> I've still got a circa 1991 Gateway '486/33MHz...
Funny... I just threw one of those out about 30 minutes ago! Stripped out the parts (1Gig HD, NIC, etc.) and put the case and MB "out to pasture". I rebuild computers for a small school here, and there comes a time when even *I* have to clear out the pile of accumulating STUFF. I'll try to breathe life into a 486/100, but the 33MHz was a little too old even for me.
> In their defense, though, Mundie is saying that it's a choice, and it's a choice Microsoft has made.
This is true, and I think it's am important point. Microsoft (and any other software company for that matter) has the write to craft their licenses in any way they see fit, as long as the consumer has a choice to accept or reject that model Of course, monopolies run into other problems, since people are no longer free to make decisions in their own best interest... but that's another topic.
What bugs the heck out of me though is the continual insunation that Mundie and others are making now that the GPL is threatening to take away their IP out from under them! That's why they keep repeating this "choice" thing. The lie is: "If everyone starts using GPL software, then we will be forced to give up our own investments in IP." It makes no sense, as anyone who has ever bothered to read the GPL knows, but it falls into the old saying:
Repeat a lie often and loudly enough, and sooner or later, it will begin to be accepted as an established fact
Let's suppose that, instead of venting his anger against a religious organization, Mr. Henson had made similar statements against some other minority group.... let's say homosexuals or abortion rights activists.
I wonder if the reaction here to his supposed "hate crimes" and "threats" would be any different.
I strongly suspect that the majority of the posts here regarding Mr. Henson's innocence, or the "harmless threats" he made would be on the other side of the fence...
While even the most casual/. reader can probably understand the terms and concepts used in the letter, I have the feeling the the average Joe/Jane on the street, or worse yet, the average PHB would quickly become lost on ideas such as "code forking" or collaborative development and integration. Shoot -- the average guy on the street doesn't even understand what "source code" is.
Thus, it is a very well written letter, and encouraging to see such a wide range of signatures, but unfortunately not really written to the same audience as Craig's comments were directed towards.
A "proven leader"... at the age of 20-something??? I agree that there are plenty of bright, motivated, and even highly responsible/moral people in that age range, but I'd have a hard time believing they've had enough years under their belt to be considered "proven leaders".
I did read the patent, and I must say I'm a bit confused as to its intent. It appears that their actual claim has more to do with limiting the number of logged on users rather than trying to patent the fundamental idea of a graphical MUD.
The whole thing still sounds a lot like Quake or EverQuest...
> Some people don't care about this, and some do but we might all have to get used to it someday.
Since when does the fact that "people don't care" mean that something is suddenly OK? I'm sure that there were a lot of people who didn't care about slavery, or the Holocaust, but that didn't mean that people of conscience couldn't rise up and do something about it. I admit that what we call "privacy" is a complex and sticky issue, with lots of people willing to give up some level of privacy in return for security or financial gain, but that doesn't mean we should simply throw up our hands in disgust and cave in...
Actually, it's a fairly convenient way to store and transfer energy. Obvioulsly, won't work in a closed system (e.g., a car), but if you use a little solar energy, you can split out the hydrogen, fill up a fuel cell with it, and THEN use the hydrogen to cleanly power the car. (Produces heat and water as by-products.)
Well, one thing is clear, MS is losing ground at an accelerating pace in the server market, and with the economy in distress, this is only going to get worse as companies look for more and more ways to cut corners financially.
And... as long as MS is prevented from taking over the servers (and even more important, the Web server market), they cannot extend their strangle-hold on the browsers and clients. As long as they don't own the browsers, there is still hope that there will continue to be choices in the desktop market.
(BTW, in the not too distant future, the browser WILL BE the OS. I'm not preaching "thin clients", but the industry's dependence on Internet services will only increase as the distinction between individual "computers" becomes more and more anachronistic.)
> hat's only true because the cost of entry into the market is too high....
Only partly true. If you have a monopoly, you can force control of proprietary interfaces. For example, if you own the desktop market, you can integrate your browser into the OS. That gives you control of the client market. Once you own the clients, you've got a huge advantage in the server market (where all the big money is), since you are the only one who knows how to take advantage of all the nifty new (and constantly changing) features on the browsers, not to mention the fact that you own all the validation and "security" triggers that they make use of to conduct on-line transactions.
No, in this case, having a superior product is no guarantee of success. The only reason Linux and other Open Source products are having any success is that (1) Linux is better in many ways, (2) Linux and other OS products are less expensive, but most important, (3) MS has generated so much disgust and outright hatred on the part of their customers that people are looking for anything to use as an alternative.
> Infinitely complex, for no explanation to be the best explanation.
I wouldn't call that "no explanation". It's simply stating the posibility that, perhaps there are some things which fall outside of the scope of what we have narrowly defined "science".
The point of the book, if I understand right, was not that filtering (moderation, portals, etc.) was a "Bad Thing" in itself, but that there are side-effects that we need to consider. It's easy to say, "Oh, just turn filtering off if you don't want it!," but how many of us really want to (or can afford the time to) give up the convenience of doing that? The end result, for better or worse, is that we shut ourselves off from many other voices out there. We tell ourselves that we are just weeding out the flamers and SPAM, but in reality it's not that simple.
That being said, I'm not sure the present situation is any different from what existed in the past. Clearly, depending on the Old Media led to a carefully filtered view of the world -- one which the majority of us had very little control over. What that view bought us, at least in the opinion of the author, was a base level of common experience on which we could build communication. However, that filter was so skiewed toward one dominant view of the world or another, that I seriously doubt it was of real value.
Bottom Line: In the end, we must filter the information that comes at us. The physical structure of our brains is built around filtering information. In fact, the ability to filter and extract meaning from the huge amount of stimuli that hits us every second of every day is one thing that sepparates us from the machines we build around us. Our brains can't deal with it all, so we pick and choose. It's not a question of "if" we filter, but "how".
Funny... Have you ever noticed that greatest experts on raising children are the people who don't have any kids? Get a bit of reality sir. Much as I would like to spend 26 hours a day with my children, that isn't possible in real life. No, I don't watch questionable content, and then tell my kids they shouldn't do that, "because you're too young." Yes, I realize that they may go over to friend's houses where they can see that kind of stuff, and they will have to learn sooner or later how to make their own decisions, but in the mean time, I wouldn't mind having the ability to filter content in my own home.
(Incidentally, though I have a cable modem for Internet, I don't have cable TV, mostly due to the fact that I object to the content on many of the channels. I just don't want that kind of stuff entering my house. Yes, there's plenty of crap on the Internet, but I'm working on that too.)
DUH! Did you actually LOOK at the site? There is a unified installer. I didn't actually run it, but my assumption is that it is like the Helix Gnome installer, where you download a small application that gives you a list of applications to download, and then figures the dependencies for you. Click on "DONE" and it downloads/installs all needed packages. Restart the X server and away you go!
It's not perfect, but anyone who claims that it's too difficult to use should consider going back to Kindergarten where they belong...
Ya, that's all well and good... in a perfect world. I've done all that, and in the end, my kids (one teen, and another just about to get married) have turned out pretty well. They are balanced, intellegent, happy, well educated, and in general, well equipped to face the world.
Hover, having said all that, I still can't say that my kids are perfect, nor are they perfectly immune to the influences that pound on their senses every day. You can't shield your kids from everything, but there are some things you do want to keep away from them. Teenagers are bound to experiment, and sooner or later, they are going to find themselves in trouble. Sometimes they are the ones asking for the hard limits. You don't tell someone with a broken leg, "Go out and walk on it, you wimp!" No, you give them a cast and critches until they have regained the strength to walk on their own.
You're right -- too many parents blame their failures on the "bad influence" of society. However, I've seen to many kids with problems to simply ignore the influence if society, or to think that a nice hug and a bed time story are going to make all those bad things just go away...
> Take for instance the toilet. I couldn't live without it, yet its design has been around since ancient Rome.
Ever looked inside a modern flush mechanism? These babies are an example of some serious engineering! Not rocket science, but still some pretty sophisticated design, not to mention tricks of manufacturing. (BTW, working with precision ceramics can be a bitch!) Look at the parts in there and I'll bet you will find a half dozen or so US Patent numbers stamped in them. Yes, those simple looking ceramic fixtures now do the same work as their 20 year old cousins, but with less than 1/5 the waste water, and probably 1/100 the water that was used by the Romans. Sure, the concept of internal plumbing has been around since the Romans, but they had a lot to learn about water conservation and the mechanics of quiet, reliable, inexpensive, self regulating, automatic shut off valves.
Just because something looks simple doesn't mean it was obvious to create in the first place!!
OK... I'll admit this is the first decent, thoughtful "defense" of the site. I do think satire is a powerful tool when used by the likes of Jonathan Swift, as a way to get us to look deeply into our own hearts and examine our thoughts and motivations.
But when does "satire" become nothing more than a cheap shot? Making fun of cat lovers is like shooting fish in a barrel. It's easy to make fun of cats and cat shows and breeders and little old ladies who lavish lace and goodies on their adorable little "bon-bons", and spend more on caskets for their deceased pets than some countries spend on royal funerals. Is this nothing more than someone's way to make fun of people they don't like, to make a quick buck, grab their 15 minutes of fame and be declaired a hero for spreading cow dung on religious icons in front of everybody?
So, what is it that you find so offensive about this cat??? I am not a "cat lover", but I see no cruelty in evidence here. So, they washed it's hair and combed it out to make it look full. Do you really think the cat is that fat?
True, incompetent breeders do exist who in-breed animals to the point where they are hopeless genetic freaks, but to blindly accuse everyone who raises show animals of cruelty displays more ignorance on the accuser than evidence of evil on the part of the breeders.
Uh, what can we come up with for our next halarious act? Perhaps a "parody" site on Bonsi Queers - How to bend, fold and mutilate your friendly neighborhood queer so that he'll turn out straight! Gee, THAT would be really funny!! And surely, since "it's only a joke," we know it should be protected by our First Ammendment Rights!
> You dont see processors which are *designed* at a hardware level to only work for a particular
operating system.
Only partly true. I'm guessing you haven't seen the "Winboard". (I think that's what they were called...) Much like the famous "winmodem", these are motherboards which have been stripped down to make the hardware cheaper, with the guts of the controllers moved into software. Due to the fact that the drivers are (of course) proprietary, these computers will run only under Windows!
To be exact, I think the CPU's are general purpose, but the chipsets, and perhaps even the memory, do not have standard, open interfaces, and therefore cannot be used under any other "alternative" OS.
Slashdot Mirror
Funny... I just threw one of those out about 30 minutes ago! Stripped out the parts (1Gig HD, NIC, etc.) and put the case and MB "out to pasture". I rebuild computers for a small school here, and there comes a time when even *I* have to clear out the pile of accumulating STUFF. I'll try to breathe life into a 486/100, but the 33MHz was a little too old even for me.
(Anyone want a fist-full of 1Meg, 30 pin SIMMs?)
--
This is true, and I think it's am important point. Microsoft (and any other software company for that matter) has the write to craft their licenses in any way they see fit, as long as the consumer has a choice to accept or reject that model Of course, monopolies run into other problems, since people are no longer free to make decisions in their own best interest... but that's another topic.
What bugs the heck out of me though is the continual insunation that Mundie and others are making now that the GPL is threatening to take away their IP out from under them! That's why they keep repeating this "choice" thing. The lie is: "If everyone starts using GPL software, then we will be forced to give up our own investments in IP." It makes no sense, as anyone who has ever bothered to read the GPL knows, but it falls into the old saying:
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I wonder if the reaction here to his supposed "hate crimes" and "threats" would be any different.
I strongly suspect that the majority of the posts here regarding Mr. Henson's innocence, or the "harmless threats" he made would be on the other side of the fence...
It's all a matter of "us" and "them".
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Thus, it is a very well written letter, and encouraging to see such a wide range of signatures, but unfortunately not really written to the same audience as Craig's comments were directed towards.
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A "proven leader"... at the age of 20-something??? I agree that there are plenty of bright, motivated, and even highly responsible/moral people in that age range, but I'd have a hard time believing they've had enough years under their belt to be considered "proven leaders".
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The whole thing still sounds a lot like Quake or EverQuest...
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I know.... party pooper.
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Since when does the fact that "people don't care" mean that something is suddenly OK? I'm sure that there were a lot of people who didn't care about slavery, or the Holocaust, but that didn't mean that people of conscience couldn't rise up and do something about it. I admit that what we call "privacy" is a complex and sticky issue, with lots of people willing to give up some level of privacy in return for security or financial gain, but that doesn't mean we should simply throw up our hands in disgust and cave in...
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Pffffth!! 100G is pocket change for these guys. They probably already made ten times that amount selling the databases to the highest bidder.
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Actually, it's a fairly convenient way to store and transfer energy. Obvioulsly, won't work in a closed system (e.g., a car), but if you use a little solar energy, you can split out the hydrogen, fill up a fuel cell with it, and THEN use the hydrogen to cleanly power the car. (Produces heat and water as by-products.)
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This was supposed to be on the Rambus story! (DUH!)
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And... as long as MS is prevented from taking over the servers (and even more important, the Web server market), they cannot extend their strangle-hold on the browsers and clients. As long as they don't own the browsers, there is still hope that there will continue to be choices in the desktop market.
(BTW, in the not too distant future, the browser WILL BE the OS. I'm not preaching "thin clients", but the industry's dependence on Internet services will only increase as the distinction between individual "computers" becomes more and more anachronistic.)
--
Only partly true. If you have a monopoly, you can force control of proprietary interfaces. For example, if you own the desktop market, you can integrate your browser into the OS. That gives you control of the client market. Once you own the clients, you've got a huge advantage in the server market (where all the big money is), since you are the only one who knows how to take advantage of all the nifty new (and constantly changing) features on the browsers, not to mention the fact that you own all the validation and "security" triggers that they make use of to conduct on-line transactions.
No, in this case, having a superior product is no guarantee of success. The only reason Linux and other Open Source products are having any success is that (1) Linux is better in many ways, (2) Linux and other OS products are less expensive, but most important, (3) MS has generated so much disgust and outright hatred on the part of their customers that people are looking for anything to use as an alternative.
--
I wouldn't call that "no explanation". It's simply stating the posibility that, perhaps there are some things which fall outside of the scope of what we have narrowly defined "science".
--
That being said, I'm not sure the present situation is any different from what existed in the past. Clearly, depending on the Old Media led to a carefully filtered view of the world -- one which the majority of us had very little control over. What that view bought us, at least in the opinion of the author, was a base level of common experience on which we could build communication. However, that filter was so skiewed toward one dominant view of the world or another, that I seriously doubt it was of real value.
Bottom Line: In the end, we must filter the information that comes at us. The physical structure of our brains is built around filtering information. In fact, the ability to filter and extract meaning from the huge amount of stimuli that hits us every second of every day is one thing that sepparates us from the machines we build around us. Our brains can't deal with it all, so we pick and choose. It's not a question of "if" we filter, but "how".
--
(Incidentally, though I have a cable modem for Internet, I don't have cable TV, mostly due to the fact that I object to the content on many of the channels. I just don't want that kind of stuff entering my house. Yes, there's plenty of crap on the Internet, but I'm working on that too.)
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Sooner or later, all Sciences reduce to the study of Mathematics.
So, every scientific field builds on the advances of all other scientific fields.
So... what's the point???
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I can tell YOU'VE never had a real job as a Sysadmin in a real shop.
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It's not perfect, but anyone who claims that it's too difficult to use should consider going back to Kindergarten where they belong...
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Hover, having said all that, I still can't say that my kids are perfect, nor are they perfectly immune to the influences that pound on their senses every day. You can't shield your kids from everything, but there are some things you do want to keep away from them. Teenagers are bound to experiment, and sooner or later, they are going to find themselves in trouble. Sometimes they are the ones asking for the hard limits. You don't tell someone with a broken leg, "Go out and walk on it, you wimp!" No, you give them a cast and critches until they have regained the strength to walk on their own.
You're right -- too many parents blame their failures on the "bad influence" of society. However, I've seen to many kids with problems to simply ignore the influence if society, or to think that a nice hug and a bed time story are going to make all those bad things just go away...
--
Ever looked inside a modern flush mechanism? These babies are an example of some serious engineering! Not rocket science, but still some pretty sophisticated design, not to mention tricks of manufacturing. (BTW, working with precision ceramics can be a bitch!) Look at the parts in there and I'll bet you will find a half dozen or so US Patent numbers stamped in them. Yes, those simple looking ceramic fixtures now do the same work as their 20 year old cousins, but with less than 1/5 the waste water, and probably 1/100 the water that was used by the Romans. Sure, the concept of internal plumbing has been around since the Romans, but they had a lot to learn about water conservation and the mechanics of quiet, reliable, inexpensive, self regulating, automatic shut off valves.
Just because something looks simple doesn't mean it was obvious to create in the first place!!
--
But when does "satire" become nothing more than a cheap shot? Making fun of cat lovers is like shooting fish in a barrel. It's easy to make fun of cats and cat shows and breeders and little old ladies who lavish lace and goodies on their adorable little "bon-bons", and spend more on caskets for their deceased pets than some countries spend on royal funerals. Is this nothing more than someone's way to make fun of people they don't like, to make a quick buck, grab their 15 minutes of fame and be declaired a hero for spreading cow dung on religious icons in front of everybody?
--
True, incompetent breeders do exist who in-breed animals to the point where they are hopeless genetic freaks, but to blindly accuse everyone who raises show animals of cruelty displays more ignorance on the accuser than evidence of evil on the part of the breeders.
--
Yea, right.
At what point does "humor" cease to be humorous?
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Only partly true. I'm guessing you haven't seen the "Winboard". (I think that's what they were called...) Much like the famous "winmodem", these are motherboards which have been stripped down to make the hardware cheaper, with the guts of the controllers moved into software. Due to the fact that the drivers are (of course) proprietary, these computers will run only under Windows!
To be exact, I think the CPU's are general purpose, but the chipsets, and perhaps even the memory, do not have standard, open interfaces, and therefore cannot be used under any other "alternative" OS.
Neat stuff, eh?
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