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Jims First Swiki Lesson
I received my first Swiki lesson today. Going into writing these essays, I always wondered, "How in the world do you place your writings on one of those Swiki things and not have it get butchered by folks who might disagree with your point of view". So I tried an experiment. I figure I'd throw some chum out there, and see if the Linux folks take the bait. I mentioned their god, Richard Stallman in the following passage:
Now there's this guy named Richard Stallman who thinks that all software should be free. I guess his vision is just to round up all of us software guys into a desert commune wearing only robes and sandals and have us program all day and worship him as the GNU god. [See, I told you puns were bad -Ed.] We should be happy to get gruel for dinner, thoughtfully provided by the hardware exploiters. Pol Pot could have learned something from this guy. "Here, be really smart, get a good education, devote yourself to your lifes work, and give it away for the good of the people." Jim Jones at least served grape Kool Aid.
Me, I'm willing to pay a guy some good bucks to keep my Boeing 777 flying and out of the drink. I'd hate to see that the desert zombie zealots were too busy advancing the state of the art in Doom 37, rather than paying attention to the 777 avionics computer code. If you ever meet Mr. Stallman, tell him to "go pound sand" for me.
The good part about Open Source is that it is you get all of the source code. The bad part is that modern software, especially that written in C, is unbelievably complex. Your chances of opening up one of those programs and doing significant work in a reasonable time frame is just about nil. Believe me, those people are just blowing sunshine up your skirt when they say, "Well, the source is free and anyone can change it to do what they want". It's pretty much the same as saying, "Here's a shovel, which allows you to move dirt and rocks. You can move Mount Everest 800 feet to the left if that's what you really want to do".
Rant over. The Linux 'look' has nothing to do with a well designed user interface or Open Source. It's about throwing bits up on the display. Morphic knows how to do this as well as anybody.
Johnny, I'll add at this point you're just being a lazy little pig dog. I've given you all the clues that you need to get that 'Linux' type of look. But I'll hold your hand and lead you through some of the finer bits.
After 12 hours, here's what the page had become:
Now there's this guy named Richard Stallman who thinks that all software should be free.
[Referee's note: Gah! Bet you a billion dollars he's going to mess this up. You can tell because he doesn't follow the "capitalize 'free' when talking about Free Software" convention.]
I guess
[Referee's note: Why guess? The GNU manifesto and various supporting docs are just a web search away...uh...you do know how to use a browser, right? Yes, I know these computer thingys are tricky...that's right, you have to plug it in...and turn in on...sheesh, just get your RA to do it.]
his vision is just to round up all of us software guys into a desert commune [Referee's note: See, this is what happens when you guess! You end up very, very, very wrong. Why not let that hard working RA finish up for you?]
wearing only robes and sandals and have us program all day and worship him as the GNU god. [See, I told you puns were bad -Ed.] We should be happy to get gruel for dinner, thoughtfully provided by the hardware exploiters. Pol Pot could have learned something from this guy.
[Referee's note: Oh geez, hasn't anyone told you that red baiting has gone out of style? What? It's back? Oh well, it may be back in style but it's still moronic. I'm sure your RA would be willing to fix this.]
"Here, be really smart, get a good education, devote yourself to your lifes work, and give it away for the good of the people." Jim Jones at least served grape Kool Aid.
[Referee's note: Geez, I guess pointing out that FSF pays programmers to work on Free software would be sorta redundant at this point. Where is that RA?]
Me, I'm willing to pay a guy some good bucks to keep my Boeing 777 flying and out of the drink. I'd hate to see that the desert zombie zealots were too busy advancing the state of the art in Doom 37, rather than paying attention to the 777 avionics computer code. If you ever meet Mr. Stallman, tell him to "go pound sand" for me.
[Referee's note: But I would have thought your skull was completely full! Why do you need more sand? Oh...well yes, it's true that most computer chips are silicon based...No! Your oven is not a clean room! But why don't you crawl in and check it out anyway? Don't forget to plug in the "heat ground" to keep from getting burnt...and put the filters on 350...]
[Ed.: Maybe the RA did write it. Revenge is a powerful motivator....]
The good part about Open Source is that it is you get all of the source code. The bad part is that modern software, especially that written in C, is unbelievably complex. Your chances of opening up one of those programs and doing significant work in a reasonable time frame is just about nil. Believe me, those people are just blowing sunshine up your skirt when they say, "Well, the source is free and anyone can change it to do what they want". It's pretty much the same as saying, "Here's a shovel, which allows you to move dirt and rocks. You can move Mount Everest 800 feet to the left if that's what you really want to do".
Rant over. The Linux 'look' has nothing to do with a well designed user interface or Open Source. It's about throwing bits up on the display. Morphic knows how to do this as well as anybody.
Johnny, I'll add at this point you're just being a lazy little pig dog. I've given you all the clues that you need to get that 'Linux' type of look. But I'll hold your hand and lead you through some of the finer bits.
[Referee's note: Are we sure we can't punt this over to Wired? With their new redesign, at least it would be illegible...]
[Ed: Their old design was pretty illegible too!]
[Referee's note: Sure, but you didn't expect them to rest on thier laurals, did you? I heard they Open Sourced the design...]
[Editor's note: While generally the identity of a referee here at Squeak Swiki is kept a strict secret, but due to a poster on the mailing list making a complete hash of his identity [Meta-editor: Arrgh. That pun was both bad and obscure!], I decided to reveal that it was Bijan Parsia's RA [Meta-editor: Ha! I wish I had one that was distinct from my self. The dang decorator pattern's not all it's cracked up to be.]]
Now on the face of it, after reading the second version, it's pretty hard to figure what I had written and what my obviously more enlightened critics had. I didn't seem to just "flow off the page" for me. For some reason, I thought that folks would just make comments on the material at the bottom of the page just like on every other civilized implementation of this idea, or maybe put a link to their reply if it was really insightful.
I'm sure that these people had some important points to make (probably obscured by the fact that they had to write them out), but I'm not sure that this was the best way to present them.
So, live and learn. Now I know what the 'lock this page after save' box is for.
Jim Benson
jb@speed.net
Well Jim, I'm the one you keep insulting, As If I Didn't Put My Name In The Last Comment and As If I Wasn't Making A Very Specific Kind Of Joke. So, for the record, my name is Bijan Parsia, I am one person, I don't use Linux on my desktop, and I do disagree with your, uh, "arguments" against Richard Stallman (note: they weren't against his position, IMHO).
I could have "written a response at the bottom of the page" but that would have been a Missed Opportunity, n'est pas? Even if my referee comments style didn't work (which it may not have; obviosuly I thought it was worth a shot "Professor") it was nice to be able to try it. And, my goodness, you sure were able to recover with ease, eh? Indeed, if you had wanted a mere "apres" style set of comments, lock the page with this tiny box is, indeed, the way to go. Of course, now there's two or three pages where I can't get at or edit the stuff I've written, including the Jim was wrong page, where I'd really like to change the tag line to "Please don't beat a path to my door." Could you do that? It's much funnier.
Since you seem to have taking it all personally, lemme point out that at least part of the reason for taking the style I did was to be in response to "Professor Morphic", not Jim Benson. If you really want to debate the issues, then, In My Most Humbe Opinion, you should do some research and write up a reasonably straight critique.
As for Butchering Your Prose, well, sorry about that. It was an experiment, and surely no worse than ordinary email response style. A Cleverer Bit of HTML (e.g., a table with Marginal Commnets) would have worked better, but, after all, this was just a First Draft. And, I guess a Last Draft as well.
Cheers,
Bijan Parsia
"Please don't beat a path to my door"