I envision that in the beginning, we'll use regular power plants, and that will be not quite dandy.
However, consider miniature hydro-power installed in your local creeks. It will go around the clock, and store the hydrogen when demand is low, spending it when demand is high. Heck - I can even see almost free fuel for our cars - a windmill and some solar cells on our roofs might go a long way in producing enough hydrogen.
The challenge is convincing Joe Average that investing in some solar cells is a good thing. Joe Farmer might have a creek through his property that he can get some power out of, but he also needs to be convinced.
Relating to the header, if you have a renewable energy source for the electrolysis, then you can also expend energy on transportation. The question is whether the energy loss would be greater if you transported by fuel cell powered trucks, or by the power grid. If we're lucky, we might find ourselves independent of the power grid. That's one less vulnerability in our society.
And, in the long run, we'll eventually have cold fusion. That will certainly along with hydrogen tech enable a virtually combustion-less society in the long run.
Then again, we just have to ask ourselves if big oil is going to see this as a business opportunity, or a business model threat.
The reality of the matter is that even if you provide poor people with internet access, they are unlikely to use it in any way beneficial to themselves and their lives.
Take a look at all the factors keeping them down (and I do realize that there are causal factors in play that to a large extent excuse their behavior) - crime, alcoholism/drug abuse, abusive parents, gangs, lack of jobs and corrupt government, along with general bureaucracy that raises the bar for starting your own business.
Now ask yourself : what will the internet provide that a library doesn't for these people? or discussing with your peers at a café?
And finally look at library usage in poor areas. Then look at how many of them watch Jerry Springer and Ricki Lake, and not the news or PBS. Are you sure Linux or bridging the Digital Divide can do anything to help this?
We're hiring these days (temporarily for now), and today I had the pleasure of getting an email from the mailsweeper we use stating "an email from was bounced due to an unsafe attachment" or some such thing. I know our mailsweeper does rathe sophisticated analysis, so he might have a macro virus. Anyhow, his failure to attach the resume as an html document or plaintext file lost him a potential job.
I know this is superficial and sensationalist in comparison to your , but let's consider gun laws for a second (I love to find inconsistencies).
A gun in itself is by American standards not a bad thing at all - unless the person posessing it is a bad person. Even then, he will have to commit a crime before any reaction occurs.
DeCSS can be used to view DVDs on linux - a perfectly resonable use. Even if we are only allowed to view the movie, but that is in the contract we effectively signed when we bought the damn disk. So, DeCSS can be used in a legal way.
How, then can you hold Jon Johansen responsible for the misuse of his (and the anonymous ppl behind him) work? The gun manufacturers are not put to prison when someone is shot. No weapons engineer working for the government is held responsible unless the weapons are faulty and kilsl the wrong ppl. Then they get fired.
Many of same people running after the DeCSS crowd with torches and handcuffs are the ones defending liberal gun laws. What does that make those people? Oh. Yeah. "Hipocrites".
Sad part is, they've got the law on their side.
So, "justice for all"?
Oh - and I know Jon Johansen is Norwegian. I am too. He's being charged by the same paragraph the suits used to try to stop illegal satelite descramblers. That didn't work. This probably won't work, either. Most Norwegian legal experts seem to agree that the Government case is extremely weak.
Makes you wonder who pressured them into pursuing a case they are doomed to lose.
The problem is that Microsoft ARE getting away with it. Ask any number of decision-makers about Microsoft's credibility. They might complain about fuzzy license schemes, but that's it.
Do we take it up the a**, or do we fight back dirtily?
Though I agree that one of our strenghts is righteousness and integrity, I am not sure if it's wise to lie back and take it when they've got such a powerful coverup-machine.
One daemon that will be fed with desirable options for online polls by some lucky geek. Maybe we'll make a slashdot like moderating system so that we'll reduce the obvious potential for abuse.
One debian package that will contain a client to the daemon.
The client will automatically contact the daemon and request an url. It gets the url, casts its vote and stores the url. Next time cron activates it, it will get a different url, and if it gets the same, it'll ask again up to three times.
Folks, this scheme can be done easily and somewhat securely. I'm quite sure quite a few geeks would run it if it was Yet Another Deb.
Is it ethical? Practical? Needed? (one question is rethorical)
If you're using a commercial distro and can afford to pay the measly bucks, pay them. They're doing a lot of work for you in configuration and such. If you're a rock hard geek, use Debian which is volunteer based.
Oh - and maybe those that make money on their linux-based business should start donating a slice of the profit to the non-corporate organizations? It's free speech, but you don't speak very loudly if you're starved and thirsty.
If you don't fit in your current job (which is what this really sounds like), you should quit. Your boss will probably give you a good letter of recommendation, since you read the situation correctly and didn't put up a big, useless fight. Yes - you heard me. Professional integrity is good, personal integrity can be counterproductive until you are the boss. If you bring in legal arguments about discrimination, you might get to stay, but you will probably lose respect unless you made a very good case.
The other thing you can do (if you want to stay and prosper), is to address the conflict maturely. Talk to your boss about how you can improve relations with other co-workers and upper management. It is important that you don't get too emotional, but convey that you feel this is a problem that is detrimental to all parties. It is.
Ask him about what you can do better.
This is a question we should all ask. Whenever there is a problem, it is not wise to point fingers. Solve the problem, and then later figure out how you can stop the problem from arising again. If you've had your toes stepped on, use your judgement when dealing with this. It can be a good opportunity to show personal growth, rather than blind vengeance.
Then again, this advice might not apply to your circumstances and environment. Talk about it if you really want to stay, otherwise pack up your things and leave.
Oh - and "aspiring linux guru" is a very good keyword in resume.
I know we are still small on the desktop, but this is even less than i expected. One possiblity pops up, though. Have someone established that Linux users have the same surfing habits as other people? Are we as interested in general news? Or maybe we're all so 31337 that we changed our browser string..
Anyhow, when Linux-based web appliances start taking off (when, when, when), the market share will hopefully start increasing.
All packages need to be patched. You end up with a maintenance nightmare if you wish to install some old 2.x slackware distribution, make it safe and then keep applying patches.
Anyhow, on such a low-end system you should compile the kernel by hand anyhow. You can usually shave a quite a few K off the standard kernel.
Basically, the 2.4 kernel when stripped down to the requirements have no problems running on a 386 or 486. It's the userspace software that eats most of the ram. And old userspace software will need to be heavily patched to kill all security holes.
It can be done, but it's not feasible for joe schmoe who's just starting out with Linux and wants to use his ten-year-old computer for experimenting with Linux. Sadly.
That was my point. If you're willing to run an old distribution with the tens of remote root exploits that implies, be my guest. But you wanna stay secure, you got to get something fairly modern. And then, you'll find yourself needing RAM. More than 8 megs. I have an old p120 with 32 megs of ram. That is enough if I run a web server and postgres, along with sshd, but not by a large margin!
Lots of US government agencies use Linux for various purposed. NASA uses it. NSA is developing their own hardened distrobution. Etc.
What's important is that we continue to provide them with a good Linux experience. Treat US government employees like royalty in newsgroups etc(when they ask about linux), and we just might increase our brainshare and marketshare.
If you're not allowed to run a server, and get a worm, the company can be reasonably suspicious that the open port is a backdoor, and then contact you.
If you let people run servers, they'll get hacked since they don't know what the heck they are doing. Then you'll have a bunch of compromised machines in your network that could be activated in a DDOS attack, or used to start worm attacks, or whatever.
Thus, restricting servers is pretty much a good thing. If you want to run a server for a few friends, make firewall rules that let them access and no-one else. This is reasonable secure if your friends are truly your friends, and will go undetected by the cable nazis.
When the so-called stable kernel can be released with such a huge bug, how can we tell the managers that Linux is stable and hassle-free?
Really - we need to make scripts that test right about every critical aspect of a kernel. That would be file systems, VM, IPC, SMP, hardware drivers, SCSI, IDE, ethernet, token ring and more.
Has anybody made such scripts? One thing is a broken, obscure driver, another thing is bugs that break everybody - like VM and now unmount.
Microsoft sells these boxes for whatever price they need to sell them for. We have to be careful not to increase demand too much.
However, Microsoft is investing all this money into the xbox in order to sell software, licenses or future xbox extensions. The money is not in selling the boxes at all!
If they have a big pile of unsold xboxen, they can dump the prices even farther. They are willing to lose a LOT of cash in order to take over the gaming console market. In the end, when they are the defacto standard, they can start raising prices again.
If a large section of the boxes sold are used for totally different purposes, they will truly bleed. They sell all these boxes for a loss, hoping to get that investment back later - but we just install linux on em instead.
That is completely demoralizing to Microsft. Hopefully, a linux hack will keep them in line since people sick of upgrading their gaming consoles will just install linux and use their box for online gaming, gimping and whatever else can be fun to do with a console.
Slackware is great for low-end and mid-end servers - and high-end servers if you can find the fsck-ing drivers.
Debian is for overworked admins. If you're in a relaxed environment, running Slackware will teach you a lot about *nix that package management systems hide from you.
Fine Microsoft for every undocumented API that should be disclosed under the agreement.
And finally a bit of regulation that's very much needed:
Full disclosure of contracts concerning sale and bundling Operating Systems. Operating Systems should be considered public infrastructure. There could be a right-to-know involved. More importantly, had the contract disclosure been in place, then Microsofts business practices would have been thoroughly documented at a much earlier stage and the damage could have been lessened.
It is wiser to avoid repeating the damage of the past rather than seeking justice for the wrongs of the past.
Slashdot Mirror
I envision that in the beginning, we'll use regular power plants, and that will be not quite dandy.
However, consider miniature hydro-power installed in your local creeks. It will go around the clock, and store the hydrogen when demand is low, spending it when demand is high. Heck - I can even see almost free fuel for our cars - a windmill and some solar cells on our roofs might go a long way in producing enough hydrogen.
The challenge is convincing Joe Average that investing in some solar cells is a good thing. Joe Farmer might have a creek through his property that he can get some power out of, but he also needs to be convinced.
Relating to the header, if you have a renewable energy source for the electrolysis, then you can also expend energy on transportation. The question is whether the energy loss would be greater if you transported by fuel cell powered trucks, or by the power grid. If we're lucky, we might find ourselves independent of the power grid. That's one less vulnerability in our society.
And, in the long run, we'll eventually have cold fusion. That will certainly along with hydrogen tech enable a virtually combustion-less society in the long run.
Then again, we just have to ask ourselves if big oil is going to see this as a business opportunity, or a business model threat.
Take a look at all the factors keeping them down (and I do realize that there are causal factors in play that to a large extent excuse their behavior) - crime, alcoholism/drug abuse, abusive parents, gangs, lack of jobs and corrupt government, along with general bureaucracy that raises the bar for starting your own business.
Now ask yourself : what will the internet provide that a library doesn't for these people? or discussing with your peers at a café?
And finally look at library usage in poor areas. Then look at how many of them watch Jerry Springer and Ricki Lake, and not the news or PBS. Are you sure Linux or bridging the Digital Divide can do anything to help this?
We're hiring these days (temporarily for now), and today I had the pleasure of getting an email from the mailsweeper we use stating "an email from was bounced due to an unsafe attachment" or some such thing. I know our mailsweeper does rathe sophisticated analysis, so he might have a macro virus. Anyhow, his failure to attach the resume as an html document or plaintext file lost him a potential job.
God I love being PHB!
I know this is superficial and sensationalist in comparison to your , but let's consider gun laws for a second (I love to find inconsistencies).
A gun in itself is by American standards not a bad thing at all - unless the person posessing it is a bad person. Even then, he will have to commit a crime before any reaction occurs.
DeCSS can be used to view DVDs on linux - a perfectly resonable use. Even if we are only allowed to view the movie, but that is in the contract we effectively signed when we bought the damn disk. So, DeCSS can be used in a legal way.
How, then can you hold Jon Johansen responsible for the misuse of his (and the anonymous ppl behind him) work? The gun manufacturers are not put to prison when someone is shot. No weapons engineer working for the government is held responsible unless the weapons are faulty and kilsl the wrong ppl. Then they get fired.
Many of same people running after the DeCSS crowd with torches and handcuffs are the ones defending liberal gun laws. What does that make those people? Oh. Yeah. "Hipocrites".
Sad part is, they've got the law on their side.
So, "justice for all"?
Oh - and I know Jon Johansen is Norwegian. I am too. He's being charged by the same paragraph the suits used to try to stop illegal satelite descramblers. That didn't work. This probably won't work, either. Most Norwegian legal experts seem to agree that the Government case is extremely weak.
Makes you wonder who pressured them into pursuing a case they are doomed to lose.
The problem is that Microsoft ARE getting away with it. Ask any number of decision-makers about Microsoft's credibility. They might complain about fuzzy license schemes, but that's it.
Do we take it up the a**, or do we fight back dirtily?
Though I agree that one of our strenghts is righteousness and integrity, I am not sure if it's wise to lie back and take it when they've got such a powerful coverup-machine.
Here's what we make:
One daemon that will be fed with desirable options for online polls by some lucky geek. Maybe we'll make a slashdot like moderating system so that we'll reduce the obvious potential for abuse.
One debian package that will contain a client to the daemon.
The client will automatically contact the daemon and request an url. It gets the url, casts its vote and stores the url. Next time cron activates it, it will get a different url, and if it gets the same, it'll ask again up to three times.
Folks, this scheme can be done easily and somewhat securely. I'm quite sure quite a few geeks would run it if it was Yet Another Deb.
Is it ethical? Practical? Needed? (one question is rethorical)
I'm not an USB user (yet). If you get multiple USB mice, what happens if you plug 'em all in?
If you're using a commercial distro and can afford to pay the measly bucks, pay them. They're doing a lot of work for you in configuration and such. If you're a rock hard geek, use Debian which is volunteer based.
Oh - and maybe those that make money on their linux-based business should start donating a slice of the profit to the non-corporate organizations? It's free speech, but you don't speak very loudly if you're starved and thirsty.
Incidentally, you can configure samba to lie about who it is. Win95, nt4 server. whatever you'd like.
If you don't fit in your current job (which is what this really sounds like), you should quit. Your boss will probably give you a good letter of recommendation, since you read the situation correctly and didn't put up a big, useless fight. Yes - you heard me. Professional integrity is good, personal integrity can be counterproductive until you are the boss. If you bring in legal arguments about discrimination, you might get to stay, but you will probably lose respect unless you made a very good case.
The other thing you can do (if you want to stay and prosper), is to address the conflict maturely. Talk to your boss about how you can improve relations with other co-workers and upper management. It is important that you don't get too emotional, but convey that you feel this is a problem that is detrimental to all parties. It is.
Ask him about what you can do better.
This is a question we should all ask. Whenever there is a problem, it is not wise to point fingers. Solve the problem, and then later figure out how you can stop the problem from arising again. If you've had your toes stepped on, use your judgement when dealing with this. It can be a good opportunity to show personal growth, rather than blind vengeance.
Then again, this advice might not apply to your circumstances and environment. Talk about it if you really want to stay, otherwise pack up your things and leave.
Oh - and "aspiring linux guru" is a very good keyword in resume.
I know we are still small on the desktop, but this is even less than i expected. One possiblity pops up, though. Have someone established that Linux users have the same surfing habits as other people? Are we as interested in general news? Or maybe we're all so 31337 that we changed our browser string..
Anyhow, when Linux-based web appliances start taking off (when, when, when), the market share will hopefully start increasing.
All packages need to be patched. You end up with a maintenance nightmare if you wish to install some old 2.x slackware distribution, make it safe and then keep applying patches.
Anyhow, on such a low-end system you should compile the kernel by hand anyhow. You can usually shave a quite a few K off the standard kernel.
Basically, the 2.4 kernel when stripped down to the requirements have no problems running on a 386 or 486. It's the userspace software that eats most of the ram. And old userspace software will need to be heavily patched to kill all security holes.
It can be done, but it's not feasible for joe schmoe who's just starting out with Linux and wants to use his ten-year-old computer for experimenting with Linux. Sadly.
Are we approaching an agreement?
That was my point. If you're willing to run an old distribution with the tens of remote root exploits that implies, be my guest. But you wanna stay secure, you got to get something fairly modern. And then, you'll find yourself needing RAM. More than 8 megs. I have an old p120 with 32 megs of ram. That is enough if I run a web server and postgres, along with sshd, but not by a large margin!
Lots of US government agencies use Linux for various purposed. NASA uses it. NSA is developing their own hardened distrobution. Etc.
What's important is that we continue to provide them with a good Linux experience. Treat US government employees like royalty in newsgroups etc(when they ask about linux), and we just might increase our brainshare and marketshare.
32 megs of ram was obscene back then. Do the motherboards even support that kind of ram?
Of course we're curious. If you're afraid of legal repercussions, post as AC. That's why they allow anonymous posting in the first place!
Happier now? You can see DivX movies or whatever on your laptop, wherever you are. You can videoconference from your seaside cabin in the summertime.
If you're not allowed to run a server, and get a worm, the company can be reasonably suspicious that the open port is a backdoor, and then contact you.
If you let people run servers, they'll get hacked since they don't know what the heck they are doing. Then you'll have a bunch of compromised machines in your network that could be activated in a DDOS attack, or used to start worm attacks, or whatever.
Thus, restricting servers is pretty much a good thing. If you want to run a server for a few friends, make firewall rules that let them access and no-one else. This is reasonable secure if your friends are truly your friends, and will go undetected by the cable nazis.
When the so-called stable kernel can be released with such a huge bug, how can we tell the managers that Linux is stable and hassle-free?
Really - we need to make scripts that test right about every critical aspect of a kernel. That would be file systems, VM, IPC, SMP, hardware drivers, SCSI, IDE, ethernet, token ring and more.
Has anybody made such scripts? One thing is a broken, obscure driver, another thing is bugs that break everybody - like VM and now unmount.
Damned wanker. All salami-slapping, no brains.
Nautilus is the best thing on Linux. It's all that windows wanted to make. I'm not sure if it thumbmails movies, but it sure thumbnails pictures.
Linux is made by geeks. Geeks also look at porn and masturbate. Why would our technical solution be technically inferior to Microsofts?
Microsoft sells these boxes for whatever price they need to sell them for. We have to be careful not to increase demand too much.
However, Microsoft is investing all this money into the xbox in order to sell software, licenses or future xbox extensions. The money is not in selling the boxes at all!
If they have a big pile of unsold xboxen, they can dump the prices even farther. They are willing to lose a LOT of cash in order to take over the gaming console market. In the end, when they are the defacto standard, they can start raising prices again.
If a large section of the boxes sold are used for totally different purposes, they will truly bleed. They sell all these boxes for a loss, hoping to get that investment back later - but we just install linux on em instead.
That is completely demoralizing to Microsft. Hopefully, a linux hack will keep them in line since people sick of upgrading their gaming consoles will just install linux and use their box for online gaming, gimping and whatever else can be fun to do with a console.
Agreed?
Slackware is great for low-end and mid-end servers - and high-end servers if you can find the fsck-ing drivers.
Debian is for overworked admins. If you're in a relaxed environment, running Slackware will teach you a lot about *nix that package management systems hide from you.
Will they laugh at our miserable coding skills?
The first two seem fair and reasonable.
The third one is a bit over the edge.
How's this for a remedy/penalty:
Fine Microsoft for every undocumented API that should be disclosed under the agreement.
And finally a bit of regulation that's very much needed:
Full disclosure of contracts concerning sale and bundling Operating Systems. Operating Systems should be considered public infrastructure. There could be a right-to-know involved. More importantly, had the contract disclosure been in place, then Microsofts business practices would have been thoroughly documented at a much earlier stage and the damage could have been lessened.
It is wiser to avoid repeating the damage of the past rather than seeking justice for the wrongs of the past.
If a kernel release is uninteresting, why should a Gnome or KDE or Mozilla release be any more interesting?