I don't have any opinion on whether or not MS "ripped off" Apple, either way. But that article is the most ludicrous piece of tripe I have read in a long time. Somehow the author manages to claim that Apple stealing the interface metaphors from Xerox is OK, but that MS stealing interface metaphors from Apple is Wrong. The crucial difference is supposed to be that "windows and menus" are general, but that "folders and a trashcan" are specific. What?? The reason this has to be claimed is that Apple clearly stole the windows idea from Xerox, so that must be alright. But Apple made up folders themselves, so when MS stole it, it's not alright. Brilliant.
Then there's the Case of the Transplanted Programmers. Early on in the article, we are told that "Apple had hired some people from Xerox (like Jef Raskin, Bruce Horn) who believed in concepts of a Graphical User Interface." and "by no stretch of the imagination could this be called 'ripping-off'." But later, we find out that "Microsoft took [Apple's] best Mac Programmer, and had him making almost every design decision for early windows." This, of course, proves that "Microsoft on the other hand did rip-off Apple." Wow.
As the other poster mentioned, MacKido generally makes Linux zealots look wishy-washy. But this one goes beyond that into some creepy cultish nether realm. Mr. David K. Every seriously needs a quick course in critical thinking skills, perhaps some elementary logic, or, failing that, a job in marketing. Seriously, read the article, people. It's just bizarre.
"Moderation is good, in theory." -Larry Wall
We're all in this together...
on
The Regulon
·
· Score: 2
$ wc -w katzarticle
1262 ktz
It seems you're not doing your part to stem the tide, Jon. Shame shame.:-)
Slashdot source from about a year ago is available here. It's broken, poorly written and feature-weak. My point is that the development of slashdot and the attitude of certain site administrators is basically that their code is theirs and you can't see it, or use it, or contribute to it, or help them develop it in any way. Does that sound like open source to you?
I quote: "Every time someone asks me for the source, I delay the release another day." If, say, Apple declared that OSX was open source, and then consistently responded to questions about it's release with this sentence, how quickly would everyone here jump down their throats? But when it's The Great Rob Malda who does it, it's perfectly Ok to claim the source is open, when in fact it simply isn't.
They can do any damn thing they please, but don't claim that slashdot runs on open source software, or that it's creators do any more than pay lip service to other people's open source efforts. The simple fact is, slash is a closed product that maybe, someday, if we wait and hope and pray, Lord Malda will see fit to hand down unto us.
You can disagree with me about whether it should be open, or whether the community has any right to expect the slash crew to practice what they preach, but you cannot argue that slash is currently open source. That's just foolish.
Oh, yeah, and I'm actually not "that fucking stupid." But thanks for caring.
If I were a moderator right now, I'd do it myself. I asked that question, knowing that this is the answer I'd get. We've all seen this before, but I thought that perhaps other people reading the site who wouldn't know what to do with the slash code if they had it might not have.
Now, I'm all for people's right to do what they want. And if they don't want to release, well, there's nothing we can do abut that. But in this case, the attitude is one of such deep and abiding rectal-cranial inversion that it still never fails to piss me off, as it's pissed off and alienated the rest of the potential development comunity as well.
I get a nice flamey email about once a week from some ass who calls me a hypocrite and slams me for not getting out a new release.
Does that maybe tell you something? Maybe some of those "asses" have a point. I know you also regularly get reminders which are not in the least "flamey" and which merely seek to point out that you are, in fact, giving a big fuck you to the very community and ideals that support you.
You know what the first thing I would do if I had the code is? Write an install script. We're not as dumb as you think, Rob. There are many people out here who can understand even YOUR terrible code.
Basically, the above poster said it. Grow up. Get your head out of your ass and look around. You're not important because people read your website. Start acting like you believe what you preach. And fuck you, too.
For a long time now, those who want to use and improve the slashdot code have been wondering, and waiting, and hoping for the much promised 0.4 tarball. Many of them have in fact become quite irate about the lag between code releases, the lack of a CVS server, and the overall appearance that the slashdot gang doesn't practice what it preaches ("release early, release often"). How would you respond to these criticisms, and do you intend to change the development practices in any way in the future?
Hey, if he loses the case, he can always just autograph a few of those cards and sell them. Not worth $97 Mill, but it's money in the bank (and what's he doing for money these days?)
It is also better suited to some tasks than languages that enforce good coding practices when they aren't needed and would be detrimental to the program at hand.
Ah yes, the Y+1C bug. I've been promoting this for a while, but no one listens.
On another note, the calendar we currently use was calculated for some ancient monk's estimate of the birth of Jesus, starting at Year 0. That's right, despite all the pompous dorks proclaiming otherwise, the first millennium started at 0. Just like all real programmers would expect. Which makes Jan 1 2000 the first day of the third millennium.
I remember this too. The Ewoks kept going "starcruiser crashhhhh!" In their obnoxious hateful little voices, and making hand motions and whatnot. Oh God, I had totally forgotten about that. I didn't even think of it when reading the Christmas special review. Mommy.... I'm scared...
My point wasn't really that RedHat is destined to be the next microsoft. I think it's clear to a large (and growing) number of people that being like MS is just not the right way to be.
I do believe, however, that the market for RedHat is as large, if not larger, than the one for MS. It's a different market, and a different approach, but I think it's just as big. I don't think RedHat, even if it was worth 579 billion, would ever look just like MS, in any way that matters.
And as for "shutting out windows on the desktop," it'll never happen, because the desktop won't be a market worth competing over. Today's computing environment will appear, fifty years from now, as quaint and charming, but slightly odd in the same way that the steam-powered mechanical contraptions of the victorian era strike us as quaint and charming, but somehow just a weird way of doing things.
Sorry, but I'm in a prognosticating mood tody...:-)
"Get away from my house you freak!" -Neal Stephenson
This is why you will sell and people who understand the business will not. I see an awful lot of short-term daytraders grabbing at linux stocks because they're hot right now, and then freaking out at the fact that the company is losing money and dumping them. You will lose in this deal, because you don't understand the market that the company is in.
I only wish I had money to buy redhat, because at $18B, the company is still vastly undervalued. MSFT is worth $579B, so by my calculations, RedHat still has $561B worth of expansion yet to do. BUT... it won't happen overnight.
To those who get it: buy a goodly chunk of RedHat, and then squirrel it away and forget you even have it. Don't read the "investor" message boards, and don't check the ticker. Just hold onto it for dear life.
Your children will thank you.
"Get away from my house you freak!" -Neal Stephenson
If the use of linux as a whole is doubling every year, that doesn't necessarily mean that each linux distro's sales will double every year. It is still free software, and many people will get their CD's from cheapbytes, so nibble off that bit of the market. Then figure that since there's no legal restrictions on the number of installs you can do from a single CD, that'll bite off another chunk of redhat's sales (ie a company would only buy one disk, even if it was converting ten servers to linux). Factor in people installing from their buddy's RH 5.2 CD, etc etc. You get the picture.
I think a 24% increase in sales is actually pretty stunning, for an idea that most people said was insane to begin with. I mean, they're selling software that can be had for free or extremely low-cost in many places (ok, I know 80 bucks isn't particularly expensive, but it is compared to 3 bucks). In any case, I think that capturing nearly a quarter of that 2x increase in direct sales is pretty damn good, and better than I would have projected for them, if I were trying to work out the numbers before the fact.
Just my 2% of $1.:-)
"Get away from my house you freak!" -Neal Stephenson
Re:Standards (somewhat OFF-TOPIC)
on
RMS The Coder
·
· Score: 2
I don't think your solution works anymore. I just tried, and it stripped away my html again. If you like your nice html formatted sig, I recommend you don't edit your user preferences!:-)
From some experimentation, I'm pretty sure a basic perl filter ( s/<.*?>//g; ) is being run on our sigs now. This, frankly, just sucks. And I agree with you, if we had the damn code, poor, poor, CdrTaco wouldn't have to work his little fingers to the bone, and we might have a better solution.
<RANT> I normally dismiss critics of/., because usually they're basically whiny and annoying. But on this point, I have to be a critic myself. This is a site which is built on free software, and which claims to be one of the biggest media voices for free software, and yet, as far as I can tell, the software that runs/. is non-free! Good intentions don't count here, Rob-- the code is being kept hidden from us. We don't need a pretty tarball, for God's sake! Just set up a CVS server! I'll host it (cvs1.ompages.com)!! It's time this deplorable situation was changed. </RANT>
"Get away from my house you freak!" -Neal Stephenson
I think you draw the line exactly at the question: "Is the 'extension' closed and proprietary?" That is, when M$ extends a standard, you are not allowed to see what they did. If M$ adds extensions to HTML, they do it because it distinguishes their browser from Netscape. Now, maybe the extension is useful and good, but the fact that it may only be implemented by M$ browsers is, overall, bad for users.
On the other hand, when an author of OSS extends a standard, the code is open, and others may see and reimplement exatly the same functionality in their code as well. Assuming this extension is also good for users, then everyone can implement it, and the net result is a big win, rather than a hideous swamp of incompatibility (like present-day HTML).
"Get away from my house you freak!" -Neal Stephenson
Er. Not being a citizen there, it's news to me too. Are you implying I should check my facts? Good God, man (or woman)! This is Slashdot! We're cutting-edge internet news, we don't need to check facts.
Now go start up a sweatshop so I'll be right.
No, really, though. Where are all these sweatshops everyone's protesting. They used to be on the Lower East Side, in NY. Where'd they move them all to?
---- Morning gray ignites a twisted mass of foreign shapes and sounds
Interesting points, all. I wish you the best with your protesting. Me, I'm just anti-everything, more or less. Or, if you're an optimist, I'm highly pro-Me. But if people get their kicks enslaving the downtrodden masses / fighting for the cause of the downtrodden masses / being downtrodden... well, more power to them. None of them are right, and none of them are wrong. We all choose our respective poisons.
---- Morning gray ignites a twisted mass of foreign shapes and sounds
Hey, you there, with the sign.. yeah you, throwing that stick... were those jeans you're wearing organically grown in a Salvdoran cooperative, or were they assembled by 8-year-olds in a Malaysian sweatshop?
Hypocrites.
---- Morning gray ignites a twisted mass of foreign shapes and sounds
No, I don't use caps for much. Only for global constants, really, and even then, sometimes I don't. I'm a perl programmer, by the way.
I started, however, as an HTML jockey, and during my servitude with that miserable beast, I got so I can type in all caps, just by holding down the shift key, almost as fast as I can type without holding it down. I was always in the "HTML tags are capitalized and that's that" school. So, the caps lock key is thoroughly useless and should, indeed be banned outright. The only thing it appears to be good for is getting in the way of the tab key and making me capitalize a whole line instead of moving it four (that's pronounced "The One True Tab") spaces to the right.
---- Morning gray ignites a twisted mass of foreign shapes and sounds
Ok, it's kind of fruity VRML & arcade-quality, but still...
You know whenever you see the "cool computer bit" on a TV show, it's always some guy sitting in front of a big screen, and he's got a model of a doo-dad, and he's twisting it around and spinning it, and stuff? I just got all the IRIS stuff, and lo and behold, my workstation now looks like the "cool computer bit" on all those TV shows.
So, it's kinda lame, comparatively, but I love it anyway.:-)
BTW, it's a Dell Precision 410 (dual P3), with a TNT2, and once I linked the hardware driver correctly, it runs like a charm. Thanks for making my day a little cooler.
---- Morning gray ignites a twisted mass of foreign shapes and sounds
The above was obviously posted by Hemos. Look at "pleasently". I rest my case. He must be getting a smaller cut of the upcoming Andover IPO shares than he wanted...;-)
---- Morning gray ignites a twisted mass of foreign shapes and sounds
Slashdot Mirror
Then there's the Case of the Transplanted Programmers. Early on in the article, we are told that "Apple had hired some people from Xerox (like Jef Raskin, Bruce Horn) who believed in concepts of a Graphical User Interface." and "by no stretch of the imagination could this be called 'ripping-off'." But later, we find out that "Microsoft took [Apple's] best Mac Programmer, and had him making almost every design decision for early windows." This, of course, proves that "Microsoft on the other hand did rip-off Apple." Wow.
As the other poster mentioned, MacKido generally makes Linux zealots look wishy-washy. But this one goes beyond that into some creepy cultish nether realm. Mr. David K. Every seriously needs a quick course in critical thinking skills, perhaps some elementary logic, or, failing that, a job in marketing. Seriously, read the article, people. It's just bizarre.
"Moderation is good, in theory."
-Larry Wall
$ wc -w katzarticle
:-)
1262 ktz
It seems you're not doing your part to stem the tide, Jon. Shame shame.
--
There is no K5 cabal.
I quote: "Every time someone asks me for the source, I delay the release another day." If, say, Apple declared that OSX was open source, and then consistently responded to questions about it's release with this sentence, how quickly would everyone here jump down their throats? But when it's The Great Rob Malda who does it, it's perfectly Ok to claim the source is open, when in fact it simply isn't.
They can do any damn thing they please, but don't claim that slashdot runs on open source software, or that it's creators do any more than pay lip service to other people's open source efforts. The simple fact is, slash is a closed product that maybe, someday, if we wait and hope and pray, Lord Malda will see fit to hand down unto us.
You can disagree with me about whether it should be open, or whether the community has any right to expect the slash crew to practice what they preach, but you cannot argue that slash is currently open source. That's just foolish.
Oh, yeah, and I'm actually not "that fucking stupid." But thanks for caring.
"Moderation is good, in theory."
-Larry Wall
If you're not sure, I recommend downloading the Q3 demo and trying it out first. I'm betting it'll work.
"Moderation is good, in theory."
-Larry Wall
"Moderation is good, in theory."
-Larry Wall
Now, I'm all for people's right to do what they want. And if they don't want to release, well, there's nothing we can do abut that. But in this case, the attitude is one of such deep and abiding rectal-cranial inversion that it still never fails to piss me off, as it's pissed off and alienated the rest of the potential development comunity as well.
I get a nice flamey email about once a week from some ass who calls me a hypocrite and slams me for not getting out a new release.
Does that maybe tell you something? Maybe some of those "asses" have a point. I know you also regularly get reminders which are not in the least "flamey" and which merely seek to point out that you are, in fact, giving a big fuck you to the very community and ideals that support you.
You know what the first thing I would do if I had the code is? Write an install script. We're not as dumb as you think, Rob. There are many people out here who can understand even YOUR terrible code.
Basically, the above poster said it. Grow up. Get your head out of your ass and look around. You're not important because people read your website. Start acting like you believe what you preach. And fuck you, too.
"Moderation is good, in theory."
-Larry Wall
The slash-help mailing list. Home of the embittered would-be open-source slash contributors.
"Moderation is good, in theory."
-Larry Wall
"Moderation is good, in theory."
-Larry Wall
"Moderation is good, in theory."
-Larry Wall
"Moderation is good, in theory."
-Larry Wall
By the same logic, no one should use the cyrillic alphabet because I don't know it.
I'm rather sick of hearing "perl is a write-only blah blah blah." Is my annoyance apparent yet?
"Moderation is good, in theory."
-Larry Wall
On another note, the calendar we currently use was calculated for some ancient monk's estimate of the birth of Jesus, starting at Year 0. That's right, despite all the pompous dorks proclaiming otherwise, the first millennium started at 0. Just like all real programmers would expect. Which makes Jan 1 2000 the first day of the third millennium.
"Moderation is good, in theory."
-Larry Wall
Pro: are that there are a lot of tech jobs here
Con: A lot of them are pretty boring
Pro: DC is a great city to live in. There are lots of non-tech things to do here, when you need a mental reboot
Con: The city can be a bit stuffy
In general, I'm happy to live in DC, and recommend it to other geeks.
"Moderation is good, in theory."
-Larry Wall
"Moderation is good, in theory."
-Larry Wall
I do believe, however, that the market for RedHat is as large, if not larger, than the one for MS. It's a different market, and a different approach, but I think it's just as big. I don't think RedHat, even if it was worth 579 billion, would ever look just like MS, in any way that matters.
And as for "shutting out windows on the desktop," it'll never happen, because the desktop won't be a market worth competing over. Today's computing environment will appear, fifty years from now, as quaint and charming, but slightly odd in the same way that the steam-powered mechanical contraptions of the victorian era strike us as quaint and charming, but somehow just a weird way of doing things.
Sorry, but I'm in a prognosticating mood tody... :-)
"Get away from my house you freak!"
-Neal Stephenson
I only wish I had money to buy redhat, because at $18B, the company is still vastly undervalued. MSFT is worth $579B, so by my calculations, RedHat still has $561B worth of expansion yet to do. BUT... it won't happen overnight.
To those who get it: buy a goodly chunk of RedHat, and then squirrel it away and forget you even have it. Don't read the "investor" message boards, and don't check the ticker. Just hold onto it for dear life.
Your children will thank you.
"Get away from my house you freak!"
-Neal Stephenson
I think a 24% increase in sales is actually pretty stunning, for an idea that most people said was insane to begin with. I mean, they're selling software that can be had for free or extremely low-cost in many places (ok, I know 80 bucks isn't particularly expensive, but it is compared to 3 bucks). In any case, I think that capturing nearly a quarter of that 2x increase in direct sales is pretty damn good, and better than I would have projected for them, if I were trying to work out the numbers before the fact.
Just my 2% of $1. :-)
"Get away from my house you freak!"
-Neal Stephenson
From some experimentation, I'm pretty sure a basic perl filter ( s/<.*?>//g; ) is being run on our sigs now. This, frankly, just sucks. And I agree with you, if we had the damn code, poor, poor, CdrTaco wouldn't have to work his little fingers to the bone, and we might have a better solution.
<RANT> /., because usually they're basically whiny and annoying. But on this point, I have to be a critic myself. This is a site which is built on free software, and which claims to be one of the biggest media voices for free software, and yet, as far as I can tell, the software that runs /. is non-free! Good intentions don't count here, Rob-- the code is being kept hidden from us. We don't need a pretty tarball, for God's sake! Just set up a CVS server! I'll host it (cvs1.ompages.com)!! It's time this deplorable situation was changed.
I normally dismiss critics of
</RANT>
"Get away from my house you freak!"
-Neal Stephenson
I think you draw the line exactly at the question: "Is the 'extension' closed and proprietary?" That is, when M$ extends a standard, you are not allowed to see what they did. If M$ adds extensions to HTML, they do it because it distinguishes their browser from Netscape. Now, maybe the extension is useful and good, but the fact that it may only be implemented by M$ browsers is, overall, bad for users.
On the other hand, when an author of OSS extends a standard, the code is open, and others may see and reimplement exatly the same functionality in their code as well. Assuming this extension is also good for users, then everyone can implement it, and the net result is a big win, rather than a hideous swamp of incompatibility (like present-day HTML).
"Get away from my house you freak!"
-Neal Stephenson
Now go start up a sweatshop so I'll be right.
No, really, though. Where are all these sweatshops everyone's protesting. They used to be on the Lower East Side, in NY. Where'd they move them all to?
----
Morning gray ignites a twisted mass of foreign shapes and sounds
Interesting points, all. I wish you the best with your protesting. Me, I'm just anti-everything, more or less. Or, if you're an optimist, I'm highly pro-Me. But if people get their kicks enslaving the downtrodden masses / fighting for the cause of the downtrodden masses / being downtrodden... well, more power to them. None of them are right, and none of them are wrong. We all choose our respective poisons.
----
Morning gray ignites a twisted mass of foreign shapes and sounds
Hypocrites.
----
Morning gray ignites a twisted mass of foreign shapes and sounds
I started, however, as an HTML jockey, and during my servitude with that miserable beast, I got so I can type in all caps, just by holding down the shift key, almost as fast as I can type without holding it down. I was always in the "HTML tags are capitalized and that's that" school. So, the caps lock key is thoroughly useless and should, indeed be banned outright. The only thing it appears to be good for is getting in the way of the tab key and making me capitalize a whole line instead of moving it four (that's pronounced "The One True Tab") spaces to the right.
----
Morning gray ignites a twisted mass of foreign shapes and sounds
You know whenever you see the "cool computer bit" on a TV show, it's always some guy sitting in front of a big screen, and he's got a model of a doo-dad, and he's twisting it around and spinning it, and stuff? I just got all the IRIS stuff, and lo and behold, my workstation now looks like the "cool computer bit" on all those TV shows.
So, it's kinda lame, comparatively, but I love it anyway. :-)
BTW, it's a Dell Precision 410 (dual P3), with a TNT2, and once I linked the hardware driver correctly, it runs like a charm. Thanks for making my day a little cooler.
----
Morning gray ignites a twisted mass of foreign shapes and sounds
The above was obviously posted by Hemos. Look at "pleasently". I rest my case. He must be getting a smaller cut of the upcoming Andover IPO shares than he wanted... ;-)
----
Morning gray ignites a twisted mass of foreign shapes and sounds