It was three or four episodes, IIRC. I recently received the DVD as a present, and I can't believe how cheesy that series was. And I can't believe I used to run home from school to watch it...
Javascript never got a good rep as a language, because it was so inexorably tied to a browser. The browser is the shell and the executable. You can't run a javascript script from the command line. You can't click on an icon to run a javascript program (unless that icon is an URL). It's a great language for embedding, but it's lousy for stand alone programs.
p.s. Yes, there are ways to run javascript without a browser or some other encapsulating application. But the Javascript community has done a good job of hiding that information away.
...the public at large would not seem to agree and is not actually demanding any such stripped down version.
That is true. The only people demanding this were either not Windows users, or large corporations competing with Microsoft. If the public truly did not want Windows Media Player, they would have downloaded/bought something else instead. Duh.
Too many companies are using Microsoft's monopoly as a crutch. Stop marketing to the OEMs! Every idiot already knows they're Microsoft's bitches. Start marketing to the music listening public instead! You're not going to be guaranteed success, but basing your entire marketing plan on scoring an exclusive account with a major OEM *WILL* guaranteed your failure.
I've actually worked in a business, not merely "for" a business. When you purchase equipment you do not know when it will need to be replaced. It might be two years or it might be five years. Hell, it might be two minutes because some nitwit dropped the computer unloading it from the truck!
But whatever the case, you do NOT throw a perfectly good computer into the landfill just because some magical date rolls over on the calendar. You do not throw it away because you guessed it's useful life incorrectly. The real fiction is telling the IRS that your computer has passed its useful life after two years.
It's not perjury either, as that still requires intent. People mispeak and misremember or are otherwise inaccruate in court all the time, yet they don't get thrown in jail for perjury.
If I get taken to criminal court of this, and I can manage to prove that I did not have the intent to defraud or perjure, then I will be found innocent. However, the odds of me getting a criminal or even civil trial with the Tax Board is negligable. Odds are it will be a kangaroo tax court without a jury or impartial judge.
Back in 1995 or 96, there was a business survey, and it turned out the most common platform at that time was the 80286. That's a "2" as in "IBM AT". This was at a time when the Pentium was out, Windows 95 was out, and OS/2 4 was out.
I was working at one of those businesses at the time. Everything was a 286 running DOS/Geoworks or DOS/Netware. All of our inventory, ordering, bookkeeping and other software was for DOS, so who cared about a faster processor or fancier OS? We got our first Windows machine running Win3.11 on a 386, as part of a credit application package.
What Microsoft should have realized then, and needs to realize now, is that software is not a consumable good. It's not the blade, it's the razor. Businesses aren't going to throw it away just because you tell them to.
Windows XP's slower adoption illustrates Microsoft's difficulty in competing with the popularity of its own software platform...
It's not about competing with oneself. It's about people not wanting to upgrade. It's not so much that they like Win2K, it's that they don't want WinXP. There are many reasons for this. They don't like the price, they feel no need to upgrade, they don't want to upgrade their hardware, they don't want to go through the upgrade hassle, they don't want to give Microsoft anymore of their money, etc.
Unlike the average Slashdot geek, businesses are very conservative. They don't relish change for change's sake. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. If you don't need to spend the money, keep it in your wallet. If it doesn't help you achieve your goals, ignore it. And as strange as it may seem to Slashdot and Bill gates, to your average business, there's nothing embarassing about possessing a 100Mhz PI.
I may have broken the IRS rules by signing the form, but I still did not commit fraud. Hell, I might even have committed a felony and might get sentenced Buttpound Penitentiary, but I still did not commit fraud.
Fraud has a specific meaning, which includes intent. If I did not intend to file a false tax form, then I have not committed fraud.
It wasn't fraud because I didn't know that's what it was. Fraud is about intent. Thus filling a form out incorrectly because of genuine ignorance icannot be fraud. But now you've explained it to me, you bastard! Congratulations, you've just created another criminal...
Ditto. I see these big thick and nicely detailed specs on a chip, and I imagine several thousand developers across the world all reinventing the same wheel for the same chip. Give us some source code as well! It doesn't have to be optimized. It doesn't have to access your secret undocumented features. It doesn't have to be immediately portable to every platform. Just give us something that will save us a bit of time.
Most specs are like purchasing a disassembled automobile with complete specs for all parts, but no instructions for assembly. The customer has to sort of figure it out on their own using carefully obscured clues in the spec.
"Doh! The control mask is a 24 bit word while the control register is 32 bits! They could have at least put that in BOLD FACE!"
You keep comparing FreeBSD and Linux. Are you saying Slackware (HardLinux) is just as ready for the desktop as Kubuntu (EZLinux)? Because when you make that generalization, you ARE comparing FreeBSD to Slackware, Gentoo, Rock, LFS, etc.
That's not realistic--almost nobody has the time for that.
It depends on who that "nobody" is. If it's your grandma, of course not! Heck, she aint' even ready for HoldYourHandLinux either!
On the other hand, I installed and configured FreeBSD with all the software I needed on my work's Dell Optiplex in about half a day. If that seems long, compare it to the two day crapshoot I had in my previous configuration of WinXPSP2 on the same system.
Just because FreeBSD (or TextModeLinux) isn't ready for the desktop of a greenhorn so new he's still hasn't outgrown his Bill Gates haircut, doens't mean that it's unsuitable for everyone's desktop.
I don't consider politics and bureaucracies to be substantially different. It's merely a degree is the granularity of the corruption. Maybe I'm just loony this way. Whether it's some congressman voting incarcerate drug users, the DEA shooting drug dealers dead in their homes, or the Supreme Court approving it all, the end result is the same.
You can't make a straight comparison, because each of those projects has a different level of package "granularity." For example, do you make kdeutils one package, or split it up into a dozen? Is X.org one package, or has it been broken out into libs, server, clients, fonts, etc? There's also the issue of multiple versions of a software counting as multiple packages.
Comparing you numbers, it seems fairly clear that PkgSrc has half the available software as Gentoo, but it's hard to tell if which has more between FreeBSD and Gentoo.
Re:the code of conduct for free software distribut
on
Drafting GPL3
·
· Score: 1
One example. The GPL prevents me from linking to a GPL library from a non-GPL application. Yet this act in no way changes, modifies, copies, mutates or distributes the GPL library. The only damage it does is that some GPL advocate gets all self-righteous and indignant. It doesn't affect the user at all.
Re:the code of conduct for free software distribut
on
Drafting GPL3
·
· Score: 1
I don't know what you mean by people taking away my freedom, because I have exactly the same rights today with every piece of BSD software as on the first day they were released. You almost make it sound as if Bill Gates could come along and change the license of the FreeBSD I am using. It's an absurd notion.
By "coruption" I don't mean lobbying or patents. Sheesh. Go take a look at most South American, and you will see political systems that simply cannot work without the corruption. It's because so ingrained that even revolutions can't remove it, because no one knows any other way to do things.
You can't get anything done without resorting to bribery. It's so commonplace it's not even immoral. In fact, North America and Europe are about the only places where bribery isn't considered immoral. It's how a lot of government workers make a living wage. It's much more pervasive than the US system of military contractor kickbacks, because everyone does it from the meter maid to the president. It's expected. I know of a company whose Latin American sales plummetted when they put in a zero tolerance policy on customer gifts.
It's like tipping. It's expected and ensures prompt quality service.
You do know, don't you, that you could have used a temporary tatto, drawn on yourself with a sharpie, or even just not shaved, and gotten the same result? The advantage being you don't have a permanent dot on you non-interview situations.
I mean, if you don't want to work for me, there are less drastic things you could have done. Like merely saying "fuck off" and walking out of the interview.
You're problems with X have nothing to do with FreeBSD, or even the NVidia driver, as both are identical under Linux. They same things. repeat, they are the same things. You didn't have to get the special driver because Centros included the special driver on the CD.
The difference is merely configuration, not desktop readiness. I'm using FreeBSD on the desktop, so the claim that it isn't ready is patently false. What isn't ready is that FreeBSD doesn't have out of the box autoconfiguration.
p.s. Sometimes I get this wierd image of reviewers comparing EasyLinux to MinimalistHardcoreLinux, and then concluding that Linux must not be ready for the desktop because it was difficult to configure the latter distro.
p.p.s. You also had some problems with FreeBSD because you were using the old 4.x branch. Not ever new piece of hardware gets backported to it. This might be the problem with the NVidia driver, because NVidia the manufacturer (not FreeBSD) is very picky about which version of the OS you're using.
The claim that this violates the right of free expression is dubious. Filtering has to be offered, but that's a different thing that having it activated for every customer. If you want to view prurient materials, just don't accept the offer of filtering!
On the other hand, this is a clear hindrance to interstate commerce. Hell, it's a massive hindrance to intrastate commerce? The social conservatives have finally divorced themselves from the economic conservatives, as this is a massive government intervention into an ISPs business. The society without economic freedoms does not have room for the free expression of socially conservative ideas.
Both liberals and conservatives need to realize that government isn't there to "get your way". It's not a wish fulfillment agency. If you can't get your way through peaceful and voluntary means, you don't have the right to impose it via the brute force of government.
I have heard this from friends who have spent several years in Brazil. Like many Latin American nations, you have wonderful people and great potential, but it's hindered by a tradition of corrupt politics. If you can ever solve that problem, you'll easily surpass the US and Europe.
Years ago I went out and got a prominent tattoo on the outer side of my wrist precisely because as I was entering my twenties I began to feel as though the very notion of "profssionalism" was really code for "you must sublimate your identity to the company, and credit to it any personal triumphs you would otherwise have had.
Instead you sublimated your identity to a fashion statement. Hah!
There's nothing inherently different between making a lacework of yourself with fifty ear piercings, or getting a tit job. It's not about individuality, it's about not being content with the body you were born with. You can't "make waves" by yourself, you need a piercing parlour to do it for you.
The last person I would hire is one who has to carve themselves up in order to be an individual.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't care what you call it, I don't want the free toy! If you give me the free toy I'm going to call the EU Antitruth Division!
It was three or four episodes, IIRC. I recently received the DVD as a present, and I can't believe how cheesy that series was. And I can't believe I used to run home from school to watch it...
Javascript never got a good rep as a language, because it was so inexorably tied to a browser. The browser is the shell and the executable. You can't run a javascript script from the command line. You can't click on an icon to run a javascript program (unless that icon is an URL). It's a great language for embedding, but it's lousy for stand alone programs.
p.s. Yes, there are ways to run javascript without a browser or some other encapsulating application. But the Javascript community has done a good job of hiding that information away.
Dammit, I want a box of Sugar Frosted Chocolate Bombs without the free toy! And I want it at the same price!
...the public at large would not seem to agree and is not actually demanding any such stripped down version.
That is true. The only people demanding this were either not Windows users, or large corporations competing with Microsoft. If the public truly did not want Windows Media Player, they would have downloaded/bought something else instead. Duh.
Too many companies are using Microsoft's monopoly as a crutch. Stop marketing to the OEMs! Every idiot already knows they're Microsoft's bitches. Start marketing to the music listening public instead! You're not going to be guaranteed success, but basing your entire marketing plan on scoring an exclusive account with a major OEM *WILL* guaranteed your failure.
I've actually worked in a business, not merely "for" a business. When you purchase equipment you do not know when it will need to be replaced. It might be two years or it might be five years. Hell, it might be two minutes because some nitwit dropped the computer unloading it from the truck!
But whatever the case, you do NOT throw a perfectly good computer into the landfill just because some magical date rolls over on the calendar. You do not throw it away because you guessed it's useful life incorrectly. The real fiction is telling the IRS that your computer has passed its useful life after two years.
It's not perjury either, as that still requires intent. People mispeak and misremember or are otherwise inaccruate in court all the time, yet they don't get thrown in jail for perjury.
If I get taken to criminal court of this, and I can manage to prove that I did not have the intent to defraud or perjure, then I will be found innocent. However, the odds of me getting a criminal or even civil trial with the Tax Board is negligable. Odds are it will be a kangaroo tax court without a jury or impartial judge.
Who gives a rat's ass when the computer is depreciated? That's has nothing to do with when a business buys another one.
Back in 1995 or 96, there was a business survey, and it turned out the most common platform at that time was the 80286. That's a "2" as in "IBM AT". This was at a time when the Pentium was out, Windows 95 was out, and OS/2 4 was out.
I was working at one of those businesses at the time. Everything was a 286 running DOS/Geoworks or DOS/Netware. All of our inventory, ordering, bookkeeping and other software was for DOS, so who cared about a faster processor or fancier OS? We got our first Windows machine running Win3.11 on a 386, as part of a credit application package.
What Microsoft should have realized then, and needs to realize now, is that software is not a consumable good. It's not the blade, it's the razor. Businesses aren't going to throw it away just because you tell them to.
Windows XP's slower adoption illustrates Microsoft's difficulty in competing with the popularity of its own software platform...
It's not about competing with oneself. It's about people not wanting to upgrade. It's not so much that they like Win2K, it's that they don't want WinXP. There are many reasons for this. They don't like the price, they feel no need to upgrade, they don't want to upgrade their hardware, they don't want to go through the upgrade hassle, they don't want to give Microsoft anymore of their money, etc.
Unlike the average Slashdot geek, businesses are very conservative. They don't relish change for change's sake. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. If you don't need to spend the money, keep it in your wallet. If it doesn't help you achieve your goals, ignore it. And as strange as it may seem to Slashdot and Bill gates, to your average business, there's nothing embarassing about possessing a 100Mhz PI.
I may have broken the IRS rules by signing the form, but I still did not commit fraud. Hell, I might even have committed a felony and might get sentenced Buttpound Penitentiary, but I still did not commit fraud.
Fraud has a specific meaning, which includes intent. If I did not intend to file a false tax form, then I have not committed fraud.
Gee thanks!
It wasn't fraud because I didn't know that's what it was. Fraud is about intent. Thus filling a form out incorrectly because of genuine ignorance icannot be fraud. But now you've explained it to me, you bastard! Congratulations, you've just created another criminal...
Ditto. I see these big thick and nicely detailed specs on a chip, and I imagine several thousand developers across the world all reinventing the same wheel for the same chip. Give us some source code as well! It doesn't have to be optimized. It doesn't have to access your secret undocumented features. It doesn't have to be immediately portable to every platform. Just give us something that will save us a bit of time.
Most specs are like purchasing a disassembled automobile with complete specs for all parts, but no instructions for assembly. The customer has to sort of figure it out on their own using carefully obscured clues in the spec.
"Doh! The control mask is a 24 bit word while the control register is 32 bits! They could have at least put that in BOLD FACE!"
Don't forget D-for-Disney Hollings!
You keep comparing FreeBSD and Linux. Are you saying Slackware (HardLinux) is just as ready for the desktop as Kubuntu (EZLinux)? Because when you make that generalization, you ARE comparing FreeBSD to Slackware, Gentoo, Rock, LFS, etc.
That's not realistic--almost nobody has the time for that.
It depends on who that "nobody" is. If it's your grandma, of course not! Heck, she aint' even ready for HoldYourHandLinux either!
On the other hand, I installed and configured FreeBSD with all the software I needed on my work's Dell Optiplex in about half a day. If that seems long, compare it to the two day crapshoot I had in my previous configuration of WinXPSP2 on the same system.
Just because FreeBSD (or TextModeLinux) isn't ready for the desktop of a greenhorn so new he's still hasn't outgrown his Bill Gates haircut, doens't mean that it's unsuitable for everyone's desktop.
I don't consider politics and bureaucracies to be substantially different. It's merely a degree is the granularity of the corruption. Maybe I'm just loony this way. Whether it's some congressman voting incarcerate drug users, the DEA shooting drug dealers dead in their homes, or the Supreme Court approving it all, the end result is the same.
You can't make a straight comparison, because each of those projects has a different level of package "granularity." For example, do you make kdeutils one package, or split it up into a dozen? Is X.org one package, or has it been broken out into libs, server, clients, fonts, etc? There's also the issue of multiple versions of a software counting as multiple packages.
Comparing you numbers, it seems fairly clear that PkgSrc has half the available software as Gentoo, but it's hard to tell if which has more between FreeBSD and Gentoo.
One example. The GPL prevents me from linking to a GPL library from a non-GPL application. Yet this act in no way changes, modifies, copies, mutates or distributes the GPL library. The only damage it does is that some GPL advocate gets all self-righteous and indignant. It doesn't affect the user at all.
I don't know what you mean by people taking away my freedom, because I have exactly the same rights today with every piece of BSD software as on the first day they were released. You almost make it sound as if Bill Gates could come along and change the license of the FreeBSD I am using. It's an absurd notion.
By "coruption" I don't mean lobbying or patents. Sheesh. Go take a look at most South American, and you will see political systems that simply cannot work without the corruption. It's because so ingrained that even revolutions can't remove it, because no one knows any other way to do things.
You can't get anything done without resorting to bribery. It's so commonplace it's not even immoral. In fact, North America and Europe are about the only places where bribery isn't considered immoral. It's how a lot of government workers make a living wage. It's much more pervasive than the US system of military contractor kickbacks, because everyone does it from the meter maid to the president. It's expected. I know of a company whose Latin American sales plummetted when they put in a zero tolerance policy on customer gifts.
It's like tipping. It's expected and ensures prompt quality service.
You do know, don't you, that you could have used a temporary tatto, drawn on yourself with a sharpie, or even just not shaved, and gotten the same result? The advantage being you don't have a permanent dot on you non-interview situations.
I mean, if you don't want to work for me, there are less drastic things you could have done. Like merely saying "fuck off" and walking out of the interview.
You're problems with X have nothing to do with FreeBSD, or even the NVidia driver, as both are identical under Linux. They same things. repeat, they are the same things. You didn't have to get the special driver because Centros included the special driver on the CD.
The difference is merely configuration, not desktop readiness. I'm using FreeBSD on the desktop, so the claim that it isn't ready is patently false. What isn't ready is that FreeBSD doesn't have out of the box autoconfiguration.
p.s. Sometimes I get this wierd image of reviewers comparing EasyLinux to MinimalistHardcoreLinux, and then concluding that Linux must not be ready for the desktop because it was difficult to configure the latter distro.
p.p.s. You also had some problems with FreeBSD because you were using the old 4.x branch. Not ever new piece of hardware gets backported to it. This might be the problem with the NVidia driver, because NVidia the manufacturer (not FreeBSD) is very picky about which version of the OS you're using.
The claim that this violates the right of free expression is dubious. Filtering has to be offered, but that's a different thing that having it activated for every customer. If you want to view prurient materials, just don't accept the offer of filtering!
On the other hand, this is a clear hindrance to interstate commerce. Hell, it's a massive hindrance to intrastate commerce? The social conservatives have finally divorced themselves from the economic conservatives, as this is a massive government intervention into an ISPs business. The society without economic freedoms does not have room for the free expression of socially conservative ideas.
Both liberals and conservatives need to realize that government isn't there to "get your way". It's not a wish fulfillment agency. If you can't get your way through peaceful and voluntary means, you don't have the right to impose it via the brute force of government.
I have heard this from friends who have spent several years in Brazil. Like many Latin American nations, you have wonderful people and great potential, but it's hindered by a tradition of corrupt politics. If you can ever solve that problem, you'll easily surpass the US and Europe.
Years ago I went out and got a prominent tattoo on the outer side of my wrist precisely because as I was entering my twenties I began to feel as though the very notion of "profssionalism" was really code for "you must sublimate your identity to the company, and credit to it any personal triumphs you would otherwise have had.
Instead you sublimated your identity to a fashion statement. Hah!
There's nothing inherently different between making a lacework of yourself with fifty ear piercings, or getting a tit job. It's not about individuality, it's about not being content with the body you were born with. You can't "make waves" by yourself, you need a piercing parlour to do it for you.
The last person I would hire is one who has to carve themselves up in order to be an individual.