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Enlightenment GUI

Rasterman Goes to VA 115

Posted by CmdrTaco from the trekking-westward dept.
WebMaven writes "Well, acording to his page, Raster will soon join Mandrake as an employee of VA Linux. Congratulations, Raster, we can't wait to see what you'll code next! "
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Rasterman Goes to VA More

Rasterman Goes to VA

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  • While it's good to have a choice, I personally don't care for the Enlightenment window manager.

    The really sad thing is that many people now believe that E is "the" window manager for GNOME, due to RedHat's financial backing of both (until recently) and the fact that they usually shipped together if you got them as binaries. As a result, many people who think they dislike GNOME, actually dislike Enlightenment.

    I'm hoping that with Raster gone, RedHat will switch to a smaller, faster window manager (such as IceWM) as the default for the GNOME environment.

  • Where could he have worked that he would not have been competing with red hat then where he could use his skills. Sorry, that's just not cool to say that someone can't make a living.

    Anyhow, while RH and VA market to the same group, it is a bit much to call us competitors. I mean, we ship red hat on our boxes all the time.

    As far as N.C. and his contract, Raster wasn't under contract, he was an employee, and he didn't go home to work with his bud, if so, he'd be in austrailia. So while you may take it as sleasy, and I understand why you feel this way, I disagree with you.

    Chris DiBona
    VA Linux Systems


    --
    Grant Chair, Linux Int.
    VP, SVLUG

  • and why wouldnt be likely? the cia and fbi had plants in the youth movment of the 60's, they have even come out and said it. so why wouldnt M$ have plants? they may not even think of themselfs as plants...
    nmarshall
    #include "standard_disclaimer.h"
    R.U. SIRIUS: THE ONLY POSSIBLE RESPONSE
  • ...with Red Hat, is a MUTE point.

    Sorry, I normally don't pick on grammar errors, but this is one of those that really bugs the shit out of me. It's "moot", not "mute". A mute point, whether in ALL CAPS or not, would be one that was unable to speak...

    Again, sorry, but if I had kept it in, I would have exploded. It's like hearing someone pronounce "nuclear" as "nucular". Nails on a blackboard...

  • Amazing (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I can't believe somebody was stupid enough to hire him after he shot his mouth off about his former employer. I can't wait until he fucks over VA Linux when he doesn't get his way there.

  • In fact, I have accepted a position with VA as well and will be joining them shortly. I am
    going to be working on developing Eterm and helping raster and mandrake with Enlightenment, Imlib, etc.



    ROCK ON! E wouldn't be half as much fun without Eterm. What's the use of having root pixmaps if you can't see them through your translucent terminal windows? Congratulations, and I'm delighted to hear that all this cool stuff is in one place, cos like you say, it'll just make it that much better that much faster.

  • >Is this worth dignifying with a response?

    Obviously not. Waste of 0s and 1s.

    >'f you've ever had your back stabbed just as you >turn it you'd have some rather scathing things to >say too.

    Erm... no, raster dude. Some things are better left unsaid. In business, there is no point in burning bridges, even if the company is treating you like crap.

    The company I started working for (Access One, Australia) got bought by Solution 6, then OzEmail, now UUNet. During this process - as you would expect - there has been a fair amount of blood-letting, tears, anger... I have seen my friends get screwed, myself get screwed... all sorts of nasty things have gone on. Redundancies, sackings, new position descriptions, new head office dictating your work from another state. It's not worth worrying about, it's just business. You'll never get anywhere thinking that work is going to be a bed of roses, or that your employer _really_ cares about you.

    Problems regularly form when personal issues are brought into the office. I'm not saying _you_ have personal "issues" dude, it's just that E is your baby, and I guess you appreciate the fact that many people around the world (including myself - I've been running e for about 2 1/2 yrs) appreciate your software. When your project, yourself, or your supporters are attacked you feel personally attacked, and are responding with what you consider appropriate, justified behaviour.

    The truth is it's not. Rading your page now leaves a sour taste in the mouth. I am sympathetic, but really don't believe you should pull out your dirty laundry to show the linux community.

    If RH/ labs/ whatever have some nasty people working there, that will all come out naturally. People with bad attitudes tend to get bad reputations.

    It would have been a much cleaner break, and you'd have more support, if you had just cruised. Mandrake would have known what was going on for a while... so would the members of the labs and others in the Linux/e community. This stuff usually gets out... you don't need to "plaster it on a billboard"/ post it on a web page.

    Just some advice for next time mate. I really appreciate your work raster... I love e and all it stands for and am excited about the further development of e :)

    Cheers

    AndyM/ stor
  • I knew that would happen, but I figured it would make good sport for the rest.

    The caveat I should have added was: Of course, I certainly do not claim to be perfect.

    Say la vee -- life sux -- bee kool.
  • The fact that he wrote WM is not that importand. To tell the truth, it is not that hard to write one. I guess, what people really brag about is the unusuall style of E. I for one, wonder why does it take him so long to finish that thing ?
    I do work as a programmer and, hell, WM - even as lavish as E are not that complicated to implement. As long as one has nice graphics and ini file parsing library, it is a snap.
  • Not trying to be rude here, but I really don't think everytime somebody gets a new job it ought to be put up in neon lights. People change jobs every day. It doesn't really change the flow of things... neither does it have *much* bearing here.

    And as to "compatibility", Redhat has always stuffed executables in non-standard places, and if no effort is made to have enlightenment look for those files in the right place, it may very well not run. Hence my concern.



    --
  • and why wouldnt be likely?


    Because they simply don't need to bother - the job is already being done. With no compelling reason to do so, they probably won't (inertia is a powerful effect).

  • I walked around the redhat stand at CeBit for a few minutes, and saw rasterman, I don't think he looks particular rock'n roll kinda. Allthough you're right, he isn't your ordinary geek looking coder.

    It was actually kinda cool, being so close to some of the people I had only read about before.

  • gnome is bigger then redhat. i suspect the gnome project will work hard to make, or help make, a variety of window managers gnome compatable. alan cox is working on wmx, the windowmaker people have done their stuff, etc.

    i think the gnome desire to be windowmanager inclusive, as opposed to the kde's kwm, is a good plan.

    i get the impression that raster is going to be doing things to make enlightenment gnome unfriendly. i think that's unfortunate. i hope i'm wrong, and i hope he works closely with the gnome people (and if the kde people have wm specs, i hope he works with them as well) to deliver a good, integrated wm.

    i also hope he, mandrake, and the author of eterm work on one additional goal - smaller memory footprint.
  • There's nothing sleazy about that. VA and RedHat don't compete at all. Hell, I'm sure you can buy a VA system with RedHat on it. The fact that he's going to work for another company, in the "same industry" as you call it, just proves that he loves working in Linux environments.

    I say let the guy do whatever the hell he wants to. It's a free country and he's doing his part to make parts of it a little free-er.
  • Not exactly.. more in the inverse...

    The "therapeutic touch" went:

    young -> wrong

    Whereas the previous poster went:

    flamebait with no real substance -> Young

    I'd be willing to bet that the average flame posting AC is young... Most of the flames lack a certain maturity, and hence the assumption that they are young...


  • I am a relative newbie to Linux, having started using it just last fall. As such, there are many personalities and things about it I still do not know. Raster to me was a non-entity until the recent postings started by him over his little fall-out with Redhat and his moving on to greener pastures.

    Having read these postings, here's my impression of Raster: a very valuable member of the Linux community, the developer of enlightenment, a passionate person, a remarkably immature person, a really crappy speller :), a person lacking somewhat in good judgement.

    Now I admit I have never met the guy and impressions can always change, but the negative impressions I (and others?) have of him are his own doing and do need mending. Such is the problem with spouting off in a public forum without first calming down and attempting to establish some perspective.

    I am not "against" Raster. But I do have a fairly negative impression of him. So, I tend to agree with the sentiment: who cares? I'm kinda tired of hearing about him too.

    I post these thoughts for two reasons:
    1. To inform Raster, in case he cares, how his public actions impact others' perceptions of him, and
    2. To highlight the need for everyone to be rational and fair-minded when participating in a public forum.

    This is not a major issue. But the recent posting by Mindcraft of the venemous hate mail they received from some members of the Linux community is an embarrasment. Everyone should take a reality check before firing off some irrational, profane, hate-filled message for all to read.

    My humble $.02 anyhow...

  • Re:Sleazy Move (Score:3)

    by raster ( 13531 ) on Tuesday June 29, 1999 @12:48PM (#1826308) Homepage
    Some of use have work visas - we have to lie and protect our butts cause the INS screws us over and basically 1. takes months to process visaS 2. only allows you to work for 1 company on a visa so thus if you at all let on you're goign to get another visa you're screwed and get kicked out so you have to lie to save your own butt. if the INS were like immigration dpeartments of other coutnires you'd have a work visa that let you work for anyone - not just one company. I've been mumbling about north carolina for a long long time if you check the news on that page since it started. if i werent on a work visa I would have changed jobs months ago. I had to keep quiet and seemingly happy to keep myself in the country. if you don't understand any of the above you've never been one of the "lucky" people in this country on a work visa - just ask anyone on one or who has been on one. now I can get on with code again... :)

  • Re:so what (Score:1)

    by Zack ( 44 )
    The post lacked maturity. Maturity correlates with age. Hence the implication that the poster was very immature by commenting on the age.

    If you feel better, you may substitute that phrase for "too bad you are so immature".

    Now, please re-read the post, with the substitution, and give me another comment.

  • Is this worth dignifying with a response?

    Certainly not. There are a certain number of people here whose hobby (or profession, perhaps) is to cause trouble. They should be ignored whenever possible. Although, I'm betting he wasn't counting on you replying personally. :-)

    Good luck, Raster. Glad to see you working with a class act like VA.

    --

  • Do you lack slack, or forget your afternoon nap? There's nothing wrong with diversifying experience and some people have a problem with marrying a job. Wisdom is gained when one jumps the fence to the greener side. Its great seeing independent code warriors who decide what risks to take in furthering their goals, whatever they may be.

    I'm just a happy E user since I compiled the tarballs on my Redhat 4.1 a few years ago. It was inspirational. It takes a creative person to do projects like E. If an author of a creative project decides to move, it only leads to greater opportunity. Its all GPL after all and he isn't taking his ideas with him when he moves. The code has always been shared and will live the duration of this universe...
  • Well, we were waiting for INS paperwork before releasing the latest batch of banners, it went through today, so we released them, and raster put it on his page. So there you go.

    Chris DiBona
    VA Linux Systems


    --
    Grant Chair, Linux Int.
    VP, SVLUG

  • offtopic:

    I think it is high time the Linux/OSS/*BSD and /. community realize that there probably is a lot of M$ dronez paid to impersonate Linux/*BSD and /. users here on /. and the other Linux OSS sites and newsgroups. The old OS2 guys say this is the same they did to derail OS2. The difference is that now we are orders of a magnitude more and aware of the M$ juggernaut

    yep. united we stand. divided we fall. people who come on here to start *hit could be those very folks you are speaking of.

    only the paranoid survive.

  • This is slightly newer news...

    Rasterman has been in the cube next to Mandrake for a few weeks now. Can't wait to see what excellent hackish software comes out of VA now :-)

    the AC

  • i was on slashdot a little earlier today and saw a banner on slashdot advertising va. the banner had a list of people they were saying worked at va, one of which was rasterman. i had no clue he had moved to va at the time. did anyone else see this banner before the slashdot article? or was i just dreaming?
  • If the two top e contributors work side by side, how can this do anything but help? Congrats to both you guys. Mandrake, some of us do like the Triangle Area, but you guys are at one of the few places that will pay to for great free code.

    keep it up. congrats to you both.
  • One of the frequently touted selling points about Linux is its ability to perform well with older hardware -- and the caveat "except for resource-intensive apps" is left as an unspoken assumption.

    I have performance problems with E if I'm using a GTK pixmap theme on my P-II 350 w/ Matrox G200 (and lots of RAM). I get far better performance even on my older P166 if I stick with a GTK plain theme (but there are likely usability problems on systems much slower than P166 - dunno, I haven't tried.)

    With all the hype about Linux not requiring state-of-the-art hardware, it only makes sense to ship a window manager suitable for low-end systems (but don't leave out those wanting the immersive experience of, say, E, and who have the hardware to support it).

    Besides, RH6 ships with E 0.15. How many 0.15 software versions are there which work nearly as well?
  • Amazing doesn't begin to explain it, considering the ruthless demand for IT-savvy labor in this and nearly every other developed nation. No doubt Rasterman is being fabulously compensated for his work, and the situation was probably no different at RedHat.

    It's startling to see so much complaining about work conditions in the IT industry. Even a moron like myself can make cash hand over fist and get respectful -- even obsequieous -- phone calls from recruiters as they pass around my modest resume. What's more, the employers I hear from are praising creative expression and friendly work environments.

    "Wage slave" is as accurate as it is tasteless. The truth is that we're compensated for our work, and that's how it's supposed to be. The glass is more than half full, I daresay.

    MJP
  • Actually, it makes great business sense for VA Linux to let the E guys have all the creative control. Let them add features and all kinds of cool effects that require more and more processor cycles... thus selling more computers.

    Yeah, it's that Wintel thing all over again...

    :)

    matt
  • When you do a job and you are paid for it, you keep your mouth shut and do whatever the job it is that you are paid to do

    You are a servant to your company, a wage slave, that's the cold hard truth.

    No, I don't think so. You have a strange perception that if you go to work for a company, you sold yourself to that company body and soul and now have to obey orders like a mindless automaton. Now, the company may want you to believe this, but that doesn't make this true.

    I tend to think about this in another way. You and the company are independent entities and you two have a contract (which may be written or implicit) that says "I, the person, will do certain stuff for the company, and in compensation for that the company will give me money and other benefits". Generally there is nothing in that contract which says "shut up and do as you are told", and if there is I would have great doubts about entering into it.

    Of course the situation, the power balance if you will, depends greatly on how valuable job-wise you are. If you are a data-entry clerk the company probably treats you as completely fungible and you may have problems persuading it that you are somebody and not something. On the other hand, if you are Rasterman or somebody with the same coding skills, you are valuable and the company better accomodate you or you'll find sweeter pastures elsewhere. This all is a power game between you and the company, but nowhere it is set in stone that you have to bend over and take it.

    This, everybody, is called a "work ethic".

    This, everybody, is NOT called a "work ethic". This is called "I believe I am a little piece of shit that the great and magnificent company is doing a great favor to by not kicking me out of the door, although I deserve it". Work ethic, in case you are interested, has been developed in medieval Europe by Protestants and it basically holds that doing one's job properly and assidiously is pleasing to God, while engaging in entertainment, leisure and other non-useful activities is sinful and wasteful of one's life. If anything, people with strong work ethic tend to value what they do and do not accept "shut up and do what you are told" approach.

    Kaa
  • Wow, VA certainly has been hiring a bunch of "purely-Linux" folks recently. They've signed Mandrake, Raster, and Jon "maddog" Hall (who, btw, I got to eat dinner with and is a pretty cool guy). None of them directly affect VA's business of selling computers. Rather, it sounds like they will all be working mostly independently of VA and will help VA just by helping Linux, which is part of VA's product. I know from talking with maddog that at least he will be basically 100% separate from VA -- they are basically just paying his salary as head of Linux International, but he will remain vendor neutral.

    I have to give credit to VA for supporting the Linux community so well.
  • Ponder this;
    If VA and Red Hat are competitors, then Red Hat and LHS were competitors.
    LHS was started by two Red Hat employees, with the full knowledge of Red Hat management.
    Do you think Red Hat management would have tolerated this at any level if your assertion were true?


    VA and Red Hat are competitors like Microsoft and Dell are competitors.

    VA sells Linux systems that run Red Hat Linux.

    Red Hat sells Red Hat Linux and Linux support and training.



    Please return the clue stick when you are finished.

    --Kit
    (who happens to like both NC and Silicon Valley :-)

  • i get the impression that raster is going to be doing things to make enlightenment gnome unfriendly. i think that's unfortunate. i hope i'm wrong, and i hope he works closely with the gnome people (and if the kde people have wm specs, i hope he works with them as well) to deliver a good, integrated wm.

    There are NO PLANS (as in zero, zilch, nada, none) to so much as remove GNOME compatibility, let alone intentionally make E GNOME-unfriendly. It's not going to happen. Period.

    i also hope he, mandrake, and the author of eterm work on one additional goal - smaller memory footprint.

    For what they do, Enlightenment and Eterm both have very small memory footprints. I often hear people comment that Eterm uses less memory than rxvt, aterm, and even xterm. However, we have chosen a feature-rich and configurability-focused approach to our products rather than a minimalist approach. We will always strive to write our code in an efficient manner, but saving memory is not our primary goal.

    After all, memory is cheap. I remember when a 1 MB SIMM cost you an arm and a leg! Now you can get a fast 128 MB DIMM for under $100. Now don't get me wrong -- I hate pointless bloat due to bad code just as much as you do. But more features require more code and more memory, and I think the feature sets of Enlightenment and Eterm are well worth it.

  • Work for a bit.

    I have.

    If you don't like your job, T.S. You can always quit. Bitching about it only annoys other co-workers and management and is completely useless.

    Did I say anything about bitching and whining? I was mostly talking about self-respect, not about complaining because you don't like something.

    Companies remain competitive, you are a commodity you are not an individual.

    Well, that's where we disagree, don't we? But it's OK by me. You can continue thinking of yourself as a commodity, and I'll continue thinking about myself as an individual.

    Do yourself a favor and talk to somebody that's gone through the Great Depression. You're a spoiled little brat, not an adult by any means.

    Heh. Think I am an idealistic college kid with stars in his eyes? You should try surviving on $575 a month with a wife and two kids, no right to work, no medical insurance, no welfare, no nothing. Try it, you'll be unpleasantly surprised.

    I'd roll over you like a steamroller if you got in my way because when it comes to my job it's my fanancial security that comes first and then whatever my boss wants to pimp me to second.

    Just in case we ever meet, please remind me to never have any dealing with you. There are a couple of people like that at my workplace and I find them intensely unpleasant.


    Kaa
  • If you have a wife and 2 kids and live off from $575 you should have used that piece of grey matter called a brain before you put yourself into that situation. Instead of simply putting yourself into a bad situation you've brought your wife there and two complete innocents that YOU decided to have. It's your own fault, you cannot run away from responsibilities that you brought entirely upon yourself.

    I would never put myself in that situation much less drag 3 other people into it. Don't expect pity from me, expect contempt from me. Your stupidity will profoundly effect your children for their entire lives.

    Well, I never said this situation lasted. This happened a fairly long time ago and had nothing to do with either idealism of having fun at work. If you would have read the paragraph carefully you should have guessed why and how that happened (er... I am assuming standard thinking abilities, I am not sure that applies). Right now my kids are doing quite well, thank you very much. Both me and my wife make six-figure salaries so I don't think putting the kids through college is going to be a problem. That, by the way, is a direct consequence of the fact that I with my family had to manage being very poor for some time.

    You better get your fucking priorities straight. Work isn't a game, it's work. If you have dependants, it's your duty to put them ahead of yourself, otherwise you shouldn't even have the right to have kids. You're a selfish twit, have the balls to see it. If you're not going to take care of your kids, I don't see why the fuck an asshole like you had them in the first place.

    Ah, the fire in his fingers... But really, you should polish your flaming style. I've seen better flames on Usenet from aolers. Besides, it helps to know what you are talking about, but you've never experienced that, did you?


    Kaa

  • Figures (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Obviously I think a lot of us assumed that is where he was going. Where else does a Linux coder go to work? Redhat or VA. ;-) (Or I guess Transmeta)

    (first reply to first post?)
    Man slashdot is SLOW today. Let's see some of that capital be invested in making this site faster. Even news.com is faster!
  • I wonder why people such as yourself even bother to follow the link to the responses, much less post such vacuous drivel. If you don't care, then simply move on to another story which does interest you.
  • Well, good for you raster. Now can somebody please tell me what's going on with Enlightenment? It's all wonderful that you've got a new job.. but we want to know how this is going to impact the devel of E. Also.. will any effort be made to keep E compatible with future redhat releases? I know they rather soured the milk on this, but alot of us still use redhat..



    --

  • Re:Enlightenment. (Score:3)

    by Mandrake ( 3939 ) <mandrake@mandrake.net> on Tuesday June 29, 1999 @11:54AM (#1826338) Homepage Journal
    "compatible" - well realize that we do run on a number of different systems and platforms and archetectures (sp?) so the compatibility shouldn't be a problem.

    Both raster and myself are spending a lot of time these days working on imlib and enlightenment (respectively). There's a lot of stuff on the whiteboard right now to do.
    --
    Geoff Harrison (http://mandrake.net)
    Senior Software Engineer - VA Linux Labs (http://www.valinux.com)

  • Re:Enlightenment. (Score:4)

    by raster ( 13531 ) on Tuesday June 29, 1999 @11:55AM (#1826339) Homepage
    Compatible - whats with that? E runs on Linux. if RH wishes to use it they can. I dont' intend to make it incompatible. If it doesnt fit what they want (and it likely won't as they want gnome and E is not part of the gnome project thus it clashes in several departments and will continue to do so) that's up to them. as for the future plans for E - it'll becoem a desktop shell - it's not going to become part of KDE or GNOME - it's just going to do a job - manage windows, let you launch and manage applications, and eventually manage files. thats it.

  • Re:Enlightenment (Score:5)

    by KainX ( 13349 ) <mejNO@SPAMeterm.org> on Tuesday June 29, 1999 @11:55AM (#1826340) Homepage

    but we want to know how this is going to impact the devel of E.

    This means only good things for the development of Enlightenment. Not only will raster and mandrake be working for a company which supports free software, but they will be working together at the same company, and even in the same room. This will facilitate the exchange of ideas in a much more effecient and productive manner than ever before.

    In fact, I have accepted a position with VA as well and will be joining them shortly. I am going to be working on developing Eterm and helping raster and mandrake with Enlightenment, Imlib, etc. Having us all together means features -- more, better, and faster.

    Also.. will any effort be made to keep E compatible with future redhat releases? I know they rather soured the milk on this, but alot of us still use redhat..

    Enlightenment was compatible with RedHat Linux before raster ever went to work for them. Furthermore, VA ships RedHat on its servers.

  • What is up with you guys? Shesh, Raster is a friend to some of us, and personally, I think it's great that he got a job at VA. They are great guys, and Raster is a great guy as well. CmdrTaco, Enlightenment, Raster, linux, and a number of us go back before slashdot even existed, so if Cmdrtaco and the gang want to post about him getting a new job, then why the heck shouldn't they be able to? If you don't like it, don't read it. It's not like every news story out there has to be some mind boggling new technology or corperate lawsuit. Raster is one of us, and he doesn't deserve some of the crap he's been getting on these forums. Some of the critisizm is legitimate, but the flames and pot shots certainly are not.
  • hopefully not ;>

    isnt it more fun to figure out how to make it work yourself???????
  • I'm afraid I have to agree. He wrote a cool window manager, and a couple other things. Get over it. Is the Linux community that starved for celebrities?
  • Posted by Synsthe:

    I wish andover.net had just enough pull on the site now that they could atleast get Rob and Jeff to remove anonymous posting; the above are very good examples why it serves no useful purpose here, except to let the trolls hide under one central identity (birds of a feather flock together?)

    If the news doesn't appeal to you, than what is the point in responding? Some people are interested in the goings on of the Linux community, and Raster is a name people know in that community. So if he moves into a new job, than there are those who like to know, to keep up to date, to just plain be happy for somebody who's doing something successful.

    The average post from an AC makes me wonder if the average age of people here is below 12 yrs old.

    It's pretty sad people.

    --
    Mark Waterous (mark@projectlinux.org)

  • RasterCam (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    RasterMan, you need a RasterCam since everyone is so fascinated in what is happening with your life.
  • I had this in the back of my head the whole time. I was just wondering why Rob didn't speculate (or blurt it out if he already knew). Power to you, Raster. From one enviable job to another... You go!
  • Yes!

    This is just great, raster and mandrake in the same company, I can't wait to see E in say six months.

    I think E is one of the things that are gone make Linux/*BSD capture the desktop in the end. (sure M$ knows this to! Just see all the troll's posting here)

    Unlike what some people like to claim it is not a slow/freaky/unstable, it is configurable to the point it can look like anything you want (almost), and take as little resources as any other windowmanager. With the Absolute E theme it is a lot faster than the Windows98 gui anyway.

    I have been using the version that came with RH6.0 since it came and it has only crashed one or two times, and then probably because of some alpha gnome/kde/x-application.

    offtopic:
    I think it is high time the Linux/OSS/*BSD and /. community realize that there probably is a lot of M$ dronez paid to impersonate Linux/*BSD and /. users here on /. and the other Linux OSS sites and newsgroups. The old OS2 guys say this is the same they did to derail OS2. The difference is that now we are orders of a magnitude more and aware of the M$ juggernaut.

  • No kidding.

    A friend of mine met her fiance here in the U.S. He is English and never had trouble getting a visa anywhere. They got married in England, and suddenly he can't get even a tourist visa to the U.S. They must be afraid of all those damn foreigners who come over and work I guess.

    If it's a global marketplace, and Nike can have their shoes made by underpaid workers in any country, why isn't it a global workplace where a worker can work in any country? This country needs to attract talent, not stifle it. Other countries already have us beat on the low-end.

    P.S. Guess that explains the spelling ;o)
    --
    "I got it running, grabbed a rocket launcher, and fired down a hallway." --John Carmack
  • Yeah, I heard he's lost weight too!
    He's also been abducted by aliens and is going to marry the reanimated corpse of Princess Diana.

    More news at 11..
  • The only people who truly believe age has anything to do with maturity after about age 7 are usually the people who are the most immature.

    But hey, just my $.02 .
  • The Gnome WM spec is, I believe, being reworked by several people (only one I know off the top of my head is Brad Hughes, who writes BlackBox). And there's no reason Raster would take the GNOME compatibility out of E just because he left RH...
    -------
    Losing your faith is a lot like losing your virginity
  • As a native American born in Southern California, this immigration crap disturbs me. What is the point in work visas and all these border laws? To exploit labor and legalize illegal labor? If someone feels this country is a nice place and wants to work to help build a better community here, I welcome the compete with our native lazy butts. Someone please enlighten me why we have people without "full citezenship" that can have all rights and property terminated when basic human freedoms wish to be expressed. I have seen people stuck in bad marriages, slaves to their spouses, just because of citizenship.
  • Nobody has censored you, they have criticized you. It sounds to me like you want to criticize while remaining free from criticism yourself. If you can't handle the heat...

  • > a really crappy speller :),
    [...]
    > venemous hate mail they received from some members of the Linux community is an embarrasment.

    venemous -> venomous
    embarrasment -> embarrassment
  • If it bothers people so much, there are plenty of ways around the banner ads. Personally, I just see a narrow white band with the Internet JunkBUSTER logo on it.

    Tastes great, less filling :)
  • Step 1: Set Threshold to 1.
    Step 2: Stop whining.
  • >Rasterman has been in the cube next to Mandrake for a few weeks now.

    They have cubicles? Gads, the drain on productivity. With no walls at all, you have the benefit of open communication, but distractions. With offices, you have no distractions but hindered communication. With cubicles, you have both distractions and hindered communication. Cubicles are evil.
  • Yes, I saw it too. Which doesn't rule out that you were dreaming :)
  • Posted by stodge:

    What has he done? Enlightenment? Install that on my machine when it's finished. They guy is turned into a hero because he wrote 1/8 of a window manager? Hmmmmmmm
  • To the best of my knowledge, GTK themes have nothing to do with enlightenment. E does not use them. However, most gnome apps are built with gtk, since gtk is the widget library of gnome. If you were to run straight E without all the gnome apps (which incur a lot of overhead by themselves), you wouldnt see this performance hit.
    You should see some of the screenshots of E running in 16 color mode. Pretty nice, for something that needs state of the art hardware...
  • In the last Slashdot post on this topic, there were some pretty broad hints dropped that this was going to happen. I know that if I were in Raster's place, I would certainly want to pick up a new job before I moved away from my current location :-).

    I'm glad to see Raster had a rational reason to lie about this - I found that fact a little disturbing until reading here that he (quite rightly) feared the INS.

    Anyone know what country Raster's from?

    D

    ----
  • Lucky for you

    I don't see what luck has to do with this. I didn't win the lottery, in case you are wondering.

    Oh Great Magic 8 Ball, please undecipher the paragraph since the author cannot verbalize it himself."

    It seems that I was right about undeveloped thinking abilities. Oh well, this was becoming boring anyway.

    You've certainly put me in MY place.

    You are a commodity, remember? That's what your place is.

    Kaa
  • I'll first address the situation with raster. I think your right about most of what you've said about him, and yes, at times he can be immature, but I don't think he was terribly outside his rights on this. He spoke what he honestly felt at the time, and I don't think you can blame him for that. You see, back when slashdot first was around, and when enlightenment was in it's early days, a good deal of the people that would post on slashdot would be known by everyone else, off irc, or off mailing lists, etc. Perhaps it's different not actually knowing raster, but most of us had atleast talked to him, and didn't think of him as anything more than just a really good coder working on a really cool idea. I guess the point I'm getting at is that we were/are his friends first, and that it's more important to us to know what is on his mind, and if he's mad and why, than to always here fluff and graciousness, if that's not what he's really feeling. I can't speak for Rob on this, but I'd guess that this is why he's posted raster's leaving and working for VA. To me, and I think rob and a lot of the others, Raster's life is important, because he's our friend, and that it's worth letting people know about. Now of course the majority of slashdot readers these days don't know raster, and probably don't care about enlightenment, or maybe even linux for that matter. I guess I'd just ask that you cut him some slack, because he's a hardworking, and caring individual as shown by his offense at his boss insulting the E user base. He had some legitimate grips, and perhaps slashdot is not the best place for those gripes anymore, but at one time it would have been. Honestly, I'm sad to see the old way of things disappearing. At one time, raster could have said this and it would have generated some sympathy, maybe a couple critisizms, and would have been pretty much over in a day. People these days seem to be incensed over it. It's blown way out of proportion, specifically by the guys saying that it's being blown out of proportion. Believe me, it's not his friends that are continually revisting it.

    Now, as to the Mindcraft emails... Unfortunately, that is something we have to expect. Out of all the linux users in the world, there are going to be ones that send nasty emails. They might not even be linux users, but kids trying to fight for the linux cause because it's the "hip" thing to do. The fact that mindcraft posted those emails I think reflects poorly on them though. Would it be right for Rob to start posting hate mail by windows users implying that all windows users are hate filled immature kids? I don't think so myself. It's an unfair representation of the majority. I'm sure that mindcraft recieved a number of well presented emails as well. I'd really be interested to find out what the number of authors that sent well-thought email vs hatemail were. (I say authors because it's more probable that hatemail would be sent multiple times by the same person.)

    I also want to thank you for the well thought out post. It's good to know what people think, especially the newer crowd that hasn't been around as long as some of us. I guess something that we as the old crowd need to realize is that wether or not we choose it, we are being put into roles of responsibility that affect many more people than we had ever dreamed of even 2 years ago. Something that I think you, and many of the others in the newer crowd need to do, is to realize that the linux culture wasn't based on advertising, or marketing, or being politically correct. Things never used to really make too many waves. You did your own thing, and it was all cool. Now that linux is in the limelight, we need to clean up our acts in some ways, and it's something that isn't going to come in a split instant, and probably won't ever completely change. Raster is gonna still be Raster, Rob is gonna still be Rob, and Nite_Hawk is gonna still be Nite_Hawk.. :) Anyway, I must have typed a page by now, so it's probably time to shutup. ;)

  • Ever heard of setting the threshold? Mine is set to 1 and I never see any AC posts. The downside is that there are actually many ACs that make good comments.

  • One option that would still allow anonymous postings, and possibly speed up the display of comments too is to group all the anonymous postings under one thread. This way the anonymous postings get the credit they deserve. If they want to hide behind anonimity let them hide togethor.
  • Does this mean the gnome WM compliance stuff is going to go away?
  • Okay, assuming we were that kind of company, do you think that we could even control E development (or it's developers) I mean, mandrake and raster are free thinkers who would not allow such a thing. Again, we have no intention of such a thing, but even if we did!

    Of coure your 8) shows you get the joke you made!

    Chris DiBona
    VA Linux Systems


    --
    Grant Chair, Linux Int.
    VP, SVLUG

  • I don't think Rob has control over the ads that show up in the banner. They come from a 3rd party. If Microsoft wants to fund a portal site that advocates a movement that is going to be their demise, more power to them :).

  • Re:so what (Score:1)

    by Zack ( 44 )
    You were not voicing an opinion. You were spouting off useless garbage. And I'm all for free speech, I'm also about responsible use of that speech. All you were doing was trying to provoke people. That has nothing to do with free speech.

    > and have been for 7 years now

    You started with Linux when you were 5? Too bad you haven't matured since then.

    This is not your site. You don't pay for this site, therefore, ergo, you have no right to complain. If you want a better site, go make your own. I'm sick of people complaining about a wonderfull free, community driven web site.

  • Well, it sure is comforting to have intelligent, rational responses to a post on Slashdot for a change.

    Anyway, thanks very much to all involved for letting us in on the details of what really happened and some of the rationales. It sure does a lot to make you feel comfortable about these dealings, not that it is any of my business anyway.
  • Why would it?

    It makes more sense to leave it in and support other open source activites...

    Think about it man ;)
  • I know exactly what you mean. One of my best friends is a German immigrant -- even after she married an American citizen, INS put her through hell getting a green card.

    Screw the INS.
    -------
    Losing your faith is a lot like losing your virginity
  • Posted by Synsthe:

    Hmm, no offense intended to the under 12 crowd; I was making reference as to maturity - like it or not, most 12 yr olds are not exactly what you consider mature adults, and the relation between the actions of people here posting AC, or even otherwise sometimes, is in direct proportion.

    Things won't change around here in regards to that, and I don't mean to throw the thread right off course, however the matter is _news_. Raster got a new job. Raster is a name people know in the Linux community, and that is news; yet people in here took it upon themselves to blast it, as in "who cares", etc. If they don't care, they shouldn't show so much interest, but since they can all hide behind one collective identity, they feel the need to misuse the ability.

    I'd rather be able to come here and read, just once, a thread of comments on some news article that wasn't chock full of such drivel.

    We now return you to your regularily scheduled program...

    --
    Mark Waterous (mark@projectlinux.org)
  • I think it is high time the Linux/OSS/*BSD and /. community realize that there probably is a lot of M$ dronez paid to impersonate Linux/*BSD and /. users here on /. and the other Linux OSS sites and newsgroups. The old OS2 guys say this is the same they did to derail OS2. The difference is that now we are orders of a magnitude more and aware of the M$ juggernaut.


    While it certainly wouldn't cost Microsoft much to do this, IMO it's not terribly likely. We're perfectly capable of shooting ourselves in the foot without assistance - immature people will exist in any group.

  • While everyone is so happy about Mandrake and Rasterman finally coming together again, doesn't this strike anyone as a sleazy move? I mean, not to put myself into flamebait and take RedHat's defense here, but...

    On Rasterman's homepage he says May 2 that everything is fine with RedHat, and he has no intentions of leaving. Less than a month later, he says that he is leaving RedHat over differences with them. Now, he's taking a job with what is in someways a competitor - VA Systems. While VA makes hardware and RedHat is software, it's still in the same industry and so kind of sleazy.

    And finally, he now has a lament on his homepage about how shitty North Carolina is. I mean, if he was so unhappy, he should have said something and been honest about it. If North Carolina sucked and Red Hat wasn't working out, then say something, but don't back out of your contract and blast a company/state because you want to go home and work with your bud.

    I guess all I'm trying to say is that this was a pretty backhanded sleazy way of handling just grievances about his working situation. Next time, I hope that he is a little more upfront about the realities of the situation.
  • No. It will not be removed.
  • So I see "Rasterman goes to VA" in the top headline. Simultaneously, the advertisement above it goes through a VA spiel: listing various coders' names, including Mandrake - and Rasterman. "What do they have in common? They all work VA Linux". Rob! You got scooped by your own advertiser!
  • Is this worth dignifying with a response? I don't know - but if you get soem clue as to whats actually going on you might understand. I'f you've ever had your back stabbed just as you turn it you'd have some rather scathing things to say too.
  • the same minute the news about Raster is posted, VA already has a banner up with his name in it!!

    +$0.02
    VT

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