Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Bundestux, Kerberos, Blizzard
This deserves a hearty 'Jawohl!' DocSnyder writes: "Since the Bundestux campaign started collecting votes in favor of putting Free Software into the German parliament (Bundestag), more than 25000 people have done so. A lot of online discussions - in addition to Heise News and Linux-Community.de, even some Bundestag parties have put up their online forums - are very active to share user experience about GNU/Linux and Free Software. (Sorry for most of the linked sites speaking German, it's simply too much to translate at once.)
After several open letters and press releases have been exchanged between lobbyists and politicians, some information about a research performed by the German company Infora appeared on Heise News (english version), recommending an all-Microsoft infrastructure with the exception of some security-critical services like e-mail. The detailed paper is still not available.
An internal test (english version) between the Bundestag administration, SuSE, IBM and Microsoft confirmed that GNU/Linux and Free Software are in fact ready for the Bundestag's IT infrastructure, yet the testers don't like the copy&paste method used by KDE and recommend Windows for the desktops.
Last week, the Bundestag members (MdB) Jörg Tauss and Hans-Joachim Otto have been invited by Heise for an online chat with the community. While Jörg Tauss is a clear supporter of open standards and Free Software, Hans-Joachim Otto takes the internal test as well as Infora's research as primarily relevant for the coming decision.
On Saturday, MdB Uwe Küster summarized some details in an interview. He considered the decision - officially due Feb 28 - as almost finalized. The solution would show GNU/Linux on most servers, Windows XP and Office XP on the desktops, keeping proprietary data formats and lock-in interfaces up to the next upgrade cycle, which in fact would have been problem number one to solve.
All in all, the community has provided lots of experience, ideas and solution paths which finally seem to be largely ignored in the decision finding process towards the successor of a homogenous Microsoft Windows NT4 infrastructure, which has to be replaced until 2003 when Microsoft will no longer provide support for NT4."
That's a lot of cleaning up to do! maffew writes "A lot of feedback and ideas have been flying around since my article How to fix the Unix configuration nighmare was featured on freshmeat and slashdot. So we've created an ongoing web site and mailing list for people to continue discussing, organising, and hopefully in the end coding. It's all at unixconfig.sourceforge.net.
Meanwhile here's a link to the permanent home for the nightmare article. This is where I'm making revisions and adding links."
Raise your hand if this would mean seeing it for the 4th time ... Chris Brewer writes "In case you've been living on a different planet, The Fellowship of the Ring picked up Five Baftas, the British equivalent of the Oscars, including Best Director, Best Film, and Peoples Choice. During a live interview (Real only) after the awards, Peter Jackson announces that a preview for The Two Towers will be shown from the March 22 screenings of The Fellowship."
At long last ... something? If you've followed the strange relationship Microsoft has had with Kerberos, you may feel grateful to the anonymous coward who writes: "It would seem that Microsoft is granting the world a royalty-free, non-exclusive license to implement their Kerberos extension."
Here's some comfort for Starcraft players. An Anonymous Coward writes "As stated on Blizzard's battle.net service, the latest Starcraft patch supports UDP play, so some of the compelling reasons to use bnetd have been addressed. Whatever you may think of Blizzard and the DMCA, at least it shows Blizzard is listening to its fans."
--sdem
it is simple to get the 10th post, but it is hard to know why the rebels only built half the deathstar.
yoda probably knows.
..thought i'd post something useless. isn't this gay?
fourth post!
You said it. This one needs to be posted more often.
Clearly an MIT fanboy. Not a Harvard man, no sir!
goddam Swabian!
All hail the Pr0n K1ng!!!
I, like most of my generation, grew up watching the Smurfs. I loved them so much that I tuned in every Saturday morning to see what crazy hijinks those lovable little blue creatures would get into.
It is just now that I have realized what I was really tuning into each and every Saturday morning was in actuality Socialist Propaganda!! Yes that is correct, Papa Smurf and all of his little Smurf minions are not the happy little characters Hanna Barbara would have us believe! The cartoon was really created by the Russian government in order to indoctrinate the youngest members of western society with Socialist beliefs and ideals thus destroying their resistance to the imminent Russian invasion that was to occur when this generation (my generation) grew up.
To prove my point I submit that 1.) They live in a communal village and are discouraged to leave the village without the company of their fellow Smurfs. 2.) Every Smurf has his own specific job and does not deviate from that job. The job even becomes part of their personality and their name (Brainy Smurf, Handy Smurf, etc.) 3.) If ever a Smurf decides to strike out on his own he is cast into danger in some way of another and it is up to the collective to save him. 4.) Papa Smurf looks an awful lot like Karl Marx plus, he wears all that red.
And let us not forget Smurfette, the lone female Smurf and the embodiment of community property.
In the face of such convincing evidence, it is easy to mark the Smurfs as the Socialists they are, and their nemeses Gargamel (and his maladjusted cat Azrael, a not so subtle attack on ISRAEL) is the personification of Capitalism; out for himself and profit trying to destroy the peaceful commune of Smurfs.
Thankfully our resistance was not destroyed, thanks to the determination of other cartoons such as G.I. Joe and Richie Rich who's goal it was to instill in the children of the western world the morals and values of Capitalism.
I've got your back, troll. good show.