That makes it sound like Adobe is foundering on Flash and Internet Standards.
It would be like a headline:
"Apple founders on iPhone Design"
People would think Apple was fumbling around with the iPhone Design.
The headline is bad, even alarmist. Is there a new Apple Intern doing some of the editing on the site? I do notice that this is apple.slashdot.org, not the real site.
Re:wow version 13.1 thats quite a lot of slackin
on
Slackware 13.1 Released
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
Thirteen isn't really very important, and it's a long, long way to version 23 yet.
You know, it's almost 2AM here right now. But you've inspired me.
My wife is fast asleep, so I can do this. I'm lighting up a pipe of burley tobacco, in the house. Something strictly forbidden, but nobody will ever know.
You're acting like it's either KDE or GNOME. Neither is also an option, you know.
Even for regular users, it's easy to pull together a simple workable desktop using for one example, a ~/.fvwm/.fvwm2rc file that has everything they need. New programs are easily added to the start menu as needed with a simple text editor. But that isn't even necessary for regular users.
But I know. I know. It doesn't have the complexity of a 'modern desktop' from Microsoft or Apple. It's not at all 'cool.'
By 1998 I had learned enough Unix from running Slackware to switch to NetBSD. Things were getting shrill by that point in Linux-land. There came a day when I wanted to install a freenix on my laptop over NFS. I used a Slackware based NFS server, but the PC-Card services for Linux were an ugly side-car diskette that you had to insert. NetBSD had the PCMCIA NIC I was using simply built into the base installer kernel.
And... almost everything I need to do to use and configure my NetBSD systems, I can get from reading the 'classic' Unix books and manuals. For configuring X11, for instance, volumes 3 and 8 of the X Window System manuals published by O'Reilly have almost all the answers.
All the fancy new shit is just people huffing Microsoft's tailpipe fumes, IMHO. But I don't really care much.
Slackware was and is cool. It's about the only version of Linux I'd ever have interest in checking out these days.
They don't have to provide a mechanism to get the firmware into flash on the device. They can do all sorts of interesting things to block your modified flash from being accepted into the firmware. A small auxillary embedded controller can act as a gatekeeper. It can contain 'valid signatures' that they are under no obligation to issue. The embedded controller is part of a 'system' and separate from the GPL'd code, which runs on a separate processor. There are all sorts of tricks the vendor can use. And every one of them can be called 'security'- it prevents modified unauthorized firmware from running on the device. Which is a SELLING POINT to a lot of customers.
And of course, the chest-pounding in threads like this is a selling point for companies like Wind River. Their marketing people would hire a few psuedo-zealots to flame on, if it wasn't already being done for them for free here.
Absolutely not true and I dare you to try to prove otherwise. If you get sent a product without factory firmware on it, it gets disclaimed from warranty. If someone tries to publicly shame you, the sane response would be to release a statement that you usually don't discuss customer information publicly, but the product was returned to you with tinkered software, specifically not allowed for warranty claims, and you believe the customer stating otherwise in public is defamatory to your company.
Interesting. So now let's look at what you're saying:
A minor shitstorm erupts because someone obtained a company's product with ditzed firmware because some hobbyist screwed with it.
The customer who shipped the unit in to you didn't futz with the firmware, someone else did.
But because they're upset, they start loudly complaining.
So now it's time for the company to sue them for defamation.
Wow. You know, vendors just LOVE it when they get the opportunity to sue one of their customers for defamation.
You should put your scenario into a Powerpoint. The proprietary tool vendors would probably pay you to use it in their sales presentations.
A WRT-54GL goes for $60 on NewEgg, even though you can get faster b/g/n Linksys routers for $30. To me, that shows that locking down the firmware has made the product worth substantially less. Surely that's a bad thing, from a business point of view?
All chest-thumping aside, what makes you think most end users care if their router is running the Linux version? It's doing the same work they require it to, at roughly half the price. If anything, your example shows that 'Linux makes the thing more expensive.' Which I am certain was not your point.
Threads like this one are dangerous, because companies like Wind River (the makers of VxWorks) can point to them when selling their product. Business types don't have much enthusiasm for having bands of hobbyist hackers/nerds fiddle with their product, tie up their external communications links with demands/questions, etc. Wind River can say 'pay us a buck a unit and you won't have to deal with that mess at all.'
And no matter what your creed or religion, for a business unit trying to sell product, it's just an expensive mess, and increased support overhead.
In most organizations, the IT department is treated as pure cost instead of something that provides strategic value. These IT departments have no chance of getting a budget approved that will allow them to "start over" on any part of their implementation; hence the constant onslaught of temporary fixes and patches.
In most organizations, IT is an infrastructure thing, like the file cabinets, cubicle walls, and the pencil sharpeners. So management doesn't think in terms of 'strategic value' regarding IT. They're in the business of producing whatever widgets or other product their company is in business to produce.
IT people tend to think about IT for the sake of IT. What color file cabinets do you think we should order next time?
I merely don't understand slashdot's group-hate towards what is, in my opinion, a great product.
We hate fucking Apple, and we always will. Steve Jobs thumbed his nose at the hacker/geek community back in 1984 with his 'hacker proof' Macintosh, which the consumer was simply not allowed at all to open. It was a non-expandable sealed unit. The operating system was a baroque sealed unit as well. If you were around back then you maybe knew some of the arrogant fucks who owned Macs. I even knew some Mac developers. Much as with the iPhone now, you had to kiss Steve's ring to get permission to do much of anything.
Richard Stallman used to (still does?) have a whole page on his website denouncing Apple.
I know none of that matters much to you at all. That's why you're here, on apple.slashdot.org and not the real Slashdot site.
Yes, but their engineers wave magic wands over the design plans before they're shipped to the same board stuffers who do all the other pc clones.
I am old enough to remember the scandal when Apple started using IBM OEM hard drives. The Mac user community shit enough bricks to build a stadium. They'd been trained 'IBM Bad, Apple Good' for years.
They aren't using SATA drives, and all the standard 'glue' chipsets now, either. Didn't you hear? SCSI is the best, better than all the rest. And let me tell you about a little secret: AltiVec! It's magic. Also RISC vs. CISC. It's a magical difference.
Let's not even broach the topic of one button mice.
Is Apple's product so bad that you have to rely on their tech support regularly?
It's been over a decade since I had to do the Tech Support thing with any product I've owned. I will say, however, that I got an iPod Touch a few months ago...
He's a terminal cancer patient now, though. So will his mausoleum be made of solid gold? Who will care in a hundred years except the grave robbers with their hacksaws?
It mostly does what people want on a superficial level. Any time said people dig a little deeper, a DRM road block appears and the walls surrounding the garden become very apparent.
And those virtual machines were defined in the hardware of the 80386 processor, not in anything 'special' that Microsoft did. The os software from Microsoft lagged far behind te capabilities of the silicon from Intel. The 80286 processor, for instance was used by some more advanced vendors for proprietary UNIX boxes and used it's protected mode well, at the same time that most people were just using it to run Microsoft's os, which crippled the processor,using it merely as a really-fast-8088 chip.
Slashdot Mirror
"Adobe Founders On Flash and Internet Standards"
That makes it sound like Adobe is foundering on Flash and Internet Standards.
It would be like a headline:
"Apple founders on iPhone Design"
People would think Apple was fumbling around with the iPhone Design.
The headline is bad, even alarmist. Is there a new Apple Intern doing some of the editing on the site? I do notice that this is apple.slashdot.org, not the real site.
Thirteen isn't really very important, and it's a long, long way to version 23 yet.
to GUIfy the system configuration and file management.
Get real. That's what curses is for.
or TCL/TK if you insist on being fancy.
You know, it's almost 2AM here right now. But you've inspired me.
My wife is fast asleep, so I can do this. I'm lighting up a pipe of burley tobacco, in the house. Something strictly forbidden, but nobody will ever know.
Praise Bob.
You're acting like it's either KDE or GNOME. Neither is also an option, you know.
Even for regular users, it's easy to pull together a simple workable desktop using for one example, a ~/.fvwm/.fvwm2rc file that has everything they need. New programs are easily added to the start menu as needed with a simple text editor. But that isn't even necessary for regular users.
But I know. I know. It doesn't have the complexity of a 'modern desktop' from Microsoft or Apple. It's not at all 'cool.'
By 1998 I had learned enough Unix from running Slackware to switch to NetBSD. Things were getting shrill by that point in Linux-land. There came a day when I wanted to install a freenix on my laptop over NFS. I used a Slackware based NFS server, but the PC-Card services for Linux were an ugly side-car diskette that you had to insert. NetBSD had the PCMCIA NIC I was using simply built into the base installer kernel.
And... almost everything I need to do to use and configure my NetBSD systems, I can get from reading the 'classic' Unix books and manuals. For configuring X11, for instance, volumes 3 and 8 of the X Window System manuals published by O'Reilly have almost all the answers.
All the fancy new shit is just people huffing Microsoft's tailpipe fumes, IMHO. But I don't really care much.
Slackware was and is cool. It's about the only version of Linux I'd ever have interest in checking out these days.
There you go. If push comes to shove, the GPL people can require that GPL'd code ONLY run on the Plasma CPU.
Companies and individuals will flock to that part.
Or will they?
Fine. Provide the custom build scripts.
They don't have to provide a mechanism to get the firmware into flash on the device. They can do all sorts of interesting things to block your modified flash from being accepted into the firmware. A small auxillary embedded controller can act as a gatekeeper. It can contain 'valid signatures' that they are under no obligation to issue. The embedded controller is part of a 'system' and separate from the GPL'd code, which runs on a separate processor. There are all sorts of tricks the vendor can use. And every one of them can be called 'security'- it prevents modified unauthorized firmware from running on the device. Which is a SELLING POINT to a lot of customers.
And of course, the chest-pounding in threads like this is a selling point for companies like Wind River. Their marketing people would hire a few psuedo-zealots to flame on, if it wasn't already being done for them for free here.
Interesting. So now let's look at what you're saying:
Wow. You know, vendors just LOVE it when they get the opportunity to sue one of their customers for defamation.
You should put your scenario into a Powerpoint. The proprietary tool vendors would probably pay you to use it in their sales presentations.
All chest-thumping aside, what makes you think most end users care if their router is running the Linux version? It's doing the same work they require it to, at roughly half the price. If anything, your example shows that 'Linux makes the thing more expensive.' Which I am certain was not your point.
Threads like this one are dangerous, because companies like Wind River (the makers of VxWorks) can point to them when selling their product. Business types don't have much enthusiasm for having bands of hobbyist hackers/nerds fiddle with their product, tie up their external communications links with demands/questions, etc. Wind River can say 'pay us a buck a unit and you won't have to deal with that mess at all.'
And no matter what your creed or religion, for a business unit trying to sell product, it's just an expensive mess, and increased support overhead.
Maybe he sells networking hardware for a living.
In most organizations, IT is an infrastructure thing, like the file cabinets, cubicle walls, and the pencil sharpeners. So management doesn't think in terms of 'strategic value' regarding IT. They're in the business of producing whatever widgets or other product their company is in business to produce.
IT people tend to think about IT for the sake of IT. What color file cabinets do you think we should order next time?
I merely don't understand slashdot's group-hate towards what is, in my opinion, a great product.
We hate fucking Apple, and we always will. Steve Jobs thumbed his nose at the hacker/geek community back in 1984 with his 'hacker proof' Macintosh, which the consumer was simply not allowed at all to open. It was a non-expandable sealed unit. The operating system was a baroque sealed unit as well. If you were around back then you maybe knew some of the arrogant fucks who owned Macs. I even knew some Mac developers. Much as with the iPhone now, you had to kiss Steve's ring to get permission to do much of anything.
Richard Stallman used to (still does?) have a whole page on his website denouncing Apple.
I know none of that matters much to you at all. That's why you're here, on apple.slashdot.org and not the real Slashdot site.
tethering, a cheaper data plan, better data service... thos are 'shiny and magical'?
Well, it would be fucking magic to get that on an Apple branded cell phone. We appear to agree on that.
Yes, but their engineers wave magic wands over the design plans before they're shipped to the same board stuffers who do all the other pc clones.
I am old enough to remember the scandal when Apple started using IBM OEM hard drives. The Mac user community shit enough bricks to build a stadium. They'd been trained 'IBM Bad, Apple Good' for years.
However, buying a Hackintosh is exactly what many customers would want. Without the attached fucking lawyer dongle, of course, thankyouverymuch.
Shouldn't you be out on the sales floor trying to sell the shitty corinthian leather option to those Cordoba customers?
They aren't using SATA drives, and all the standard 'glue' chipsets now, either. Didn't you hear? SCSI is the best, better than all the rest. And let me tell you about a little secret: AltiVec! It's magic. Also RISC vs. CISC. It's a magical difference.
Let's not even broach the topic of one button mice.
Is Apple's product so bad that you have to rely on their tech support regularly?
It's been over a decade since I had to do the Tech Support thing with any product I've owned. I will say, however, that I got an iPod Touch a few months ago...
You could at least have sent them a check for, say, $2.11. It would have cost them considerably more than the two bucks to issue your refund.
Then you sit on the refund check for five months before cashing it.
I would go so far as to allow that Apple is the Fiat of computer manufacturers.
He's a terminal cancer patient now, though. So will his mausoleum be made of solid gold? Who will care in a hundred years except the grave robbers with their hacksaws?
It mostly does what people want on a superficial level. Any time said people dig a little deeper, a DRM road block appears and the walls surrounding the garden become very apparent.
But it's shiney and so easy to use.
Detroit was killed by the UAW, not by anything that has anything remotely to do with the race of the citizens.
And those virtual machines were defined in the hardware of the 80386 processor, not in anything 'special' that Microsoft did. The os software from Microsoft lagged far behind te capabilities of the silicon from Intel. The 80286 processor, for instance was used by some more advanced vendors for proprietary UNIX boxes and used it's protected mode well, at the same time that most people were just using it to run Microsoft's os, which crippled the processor,using it merely as a really-fast-8088 chip.