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:) I'm glad someone got the joke. I didn't even read the checklist, but it sounds painful...

Either someone at Microsoft has a sense of humor, or... umm. No, the alternative is too scary.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

This is too funny - check out what Microsoft recommends for you to do, to see the IIS 4.0 Security checklist.

It's good to see that they're giving us those safety tips already.

This is off of http://www.microsoft.com/security/ - the link is in the article too, but it's broken.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Ooo, 128-bit encryption, that's 16 whole BYTES. No one will ever break that...

We all know that the W2K machine that was "naked" on the internet had no problems at all. Nooo. Uh uh. And if they gave you that Administrator password, it'd be *fine*. (Compare to the linux box. um... no, no comparison.)

What are they going to do to enhance security, stop selling Office? Those pesky macros, always making my paperclip sick...

But seriously, folks, now that Microsoft released this to the press, that they're really *really* serious about it this time, and they're going to be extra-nice by charging us more for this week's upgrade, don't you think we should let them play with the big boys yet?

Nah, I didn't think so either.

Sure, it's easy to criticise Microsoft. Because it's so much fun. And historically accurate. I mean, if they wanted to try to do better now, they'd have to issue a formal apology to anyone who ever had to suffer through an unpatched Windows bug. Whoops, I think that's everyone!
</CHEAP SHOT>
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Yes, but you don't want a write-in like Segfault had.

However, if you did, you'd be amazed at what a strong showing the independent party for NATALIE PORTMAN NAKED AND PETRIFIED FOR PRUZ1DENT!!!1!1 has... ;)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Well, I can't really take credit for it, but I admit it had me convinced. I don't know about the reverse-sin-taxes, though. (saint-tax-exemptions?) But maybe that's just because I don't like sin-tax in the first place. Ever since those BASIC interpreters gave me sin-tax errors... :)

But yes, you could create a simple system that's good enough like this and massively reduce paperwork. In England, they have a (huge, in my opinion) VAT (value-added tax)... but they still tax the hell out of their citizens anyhow, so maybe that's a bad example. (Disclaimer: not from England. If you are, feel free to enlighten me as to the system there)

What I like about it, though, is people who would normally pay huge taxes on their house and land that they can't afford on their current income wouldn't have to be punished so harshly. Just because they already have possessions doesn't mean they still have money. Tax people when the money changes hands, and that way you're sure to get some of it.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Maybe I didn't make myself clear. I don't mind the *occasional* important patent story every week or so. But if whining won't help, how about statistics?

Look up Patent Stories...

0 TiVo Sued for Patent Infringement by Hemos on 03:24 PM January 20th, 2000 EST 135
1 Dolly Cloning Method Patented by Hemos on 12:06 PM January 20th, 2000 EST 71
2 Geoworks Demands Royalties For All WAP Apps by Roblimo on 10:42 AM January 20th, 2000 EST 187
3 PTO's New DNA Guidelines by Hemos on 11:24 PM January 12th, 2000 EST 149
4 Xerox Wins Prelim Patent Ruling Against 3Com by Hemos on 03:51 PM January 11th, 2000 EST 328
5 Uruguayan SuSE Reseller Trying to Trademark Linux by Hemos on 09:07 PM January 6th, 2000 EST 217
6 Is H.R.1907 Patent Reform that We Want? by Cliff on 03:00 PM January 6th, 2000 EST 291
7 Google (Patent Pending) by Roblimo on 05:24 AM December 27th, 1999 EST 288
8 The IP Lawyers Strike Back by Hemos on 10:30 AM December 24th, 1999 EST 200
9 Feed Magazine Commentary on Patent Insanity by Roblimo on 04:23 AM December 24th, 1999 EST 85

Hmm. Three of them today. Rather unusual. And it looks like the usual culprits are Hemos and Roblimo. Those bastards!

Hey, a "bite me" defense would be cool. Nice handle, by the way.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Hmm. Is this a bad thing? Every month it's like a constant "We've lost our lease, everything must go!" sale. After a while they might have to give in and start advertising, or get more public funding, a cooler image...

Nah. I don't want PBS to sell out any more than they already have. I was pissed when they changed the Sesame Street intro to be more "hip". There are just some things in life you don't have to change. (But I'd happily have advertising on PBS if they didn't have to change *that*.)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

:) Touche. Of course, while we're at it, buying people is classic conservative thinking, but this was meant to be humorous anyhow. You're not being punished, you're setting a good example for the rest of us; by working harder, you're taking on more responsibility for your country. Or, you could spend time learning how to (sometimes legally) evade the system. Roth IRAs look rather nice nowadays, at least, and failing that, you can pay an accountant, or buy a local authority figure.

I wish I could change my economic status by working harder. Sadly in my case, the opposite is true. If I work harder, I could end up paying *more* to my University. Over the summer, however, is another matter.

But there are many people out there who work much longer hours than I would for much less money. They can work "harder" all they want, but they don't necessarily get the cushy tech-support jobs over the crappy bus-driving / hotel-security / food-service jobs. Work smarter, not harder. Anyone who *really* believes that the wealthy physically work harder is stupider than they think you are. Maybe. That's another good reason why the wealthy should pay more in taxes.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Well, it started to be this way for obvious reasons: follow the money.

I know it wasn't this way back when I read "Nintendo Power", yea, when it first came out. You couldn't get offended by the advertising unless you were afraid of fat little Italian men and giant mushrooms.

Before that, there was no problem with Breakout and Pong, I'm pretty sure.

So it's obviously a recent thing, and apparently most of the gamers with the new, fast "gaming computers" are men. Otherwise, the gaming magazines are being pretty stupid. But it'd be worth it to have at least *a* gaming magazine devoted to the latest puzzle games, RPG's, etc., with advertising content to match. Heck, if I bought magazines, I might look at that. That's why I got Nintendo Power, to see what the next Zelda, Megaman, or Final Fantasy game looked like.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

I don't think that's how it works. When you use up your mod points, doesn't someone else get mod points? I'd hope they've figured that problem out in the code already.

But yes, I agree with the general principle, it's better to moderate up than to moderate down. But what's the point of moderating a +3 up to a +4 when you could be helping get rid of a slew of huge, random, content-free posts? Sometimes it's better to help slay the horde of orcs so the other players can move freely than promote the level 24 character to level 25... :)

(where's that Doom interface to Moderation when I need it?)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

For starters: this ad is written by "Atari"? Get a new nickname girl, that one is taken by an evil gaming corporation that has sexy game characters like those found in Gauntlet: Legends. The Valkyrie has that phallic sword that she always carries, and her screams are so sexy... Oops, I've been reading that article for too long.

I don't read gaming magazines, but game advertising sucks anyhow. Who wants to be shouted at with "SEGA!". At least "Play-stashion" is a bit more bearable, but... come on. Most of the cool ads I've seen are literally just showing you how cool the game looks (and not really sexist, that I've seen). And really, who reads magazines anymore, when we have the internet? :)

Well, I tend to like RPGs and pretty games. I don't play that many shooters. I'd rather be playing Angband, Final Fantasy, Ultima, Star Control, Heroes of Might and Magic, (or Masters of Magic! Please make a sequel!) those types of games.

And from my experience with the chicks I know that play games... They tend to play some RPG's, more puzzle games than I do, and more heavy storyline games, some written by women. Some Sierra games come to mind (even sometimes including Leisure Suit Larry -- take that, silly article writer, it's funny stuff!) as well as King's Quest, and also the Gabriel Knight series (GK3 looks pretty cool) and many others...

Of course, my generalizations could be horribly wrong, so please, any geekgrrls who would rather be playing Tomb Raider and Quake 3 please speak up, so we can get your e-m... um... hear your opinions. :)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Nowadays "liberal" is becoming a bad word, as it is overused by those darn conservatives. It used to be that liberal might imply, say, democrat, libertarian, free-thinking, progressive... Now it's liberal in the context of "tax-and-spend liberal", as opposed to the much more noble "tax-exemption-for-me republican"...

That, in fact, would be the only *good* thing about a flat tax: getting rid of the loopholes in the current system. But I doubt they'll get rid of property tax, capital gains tax, gift tax, intangibles tax, etc., etc. anytime soon...

Oh, and for any rich, offended, extreme-right-wing republicans out there: my opinion is natural given my economic status. If you want to change my mind, try donating me some money instead of arguing with me. I'll like you better, and you can find out if I can be bought. *And* it's better than property tax, because you know the student that you are helping! Think of it as a scholarship for people who will take your money.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

I agree, that's pitiful.

I'd like to send out a big FUCK YOU to Mr. Smargle here, and I encourage the moderators to send those posts to oblivion--at least -2, if possible.

I like to read at -1 sometimes, to see what people are saying. But I'd appreciate it if I could do that without my netscape trying to swap.

And for people with slow connections at home... well, at least it's compressible.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

George W. Bush doesn't have a very good "online reputation" (I wasn't impressed with his buying up domain names--if people don't like you, they'll tell you, and if you buy the domain name they wanted to get, they'll just like you less.) and I've never liked Al Gore that much because of his stances on encryption, Clipper, and the like. (even if he did invent the internet... ;)

But... how many people out there get most of their political news from the internet? Maybe that would make a good slashdot poll, because I know I don't, but I'm sure other people do. I know the Starr report was a very popular download, so maybe this will start to make a difference. Heck, ever since Byte disappeared from the shelves, I haven't really supported dead-tree media at all...

Oh, and for future reference: don't support anyone who thinks the flat tax will solve all of your problems. They're morons. All it does is change the current (progressive) bracket system with a simpler, flat/regressive one. A better solution would be a national sales tax with exemptions for food / clothing / books, but I don't think people realize how large it would have to be.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

If the courts read slashdot, maybe they'd agree with us. Since they don't, I don't see why *I* have to keep reading about it.

Don't preach to the choir, preach to the masses.

Or, possibly, the world can't be going to hell faster than slashdot is, because we'd be there already. Geez. :)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

No more copyright, trademark, infringement, legal action or otherwise stories for today please, thank you.

Let's just set up "Slashmark--News for Lawyers. Stuff that's argued forever."

Also, anyone else here think lawsuits for linking to "blah" is lame? Can I sue a search engine yet?
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

I think you at least partially understand my ludicrous reasoning.

What scares people about digital technology is that they are able to make very good to perfect copies that don't degrade and can last for a long time, cheaply. That's also why analog tape players and VCRs degrade copies from the originals. Some of this is by design, when they were created.

Since streaming technology is inherently flawed in this respect, it is more like analog technology. Copying it right now would be silly. Therefore, this is more like TV over the internet than it would be if I, say, made a high-quality movie file of "Dawson's Creek" or yesterday's NBA game or whatever, and put it up for download. (of course, that would also be expensive or time-consuming to copy for most people)

Anyhow, my point is, this stuff isn't easy to redistribute on the internet. And the people paying for this service are essentially paying for watching Canadian TV. It's about as dangerous as streaming a RealAudio radio station from England. (My favorite is Virgin Radio)

Feel free to reply, without the silly age comments that make you sound so young. :)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Re:fork():

Well, that's your opinion. I admit I'm not well-qualified to talk on NT or BSD system internals, so I won't. But, from the little I remember about Linux, both fork() and thread spawning were implemented with the clone system call, the difference being that fork() also has to set up a separate memory space for the data. There are cases where this would be useful, and then you would use fork() for them. There are cases where it would not, and then you would use threads.

Frankly, it doesn't matter what you think a modern OS should or should not do: until there are no situations where using fork() would still be useful, a modern OS should still use it. I don't think it has outlived its usefulness yet.

And yes, NT focuses on threads more than processes. But if you wanted to implement it correctly, one approach would be to write the best threading model possible, and implement processes on top of that.

(I know NT does some "weird" stuff because of the VMS baggage, but I don't remember enough, really. Believe me, none of us would complain about NT if it also shared the *advantages* of VMS, such as wonderful clustering, great stability, low system requirements, the ability to stick it in a closet and forget its there, and an adventure game on every machine. ;)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

It says on ICraveTV's site that the programming "are those freely available to Toronto, Canada", and there's a comment about that in the previous slashdot thread, too.

I see nothing wrong with rebroadcasting over the internet what's already on the airwaves. If I captured jpegs from my TV capture card and posted them on my homepage (as I've seen many people do), is that illegal? I'm paying for the signal, the TV card, the internet connection... aren't I paying for the content, too?

This sounds like a discussion we've had before on slashdot. As a consumer, *I* think I'm paying for the content. *They*, the people selling it to me, think I'm paying for a license to watch it, and forget about it forever after until I want to pay for it again. If I can tape shows off of TV, I should be able to do this.

Now, selling it is another matter, but if it's mine, shouldn't I be able to show it to people? It shouldn't be a perfect copy anyhow. And if they're willing to pay for it, isn't that just a transaction between us, they get my property, etc.?

On the internet, if I view a copyrighted image, I guarantee you many copies of it have just been made in various places due to the technology at work. Are you going to sue me, Netscape, Microsoft, or the routers in between?

Of course, I also am not a lawyer, but I'd be happy if one of those could enlighten us about where this falls between "fair use" and "theft", because the line is pretty gray.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Let's review real quick, and see which handy obvious things have been patented (thank god they expire after 17 years, otherwise there would be no such thing as a free UNIX!)...


the pixel,the character generator, sprites...
...on-screen programming, program guides...

What's next? (quick, patent it!)

How about "a method whereby animated characters interactively provide on-screen programming and program guides, comprising a character generator, animated sprites using the XOR method, an intelligent agent searching interface, local storage of programming information that can be retrieved from an on-demand network of"... blah, blah, blah.

Sure, it's just MS-Bob+TV-Guide, but... patent it, quick, so you can *sue* them when they try to do it, and *counter-sue* them if they try to sue you!

Patent, patent, gotta patent all, gotta patent'em all...I hate patents!
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Apparently you only get this famous after you die and you finally can't stop the media from talking about you--it sounds like the story of her life.

Here's a link from before she died...

MIT Inventors

Now, the Forbes article was pretty good. I can understand how someone with her background could help out on an idea like this, but she certainly didn't invent it outright, which is what the Wired article sounds like. Maybe we could have gotten the full story before, but she's dead now, and let the media make a story about it all they want, they always do...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Hey, Linus, thanks for reminding me about the Transmeta(tm) announcement! I know what I'm going to be reading on slashdot tomorrow....

I know enough about trademark law to feel sorry for the man, I'm sure he hates this crap as much as we do. But, it's good to know that "our creator" is looking out for the good name of Linux(tm). And I'm glad religion doesn't work the same way. :)

Also, now I want to start a yyyy corp and trademark xxxx(tm). :)

xxxx is a trademark of yyyy.
Neener, neener, profits are for losers... (Dilbert)
All other trademarks are owned by their respective owners.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Okay, I'm annoyed. Did any of these pinhead moderators know who Zippy is, bother to follow the attached link, or read my sig?

It's called "humor".

Feel free to flag this as "Offtopic", since I'm obviously replying to my own post about bad moderation. Just... please, read the original post and make your own judgements. Looks like more reason to continue to browse at -1... *sigh*
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Um, no.

Actually, IIRC, Microsoft used technology from MainWin (which they later bought--it's a company that specialized in porting Windows applications to UNIX), and MainWin had already ported at least half of Windows to UNIX. IE runs on top of that. But it still sucks, bigtime. :)

As I've said before, IE 3.0 for Windows 3.1 (separate product, woo hoo!) runs fine under Wine, and much better than IE 3.0 "for UNIX" runs on any UNIX. :) I haven't been able to install the other two to test them, but they look like Windows applications to me...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Zippy the Pinhead writes with some welcome news:

Remember the RealNetworks vs. Now I'm having INSIPID THOUGHTS about the beautiful, round wives of HOLLYWOOD MOVIE MOGULS encased in
PLEXIGLASS CARS and being approached by SMALL BOYS selling FRUIT.. Streambox case a few weeks
ago? Well, the judge has decided to lift the injunction against Streambox. .. Now I think I just reached the
state of HYPERTENSION that comes JUST BEFORE you see the TOTAL at the SAFEWAY CHECKOUT COUNTER! They can
now resume developing and selling their nifty RealAudio tools."


...It's the only way to read slashdot!
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Hey Andover.net, here's a Linux job for you:

We need a "Sort By Lowest Score First" option, because the bottom six incoherent posts that got scored down are far funnier than the top six incoherent posts that got scored up.

Did I mention that slashdot was going to hell?
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

:) Windows 1.03, on six 5+1/4" floppies, right?

Oh man, that was cool, it supported *EGA*, you could have 16 colors, for the first time, just like the Commodore 64 always did.

The sad thing is, Write didn't change significantly from Windows 1.03 to windows 3.10.

(You could still open the same files in each one, the addition was OLE in Windows 3.x, and that was more of a global Windows thing than a Write feature)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Replying to a couple of comments:

First, if people are going to call Solaris of all things "big iron", then IRIX definitely qualifies. It's true that you can buy a graphics workstation that runs IRIX, but that's not all they sell. I've seen some neat multi-processor monsters with gobs of RAM and disk space running all your nifty UNIX services off of IRIX.

Second, yeah, I always thought of IBM Mainframes and stuff when people talked about "big iron", but it's an old term, and nowadays people use it interchangeably with "enterprise computing". ...and, depending on what you want to do, Cray is often not the answer. For fast vector processing, go for it, but for many other things a fast network of computers beats a Cray. (also depends on which Cray, and which Cray computers we're talking about!)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

*sigh* Some developers have it already. Some warez kiddies might have the final version (but more likely have some random-numbered beta).

But most people won't have a copy because it's not sold in stores. Remember the Windows '95 launch? Or when they opened computer stores at midnight to sell Windows '98? That's when it's available.

If I manage to steal a copy, or sleep with microsoft to get one early, that's not the same as when they start selling it. It's available when anyone with the cash can get a copy.

...and I've seen Beta 3. Woo hoo, what a piece of crap. With Microsoft, I probably shouldn't consider it released until the first Service Pack that fixes any important issues is released. :)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Thanks for the info...

Of course, this confuses the issue, because anyone who buys a computer in that window could get Windows 2000, but it still won't be sold in stores yet. And, at $220 for the upgrade from Windows '95/'98, it looks like consumers will be advised to wait for "Millenium". (which is due when? Sometime between 2000 and 2001, like most people think the millenium is?)

Of course, if Microsoft wanted a Linux competitor, they should have kept Xenix. ;)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

First, Windows 2000 ISN'T OUT YET. I don't know how many times I have to say this, and *still* have people argue with me. I think I'll give up by February. :)

Second, Windows 2000 != Office 2000.

Third, there are "Office clones" avaliable for Linux, and I believe the file format since Word '97 hasn't really changed. Star Office should work fine for this, and I've had good luck with Word Perfect (I like the HTML it generates much better, too).

Fourth, Windows 2000 will contain many technical advances compared to the earlier Windows products, and that *is* why people will migrate to it. Where I am, the IT department is beginning to find out that NT isn't all it's cracked up to be, and they might end up migrating to Red Hat instead. (maybe even running NT in VMWare, as needed!) The truth is, as the article states, Windows 2000 is still playing catch-up to Unix, and it's embarrassing that some free program that developers play with in their spare time is shaping up better than the "industry standard". :)

I doubt this was written specifically to get posted to Slashdot, and ZD Net's track record has gotten a lot better, and this isn't even a ZD Net *article*! However, if this wasn't written now, I'm sure it would have been written later (for the awards, you know, Infoworld, Product of the Year, and all...).

In my experience, Linux's hardware support lies somewhere between Win 95/98 and NT. Since NT has a "supported hardware" list that's iffy at best, and that's *with* corporate backing, I'm glad I can use my generic sound card, TV card, etc. under Linux...

Some drivers under Linux *are* under development. However, many drivers for hardware for NT are, also, and that means *no* driver, not a "perma-beta" driver.

I wouldn't even begin to accociate e-commerce with "big iron". However, if I were to talk about "big iron", I might think of IRIX as well. But IRIX is being dropped, in favor of? Linux, I believe. If SGI puts resources into extending Linux at the higher levels, I'll be pretty happy. Also, realize where your comparison got lost: I'd rather be running a scalable Solaris box than a buggy NT box any day. Also, the BSD's don't necessarily do better here. Any well-configured, stable box should do fine, you don't need the latest new-fangled version of GNOME, *especially* if you're root. :)

This article is saying that if Microsoft isn't careful, it's going to get the bomb dropped on them. In fact, often when pundits say "it is beginning", chances are it's all but over. I thought awarding things to Linux would be so 1998 by now, but apparently we're still the underdog in the media.

Nice little moralistic rant there, Sig11, but you're rambling. Did someone bet you to post something and get it scored up to 5, without reading the article?
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

:) You are correct, sir. All part of the humor.

However, thanks for the Star Control link! (I love those games... Any game that uses mods for sound must be cool.)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Ooo, I can answer this one!

Maybe she was programmed by men in the UK. That would explain the "racist" British news focus, too. Hmm...

Besides, what do you care, it's just an interface that reads text, and this is a prototype. I'm sure that if the technology is successful, there will be Canadian men and Asian Aliens and whatever your little 3-D rendered heart could possibly desire.

Me? I'm still rooting for the Cyc project.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Lisp has been doing this stuff forever. Maybe it'd be a good idea to look into the formats that expert systems use to exchange data; I bet they're pretty generic.

Of course, that won't happen, we'll all make our own stripped-down, human-readable versions, with big gaping flaws, until someone either standardizes it, or hides something nasty and binary with a GUI and dominates the market (*hint* I wonder who wants to use XML and "open standards"....) So let's try to come up with a real open format now, instead. :)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Isn't he the guy who writes the best-selling kid's books?

Explain your cryptic reference, and I'll explain mine:

Go play Star Control 2; you obviously haven't yet.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

This isn't a problem, it's a solution:

Let's sue MS-NBC for stealing 2,500 credit card numbers!

These sorts of lawsuits are brought against [cr|h]ackers all the time. The defense? "Um... I wasn't going to use them, I was just... just wanted to see if I could get them! Yeah, that's it!" Yeah, right. And that's what MS-NBC wants you to believe too. So either we'll have a precedent for being able to collect information on the grounds that it's cool, or we'll get to sue MS-NBC back into the dark ages. Sounds good to me.

(all you have to find is one of these companies who actually knew they got hacked... um... never mind. :)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

The article was a pretty good historical look at what happened, but the best part was the end, which also showed that the author didn't get it. Also, IMO, the history didn't go back far enough.

AOL *was* a BBS in Virginia in the old days, and in some senses, it still is. (okay, hardly) But originally, it was a BBS that had clients on Commodore 64's! Even though it may suck now, it has been around for a looong time, and that says something.

Jumping to the end, the casual guy dressed formal, and the formal guy dressed casual. This is the same thing that happened when Microsoft and IBM were working on the PC. Five seconds later, everybody laughed, and realized it didn't matter that much. This isn't saying that they don't understand each other, far from it. It's saying that this isn't such a hostile takeover after all, and both sides are doing what they can to make this work--a sign of cooperation.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

This is why I use redhat: no frozen potatoes.

Maybe if I had a microwave card for my computer, I wouldn't care, but I find it's too much trouble to constantly be heating and stirring those frozen potatoes. They take forever to heat up, and even after that, they don't always have that even consistency.

So I use RedHat 6.0, even though I don't know if I have to microwave a "Hedwig" or not. (Hedwig? Is that an alien from Star Control 2?) However, I guess if I used Debian, I could just try to Slink around the whole issue...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

The Solaris and HP/UX versions of IE all suck rocks.

If you want to use IE under Linux, I've managed to run IE 3.0 for 16-bit Windows under Wine (the colors are fixed now, yay!). I can't manage to install IE 4.0 or 5.0 yet--they seem to require a network install.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Yeah, the reason I mentioned the DLL / library thing is because I knew it was a problem they were working on (in Windows)--I hope they fix it.

In Linux, either you have to make the libraries come out right (to build the apps in the first place) or hopefully your distribution properly checks dependencies. (Red Hat, for instance, does this, and all of them should)

There's nothing wrong with liking the tools Windows has to offer. The only problem is, if you don't, you're screwed. They don't exactly have as many different toolsets to choose from. (Explorer pissed me off, not that the Program Manager was much better... I use fvwm2, stripped down. Just windows, no buttons, type what you want, four virtual desktops.)

It panicked on you for untarring a file? I hope that wasn't it. I managed to trash a filesystem one time, but I was kinda using an alpha version of some drive compression software...

I saw Windows 2000 Beta 3, and it crashed non-stop in the installation, but it ran okay. I hope more people have the same rock-solid experience that you do (once it's released).
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

*sigh* I'll be happy to disagree with you here.

You're right, Windows '95-2000 (there's a Y2K bug), Office, and Visual Studio all are very "featured". They also have many "mis-features", and many bugs. Unix has features that people actually *need* (that's why they put them there). Also, Unix is an Operating System, not a Word Processor, let's maintain that distinction. If you want a Word Processor for Unix, I'm sure you can find a good one, but you don't buy it from UNIXSoft, okay?

I'll have to disagree with this next one: Linux looks like Unix, it behaves like Unix, and it's implemented *well* compared to many commercial unixes. Of course, this all depends on what you want, but... ever used HP/UX? Linux makes *much* more sense compared to that. If you've used one particular commercial Unix for a while, you might be biased towards a particular flavor, as I surely am towards Linux, but they all share a lot of similarities.

What I like about Linux is that it caches *very* well, does very efficient process creation, is pretty stable, and supports a lot of devices (a note on these two: of course, some drivers are more stable than others, and there are always patches. That's what happens when you get something in development. However, I've never seen Linux get Unstable in the sense that Windows does--everything happens for a reason in Linux, and you can find out what it is if you know what you're doing.)

VMS is supposed to be good for scalability. I can't personally vouch for that, because I've seen it in situations where it must have been badly misconfigured. But that says something for its stability, because it didn't go down, it just went *really* slow. However, NT didn't get either of those features right. And I've seen Unix be just as stable as VMS, and far more friendly. :)

Win32 *does* have APIs for just about everything. It's a headache. Especially since it manages them with DLLs, which have to be the worst excuse for libraries that I've ever seen. First off, who in their right mind would let a program randomly modify/overwrite crucial system libraries? (or, even worse, let a *user* do this...) And even if you did, what if you have different, incompatible library versions with the same name? Microsoft did this many times in different versions of Office--they would replace a DLL that another Windows program used, such that installing Office breaks the other Windows program! That's apparently Microsoft Binary Compatibility for you. Maybe you could give them different names in a filesystem that did symlinks properly. Hmm... ;)

In the meantime, if you want APIs to program with, you can find tons of them for Linux. DGA instead of DirectX, many of the Windows APIs are implemented in Wine, there are many sound / graphics interfaces, some of them crossplatform like SDL, and many widget sets (I wish Windows knew what a widget set was!) and window managers (ditto for that, Windows needs more cool shells) and many free ready-made applications and stuff.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Okay guys, read the article. It sounds like this was an actual physical logo, like a billboard. Not the stupid thing in the bottom-left-hand corner of the screen!

I don't care who owns the transmission, if it's live, I want to see what's there! It's New York, for cris'sake. If they had a partnership with Lipton and digitally changed the big Cup-a-Noodle display or something, I'd be pissed!

(Why? Because I was at Times Square for New Years last year, I stared at that thing for three hours, and I kinda like it. I trust my news for some reality now and then, and if I found out that they lied to me like that, I'd be annoyed.)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Well, how much of any of that was written by Bill is still sometimes disputed, but if he did write it, that might explain what happened to Windows: designed by an assembler programmer good at writing *small* programs... Hmm.

In any case, we know he didn't write DOS, and it's obvious that all the later versions of DOS were pretty much just hacked up from the earlier versions. (FAT12 -> FAT16, and now VFAT / FAT32? Puh-leese.)

Windows 1.0 and 2.0 sucked, and they had teams of people working like that. Of the two, I still like GEOS better. Windows 3.0 and 3.1 was better, and more stable, but still couldn't multi-task well. In Windows '95/'98, they managed to fix the multi-tasking but drop the stability.

In Windows NT, they originally fixed the stability, but raised the resource requirements massively. In later versions, they managed to speed it up some, but now it's less stable.

It will be interesting to see what Windows 2000 brings, but none of this implies that people at Microsoft are good at big projects. Maybe they can all code great small assembler programs, and maybe they should have started with that and stuck to it for a while. After all, that's what got UNIX started. Maybe Microsoft will eventually manage to reinvent it. Or offer a good product at a fair price. Or give good tech support. Or take responsibility for their product's shortcomings, and advertise and benchmark truthfully.

...or they can just sue Al Gore for claiming to invent the Internet when we all *know* it was Bill Gates! That sounds more like it!
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

If we're going to go with this silly bacteria-space-roaming theory, who is to say that life didn't originate on Venus?

Here, I'll propose a (semi-)plausible (alien conspiracy) theory with almost no evidence--tell me what you think.

All life on Earth was engineered by hyper-intelligent beings on Venus. They realized that their planet was moving inhospitably close to the Sun, and they wanted something to survive them. However, they had polluted their planet (wars, manufacturing, whatever) to the point where it was inhospitable, and Earth still was, too, at the time. Now, we have evolved into sentient beings, and they are dead, as is all record of their civilization. (Venus looks pretty nasty right now)

There. So life began on Venus, and as *proof*, notice that nothing can survive on Venus anymore, but it could have in the past. Ooo!

Now you make up your story, and with the new rules of sensationalistic journalism, you too can turn Science Fiction into Science!
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Do my rights online include a decent *color* for a section like this, maybe so I could read it?

Well, apparently not, so I'm browsing in w3m. But the article didn't get any better.

I'm opposed to censorware in principle, but what do you think is going to happen to the little geek kid who runs into
a censored web browser? Well, I think he's going to find a way around it. And I think that's wonderful. If this
goes through, I'd like to thank Holland, MI, and all the other little towns breeding the next generation of clever
hackers and crackers.

Why? Because censorware software is horrible. It's pretty funny when the adults can't get their work done due to the
"security measures" in place, while the kids go to all the xxx/porn/warez sites--maybe they aren't even interested in
them, maybe it's just the challenge.

Remember, folks. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. And people's "intentions" seem to be getting better
all the time...

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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

I kinda like that, actually.

Good Woz quote, too.

I don't know whether to admire you know, or tell you to piss off, now. Maybe I should have asked HAL for his opinion... :)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

To all those people who claim the article had no substance:

STOP RUNNING IT THROUGH THE PREPROCESSOR!

The proper way to view the article is with a web browser. You're not supposed to download it to article.c, and run 'cc -E article.c' to read the article. (and if you do, at least use the proper definitions for your situation, and remember that all comments will be stripped)

Anyhow, I thought it was a cute gimmick. And isn't that enough for Salon, sometimes?
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Don't even get me started, because IIRC, the split between ELIZA and Emacs Doctor was far and wide at the time. I also left out Stanley Kubrick, but... well, you can't credit everyone.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Let me use an interface besides Emacs, HAL!

I'm sorry, Dave, but I can't do that. LISP makes a lot more sense, once you get the hang of it. You should try it sometime.

I just want to type! Don't make me press the power button, HAL.

There is no power button, Dave. You would have to use the Meta-Hyper-Control Power-button command first, and then type in the access code.

Okay, HAL, I'll do it.

How do you feel now, HAL?

Is it because do I feel now HAL that you came to me?

Oops, that must have been the wrong button.

Does it bother you that it must have been the wrong button?

Aaaahhh!

How are you feeling now, HAL?

I'm in LOVE with DON KNOTTS!!

Who? What are you talking about??

Who wants some OYSTERS with SEN-SEN an' COOL WHIP?

HAL, come back! I'm sorry!

(With apologies to Arthur C. Clarke, RMS, Emacs Doctor, Zippy the Pinhead, and of course HAL)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Sure. It'd take a pretty big beowulf cluster to truly model the fluid dynamics accurately, even in a little pint of Guinness.

However, the Guinness models it perfectly... amazing! Beer-based computing time!

Seriously though, folks, there have been articles about using DNA for specialized problem-solving that would ordinarily take supercomputers a long time, and it involves basically sloshing the stuff around in a solution, and then looking through it later for the result. Neat stuff, that. So you're closer to the truth than you think.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.