> There are placement services that >pay administrative assistants $30k a year or less to filter resumes but they will not serve you well.
Reminds me of one of my first encounters with a recruiter, a few years back. I was studying the Want Ads, & saw a well-known national temp agency was recruiting for people at Sequent. They listed a position that was equivalent to entry-level to mid-level Unix admin, something I was interested in, so I went over on my day off to turn a resume.
After a few misadventures with the receptionist, I got to talk with the recruiter, who looked over my resume, then pulled the list of posiitons Sequent wanted them to fill from his inbox & began to go down them.
``They are looking for an Administrative Assistant," he said in a hopeful voice.
I indicated that this was not the line of work I was interested in.
``Well, I don't know," he said uncertainly, ``we send them resumes for this position, & they don't like any of them. I don't know what they are looking for in their candidates."
Needless to say, they failed *MY* initial interview. I understand that Sequent eventually felt they weren't working out & sought their technical talent from another source.
Geoff
Re:Its technically feasible, for now.
on
Bootlegging Buffy
·
· Score: 1
>As I recal, in singapore it is treason to have a satelite dish for these reasons...
You make some good points here & further down in the thread, Altus, but can I suggest an alternative a little more futuristic?
Using a voice call to mask data transfer.
And what will the authorities do? Prosecute every person who has a bad connection on an international call?
I'm not sure what the laws on pornography are in Singapore, but if they are as repressive as in other authoritarian states, then there will be a flourishing black market for porn. And it will pay not only for the risks, but also for developing the technology.
Little Dutch Boys have only so many fingers they stick into the dike . . .
>F*ck is _never_ a proper engineering term. I'm against censorship, and definitily not a prig -- but I'm surprised that >someone smart enough to kernel-hack has such a small vocabulary.
At my job for a now-defunct telephony equipment vendor, one of the engineers showed me some source code with ``unprofessional" comments in it. In a nutshell, one of the programmers had used potty-language in the opening comments to vent frustration about some aspect of the project.
And a friend of mine, who writes Cobal for a living, once told me a tale or two about the comments he found in the code he had to maintain.
And then there was some suspicion that one reason it took Netscape so long to release the source code to their browser was that they had to grep for naughty words in the comments. Anyone want to bet that DOS/Windows/Windows NT is entirely free of said comments?
When's it's 3:00am after an 18- or 20-hour shift, & a programmer has spent half of that banging your head against a wall, I sincerely doubt he (or she) will mince his/her words in the documentation. Just be glad he or she has commented the difficult spots!
On the positive side, US West has an unusual number of clueons when it comes to Linux: one of their field installers is even a regular on the PLUG (Portland Linux/Unix Group) mailing list -- & you can ask for specific installers. ADSL & Linux is as much of a sure thing in the Portland/Vancouver area as ADSL is anywhere.
On the negative side, US West seems to be locked in a number of petty battles with every state over its business practices. Right now it's trying to let the rural part of the state suffer while pumping money into sexier offerings in the Portland area. The PUC here is fighting with the company over substandard service in towns like Florence & Roseburg, while US West is pushing a bill to free itself from PUC oversight thru the legislature.
Think of a world where Microsoft could own more than one state legislature & a few congresscriters, & you have US West. Bleh.
>Who the hell cares if Linus wrote Linux by himself (I know he didn't)? By not making a >buck out of it, it still makes him a moron. Anybody who doesn't get paid what they're >worth is stupid, period.
Excuse me, but do you work for Microsoft? No? Well, you ought to: statements like that appear to fit in well with their corporate culture.
A lot of us have to settle for less than we believe we are worth because we are looking for experience. Or we can't give ourselves a lateral transfer into that big room with the blue ceiling because we have bills to pay -- even if that will lead to a better paying job.
All of us are trying to make do wit the cards fate has dealt us: if someone can't do better than a pair of twos, then we don't need a loud twit like you making fun of her or his bad luck.
Mebbe you haven't worked at enough shops, but they are out there.
The best story I heard was form my ex-roommate, who was a contractor doing layout work on Macintoshes for catalogues, he - & several others -- were discussing the DPI resolution of different printers in front of their boss.
After a few minutes, said boss proved just hwo pointy his hair was by shaking his head at all of this talk, & stating that ``all of this talk of DPI is way over *my* head! You're just too technical for *me*!"
Same boss also spent most of his time on the phone, talking with his cronies at other companies about such important developments as the fact he bought himself a new Land Rover.
And I could tell stories of management at Stream International -- but anyone who has worked there knows mentioning the name is enough.
>This article sounds like it was written by someone who has been claiming oppressed class status and is afraid of losing it if >some other group is also seen to be oppressed.
Until I read this article, I always thought that the adjective ``Politically Correct" was used by conservatives of Rush Limbuahg's ilk to tar their more liberal critics.
Some of the people here at Slashdot may be familiar with George Orwell's essay about how politics make for bad language. (I don't remember the name of this essay, but it is in his _Collected_Works_ -- & worth reading.) But I doubt as many recognized some of the rhetoric Dark used in her essay, which is lifted from Post- & De-Constructionist ``literary criticism". This is a body of writing written by people who want to pass themselves off as experts in literature, but do not want to expend the work on actually _reading_ any works of literature. (In other words, the PHBs of the liberal arts.) These catch-phrases warned me that I was in for a superficial treatment of a complex problem.
Dark's point seems to be that if you are American, white, suburban & middle-class, you can't know what suffering is about. If she were truly as insightful about this matter as she tries to present herself, she would have realized that this is one more example of good-ol' American striving towards mediocrity, which has been described by such writers as H.L. Mencken & Mark Twain -- although being Dead White Men, she probably considers their testimony suspect.
Then again, the rise of Post- & De-Constructionist ``literary criticism" could be seen as another example of this relentless striving. After all, the PHBs seem to be everywhere.
>This may sound like blasphemy to some of you, but Ballmer looks like a decent guy. While pondering about Open >Source, so far I haven't seen him spout any FUD so far - that's makes him seem like a saint compared to those >other guys (Muth, Gates for example).
IIRC, Ballmer was the guy who claimed that there was a ``Chinese Wall" between the OS development team & the application development teams. And this was proof that Word, Excel & Powerpoint all happened upon those undocumented features in Windows 3.1 entirely by hard work.
Ballmer always struck me as being to PHBs as Bill Gates is to the common garden-variety hacker: a ersatz knock-off of the real thing.
Then again, Gates has a clue that Micro$oft is on a direct course with an iceburg: he has recently sold off some 260 million shares, & is spending his time on a speaker's tour of the world. Ballmer has been left to deal with the numerous challenges to Microsoft: BSD & Linux on the server side, 3Com's Palm Pilot on the handheld side, several competitors for tv-top controllers -- & the tv-top market may not be the next Killer Application. Ballmer may find himself tied to the mast as M$ starts its downward spiral.
>Has RMS ever indicated that he would have a problem taking money from an institution he has some fundamental >problems with?
RMS has expressed that he has problems with a number of businesses who sell proprietary software -- Sun, Oracle, even Troll Tech in Norway. All software that does not include the source code is distasteful to him.
The only difference is that he has been recorded giving the bird to Gates' name when he entered the CS building on Stanford's campus. But I'm sure fi Larry Ellison donates money to build a CS building at some university, RMS will extend to the structure the same respect.;-)
>Most see something like a network failure as NT failing. Or specific sofware failures (such as oracle crashing) as >an NT failure (remember, an OS can't stop crappy code from crashing). The typical response is to reboot since >this is faster than trying to hot correct the problem in most cases (under ANY OS). > Yes, but crappy code, or a poorly-written application should not take the OS down with it. Except for the stuff Microsoft & Apple have written, operating systems will run for months (or even years) without needing to be rebooted except for upgrades to the OS or hardware failures.
>Things like blue screens on NT are typically due to hardware failures or crappy device drivers.
Sez you. A divide-by-zero error in a s/w application brought a US warship to a dead stop.
And I have tried to troubleshoot BSOD on NT. It's like trying to reach the base fo the rainbow where the Leprechaun's pot of gold lies.
>Linux currently has a big advantage in reliability for one reason only. The same people that hack the kernel are the >same people that write the device drivers. As such, they have an intimate knowledge of the kernel and can make >better, more reliable drivers. Should the time come when Linux enjoys the same kind of ISV driver support that >NT has, it too will have reliability problems with a majority of hardware.
Methinks you are a rat, & this paragraph proves your Windows way of thinking.
Linux -- as well as many other non-MS OS's -- are written to conform to publicly defined APIs. There are probably undocumented system calls in Solaris, AIX, & even Linux, but except for champion-round games of Computer Trivia Pursuit no one needs to know about them. Write the drivers to address these APIs, & the peripheral will work.
However, in the Windows world, there are vast constellations of officially undocumented interfaces & system calls that are needed to make third-party software to run at acceptible speeds. Andrew Schulman & others have written about these, & have shown how they emerge, shift, mutate & vanish into the fogbanks of every new M$ software release. That is why ISV applications will stop working when a new revision of Windows or Office is installed.
In short, device driver writers have little need for ``an intimate knowledge of the kernel" -- & if they do, then wouldn't it be easier for them to write to Linux & other OS with available source code (like the BSDixen?) than a proprietary OS like Windows that changes every time its users study it?
If you had experience with non-M$ software, you would know these things.
I'm using Nscape 4.07, & the first time thru the page loaded fine. However, on subsequent viewings (I tend to jump up & down the history stack of followed links) this page would load far more slowly.
Could it be due to M$ ``technology"? (Note the.asp extension.) Could it be due to bugs in Nscape's history stack (which makes how I go back & forth over links impossible under NS 3.x, & risky under 4.x)?
I have to admit that I'm getting a little suspicious about this constant claim that this guy at Mindcraft is receiving ``rude and vulgar emails".
First, if you are going to make a strong statement about *anything* on the Internet, you are going to get flamed. Especially if you defend Micro$oft -- do you think every email Gates receives is a love note? The potty-mouths are out there, & the best thing to do is to publish their subliterate ravings for all to laugh at. Or ignore them.
However, I figure this Bruce guy knows this, & would have posted a few by now if they existed. (It would be the kind of evidence M$ needs to prove their claim that Linux is an OS written by 16-year-olds in their bedroom on their big brother's PC.) But all he has done is whine about receiving them.
>JWZ had an extremely long, stormy history with Netscape and the browser, and has been reportedly unhappy >for a long time as well. He is absolutly right about Mozilla STILL being primarily a Netscape product, with >Netscape engineers doing a lot of the development. > >However, maybe this could be a developer wake up call for more 'outside' people to start contributing more to >the Mozilla project.
I wonder if there are any more outside people available to contribute to Mozilla.
I was looking for some code to build on for a browser for the Palm Pilot, & happened to look at the ftp site for Arena -- development on that Open Source browser came to a halt at about the time Mozilla went Open Source. All the other people interested in browser hacking apparently either have their own projects (e.g. Lynx) or do it for a living on a proprietary product (e.g. Opera).
And to contribute to a software package that interprets & renders HTTP/XML/CSS/etc. is not something that anyone with a few programming classes can slide into & begin to code for. I'm learning that there is a steep learning curve to it.
>I believe there was a beta or some other kind of pre-release version of Windows 3.x that, when run on a >non-MS DOS, gave a message to the effect that MS could not guarantee the stability of Windows on this OS >and there could be big bad bugs FUD FUD FUD. > >MS claimed (very reasonably) that it simply wanted to be sure users knew that there were potential >incompatibilities.
You have the general story right. Andrew Schulman tells all in his book, _Undocumented DOS_.
Jeez, trying to understand DOS with that book was a bitch. (And I don't think it was Schulman's fault.) Far harder than understanding UNIX with the Lions book.
>Try this, remove all GNU tools from your "Linux" system, maybe then you will give some credit to GNU for >what it actually does.
And your point is?
The problem with RMS insisting that everyone calls the OS ``GNU/Linux" is this: he is monomaniacal about this, just like a certain Sea Captain. His obsessiveness about people using only this phrase for the OS is beginning to make him appear to be a net.kook.generic. And harming his ability to explain the idea of Free Software to a larger audience.
If it's more important for the FSF/GNU to get credit for their contributions to Linux than to explain & promote the idea of Free Software, then RMS should continue this tactic. If he truly wants to reduce the use of proprietary software, then I advise him to change this tactic. He has better ideas that will frighten the suits, & I would like those to get attention.
>An amalgamation of L. Ron Hubbard and Frank Lloyd Wright (as far as cult-of-personalitiness goes).
So I'm not the only one who has noticed the connection between an international criminal organization & Microsoft. And rather than being glad about this shared perception, I am worried: rather than fighting a vicious business that makes crappy software, we are now fighting a well-funded cult of personality.
At least Microsoft software works better than Hubbard's laughable pseudo-philosophy (which is to say feebly versuses NOT AT ALL).
And although Wright did create a cult around him, he was a true genius who advanced his field -- which sets him above both Gates & Hubbard. History will forgive Wright's follies (which are many) & relegate the other two to short footnotes.
>I'm not really up to speed about what why everyone here is so against RMS, ESR, and all the Free Software guys... I >mean I thought as a group many of us are all for their ideals! > >This isnt meant to start a flame, I'd just like the current reason for all the hostility. I think im out of the loop.
I'm probably out of the loop on this also, but if I understand the issues, the disagreement comes down to how should software with GPL (or similarly worded) liscencing work. Some writers here see this as an issue with incorporating GPL'd software into proprietary software -- e.g., if Sun or Microsoft were to port Emacs to their own OS's, & only distributed the binary. Some -- such as RMS -- hold that all software on a GPL'd OS (such as Linux or BSD Unix) should not be proprietary, but follow the GPL also; in other words, if Oracle ports their database to Linux, they must include the source code with every copy of their product.
ESR -- if I understand correctly -- is a little more pragmatic on this issue, & allows for proprietary software to be ported to GPL'd OS's. Even if this is not ESR's opinion, this view makes sense to me as a short-term strategy: we need to introduce the idea of open source, free software -- whatever the fsck you want to call the concept -- to the suits so that they begin to understand that including the source to software is not the end of the world -- or their bottom lines.
This is a risk to both the hackers on one side, & the suits on the other. But I think we have a lot more to lose if the risk isn't taken.
>Microsoft did reduce the cost of computing - there is no doubt about it. Linux would not exist if Microsoft >hadn't help drive down the prices of x86 hardware.
It appears that people forget that it was not Microsoft's doing that PCs standardized on the x86 hardware architecture, but IBM's choice in the early 1980's. The computer press at the time predicted IBM would make the decisions that would standardize the product, & it became a self-fulfulling prophecy. Microsoft merely did a better job selling themselves to IBM than Digital Research did.
The computer industry needed a standard to coalesce around, & if IBM hadn't have stepped in, someone else would have set it -- Apple, Commodore, Atari, or someone else I've forgotten.
Microsoft's election to this role was never based on their software skills -- it was a gift that fell to Gates & Co. from heaven, & they responded to this opportunity not with technological expertese, but with ruthless & savage business practices. And computer users have suffered for this ever since.
> Thanks for the kind words. I try to get my readers to think out of the box once in > awhile. Sometimes it isn't possible.
> --ted
>Yeah, I found it unbelievable, too.
Maybe what he meant by the phrase ``to think out of the box" was ``I just took some LSD for the first time & it was so kewl that I think you ought to do it to."
>Frankly, a great deal of viruses have gotten into >closed source program than one can count... >usually these programs are benign and called by >the name "easter eggs"! Have you ever seen the >little doom clone that the Microsoft programmer >put into excel?
``Easter eggs" started to appear because corporations did not want their programmers to attach their names to the software. (The corporations were afraid that head-hunters could then lure the best people from said companies to other jobs.) But since it is a human trait to want to attach one's identity to one's work, these best people figured out how to leave some sign that a real person did have something to do with the software.
In the Open Source/Free Software model, this need to attach one's identity to something is met by a line or two in the comments:
# Written by Joe Blow # (c) by Joe Blow, under the terms of GPL
> How hard do you think it would >be for one of those programmer to put a few more >as a trap door because they are pissed of at the >company?
Disgruntled employees are endemic at every high tech corporation. Treat the employees better, make the code available for peer review, & this problem will go away.
>Seems like a lot of you really need to make up your minds. A great deal of the time you're >saying, "Linux is so awesome, it's gonna destroy Microsoft, d00d!" Then by the time the next thread >comes along, you're up in arms, screaming, "How dare Micro$uck say that they're not a monopoly! >They have no competition!"
The word monopoly means more than having practically an entire market to oneself: it also includes a history of systematically destroying all competition by unfair use of its majority market share. As a result, the only OS that is gaining market share against Microsoft's own OS's is one created by a band of programmers, most of whom do it without pay or monetary compensation. (And it might be correct to say that all of those who are paid to code would continue to do so if they weren't paid -- they would end up writing less Linux code, however.)
And it says something for Microsoft's aggressive stance against all perceived competitors that only a product that is distributed for a token amount (although a number of people are betting that they can make money from supporting this software).
And it's probably fair to say that most of the people in the Linux community are surprised to see this software fair so well against such a big corporation. Surprised enough that more than a few will post stuff like ``Linux is so awesome, it's gonna destroy Microsoft, d00d!" I'm sure the Vietnamese felt the same way after they drove US troops off Vietnamese soil, then a few years later defeated an invading Chinese army.
>The DOJ surprised Microsoft's computer "expert" >by revealing that the survey he used as part of >his testimony was actually ordered by Gates. Bill >being the nice guy he is, he went ahead and >specified what the results of the survey should be
Sometimes polls can useful for showing things: you just have to look at the petty details that don't fit in.
For example, in a poll done before a local election, the pollster knew the mayor was in trouble when one unknown candidate was the choice of 2% of the folks surveryed. Why? Cause the unknown happened to be the pollster's dog.
Gates ordered^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hstrongly suggested that a poll be commissioned showing that 90% of the population thought Windows was the best operating system. Despite all of their efforts to spin the question, the best the posllsters could get was 87%
What does this tell me? That if Microsoft were the last software company left in the world, 13% of the US population would be scouring garage sales & Goodwill for old TRS-80s, CPM machines & Apple ]['s before they would buy Microsoft.
Slashdot Mirror
> There are placement services that
>pay administrative assistants $30k a year or less to filter resumes but they will not serve you well.
Reminds me of one of my first encounters with a recruiter, a few years back. I was studying the Want Ads, & saw a well-known national temp agency was recruiting for people at Sequent. They listed a position that was equivalent to entry-level to mid-level Unix admin, something I was interested in, so I went over on my day off to turn a resume.
After a few misadventures with the receptionist, I got to talk with the recruiter, who looked over my resume, then pulled the list of posiitons Sequent wanted them to fill from his inbox & began to go down them.
``They are looking for an Administrative Assistant," he said in a hopeful voice.
I indicated that this was not the line of work I was interested in.
``Well, I don't know," he said uncertainly, ``we send them resumes for this position, & they don't like any of them. I don't know what they are looking for in their candidates."
Needless to say, they failed *MY* initial interview. I understand that Sequent eventually felt they weren't working out & sought their technical talent from another source.
Geoff
>As I recal, in singapore it is treason to have a satelite dish for these reasons...
You make some good points here & further down in the thread, Altus, but can I suggest an alternative a little more futuristic?
Using a voice call to mask data transfer.
And what will the authorities do? Prosecute every person who has a bad connection on an international call?
I'm not sure what the laws on pornography are in Singapore, but if they are as repressive as in other authoritarian states, then there will be a flourishing black market for porn. And it will pay not only for the risks, but also for developing the technology.
Little Dutch Boys have only so many fingers they stick into the dike . . .
Geoff
>F*ck is _never_ a proper engineering term. I'm against censorship, and definitily not a prig -- but I'm surprised that
>someone smart enough to kernel-hack has such a small vocabulary.
At my job for a now-defunct telephony equipment vendor, one of the engineers showed me some source code with ``unprofessional" comments in it. In a nutshell, one of the programmers had used potty-language in the opening comments to vent frustration about some aspect of the project.
And a friend of mine, who writes Cobal for a living, once told me a tale or two about the comments he found in the code he had to maintain.
And then there was some suspicion that one reason it took Netscape so long to release the source code to their browser was that they had to grep for naughty words in the comments. Anyone want to bet that DOS/Windows/Windows NT is entirely free of said comments?
When's it's 3:00am after an 18- or 20-hour shift, & a programmer has spent half of that banging your head against a wall, I sincerely doubt he (or she) will mince his/her words in the documentation. Just be glad he or she has commented the difficult spots!
Geoff
On the positive side, US West has an unusual number of clueons when it comes to Linux: one of their field installers is even a regular on the PLUG (Portland Linux/Unix Group) mailing list -- & you can ask for specific installers. ADSL & Linux is as much of a sure thing in the Portland/Vancouver area as ADSL is anywhere.
On the negative side, US West seems to be locked in a number of petty battles with every state over its business practices. Right now it's trying to let the rural part of the state suffer while pumping money into sexier offerings in the Portland area. The PUC here is fighting with the company over substandard service in towns like Florence & Roseburg, while US West is pushing a bill to free itself from PUC oversight thru the legislature.
Think of a world where Microsoft could own more than one state legislature & a few congresscriters, & you have US West. Bleh.
Geoff
>Who the hell cares if Linus wrote Linux by himself (I know he didn't)? By not making a
>buck out of it, it still makes him a moron. Anybody who doesn't get paid what they're
>worth is stupid, period.
Excuse me, but do you work for Microsoft? No? Well, you ought to: statements like that appear to fit in well with their corporate culture.
A lot of us have to settle for less than we believe we are worth because we are looking for experience. Or we can't give ourselves a lateral transfer into that big room with the blue ceiling because we have bills to pay -- even if that will lead to a better paying job.
All of us are trying to make do wit the cards fate has dealt us: if someone can't do better than a pair of twos, then we don't need a loud twit like you making fun of her or his bad luck.
Geoff
>There are no PHBs.
Mebbe you haven't worked at enough shops, but they are out there.
The best story I heard was form my ex-roommate, who was a contractor doing layout work on Macintoshes for catalogues, he - & several others -- were discussing the DPI resolution of different printers in front of their boss.
After a few minutes, said boss proved just hwo pointy his hair was by shaking his head at all of this talk, & stating that ``all of this talk of DPI is way over *my* head! You're just too technical for *me*!"
Same boss also spent most of his time on the phone, talking with his cronies at other companies about such important developments as the fact he bought himself a new Land Rover.
And I could tell stories of management at Stream International -- but anyone who has worked there knows mentioning the name is enough.
Geoff
>This article sounds like it was written by someone who has been claiming oppressed class status and is afraid of losing it if
>some other group is also seen to be oppressed.
Until I read this article, I always thought that the adjective ``Politically Correct" was used by conservatives of Rush Limbuahg's ilk to tar their more liberal critics.
Some of the people here at Slashdot may be familiar with George Orwell's essay about how politics make for bad language. (I don't remember the name of this essay, but it is in his _Collected_Works_ -- & worth reading.) But I doubt as many recognized some of the rhetoric Dark used in her essay, which is lifted from Post- & De-Constructionist ``literary criticism". This is a body of writing written by people who want to pass themselves off as experts in literature, but do not want to expend the work on actually _reading_ any works of literature. (In other words, the PHBs of the liberal arts.) These catch-phrases warned me that I was in for a superficial treatment of a complex problem.
Dark's point seems to be that if you are American, white, suburban & middle-class, you can't know what suffering is about. If she were truly as insightful about this matter as she tries to present herself, she would have realized that this is one more example of good-ol' American striving towards mediocrity, which has been described by such writers as H.L. Mencken & Mark Twain -- although being Dead White Men, she probably considers their testimony suspect.
Then again, the rise of Post- & De-Constructionist ``literary criticism" could be seen as another example of this relentless striving. After all, the PHBs seem to be everywhere.
Geoff
>This may sound like blasphemy to some of you, but Ballmer looks like a decent guy. While pondering about Open
>Source, so far I haven't seen him spout any FUD so far - that's makes him seem like a saint compared to those
>other guys (Muth, Gates for example).
IIRC, Ballmer was the guy who claimed that there was a ``Chinese Wall" between the OS development team & the application development teams. And this was proof that Word, Excel & Powerpoint all happened upon those undocumented features in Windows 3.1 entirely by hard work.
Ballmer always struck me as being to PHBs as Bill Gates is to the common garden-variety hacker: a ersatz knock-off of the real thing.
Then again, Gates has a clue that Micro$oft is on a direct course with an iceburg: he has recently sold off some 260 million shares, & is spending his time on a speaker's tour of the world. Ballmer has been left to deal with the numerous challenges to Microsoft: BSD & Linux on the server side, 3Com's Palm Pilot on the handheld side, several competitors for tv-top controllers -- & the tv-top market may not be the next Killer Application. Ballmer may find himself tied to the mast as M$ starts its downward spiral.
Geoff
>Has RMS ever indicated that he would have a problem taking money from an institution he has some fundamental
;-)
>problems with?
RMS has expressed that he has problems with a number of businesses who sell proprietary software -- Sun, Oracle, even Troll Tech in Norway. All software that does not include the source code is distasteful to him.
The only difference is that he has been recorded giving the bird to Gates' name when he entered the CS building on Stanford's campus. But I'm sure fi Larry Ellison donates money to build a CS building at some university, RMS will extend to the structure the same respect.
Geoff
>Most see something like a network failure as NT failing. Or specific sofware failures (such as oracle crashing) as
>an NT failure (remember, an OS can't stop crappy code from crashing). The typical response is to reboot since
>this is faster than trying to hot correct the problem in most cases (under ANY OS).
>
Yes, but crappy code, or a poorly-written application should not take the OS down with it. Except for the stuff Microsoft & Apple have written, operating systems will run for months (or even years) without needing to be rebooted except for upgrades to the OS or hardware failures.
>Things like blue screens on NT are typically due to hardware failures or crappy device drivers.
Sez you. A divide-by-zero error in a s/w application brought a US warship to a dead stop.
And I have tried to troubleshoot BSOD on NT. It's like trying to reach the base fo the rainbow where the Leprechaun's pot of gold lies.
>Linux currently has a big advantage in reliability for one reason only. The same people that hack the kernel are the
>same people that write the device drivers. As such, they have an intimate knowledge of the kernel and can make
>better, more reliable drivers. Should the time come when Linux enjoys the same kind of ISV driver support that
>NT has, it too will have reliability problems with a majority of hardware.
Methinks you are a rat, & this paragraph proves your Windows way of thinking.
Linux -- as well as many other non-MS OS's -- are written to conform to publicly defined APIs. There are probably undocumented system calls in Solaris, AIX, & even Linux, but except for champion-round games of Computer Trivia Pursuit no one needs to know about them. Write the drivers to address these APIs, & the peripheral will work.
However, in the Windows world, there are vast constellations of officially undocumented interfaces & system calls that are needed to make third-party software to run at acceptible speeds. Andrew Schulman & others have written about these, & have shown how they emerge, shift, mutate & vanish into the fogbanks of every new M$ software release. That is why ISV applications will stop working when a new revision of Windows or Office is installed.
In short, device driver writers have little need for ``an intimate knowledge of the kernel" -- & if they do, then wouldn't it be easier for them to write to Linux & other OS with available source code (like the BSDixen?) than a proprietary OS like Windows that changes every time its users study it?
If you had experience with non-M$ software, you would know these things.
Geoff
I'm using Nscape 4.07, & the first time thru the page loaded fine. However, on subsequent viewings (I tend to jump up & down the history stack of followed links) this page would load far more slowly.
.asp extension.) Could it be due to bugs in Nscape's history stack (which makes how I go back & forth over links impossible under NS 3.x, & risky under 4.x)?
Could it be due to M$ ``technology"? (Note the
Pick yer poison^Wbug, folks.
Geoff
I have to admit that I'm getting a little suspicious about this constant claim that this guy at Mindcraft is receiving ``rude and vulgar emails".
First, if you are going to make a strong statement about *anything* on the Internet, you are going to get flamed. Especially if you defend Micro$oft -- do you think every email Gates receives is a love note? The potty-mouths are out there, & the best thing to do is to publish their subliterate ravings for all to laugh at. Or ignore them.
However, I figure this Bruce guy knows this, & would have posted a few by now if they existed. (It would be the kind of evidence M$ needs to prove their claim that Linux is an OS written by 16-year-olds in their bedroom on their big brother's PC.) But all he has done is whine about receiving them.
In short, methinks this AC smells like a troll.
Geoff
Okay, I'll bite too.
I'm as egotistical as anyone else here to know how I rate.
Geoff
>JWZ had an extremely long, stormy history with Netscape and the browser, and has been reportedly unhappy
>for a long time as well. He is absolutly right about Mozilla STILL being primarily a Netscape product, with
>Netscape engineers doing a lot of the development.
>
>However, maybe this could be a developer wake up call for more 'outside' people to start contributing more to
>the Mozilla project.
I wonder if there are any more outside people available to contribute to Mozilla.
I was looking for some code to build on for a browser for the Palm Pilot, & happened to look at the ftp site for Arena -- development on that Open Source browser came to a halt at about the time Mozilla went Open Source. All the other people interested in browser hacking apparently either have their own projects (e.g. Lynx) or do it for a living on a proprietary product (e.g. Opera).
And to contribute to a software package that interprets & renders HTTP/XML/CSS/etc. is not something that anyone with a few programming classes can slide into & begin to code for. I'm learning that there is a steep learning curve to it.
Geoff
>I believe there was a beta or some other kind of pre-release version of Windows 3.x that, when run on a
>non-MS DOS, gave a message to the effect that MS could not guarantee the stability of Windows on this OS
>and there could be big bad bugs FUD FUD FUD.
>
>MS claimed (very reasonably) that it simply wanted to be sure users knew that there were potential
>incompatibilities.
You have the general story right. Andrew Schulman tells all in his book, _Undocumented DOS_.
Jeez, trying to understand DOS with that book was a bitch. (And I don't think it was Schulman's fault.) Far harder than understanding UNIX with the Lions book.
Geoff
>Try this, remove all GNU tools from your "Linux" system, maybe then you will give some credit to GNU for
>what it actually does.
And your point is?
The problem with RMS insisting that everyone calls the OS ``GNU/Linux" is this: he is monomaniacal about this, just like a certain Sea Captain. His obsessiveness about people using only this phrase for the OS is beginning to make him appear to be a net.kook.generic. And harming his ability to explain the idea of Free Software to a larger audience.
If it's more important for the FSF/GNU to get credit for their contributions to Linux than to explain & promote the idea of Free Software, then RMS should continue this tactic. If he truly wants to reduce the use of proprietary software, then I advise him to change this tactic. He has better ideas that will frighten the suits, & I would like those to get attention.
Geoff
>An amalgamation of L. Ron Hubbard and Frank Lloyd Wright (as far as cult-of-personalitiness goes).
So I'm not the only one who has noticed the connection between an international criminal organization & Microsoft. And rather than being glad about this shared perception, I am worried: rather than fighting a vicious business that makes crappy software, we are now fighting a well-funded cult of personality.
At least Microsoft software works better than Hubbard's laughable pseudo-philosophy (which is to say feebly versuses NOT AT ALL).
And although Wright did create a cult around him, he was a true genius who advanced his field -- which sets him above both Gates & Hubbard. History will forgive Wright's follies (which are many) & relegate the other two to short footnotes.
Geoff
>in 1948th place with 0.002% of the code.
Actually Linus is mentioned under three different entries, with a total of roughly 0.02% of the code.
I didn't see any entries for Alan Cox, & offhand I don't know the names of any other important contributors/maintainers of the Linux source.
How does that saying about figures, calculations, & liars go?
Geoff
>I'm not really up to speed about what why everyone here is so against RMS, ESR, and all the Free Software guys... I
>mean I thought as a group many of us are all for their ideals!
>
>This isnt meant to start a flame, I'd just like the current reason for all the hostility. I think im out of the loop.
I'm probably out of the loop on this also, but if I understand the issues, the disagreement comes down to how should software with GPL (or similarly worded) liscencing work. Some writers here see this as an issue with incorporating GPL'd software into proprietary software -- e.g., if Sun or Microsoft were to port Emacs to their own OS's, & only distributed the binary. Some -- such as RMS -- hold that all software on a GPL'd OS (such as Linux or BSD Unix) should not be proprietary, but follow the GPL also; in other words, if Oracle ports their database to Linux, they must include the source code with every copy of their product.
ESR -- if I understand correctly -- is a little more pragmatic on this issue, & allows for proprietary software to be ported to GPL'd OS's. Even if this is not ESR's opinion, this view makes sense to me as a short-term strategy: we need to introduce the idea of open source, free software -- whatever the fsck you want to call the concept -- to the suits so that they begin to understand that including the source to software is not the end of the world -- or their bottom lines.
This is a risk to both the hackers on one side, & the suits on the other. But I think we have a lot more to lose if the risk isn't taken.
Geoff
>Microsoft did reduce the cost of computing - there is no doubt about it. Linux would not exist if Microsoft
>hadn't help drive down the prices of x86 hardware.
It appears that people forget that it was not Microsoft's doing that PCs standardized on the x86 hardware architecture, but IBM's choice in the early 1980's. The computer press at the time predicted IBM would make the decisions that would standardize the product, & it became a self-fulfulling prophecy. Microsoft merely did a better job selling themselves to IBM than Digital Research did.
The computer industry needed a standard to coalesce around, & if IBM hadn't have stepped in, someone else would have set it -- Apple, Commodore, Atari, or someone else I've forgotten.
Microsoft's election to this role was never based on their software skills -- it was a gift that fell to Gates & Co. from heaven, & they responded to this opportunity not with technological expertese, but with ruthless & savage business practices. And computer users have suffered for this ever since.
Geoff
>A few hours later I received this reply:
> Craig,
> Thanks for the kind words. I try to get my readers to think out of the box once in
> awhile. Sometimes it isn't possible.
> --ted
>Yeah, I found it unbelievable, too.
Maybe what he meant by the phrase ``to think out of the box" was ``I just took some LSD for the first time & it was so kewl that I think you ought to do it to."
Geoff
A Computer Society member
>Frankly, a great deal of viruses have gotten into
>closed source program than one can count...
>usually these programs are benign and called by
>the name "easter eggs"! Have you ever seen the
>little doom clone that the Microsoft programmer
>put into excel?
``Easter eggs" started to appear because corporations did not want their programmers to attach their names to the software. (The corporations were afraid that head-hunters could then lure the best people from said companies to other jobs.) But since it is a human trait to want to attach one's identity to one's work, these best people figured out how to leave some sign that a real person did have something to do with the software.
In the Open Source/Free Software model, this need to attach one's identity to something is met by a line or two in the comments:
# Written by Joe Blow
# (c) by Joe Blow, under the terms of GPL
> How hard do you think it would
>be for one of those programmer to put a few more
>as a trap door because they are pissed of at the
>company?
Disgruntled employees are endemic at every high tech corporation. Treat the employees better, make the code available for peer review, & this problem will go away.
Geoff
>Seems like a lot of you really need to make up your minds. A great deal of the time you're
>saying, "Linux is so awesome, it's gonna destroy Microsoft, d00d!" Then by the time the next thread
>comes along, you're up in arms, screaming, "How dare Micro$uck say that they're not a monopoly!
>They have no competition!"
The word monopoly means more than having practically an entire market to oneself: it also includes a history of systematically destroying all competition by unfair use of its majority market share. As a result, the only OS that is gaining market share against Microsoft's own OS's is one created by a band of programmers, most of whom do it without pay or monetary compensation. (And it might be correct to say that all of those who are paid to code would continue to do so if they weren't paid -- they would end up writing less Linux code, however.)
And it says something for Microsoft's aggressive stance against all perceived competitors that only a product that is distributed for a token amount (although a number of people are betting that they can make money from supporting this software).
And it's probably fair to say that most of the people in the Linux community are surprised to see this software fair so well against such a big corporation. Surprised enough that more than a few will post stuff like ``Linux is so awesome, it's gonna destroy Microsoft, d00d!" I'm sure the Vietnamese felt the same way after they drove US troops off Vietnamese soil, then a few years later defeated an invading Chinese army.
>The DOJ surprised Microsoft's computer "expert"
>by revealing that the survey he used as part of
>his testimony was actually ordered by Gates. Bill
>being the nice guy he is, he went ahead and
>specified what the results of the survey should be
Sometimes polls can useful for showing things: you just have to look at the petty details that don't fit in.
For example, in a poll done before a local election, the pollster knew the mayor was in trouble when one unknown candidate was the choice of 2% of the folks surveryed. Why? Cause the unknown happened to be the pollster's dog.
Gates ordered^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hstrongly suggested that a poll be commissioned showing that 90% of the population thought Windows was the best operating system. Despite all of their efforts to spin the question, the best the posllsters could get was 87%
What does this tell me? That if Microsoft were the last software company left in the world, 13% of the US population would be scouring garage sales & Goodwill for old TRS-80s, CPM machines & Apple ]['s before they would buy Microsoft.
That's not exactly a ringing endorsement.
Geoff