I recommend you sue the entire US of A for its criminal failure to imbue you with a sense of irony. --
Dilbert Hole - it's a shame really.
on
Quickielanche
·
· Score: 2
Because the guy has a good skill not only for imitating the Dilbert drawing style, but also the comic timing that Adams goes in for. If only he had some joke ideas it could really go somewhere. --
I was urging OSI not to represent letters as "from the Open Source community" since a community can't send letters. If your reply addresses that then I'm failing to get some part of the content.
Thinking about it, this reflects a comment Bruce Perens made: industry want to see Open Source as a corporation with ESR as CEO, and OSI, seeing how corporate support will further all our interests (and it will) are tempted to try and meet these expectations. However, since we can't succeed it's a mistake to try. --
They speak for themselves, as I do. No-one can speak for the community. I respect them too, I just think they should be careful not to misrepresent themselves. --
I agree that their letter is a well thought out response to Microsoft's declarations and it's an all-round Good Thing that OSI are writing them. I just think that they shouldn't represent them as being "from the Open Source community". --
"Response to Microsoft from the Open Source Community"
What? No individual or group of individuals can speak for a community, least of all for one as diverse as ours. We couldn't elect representatives even if we wanted to - who would draw up the electoral register? That anyone would so blithely claim to speak with our voice is disturbing. Indeed, many have expressed the hope that Microsoft *doesn't* open its source to seal the doom of their bad designs, and certainly the welcome they would receive if they tried to join us would be uncertain to say the least.
This is the worst sign yet that OSI have decided, despite denials, to appoint themselves our leaders. I really hope they change direction on this soon. --
"Response to Microsoft from the Open Source Community"
What? No individual or group of individuals can speak for a community, least of all for one as diverse as ours. We couldn't elect representatives even if we wanted to - who would draw up the electoral register? That anyone would so blithely claim to speak with our voice is disturbing. Indeed, many have expressed the hope that Microsoft *doesn't* open its source to seal the doom of their bad designs, and certainly the welcome they would receive if they tried to join us would be uncertain to say the least.
This is the worst sign yet that OSI have decided, despite denials, to appoint themselves our leaders. I really hope they change direction on this soon. --
"First, I still don't believe there's any justification for committing a crime..."
Wow. Need I list the people, today considered hereoes, whose heroic acts were illegal in the times and countries in which they were committed? Can you really not think of the laws, anywhere in the world, that you would not require people to observe in order to meet your moral standards? I think you would have to have a seriously twisted political philosophy to stand by this assertion. --
If the content of a website is under an OSD-compliant license, then that license must grant the freedom to use text and images from that website to create a satirical version.
Point 1 gives me the freedom to redistribute. Point 3 allows me to create derived versions and redistribute those. And points 6 and 7 explicitly forbid any attempt to disallow mocking or satirical versions!
So, let's see those "Gore2K Problem" websites now! --
I find I'm less likely to get a 2 if I post to a thread later. That's OK per post, but if I'm lowering my average by doing it it means I'm best off only posting if I can get my comment in early enough. I suspect this is only one of many biases in alignent calculation that (a) throw it further away from a good indication of someone's posting form, and (b) bias people towards strange behaviour directed towards maintaining a good alignment. Running more than one account could also be used towards this end.
If I've misunderstood and it's a total rather than an average, biases the other way happen: very frequent posting is encouraged, and those who post only the best are discriminated against.
I think this stuff is really difficult to get right. I'm surprised that there's no bazaar development around Slashdot so you don't have the same pressure to implement ideas before suggesting them. --
MSNBC are surprisingly good; it isn't them.
on
WSJ Says Linux Lags
·
· Score: 1
MSNBC have run quite a lot of articles in frank praise of Linux and critical of Microsoft; they're nothing like Slate who really do seem to be an openly biased FUD-organ.
This article isn't theirs; it's a reprint from the Wall Street Journal, who are in turn quoting a report by a "consulting group" that no-one's ever heard of and that clearly don't know a damn thing.
--
Security through obscurity can be avoided
on
SETI@Home For Linux
·
· Score: 1
I don't know what SETI@Home are doing, but certainly for distributed.net it's not hard to check up on people. You can generate a cryptographic "proof" that you've tried all the keys in a given block; then you sign all your proofs to say that they were all honestly generated. If you hand out a few duplicate blocks you can quickly detect if a given person is generating false proofs, discard all their data and publically humiliate them. --
Sorry, did you have another suggestion that was better, such as perhaps arbitrarily appointing one person to bestow the approval of the community without soliciting any opinions at all? --
I tend to disagree with people in public but congratulate privately, to avoid AOL syndrome. However, you don't publish one, so I'm forced to agree in public... --
*Why* do people post carefully argued, well thought out articles as ACs? This sort of writing makes me think "I want to read more of what this person has written", but I can't. --
RMS refers to "free software" because he doesn't like the term "open source", but apart from that you can substitute one for the other in his article. RMSs problems with the APSL translate directly into possible OSD violations. The two terms still mean the same thing to everyone, even ESR and RMS. --
Linus, acting quite within his rights, doesn't get flamed because he doesn't get involved. He hasn't tried to persuade anyone to Open Source a previously closed codebase. He hasn't discussed the merits of one licensing scheme over another. He wants to hack the kernel, so he gets flamed about his kernel-related decisions.
It's good that Linus does that, but it's also good that not everyone does. --
"At one point, he expresses a pleasant surprise that ~50% of the comments on/. were expressing support for him; he's obviously reading through a lot of this, and sorting out the immature people from the real people."
I can't find a way to read this that doesn't equate "maturity" with "agreeing with ESR". This is precisely the fault that the higher-scored posts in this thread accuse ESR of. --
Some programs can be *faster* and *more responsive* as a result of substituting proper MM technology for malloc/free. As well as being cleaner, more reusable and more bug-free. --
First, I'm surprised that your article isn't scored higher (2 just now) since I think it's a marvellously clear, consistent and concise explanation of why the FSF take the stance they do on the name "GNU/Linux". It seems to me basically correct to argue that it's primarily because of RMS's vision back then that we can now run computers using entirely software libre, even though the job has been made vastly easier by software written for purposes other than fulfilling that vision, and in that sense it's true to say that my computer at home is basically running a version of the GNU system.
However, I *don't* think it's the job of the name of the operating system to give credit; it's to convey information. What I'll answer when someone asks what sort of computer I'll have will depend on how much I think they know about computers; I might for example say Unix, Linux, Debian, or Slink. However I'll certainly avoid any cumbersome or inconvenient descriptions when a shorter one will convey the same information.
I think it's genuinely important that Stallman, the FSF, and the shared vision of liberating software be given proper credit in making the operating system we have today possible. But trying to change the name is the wrong way to do it - it's doomed to failure, and far from advancing the debate it seems to be distracting people from it.
It might also help if Stallman had done half as good a job of explaining his point of view as you did. --
Slashdot Mirror
I recommend you sue the entire US of A for its criminal failure to imbue you with a sense of irony.
--
Because the guy has a good skill not only for imitating the Dilbert drawing style, but also the comic timing that Adams goes in for. If only he had some joke ideas it could really go somewhere.
--
No-one else is reading this thread now, so... send me an email!
cheers,
--
I was urging OSI not to represent letters as "from the Open Source community" since a community can't send letters. If your reply addresses that then I'm failing to get some part of the content.
Thinking about it, this reflects a comment Bruce Perens made: industry want to see Open Source as a corporation with ESR as CEO, and OSI, seeing how corporate support will further all our interests (and it will) are tempted to try and meet these expectations. However, since we can't succeed it's a mistake to try.
--
They speak for themselves, as I do. No-one can speak for the community. I respect them too, I just think they should be careful not to misrepresent themselves.
--
I agree that their letter is a well thought out response to Microsoft's declarations and it's an all-round Good Thing that OSI are writing them. I just think that they shouldn't represent them as being "from the Open Source community".
--
"Response to Microsoft from the Open Source Community"
What? No individual or group of individuals can speak for a community, least of all for one as diverse as ours. We couldn't elect representatives even if we wanted to - who would draw up the electoral register? That anyone would so blithely claim to speak with our voice is disturbing. Indeed, many have expressed the hope that Microsoft *doesn't* open its source to seal the doom of their bad designs, and certainly the welcome they would receive if they tried to join us would be uncertain to say the least.
This is the worst sign yet that OSI have decided, despite denials, to appoint themselves our leaders. I really hope they change direction on this soon.
--
"Response to Microsoft from the Open Source Community"
What? No individual or group of individuals can speak for a community, least of all for one as diverse as ours. We couldn't elect representatives even if we wanted to - who would draw up the electoral register? That anyone would so blithely claim to speak with our voice is disturbing. Indeed, many have expressed the hope that Microsoft *doesn't* open its source to seal the doom of their bad designs, and certainly the welcome they would receive if they tried to join us would be uncertain to say the least.
This is the worst sign yet that OSI have decided, despite denials, to appoint themselves our leaders. I really hope they change direction on this soon.
--
"First, I still don't believe there's any justification for committing a crime..."
Wow. Need I list the people, today considered hereoes, whose heroic acts were illegal in the times and countries in which they were committed? Can you really not think of the laws, anywhere in the world, that you would not require people to observe in order to meet your moral standards? I think you would have to have a seriously twisted political philosophy to stand by this assertion.
--
"any code of conduct whatsoever"? Your inability to imagine any code of conduct besides current law is an extraordinary failure of imagination.
--
strcmp(x,y) == 0 definitely means that the two strings are identical in content and length.
strcmp("abc", "abcde") will return a negative number.
--
If the content of a website is under an OSD-compliant license, then that license must grant the freedom to use text and images from that website to create a satirical version.
Point 1 gives me the freedom to redistribute. Point 3 allows me to create derived versions and redistribute those. And points 6 and 7 explicitly forbid any attempt to disallow mocking or satirical versions!
So, let's see those "Gore2K Problem" websites now!
--
I find I'm less likely to get a 2 if I post to a thread later. That's OK per post, but if I'm lowering my average by doing it it means I'm best off only posting if I can get my comment in early enough. I suspect this is only one of many biases in alignent calculation that (a) throw it further away from a good indication of someone's posting form, and (b) bias people towards strange behaviour directed towards maintaining a good alignment. Running more than one account could also be used towards this end.
If I've misunderstood and it's a total rather than an average, biases the other way happen: very frequent posting is encouraged, and those who post only the best are discriminated against.
I think this stuff is really difficult to get right. I'm surprised that there's no bazaar development around Slashdot so you don't have the same pressure to implement ideas before suggesting them.
--
MSNBC have run quite a lot of articles in frank praise of Linux and critical of Microsoft; they're nothing like Slate who really do seem to be an openly biased FUD-organ.
This article isn't theirs; it's a reprint from the Wall Street Journal, who are in turn quoting a report by a "consulting group" that no-one's ever heard of and that clearly don't know a damn thing.
--
I don't know what SETI@Home are doing, but certainly for distributed.net it's not hard to check up on people. You can generate a cryptographic "proof" that you've tried all the keys in a given block; then you sign all your proofs to say that they were all honestly generated. If you hand out a few duplicate blocks you can quickly detect if a given person is generating false proofs, discard all their data and publically humiliate them.
--
Yes, that sounds good.
Sorry, did you have another suggestion that was better, such as perhaps arbitrarily appointing one person to bestow the approval of the community without soliciting any opinions at all?
--
I tend to disagree with people in public but congratulate privately, to avoid AOL syndrome. However, you don't publish one, so I'm forced to agree in public...
--
*Why* do people post carefully argued, well thought out articles as ACs? This sort of writing makes me think "I want to read more of what this person has written", but I can't.
--
RMS refers to "free software" because he doesn't like the term "open source", but apart from that you can substitute one for the other in his article. RMSs problems with the APSL translate directly into possible OSD violations. The two terms still mean the same thing to everyone, even ESR and RMS.
--
Linus, acting quite within his rights, doesn't get flamed because he doesn't get involved. He hasn't tried to persuade anyone to Open Source a previously closed codebase. He hasn't discussed the merits of one licensing scheme over another. He wants to hack the kernel, so he gets flamed about his kernel-related decisions.
It's good that Linus does that, but it's also good that not everyone does.
--
"At one point, he expresses a pleasant surprise that ~50% of the comments on /. were expressing support for him; he's obviously reading through a lot of this, and sorting out the immature people from the real people."
I can't find a way to read this that doesn't equate "maturity" with "agreeing with ESR". This is precisely the fault that the higher-scored posts in this thread accuse ESR of.
--
Some programs can be *faster* and *more responsive* as a result of substituting proper MM technology for malloc/free. As well as being cleaner, more reusable and more bug-free.
--
The Harlequin Memory Management Reference is a good reference for lots of this stuff, especially the glossary:
http://www.harlequin.com/mm/reference/
--
Lots of "freaks" respect concerns about safety and consent more than lots of "normal people". Perhaps you need some more precise insults.
--
First, I'm surprised that your article isn't scored higher (2 just now) since I think it's a marvellously clear, consistent and concise explanation of why the FSF take the stance they do on the name "GNU/Linux". It seems to me basically correct to argue that it's primarily because of RMS's vision back then that we can now run computers using entirely software libre, even though the job has been made vastly easier by software written for purposes other than fulfilling that vision, and in that sense it's true to say that my computer at home is basically running a version of the GNU system.
However, I *don't* think it's the job of the name of the operating system to give credit; it's to convey information. What I'll answer when someone asks what sort of computer I'll have will depend on how much I think they know about computers; I might for example say Unix, Linux, Debian, or Slink. However I'll certainly avoid any cumbersome or inconvenient descriptions when a shorter one will convey the same information.
I think it's genuinely important that Stallman, the FSF, and the shared vision of liberating software be given proper credit in making the operating system we have today possible. But trying to change the name is the wrong way to do it - it's doomed to failure, and far from advancing the debate it seems to be distracting people from it.
It might also help if Stallman had done half as good a job of explaining his point of view as you did.
--