04.14
I bet if you looked in the standard Linux advocates dictionary you’d be hard pressed to find the word ‘easy’. It’s probably cowering somewhere among the Z’s, hoping that the the torture will stop.
What am I referring to? Comments such as this (or Google your own) …
Maybe if it wasn’t so easy to change it would matter a little but now it’s starting to sound like a bunch of spoiled babies crying because mommy didn’t cut the crust off of their sandwich. Get over it people…
In the above example the zealot is saying how you shouldn’t complain about a usability regression because it’s so easy to change back. Here’s what people are referring to as easy:
It is easy to change back to the traditional top RHS.
Alt +F2 to open launcher
gconf-editor
select: apps/metacity/general/button_layout
Place ‘spacer, after ‘menu:’
menu:spacer,maximize,minimize,close
It’s almost as if you say something is easy enough times it’ll suddenly be easier – such as ‘updating is easy, just type sudo apt-get dist-upgrade’ – ignoring the fact that words have actual meanings, and changing the meaning to make something seem better than it is is dishonest. Here’s the dictionary definition of ‘easy’:
Easy: achieved without great effort; presenting few difficulties : an easy way of
Of course when you actually bring up the fact that it’s not easy you’ll get this fun little qualifier added ‘It’s easy when you know how‘. But as far as all the dictionaries I have checked none have ‘when you know how’ anywhere in the description. And why not? Because ‘when you know’ negates the whole meaning of ‘easy’. Here’s a bunch of other things that are ‘easy when you know how’.
- C Pointers
- Regular Expressions
- Mod Rewrite
- Juggling
- Professional Snooker
- Tightrope Walking
- Multidimensional Arrays
- Assembly Language
- Windows Arabic Edition (it’s easy once you learn Arabic)
You see where I am going with this. In fact I can’t think of a single thing that isn’t ‘easy once you know how’. Even the deliberately obfuscated languages such as Brainfuck are probably fairly simple once you get to know it well enough.
CLI vs GUI
Think of a GUI as a complex network of roads and paths. You have all the paths in front of you and can see the main highways (start button) and little hidden side-roads (control panel) but although they are sometimes twisty and poorly signposted it is possible to get from A to B without a map. Not that a map wouldn’t help, and not that the signs can’t be better, but getting from A to B does not require one.
The CLI on the other hand is like the same network of roads, but instead of having signposts you have a blindfold. You need to know exactly what road you need, where it is and how to get down it. One mistake and you are lying in the ditch. It’s the whole point of a GUI and why they have been so wildly successful – they make things easy.
I remember telling a veteran Linux user about tail -f to monitor updates on a log file. It’s not because he was stupid, it’s because he had never ever read the particular bit of documentation that described this feature. That is, to effectively use a CLI based interface you must have already read and remembered everything about it.
If we take the above example as a GUI then the program will often pop up a message ‘changes detected, do you want to update to the file stored on disk’, with Yes, No and Always as an option. There’s no way you could not know about it. Same thing with mounting volumes, I’ve used various GUI partition tools for the last 20 years and the only thing I need to know going in was what I wanted. I used the Linux mount command for the first time and wasted the best part of an hour due to not knowing to add ‘-umask=0666′ to the command to make it user-readable. If that was a GUI there would have been an ‘allow user access’ checkbox and the problem would not have existed.
If something requires a mass amount of prerequisite knowledge then it is not easy! If there is no way of knowing that something is even possible, let possible to figure out yourself then it is not easy! Just because once you have invested the months of practice into learning whatever you happen to be using (Bash, VI, Emacs, Perl, etc) you can do something in 5 seconds does not make it easy! If you have to copy line by line from the internet into a terminal window with no idea what you are typing means, it is not easy!
Hell, I am at the bottom of this article and I simply can’t remember what the steps were that were outlined as ‘easy’ – so if something can be written and read multiple times and you still can’t remember how to do it, it’s not easy.
Update: That’s not to say you don’t get some terrible GUI apps – you do. But the natural state of a well made GUI app is to be intuitive, obvious and easy. A CLI apps natural state is to have a mandatory RTFM requirement.
Sadly, I sometimes see this attitude applied to gaming – older games in particular where a nostalgia factor is in play. Game has tedious bosses that require level grinding to beat? Its easy if you know you have to prepare! Game has enemies with nonexistent / hard to find weaknesses? Its easy once you know them! Game requires traversing an entire map at a ridiculously slow speed? Its easy once you know the boots of blinding speed glitch! Game has blind jumps (I’m looking at you, Mega Man)? Its easy once you know where to land!
Of course, if a game/OS doesn’t require excessive trial and error, its been dumbed down for the masses / Windows users.
I once saw a program where you had to use an open file dialog to open a directory-based database. The solution? You go inside the database’s directory and open any one of the files; the file name is trimmed from the path. What’s worse is I saw a guy decry this as “not an issue.”
With GUIs as poorly integrated as the ones used in Linux, it’s no wonder hardcore users prefer the CLI. Here is an example: Click a program on the launcher… nothing happens. What? What’s going on? Click it again and again. Still nothing. Why?
Stop. I have to open a CLI window then manually try to launch the program to see the ERROR message telling me why the program won’t open. Unacceptable in 2010.
There was an incident where some user complained that he lost all of his work when X unexpectedly crashed as he opened a new window, and the useless reply from a Zealot was he should have expected a crash when doing something as unusual as using multiple windows at once. Keep in mind supposedly unstable Windows handles hundreds of windows without incident.
I love this blog.
The reason nerds love the CLI so much is because it makes them feel like they’re in The Matrix.
When they wanna promote Linux, they tell people it’s the easiest OS in the world. When you point out a serious usability problem, well, then you’re an idiot who can’t figure it out.
Wanting an easier interface and more streamlined usability is not *wrong*, people. This is about computer usage, not a pissing contest. Lambasting users for not being “macho” enough to wanna learn new commands is about as mature as a high school jock lambasting a preppy kid for not wanting to smoke.
Even folks who use computers regularly appreciate making things streamlined. It’s quicker and simpler to get things done. That is the concept of “convenience”, and it’s a lot more helpful in our lives than trying to keep up with esoteric methodology.
Tell me, why do you Linux fanboys use conveniences like plumbing and electricity? Don’t you think REAL people bath in streams, shit in the woods, burn kerosene and hunt animals for their food?! If not, stop crying, you babies!
Linux zealots have been telling us that LinuxIsNotHardAnymore(TM) for more than a decade. They’re kinda expected to, there are few Linux users who actually can keep an open mind and be realistic about the system they use.
There’s a difference between “hard” and “unnecessary”, “complex”, “unintuitive”, etc. Linux definitely falls into the latter categories rather than the former. Yes, I can, and -have-, learnt Linux console commands. But, I *shouldn’t have to* just to have a desktop operating system, and nor should the rest of the world. Just like I shouldn’t have to learn electrical engineering just to use a lamp on my desk, and I shouldn’t have to learn medicine and biochemistry just to mix up cough syrup if I have a chest cold. This is the attitude Linux zealots take.
HTML is easy to write once you’ve learned every tag. CSS is easy once you’ve learned every selector and attribute. Oh, and once you’ve learned every browser quirk.
Please stop complaning about ‘Linux’ if you’re not going to even specify which distribution you’re talking about. How about you use Ubuntu? Then you can direct all this criticism to the Ubuntu developers and leave everybody else alone.
HTML is easy to write once you’ve learned every tag
Come now, HTML takes all of about 5 minutes to learn, 7 if you want to validate with a strict DTD.
lease stop complaning about ‘Linux’ if you’re not going to even specify which distribution you’re talking about.
Usability flaws in the core design of an application, or in the core design of an OS itself doesn’t really change from dirto to distro.
Having used Mandrake, Debian, Slackware, Gentoo, Arch, Ubuntu, LFS, Lycoris, Corel Linux, eLive, GNUStep Live, JackLab, Crux, SuSE and others, having to drop to the CLI for no good reason is universal, The attrocious, unintuitive UIs are the same attrocious, unituitive UIs everywhere. Ardour, for example, is every bit as unintuitive and hideous to use be it on Ubuntu, Arch or Jacklab.
The first example in the main post is a gnome issue that’s universal accross distros. Gnome is Gnome. You want to fuck around with Gnome, you’re going to have to go through GConf, regardless of distribution.
The bit about GUI vs CLI applies everywhere, regardless of distribution, regardless of OS.
The example pertaining to APT is also universal, even on non-dpkg systems, there’s the equivalent command for Yum, Packman, Portage, pkgSRC, Swaret, etc. Someone apparently doesn’t understand what an example is.
Then you can direct all this criticism to the Ubuntu developers
Who do little more than repackage upstream projects, pit a shit brown theme on it, and call give it an African name to make it sound exotic, even if it was more than that, the Shuttleman himself says that OSS is not a democracy, he doesn’t give two shits if you don’t like what he has to offer, and of course, as a redistributor, they take care of fundamental shortcomings in the design of a system, or of components they didn’t actually develop, but rather inherited from their parent project.
and leave everybody else alone.
Because, Like, Kerberos had a gun pointed to your head threatening to teabag your mother to death and set your dog on fire if you don’t read his blog, right?
While you make a fair point, I find the converse to be more frustrating. When experience doesn’t confer an advantage in complex, time-consuming tasks I get frustrated very quickly.
Given a choice between a discoverable interface that has a low top speed and a cryptic one that can move mountains once you learn how, I know which one I’ll pick for common complex tasks. Learning can be hard, but at least it’s possible.
@3page
No. Linux fans are allowed to infest every corner of the tech community. They’re allowed to bash everyone else, from people who use other OSes to members of their own community. The web is in no short supply of Linux trolls who use “m$” and “windoze” and “crapintosh”. Go tell those people to leave everyone else alone. I’m sick and tired of Linux trolls being given free reign but if anyone else does the same thing then it’s “STOP BEING SO MEAN” and “LEAVE THEM ALONE” and “NOBODY IS FORCING YOU”.
Also… UseDistroX™ has been covered in-depth at the TMRepository. Linux has a multitude of problems that go beyond mere distro design. As someone who distro-hopped a lot during those years as a Linux user, I can tell you it’s a lot of crap. Basically, distros can be divided into these categories:
The “We tried to make it look like Mac or Windows” distro
“Desktop/beginner” distro
“Hardcore distro for Linux gods”
“Hardcore distro that we toned down for beginners”
The “based-on-major-distro-but-with-extra-stuff” distro
The “we-used-closed-source-components” distro
The “kitchen-sink distro that we claim can do it all”
“Any mix of the above but with a different desktop” distro
If Linux were so goddamn perfect, distros would be competiting to get it “right”.
Given a choice between a discoverable interface that has a low top speed and a cryptic one that can move mountains once you learn how
I find the converse to be more frustrating. When experience doesn’t confer an advantage in complex, time-consuming tasks I get frustrated very quickly.
Whose to say that’s always the case with intutive interfaces? Ableton Live is a great example of this, brilliant intuitive interface that took all of 15 minutes to get the hang of. That was 4 years ago, now I’m doing things with it I didn’t think were possible previously. Or take Photoshop or Illustrator, a decade down the line, and I’m doing increasing complex tasks with it, while investing decreasing amounts of time and effort as I gain experience.
That’s a misconception people who polarize things tend to make. The intuitive GUI interface serves to fascilitate use of basic funtionality and day-to-day use, the top tier functionality is still there, and still requires a time investment for learning, but people expect that of high end featuresets, while they have the opposite expectations for general use cases. Usability does not have to come at the expense of power if you do it right and segment the tiers of functionality properly, and discoverability doesn’t have to either: I’d posit that both Logic Studio and FCP are great examples of applications with discoverable, intuitive interfaces, with all kinds of upper tier functionality, as well as the ability to move mountains, none of their power lost through streamlining the interface.
Given a choice between a discoverable interface that has a low top speed and a cryptic one that can move mountains once you learn how,
I’d take the third option, an intuitive, discoverable interface with the ability to love mountains, once you learn how to use the full breath of its functionality.
“I’d take the third option, an intuitive, discoverable interface with the ability to love mountains, once you learn how to use the full breath of its functionality.”
Exactly. It’s a huge lie that the CLI interface is somehow inherently faster than a GUI. The few examples provided to ‘prove’ how it’s better are always ridiculous corner-cases that would rarely exist in the real world.
Given a choice between a discoverable interface that has a low top speed and a cryptic one that can move mountains once you learn how, I know which one I’ll pick for common complex tasks. Learning can be hard, but at least it’s possible.
Which is fine, go ahead, create a convoluted complex system that’s a bitch to use and require months to master – nobody will stop you. But if you do, please stop promoting Linux and insulting Windows as normal people don’t want your ‘hard but efficient’ goal.
This whole CLI vs GUI issue is just another demonstration of how the Linux Desktop doesn’t get the concept of design. In the real world, you don’t just slap things together. You write a library to expose functionality through a (*coff* *coff* stable) API, and then you build a front-end to it. Whether that front-end is a GUI or the CLI is immaterial. It won’t affect speed; it won’t affect rich functionality; it won’t affect anything. Don’t like the GUI/CLI? Fine. Write a CLI/GUI.
I’ve never seen this happen in the Linux world. Everything seems to be a CLI with a god-awful graphical mish-mash haphazardly thrown on top (the innumerable desktops don’t help). Sorry, but piping command-line instructions with heaps of obscure switches through a shell does not a design make.
Yeah, I never got why people are so in love with piping – it’s just text streams. If it could exchange actual well defined data objects then that would be good but it just seems like a glorified screenscraper to me. Same goes with the CLI wrapper approach – the amount of times I have seen a CLI error message pop up in a Linux GUI is ridiculous. As far as programming projects go parsing text with regexes has to be at the ‘toilet cleaning’ level of entertainment. Why do it to yourself? It’s not 1970 anymore!
To be honest I think the terminal is stupid – it’s the worst of both worlds. Just sack the whole damn thing off and replace it with an honest interpreted language. I swear some of the solutions these people come up with are more convoluted than just writing a short script to do it in Python/PHP.
As some else said I think it’s just some people get a sense of importance from doing easy things in a difficult way (like they are in the Matrix) and like to say “Look how smart I am, this is really complicated but I think it’s so easy! Did I say how smart I am!”
Actually I do agree a lot, but I wouldn’t say it’s CLI vs GUI.
( Warning: if you’re a linux zealot stop reading here or you’ll rage )
Thing is, look at powershell. There are no arcane two letter commands in powershell. There are aliases to them, so you can use stuff like spps -n explorer.exe, but you could also use something less cryptical, i.e. Stop-Process -Name explorer.exe and it would work as well. If I got some place I can search for everything I want to ( Get-Help ), using a CLI is easy. The problem is on linux that it’s copied from UNIX with unstandard additions. And like each program got a different set of arcane switches that are poorly documented, if you’re lucky there in some man page you can read over a SSH connection to not damage your eyes at all. But in Linux, there is no kind of standarized switches. -v in one program does something different in an other, and some require double minus for switches, others don’t etc. Nobody sane can remember this. Then there is stuff like chmod modi. Telling people to set chmod a+s /bin/ping if their ping shows them they need to run as root is of course a good solution. In Windows there are flags for this as well. However, I *barely* hear of people who use icacls to change their file permissions? Why? Because it’s easier to right click and just check the boxes you need to.
A good CLI is of course something handy, but saying CLI is GUI for pros is a paraphrasing for “GTK+ sux, I tried to code with it, but it’s like bullshit and not handy” ( don’t believe? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GTK%2B#GTK.2B_hello_world ! ). I can understand you don’t want to make a UI with that, especially because others got no GTK+ but Qt or WxWidgets etc. ( Funny fact: you can create a GUI in pure powershell that delivers the same in about 2 lines of code )
However, I think there is also a lot of stuff a CLI is handy for. Scripting for instance ( ok you can use VBScript on Windows, even 6 year old kids can code with it, it’s self-explanatory ), or special stuff like queries. For WMI queries, a CLI is the way to go, as you need to type in stuff anyway. But pushing GUI things off to CLI with cheap excuses like: I can do it faster this way etc, is rather an attempt to conceal that creating a GUI on Linux is a pain in the ass, because of no standarized API causing people to have to install at least 3 different types of widget toolkits atop Xorg to get all programs to run. Although, this is not limited to CLI/GUI issues. Crypto got the same problem on Linux. Heimdal/MIT Kerberos or GNU GSS/Shishi, you can find it all. As they conflict in library names, your program needs to basically hold support for all of them to get it to work properly. You’re going to think twice about including Kerberos support into your app before actually doing it. Having a CLI is way more comfortable on Linux. Of course it is. Is it superior to a properly done GUI for the end user? Certainly not.
Whether that front-end is a GUI or the CLI is immaterial.
They also don’t get that the UI itself requires actual design. It’s the first rule of (good) design: Form Follows Function, always and without exception. “Pretty” is of no use if it lacks usability or fails to segment and expose different tiers of functionality in a sane and intuitive manner. Polish is one thing, design is another, though a talented designer will give you both, the latter should supercede the former always and without exception.
Granted it’s no trivial task to come up with, much less implement a UI design that is both accessible to the layman, while accomodating the pro (but even pros like accessibility, worlflow and intuitiveness), but it isn’t impossible, there are ways to do it, using Ableton as an example again, there are different views for different workmodes, with well done functionality segmentation, so no matter what you’re doing, you’re presented with a clean, intuitive and straightforward interface through which to do it. You wouldsn’t think dj-style mixing would be provided with an intuitive interface through to do it in what is essentially a DAW/multitrack editor, but they pull it off quite well, all while keeping in line with users’ expectations of what a DAW should look like and behave like, while presented in a way where, while it certainly helps, little to no prerequisite knowledge is necessary (other than the obvious, nothing will help you if you don’t have an ear for music, and no amount of visual aids will help you much if you’re tonedeaf).
Another fantastic example is Reason’s routing interface, is there anything more intuitive than mimicking the IO cabling of physical equipment? And much like physical equipment, the cabling comes out of the back of the device, so it’s not in your way, cluttering up the main UI. Not only is that clever UI design, it’s a top-notch example of segmenting functionality in a way where each tier is as intuitive and accessible as the others.
(I like using audio processing as an example since it’s generally regarded as one of the more complicated use cases, which also tends to have a lot of pre-requisite knowledge associated with it)
And there’s Reactor, which contrary to alternatives (Max, CSound) requires little to no prior knowledge of audio programming or synthesis or even sound theory to create synthesizer instruments, which is presented by the primary UI much like Automator presents shell automation, a modular drag-and-drop interface, with the under-the-hood/high end functionality segmented and hidden away elsewhere. You don’t even need to have basic knowledge (like what a sine wave, oscillator or arpeggio is) to create, say a three-oscillator arpeggiated synthesizer, you just link three oscilators together and rout them through an arpeggiator, bingo bango, you’ve build a basic instrument. Simple, easy to use, accessible interface with no barrier to entry that can move planets (screw mountains) once you learn the upper tiers of functionality? There aren’t many better examples, and neither CSound nor Max qualify as such.
And with all that being said, having prior knowledge of things like musical theory, audio synthesis and audio programming most certainly helps, and you’re well rewarded for it in that the quality of the end result scales proportionally to how good you are, hoe experienced you are, and how well you know you shit – though none of it requisite for the layman, nor for base functionality.
These examples of course, are cases where the UI and underlying programming are designed and built as parts of a complete unit, that function so seemlessly that it makes me wonder if the underlying programming was actually built around the UI.
An app without a useful UI is useless. The purpose of an application to be a tool used to accomplish a task, any interface that gets in the way of doing that, or makes it more convoluted than it needs to be fails at 3F. It helps to look at your application for what it is, little more than a glorified screwdriver, and the OS as a glorified tool shelf, design accordingly. There’s no benefit (or point) to an overly convoluted screwdriver, and while the difficulty of intuitive design increases proportionally to the complexity of the task it is geared to accomplish, (so it’s a power saw instead of a screw driver, let’s say) it’s no excuse to forgo proper design entirely. I don’t need to understand the physics of why pounding on a nail with a hammer pushes it into a surface to use a hammer, so too, I shouldn’t need to know anything about how the underlying system or hardware works to use a computer, knowing such may be useful, but should never be pre-requisite to use.
Yeah, I never got why people are so in love with piping
Piping is powerful, being able to chain commands together and to use the output of the previous command as the input of the following command offers a lot of possibilities, especially for scripting and task automation. Though it makes a lot more sense in the context of Unix, whereeverything is supposed to, ideally, do one thing and do it well, it’s still nice functionality to have, it’s just not the be-all-end-all-ultimate-solution-to-everything some people make it up to be.
However, it’s not a CLI-specific thing. Anyone whose used OSX 10.4 anmd later, especially one whose made heavy use of Automator (especially with QuickSilver) will attest to how awesome it can be, especially when there’s an intuitive, user-friendly GUI for it that treats CLI scripting like modular drag-and-drop assembly, where it’s a lot less like CLI scripting, and a lot more like recording macros. Yeah, they made a GUI frontend to piping and the CLI, and it does wonders for workflow.
To be honest I think the terminal is stupid – it’s the worst of both worlds. Just sack the whole damn thing off and replace it with an honest interpreted language. I swear some of the solutions these people come up with are more convoluted than just writing a short script to do it in Python/PHP.
I find myself using interactive Python as a shell quite often, but the traditional CLI is useful. Powershell is wonderful, and Bash isn’t so bad either (though I’m one of those nutcases who still prefers CSH, I got used to it on Solaris and FreeBSD). My issue with the CLI on Linux is that as much as they say otherwise, the CLI is the primary UI, and the GUI is just an afterthought tacked on to it ex post facto, and while a CLI is nice to have, it’s unacceptible as the primary interface to a desktop/workstation in this day and age.
There are no arcane two letter commands in powershell
I liked that PS had many of the same commands as Bash as cmdlets (rm, mv, ls, etc) which greatly reduces the barrier to entry for base functionality. It’s good design for a CLI interface, especially given that I don’t need to know anything about the higher end functionality or OO stuff to use it as a layman. Even the CLI can make use of segmented functionality to provide a more accessible and intuitive UI).
The problem is on linux that it’s copied from UNIX with unstandard additions. And like each program got a different set of arcane switches
It’s not that they’re poorly documented, the CLI apps (and their maze of switches) are quite well documented in BSD and Unix. It’s just that they’re not well documented in Linux (open up the “same” manpage on FreeBSD and in Linux and marvel at the difference – some BSD manpages may be more on the cryptic side, but at least they’re complete and orders of magnitude more well written, in contrast), which weather the loons like to realize it or not, results in knowledge of Unix being pre-requisite to using Linux, which is dually absurd, since Linux isn’t even Unix, and the sheer amount of Linuxisms makes a fair share of that prior knowledge useless, while still being requisite.
I can take what I know from IRIX to Solaris and vice versa, I’ve been able to use that to operate AIX and HP-UX as well. But a lot of that stuff goes out the window with Linux, but yet, Linux is designed in a way where you’re expected to already know Unix, but yet its implementation isn’t entirely faithful to how things are done in Unix, so knowing Unix doesn’t actually help you all that much, and what’s worse is that this approach actually makes sense to some people!
The Linux Haters Blog has gone silent. I suggest that all inferior offshoots do the same. Linux will endure past your attempts to destroy it.
Well what do you know? It’s adam queef. Admit it queefy boy, YOU HAVE NOTHING LEFT!
Who’s trying to destroy Linux? We’re sick of the constant advocacy and the cult-like frenzy to defend it at all costs. We’re sick of the fanboys telling us that it’s perfect when it’s anything but.
But that’s the attitude of the typical zealot. “You’re not for us, you’re against us”, “Everything’s in black and white”, etc. All I can say is, I’m glad Adam ran into Linux before he happened to bump into a suicide bomber recruiter. He’d be ripe picking.
I love how freetarded fucktwats like queefer are all about freedom, or so they claim, because it’s convenient, but when push comes to shove, won’t hesitate to try denying others the very cornerstone of freedom and free society: the right to dissent.
Freedom and free society aren’t achieved through software licenses or through source code availability, but from the free market place of ideas and the freedom to express oneself.
“Freedom” fot freetards is ultimately a self-delusion they use to mask that it’s really all about getting something for free, while allowing them to pretend to be all smug and morally superior about it.
I’ll take Mill and Voltaire’s idea of freedom over RMS’ any day, thank you.
I’m also quite fond of the groupthink that goes on on freetard circlejerks – any opinion that opposes theirs must be silenced in the name of freedom, of course. No, it’s not that queefer has nothing left, he never had anything to begin with.
Anybody counted the number of responses on Adam King’s blog recently? Not that quantity is a substitute for quality.
People should not be allowed to spread misinformation and fud. The difference between winbreds and linux users is linux users base their lives on truth where as winbreds are happy slaves being fed lies by proprietary companies.
Oh and I moderate the visitors on my blog based on IQ- that is to say only allow linux users.
I swear some of the solutions these people come up with are more convoluted than just writing a short script to do it in Python/PHP.
I never understood that either. It would be like someone trying to build complex applications using batch files in Windows.
*queef post.*
Don’t feed the troll guys.
@Adam King
“Oh and I moderate the visitors on my blog based on IQ- that is to say only allow linux users.”
Quoting one of my favorite dilbert strips:
“Nature has a way of compensating for weaknesses.”
“Really?”
“That’s why blind people often develop great hearing.”
“I guess that also explains why stupid people have big mouths.”
Oh and I moderate the visitors on my blog based on IQ- that is to say only allow linux users.
With the same redirect mechanism as before? Please. hitting stop before everything finishes loading bypasses that, that and changing your UA to “Queefer sucks donkey cocks”.
Anyone whose ever done a kind of web development, no matter how trivial knows how futile UA sniffing is.
People should not be allowed to spread misinformation and fud.
Regardless of the validity or lack thereof of either side’s claim. Freedom means that each side is equally allowed to present their viewpoint. The funny thing is that I don’t recall ever seeing censorship of any shape or form on the hater blogs (here, LHB, TMR, Jerkface, etc) but it’s rampant in freetardia.
“I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.” – Voltaire
We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still. – J.S. Mill
The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen. – Tommy Smothers
This one seems particularly befitting of Stallmanism:
Censorship reflects society’s lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime. – Potter Stewart
The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. ~John Stuart Mill
The test of democracy is freedom of criticism. ~David Ben-Gurion
If mankind minus one were of one opinion, then mankind is no more justified in silencing the one than the one – if he had the power – would be justified in silencing mankind. – J.S. Mill
I can keep going all day.
If you’re going to preen on and on about freedom, liberty and slavery, then put up or shut the fuck up.
“Fighting patents one by one will never eliminate the danger of software patents, any more than swatting mosquitoes will eliminate malaria. ”
“I could have made money this way, and perhaps amused myself writing code. But I knew that at the end of my career, I would look back on years of building
walls to divide people, and feel I had spent my life making the world a worse place.”
“If programmers deserve to be rewarded for creating innovative programs, by the same token they deserve to be punished if they restrict the use of these
programs. ”
“The idea of copyright did not exist in ancient times, when authors frequently copied other authors at length in works of non-fiction. This practice was
useful, and is the only way many authors’ works have survived even in part.”
The great Richard Stallman rips all your authors a new one for being irrelevant in the modern age.
“The great Richard Stallman rips all your authors a new one for being irrelevant in the modern age.”
http://piestar.net/2010/02/21/the-scientific-method/
Developers need to eat. Sure, you give it the large with this ‘free as in freedom’ bullshit but if nobody pays their wages then they are not going to work – and if you want me to give my software away for free and then work as phone support to make my money back you are seriously deluded.
FOSS seriously discriminates against the small developers, the people least able to provide the whole ‘support’ solution you love to go on about. It’s ironic that to work on FOSS you pretty much be funded by some big corp, such as IBM, and thus give up your freedom to work on what you want – instead having to work on what Megacorp A tells you to. Bye bye innovation!
If a programmer decides to create something and release it under an extremely onerous license then they are free to do so – the world loses nothing by them doing this. If you want to force everyone to give their work away for free (it’s called communism and it doesn’t work) then the world loses as creators no longer have the motivation to create.
“FOSS zealot advocates seriously discriminates against the small developers”
Fix’d, don’t generalize the entire population. ( There are good FOSS out there, like Free BSD for example.)
I more meant that it is night on impossible for an individual/small development shop to actually monetize the development of FOSS. To make ‘free software’ profitable it generally needs to be provided alongside other services – see hosting companies, support etc. If you just want to make an app then you are pretty much screwed.
I don’t mind people making free software in the slightest, it’s this whole ‘ethical’ thing where you are being told to give everything away for free (by non-developers, newbies and idiots) with the claim that you can somehow magically make more money via some UnderpantsGnomeStrategy(TM).
Thinking about it the fact that the only people who can’t make money from FOSS development are software companies is highly amusing.
I object to your saying that communism just doesn’t work. A truely communist state has never been tried before. Capitalism doesn’t work either in the sense that it lets the rich get all the power.
True communism goes against human nature. Unless human nature changes, you can pretty much forget about the whole thing.
“I object to your saying that communism just doesn’t work.”
There is far too much ‘red scare’ rhetoric still attached to communism. Personally I think it is a great idea (in theory) but it just doesn’t seem practical on a large scale. Communism has been working successfully for thousands of years in small communities and tribes. It’s just (as Til said) human nature takes over on a large scale as why put in the extra effort to help people you don’t know and will never meet?
Capitalism works because it provides an encouragement for working your ass off. The ultimate failing is nobody will work hard if they get just the same reward for slacking all day.
But you can’t just say it’s nature. It could very well be a nerture problem; people are taught to value themselves over society. If people are taught to value giving to society first and foremost then communism could work quite well.
Rusty — that’s indoctrination, not nurture. It’s difficult to imagine a society beyond the level of a small tribe where this would work at all, let alone well. Who are the teachers? How are they organised? Who’s in charge?
And what happens when a communist Bill Gates, fully nurtured and so on, suddenly realises that he can make far more money by working for himself than by working for the community?
See, pure theoretical communism only works two ways. In the utopian version, it works because everybody plays nice — which they won’t. In the dystopian version, it works because somebody with a bloody great two-by-four, studded with nails, hits you over the head when you don’t play nice. Quis custodiet ipsos custodies? Clue: it won’t be nurture or true believers.
The days of the monitized small developers are over. Customers realize that free alternatives produce better results for zero cost.
Just a guess, but Happy Birthday, mate.
Heh. Rusty, re-read what you wrote carefully. IF we could change human nature then people would work for free. Yep. IF we changed human nature we could eliminate anger, sadness and all our negative emotions. Hell, why stop there? IF we could change the fundamental laws of nature and the universe, we could be rid of a predator/prey ecological model and entropy respectively!
You see the point? Any system which “works” so long as it requires a totally new social order… well… doesn’t really work, now does it? Wishful thinking doesn’t make something so.
The simple fact is that competition is healthy, and survival is a great motivator to do your job well. People aren’t “taught” these things; it is a deeply-rooted instinct which exists in all animals. The FSF and Karl Marx, insightful as he was, isn’t about to change hundreds of millions of generations of hardwired thinking.
I work for a living. I don’t make money just because I “only think of myself”. I have a family to support and I donate my time and money to the needy where and when I can. Capitalism and community are not mutually exclusive concepts and I’m sick of people who keep drawing on that false false dichotomy.
The great Richard Stallman rips all your authors a new one for being irrelevant in the modern age.
Freedom, democracy, free speech, free culture and the right to dissent, and the evils of censorship and the repression of freedom are irrelevent in the modern age, ? My Gods man, what distopian world do you come from?
Here’s one from another MIT graduate (albeit this one, unlike Stallman, is actually quite reknown) and is rather appropriate for Queefer:
“If you believe in freedom of speech, you believe in freedom of speech for views you don’t like. Goebbels was in favor of freedom of speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re in favor of freedom of speech, that means you’re in favor of freedom of speech precisely for views you despise.” – Noam Chomsky, “Manufacturing Consent”, 1992.
I object to your saying that communism just doesn’t work. A truely communist state has never been tried before. Capitalism doesn’t work either in the sense that it lets the rich get all the power.
“True”Communism, like Marxism is a uptopian conept which cannot be put in practise in the real world. And you’re right that it never has been, all we’ve seen, or rather what we generally refer to as “communism” is a corrupt form of despotist socialism, which has never worked – though that’s not even the only form of socialism that’s been put into practice – Democratic socialism, however, works very well in Canada and the Scandinavian states (which tie up the top of the ranks of the Human Development Index in terms of quality of life). Part of it is, I guess, that states implementing democratic socialism know better than to actually call themselves socialist states, and even the redophobes don’t call these socialist states (the term “welfare state” gets used a lot) because it flies in the face of their argument that all branches of Marxism, regardless of implementation, are doomed to failure.
The core economic of the economic ideology, Marxism, is far too utopian to ever work, and even Marxists know that, the more tempered branch, Communism, still doesn’t work, the most realistic branch, Socialism, when implemented properly (as a mechanism to temper the free market, rather than replace it), however, works quite well, with the biggest caveat/advantage being that while a socialist economy won’t balloon like a capitalist economy will, it’ll be much more stable and will grow steadily, with proper management, in a sustainable fashion.
The way I see it: Free market == good. Capitalism == bad, Socialism == good. The first two aren’t mutually inclusive, and the first and third aren’t mutually exclusive, why not combine the two goods and leave out the bad (or as much of it as is possible, at any rate).
WTF? My comment didn’t post? O_o
The great Richard Stallman rips all your authors a new one for being irrelevant in the modern age.
What fantasy distopian universe do you come from, where freedom, freedom of speach, free sociatey, democracy, the right to dissent, tollerance and the evils of censorship and the repression of freedom and basic human rights are no longer relevant in the modern age?
Here’s one for Queefer, from another MIT graduate (although this one is important enmough for people to know he exists):
“If you believe in freedom of speech, you believe in freedom of speech for views you don’t like. Goebbels was in favor of freedom of speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re in favor of freedom of speech, that means you’re in favor of freedom of speech precisely for views you despise. ” – Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent, 1992.
as an aside…
The idea of copyright did not exist in ancient times, when authors frequently copied other authors at length in works of non-fiction. This practice was
useful, and is the only way many authors’ works have survived even in part.
What about works of fiction, then? Authors didn’t copy those at length? It’s okay to copyright those?
And what timeframe is he speaking of when he says “ancient times” literacy wasn’t ubiquitous in ancient times as it is now, even in the not-all-that-distant-past (colonial times) reading and writing were skills reserved for scribes, monks and the upper class elite. Most important works weren’t even translated into vernacular language until Martin Luther came along, or was he talking about further back, where everyone and their mother walked around with a chizzel and tablet looking for things to copy?
And again, what of fiction? News, legislature, historic records, collections of works, etc are one thing, and copyright doesn’t really cover those now, either (copyright is one thing, plagarism is another) but what about creative works (which is why copyright is designed to protect). You’d never see replications of creative works of the great masters (also because the barrier to entry for such was quite high), but even people in a position to do so, never really overtly copied each other, they’d instead one-up each other (take an idea and do it better), and you’d never see rampant copying of the great philosophers either – the concept of authors rights (which btw is Civil Law copyright) has existed for as long as the publishing of creative works has existed (it was just never, irrc, internationalized until the Berne Convention – which appropriately took place in a time where reading and writing had already become ubiquitous).
I know you’re just blindly regurgitating, but I, and I’m sure others, have spotted the very deliberate choice of words (non-fiction), ignoring creative works alltogether, which we all know is what copyright and author’s rights were designed to protect.
Also, while intellectual rights have changed over time to adapt to the way of the world, wheras the passage you quote is anachronistic at best, absurd at worst. We should go back to a system used in ancient times (whatever that may be, where by common understanding of the period “ancient times” refers to, such mechanisams were not necessary on the grounds of the barrier to entry being ridiculously high), where software didn’t exist, and was thus never taken into account expressly, and apply it to something that didn’t even exist in that period? And he’s relevent in the modern age?
What’s worse is that nothing you’re quoted even relates to, nuch less obsoletes anything I have posted, as you’re talking software, and I’m talking the basis of free society.
they’d instead one-up each other (take an idea and do it better),
As an addition, both copyright and patent law allow such behaviour as well: while you cannot outright copy a method (without authorization), patent law allows to to conceive a different (better or otherwise) method in place, without requiring authorization.
So, too, copyright afford an author the ability to draw on other works and produce something similar or in the same veign as the works being drawn on, so long as the second author isn’t outright copying the initial works.
And besides that. outright copying of creative works is and always has been shunned in creative circles, regardless of legislation. Even amongst people unfamiliar with IP rights, copying is shunned and something to be avoided (while the technical profficiency required to faithfully reproduce a work is recognized), thought it’s genetrally understood that you need permission from the original author, or barring that, is fair game as long as you don’t claim credit or try to sell it (reproducing a work in your own, or a different style, however, say Gaugin the the Fauvist style, or Geiger in analytical cubism, etc is a different matter entirely) And distributing someone else’s works is also frowned upon. But this also works because the sense of competition is quite different in creative fields than in it is in others (say, software) Art happens for Art’s sake, it doesn’t really get productized, you enjoy it for what it is, you don’t replace one creative work with the other, like you do with software. (Design, which some refer to as “applied art” is both a creative work, and productized, mind you).
Software, while it can be considered a creative work, serves a different purpose than traditional creative works, it’s made to be functional and to provide a functionality other than its being, it’s a tool, it’s productised, and the type of competition is very, very different, and you’ll find a very different sense of what is and is not allowed without authorization (again barring actual legislation), while all the while, the same legal mechanisms protect both in the same way, because they both the same kind of work.
Are you some kind of anarchist? Either you’re living in some sort of LSD induced fantasy or you’re an anarchist that believes that people should be able to do whatever they want including kill and rape.
If we see someone cutting themselves we stop them. If we see someone jump in front of a car we stop them. If we see someone take the wrong bag by mistake we stop them. Why then can’t we stop them for expressing opinions that are wrong?
P.S. It seems M$ is torturing workers in China. Quick, tell me again how M$ is a saint who’s only purpose is to gently relieve me of my money.
Fighting patents one by one will never eliminate the danger of software patents, any more than swatting mosquitoes will eliminate malaria.
So RMS advocates the genocide of mosquitoes? To paraphrase the great Frank Zappa, that’s like treating dandruff with decapitation.
What exactly IS the danger patents present anyway? What they do is not only encourage but enforce both cooperation and innvocation – you want to use somebody else’s method, you ask permission and engage in negotiations (rather than just taking it), encouraging cooperation, barring that, or if negotiations don’t go your way, you’re presented with the option of innovating, and conceiving a different method.
Oh, my, the dangers of a courteous and innovative industry, heavens forbid!
“I could have made money this way, and perhaps amused myself writing code. But I knew that at the end of my career, I would look back on years of building
walls to divide people, and feel I had spent my life making the world a worse place.
That’s his prerogative, but someone as someone who preaches freedom, he does so in a fundamentalist way, only my definition of freedom is truly free, which isn’t freedom at all. The sentiment on it’s own, on the surface isn’t bad at all. He thinks he’s making the world a better place in his own narrow way, more power to him – but that stops once you put it into context, the man seeks to destroy what doesn’t conform to his ideology, and impose his over all, which spits in the face of his contention about the paramount importance of freedom… Unless, of course, he redefined “freedom” to serve his purposes (which isn’t all that uncommon, Immanual Kant used similar means in order to make his philosophical ideology self-contained, he created his own universe, or so to speak, to better support his philosophical ideology)
“If programmers deserve to be rewarded for creating innovative programs, by the same token they deserve to be punished if they restrict the use of these
programs. ”
And the above applies to this, too. It’s one thing to have your own ideology and abide by it, it’s another to impose it on others, especially when they aren’t doing anything particularly wrong, and your ideology revolves around denying the idea of author’s rights, and property rights (the latter being a basic human right), it’s up to to the holder of the rights to lay down to terms of under which their work can be reproduced.
So it isn’t by the same token at all, that they should be punished, is it? Programmers, as authors, have the right to decide the terms under which their creative work can be reproduced, and have the right to choose who can and cannot do so, why is it that “by the same token” they should be punished for making use of those rights? Especially when RMS is also using copyright exactly as it is designed to be used, with the GPL.
Whereas copyright ballances authors’ rights with everyone else’s rights via the Fair Use Doctrine, RMS denies authors’ rights entirely by placing the restrictions on what a prospective author is free to do. By his own faulty reasoning, shouldn’t he too be punished for restricting the use of his programs?
The answer is simple, not unless you ignore authors’ rights (which saves you the trouble from having to redefine what does and does nor constitute restriction), and refeine “freedom” and “rights”.
I can do this all day, as well.
Are you some kind of anarchist? Either you’re living in some sort of LSD induced fantasy or you’re an anarchist that believes that people should be able to do whatever they want including kill and rape.
By definition, the fact that I support copyright and authors’ rights barrs me from being an anarchist. But nice “MyDoom And You” referrence you’ve got there.
Why then can’t we stop them for expressing opinions that we disagree with?
Fixed that for you.
Because you sipposedly believe in freedom and freedom of speech. Put up or shut up.
Either way, no oponion is right or wrong. An opinion is an opinion, not a statement of fact (and a fact is not a statement of truth – facts aren’t dependent on perception: 2 + 2 is always 4, and the Earth rotates around the Sun. truths however are dependant on perception on other factors – two seemingly contradictory statements can be equally true to to two contradictory ideologies, e.g. Jesus was the messiah, while true to the Christian ideology is false to the Judaic ideology which suggests that the Messiah has yet to come).
Opnions are neither true nor false, nor right or wrong, they are opinions. While we may change our opinions based in our perception of the world, a new opionion is no more true or false or right or wrong than the old one was before being replaced by the new one.
Though one can argue that an opionion becomes a truth when it is accepted and shared by many – being based on perception of course, it is equally false to people or groups of different world views. Factuality of course, is a product of the scientific method, and requires empirical evidence, rather than mass agreement.
Systems like this allow M$ to get away with overworking chinese workers to the point that they barely get any sleep. Tell me again about how they should be allowed to sell their shitty product rather than let the world use it for whatever we want.
Waxing philosophical aside, if you think I’m wrong, you’re welcome to prove me wrong, which is something you have yet to do.
Silencing an opposing view is a concession of defeat. You flail haplessly at trying to prove it wrong, and resort to silencing it. If your argument was ‘true’ it would stand on its own, without the need to silence opposing viewpoints.
Opposing views should be silenced because objective proof rarely works. Look at the creation argument. We’re in the 21st centuries and these idiots still hold on to their supersticions. So objective proof doesn’t work and silencing them is the only way. Happy? I win.
Systems like this allow M$ to get away with overworking chinese workers to the point that they barely get any sleep. Tell me again about how they should be allowed to sell their shitty product rather than let the world use it for whatever we want.
The two statements have no correlation to each other.
Microsoft, or any other company, for that matter is allowed to treat foreign workers in that way because that is acceptible behaviour in those countries, in this case, the PRC.
If you have an issue with that, I suggest you take it up with the G8 and join the anti-globalization movement, or to lobby your own government to set legislated standards on corporate behaviour (e.g. you want to do business in this country, you have to meet a minum standard, or a less extreme approach, corporations with a good track record may be rewarded wth tax breaks, while those without, are penalized with tarriffs).
Now, while I don’t necessareily agree with the treatment of workers in developing nations, especially poor countries, I do recignize that these corporations aren’t actually doing anything that is illegal, and are simply using the means available to them to achieve their ends. Hey, if Germany can implement a tariff/reward system for the green issue, why not a similar system for treatment of workers, right?
If you want to get down to the rux of it, Microsoft isn’t the one overworking chinese workers to death, the Chinese government is – Microsoft, while not a saint by any standard, is only doing what is allowed under Chinese law. Place the blame on the guilty party, not the one you happen to dislike more, lobby for international pressure for PRC to reform their legislture – Now, it won’t work, because no economy has the balls to restrict Chinese exports in any way significant enough to make a difference, but at least blame the guilty party.
To address your second statement, I already have – because authors have rights, it is up to the holder of the rights to establish the terms under which their work can be used to reproduced.
If you’re done arguing in circles and shooting in the dark while chaining random unrelated fragments to each other, hoping that they stick, I’d like to get back to some sensible discourse, thank you.
Opposing views should be silenced because objective proof rarely works. Look at the creation argument. We’re in the 21st centuries and these idiots still hold on to their supersticions.
You’re getting it wrong. The burden of proof isn’t on science to prove creationism wrong, nor is it on creationism to prove science wrong – the burden of proof lay on science to prove itself “right” (in quotes because while many theories check out mathematically and have observable empirical data to support them, are still regarded as theories, and have no yet graduated to facts), and it has, via the scientific method. And the burdon of proof lay on the creationists to prove creationism “right” (and they’ll argue that proof isn’t requisite, only faith).
Which is fine. They’re entitled to their opinions and have a right to exprees them, just as you have the right to express your beliefs and opinions and express them. My point of contention is not that you’re arguing censorship and the silencing of opposing ideas – that you’re right to do so – my contention is that you claim to support and believe in freedom of speech, while supporting the censorship of ideas which oppose yours.
So objective proof doesn’t work and silencing them is the only way.
Why is it so important to you that they be convinced? I don’t really care what anyone else believes – I’ll agree or disagree with certain oponions and engage in discourse, but in the end the objective is discourse, not to convince the opposing party. People are entitled to their beliefs, and I’m of the mind that they have the same rights I do regarding them. Freedom of speech is worthless if it onlt applies to one side of the argument.
Happy? I win.
No, you really don’t. Not unless you redefine “win” to mean “flail haplessly”.
Actually its an interesting insight into your persona’s psyche. You’re supposedly all about freedom, and opposed to restrictions (but only the ones who apply to you), but are all for imposing your view upon others, and restricting them (because rtestrictions are fine, as long as they don’t affect you).
So, what is it that make YOU so special?
It’s important to me because it has actual practical consequences. If M$ is made to behave in a manner promoting freedom then they will share windows even though no one wants it.
So you’re trying to make the circular argument that you want to forcibily impose your ideal on others and silence all opposing viewpoints, on the grounds that there’s the “practical consequence:” that you’ve effectively robbed authors of their rights, and forcibly imposed your ideal on everyone and forcibly silenced all opposition, all so you can get something you claim to not even want in the name of promoting freedom, even though you’re made it quite clear that you neither believe in nor promote freedom.
New TM, anyone? FreeAsInStalin(tm)
You’ve still not answered by rather straightforward questions:
- What makes YOU so special?
- Why should authors not have rights?
Queefer has nothing.
communism is not a system that has to be implemented. it is a result of historical development that brings economic changes. the “problem” with communism is not humans are greedy, but the entire marxian theory of history.
If adam queef have his way, then say hello to communism software. I can’t figure out if it’s hypocrisy or irony.
the “problem” with communism is not humans are greedy, but the entire marxian theory of history.
I’d say it’s because pure Marxism is too uptopian to ever actually work, its offshoot, Communism, is still too idealistic to ever work – the only branch of Marxism to ever be implemented in practice is Socialism, which has mixed results: Despotist Socialism as implemented by CCCP, PRC, North Korea, etc has been an abject failure every time – Democratic Socialism, on the other hand (as implemented by Canada and most of the Scandinavian states) works quite well, and the states implement it perrenially top the Human Development Index rankings. We don’t think of these states as socialist because for one, they know better than to call themselves socialists, and even the commiephobes call them “welfare states” instead, as the success of such implementations spits in the face of the assertion that all forms of Communism are doomed to failure.
The problem is that neither capitalism, nor communism work particularly well (or at all) on their own. Free Market == good, Capitalism == Bad, Socialist economics == good, Communism == not applicable. strip out the bad elements and combine the good ones. Implementations where socialist economics are implemented as a mechanism to complement and regulate the free market, rather than outright replace it are proven to work quite well, while such an economic system (and people forget that socialism is purely an economic system) won’t produce the exponentially ballooning growth of a closer-to-capitalist economy, it will result in a much more stable, efficient one that can grow sustainably with proper management.
Adam King said: 2010.04.20 23:35
“It’s important to me because it has actual practical consequences. If M$ is made to behave in a manner promoting freedom then they will share windows even though no one wants it.”
If no one wants it, then it won’t have any practical consequences, now will it?
North Korea promotes Linux, and by extension, freedom. If you want to be free, why not renounce your US citizenship and move there?
By the way, please give us a link to a “Microsoft oppresses Chinese workers” citation.
It would be interesting to see what Queef has in “mind” especially on the background of an article like this: http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2007/0416/064.html .
It’s important to me because it has actual practical consequences. If M$ is made to behave in a manner promoting freedom then they will share windows even though no one wants it.
So you basically just want a free copy of Windows then?
Explain to my something, why am I not FREE to include GPL code into my proprietary app? If this code is so open and free why can’t I just use it to do whatever I want? After all, if I read a book on explosives I could make a bomb OR I could create pyrotechnics for a movie, the book doesn’t dictate what I have to use my new found knowledge for.
Adam King is referencing a recent report that a facility in China that assembles hardware components for a number of US companies is essentially a labor camp.
In other words, nothing to do with software whatsoever, and certainly nothing MS had any direct hand in. Unless he believes that ‘M$’ has an evil monopoly on chintzy keyboards and they need to open-source how they add dome switches and set the function keys to behave erratically by default.
Adam King is referencing a recent report that a facility in China that assembles hardware components for a number of US companies is essentially a labor camp.
And he for some reason things Microsoft is responsible for this rather than the PRC government, and the G8/globalization initiative.
Except he’s too uninformed to know about globalization and the G8 summits, and he can’t reconsile (rightfully) placing blame on the PRC because they develop Red Flag Linux and the Unified Linux Kernel. Just like freejects can’t reconsile IBM both facilitating the holocaust and promoting Linux.
So they blame Microsoft. Because MS is responsible for all the evils in the world anyway.
We’re not fooled. Although you consistently talk about “freedom”, we all know it’s just a rather poor attempt to put a positive spin on your crusade against Microsoft.
I’ve been involved in IT for many years now. One of the common threads is the ceaseless Microsoft-bashing. Yeah, we know MS released lousy products. Yeah, we know some of their business practices are dodgy. It’s been said, and said again, and again and again, ad nauseam. It’s truly gotten stale now. It’s not as if MS hasn’t been held accountable. It’s not as if MS is the only offending company. It’s not as if they’re the biggest offenders of all.
When someone says M$ is not the worst offender at anything I immediately get suspicious. What other company routinely breaks the law like M$? What other company has been declared an illegal monopoly like M$? What other company has most of the population brainwashed into using their crappy product? What other company dumps their product when it looks like a competitor just might have a customer? What other company’s products routinely phone home to make sure chairman Bill hasn’t decided to cut off all windows 7 licenses unless you pay him $1000?
What’s the last time that you back up your extraordinary clams with citations? Back up or shut the fuck up!
Adam King said: 2010.04.24 20:41
When someone says M$ is not the worst offender at anything I immediately get suspicious.
Even if what you “begin to suspect” is that the person who says that, is not a dishonest and ignorant liar like yourself, you are still as dumb as a rock.
Sometimes people here say that “Adam Queef has nothing left” but the fact is, that Adam Queef has nothing, has always had nothing, will always have nothing, and, most importantly, is nothing.
“When someone says M$ is not the worst offender at anything I immediately get suspicious.”
Yep, of course you do. Anyone with a contrary opinion has dastardly intent. It’s all black and white, and anyone who is not for you is against you, etc etc etc.
By the way, are you aware that paranoia is classified as a form of delusion? From Wikipedia: Paranoia is a thought process heavily influenced by anxiety or fear, often to the point of irrationality and delusion. Paranoid thinking typically includes persecutory beliefs concerning a perceived threat towards oneself. In the original Greek, paranous simply means madness (para=outside, nous=mind). Historically, this characterization was used to describe any delusional state.
I’m one of the first to criticize MS. I loathe Internet Explorer and severely dislike the Xbox. I have issues with MS policies, prices and design decisions. But I don’t have the same irrational hatred as many in the IT world do, and believe in fair criticism as opposed to outright lies, double-standards and exagerrations.
“What other company routinely breaks the law like M$?”
Royal Dutch Shell (corruption, use of forced labor, violating embargoes, war profiteering during the Vietnam war, to name only a few cases), Boeing (industrial espionage), McDonald’s (illegal environmental, labor and health practices, bullying other companies), Wal-Mart (use of illegal workers, underage staffing), Nintendo (price-fixing), Goldman-Sachs (fraud and corruption), Xerox (auditing and accounting irregularities), Enron and Halliburton (do I even need to go into detail with that one?), and so on and so forth.
Out of interest, CNN ran an article not to long ago about American companies use Stimulus funds to break the law: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/US/01/25/stimulus.breaking.law/index.html
The biggest companies in the world are related to oil and motorcars, and are the among the biggest offenders to the law, human rights and the environment. MS doesn’t even feature in the top 10 list, nor in the top 25 list of the biggest companies in the world.
“What other company has been declared an illegal monopoly like M$?”
MS is neither a monopoly nor has it been “declared illegal”.
For a company to be a monopoly it must have absolute control over a service and/or product. The very fact that MS has competition, in the desktop market with Apple and in the server market with BSD and Linux, means that it is not a monopoly. MS has a large majority of the desktop market, which is *not* the same as a monopoly.
An example of a true monopoly is the South African company Spoornet, also known as Transnet. It is a railroad company that is state-owned. No other railroad company exists in the country.
Microsoft has been brought to court over its business practices, just as much as the companies listed above. MS’ practices, while not excusable, are tiny in comparison to the atrocities commited by the above and other historic companies, such as the East India Company.
“What other company has most of the population brainwashed into using their crappy product?”
Most folks use Windows because it meets their needs, not because they’ve been “brainwashed”. Linux is free, widely-known and has an army of defenders. Most people, Windows users included, bash Microsoft regularly. Yet, the majority of the world uses Windows on their desktops. Why do you think that is? Actions speak louder than words, and no matter how highly you speak of a product, the population will not use it if it doesn’t meet their needs.
“What other company dumps their product when it looks like a competitor just might have a customer?”
See above.
“What other company’s products routinely phone home to make sure chairman Bill hasn’t decided to cut off all windows 7 licenses unless you pay him $1000?”
Windows 7 “phones home”, once, to be activated. It will require re-activation if it detects major hardware changes. It’s not “routinely”. Also, Windows 7 does not cost $1,000. It costs less than $400.00, and that’s for the Ultimate edition.
“What other company routinely breaks the law like M$?”
Most, I’d bet, if not all.
“What other company has been declared an illegal monopoly like M$?”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:United_States_antitrust_case_law
You’re a bit obsessed, you realize?
I’ve never heard of a Microsoft fanboy, but there’s no way they’re as crazy or repulsive as this “Adam King” character. Are you just a fictional parody?
“What other company has most of the population brainwashed into using their crappy product?”
I’ve been using desktop Linux as my main OS for several years, and I think I’m going to switch to Windows 7 with my next computer. I’ve been using it on another computer for a few months, and it’s much more reliable, stable, intuitive, and usable than Linux.
Yes, that would mean I’m *CHOOSING* to go back to Windows, because it’s objectively *BETTER* than Linux. I’m an intelligent person, and I’ll gladly pay a few hundo for an OS that’s not going to waste all my free time and give me migraines when it fails me every few days. Stability and usability are much more important to me than meaningless notions of “freedom”. I want to use my computer to get things done, not to dick around on the command line putting band-aids on bugs created by amateur programmers who have been duped into working for free so that corporations can make money off their fanatical idealism. I drank the Kool-Aid once, but I think it’s wearing off.
I love the notion that people were “brainwashed” into using Windows. If they were brainwashed, why doesn’t Microsoft charge triple the price. If all Windows users are brainwashed fanboys, they’ll gladly pony up the extra cash. Right?
Historically, Microsoft hasn’t even advertised Windows as a lifestyle choice like Apple does, so how exactly did they do all this brainwashing?
Also, how does Queefer explain the fact that the percentage of pirated copies of Windows far exceeds the Linux marketshare? They’d rather steal Windows, an OS they know will work, than use Linux for free.
“What other company dumps their product when it looks like a competitor just might have a customer?”
That’s a funny accusation coming from a Linux evangelist. FOSS is the epitome of dumping.
Exactly! Giving something away for free is the ultimate form of price dumping.
“What other company dumps their product when it looks like a competitor just might have a customer?”
Pretty much all of them, you dumb fuck. Well, all of the successful ones. You know, the ones that know how to “compete in the marketplace”.
It’s not that we don’t already know that you’re stupid; it’s that we are always surprised by exactly how stupid you actually are.
By the way, the Linux win in Munich is turning out to be a great victory… for Microsoft.
The few examples provided to ‘prove’ how [the CLI is] better are always ridiculous corner-cases that would rarely exist in the real world.
Not only that, but they tend to be one-off single line scripts. Given that, the speed of the CLI is immaterial. After all, what’s an additional (possible) 30 seconds for a task that needs to be done once? Meanwhile, Microsoft, Apple, and Adobe spend millions researching which functions to make most visible so as to enhance efficiency.
Hi All,
I just wanted to share the process for vertically centering a page in Open Office Writer 3–it’s easy once you know how.
1. Open a new text document.
2. Select View | Zoom | Entire Page to see the entire page on your screen.
3. From the Table menu, select Insert | Table.
4. In the Insert Table dialog under Size, select 1 column and 1 row.
5. Under Options, uncheck Heading and uncheck Border.
6. Click OK.
7. Right-click on the table row and select Row | Height from the menu that appears.
8. Enter 9.92 inches in the row height specification box if you are using the default page settings. If you have changed your margins, determine the correct row height by calculating Row Height=Page Height-(top margin+bottom margin).
9. From the Table toolbar select the Center (vertical) button.
10. Begin typing the contents of your vertically centered page.
Becuase of the nature of inserting a table row that is the same size as a page, an extra page will automatically be added to your document. When you are printing your document, remember to set your printer settings to only print the page with content.
Here is another one:
1.Select the text that you want to center on the page.
2.Choose Insert -> Frame.
3.In the Anchor area, select To page.
4.In the Size area, set the dimensions of the frame.
5.In the Position area, select “Center” in the Horizontal and Vertical boxes.
6.Click OK.
I’m not kidding; everyone google “openoffice vertical center” right now, and journey back in time to 1996.