Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Intentia, Ephemera, Restoration
With a baby and some makeup you can add in some aliens.
Docrobot writes "NASA is obviously tired of the recent fanatical conspiracy claims dealing with 'faked' Apollo Moon Landings, the 'Face on Mars,' and most recently EuroSeti's claim that enhanced SOHO satellite images show UFOs.
NASA debunks EuroSeti's resent image enhanced SOHO satellite UFO photos covered by us here with this snappy and smug how-to article entitled: How to Make Your Own UFO.
It looks like Euroseti should to go back to the drawing board, or up their meds..."
At least use a security envelope next time. mpawlo writes "As reported by Greplaw, Reuters will not be prosecuted due to the alleged hack of Intentia's web server. Intentia did not clearly state that the information was secret, nor did Intentia try protecting it. Intentia stated that the report would be available at a certain time, and you only had to slightly change the URL from the report of the previous quarter in order to obtain the current report. Hence, the prosecutor will not initiate proceedings against Reuters or any of its reporters."
(Here is Slashdot's previous story on this affair.)
A happy turn in the PCI list saga. DieNadel writes "I've received an email today from PCI-SIG regarding the End of the Free PCI Device List, that says:
'Dear PCI Community,The PCI Vendor and Device Lists located at http://www.yourvote.com/pci/ have been restored. The PCI-SIG recognizes the value of Jim Boemler's Web site and our officers have worked with him to restore it.
We are committed to working with Jim and the rest of the community to ensure this service is not interrupted in the future.
Thank you for your continued support of our technologies. We will keep you informed with any other updates.
Best Regards,
Tony Pierce
PCI-SIG Chairman.'
I think it's a nice move from PCI-SIG!"
Making money with Free software, explained. Yesterday, we posted a link to an article explaining Red Hat's new EOL schedule for various versions of its operating system. Red Hat's decision drew a lot of flak in the comments attached to that story; not that it won't again, but over on NewsForge, Red Hat's Jeremy Hogan has a reaction-to-the-reaction (not just on Slashdot) which the new EOL schedule drew.
When you finish your UFO, be sure to make yourself an alien. Seriously, this is a fun read by some FX experts that really destroys that alien autopsy stuff.
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
Come on... we're all terribly curious. It's been slower than all get out recently. Why? How about letting everyone that hasn't befriended Taco know what he said in his journal about the site/features/updates? There's probably no more fitting place to have a meta-discussion about the site than in slashback, so let's do it.
Ah, I see. I thought this Safari Browser of mine was doing something wierd ;-)
I'm getting loads of timeouts. Are they using MS SQL servers or something.
Please fix CmdrTaco!
I hate it when obviously faked UFOs are publicized and then thouroughly debunked. This leads people to assume that all UFO reports are obviously faked and there are no reports which are unexplainable.
There are, its a real phenomenon, and nobody knows what they are. 95% of the cases may be solar flares and whatnot, but there are cases where trained pilots chase things which show up on radar going at supersonic speeds making hairpin turns. There are UFO sightings with craft doing these things recorded by witnesses over large areas from many different perspectives.
They could all be fake. But this doesn't mean they do not warrant investigation. A few shitty UFO pictures which can be duplicated easily doesn't make the interesting accounts and evidence any less interesting.
--
Hence, the prosecutor will not initiate proceedings against Reuters or any of its reporters.
It probably would have been better if the prosecutor had initiated proceedings, and then lost. It would set a favorable precedent.
And I thought that UFOs were real.
Guess this Raelian thing just isn't for me.
yeah the 'zoo' is *broken* please explain...
Quit Slashdot Today!
Although I disagree that this is the proper place, I can't think of a better one...
I certainly have noticed a _major_ slowdown over the last week though.
-Ben
We already saw the NASA debunking. In this slashback, I was expecting a debunking of the NASA debunking by the UFO people.
Living in the UK, I have a duty to hate america :) :)
:)
However from a very young age the one thing I've consistently liked is NASA. Yeah I know they have problems, but they represent a lot of dreams
About half a year ago I posted a comment saying I couldn't work out how to apply to NASA. A few people posted links, but they were all for things like biochemists and managers and stuff.
How do I get to do mad-scientist kinda stuff? Work on rockets and spaceships?
I worked at BAe Systems for a while hoping to get in via that route, but only one person had done it before me, and that was through creating better missiles to kill people with - not a route I wanted to go.
Super Bowl was pretty fun. I didn't see no stinkin' X-Men 2 commercial, but dammit it I'm so stoked for The Matrix.
Lots of stuff going on in the code lately, and I'm getting more than the usual amount of flame bitching about it. Since I'm back from New York (pretty busy week all things considered, but I had a better time than I was expecting) I actually have some time to address a few things. This weekend has been loaded with heaping flames (relating to someone who spoofed my email on their web page) and a number of people bitching about me not staying on top of alerting people to changes on Slashdot.
First up, its worth noting that the last couple weeks have been somewhat hellish. Over Christmas we had some robot attacks, and some pretty serious hardware and software issues. Because of these things, and of course the shortened holiday schedules, we weren't able to do our usual wed. night code refresh. For those of you who don't pay attention, jamie usually syncs Slashdot to the latest tagged release on CVS every wed. Normally our code syncs are a few hundred lines of random stuff, but since this one was nearly a month worth of code and bug fixes held back because of the serious performance issues, this one was a doozy.
So there have been lots of fun little buglets to contend with. Some of them have been fixed, but here are a few: I'm pretty sure the comments on users.pl have the proper score now, and I'm pretty sure there are no more Score:6 comments. The reason for this is that we finally broke the Karma Bonus out into a user preference. For nearly 4 years now, the karma bonus was essentially hard coded to the users comment. But now it's actually a user preference. So if you're sick of karma whoring Score:2 default posters, you can disable the karma bonus. Honestly it would make more sense to set them as a Foe and and set the Foe penalty to -1, because a good number of Karma Bonus posters are fine, but if you wanna throw the baby out with the bathwater, thats cool with us.
Also worth noting is that a comment that gets 2 down mods loses the Karma bonus. The reason for this is that a comment with the bonus by default can't go lower than 0. Even if 3 people try to mod it down, the 3rd will have no real affect because of the bonus. This means that moderators use points on a Score:0 comment thinking that it can go to Score:-1, but the +1 default karma bonus prevents it. It creates a whole nasty cycle. The solution was simply to disable the Karma Bonus for any comment modded down twice. It's important that Karma Bonus users use their bonus wisely. Someday perhaps I'd like to enforce a stronger penalty for using the bonus to post a comment that ultimately drops to -1. Not a steep one, but that should definately be a consideration if the user is to continue to have access to the Bonus.
You've probably noticed a fair number of changes to users.pl. The layout of the user info pages is in serious flux. And by flux, I mean, Fucked Up. There are a few browser incompatibilities, and general layout screwups that really are making the users stuff hard to user. That will be cleaned up over the next couple of code refreshes.
We changed the moderation display on comments page. Originally we displayed them as a hard number (eg, Insightful=5, Offtopic=3....). And I had several issues with this. Mainly it was just hard to read on those comments that had many different moderation categories active, what with the word wrapping and all. So I changed it to be a percentage, and to only display the top 3. I find this display a much more simple and elegant view. Much more useful since for comments with few mods, its irrelevant, and with many mods, I really only want to know what the dominant couple of mods are. Especially since those are the ones that ultimately become the comment label and affect the score's comments.
The second half of this change is to add a second batch of labels that will show a user what other point modifiers are active on any given comment. The goal is eventually to make it clear what comments are triggering the long comment bonus, or the Karma Bonus, or, say the Friend of Friend bonus, and all according to your user preferences.
As you imagine, this data will greatly clarify the scores of comments for users, but it will also require some sacrifices in screen real estate to keep the whole thing understandable. So hang in there while we sort it out. This stuff is all a serious work in progress.
These changes have been some what controversial, and it will only get more controversial I promise. We've had a long standing feature request to revamp the scoring system. The existing system essentially is +1 for good, -1 for bad, and a handful of modifiers decided upon by the poster, and the reader. This is of course not a really scalable solution.
Dammit. The batteries in my wireless keyboard just died. It's 5 degrees out. I don't want to get new ones
Where was I. Scalable solutions. Historically, you could look at a Score:3 comment and kind fudge together that 1-3 moderators liked it (depending on whatever obvious factors existed like AC/Logged in you saw). This creates a lot of limits on the system, most substantially is that it enforces some sort of maximum number of moderators the system can have. Once 5 or so moderators have had their say on a given comment, what more needs to be done?
What do I mean? Well, the point of moderation is to filter cruft, and to let users control how many comments they read, and have some sort of quality level associated with that number. In other words, that there will be a pyramid of comments, and if you only wanna read 10 comments, you can be reasonably assured that the 10 or so score:5 comments are the best. The problem is that if we put in double the moderators, we start getting more and more Score:5 comments. We learned that a few months ago when we doubled the number of mod points in the system. THere was a substantial increase in Score:5, but I don't think that necessarily meant that we had a better discussion- comments posted later in the discussion are still kinda ignored by moderators.
One group of people just says "Add Score:6!" but I don't really want to do that. Instead I want to redesign how scoring works. There are hundreds of ways that this could be done, and I'm certainly open to suggestions (my inbox is always available, and I'm on irc.slashnet.org much of the time). This is still very much in the conceptual stages, but I'd like to factor in many components into computing the score of the comment.
A few examples (these are all just vague ideas, nothing concrete, no flames!)
Time since discussion creation: A comment posted 24 hours after a discussion was created, and moderated 36 hours after creation has something unique to it. Since most comments are posted & moderated in the first 12 hours, the fact that this comment bubbled up so late means perhaps it has a bit more value than a comment posted in the initial burst of discussion. Perhaps a scoring boost will help that. Part of this would be to encourage discussion to continue. And part of this would be to improve the value of moderation to those comments that number 1000+ in a discussion. Those big discussions really take a hit at some point.
User factors: we have countless factors that we could use. UID? Activity levels? Historical Moderation Fairness? Mod points used? If UID 2,000 is a constant reader, historically moderates 98% fairly, and never lets his 5 mod points expire, perhaps this could be rewarded.
Moderation Types: I think that the 5th 'Insightful' mod shouldn't mean as much as the first 'Insightful' mod. Some sort of diminished return. Also, I'd like to account for the number of mods in each category. I think that 6 insightfuls, 3 trolls, and 3 offtopics should have a net result of maybe +1, even tho the sum of the values of these moderations are 0, I think that the dominant moderation should have a stronger affect on the final score of the comment.
Capping Moderation: At some point a comment needs to be done being moderated just to encourage moderation points to be spent elsewhere. As I mentioned above, it only takes 5 moderators to get an AC comment from 0 to 5. So what is the point to the 20th moderator throwing his 2 bits in? I'd much rather encourage a moderator to look at some other comment more deserving of attention? So I don't know if my best bet is to explicitly disallow moderation of comments after a certain number of moderations have been used, or to have each moderation value successively less. Either essentially has the same result.
;)
We've also been slowly slapping in a few additional plums for Subscribers. One of them is to allow them to scroll back through comments. Currently we only let people see their last 24 comments (this is to prevent robots from crawling us, and to keep the db load down). We're letting subscribers have the next/prev links so they can browse more easily into history. Viewing those pages of course counts towards your subscription page count.
We've also set it so that subscribers can have double the friends in the Zoo system. This so far hasn't affected a lot of users, but there have been just enough people hitting the limits that we'd like to let them continue to befriend more people.
Future subscriber plums will be listed in the subscriber section of the FAQ. There are a couple of good ones coming that we're testing now. I think you'll like them. ANd as always, you can send ideas to me. IRC. Email. SourceForge. I'm usually fairly on top of all three.
That about wraps it up for me today. SimCity 4 is out, and I'm really hoping to have a few hours today to try to get a city with actual skyscrapers. So far I've not been lucky in this. And I still have friday's Farscape on the Tivo to enjoy. Also, that should give the complainers enough information to write derogatory discussions of the Slashdot Conspiracy in their journals explaining how the Slashdot Janitors are fascist demon children bent on destroying the world somehow or other
Drop one of those fancy new Cruise Missile things with Microwave-Generators-Inside(TM), which will in turn destroy all radar, thus making every flying object unidentified.
:-p
I rest my case.
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
Ok, I have to upgrade my systems annually to maintain support, I'll "buy" that. But, could you tell me how I perform an OS upgrade on a remote headless system? Sure, I can throw on the latest RPMs for vi and emacs but I want to know how I do a complete system UPGRADE from 7.3 to 8.0 remotely via telnet, ssh, what-have-you. I may be thousands of miles away from my servers and they are located in lights out facilities.
P.S. Microsoft just had to restate their EOL on NT 4.0. Will you be doing the same in a couple of months?
I'm pretty sure that that should be recent, but resented would work pretty well, too.
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
I have read a many of teh comments about the EOL from RedHat ( here and NewsForge ), and nowhere did I see that one had to actaully re-install the entire server. I often just use the "update" option on my latest RH CD.
Is this somehow no longer allowed, or do things change too much?
I've always used Windowz and I consider myself an exceptional Visual
Basic programmer, so I know computers pretty good. In fact I got an A-
in my programming class last term. But I'm a little wary of how much
power Microsoft has in the computer field. Many of my friends use
RedHat and I've recently installed it on my machine at home. Although
I haven't had as much chance to play with it as I'd like, I've been
greatly impressed.
This weekend I gave some thoughts to the things that are wrong with
Linux. I hope no one minds having some flaws pointed out. I'd like to
help make RedHat stronger so it can conquer MS. Hopefully RedHat will
hear this (crossing fingers) and address these. I think with a little
effort, RedHat's Linux can defeat Microsoft's Windows!
To begin with, there are too many different flavors of RedHat.
Browsing a list on Amazon, I saw they made varients under the
codenames of Mandrake, Debian and Slackware, just to name a few. I
know that I'm very new to RedHat so maybe this is obvious but it seems
like RedHat should just sell a few different flavors of its operating
system. Perhaps one for the desktop and one for a server? Could
someone explain why RedHat produces dozens of different versions of
Linux?
Secondly did you know that anyone can view the source code to Linux! I
think that RedHat shouldn't make its code available. After all, what
keeps Microsoft from stealing RedHat's ideas and putting it into
Windows? My friend says that FreeBSD stole the TCP/IP stack from DOS a
long time ago and Microsoft is always looking for revenge for that.
Plus it seems to me like RedHat is just giving away its ideas for
free. And what keeps hackers or terrorists from tampering with the
code and putting a virus in every computer?
On a related note, why doesn't RedHat write Linux in assembly? My
friend says that's what Microsoft does for Windows, and that's why
Windows is faster and more stable than Linux.
Next RedHat definitely should kill -9 (ha, ha!) the command line.
Microsoft finally gave up DOS when Windows 2000 came out. I'm suprised
that RedHat hasn't migrated away from...whatever its version of DOS is
called (Bash, I think?) But maybe this is planned for a future
release?
Finally Linux needs games! RedHat will never be successful in the home
without games. They should also tell M$ to release a version of Office
for Linux too. And Internet Explorer!
Have a nice day! Go Linux!!
I resent the recent images of UFOs that were sent and resent.
Has anyone else experienced server timeouts and general connection problems with Slashdot recently? I've been really saddened by the poor service as of late.
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
>It looks like Euroseti should to go back to the
>drawing board, or up their meds..."
Not to mention the Slashdot editors who posted this crap as a Science story in the first place.
So what's the story?
Was the Lawyer acting on his own?
Did the PCI-SIG brass sick him on poor Jim on purpose, then realize their mistake?
Was it (my favorite) a marketing exec run amok?
Inquiring minds want to know.
...is that they assume that they *aren't* increasing their user base much, and that it's the same people always upgrading their version of linux. As their user base increases, there will be demand to keep supporting releases for longer periods. Hopefully the EOL commitment is not etched in stone.
alias uptime="echo '5:33pm up 22342352324 days, 6:28, 2124315623 users, load average: 2432.40, 12312.31, 123123.19'"
You are one of us now.
You just have to install apt4rpm on the Red Hat machine.
[snip] there are cases where trained pilots chase things which show up on radar going at supersonic speeds making hairpin turns [snip]
You wanna know why in recent times these cases have become so rare? It's because the software for radar tracking has been improved to the point where it won't link spurious signals together and assume that these must be a continuous track. Now when such systems do find something making hairpin turns (doesn't have to be supersonic) or travelling at 10K+ MPH, then the software will filter out such tracks.
Now a true believer's reaction might be "OH!MY!GOD! THEY (MIBs, the Fed, whatever) are stopping the information at the source! How can we protect ourselves if we don't even know if the UFOs are there!"
Or you might figure that the older radar systems simply were faulty.
Based on that 5th paragraph, I can tell you're just being sarcastic. But I'm bored and feeling like explaining things, so:
1) Red Hat linux is only one distribution. Mandrake is, yes, based on Red Hat, but they aren't the same company. Red Hat does not *own* linux, nor did they even create it. Search for "Linus Torvalds" on google. Red Hat was merely one of the first companies to package it and sell it for money. I consider them the AOL of linux: They make it easier for idiots to use this operating system, what with their packagae manager.
Debian and Slackware have absolutely nothing to do with Red Hat, except providing a copy of the rpm software (mainly because it's so easy most people use it. I refuse to, I like to compile my own). Each distro has its own list of software packages that they include, and THAT'S what separates them. Each incremented version (Red Hat 7.0 vs Red Hat 8.0, or Slackware 8.0) only means there are more recent versions of the programs included, maybe some programs added or removed. I believe they all use the kernels available at kernel.org, but I could be wrong.
I personally don't think Red Hat themselves are going to get anywhere *near* as large as microsoft, but I'm sure they're trying.
2) The GPL (open-source license) is the reason linux is as big as it is today: It allows people the ability to acquire this and LEARN it, without having to shell out too much money-- Even better, it allows them to take the software and modify it, making it better or adapting it to their purpose. This is what the linux community is all about. Microsoft taking the code and changing it, and then *charging* for it (which you know they ain't gonna give nothing for free) would go against that license, and they could be sued.
What's to keep hackers from creating virii to specifically target this OS? Nothing. Except that then *they* become susceptible to this virus as well. Personal opinion, most hackers use some flavor of *nix.
3) Kill the command line? The *reason* *nix is as powerful as it is? When was the last time you were able to modify *every* one of your 1,421 mp3 files with a single command? Windows has NOT eliminated the command line. Every single version of windows (excepting maybe CE, perhaps) comes with what they call "Command Prompt" or "MS-DOS Shell". What do you think this program is? it's like the joke "Windows 98 is a 32-bit patch to a 16-bit overlay on an 8-bit operating system created by a 2-bit company." (Isn't there a "4-bit" in there?)
4) I totally agree on the games. I'd like to see linux surpass Mac on game availability. I *would* purchase games for linux that were not released under the GPL. Close-source that crap, I don't care, just don't make me boot into windows to play games! Especially you, Blizzard!
To borrow words from the X files, I want to believe. But I can't make myself believe.
From what we know about the vastness of space and the immense distances that UFOs would have to travel to get here, it would take some pretty amazing technology, especially if it was transporting biological entities.
Any civilization with that kind of technology:
(a) wouldn't care a whole lot about Earth, we're one foot out of the ectoplasm. We haven't done anything interesting that a highly evolved civilization hasn't already done.
(b) and if they did (hey, I still look at ant hills), why wouldn't their technology enable them to remain completely undetected? Or gather their information via remote sensing?
I just can't get past these things. I'd like someone to tell me why I should.
That's been my thought since reading the CND letter. I don't recall it saying anything about the site itself, just its use of the logos. I can't find the letter itself anymore (looks like it's been removed from the site), but there isn't a single PCI-SIG logo anywhere on it.
Thirdly by having such an aggressive EOL policy is will force a much smoother upgrade process, being it via physical media or Internet upgrades.
Why should RH commit themselves to be held back whenits clearly not in their own interst, not the interest of the "desktop" users, Incl. Jane Sixpack.
Help fight continental drift.
I'm not really a sysadmin, and I'm wondering just how serious this EOL thing is.
I understand that "if it ain't broke, don't touch it" is a good rule for IT. But Red Hat won't be forcing you to upgrade all your machines, it just will be refusing to support old installs. If it ain't broke, you don't need support, right?
The other thing is that Microsoft upgrades often come with serious changes: you can't just install the new version, you have to change your whole setup. Isn't it true that Linux server software is generally backwards-compatible, and you can upgrade your packages to the latest stuff without changing the way the servers are set up?
Finally, I run Debian, and it's easy for me to upgrade a system with just an ssh connection. Can Red Hat admins remotely upgrade packages over ssh, without having to install APT for Red Hat? (And if not, how do real sysadmins feel about APT for Red Hat?)
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Remember everybody's favorite signature? Slashdot Math: 50+1-1 = 49. Taco was so incensed about that he decided to hide Karma from everyone so they couldn't criticize his math skills. This was a good idea, and one he should have stuck with.
Recently, Slashteam decided that printing moderation totals was a bad idea. It's part of a continuing development trend of hiding the Slash backend from the users (not a bad idea). Maybe Krow has been playing an audio version of Chromatic's O'Reilly article to Taco while he sleeps. Maybe Taco's pride has finally yielded enough that he's willing to listen to someone else. Who knows. For whatever reason, someone's trying to make it harder to game the Slash system by removing anything that could be construed as "points" (I'm wondering how they plan to make it impossible to count your friends, but that's another story).Personally, I like to think that Trollback was responsible. But that's just ego talking.
In any event, moderation totals are now shown as percentages in an attempt to hide the number of times a post has been moderated. While it's pretty simple to reverse-engineer this number, you now need a calculator, which raises the bar a bit.
The funny thing, however, is that Taco has once again exposed his math skills to the world. So, once again, we get to put "Slashdot Math" in our .sigs. Are you ready?
Slashdot Math: 30+40+10 = 100
Enjoy,
Update: As many have pointed out in the comments, it is true that this change has a few side affects. One is that editors can now disguise their modbombing activity a little easier. The second is that by activating a division-based mod system, SlashTeam has proven that all its protestations about K5's moderation not scaling are a bogus. Of course, if you haven't accepted the fact that modbombing and handwaving are a way of life around here, you're blind, and you don't read my journal.
Its terribly depressing to think that you didn't notice the poster knew all the answers you provided him with .. he was posting satire. You do have satire in your country, right?
"Old man yells at systemd"
I beleive it's a 4 bit processor
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
"...specifically designed to help open source penetrate large IT users."
sounds very uncomfortable.
when he/she is presented with all of the server logs for the nic.mil domain registation web page(s). not only were those pages publically accessible, but they were not listed as being private either.
I really did see a ufo in a nasa picture shaking hands with john lennon, elvis and neil armstrong .... but when the acid wore off, it was gone
You mean: "Windows: A 32-bit patch to a 16-bit graphical interface based on an 8-bit operating system origionally encoded for a 4-bit processor written by a 2-bit company that can't stand 1-bit of competition."
Centralization breaks the internet.
Did you even read the first line of my post? In it, I explain that I realize this is not a serious post.
At the time, however, I had classified it as "sarcasm", but I suppose satire fits better. It *did* make me laugh. But then again, isn't that what satire is? Humorous sarcasm?
Besides, how do you know there aren't linux-disabled people reading these posts? Perhaps it answered some of their questions. How do you think I learned what I know? Precisely because of posts like this.
If it isn't possible then there is little chance of finding intelligent life in the universe. It's taken billions of years to develop intelligent life on this planet. Humans have been around for about a million years or so. 10 thousands years ago we started farming. 5 thousand years ago civilisations sprung up. 100 years ago the industrial age started. Now the way we are going the industrial age could last as little as 30 years and that's provided we don't wipe ourselves out with a super virus, nuclear war or Steve Irwin like disregard for dangerous animals first.
Now if we do the maths, assuming other human like species have developed in much the same way we did, the chances of any two species developing at about the same time so that they can actually detect the other one is there is very small. Each species has a window of a couple of hundred years in the billions it takes for them to develop to make enough noise to be detectable by another species on a planet far far away.
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
Sorry, but I think you have to get over it or stay with windows. (Bear in mind I am talking about Desktop not Server / Mission critical stuff) Looks like Compaq is getting with the "program" of quick upgrade cycle. This needs to continue and commercial SW vendors needs to incorporate this in their offering.
There was a very interesting Keynote a few days ago (can't remember by whom) the point the guy was making was that 85% of IT expenses was spend for keeping the "Status quo" only 15% was spend on development. This celarly needs to change and one way to do this is thru program like RH's steeper improvement rate.
Help fight continental drift.
The problem with a RedHat release is that there's no way to update it to the latest version without a reinstall. RPM as implemented by RedHat is good for maintaining a single version of the software but isn't good for maintaining and upgrading it. The "updates" Redhat produce don't change the version of the package, they just fix bugs. Updating to the latest version of a package is a nightmare of dependency problems. RPMs offered by vendors are pretty much only good for a single RedHat release (making life difficult for pretty much everyone).
Debian on the other hand allows you to get the latest version of the software and everything it needs in a single command. Upgrading is usually pretty painless.
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
nice sig!
The most important thing any republican needs to know.
Moderations: 30% Offtopic, 10% Redundant, 10% Interesting
Right now listed as +2 Informative. That's confusing.
I'm not going to argue the point about the SOHO satellites because I've already taken NASA's word for it. I was pretty skeptical about Euroseti's claims before anyway.
However (I'm playing the devil's advocate here), a lot of people make nothing more than assumptions about ETs not visiting us. Unfortunately, there really isn't any evidence against ET visiting us. Of course, there isn't any strong evidence for it.
All the assumptions that people use in arguments against ET visits seem, to me anyway, like nothing more than a projection of our own technological progress upon a possibly existent or non-existent non-earthly species. Could it be that skeptics are more ranting about the little amount of technological progress we've hitherto made?
We've had widely accepted assumptions in the past that have been hugely mistaken (e.g. the Sun orbiting the Earth.) Why is this any different? Sure, we don't have any evidence for it, but that only means that we can only say, "We don't know."
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
And here I was thinking that the most damning critism was that a "doctor" was pulling cow guts out of a foam rubber "alien"!
What does that phrase mean? Beavers build dams. Predators kill prey. Ants raise caterpillars and fungi and enslave other ants and bugs for their own benefit. Species drive other species to extinction. All animals shit all over. But if humans build dams, run ranches, hunt, farm, and drive other species to extinction.
Where is the limit? Was it ok for American Indians to drive big land animals to extinction when they first arrived here from Siberia, but not current humans? Is it ok for birds to shit all over islands and pollute them to hell and back, we think it cute and call it guano and harvest it for fertilizer. But if humans shit too much, that's pollution!
Bah.
Infuriate left and right
--just so happens I'm in the middle of a project using apt to try and jump from a stock 7.2 from cds install to "updated" 7.3 and I've about hit a wall. Can't seem to get newer labeled kernels to take, nor initiscripts and etc. You can upgrade a lot of the packages, even fake the machine out to think it's fully upgraded, but when you get down to it you get into dependecy conflicts that are super hard to resolve. I've googled and hit irc channels looking for examples or tips, but not a lot of luck so far, although theoretically it seems like it's possible, or should be. I'm on a slow modem so downloading isos is not happening. I'd like to be able to do this a package or group of packages at a time (like at night when not surfing, etc), at my leisure, but haven't found any real good guidelines for procedure yet.
fair enough, i was just impressed you felt it worth your time. :)
it wasnt meant as an attack =) no harm intended, so i offer my apologies
"Old man yells at systemd"
I am a "trained pilot" and that training may indeed help me recognize things in the air better than a baker would. But it doesn't take an Einstein to pilot an aircraft, and pilots do not have special deductive or analytical powers. Pilots can be gullible and jump to conclusions just like people in any other profession.
What I do know is that it is not possible for a pilot to determine the trajectory of another object in the air for certain. A gust of wind can pitch or yaw the plane that I am in, making it appear that objects outside my craft have made sudden jumps across the sky. Human inner-ear is not capable of adapting to some sorts of disorientation. Pilots are trained to not trust inner-ear orientation, and use other cues instead. A radar is not immune to this problem either; in fact radar's have more problems than you can shake a stick at, even ground based ones.
Ideally pilots would attribute apparent strange motion of flying objects to his own craft's instability. However, older pilots were not trained to distrust the inner ear; and many pilots are just plain stubborn and still try to fly 'by the seat of their pants'. This is to detriment of their own safety and credibility as well.
Bottom line is that pilots chasing strange things in the air is not cause for belief in aliens, but rather cause for reflection on human error.
RPM is not a good format for upgrading between major versions.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
You misunderstood my original point. These weren't just blips on the radar, they were blips on the radar correllated with pilots seeing silver discs out their cockpit and chasing them.
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Many non-citizens work at NASA centers!
We don't hate you! :)
:)
For all the Europeans out there, just so you know: Americans may make jokes about Europe, but we really, really like you. You're our pals. We disagree about some stuff, but we like you.
(Of course, we don't agree with ourselves a lot of the time!
I hate it when other people say it, and saying this now is leaving a bitter taste in my mouth(?), but..
If you don't like RedHat's EOL policy, choose a different distro or maintain it yourself etc. etc. yadda yadda yadda
I chose Debian ages ago anyway so naaaaaaaa :p
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
I subscribe to wired. It used to be that some of the most important stories also got posted to /. But now I think not only every major article, but every last damned blurb in each of the last two magazines, possibly short of the "Return to Sender" contest, has turned up sooner or later on Slashdot. Why don't you all just read both /. and wired.com, instead of linking to every thing wired ever posts on /.?
Yes, but if you by default filter out anything making hairpin turns and going super fast then you are never going to see something that does.
My argument would be that if you make a radar that isn't capable of telling you that something is there and doing things that you think are impossible then you haven't made a better radar, you've made an instrument that confirms what you think to be true.
is that beavers don't build nuclear weapons.
Dumas.
Big words coming from somebody using the wrong insult 3 times.
Dumbass.
That's right. I said ass-lawyer.
As a UNIX Systems Engineer, here's my perspective...
I understand that "if it ain't broke, don't touch it" is a good rule for IT.
Of course this is very true.
If it ain't broke, you don't need support, right?
Unfortunately, new exploits for software (such as sql, ssh, web, ftp and dns servers) come out all the time, and these programs need to be patched. The situation is even worse if you have users logging in and/or executing programs on the server.
While possible, installing programs without using 'official' packages throws away the benefits of using a RPM system in the first place, particularly it's ability to verify the integrity and compatibility of installed programs (which it's main point of superiority over Debian's package management system).
Fortunately having done this for various versions of Red Hat on many systems, I can say it's a complete breeze to upgrade Red Hat systems (and as such it's hard to criticise Red Hat for EOL'ing these old distributions). You only need to pop in a CD of the latest version of Red Hat and select 'Upgrade'. It does an excellent job of not screwing up your system configuration or other data, while still upgrading all your applications.
It's quite possible to let someone who's never run Linux in their life and doesn't know a single UNIX command to upgrade a Red Hat system, as it only requires clicking through the graphical installation wizard, selecting 'Upgrade' where appropriate. The only downside is having to hook up an interface (i.e. keyboard/monitor) to the server, and that it requires downtime.
Finally, I run Debian, and it's easy for me to upgrade a system with just an ssh connection. Can Red Hat admins remotely upgrade packages over ssh, without having to install APT for Red Hat?
You can upgrade packages over ssh, Red Hat systems are even capable of being updated with a single click over the web or 'pushed' signed updates by Red Hat's central server, if you register with the Red Hat Network (IIRC you may register 1 system with them for free, or pay ~$65 a year for each system, it's a genuinely excellent server management system and well worth it IMO). However this does not help when said system is running a version of the distribution that has been EOL'd, as there will be no official packages to patch the bugs which are subsequently found.
Additionally, the features of RPM which make it better in ensuring a high level of compatibility and allow it, unlike Debian, to offer package integrity checking also make it awkward to use in many cases (and not nearly as pleasant as Debian!), which of course would be cured by APT-GET for RPM, which brings us on to...
(And if not, how do real sysadmins feel about APT for Red Hat?)
I love APT. I use Debian on all my home systems, and I even use apt on my OS X based PowerBook. (Though I admit I have reservations about using APT on production servers).
Sadly, however, all implementations of APT for RPM that I have tried have been dreadful and hideously bug ridden, and I have only heard of the same poor experiences from friends and colleagues. I think a workable version of APT for RPM would require active effort by Red Hat, but I do not see that happening any time soon as they have other priorities (and the corporate market they are targeting does not bemoan the lack of APT, the existing RPM system adequately meets their needs).
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Runnin' around, robbin' banks all whacked on the Scooby Snacks...
Uh, 'silver discs?' Between the power of suggestion (especially during the 50s and 60s) and the inability of folks to identify natural phenomena (yes, even experienced pilots can misidentify bright planets. Heck, I [not a pilot but an amateur astronomer] was in a particular situation where I would have sworn that Jupiter was dancing back and forth about a degree or so), it wouldn't be surprising that some folks may have 'seen' discs. Unfortunately people are notorious liars\h\h\h\h\h augmenters in details when acting as eyewitnesses, especially after time (where repetition wipes out details) and/or after becoming defensive ("You're questioning my judgment?").
So people seeing things in association with radar images? Feh.
I'm kinda suprised that someone hasn't suggested that the UFOs are merely employing stealth tech (or maybe I haven't read enough of the replies).
Does that mean that I can invade the United States with my fleet of zeppelins? The user-friendly computers in the air defense radars will suppress the radar returns from my airships as noise or birds.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Dumas.
Big words coming from somebody using the wrong insult 3 times.
Dumbass.
The name is DoomAhhs.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Strange... can anybody explain to an outsider (I'm german) why NASA even responds to cranks?
The web is full of weirdos showing off photos of UFOs, faces on mars, alien crop circles, water finders, magic spirals, health magnets and garbage like that.
Why does NASA care what these people are quacking about? Don't they have anything better to do?
Ciao,
Klaus
Free PC version of ChipWits at http://www.breueronline.de/klaus/chipwits/
I'm at K5. I only come over here to troll you idiots. Stupid code changes only fuel the fire, they don't put it out.
So your response is "Feh." Way to be open minded. There are a fuckload of reputable people who have seen and tracked these things on radar and seen them in the sky. The question isn't if they exist, but what is it that they are.
1 Police Scanner
4 Plastic Drinking Straws
13 lightweight straight pins
13 plain birthday candles
1 Shirt-sized dry-cleaner bag
Crimp the end of one straw so that it will fit inside the other (to make a double-length straw). Repeat with the other two straws. Make an X out of the two "crossbeams" and stick one pin through the intersection. Place the other 12 pins approx 1/2" apart on each of the 4 spokes, 3 per spoke.
Place one candle on each of the pins. The candles need to be the kind with a hole in the bottom.
Affix the "engine assembly" to the dry cleaner bag with small bits of masking tape. Curl the top of the bag where the coathanger hole is and seal with more small bits of masking tape.
Weight is crucial. Use the minimum amount of tape to secure the engine to the fuselage, and to close the hole in the top of the fuselage. For further weight reduction, you can clip the pins with wire cutters, leaving only enough to secure the "solid fuel convective devices" to the "engine assembly"
The Solid Fuel devices should be the plain, straight kind. The swirly ones burn too fast and risk melting the fuselage.
With care, and with a minimum of excess weight, optimum flight temperature is roughly 50^F or colder. Please do not attempt this in marginal conditions (55^F or warmer) or if the craft does not gain sufficient lift to clear the treeline once the engines are fired.
It is further recommended that the launch site be evacuated as soon as the craft is above the treeline, to avoid attention by potentially hostile elements (cops, fire dept, etc.)
Of course, the Police Scanner is for listening for "sightings".
I bought this house and you know I'm boss
Ain't no h'aint gonna run me off
I fail to see how rpm is superior to dpkg in verifying the 'compatibility' of installed programs -- that is to say, only as good as the packager
There are two answers I'd like to give to this:
(1) Red Hat have always provided better quality packages (by which I mean they are more polished, with much more accurate meta data). Additionaly, in actuality, I belive that debsum -ca is no where near as useful as rpm -Va. If your a Debian user too I don't need to point that 'stable' is wildly out of date and that 'un-stable' is, as the name implies, often wildly unstable.
2) The idea that the only difference factor is simply the quality of the package and that there is no significant differnce in the package management systems is false. Crucialy, Debian lacks anything which matches the power of rpmlib.
In summary, while Debian manages to be much easier to maintain and use for personal desktop systems, it does not have the professional level of polish and intergrity that is required by most corporate (server) environments - partly due the the package management system (and rpmlib) and partly due to the quality of Red Hat's packages. As the forcus of Debian's maintainers is primarily users and developers, rather than the servers of large corporations, I think this situation is unlikely to change in immediate future.
'Feh?' You bet. Ever since the late 1940s with the first modern sightings and Roswell we have been bombarded by all of these boys crying wolf (assisted by the sensation-seekng press), and what do we have to show for this? Perhaps a better understanding of the phenomena of suggestion and hysteria--beyond this, the question of whether or not there is anything physical to study stlll remains. Given unlimited resources, sure, go ahead; but the reality is that we cannot study everything, and given the unreliable nature of such situations, do you have to wonder why most people don't bother?
I'll match your f-load of people with a larger one of equally reputable people who thought they saw something but then figured out what it was and thus never reported it (they will be harder to track down, of course).