Such glorious days were they! When every computer science diploma had an "Endorse Here" line on the back to cash at the bank. When Pets.com simply couldn't fail. When Red Hat would destroy Microsoft -- "Is Linux ready for the desktop?" -- that headline was actually new (and exciting). When 5-digit/. user ids were extremely large values. Alice and Bill were still together, and in print. What's better: Alta Vista or Lycos? AOL was called America Online ("The future: now available"), but we remember CompuServe and GEnie and Prodigy and Delphi.
And let me tell you something: Java is going to change the world!
Daikatana tried to have a story in a FPS long before Half-Life
Half-Life came out long before Daikatana.
...once John Romero was gone, Id reverted to John Carmack's view that a plot is as needed for a game as for a porno movie.
When Romero was at Id, none of their games had plots, either. They didn't revert; they remained consistent.
So me say just one thing: if a _quarter_ of the people posting all "Daikatana sucks!!!" all over the place had actually played the fucking game, it would have been a major commercial success. It would have probably outsold The Sims.
Are you being facetious? Daikatana's target audience was hard-core FPS players. The Sims reached out to every segment of the market. What a ridiculous statement! You are greatly overestimating the number of people who read game sites at the time. Your general gaming audience had never even heard of Daikatana, and the name "John Romero" was meaningless. They saw an ugly red box with a silly title and bad graphics. That's why it was a poor seller.
A lot of people still bitching about how bad Daikatana's design or gameplay supposedly was, still haven't actually even _seen_ that design or gameplay.
The first level of the demo consisted of killing small frogs in the rain. The whole level. Design genius? Perhaps in an abstract fun-is-not-cool hipster universe. But in this world, it was stupid, and pointless.
"I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.
"Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.
"There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period."
Since when is technology the sole defining characteristic of geeks? I'm a geek. I blog about books that I'm reading. I seem to recall reading being a geeky activity, ergo it's a geek blog.
You don't need teh mad skillz to get Linux running on a spoon in order to be a geek.
I'm not a big reader of The Register, and having just finished the article, I remember why. The article's premise: Solaris didn't crash *as much* as Linux, so Linux had better look out.
Oh, but he couldn't even detect a NIC without the manual editing of conf files, and wasn't really unique or remarkable in any discernable way.
How tone-deaf is the writer to the PC world, anyway? It doesn't take a Bill O'Brien to see that the OS market is supersaturated, and anything short of the second coming of MacOS X will be greeted with a great big yawn from the collective computing community. (Well, a very small band of users will love it and sing its praises. I mean people are still clinging to Amiga OS, for crying out loud.)
This is aside from Sun's remarkable in its ability to ruin every good technology it creates through corporate nonsense and heavy-handed tactics (read: Java), and really, Solaris wasn't really all that thrilling on Sparc. (I spent my entire undergrad shackled to it.)
Neither the article, nor Sun, answer the most critical question in the OS world today: Why should x86 users switch? Why should I leave my comfortable XP or Debian or Red Hat or SuSE for Solaris?
Wait, let me guess: because Sun is including (insert Java widget here).
Note to Scott McNealy: the magic Java dust has lost its power.
Pomme de Terre!
Re:Nice Anti-Usian Propaganda, Now Some Facts
on
Cuba Switching to Linux
·
· Score: 2, Funny
"Wherever there is a jackboot stomping on a human face there will be a well-heeled Western liberal to explain that the face does, after all, enjoy free health care and 100 percent literacy." - John Derbyshire
I'm a big fan of people staying home on election day.
(I'll give you a moment to recover from shock and righteous indignation.)
Voting is a right, yes. And I believe that every informed citizen should do it. Along the same line, I believe that as a citizen it is your duty and obligation to *get informed.*
But if you're not going to understand the issues, stay away from the polls. We're at war, the Supreme Court is probably at stake (although admittedly we hear that every election), the economy is on an uncertain path, social security needs major reformation, millions lack healthcare, the world is packed with torture, famine, genocide, and slavery... and you're too busy to register until a low-rent web site of solopsistic kids in need of public vanity validation encourages you??
You're probably one of those people we don't need pulling a lever.
Contrary to contemporary platitudes, not everyone's opinion is important. If you're too lazy to understand why we're at war and formulate a rationale for supporting or opposing it, your vote is detrimental to society.
The same people who lament the "soundbite" nature of modern politics also cheer on these "be cool and vote!" drives, without realizing that we have a soundbite society BECAUSE of these drives!
Want substantive politicians? Get substantive voters.
Hmm. Can they use all that nifty technology and virtual reality to make sure Military Police and Military Intelligence units understand the Geneva Conventions?
I am a military policeman for the Air Force. (For the record, in the USAF, we're called Security Forces.)
Troops are briefed on the Geneva conventions every time we mobilize to deploy. We're briefed everytime we get to a foreign nation. We're briefed every time we simulate deployment. Practically any time someone mentiones mobilization... the briefing comes. Further, every year we are required to take tests verifying our understanding of the conventions. In simulated exercises, we have to abide by the rules. In every briefing, we're told what we can and cannot do and we're told what the consequences are for breaking the rules.
Those soldiers at Abu Ghraid knew the rules. This wasn't a case of ignorance of the law. Further, they knew quite well that only lawful orders are to be followed. So the "My commander made me do it!" excuse is laughable.
More training isn't needed. And as we're seeing from the many investigations and courts martial, Geneva Convention rule violations are not tolerated.
The prison abuses aren't an institutional problem, they're a humanity problem. They're a byproduct of war, and nothing will change that reality. As members of the armed forces, we strive to be better than that; in the overwhelming majority of cases, we are. But, unfortunately, we'll see the darkness of man again when the next conflict breaks out.
War is ugly, and it brings out the worst in humanity.
Anybody can learn a trade. With enough practice and on-the-job training, one can be a programmer, or a musician, or a medic, or an architect, or anything else that a degree officiates.
A university degree is not about learning a trade. Given enough bodies, you too can be a brain surgeon.
So what does a diploma mean?
It means that when presented with a sometimes arduous, sometimes tedious, often times overwhelming task... you did not stop working.
When faced with a charge that spanned several years and consisted of a great variety of challenges... you did not quit.
When given the option to take the easy way out at any time, with no consequences... you did not relent.
A university diploma means you saw a challenge through to completion.
You can fake your way through any class. Everyone reading this at one time or another learned just enough to pass a course. Cliff Notes, test-taking strategies, last-minute cramming, and desperate memorization of theorems and equations. A gentleman's C, mission accomplished.
You can fake an Intro to Calculus class. But when faced with subsequent courses, with each building on the class before it, it becomes impossible not to learn the material.
You learn, or you go away.
I speak from experience. I'm no natural. But I was persistant. It took 5 years for me to become a capable math student. But I learned. And I can still open my textbooks and solve the problems.
A university degree means you *have been*, and *can be* taught.
This school doesn't offer that. It's learn, dump, repeat.
As a trade school, I'm sure it's fine. But as a "univerity?" It's a McEducation. It's a joke.
If you think these townhall meetings are forums to pursuade or convince your Congressman of *anything*, you will be pretty disappointed.
These things are primarily designed to get a nice story in the local paper, and maybe help a few people with "The road near my cousin's house is falling apart" or "I'm getting the runaround from can you help?"
If you are serious about garnering insight or pursuading your congressman of anything beyond the superficial, you need to set up a private meeting with him or one of his staff. (This is not a difficult thing to do, and contrary to the press, you do not need to be a millionaire contributor to do it.)
At the said meeting, you need to have a concise argument ready, provide facts, figures, and documentation. ("I hate Microsoft and think everyone should use BSD" will not cut it.)
Please be knowledgable about your subject. The fact that you're dredging Slashdot for talking points is not a good sign, and will likely do more harm than good when the conversation gets into specifics and fine details. Remember, the idea is to convince, not just spout off your opinion.
Technology issues are a huge body of legislation, and you will more than likely find at least somebody on his staff with experience in such matters, who will be the true path to action. (Staffers are the key to power.)
I can promise you that any townhall grandstanding about any substantive issue will result in a noncommittal "That's really good point, and there are a lot of people who agree with you. Let me look into it."
>>> Hate to be picky, buy Kubrick is not "flawless"... if you watch The Shining, in the very first sceen, you can see the shadow of the helicopter that the camera is on, off to the right of the screen.
Well, in Kubrick's defense, Stanley didn't actually shoot that footage... a second unit director did. As we all know, Kubrick was *not* a fan of flying:)
I am sad to see that the late Stanley Kubrick has not been mentioned thus far.
A true geek in the strictest sense of the word, he is largely considered to be one of the greatest film directors to ever live. To watch a Kubrick film is to see art of the first order in cinematic form. He is the Michaelangelo of our times. Symbolism and imagination drip from every Stanley Kubrick work, while a flawless technical precision executes every scene and shot perfectly. A clear sanity in vision illustrates an insane world around us. Every film of his is a masterpiece. And while we have McDonald's directors ruling Hollywood today, pumping out mediocre film after mediocre film, Kubrick was always patient and expert, taking years to complete a film, but always cost conscious. An expensive film != a great film. He knew that all too well.
That is not even to mention the effect he has had on all geeks that have come since him. What computer scientist in artificial intelligence isn't inspired by HAL from Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey"? Kubrick elevated science fiction film from men dressed in foam lizard suits to a legitimate expressive art form.
Scientists != geeks. There's more to it than that. And Kubruck is most definitely a geek. If Stanley Kubrick isn't a geek of the millennium, (if only to represent the art of film) then who is?
>Russia is RUN BY and terrorized by mobsters. >Their government has no authority.
There is no question that organized crime has a foothold in Russia, but my question to you is, what were Yeltsin's mistakes? Letting the mobsters gain power?
Anytime a national government weakens, organized crime takes hold. They had power long before Yeltsin did. How could he have prevented this? Tough laws? Right... with no real enforcement body and no substantial criminal justice system, (or one at the very least needed complete replacement) how could such a thing be prevented?
Military involvement? That would have worked, but it would have put Yeltsin in an uncomfortable spot - the appearance or tyranny. He was building a stable nation-state. Running the armies up and down the street *may* have worked, but not in the atmosphere Russia was in earlier this decade.
What were Mr. Yeltsin's huge mistakes?
>I usually have an idea on how to reform things, >but Russia is SOOO far gone I have no idea what >they can do.
Precisely my point. Yeltsin's was not an easy job!! It's perfectly easy to look back and say "Gee, he should have paid more attention to organzied crime." However, at the expense of the country tearing itself apart, forming independent nations? At the expense of the looming communist threat? At the expense of radicals and extremists coming to power? At the expense of the freedom that the Russian people starve for?
Russia is no more far gone than when Yeltsin took power, except *now* there is a state in place, a base from which future leaders can govern.
Of all world leaders this century, he had probably one of the greatest, most challenging tasks imaginable. He had to, from *nothing* create a stable nation-state and a government. At the same time, he had to create a successful economic system! Can you even imagine the intense pressure and stress.
Of course he made mistakes. If you had to create *everything* with very little support from neither the people nor fellow statesmen, while at the same time trying to sustain a *shred* of national dignity... well... mistakes are bound to be made.
This isn't like the task the American founding fathers undertook -- they had to build everything that Yeltsin is building; however, they only had a few colonies/states to deal with at the time. Yeltsin has the weight of hundreds of millions of Russian people on his shoulders.
Not an easy job.
Thank you Mr. Yeltsin. You had every opportunity to become a dictator. You had every reason to slip backwards into communism. You could have been emperor of one of the largest nations on the planet. But you chose the honorable thing... the good thing. So few people would have done the same. You have earned my respect.
>Acutally they're expected to GPL the Java 2 >Standard edition in January.
Actually they will do no such thing. Sun has been quite clear in their opposition to the GPL. It is possible, however, that they will release it under their Sun Community Source License.
You know this license, don't you? (Ask any Blackdown team member.) "You do all the work, we take all the credit."
I am the person who submitted this story to Slashdot. When I first ran across the headline "Infoseek Exec Arrested" I was very uninspired to read the story. Something in my head told me to continue, however.
Never in my wildest dreams did I think that the executive in question would be Patrick Naughton.
I am a 3rd year computer science major, but while I was still in high school I was not very serious about computer science. (I just coded for kicks.) That all changed when I read a 1995 (?) issue of InternetWorld. Inside was the greatest interview I'd ever read... a techy, smart conversation with a Starwave executive.
This exec freely stated his opinions on Microsoft, Java, the Internet, and the future of technology. He was brilliant, fun, and clever. He was who I wanted to be.
I changed my entire perspective on code, software, computer science. I looked at things analytically... I decided to do things the Right Way. All thanks to an interview with Patrick Naughton.
Now, it may sound stupid to many, but this man indirectly changed my life. That's why this whole situation is pretty difficult for me. All of his accomplishments, in the eyes of many, are nonexistant. He was a pioneer in Java. He wrote the original Hot Java browser. He went on to lead Starwave, a company that pushed the boundaries of web site design and content. He then settled in a comfortable position at Infoseek. A hell of a life, filled with lots of money and accomplishments.
But that probably won't mean much anymore.
I'm sorry for you Patrick. Thank you for changing my life. I only wish that you'd have shown better judgement in your own.
Slashdot Mirror
Such glorious days were they! When every computer science diploma had an "Endorse Here" line on the back to cash at the bank. When Pets.com simply couldn't fail. When Red Hat would destroy Microsoft -- "Is Linux ready for the desktop?" -- that headline was actually new (and exciting). When 5-digit /. user ids were extremely large values. Alice and Bill were still together, and in print. What's better: Alta Vista or Lycos? AOL was called America Online ("The future: now available"), but we remember CompuServe and GEnie and Prodigy and Delphi.
And let me tell you something: Java is going to change the world!
I remember when this was posted -- how could one forget, after all? -- and I'm pretty sure that comments were enabled.
But can it detect midichlorian counts?
Daikatana tried to have a story in a FPS long before Half-Life
...once John Romero was gone, Id reverted to John Carmack's view that a plot is as needed for a game as for a porno movie.
Half-Life came out long before Daikatana.
When Romero was at Id, none of their games had plots, either. They didn't revert; they remained consistent.
So me say just one thing: if a _quarter_ of the people posting all "Daikatana sucks!!!" all over the place had actually played the fucking game, it would have been a major commercial success. It would have probably outsold The Sims.
Are you being facetious? Daikatana's target audience was hard-core FPS players. The Sims reached out to every segment of the market. What a ridiculous statement! You are greatly overestimating the number of people who read game sites at the time. Your general gaming audience had never even heard of Daikatana, and the name "John Romero" was meaningless. They saw an ugly red box with a silly title and bad graphics. That's why it was a poor seller.
A lot of people still bitching about how bad Daikatana's design or gameplay supposedly was, still haven't actually even _seen_ that design or gameplay.
The first level of the demo consisted of killing small frogs in the rain. The whole level. Design genius? Perhaps in an abstract fun-is-not-cool hipster universe. But in this world, it was stupid, and pointless.
> The game design wasn't particularly bad
"I CAN'T LEAVE WITHOUT MY BUDDY SUPERFLY!"
QED.
"Jamie adds: and all it took was twelve years of overwhelming scientific consensus"
To quote another:
"I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.
"Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.
"There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period."
Heh. Boy, does this refrain ever sound familiar.
That's probably because it's a dupe.
...clearly, this is the work of the giant purple spiders.
... it also appears to have been ruled by giant purple spiders.
Since when is technology the sole defining characteristic of geeks? I'm a geek. I blog about books that I'm reading. I seem to recall reading being a geeky activity, ergo it's a geek blog.
You don't need teh mad skillz to get Linux running on a spoon in order to be a geek.
Pomme de Terre!
I already posted this on TechNudge.com:
I'm not a big reader of The Register, and having just finished the article, I remember why. The article's premise: Solaris didn't crash *as much* as Linux, so Linux had better look out.
Oh, but he couldn't even detect a NIC without the manual editing of conf files, and wasn't really unique or remarkable in any discernable way.
How tone-deaf is the writer to the PC world, anyway? It doesn't take a Bill O'Brien to see that the OS market is supersaturated, and anything short of the second coming of MacOS X will be greeted with a great big yawn from the collective computing community. (Well, a very small band of users will love it and sing its praises. I mean people are still clinging to Amiga OS, for crying out loud.)
This is aside from Sun's remarkable in its ability to ruin every good technology it creates through corporate nonsense and heavy-handed tactics (read: Java), and really, Solaris wasn't really all that thrilling on Sparc. (I spent my entire undergrad shackled to it.)
Neither the article, nor Sun, answer the most critical question in the OS world today: Why should x86 users switch? Why should I leave my comfortable XP or Debian or Red Hat or SuSE for Solaris?
Wait, let me guess: because Sun is including (insert Java widget here).
Note to Scott McNealy: the magic Java dust has lost its power.
Pomme de Terre!
"Wherever there is a jackboot stomping on a human face there will be a well-heeled Western liberal to explain that the face does, after all, enjoy free health care and 100 percent literacy." - John Derbyshire
I'm a big fan of people staying home on election day.
(I'll give you a moment to recover from shock and righteous indignation.)
Voting is a right, yes. And I believe that every informed citizen should do it. Along the same line, I believe that as a citizen it is your duty and obligation to *get informed.*
But if you're not going to understand the issues, stay away from the polls. We're at war, the Supreme Court is probably at stake (although admittedly we hear that every election), the economy is on an uncertain path, social security needs major reformation, millions lack healthcare, the world is packed with torture, famine, genocide, and slavery... and you're too busy to register until a low-rent web site of solopsistic kids in need of public vanity validation encourages you??
You're probably one of those people we don't need pulling a lever.
Contrary to contemporary platitudes, not everyone's opinion is important. If you're too lazy to understand why we're at war and formulate a rationale for supporting or opposing it, your vote is detrimental to society.
The same people who lament the "soundbite" nature of modern politics also cheer on these "be cool and vote!" drives, without realizing that we have a soundbite society BECAUSE of these drives!
Want substantive politicians? Get substantive voters.
Pomme de Terre!
Hmm. Can they use all that nifty technology and virtual reality to make sure Military Police and Military Intelligence units understand the Geneva Conventions?
I am a military policeman for the Air Force. (For the record, in the USAF, we're called Security Forces.)
Troops are briefed on the Geneva conventions every time we mobilize to deploy. We're briefed everytime we get to a foreign nation. We're briefed every time we simulate deployment. Practically any time someone mentiones mobilization... the briefing comes. Further, every year we are required to take tests verifying our understanding of the conventions. In simulated exercises, we have to abide by the rules. In every briefing, we're told what we can and cannot do and we're told what the consequences are for breaking the rules.
Those soldiers at Abu Ghraid knew the rules. This wasn't a case of ignorance of the law. Further, they knew quite well that only lawful orders are to be followed. So the "My commander made me do it!" excuse is laughable.
More training isn't needed. And as we're seeing from the many investigations and courts martial, Geneva Convention rule violations are not tolerated.
The prison abuses aren't an institutional problem, they're a humanity problem. They're a byproduct of war, and nothing will change that reality. As members of the armed forces, we strive to be better than that; in the overwhelming majority of cases, we are. But, unfortunately, we'll see the darkness of man again when the next conflict breaks out.
War is ugly, and it brings out the worst in humanity.
Pomme de Terre!
First Post! Bye karma!
Anybody can learn a trade. With enough practice and on-the-job training, one can be a programmer, or a musician, or a medic, or an architect, or anything else that a degree officiates.
A university degree is not about learning a trade. Given enough bodies, you too can be a brain surgeon.
So what does a diploma mean?
It means that when presented with a sometimes arduous, sometimes tedious, often times overwhelming task... you did not stop working.
When faced with a charge that spanned several years and consisted of a great variety of challenges... you did not quit.
When given the option to take the easy way out at any time, with no consequences... you did not relent.
A university diploma means you saw a challenge through to completion.
You can fake your way through any class. Everyone reading this at one time or another learned just enough to pass a course. Cliff Notes, test-taking strategies, last-minute cramming, and desperate memorization of theorems and equations. A gentleman's C, mission accomplished.
You can fake an Intro to Calculus class. But when faced with subsequent courses, with each building on the class before it, it becomes impossible not to learn the material.
You learn, or you go away.
I speak from experience. I'm no natural. But I was persistant. It took 5 years for me to become a capable math student. But I learned. And I can still open my textbooks and solve the problems.
A university degree means you *have been*, and *can be* taught.
This school doesn't offer that. It's learn, dump, repeat.
As a trade school, I'm sure it's fine. But as a "univerity?" It's a McEducation. It's a joke.
Pomme de Terre!
If you think these townhall meetings are forums to pursuade or convince your Congressman of *anything*, you will be pretty disappointed.
These things are primarily designed to get a nice story in the local paper, and maybe help a few people with "The road near my cousin's house is falling apart" or "I'm getting the runaround from can you help?"
If you are serious about garnering insight or pursuading your congressman of anything beyond the superficial, you need to set up a private meeting with him or one of his staff. (This is not a difficult thing to do, and contrary to the press, you do not need to be a millionaire contributor to do it.)
At the said meeting, you need to have a concise argument ready, provide facts, figures, and documentation. ("I hate Microsoft and think everyone should use BSD" will not cut it.)
Please be knowledgable about your subject. The fact that you're dredging Slashdot for talking points is not a good sign, and will likely do more harm than good when the conversation gets into specifics and fine details. Remember, the idea is to convince, not just spout off your opinion.
Technology issues are a huge body of legislation, and you will more than likely find at least somebody on his staff with experience in such matters, who will be the true path to action. (Staffers are the key to power.)
I can promise you that any townhall grandstanding about any substantive issue will result in a noncommittal "That's really good point, and there are a lot of people who agree with you. Let me look into it."
Pomme de Terre
>>>
:)
Hate to be picky, buy Kubrick is not "flawless"...
if you watch The Shining, in the very first
sceen, you can see the shadow of the
helicopter that the camera is on, off to the
right of the screen.
Well, in Kubrick's defense, Stanley didn't actually shoot that footage... a second unit director did. As we all know, Kubrick was *not* a fan of flying
Dave
I am sad to see that the late Stanley Kubrick has not been mentioned thus far.
A true geek in the strictest sense of the word, he is largely considered to be one of the greatest film directors to ever live. To watch a Kubrick film is to see art of the first order in cinematic form. He is the Michaelangelo of our times. Symbolism and imagination drip from every Stanley Kubrick work, while a flawless technical precision executes every scene and shot perfectly. A clear sanity in vision illustrates an insane world around us. Every film of his is a masterpiece. And while we have McDonald's directors ruling Hollywood today, pumping out mediocre film after mediocre film, Kubrick was always patient and expert, taking years to complete a film, but always cost conscious. An expensive film != a great film. He knew that all too well.
That is not even to mention the effect he has had on all geeks that have come since him. What computer scientist in artificial intelligence isn't inspired by HAL from Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey"? Kubrick elevated science fiction film from men dressed in foam lizard suits to a legitimate expressive art form.
Scientists != geeks. There's more to it than that. And Kubruck is most definitely a geek. If Stanley Kubrick isn't a geek of the millennium, (if only to represent the art of film) then who is?
Dave
>Russia is RUN BY and terrorized by mobsters.
>Their government has no authority.
There is no question that organized crime has a foothold in Russia, but my question to you is, what were Yeltsin's mistakes? Letting the mobsters gain power?
Anytime a national government weakens, organized crime takes hold. They had power long before Yeltsin did. How could he have prevented this? Tough laws? Right... with no real enforcement body and no substantial criminal justice system, (or one at the very least needed complete replacement) how could such a thing be prevented?
Military involvement? That would have worked, but it would have put Yeltsin in an uncomfortable spot - the appearance or tyranny. He was building a stable nation-state. Running the armies up and down the street *may* have worked, but not in the atmosphere Russia was in earlier this decade.
What were Mr. Yeltsin's huge mistakes?
>I usually have an idea on how to reform things,
>but Russia is SOOO far gone I have no idea what
>they can do.
Precisely my point. Yeltsin's was not an easy job!! It's perfectly easy to look back and say "Gee, he should have paid more attention to organzied crime." However, at the expense of the country tearing itself apart, forming independent nations? At the expense of the looming communist threat? At the expense of radicals and extremists coming to power? At the expense of the freedom that the Russian people starve for?
Russia is no more far gone than when Yeltsin took power, except *now* there is a state in place, a base from which future leaders can govern.
He did a good job under the circumstances.
Dave
I have always respected Yeltsin.
Of all world leaders this century, he had probably one of the greatest, most challenging tasks imaginable. He had to, from *nothing* create a stable nation-state and a government. At the same time, he had to create a successful economic system! Can you even imagine the intense pressure and stress.
Of course he made mistakes. If you had to create *everything* with very little support from neither the people nor fellow statesmen, while at the same time trying to sustain a *shred* of national dignity... well... mistakes are bound to be made.
This isn't like the task the American founding fathers undertook -- they had to build everything that Yeltsin is building; however, they only had a few colonies/states to deal with at the time. Yeltsin has the weight of hundreds of millions of Russian people on his shoulders.
Not an easy job.
Thank you Mr. Yeltsin. You had every opportunity to become a dictator. You had every reason to slip backwards into communism. You could have been emperor of one of the largest nations on the planet. But you chose the honorable thing... the good thing. So few people would have done the same. You have earned my respect.
David
>Acutally they're expected to GPL the Java 2
>Standard edition in January.
Actually they will do no such thing. Sun has been quite clear in their opposition to the GPL. It is possible, however, that they will release it under their Sun Community Source License.
You know this license, don't you? (Ask any Blackdown team member.) "You do all the work, we take all the credit."
Dave
I am the person who submitted this story to Slashdot. When I first ran across the headline "Infoseek Exec Arrested" I was very uninspired to read the story. Something in my head told me to continue, however.
Never in my wildest dreams did I think that the executive in question would be Patrick Naughton.
I am a 3rd year computer science major, but while I was still in high school I was not very serious about computer science. (I just coded for kicks.) That all changed when I read a 1995 (?) issue of InternetWorld. Inside was the greatest interview I'd ever read... a techy, smart conversation with a Starwave executive.
This exec freely stated his opinions on Microsoft, Java, the Internet, and the future of technology. He was brilliant, fun, and clever. He was who I wanted to be.
I changed my entire perspective on code, software, computer science. I looked at things analytically... I decided to do things the Right Way. All thanks to an interview with Patrick Naughton.
Now, it may sound stupid to many, but this man indirectly changed my life. That's why this whole situation is pretty difficult for me. All of his accomplishments, in the eyes of many, are nonexistant. He was a pioneer in Java. He wrote the original Hot Java browser. He went on to lead Starwave, a company that pushed the boundaries of web site design and content. He then settled in a comfortable position at Infoseek. A hell of a life, filled with lots of money and accomplishments.
But that probably won't mean much anymore.
I'm sorry for you Patrick. Thank you for changing my life. I only wish that you'd have shown better judgement in your own.
Pomme de Terre