Even disregarding the reasons you mentioned, money is not going to disappear.
It is too convenient a concept; direct trade of one thing for another requires two people to each find a thing the other one wants. That can get quite complicated, whilst money is money is money and can be exchanged for anything, given large enough quantities.
And until someone builds a machine which can at least comprehend human language, I won't believe you can build a machine which could invent anything.
These are all nice, utopistic ideas - but not that well thought out.
I clicked on the link and the formatting's even worse than here, since/. thankfully does not allow colour. FSM be praised.
Anyway, this does seem an interesting idea - however, somebody has to design the robots, repair the robots, invent the stuff they want the robots to produce...
Robots can reduce or maybe even remove the need for manual labour. But man will always find something to do. And then start doing it in exchange for some other thing somebody else enjoys doing. And there we go again.
They actually use the phrase 'don't be evil'. The difference, as I see it, is that 'do no evil' paralyzes you when you have to choose among two evils; 'don't be evil' just makes sure that whatever evil you choose, you choose with the best intentions.
Let me precede my comment with a disclaimer: I am a Gentoo user.
I haven't yet tried Slackware, though from what I've seen and read, it is a very nice distro. And aside from the attitude towards compiling, it seems pretty similar to Gentoo in the underlying philosophy.
All that being said, I fail to see the point of your post. Most people would rather not install every single thing by compiling it first, which is the default method on Gentoo as well as Gentoo's most distinctive feature.
Furthermore, such fanboyish trolling in a discussion about another distro is... well... fanboyish trolling.
And apparently, I have just fed you.
Well, never mind. But I've just come to wonder: was there even an article here when Gentoo 2007.0 came out? I know I haven't seen one - actually, I don't recall ever seeing an article about a new Gentoo release - but I do see Slackware articles.
It's probably just that Slackware has a better marketing team;)
It is in the 4 different package frontends and the dozens of different repositories with the same damn software packaged in dozens of different ways.
And every distro keeps its own repositories. And has a built-in way to install the software from them.
Hell, just go there and pick whatever you like.
Besides, chances are that a piece of software written (and compiled) for Windows 98 will run on Windows XP... and probably even Vista. A Linux package from a 1998 version Debian (2.0?), on the other hand, almost certanly won't run on a modern version of RedHat.
Well, I've had tons of old stuff refusing to run on WinXP. And there is always the option of static compiling, so you have all the things you need compiled-in...
Linux is different from Windows, in this area as well as others. However, vendors need not worry about creating packages for every single distro - that's the distro maintainers' job. They'll adapt eventually.
I was quite impressed when I saw cash registers in the largest Croatian supermarket chain running under RedHat. And the owner introduced that years ago.
Oh yeah, what about those people that aren't even technical enough to run Windows?
Until less than two years ago, my father didn't even know how to turn a computer on.
Then he bought one (actually, we built it together) and I gave him both Windows and Linux. Since he was learning from scratch, I thought it would be better if I showed him both, let him play, see how similar they are in most things relevant to him... I only told him to surf the net from Linux since I wouldn't have to worry about him catching a virus or two thousand while he's still learning the very basics.
Ever since, I'd used him as an example for Linux Desktop Readiness (tm); he indeed learned both Linux and Windows - nowhere near to a geek level, but quite a bit above the average user level: just yesterday he told me how he'd come to realise - through conversation - that most of his co-workers and acquaintances (at least from his age group, and they'd all had computers for years before he got one) know much less about computers than he does. He also told me to stop citing him as an example for a non-technical user using Windows and Linux to an equal degree - he said he has grown to appreciate Linux much more than Windows. So go figure.
P.S. As far as purely non-technical users go, my father's GF is one. And AisleRiot beats MS Solitaire, so she also boots into Linux. It's just that Linux developers don't really understand which apps are the true flagships;)
See, you two can't even agree on package managers, and you're saying there isn't fragmentation.
In the words, if not the image, of any 4chan user, O RLY?
Let's see...
First, both lists have apt, which was built to deal with.deb files. So.deb's covered.
Then portage; OK, the other list only lists its emerge component, but emerge is a part of portage.
YAST is a.rpm manager; one of many, sure, but the other list you quote lists simply "rpm", so that's covered, too.
And though I haven't had any experience with Slackware yet (though it's an option for my grandfather's ancient computer), somehow I think that.tgz and pkgtool have something to do with one another.
Where, then, is that so-called fragmentation?
And in that case, is the Windows market fragmented as well? I mean, you have Win9x, Win2k, WinXP Home, WinXP Pro, WinXP 64, Win2003 Server, WinME, WinMCE, Vista Home, Vista Business, Vista Ultimate and several other flavours I have most certainly missed... how many different desktops, different Start menus, different browsers, different GUIs, different driver versions, different ways to uninstall a program...?
"Swayed" implies less emotional stability and/or less rationality.
Does it? Ooops. Didn't know that. Not a native speaker and all that.
I do know the meaning, but didn't know the implication... though I doubt that this implication would be made by all native speakers of English. Though I've been wrong before.
This is not to say that eventual studies may find an effect for educational level, but on the absence of such evidence nor any adequate conceptual ground, your statement is just an expression of prejudice. In other words: what you say makes you a snob, and I don't care for what you say that you're saying.
Well, maybe I should have added an 'IME'. I admit I have not done scientific research in that area, but I have seen many people fall for bullshit and get tangled up in it, and I have noticed some differences. Then again, I do wonder to what degree the differences in our languages and education systems factor in...
And, BTW: I have no sympathy for trial by jury. I prefer a professional judge to deal with the inevitable subtleties, but that is because having people serve in jury duty requires society to train them each time in the specifics, not because they are mentally or emotionally inferior for lacing a degree in Law.
Where did I mention mental and/or emotional inferiority?
The inevitable subtleties hidden by bullshit were my point. A judge is supposed to be well trained in that area; twelve randomly (for a sufficient value of 'randomly') chosen people are not. Unless they're mothers, maybe.
By the way, why don't you get a lawyer without a college degree?
Not to say I'm some kind of snob, but really, uneducated people are more easily swayed. And in the legal system where you depend on the judgement of a dozen people, I'd rather have them educated.
Luckily, I live in a country where people are tried by educated people. Though this system has its faults just as well, including our famous judge who proclaimed that pushing a finger up somebody's anus is not sexual at all, since neither hand nor anus are sexual organs, and therefore this act is more akin to handshake than to rape.
Luckily, our legal system is not based on Common Law. That would've been quite a precedent.
When asked whether his own e-mail had been compromised, Gates responded, 'I don't do e-mail. I'm a very low-tech person.'
Taken out of context like this, this statement can be very confusing. I mean, Bill Gates not using e-mail? WTF?
Seriously, though, the guy's 63. OK, so e-mail's been around for quite some time... but basically, it's quite a time-consuming means of communication for anyone with a poor eyesight, lack of typing skills (and computer skills in general).
And that's without having to deal with spam.
What actually interests me is - why isn't all e-mail heavily encrypted?
Then again, people have entered - IIRC - the Pentagon, the CIA building and the NSA building flashing an ID with a picture of a person of a different race, with "THIS IS A FAKE ID" in big block letters.
At the end of the day the real question is if you trust Google or M$ to mine your files for you. M$ will sell you for a nickel and Google can be forced by governments. This is why free software is the answer where you are doing anything you care about.
Excuse me, where did I mention MS or Google? I was sticking to Beagle, thank you very much.
However, this is offtopic, so best get ontopic quickly.
There are dozens of GUI front ends to grep that deliver most of the functionality. One of the easiest to use is the KDE find utility, which can search by content, file dates and all of that. Used in conjunction with a reasonable directory structure, you can get most of the benefits of an indexing search engine witout the performance hit.
Well, talk about a reasonable directory structure to someone who was taught that his documents go to My Documents.
All of them.
Besides, Beagle spoiled me; when I'm in a hurry, I just save the bloody file anywhere in my ~ (or, most likely, directly in my ~) - I just name the file as I would tag it and search for it later.
Anyway, directory structure isn't allmighty; sometimes you might want the same file in two or more places (e.g. you want to find a song which appeared on several albums, but can only think of one right at the moment). In that case, you're stuck with either multiple copies or linking.
Then again, desktop search makes me sloppy. Just like I am in real life.
I just wish someone would devise a desktop search for the stacks of paper and other stuff on my real desktop.
Though I just love locate, this is a wee bit different. For one, these programs index the content of your documents as well, not just their names. As practical as locate is, it only matches your search to the list of names in the database; I cannot search for a document containing some word.
Of course, that's where grep comes in, but then, grep's database is the fscking filesystem, so it may take a while.
Besides, I can teach my father how to use Beagle. I cannot teach him how to grep.
OK, I could, but I don't have the time.
... and since they have "one of the most reviled, and therefore most attacked, Web sites in the world", they'd be pretty pressed to move to a more secure platform.
Now, though,/. crowd faces a dilemma - who to root for?
If RIAA keeps getting attacked and their site is down most of the time, maybe - just maybe - somebody at RIAA gets the message.
If we wish the RIAA website a long and happy uptime, though, we can keep arguing that yes, Linux is more secure than Windows...
Personally, I'd go with the long and happy uptime. It's not that the RIAA don't know what the end-customers think about them; it's just that they don't give a damn.
And we do want Linux to work for everyone.
Slashdot Mirror
Even disregarding the reasons you mentioned, money is not going to disappear.
It is too convenient a concept; direct trade of one thing for another requires two people to each find a thing the other one wants. That can get quite complicated, whilst money is money is money and can be exchanged for anything, given large enough quantities.
And until someone builds a machine which can at least comprehend human language, I won't believe you can build a machine which could invent anything.
These are all nice, utopistic ideas - but not that well thought out.
Oh. My. FSM.
I clicked on the link and the formatting's even worse than here, since /. thankfully does not allow colour. FSM be praised.
Anyway, this does seem an interesting idea - however, somebody has to design the robots, repair the robots, invent the stuff they want the robots to produce...
Robots can reduce or maybe even remove the need for manual labour. But man will always find something to do. And then start doing it in exchange for some other thing somebody else enjoys doing. And there we go again.
In short, not gonna happen.
P.S. Get a webdesigner. This is dismal.
Well, haven't we already learned that with Microsoft?
They actually use the phrase 'don't be evil'. The difference, as I see it, is that 'do no evil' paralyzes you when you have to choose among two evils; 'don't be evil' just makes sure that whatever evil you choose, you choose with the best intentions.
Of course, the road to hell and all that...
... or just that it wasn't much of a joke in the first place. The FP in the Gentoo article linked below was both on-topic and funny.
If it's still updated and used, then the interest isn't purely historical.
Let me precede my comment with a disclaimer: I am a Gentoo user.
I haven't yet tried Slackware, though from what I've seen and read, it is a very nice distro. And aside from the attitude towards compiling, it seems pretty similar to Gentoo in the underlying philosophy.
All that being said, I fail to see the point of your post. Most people would rather not install every single thing by compiling it first, which is the default method on Gentoo as well as Gentoo's most distinctive feature.
Furthermore, such fanboyish trolling in a discussion about another distro is... well... fanboyish trolling.
And apparently, I have just fed you.
Well, never mind. But I've just come to wonder: was there even an article here when Gentoo 2007.0 came out? I know I haven't seen one - actually, I don't recall ever seeing an article about a new Gentoo release - but I do see Slackware articles.
It's probably just that Slackware has a better marketing team ;)
And every distro keeps its own repositories. And has a built-in way to install the software from them.
Hell, just go there and pick whatever you like.
Well, I've had tons of old stuff refusing to run on WinXP. And there is always the option of static compiling, so you have all the things you need compiled-in...
Linux is different from Windows, in this area as well as others. However, vendors need not worry about creating packages for every single distro - that's the distro maintainers' job. They'll adapt eventually.
Sure... if it compiles, ship it.
I was quite impressed when I saw cash registers in the largest Croatian supermarket chain running under RedHat. And the owner introduced that years ago.
Until less than two years ago, my father didn't even know how to turn a computer on.
Then he bought one (actually, we built it together) and I gave him both Windows and Linux. Since he was learning from scratch, I thought it would be better if I showed him both, let him play, see how similar they are in most things relevant to him... I only told him to surf the net from Linux since I wouldn't have to worry about him catching a virus or two thousand while he's still learning the very basics.
Ever since, I'd used him as an example for Linux Desktop Readiness (tm); he indeed learned both Linux and Windows - nowhere near to a geek level, but quite a bit above the average user level: just yesterday he told me how he'd come to realise - through conversation - that most of his co-workers and acquaintances (at least from his age group, and they'd all had computers for years before he got one) know much less about computers than he does. He also told me to stop citing him as an example for a non-technical user using Windows and Linux to an equal degree - he said he has grown to appreciate Linux much more than Windows. So go figure.
P.S. As far as purely non-technical users go, my father's GF is one. And AisleRiot beats MS Solitaire, so she also boots into Linux. It's just that Linux developers don't really understand which apps are the true flagships ;)
In the words, if not the image, of any 4chan user, O RLY?
Let's see...
First, both lists have apt, which was built to deal with .deb files. So .deb's covered.
Then portage; OK, the other list only lists its emerge component, but emerge is a part of portage.
YAST is a .rpm manager; one of many, sure, but the other list you quote lists simply "rpm", so that's covered, too.
And though I haven't had any experience with Slackware yet (though it's an option for my grandfather's ancient computer), somehow I think that .tgz and pkgtool have something to do with one another.
Where, then, is that so-called fragmentation?
And in that case, is the Windows market fragmented as well? I mean, you have Win9x, Win2k, WinXP Home, WinXP Pro, WinXP 64, Win2003 Server, WinME, WinMCE, Vista Home, Vista Business, Vista Ultimate and several other flavours I have most certainly missed... how many different desktops, different Start menus, different browsers, different GUIs, different driver versions, different ways to uninstall a program...?
Didn't she offer to open-source the code anyway? With the code, they can get a whole bunch of clues.
Sure we can.
Give it to kids. Say it's a new drug.
Isn't that, one hand fapping?
Does it? Ooops. Didn't know that. Not a native speaker and all that.
I do know the meaning, but didn't know the implication... though I doubt that this implication would be made by all native speakers of English. Though I've been wrong before.
Well, maybe I should have added an 'IME'. I admit I have not done scientific research in that area, but I have seen many people fall for bullshit and get tangled up in it, and I have noticed some differences. Then again, I do wonder to what degree the differences in our languages and education systems factor in...
Where did I mention mental and/or emotional inferiority?
The inevitable subtleties hidden by bullshit were my point. A judge is supposed to be well trained in that area; twelve randomly (for a sufficient value of 'randomly') chosen people are not. Unless they're mothers, maybe.
Read what the AC above your reply said.
By the way, why don't you get a lawyer without a college degree?
Not to say I'm some kind of snob, but really, uneducated people are more easily swayed. And in the legal system where you depend on the judgement of a dozen people, I'd rather have them educated.
Luckily, I live in a country where people are tried by educated people. Though this system has its faults just as well, including our famous judge who proclaimed that pushing a finger up somebody's anus is not sexual at all, since neither hand nor anus are sexual organs, and therefore this act is more akin to handshake than to rape.
Luckily, our legal system is not based on Common Law. That would've been quite a precedent.
So, they're choosing your peers by the least common denominator?
How quaint. We wouldn't want educated people deciding on something like that, now would we?
</rant>
So, all we need now is some content providers lawyering up the moment they find out their sites look modified when accessed through certain ISPs.
I hope you earn millions.
Taken out of context like this, this statement can be very confusing. I mean, Bill Gates not using e-mail? WTF?
Seriously, though, the guy's 63. OK, so e-mail's been around for quite some time... but basically, it's quite a time-consuming means of communication for anyone with a poor eyesight, lack of typing skills (and computer skills in general).
And that's without having to deal with spam.
What actually interests me is - why isn't all e-mail heavily encrypted?
Then again, people have entered - IIRC - the Pentagon, the CIA building and the NSA building flashing an ID with a picture of a person of a different race, with "THIS IS A FAKE ID" in big block letters.
Is basic security so hard to train?
It's so hot and I'm so tired I'd read that you had Mr Goatse's fax number.
Only on /. would that even make sense.
Excuse me, where did I mention MS or Google? I was sticking to Beagle, thank you very much.
However, this is offtopic, so best get ontopic quickly.
Well, talk about a reasonable directory structure to someone who was taught that his documents go to My Documents.
All of them.
Besides, Beagle spoiled me; when I'm in a hurry, I just save the bloody file anywhere in my ~ (or, most likely, directly in my ~) - I just name the file as I would tag it and search for it later.
Anyway, directory structure isn't allmighty; sometimes you might want the same file in two or more places (e.g. you want to find a song which appeared on several albums, but can only think of one right at the moment). In that case, you're stuck with either multiple copies or linking.
Then again, desktop search makes me sloppy. Just like I am in real life.
I just wish someone would devise a desktop search for the stacks of paper and other stuff on my real desktop.
Well, no, not exactly.
Though I just love locate, this is a wee bit different. For one, these programs index the content of your documents as well, not just their names. As practical as locate is, it only matches your search to the list of names in the database; I cannot search for a document containing some word.
Of course, that's where grep comes in, but then, grep's database is the fscking filesystem, so it may take a while.
Besides, I can teach my father how to use Beagle. I cannot teach him how to grep.
OK, I could, but I don't have the time.
... and since they have "one of the most reviled, and therefore most attacked, Web sites in the world", they'd be pretty pressed to move to a more secure platform.
Now, though, /. crowd faces a dilemma - who to root for?
If RIAA keeps getting attacked and their site is down most of the time, maybe - just maybe - somebody at RIAA gets the message.
If we wish the RIAA website a long and happy uptime, though, we can keep arguing that yes, Linux is more secure than Windows...
Personally, I'd go with the long and happy uptime. It's not that the RIAA don't know what the end-customers think about them; it's just that they don't give a damn.
And we do want Linux to work for everyone.