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  1. Microsoft versus Freedom, Justice, et al on Ballmer Wants to "Stomp Linux" Using MS community · · Score: 2

    Given problem X, the Linux admin will fiddle with some commands, adjust some settings, tweak some variables, and the problem is solved.

    The Windows admin looks in a trade magazine about what products solve what, evaluates a bunch of them, picks one, and asks the boss for his/her credit card.

    Now obviously if you were in the business of producing shrinkwrap software the Windows platform is the greatest invention ever.

    But if you're using software to get real work done and don't want to put up with that kind of shit, Windows is out. It's just not acceptable. Linux is the direct result of an unfulfilled need, a tool that builders can use with total freedom. It is not merely the anticipation or the reduction of our collective needs to the common denominator. Linux would simply not exist if Microsoft made its customers happy. This isn't marketshare that's been stolen from Microsoft, it's the market that Microsoft lost all by itself.

    Microsoft is dealing with an enemy created from their own oblivion, which exists in a dimension it cannot even perceive. Through their own ineptitude they created their demise. It is poetic, and it is just.

    Popular hacker lore makes my signature more apropos:

    We've been spoon-fed baby food when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip through were pre-chewed and tasteless.

  2. Re:Why are they so desperate ? on FSF Issues GNU/Linux Name FAQ · · Score: 2

    Also, as an aside, do they insist that it be called GNU/FreeBSD? Don't the BSDs come with a bunch of GNU software? Or am I missing something? And do they insist that it be called GNU/Solaris when people install gcc and bash on the box? In other words, I don't agree with the FSF on this.

    No foolin' but this frequently asked question is answered in the FAQ. The short answer is no they don't want it to be called GNU/FreeBSD or GNU/Solaris. The long answer is an exercise for the reader.

    I think I will start calling it GNU/FreeBSD because the FreeBSD project has always been annoyed that they depend on GCC and friends. Perhaps if enough people do this it will shame* them into finally making their one, complete BSD system.

    *It's happened before: IIRC they refused to use less and simply enhanced more because less was GPL'd. Finally the author of less dual licensed it and put the issue to sleep.

  3. The implications are obvious on Pentium-Based Macs The Future of Apple? · · Score: 2

    I wonder what the implications this might have for Apple with regards to market share and software support.

    The implications are that Microsoft will destroy them. Duh. This will never happen unless Steve Jobs is blinded with his own ego and his shareholders let him.

  4. Sun summed up in one passing comment on IRC on The Days of SysAdmin Numbered? · · Score: 4, Informative

    "because I had an account on a Sun e10k and I can tell you like clockwork the thing reset every month for a year and then Sun came out and said 'yes, every Sun e10k on the market does this it's bad cache in some form but we don't understand and we suggest installing more a/c. in addition we made all our customers who reported the problem sign an NDA to get support. any questions?'"

  5. Re:NOOO!!!!! on Running 100,000 Parallel Threads · · Score: 2

    For any admins subjected to such clever users, the correct way to handle a forkbomb is to first send STOP to all processes, which will prevent them from replacing the siblings which you kill, then you break out the nine.

  6. Just one question.. on Talk To a Convicted Warez Guy · · Score: 2

    Were you loaded up on Robitussin when the FBI got you to sign a confession admitting to the defacements of RSA Security, cwc.gov?

    Er, sorry, wrong case.

  7. Chris DiBona reminds me of the Comic Book Guy... on Star Trek: Pick A Plot · · Score: 3, Funny


    Bart: Hey, I know it was great, but what right do you have to complain?
    CBG: As a loyal viewer, I feel they owe me.
    Bart: What? They're giving you thousands of hours of entertainment for
    free. What could they possibly owe you? If anything, you owe
    them.
    CBG: [pauses] Worst episode ever.

  8. I'm very pleased as a Palm customer on Palm Offers Refund to m130 Owners · · Score: 2

    I purchased a refurbished Palm Vx. The device kept losing its calibration which required me to re-run the digitizer. Sometimes it wasn't reachable and required a hard reset. Called Palm, gave them my S/N, a replacement arrived in the mail.

    Painless and awesome. Thanks guys.

  9. P2P sharing should leverage popularity on Can Poisoning Peer to Peer Networks Work? · · Score: 2

    Popular files are more likely to be valid. Poison is less likely to be popular. Poison sinks to obscurity.

  10. Sorry if I'm not gobbling up the hype.. on A Borg-like Artificial Intelligence For Lionhead's New Game · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'll believe it when I see it.

  11. Use a line tester on How to Test Your T1? · · Score: 2

    Put the remote CSU/DSU in loopback mode, use a line tester on your end. It should tell you 1544000 bits/sec exactly. Or am I misunderstanding the question?

  12. Cracked and completely effectiveless in... on JVC Announces Technology To Prevent Software Copying · · Score: 4, Funny

    Wager time. I'm betting...

    One week before researchers have produced code that can completely compromise all of the copy protection.

    One point five weeks before the elite technical community can get over the annoyances.

    Two weeks before software pirates can make copies without skipping a beat.

    Eight months of legitimate users being annoyed before the tech is pulled.

    Sprinkle random DMCA arrests and intimidation.

  13. Re:Tired of being told to switch on Review: Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar · · Score: 2

    Don't assume that just because it's not in your face and it's not identical to the Unix hacker culture you're used to that it doesn't exist.

    You are correct. I should clarify that the Freenix hacker culture that I find so accomodating is not available to me on MacOS X.

  14. Re:Tired of being told to switch on Review: Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar · · Score: 2

    I'm sorry, who's telling you to switch now? I felt that the article was more "Mac OS 9 vs. Mac OS 10" than it was "Linux vs. Mac OS 10," but hey, that's just me.

    The first and subsequent posters in this story. Apple's ad campaign. Many people when a discussion about Linux and Apple come up. Just giving my reasons.

  15. Tired of being told to switch on Review: Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar · · Score: 1, Troll

    Look, I'm really happy that people are finding MacOS X useful. It's about time that they had a decent low-level system too, and FreeBSD is a fine choice (lets not talk about Mach). Some Linux users even find their way to MacOS X and never look back. Again, fantastic.

    I however, have no interest in switching. The appeal of Linux to me is that it has a real hacker culture, which you can't develop just by sprinkling open source pixie dust and bundling ssh and ping. Solaris has these too, sometimes it comes with source. But I'm not using Solaris, am I? Apple put together the ingredients, but is still missing the, uh, the soul. Yeah. So the cake comes out lousy.

    I don't care about the super smooth GUI (I prefer wmaker and vtwm myself), or for that matter the applications that run on it. I'm not a visual artist, or sound engineer. But if I did care about these things, I might be annoyed if it's not open source. Switching to an OSX box for me involves switching to slower, more expensive hardware plus a software tax for a system I don't personally care about. It's safe to say that I will probably never switch.

    Sorry.

  16. What's missing on Timeline of Online Gaming · · Score: 2

    Some BBS games that are missing..

    • Barren Realms Elite
    • Usurper
    • Legend of the Red Dragon (by Seth Able Robinson?!!)

    That is all

  17. Standard MySQL disclaimer on slashdot on MySQL A Threat To The Big Database Vendors? · · Score: 5, Informative

    Addressing the typical slashdot negativity when MySQL is mentioned...

    MySQL, w/ InnoDB tables (binaried as MySQL-Max) supports transactions with row-level locking and multi-versioning. It also supports foreign key constraints to some degree (on delete cascade, IIRC).

    MySQL w/ InnoDB is extremely fast, and this isn't just on SELECTs. UPDATE/INSERTs are much faster than in MyISAM tables. Looking back, the turning point where MySQL went from a good database to a great database is when it picked up InnoDB, IMO.

    No, MySQL does not yet support stored procedures, subselects, or views. These are coming in 4.1, along with built-in hot backup support. Plus better replication. 4.0 is available now and seemingly stablizing. The biggest buzz is how thrilled people are with the query cache. At the current pace of development I imagine the above mentioned features will appear and stabilize in version 4.1 within 2 years.

    Is MySQL an Oracle replacement in all circumstances? Absolutely not, but very often Oracle is wholly unnecessary for many of the tasks it's purchased for. We're currently running MySQL + InnoDB on a 36GB dataset at a load of ~500 queries/sec average against a 3 month period. Approxiamtely 30% of queries are data modifications. This is obviously not an impressive system to many of you, but I'm fairly pleased with it, especially considering that "professionals" have been telling us abandon this toy database for years. Personally, I'm glad we saved the down payment on Ellison's next yacht.

    Is MySQL a PostgreSQL replacement? Probably not. There are back and forths about speed and features--PostgreSQL does support more of the features listed above--but I find MySQL to be easier to use and better supported, and the benefits to me of switching are not very apparant. Your mileage may vary. It's not the end of the world to enforce some business logic in the application layer, and it has its own benefits.

    MySQL continues to impress us and the support we receive is outstanding. And that was before we even decided to purchase a yearly support contract. I have nothing but praises to sing about MySQL, and I think it can only get better.

    Oh and it's free and open source. *shrug*

  18. Re:LAMP on MySQL A Threat To The Big Database Vendors? · · Score: 2

    P less commonly means Perl and Python.

    And L can sometimes mean FreeBSD.

    But otherwise, Sun has J2EE, Microsoft has .NET, we've got LAMP.

  19. Certificates aren't very effective to begin with on IE and Konqueror Bug Makes SSL Insecure · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Signed certificates simply state that Verisign trusts the company is who it says it is. That's about it. Signed certificates do not define whether your communications are encrypted or cleartext.

    Signed certificates cannot prove that:

    • The company you're purchasing from is trustworthy
    • The certificate wasn't stolen
    • Verisign wasn't tricked into signing the certificate (which has happened)
    • An attacker hasn't redirected your connection to some other site from the backend (think PHP fopen())

    Many companies don't bother with having their certificates signed. It's pricey, an administrative burden, and doesn't really increase security. I'm annoyed that browsers have been swept into warning you if the site you're visiting doesn't support Verisign's cash flow.

  20. See my Linux Journal article on the subject on Cheap KVM Over IP? · · Score: 3, Informative

    I know it's not exactly what the poster asked for, but I was in the same boat about 6 months ago and you can at least step through my thought processes.

    Article linked here.

  21. I (heart) MySQL on MySQL 4 - Is it Stable? · · Score: 4, Informative

    MySQL's limitations are not a serious problem for me. Most database accesses in my applications are consolidated in a separate layer. It is very simple to duplicate features which may be missing from MySQL.

    The support behind MySQL is outstanding, both from the mailing list and paid MySQL support. MySQL is extremely simple to set up and can handle quite impressive loads.

    To keep score, MySQL + Innobase supports transactions (w/ row level locks and multi-versioning), foreign keys. 4.0 introduces UNION statements and a supposedly cool query cache. Pretty soon should come subqueries, stored procedures, etc.

    That said, I've not used 4.0 in a production environment. What we have right now (3.23.51-max) seems to be doing the job just fine.

  22. Why just RIAA.org? on RIAA Smacked by DoS · · Score: 2

    The RIAA is an industry consortium. No one cares about their site. Hit all of the member company sites. Imagine if member companies who are already kind of annoyed by how the RIAA is handling this started getting attacked because of their stupidity? That would definitely cause some internal pressure.

    And if not, at least you get John Ashcroft to come on TV and vow vengeance against the cyber terrorists. If you're going to commit crime, at least go all out. Crime is the only unspoiled artform left.

  23. I'd hate to see this become a standard.. on Internet Security Standards · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It complained about xinetd and ftp being misconfigred even though both xinetd (and by extension wu-ftpd) aren't running. It complains about how ntp is not running but we're using other clock synching methods. I'm getting a reduced score on bullshit.

    I can see it now... "Sorry, we only do business with vendors whose servers score 9.5 or better"

  24. Odd on Internet Security Standards · · Score: 2

    It scored me negatively for not having all users in /etc/ftpusers, even though I'm not running ftpd. Plenty of other cases like this.

    So far, very impressive. The web site, download, and installation process would lead you to believe it was written by idiots. Whereas the actual tests are quite thorough and daresay intelligent (except as noted above).

  25. Re:Surely there will be a Linux port on Wanna Work for Dave Taylor & American McGee? · · Score: 2

    Haha, that's "one way", but there's still "or another".

    But I won't say anything unless Dave says it. :D