Corporations love this notion that the OpenSource industry can't get their act together...
The problem is that following the 'Bazaar' model, many open sorcerors post their dumb ideas in public, make their mistakes in public, learn in public. Linus taught us that, remember? Corporations also make mistakes, have dumb ideas, learn. But they do it in secret. Publicly they act very focused and confident - the behavior of a used car salesman, not a scientist. As for follow-up effort, it's usually not as fun as creation. Therein lies a major weakness.
As you point out, there are reasons why sourceforge hosts lots of uncompleted projects. However, I share xp0rnstar's irritation with sourceforge. When I stumble across a project on sf that's vapor, I'd like to see H1 Nothing to see here - move along/H1. When people make their own web pages, the flavor of the web pages tells you a bit about the project and how 'alive' it is. Sf gives every half-baked daydream a really complicated professional-looking page, and you have to look harder to figure out if the thing's for real. Sf's pages remind me of commercial web sites - they're overly busy and full of links that don't necessarily do anything - something like 'click to view mailing list archives' and then you find out there are no mailing list archives. Actually, my wish goes beyond SF - I wish every open source project had a short summary of the status at the top of the page, like 'compiles on Red Hat 6.0 but does nothing useful yet.'
What need does Freenet fulfill? Primary a perceived need on the part of the engineers for privacy and anonymity.
As I see it, Freenet will permit the exchange of information without censorship. Currently every country censors information deemed undesirable by the ruling elites. I think that anonymity is mainly a means to this end. Freenet won't help the severely repressive countries like China, but it will make free countries more free.
In places like the US, the vast majority of people do not perceive a need for Freenet.
Did people perceive a need for Napster before it came along? Because Napster is going away, or rather becoming a subscription service whose content is censored by BMG. In the future, bandwidth will permit easy downloading of first-run movies. Do you see that happening on the web? When you look at the progress of the Internet since '94 for example, the amazing thing is that so much of the information people want is not on the internet. Because of laws and lawyers. Freenet may solve that.
The marginally philanthropic start to notice the increased load, and decide that they aren't so philanthropic any more.
This is a good doomsday scenario, but I don't think it will happpen. My understanding is that each Freenet node decides how much storage to allocate, and when demand for storage exceeds supply (which should be always, once the system is really functioning) the least popular bits of data get dropped. So much for data density. As for load, I'm not sure what the effect of changing network size is on each node in the network. Remember that lower data density doesn't necessarily lower the load because requests are routed through many machines before reaching a machine that holds the requested data. And of course the response is similarly routed. If I were slightly more ambitious I'd look in Ian's paper and see if he's modelled this curve.
You state that using Flash means you don't care about your customers. Now for me, someone who wanted to provide a nice, well-designed visual and aural site for the common user...
I think you may be like the husband who buys his wife a power drill. You care about your customers, but do you care about what they want? Do you think the common user wants a nice, well-designed visual and aural site? The numbers say otherwise - the common user wants yahoo, google, ebay - the sites with strong databases and simple front ends.
...or ignore a site altogether for the less-motivated users.
That about sums things up. The only time I'm 'motivated' is when a site has a monopoly on something. So if I'm looking to buy a widget, and widget vendor 1 has a useless web site, I skip them. If I need Oracle docs, I have to dig through Oracles web site no matter how hard they make it. So before you put up a barrier of flash, make sure you have a monopoly on whatever you're selling. I want to point out that even if plugin and bandwidth issues are solved, you will still piss off and disorient a lot of users with unnecessary flash. People like the 'normal' interface of the web browser and don't want weird, invasive stuff happening. The less experienced the user, the more likely to feel threatened and confused by your flash extravaganza. Having said that, if you use flash for art, more power to you - I wouldn't dream of criticizing it. Just don't put it between me and the information I'm seeking.
Fact is, if people didn't want a pretty or graphical site, then the tag would never have been invented, and everyone would still be using lynx.
The word 'people' as used here conflates two utterly opposed groups: web site owners, and web users. I've worked on building web sites, and I've listened to the complaints of users ranging from very technical to non-technical. The people behind web sites - investors and advertising and marketing folks - have a huge appetite for bandwidth-wasting crap. That's mainly because they don't really use the web. Users, on the other hand, always complain about how slow a site is and never ask for more complexity or decorations. And CSS was developed defensively as an attempt to defang rotten commercial web sites. CSS represents a meeting ground between the 'decorators' and the users - the decorators can pour their heart into creating the perfect 'style sheet', and the users can opt not to use it. Everyone's satisfied.
I don't think anonymity is a problem. In fact, I think/. has reached quite a good equilibrium, with moderation keeping the abusers below my threshold. I also don't accept your glib assertion that 'assholes' are self-esteem challenged. They could be motivated by a wide range of factors. Maybe they just enjoy being assholes, to adopt the simplistic explanation. In any event, I like the net the way it is and would not enjoy an increase in self-restraint or responsibility. I like how the net directs a torrent of criticism and mockery at any popular idea, for example the GPL. This means the internet won't grow indefensible ideas as 'hothouse flowers' the way the Media/Business/Government thingy is doing.
But what makes you think that any poster, especially a troll, will allow his real face and voice to appear on/.? Currently only a minority of posters use handles that resemble RL names. I'd expect Quake monsters, rendered LEGO creations, abstract graphic patterns. And for voices: bizarre chirping, growling, mechanoid humming. And that's being optimistic. What the trolls would really do is use the sensory-extravaganza web board to blast bestial goatporn in our faces. Not to mention all the nasty things trolls/flamers will do with your likeness and voice once they have sufficient samples of them. I'm happy with a text based medium, thank you.
Good question - I hope it gets modded up. (It won't). I've noticed the increasing influx of Windows-influenced software into Linux, and it makes me sad because we stand to lose Unix culture and efficient work methods. The cause is that for modern problems, like handling tabular data (think Excel) M$ has a clear-cut pattern to fit your solutions into, so it's easy to copy them. Finding the solution that's truly elegant and Unixy is harder, and half a loaf is better than none. So part of me wonders if this is a generation gap - I grew up with CP/M and then DOS, so CLI feels natural to me. Does growing up with GUI's predispose one to GUI's? wrt "don't need themes to look good" I like slang/curses apps because
If I'm accessing the app over a modem, I don't have to wait for X events.
xterm lets me control-right-click to change the font size. I've never seen something that convenient in a GUI app.
GUI apps frequently have black letters on white background, which hurts my eyes. Fixing this is difficult or impossible.
GUI's bother me emotionally, especially if they look like MS Windows. I notice that my muscles tense up and my heart rate increases a little if I have to use a Gnome/KDE app.
Without some protection for the creators of information there will be no incentive to create any information.
You just created some information: your post. What "protection" does that post enjoy? Yes, I know "Comments (C) the poster" but in practice are you expecting any compensation for it? Really, you didn't post to make money; you posted to make your opinion heard.
Information does not want to be free; information is not conscious and is not capable of wanting anything.
Information wants to be free in the same sense in which a compressed spring wants to extend and water seeks its own level. The statement is not a value judgement, but an observation of a constant force. All objects on Earth want to move towards the center of the planet - that movement can be prevented by tables, floors, dirt - but gravity is an ever-present force.
Every time an issue like this appears on slashdot, we get 10^6 iterations of the 'propertarian defense': "It's their property; they can do what they want." In addition to the point you made, the propertarian defense tries to answer the question "Does Acme have the right to censor foo?" rather than "should Acme censor foo?" In other words, would such censorship cause us customers to like or dislike the company?
Neat idea. May I recommend that you not start your reverse blacklist with m3? They are quite the little spam village, with a few 'legit' sites like peacefire for cover. You'd better do some really careful investigation before placing a site on the reverse list, if you want to have any credibility. Spammers lie; spammers are con artists. And they'll see you as a perfect sucker.
Also, spam consumes a non-trivial amount of bandwidth and increases the load on the mailservers even if they reject it. Dropping spammers' packets at the border routers lowers costs.
No, the advice is, "Grandma, you need to switch ISP's. It turns out your ISP is run by unscrupulous people. By obstinately harboring criminals, they've burned their bridges to the rest of the internet." It's like changing doctors if your doctor is convicted of malpractice. No need to dig into technical arcana.
you're just not allowed to ask an electrical engineer to build a bridge.
Not true. The jurisdictions I'm familiar with in the US lump all licensed engineers into one category. Most licensed engineers are mechanical - a few are electrical. It is the engineer's responsibility to avoid work that's outside his competency. Licensed electrical engineers frequently have to approve drawings of mechanical assemblies for power substations and stuff - remember every EE is forced to take some ME in college. And medicine works the same way - any medical doctor can legally practice any kind of medicine. Restrictions are self-imposed.
If you looked hard enough, I think you'd find a bridge carrying ductbanks across a creek that was stamped by an EE at the power utility.
OK, so you've got this computer that triggers on your saying "computer" in a commanding voice. Now you're on the phone with tech support. Whenever you try to turn on the lights, the computer is launching one of the lifeboats.
"I said, um, you know, turn on the lights!" "Sir, you need to say computer! turn on the lights."
"I DID say computer! turn on the lights! Oh no!"
Or how about, "Computer! tell the hull repair robot, 'Computer: tell the tailfin computer, "Computer: shutdown now!" ' "
"Computer... Computer??"
How do you handle escaping issues?
I think Jaron is being misunderstood a bit. He isn't so much crapping on Unix as wanting to move forward. And he isn't defining 'forward' as Microsoft. I love Unix but I don't think it's the end of OS evolution.
I don't know what world you live in, but if you can describe a process quickly and efficiently with *only* words, it's not that complicated of a process.
I think it's just the reverse - words are the most efficient way of describing things. How about "Issue a blue badge to all the contractors hired after January 5 who report to Gladys or have put in 80 hours." How do you express that in a GUI? All the internet protocols are described in words - see the RFC's. Yes, there's some ascii art in there, but I don't think it's essential.
If you've ever tried to fix someone's computer over the phone, or played pictionary, it's clear that only having text, or only having pictures, is not sufficient.
I've helped people over the phone with both M$ and Unix. It's frustrating both ways but it's far worse with M$. At least with Unix the responses are clearcut and the user can read them to you. With M$, it's always "A window popped up and it has icons in it..." I can walk someone through a Unix problem using only logic and memory. To help with M$ I need a M$ computer in front of me, unless the problem is very basic. That's because I can never remember the sequence of stupid dialog boxes that replaces a two second command in Unix.
if you need to delete some, but not all subdirs that don't have a common identifier, selecting multiple ones then hitting delete in a gui can be quicker than typing rm foo for a bunch of differnet foos.
Maybe a little. You can type rm -f foo bar qiz qak...
But it's rare for the target files to have no commonality. Typically they're united, if not in filename then in modification time or owner or filetype. That points to find . [ criteria ] -exec rm -f {} \;
The reason is that Apple gave them free computers to get mindshare.
But even if the schools had bought Macs, it wouldn't prove that they're easier to use. It would prove that Apple's marketing appeals to educators.
This idea of Mime-types has some merit, but:
Linux does not determine the type of a file by 'extensions'. Some applications do - I consider this a bug. Of course, Apache uses extensions to generate Mime-types. I guess that's reasonable. But you're free to call a gzipped tarball foo.midi or whatever.
... and the name of the program that created it.
No, please don't do that. It doesn't matter what program created it. What if it's cat or grep? The point is what open standard the file adheres to. Recording the creating program encourages a Microsoft-like world of proprietary formats.
It's about being able to highlight a piece of text, and move it to the point in the document where you want in to be.
And it's a cute trick on a small scale. When you're trying to highlight 175 pages of a 400 page document and move it to a precise place, you start to miss the precision of more powerful tools.
I can't even begin to imagine how you'd do that with a command line.
How about ":120,135d515Gp" ? It really depends what terms you want to use to specify the locations of interest. The GUI assumes that you want to specify based on location on the screen, which may be irrelevant to your real concerns.
Vi makes it so easy to navigate by searching that I'm rarely concerned with where the cursor is in the document. Direct manipulation does not scale well. I remember trying to highlight all the populated rows in an Excel spreadsheet - I couldn't use the button that highlights the whole spreadsheet, because it would include tons of unused rows at the bottom. It was a miserable task, made worse by a slow PC that couldn't refresh the screen fast enough.
Slashdot Mirror
Corporations also make mistakes, have dumb ideas, learn. But they do it in secret. Publicly they act very focused and confident - the behavior of a used car salesman, not a scientist.
As for follow-up effort, it's usually not as fun as creation. Therein lies a major weakness.
As you point out, there are reasons why sourceforge hosts lots of uncompleted projects. /H1.
However, I share xp0rnstar's irritation with sourceforge. When I stumble across a project on sf that's vapor, I'd like to see H1 Nothing to see here - move along
When people make their own web pages, the flavor of the web pages tells you a bit about the project and how 'alive' it is. Sf gives every half-baked daydream a really complicated professional-looking page, and you have to look harder to figure out if the thing's for real.
Sf's pages remind me of commercial web sites - they're overly busy and full of links that don't necessarily do anything - something like 'click to view mailing list archives' and then you find out there are no mailing list archives.
Actually, my wish goes beyond SF - I wish every open source project had a short summary of the status at the top of the page, like 'compiles on Red Hat 6.0 but does nothing useful yet.'
Did people perceive a need for Napster before it came along? Because Napster is going away, or rather becoming a subscription service whose content is censored by BMG. In the future, bandwidth will permit easy downloading of first-run movies. Do you see that happening on the web?
When you look at the progress of the Internet since '94 for example, the amazing thing is that so much of the information people want is not on the internet. Because of laws and lawyers. Freenet may solve that.
So much for data density. As for load, I'm not sure what the effect of changing network size is on each node in the network. Remember that lower data density doesn't necessarily lower the load because requests are routed through many machines before reaching a machine that holds the requested data. And of course the response is similarly routed.
If I were slightly more ambitious I'd look in Ian's paper and see if he's modelled this curve.
That about sums things up. The only time I'm 'motivated' is when a site has a monopoly on something. So if I'm looking to buy a widget, and widget vendor 1 has a useless web site, I skip them. If I need Oracle docs, I have to dig through Oracles web site no matter how hard they make it. So before you put up a barrier of flash, make sure you have a monopoly on whatever you're selling.
I want to point out that even if plugin and bandwidth issues are solved, you will still piss off and disorient a lot of users with unnecessary flash. People like the 'normal' interface of the web browser and don't want weird, invasive stuff happening. The less experienced the user, the more likely to feel threatened and confused by your flash extravaganza.
Having said that, if you use flash for art, more power to you - I wouldn't dream of criticizing it. Just don't put it between me and the information I'm seeking.
And CSS was developed defensively as an attempt to defang rotten commercial web sites. CSS represents a meeting ground between the 'decorators' and the users - the decorators can pour their heart into creating the perfect 'style sheet', and the users can opt not to use it. Everyone's satisfied.
I don't think anonymity is a problem. In fact, I think /. has reached quite a good equilibrium, with moderation keeping the abusers below my threshold.
I also don't accept your glib assertion that 'assholes' are self-esteem challenged. They could be motivated by a wide range of factors. Maybe they just enjoy being assholes, to adopt the simplistic explanation.
In any event, I like the net the way it is and would not enjoy an increase in self-restraint or responsibility. I like how the net directs a torrent of criticism and mockery at any popular idea, for example the GPL. This means the internet won't grow indefensible ideas as 'hothouse flowers' the way the Media/Business/Government thingy is doing.
But what makes you think that any poster, especially a troll, will allow his real face and voice to appear on /.? Currently only a minority of posters use handles that resemble RL names. I'd expect Quake monsters, rendered LEGO creations, abstract graphic patterns. And for voices: bizarre chirping, growling, mechanoid humming. And that's being optimistic.
What the trolls would really do is use the sensory-extravaganza web board to blast bestial goatporn in our faces.
Not to mention all the nasty things trolls/flamers will do with your likeness and voice once they have sufficient samples of them.
I'm happy with a text based medium, thank you.
The cause is that for modern problems, like handling tabular data (think Excel) M$ has a clear-cut pattern to fit your solutions into, so it's easy to copy them. Finding the solution that's truly elegant and Unixy is harder, and half a loaf is better than none.
So part of me wonders if this is a generation gap - I grew up with CP/M and then DOS, so CLI feels natural to me. Does growing up with GUI's predispose one to GUI's?
wrt "don't need themes to look good" I like slang/curses apps because
But information has long been recognized by our culture as something unique. What happens when we try to substitute a material object?
- "The cat's out of the bag." - "The Honda's out of the garage."
- "The morsel of gossip spread from house to house like wildfire." - "The Honda spread from driveway to driveway like wildfire."
- "The catchy tune was on everyone's lips" - "The Honda was in everyone's driveway"
I think I could come up with better examples, but the point is clear: in common usage we recognize the spreading, expansionist nature of information.You just created some information: your post. What "protection" does that post enjoy? Yes, I know "Comments (C) the poster" but in practice are you expecting any compensation for it?
Really, you didn't post to make money; you posted to make your opinion heard.
Information wants to be free in the same sense in which a compressed spring wants to extend and water seeks its own level. The statement is not a value judgement, but an observation of a constant force. All objects on Earth want to move towards the center of the planet - that movement can be prevented by tables, floors, dirt - but gravity is an ever-present force.
Every time an issue like this appears on slashdot, we get 10^6 iterations of the 'propertarian defense': "It's their property; they can do what they want."
In addition to the point you made, the propertarian defense tries to answer the question "Does Acme have the right to censor foo?" rather than "should Acme censor foo?" In other words, would such censorship cause us customers to like or dislike the company?
How's this? .. "zzzz")'` Time to RBL /.
mail -s "Make Money Fast!" `perl -e'print "$_\@hotmail.com " for ("aaaa"
Neat idea. May I recommend that you not start your reverse blacklist with m3? They are quite the little spam village, with a few 'legit' sites like peacefire for cover. You'd better do some really careful investigation before placing a site on the reverse list, if you want to have any credibility. Spammers lie; spammers are con artists. And they'll see you as a perfect sucker.
Also, spam consumes a non-trivial amount of bandwidth and increases the load on the mailservers even if they reject it. Dropping spammers' packets at the border routers lowers costs.
No, the advice is, "Grandma, you need to switch ISP's. It turns out your ISP is run by unscrupulous people. By obstinately harboring criminals, they've burned their bridges to the rest of the internet."
It's like changing doctors if your doctor is convicted of malpractice. No need to dig into technical arcana.
If you looked hard enough, I think you'd find a bridge carrying ductbanks across a creek that was stamped by an EE at the power utility.
OK, so you've got this computer that triggers on your saying "computer" in a commanding voice. Now you're on the phone with tech support. Whenever you try to turn on the lights, the computer is launching one of the lifeboats. ... Computer??"
"I said, um, you know, turn on the lights!"
"Sir, you need to say computer! turn on the lights."
"I DID say computer! turn on the lights! Oh no!"
Or how about,
"Computer! tell the hull repair robot, 'Computer: tell the tailfin computer, "Computer: shutdown now!" ' "
"Computer
How do you handle escaping issues?
I think Jaron is being misunderstood a bit. He isn't so much crapping on Unix as wanting to move forward. And he isn't defining 'forward' as Microsoft. I love Unix but I don't think it's the end of OS evolution.
I've helped people over the phone with both M$ and Unix. It's frustrating both ways but it's far worse with M$. At least with Unix the responses are clearcut and the user can read them to you. With M$, it's always "A window popped up and it has icons in it..." I can walk someone through a Unix problem using only logic and memory. To help with M$ I need a M$ computer in front of me, unless the problem is very basic. That's because I can never remember the sequence of stupid dialog boxes that replaces a two second command in Unix.
But it's rare for the target files to have no commonality. Typically they're united, if not in filename then in modification time or owner or filetype. That points to find . [ criteria ] -exec rm -f {} \;
The reason is that Apple gave them free computers to get mindshare.
But even if the schools had bought Macs, it wouldn't prove that they're easier to use. It would prove that Apple's marketing appeals to educators.
Linux does not determine the type of a file by 'extensions'. Some applications do - I consider this a bug. Of course, Apache uses extensions to generate Mime-types. I guess that's reasonable. But you're free to call a gzipped tarball foo.midi or whatever.
No, please don't do that. It doesn't matter what program created it. What if it's cat or grep? The point is what open standard the file adheres to. Recording the creating program encourages a Microsoft-like world of proprietary formats.
How about ":120,135d515Gp" ? It really depends what terms you want to use to specify the locations of interest. The GUI assumes that you want to specify based on location on the screen, which may be irrelevant to your real concerns.
Vi makes it so easy to navigate by searching that I'm rarely concerned with where the cursor is in the document. Direct manipulation does not scale well. I remember trying to highlight all the populated rows in an Excel spreadsheet - I couldn't use the button that highlights the whole spreadsheet, because it would include tons of unused rows at the bottom. It was a miserable task, made worse by a slow PC that couldn't refresh the screen fast enough.