Even Gen. Powell said of the "evidence" he was to present, "I can't read this. This is bullshit." Of course, he went on to read it.
Several of the documents presented to "prove" Iraq's level of danger to the US were later shown to be forgeries. Another was cribbed mostly from outdated documents available on-line. And now intelligence officials are coming forward to state that the intelligence presented differed significantly to the intelligence gathered.
It is not the questioning that is the problem.
Yes, it is. There is not *enough* questioning. Our government should be under a microscope at all times.
If you do it out of a hatred for the country and its people, then you certainly are unpatriotic. Looking forward to having you leave and go to Cuba or North Korea.
Your thinking is deeply flawed. Why do you assume I hate my country or its people? I love my country, as I stated; I love our culture, our society, and our people. I just hate individuals, like Pres. G. W. Bush.
I'm not too fond of blind loyalists like you, either.
You yourself have assumed that there is some duty in life, namely to increase joy in others. At least you were correct about it being the worst kind of self-important drivel.
Yes, I do believe there is a duty to increase joy in others. My duty is mine own, one which I have willingly undertaken. In my original message, I did not make it clear that it is my own; in fact, I *did* say it was "our" duty.
And I am self-important. I am pretty damned important to myself, and a handful of others.
Thanks for noticing!
There is no duty in life. None. Any duties you feel, any debts you take on, are you own choices. No one else need be bound by them, except by their own choice.
But these and other silly word games help fill up the time between now and when we die.
You have contradicted yourself. Either "there is no lasting value in life" or "the only lasting value in life is the joy we derive from life". Take your pick, but you can only pick one.
Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself. I am large; I contain multitudes. (Thank you, Walt Whitman.)
There is no lasting value in a single life. We die. Any value we intrinsically had dies with us.
But, we interact with others in life. In that, we contribute a lasting value, that dies only when our influence dies. The more joy we take from life, and the more joy we give in life, the better our influence.
Shockingly, he supposes that lasting value in life might come from knowing oneself better, and that real sources of happiness are pusued with fewer contemplative distractions.
Not to sound like a nihilistic hedonist, but... there is no lasting value in life.
In due time, we will all die.
The only lasting value in life is the joy we derive from life; our only real duty in life is to increase the amount of joy experienced by others.
The path to death may be joyous or somber or angry; but it cannot be avoided. Every step you take is one step closer to the ultimate demise.
Knowlege is only valuable inasmuch as it contributes to your joy, and the joy of those whom you affect. I enjoy intellectual conversation, and so I value those who seek knowlege.
But are the real sources of happiness pursued with fewer contemplative distractions? For some, yes. For others, no. Me, I'm not arrogant enough to assume my inner complexity requires constant contemplation. I think I have myself figured out fairly well. Occassionaly, I reconsider who I truly am; but for the most part, I merely exist, and enjoy that existence.
But, YMMV, of course. But to assume your purpose in life is another's purpose is the worst kind of self-important drivel in existence.
My life is whittled down to the basics, so I only concentrate on what's important. Gadgets are just used to fill voids in empty lives.
And what is a 'full' life, pray tell?
Seriously, what do the self-righteously self-deprived do with their copious free time?
My life is filled with useless shit, and you know what? I love it! I am *extremely* content with all my CDs of music (more and more coming from independent labels, as that's where the interesting stuff is), my shelves and shelves of escapist SF, my Tivo full of Farscape re-runs (damn you, sci-fi, for cancelling this great show!), my office full of computer-geek stuff.
Once I lived the spartan life, and I thought great thoughts, and I wrote great stories. I was published once in a while, but eventually the rejection slips became more frequent, and more magazines went belly-up.
And what did I realize? I'm gonna die, and everything I know is going to die with me. So I spend time with friends when I can, and have fun at all times.
As is apparent by this post, IANAL, I have never wanted to be a lawyer, nor do I have any respect whatsoever for the lawyer profession. Fucking weasels.
That said:
SCO is not claiming copyright infringement, so the case isn't strictly about copied code. They are claiming violation of contract, so the *court case* will hang on contract law, *not* IP law.
However, in *public* they are making this an IP case. They have made not-so-veiled claims to owning the rights to the concepts of *all* modern operating systems.
If the case were based on their public claims, they wouldn't stand a chance. But, their case is based strictly on contract law. All this public posturing means nothing.... except....
If they win the contract violation suit, it will appear as if their public claims were valid, and upheld by the force of law!
This is subtle, and will have a chilling effect on all future SCO dealings. They can then extort money from every single OS vendor in the country, based not on actual fact, but on lies and innuendo. Look at how quickly (Sun?) and Microsoft payed up without a single court win.
In any case, this public face is designed to get the top administration a chance to sell their shares at a nice profit. They don't really care about much else, near as I can tell.
That makes you very un-patriotic. You are so ignorant of political matters, and so blinded by hatred, it is dangerous when people like you get politically involved in anything. Become informed about things.
Huh?
If questioning our leaders is unpatriotic, I don't want to be a part of this country.
The $250B figure is *money paid to* corporations, not tax breaks. Bush's lies are well-documented. The rich pay less taxes than the poor, as documented by the IRS.
I may be politically naive, but I am certainly not blind.
It hasn't. Corporations are still overtaxed and over-regulated.
By what standard?
In 2000, the United States payed US corporations over $250 billion in corporate subsidies (or "welfare," as it is known if provided to individuals). Meanwhile, neither GE nor Microsoft payed *any* taxes in 1999, and very little in subsequent years.
Yes, I know that 10% of the US population payed 30% of the taxes collected; but that 10% accounted for over 40% of the income! Now, with Bush's new tax breaks, the rich pay even *less* in taxes. By casting the deciding vote, Cheney earned $80k in reduced taxes this year. That's more than 90% of the population makes in regular income!...since those who are anti-Bush are typically so because they hate the country and its people.
Huh? What kind of rhetorical idiocy is this? I am definitely anti-Bush, as his imperialistic agenda has made the United States look like a lieing bully to the rest of the world. He has lied to the world, he has lied to the citizens of his own country, and he is quite likely leading the US into the worst recession since the great depression. His only redeeming quality is that he seems hell-bent on destroying the rest of the world, too.
The harm he is causing the country and the world will take years to repair. The lies he has propogated for his agenda have already destroyed US credibility. (Which lies, you ask? Most of the documents presented as "proof" of Iraq's guilt have been shown to be crude forgeries, or misrepresentation of the facts.)
Dude, face it: GW Bush is raping his own country with a large-bore artillery cleaning brush, and almost half the country is saying, "Give me more! It's not big enough!"
I love the US. We are truly a great country, with all our flaws. And I consider it my patriotic duty to question every action of the president (and the other representatives); otherwise, how can we be sure he is not squandering that greatness on evil?
No, OSS tries to copy, but doesn't always copy well (Read: still working on a good unix desktop. See Also: Apple for innovation in this area). I've also never seen OSS innovate beyond simple improvements to what OSS copied.
Huh? What the hell are you talking about?
OSS innovations: the internet. The web. Email. Kerberos. The X Windows system.
Don't hand me that "OSS never innovates" bullshit. That hasn't been true from the beginning, and is less true every day.
Look, everyone! Of *course* you'd use the same compiler, same optimisations, etc. SCO would have a well-documented compiler chain and methodology. If IBM has licensed the code, chances are they have received the build tools as well.
Plus, the burden of proof is on SCO. Make them compile the code in a well-monitored environment. This seems to be the only way to "prove" the code was in UnixWare before it was in Linux.
That is, unless there is some historical repository of SCO code that is both legitimate and trustworthy...
SCO *has* shown something to the public, to whit: binaries. Compile the original programs that contain suspected infringing code, compare it against the binaries they shipped, and if the match, the are able to place their code in time.
CVS logs can be altered. The code that is compiled cannot, nor can they change the binaries that have already shipped.
It's easy, it's fast, and it is accurate.
That should place the SCO code in time within about a six-month period. If the Linux code pre-dates this period by a significant amount, the infringing code came from the Linux kernel, and SCO is a smoking crater.
If the Linux code came later, then it is IBM who is curb-stomped, followed by a full-frontal assault on Linux itself.
they have enough cash in the bank to pay every one of their 40,000 employees for the next five years.
This is a common misconception which originates in the flawed accounting laws that helped allow Enron and Worldcom to fleece the world for so long.
The current accounting laws allows companies to include employee stock options as "income." Microsoft is able to include the valuation of these stock options as income, so as long as the stock price goes up, Microsoft gets to count that as income, even though there is no actual money exchanging hands. In fact, Microsoft gets to "print" its own money by handing out more stocks to its employees.
This is important, because if Microsoft's stock starts to fail, the amount of "cash" they have on-hand will dwindle also, very rapidly.
Microsoft is not as golden as you might expect, given the business hype that surrounds the company.
That's why I treasure my original copy of the GLS-edited Hacker's Dictionary...
ME TOO!
Seriously. I found "The Hacker's Dictionary" in a bookstore in Ketchikan, Alaska, in 1984. Until then, I felt as if I was the only geek in the world. After that, I realized I was the only geek in Alaska, and there was a real world Out There.
If these allegations are true, and ESR is allowing editorial power to overcome the editor's responsibility to accurately reflect hacker culture, then this is a Very Bad Day for our collective family.
I propose a new rule for the editor of the Jargon File: the editor cannot contribute entries, and instead is relegated to the role of researching and selecting entries, and possibly editing them for language and content (rather like TNT does to movies).
However, as others have pointed out, the Jargon File is ESR's baby. If Guy L. Steele trusted him, I guess we have very little to say. The most we could do would be to fork the Jargon File and create a project called "The Hacker's Dictionary," with CVS access, an XML schema, etc.
Jobs and Woz are good in different ways. I don't understand why you have to give a comment like that.
It's a valid and important comparison. The poster is stating that they choose to admire technical talent and scrupulous behaviour, and not ruthless business acumen.
In this world, there is a surplus of ruthless, greedy, and selfish behaviour. That, we've got coming out of our collective ass. Note how we measure success.
Not enough people even know who Wozniak *is*, let alone what he stands represents to most of us geeks who cut our teeth on the original Apple ][, long before the PC ever emerged from the gaping bowels of IBM.
It's just like saying that Bill Gates seems to lack everything Linus Torvalds has.
What, like talent at computers? Scruples?
Gates has never been very good at computers. In fact, the early days of Apple and Microsoft are curiously similar. Both were founded by two friends, one of whom was good at business, and the other at technical things. In the case of Apple, Woz was an electronics wiz. For Microsoft, Paul Allen was damned talented at software.
Now, both of the real talent behind the founding of these companies have moved on, while the less-talented (geek-wise) partners milk it for everything it's worth.
Gates could not have written an OS kernel from scratch. Linus did. (Linux was a working kernel when he unleashed it on the world. It just wasn't very complete.)
The evidence indicates that Bill Gates has no sense of humor, and no scruples. Linus has both.
Most importantly, Linus didn't have to become the world's richest man to get a girlfriend. Plus, Tove could kick Melinda Gates' ass.
Very good thought, but with only one catch: it often takes fifteen minutes just to get back into a project, let alone accomplish anything in that project.
Research has shown that even a one-minute interruption during peak efficiency at work results in fifteen minutes of lost productivity, as it takes a while to get back into the groove.
Hell it takes me fifteen minutes just to get comfortable.
Without something in writing, there's no real security in your purchase/training.
As mentioned in the parent, companies like Red Hat and Suse make their money from support contracts. Since their bread and butter is in these contracts, and not in selling upgrades, they are more likely to take an active role in fixing problems, instead of having a vested interest in propogating problems (leading to more upgrades).
Microsoft has, in the past, refused to fix bugs in "older" software. In many circumstances, the solution is to "upgrade." In several cases, bugs deemed non-critical by MS have been left unfixed for months. In several other cases, the fixes to these bugs have caused even worse problems.
I have yet to see a contract stipulating Microsoft promises to fix any problems discovered, let alone take resonsibility for any defects. Doesn't mean they don't exist; but, like invisible ephemeral unicorns, until I see one (or the effects of one), I don't believe in them.
The concept of manufacturer liability in the software market is laughable. Schools can get sued for millions for choosing co-valedictorians, but Microsoft sure as hell isn't going to pay for the privacy-raping holes in Passport.
TCP/IP, along with many of the ideas related to it (sliding transmit windows, for instance).
World-wide web.
Email (not just SMTP, but the entire concept).
Many of the basic concepts in comp-sci, such as the various sort methods, binary trees, hash buckets, etc.
Is this enough yet? If these concepts were tied up in patents, we couldn't do our job.
Now, name one great idea that *didn't* originate in the open community. (Warning: this is a trick request. I can "prove" that any idea you present originated in the open community because we are *all* standing on the shoulders of giants.)
Marillion wrote: "It will be regretable that some good stuff about the Internet will be the victim of "improvements." Let's hope that some things make a comeback."
This is funny. You take your nick from a band that is popular because of self-controlled destiny, popularization through the internet, and the ability to produce their own media.
Marillion would not be where they are today without the open, free internet. Media companies would have kept them in Europe; here in the states, nobody would have heard of them, except the few die-hard fans that discovered them accidently overseas.
They certainly would not have had the artistic freedom to produce and publish their own albums based entirely on support from fans.
"C'est la Vie" has nothing to do with it. Getting hit with a car: that's life. Watching the car coming and not doing anything about it: that's stupidity.
I learned to program on the Apple ][, back in 1978. I learned BASIC in about a month, then insisted the school buy Pascal. Then I moved on to assembly (ahh, Sweet 16 mini-assembler, built right in!).
I learned how to program within a month, and within a year was using the built-in mini assembler to write programs that controlled the video directly (for games, of course). I *knew* that machine, inside and out. I could look at a JSR opcode and know exactly which system call was being made.
Today, even programming the most trivial program can take a month. Learning a new system? My nephew (who is the age I was when I started programming, and he's lived with computers almost his whole life) is having troubles learning how to write the simplest program.
Why? Because it's all too damned complex.
People learn using building blocks. Learn the simple concepts first, then build on that knowlege to learn more and more complex things.
Problem is, it's tough to do that with modern computers. I think that is the primary appeal of Linux, to me. It's not as hard to start simply, because the simple stuff is exposed. Overly-complex systems designed to hide the fundamentals will never lead to a generation of people truly *good* with computers. Good with a particular system? Perhaps. But good with *computers*?
Not likely.
That's where the love of the old machines comes from.
In times past, Linux (or *BSD) plus Samba has outperformed MS-Windows on the same hardware. This is quite important, and the reason this test was commissioned.
Secondly, note that no real test results were provided; the report merely states that MS-Windows provided a higher *peak* throughput. Please realize that real-world performance does not rely on peak throughput as much as it relies on aggregate *sustained* throughput.
It could be that Samba still knocks the socks off MS-Windows in that more-important category. But, until some legitimate benchmarks are run, Microsoft will continue to pay for FUD.
BTW: several quibbles with testing methodology. First, no optimisations were done to the Linux box (no noatime option on the filesystem mount, for instance). Second, they didn't test against an optimized kernel (which is fair, I guess, as most people will stick with a stock install; however, most people won't do those MS-Windows tweaks, either). Finally, this was tested against an aging 2.4 kernel, and not against either the newer 2.4 kernel, or against any of the later 2.5 builds. With the SMP, low-latency, and I/O buffs in the new 2.5 series, I imagine the outcome would be quite different.
Slashdot Mirror
You can't document even one.
"Weapons of Mass Destruction" ring a bell?
Even Gen. Powell said of the "evidence" he was to present, "I can't read this. This is bullshit." Of course, he went on to read it.
Several of the documents presented to "prove" Iraq's level of danger to the US were later shown to be forgeries. Another was cribbed mostly from outdated documents available on-line. And now intelligence officials are coming forward to state that the intelligence presented differed significantly to the intelligence gathered.
It is not the questioning that is the problem.
Yes, it is. There is not *enough* questioning. Our government should be under a microscope at all times.
If you do it out of a hatred for the country and its people, then you certainly are unpatriotic. Looking forward to having you leave and go to Cuba or North Korea.
Your thinking is deeply flawed. Why do you assume I hate my country or its people? I love my country, as I stated; I love our culture, our society, and our people. I just hate individuals, like Pres. G. W. Bush.
I'm not too fond of blind loyalists like you, either.
That's just it, I'm not wealthy enough to have ANY free time.
Ah! That's completely different. And I apologize for my arrogance; it was uncalled-for.
I figured out the problem for me, though. I just became so damned arrogant I no longer have friends.
Problem solved. I now have *loads* of free time.
You condtradicted yourself twice.
Wonderful! I love contradictions.
You yourself have assumed that there is some duty in life, namely to increase joy in others. At least you were correct about it being the worst kind of self-important drivel.
Yes, I do believe there is a duty to increase joy in others. My duty is mine own, one which I have willingly undertaken. In my original message, I did not make it clear that it is my own; in fact, I *did* say it was "our" duty.
And I am self-important. I am pretty damned important to myself, and a handful of others.
Thanks for noticing!
There is no duty in life. None. Any duties you feel, any debts you take on, are you own choices. No one else need be bound by them, except by their own choice.
But these and other silly word games help fill up the time between now and when we die.
Amen, Brotha.
You have contradicted yourself. Either "there is no lasting value in life" or "the only lasting value in life is the joy we derive from life". Take your pick, but you can only pick one.
Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself. I am large; I contain multitudes. (Thank you, Walt Whitman.)
There is no lasting value in a single life. We die. Any value we intrinsically had dies with us.
But, we interact with others in life. In that, we contribute a lasting value, that dies only when our influence dies. The more joy we take from life, and the more joy we give in life, the better our influence.
At least, in my view.
Shockingly, he supposes that lasting value in life might come from knowing oneself better, and that real sources of happiness are pusued with fewer contemplative distractions.
Not to sound like a nihilistic hedonist, but... there is no lasting value in life.
In due time, we will all die.
The only lasting value in life is the joy we derive from life; our only real duty in life is to increase the amount of joy experienced by others.
The path to death may be joyous or somber or angry; but it cannot be avoided. Every step you take is one step closer to the ultimate demise.
Knowlege is only valuable inasmuch as it contributes to your joy, and the joy of those whom you affect. I enjoy intellectual conversation, and so I value those who seek knowlege.
But are the real sources of happiness pursued with fewer contemplative distractions? For some, yes. For others, no. Me, I'm not arrogant enough to assume my inner complexity requires constant contemplation. I think I have myself figured out fairly well. Occassionaly, I reconsider who I truly am; but for the most part, I merely exist, and enjoy that existence.
But, YMMV, of course. But to assume your purpose in life is another's purpose is the worst kind of self-important drivel in existence.
My life is whittled down to the basics, so I only concentrate on what's important. Gadgets are just used to fill voids in empty lives.
And what is a 'full' life, pray tell?
Seriously, what do the self-righteously self-deprived do with their copious free time?
My life is filled with useless shit, and you know what? I love it! I am *extremely* content with all my CDs of music (more and more coming from independent labels, as that's where the interesting stuff is), my shelves and shelves of escapist SF, my Tivo full of Farscape re-runs (damn you, sci-fi, for cancelling this great show!), my office full of computer-geek stuff.
Once I lived the spartan life, and I thought great thoughts, and I wrote great stories. I was published once in a while, but eventually the rejection slips became more frequent, and more magazines went belly-up.
And what did I realize? I'm gonna die, and everything I know is going to die with me. So I spend time with friends when I can, and have fun at all times.
And I love the little shit that pervades my life.
As is apparent by this post, IANAL, I have never wanted to be a lawyer, nor do I have any respect whatsoever for the lawyer profession. Fucking weasels.
That said:
SCO is not claiming copyright infringement, so the case isn't strictly about copied code. They are claiming violation of contract, so the *court case* will hang on contract law, *not* IP law.
However, in *public* they are making this an IP case. They have made not-so-veiled claims to owning the rights to the concepts of *all* modern operating systems.
If the case were based on their public claims, they wouldn't stand a chance. But, their case is based strictly on contract law. All this public posturing means nothing.... except....
If they win the contract violation suit, it will appear as if their public claims were valid, and upheld by the force of law!
This is subtle, and will have a chilling effect on all future SCO dealings. They can then extort money from every single OS vendor in the country, based not on actual fact, but on lies and innuendo. Look at how quickly (Sun?) and Microsoft payed up without a single court win.
In any case, this public face is designed to get the top administration a chance to sell their shares at a nice profit. They don't really care about much else, near as I can tell.
Fuckers.
That makes you very un-patriotic. You are so ignorant of political matters, and so blinded by hatred, it is dangerous when people like you get politically involved in anything. Become informed about things.
Huh?
If questioning our leaders is unpatriotic, I don't want to be a part of this country.
The $250B figure is *money paid to* corporations, not tax breaks. Bush's lies are well-documented. The rich pay less taxes than the poor, as documented by the IRS.
I may be politically naive, but I am certainly not blind.
It hasn't. Corporations are still overtaxed and over-regulated.
...since those who are anti-Bush are typically so because they hate the country and its people.
By what standard?
In 2000, the United States payed US corporations over $250 billion in corporate subsidies (or "welfare," as it is known if provided to individuals). Meanwhile, neither GE nor Microsoft payed *any* taxes in 1999, and very little in subsequent years.
Yes, I know that 10% of the US population payed 30% of the taxes collected; but that 10% accounted for over 40% of the income! Now, with Bush's new tax breaks, the rich pay even *less* in taxes. By casting the deciding vote, Cheney earned $80k in reduced taxes this year. That's more than 90% of the population makes in regular income!
Huh? What kind of rhetorical idiocy is this? I am definitely anti-Bush, as his imperialistic agenda has made the United States look like a lieing bully to the rest of the world. He has lied to the world, he has lied to the citizens of his own country, and he is quite likely leading the US into the worst recession since the great depression. His only redeeming quality is that he seems hell-bent on destroying the rest of the world, too.
The harm he is causing the country and the world will take years to repair. The lies he has propogated for his agenda have already destroyed US credibility. (Which lies, you ask? Most of the documents presented as "proof" of Iraq's guilt have been shown to be crude forgeries, or misrepresentation of the facts.)
Dude, face it: GW Bush is raping his own country with a large-bore artillery cleaning brush, and almost half the country is saying, "Give me more! It's not big enough!"
I love the US. We are truly a great country, with all our flaws. And I consider it my patriotic duty to question every action of the president (and the other representatives); otherwise, how can we be sure he is not squandering that greatness on evil?
No, OSS tries to copy, but doesn't always copy well (Read: still working on a good unix desktop. See Also: Apple for innovation in this area). I've also never seen OSS innovate beyond simple improvements to what OSS copied.
Huh? What the hell are you talking about?
OSS innovations: the internet. The web. Email. Kerberos. The X Windows system.
Don't hand me that "OSS never innovates" bullshit. That hasn't been true from the beginning, and is less true every day.
Look, everyone! Of *course* you'd use the same compiler, same optimisations, etc. SCO would have a well-documented compiler chain and methodology. If IBM has licensed the code, chances are they have received the build tools as well.
Plus, the burden of proof is on SCO. Make them compile the code in a well-monitored environment. This seems to be the only way to "prove" the code was in UnixWare before it was in Linux.
That is, unless there is some historical repository of SCO code that is both legitimate and trustworthy...
The way to prove the code?
Compile it.
SCO *has* shown something to the public, to whit: binaries. Compile the original programs that contain suspected infringing code, compare it against the binaries they shipped, and if the match, the are able to place their code in time.
CVS logs can be altered. The code that is compiled cannot, nor can they change the binaries that have already shipped.
It's easy, it's fast, and it is accurate.
That should place the SCO code in time within about a six-month period. If the Linux code pre-dates this period by a significant amount, the infringing code came from the Linux kernel, and SCO is a smoking crater.
If the Linux code came later, then it is IBM who is curb-stomped, followed by a full-frontal assault on Linux itself.
they have enough cash in the bank to pay every one of their 40,000 employees for the next five years.
This is a common misconception which originates in the flawed accounting laws that helped allow Enron and Worldcom to fleece the world for so long.
The current accounting laws allows companies to include employee stock options as "income." Microsoft is able to include the valuation of these stock options as income, so as long as the stock price goes up, Microsoft gets to count that as income, even though there is no actual money exchanging hands. In fact, Microsoft gets to "print" its own money by handing out more stocks to its employees.
This is important, because if Microsoft's stock starts to fail, the amount of "cash" they have on-hand will dwindle also, very rapidly.
Microsoft is not as golden as you might expect, given the business hype that surrounds the company.
(SEE Bill Parish's website for more details.)
That's why I treasure my original copy of the GLS-edited Hacker's Dictionary...
ME TOO!
Seriously. I found "The Hacker's Dictionary" in a bookstore in Ketchikan, Alaska, in 1984. Until then, I felt as if I was the only geek in the world. After that, I realized I was the only geek in Alaska, and there was a real world Out There.
If these allegations are true, and ESR is allowing editorial power to overcome the editor's responsibility to accurately reflect hacker culture, then this is a Very Bad Day for our collective family.
I propose a new rule for the editor of the Jargon File: the editor cannot contribute entries, and instead is relegated to the role of researching and selecting entries, and possibly editing them for language and content (rather like TNT does to movies).
However, as others have pointed out, the Jargon File is ESR's baby. If Guy L. Steele trusted him, I guess we have very little to say. The most we could do would be to fork the Jargon File and create a project called "The Hacker's Dictionary," with CVS access, an XML schema, etc.
Jobs and Woz are good in different ways. I don't understand why you have to give a comment like that.
It's a valid and important comparison. The poster is stating that they choose to admire technical talent and scrupulous behaviour, and not ruthless business acumen.
In this world, there is a surplus of ruthless, greedy, and selfish behaviour. That, we've got coming out of our collective ass. Note how we measure success.
Not enough people even know who Wozniak *is*, let alone what he stands represents to most of us geeks who cut our teeth on the original Apple ][, long before the PC ever emerged from the gaping bowels of IBM.
It's just like saying that Bill Gates seems to lack everything Linus Torvalds has.
What, like talent at computers? Scruples?
Gates has never been very good at computers. In fact, the early days of Apple and Microsoft are curiously similar. Both were founded by two friends, one of whom was good at business, and the other at technical things. In the case of Apple, Woz was an electronics wiz. For Microsoft, Paul Allen was damned talented at software.
Now, both of the real talent behind the founding of these companies have moved on, while the less-talented (geek-wise) partners milk it for everything it's worth.
Gates could not have written an OS kernel from scratch. Linus did. (Linux was a working kernel when he unleashed it on the world. It just wasn't very complete.)
The evidence indicates that Bill Gates has no sense of humor, and no scruples. Linus has both.
Most importantly, Linus didn't have to become the world's richest man to get a girlfriend. Plus, Tove could kick Melinda Gates' ass.
Very good thought, but with only one catch: it often takes fifteen minutes just to get back into a project, let alone accomplish anything in that project.
Research has shown that even a one-minute interruption during peak efficiency at work results in fifteen minutes of lost productivity, as it takes a while to get back into the groove.
Hell it takes me fifteen minutes just to get comfortable.
Without something in writing, there's no real security in your purchase/training.
As mentioned in the parent, companies like Red Hat and Suse make their money from support contracts. Since their bread and butter is in these contracts, and not in selling upgrades, they are more likely to take an active role in fixing problems, instead of having a vested interest in propogating problems (leading to more upgrades).
Microsoft has, in the past, refused to fix bugs in "older" software. In many circumstances, the solution is to "upgrade." In several cases, bugs deemed non-critical by MS have been left unfixed for months. In several other cases, the fixes to these bugs have caused even worse problems.
I have yet to see a contract stipulating Microsoft promises to fix any problems discovered, let alone take resonsibility for any defects. Doesn't mean they don't exist; but, like invisible ephemeral unicorns, until I see one (or the effects of one), I don't believe in them.
The concept of manufacturer liability in the software market is laughable. Schools can get sued for millions for choosing co-valedictorians, but Microsoft sure as hell isn't going to pay for the privacy-raping holes in Passport.
Something is fucked up here.
TCP/IP, along with many of the ideas related to it (sliding transmit windows, for instance).
World-wide web.
Email (not just SMTP, but the entire concept).
Many of the basic concepts in comp-sci, such as the various sort methods, binary trees, hash buckets, etc.
Is this enough yet? If these concepts were tied up in patents, we couldn't do our job.
Now, name one great idea that *didn't* originate in the open community. (Warning: this is a trick request. I can "prove" that any idea you present originated in the open community because we are *all* standing on the shoulders of giants.)
Marillion wrote: "It will be regretable that some good stuff about the Internet will be the victim of "improvements." Let's hope that some things make a comeback."
This is funny. You take your nick from a band that is popular because of self-controlled destiny, popularization through the internet, and the ability to produce their own media.
Marillion would not be where they are today without the open, free internet. Media companies would have kept them in Europe; here in the states, nobody would have heard of them, except the few die-hard fans that discovered them accidently overseas.
They certainly would not have had the artistic freedom to produce and publish their own albums based entirely on support from fans.
"C'est la Vie" has nothing to do with it. Getting hit with a car: that's life. Watching the car coming and not doing anything about it: that's stupidity.
He spelled "loose," and he meant, "loose."
As in, "Loose your rights upon the world," as in, "Loose the hounds!"
Seems that's what SCO is doing: "We shall loose our IP rights upon your wretched visage, and all your base are belong to us!"
Huh? "Feed on each other to make a stronger whole." Is that what this is about?
This is more like a barfight in which one combatant sees another combatant poke at the eyes, and so copies that move himself.
This doesn't mean you end up with a "stronger whole." It means you end up with a bunch of blind drunks, a smashed-up bar, and wasted alchohol.
Until we start cooperating with each other, there is no such thing as a stronger whole. We only get more-attractive divisions.
...Apple took an unfriendly OS and turned it into a consumer product.
Hogwash. *BSD is *very* friendly. It's just particular about its friends.
I learned to program on the Apple ][, back in 1978. I learned BASIC in about a month, then insisted the school buy Pascal. Then I moved on to assembly (ahh, Sweet 16 mini-assembler, built right in!).
I learned how to program within a month, and within a year was using the built-in mini assembler to write programs that controlled the video directly (for games, of course). I *knew* that machine, inside and out. I could look at a JSR opcode and know exactly which system call was being made.
Today, even programming the most trivial program can take a month. Learning a new system? My nephew (who is the age I was when I started programming, and he's lived with computers almost his whole life) is having troubles learning how to write the simplest program.
Why? Because it's all too damned complex.
People learn using building blocks. Learn the simple concepts first, then build on that knowlege to learn more and more complex things.
Problem is, it's tough to do that with modern computers. I think that is the primary appeal of Linux, to me. It's not as hard to start simply, because the simple stuff is exposed. Overly-complex systems designed to hide the fundamentals will never lead to a generation of people truly *good* with computers. Good with a particular system? Perhaps. But good with *computers*?
Not likely.
That's where the love of the old machines comes from.
In times past, Linux (or *BSD) plus Samba has outperformed MS-Windows on the same hardware. This is quite important, and the reason this test was commissioned.
Secondly, note that no real test results were provided; the report merely states that MS-Windows provided a higher *peak* throughput. Please realize that real-world performance does not rely on peak throughput as much as it relies on aggregate *sustained* throughput.
It could be that Samba still knocks the socks off MS-Windows in that more-important category. But, until some legitimate benchmarks are run, Microsoft will continue to pay for FUD.
BTW: several quibbles with testing methodology. First, no optimisations were done to the Linux box (no noatime option on the filesystem mount, for instance). Second, they didn't test against an optimized kernel (which is fair, I guess, as most people will stick with a stock install; however, most people won't do those MS-Windows tweaks, either). Finally, this was tested against an aging 2.4 kernel, and not against either the newer 2.4 kernel, or against any of the later 2.5 builds. With the SMP, low-latency, and I/O buffs in the new 2.5 series, I imagine the outcome would be quite different.
But, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
the Boogeyman of Redmond isn't really hiding under your bed...
Duh. He's hiding in your computer.
And he's watching you.