Look, pal, just because you live in some weird alternate universe where there is this imaginary buddy in the sky called "god" doesn't mean you have the final say on what is real and what isn't.
With what sort of bizzarre reasoning did you come to the conclusion that not> being Christian is somehow 'going with the crowd'? I was ostracized for not being Christian all throughout my childhood years and I still refused to pretend to belive in a god that has no evidence, even though that would have been the easier path.
So go take your "testicular fortitude" and shove it where the sun don't shine. I've got plenty of it, or I would have given in long ago.
And since when are slashdotters liberal? We're not sheep, if that's what you mean, but there's Republicans and Libertarians aplenty here.
The KDE people don't need to slander RMS's character. All they had to do was post a reference to RMS's own words and let RMS slander himself.
RMS deserves a lot of credit for starting this movement. He also deserves a lot of ridcule for trying to exert exclusive control over it. Get over it, RMS, the movement is bigger than just you now, and if you aren't big enough to accept the fact that this means there will be some people in it that you don't like, then up yours. Welcome to the real world, where you can't control what everybody says and thinks, and where people don't want to fund software with a FSF tax. Why trade one unfair software tax for another? You shouldn't have to pay for what don't use - it's true for Microsoft and its true for the FSF also.
Get rid of the archaic electorial college system and then an individual's vote might count, but until then it doesn't. If N people vote for candidate X in a state, and N+1 people vote for candidate Y in that state, then the results are the same as if everybody had voted for candidate Y, and zero people voted for X.
This is dammed unfair. Third party candidates not only can't win (which is to be expected, a bit), but they also can't even get any notice at all because those who vote for them get their votes erased by this messed up system. So if a candidate has like 10% of the popular vote, it looks like he has 0% instead. This prevents anyone not in the big 2 from getting any noteriety at all. A slow buildup of support for a new party, year after year, is literally impossible when everything small rounds down to zero.
The electorial college made sense back when getting a real count of the votes was technologically infeasable. But today it makes no sense at all. At the very least they could stop rounding entire states to 0% or 100%, such that if a candidate gets 20% of the vote, then he gets 20% of the electors from that state. That would be sensible, but this is America. Land of the status quo.
In general, you have one good point: that informing users of alternatives politely is smarter and more effective in the long run than belittling them.
But, you belittle slashdotters in so saying, by assuming that we are idiots who don't already know this simple fact. Thus you are not following your own advice.
And your examples were terrible. ODBC?! Puh-lease! ODBC is very hard to use compared to the SQL it is trying to supplant. It is *not* an example of an improvement.
And why on earth do you assume that a world in which the linux machines are only on the server and the clients are all Windows is a good goal? This is not a worthy goal. We can already do that today. Allowing Linux on the clients is a good goal. Making MS coexist with Linux is also an impossible goal unless we can raise awareness of MS's incompatabilities so the public no longer tolarates them. Getting Windows to play nice with other platforms is essentially what this article was about, if you will recall.
In an ideal world, the choice of what OS to have on the desktop would *not* have to be dictated from on high just to get stuff to be compatable. I have no problem with systems where the users *can* use Windows and most end up choosing to use Windows. I have a problem with systems where the users have no choice but to use Windows in order to work with their Windows-using co-workers. (This is also why I don't like the propsed network for the ISS - allowing Windows is one thing, but forcing it on people for artificial reasons is another entirely.)
When you have a cold hard fact that makes MS look bad, is it 'partasinship' or 'anti-Microsoft FUD' to point this out? Hell no. To ignore it would be partasinship in favor of MS. To point it out is neutral honesty. The fact that neutral honesty usually makes MS look bad is MS's fault, not ours.
Zem, if what you say is true (it sounds like it since I doubt there are internationally enforced rules of business about patents and copyrights), then the US is hindering its competetiveness rather than helping it.
If the US govt makes it harder to to do business by enacting these silly rules, then companies will have to operate outside the US. This is not good for US business. I think when I write my letter of protest I'll have to point that out. (While they won't listen to arguments about fairness, they might listen to arguments about losing money.
Regardless of your opinion of the US Military, boycotting something like an OS just because the military uses it too is plain stupid. There are lots of other things the military uses too, like electricity, oil, automobiles, airplanes, cafeteria food preparation equipment, beds, shoes, radios, etc. Do you have plans to boycott all of those things too?
Some things are so universally ubiquitous that everyone uses them, even those who disagree with each other completely. Would you stop using a brand of disk drive if you found that Microsoft uses that brand too? Of course not. This is no different.
Computers are an important tool in today's society. Something that affects computers affects "real life" just as much as something that affects automobiles, or electrical utilities, and so on.
This notion that computer stuff is somehow not a part of "real life" is insulting at least, and Luddite at worst.
A major factor when selecting the machines is power requirements. Everything here is running off of solar cells and batteries, remember.
Uhm, okay. Then they can start by using an OS that makes proper use of the HLT instruction.
pre-configuration eliminates Windows advantage
on
Space Station's LAN
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· Score: 1
__
To summarize, a number of people have claimed that Windows is a good choice because the astronauts won't have time to muck about with the extra time it takes to get unix working. With Windows, the story goes, the astronauts can just go about their business without worrying about the OS.
Then, in response to this, others point out that Windows is horrible for administration and crashing and so on, and can't be administrated remotely very well.
In response, the Winvocate says that this is not a problem becasue, as the article points out, the laptops are being sent up preconfigured by competent personnel on the ground. If anything breaks they won't try to fix it remotely, just send up a new machine on the next run and take down the old one.
Am I the only one that sees the contradiction here? Hellloooo, Mcfly! If the ground personnel are the only ones configuring the machines, and they spend the time to get them all working perfectly before they get sent up, then this knocks the legs out from under the argument that Unix would be bad because the astronauts would waste time fiddling with it.
If all the admin happens on the ground, then Unix can be set up even better than Windows can be, and you have no reason to claim the astronauts have to set things up themselves.
Remember that there are two Solaris laptops going up too. Are *they* going to be adminstrated by the astronauts? Of course not.
Microgravity makes standard printers not work.
on
Space Station's LAN
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· Score: 1
All standard printers share this property: They collect the paper in a tray, they get fed paper from a tray. That doesn't work so well in zero G. 'Hold on, I have to go catch my printout, literally..'
I doubt they will use printers of *any* kind up there. Where would they throw away the old paper? stuff on paper is a bad idea in general I would think.
I can't think of any system that has more of a need for good remote administration than an orbiting space station.
Sending an IT staff member on-site is going to cost a tad bit more than an airplane ticket in this case, I think. Given that, the 'cost' of learning a Unix over Windows is well worth it. Besides, it's not like we're dealing with idiots who can't program their VCRs, which is MS's target audience. These are astronauts for Crissakes. Learning Unix is nothing compared to the rest of the training they end up going through in preparation for a mission. These are guys who think nothing of going through complicated checklists just to take a leak.
Using Windows for this, even for something as simple as word processing and e-mail, is a major mistake because it cannot be fixed remotely. And why on earth (or not on earth) do they plan on making the communications link to the ground be some Windows proprietary crap too. That locks them in for purely artificial reasons. The comm link shouldn't give a rat's ass what the OS of the clients is, IMO.
Okay, I'm going to type slowly so that you can understand me.
Despite whatever predjudices you may have, Slashdot readers are not a homogeneous group. It is therefore entirely possible that the people saying (in your words), ""Linux is so awesome, it's gonna destroy Microsoft, d00d!" are maybe not the same people as the ones who are saying (in your words)"How dare Micro$uck say that they're not a monopoly! They have no competition!"
We are not a bunch of sheep who follow a party line, and the great thing about OSS is that unlike in the MS world, we dont have to be in order to work together. Opinions run the wide spectrum from the libertarian ESR to the neo-socialist RMS, and yet still stuff gets done anyway. Technical issues don't give a rip what someone's political and economic opinions are and that's the way it should be.
Okay, I poked around their website for a while and I still have one small little question:
- What the heck *is* X11amp anyway? From the screenshots I can guess that it is a sound thing of some sort, but nothing on the site gives enough information to figure out anything other than that.
Turn-based 'leader' games are perfect for Linux.
on
Civ3 For Linux
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· Score: 1
Civ always struck me as being exactly the right kind of game to do in the Xwindow environment.
Lots and lots of information up in lots of little popup windows is the kind of thing X excells at. And the way it can be done interspersed with 'real' work makes it just perfect. (Play a turn of Civ while watching your 'make' out of the corner of your eye, that sort of thing). Plus, the type of audience that likes that kind of game tends to overlap a lot with the 'geek' audience, so it makes marketing sense to put something like that on Linux.
I'll look forward to it. Other games that would be similarly sensible to have in X windows are other turn-based 'leader' perspective games, Deadlock, Star Wars Rebellion (not turn based, but should have been), that sort of thing.
Many people have pointed out that the idea of a CPU id is not new, and has been around before. That's true. But you aren't paying attention to what makes this situation different. Look at how they intend to use the ID, and the reason for concern is obvious. They want to use it to track who is being 'naughty' and disallow them from places. For example, imagine a next-generation IRC-like chat room system that would be able to kick people off on the basis of their CPU ID and not let them back even if they choose a different name (which was one of the examples given). Does this mean that anyone who chooses to mask off the ID at boot-up would never be allowed in, under the presumption that they must be doing it for illicit purposes?
What about people who don't use an Intel PC? Will they be shunned for not submitting to the monopoly, because they lack the ID? Will cloners like AMD end up being forced to implement the IDs as well so as to not cut off their users from those sites? Will there be ID clashes between AMD, Cyrix, and Intel using the same ID numbers? (Intel certainly wouldn't want to divvy up the numberspace for the benefit of their competitors.)
How will software transmit this ID information to other sites? Can you be easily defamed by someone else spoofing your ID and engaging in illicit activity?
The problem here is not that the ID exists, but that it is intended to be used in an insecure, unreliable way by people who are going to falsely assume it is accurate and reliable. Good people will be hurt by this, and anyone not using an Intel-branded CPU will be assumed to be an evil little criminal by the software because they won't have the proper ID.
This whole idea promotes the myth that there is one user per PC. A true multi-user computer would confound the assumptions in their tracking databases. Just because somebody used my computer a few seconds ago to vist a site doesn't mean that that someone was me. It could have been the person down the hall running netscape on my machine through a remote X11 session. This idea is a slap in the face to users of real OS's that can do this. It's like they are saying we don't exist.
This one-user-per-PC myth is the sort of thing MS's networking 'solutions' have been promoting for ages. (Anyone who has tried to set up Samba in a secure fashion knows what I mean.)
If companies can sue just because you are using a similar name to their name, then where does the dividing line lay?
How close do two words have to be for it to be an infringement? Do they have to prove intent as well - so an accidentally similar name would not be a suitable cause for a case? These questions must be answered if the courts are going to allow this kind of thing to continue.
If these questions are inherently unanswerable, then the courts should not be taking these cases at all.
Imagine yourself being wronged by some large company with deep pockets for lawyers. Let's say that for whatever reason, you know you are right, but you aren't 100% convinced you can prove it in court. Say for example, you are 90% convinced you would win. In a "loser pays" system, that small 10% chance that you might lose is going to scare you away from the case, because *you* can't afford to pay for *their* lawyers, while *they* would have no problem paying for *your* lawyers.
Cases would be decided out of court by FUD. If you have even a glimmer of doubt about the likelyhood of winning, you would never want to set foot in the courtroom.
I'd love to be able to prove my dad wrong when he said, "You know, money doesn't grow on trees..."
January issue out in January. What a surprise.
on
January Linux Gazette
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· Score: 1
Hmm. A monthly periodical puts out its January issue in January. Amazing news. Boy am I glad I logged on to slashdot today to find that out. If it weren't for the wonderful news I get here I don't know what I'd do.
(Hint: this isn't news. On the other hand, Mentioning something about one of the particular articles and opening up discussion about it, as is typically done with other periodicals here, would have been worthwhile.)
Slashdot Mirror
With what sort of bizzarre reasoning did you come to the conclusion that not> being Christian is somehow 'going with the crowd'? I was ostracized for not being Christian all throughout my childhood years and I still refused to pretend to belive in a god that has no evidence, even though that would have been the easier path.
So go take your "testicular fortitude" and shove it where the sun don't shine. I've got plenty of it, or I would have given in long ago.
And since when are slashdotters liberal? We're not sheep, if that's what you mean, but there's Republicans and Libertarians aplenty here.
The article?s pretty good, but the site?s in some serious need of demoronizing, ?cause it?s got screwed up apostorphes (?).
RMS deserves a lot of credit for starting this movement. He also deserves a lot of ridcule for trying to exert exclusive control over it. Get over it, RMS, the movement is bigger than just you now, and if you aren't big enough to accept the fact that this means there will be some people in it that you don't like, then up yours. Welcome to the real world, where you can't control what everybody says and thinks, and where people don't want to fund software with a FSF tax. Why trade one unfair software tax for another? You shouldn't have to pay for what don't use - it's true for Microsoft and its true for the FSF also.
This is dammed unfair. Third party candidates not only can't win (which is to be expected, a bit), but they also can't even get any notice at all because those who vote for them get their votes erased by this messed up system. So if a candidate has like 10% of the popular vote, it looks like he has 0% instead. This prevents anyone not in the big 2 from getting any noteriety at all. A slow buildup of support for a new party, year after year, is literally impossible when everything small rounds down to zero.
The electorial college made sense back when getting a real count of the votes was technologically infeasable. But today it makes no sense at all. At the very least they could stop rounding entire states to 0% or 100%, such that if a candidate gets 20% of the vote, then he gets 20% of the electors from that state. That would be sensible, but this is America. Land of the status quo.
But, you belittle slashdotters in so saying, by assuming that we are idiots who don't already know this simple fact. Thus you are not following your own advice.
And your examples were terrible. ODBC?! Puh-lease! ODBC is very hard to use compared to the SQL it is trying to supplant. It is *not* an example of an improvement.
And why on earth do you assume that a world in which the linux machines are only on the server and the clients are all Windows is a good goal? This is not a worthy goal. We can already do that today. Allowing Linux on the clients is a good goal. Making MS coexist with Linux is also an impossible goal unless we can raise awareness of MS's incompatabilities so the public no longer tolarates them. Getting Windows to play nice with other platforms is essentially what this article was about, if you will recall.
In an ideal world, the choice of what OS to have on the desktop would *not* have to be dictated from on high just to get stuff to be compatable. I have no problem with systems where the users *can* use Windows and most end up choosing to use Windows. I have a problem with systems where the users have no choice but to use Windows in order to work with their Windows-using co-workers. (This is also why I don't like the propsed network for the ISS - allowing Windows is one thing, but forcing it on people for artificial reasons is another entirely.)
When you have a cold hard fact that makes MS look bad, is it 'partasinship' or 'anti-Microsoft FUD' to point this out? Hell no. To ignore it would be partasinship in favor of MS. To point it out is neutral honesty. The fact that neutral honesty usually makes MS look bad is MS's fault, not ours.
If the US govt makes it harder to to do business by enacting these silly rules, then companies will have to operate outside the US. This is not good for US business. I think when I write my letter of protest I'll have to point that out. (While they won't listen to arguments about fairness, they might listen to arguments about losing money.
Some things are so universally ubiquitous that everyone uses them, even those who disagree with each other completely. Would you stop using a brand of disk drive if you found that Microsoft uses that brand too? Of course not. This is no different.
Linux owes its existence to the Internet.
The Internet owes its existence to the old ARPAnet.
The ARPAnet owed its existence to the US Military.
Linux is already the outcome of a millitary project, for better or for worse it's already "tainted" thusly.
This notion that computer stuff is somehow not a part of "real life" is insulting at least, and Luddite at worst.
Uhm, okay. Then they can start by using an OS that makes proper use of the HLT instruction.
To summarize, a number of people have claimed that Windows is a good choice because the astronauts won't have time to muck about with the extra time it takes to get unix working. With Windows, the story goes, the astronauts can just go about their business without worrying about the OS.
Then, in response to this, others point out that Windows is horrible for administration and crashing and so on, and can't be administrated remotely very well.
In response, the Winvocate says that this is not a problem becasue, as the article points out, the laptops are being sent up preconfigured by competent personnel on the ground. If anything breaks they won't try to fix it remotely, just send up a new machine on the next run and take down the old one.
Am I the only one that sees the contradiction here? Hellloooo, Mcfly! If the ground personnel are the only ones configuring the machines, and they spend the time to get them all working perfectly before they get sent up, then this knocks the legs out from under the argument that Unix would be bad because the astronauts would waste time fiddling with it.
If all the admin happens on the ground, then Unix can be set up even better than Windows can be, and you have no reason to claim the astronauts have to set things up themselves.
Remember that there are two Solaris laptops going up too. Are *they* going to be adminstrated by the astronauts? Of course not.
I doubt they will use printers of *any* kind up there. Where would they throw away the old paper? stuff on paper is a bad idea in general I would think.
No, they aren't. They're using Windows. Windows and networking and minimum complexity don't belong in the same sentence.
Sending an IT staff member on-site is going to cost a tad bit more than an airplane ticket in this case, I think. Given that, the 'cost' of learning a Unix over Windows is well worth it. Besides, it's not like we're dealing with idiots who can't program their VCRs, which is MS's target audience. These are astronauts for Crissakes. Learning Unix is nothing compared to the rest of the training they end up going through in preparation for a mission. These are guys who think nothing of going through complicated checklists just to take a leak.
Using Windows for this, even for something as simple as word processing and e-mail, is a major mistake because it cannot be fixed remotely. And why on earth (or not on earth) do they plan on making the communications link to the ground be some Windows proprietary crap too. That locks them in for purely artificial reasons. The comm link shouldn't give a rat's ass what the OS of the clients is, IMO.
Despite whatever predjudices you may have, Slashdot readers are not a homogeneous group. It is therefore entirely possible that the people saying (in your words), ""Linux is so awesome, it's gonna destroy Microsoft, d00d!" are maybe not the same people as the ones who are saying (in your words)"How dare Micro$uck say that they're not a monopoly! They have no competition!"
We are not a bunch of sheep who follow a party line, and the great thing about OSS is that unlike in the MS world, we dont have to be in order to work together. Opinions run the wide spectrum from the libertarian ESR to the neo-socialist RMS, and yet still stuff gets done anyway. Technical issues don't give a rip what someone's political and economic opinions are and that's the way it should be.
- What the heck *is* X11amp anyway? From the screenshots I can guess that it is a sound thing of some sort, but nothing on the site gives enough information to figure out anything other than that.
Civ always struck me as being exactly the right kind of game to do in the Xwindow environment.
Lots and lots of information up in lots of little popup windows is the kind of thing X excells at. And the way it can be done interspersed with 'real' work makes it just perfect. (Play a turn of Civ while watching your 'make' out of the corner of your eye, that sort of thing). Plus, the type of audience that likes that kind of game tends to overlap a lot with the 'geek' audience, so it makes marketing sense to put something like that on Linux.
I'll look forward to it. Other games that would be similarly sensible to have in X windows are other turn-based 'leader' perspective games, Deadlock, Star Wars Rebellion (not turn based, but should have been), that sort of thing.
What about people who don't use an Intel PC? Will they be shunned for not submitting to the monopoly, because they lack the ID? Will cloners like AMD end up being forced to implement the IDs as well so as to not cut off their users from those sites? Will there be ID clashes between AMD, Cyrix, and Intel using the same ID numbers? (Intel certainly wouldn't want to divvy up the numberspace for the benefit of their competitors.)
How will software transmit this ID information to other sites? Can you be easily defamed by someone else spoofing your ID and engaging in illicit activity?
The problem here is not that the ID exists, but that it is intended to be used in an insecure, unreliable way by people who are going to falsely assume it is accurate and reliable. Good people will be hurt by this, and anyone not using an Intel-branded CPU will be assumed to be an evil little criminal by the software because they won't have the proper ID.
This one-user-per-PC myth is the sort of thing MS's networking 'solutions' have been promoting for ages. (Anyone who has tried to set up Samba in a secure fashion knows what I mean.)
How close do two words have to be for it to be an infringement? Do they have to prove intent as well - so an accidentally similar name would not be a suitable cause for a case? These questions must be answered if the courts are going to allow this kind of thing to continue.
If these questions are inherently unanswerable, then the courts should not be taking these cases at all.
Imagine yourself being wronged by some large company with deep pockets for lawyers. Let's say that for whatever reason, you know you are right, but you aren't 100% convinced you can prove it in court. Say for example, you are 90% convinced you would win. In a "loser pays" system, that small 10% chance that you might lose is going to scare you away from the case, because *you* can't afford to pay for *their* lawyers, while *they* would have no problem paying for *your* lawyers.
Cases would be decided out of court by FUD. If you have even a glimmer of doubt about the likelyhood of winning, you would never want to set foot in the courtroom.
I'd love to be able to prove my dad wrong when he said, "You know, money doesn't grow on trees..."
(Hint: this isn't news. On the other hand, Mentioning something about one of the particular articles and opening up discussion about it, as is typically done with other periodicals here, would have been worthwhile.)