It came from Murray Hills New Jersey.

Was it the underpant gnomes?

I still haven't figured out why people read slashcr@p. I may have no over bearing love for MSFT but that place is like the nerd version of a supermarket tabloid.

Can I be stupid like them and work for free so large corporations can use my source to make money? Thanks but no. I work on open source projects, probably way more than is good for me or my career but pleeeeease Rory. Slashdot?

I've actually asked people I work with on OS projects who are way bigger OS geeks than me if they read Slashdot and I get the eye rolling, "are you F#cking stupid, do you know what reading that level of stupidity will do to your brain!?!", look.

The OS people that take part in Slashcr@p are the ones who start a project then spend ten years arguing about the license they will release it under and never actually do anything.

Most major OS projects have ten or less core people working on them and I'm pretty sure they don't read Slashcr@p. If they do it's probably for light humor.

If you are going to read slashcr@p, why don't you just do meth it can't possibly be any worse for your brain.

And your quote about replacing the collective mind of Slashdot with folgers crystals, no one would notice but: *sarcasm* Score 5, Funny */sarcasm* for you with that one. I d@mn near sh!t myself I laughed so hard. Somebody should tell the slashcr@p idiots to look behind them because the rest of lemmings might be gaining on them.

As far as Firefox goes, so f#cking what if you use Firefox buddy? I used Opera before I used Firefox. Firefox is a nice browser but so far at work my users are saying Java applets still run better in IE6. Far less painting issues than Firefox has. Meh whatever, I've never liked IE but Bully for them if they want to use it. I'll use whatever makes me money. Right now Firefox is making me money before that it was IE. I go where the cash is, I could give a flying f#ck about anything else. I'd switch to Linux if it made money but people need to catch a clue Linux sucks for 99.9% of people who don't compile software for a living. that's ok if they want to write Linux apps because it means more money for me writing Windows and Mac apps. Yeah fight the power buddy, d@mn the man, you go work hard on your linux solution and stick it to the man. In the meantime you'll find me over there getting paid fat cash by the man.

Good to see you back around boy. I hope Potato Chip GF is treating you well.

Slashdot?

Is this the magazine that all those programmers who pump gas for a living read?

Rory - I submitted that story to Slashdot and that comment is by me (see the username on the post).

Now, step back a bit and read it in a different way - and you would see that I had taken a dig at Slashdot and the 'Microsoft is dead crowd'.

I had submitted stories to Slashdot before with..err..pretty obvious digs at Linux but they never got accepted. So I made this one a bit more subtle.

2 things

- See the 'where *ni are 'supposed' to be doing well comment

- I had taken a poke at the general Slashdot opinion in the last sentence about Microsoft dying.

I had really wanted to submit this as "Microsoft dying? I dont think so, you nutcases"..but something told me that..well..may not have had a good chance of getting accepted

Grr..formatting!

- See the 'where *nix are supposed to be doing well' comment

Btw,in case any of you are wondering, yes, I do have too much free time. But the real reason is - I just got too annoyed with Slashdot and felt that the Microsoft-world needed to get its own say in a bit

After reading this paper, one might have a different opinion on why people are willing to work without monetary payments in software projects.

http://perens.com/Articles/Economic.html

What do you think of the idea that software (ideas) is a non-scarce good. And from a macro-economic standpoint oss is a more efficient way of producing software to drive 'services' for which one can charge?

Sriram -

"I had taken a poke at the general Slashdot opinion in the last sentence about Microsoft dying."

OK - that makes sense.

It didn't read that way to me, but it was also on Slashdot, so I assumed the worst.

Anonymous -

"What do you think of the idea that software (ideas) is a non-scarce good. And from a macro-economic standpoint oss is a more efficient way of producing software to drive 'services' for which one can charge?"

I think that, once I remove the terms like "macro-economic" and "non-scarce good," it still sounds like a bunch of hippies being taken advantage of by IBM.

Sriram -

OK - I went back and re-read it knowing what you were trying to say, and it's a completely different post now.

Damn you and your subtle slashdot jabs :)

"What do you think of the idea that software (ideas) is a non-scarce good. And from a macro-economic standpoint oss is a more efficient way of producing software to drive 'services' for which one can charge?"

The point is that people are writing OSS, and then /other people/ are charging for the 'services'. There's a lot of people making money from OSS, but most of them are not the ones actually writing the software.

Besides, I don't think *good* software is "non-scarce" at all. In fact, it's really, really hard to find!

Rory,

I usually don't get involved with debates on this matter (they are futile), but that is the best f@cking comment pointing out the ineptness of open-source zealots I have ever read.

Dean -

"Besides, I don't think *good* software is "non-scarce" at all. In fact, it's really, really hard to find!"

Good point :)

Nicholas -

"I usually don't get involved with debates on this matter (they are futile)"

Yeah... For me, this type of post is an emotional thing rather than something rational.

I'm not trying to solve anything, but it makes me feel a little better to get it off my chest and toss some words around with readers.

Plus, it's fun.

"Besides, I don't think *good* software is "non-scarce" at all. In fact, it's really, really hard to find!"

That is why the makers should be rewarded and applauded. The people who are distributing the software should be rewarded too.

Respectively the software implementer should earn a much higher pay then the distributor not the other way around. I think this is what the hippies want to achieve.

"For me, this type of post is an emotional thing rather than something rational."

Idem

Want to tick-off Linux zealots? Now that’s easy – find couple of them and ask them:
1) Which distribution is the best?
2) Which to use – that KDE or Gnome thingy?
3) Which editor to use vi or emacs?
4) Which installation/file/whatever system should you use?
5) Should you use kernel build x.y.z or x.y.z+2?
...
Its easy to add more questions – Linux has so many options on which nobody can ever agree on – they have more projects which are trying to standardize some portion of system (and keep on failing to do so) then they have working projects.
After listening to argument for some time – say hmm… that all sounds too confusing to me – maybe I’ll just wait until Linux gets out of beta. Until then it I’ll use Windows (now exit stage quickly).
PS: somebody started a war on /. with similar question:
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/31/1441200&from=rss

I’m reading /. and similar Linux, anti-Microsoft and anti-reality sites because:
- I love good humor (and on /. you may find a lot of material for certain Mark Miller’s Mondays segment)
- If you want to find way to bash Linux – these are the right sources for it (it just takes a lot of filtering but you’ll get the fresh ammo)
- And sometimes you just might stumble on some actually useful information (ok I’ve just spent 10 minutes trying to think of one and now I’m giving up)