Jon Postel, who passed away last year, pioneered the internet in the most unselfish way imaginable.
Slashdot would do a wonderful honor to donate the money in Jon's name for recognition of his tireless efforts to help build the internet to what it is today.
He speaks his mind with conviction and brutal honesty.
He helped build Netscape back when it meant something, he's an open source advocate, releasing all this hacks, and he's one of my favorite story posters at/.
jwz deserves recognition for just being himself. We could all learn a lot from Jamie.
Ok, so I'm a linux newbie, but I have an extra system at home and a cable modem.
Last week I downloaded iso's of Mandrake 6.1, Caldera's 1.3, and Debian's latest release. I burned them each to CD, and started installs of each on a fresh drive.
I wanted to go with Mandrake and nothing else because I'd successfully installed Redhat 5.2 on a computer at work without any trouble. On my home system I knew everything that was on it, so I didn't think I'd have any trouble.
I started Mandrake. When I got to the x server install, it probed for my graphics card (AGP Banshee card) and couldn't find it. The installer wouldn't progress after that. I couldn't find a banshee card in the listed cards so I quit the Mandrake install, as it was going no where after that step anyway.
A longtime linux user at work told me Debian was the best distro and that if I had probs, he could telnet in and fix things. Well, I got through the install, but no networking because of a lack of DHCP and no x server either because of another failed autoprobing. So I got a command line with no networking so I couldn't search deja news for answers. I was stuck. Since he couldn't telnet to it, I said forget it.
So finally, I plopped in the Caldera disk, rebooted. Fancy wizards walked through everything. The choices were much the same as Redhat/Mandrake's installers, but just looked nicer. DHCP worked fine, and it found my graphics card no prob. Time to go from formatted drive to running Netscape under KDE in Caldera's Linux? 30 minutes.
It was easier than installing Win98 on the same machine (which takes about 45 minutes). No fumbling with a serial number either, that was nice too.
Well this case seems like the "first come, first serve" rule is still in effect. And I guess that's a good thing.
Though sometimes it's a pain. Did you ever try to find out about Nissan cars and trucks at Nissan.com? Well, you'll only see a cheesy frontpage site about a little computer store in North Carolina. Nissan the car company had the amazing foresight not to get Nissancars.com, or Nissan-cars.com, but Nissan-USA.
For a long time, I didn't think the profile you described was the "typical" hacker. Then a couple years ago, I came across this part of the Jargon file:
and I've noticed that quite a few of the people I know and work with, fit the profile (not to mention that I fit the profile pretty well too).
I bet there's a logical reason where the typical liberal/atheist/open minded stereotype got started. It probably has something to do with the ultra-intelligent folks at MIT and Caltech in the late 60's/early 70's.
My knee-jerk explanation is that it's just the nature of working with computers. Computers are controlled environments, I can start it up, shut it down, make it do anything I want. In a simplified way, I'm the "god" of my system and I can do anything I want, I have no limits, my imagination is the only thing holding me back (there's also some memory/CPU upgrades holding me back, but I won't get into it here:). You can also say the world of mathematics is much the same, a controlled place, where the controller has the feeling of total control over the universe in which they inhabit.
If I had to pick a common theme running among things like religion, conservativism, and closed-mindedness, I'd have to say the first word that comes to mind is "limits." Religion limits what you can do; it does so for good reasons, but they're limits nonetheless, and I should be able to decide what is right and what is wrong. Conservativism also makes me think of limits to what my freedoms are, especially after growing up in the Reagan/Bush years. Closed-mindedness seems to be the antithesis of someone who works almost exclusively with computers. Computers have taught me that it doesn't matter what your background, sex, race, upbringing, sexual orientation, or disability is, the only thing that matters is how well you can code or produce great things from your computer. I've been surprised on several occasions to learn upon meeting someone that someone I've been exchanging email with, they happen to be completely deaf, or grossly overweight, or 18 years of age when their writing suggests 35.
A quick straw poll of where I work (small computer group at a large american university) shows that 14 out of 16 fit the typical profile pretty well, there's just a couple of right-wing types in my computer group.
What types of computer people seem typical to you?
I have used a 2Mb wireless LAN at work for the last year. Not for day-to-day use, but mostly just for bringing laptops to meetings, ocassionally working outside the building, etc. Our wireless LAN is pretty slow, the best transfer rates I've gotten were more along the lines of 500-700kbps (about 60-90KB/sec). I've always wanted to set one up at home, but the costs were prohibitive. Our Netwave hub cost around $1000 and each PC card is around $250. So this new Apple/Lucent setup looks great, I might just buy one.
Slashdot Mirror
Jon Postel, who passed away last year, pioneered the internet in the most unselfish way imaginable.
Slashdot would do a wonderful honor to donate the money in Jon's name for recognition of his tireless efforts to help build the internet to what it is today.
Jon Postel will always be one of my heros.
Jamie Zawinski is one of my all time heros.
/.
He speaks his mind with conviction and brutal honesty.
He helped build Netscape back when it meant something, he's an open source advocate, releasing all this hacks, and he's one of my favorite story posters at
jwz deserves recognition for just being himself. We could all learn a lot from Jamie.
and the problem with that is.... ?
I'm glad my foreskin went to good use, instead of just being thrown away.
I meant 2.3 instead of 1.3 in my second paragraph
Ok, so I'm a linux newbie, but I have an extra system at home and a cable modem.
Last week I downloaded iso's of Mandrake 6.1, Caldera's 1.3, and Debian's latest release. I burned them each to CD, and started installs of each on a fresh drive.
I wanted to go with Mandrake and nothing else because I'd successfully installed Redhat 5.2 on a computer at work without any trouble. On my home system I knew everything that was on it, so I didn't think I'd have any trouble.
I started Mandrake. When I got to the x server install, it probed for my graphics card (AGP Banshee card) and couldn't find it. The installer wouldn't progress after that. I couldn't find a banshee card in the listed cards so I quit the Mandrake install, as it was going no where after that step anyway.
A longtime linux user at work told me Debian was the best distro and that if I had probs, he could telnet in and fix things. Well, I got through the install, but no networking because of a lack of DHCP and no x server either because of another failed autoprobing. So I got a command line with no networking so I couldn't search deja news for answers. I was stuck. Since he couldn't telnet to it, I said forget it.
So finally, I plopped in the Caldera disk, rebooted. Fancy wizards walked through everything. The choices were much the same as Redhat/Mandrake's installers, but just looked nicer. DHCP worked fine, and it found my graphics card no prob. Time to go from formatted drive to running Netscape under KDE in Caldera's Linux? 30 minutes.
It was easier than installing Win98 on the same machine (which takes about 45 minutes). No fumbling with a serial number either, that was nice too.
Well this case seems like the "first come, first serve" rule is still in effect. And I guess that's a good thing.
Though sometimes it's a pain. Did you ever try to find out about Nissan cars and trucks at Nissan.com? Well, you'll only see a cheesy frontpage site about a little computer store in North Carolina. Nissan the car company had the amazing foresight not to get Nissancars.com, or Nissan-cars.com, but Nissan-USA.
God I hate URLs with dashes in them...
For a long time, I didn't think the profile you described was the "typical" hacker. Then a couple years ago, I came across this part of the Jargon file:
:). You can also say the world of mathematics is much the same, a controlled place, where the controller has the feeling of total control over the universe in which they inhabit.
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/j argon/html/Appendix-B.html
and I've noticed that quite a few of the people I know and work with, fit the profile (not to mention that I fit the profile pretty well too).
I bet there's a logical reason where the typical liberal/atheist/open minded stereotype got started. It probably has something to do with the ultra-intelligent folks at MIT and Caltech in the late 60's/early 70's.
My knee-jerk explanation is that it's just the nature of working with computers. Computers are controlled environments, I can start it up, shut it down, make it do anything I want. In a simplified way, I'm the "god" of my system and I can do anything I want, I have no limits, my imagination is the only thing holding me back (there's also some memory/CPU upgrades holding me back, but I won't get into it here
If I had to pick a common theme running among things like religion, conservativism, and closed-mindedness, I'd have to say the first word that comes to mind is "limits." Religion limits what you can do; it does so for good reasons, but they're limits nonetheless, and I should be able to decide what is right and what is wrong. Conservativism also makes me think of limits to what my freedoms are, especially after growing up in the Reagan/Bush years. Closed-mindedness seems to be the antithesis of someone who works almost exclusively with computers. Computers have taught me that it doesn't matter what your background, sex, race, upbringing, sexual orientation, or disability is, the only thing that matters is how well you can code or produce great things from your computer. I've been surprised on several occasions to learn upon meeting someone that someone I've been exchanging email with, they happen to be completely deaf, or grossly overweight, or 18 years of age when their writing suggests 35.
A quick straw poll of where I work (small computer group at a large american university) shows that 14 out of 16 fit the typical profile pretty well, there's just a couple of right-wing types in my computer group.
What types of computer people seem typical to you?
I have used a 2Mb wireless LAN at work for the last year. Not for day-to-day use, but mostly just for bringing laptops to meetings, ocassionally working outside the building, etc. Our wireless LAN is pretty slow, the best transfer rates I've gotten were more along the lines of 500-700kbps (about 60-90KB/sec). I've always wanted to set one up at home, but the costs were prohibitive. Our Netwave hub cost around $1000 and each PC card is around $250. So this new Apple/Lucent setup looks great, I might just buy one.