I thought it was the Democrats that pander to the media companies. The Republicans stick to the oil companies. All you have to do is pick your favorite corporate whore.
Of course, I'm sure it's different in Europe. Every party there probably has a completely different industry controlling it.
Actually, in both pen and paper RPGs and CRPGs, I've always played female fighter characters and male magic users. I don't know where it came from, but that's how I am.
I only really care to convert people to open source products when they're the best choice. Firefox is obvious because IE is terrible. Whenever people come to me with a computer problem, it usually somehow connects to IE. Maybe Microsoft will make a good browser in IE 7, I don't know. I'll try it when it's ready.
As for other programs, it really depends on the person and the needs. If they can't afford Microsoft Office, I recommend OpenOffice, but I warn that there are still a few compatibility problems. I tell people that Gimp is pretty cool, nowhere near Photoshop, but about seven hundred dollars less. I mainly recommend it for people that haven't gotten around to pirating Photoshop yet.
Then, of course, there's Linux. I love Linux and have a pretty awesome setup here at home. When people see it, a lot of them end up wanting to switch. Most of the time, I tell them not to. The thing I love about Linux is how you can get into the guts of the system to configure, troubleshoot, or build on it yourself. That's also why it's not so good for most people. I love being able to dig through text files to tune it just right, or add the right code to make it do something really obscure. It's really awkward when a non-techie ends up having to do the same. For instance, I just set up Debian on my new computer and gdm isn't coming up. I don't care, I just disable gdm anyway. I'll jigger around with XF86Config later on, but X isn't a big priority for me. The normal user, when thrown back to a text console, would have no idea what to do. If they want to learn, I'd be glad to help, but I know a lot of people that don't want to spend hours editing text files and reading through man pages to be able to use their computer.
The main point is, as far as day-to-day usability is concerned, proprietary software is often still way past open source. I'm not bashing it. It's made for different purposes. But the complexity and adaptability I'm so fond of will likely keep it from being embraced by the population at large.
It's not nearly as simple as an employer missing out on a good worker due to stupidity, it's entire groups of good workers kept from work for unfair reasons.
Ideological issues aside, the problem with work-related discrimination due to societal bias is that it reinforces the relegation of whatever group to second-class citizens through what amounts to financial embargoes.
On a fundamental level, the effect of such discrimination on a populace can lead to broad social problems, such as increased crime, homelessness, health care for those without coverage*, and general discontent. This has a more detrimental effect than regular unemployment since it creates a divide between those allowed success and those denied it due to arbitrary reasons, polarizing society and leading to such things as gangs and race riots.
Of course, it's slightly different when it comes to gender- and sexuality-based discrimination, but the the more subtle issues of increased suicide rates, poverty among single-parent families, and marginalization similarly reduce general quality-of-life in this country and create the need for costly government support programs.
I've always found this really quite simple to understand, and while I realize that government regulation is a far from perfect way to enforce equality, there is little else that can be done in the short term to solve these problems.
* Whatever opinion one may have of government-funded health care, emergency services are required to help patient regardless of their ability to pay. When large amounts of people do not have employer-supplied health coverage, this is a large tax drain
I was talking to someone at work about this a week or two ago. People have known how to make flying cars for a while now. If the field were viable, it would be fairly easy for an automobile/aerospace corporation to design and build one in the next couple of years.
The problem is and has always been the infrastructure and regulation required to make it anywhere near safe for average citizens to fly. This Highway in the Sky program sounds neat, but it still doesn't address many of the major problems involved. I'd hate to see a flying car stall in New York, for instance, or a drunk teenager crash one into a building.
Give most people a plane and tell them they have to keep steering it in this little box on a screen and see how long they'll stick with it before going off on a joyride. The only way these things wouldn't endanger innocents would be if police installed anti-air missiles at every street corner to blow anyone that veers from their flight path to pieces. I'm not sure that too many people would line up to buy a flying car once that went into effect, though.
Oddly enough, Verizon was the only carrier I tried that actually did work in my house. It's got really good coverage. I have a little trouble at work because they don't have a transmitter on the Stanford campus, but it still works fine on the extended network. I don't have to pay extra for it either.
There's really no reason for the CEO to be such an ass. The service is actually fairly decent. Most people I've talked to have had similarly good experiences with it. But if I had heard this guy before I started the service, I wouldn't have even tried them. If that's the kind of tough talk that gets him ahead in business, businesses must be more out of touch than I thought.
Thanks for providing all these references. From the article and the general consensus here, it sounded like Linus lost his mind or something. I don't know who's more right in the actual argument, but at least I can see where Linus is coming from here. He sounds a lot more reasonable and Linus-y now.
I'd really like to be able to replace my regular incandescent lights at home. We have some bulbs in very hard to reach places, and I don't like the fact that the companies design them to burn out more quickly.
The problem I have is that fluorescent lights give me migraines, so they're not really an option. Apart from that, the light they provide also seems a lot harsher.
Personally, I'd be willing to pay extra for LEDs to get a nice white light from a source I don't have to replace. Extra efficiency is nice too, but that's not my main concern. I'll be pretty excited when I find a decent LED replacement for a conventional bulb.
As far I can tell, they're the same thing. People with ADHD inattentive-type aren't actually hyperactive, but they still call it ADHD. Never figured that part out.
Well, she's only half-Betazoid, plus she's got that weird accent. Her mother doesn't have an accent, none of the other Betazoids have an accent. She must have gotten it from somewhere. I know Ms Sirtis doesn't talk like that normally, so it's part of the character. I guess it's Greek-accented British English, but I can't really be sure.
I think I represent all people with ADHD when I say I take offense at that. I can't keep up with anything MTV plays anymore. Leaving it on for more than a minute gives me a migraine.
Actually, these days I think all they play is a pattern of flickering lights that hypnotizes teenagers into buying 50 Cent/Eminem albums and any product containing the word X-TREME.
Bill wasn't the one that played Uncle Fran. I'm pretty sure he was a high-fivin' white guy, though. Bill Nye was awesome, but my favorite has always been John Keister in Mind Your Manners With Billy Quan. I even learned kung fu so I could teach people manners too.
As someone with moderator points, I have to say that I'm actually interested in the problems you have with GNU tools, but since you demanded it, I had to go ahead and mod you down.
I have to thank you for giving me such a good idea. From now on, whenever I can moderate and find someone saying he will be modded down, I will do so. I like to be helpful.
Now I'm just an illiterate non-coding yokel, visiting slashdot from the swamp across the way, but I don't know what you mean by the Unix philosophy. What is it and why do you think GNU doesn't understand it? If someone could explain this to me, I'd really appreciate it.
In the article, the author mentioned the corporations. They made a statement that they will add in features that are helpful to their clients, but not otherwise. Since the clients are generally business-oriented, the normal user won't get much support from that arena.
Usually the complaints about elitism are because the developers get snippy at the users' suggestions. It's most likely due to very disparate points of view, where the users see the developer as they would a software company and feel they should be ready to support and improve their product based on consumers' input. The developer, on his part, think the users are rude because he built the software on his own time and provided it freely, then all he gets back is negative feedback on all the things people didn't like.
Well I don't think that Gnome is ignoring users' needs. It's just that they have their own design for the user interface, and don't feel like they need to change that because particular users want certain things.
As they said, "a feature will be implemented if and only if there is a developer that wants to implement it." They might, in fact, add the requested feature if they want to do so, but they won't if they don't like the idea. They're not beholden to the users, like they might be if they were being paid.
I'm not including those that work on OSS for a living. User interface design is a perfect example of why paid open source developers are needed. Distributed development makes for a solid base, but corporate backing is the best way toward a slick interface.
Here's the thing, though. These people are coding this on their own free time, for their own enjoyment. A lot of them are programmers for a living, forced to write things a particular way all day. Open source is a way to vent their frustration and express their creativity. They can be as elegant as they want. They don't worry about the old feeping creatures. It's their code.
How many people want to come home after work every day to emails from Gnome, telling them to do more coding they don't enjoy? Especially if those people have friends, families, or other concerns? What the article proposes is turning a hobby these people do for their own fulfillment into an unpaid job. How many programmers would the community lose?
We're not talking about whether Gnome can handle the criticism, though. The issue is whether or not they are beholden to their users.
The general argument here is that since the users aren't paying them, they have no responsibility to implement their ideas. Personally, I think that's a good thing, because it means that Gnome is free to pursue what it feels is the best design, rather than whatever features are popular at the moment. And if Gnome's design views differ from the users', they don't have to use it.
When you can try it for free, there's little reason to complain that the product didn't meet your expectations.
I totally agree. I see the exact thing with music and video. Like that guy in front of the Albertson's in Oakland selling copied versions of CDs and DVDs, or those Chinese rips of movies. I totally think that's stealing, just like I think this is stealing.
Or wait, are you talking about grabbing an mp3 from the net, or ripping a friend's CD? That's another thing entirely.
Disclaimer: No, I don't download music from the net. I stopped when it became a big deal. And now I've stopped buying CDs, since I can't find out what's good anymore. But I guess that what's in the RIAA's best interest.
I used Macs back in '92 and I had a 14" monitor, which was pretty decent for the time. The interface was years ahead of Windows 3.1. The problems were that Macs were more more expensive, ran less software, and couldn't be upgraded like PCs.
Apple's doing a lot better these days, but the problems more or less stand.
Sounds like the Law of Fives in effect, only with, you know, 42.
Wait... 42 is 6 x 7, right? Subtract six from seven and you get one, of course. But, the digits in 42 add up to 6, obviously, and then if you remove the one that you got earlier, it adds up to five! It was right in front of my face all along! At first you think it's a red herring, but they're trying to trick you. It's all layers, you see.
Re:A special flop the Slashdot crowd will apprecia
on
Top 10 Apple Flops
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· Score: 1
I didn't realize A/UX was so obscure. I remember when it first came out. I actually didn't know anything about Unix until I looked into A/UX. I never actually got a copy myself, though I remember really wanting to.
Of course, my aunt was a manager at Apple up until the mid-nineties, so I was up in the middle of it. I also remember playing with a brand new Mac 128k as a kid, and seeing Kevin Pollak perform at the 1986 Apple Picnic. Man, I loved those picnics.
I remember going to see Douglas Adams at a local bookstore a couple of years before he passed away, and even then he spent half the discussion talking about the movie. He was really excited about this. I've been waiting for it for a long time.
Of course it will be different from the book, but he made sure to keep what he could. This may be a different screenplay entirely, but I really hope not. I remember one of his concerns was whether he could accomplish some of the scenes with the special effects back then, but by now I'm thinking it should look really polished.
I was raised Protestant in an annoyingly conservative Presbyterian church (for California, at least), and I actually thought that the KJV was mostly Catholic. None of the Protestant churches I'd been to ever referred to it at all, other than perhaps as a historical note or to mention one of its quirks.
I guess it's difficult to make generalizations about Protestant churches since they basically consist of anything that isn't Catholic or Eastern Orthodox (plus Coptic, Ethiopian, Assyrian and other ancient sects). While there are some extremely hardcore Evangelicals, there are also churches such as the Quakers, Unitarians, and Lutherans, who are far more peaceful and accepting, some to a degree as extreme as the most conservative fundamentalists are the opposite.
Anyway, as you say, the "strict-word-of-God" types are a minority, it's just that they're so loud that they drown out the more reasoned majority. It's sad, really, and gives the world an undeservedly bad view of Christianity. I only hope that one day these people will recognise that they are hurting our religion, but I doubt it will occur soon.
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I thought it was the Democrats that pander to the media companies. The Republicans stick to the oil companies. All you have to do is pick your favorite corporate whore.
Of course, I'm sure it's different in Europe. Every party there probably has a completely different industry controlling it.
Actually, in both pen and paper RPGs and CRPGs, I've always played female fighter characters and male magic users. I don't know where it came from, but that's how I am.
I only really care to convert people to open source products when they're the best choice. Firefox is obvious because IE is terrible. Whenever people come to me with a computer problem, it usually somehow connects to IE. Maybe Microsoft will make a good browser in IE 7, I don't know. I'll try it when it's ready.
As for other programs, it really depends on the person and the needs. If they can't afford Microsoft Office, I recommend OpenOffice, but I warn that there are still a few compatibility problems. I tell people that Gimp is pretty cool, nowhere near Photoshop, but about seven hundred dollars less. I mainly recommend it for people that haven't gotten around to pirating Photoshop yet.
Then, of course, there's Linux. I love Linux and have a pretty awesome setup here at home. When people see it, a lot of them end up wanting to switch. Most of the time, I tell them not to. The thing I love about Linux is how you can get into the guts of the system to configure, troubleshoot, or build on it yourself. That's also why it's not so good for most people. I love being able to dig through text files to tune it just right, or add the right code to make it do something really obscure. It's really awkward when a non-techie ends up having to do the same. For instance, I just set up Debian on my new computer and gdm isn't coming up. I don't care, I just disable gdm anyway. I'll jigger around with XF86Config later on, but X isn't a big priority for me. The normal user, when thrown back to a text console, would have no idea what to do. If they want to learn, I'd be glad to help, but I know a lot of people that don't want to spend hours editing text files and reading through man pages to be able to use their computer.
The main point is, as far as day-to-day usability is concerned, proprietary software is often still way past open source. I'm not bashing it. It's made for different purposes. But the complexity and adaptability I'm so fond of will likely keep it from being embraced by the population at large.
It's not nearly as simple as an employer missing out on a good worker due to stupidity, it's entire groups of good workers kept from work for unfair reasons.
Ideological issues aside, the problem with work-related discrimination due to societal bias is that it reinforces the relegation of whatever group to second-class citizens through what amounts to financial embargoes.
On a fundamental level, the effect of such discrimination on a populace can lead to broad social problems, such as increased crime, homelessness, health care for those without coverage*, and general discontent. This has a more detrimental effect than regular unemployment since it creates a divide between those allowed success and those denied it due to arbitrary reasons, polarizing society and leading to such things as gangs and race riots.
Of course, it's slightly different when it comes to gender- and sexuality-based discrimination, but the the more subtle issues of increased suicide rates, poverty among single-parent families, and marginalization similarly reduce general quality-of-life in this country and create the need for costly government support programs.
I've always found this really quite simple to understand, and while I realize that government regulation is a far from perfect way to enforce equality, there is little else that can be done in the short term to solve these problems.
* Whatever opinion one may have of government-funded health care, emergency services are required to help patient regardless of their ability to pay. When large amounts of people do not have employer-supplied health coverage, this is a large tax drain
I was talking to someone at work about this a week or two ago. People have known how to make flying cars for a while now. If the field were viable, it would be fairly easy for an automobile/aerospace corporation to design and build one in the next couple of years.
The problem is and has always been the infrastructure and regulation required to make it anywhere near safe for average citizens to fly. This Highway in the Sky program sounds neat, but it still doesn't address many of the major problems involved. I'd hate to see a flying car stall in New York, for instance, or a drunk teenager crash one into a building.
Give most people a plane and tell them they have to keep steering it in this little box on a screen and see how long they'll stick with it before going off on a joyride. The only way these things wouldn't endanger innocents would be if police installed anti-air missiles at every street corner to blow anyone that veers from their flight path to pieces. I'm not sure that too many people would line up to buy a flying car once that went into effect, though.
Oddly enough, Verizon was the only carrier I tried that actually did work in my house. It's got really good coverage. I have a little trouble at work because they don't have a transmitter on the Stanford campus, but it still works fine on the extended network. I don't have to pay extra for it either.
There's really no reason for the CEO to be such an ass. The service is actually fairly decent. Most people I've talked to have had similarly good experiences with it. But if I had heard this guy before I started the service, I wouldn't have even tried them. If that's the kind of tough talk that gets him ahead in business, businesses must be more out of touch than I thought.
Thanks for providing all these references. From the article and the general consensus here, it sounded like Linus lost his mind or something. I don't know who's more right in the actual argument, but at least I can see where Linus is coming from here. He sounds a lot more reasonable and Linus-y now.
I'd really like to be able to replace my regular incandescent lights at home. We have some bulbs in very hard to reach places, and I don't like the fact that the companies design them to burn out more quickly.
The problem I have is that fluorescent lights give me migraines, so they're not really an option. Apart from that, the light they provide also seems a lot harsher.
Personally, I'd be willing to pay extra for LEDs to get a nice white light from a source I don't have to replace. Extra efficiency is nice too, but that's not my main concern. I'll be pretty excited when I find a decent LED replacement for a conventional bulb.
As far I can tell, they're the same thing. People with ADHD inattentive-type aren't actually hyperactive, but they still call it ADHD. Never figured that part out.
Well, she's only half-Betazoid, plus she's got that weird accent. Her mother doesn't have an accent, none of the other Betazoids have an accent. She must have gotten it from somewhere. I know Ms Sirtis doesn't talk like that normally, so it's part of the character. I guess it's Greek-accented British English, but I can't really be sure.
I think I represent all people with ADHD when I say I take offense at that. I can't keep up with anything MTV plays anymore. Leaving it on for more than a minute gives me a migraine.
Actually, these days I think all they play is a pattern of flickering lights that hypnotizes teenagers into buying 50 Cent/Eminem albums and any product containing the word X-TREME.
Bill wasn't the one that played Uncle Fran. I'm pretty sure he was a high-fivin' white guy, though. Bill Nye was awesome, but my favorite has always been John Keister in Mind Your Manners With Billy Quan. I even learned kung fu so I could teach people manners too.
As someone with moderator points, I have to say that I'm actually interested in the problems you have with GNU tools, but since you demanded it, I had to go ahead and mod you down.
I have to thank you for giving me such a good idea. From now on, whenever I can moderate and find someone saying he will be modded down, I will do so. I like to be helpful.
Now I'm just an illiterate non-coding yokel, visiting slashdot from the swamp across the way, but I don't know what you mean by the Unix philosophy. What is it and why do you think GNU doesn't understand it? If someone could explain this to me, I'd really appreciate it.
In the article, the author mentioned the corporations. They made a statement that they will add in features that are helpful to their clients, but not otherwise. Since the clients are generally business-oriented, the normal user won't get much support from that arena.
Usually the complaints about elitism are because the developers get snippy at the users' suggestions. It's most likely due to very disparate points of view, where the users see the developer as they would a software company and feel they should be ready to support and improve their product based on consumers' input. The developer, on his part, think the users are rude because he built the software on his own time and provided it freely, then all he gets back is negative feedback on all the things people didn't like.
Well I don't think that Gnome is ignoring users' needs. It's just that they have their own design for the user interface, and don't feel like they need to change that because particular users want certain things.
As they said, "a feature will be implemented if and only if there is a developer that wants to implement it." They might, in fact, add the requested feature if they want to do so, but they won't if they don't like the idea. They're not beholden to the users, like they might be if they were being paid.
I'm not including those that work on OSS for a living. User interface design is a perfect example of why paid open source developers are needed. Distributed development makes for a solid base, but corporate backing is the best way toward a slick interface.
Here's the thing, though. These people are coding this on their own free time, for their own enjoyment. A lot of them are programmers for a living, forced to write things a particular way all day. Open source is a way to vent their frustration and express their creativity. They can be as elegant as they want. They don't worry about the old feeping creatures. It's their code.
How many people want to come home after work every day to emails from Gnome, telling them to do more coding they don't enjoy? Especially if those people have friends, families, or other concerns? What the article proposes is turning a hobby these people do for their own fulfillment into an unpaid job. How many programmers would the community lose?
We're not talking about whether Gnome can handle the criticism, though. The issue is whether or not they are beholden to their users.
The general argument here is that since the users aren't paying them, they have no responsibility to implement their ideas. Personally, I think that's a good thing, because it means that Gnome is free to pursue what it feels is the best design, rather than whatever features are popular at the moment. And if Gnome's design views differ from the users', they don't have to use it.
When you can try it for free, there's little reason to complain that the product didn't meet your expectations.
I totally agree. I see the exact thing with music and video. Like that guy in front of the Albertson's in Oakland selling copied versions of CDs and DVDs, or those Chinese rips of movies. I totally think that's stealing, just like I think this is stealing.
Or wait, are you talking about grabbing an mp3 from the net, or ripping a friend's CD? That's another thing entirely.
Disclaimer: No, I don't download music from the net. I stopped when it became a big deal. And now I've stopped buying CDs, since I can't find out what's good anymore. But I guess that what's in the RIAA's best interest.
I'm doing my -absolute best- not to make a terrible joke about 9" nails. Oh, it hurts.
I used Macs back in '92 and I had a 14" monitor, which was pretty decent for the time. The interface was years ahead of Windows 3.1. The problems were that Macs were more more expensive, ran less software, and couldn't be upgraded like PCs.
Apple's doing a lot better these days, but the problems more or less stand.
Sounds like the Law of Fives in effect, only with, you know, 42.
Wait... 42 is 6 x 7, right? Subtract six from seven and you get one, of course. But, the digits in 42 add up to 6, obviously, and then if you remove the one that you got earlier, it adds up to five! It was right in front of my face all along! At first you think it's a red herring, but they're trying to trick you. It's all layers, you see.
I didn't realize A/UX was so obscure. I remember when it first came out. I actually didn't know anything about Unix until I looked into A/UX. I never actually got a copy myself, though I remember really wanting to.
Of course, my aunt was a manager at Apple up until the mid-nineties, so I was up in the middle of it. I also remember playing with a brand new Mac 128k as a kid, and seeing Kevin Pollak perform at the 1986 Apple Picnic. Man, I loved those picnics.
I remember going to see Douglas Adams at a local bookstore a couple of years before he passed away, and even then he spent half the discussion talking about the movie. He was really excited about this. I've been waiting for it for a long time.
Of course it will be different from the book, but he made sure to keep what he could. This may be a different screenplay entirely, but I really hope not. I remember one of his concerns was whether he could accomplish some of the scenes with the special effects back then, but by now I'm thinking it should look really polished.
I was raised Protestant in an annoyingly conservative Presbyterian church (for California, at least), and I actually thought that the KJV was mostly Catholic. None of the Protestant churches I'd been to ever referred to it at all, other than perhaps as a historical note or to mention one of its quirks.
I guess it's difficult to make generalizations about Protestant churches since they basically consist of anything that isn't Catholic or Eastern Orthodox (plus Coptic, Ethiopian, Assyrian and other ancient sects). While there are some extremely hardcore Evangelicals, there are also churches such as the Quakers, Unitarians, and Lutherans, who are far more peaceful and accepting, some to a degree as extreme as the most conservative fundamentalists are the opposite.
Anyway, as you say, the "strict-word-of-God" types are a minority, it's just that they're so loud that they drown out the more reasoned majority. It's sad, really, and gives the world an undeservedly bad view of Christianity. I only hope that one day these people will recognise that they are hurting our religion, but I doubt it will occur soon.