for 3 September 1999. Updated every WEEKDAY.
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Out of Eden Subject: Re: Friday's Article I was able to sneak an early look at today's (late) Friday posting. I think that you are wrong about Linux. Although, as said in the movie Wall Street, "Greed is good!" I believe that freeware is a rising star. <miked348@ hotmail.com> I don't know that greed is good so much as it's inevitable. Because free software is a rising star, plenty of people are going to try to hitch their wagons to it, although not all of them will be purely interested in astronomy. Or, um, something like that. Greg Knauss  Nice prose at Suck.com today, but I don't think you understand strength through diversity. Sure, some corporation is going to add something repulsive like a talking paper clip, but that doesn't mean that I have to give a rat's ass, let alone install it. Corporations only ruin software by adding stupid things that become required by something you need or by taking things away. ("Sorry, we don't support that, buy our New Technology instead.") Frankly, they're powerless to do either in an open source world. So then it's all about money. Yawn. I've got to get back to coding. <pohl@ screaming.org> But coding what? I'll give you $10,000 to write a talking paper clip instead of that journaled file system you've been working on. Others may not end up installing your vomitously cute help system, but neither will they be able to install the file system you abandoned. Where do your loyalties lie when there's cash on the line? Where do most people's? Where will Linux development be in the future based on that? Greg Knauss Subject: Knauss article Knauss' article had some interesting points — buried deep, deep under what appears to be a total misunderstanding of the issue. You guys should stick to commenting on things you actually understand. <rdosser@>mindspring.com> But then every article would be about the tender, loving hug of a small child. And wouldn't that get dull quick? No, being lectured by people who "know better" but are too busy to explain it to us is a much better way to go, we think. Thanks for your input, though! Greg Knauss Note. Red Hat is a Linux DISTRIBUTION. An iteration. To suggest that Red Hat and other commercial distros represent the entirety of the Linux community is like saying KFC is the only place that sells chicken. Saying that money and superficial features will be the primary forces driving Linux development is also somewhat short sighted. The real answer lies in what you call the earlier sins of Linux: vanity and pride. To the geek, these are the real brass rings. Recognition of the superior hack. Respect for the technically sweet. And yes, a level of disdain for the end user. These will continue to be the motivations of the majority of the Linux community. Let's remember, most of the Linux übernerds out there are already gainfully employed and hack around with their kernels for the same reasons marketing VPs go to baseball games. So Red Hat went public. So it's beholden to their shareholders. So what? Is it going to start writing most of its own code? I doubt it; that would be a major change of its business model — a nonsensical one. Regardless, Red Hat is one of a thousand blooming Linux flowers, and even if all the distros begin marketing to the lowest common denominator, they'll only be a part of the picture. That's open source. Jonathan Gran <chyld@elwha.evergreen.edu> No, the distributions aren't the whole of Linux, just like money won't be the whole of coders' motivations. But they will be very, very big (even the biggest) parts. Vanity and pride have motivated coders up till now because that's all there was. Add money to the mix and the dynamic changes dramatically. Vanity and pride will still play a role, of course, just as they always have. But I — and, I suspect, most people — would trade them in an instant for a few thousand dollars. Greg Knauss Linux means different things to different people, and because each user owns the source, it is not possible to take that away. Also, each distribution is different. If Caldera thinks an easy install is important, will any Debian users even think twice? No. What is important is to maintain some level of compatibility between them; and that is where Red Hat will play the most important role. It is the de facto Linux Standard Base system. As long as it stays truly open source, compatibility between distributions with completely different agendas will continue. Mark Lehrer <mark@hdplus.com> And what's Red Hat's motivation for doing this? It has a legal obligation to get the maximum return for its shareholders, and making things easy for Caldera just doesn't do that. Red Hat will do what corporations do, and that's make money in whatever way possible: gimmicky features, closed source development, all that. Greg Knauss I just wanted to point out a minor inaccuracy in your column about the Red Hat IPO ... and I quote: "Fixing an obscure bug in the driver code for a network card may be useful, but it's not sexy, and it's certainly not going to get the author noticed the next time someone's handing out prepublic stock." Actually one of the sources that Red Hat used for selecting candidates for pre-IPO stock was the credits list in the Linux kernel. The people listed in the kernel credits get there by fixing obscure bugs in driver code. Note that all distributions of Linux use the same kernel, so programmers did not have to directly contribute to Red Hat to be selected for pre-IPO stock. I'm not a C hacker, so I have no relation to Linux as a programmer, but several of my co-workers were invited and did participate. All of them were selected based on obscure bug fixes and extremely nonsexy, unglamourous geeky-type things that Mr. CEO Executive T. Moneybags MBA would never understand. Aside from this item, I agree with you that money may very well change some people's approach to Linux development. I think it already may have started before the Red Hat IPO. However, programmers are a strange lot. For one thing, good programmers are usually making enough money at their "day jobs" that they don't really care too much about getting more, more, more. I'm sure some people are going to greed out and go loco trying to make Linux sexy and get mentioned on News.com and InfoWeek, but there will always be hackers who work on the OS for the love of what they're doing and not for what they're getting. Thanks for sucking :) Joshua R. Davison <josh@onshore.com> But there's no guarantee that other IPOs — if they even include community stock distribution — will be based on the kernel's CONTRIBUTORS file. If raising my profile meant the difference between $25,000 and squat, you can bet I'd be raising my profile, in every way I could. Why take chances? Greg Knauss When I think of programmers and corporations becoming corrupt because of the commercialization of Linux, I am struck by the following: If any of those people contained the greed gene that leads to corruption, wouldn't they have already turned to the dark side? This is the software industry after all, the hottest, most sought after jobs are in it, and brains are the commodity. It's not like these people are poor inventors whose widgets have suddenly become this year's hot Christmas item. On the contrary, these are engineers whose day jobs let them drive BMWs. <brian@uniqsys.com> Speaking as an engineer who drives a 5-year-old Ford, if someone were to offer me a big pile of cash, even for doing something I enjoyed doing, I'd happily snatch it up. I've got kids to put through school. To say that gosh, everybody working on open source projects already has enough money ... that's just nuts. "No, thanks. Really. I don't need that extra $25,000. I've got plenty right here. But thanks. The offer is very sweet." Greg Knauss I would read Suck almost every day back three to four years ago but haven't looked at it in a long time, and your Linux article reminds me why. It wasn't even funny, for Christ's sake! Linux developers coded for love long before the IPO and the hype, and they'll continue to do so long into the future, even on obscure device drivers. There are plenty of people who really LOVE this stuff, and they're not going to curl up and go away just because the cocktail-party crowd is suddenly interested in their OS. If I want to read what a real hard-nosed realist thinks of open source, I'll go read Sam Williams' stuff in Upside. Based on your article, your opinions are not even worth a second look. Goodbye. <douglay@relicorp.com> So let me see if I've got this straight: Suck has lots of hype and sells out — you stop reading Suck. Linux has lots of hype and sells out — you stop reading Suck again. Y'know, Doug, another time or two and we're going to start taking it personally. Greg Knauss Hit & Run I very much enjoyed your latest Hit and Run, the interview being my absolute favorite. It amuses me that even in his fight for independence, Chief Hypocrite, or whoever, still succumbs to good ol' Hollywood. A man's got to make a living, right? I can't blame him, but it just seems fitting. So if and when they gain independence, is he going to become a foreign film star or what? I thought he was brilliant in Thomas and the Magic Railroad, BTW. Nacho <senornacho@geocities.com> "Chief Hypocrite" was fighting The Man before you were even an itch in your dad's pants, señor. Considering how many Hollywood westerns had Indians played by Sicilians (or in the case of The Searchers Chief Scar was played by the Berlin-born Heinrich von Kleinbach), it's only fair that a guy like Russell Means make a little jing from Hollywood. Yr pal, BarTel Dear Suck, I love reading your witty views on different things every day, especially with all the cool visuals. My only problem is that I find the format of "not a lot of words per line" kind of annoying to read. I have to constantly scroll down. Is there a way you could add another regular type format? Ashish Shetty <ashetty@andover.edu> No. I don't watch movies or TV very much, so I don't know if you're pulling my leg. I just thought it was an interview with an angry guy until you started rolling with the questions about acting in movies, etc. Come on!!? A guy that hates the American establishment takes direction from somebody in Hollywood? And if you did go to a reservation with a casino, how could you tell if the odd man out was a Canadian or a white guy (assuming he wasn't wearing a toque)? Kent Milani <milanik@processing.ersgroup.com> If he's Canadian, the odd man out will end every sentence with the phrase "... but I'm not from the United States; I'm Canadian." And don't say you don't watch TV or movies. It throws off the statistics. Mega-opichi-meegwetch (thanks) for the interview with Russell Means. It is opportunities like this that allow the general population(s) to learn about our issues. As a Native north of the 49th parallel (after all, my ancestors did travel across this continent), I was pleased and keenly interested to learn about the intentions of my relations to the south. Usually printed media, unless published by our own people, doesn't allow for full discourse of the issues at hand — we get to talking semantics. Anyway, thanks for spreading this news. Although I usually read your page for humor, it's good to see that you take on serious issues from time to time. (I have only subscribed for a couple months now.) Denise Bouchard <debchrd@cancom.net> Mega-opichi-meegwetch right back atcha. You might find that Means' opinions get rather short shrift even in media printed by The People. But you've got to give him one thing: He's colorful. Yr pal, BarTel Talk about no sense of humor! The appropriately named Russell Means is doing himself and his cause a great injustice by being such a rude bastard. His obnoxious, sophomoric "come backs" and post-PC posturing is just so ridiculous. Thanks again for humorously exposing the depths to which people sink. Nina Gregory
The reason Americans "chomp blithely" on said foods is that the FDA has actually made it ILLEGAL to label foods as not-genetically altered (I'm sure you remember the brouhaha over BGH). The government knows Americans wouldn't touch the stuff with a stick if there was anyway of their knowing what to buy. A large part of the trade war with Europe was over this. Europeans didn't want to be guinea pigs for large chemical companies and the US biotech industry. Eventually the United States caved a little bit, allowing the Europeans to label which foods were genetically altered (opening Europe to "free market forces" and "allowing consumers to decide for themselves," a goal that apparently carries no weight here. This particular example of our heroes on Capital Hill, striking another blow for freedom, is just dripping with irony). Since protection of the consumer can't possibly be offered as an explanation of this policy (he must be stopped before he cuts himself out of this incredible deal!), some of us would see it as yet another underhanded subsidy for US high technology (à la stealth). But given the way you terated the Indian, I guess you'd rather not hear it. Joe! <jhammerm@astro.ocis.temple.edu> ZZZZZZZ! Wha'? Oh, sorry, Joe, I just dozed off with my face in the seedless winter cantaloupe. "... the way you terated the Indian?" Did you read the interview? Yr pal, BarTel
I am really confused and concerned by Russell Means' comment that there are no black people on reservations. An African-American friend of the family worked as a doctor heading the tribal public health outreach program in an eastern casino. We asked him about the Native Americans, and he said that most white people would categorize them as black because they were, in some cases, African-American and only one-eighth Native American, etc. The majority of the tribe had some African-American ancestry. As far as I know, this is common throughout all or most of the tribes in the southern United States, with only the western tribes, albeit the largest tribes, keeping more genetically pure. I felt Russell's comments couldn't go by without some comment. As for your odd support of the eco-psychotics, I can only say that another friend of the family lost 10 years of his research and checked himself into a mental hospital after his genetically engineered corn, meant to help curb Third World hunger and produce stronger plants, was destroyed by thinly veiled luddite fascists. Had he created the same product organically, a process that would have taken 50 to 100 years instead of 10, the same eco-terrorists would have left him alone and maybe even used his organic genetically altered corn as an example of curbing Third World hunger. It makes you want to read that Onion article ostensibly by the 16-year-old farm boy again and again until it all sinks in. Your kids can get blue eyes one of two ways: by genetic alteration or by you fucking a blue-eyed person. Either way, it's the same exact result. Don Smith <dsmith@>qrc.com> Last week, in comments before the Navajo Supreme Court, Means' own lawyer noted that there are more non-Indians than Indians living on Indian reservations and that therefore his client should not be subject to the courts of another tribe. Go figure. Not fucking any blue-eyed people, the Sucksters Subject: Let's look at the results of pot use Scientific studies are but one source of info on marijuana.We have seen so many "junk science" reports floating around that they cannot be relied upon as a definitive answer to the drug issue.The fact is that scientists are human and have just as many prejudices as the rest of us. Let's look at the results of marijuana use. All the admitted pot smokers I have met on the Internet appear to have certain characteristics in common: They are immature, illogical, and incapable of discussing things in a calm, adult manner.They appear to be totally obsessed with weed to the exclusion of other issues. They babble incessantly about things that appear to have no relation to the subject under discussion. I myself have read of several studies which indicate that long term use of marijuana leads to permanent changes in brain chemistry. Most studies indicate that the byproducts of marijuana use remain in the bloodstream permanently. That's enough for me; I won't touch the stuff. Joe Bruno <Arusski@webtv.net> Once we were young like you, Joe. Such days! Out on seaside jaunts in our straw boatmen's hats, we whistled, "Hey Fiddle! Hey Fiddle!" at the young ladies with their matronly chaperones and drank bathtub gin with the brothers of Bones. When I graduated from old DeQuincy, my father called me into his study, handed me his watch and fob and an envelope full of greenbacks, and told me, "Son, this is yours to use as wisely or as foolishly as you see fit." I used half of it to buy myself a Roadster and put the other half into stock in His Master's Voice. The market was humming and jumping like a Negro band in those days. A year later, by God, I was rich! Youth! Youth! How buoyant are thy hopes! They turn, like marigolds, toward the sunny side. It's all gone now, blasted and seared with age. You kids don't know lickspit about the world. "Businessman, come drink my wine," you sing, "Come and dig my herb." It's all beer, skittles, and toad- licking to you, with your "Be-ins" and "Happenings." Oh, you'll learn! BarTel |
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