I suggest counter-suing for defamation of character. Just how much is an international reputation worth? Linus could end up owning SCO. Now *that* would justice. -rick
In order to prove a defamation of character, you have to prove that Linus' character was actually defamed by this claim.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, do you believe that this man, who has donated countless hours of his personal time, sweat and tears to a computer program, which we'll call an "Operating System", willfully infringed upon copyright and/or patents and/or trade secrets? Do you believe that someone who shares all the fruits of his labor, called "Source Code" for all to view, check and use without restriction knowingly did something bad? Or, after those hundreds of thousands of lines of code, is it likely to find only one such infraction a demonstration of humanity?
Personally, I think that a company that finds problems a decade after Linux started sure says something about Linus' character -- and it isn't negative.
Why is it we need an original game? Aren't the current ones good enough? Don't get me wrong, I don't want revolutions or evolutions to stop, but I think our priorities are messed up here.
Linux is basically 30 years old, and certainly the Posix standard it was written against was based off of rewrites on rewrites, but it inherantly goes back to 1970 UNIX (now politically referred to as Unix).
We're in an atmosphere where PowerPC and Sparc falter, MIPS and Alpha barely survive, but Intel 4004 derived processors prosper and dominate?
My favorite game is Starcraft (aka Warcraft 2.5: Now In Space). I've reluctantly started playing "Warcraft 3: 3D Acceleration Because We Could, Not Because It Was Needed" despite my 32 meg video card from ages ago. My favorite game of all time, Starflight II, was based on Starflight, whose premise could be loosely considered to be based on Oregon Trail. New titles are hard and spaced out very far. It's not enough to be different, it's got to be compelling. If it's same old-same old, but compelling, that's what matters-- ask Id. Doom III may be a rewrite of the engine in manners which I cannot comprehend, but it's a spin on the genre that Wolfenstein started (and games before it, I imagine, but Wolfenstein was the first I saw). I didn't play that much Tetris, but I played enough Puzzle Fighter to keep me busy.
I'd like to see more of a concentration on game writing getting the best of the best even better. I'd like to see an end to Warcraft III's characters that are obviously polygon derived -- an example of moving to a technology because it was possible. There is so much more that the hardware can really do, but we give up because New is Better. Finish what you start before moving on.
Once you are used to multiple desktops (no, that measly 4 add-on powertoys desktops don't count.), Unix-style copy-paste and much greater flexibility and configurability, you will never go back to Windows.
I was handed a quad processor machine with 2 gigs of RAM as my only computer in 1999. It ran Unix (AIX, all jokes aside about how "Unix" that is...), and I was very happy. I got used to a number of things, but the least of which was the file management. I'm very fluent with ls, rm, mv, etc, but it is still nothing compared to a real GUI file manager. Maybe I could have installed one, but AIX didn't have one that compared to MacOS or Windows. But I loved the multiple desktops, remote machine abilities, real honest-to-god use for a three button mouse, etc.
Almost two years ago, I switched jobs within the company. Lost the Real Machine. Got a Thinkpad-- and suddenly the only applications I wanted to run were supported on Windows only.
Sometimes it's not about the right tool for the job, but about the tool the job allows to have. I went back, but not by choice. File management got much better. Stability, on the other hand, is not always as good on Win2k installs as some would lead you to believe (despite a lack of installed software).
Now if only IBM would release a Notes version 6 for AIX...(4 is no good to me)
Lego has great computer-like qualities - it is a binary toy; everything is either connected to something or it's not
My old roommate was a math major. Awesome at just about everything in math except for statistics. This guy could do things that I couldn't even comprehend -- except for statistics.
Me: Hey, Eric, what are the odds that I'll pull a ten of clubs out of this deck of cards?
E: There are two possibilites. Either it will happen, or it won't. Therefore, 50/50.
Me: Hey, Eric, what are the odds that, by running into this wall here, you'll pass straight on through?
E: I won't fall for that one again.
Me: But we learned in physics that there's a finite possibility you'll pass straight through the wall. What are the odds?
E: 50/50. Either I will, or I won't. But I probably won't.
He still can't wrap his brain around it. He teaches high school math now -- and has another teacher take over when it comes to statistics and probabilities because he just doesn't believe it. Fortunately he refuses to penalize his students because they believe the propaganda that is probabilty and statistics.
Another way of viewing it is that people willing to pay zero dollars but pay the hidden cost of enduring the risk of running illicit MS software (what that risk really costs is a matter for insurance actuaries).
Those warez users have already made their own decision, with MS out of the loop, about the discount they want and what they are willing to pay for.
I see your point, but I think I need to introduce a few shades of gray. Let's consider a hypothetical student, say, puelfebola (rot13), who felt he had to have an intimate knowledge of Windows software before entering the workforce. And the only copy of Windows that was available at the time to puelfebola was NT server 3.5. Now puelfebola isn't a rich guy, being a student and all, but he feels he has to get this experience. Can he afford the $500 for the real license? No. Can he afford the >$100 for Windows 95? Honestly, no. He's up to his ears in debt anyway. If he could have offered the best can afford $20 for his copy of 95 (or NT for that matter), he would have. But he couldn't make that tradeoff, Microsoft missed out on 100% of the revenue instead of 80-90% of it, and he got the experience at the risk of getting caught.
Puelfebola is a reasonable, normally law abiding fella, and as soon as he could afford it, he got his hands on a copy of the licence for that copy of NT he learned on. By then it was used and less than $20 (de-installed from a server), but it relieved a conscience.
I encourage you to consider the fact that there's a range of people who cannot afford what Microsoft demands but would willingly put down money if someone would just take it from them. Not all who forgo >$100 operating systems for warez do so because they won't pay a dime.
Puelfebola eventually learned enough of Windows to get by at work and moved on to Slackware and later Debian, supporting them as possible.
Some say this is dumping -- selling their product below cost just to push out a smaller competitor. Sure, it fits that definition, but Microsoft is lowering its price to that of a competitor who is also selling below cost. Alan Cox's labor alone probably ads up to more than a penny on the two debian machines I have right now which would be two more pennies than I spent on their software. (Aside, if each of us sent Alan a penny for each of our servers, how much money would he have?)
Some are calling this just another unfair tactic, losing money to maintain marketshare. Well, maybe it is, but isn't that what M$ is doing with the XBox? Rumor has it that Sony did it with the PS2 at least when it came out. Numerous other business models do this as well. Maybe Microsoft is turning to a business model where the software is free (under certain circumstances) and they earn their money on the support calls and Must Consult Someone Else certifications? Isn't that the business model all the free software people advocate?
I don't like Microsoft's history or how they do business, but I'm racking my brains here to find a way that they're evil and my favorite business OS, Linux, is good. All I'm coming up with is either ways to kill Linux accidently or ways that this is a legit thing to do.
Perhaps there's something to do with how the prices are different? Can it be proven discriminatory, or is it along the same lines as airline seat price differences?
The best I have is that foreign governments can prohibit or tariff Microsoft OS imports that are under priced because they're being dumped-- when and only when they have local developers working on Linux and consider that flavor to be domestic. Much like the US is doing (illegally due to WTO agreements) with steel.
Microsoft was evil, in my opinion, when they released IE for free against Netscape's paid-for product. Why is free as in beer Linux good when it's apparently forcing Microsoft to give their OS away for free? Aside from brand hatred of Microsoft, why do I want Linux to succeed? Simply because I can and have modified the source code (but that gets back to it being Free as in libre which I think should stay out of this argument).
If it's reasonable to cast licensing paranoia aside for a moment, Microsoft appears to be offering those who cannot afford their software the ability to get upgrades for free without having to pay for migrating proprietary code to the Linux platform. If I replaced "Microsoft" with another business name, that would be A Good Thing.
Can we write a law that refers to the Microsoft business entity specifically and prohibits them from "selling" their product at a loss as punishment for prior practices?
I almost never catch Car Talk on NPR on the weekends because it's on before I'm out driving around (I'm in CA, and I sleep in on weekends).
Now, OTOH, on the weekdays I find myself listening to crappy morning shows during my commute if I'm not up for news. I would really like the option of pulling up a show from the weekend (or a Science Friday or whatever) and listening to it rather than putting on Sarah & No-Name and listening to what happened on TV the night before just to have *something* to listen to.
Personally, my wife and I listen to NPR during the part of our morning routine that's upstairs. No good radio downstairs, so we go NPRless, missing some programming. Then we get in the car and usually either talk about what's going to happen in our lives that day or just enjoy a few minutes of quiet in each other's company. When we get to the higher speed limit roads, we turn the radio on -- NPR again. By the time we get to work, we're usually hearing the repeat of what we heard when we started to get ready for work.
Time shifting NPR would be cool because it would let us pause the program and continue when we were going to pay attention to it, minimizing same-day repeats.
That reminds me of the time my parent's answering machine got into an infinite loop with an autodialler. Somehow, the answering machine beep caused the spiel to restart and that spiel ended with a beep. That beep, I guess, was misinterpreted as an attempt to access the remote "check my messages" feature of the answering machine. The password failure resulted in the same beep. Which, if you see above, caused the spiel to restart -- and end with a beep.
The 60 minute tape was filled with the same spiel 60 times in a row with two beeps to seperate.
Completley wrong my good sir. Consumer Reports tested the ionic breeze and *was unable* to measure its effectivness because its filtration was "below measurable levels" if it was doing anything at all.
The original poster claimed to have one installed, and claimed that it was pulling dust out of the air. You state that he's wrong because some magazine said so? I'm not quite sure what you're thinking. Perhaps you'd like to provide some evidence that the original poster's computer room is not actually cleaner?
I've got one of these things. My wife can't breathe through her nose for 24 hours if I leave it turned off or if it's dirty. I have to clean it every week or two because it collects so much stuff it starts to make noise otherwise. Your post, and that of another here, actually dropped my opinion of Consumer Reports. Perhaps it's not that good for cleaning whatever lab setup they had, but perhaps it is good at my real world (read as "5 cats", in a room adjacent to the litter box, vacuum monthly, ceiling fan on during summer) scenario.
Calling someone's personal observations "wrong" because they have a claim that disagrees with what you've read about is an interesting tactic.
I've seen, first hand, how dirty a HEPA filter can get, how quickly. I've seen, first hand, how dirty an Ionic Breeze can get, how quickly. I'm not equipped to measure anything, but those Ionic Breeze blades sure do pick up lots within 24 hours (especially if you burn a scented candle). I'm not going to claim that the Ionic Breeze got all the particle sizes a HEPA does, but I will claim that, for my bedroom of moderate size where the door is never closed, the Ionic Breeze cleans the room well enough for my wife who's allergic to dust mites to breathe, and quiet enough for my picky ears to let me sleep.
You can't tell us we're wrong, because Consumer Reports said so, and expect to be believed by any reasonable human being.
I can only echo what I've already read in this thread. You don't specify the size of the room you need to cleanse, and you don't specify if you have any special requirements (allergies demanding HEPA or smokers, or both).
I bought it because my girlfriend's HEPA filter sounded like a vacuum cleaner 24/7 and I had trouble sleeping with it... for 2 years. When I moved out of the college housing to get a real job, I got one of these that was advertised as "silent" in the hopes that when she followed me 3 months later, she'd not need the HEPA beast. I don't know how close the Ionic Breeze gets to HEPA, but it's close enough for her. After almost 4 years of service, the first one gave up the ghost. I think it was my fault, putting the blades back wet always made crackling noises and bad smells, but I was lazy and water improved the cleaning process. Screw the fact that I had a masters in EE and knew better. Over the 4 years, it paid for itself in the costs of replacement HEPA filters for her original one. Okay, maybe that's a lie... I can no longer find filters for it. But, if they were still available, the original $199 purchase would have been paid back. Anyway, it stopped moving air after all this time and I went to take it apart and broke one of those tiny wires that makes the whole thing work.
Prices have gone up a bit. I just bought my second (and third, they are running a promotion where the second one is 50% off). They have two sizes (smaller than first). I don't honestly know how they work, but it seems like they negatively charge the air with tiny wires and then the air gets sucked to the positively charged metal blades where it leaves off all the bad stuff. It's not silent, but if you have even the slightest background noise, or are more than 3-5 feet away, you'll not hear it.
If your lab is the victim of smokers, no filter in your pricerange will prolong your computers' supplies. Regardless, if it's a problem, taking the computers apart every 6 months to vacuum can cause only 20-30 minutes of downtime apiece and only costs what you put in vacuum electricity.
If anybody cares, and has read this far, aforementioned girlfriend became wife in 2000 and shortly will receive the title "Mom". Not that I'm prouder than hell about it or anything.
Who was the other person?
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FTC vs Spammers
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· Score: 4, Funny
after receiving about 46,000 complaints
Okay, so my bash script was responsible for 32,767 of those, who was the other guy?
My favorite container plant...
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Gardening for Geeks?
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· Score: 2, Informative
Speaking from experience, try a strawberry plant. Keep it from getting frost, and if you're in a hot climate, keep it from getting direct afternoon sun. For a whole year, it's just a green plant. The next year, it'll bear fruit. The sweetest fruit you've ever tasted. There's nothing like a strawberry vine ripened and still warm from the sun.
My new problem, however, is that my wife won't eat strawberries from anyplace else now. Like oranges, when you've had fresh off the plant from the right plant, nothing else just can compare.
You asked specifically about two plants. Your number one enemy, from my experience, is severe spider infestation. Mist your plants if they're too delicate to handle direct hose water. Don't use pesticides, but try to keep as many nasties off as you can. There are some nice organic solutions, including using cedar. It seems to work pretty well to use cedar mulch on top of the soil. If you have the right window exposure, you can grow good plants indoors. My strawberry plant grew well in a Vermont window with a northwest exposure.
Also, stay away from plastic pots. They hold moisture too well, and even with the right drainage, it's tough to keep mold / mildew from growing in it. Same with heavily painted terra cotta. Stick with bare terra cotta and you won't go too far wrong in the drainage department. Of course, you will still have to monitor moisture (Wal-mart sells hydrometers for like $5 or less), but it's tough to overwater a terra cotta pot with a hole in the bottom.
One of my favorite songs:
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Eleventy What?
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The poster seems unaware that Debian can run on Apple hardware. Or should I be assuming that the user had tried to run Debian, but unique hardware had prevented it?
Posted from an ssh tunnel to a PowerMac 7600 upgraded to a G3 running Woody.
There are a lot of peeps complaining about substandard ram. If you had RTFA, you'd realize that the downgrade ram is reconfigured to skip the bad parts in the chips, so that it comes out as a normal module. Just because there is a faulty bit or 10 in a modules, doesn't mean the reast of that module is bound to fail. It could just have been an imperfection in the silicon or the circuit process.
You have made a statement that makes it very clear you are a very educated layman, not someone in the field. What you've said is true to the first order, but not inherantly true.
Wafers have what can be measured as "defect density", and observe a phenomena called "defect clustering". Defects are not always hit or miss, open or short, some of them are latent or resistive. As the part ages (diffuses), electromigrates or observes hot electron effects, all parts will decrease in quality. Downgrade RAM, so to speak, would be most likely to have additional cells fail due to the above effects -- because it had failures that made it marginal in the first place. Testing methodologies at higher quality manufacturers build in guardbands to make sure that nobody ever experiences the defects when used in-spec. (This is why many overclockers lose their chips after only a year or two, they cause latent defects to surface and suddenly the chip won't even operate at nominal frequencies; the guardband effect also explains to a great degree why many chips can be overclocked in the first place.)
I'm not dis'n you, just trying to fill in a few more holes.
I'd like to point out that the students weren't sharing music they'd composed themselves, or movies they'd made themselves. What they were doing was no different from using the university's Film Studies (or Media Studies or whatever it's called) department's equipment to run off a thousand copies of a video fom Blockbuster.
I see your point. What this university was doing, therefore, is the equivalent of watching 10 minutes of EVERY film that enters that lab and passing judgements on everyone who does so. There are legitimate reasons for a blockbuster video to enter that lab -- if you're not dubbing it, or if you're taking 10 seconds for educational use... Fingerprinting and recording the bits as they pass by cannot measure intent. If someone owns a copy of a movie that was destroyed in a fire, don't they have a right to get a new copy? If a computer game CD is destroyed, most (all?) publishers will send you a new copy for a nominal fee ($9 is what I've seen, after you prove you bought it once already).
Slashdot is doing itself no favors by condoning this kind of activity. It's obsessing on trivial freedoms and missing the "big picture".
Slashdot isn't condoning any activity. As a reader, I'm uncomfortable with universities that do this kind of logging. Blocking is a different issue, and one that can be argued to have its advantages and disadvantages, but logging presumes to capture intent as well. The "big picture" that I see is that the law is there to help business make money, students learn much faster by using these tools (some break the law doing so, but the fruits of their labor are still valid). Is pirating the latest eminem album to save yourself $16 a violation of copyright? Yes. Is getting a copy, when you already own the CD? No. Now the big picture kicks in: is it wrong to get a copy of the songs you can download for personal use when you don't have the money to buy them anyway? Maybe. Is it wrong to copy a friend's eminem CD to get a sound clip for a free expression class? Not to me. There are many good, valid reasons that pirating is and should be illegal. But there are many good, valid reasons that behavior that looks like pirating is and should be legal.
Don't presume that the "big picture" you see is the only valid one. I'm not saying you're wrong, but I hold a different "big picture" view and perhaps have different values. Since I pay my taxes and vote, my values have as much weight as yours.
The point is, it's THEIR network. It's not the student network, it's not the taxpayers network, it's not even the Alumni's network. It belongs to the University plain and simple. University is for research, not d/l pr0n or sharing eminem. Students are given access to the internet in their dorm rooms to assist them with their studies.
That certainly is an interesting point. Please allow me to offer a counter point.
Universities are there for learning and growth of their students and faculty. They are not all about books and studying and stuff like that. Universities sponsor football -- why? Student unions and governments -- why? Those are extracurricular activities that help the students grow as people, round them out, etc. Ever meet someone in real life who thought university was there for books and no socialization? I've met one, and let me tell you, communicating to get to the immense book-smarts was tough, and he was not prone to creative, reasonably practical ideas.
The university network is there primarily for learning, but there should be a reasonable amount of respect for personal growth and exploration. I'm not sure I want to argue that pirating friends episodes and pornography are aiding that pursuit, but maybe they are. The university should make a reasonable effort to allow the students to do explore their freedoms and help enforce the law when subpoenaed to do so. I think it can easily be argued that the downloading of friends episodes leads one to think about copyrights and what use they have in the real world. The exploration of pornogrpahy, it can be argued, helps educate the "consumer" what he (or she) thinks about the impact on the models as individuals.
My education was, believe it or not, furthered by playing with a little known Unix clone named "Linux". It wasn't supported on my campus network, and there were times when I used bandwidth for this side project that did not contribute directly to my studies, but I believe it was worthwhile. I played Doom over Kali, and ended up learning something about network latencies and bandwidths. Completely illegal on the campus network, I even ran a password logger for some time -- this turned out to be a very powerful lesson in cryptography and network security. I did not have the money to set up a legitimate private network to explore these issues, but this was education that helped me become the person that I am.
I believe that university and college dorms are there, not for the exclusive pursuits of scheduled academia, but for the students to explore their own educations, as they pertain or do not pertain to their class schedules.
I got out of graduate school in 1999 and found myself in the market for a new car. I didn't shop around, I thought I knew what I wanted -- a new 2000 Saturn SC2, black. I found that dream car sitting on the lot, and bought it (well, a bank helped me).
So, here I am, 4 years later, the not-so-proud owner of a blackberry (purple in bright sunlight, black at night) Saturn, having learned so much about the downfalls of plastic. I'll never buy another Saturn. If I had it to do over again, I wouldn't have bought a Saturn in the first place. The sales pitch says this: when you get into an accident, plastic body panels are much easier to replace than metal ones. They don't say that every little ding and scrape you get (ever park next to an SUV that doesn't have enough repsect for drivers of smaller cars that they open their doors until they hit the next car over? Ever find a shopping cart resting against your car?) will leave you with a white mark. In a white car, that may not be bad, but when this car is all newly washed and shiney, it's got ugly white scratches on the sides and rear fender. For some reason, metal cars don't seem to have this problem as much.
Gloss plastic. In practice, does this mean that it'll stick as well as paint does to my plastic Saturn? Or will it have the staying power of paint on metal? I don't care about the press articles on it, I want to know what the field tests say in the hands of real people.
It always pays to know your rights. You don't have to let them do the credit check. Of course, they have the right to turn you down for not submitting.
If you handle money, purchases, anything financial in the course of this director level position (the term "director" is subjective at a company with only 40 people, by the way), a credit check is a sound thing to do from their perspective. "Director" at the company where I work means you deal with finances, customer negotiation, resource issues (people and stuff), so I'd hope some sort of personal investigation was done. Think of it from their perspective: if you're looking at two otherwise equally qualified candidates for a position that deals with finances, purchasing, hiring, negotiation, etc., would you hire the one with a clean credit check, or the one who refuses to submit? Watch out for number one, buddy, you'd hire the clean, visible history. You no doubt gave them your address, social security number, phone number, educational and professional history and next of kin, what's one more piece of the puzzle?
Of course, if you're not dealing with finances, what business is it of theirs? If it's a position that may one day deal with finances, I am sure that a determined superior could get to know you well enough to understand your level of responsibility in a friendly, non-confrontational manner. Friends sometimes talk about stuff like this. And if they're this worked up about a piece of paper that you don't feel comfortable sharing, move along.
You have the right to say, "no," but so do they. Weigh the personal cost. If you have something to hide, you have little to lose by saying, "no." If you have nothing to hide, it's the cost of your pride and privacy. How much is this job worth to you?
As a nationally syndicated author, you're in quite a high profile position. I have no doubt that, had this interview not come up, you'd be busy doing things you get paid to do.
That said, why did you agree to do this interview? Did you think it would be a neat thing to do? Is this another way for people to learn about your column, or are you learning more about what's on the minds of your readers? Are we going to get our own article written about us (no doubt that would be a funny and possibly humbling experience)? As someone from "the outside world", do you see us as a bunch of people with wide backgrounds and experiences, or are we the teenage boy group that TV tells us owns and authors the internet?
When all is said and done, you cannot place all the blame on either President Bush in particular or the Republican Party in general. If any one "thing" is to get all the blame, it's the whole God damned bureaucracy.
Hi, I'm an American citizen and a registered voter. I assert that I can blame President Bush and the Republican party for the current state of NASA.
You harp on what happens when NASA goes over budget, Congress tells them to go to hell. You think I should be blaming the contractors. Fine, that's an opinion you're welcome to have in this free country. However, you cannot tell me whom I can blame! Then I'd have to get someone's approval to have an opinion of my own? When the DOD goes over budget, they get some extra money. When there were forest fires a few years ago demanding more money from the park service, they had cutbacks to make up for some of it, but Congress helped out some.
Like many slashdotters, I am fascinated with space. I think that, as the most powerful country in the world (until China gets a little further with their free market reforms at least), we should be pioneers on the space frontier. Our President and Congress disagree, apparently, and are stranging NASA by cutting budgets and not helping out when contractors go over budget (a fact of life in federal government contracts).
You, Guppy06, assert that I cannot blame either the President or our Congress for the fact that NASA lacks the money to do anything other than bandage the ISS plans. I assert that I can, and will. I'm a voter and a taxpayer, and I think the American military gets too much money, and education and NASA get far too little. When I disagree with the government, I have the obligation to blame them for the repercussions.
You asked about making reservations online. Are you trying to save a buck, or trying to shoot for convenience?
Like many people, I've made many reservations, happily and without problem I might add, using Travelocity or travel.yahoo.com. That's a good way to save a buck or two.
If money is less of an object, and you're shooting for convenience, call up a travel agent. Pull open the yellow pages and look for "travel" in your metropolitan area. That's what I did for my honeymoon in October 2000. I conducted most of my business over the phone and through e-mail with my agent (contrary to what most services tell you, the agents get kick backs roughly equal to what yahoo or travelocity do), and only had to go to the office to pick up the tickets. I wanted to get access to some extra services, like a premium floor at the Contemporary2 at DisneyWorld (I couldn't figure out how to do that over the web 2.5 years ago). But calling up and talking to a travel agent helped me get flight arrangements, park tickets at a discount, and set up a private car so we didn't have to hunt down a taxi to take us to and from the hotel.
Yes, you might possibly be able to save a few bucks, or use this novel "Internet" to help you make all the decisions yourself. Or, a travel agent who does this kind of thing professionally may be able to help you out and find you options you didn't know you had. Maybe you pay the same. Maybe you pay more, but get better accomodations.
Choose carefully. Your bride will remember this experience well -- and tell her friends about it. Heck, you probably will, too.
Oh, and Disney World was great. If you go, go first to Epcot Center's gift store and let it slip that you're on your honeymoon. They used to give out bride and groom mouse ears. Once you have those, you get to the front of LOTS of lines. And October is a very temperate, less busy time of year to go.
They aren't interested in putting Linux on the desktop for the same reasons they never put AIX on the desktop.
Crap. I better ditch my 400MHz Power3+ RS/6000 then. Since it's a server, I should certainly not be using it daily as my desktop. Damn shame to have the fast, pretty graphics card in it.
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In order to prove a defamation of character, you have to prove that Linus' character was actually defamed by this claim.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, do you believe that this man, who has donated countless hours of his personal time, sweat and tears to a computer program, which we'll call an "Operating System", willfully infringed upon copyright and/or patents and/or trade secrets? Do you believe that someone who shares all the fruits of his labor, called "Source Code" for all to view, check and use without restriction knowingly did something bad? Or, after those hundreds of thousands of lines of code, is it likely to find only one such infraction a demonstration of humanity?
Personally, I think that a company that finds problems a decade after Linux started sure says something about Linus' character -- and it isn't negative.
Why is it we need an original game? Aren't the current ones good enough? Don't get me wrong, I don't want revolutions or evolutions to stop, but I think our priorities are messed up here.
Linux is basically 30 years old, and certainly the Posix standard it was written against was based off of rewrites on rewrites, but it inherantly goes back to 1970 UNIX (now politically referred to as Unix).
We're in an atmosphere where PowerPC and Sparc falter, MIPS and Alpha barely survive, but Intel 4004 derived processors prosper and dominate?
My favorite game is Starcraft (aka Warcraft 2.5: Now In Space). I've reluctantly started playing "Warcraft 3: 3D Acceleration Because We Could, Not Because It Was Needed" despite my 32 meg video card from ages ago. My favorite game of all time, Starflight II, was based on Starflight, whose premise could be loosely considered to be based on Oregon Trail. New titles are hard and spaced out very far. It's not enough to be different, it's got to be compelling. If it's same old-same old, but compelling, that's what matters-- ask Id. Doom III may be a rewrite of the engine in manners which I cannot comprehend, but it's a spin on the genre that Wolfenstein started (and games before it, I imagine, but Wolfenstein was the first I saw). I didn't play that much Tetris, but I played enough Puzzle Fighter to keep me busy.
I'd like to see more of a concentration on game writing getting the best of the best even better. I'd like to see an end to Warcraft III's characters that are obviously polygon derived -- an example of moving to a technology because it was possible. There is so much more that the hardware can really do, but we give up because New is Better. Finish what you start before moving on.
I was handed a quad processor machine with 2 gigs of RAM as my only computer in 1999. It ran Unix (AIX, all jokes aside about how "Unix" that is...), and I was very happy. I got used to a number of things, but the least of which was the file management. I'm very fluent with ls, rm, mv, etc, but it is still nothing compared to a real GUI file manager. Maybe I could have installed one, but AIX didn't have one that compared to MacOS or Windows. But I loved the multiple desktops, remote machine abilities, real honest-to-god use for a three button mouse, etc.
Almost two years ago, I switched jobs within the company. Lost the Real Machine. Got a Thinkpad-- and suddenly the only applications I wanted to run were supported on Windows only.
Sometimes it's not about the right tool for the job, but about the tool the job allows to have. I went back, but not by choice. File management got much better. Stability, on the other hand, is not always as good on Win2k installs as some would lead you to believe (despite a lack of installed software).
Now if only IBM would release a Notes version 6 for AIX...(4 is no good to me)
My old roommate was a math major. Awesome at just about everything in math except for statistics. This guy could do things that I couldn't even comprehend -- except for statistics.
Me: Hey, Eric, what are the odds that I'll pull a ten of clubs out of this deck of cards?
E: There are two possibilites. Either it will happen, or it won't. Therefore, 50/50.
Me: Hey, Eric, what are the odds that, by running into this wall here, you'll pass straight on through?
E: I won't fall for that one again.
Me: But we learned in physics that there's a finite possibility you'll pass straight through the wall. What are the odds?
E: 50/50. Either I will, or I won't. But I probably won't.
He still can't wrap his brain around it. He teaches high school math now -- and has another teacher take over when it comes to statistics and probabilities because he just doesn't believe it. Fortunately he refuses to penalize his students because they believe the propaganda that is probabilty and statistics.
I see your point, but I think I need to introduce a few shades of gray. Let's consider a hypothetical student, say, puelfebola (rot13), who felt he had to have an intimate knowledge of Windows software before entering the workforce. And the only copy of Windows that was available at the time to puelfebola was NT server 3.5. Now puelfebola isn't a rich guy, being a student and all, but he feels he has to get this experience. Can he afford the $500 for the real license? No. Can he afford the >$100 for Windows 95? Honestly, no. He's up to his ears in debt anyway. If he could have offered the best can afford $20 for his copy of 95 (or NT for that matter), he would have. But he couldn't make that tradeoff, Microsoft missed out on 100% of the revenue instead of 80-90% of it, and he got the experience at the risk of getting caught.
Puelfebola is a reasonable, normally law abiding fella, and as soon as he could afford it, he got his hands on a copy of the licence for that copy of NT he learned on. By then it was used and less than $20 (de-installed from a server), but it relieved a conscience.
I encourage you to consider the fact that there's a range of people who cannot afford what Microsoft demands but would willingly put down money if someone would just take it from them. Not all who forgo >$100 operating systems for warez do so because they won't pay a dime.
Puelfebola eventually learned enough of Windows to get by at work and moved on to Slackware and later Debian, supporting them as possible.
Some say this is dumping -- selling their product below cost just to push out a smaller competitor. Sure, it fits that definition, but Microsoft is lowering its price to that of a competitor who is also selling below cost. Alan Cox's labor alone probably ads up to more than a penny on the two debian machines I have right now which would be two more pennies than I spent on their software. (Aside, if each of us sent Alan a penny for each of our servers, how much money would he have?)
Some are calling this just another unfair tactic, losing money to maintain marketshare. Well, maybe it is, but isn't that what M$ is doing with the XBox? Rumor has it that Sony did it with the PS2 at least when it came out. Numerous other business models do this as well. Maybe Microsoft is turning to a business model where the software is free (under certain circumstances) and they earn their money on the support calls and Must Consult Someone Else certifications? Isn't that the business model all the free software people advocate?
I don't like Microsoft's history or how they do business, but I'm racking my brains here to find a way that they're evil and my favorite business OS, Linux, is good. All I'm coming up with is either ways to kill Linux accidently or ways that this is a legit thing to do.
Perhaps there's something to do with how the prices are different? Can it be proven discriminatory, or is it along the same lines as airline seat price differences?
The best I have is that foreign governments can prohibit or tariff Microsoft OS imports that are under priced because they're being dumped-- when and only when they have local developers working on Linux and consider that flavor to be domestic. Much like the US is doing (illegally due to WTO agreements) with steel.
Microsoft was evil, in my opinion, when they released IE for free against Netscape's paid-for product. Why is free as in beer Linux good when it's apparently forcing Microsoft to give their OS away for free? Aside from brand hatred of Microsoft, why do I want Linux to succeed? Simply because I can and have modified the source code (but that gets back to it being Free as in libre which I think should stay out of this argument).
If it's reasonable to cast licensing paranoia aside for a moment, Microsoft appears to be offering those who cannot afford their software the ability to get upgrades for free without having to pay for migrating proprietary code to the Linux platform. If I replaced "Microsoft" with another business name, that would be A Good Thing.
Can we write a law that refers to the Microsoft business entity specifically and prohibits them from "selling" their product at a loss as punishment for prior practices?
Personally, my wife and I listen to NPR during the part of our morning routine that's upstairs. No good radio downstairs, so we go NPRless, missing some programming. Then we get in the car and usually either talk about what's going to happen in our lives that day or just enjoy a few minutes of quiet in each other's company. When we get to the higher speed limit roads, we turn the radio on -- NPR again. By the time we get to work, we're usually hearing the repeat of what we heard when we started to get ready for work.
Time shifting NPR would be cool because it would let us pause the program and continue when we were going to pay attention to it, minimizing same-day repeats.
That reminds me of the time my parent's answering machine got into an infinite loop with an autodialler. Somehow, the answering machine beep caused the spiel to restart and that spiel ended with a beep. That beep, I guess, was misinterpreted as an attempt to access the remote "check my messages" feature of the answering machine. The password failure resulted in the same beep. Which, if you see above, caused the spiel to restart -- and end with a beep.
The 60 minute tape was filled with the same spiel 60 times in a row with two beeps to seperate.
The original poster claimed to have one installed, and claimed that it was pulling dust out of the air. You state that he's wrong because some magazine said so? I'm not quite sure what you're thinking. Perhaps you'd like to provide some evidence that the original poster's computer room is not actually cleaner?
I've got one of these things. My wife can't breathe through her nose for 24 hours if I leave it turned off or if it's dirty. I have to clean it every week or two because it collects so much stuff it starts to make noise otherwise. Your post, and that of another here, actually dropped my opinion of Consumer Reports. Perhaps it's not that good for cleaning whatever lab setup they had, but perhaps it is good at my real world (read as "5 cats", in a room adjacent to the litter box, vacuum monthly, ceiling fan on during summer) scenario.
Calling someone's personal observations "wrong" because they have a claim that disagrees with what you've read about is an interesting tactic.
I've seen, first hand, how dirty a HEPA filter can get, how quickly. I've seen, first hand, how dirty an Ionic Breeze can get, how quickly. I'm not equipped to measure anything, but those Ionic Breeze blades sure do pick up lots within 24 hours (especially if you burn a scented candle). I'm not going to claim that the Ionic Breeze got all the particle sizes a HEPA does, but I will claim that, for my bedroom of moderate size where the door is never closed, the Ionic Breeze cleans the room well enough for my wife who's allergic to dust mites to breathe, and quiet enough for my picky ears to let me sleep.
You can't tell us we're wrong, because Consumer Reports said so, and expect to be believed by any reasonable human being.
I can only echo what I've already read in this thread. You don't specify the size of the room you need to cleanse, and you don't specify if you have any special requirements (allergies demanding HEPA or smokers, or both).
The Sharpter Image Ionic Breeze has been a godsend in my household since 1999.
I bought it because my girlfriend's HEPA filter sounded like a vacuum cleaner 24/7 and I had trouble sleeping with it... for 2 years. When I moved out of the college housing to get a real job, I got one of these that was advertised as "silent" in the hopes that when she followed me 3 months later, she'd not need the HEPA beast. I don't know how close the Ionic Breeze gets to HEPA, but it's close enough for her. After almost 4 years of service, the first one gave up the ghost. I think it was my fault, putting the blades back wet always made crackling noises and bad smells, but I was lazy and water improved the cleaning process. Screw the fact that I had a masters in EE and knew better. Over the 4 years, it paid for itself in the costs of replacement HEPA filters for her original one. Okay, maybe that's a lie... I can no longer find filters for it. But, if they were still available, the original $199 purchase would have been paid back. Anyway, it stopped moving air after all this time and I went to take it apart and broke one of those tiny wires that makes the whole thing work.
Prices have gone up a bit. I just bought my second (and third, they are running a promotion where the second one is 50% off). They have two sizes (smaller than first). I don't honestly know how they work, but it seems like they negatively charge the air with tiny wires and then the air gets sucked to the positively charged metal blades where it leaves off all the bad stuff. It's not silent, but if you have even the slightest background noise, or are more than 3-5 feet away, you'll not hear it.
If your lab is the victim of smokers, no filter in your pricerange will prolong your computers' supplies. Regardless, if it's a problem, taking the computers apart every 6 months to vacuum can cause only 20-30 minutes of downtime apiece and only costs what you put in vacuum electricity.
If anybody cares, and has read this far, aforementioned girlfriend became wife in 2000 and shortly will receive the title "Mom". Not that I'm prouder than hell about it or anything.
Okay, so my bash script was responsible for 32,767 of those, who was the other guy?
Speaking from experience, try a strawberry plant. Keep it from getting frost, and if you're in a hot climate, keep it from getting direct afternoon sun. For a whole year, it's just a green plant. The next year, it'll bear fruit. The sweetest fruit you've ever tasted. There's nothing like a strawberry vine ripened and still warm from the sun.
My new problem, however, is that my wife won't eat strawberries from anyplace else now. Like oranges, when you've had fresh off the plant from the right plant, nothing else just can compare.
You asked specifically about two plants. Your number one enemy, from my experience, is severe spider infestation. Mist your plants if they're too delicate to handle direct hose water. Don't use pesticides, but try to keep as many nasties off as you can. There are some nice organic solutions, including using cedar. It seems to work pretty well to use cedar mulch on top of the soil. If you have the right window exposure, you can grow good plants indoors. My strawberry plant grew well in a Vermont window with a northwest exposure.
Also, stay away from plastic pots. They hold moisture too well, and even with the right drainage, it's tough to keep mold / mildew from growing in it. Same with heavily painted terra cotta. Stick with bare terra cotta and you won't go too far wrong in the drainage department. Of course, you will still have to monitor moisture (Wal-mart sells hydrometers for like $5 or less), but it's tough to overwater a terra cotta pot with a hole in the bottom.
One hundred buckets of bits on the bus,
one hundred buckets of bits.
Take one down,
Short it to ground
FF buckets of bits on the bus.
...
Finally, I can run Linux on my 12" Powerbook.
The poster seems unaware that Debian can run on Apple hardware. Or should I be assuming that the user had tried to run Debian, but unique hardware had prevented it?
Posted from an ssh tunnel to a PowerMac 7600 upgraded to a G3 running Woody.
There are a lot of peeps complaining about substandard ram. If you had RTFA, you'd realize that the downgrade ram is reconfigured to skip the bad parts in the chips, so that it comes out as a normal module. Just because there is a faulty bit or 10 in a modules, doesn't mean the reast of that module is bound to fail. It could just have been an imperfection in the silicon or the circuit process.
You have made a statement that makes it very clear you are a very educated layman, not someone in the field. What you've said is true to the first order, but not inherantly true.
Wafers have what can be measured as "defect density", and observe a phenomena called "defect clustering". Defects are not always hit or miss, open or short, some of them are latent or resistive. As the part ages (diffuses), electromigrates or observes hot electron effects, all parts will decrease in quality. Downgrade RAM, so to speak, would be most likely to have additional cells fail due to the above effects -- because it had failures that made it marginal in the first place. Testing methodologies at higher quality manufacturers build in guardbands to make sure that nobody ever experiences the defects when used in-spec. (This is why many overclockers lose their chips after only a year or two, they cause latent defects to surface and suddenly the chip won't even operate at nominal frequencies; the guardband effect also explains to a great degree why many chips can be overclocked in the first place.)
I'm not dis'n you, just trying to fill in a few more holes.
I'd like to point out that the students weren't sharing music they'd composed themselves, or movies they'd made themselves. What they were doing was no different from using the university's Film Studies (or Media Studies or whatever it's called) department's equipment to run off a thousand copies of a video fom Blockbuster.
I see your point. What this university was doing, therefore, is the equivalent of watching 10 minutes of EVERY film that enters that lab and passing judgements on everyone who does so. There are legitimate reasons for a blockbuster video to enter that lab -- if you're not dubbing it, or if you're taking 10 seconds for educational use... Fingerprinting and recording the bits as they pass by cannot measure intent. If someone owns a copy of a movie that was destroyed in a fire, don't they have a right to get a new copy? If a computer game CD is destroyed, most (all?) publishers will send you a new copy for a nominal fee ($9 is what I've seen, after you prove you bought it once already).
Slashdot is doing itself no favors by condoning this kind of activity. It's obsessing on trivial freedoms and missing the "big picture".
Slashdot isn't condoning any activity. As a reader, I'm uncomfortable with universities that do this kind of logging. Blocking is a different issue, and one that can be argued to have its advantages and disadvantages, but logging presumes to capture intent as well. The "big picture" that I see is that the law is there to help business make money, students learn much faster by using these tools (some break the law doing so, but the fruits of their labor are still valid). Is pirating the latest eminem album to save yourself $16 a violation of copyright? Yes. Is getting a copy, when you already own the CD? No. Now the big picture kicks in: is it wrong to get a copy of the songs you can download for personal use when you don't have the money to buy them anyway? Maybe. Is it wrong to copy a friend's eminem CD to get a sound clip for a free expression class? Not to me. There are many good, valid reasons that pirating is and should be illegal. But there are many good, valid reasons that behavior that looks like pirating is and should be legal.
Don't presume that the "big picture" you see is the only valid one. I'm not saying you're wrong, but I hold a different "big picture" view and perhaps have different values. Since I pay my taxes and vote, my values have as much weight as yours.
The point is, it's THEIR network. It's not the student network, it's not the taxpayers network, it's not even the Alumni's network. It belongs to the University plain and simple. University is for research, not d/l pr0n or sharing eminem. Students are given access to the internet in their dorm rooms to assist them with their studies.
That certainly is an interesting point. Please allow me to offer a counter point.
Universities are there for learning and growth of their students and faculty. They are not all about books and studying and stuff like that. Universities sponsor football -- why? Student unions and governments -- why? Those are extracurricular activities that help the students grow as people, round them out, etc. Ever meet someone in real life who thought university was there for books and no socialization? I've met one, and let me tell you, communicating to get to the immense book-smarts was tough, and he was not prone to creative, reasonably practical ideas.
The university network is there primarily for learning, but there should be a reasonable amount of respect for personal growth and exploration. I'm not sure I want to argue that pirating friends episodes and pornography are aiding that pursuit, but maybe they are. The university should make a reasonable effort to allow the students to do explore their freedoms and help enforce the law when subpoenaed to do so. I think it can easily be argued that the downloading of friends episodes leads one to think about copyrights and what use they have in the real world. The exploration of pornogrpahy, it can be argued, helps educate the "consumer" what he (or she) thinks about the impact on the models as individuals.
My education was, believe it or not, furthered by playing with a little known Unix clone named "Linux". It wasn't supported on my campus network, and there were times when I used bandwidth for this side project that did not contribute directly to my studies, but I believe it was worthwhile. I played Doom over Kali, and ended up learning something about network latencies and bandwidths. Completely illegal on the campus network, I even ran a password logger for some time -- this turned out to be a very powerful lesson in cryptography and network security. I did not have the money to set up a legitimate private network to explore these issues, but this was education that helped me become the person that I am.
I believe that university and college dorms are there, not for the exclusive pursuits of scheduled academia, but for the students to explore their own educations, as they pertain or do not pertain to their class schedules.
please log onto our website
I tried, but I couldn't find the blank for my userid and password. Perhaps your site is broken.
I got out of graduate school in 1999 and found myself in the market for a new car. I didn't shop around, I thought I knew what I wanted -- a new 2000 Saturn SC2, black. I found that dream car sitting on the lot, and bought it (well, a bank helped me).
So, here I am, 4 years later, the not-so-proud owner of a blackberry (purple in bright sunlight, black at night) Saturn, having learned so much about the downfalls of plastic. I'll never buy another Saturn. If I had it to do over again, I wouldn't have bought a Saturn in the first place. The sales pitch says this: when you get into an accident, plastic body panels are much easier to replace than metal ones. They don't say that every little ding and scrape you get (ever park next to an SUV that doesn't have enough repsect for drivers of smaller cars that they open their doors until they hit the next car over? Ever find a shopping cart resting against your car?) will leave you with a white mark. In a white car, that may not be bad, but when this car is all newly washed and shiney, it's got ugly white scratches on the sides and rear fender. For some reason, metal cars don't seem to have this problem as much.
Gloss plastic. In practice, does this mean that it'll stick as well as paint does to my plastic Saturn? Or will it have the staying power of paint on metal? I don't care about the press articles on it, I want to know what the field tests say in the hands of real people.
It always pays to know your rights. You don't have to let them do the credit check. Of course, they have the right to turn you down for not submitting.
If you handle money, purchases, anything financial in the course of this director level position (the term "director" is subjective at a company with only 40 people, by the way), a credit check is a sound thing to do from their perspective. "Director" at the company where I work means you deal with finances, customer negotiation, resource issues (people and stuff), so I'd hope some sort of personal investigation was done. Think of it from their perspective: if you're looking at two otherwise equally qualified candidates for a position that deals with finances, purchasing, hiring, negotiation, etc., would you hire the one with a clean credit check, or the one who refuses to submit? Watch out for number one, buddy, you'd hire the clean, visible history. You no doubt gave them your address, social security number, phone number, educational and professional history and next of kin, what's one more piece of the puzzle?
Of course, if you're not dealing with finances, what business is it of theirs? If it's a position that may one day deal with finances, I am sure that a determined superior could get to know you well enough to understand your level of responsibility in a friendly, non-confrontational manner. Friends sometimes talk about stuff like this. And if they're this worked up about a piece of paper that you don't feel comfortable sharing, move along.
You have the right to say, "no," but so do they. Weigh the personal cost. If you have something to hide, you have little to lose by saying, "no." If you have nothing to hide, it's the cost of your pride and privacy. How much is this job worth to you?
Please note the corrected URL points to www.freedesktop.org, while the old one was freedesktop.org, NOT freedesktop.com.
If we can't keep the org/net/com/new TLD of the day straight, how can we expect others who just want it to work to keep it straight?
Mr. Barry,
As a nationally syndicated author, you're in quite a high profile position. I have no doubt that, had this interview not come up, you'd be busy doing things you get paid to do.
That said, why did you agree to do this interview? Did you think it would be a neat thing to do? Is this another way for people to learn about your column, or are you learning more about what's on the minds of your readers? Are we going to get our own article written about us (no doubt that would be a funny and possibly humbling experience)? As someone from "the outside world", do you see us as a bunch of people with wide backgrounds and experiences, or are we the teenage boy group that TV tells us owns and authors the internet?
When all is said and done, you cannot place all the blame on either President Bush in particular or the Republican Party in general. If any one "thing" is to get all the blame, it's the whole God damned bureaucracy.
Hi, I'm an American citizen and a registered voter. I assert that I can blame President Bush and the Republican party for the current state of NASA.
You harp on what happens when NASA goes over budget, Congress tells them to go to hell. You think I should be blaming the contractors. Fine, that's an opinion you're welcome to have in this free country. However, you cannot tell me whom I can blame! Then I'd have to get someone's approval to have an opinion of my own? When the DOD goes over budget, they get some extra money. When there were forest fires a few years ago demanding more money from the park service, they had cutbacks to make up for some of it, but Congress helped out some.
Like many slashdotters, I am fascinated with space. I think that, as the most powerful country in the world (until China gets a little further with their free market reforms at least), we should be pioneers on the space frontier. Our President and Congress disagree, apparently, and are stranging NASA by cutting budgets and not helping out when contractors go over budget (a fact of life in federal government contracts).
You, Guppy06, assert that I cannot blame either the President or our Congress for the fact that NASA lacks the money to do anything other than bandage the ISS plans. I assert that I can, and will. I'm a voter and a taxpayer, and I think the American military gets too much money, and education and NASA get far too little. When I disagree with the government, I have the obligation to blame them for the repercussions.
You asked about making reservations online. Are you trying to save a buck, or trying to shoot for convenience?
Like many people, I've made many reservations, happily and without problem I might add, using Travelocity or travel.yahoo.com. That's a good way to save a buck or two.
If money is less of an object, and you're shooting for convenience, call up a travel agent. Pull open the yellow pages and look for "travel" in your metropolitan area. That's what I did for my honeymoon in October 2000. I conducted most of my business over the phone and through e-mail with my agent (contrary to what most services tell you, the agents get kick backs roughly equal to what yahoo or travelocity do), and only had to go to the office to pick up the tickets. I wanted to get access to some extra services, like a premium floor at the Contemporary 2 at DisneyWorld (I couldn't figure out how to do that over the web 2.5 years ago). But calling up and talking to a travel agent helped me get flight arrangements, park tickets at a discount, and set up a private car so we didn't have to hunt down a taxi to take us to and from the hotel.
Yes, you might possibly be able to save a few bucks, or use this novel "Internet" to help you make all the decisions yourself. Or, a travel agent who does this kind of thing professionally may be able to help you out and find you options you didn't know you had. Maybe you pay the same. Maybe you pay more, but get better accomodations.
Choose carefully. Your bride will remember this experience well -- and tell her friends about it. Heck, you probably will, too.
Oh, and Disney World was great. If you go, go first to Epcot Center's gift store and let it slip that you're on your honeymoon. They used to give out bride and groom mouse ears. Once you have those, you get to the front of LOTS of lines. And October is a very temperate, less busy time of year to go.
I wish you many happy years.
They aren't interested in putting Linux on the desktop for the same reasons they never put AIX on the desktop.
Crap. I better ditch my 400MHz Power3+ RS/6000 then. Since it's a server, I should certainly not be using it daily as my desktop. Damn shame to have the fast, pretty graphics card in it.