Personally, on x86 I had far more problems with setting up gentoo (I have to compile a kernel during the installation? how fucked up is that?) than I ever had with using packages under mandrake (particularly when using easy urpmi.
I mean, different stroke for different folks, certainly. But gentoo's strenth is its' ability to squeeze 0.0008 percent more processing power out of your 2.4ghz computer; not ease of use or installation. That arena is where (imho) mandrake really shines.
First off, your original strawman was when MS does something which changes the competitive landscape, people say it's bad; but when the OSS movement does it, people say it's good. I proceeded to explain the difference.
To answer your inflammatory question; the person who got laid off doesn't give a shit about anything other than how he's going to get by (and rightly so); but the developer who could have been hired by IBM or Novell to fix/support the code might care wether the program is OSS or wether it's hidden behind MS's patent wall!
Funny how putting people out of work is only bad when MS does it. If a bunch of college kids do it in the name of 'free software' it's just peachy.
When MS does it, the tools they use to put people out of work with are hidden behind a wall of EULAs, patents and lawyers. When "college kids" (or professionals working in their spare time, or professionals working for a company such as IBM) do it, they release the product out into the community, where other people who are working are free to pick up on the source and either charge to customise it, or charge for support it. Of course, if that 'free software' is under the GNU License, it's perfectly ok to sell it.
So, to summarise; when MS puts people out of work with their products, only they benefit. When "free software" does it, the entire computing community benefits, as does the economy (eg, people working for Sun, IBM, Novell who work on OSS projects).
Price. Here, we must consider not simply the price tag of the initial investment, which, in the case of PHP, is obviously free, but also the implementation, maintenance, and debugging costs. In the case of PHP, you may invest in the Zend optimization engine. With ASP, however, you're investing from the very beginning,
and you're spending for add-on technologies--libraries for doing graphics manipulations, for instance. But, in the long term, PHP isn't going to press you to upgrade and collect more licensing fees. Everyone who has dealt with complex licensing also knows that companies spend time and money just ensuring they are compliant. Furthermore, you have a difference in response when getting bugs fixed. This, of course, translates to time, which translates to cost for overall development.
So...I have to pay for features that I can get from the competitor for free, I have to pay (my employees) to insure that I am paying what I need to (for a product wich offers comparable services as the competitor) and I get to continually be pressed to upgrade and give them more money in licensing fees.
[sarcasm]Gee whiz, mister; where do I sign up?[/sarcasm]
Ok, let's take your argument at face value, then. If we are to say that a corporation should not pay taxes by virtue of being a "pass-thru" entity, then they should not --for that exact reason-- benefit from grants or cash benefits.
As I said previously; you cannot have it both ways.
Do let's be consistent, shall we?
on
Dell CEO Tells All
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
ON THE OFFSHORING DEBATE "You can't be a global company and you can't operate in a trade environment and say, 'But all of the jobs are going to stay in our country.' "
Conversely, you cannot say "I want all of the tax breaks and government s ubsidies of a company that is giving Americans jobs" while at the same time cherry-picking your labor pool from the cheapest of third-world labor.
If you want to be a "global company"? Fine. Then relinquish your cushy benefits you get for supporting American interests.
I'm not sure if this counts or not. I volunteer at a treatment center which has a computer lab. They are running windows 98 and office 2000. I'm waiting for permission to bring in a stack of knoppix cds to use as an upgrade path (meaning, instead of shelling out $ for 15 XP licenses). If I get a green light, that will be 15 computers running OO.org--and, of course, Mozilla (which I'm planning on using during the pitch. you know "and, on top of everything else, the default browser is immune to IE security flaws")
There's only so many ways to re-invent the wheel, so many file systems you can write, so many OS's you can put up on sf.net.
I think that the open source community as a whole is -at least on an unconcious level- looking for the next challenge (coding wise, not legal-wise) and working on the interface may well be the best direction to go. Not just because of the growing userbase that you pointed out, but for the sake of exploring new problems (and maybe -just maybe- exploring new ideas as well).
Whenever I show someone who uses XP what linux has to offer that XP doesn't, I'm usually stumped. (explaining "better security" to a dial-up user who only checks their mail mostly results in blank stares).
This is something that, once on a knoppix cd, should make a lot of people think seriously about using linux.
SAO PAULO, Brazil (Reuters) - Brazil has butted heads with the United States this year on issues ranging from cotton subsidies to the war in Iraq.
But perhaps none of the battles has been so personal as the one being fought on the Internet.
Thousands of Brazilians have become devotees of Orkut (http://www.orkut.com), a popular new social-networking site from Web search leader Google Inc.
Orkut allows members to organize themselves into online communities of friends, and friends of friends, to discuss everything from chess to sandwiches.
But the rush of Brazilians to join Orkut and rival social networking sites has upset some online users, who complain of a proliferation of messages posted in Portuguese, Brazil's native tongue.
Some users have even started communities specifically for people to air their gripes on this issue.
The United States has at least 153 million Internet users, compared with Brazil's 20 million. Still, Orkut said Brazilians dominated its membership roster in June, outnumbering Americans for the first time.
The site says it has more than 769,000 members, making it one of the largest and most popular of its type on the Internet. About 23.5 percent of the users are from the United States, while another 41.2 percent are Brazilians.
Iranians are a distant third place at about 6 percent.
SELECTIVE MEMBERSHIP
Orkut, named after Google software engineer Orkut Buyukkokten, made its debut in January and is still in the testing stages. Part of its allure is its exclusivity -- one can only join at the invitation of another member.
"Orkut maps one's social prestige, and Brazilians are by nature gregarious," said Beth Saad, a professor at the University of Sao Paulo's School of Communications and Arts.
Although more than one-fourth of Brazilians live in poverty, those who can afford Internet access have become avid Web surfers.
In terms of time spent on the Internet, Brazilians edged out the United States in May for the second month in a row, according to Ibope/NetRatings. The market researcher estimates that Internet use for Brazilians averaged 13 hours and 51 minutes in May, eight minutes more than for Americans.
The number of Brazilian visitors to community sites and online diaries rose 14.6 percent to 3.5 million in May from January, Ibope/NetRatings said.
Tammy Soldaat, a Canadian, got a sample of Brazilian wrath recently when she posted a message asking whether her community site on body piercing should be exclusive to people who speak English.
Brazilian Orkut users quickly labeled her a "nazi" and "xenophobe."
"After that I understood why everyone is complaining about these people, why they're being called the 'plague of Orkut,"' she said in a site called "Crazy Brazilian Invasion."
John Gibbs of Mountain View, California, has founded a community called "So many Brazilians on Orkut."
"When the average Orkut user goes to look at community listings to see what's out there, he'll see a list populated with pretty much all Portuguese communities," Gibbs said. "This is highly frustrating since Orkut is not a Brazilian service."
But Mateus Reis, a publicist who lives in Sao Paulo, said users should be free to write what they want, in the language of their choosing.
"Since we can invite anyone we want at Orkut, and my friends are Brazilians, it doesn't make sense talking to them in English," Reis said in Portuguese. "I use the language I know."
His compatriot Pablo Miyazawa has a more moderate view.
"Brazilians have the right to create anything they want in any language they want," Miyazawa said. "The problem is to invade forums with specific languages and write in Portuguese. Brazilians are still learning how to behave in the Net."
AN INTERNET FORCE
The Brazilians' ardor for the Internet extends to other community-based sites, and Web ent
SAN JOSE, California (AP) -- A small company called Acacia Research Corp. went after some of the biggest names in broadcasting last month, suing nine companies for an estimated $100 million for allegedly violating its patent on streaming video.
That earned Acacia a spot on what the Electronic Frontier Foundation considers a top 10 list of intellectual property ignominy: patents the online civil liberties group is seeking to strike down as unwarranted and harmful to innovation.
"Good luck," said Paul Ryan, Acacia's chief executive. "Their chances are pretty remote."
Part fighting words. Part truth.
Only 614 of the nearly 7 million existing patents have been revoked, according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Some 3,927 patents have been narrowed since the agency began conducting re-examinations in 1981.
The hardest part for challengers is qualifying for a re-exam at all.
A challenger must find written evidence, called "prior art" in patent parlance, showing others developed the technology before the patent application was filed -- a formidable task that consumes a cottage industry of patent researchers and lawyers.
One-time startup BountyQuest set out in 2000 on such a quest. It wanted to debunk questionable patents by letting interested parties offer rewards of $10,000 or more for hard-to-find prior art. But there were few takers and the business failed.
The EFF is similarly relying on volunteers -- but without offering rewards. That's a surefire recipe for limited success, said Bradley Wright, a patent lawyer with Banner & Witcoff Ltd. "There are not a lot of people willing to spend free time to research for prior art."
Even when prior art is presented, re-exams are rare. The patent office held only 6,136 between the time the agency was authorized to do so in July 1981 and the end of March 2004, said Brigid Quinn, a patent office spokeswoman.
Intellectual property The Acacia patent the EFF objects to is on "the transmission of digital content via the Internet, cable, satellite and other means."
Another on its list, owned by Clear Channel Communications Inc., covers the distribution of digital recordings right after concerts.
"These companies are trying to claim a monopoly on the tools of free expression," said Jason Schultz, staff attorney at the foundation.
The group's list, chosen from 200 suggestions solicited through its Web site, focuses on patents it contends are being unfairly used to demand licensing fees from rivals or individuals.
Acacia and Clear Channel defend their patents and their right to seek royalties for intellectual property they say they spent millions to develop or buy.
Clear Channel bought the so-called Instant Live patent two months ago. It plans to charge an "extremely small" licensing fee -- $1 per event in some cases -- to artists who want to distribute freshly minted CDs after their concerts.
Acacia's digital media patents, granted to the founders of Greenwich Information Technologies in the 1990s, weren't enforced until Acacia bought them in 2001. Acacia has since secured dozens of licensing deals with companies ranging from adult entertainment sites to The Walt Disney Co. It sued the large cable and satellite providers for patent infringement last month.
Ryan rejected the foundation's charges of bullying. "We're not trying to restrict anyone's freedoms, but we'd like to be paid for the use of our technology," he said.
Schultz and fellow self-anointed patent-busters hope their crusade will raise awareness about concerns the patent office is issuing baseless patents because it lacks the resources to thoroughly investigate patent claims.
"It's too easy to get a patent and too expensive to defend," he said.
Greg Aharonian, publisher of the Internet Patent News Service and founder of www.bustpatents.com, questions the validity of a patent granted to Microsoft Corp. in June covering the use of the human body to transmit powe
By Paul Murphy www.LinuxInsider.com, Part of the ECT News Network 07/15/04 7:45 AM PT
I doubt it's possible to get a definitive answer, but as long as you don't take any of it too seriously you can have a lot of fun playing with proxies such as the average user's ability to read and write his or her native language.
My wife has a Dilbert cartoon on her office door in which one of the characters says: "If you have any trouble sounding condescending, find a Unix user to show you how." She's a Mac user and they were worse even before they all became Unix users too.
Or maybe not. But finding out whether the average Mac user really is smarter than the rest of us isn't so easy. Part of the problem is that even if you matched the admissions test results for a graduate school with individual PC or Mac preferences to discover a strong positive correlation, people would argue that the Mac users are exceptional for other reasons, that the tests don't measure anything relevant, and that it's unethical to do this in the first place. In fact, it's pretty clear that this topic is sufficiently emotionally loaded that you'd get shouted down by one side or another no matter how you did the research; and that's too bad because a clear answer one way or the other would be interesting.
I doubt it's possible to get a definitive answer, but as long as you don't take any of it too seriously you can have a lot of fun playing with proxies such as the average user's ability to read and write his or her native language. This isn't necessarily a reasonable measure of intelligence (mainly because intelligence has yet to be defined) but almost everyone agrees that a native English speaker's ability to write correct English correlates closely with that person's ability to think clearly. Measuring Written English In other words, if we knew that Mac users, as a group, were significantly better users of written English than PC users, then we'd have a presumptive basis for ranking the probable "smartness" of two people about whom we only know that one uses a Mac and the other a PC. So how can we do that? As it happens, Unix has been useful for text processing and analysis virtually from the beginning. In fact, the very first Unics application offered text processing support for the patent application process at Bell Labs -- in 1971 on a PDP-11 with 8 KB of RAM and a 500-KB disk.
By coincidence, Interleaf, the first GUI-based Document-processing package, was the first major commercial package available on Sun -- in 1983, well before Microsoft "invented" Windows and well ahead of the first significant third-party applications for the Apple Lisa. During the 12 years between those two applications, text processing and related research became one of the hallmarks of academic Unix use. By the early eighties therefore most Unix releases, whether BSD- or AT&T-derived, came with the AT&T writers workbench -- a collection of useful text processing utilities.
One of those was a thing called style. Style is somewhat out of style these days but is on many Linux "bonus" CDs and downloadable from gnu.org as part of the diction package. Style produces readability metrics on text. Forget for the moment what the ratings mean and look at the numbers. For comparison, here's what style says about the first 1,000 words in what is arguably the finest novel ever published in English: The Golden Bowl readability grades:
Kincaid: 18.2
ARI: 22.2
Coleman-Liau: 9.8
Flesch Index: 46.7
Fog Index: 21.7
Lix: 64.4 = higher than school year 11
SMOG-Grading: 13.5
Of course, that's Henry James at the top of his form.
Slashdot and Other Style For a more realistic and interesting baseline, I collected about 2,800 lines of Slashdot discussion contributions and ran style against them to get the following ratings summary along with a lot of detail data omitted here:
I'm not certain, but I'm going to guess that Nintendo was in a better posistion to experiment with the gameboy since it -as a platform- already had a long, successful run and they were in a posistion where they could retire it if the GBA failed.
I'm not as familiar with nokia so I may be wrong; but I don't think that they were in anywhere close to the same posistion.
So like, I'm looking at my slashdot one day and it's all like "-1" this and "+5 troll" that and I'm like WHAT THE FUCK?!?! So, like I talked to my friend bob and he syas I need to use Linux and I'm like OMFG! and ever since I made the switch, I feel like, I'm part of something that, like is like a a larger cummunity, OMFG!
The parent post is employing a common "troll" technique (one I've used myself, in fact) of calling attention to a legitimate post and accusing it of being a 'troll' or 'goatse link' in hopes of getting the parent modded down.
I visted the link in the grand parent post and, while longer and dryer than I wanted to deal with right now, is in no way 'trollish'.
That's what I suspect, at least. Call me paranoid, but I see one of two things happening:
1)taking a cue from hiter and microsoft, there will be strategically placed 'audience' members who will ask carefully phrased questions that either bring up why they should regulate VOIP or will give the speaker an opening to justify said regulation
2)They will do this for the sake of looking good, but then totally disregard it when it comes time to decide on the final legislation.
Either way, the next two steps are already written on the wall:
Slashdot Mirror
Personally, on x86 I had far more problems with setting up gentoo (I have to compile a kernel during the installation? how fucked up is that?) than I ever had with using packages under mandrake (particularly when using easy urpmi.
I mean, different stroke for different folks, certainly. But gentoo's strenth is its' ability to squeeze 0.0008 percent more processing power out of your 2.4ghz computer; not ease of use or installation. That arena is where (imho) mandrake really shines.
First off, your original strawman was when MS does something which changes the competitive landscape, people say it's bad; but when the OSS movement does it, people say it's good. I proceeded to explain the difference.
To answer your inflammatory question; the person who got laid off doesn't give a shit about anything other than how he's going to get by (and rightly so); but the developer who could have been hired by IBM or Novell to fix/support the code might care wether the program is OSS or wether it's hidden behind MS's patent wall!
When MS does it, the tools they use to put people out of work with are hidden behind a wall of EULAs, patents and lawyers. When "college kids" (or professionals working in their spare time, or professionals working for a company such as IBM) do it, they release the product out into the community, where other people who are working are free to pick up on the source and either charge to customise it, or charge for support it. Of course, if that 'free software' is under the GNU License, it's perfectly ok to sell it.
So, to summarise; when MS puts people out of work with their products, only they benefit. When "free software" does it, the entire computing community benefits, as does the economy (eg, people working for Sun, IBM, Novell who work on OSS projects).
So...I have to pay for features that I can get from the competitor for free, I have to pay (my employees) to insure that I am paying what I need to (for a product wich offers comparable services as the competitor) and I get to continually be pressed to upgrade and give them more money in licensing fees.
[sarcasm]Gee whiz, mister; where do I sign up?[/sarcasm]
[accosting J Random Pedestrian]"sir, I'd like to tell you about our"[gets punched and knocked to the pavement...again]
Ok, let's take your argument at face value, then. If we are to say that a corporation should not pay taxes by virtue of being a "pass-thru" entity, then they should not --for that exact reason-- benefit from grants or cash benefits.
As I said previously; you cannot have it both ways.
Conversely, you cannot say "I want all of the tax breaks and government s ubsidies of a company that is giving Americans jobs" while at the same time cherry-picking your labor pool from the cheapest of third-world labor.
If you want to be a "global company"? Fine. Then relinquish your cushy benefits you get for supporting American interests.
I'm not sure if this counts or not. I volunteer at a treatment center which has a computer lab. They are running windows 98 and office 2000. I'm waiting for permission to bring in a stack of knoppix cds to use as an upgrade path (meaning, instead of shelling out $ for 15 XP licenses). If I get a green light, that will be 15 computers running OO.org--and, of course, Mozilla (which I'm planning on using during the pitch. you know "and, on top of everything else, the default browser is immune to IE security flaws")
There's only so many ways to re-invent the wheel, so many file systems you can write, so many OS's you can put up on sf.net.
I think that the open source community as a whole is -at least on an unconcious level- looking for the next challenge (coding wise, not legal-wise) and working on the interface may well be the best direction to go. Not just because of the growing userbase that you pointed out, but for the sake of exploring new problems (and maybe -just maybe- exploring new ideas as well).
apparently google news no longer provides courtesy links.
:(
Off to -1 land for me again.
thanks to google news.
Whenever I show someone who uses XP what linux has to offer that XP doesn't, I'm usually stumped. (explaining "better security" to a dial-up user who only checks their mail mostly results in blank stares).
This is something that, once on a knoppix cd, should make a lot of people think seriously about using linux.
SAO PAULO, Brazil (Reuters) - Brazil has butted heads with the United States this year on issues ranging from cotton subsidies to the war in Iraq .
But perhaps none of the battles has been so personal as the one being fought on the Internet.
Thousands of Brazilians have become devotees of Orkut (http://www.orkut.com), a popular new social-networking site from Web search leader Google Inc.
Orkut allows members to organize themselves into online communities of friends, and friends of friends, to discuss everything from chess to sandwiches.
But the rush of Brazilians to join Orkut and rival social networking sites has upset some online users, who complain of a proliferation of messages posted in Portuguese, Brazil's native tongue.
Some users have even started communities specifically for people to air their gripes on this issue.
The United States has at least 153 million Internet users, compared with Brazil's 20 million. Still, Orkut said Brazilians dominated its membership roster in June, outnumbering Americans for the first time.
The site says it has more than 769,000 members, making it one of the largest and most popular of its type on the Internet. About 23.5 percent of the users are from the United States, while another 41.2 percent are Brazilians.
Iranians are a distant third place at about 6 percent.
SELECTIVE MEMBERSHIP
Orkut, named after Google software engineer Orkut Buyukkokten, made its debut in January and is still in the testing stages. Part of its allure is its exclusivity -- one can only join at the invitation of another member.
"Orkut maps one's social prestige, and Brazilians are by nature gregarious," said Beth Saad, a professor at the University of Sao Paulo's School of Communications and Arts.
Although more than one-fourth of Brazilians live in poverty, those who can afford Internet access have become avid Web surfers.
In terms of time spent on the Internet, Brazilians edged out the United States in May for the second month in a row, according to Ibope/NetRatings. The market researcher estimates that Internet use for Brazilians averaged 13 hours and 51 minutes in May, eight minutes more than for Americans.
The number of Brazilian visitors to community sites and online diaries rose 14.6 percent to 3.5 million in May from January, Ibope/NetRatings said.
Tammy Soldaat, a Canadian, got a sample of Brazilian wrath recently when she posted a message asking whether her community site on body piercing should be exclusive to people who speak English.
Brazilian Orkut users quickly labeled her a "nazi" and "xenophobe."
"After that I understood why everyone is complaining about these people, why they're being called the 'plague of Orkut,"' she said in a site called "Crazy Brazilian Invasion."
John Gibbs of Mountain View, California, has founded a community called "So many Brazilians on Orkut."
"When the average Orkut user goes to look at community listings to see what's out there, he'll see a list populated with pretty much all Portuguese communities," Gibbs said. "This is highly frustrating since Orkut is not a Brazilian service."
But Mateus Reis, a publicist who lives in Sao Paulo, said users should be free to write what they want, in the language of their choosing.
"Since we can invite anyone we want at Orkut, and my friends are Brazilians, it doesn't make sense talking to them in English," Reis said in Portuguese. "I use the language I know."
His compatriot Pablo Miyazawa has a more moderate view.
"Brazilians have the right to create anything they want in any language they want," Miyazawa said. "The problem is to invade forums with specific languages and write in Portuguese. Brazilians are still learning how to behave in the Net."
AN INTERNET FORCE
The Brazilians' ardor for the Internet extends to other community-based sites, and Web ent
SAN JOSE, California (AP) -- A small company called Acacia Research Corp. went after some of the biggest names in broadcasting last month, suing nine companies for an estimated $100 million for allegedly violating its patent on streaming video.
That earned Acacia a spot on what the Electronic Frontier Foundation considers a top 10 list of intellectual property ignominy: patents the online civil liberties group is seeking to strike down as unwarranted and harmful to innovation.
"Good luck," said Paul Ryan, Acacia's chief executive. "Their chances are pretty remote."
Part fighting words. Part truth.
Only 614 of the nearly 7 million existing patents have been revoked, according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Some 3,927 patents have been narrowed since the agency began conducting re-examinations in 1981.
The hardest part for challengers is qualifying for a re-exam at all.
A challenger must find written evidence, called "prior art" in patent parlance, showing others developed the technology before the patent application was filed -- a formidable task that consumes a cottage industry of patent researchers and lawyers.
One-time startup BountyQuest set out in 2000 on such a quest. It wanted to debunk questionable patents by letting interested parties offer rewards of $10,000 or more for hard-to-find prior art. But there were few takers and the business failed.
The EFF is similarly relying on volunteers -- but without offering rewards. That's a surefire recipe for limited success, said Bradley Wright, a patent lawyer with Banner & Witcoff Ltd. "There are not a lot of people willing to spend free time to research for prior art."
Even when prior art is presented, re-exams are rare. The patent office held only 6,136 between the time the agency was authorized to do so in July 1981 and the end of March 2004, said Brigid Quinn, a patent office spokeswoman.
Intellectual property
The Acacia patent the EFF objects to is on "the transmission of digital content via the Internet, cable, satellite and other means."
Another on its list, owned by Clear Channel Communications Inc., covers the distribution of digital recordings right after concerts.
"These companies are trying to claim a monopoly on the tools of free expression," said Jason Schultz, staff attorney at the foundation.
The group's list, chosen from 200 suggestions solicited through its Web site, focuses on patents it contends are being unfairly used to demand licensing fees from rivals or individuals.
Acacia and Clear Channel defend their patents and their right to seek royalties for intellectual property they say they spent millions to develop or buy.
Clear Channel bought the so-called Instant Live patent two months ago. It plans to charge an "extremely small" licensing fee -- $1 per event in some cases -- to artists who want to distribute freshly minted CDs after their concerts.
Acacia's digital media patents, granted to the founders of Greenwich Information Technologies in the 1990s, weren't enforced until Acacia bought them in 2001. Acacia has since secured dozens of licensing deals with companies ranging from adult entertainment sites to The Walt Disney Co. It sued the large cable and satellite providers for patent infringement last month.
Ryan rejected the foundation's charges of bullying. "We're not trying to restrict anyone's freedoms, but we'd like to be paid for the use of our technology," he said.
Schultz and fellow self-anointed patent-busters hope their crusade will raise awareness about concerns the patent office is issuing baseless patents because it lacks the resources to thoroughly investigate patent claims.
"It's too easy to get a patent and too expensive to defend," he said.
Greg Aharonian, publisher of the Internet Patent News Service and founder of www.bustpatents.com, questions the validity of a patent granted to Microsoft Corp. in June covering the use of the human body to transmit powe
By Paul Murphy
www.LinuxInsider.com,
Part of the ECT News Network
07/15/04 7:45 AM PT
I doubt it's possible to get a definitive answer, but as long as you don't take any of it too seriously you can have a lot of fun playing with proxies such as the average user's ability to read and write his or her native language.
My wife has a Dilbert cartoon on her office door in which one of the characters says: "If you have any trouble sounding condescending, find a Unix user to show you how." She's a Mac user and they were worse even before they all became Unix users too.
Or maybe not. But finding out whether the average Mac user really is smarter than the rest of us isn't so easy. Part of the problem is that even if you matched the admissions test results for a graduate school with individual PC or Mac preferences to discover a strong positive correlation, people would argue that the Mac users are exceptional for other reasons, that the tests don't measure anything relevant, and that it's unethical to do this in the first place.
In fact, it's pretty clear that this topic is sufficiently emotionally loaded that you'd get shouted down by one side or another no matter how you did the research; and that's too bad because a clear answer one way or the other would be interesting.
I doubt it's possible to get a definitive answer, but as long as you don't take any of it too seriously you can have a lot of fun playing with proxies such as the average user's ability to read and write his or her native language. This isn't necessarily a reasonable measure of intelligence (mainly because intelligence has yet to be defined) but almost everyone agrees that a native English speaker's ability to write correct English correlates closely with that person's ability to think clearly.
Measuring Written English
In other words, if we knew that Mac users, as a group, were significantly better users of written English than PC users, then we'd have a presumptive basis for ranking the probable "smartness" of two people about whom we only know that one uses a Mac and the other a PC.
So how can we do that? As it happens, Unix has been useful for text processing and analysis virtually from the beginning. In fact, the very first Unics application offered text processing support for the patent application process at Bell Labs -- in 1971 on a PDP-11 with 8 KB of RAM and a 500-KB disk.
By coincidence, Interleaf, the first GUI-based Document-processing package, was the first major commercial package available on Sun -- in 1983, well before Microsoft "invented" Windows and well ahead of the first significant third-party applications for the Apple Lisa.
During the 12 years between those two applications, text processing and related research became one of the hallmarks of academic Unix use. By the early eighties therefore most Unix releases, whether BSD- or AT&T-derived, came with the AT&T writers workbench -- a collection of useful text processing utilities.
One of those was a thing called style. Style is somewhat out of style these days but is on many Linux "bonus" CDs and downloadable from gnu.org as part of the diction package.
Style produces readability metrics on text. Forget for the moment what the ratings mean and look at the numbers. For comparison, here's what style says about the first 1,000 words in what is arguably the finest novel ever published in English: The Golden Bowl readability grades:
Kincaid: 18.2
ARI: 22.2
Coleman-Liau: 9.8
Flesch Index: 46.7
Fog Index: 21.7
Lix: 64.4 = higher than school year 11
SMOG-Grading: 13.5
Of course, that's Henry James at the top of his form.
Slashdot and Other Style
For a more realistic and interesting baseline, I collected about 2,800 lines of Slashdot discussion contributions and ran style against them to get the following ratings summary along with a lot of detail data omitted here:
Kincaid: 7.7
ARI: 8.0
Coleman-Liau: 9.7
I'm not certain, but I'm going to guess that Nintendo was in a better posistion to experiment with the gameboy since it -as a platform- already had a long, successful run and they were in a posistion where they could retire it if the GBA failed.
I'm not as familiar with nokia so I may be wrong; but I don't think that they were in anywhere close to the same posistion.
if the designers and marketers would have had to have used it for a month?
Haven't tried it, but I'm guessing "no"
So like, I'm looking at my slashdot one day and it's all like "-1" this and "+5 troll" that and I'm like WHAT THE FUCK?!?! So, like I talked to my friend bob and he syas I need to use Linux and I'm like OMFG! and ever since I made the switch, I feel like, I'm part of something that, like is like a a larger cummunity, OMFG!
I would put it to you that destroying the internet is not entirely out of the question. In fact, it may be the next logical step.
Other than increased the amount of dead-tree spam I get?
;-)
*thinks*
Let me get back to you on that one.
Openserver, could it?
would be better than the last moron who played him. Here's a hint: the show is called "doctor ,b>WHO, not "doctor spurting fecal fount".
:)
At any rate, can't wait to see it on pbs.
The parent post is employing a common "troll" technique (one I've used myself, in fact) of calling attention to a legitimate post and accusing it of being a 'troll' or 'goatse link' in hopes of getting the parent modded down.
I visted the link in the grand parent post and, while longer and dryer than I wanted to deal with right now, is in no way 'trollish'.
HTH.
That's what I suspect, at least. Call me paranoid, but I see one of two things happening:
1)taking a cue from hiter and microsoft, there will be strategically placed 'audience' members who will ask carefully phrased questions that either bring up why they should regulate VOIP or will give the speaker an opening to justify said regulation
2)They will do this for the sake of looking good, but then totally disregard it when it comes time to decide on the final legislation.
Either way, the next two steps are already written on the wall:
3)???
4)Legislate!!
Wow, that really sucks. I'm glad the police could spare the manpower while the thugs at SCO are out commiting real crimes.