I agree, he deserves the prize. He stopped Sarah Palin from becoming vice president.
The amount of damage at home and abroad that woman could have done with that much power is frightening. The rest of the world breathed a sigh of relief when Obama won the election.
There's a 4th category: People who are happy to install drivers, but expect them to work.
I've recently been trying to get a Broadcom NIC working on a Red Hat 5 installation. It didn't work out of the box - fine, I'm happy with that. Windows didn't recognise it either. But when I got the Windows driver on that system, it "just worked." After downloading and compiling about 4 different versions of the Linux driver, all of which claimed to support my kernel version, the only one that actually gave me an eth0 in my ifconfig listing would hard lock the system as soon as I tried to ping anything on my LAN.
Funny you should mention the "pre-[Windows]95 command prompt" actually. Until I started using Linux a couple of years ago, that was the last time I'd ever needed to use a command prompt for anything.
Says a lot about Linux IMO.
Viruses/trojans run with regular user permissions wouldn't need a password to do malicious things with users' data. As a home desktop user, I couldn't give a flying fuck if a virus wiped out/bin, it's my personal data that I care about.
With linux, you whip up a little script that runs jhead -autorot and convert -resize.
No, you whip up a little script. The kinds of user casual desktop user targeted by Vista and OSX does not.
Perhaps if there were lots of little good quality easy to find/install/use apps for Linux, it would take off more. Like the iPhone app store, but repo based and free.
Want a program to rotate all your images? There's an app for that. And you don't need to touch the command line to do it.
No that question is relevant. First you assert "he" (Bill Gates) is personally responsible for the for installing these apps (presumably you think he designed and coded them all himself too). Then you go on to say that actually it doesn't matter, lets bash Bill anyway.
I don't approve of invasion of privacy or illegal business practices any more than you do, and I agree with the principal that software should not be designed to spy on people. But if you actually read TFA you might have noticed it didn't have a great deal to do with any of that. What I take issue with is that you, like so many Slashdotters, take any article remotely linked to Microsoft/Gates as an opportunity to spin a cheap swipe at them. They guy is trying to get businesses engaged in projects that help the poor in ways that are mutually beneficial, hence sustainable. Yes it's idealistic, and he's not the first person to have such ideas, but it's good that someone as high profile as him is saying these things. I think it's pretty lame that people like you just take this as an opportunity to dig up past mistakes, pet peeves and post some off-topic rant on why you hate Bill.
looking for profits in the process rather than as charity may be an object of interest as well as concern
I think that's just being pragmatic though. Much like adopting technologies and practices to deal with climate change, businesses and governments aren't actually going to do anything unless they can find a profitable way to do it, or at least break even.
To see that things have gotten so bad in the world that all I see here is cynicism and trolling...
Totally agree, all this bitching is appalling. It only serves to demonstrate how self-centred these people really are. Doesn't really matter what Bill does for charitable causes - he could develop, manufacture and give away a cure for AIDS all for free, and the posts on this site would still be dominated by cynical bitching whiners digging up the past or finding some other reason to complain e.g. "not the right kind of free."
What "ruined their chances" was not that they overlooked a memory leak, what ruined their chances was that they didn't know what they were doing.
Whereas code written by people who "know what they're doing" has zero bugs - ever. Right. And to assert that they didn't test their software is ludicrous.
Now if we can just get the game developers to write code which will run at acceptable FPS on mid- to low-end video hardware...
I have a 256MB Radeon 1950pro, 1.8GHz Core2 Duo, 2GB RAM. In terms of the current generation of PC hardware at the time of this game's release, that counts as mid-range. The Crysis demo looks and plays fantastic at 1680x1050 res on my system.
If you can produce a playable demo with the same level of fidelity in terms of visuals, interactive physics, AI, and level size and scope based on a moddable engine, that runs on low end hardware - I'm sure Crytek would love to hear from you. I bet there's an army of FOSS l33t coders all getting together right now to show Crytek how it's done. And in their spare time they beta test DNF.
Every discussion of Vista is FULL of astroturfers defending the OS, and they're always modded up. It's almost impossible to discuss its real flaws because of all the Microsoft-sponsored noise.
On the contrary, what with this site being Linux fanboy central, it's rather refreshing to find positive comment about a piece of Microsoft's software here, or at least one that acknowledges the good things rather than choosing to ignore them and focus exclusively on the bad. Of course, this being Slashdot, being trying to be objective about such things makes me a shill and a troll.
To me, the funniest thing about Vista's gadget system is that (still, in 2007!) when your resulotion gets changed (by a game, for example -- happens to me far more than once a day ) the gadgets in the lower and right-most portions of your screen get pushed up/left, and have to be moved back manually. For the love of god, people, anchor the things to the nearest edges.
Yeah I'd find that funny too, were it not for the fact that I spent nearly half an hour at work this morning trying to get Mandrake Linux to run my monitor at 1280x1024 @100Hz like it does in Windows, and (still, in 2007!) I found that to achieve this I have to open up xorg.conf and edit fucking mode lines. For the love of god, people, get your own house in order before you start complaining about other peoples'.
And if I really like YaST, can I run it on my Ubuntu machine? No? Why not? After all, it's just an app front end to all the same settings I have on my Ubuntu box as you do on your SuSE box, or your Gentoo box or whatever else.
"I would try to pool all the development into 1 distro to reduce duplication of so much effort."
I intend to release my own distro in a couple of months.
How do you plan on stopping me?
I wouldn't stop you, you go ahead.
Having one distro would act as a focus for the community and for the wider industry. Single relevant documentation sources, consistent locations for files, single package management system, single target for devs to test their apps/drivers against, and many other things could be standardised on. This would make Linux a more consistent target to develop for, test against, and provide technical support for, and to learn to administer, and use.
If you want to release your own distro and use that instead, the onus is on *you* to work around the complications caused by all the little differences. As it stands, that ball is in the user's court whether they like it or not.
You could sum up TFA in a single line: "Microsoft discusses future extensions to the DirectX API. The current generation of hardware won't support those."
How dare they! How dare they introduce some small incremental changes to their existing API! How dare they intend to improve the conformance of future DirectX compatible hardware and software, making it easier to develop for and test against the platform! The Slashdot community must unite at once and spin this breaking news as the unforgivable evil that it truly is!
Seriously though, not surprised at all, this is the kind of bullshit topic that's sadly all too typical of Slashdot.
Slashdot: Flamebait for suckers - it's the ad views that matter
Yet, people who bought TiVo's were unable to make full use of the freedoms that the GPL (as a Free software license) was supposed to guarantee them.
Does the GPL guarantee the right to change the software or the system? As I understand it, you can change the software, but you can't change the system, which is far enough imo. Once you've changed the code, it still says TiVo on the box, but it's not a TiVo any more. Seems much the same as the Firefox/Iceweasel issue to me.
TiVo presumably have other stakeholder concerns beyond the end user, such as content producers. I can't believe they spent development time and money implementing DRM features just to piss people off. It's entirely right that they should be able to decide how their system is used; after all TiVo will still end up being held responsible if any legal shit hits the fan regarding modified versions of the product being used in ways that they, or their stakeholders, did not intend. If you don't like it buy a different one, or take their GPLed code and build your own.
Others felt it was violating the spirit (not the letter) of the license that the code was provided to TiVo under.
Along similar lines to his religious zealot accusations, this idea of the "spirit" not the "letter" of the license is something Linus has complained before. There was a slashdot article about it a few weeks back I think. People should fully expect businesses to use licenses on their merit, as they are written. Inferring what the "spirit" is, is rather open to interpretation. I can't imagine it stands up well in court.
Joe User doesn't want to spend 2 or 3 days just trying to get his OS installed
Yeah Joe User doesn't want to and I can't blame him - neither do I and I'm a software engineer. Sixteen years of Linux development, essentially a clone of a system with thirty years of heritage; I damn well don't expect to spend days getting things to work that I have come to take for granted for years as working out of the box on other systems (which Linux fanbois would like me to believe are inferior).
Joe User can't be bothered with adapting to a whole slew of apps, that 'sort-of-look-but-aren't-really-the-same' as their old ones
For Linux to succeed as a home and business desktop, the applications available for it need to set the standard, they need to be the killer apps that people want to use. As it is the Linux community seems to be playing perpetual catch-up with Microsoft and Apple. I read so many times about how OSS development is more productive, innovative etc., but I don't see it on the desktop. Why has it taken so long for the Linux home/business desktop to get where it is today?
So again, I ask: what about Dell makes them "not very good computers"? I can see "not the best" and "not speed demons" but "not very good" makes you sound like you've not touched a Dell since 1992; for most people doing most things computers are used for, I think they're great. And have a great price tag to boot.
Agreed.
Unfortunately many people can't tell the difference between the statements: "X is not the best," and "X is not very good," or more usually "X entirely sucks by any criteria you choose to name." This kind of ignorance appears frequently on Slashdot, so I wouldn't expect you to get a rational answer to your question.
Slashdot Mirror
...you need to start with the haystack.
I agree, he deserves the prize. He stopped Sarah Palin from becoming vice president.
The amount of damage at home and abroad that woman could have done with that much power is frightening. The rest of the world breathed a sigh of relief when Obama won the election.
There's a 4th category: People who are happy to install drivers, but expect them to work.
I've recently been trying to get a Broadcom NIC working on a Red Hat 5 installation. It didn't work out of the box - fine, I'm happy with that. Windows didn't recognise it either. But when I got the Windows driver on that system, it "just worked." After downloading and compiling about 4 different versions of the Linux driver, all of which claimed to support my kernel version, the only one that actually gave me an eth0 in my ifconfig listing would hard lock the system as soon as I tried to ping anything on my LAN.
Linux is not ready for prime time.
Such as what? ...
/facepalm
If you have to ask, you'll never know.
Seriously. After so many, many, many years of of "Linux desktop" development...
Yay for choice!
Funny you should mention the "pre-[Windows]95 command prompt" actually. Until I started using Linux a couple of years ago, that was the last time I'd ever needed to use a command prompt for anything. Says a lot about Linux IMO.
Do better.
Viruses/trojans run with regular user permissions wouldn't need a password to do malicious things with users' data. As a home desktop user, I couldn't give a flying fuck if a virus wiped out /bin, it's my personal data that I care about.
With linux, you whip up a little script that runs jhead -autorot and convert -resize.
No, you whip up a little script. The kinds of user casual desktop user targeted by Vista and OSX does not. Perhaps if there were lots of little good quality easy to find/install/use apps for Linux, it would take off more. Like the iPhone app store, but repo based and free. Want a program to rotate all your images? There's an app for that. And you don't need to touch the command line to do it.
No that question is relevant. First you assert "he" (Bill Gates) is personally responsible for the for installing these apps (presumably you think he designed and coded them all himself too). Then you go on to say that actually it doesn't matter, lets bash Bill anyway.
I don't approve of invasion of privacy or illegal business practices any more than you do, and I agree with the principal that software should not be designed to spy on people. But if you actually read TFA you might have noticed it didn't have a great deal to do with any of that. What I take issue with is that you, like so many Slashdotters, take any article remotely linked to Microsoft/Gates as an opportunity to spin a cheap swipe at them. They guy is trying to get businesses engaged in projects that help the poor in ways that are mutually beneficial, hence sustainable. Yes it's idealistic, and he's not the first person to have such ideas, but it's good that someone as high profile as him is saying these things. I think it's pretty lame that people like you just take this as an opportunity to dig up past mistakes, pet peeves and post some off-topic rant on why you hate Bill.
Who installed those programs?
I think that's just being pragmatic though. Much like adopting technologies and practices to deal with climate change, businesses and governments aren't actually going to do anything unless they can find a profitable way to do it, or at least break even.
Totally agree, all this bitching is appalling. It only serves to demonstrate how self-centred these people really are. Doesn't really matter what Bill does for charitable causes - he could develop, manufacture and give away a cure for AIDS all for free, and the posts on this site would still be dominated by cynical bitching whiners digging up the past or finding some other reason to complain e.g. "not the right kind of free."
Whereas code written by people who "know what they're doing" has zero bugs - ever. Right. And to assert that they didn't test their software is ludicrous.
I have a 256MB Radeon 1950pro, 1.8GHz Core2 Duo, 2GB RAM. In terms of the current generation of PC hardware at the time of this game's release, that counts as mid-range. The Crysis demo looks and plays fantastic at 1680x1050 res on my system.
If you can produce a playable demo with the same level of fidelity in terms of visuals, interactive physics, AI, and level size and scope based on a moddable engine, that runs on low end hardware - I'm sure Crytek would love to hear from you. I bet there's an army of FOSS l33t coders all getting together right now to show Crytek how it's done. And in their spare time they beta test DNF.
On the contrary, what with this site being Linux fanboy central, it's rather refreshing to find positive comment about a piece of Microsoft's software here, or at least one that acknowledges the good things rather than choosing to ignore them and focus exclusively on the bad. Of course, this being Slashdot, being trying to be objective about such things makes me a shill and a troll.
Yeah I'd find that funny too, were it not for the fact that I spent nearly half an hour at work this morning trying to get Mandrake Linux to run my monitor at 1280x1024 @100Hz like it does in Windows, and (still, in 2007!) I found that to achieve this I have to open up xorg.conf and edit fucking mode lines. For the love of god, people, get your own house in order before you start complaining about other peoples'.
And if I really like YaST, can I run it on my Ubuntu machine? No? Why not? After all, it's just an app front end to all the same settings I have on my Ubuntu box as you do on your SuSE box, or your Gentoo box or whatever else.
I intend to release my own distro in a couple of months.
How do you plan on stopping me?
I wouldn't stop you, you go ahead.
Having one distro would act as a focus for the community and for the wider industry. Single relevant documentation sources, consistent locations for files, single package management system, single target for devs to test their apps/drivers against, and many other things could be standardised on. This would make Linux a more consistent target to develop for, test against, and provide technical support for, and to learn to administer, and use.
If you want to release your own distro and use that instead, the onus is on *you* to work around the complications caused by all the little differences. As it stands, that ball is in the user's court whether they like it or not.
How dare they! How dare they introduce some small incremental changes to their existing API! How dare they intend to improve the conformance of future DirectX compatible hardware and software, making it easier to develop for and test against the platform! The Slashdot community must unite at once and spin this breaking news as the unforgivable evil that it truly is!
Seriously though, not surprised at all, this is the kind of bullshit topic that's sadly all too typical of Slashdot.
Slashdot: Flamebait for suckers - it's the ad views that matter
Impending doom for the crew? All out of ideas? Engaging story lines dried up years ago?
Make up a new particle!
Does the GPL guarantee the right to change the software or the system? As I understand it, you can change the software, but you can't change the system, which is far enough imo. Once you've changed the code, it still says TiVo on the box, but it's not a TiVo any more. Seems much the same as the Firefox/Iceweasel issue to me.
TiVo presumably have other stakeholder concerns beyond the end user, such as content producers. I can't believe they spent development time and money implementing DRM features just to piss people off. It's entirely right that they should be able to decide how their system is used; after all TiVo will still end up being held responsible if any legal shit hits the fan regarding modified versions of the product being used in ways that they, or their stakeholders, did not intend. If you don't like it buy a different one, or take their GPLed code and build your own.
Others felt it was violating the spirit (not the letter) of the license that the code was provided to TiVo under.Along similar lines to his religious zealot accusations, this idea of the "spirit" not the "letter" of the license is something Linus has complained before. There was a slashdot article about it a few weeks back I think. People should fully expect businesses to use licenses on their merit, as they are written. Inferring what the "spirit" is, is rather open to interpretation. I can't imagine it stands up well in court.
Yeah Joe User doesn't want to and I can't blame him - neither do I and I'm a software engineer. Sixteen years of Linux development, essentially a clone of a system with thirty years of heritage; I damn well don't expect to spend days getting things to work that I have come to take for granted for years as working out of the box on other systems (which Linux fanbois would like me to believe are inferior).
Joe User can't be bothered with adapting to a whole slew of apps, that 'sort-of-look-but-aren't-really-the-same' as their old ones
For Linux to succeed as a home and business desktop, the applications available for it need to set the standard, they need to be the killer apps that people want to use. As it is the Linux community seems to be playing perpetual catch-up with Microsoft and Apple. I read so many times about how OSS development is more productive, innovative etc., but I don't see it on the desktop. Why has it taken so long for the Linux home/business desktop to get where it is today?
Agreed.
Unfortunately many people can't tell the difference between the statements: "X is not the best," and "X is not very good," or more usually "X entirely sucks by any criteria you choose to name." This kind of ignorance appears frequently on Slashdot, so I wouldn't expect you to get a rational answer to your question.
Yeah it also has a device manager, but without the "management" factor.