"I'm not really just sitting in a chatroom trolling for pickups, I'm testing distros for a ZDNet article!" You know, I never understood "office work" (oops, I mean """work""") that much. Apparently you need to throw around stacks of quarterly reports, pie charts, Powerpoint-Prestations with stupid animations and teeth-grindingly-irritating-sounds, appointment books, calendars, et cetera ad infinitum, just to keep appearing to look busy. Meanwhile, engineers (the actual productive portion of the workforce) look busy by sitting quietly in their office with the door closed.
But, anyway, if it makes you happy, Ubuntu is your office distro! I've tried Ubuntu, and I think it should certainly keep any office worker satisfied. Engineers still await *their* distro.
For those of you outside the USA, Thanksgiving is just a feast day. Nothing more, nothing less. Our family celebrates it in a pagan sense (last big feast before winter sets in), but the propaganda is that the first settlers of the US were so grateful for finding the new world and the indians were grateful because they weren't getting killed by the invading white man yet, yada yada.
Pay no attention to the propaganda - or do what my family, social circle, and I did the first Thanksgiving after the beginning of the Iraq war: have a Ghandi Thanksgiving, in protest of the United States' global conquest. "Feast" on Ghandi's diet of rice, vegetables, goat's milk, and fruit. Spend the day in meditation and in remembrance of all the victims of the United States, be they the virtually genocided original American natives, the enslaved peoples imported to work and build the wealth the US currently wields as it's basis of power, or the various nations of the middle East currently being pirated under false pretenses.
And this post is dedicated to all the/.ers who will be flaming it and modding it down, though this will not diminish it's truth. I've given them something to hate to be grateful for, hate being the most patriotic American emotion.
...under powers entrusted to me under Section 47, Paragraph 7 of Council Order Number 438476, that Mr Buttle, Archibald, residing at 412 North Tower, Shangri La Towers, has been invited to assist the Recording Industry Association of America with certain enquiries, the nature of which are ascertained as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and that he is liable to certain obligations as specified in Council Order 173497, including financial restitutions which may or may not be incurred if Information Retrieval procedures beyond those incorporated in Article 7 subsections 8, 10 & 32 are required to elicit information leading to permanent arrest. This is your receipt for your husband...thank you. And this is my receipt, for your receipt.
This is like saying that if you do not know how to change give your car a tune-up, then you should not be driving.
My most recent car experience: Brakes were failing, so I took it to the shop that advertised full brake jobs for $200. When they saw me, they guessed $300 and I shrugged, but then they needed to look it over thoroughly before giving me a final estimate. I left it there and called them back. Now it was up to $500! I said, don't touch the damn thing, I'm coming back for it. I did get it back (after a fight! can you believe it?) and went across the street for a pair of medium-grade brake pads for about $40., plus a couple of special tools (drum compressor and such) for another $10 and the largest brake fluid bottle for $5. It took me a greasy afternoon, but what the hell, it was Sunday, and for less than $100 I had the best brakes that car's ever had, when the burglars at the clip joint would have ended up charging me $800 just to pull the wire under the dashboard that makes the red "brakes" warning light up. Because after all, I'm just a dumb ass bringing his car in because he doesn't want to work on it himself; what the hell would I know? Mind you, I'd done mechanic work on and off my whole life, but every time I say "That's too much work, I'll pay somebody else to do it." I end up getting royally screwed *every* *time*!
Now apply the same story to computers. That used to be why people ran Linux. Now it's why people run Slackware. Very soon, it will be why people use BSD. Because people like you protest when you have anything but an office suite and a chat program and a web browser on your system. But you'll soon see, you can't take just that and make a new operating system with it. So as the years go by, your system will become outdated. And where will you get a new one? Who's going to program it for you? Not we "elitists", we all got tired of you hating us and ran away to BSD.
If the console bothers you so much, don't use it. But don't march on Washington to have it banned, because some of us need the console. Just type "startx" and stay in your GUI - it's not like Slackware doesn't come with GUIs; in fact, it comes with more than any other system: KDE Gnome (but they're ditching that) Blackbox Fluxbox Xfce4 Window-Maker Fvwm and TWM!
Of COURSE Slackware is under attack. It's the only distro that has kept it's brain intact. Everybody else wants to lobotomize Linux so it will be usable for the AOL zombies, not realizing that you castrate Linux as well: you can't compile a new system with an office suite and a chat program.
Oh, I know, I'm the enemy. No need to flame me anymore, I'll do it myself! I'm a bad person, just because I want to learn something and want to empower other people to learn and also I like compilers and code libraries and Bash shell script configurations. Because I stubbornly insist that we wouldn't have any Linux or BSD or Solaris or OS X or yes, even DOS without programmers, who need programming tools to make them. Because I don't believe that all software comes from the Blue Software Fairy.
Yes, I know, that makes me elitist. Drive us away from Linux, you stupid asses, and watch your operating system sink into the sand when you find out it needs SOMEBODY TO MAINTAIN IT. That it can't update and propegate and compete on it's own. Watch you end up back at Microsoft in five years, saying "I don't know WHAT happened - all of a sudden, source code tarballs became rare as dinosaurs, because everybody hated them, and then somebody told me that that's what you make new packages out of. No wonder the update button did nothing but pop up an error dialog!"
Meanwhile, we "elitists" will be over in BSD or Solaris or BeOS. Laughing like hell. Because as long as an elitist has a tool and a book, an elitist always has just the right operating system. I suppose Paul Volkerding can't die fast enough to please the rest of you, but I'm going to miss him like hell. He UNDERSTOOD.
What *I* do is, cut 'n' paste the URL to the console and browse it in lynx - no pictures at all, guaranteed, just scrolling text. I'm still waiting for the Firefox plugin that does this automagically.
If we rack up massive karma points, do we cross some threshhold?
Well, see, what people don't know* is, karma is actually multiplying out of control, like bacteria in a petri dish. If it gets to critical mass, the Earth will explode with a sound like a set of bagpipes having an orgasm. Fortunately, we have these Slashdotters who have been convinced that karma is tasty and nutritious, and they act as safe karma-disposing entities.
We need a none geek term for this, something that is clear and easily understandable.
Hay, You're absolutely right! And I also think that world hunger is caused by a nutritional deficit awareness gap, in which the adequate expectations paradigm failed to be impacted by the proactivity focused information enabling solution.
fgets() instead of gets(), strncpy() instead of strcpy(), memset(), just to name a few)
What gets me is, why are these known "gotcha"s allowed to continue to draw breath? As soon as the vulnerability is discovered, it should not get past any new release of a compiler, no matter what warning level. To heck with backwards compatibility: if my code uses a known vulnerability, it is broken and I should fix it.
If it is a crime, then how come I don't feel guilty?
Yeah, I know. I've never downloaded a song in my entire life, through any means. It's all been religiously bought at the store. I never even taped songs off the radio to cassettes, back when that was vogue. But now that being a good, law-abiding citizen carries the risk of trashing my computer which would ruin my whole freaking life, then it's all stealing from here on out, unless the CD's release date is prior to all known DRM technology.
Don't listen to crappy music. Seriously, that's the crowning hee-haw to this whole donkey-show: I looked over the playlist and, after sighing relief that none of the CDs I owned were on it, looked it over a second time and realized that the ones that were known to me at all were the kind of crap you couldn't get me to take if you chased me down the street with it (disclaimer: OK, maybe the ones I haven't heard of are bravo-terrific, WIBI*?)...and they're worried somebody's going to steal it!
It's crossed my mind more than once: What if it finally came out that this whole thing was a crocked-up publicity stunt to get their lowest-selling artists some public exposure? It just all reminds me too much of the George Carlin joke about people who are against abortion being the kind of people you wouldn't want to "shpx"** in the first place.
Tell me this all didn't happen, OK? Tell me this whole Sony fiasco was a story somebody told me when I was stoned.
Please bust the number one myth on /.!!??!!??
on
Ask The Mythbusters
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· Score: 1
The number-one myth on Slashdot is: "Linux is too difficult to use on the desktop."
So: Start with bare computers, and the install disks for each system. To be fair, use five major Linux distros http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major, and five of any non-Linux operating systems (This is fair because one Linux system is very different from another.). Your test subjects have to (a) install the system on the computers with NO expert assistance (they are allowed to consult all the manuals, books, and internet forums they need), and (b) are given one week each person/system-combo to complete a simple list of goals with each system: 1. Connect to the internet. 2. Send an email. 3. Compose a simple office memo and save it to removable media. 4. Play a movie. 5. Burn a set of songs onto a CD. 6. Load/install a game to a state of being playable, hardware issues be damned. By the way, no fair modifying the hardware given the subject, and no fair spending money on enhancements beyond the OS disks themselves. They can download all the freeware they want for any system.
At the end, subjects can report on their success or failure in the goals, and the relative ease with which they accomplished each.
As brownie-points: I offer my response to our recent Slashdot poll, in which I was the sole person to nominate you as the most accurate TV geeks: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=168355&thresho ld=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=14074600
Note the date of Nov 20th. Almost like I knew you were coming, huh? We here will be eternally grateful if you can settle this once and for all.
And to everybody else on the board: I'm not interrested in your responses at all. I can hear the rest of you babble all year. I'm asking the Mythbusters team, and the Mythbusters team ONLY.
Let's see, you essentially become MS's whore, doing your little hatchet job like a good slut. Then, as if that WEREN'T ENOUGH, you come back next week to rub it all in our faces. Are you by any chance contemplating suicide?
And second, isn't it remarkable that the only people who ever have anything good to say about Microsoft at all are the people who make money if they do so, and all the people who swear by open source do so because they sincerely mean it?
Let's see, we have Linux, BSD, Solaris, OS X, BeOS...all good little operating systems that play nice together...Come to that, I really don't see where there's that much difference between them all that if I went from one to the other, I would experience problems. Correct me if I'm wrong (like I have to ask for THAT on Slashdot!), but won't most of the programs from one run on another, with little to no modification? I know I can use BSD and Unix utilities on Linux with darn near impunity. Do they not all share their toys (source code) and happily borrow from each other?
Then over here, we have the one bad, sulky operating system. Who is this making these horrible noises and faces at everybody else over here in this dark corner? Why, my goodness, it's Microsoft! What's the matter, Softie, don't you want to play nice with the other systems? Oh, I see, you want all the other systems to *DIE* so you can be all by yourself. OK, I guess that's a "no". Well we're going to go on having our little party together and maybe you'll get the hint and just go away...
But I still don't see it real soon, even if MS suddenly does a Grinch and grows it's heart three sizes bigger and decides it's going to play nice after all. Witness the fragmentation even within an OS's community (distro vs distro, desktop vs desktop, editor vs editor), and I don't think you'll get the vi/Gnome/Debian bigot and the Emacs/Fluxbox/Slackware bigot to say "Eeeeeh...what's the difference?" But then again, my crystal ball *is* due for a polishing...
Has anybody out there *ever* gotten an Intel chip that matched the sticker on the outside of the box when they bought the whole thing ready-made? Dunno how many times I've reclaimed castaway computers where the stickers on the outside were complete fantasy when compared to what's inside. And don't worry about the consumer getting wise - even amongst the savier users, 90% of the public wouldn't know better if you told them Dumbo the Flying Elephant was inside their computer, they're *never* gonna open that sucker up!
Re:What I have to say will certainly get me banned
on
The Prodigy Puzzle
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· Score: 1
Nah, you're insightful.
Yes, I am probably the most guilty of the charges you level. I can see that. I hasten to point out that the bitching about how-hard-it-is-to-be-smart is just for this thread: in every other thread, you'll find us happily chirping about how our gifts enabled us to win our successes. I wouldn't trade how I am for the world, and the others (most) here who are smarter probably wouldn't trade it either. I think many of us have fessed up our horror stories just to point out, since the topic is about how best to manage the smart kids, how horribly wrong it can all go with the best of intentions. But moreover, our backgrounds also indicate how we *overcame* those obstacles and learned how to deal with the world in our own way, despite how we were mismanaged. How we eventually come to find mates who love us for who we are, jobs where we can be at our best (or self-employment, even better), and ways to seek out our kind. Note, that most of the success stories in here seem to be pretty indifferent to educational methods.
Thanks for putting up with us. Were we at least better than the script kiddies, consumer-cows, and flaming fanboys you usually see in this space?
Re:Not Everybody's Smart In The Same Way
on
The Prodigy Puzzle
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· Score: 1
Very concise, but there's a post "No Silver Bullet" by an anonymous coward here who sounds like s/he was messed up by people who believe as you do.
Re:"Genius" and high IQ are different animals
on
The Prodigy Puzzle
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· Score: 1
*Pounce* While we have an expert - what's your view of the whole people-smart vs math-smart vs word-smart vs random-smart/etc.? It always made sense to me, but I wonder if it still holds the same water in achedemic circles that it did ten years ago?
Anybody else out there pulled similar stunts to what I described? I know I hear women all the time saying they play dumb because "men are intimidated by smart women" (and lemme tell yah, it took me *years* to find one who would drop the frickin' ruse and just be herself!). By the way, this *does* *not* *work* with drugs and alcohol. You just have to be a good actor (i.e. lying, deceptive shit!) for a limited stint of a week or two.
If nothing else, I'd suggest this as a dandy strategy for those reality show games - play it stupid until the final four! Every time I saw a contestant letting out the full stops the first week, I'd groan for them. Don't they know that's like a target on their chest?
Slashdot Mirror
"I'm not really just sitting in a chatroom trolling for pickups, I'm testing distros for a ZDNet article!" You know, I never understood "office work" (oops, I mean """work""") that much. Apparently you need to throw around stacks of quarterly reports, pie charts, Powerpoint-Prestations with stupid animations and teeth-grindingly-irritating-sounds, appointment books, calendars, et cetera ad infinitum, just to keep appearing to look busy. Meanwhile, engineers (the actual productive portion of the workforce) look busy by sitting quietly in their office with the door closed.
But, anyway, if it makes you happy, Ubuntu is your office distro! I've tried Ubuntu, and I think it should certainly keep any office worker satisfied. Engineers still await *their* distro.
But this can't be that much of a problem, right? I mean, this was funny for about 5 minutes back in 1972.
Anybody who even brings that repulsive piece of shit up is a moron.
Pay no attention to the propaganda - or do what my family, social circle, and I did the first Thanksgiving after the beginning of the Iraq war: have a Ghandi Thanksgiving, in protest of the United States' global conquest. "Feast" on Ghandi's diet of rice, vegetables, goat's milk, and fruit. Spend the day in meditation and in remembrance of all the victims of the United States, be they the virtually genocided original American natives, the enslaved peoples imported to work and build the wealth the US currently wields as it's basis of power, or the various nations of the middle East currently being pirated under false pretenses.
And this post is dedicated to all the /.ers who will be flaming it and modding it down, though this will not diminish it's truth. I've given them something to hate to be grateful for, hate being the most patriotic American emotion.
...under powers entrusted to me under Section 47, Paragraph 7 of Council Order Number 438476, that Mr Buttle, Archibald, residing at 412 North Tower, Shangri La Towers, has been invited to assist the Recording Industry Association of America with certain enquiries, the nature of which are ascertained as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and that he is liable to certain obligations as specified in Council Order 173497, including financial restitutions which may or may not be incurred if Information Retrieval procedures beyond those incorporated in Article 7 subsections 8, 10 & 32 are required to elicit information leading to permanent arrest. This is your receipt for your husband...thank you. And this is my receipt, for your receipt.
Thanks anyway! (-:
My most recent car experience: Brakes were failing, so I took it to the shop that advertised full brake jobs for $200. When they saw me, they guessed $300 and I shrugged, but then they needed to look it over thoroughly before giving me a final estimate. I left it there and called them back. Now it was up to $500! I said, don't touch the damn thing, I'm coming back for it. I did get it back (after a fight! can you believe it?) and went across the street for a pair of medium-grade brake pads for about $40., plus a couple of special tools (drum compressor and such) for another $10 and the largest brake fluid bottle for $5. It took me a greasy afternoon, but what the hell, it was Sunday, and for less than $100 I had the best brakes that car's ever had, when the burglars at the clip joint would have ended up charging me $800 just to pull the wire under the dashboard that makes the red "brakes" warning light up. Because after all, I'm just a dumb ass bringing his car in because he doesn't want to work on it himself; what the hell would I know? Mind you, I'd done mechanic work on and off my whole life, but every time I say "That's too much work, I'll pay somebody else to do it." I end up getting royally screwed *every* *time*!
Now apply the same story to computers. That used to be why people ran Linux. Now it's why people run Slackware. Very soon, it will be why people use BSD. Because people like you protest when you have anything but an office suite and a chat program and a web browser on your system. But you'll soon see, you can't take just that and make a new operating system with it. So as the years go by, your system will become outdated. And where will you get a new one? Who's going to program it for you? Not we "elitists", we all got tired of you hating us and ran away to BSD.
If the console bothers you so much, don't use it. But don't march on Washington to have it banned, because some of us need the console. Just type "startx" and stay in your GUI - it's not like Slackware doesn't come with GUIs; in fact, it comes with more than any other system: KDE Gnome (but they're ditching that) Blackbox Fluxbox Xfce4 Window-Maker Fvwm and TWM!
Oh, I know, I'm the enemy. No need to flame me anymore, I'll do it myself! I'm a bad person, just because I want to learn something and want to empower other people to learn and also I like compilers and code libraries and Bash shell script configurations. Because I stubbornly insist that we wouldn't have any Linux or BSD or Solaris or OS X or yes, even DOS without programmers, who need programming tools to make them. Because I don't believe that all software comes from the Blue Software Fairy.
Yes, I know, that makes me elitist. Drive us away from Linux, you stupid asses, and watch your operating system sink into the sand when you find out it needs SOMEBODY TO MAINTAIN IT. That it can't update and propegate and compete on it's own. Watch you end up back at Microsoft in five years, saying "I don't know WHAT happened - all of a sudden, source code tarballs became rare as dinosaurs, because everybody hated them, and then somebody told me that that's what you make new packages out of. No wonder the update button did nothing but pop up an error dialog!"
Meanwhile, we "elitists" will be over in BSD or Solaris or BeOS. Laughing like hell. Because as long as an elitist has a tool and a book, an elitist always has just the right operating system. I suppose Paul Volkerding can't die fast enough to please the rest of you, but I'm going to miss him like hell. He UNDERSTOOD.
then doesn't it seem rather strange that the president who only has a 30% approval rating got elected by a majority only a year ago?
What *I* do is, cut 'n' paste the URL to the console and browse it in lynx - no pictures at all, guaranteed, just scrolling text. I'm still waiting for the Firefox plugin that does this automagically.
Well, see, what people don't know* is, karma is actually multiplying out of control, like bacteria in a petri dish. If it gets to critical mass, the Earth will explode with a sound like a set of bagpipes having an orgasm. Fortunately, we have these Slashdotters who have been convinced that karma is tasty and nutritious, and they act as safe karma-disposing entities.
*shhhhhh, don't tell.
Hay, You're absolutely right! And I also think that world hunger is caused by a nutritional deficit awareness gap, in which the adequate expectations paradigm failed to be impacted by the proactivity focused information enabling solution.
What gets me is, why are these known "gotcha"s allowed to continue to draw breath? As soon as the vulnerability is discovered, it should not get past any new release of a compiler, no matter what warning level. To heck with backwards compatibility: if my code uses a known vulnerability, it is broken and I should fix it.
Yeah, I know. I've never downloaded a song in my entire life, through any means. It's all been religiously bought at the store. I never even taped songs off the radio to cassettes, back when that was vogue. But now that being a good, law-abiding citizen carries the risk of trashing my computer which would ruin my whole freaking life, then it's all stealing from here on out, unless the CD's release date is prior to all known DRM technology.
It's crossed my mind more than once: What if it finally came out that this whole thing was a crocked-up publicity stunt to get their lowest-selling artists some public exposure? It just all reminds me too much of the George Carlin joke about people who are against abortion being the kind of people you wouldn't want to "shpx"** in the first place.
*Wouldn't It Be Ironic?
**Rot-13. Rhymes with "luck".
Tell me this all didn't happen, OK? Tell me this whole Sony fiasco was a story somebody told me when I was stoned.
So: Start with bare computers, and the install disks for each system. To be fair, use five major Linux distros http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major, and five of any non-Linux operating systems (This is fair because one Linux system is very different from another.). Your test subjects have to (a) install the system on the computers with NO expert assistance (they are allowed to consult all the manuals, books, and internet forums they need), and (b) are given one week each person/system-combo to complete a simple list of goals with each system: 1. Connect to the internet. 2. Send an email. 3. Compose a simple office memo and save it to removable media. 4. Play a movie. 5. Burn a set of songs onto a CD. 6. Load/install a game to a state of being playable, hardware issues be damned. By the way, no fair modifying the hardware given the subject, and no fair spending money on enhancements beyond the OS disks themselves. They can download all the freeware they want for any system.
At the end, subjects can report on their success or failure in the goals, and the relative ease with which they accomplished each.
As brownie-points: I offer my response to our recent Slashdot poll, in which I was the sole person to nominate you as the most accurate TV geeks: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=168355&thresho ld=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=14074600
Note the date of Nov 20th. Almost like I knew you were coming, huh? We here will be eternally grateful if you can settle this once and for all.
And to everybody else on the board: I'm not interrested in your responses at all. I can hear the rest of you babble all year. I'm asking the Mythbusters team, and the Mythbusters team ONLY.
Let's see, you essentially become MS's whore, doing your little hatchet job like a good slut. Then, as if that WEREN'T ENOUGH, you come back next week to rub it all in our faces. Are you by any chance contemplating suicide?
And second, isn't it remarkable that the only people who ever have anything good to say about Microsoft at all are the people who make money if they do so, and all the people who swear by open source do so because they sincerely mean it?
But her plastic surgeon modifies her all the time...
Then over here, we have the one bad, sulky operating system. Who is this making these horrible noises and faces at everybody else over here in this dark corner? Why, my goodness, it's Microsoft! What's the matter, Softie, don't you want to play nice with the other systems? Oh, I see, you want all the other systems to *DIE* so you can be all by yourself. OK, I guess that's a "no". Well we're going to go on having our little party together and maybe you'll get the hint and just go away...
But I still don't see it real soon, even if MS suddenly does a Grinch and grows it's heart three sizes bigger and decides it's going to play nice after all. Witness the fragmentation even within an OS's community (distro vs distro, desktop vs desktop, editor vs editor), and I don't think you'll get the vi/Gnome/Debian bigot and the Emacs/Fluxbox/Slackware bigot to say "Eeeeeh...what's the difference?" But then again, my crystal ball *is* due for a polishing...
Has anybody out there *ever* gotten an Intel chip that matched the sticker on the outside of the box when they bought the whole thing ready-made? Dunno how many times I've reclaimed castaway computers where the stickers on the outside were complete fantasy when compared to what's inside. And don't worry about the consumer getting wise - even amongst the savier users, 90% of the public wouldn't know better if you told them Dumbo the Flying Elephant was inside their computer, they're *never* gonna open that sucker up!
Yes, I am probably the most guilty of the charges you level. I can see that. I hasten to point out that the bitching about how-hard-it-is-to-be-smart is just for this thread: in every other thread, you'll find us happily chirping about how our gifts enabled us to win our successes. I wouldn't trade how I am for the world, and the others (most) here who are smarter probably wouldn't trade it either. I think many of us have fessed up our horror stories just to point out, since the topic is about how best to manage the smart kids, how horribly wrong it can all go with the best of intentions. But moreover, our backgrounds also indicate how we *overcame* those obstacles and learned how to deal with the world in our own way, despite how we were mismanaged. How we eventually come to find mates who love us for who we are, jobs where we can be at our best (or self-employment, even better), and ways to seek out our kind. Note, that most of the success stories in here seem to be pretty indifferent to educational methods.
Thanks for putting up with us. Were we at least better than the script kiddies, consumer-cows, and flaming fanboys you usually see in this space?
Very concise, but there's a post "No Silver Bullet" by an anonymous coward here who sounds like s/he was messed up by people who believe as you do.
*Pounce* While we have an expert - what's your view of the whole people-smart vs math-smart vs word-smart vs random-smart/etc.? It always made sense to me, but I wonder if it still holds the same water in achedemic circles that it did ten years ago?
If nothing else, I'd suggest this as a dandy strategy for those reality show games - play it stupid until the final four! Every time I saw a contestant letting out the full stops the first week, I'd groan for them. Don't they know that's like a target on their chest?