ideologically, technically, or ethically), you either hack on it till it does, or do it yourself.
From my own point of view, I don't blame them - I for one think GNOME is bloated. KDE's not as bad, but it's starting to suffer from code bloat as well. WindowMaker is good, but it still suffers in a few areas, Enlightenment too, and as far as LiteStep goes I simply don't have the need for all that customization and plugging in. Here's my point: it's not about what's right, or who's better at coding, or what's popular, or (and goddamn I HATE this) what's best for the Community. When something works for me, I use it. So, I use a fudged-together unreleased hybrid WM at home, and if it's not available on the go I use FVWM and forget the desktop bit.
Personally, I'm not that much into customization either. I like my desktop pretty and all, but I'll settle for a few window colors and a desktop background, and some icons that start up emacs and gdb and gimp. I don't need, or want, any more. Flame me for being a minimalist, but IMHO the less there is, the less there is to break or run slow. I'm one of the few who like having clock cycles unused on my machine.
While I can't exactly agree with cheese's phrasing of the matter, the previous posting does have merit, and should not have been marked a troll, nor should have his efforts at pointing out the moderator's error been marked down as well. Especially if it was the same moderator.
Situations like this are exactly why moderation, and in turn meta-moderation, are sorely needed at Slashdot, if anyone is still arguing that matter.
Being arrogant and ignorant (absolutely no argument there, look at my roommate) has nothing to do with the "trip to the top", or evolution as a whole. Our race is physically weak and inelegant as a species, with little going for it. Our only strength lies in an oversized brain cavity, with which we develop tools, first for self-defense, then for self-enlightenment.
Man is certainly disgusting. Just by ourselves we're not a pretty sight. Overall, modern society is driven today by consumerism, and it's no new big news flash that our material possessions are going to come at a cost. The consumer paradigm (particularly in the US) will have to change radically before anything will change, and I would suggest that perhaps less pessimism is needed. There is a point where the Earth will not heal. We're already there. But I think we still have a chance to keep it going.
From my religious standpoint, the brother's keeper is the guideline. Consumerism is coming at a cost that does not follow such a guideline, and perhaps therein lies the problem you see in today's society. But creating life, IMHO, is another story. God gave us our talents. Why not use them, as long as we do so with each other and the rest of the world as our first priority in doing so? The opposition from world religion will come from the fact that our ability to create life eliminates the idea that God is the sole creator of life. But if you're not willing to challenge tradition for advancement, it's not worth fighting for. What about Galileo?
Rest assured, if God doesn't want us creating life on our own, I have a feeling that He would let us know. =-) Otherwise, I say, look first to our brothers and then to the future with them.
I have a question for the Palm/Handspring users out there since I don't currently own one... just exactly how much pressure has Handspring and the memstick-ready clones been putting on Palm? And is the Handspring COMPLETELY code-compatible? IMO it'd be better if prices were dropping instead of capabilities rising (or maybe both?) - as much as I'd love to have a Palm, $599 isn't worth it.
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Grr. I hate it when people remark about one generation or another has it easier.
... It is true the population has increased."
So what exactly is "this generation" - are you referring to the book's authors, the Gen Xers? Or are you referring to the generation after them, today's teenagers now finishing high school and college? (Of which I am one) Or are you referring to people like some of my friends in high school?
I don't think any one generation has it easier than the other - the challenges simply change. Look at a friend of mine in his freshman year of high school; you wouldn't believe the backlash from Columbine. He is honestly afraid to speak his opinions about literature, religion, etc. and that's a fate far worse than any I can imagine; to not be able to speak his mind freely among his peers. I swear, walking in his school feels like reading 1984 again.
I think of Waiting for Godot (excuse me if don't get the quotation exactly right) - "Let us not speak of any generation then, for they are no happier or sadder than any before. Let us not speak of it at all.
Good god, man, it was a joke.
It's kinda obvious, IMHO, when somebody misspells enterprise and waxes about non-programmed features, and states things that are clearly not true.
And, I would disagree that Windows is nothing more than a GUI on top of DOS; from a programming standpoint, DOS provided nothing more than file access functions and the most basic OS-related routines (who here still remembers INT 24h...) whereas Windows provides an abstraction layer - which you refer to as shit, but if you'd rather do VESA and BIOS calls and direct screen writes rather than GDI calls, for example, you need mental help. Much less some of the other things that Windows APIs do very nicely for us coders, such as TWAIN. Or using Windows sound routines rather than manipulating a DSP manually, and god help you if it's not 100% Sound Blaster compatible. For the coders, as much as we hate the instabilities and quirky behavior of Windows OSes, it's better than DOS by a long shot.
Granted, I'd rather be working in Linux on that I prefer its architecture over Windows, but that's me. For normal users you MIGHT be correct, if you don't do anything in Windows that you couldn't do before in DOS with a bit of elbow grease. For coders, Windows is still far and away better than DOS. (IMHO not as good as X though.)
but still very cool. Anybody know if this thing plugs into a standard port (USB, PS/2, etc.) or requires a separate card interface? CPU loads?
It would probably ruin my quake playing though - I'm a fast twitch player and it would make me get disoriented. My eyes will move way faster than my ears will let me. =)
Does anyone know what exact patent is the basis for this lawsuit, since it wasn't mentioned in the news posting? According to the press release it sounds pretty shallow and all-encompassing.
To be honest, it sounds like a revisit of the lawsuit against 3D Realms a few years back by somebody holding a patent on animated sprites moving on a computer screen. =P
Their TMS4000. 700MHz. ONE WATT. About a quarter of the transistors/logic gates of a P3.
For those not watching, Crusoe processors are long-word processing systems that load the whole of various instruction sets (x86, etc.) in software. Designed with mobility foremost, leading to low power and low heat output, targeted towards clients rather than server platforms.
More interesting is the idea (mentioned briefly by the monkey on stage) of Crusoe's software adjusting its performance and configuration to software. I drooool.
I think LinuxOne's massive IPO proves that the industry is already fanatic over anything with Linux on the name. But it's a good point anyways, especially with the squatting.
/. effect against any squatters on linux-related domains? =oD
Has anyone considered using the
Maybe you haven't thought about this. That bit extends to more than just domain names. Linus has the ability to selectively choose who and who does not get the ability to use the term "Linux" (TM) in trademarked names of companies, products, titles, etc. While I personally would trust Linus' decision on said issue, it still automatically worries me. God knows what would have happened if other companies often in the press (M$, Nintendo, Apple, etc.) started doing the same thing.
One more thought - what about parody or comic site names?
"Our understanding of their position is that we cannot have an outright auction of domain names that contain the word Linux, and that those legitimate Linux consultancies or programming shops that are interested in any of our domain names that incorporate Linux® must approach Mr. Torvalds et al to make sure that the domain name is worthy to be granted a license..."
I'm sorry - that bit right there gives me shivers, plain and simple. This is, quite honestly, the first lawyerly bit surrounding Linux, GNU, or the GPL that has honest-to-god worried or scared me.
=-I
It's neither good or bad. It's good to see that people aren't scared about protecting the good name of Linux. It's bad because it makes Linux-using folks look like karma whoring fiends who are rabid about the .com industry - and that some people can have Linux in their name regardless of their value to the community (diverse ranges such as LinuxOne and LinuxToday) and some cannot. Who knows what might have been done with the names, positive or negative. And while I understand that Linus does have the trademark, was there any other reason besides trademark enforcement to block sales?
I get a sort of queasy feeling about it - there wasn't much to be gained by blocking them, and we might have gotten some bad repute as a result.
Like it's so difficult for you to click once, read the article, and realize that there is in fact no link to the EBay posting in the CNET story.
If you could fit the facts way up in there next to your head, I'd tell you to get them. Get a life, indeed.
*shudder* I'm jealous.
Here at University of Portland we have 10BaseT in the rooms also (I think there's 100 in a few spots, but not everywhere). At least in my res hall, though, performance is not exactly what we had hoped. My roommate and I can barely manage 100K / sec, it takes 10 or 15 minutes at times to get one 600MB backup from his machine to mine for burning.
The latency outside is also horrific; I have yet to see a ping below 300 to anywhere outside UP, and 500 to 600 is the norm for most of the day. To be perfectly honest, when I want to play any net games, I run a good old-fashioned phone line to my modem and play from my local ISP over 33.6, where I can at least get 150-180 to my favorite servers.
Also weird because last year, people were capable of sending files over ICQ in the 1000-1500 KB/sec range to UW, so something's changed bigtime.
Not me. It doesn't change anything - Gates just puts a memo on Ballmer's desk to sign for legal matters, before he does it anyways. Gates is still for all intents and purposes in charge of the company, since you know Ballmer won't contradict him. (Unless it'll prevent a breakup.)
More likely, this lets Gates be not quite as uberscrewed by the impending breakup (is anyone else moaning?), just partly screwed.
That is precisely, almost verbatim from the FAQ, what a Usenet Death Penalty IS.
Maybe you should read up on the subject before you attack; it saves you face, and reduces my stress level, thus reducing the amount of coffee I drink at work, thus increasing my life expectancy and saving my company money! WOW! *grin*
If you look at the history of the UDPs, we have yet to find a UDP that has lasted longer than five days.
/dev/null.
We hurt millions of users for five days to remove billions of crossposted spam from millions of Usenet servers - and also as retaliation for @Home's little alias of abuse@home.com to
Have you ever run a Usenet server? Do you have any idea of the pure amount of GARBAGE from spam and advertisements that will suck up entire T3s 24/7? If you want a better analogy, this is little different than when Iraq invaded Kuwait and didn't respond to demands to stop; most of NATO got together and pounded on them.
Given the choice of massive spamming or blocking cable users from direct Usenet access (they can still use Deja) for a few days, I pick the block. Who knows, @Home might even clean up their act before the UDP goes into effect. Historically UDPs are usually released before the deadline for that very reason.
So it means that unless @Home cleans up their act, starting Tuesday of next week at 17:00pm, all participating Usenet servers (i.e. most ones out there) will dump all messages from @Home users into the bitbucket, not posting them.
@Home and all clients going through @Home Usenet servers become gagged until the upper echelon management finds out and orders an immediate change of policy on spam.
A UDP requires the participation of other USENET servers, but many, in fact most, servers are set up to automatically honor all UDPs by default.
Anyone who wants to post must obtain a client.
How is this different from e-mail, HTTP, FTP, Gopher, etc?
Even then it is not 100% likely that you will be able to get that group that you want.
What newsgroups are carried are set by the system administrator for your ISP, and most wellbehaved ones will add ones if you ask for it. (Although you may want to rethink about asking for sex, warez binaries groups, etc.)
There are also some public servs that carry as many groups as possible, or cater to specific areas (binaries, portman, grits, etc.)
What people need to do is to simply delete the spam and just look at what's there. How hard is it to just delete it?
USENET postings cannot be deleted. With USENET, one person posts a message, and that message is then duplicated bit by bit to every server in existence that carries the newsgroup. So:
1) No centralized source to delete it from.
2) It can always be found on some odd server.
3) Same ethical/philosophical reasons that Slashdot doesn't allow moderators to delete postings.
Is it's presence that bad that it actually causes people to react like it was a cockroach or maybe a demon?
The headers must be downloaded when you spam off line; it takes time to download a million spam messages. Much less people like me who have to let my machine grab full text for me to read later.
It's a lot like e-mail spam, except messier and in such huge quantities as to compare CyberPromo (anyone remember Stanford?) to a landfill the size of Texas.
UUNet attempted to do the same thing two years ago when they got UDP'd. Their lawyers, and the government also, told them that they had no case.
We aren't attempting to destroy @Home, we're simply not carrying their packets on USENET - which we aren't obligated to do anyways. They could only sue us if we had a contract requiring us to carry any and all spam from them.
UUNet thought they were all that with lawyers too, and when they tried, the number of people supporting the UDP nearly doubled in anger.
I managed to get #1 with an Antec full-tower jobbie - you used to even pick those up at Fry's, the only case I've ever seen there that DIDN'T suck. Even came with a reliable 300W supply. Has slide-out sides and rear, removable front bays. I put in a dust filter myself, and replaced the intake fan with a gamma blower. I have yet to put in cable routing tubes, but perhaps that's something to do this weekend =) The USB, joystick, etc. ports in front can be done with a spare front bay faceplate and a few seconds with a high-speed rotary tool, if you don't mind some cables running from the ATX mobo slots outside back into the case. I already have cables running like that for a digitizer (which has a front bay mounting slot, thank god), so it would work fine for me.
The original three movies (SW, ESB, ROTJ) are episodes 4, 5, and 6. TPM is episode 1. The forthcoming prequels are 2 and 3.
There were scripts for 7, 8, and 9, but at this rate Lucas will knock off before he finishes them.
LOL on the tax people - damn straight. Good points. Somebody moderate this up even a bit farther.
/. every once in a while.
/.'s Fort Knox.
And it's ironic that every seems to think of having social skills or not having social skills. The fact that certain people don't get out as much doesn't mean they are utterly without social graces, or even shy. One of the more infamous "zone-out" hardcore programmers out there is John Carmack, whose work is absolutely stunning, but he manages to get by well enough to go out, not only have a g/f but get married, and respond to posters on
And besides... after seeing people around me, I often debate whether I want to be considered part of our current society anyways. Silence is compliance is association. Not that I have much choice; but I think there's a considerable difference between _social skills_ (which I define as being able to handle oneself with at least some grace in public situations and capable of communicating well with other people) and _social participation_ (idolizing outrageous and uncontrolled movie/music/sports stars, the world of brand names and fitting into the cliches).
Just two more pennies into
IMHO it depends on how you take Illiad's humor. I see his work as not laughing at the less skilled computer users out there, more laughing at just computer life in general. I have yet to see a strip that has openly said, "This person is a moron for asking this question" unless it was something completely obvious - and don't go off on what's obvious and not, I know, I did tech support for my last ISP for two years.
Honestly, I don't think UF pokes fun at all at the users; I think it pokes fun at the staff, and makes light of their reactions. I actually have been called with some of the questions in UF, and I can say that I had much more.. err.. animated.. reactions once the customer was off the phone. There are people out there that will make you scream, wince, and have you swearing at the end of each day you will quit tomorrow, and then come in the next day to do it all over again.
And who said at the beginning of all this that having a bit of fun about it prevented us from helping people? Back at my last job I spent hours working through relatively simple TCP/IP problems on the phone, and then I laughed my head off. It's a sort of release from having to slow down our own thoughts and ways of doing things, to do things another way and another pace - without it I think all ISP workers would have started getting even with customers. (Another thing the UF characters have yet to do.)
I think people just need to calm down. It's a comic! Laugh, or don't laugh. It's not really offensive from my standpoint, and doesn't warrant an attack on any artist's principles.
Cuz that's the whole history of most GNU software and the Linux kernel - if it doesn't work for you (either ideologically, technically, or ethically), you either hack on it till it does, or do it yourself.
From my own point of view, I don't blame them - I for one think GNOME is bloated. KDE's not as bad, but it's starting to suffer from code bloat as well. WindowMaker is good, but it still suffers in a few areas, Enlightenment too, and as far as LiteStep goes I simply don't have the need for all that customization and plugging in. Here's my point: it's not about what's right, or who's better at coding, or what's popular, or (and goddamn I HATE this) what's best for the Community. When something works for me, I use it. So, I use a fudged-together unreleased hybrid WM at home, and if it's not available on the go I use FVWM and forget the desktop bit.
Personally, I'm not that much into customization either. I like my desktop pretty and all, but I'll settle for a few window colors and a desktop background, and some icons that start up emacs and gdb and gimp. I don't need, or want, any more. Flame me for being a minimalist, but IMHO the less there is, the less there is to break or run slow. I'm one of the few who like having clock cycles unused on my machine.
-Ryan Myers (borisian@planetquake.com)
While I can't exactly agree with cheese's phrasing of the matter, the previous posting does have merit, and should not have been marked a troll, nor should have his efforts at pointing out the moderator's error been marked down as well. Especially if it was the same moderator.
Situations like this are exactly why moderation, and in turn meta-moderation, are sorely needed at Slashdot, if anyone is still arguing that matter.
Being arrogant and ignorant (absolutely no argument there, look at my roommate) has nothing to do with the "trip to the top", or evolution as a whole. Our race is physically weak and inelegant as a species, with little going for it. Our only strength lies in an oversized brain cavity, with which we develop tools, first for self-defense, then for self-enlightenment.
Man is certainly disgusting. Just by ourselves we're not a pretty sight. Overall, modern society is driven today by consumerism, and it's no new big news flash that our material possessions are going to come at a cost. The consumer paradigm (particularly in the US) will have to change radically before anything will change, and I would suggest that perhaps less pessimism is needed. There is a point where the Earth will not heal. We're already there. But I think we still have a chance to keep it going.
From my religious standpoint, the brother's keeper is the guideline. Consumerism is coming at a cost that does not follow such a guideline, and perhaps therein lies the problem you see in today's society. But creating life, IMHO, is another story. God gave us our talents. Why not use them, as long as we do so with each other and the rest of the world as our first priority in doing so? The opposition from world religion will come from the fact that our ability to create life eliminates the idea that God is the sole creator of life. But if you're not willing to challenge tradition for advancement, it's not worth fighting for. What about Galileo?
Rest assured, if God doesn't want us creating life on our own, I have a feeling that He would let us know. =-) Otherwise, I say, look first to our brothers and then to the future with them.
I have a question for the Palm/Handspring users out there since I don't currently own one... just exactly how much pressure has Handspring and the memstick-ready clones been putting on Palm? And is the Handspring COMPLETELY code-compatible? IMO it'd be better if prices were dropping instead of capabilities rising (or maybe both?) - as much as I'd love to have a Palm, $599 isn't worth it.
Upcoming... palms with tactile feedback?