Is it just me, or is the target audience of these features rapidly decreasing in intelligence?
Is the Slashdot audience the audience that needs the author's interpretation and sugar coating of the history of Microsoft gaining dominance, in order for us to understand the article? Is the Slashdot audience the audience that needs HTML explained?
Do we represent the people that need small words and short sentences so that we can understand things? I felt like the point in this article was very difficult to get to, because of the assumption that every second word or concept needed to be explained[1].
I actually got the feeling that, in fact, the author was as unfamiliar with this topic as he took his audience to be. This is a mistake, in my opinion -- but my opinion is that the people that know something the rest of us don't are the ones that share in public forums.
I find myself turning rapidly into an old curmudgeon, and while I apologize for it, these are still my views.
1. Footnotes are good for explaining things that some people might need explained, but the majority will not.
I've read Feynman's article before, and once again I am not very impressed with it. It's a commencement speech written by an incredible man, but it's still a commencement speech.
As for your ``example'' of how ``flawed'' psychology journals are. First, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised that editors were simply amazed that a physicist would publish an article in their journal, due to the bias you very adequately demonstrate. They certainly should have investigated the article, but I would be surprised to find that every article written by, say microbiologists for physics journals are better handled by the reviewing boards.
As for the psychologist I'm working for: I haven't been around long enough to learn much of the experiments, rather than my end -- statistical analysis and software generation.
The most I can say is that your low opinion of anything outside of physics and chemistry contrary to my own experience of research psychology, and other soft science. If I am simply undisciplined and easily fooled, so be it -- but I doubt it; I'm not exactly a soft science person myself.
If you will excuse me from saying so, that's a pretty hoity-toity post.
You blast psychology and other social sciences over and over again for lack of accountability and evidence -- "What evidence brings her to say that?" -- and yet it doesn't look like you're sufficiently familiar with the topic.
Specifically, you attack everything about the book without actually knowing (beyond cursory examination) the subject matter, and without a single clue as to what research was put into it.
Your attitude seems only reasonable if one starts with the assumption that no proof can be garnered about the subject. Therefore, anyone spouting theories is spouting hot air, because there's nothing to back it up. You seem to assume that this book can't possibly have any basis in fact, because it's a book on "social sciences."
I think your basic assumption is severely flawed, to say the least. Working with psychologists right now (I'm a programmer), I can say there's a great deal of work put into being sure that the measuring methods mean something, the experiments are relevant to the question being asked, and the data is collected in a statistically relevant way.
I can speak nothing towards the book, having not read it -- but I find your attitude of "What will we gain from this analysis? Insight? Inner peace? Enlightenment?" completely unscientific. Are questions of our intellectual origin, or mental processes, out of reach of science? Or are they as fair game as questions of our physical origin?
Something that neuropsychologists are able to show is that thoughts really do correspond to physical processes: questions of intellectual origin are simply extremely complex questions of physical origin.
This review should give everyone that reads it pause. Not because the book itself is so ground shaking, or so poor, as it may or may not be.
It should give us pause because of the underlying criteria Jon Katz is using. He doesn't dislike the book because the thesis is poorly supported, or the thesis is wrong; he doesn't even offer distaste for the subject matter (no, he revels in memes, as I think anyone observing current Internet culture should), and only seems to note distastefully that the writing is ``dry.''
No, it looks like Mr. Katz pans the book because he doesn't understand it. The writing isn't simple and clear, but (from inference) typical academic, and the subject matter is dealt with in a precise and laborious way. Apparently there's no jumping to conclusions, just slow presentation of information and inference, until we get to the end, and find the thesis (People are comprised of memes and some more basic hardware used to pass memes, and the memes are what make us sentient?) -- a thesis that, because of the care taken in presenting it with a full show of support, bores and confuses Mr. Katz.
Certainly, some of the above is inference and hyperbole. I hope that Mr. Katz will forgive me pressing a point at his expense. But his analysis of this book opened him to it (not the verdict, but his display of the thought process he went through to decide his verdict).
Perhaps this book is too heavy for someone who is too busy to give it his full attention, or for people that are used to executive summaries. I hardly think, though, that such ``heaviness'' makes it unsuitable reading material for the Slashdot audience, as I (as a single member with admittedly foggy understanding) see said audience.
Your understanding of people, Mr. Katz, keeps me reading your articles long after your writing style would normally drive me away. Your assumption, however, that at least I as a Slashdot reader appreciate your review that pushes away ``too difficult'' material is wrong.
Everyone encounters material -- both reading material and tasks -- too difficult to understand easily, or even with more than cursory examination. Not everyone shies away from such material, and not everyone encourages others to shy away from material that they found too difficult.
GPL'd software is not public domain. It is copyrighted and that is why GPL'd software can not be taken over by one company.
Funny you should bring that up, when there are other licenses -- Open Source (notm) licenses -- that let people take the code, and do with it as they will.
The X/MIT license, for instance, may as well be public domain for all the restrictions it puts on you; the BSD license is only barely moreso. Yet, even though there are proprietary versions of most any BSD software you care to name (in fact, OS/2 has a lot of the networking stuff as far as I can tell), it's still largely free software.
To put it another way, the free software community is strong enough that it doesn't need the GPL, or trademarks, to keep its intellectual property largely in the open.
There are versions of Apache that are proprietary, as I recall. But that's not where most of the technology, or even code, is. There is plenty of code based on the X sources that's out there, and proprietary -- but really, how far ahead of XFree86 are these other X Window Systems?
There are, in my opinion, exceptions to this seeming rule. I think there are programs that should be protected by the GPL, such as the Linux kernel, or the GIMP. But not all of it.
Will you Unix users stop thinking Linux is some kind of cheap Unix?
It's not a cheap UNIX, but for all intents and purposes it is UNIX. As jwz has been quoted many times as saying, "Linux is only cheap if you don't value your time." That comment cuts both ways, and the same could be said of any free quality software.
I really enjoy Linux, but not Red Hat Linux. As I think I explained already, Red Hat is not the result of as much thought as some other distributions I could name.
As for 'Linux books,' which would you recommend? I already have Slackware Linux Unleashed, Linux in a Nutshell, The Complete Linux Kit, and maybe another one or two.
a) My point was that numerous annoying, facile problems made it into the distribution, and every distribution I've seen (4.2,50,5.2,6.0). Hence my opinion that it isn't the best distribution.
b) Gnome is "almost there." I like a lot of its premises, and the way it works. It bugs me significantly less than KDE, when it works. However, it is not a 1.0 release (the version that comes with Red Hat is what, 1.0.9?), and it should not be the default, encouraged environment for production environments.
Either way, I've spent money on Red Hat CDs to do my part in funding one of the most visible and active Linux supporters.
Something I've come across numerous times, is that I think the Red Hat distribution sucks. No offense meant here, because I admin several Red Hat machines as part of my job, but it is too far afield of UNIX for me to like. For a tiny example, the default bash prompt is unwieldy and uninformative, showing (IMHO) a lack of attention to detail that also shows itself in poorly documented and undocumented configuration files and scripts. Other things, like the default not-quite-right behavior of backspace in xterms, is as annoying as it is easy to fix. More importantly, Gnome (at least the Gnome that comes on a Red Hat 6.0 CD) is still not ready for prime time, and has annoying glitches or default behaviors that have no place in a production environment. On the other hand, I was amazed by some of the accurate system-snooping the Red hat install did on my system; for the most part I didn't have to correct it.
So, in my opinion: Red Hat is an awesome company that deserves to be commended for its staunch support of Free Software, and I welcome them the money they will hopefully make by being the most-commercially-supported distribution. Further, for anyone familiar and comfortable with UNIX and computers I recommend Debian and/or Slackware.
Granted, the OS/2 version uses Open32 so the Linux version would probably use Wine, but I don't expect Lotus to do anything that intelligent.
Timur, I think you got your facts a bit off here: wine is analagous to Win32-OS/2 in functionality, rather than Open32. With the additional understanding that like the last version of Win32-OS/2, something like pe2lx.exe is not necessary.
This is stuff I'd assume you know (being on the former Win32-OS/2 team, and all), but you don't write things to wine, you write things to Win32 and have them run under wine.
I love the Natural keyboard feel as well, but since I was first introduced to it on a Mac, I wasn't cough too enthused about buying one from Microsoft. Instead, I got one from PC Systems which has served me very well. The only problem was, when I cleaned it, I screwed something back in wrong and now the mouse pass-through cable doesn't work. But that's not their fault.
And from comparison, it's on par in terms of quality with the MSNK, although it's not as slick looking (has three stupid buttons in the middle, I think there's a model that isn't this braindead).
Hope that helps you, if you ever need to replace your keyboard!
The Good and Bad of Filtering
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ShutUp Software
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· Score: 1
This is an issue I've dealt with a few times, having been a proponent of a moderated news group, and a proponent of all the filtering available here at/. It seems to me that it's an issue of trust, and of community. With the newsgroup (rec.martial-arts.moderated), the people doing the filtering were in one sense poor candidates, since they'd volunteered for the job. But they were perfect candidates, because they were trusted members of the community. It had become a necessity, after all of the two person, hundred plus flame wars on rec.martial-arts, and because of all the irrelevant spam (in fact, relevant spam is still allowed by the moderators today). I don't have the time to read a newsgroup with 5-600 new posts a day. The new moderators were well-known for posting content, and for agreeing with people who they generally disagreed with, when valid arguments were made.
So how does that apply here? Simple: it can lead us to the belief that filtering out bits, while good, is different from filtering out ideas. It also showed me that, not restricting anyone's priviledge to be heard allows a DoS attack on everyone's right to free speech (in the 'Net paradigm). The problem is quite clear: do we decide that we must strive for a perfect world, wherein such an attack wouldn't be made? Or do we decide that we must strive for an imperfect world, but one wherein a DoS of our right to free speech is more difficult to do?
My opinion is this: given that we live in a populated world, we must expect a DoS regardless of intent; thus, we can not assume that everyone's good intentions will protect us. Filtering becomes a necessity, not just of having robustness, but to have even the more basic rights! However, it must be done correctly: and one of the best ways to do this isn't democratic filtering, but meritocratic; the ones most fit to participate in a forum should know the best what doesn't belong, and what does belong despite disagreements.
This, then, is why I don't filter stories on Slashdot, but have filtering set up to +1 or +2 (depending on my mood). There is no meritocratic way to decide something as broad as "appropriateness of something Geek and/or News-related to Slashdot's community" (although, of course, appropriateness to Slashdot itself is decided by CmdrTaco), but there is a way to decide "appropriateness of a particular post in a particular context to Slashdot's community."
Thus, I agree with one point of this article -- to try to view the bigger picture as much as possible at/. -- but I disagree with the opinion that moderation is something that, available or not, should not be used. Back to my original example, rec.martial-arts.moderated has been growing as more people have discovered they can not deal with the constantly growing size of rec.martial-arts, even though they were originally marginally against reading a moderated forum.
You could do something very similar with NeXT cubes. A little-tiny bit of creative jumper-connecting, and you could stick up to four motherboards in the thing.
The best use I've seen it put to was sticking a high-end NeXT mobo with its high-end graphics system in two slots, and two extra net-booting low-end systems in the other two. Total of four monitors (three monochrome), with one monochrome and the color being used dual-headed.
All from one case, so it would be convenient for, say, sticking the Cube in the middle of a conference table, and then having three people work together. Or you could replace the extra graphics board with a third motherboard, and get a four-person system.
It's also been done with two motherboards with high-end graphics -- good I suppose if the collaborative work is graphics.
I really don't think there's much cooler stuff you can do to a case, with so little hardware work.
Well, on the first point, you better believe it. I am most certainly a) a critic of some of OSI's recent actions and b) a supporter of what I understand OSI to be trying to do.
So I consider it important that I at least try. I've tried actually talking with Richard Stallman and Eric Raymond, and they don't much listen to me (but then, understandably -- I am not a prolific coder, and I have nothing like the years they do on the scene).
And hopefully, if a lot of OSI's 'supporters' and OSI's 'critics' get on the list, it won't be just me, but a lot of people trying to sort these things out.
So people, if you have an interest in keeping the Open Source trademark close to what you believe in, please join!
I'm no master of obscure C code (I use a reference when I need it, and I much prefer using a small subset of the language), but there is a response at RTFM* to some of the Comp.Lang.C. FAQ's that cites Schildt in C: The Complete Reference as a support, and nothing else.
Thus my guess would be, if Schildt's books pit him against Comp.Lang.C's FAQ maintainers and contributors, that, well... he needs help.
(*) The filename is Re:_comp.lang.c_Answers_(Abridged)_to_Frequently_A sked_Questions_(FAQ) -- but entering in the ASCII codes for parentheses, I still get errors. So go to the directory and get the file:)
Maybe he was trying to represent the wrong people
on
ESR Wants to Retire
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· Score: 4
I use to support a lot of what Mr. Raymond was doing, providing guidance to corporations on how to get into this groovy 'open source' stuff that was totally happening. The NPL, whose final status as a free software license, can be at least partially attributed to him (were others very involved? I can't remember). I am looking forward, in a big way, to Netscape 5.
As time has passed, however, he has felt the need to engage in more self-promoting behavior to keep his position, until he was doing as much self-promotion as actual work. I think the new Apple license is the final thing that made him lose acceptance with a lot of free software and open source advocates.
In my opinion -- and it's apparently an opinion shared by many here -- the APSL is a marketing hijink and a joke. Although Mr. Raymond supports it as Open Source (which is his right), it is very clearly not free software, since among other things it can't be used in other code, even personal changes are controlled by a central corporation, etc.
I certainly have questions about whether the job Mr. Raymond has been doing needed filled -- I use proprietary software, and I'd rather know I was using proprietary software than thinking it was free -- but more importantly, I think that if the job is going to be filled, the applicant needs to avoid being used as a marketing tool.
I'm afraid that I think that's what has become of Mr. Raymond -- a company can apparently now manage to compromise the community from which Mr. Raymond hails, with his support and belief that it is helping the community.
Here's to your ideals, Mr. Raymond, and I'm sorry we live in a world where they are compromised.
1. The LinuxPPC guys aren't worried about having to rereverse engineer the G3 specs, never minding the fact that Apple's probably a lot more willing to legally go after Be than LinuxPPC.
2. If Be used the LinuxPPC sources, how many people would immediately call for them to release the Be kernel (G3 version only, of course) under the GPL? Would they? Should they?
There are legitimate legal issues for a closed-source, commercial operating system to have difficulty porting in this context.
Yeah, it would be nice if mysql were really free. But it's not, and that's the author's choice. I would think that that would not invalidate his opinions on software patents, however. In fact, I think it's telling if even some proprietary developers think such patents suck ass.
Yes, that was the thread in which he also bitches about Minix' license. He didn't say 'It's not GNU,' and neither did Perens. He said 'it sucks ass, I can't deal with this patch file crap [among other things, it *has* been a while]' and wrote his own system. Perens essentially pointed out that it's not very free, and is at least supporting an alternative.
I think my biggest problem with the QPL (and several other licenses) that doesn't get enough air time is the whole patch file business. It completely destroys the potential for code reuse (as does incompatible licenses, of course).
Which is why, more than a plethora of OK 'open source licenses,' we need to one or two GOOD 'free licenses' that allow as much code reuse and distribution as possible. I think that the X and GNU licenses fit here quite nicely.
So the 'followers' of ESR and RMS agree wrt what? Pragmatism? Or Idealism? Or are you trying to say that ESR's followers are on the same side as ESR, and RMS's on RMS's?
Never mind that Linus himself was the first to whine -- one of the reasons Linus wrote Linux (if you believe the USENET logs) is that he had issues with the Minix license.
Slashdot Mirror
Is it just me, or is the target audience of these features rapidly decreasing in intelligence?
Is the Slashdot audience the audience that needs the author's interpretation and sugar coating of the history of Microsoft gaining dominance, in order for us to understand the article? Is the Slashdot audience the audience that needs HTML explained?
Do we represent the people that need small words and short sentences so that we can understand things? I felt like the point in this article was very difficult to get to, because of the assumption that every second word or concept needed to be explained[1].
I actually got the feeling that, in fact, the author was as unfamiliar with this topic as he took his audience to be. This is a mistake, in my opinion -- but my opinion is that the people that know something the rest of us don't are the ones that share in public forums.
I find myself turning rapidly into an old curmudgeon, and while I apologize for it, these are still my views.
1. Footnotes are good for explaining things that some people might need explained, but the majority will not.
I've read Feynman's article before, and once again I am not very impressed with it. It's a commencement speech written by an incredible man, but it's still a commencement speech.
As for your ``example'' of how ``flawed'' psychology journals are. First, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised that editors were simply amazed that a physicist would publish an article in their journal, due to the bias you very adequately demonstrate. They certainly should have investigated the article, but I would be surprised to find that every article written by, say microbiologists for physics journals are better handled by the reviewing boards.
As for the psychologist I'm working for: I haven't been around long enough to learn much of the experiments, rather than my end -- statistical analysis and software generation.
The most I can say is that your low opinion of anything outside of physics and chemistry contrary to my own experience of research psychology, and other soft science. If I am simply undisciplined and easily fooled, so be it -- but I doubt it; I'm not exactly a soft science person myself.
If you will excuse me from saying so, that's a pretty hoity-toity post.
You blast psychology and other social sciences over and over again for lack of accountability and evidence -- "What evidence brings her to say that?" -- and yet it doesn't look like you're sufficiently familiar with the topic.
Specifically, you attack everything about the book without actually knowing (beyond cursory examination) the subject matter, and without a single clue as to what research was put into it.
Your attitude seems only reasonable if one starts with the assumption that no proof can be garnered about the subject. Therefore, anyone spouting theories is spouting hot air, because there's nothing to back it up. You seem to assume that this book can't possibly have any basis in fact, because it's a book on "social sciences."
I think your basic assumption is severely flawed, to say the least. Working with psychologists right now (I'm a programmer), I can say there's a great deal of work put into being sure that the measuring methods mean something, the experiments are relevant to the question being asked, and the data is collected in a statistically relevant way.
I can speak nothing towards the book, having not read it -- but I find your attitude of "What will we gain from this analysis? Insight? Inner peace? Enlightenment?" completely unscientific. Are questions of our intellectual origin, or mental processes, out of reach of science? Or are they as fair game as questions of our physical origin?
Something that neuropsychologists are able to show is that thoughts really do correspond to physical processes: questions of intellectual origin are simply extremely complex questions of physical origin.
This review should give everyone that reads it pause. Not because the book itself is so ground shaking, or so poor, as it may or may not be.
It should give us pause because of the underlying criteria Jon Katz is using. He doesn't dislike the book because the thesis is poorly supported, or the thesis is wrong; he doesn't even offer distaste for the subject matter (no, he revels in memes, as I think anyone observing current Internet culture should), and only seems to note distastefully that the writing is ``dry.''
No, it looks like Mr. Katz pans the book because he doesn't understand it. The writing isn't simple and clear, but (from inference) typical academic, and the subject matter is dealt with in a precise and laborious way. Apparently there's no jumping to conclusions, just slow presentation of information and inference, until we get to the end, and find the thesis (People are comprised of memes and some more basic hardware used to pass memes, and the memes are what make us sentient?) -- a thesis that, because of the care taken in presenting it with a full show of support, bores and confuses Mr. Katz.
Certainly, some of the above is inference and hyperbole. I hope that Mr. Katz will forgive me pressing a point at his expense. But his analysis of this book opened him to it (not the verdict, but his display of the thought process he went through to decide his verdict).
Perhaps this book is too heavy for someone who is too busy to give it his full attention, or for people that are used to executive summaries. I hardly think, though, that such ``heaviness'' makes it unsuitable reading material for the Slashdot audience, as I (as a single member with admittedly foggy understanding) see said audience.
Your understanding of people, Mr. Katz, keeps me reading your articles long after your writing style would normally drive me away. Your assumption, however, that at least I as a Slashdot reader appreciate your review that pushes away ``too difficult'' material is wrong.
Everyone encounters material -- both reading material and tasks -- too difficult to understand easily, or even with more than cursory examination. Not everyone shies away from such material, and not everyone encourages others to shy away from material that they found too difficult.
GPL'd software is not public domain. It is copyrighted and that is why GPL'd software can not be taken over by one company.
Funny you should bring that up, when there are other licenses -- Open Source (notm) licenses -- that let people take the code, and do with it as they will.
The X/MIT license, for instance, may as well be public domain for all the restrictions it puts on you; the BSD license is only barely moreso. Yet, even though there are proprietary versions of most any BSD software you care to name (in fact, OS/2 has a lot of the networking stuff as far as I can tell), it's still largely free software.
To put it another way, the free software community is strong enough that it doesn't need the GPL, or trademarks, to keep its intellectual property largely in the open.
There are versions of Apache that are proprietary, as I recall. But that's not where most of the technology, or even code, is. There is plenty of code based on the X sources that's out there, and proprietary -- but really, how far ahead of XFree86 are these other X Window Systems?
There are, in my opinion, exceptions to this seeming rule. I think there are programs that should be protected by the GPL, such as the Linux kernel, or the GIMP. But not all of it.
Why send patches for software I don't want to work with?
Will you Unix users stop thinking Linux is some kind of cheap Unix?
It's not a cheap UNIX, but for all intents and purposes it is UNIX. As jwz has been quoted many times as saying, "Linux is only cheap if you don't value your time." That comment cuts both ways, and the same could be said of any free quality software.
I really enjoy Linux, but not Red Hat Linux. As I think I explained already, Red Hat is not the result of as much thought as some other distributions I could name.
As for 'Linux books,' which would you recommend? I already have Slackware Linux Unleashed, Linux in a Nutshell, The Complete Linux Kit, and maybe another one or two.
It isn't just for production environments, but that is the environment Red Hat caters to.
Try explaining to a large corporation that the software you label as 1.0, and recommend for production environments, isn't.
a) My point was that numerous annoying, facile problems made it into the distribution, and every distribution I've seen (4.2,50,5.2,6.0). Hence my opinion that it isn't the best distribution.
b) Gnome is "almost there." I like a lot of its premises, and the way it works. It bugs me significantly less than KDE, when it works. However, it is not a 1.0 release (the version that comes with Red Hat is what, 1.0.9?), and it should not be the default, encouraged environment for production environments.
Either way, I've spent money on Red Hat CDs to do my part in funding one of the most visible and active Linux supporters.
Something I've come across numerous times, is that I think the Red Hat distribution sucks. No offense meant here, because I admin several Red Hat machines as part of my job, but it is too far afield of UNIX for me to like. For a tiny example, the default bash prompt is unwieldy and uninformative, showing (IMHO) a lack of attention to detail that also shows itself in poorly documented and undocumented configuration files and scripts. Other things, like the default not-quite-right behavior of backspace in xterms, is as annoying as it is easy to fix. More importantly, Gnome (at least the Gnome that comes on a Red Hat 6.0 CD) is still not ready for prime time, and has annoying glitches or default behaviors that have no place in a production environment. On the other hand, I was amazed by some of the accurate system-snooping the Red hat install did on my system; for the most part I didn't have to correct it.
So, in my opinion: Red Hat is an awesome company that deserves to be commended for its staunch support of Free Software, and I welcome them the money they will hopefully make by being the most-commercially-supported distribution. Further, for anyone familiar and comfortable with UNIX and computers I recommend Debian and/or Slackware.
Granted, the OS/2 version uses Open32 so the Linux version would probably use Wine, but I don't expect Lotus to do anything that intelligent.
Timur, I think you got your facts a bit off here: wine is analagous to Win32-OS/2 in functionality, rather than Open32. With the additional understanding that like the last version of Win32-OS/2, something like pe2lx.exe is not necessary.
This is stuff I'd assume you know (being on the former Win32-OS/2 team, and all), but you don't write things to wine, you write things to Win32 and have them run under wine.
And WordPerfect does not run under wine.
I love the Natural keyboard feel as well, but since I was first introduced to it on a Mac, I wasn't cough too enthused about buying one from Microsoft. Instead, I got one from PC Systems which has served me very well. The only problem was, when I cleaned it, I screwed something back in wrong and now the mouse pass-through cable doesn't work. But that's not their fault.
And from comparison, it's on par in terms of quality with the MSNK, although it's not as slick looking (has three stupid buttons in the middle, I think there's a model that isn't this braindead).
Hope that helps you, if you ever need to replace your keyboard!
This is an issue I've dealt with a few times, having been a proponent of a moderated news group, and a proponent of all the filtering available here at /. It seems to me that it's an issue of trust, and of community. With the newsgroup (rec.martial-arts.moderated), the people doing the filtering were in one sense poor candidates, since they'd volunteered for the job. But they were perfect candidates, because they were trusted members of the community. It had become a necessity, after all of the two person, hundred plus flame wars on rec.martial-arts, and because of all the irrelevant spam (in fact, relevant spam is still allowed by the moderators today). I don't have the time to read a newsgroup with 5-600 new posts a day. The new moderators were well-known for posting content, and for agreeing with people who they generally disagreed with, when valid arguments were made.
/. -- but I disagree with the opinion that moderation is something that, available or not, should not be used. Back to my original example, rec.martial-arts.moderated has been growing as more people have discovered they can not deal with the constantly growing size of rec.martial-arts, even though they were originally marginally against reading a moderated forum.
So how does that apply here? Simple: it can lead us to the belief that filtering out bits, while good, is different from filtering out ideas. It also showed me that, not restricting anyone's priviledge to be heard allows a DoS attack on everyone's right to free speech (in the 'Net paradigm). The problem is quite clear: do we decide that we must strive for a perfect world, wherein such an attack wouldn't be made? Or do we decide that we must strive for an imperfect world, but one wherein a DoS of our right to free speech is more difficult to do?
My opinion is this: given that we live in a populated world, we must expect a DoS regardless of intent; thus, we can not assume that everyone's good intentions will protect us. Filtering becomes a necessity, not just of having robustness, but to have even the more basic rights! However, it must be done correctly: and one of the best ways to do this isn't democratic filtering, but meritocratic; the ones most fit to participate in a forum should know the best what doesn't belong, and what does belong despite disagreements.
This, then, is why I don't filter stories on Slashdot, but have filtering set up to +1 or +2 (depending on my mood). There is no meritocratic way to decide something as broad as "appropriateness of something Geek and/or News-related to Slashdot's community" (although, of course, appropriateness to Slashdot itself is decided by CmdrTaco), but there is a way to decide "appropriateness of a particular post in a particular context to Slashdot's community."
Thus, I agree with one point of this article -- to try to view the bigger picture as much as possible at
You could do something very similar with NeXT cubes. A little-tiny bit of creative jumper-connecting, and you could stick up to four motherboards in the thing.
The best use I've seen it put to was sticking a high-end NeXT mobo with its high-end graphics system in two slots, and two extra net-booting low-end systems in the other two. Total of four monitors (three monochrome), with one monochrome and the color being used dual-headed.
All from one case, so it would be convenient for, say, sticking the Cube in the middle of a conference table, and then having three people work together. Or you could replace the extra graphics board with a third motherboard, and get a four-person system.
It's also been done with two motherboards with high-end graphics -- good I suppose if the collaborative work is graphics.
I really don't think there's much cooler stuff you can do to a case, with so little hardware work.
Well, on the first point, you better believe it. I am most certainly a) a critic of some of OSI's recent actions and b) a supporter of what I understand OSI to be trying to do.
So I consider it important that I at least try. I've tried actually talking with Richard Stallman and Eric Raymond, and they don't much listen to me (but then, understandably -- I am not a prolific coder, and I have nothing like the years they do on the scene).
And hopefully, if a lot of OSI's 'supporters' and OSI's 'critics' get on the list, it won't be just me, but a lot of people trying to sort these things out.
So people, if you have an interest in keeping the Open Source trademark close to what you believe in, please join!
I'm no master of obscure C code (I use a reference when I need it, and I much prefer using a small subset of the language), but there is a response at RTFM* to some of the Comp.Lang.C. FAQ's that cites Schildt in C: The Complete Reference as a support, and nothing else.
A sked_Questions_(FAQ) -- but entering in the ASCII codes for parentheses, I still get errors. So go to the directory and get the file :)
Thus my guess would be, if Schildt's books pit him against Comp.Lang.C's FAQ maintainers and contributors, that, well... he needs help.
(*) The filename is Re:_comp.lang.c_Answers_(Abridged)_to_Frequently_
I use to support a lot of what Mr. Raymond was doing, providing guidance to corporations on how to get into this groovy 'open source' stuff that was totally happening. The NPL, whose final status as a free software license, can be at least partially attributed to him (were others very involved? I can't remember). I am looking forward, in a big way, to Netscape 5.
As time has passed, however, he has felt the need to engage in more self-promoting behavior to keep his position, until he was doing as much self-promotion as actual work. I think the new Apple license is the final thing that made him lose acceptance with a lot of free software and open source advocates.
In my opinion -- and it's apparently an opinion shared by many here -- the APSL is a marketing hijink and a joke. Although Mr. Raymond supports it as Open Source (which is his right), it is very clearly not free software, since among other things it can't be used in other code, even personal changes are controlled by a central corporation, etc.
I certainly have questions about whether the job Mr. Raymond has been doing needed filled -- I use proprietary software, and I'd rather know I was using proprietary software than thinking it was free -- but more importantly, I think that if the job is going to be filled, the applicant needs to avoid being used as a marketing tool.
I'm afraid that I think that's what has become of Mr. Raymond -- a company can apparently now manage to compromise the community from which Mr. Raymond hails, with his support and belief that it is helping the community.
Here's to your ideals, Mr. Raymond, and I'm sorry we live in a world where they are compromised.
Ummm... so 1000 Gigabyte-sized images? Didn't know we'd hit that point already...
I was very much impressed with the animation. Cute story too.
Rhapsody was mentioned once at FreeBSD.org, as 'this piece of software also runs on Rhapsody.'
Please.
Oh don't be stupid, please.
1. The LinuxPPC guys aren't worried about having to rereverse engineer the G3 specs, never minding the fact that Apple's probably a lot more willing to legally go after Be than LinuxPPC.
2. If Be used the LinuxPPC sources, how many people would immediately call for them to release the Be kernel (G3 version only, of course) under the GPL? Would they? Should they?
There are legitimate legal issues for a closed-source, commercial operating system to have difficulty porting in this context.
Yeah, it would be nice if mysql were really free. But it's not, and that's the author's choice. I would think that that would not invalidate his opinions on software patents, however. In fact, I think it's telling if even some proprietary developers think such patents suck ass.
Yes, that was the thread in which he also bitches about Minix' license. He didn't say 'It's not GNU,' and neither did Perens. He said 'it sucks ass, I can't deal with this patch file crap [among other things, it *has* been a while]' and wrote his own system. Perens essentially pointed out that it's not very free, and is at least supporting an alternative.
I think my biggest problem with the QPL (and several other licenses) that doesn't get enough air time is the whole patch file business. It completely destroys the potential for code reuse (as does incompatible licenses, of course).
Which is why, more than a plethora of OK 'open source licenses,' we need to one or two GOOD 'free licenses' that allow as much code reuse and distribution as possible. I think that the X and GNU licenses fit here quite nicely.
So the 'followers' of ESR and RMS agree wrt what? Pragmatism? Or Idealism? Or are you trying to say that ESR's followers are on the same side as ESR, and RMS's on RMS's?
I don't quite follow you any more.
Never mind that Linus himself was the first to whine -- one of the reasons Linus wrote Linux (if you believe the USENET logs) is that he had issues with the Minix license.