What, do we have to register *EVERYONE* nowadays? Why not register authors, and columnists, and poets? Is there no freedom anymore?
It's not about freedom, and those other professions that you describe are ARTS. As much as programming can be artistic, I don't think anyone in their right mind can literally call it an ART. Art doesn't have boundaries because there's no one/nothing to protect if art fails, because failure in art is only opinion.
Get the programmers together and REVIEW THEIR CODE on a weekly basis. You will know who is the best programmer. And you will know who is 'certifiable'.
I agree, peer review is one of the better ways to handle code discrepancies, but what's to say that any of the reviewers are 'certifiable' either?
It's not a bad idea. Certification is one of the best grounds for protection in a lawsuit, especially with something like a science, where the plaintiff is more often then not going to be someone that doesn't hail from that field of science, and hence, uneducated about the subject. If someone were to sue you because of your poor code nowadays, the only thing you have is to call another, possibly your senior, programmer, and have them 'vouch' for your prowess. Personally, as much as I hate it too, I would rather have a piece of paper that signifies that THOUSANDS of programmers are vouching for my programming ability, not unlike a bar evaluation for lawyers and (?) doctors.
What we need is an IT union. How about the Teamsters. Certification is garbage. Go to college.
If I was Italian, I might consider that...:)
Certification though, is not. I agree with the earlier poster about checking libs, OS, etc., but if coders were certified on their knowledge of the language, and the underlying libraries, (but not the code involving those libraries, just the calls, etc) other API, etc., it wouldn't be too bad of an idea, and protect the programmer in case that nuclear plant blows it's top.
"I knew what I was doing, Cert. XXX666 shows that, therefore it must hvae been the Operating System....."
Somebody more qualified than me needs to look into this site. Please.
http://www.sco.com/ and search for Linux. Also search for open source.
Looks VERYYYY interesting. Level B1 security for Linux!? 141 documents.
No, SCO's new CMW+ 3.0 is going to have a (predicted, I imagine) ITSEC F-B1 rating. I found the same thing whilst looking for linux (although, the words linux, and open source were never found in the page.....)
"www.microsoft.com is running Microsoft-IIS/4.0 on NT3 or Windows 95" is that some kind of error? maybe because they are running some totally mutated version of Windows NT? Or is Microsoft really using an older version of their own product?
It seems that Doug is making a last gasp at releveance. At this point, it would make more sense for SCO to take the "if you can't beat them, join them" approach: Build a SCO Linux distribution, test the hell out of it, slap the oh so precious SCO label on the box, and charge a ton of cash for a bulletproof, certified by SCO Labs distribution of Linux.
I think if SCO had half a brain they would be doing custom server configurations almost exclusively. I may not meet eye to eye with my CE/CS Prof's about what *nix is best, but you won't find anyone in thier right mind defending SCO's Unix(TM) over anything else.
I think most of you guys are missing the point of this article. He needs HELP, not documentation. While most of you (including myself) hate people like this, they do exist, and it doesn't take a lot of work to write up HELP.
2 friends of mine and I were thinking of doing something along the lines of "Linux for Dummies", only, actually helpful. Talking about everything from standard compiling routines, to using various package managers, handling bash, vi, emacs, etc.
It's not the fact that this stuff is hard, but the fact that most people just are not affluent to tech-speak. So, if we translate our speak to english (and other languages of course), this shouldn't be too hard to master. Also, you might want to note that while the average joe has to learn how to compile the kernel, he may not know enough about bash to even get to the directory where the kernel source is located.
We need a few distinct things to happen before we can really get this going. Please mail me at belman@hempseed.com if you are interested in taking on such a project.
1) Centralized Help Directory. No LDP, man, info, xman, kfm's help, gnome help, etc. etc. etc. Something that all linux users can find, and know exist on their system. Also it would be nice if programs could call these files via a mimetype or direct program, so that the system could get integrated into GUI programs.
2) HELP, not documentation. That means, those of you in tech support and are familiar with standard user problems (whether in linux or not) could be of great help here, describing normal problems that new users face.
3) Cross-Linked Index of Terms. Ala, when MTU appears in a HOWTO, Help file, or other docs, it would be linked to an index entry on MTU, describing it. This could probably be done relatively simply with perl and HTML, using a wordlist to parse and finding various information on the net to use for descriptions of the terms.
The point is, is that all of this stuff is already there, we just need someoen to collect ALL of it, not just the Linux HOWTO's, and put it in a simple to use, easily accessable interface. The rest is just some elbow grease, and I think that if we got enough people interested it would be easy to do.
email me at belman@hempseed.com if you are interested, especially if you have some experience writing GUI apps (As I do not), wanting to write documentation, or are a self-proclaimed perl god.:)
Right now, you get page after page of useless sites. If the better sites paid for position, maybe I would find what I wanted quicker. I find stuff on Altavista just fine, but I prefer using google when i'm looking for things with high popularity, as they have a calculated 'rating' system which tends to be pretty on the money. It would be a form of survival of the fittest. God the internet (and the world in a lot of related cases) has gone to hell. Survival of the fittest without money is one of the true attractions of the internet, not capitalism. Sometimes I wish the web was never invented. Other times, I just wish people weren't allowed to sell goods of any nature on the internet period. Then I think about it, and the internet wouldn't truly be 'free' without that aspect. Unfortunately money has worked it's way into destroying yet another good idea(tm). (hey rob, why aren't extended characters translated?) How utterly frustrating. I needà to kiss some ass and move to monaco or something. -Erik-
Wasn't Rockefeller closer to 100 years ago? Anyway, people still know who he is just like people still know who Ford was.
Yeah, but other than the fact that he owned standard oil and owned one of the biggest monopolies out there, what else? I don't know many people (i imagine) that could point out anything else he might have done or any possible accomplishments..
Although I imagine if you were a history or economics major you would be more educated about him, but the common folk could care less, just like all the other filthy rich capitalists. No different than a good 1/2 of our presidents, most people can't even remember their names much less what they did.
Who drew the boundaries? RMS was part of the so-called "hacker culture", at MIT, that you mention and as such was there and active before Gates ever made his mark on MIT. I would consider RMS a hero - yes. I respect him for his philosophy, hard work and dedication over the years.
My apologies for posting this twice. For some reason the comment didn't get formatted properly and I was an idiot and didn't hit "preview":)
I think the point that most of you are missing, that despite RMS's accomplishments and hard work, no matter how that is measured, the only thing that matters to most colleges is green paper, $$$, money.
The more green paper they have, the more academic programs they can sponsor, which inspires more people to go to their school, which brings them more money. Get with it folks.
Call me a skeptic, but investigate your school's practices. I left Oregon State University because they decided that they'd cut millions of dollars from their engineering program, and build a brand new football stadium with it.
Now, if you are going to be an engineer%Ò2C and don't want to transfer/can't transfer out of state, if you can graduate from Oregon State you have a pretty credible deee in a lot of engineer farms in the northwest (and elsewhere). HP is right down the street from em and they get a LOT of money from Intel and other places.
But, because of the fraternity presence and their lacking football team there, not to mention OSU's overwhelming pride in "tradition", we get a new football stadium while a good half of the EE professors walk off the job.
Sounds like an educational experience to me. I transferred out (to a CC nonetheless because of late reg problems) last term. Just keep that little anecdote in mind next time you think of college as an institution and not a business. You're dead wrong.
Who drew the boundaries? RMS was part of the so-called "hacker culture", at MIT, that you mention and as such was there and active before Gates ever made his mark on MIT. I would consider RMS a hero - yes. I respect him for his philosophy, hard work and dedication over the years. I think the point that most of you are missing, that despite RMS's accomplishments and hard work, no matter how that is measured, the only thing that matters to most colleges is green paper, $$$, money. The more green paper they have, the more academic programs they can sponsor, which inspires more people to go to their school, which brings them more money. Get with it folks. Call me a skeptic, but investigate your school's practices. I left Oregon State University because they decided that they'd cut millions of dollars from their engineering program, and build a brand new football stadium with it. Now, if you are going to be an engineer, and don't want to transfer/can't transfer out of state, if you can graduate from Oregon State you have a pretty credible degree in a lot of engineer farms in the northwest (and elsewhere). HP is right down the street from em and they get a LOT of money from Intel and other places. But, because of the fraternity presence and their lacking football team there, not to mention OSU's overwhelming pride in "tradition", we get a new football stadium while a good half of the EE professors walk off the job. Sounds like an educational experience to me. I transferred out (to a CC nonetheless because of late reg problems) last term. Just keep that little anecdote in mind next time you think of college as an institution and not a business. You're dead wrong. -Erik-
i'm sure it was john Carmack's intention to make thousands of crazy teen's go out with assorted weapons and kill other kids. I'm sure that was his intention. Everyone always wants to blame somebody else for there fuckup. John Carmack is a great human being....he brought us doom and quake...and is making OpenGL and industry standard for 3d graphics (not directx). What can i say...he's John Carmack, leave him alone
You're right! After all, we all know that Commander Keen is the antichrist.:)
The media clearly influence behavior. Otherwise, advertising would be pointless. There is not a hard cause-and-effect relationship though. I, for instance, have seen many thousand Coca Cola ads in my life, but I have never bought Coca Cola. People as a group however are more likely to buy Coca Cola if they have seen Coca Cola ads. The fact that many people here claim "I have played Quake all my life and have never killed anybody!" is completely irrelevant. The relevant question is: "does playing Quake increase the likelihood to kill?"
Advertising is seldom a means of harboring influence anymore. No one buys a Coca-Cola because the advertisement convinces them to buy it, but because they hear it and think "gee, I want a coke", or "i wonder what coke tastes like, maybe i'll get one the next time I buy a pop". They don't like Coke, they will never purchase it again regardless of advertisement.
Same goes with Quake. No one plays quake thinking "wow, I want to kill people, I think i'll do it on my computer", nor does anyone think "this is so easy in quake, maybe the next time i'm out i'll try killing a real person". AÎdrenaline from playing the game may easily be a factor in aggression right after playing, but it7s just not plain logical to suggest that a computer game (and even less so a movie) is suggestive of killing real people.
The fact is, the kid was disturbed, alienated, and depressed. I personally think that the society around him was directly responsible, and as much as I hate to suggest it, the kids that were shot themselves were probably most likely to blame.. After all, i'm imagining he had a goal on who he was going to shoot. I'm not saying they deserved it or anything of that sort, but kids are very cruel little shitheads and a lot of school teachers aren't of the highest caliber when it comes to "giving half a shit about their students".
The kid had prior problems in school, and they obviously were not addressed very well. I imagine, that in class, some of these kids may have been bothering/teasing him, which might have created the alienation. It's the teacher's job to maintain a classroom for all the students. This happens all the times, and sometimes, I've even seen teachers get into the act themselves, lowering to the social graces of an 8 year old.
And not every kid has the ability to defend himself or just ignore the problem. This is how defensive mechanisms start, his was a one time shot with a machine gun. (no pun intended)
Most likely the kid has had multiple nervous breakdowns that have not been treated properly. The parents, the teachers, the school, and the kids are to blame, whether they intentionally did it or not.
What I want to know is why the parents of the shooter Michael Carneal did not do anything to control their child's access to materials containing pornography and violence. For the parnets of the victims to blame the entertainment industry, and especially the computer game industry for a child's actions is absurd.
I liken it to this: trying to sue the crack because your kid smoked it and it killed him.
The drugs aren't the problem, the user is for not informing him/herself to smoke them. In this case, the role of the parent is to be the decision maker/moral guidance for the child, and if they had done their job right, they would have kept open communication with their child and would most likely have noticed the problems he was having before this ever became a problem. Just a simple acknowledgement and communication about an alienation problem can be enough to curb it at times.
Generally when I play these games (quake, sin, etc), it's a stress release. I just simply think about whatever problem I'm having, layer it over another player in DM, and chuck a few rockets at it.:) At least this way, if I'm going to be violent, it's going to be with a mouse and a keyboard, not weapons by any means. Frankly these games have done more good for my demeanor than anyone telling me I can't have them.
They only made IE free to kill Netscape. So if Netscape dies, you bet they will slowly start charging for IE.
They already are charging for IE, if you really want to look at it that way. You can get an IE 4.0/5.0 cd for cash, and you can get Win98, which comes with IE 4, for a good 89 bucks.
IE, download wise, is something like 60 megs now. I have a relative who was asking me about it, had no idea how long 60 megs would take to download. She thought it would take an hour on her 33.6k modem, and I couldn't help but LMAO (the mactarnahan's stout didn't help).
She is probably going to go out and purchase Win98-2, because she wants IE 5 and doesn't want to download it. That's where they make their money.
This sounds an awfully lot like the excuse that a lot of software pirates use to justify their illegal activities. "This is far more expensive than I can afford, and so if I hadn't pirated it, I wouldn't have bought it anyway.. so nobody is losing anything." It's an interesting claim, but it's hardly valid (try using that after being arrested for grand theft auto.)
I won't get into your poor analogy, but, no one likes paying for crap. I can count the number of albums I've bought this last year on my right hand - all of them coming from MP3's. Korn, Incubus, Lenny Kravitz. I plan on purchasing 3 Aphex Twin albums this year, even though I own every song made by Richard D James in mp3. Why? I want to support the artist. I do, however have a problem with the RIAA getting a good 90% of hte profit.
Why is it that a large percentage of bands today aren't even wasting their time with a big record label, they're creating their own? Because, after the producers, record companies, and RIAA get their share, they have nothing left.
Pirating Software can also be applied here. I pirate a small percentage of applications that I rarely use. In fact, I am a large proponent of paying for your osftware, but the reason that I pirate so little is because I pay for the good stuff, when I am able, and pirate the crap. Paying $400 for an art app that essentially does a little more than MS Paint for me is absurd.
When a few friends of mine and I were starting a web-design shop, I suggested we took out a loan so that we could pay for this unsaid art app (and many other web creation apps), because it was going to bring us financial gain and a large majority of our work would be done in it.
The pirates that really need to be ridiculed are the guys who own ISP's and milk that T3 dry collecting warez when they have more than enough money to purchase them.
I worked for one of these guys, he had 6 or 7 NT machines running on pirated copies, 3 linux boxen, and another 6 gigs of apps from photoshop to pagemaker to office to 3d studio max. He hadn't paid one dime for any of the software used in the office. Those are the people that the SPA and BSA, etc is targeting, because they ARE costing software companies money. They need the applications to stay in business, and they choose to skirt the payment because of the mega-bandwidth they can offer in shells to pirates.
Something to think about, eh? Of course Free software could solve that whole problem entirely.:)
I agree it can be interesting to read MS horror stories now and then. And it is funny to see bad reviews of a $500 book written by a $1.000.000.000 man. Actually, I think there should be a seperate website for this. Fighting the enemy is something else than supporting a friend. At this moment, both of these things are happening on slashdot.
There are sites like this, I can't recall the names of the sites though, but you can find em.
This isn't "news about technology", remember. this is "news for nerds - stuff that MATTERS". Maybe some Joe Sixpack was actually thinking about buying this book, and I'll tell you something, if he didn't read it here, he'd be reading it on salon, and amazon's comments section, among other places which I have not seen. No one is happy with this book from what I've read. So, read it here, read it elsewhere, or don't read at all.
What it comes down to in the end is "Rob". As a BBS operator myself I've gotten my share of flames for many reasons, from adding this message base, to taking down this door game, to deleting accounts, etc.
Fact is, until Slashdot goes IPO, which I hope to god will never happen, the only control that you and I really have over this place is not to frequent it, which, if you have a serious problem with it, you can do.
Otherwise, it might be wise for you to get a user account so that you can actually filter this stuff out.:)
I'd like to see moderator comments. These could be something you could turn on or off with preferences.
Now that is a GREAT idea! Moderators could be required to justify their reasoning for raising/lowering scores. This would get rid of any moderation-happiness (unless you feel like making up descriptions all day) and at least give the writer of the post a small sense of relief that he wasn't being picked on.
And, instead of enabling/disabling it via user accounts, it would be easier just to have a button in the header that would display it for a specific message. If on top of this, there was a "psuedo-id" for each moderator that was posted with the comment, this would probably make rob's job a lot easier in resolving who is really doing the job, and who's broke out the proverbial d!ck pump moderating.
This would definately solve a lot of problems at least with the human aspect. Frankly I think it would be most honest to have direct information of who's moderating your posts and why, no pseudo-nothing. That would press the moderators to at least THINK about what they're doing before they do it.
You get to roleplay one of several classes: open source political freak, 14 year old script kiddie, stuck up programer whose ideas are somehow automaticaly more valid than anyone else's, or just plain troll.
Ooh! Can we play multiple classes?
I want to be a FSF/Troll/Fighter/Mage:)
Hell heh, you could make it 80% D&D and the other 20% Paranoia, heh.
"Speaking of your mutant power is treason. Lose a clone, 1 alignment, and 100 experience points"
teehee (it's late, it's my birthday, and.... mmm.. stout)
I think something that Rob should consider more is the human aspect to moderation. I understand moderating down a flame, or something "flame-like", but people are still human.
I currently run a REAL BBS (you know, telnet, ansi, matrix logins, message areas, file transfer areas, door games, the whole 9 yards), and have been running it for... good lord, something like 6 or 7 years now.
I have had "subject operators" or "moderators" before on the BBS, and if you want to maintain a high quality of free speech, it's nearly impossible. People are human, and they're going to moderate posts that differ from their views.
Myself, being "off the norm", especially in the engineering crowd's GENERAL (and I use that word with caution) point of view, fear a lack of respect for my POV may occur just because my opinion differs that from the norm.
And something else, if I were mailicious, and selected for "jury duty", and just wanted to be an ass, I could easily just moderate down every post and help total the collective alignment. This is not really my idea of free speech, which I believe rob is trying to preserve.
Of course this is all hypothetical, but the first suggestion that I would make would be to wax AC's period. No one is required to offer their real name here, and now that you can set your own password the cookie dispute should be simpler also. Granted, there would still be multiple account bimbos but that can be defeated with ip filters and such. This has all been done before on BBS's, IRC, and various other forum and chat systems in the world, why try to re-invent the wheel?
I've heard of some problems in trying to get door games working with telnettable BBSs, as many of them have COM stuff hard-coded into the executable.
I run a (telnet) BBS right now with 4 doors. As long as the BBS runs on fossil-based communication, it'll work with most of the telnetfossil wrapper programs out there (netmodem, SIO, etc).
The big dilemma (much to my dismay) is this: 90% of these games won't work properly because they were written in turbo pascal, and most of you familiar with the it will know about the PPro (including PII's) breaking the delay() call in TP, which uses the system clock, something that's used rather often in BBS doors.
The other problem, is finding half ot these doors for anything but DOS is nearly impossible, and the registration costs for TW2002 are still outrageous ($50 for version 3, another $25 for the DPMI or 20,000 sector version)... I just do not get how these BBS authors have the nuts to keep charging for these programs, or, at least that much, and expect to make any money.
Its a case, im afraid, of morals failing. As we enter a technological world we depend less and less on others, and more on ourselves. 20 years ago Clinton would have been chewed up and spit out, but here in the "modern" 90's no one gives a hoot that he lied, denied he lied, then lied about the lie:/. Although his sexual life is not really something that is important, the fact that he betrayed everyone should be. The president should be someone important. Abit there are few today, Clinton should strive to be a hero (although not a war hero as he has shown before), atleast attempt to have some honor and set of morals, but he is let off the hook. Although I do not think Mitnick is a "hero" per say, he is not "ignoring" the laws. I think 4 years in jail is excessive, although few mention it is partially his own fault, the legal system does have some responsability to get it done.
Define morals. I'd like to see that. Morality is a person's interpretation of what's right. After all, in ancient japan, samurai's tested swords on wayfarers. Is that moral? The ancient japanese regarded it as a very high moral priority, as it tested durability of the sword and the ability of the bearer.
As for the hero aspect, the best heroes throughout time are those who don't strive to be one. A hero to one person is a demon to another. Nazi's still view Hitler as a hero - does that mean that people think to themsevles, "hmm, hitler should have strived to be a hero". I doubt it, most people would have just been happy if he would have stopped killing people.
Heroes are only for comic books and movies. A wise man will take bits of knowledge from everyone, and make himself his own hero. The reason for that is that no "hero" is ever fully truthful or honest about his actions, no one is perfect.
Mitnik broke the law and stole credit card numbers and other things from computer systems. He is a criminal, not a hero. Why must people let politics turn criminals into heroes and ignore the law? Cases in point: Jack Kavorkian and Bill Clinton. Here's a thought: let's start enforcing the law equally in this country and leave politics out of the process. A radical idea, I know...
Disclaimer: I believe Mitnick is a criminal.
But, people keep forgetting that law is very relative. Mr. Clinton did nothing different than just about every other american president, lying under oath, having extra-marital sex, etc. Kevorkian had people COMING to him to ask him to kill them, it's not like he had a grudge against any of these people, he was doing them a favor, despite your moral dilemma with it.
The fact of the matter is, is that the law doesn't do a whole lot to protect the community from the criminals, it ends up doing more to protect the criminals from themselves.
Mitnick's sentence would be better served if he were to write a paper describing how he performed the crimes itself for the betterment of security in general. Then, he, and the law, would be serving those would were done harm, instead of putting a geek in the same room as 3 or 4 "lifers".
Bill Clinton would be serving the community by apologizing for his actions, as it is only instictive for someone in power to disavow any knowledge of wrongdoing. He has already done this and I think the fact that he's going to have to live with Ms. Lewinsky and the actions surrounding it down will be more than enough punishment.
Dr. Kevorkian, to the best of my knowledge, did nothing wrong. He did a favor to people who were going to die suffering, nothing more than shooting a crippled horse dead. Even better as a matter of fact, because the horse can't say "please kill me".
People just do not question the law enough in this country, and it's a serious problem. It constantly has to be a black and white issue, when it's always a shade of gray. After all, religious freedom is still a very "new" thing in the history of the world - how do you think people in the past reacted to that before the pilgrims' rebellion?
I could just see someone like you shouting "the anglican faith is the only faith, because it is the law, of course".
Slashdot Mirror
What, do we have to register *EVERYONE* nowadays? Why not register authors, and columnists, and poets? Is there no freedom anymore?
It's not about freedom, and those other professions that you describe are ARTS. As much as programming can be artistic, I don't think anyone in their right mind can literally call it an ART. Art doesn't have boundaries because there's no one/nothing to protect if art fails, because failure in art is only opinion.
Get the programmers together and REVIEW THEIR CODE on a weekly basis. You will know who is the best programmer. And you will know who is 'certifiable'.
I agree, peer review is one of the better ways to handle code discrepancies, but what's to say that any of the reviewers are 'certifiable' either?
It's not a bad idea. Certification is one of the best grounds for protection in a lawsuit, especially with something like a science, where the plaintiff is more often then not going to be someone that doesn't hail from that field of science, and hence, uneducated about the subject. If someone were to sue you because of your poor code nowadays, the only thing you have is to call another, possibly your senior, programmer, and have them 'vouch' for your prowess. Personally, as much as I hate it too, I would rather have a piece of paper that signifies that THOUSANDS of programmers are vouching for my programming ability, not unlike a bar evaluation for lawyers and (?) doctors.
-Erik-
What we need is an IT union.
:)
How about the Teamsters.
Certification is garbage. Go to college.
If I was Italian, I might consider that...
Certification though, is not. I agree with the earlier poster about checking libs, OS, etc., but if coders were certified on their knowledge of the language, and the underlying libraries, (but not the code involving those libraries, just the calls, etc) other API, etc., it wouldn't be too bad of an idea, and protect the programmer in case that nuclear plant blows it's top.
"I knew what I was doing, Cert. XXX666 shows that, therefore it must hvae been the Operating System....."
I think you see what I mean.
-Erik-
to find out what server and OS are being used by a given domain name. Try egg.microsoft.com
:)
I beleive those statistics are generated by a program called "Queso" (search for it on freshmeat) that does this at the command line.
You should check it out, it's hours of fun
-Erik-
Somebody more qualified than me needs to look into this site. Please.
http://www.sco.com/ and search for Linux. Also search for open source.
Looks VERYYYY interesting. Level B1 security for Linux!? 141 documents.
No, SCO's new CMW+ 3.0 is going to have a (predicted, I imagine) ITSEC F-B1 rating. I found the same thing whilst looking for linux (although, the words linux, and open source were never found in the page.....)
-Erik-
"www.microsoft.com is running Microsoft-IIS/4.0 on NT3 or Windows 95" is that some kind of error?
/etc/queso.conf
maybe because they are running some totally mutated version of Windows NT? Or is Microsoft really using an older version of their own product?
[/usr/sbin]$ queso www.microsoft.com
207.46.131.137:80 *- Unknown OS, pleez update
weird.... I figured Queso would have detected whatever is routing their web traffic.. .
-Erik-
It seems that Doug is making a last gasp at releveance. At this point, it would make more sense for SCO to take the "if you can't beat them, join them" approach: Build a SCO Linux distribution, test the hell out of it, slap the oh so precious SCO label on the box, and charge a ton of cash for a bulletproof, certified by SCO Labs distribution of Linux.
I think if SCO had half a brain they would be doing custom server configurations almost exclusively. I may not meet eye to eye with my CE/CS Prof's about what *nix is best, but you won't find anyone in thier right mind defending SCO's Unix(TM) over anything else.
-Erik-
Haha! Oh wow, I almost forgot! I better save a bit....
:)
oh nevermind.
-Erik-
I think most of you guys are missing the point of this article. He needs HELP, not documentation. While most of you (including myself) hate people like this, they do exist, and it doesn't take a lot of work to write up HELP.
:)
2 friends of mine and I were thinking of doing something along the lines of "Linux for Dummies", only, actually helpful. Talking about everything from standard compiling routines, to using various package managers, handling bash, vi, emacs, etc.
It's not the fact that this stuff is hard, but the fact that most people just are not affluent to tech-speak. So, if we translate our speak to english (and other languages of course), this shouldn't be too hard to master. Also, you might want to note that while the average joe has to learn how to compile the kernel, he may not know enough about bash to even get to the directory where the kernel source is located.
We need a few distinct things to happen before we can really get this going. Please mail me at belman@hempseed.com if you are interested in taking on such a project.
1) Centralized Help Directory. No LDP, man, info, xman, kfm's help, gnome help, etc. etc. etc. Something that all linux users can find, and know exist on their system. Also it would be nice if programs could call these files via a mimetype or direct program, so that the system could get integrated into GUI programs.
2) HELP, not documentation. That means, those of you in tech support and are familiar with standard user problems (whether in linux or not) could be of great help here, describing normal problems that new users face.
3) Cross-Linked Index of Terms. Ala, when MTU appears in a HOWTO, Help file, or other docs, it would be linked to an index entry on MTU, describing it. This could probably be done relatively simply with perl and HTML, using a wordlist to parse and finding various information on the net to use for descriptions of the terms.
The point is, is that all of this stuff is already there, we just need someoen to collect ALL of it, not just the Linux HOWTO's, and put it in a simple to use, easily accessable interface. The rest is just some elbow grease, and I think that if we got enough people interested it would be easy to do.
email me at belman@hempseed.com if you are interested, especially if you have some experience writing GUI apps (As I do not), wanting to write documentation, or are a self-proclaimed perl god.
-Erik-
Right now, you get page after page of useless sites. If the better sites paid for position, maybe I would find what I wanted quicker. I find stuff on Altavista just fine, but I prefer using google when i'm looking for things with high popularity, as they have a calculated 'rating' system which tends to be pretty on the money. It would be a form of survival of the fittest. God the internet (and the world in a lot of related cases) has gone to hell. Survival of the fittest without money is one of the true attractions of the internet, not capitalism. Sometimes I wish the web was never invented. Other times, I just wish people weren't allowed to sell goods of any nature on the internet period. Then I think about it, and the internet wouldn't truly be 'free' without that aspect. Unfortunately money has worked it's way into destroying yet another good idea(tm). (hey rob, why aren't extended characters translated?) How utterly frustrating. I needà to kiss some ass and move to monaco or something. -Erik-
Wasn't Rockefeller closer to 100 years ago? Anyway, people still know who he is just like people still know who Ford was.
Yeah, but other than the fact that he owned standard oil and owned one of the biggest monopolies out there, what else? I don't know many people (i imagine) that could point out anything else he might have done or any possible accomplishments..
Although I imagine if you were a history or economics major you would be more educated about him, but the common folk could care less, just like all the other filthy rich capitalists. No different than a good 1/2 of our presidents, most people can't even remember their names much less what they did.
-Erik-
Who drew the boundaries? RMS was part of the so-called "hacker culture", at MIT, that you mention and as such was there and active before Gates ever made his mark on MIT. I would consider RMS a hero - yes. I respect him for his philosophy, hard work and dedication over the years.
:)
My apologies for posting this twice. For some reason the comment didn't get formatted properly and I was an idiot and didn't hit "preview"
I think the point that most of you are missing, that despite RMS's accomplishments and hard work, no matter how that is measured, the only thing that matters to most colleges is green paper, $$$, money.
The more green paper they have, the more academic programs they can sponsor, which inspires more people to go to their school, which brings them more money. Get with it folks.
Call me a skeptic, but investigate your school's practices. I left Oregon State University because they decided that they'd cut millions of dollars from their engineering program, and build a brand new football stadium with it.
Now, if you are going to be an engineer%Ò2C and don't want to transfer/can't transfer out of state, if you can graduate from Oregon State you have a pretty credible deee in a lot of engineer farms in the northwest (and elsewhere). HP is right down the street from em and they get a LOT of money from Intel and other places.
But, because of the fraternity presence and their lacking football team there, not to mention OSU's overwhelming pride in "tradition", we get a new football stadium while a good half of the EE professors walk off the job.
Sounds like an educational experience to me. I transferred out (to a CC nonetheless because of late reg problems) last term. Just keep that little anecdote in mind next time you think of college as an institution and not a business. You're dead wrong.
-Erik-
Who drew the boundaries? RMS was part of the so-called "hacker culture", at MIT, that you mention and as such was there and active before Gates ever made his mark on MIT. I would consider RMS a hero - yes. I respect him for his philosophy, hard work and dedication over the years. I think the point that most of you are missing, that despite RMS's accomplishments and hard work, no matter how that is measured, the only thing that matters to most colleges is green paper, $$$, money. The more green paper they have, the more academic programs they can sponsor, which inspires more people to go to their school, which brings them more money. Get with it folks. Call me a skeptic, but investigate your school's practices. I left Oregon State University because they decided that they'd cut millions of dollars from their engineering program, and build a brand new football stadium with it. Now, if you are going to be an engineer, and don't want to transfer/can't transfer out of state, if you can graduate from Oregon State you have a pretty credible degree in a lot of engineer farms in the northwest (and elsewhere). HP is right down the street from em and they get a LOT of money from Intel and other places. But, because of the fraternity presence and their lacking football team there, not to mention OSU's overwhelming pride in "tradition", we get a new football stadium while a good half of the EE professors walk off the job. Sounds like an educational experience to me. I transferred out (to a CC nonetheless because of late reg problems) last term. Just keep that little anecdote in mind next time you think of college as an institution and not a business. You're dead wrong. -Erik-
i'm sure it was john Carmack's intention to make thousands of crazy teen's go out with assorted weapons and kill other kids. I'm sure that was his intention. Everyone always wants to blame somebody else for there fuckup. John Carmack is a great human being....he brought us doom and quake...and is making OpenGL and industry standard for 3d graphics (not directx). What can i say...he's John Carmack, leave him alone
:)
You're right! After all, we all know that Commander Keen is the antichrist.
-Erik-
The media clearly influence behavior. Otherwise, advertising would be pointless. There is not a hard cause-and-effect relationship though. I, for instance, have seen many thousand Coca Cola ads in my life, but I have never bought Coca Cola. People as a group however are more likely to buy Coca Cola if they have seen Coca Cola ads. The fact that many people here claim "I have played Quake all my life and have never killed anybody!" is completely irrelevant. The relevant question is: "does playing Quake increase the likelihood to kill?"
Advertising is seldom a means of harboring influence anymore. No one buys a Coca-Cola because the advertisement convinces them to buy it, but because they hear it and think "gee, I want a coke", or "i wonder what coke tastes like, maybe i'll get one the next time I buy a pop". They don't like Coke, they will never purchase it again regardless of advertisement.
Same goes with Quake. No one plays quake thinking "wow, I want to kill people, I think i'll do it on my computer", nor does anyone think "this is so easy in quake, maybe the next time i'm out i'll try killing a real person". AÎdrenaline from playing the game may easily be a factor in aggression right after playing, but it7s just not plain logical to suggest that a computer game (and even less so a movie) is suggestive of killing real people.
The fact is, the kid was disturbed, alienated, and depressed. I personally think that the society around him was directly responsible, and as much as I hate to suggest it, the kids that were shot themselves were probably most likely to blame.. After all, i'm imagining he had a goal on who he was going to shoot. I'm not saying they deserved it or anything of that sort, but kids are very cruel little shitheads and a lot of school teachers aren't of the highest caliber when it comes to "giving half a shit about their students".
The kid had prior problems in school, and they obviously were not addressed very well. I imagine, that in class, some of these kids may have been bothering/teasing him, which might have created the alienation. It's the teacher's job to maintain a classroom for all the students. This happens all the times, and sometimes, I've even seen teachers get into the act themselves, lowering to the social graces of an 8 year old.
And not every kid has the ability to defend himself or just ignore the problem. This is how defensive mechanisms start, his was a one time shot with a machine gun. (no pun intended)
Most likely the kid has had multiple nervous breakdowns that have not been treated properly. The parents, the teachers, the school, and the kids are to blame, whether they intentionally did it or not.
-Erik-
What I want to know is why the parents of the shooter Michael Carneal did not do anything to control their child's access to materials containing pornography and violence. For the parnets of the victims to blame the entertainment industry, and especially the computer game industry for a child's actions is absurd.
:) At least this way, if I'm going to be violent, it's going to be with a mouse and a keyboard, not weapons by any means. Frankly these games have done more good for my demeanor than anyone telling me I can't have them.
I liken it to this: trying to sue the crack because your kid smoked it and it killed him.
The drugs aren't the problem, the user is for not informing him/herself to smoke them. In this case, the role of the parent is to be the decision maker/moral guidance for the child, and if they had done their job right, they would have kept open communication with their child and would most likely have noticed the problems he was having before this ever became a problem. Just a simple acknowledgement and communication about an alienation problem can be enough to curb it at times.
Generally when I play these games (quake, sin, etc), it's a stress release. I just simply think about whatever problem I'm having, layer it over another player in DM, and chuck a few rockets at it.
-Erik-
'nuff said
-Erik-
They only made IE free to kill Netscape. So if Netscape dies, you bet they will slowly start charging for IE.
They already are charging for IE, if you really want to look at it that way. You can get an IE 4.0/5.0 cd for cash, and you can get Win98, which comes with IE 4, for a good 89 bucks.
IE, download wise, is something like 60 megs now. I have a relative who was asking me about it, had no idea how long 60 megs would take to download. She thought it would take an hour on her 33.6k modem, and I couldn't help but LMAO (the mactarnahan's stout didn't help).
She is probably going to go out and purchase Win98-2, because she wants IE 5 and doesn't want to download it. That's where they make their money.
-Erik-
This sounds an awfully lot like the excuse that a lot of software pirates use to justify their illegal activities. "This is far more expensive than I can afford, and so if I hadn't pirated it, I wouldn't have bought it anyway .. so nobody is losing anything." It's an interesting claim, but it's hardly valid (try using that after being arrested for grand theft auto.)
:)
I won't get into your poor analogy, but, no one likes paying for crap. I can count the number of albums I've bought this last year on my right hand - all of them coming from MP3's. Korn, Incubus, Lenny Kravitz. I plan on purchasing 3 Aphex Twin albums this year, even though I own every song made by Richard D James in mp3. Why? I want to support the artist. I do, however have a problem with the RIAA getting a good 90% of hte profit.
Why is it that a large percentage of bands today aren't even wasting their time with a big record label, they're creating their own? Because, after the producers, record companies, and RIAA get their share, they have nothing left.
Pirating Software can also be applied here. I pirate a small percentage of applications that I rarely use. In fact, I am a large proponent of paying for your osftware, but the reason that I pirate so little is because I pay for the good stuff, when I am able, and pirate the crap. Paying $400 for an art app that essentially does a little more than MS Paint for me is absurd.
When a few friends of mine and I were starting a web-design shop, I suggested we took out a loan so that we could pay for this unsaid art app (and many other web creation apps), because it was going to bring us financial gain and a large majority of our work would be done in it.
The pirates that really need to be ridiculed are the guys who own ISP's and milk that T3 dry collecting warez when they have more than enough money to purchase them.
I worked for one of these guys, he had 6 or 7 NT machines running on pirated copies, 3 linux boxen, and another 6 gigs of apps from photoshop to pagemaker to office to 3d studio max. He hadn't paid one dime for any of the software used in the office. Those are the people that the SPA and BSA, etc is targeting, because they ARE costing software companies money. They need the applications to stay in business, and they choose to skirt the payment because of the mega-bandwidth they can offer in shells to pirates.
Something to think about, eh? Of course Free software could solve that whole problem entirely.
-Erik-
I agree it can be interesting to read MS horror stories now and then. And it is funny to see bad reviews of a $500 book written by a $1.000.000.000 man. Actually, I think there should be a seperate website for this. Fighting the enemy is something else than supporting a friend. At this moment, both of these things are happening on slashdot.
:)
There are sites like this, I can't recall the names of the sites though, but you can find em.
This isn't "news about technology", remember. this is "news for nerds - stuff that MATTERS". Maybe some Joe Sixpack was actually thinking about buying this book, and I'll tell you something, if he didn't read it here, he'd be reading it on salon, and amazon's comments section, among other places which I have not seen. No one is happy with this book from what I've read. So, read it here, read it elsewhere, or don't read at all.
What it comes down to in the end is "Rob". As a BBS operator myself I've gotten my share of flames for many reasons, from adding this message base, to taking down this door game, to deleting accounts, etc.
Fact is, until Slashdot goes IPO, which I hope to god will never happen, the only control that you and I really have over this place is not to frequent it, which, if you have a serious problem with it, you can do.
Otherwise, it might be wise for you to get a user account so that you can actually filter this stuff out.
-Erik-
-Erik-
I'd like to see moderator comments. These could be something you could turn on or off with preferences.
Now that is a GREAT idea! Moderators could be required to justify their reasoning for raising/lowering scores. This would get rid of any moderation-happiness (unless you feel like making up descriptions all day) and at least give the writer of the post a small sense of relief that he wasn't being picked on.
And, instead of enabling/disabling it via user accounts, it would be easier just to have a button in the header that would display it for a specific message. If on top of this, there was a "psuedo-id" for each moderator that was posted with the comment, this would probably make rob's job a lot easier in resolving who is really doing the job, and who's broke out the proverbial d!ck pump moderating.
This would definately solve a lot of problems at least with the human aspect. Frankly I think it would be most honest to have direct information of who's moderating your posts and why, no pseudo-nothing. That would press the moderators to at least THINK about what they're doing before they do it.
-Erik-
You get to roleplay one of several classes: open source political freak, 14 year old script kiddie, stuck up programer whose ideas are somehow automaticaly more valid than anyone else's, or just plain troll.
:)
.... mmm.. stout)
Ooh! Can we play multiple classes?
I want to be a FSF/Troll/Fighter/Mage
Hell heh, you could make it 80% D&D and the other 20% Paranoia, heh.
"Speaking of your mutant power is treason. Lose a clone, 1 alignment, and 100 experience points"
teehee (it's late, it's my birthday, and
-Erik-
I think something that Rob should consider more is the human aspect to moderation. I understand moderating down a flame, or something "flame-like", but people are still human.
I currently run a REAL BBS (you know, telnet, ansi, matrix logins, message areas, file transfer areas, door games, the whole 9 yards), and have been running it for
I have had "subject operators" or "moderators" before on the BBS, and if you want to maintain a high quality of free speech, it's nearly impossible. People are human, and they're going to moderate posts that differ from their views.
Myself, being "off the norm", especially in the engineering crowd's GENERAL (and I use that word with caution) point of view, fear a lack of respect for my POV may occur just because my opinion differs that from the norm.
And something else, if I were mailicious, and selected for "jury duty", and just wanted to be an ass, I could easily just moderate down every post and help total the collective alignment. This is not really my idea of free speech, which I believe rob is trying to preserve.
Of course this is all hypothetical, but the first suggestion that I would make would be to wax AC's period. No one is required to offer their real name here, and now that you can set your own password the cookie dispute should be simpler also. Granted, there would still be multiple account bimbos but that can be defeated with ip filters and such. This has all been done before on BBS's, IRC, and various other forum and chat systems in the world, why try to re-invent the wheel?
Just some suggestions, not a flame.
-Erik-
I've heard of some problems in trying to get door games working with telnettable BBSs, as many of them have COM stuff hard-coded into the executable.
I run a (telnet) BBS right now with 4 doors. As long as the BBS runs on fossil-based communication, it'll work with most of the telnetfossil wrapper programs out there (netmodem, SIO, etc).
The big dilemma (much to my dismay) is this: 90% of these games won't work properly because they were written in turbo pascal, and most of you familiar with the it will know about the PPro (including PII's) breaking the delay() call in TP, which uses the system clock, something that's used rather often in BBS doors.
The other problem, is finding half ot these doors for anything but DOS is nearly impossible, and the registration costs for TW2002 are still outrageous ($50 for version 3, another $25 for the DPMI or 20,000 sector version)... I just do not get how these BBS authors have the nuts to keep charging for these programs, or, at least that much, and expect to make any money.
-Erik-
Its a case, im afraid, of morals failing. As we enter a technological world we depend less and less on others, and more on ourselves. 20 years ago Clinton would have been chewed up and spit out, but here in the "modern" 90's no one gives a hoot that he lied, denied he lied, then lied about the lie :/. Although his sexual life is not really something that is important, the fact that he betrayed everyone should be. The president should be someone important. Abit there are few today, Clinton should strive to be a hero (although not a war hero as he has shown before), atleast attempt to have some honor and set of morals, but he is let off the hook. Although I do not think Mitnick is a "hero" per say, he is not "ignoring" the laws. I think 4 years in jail is excessive, although few mention it is partially his own fault, the legal system does have some responsability to get it done.
Define morals. I'd like to see that. Morality is a person's interpretation of what's right. After all, in ancient japan, samurai's tested swords on wayfarers. Is that moral? The ancient japanese regarded it as a very high moral priority, as it tested durability of the sword and the ability of the bearer.
As for the hero aspect, the best heroes throughout time are those who don't strive to be one. A hero to one person is a demon to another. Nazi's still view Hitler as a hero - does that mean that people think to themsevles, "hmm, hitler should have strived to be a hero". I doubt it, most people would have just been happy if he would have stopped killing people.
Heroes are only for comic books and movies. A wise man will take bits of knowledge from everyone, and make himself his own hero. The reason for that is that no "hero" is ever fully truthful or honest about his actions, no one is perfect.
-Erik-
Mitnik broke the law and stole credit card numbers and other things from computer systems. He is a criminal, not a hero. Why must people let politics turn criminals into heroes and ignore the law? Cases in point: Jack Kavorkian and Bill Clinton. Here's a thought: let's start enforcing the law equally in this country and leave politics out of the process. A radical idea, I know...
Disclaimer: I believe Mitnick is a criminal.
But, people keep forgetting that law is very relative. Mr. Clinton did nothing different than just about every other american president, lying under oath, having extra-marital sex, etc. Kevorkian had people COMING to him to ask him to kill them, it's not like he had a grudge against any of these people, he was doing them a favor, despite your moral dilemma with it.
The fact of the matter is, is that the law doesn't do a whole lot to protect the community from the criminals, it ends up doing more to protect the criminals from themselves.
Mitnick's sentence would be better served if he were to write a paper describing how he performed the crimes itself for the betterment of security in general. Then, he, and the law, would be serving those would were done harm, instead of putting a geek in the same room as 3 or 4 "lifers".
Bill Clinton would be serving the community by apologizing for his actions, as it is only instictive for someone in power to disavow any knowledge of wrongdoing. He has already done this and I think the fact that he's going to have to live with Ms. Lewinsky and the actions surrounding it down will be more than enough punishment.
Dr. Kevorkian, to the best of my knowledge, did nothing wrong. He did a favor to people who were going to die suffering, nothing more than shooting a crippled horse dead. Even better as a matter of fact, because the horse can't say "please kill me".
People just do not question the law enough in this country, and it's a serious problem. It constantly has to be a black and white issue, when it's always a shade of gray. After all, religious freedom is still a very "new" thing in the history of the world - how do you think people in the past reacted to that before the pilgrims' rebellion?
I could just see someone like you shouting "the anglican faith is the only faith, because it is the law, of course".
-Erik-