Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Munich, Harlan, Alacrity
Please don't link "here": case in point. Kent Brewster writes "As previously mentioned here(1), here(2), and here(3), national treasure Harlan Ellison has been fighting a drawn-out battle with AOL over alt.binaries.e-book. Looks like a settlement has been reached; details (such as they are) are on AOL."
Papa Legba adds a link to an informative page on the suit's progress, with lots of informative links.
The basement dwellers burrow deeper. kevin_conaway writes "Accoring to this article on Tech Target, the DNS outage at Akamai was caused by a massive DDOS attack on Akamai's servers. Akamai Technologies Inc. said a 'sophisticated, large-scale distributed denial of service attack' on its domain name service bogged down several of its clients' Web sites yesterday morning, and that it's investigating the incident with federal authorities."
Time to quit your Winin' marmoset writes "As a followup to this story, Dave Winer has posted information about transitioning weblogs.com sites. Rogers Cadenhead and Steve Kirks pitched in to help. The plan includes a 90-day free evaluation period, during which the affected users will be able to make local copies of their data, sign up for paid hosting, or move to another hosting solution."
Pay up, Pal. ack154 writes "Following up from a previous slashdot story, PayPal may have reached a preliminary settlement in the class action lawsuit brought against them in 2002. The lawsuit was regarding the freezing of suspected fraud accounts and communication of limits on accounts. Limited details are available right now, but the eBay announcement states that anyone who signed up for a PayPal account between Oct 1999 and Jan 2004 may be eligible."
Forkenbrock points to this USAToday today article which says that "Ebay's Paypal will pay a total of 9.25 million dollars to its users (businesses and individuals)."
What about Java vs. T++? Stefan de Bruijn was one of several readers who reacted to the benchmarks cited in the Slashdot post titled 'Java faster than C++'.
He writes "I took the liberty to re-write a major piece of the C++ part of the benchmark. Furthermore, the Intel compiler has been tested as well. The Java code was assumed 'correct.'
The results are quite different than the former posting. Here, C++ appears to be a winner for the vast majority of programs; where Java scored better with (recursive) algorithms and the use of file IO (where it must be remarked that the C++ code uses iostreams)." joekaylor writes "I did a similar study 6-months ago to the study sited recently here on Slashdot, and I did it with java jdk 1.4.x. Java performance has been underestimated for QUITE some time. It's not the best tool every time, but it is not considered often enough and for the wrong reasons."
And an anonymous reader writes "This article by USC graphics researchers surveys a number of good (mostly numeric) benchmarks and then explains the theory of why maybe java should be faster than C++. It also raises the (unanswered) question of why geeks (ostensibly intelligent and scientifically-minded people) continue to believe some ideas (for example, 'garbage collection is slow') despite strong evidence to the contrary that has been available for many years."
Well, it's sort of like a gigabyte. helloanand writes "So, a day after yahoo relaunched their email service with 100 MB space, hotmail also expanded their offering to 25 MB. Just logged into my hotmail account and saw the space bumped up. The thing that I noticed is that MSN/Hotmail didn't make a big splash about it. Its actually a good thing for the users. Gmail started this trend by coming up with 1 GB (yes! gigabyte) worth of space. Then yahoo joined the party with their own 100 MB version and now the latest to join in bill gates & co (aka MSN Hotmail). Lets see what other changes does Gmail stimulate to the email service. Also the thing to note is that Google's gmail is being closely observed by the established players like MSN and Yahoo."
Each city represents a star system; players alternate by country. Wudbaer writes "The Munich city council has finally OK'ed the multi-step 30 Million Euro project to migrate the Munich city council to Linux, as heise news reports (German text). The planned high-profile migration of the administration of one of the largest cities in Germany has already created a lot of interest both in pro and anti-OSS camps, and was rumored to have run into substantial problems at the beginning of the year which might have endangered the council's final OK for the project. But now apparently the road is open for the project. Go Tux !"
Marcus links to this announcement on the city government's web page, and suggests that you put it through Google.
securitas writes "Hot on the heels of Munich's decision to go with Linux, the City of Bergen, Norway will replace its Unix and Windows core infrastructure with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 8. The second part of the implementation will migrate the city's educational network - with 100 schools and 32,000 users - from 100 Windows application servers to 20 Linux IBM eServer BladeCenters. Bergen is Norway's second-largest city. ZDNet UK's Michael Parsons discusses the choice in an interview with Bergen CTO Ole Bjoern Tuftedal."
Making less of a mess. HishamMuhammad writes "The GoboLinux story featured recently on /. got the project some publicity, but again a number of misconceptions showed up, from people who think we are "just another user-friendly distro", because of our verbose pathnames like /System/Settings. Here is an article I wrote in order to explain the principles behind the design of GoboLinux (also in PDF), which tells our side of the story."
My Hotmail account still only has 2MB of storage - and every time I leave it alone for more than two days, it fills up with spam. I checked the site pretty carefully for any expansion offers, but it looks like either the poster lied or was one of a select few to get an offer that's unavailable (for free).
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
Of course, the reason that Hotmail is 25 MB, and Yahoo is 100 MB, is because Hotmail runs on Windows server, which needs the rest of the space for its system files.
I figured Microsoft would try to turn Hotmail into a category killer by making it UNLIMITED!!! (Actually, they would promise it, but never deliver) They would of course pay for this with the OEM tax on new computers.
Unknown host pong.
I just checked and Hotmail is still showing 2 MB for me. This link still shows a fee of $29.95 a year for 25 MB.
I always thought it ludicrous to pay MSN for more space for one simple reason : the only cause of me exceeding my space limit was all of the spam that I got from having a Hotmail account, and Microsoft is still the only company (that I know of) that counts your junk mail folder against your quota. Why should I give them money to house more crap when it's their insecure system that's the cause of all of my spam?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Wow - I'm genuinely impressed that they managed to get that much out of him. I'd at least expect that he would have gotten pissed off, thrown a tantrum, and then insist that they refer to him by a silly name in the press release.
Harlan's books are rarely posted to alt.binaries.ebooks. The only times i have seen it happen is after he has one of his legendary tanrums.
If he really wants to do justice to the authors whos work does get posted to that group, he should work to see that their work remains in print and available in local bookshops.
Media tie-ins and "books in the world of famous author by someone you never heard of" do more harm to real authors than e-books ever will. The less you can find real authors in your local bookstore, the more people will turn to e-books.
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
Hotmail users have been finding that gmail invites are getting routed to their spam filters, even when they have the spam filter disabled. What's up with that?
My yahoo e-mail went to the 100mb limit the other day, but, in addition for the last few months neither the bulk mail (spam) or the trash folder have counted against the limit
Perhaps it's just a gimmick. All jokes aside, Hotmail is still part of MickeySoft and them increasing it to 25MB is still a joke in the face of what the other big boys are doing.
/. stories lately.
But, we should still make consideration for the face that hotmail has tons of users. Gmail is new, although there are good minds behind it. Yahoo is looking for any way to make the press. MickeySoft doesn't necessarily need to attract users so much as retain and build upon that retention.
That sounds a bit like Windows Dominance and all the
Now I can get 23 more megabytes of penis enlargement, Paris Hilton and weight loss in 30 days messages and I'll still be over quota!
I think the fact that new/delete are a huge part of the overhead of complicated programs is pretty obvious to anyone who has every profiled their code. Once you throw threads into the mix you will see another massive hit to time spent in allocation.
[Set Cain on fire and steal his lute.]
Yes, I am talking about gmail demise. We all love google and hate yahoo ads, but, with the release date of gmail still uncertain, privacy rumours in everyones mind, the chance of gmail taking a lead might be really slim. It might verywell be a email_SE (read special edition) for the geeks. Nothing more. I wonder how many would trade the superior spam filtering of yahoo for the 900MB extra storage of gmail. (And we all know how to use adblock don't we ? so the yahoo ad problem is not that much of a problem.) There is atleast 6 months before gmail goes public. Yahoo could make a killing in this period. I don't see many yahooligans moving to gmail - i.e. when they get a chance to. Yahoo has done its homework this time. Just a little bit of storage hammer can keep the gmail away.
It's not really Gmail's storage space that most people (myself included) find compelling about Gmail. Other free services like Spymac (http://www.spymac.net/) offer comparable storage amounts also.
Rather, it's the clean user interface, the automatic threading of messages, and the fast searching that most users (myself included) like.
Only if Yahoo, MS, SBC, et al. can replicate that part of the user experience, will Gmail have a viable competitor.
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
I subscribe to two different yahoo mail services and I have to say I'm pretty confused about what they heck they're doing. I get Yahoo mail plus which just gave me 2 Gigabytes (yes, gigabytes) for only $20 a year. No free, but a very nice price.
The confusing part is that I also subscribe to Yahoo's business email (don't ask why I do both... It's either complicated, or I'm stupid or both) Anyway, their business mail, which goes for $10 per month, is still only getting 25MB. Note, this is 1/4 the space of what the free email people get and, well, a whole, whole lot less than the mail plus people, but at a much higher price.
As a very long time yahoo mail user I very much applaud the new offerings of Yahoo, but their offerings are very unevenly applied. It's a little frustrating and I'd love to have someone explain it to me.
TW
Try Spymac.com which allows anyone to signup for a free 1 gig account
aventuremail.com also is in beta, but allows 2 gig online storage
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Regarding Ellison, he's actually done somewhat less than you think. He came up with story ideas on two, count 'em two episodes (admittedly from 1998) but didn't even do the scripts for either.
Frankly, he's been a jerk about this whole deal -- but then, when has he _not_ been jerk?
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Harlan Ellison is a decent writer. However, he's also a fantastic grandstander. His temper tantrums and aggressive behavior at writers' conventions are nothing short of legendary. The quality of his writing aside (I like most of his short stories), a good portion of his popularity is tied directly in to his notoriety. He knows, much to the chagrin of many people, that his antics keep his books on the shelves where less - colorful - authors disappear from print.
It doesn't surprise me that AOL settled. Having seen the man on one of his torrential rants (not, thankfully, as the focus of his ire), I almost feel sorry for the execs of AOL/Time/Warner, imagining what sort of invective must have been leveled against them.
Doing my level best to piss off the religious right wing...
It also raises the (unanswered) question of why geeks (ostensibly intelligent and scientifically-minded people) continue to believe some ideas (for example, 'garbage collection is slow') despite strong evidence to the contrary that has been available for many years.
It's not an unanswered question, it was answered quite long ago, in satirical form:
Real programmers don't use Pascal.
The same attitude prevails today, albeit the programming languages are different.
Personally, I've been around long enough to have heard "C is slow, you should be writing that in assembly language". And now the mantra is "Java is slow, you should use C/C++".
That is the first category of machismo anyway: speed-freaks who are quick to recommend C, yet seem surprized when their favorite program turns out to have a buffer-overflow exploit.
The second category appears to be the CS-geek-machismo which is more academic.. These are the guys who are talking about how it all should be Lisp, no matter what. And Java sucks because of its typing, etc. Practical use of the language seems to be of less concern than the design of the language itself for these guys.
Then there are those who believe in using the right tool for the right job. Sadly, you don't hear as much from these guys, probably because macho-geeks are loud and obnoxious by definition.
Anyway, I used to teach a beginners' course in programming, and often got the question on what the 'best' programming language was. I usually answered by asking: "What's the best tool, a screwdriver or a hammer?"
The confusing part is that I also subscribe to Yahoo's business email (don't ask why I do both... It's either complicated, or I'm stupid or both) Anyway, their business mail, which goes for $10 per month, is still only getting 25MB. Note, this is 1/4 the space of what the free email people get and, well, a whole, whole lot less than the mail plus people, but at a much higher price.
Yahoo's not pricing what's "fair", they're pricing what the market can bear.
They've figured (probably correctly) that business users can and will pay more -- and probably also would find it more disruptive and expensive, in terms of lost business --, to change addresses.
Since businesses can, and will, and have more to lose if they won't, pay more, Yahoo is more than willing to charge business users more.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
They gave a bunch of programmers some tasks to do. The fastest language was...
perl then java then c then C++.
It had more to do with the perl programmers use of hashes than anything else. Thats the way perl programmer think.
Basically the more difficult you make it to use more efficent data structures the less likely programmers are to use them. C++ even with the STL is non-trivial.
The company I worked for was having trouble with STL three years ago, and only one guy there really knew it well. We were parsing lots of text. Java was easy to use with well documented libraries and surprising fast. And everyone picked up the java programming language quickly.
Will highly optimized C/C++ toast all other languages? Yes, but writting the code is significantly more difficult and time consuming. For many tasks computers are fast enough now where it doesn't matter for many tasks..
That's the problem. Ellison is always incoherently pissed off at something, you can never know when it's actually legitimate.
A friend of mine met him at an American Bookseller's Association meeting years ago and commented that it's a shame you can't find his books easier. Harlan's response? "F--- you."
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
I found out along with everyone else a couple days ago that Yahoo had upgraded their mail services, but the post doesn't mention the upgrade they made to those of us paying for services through them.
::poof::, all the spam starts bouncing. I think you can make as many as you'd like, one for each site where you feel it's necessary. That is way cool. (I know you can do this with your own private server as well, but that would cost a lot more and be less accessable).
.mac) that do this, but with a 2 GB space I could even keep multiple versions of the backup. As it is they have a 10 MB message size limit.
About a year ago I upgraded my Yahoo account to 25MB of storage for something like $20 a year. It was worth it to me because that was the email address I had used for years, and i wanted to be able to access every important message I had gotten in a few years from anywhere (I'm in the military). Yahoo had bumped up my inbox size a couple times before (I think new users got 4 MB but mine had gone up to 8 by that time). But I was running out of room and wanted to keep my messages.
So anyway, I logged on a couple days ago, and my mailbox had been upgraded to 2 GB. Damn.
It also turned out that they had implemented almost every feature I had wanted, and a few that I didn't know I wanted. I almost never get a spam mail, partly through discipline and partly through Yahoo's pretty decent spam filtering. The one feature I really wanted was the ability to search through all my mail. They put this in, and along with a few other features (like filtering rules and better spam protection), put in a feature which i had never actually wanted before, but that was only because I had never thought of it.
I think it's called something like "Address Guard", and it's a lot like what American Express is doing with its credit cards for online purchases. They realized that you can never stop ALL the spam, so they made it so you can make throwaway email addresses that link to your actual address. You give out your throwaway, and if you start getting spammed at it you can just delete it, and
The enormous mailbox limit has given rise to a new feature request. Now i wish they had a remote disk function, where I could back up part of my hard drive on their servers. A 200 MB PGP disk could hold just about all my sensitive files (including scans of all my military records) and make them accessable from anywhere. I know there are services (like
"He's more machine now than man, twisted and evil."
After reading the doc, I think I can answer all questions rather quickly...
Q: Why change the directory names/structure?
A: Because he can. No other reason.
Q: Why aren't user and superuser programs seperate?
A: He just does not understand the numerous benefits of doing so. I really mean that.
Q: How can I boot into a skeleton (single-user, root / only) system?
A: You can't. He's decided that you must use bootable media, and no other way. I leave it to you to discuss the problems with that...
Q: How about remote mounts and/or seperate partitions?
A: You have one choice... Union mounts. He believes doing it the normal Unix way is morally wrong, or something like that.
Q: Why is the name of root changed?
A: This is a multi-part answer:
1. He dreams of a no-root system, where everything is peaches and cream, but since it doesn't work well in the real world, there is still a root.
2. He feels more secure in the cloud of obscurity that comes when root isn't named "root".
3. He likes people to ask, so he can take the opportunity to rant about how a Unix user/root system is wrong, and terrible. He's not trying to work on the new (theoretically superior) system, he just wants to complain.
I think that covers it pretty well.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant