All privacy functions within NSA Linux have been removed or disabled, all Internet traffic is cached at NSA headquarters for your convenience, and nearly-anonymous statistics are recorded about you to improve customer service. Any attempt to circumvent these features will result in quiet, painless death in the middle of the night.
If you wire this puppy up to a Wolfentstein front end to "kill", you can then run around killing Nazis and shutting off your kitchen lights and at the same time
This reminds me a lot of Napster's 60's-style "take back the net" mumbo jumbo. When it comes right down to it, most of the good causes nowadays are stirred up and promoted by one corporation or another. Linux is one of the few good causes left, but even that is starting to get a distinctly corporate feel.
Pair computing is a great idea because it improves efficiency (when one brainfarts, the other takes over), accuracy ("hey you left a semicolon out there), and creativity (two brains can come up with sillier ideas than one brain).
If companies can afford two proggers at one computer, the return on their investment will likely be substantial.
"Pair Computing", the idea having two people to a computer, actually might have some benefits. One person could control the keyboard, and one the mouse (sort of like a pilot and a gunner), therefore increasing the number of frags they can get while they should be working.
Aside from Quake though, it's pretty much useless.
Despite it's attractive name, Extreme Programming has little to do with all-night coding sessions powered by passion and caffeine.
Many of the notions put for the in the rules and practices of Extreme Programming make sense, such as "Make frequent small releases," but others are less intuitive, such as: "Leave optimization till last" (i.e., write the program, and then try to make it fast) and "Move people around" (i.e., just when someone is getting the hang of one piece of code, send them to do something else).
And some parts of Extreme Programming are just plum unrealistic. There should, according to XP, be two programmers at a single computer ("pair computing"), no overtime (let's see that right before release day), and "collective code ownership" (anyone can screw with any part of the code at any time).
It's a neat idea, a great mental exercise, but I doubt that it will make it past the trendy self-help phase into an accepted way to run a programming department. Some companies have experimented with it, but it will be a long time before the traditional caffeine / overtime / don't-touch-my-code programming paradigm goes away.
First of all, there's no such thing as "growing too fast." It grows as fast as it grows. When routers stop being able to handle it, it stops growing until technology catches up. It's a standard population cycle.
Second of all, a greater concern might be "Is the Internet growing too disorganized?" There are ten jillion pages out there, and the vast majority of them aren't even linked to from other documents. They don't show up on search engines, they just sit there, with the web masters wondering why they've only gotten 3 visits in the past year.
Even the sites that can be found by search engines are getting increasingly hard to organize. Yahoo! is starting to wobble in their traditional high-quality, hand-picked links directory. They can't keep up with the net, so they've started implementing pay-for-listing programs. The Open Directory Project survives because of heaps and heaps of volunteer editors, but every category varies in qualities, and some basic categories don't even have editors. Many other search engines have attempted dynamically-created directories based on keywords, but these are easy to spam and often have very low-quality content.
All the disorganization also affects our information processing skills. We don't read like we used to. Hardcore web surfers are generally incapable of sitting down and enjoying a good book, because they're too accustomed to the "This page doesn't have it, go to the next one" cognitive paradigm.
What we really need is a new way to organize web sites, perhaps based on a combination of client (most visited sites), server (author-specified categories), and parsed (most linked-to sites) information.
The internet is not growing too fast. Our ability to cope with it, however, is failing to grow with it.
The end result is that the new Zaurus will become another AmigaOS platform...
I didn't see anything in there about AmigaOS, just software developed by Amiga.
This is a statement on the Amiga site saying that "The Amiga OS can run hosted on Linux, Embedded Linux, Windows 95, 98, 2000, NT, CE and QNX4," but this strikes me as someone strange. Is an operating system that runs on top of another operating system really an operating system, or just a shell/SDK/whatever?
It's sort of funny how almost all the statements on the Star Bridge site are prefaced with "We believe that..." It's almost as if they're not quite willing to state their own hype as facts, so they qualify them in every sentence.
BeOS is one of the most elegant operating systems I have ever used. Linux and BSD make great workhorse computers, but when it comes to a beautiful, stable, fun, and useful desktop, Be had the market cornered. Even Windows, the AOL of operating systems, could have learned a lot from the user-friendliness of BeOS.
Many people didn't like it because it "felt" too much like MacOS. I would say, however, that BeOS successfully united a strong backend with a strong user interface, which is the unattainable ideal of seemingly every other operating system.
It's just a shame it was impossible to find software for it. The basic utilities existed, as well as some fun stuff, but the hardcore apps that even Linux has did not exist for BeOS.
I sincerely hope that if Be, Inc. dies, they will at least scatter their ashes among us so that we can take advantage of what existed so far.
And for those of you who have never actually used it, clear off a partition and toss it on there. Get your hands dirty with it, so that you'll understand what we're losing.
When ISP service becomes a legal right instead of a luxury service, I think it's safe to say that the Internet has taken its place as a fundamental part of life in society.
Once the internet shakes off its unstable bits, regains its composure, and starts over, I think that some of the powerful sites like ArsDigita will thrive once again.
Some will change, some will stay the same, but when the garbage falls away, only the sites with real content, real creativity, and real usefulness with thrive, and I honestly think that ArsDigita is one of these.
Reading this, it becomes clear that the social "revolution" brought about by technology is actually a very slothlike creature. It's not so much a revolution as a gradual paradigm shift. The same issues are being debated now as were a decade ago, but the key difference is that millions of people are aware of them now, instead of just a handful of isolated geeks.
I hate to sound like Katz, but things really are changing. The thing that tech types have which many people don't is a passion for communication and information. Ideas are shared faster and with more clarity in the tech subculture than in any other group. Eventually, those ideas started leaking into mainstream culture, and we now see concepts and opinions once expressed only in text files passed around BBSes being expressed on CNN and in Time magazine. Napster, Linux, Open Source, Encryption are all words being discussed in restaurants, classrooms, workplaces, not just your buddy's basement over a game of Dungeons and Dragons.
And it all started out with guys like John Perry Barlow, who wrote things like that way, way back in the day.
People are trading credit card numbers not for gold, but for an electronic (i.e., imaginary) statement that their money went toward gold somewhere in the world? It's an absurd notion. Why trade something tenuous (a credit card number) for something even more tenuous (electronic gold)?
The world is becoming disturbingly postmodern. In the beginning there was bartering. Then people started using precious metals to represent the value of objects. Then they started using pieces of paper to represent the metals. Then they started using plastic cards to represent pieces of paper. Now they're trading that in for a number in a database.
If there is a violation of the GPL, it is equivalent to breaking one of the Ten Commandments, but if Microsoft defends their license it's just another example of "evil corporations."
If Apple fails to support HyperCard, how long do you think it will be before emulators or other software pop up that make it possible to run them?
I'm guessing that it'll happen butt-quick. As is often the case, it only takes one nostalgic programmer to get the job done.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it's terrific that technology now offers us the option to be absolutely lazy at whatever temperature what desire.
Now, if I could just teach my AIBO to bring me a Coke when I ask for it....
All privacy functions within NSA Linux have been removed or disabled, all Internet traffic is cached at NSA headquarters for your convenience, and nearly-anonymous statistics are recorded about you to improve customer service. Any attempt to circumvent these features will result in quiet, painless death in the middle of the night.
If you wire this puppy up to a Wolfentstein front end to "kill", you can then run around killing Nazis and shutting off your kitchen lights and at the same time
This reminds me a lot of Napster's 60's-style "take back the net" mumbo jumbo. When it comes right down to it, most of the good causes nowadays are stirred up and promoted by one corporation or another. Linux is one of the few good causes left, but even that is starting to get a distinctly corporate feel.
Yeah. *quotefingers* "Groovy."
If companies can afford two proggers at one computer, the return on their investment will likely be substantial.
Aside from Quake though, it's pretty much useless.
Despite it's attractive name, Extreme Programming has little to do with all-night coding sessions powered by passion and caffeine.
Many of the notions put for the in the rules and practices of Extreme Programming make sense, such as "Make frequent small releases," but others are less intuitive, such as: "Leave optimization till last" (i.e., write the program, and then try to make it fast) and "Move people around" (i.e., just when someone is getting the hang of one piece of code, send them to do something else).
And some parts of Extreme Programming are just plum unrealistic. There should, according to XP, be two programmers at a single computer ("pair computing"), no overtime (let's see that right before release day), and "collective code ownership" (anyone can screw with any part of the code at any time).
It's a neat idea, a great mental exercise, but I doubt that it will make it past the trendy self-help phase into an accepted way to run a programming department. Some companies have experimented with it, but it will be a long time before the traditional caffeine / overtime / don't-touch-my-code programming paradigm goes away.
Well, I certainly don't think that NNTP is putting a strain on any routers...
Second of all, a greater concern might be "Is the Internet growing too disorganized?" There are ten jillion pages out there, and the vast majority of them aren't even linked to from other documents. They don't show up on search engines, they just sit there, with the web masters wondering why they've only gotten 3 visits in the past year.
Even the sites that can be found by search engines are getting increasingly hard to organize. Yahoo! is starting to wobble in their traditional high-quality, hand-picked links directory. They can't keep up with the net, so they've started implementing pay-for-listing programs. The Open Directory Project survives because of heaps and heaps of volunteer editors, but every category varies in qualities, and some basic categories don't even have editors. Many other search engines have attempted dynamically-created directories based on keywords, but these are easy to spam and often have very low-quality content.
All the disorganization also affects our information processing skills. We don't read like we used to. Hardcore web surfers are generally incapable of sitting down and enjoying a good book, because they're too accustomed to the "This page doesn't have it, go to the next one" cognitive paradigm.
What we really need is a new way to organize web sites, perhaps based on a combination of client (most visited sites), server (author-specified categories), and parsed (most linked-to sites) information.
The internet is not growing too fast. Our ability to cope with it, however, is failing to grow with it.
I didn't see anything in there about AmigaOS, just software developed by Amiga.
This is a statement on the Amiga site saying that "The Amiga OS can run hosted on Linux, Embedded Linux, Windows 95, 98, 2000, NT, CE and QNX4," but this strikes me as someone strange. Is an operating system that runs on top of another operating system really an operating system, or just a shell/SDK/whatever?
An operating system that runs on top of Linux? That's not an operating system, is it?
Check it out, you'll see what I mean.
irony (r-n, r-)
n., pl. ironies.
1. The fact that the word Mormon is only a letter away from the word moron.
Yeah, it's amazing how much that one letter separates me from you, isn't it? :)
--James (zpengo) the Mormon
Many people didn't like it because it "felt" too much like MacOS. I would say, however, that BeOS successfully united a strong backend with a strong user interface, which is the unattainable ideal of seemingly every other operating system.
It's just a shame it was impossible to find software for it. The basic utilities existed, as well as some fun stuff, but the hardcore apps that even Linux has did not exist for BeOS.
I sincerely hope that if Be, Inc. dies, they will at least scatter their ashes among us so that we can take advantage of what existed so far.
And for those of you who have never actually used it, clear off a partition and toss it on there. Get your hands dirty with it, so that you'll understand what we're losing.
When ISP service becomes a legal right instead of a luxury service, I think it's safe to say that the Internet has taken its place as a fundamental part of life in society.
Once the internet shakes off its unstable bits, regains its composure, and starts over, I think that some of the powerful sites like ArsDigita will thrive once again.
Some will change, some will stay the same, but when the garbage falls away, only the sites with real content, real creativity, and real usefulness with thrive, and I honestly think that ArsDigita is one of these.
Another relevant question: "Why isn't Windows a desktop operating system?"
I hate to sound like Katz, but things really are changing. The thing that tech types have which many people don't is a passion for communication and information. Ideas are shared faster and with more clarity in the tech subculture than in any other group. Eventually, those ideas started leaking into mainstream culture, and we now see concepts and opinions once expressed only in text files passed around BBSes being expressed on CNN and in Time magazine. Napster, Linux, Open Source, Encryption are all words being discussed in restaurants, classrooms, workplaces, not just your buddy's basement over a game of Dungeons and Dragons.
And it all started out with guys like John Perry Barlow, who wrote things like that way, way back in the day.
So now I can heat up pizza in my car, right?
The world is becoming disturbingly postmodern. In the beginning there was bartering. Then people started using precious metals to represent the value of objects. Then they started using pieces of paper to represent the metals. Then they started using plastic cards to represent pieces of paper. Now they're trading that in for a number in a database.
Makes my head hurt.
Yeah, okay.
If there is a violation of the GPL, it is equivalent to breaking one of the Ten Commandments, but if Microsoft defends their license it's just another example of "evil corporations."
If Apple fails to support HyperCard, how long do you think it will be before emulators or other software pop up that make it possible to run them? I'm guessing that it'll happen butt-quick. As is often the case, it only takes one nostalgic programmer to get the job done.