There aren't hundreds of posts bashing TiVo for profiling. Oh wait, that's because people can't even pretend to read the article because it requires a SUBSCRIPTION! heh.
Thing is, we're dealing with two separate issues here.. The "profiling" Tivo does is periodically it phones in stats on everything you recorded and/or watched, which Tivo (the company) compiles and sells as anonymous viewer data to the networks (i.e. 5,000 of our subscribers recorded Dawson's creek this week, of those 4,000 watched it within 48 hours, and 1,000 deleted it after watching the first 10 minutes").
The second issue is Tivo's suggestions.. *As far as I know* (and I could totally be wrong here), your Tivo computes suggestions on the box itself, not by consulting with some master Tivo database somewhere. It's really quite braindead... All shows are assigned categories, so Tivo computes a "probability" of whether you may or may not like a given category based on your thumb-data. For example, if you thumb up the Simpsons (category Animation, Comedy), you're likely to see stuff like Futurama, and lots of stuff on the cartoon network which fit those categories. Some lines are a little blurry, I thumbed-up Politically Incorrect (when it was on the air) which was categorized as News, Talk, and got crap like the O'Reilley factor, CNN's crossfire, etc. Some things are a lot easier, I thumbed up a couple of motorcycle races, and from then on it would catch motorcycle races I didn't even realize were being broadcast.
Contrary to the anecdotal evidence in the article, in my experience approving one category will NOT lower your "approval" of another. I think only thumbs-down will do that (i.e. thumbing up Emeril Live - Howto, Cooking - shouldn't dimish its afinity for Movies, Horror if you have thumbed up Texas Chainsaw Massacre).
My theory I have after owning a couple of Tivos is at first when you haven't rated much it tries to throw a wide variety of EVERYTHING at you to get you to rate stuff and get it pointed in the right direction. During the first three months I got some strange suggestions (my Tivo thought I was a kid for a while, and recorded just about everything on HBO Family, presumably because of my favorable ratings for simpsons, futurama, king of the hill, and family guy. But I have to say after three months it got REALLY good and finding stuff I'd want to see.
There has been talk that in future releases some of the suggestion tweaking will be done on the in-house Tivo servers and pushed out to the boxes (i.e. people who record MST3K on commedy central also record Monty Python on BBCA most of the time). But to my knowledge right now all of your suggestions happen in the Tivo box itself based on input from you, and are not neccessarily shared back to Tivo corporate or influenced from the suggestions of other subscribers.
Why do you ask a linux guru to map network drives on a windows machine?
Well, to be pedantic, *I* wasn't involved in any of this, I was a lowly telephone tech support guy at the time. He was the sole network admin for the company. The boss says "Bob (not his real name), we need a file server". Bob being a linux and open-source kind of guy immediately downloads, compiles, and configures samba. Part of getting the samba installation up and running is testing it from the win PCs and helping the users map drives to it. He finally did manage this, but it took him a long time to do it.
Yes, probably one of us in tech support could have stopped answering calls for a while and helped him out.. But basically we would have stopped doing our jobs to help him do his.
Whereas this dude who`s accustomed to unix systems finds windows to be a very alien and difficult interface
/me bangs head against wall
That wasn't the point at all.. While I'll conceede that windows may indeed by an alien interface for those used to "the unix way", my point was his lack of windows knowledge was a liability, in that it hampered his ability to do a lot of the things he was asked to do. I don't think expecting your local linux guru to know how to map drives, setup network printers, and get around in word and excel is asking too much.
I consider myself a linux guru and I'm also Win2k MCSE certified. Yeah, flame away, MCSE's suck, MCSE's are clueless, etc, etc. As I've said in my earlier posts, a good part of my job as a network admin is making linux and windows products play nice together. It takes a good knowledge of BOTH to accomplish this. For example, without a decent understanding of Microsoft's Active Directory services, how do you expect to be able to setup samba's implementation of it if/when they get there?
And you know how you become a super Linux guru knowing little about Windows? It's because you focus your efforts. It's better to do one thing well than do a shitty job knowing a little bit of everything.
I guess it depends on you job and your interests... If you are a kernel hacker, or get paid to write linux-based software, then sure, I'd agree with you that it's better to know everything there is to know about linux at the expense of other OSes. Me, I'm a network administrator at a stuffy corporate real estate company.. Fortunately, I'm lucky enough to be able to use Linux as servers, but at the same time, I have to make them interoperate with Windows products *every day*. I have to be able to feed excel spreadsheets from MySQL and/or PostgreSQL tables, I have to be able to provide (and support) full file server access (via samba) to windows clients, etc, etc. I have to be able to exchange our internal data with partners and affiliates which are brainwashed by microsoft and only use microsoft products. My whole point with my original post is some of us don't have the luxury of ignoring microsoft.. Unless you're one of the lucky few who are not forced to come into contact with microsoft products daily, it's (IMHO) a silly approach to take to say "I don't know a damn thing about microsoft products and I'm proud of it".
but is it really my fault because I don't know every single problem with Windows? You tell me. I really don't think so.
Not at all.. Knowing your way AROUND windows is a whole different animal that knowing every single problem with Windows (like anyone does?).
user: something about not enough memory.
me:...
user: But I just want to save the file but it won't let me. I don't even have anything else open.
me:... hmm... I donno
This would be me:
me: have you tried rebooting?
user: yes
me: hang on, let me check your file permissions
(/me checks user's file permissions and/or group settings in linux on samba server, 99% of the time this solves the problem)
me: reboot and try it again, if it doesn't work try windowsupdate.microsoft.com.
Maybe that does or doesn't solve the problem, but I at least went a step further than "I dunno dude, I only get paid $60,000 a year to manage apache under linux, not answer silly excel questions".
Imagine I'm a Linux and BSD poweruser/sysadmin and the problem is related to Windoze or Mac. I honestly don't know that much about those systems (nor do I care to learn) so there's no 'pretend'.
I used to work with a guy who had this same attitude.. The guy was a super genius and could to anything with linux you'd ever want done, but had some secret hatred of microsoft and refused to go near their products. Problem is, in the Real World you can't just ignore them. Case in point, said co-worker was asked to setup a samba server on linux. He had no problems setting up the server, but even *mapping a drive* from windows to test the server took him hours since he knew so little about windows. Like it or not, Microsoft has a MAJOR foothold in the PC and server world (to say the least), and simply ignoring them will do much more harm to you than to them.
In many cases it's best just to ignore M$ quietly, and focus on doing your things with the best tools.
That's YOUR decision if you choose to ignore Microsoft just because they're microsoft - and I certainly won't bash you for it - but sometimes a microsoft product IS the best tool for the job.. Throwing it away just because it is made my microsoft seems a little short sighted.. To me, "best tools" should include ANY tool that helps me accomplish what I need to accomplish with my PC.
Think of it this way: M$ is the neighbourhood bully who gets his satisfaction from pissing you off. He will be powerless if you just ignore him.
Ugh, slashdot analogies are always horrible.. And since we've established that, let me make an equally horrible one... Think of Microsoft as your corner crack dealer. You may not approve of what he does, and yes, if you ignore him he probably won't try to sell you crack.. But hey, if you need some crack, he's the only place you're gonna find it.
(Sheesh, did I just stick up for microsoft AND refer to them as a crack dealer in the same post? I need to leave the beer alone).
Several reasons... First because you'll PAY $100 for it (not meaning you specifically, but you in the general public sense).. Businesses with 1,000 or 10,000 users simple cannot afford (or at least, will not pay) $100 per seat for an OS.. Same with OEM's. Businesses and OEM's don't need boxes or even media for each PC.. All they need is one or two "masters" and licensing for each install. Also, I'm assuming part of the OEM licensing stipulates that the OEM is responsible for all support, media replacement, etc.. Whereas in the end user version Microsoft is responsible for all of this. Long story short, OEMs act as wholesalers and get wholesale pricing, whereas the version you go to CompUsa and buy is a retail version, subject to retail pricing.
Not my concern if your manufacturing methods are not optimal. Seems to me the last step in manufacturing a computer is to copy the software on. If it costs you more to not put software on a computer, there is something wrong with your company!
Think of it this way (warning, bad car analogy ahead), let's say you want to buy a new Honda Accord, but without seats. You scream and yell at the dealer that because you want the car without seats it should be CHEAPER, after all, Honda doesn't have to pay for the seats to go in your car. What the original poster was trying to say (applied to my cheesy car analogy) is for Honda to sell a car without seats, it has to alter its assembly line, or have someone come in a remove the seats AFTER they were installed on the assembly line. If 99.99% of car buyers want seats in their car, why does that mean there's something wrong with the company if they are setup to include them in every car?
That said, it's *possible* that the smaller mom-and-pop PC stores that build their own PCs will pass the $15 - $30 savings on to you if you want your custom built PC with no OS, but as the earlier poster pointed out, the large PC farms are simply not setup to do this at this point because there is little to no demand for it.
Keep in mind everything above refers to desktop PCs and laptops.. Last I checked Dell offered RedHat Linux and No OS as software options for their PowerEdge servers.. Maybe now you'll get your $15 discount you guys have been screaming about. Wow, $15 off $4,0000, what a deal.
I was wondering if I was the only pervert having visions of drunk sensors converging on new orleans every february and exposing their "naughty bits" for cheap plastic beads after reading that headline.. Ah, Sensors Gone Wild Volume 9: Infrared Exposed.. Can't wait.
Next Up: Slow-motion adds with subtitles that play at normal speed while fast-forwarding.
Heh, they're going to have to get REALLY good to figure out how to grab my attention during the 1 1/2 seconds of each commercial I see when hitting my 30-second-skip button to fly by a 2-minute commercial break.
/me cackles madly
Seriously though, I think you'll see more paid-for product placement (like the heavy tie-ins with SprintPCS and Toyota for Push, Nevada), and "Show-X brought to you by Brand-Y", as is the case with most things on PBS, and the fox season premier of 24 presented commercial-free by Ford.
Reminds me of when I got my Handspring Visor (the old black one - still use it).
I go through the same thing when my (non-technical) friends come over and see me pause the TV.. They're like "How did you do that?", and I just answer, "Oh, I've got Tivo", even though I actually have a Microsoft ultimate TV receiver[1].. It's both easier to SAY Tivo, and there's less chance I'll have to explain what it is.
I even use it as a verb.. Friend asks: "Did you see South Park last night?", I respond: "No, I tivo'd it but haven't watched it yet". It's easier than saying "I had my Microsoft Ultimate TV PVR record it".
Shayne
[1] Before anyone starts a rant about how "d000d, t1v0 1s m0r3 l33t", or "why do you have a microsoft receiver? microsoft's evil!", let me just say that I've owned both, after my tivo-integrated directv receiver died, no one had them in stock and if I wanted a PVR enabled directv receiver, microsoft UTV was my only option. When the series II directivo's (as they're unofficially known - officially they'll be the Hughes DirecTV Receiver with Tivo Service) come out, I'll be switching back to tivo.
Here's SourceForce's Archive. The developers mostly refer to it as Bayes, so try that in your searching.. Also you can search their bugzilla for "bayes" to see some of the discussion there, too.
These technologies are interesting, but the problem of spam should be solved at the source.
And how do you propose we solve the problem at its source? Make it illegal? They'll just find loopholes in the law and/or move to a country where it is legal. Hunt them down and murder their wife and kids in front of them then hang them from a tree? Satisfying though it may be, last I checked murder was illegal.
Techniques like this CAN eventually solve the problem.. As others have pointed out, for someone to buy something from a spammer they have to READ the spam. If they send out 1 million spams and 500,000 read them and 20 of them buy something, they'll keep doing it. If they send out 1 million and only 500 people read it and 1 person buys something, they'll loose their source of income and have to find a new line of work.
Also, for each obstacle we put in their way (checksum databases, open relay databases, filters, etc) it costs them more time, effort and therefore, money to send their crap - all for less income.
Is there an application to this theory with SpamAssassin?
Yup, they've been working on getting this added to the tests they're already doing, so you get the benefits of bayes filtering PLUS all of the other tests SA does. I'm not attached to the project, but I follow the sa-devel list.. From what I've seen, most of the code is in CVS so you can get it by downloading one of the nightly test builds.. I imagine if it goes well it will be included in the next release.
Do we have protection in the case that MS does purchase VA?
Uhhh, "protection"? Prudential offers Microsoft-Assimilation Insurance? Dude, we gotta get some of that.
What would happen if MS bought VA and "shut down" source-forge and slashdot? Has anyone given this serious thought?
What do you mean, what would happen? They would be shut down. No more slashdot. No more sourceforge. The earth would still rotate. Taxes would still be due on April 15th. Alanis Morissette would still suck. Life would go on. No one would look back in 20 years and say "where were you on the day the Microsoft buyout of VA Linux was announced?".
As another poster mentioned, other sites would pop up, people would move on. Anyone hosting a project on sourceforge with ANY sense has off-site backups.. There would be chaos for a while while everyone scrambled to reorganize, but it would happen. A couple of years ago people said the same thing about napster: "what would we do if they shut napster down?". Well they did, and I still have access to just as much free^H^H^H^Heasily-evaluated-before-purchasing music as I ever did.
Unfortunately that idea wouldn't work with their current setup. SETI@home isn't a real distributed system its a multiple node application - it can only run the single program and to adapt it to aything else would require users to download a new application.
On their Future Directions page, they mention that sometime soon they'll be releasing their "BOINC" product which will be a flexible framework for distributed applications.. I would assume they would look at hosting and distributing some commercial applications, and possibly make a few bucks to support themselves. Seems logical to me.
It's a pity somebody didn't build a Perl with -w, use strict and limiting the scope of $_ *switched on as default*. This would get rid of most the frustration.
While I see your point here, I think making 'use strict' and -w the default would push a lot of newbies choosing between Perl and PHP over to PHP. Not that this is a competition for programmers or anything, but Perl was the first language I learned primarily because you could pick it up and write (admittedly) bad code that would actually DO something. Over time as I because familiar with Perl and programming in general, I was able to improve my habits and now I use -w and 'use strict' in everything I write. Yeah, you can argue that forcing good programming practice makes better code and better programmers, but at the expense of how many would-be Perl programmers?
To me, Perl 6 in "strict mode" is basically going to be Java with a better regex engine. Java's lack of a relaxed mode (and its commercial nature) kept me away from it when I was picking a "primary" language for my programming arsenal. Of course, now that I have some much time invested in Perl I'll eventually make the leap to Perl 6 - and maybe I'll be a better programmer for it - but I think picking up Perl 6 is going to be hard enough for the newbie programmer.. I certainly would hate to force 'use strict' and -w on them.
A spamfilter which had no false positives would be 100% beneficial, even if it had false negatives, because it wouldn't lose any important data; you could _always_ run it to reduce the amount of noise, and then if you wanted to reduce false positives using your method you could run another filter which was meaner.
Yeah, I see what you're saying here.. We're just looking at it from two different angles. In your scenario the spamfilter removes much of the noise but doesn't harm the signal. In my case I'd rather remove as much of the noise as humanly possible and look for any signal that may have gotten nabbed too at my convenience. As you said it probably depends a lot on how much signal-hunting you have to do and your other e-mail habits as to which of these camps you fall. In any case I think we can consider this horse dead and beaten.:)
I don't see how you're disagreeing -- he's saying that he wants to see less spam but ALL of his real email, and you're saying that you don't want to automatically delete any email.
Well, he was saying he'd rather see spam than false positives, I'm saying I'd much rather see false positives (as long as they're still available in another folder) than spam in my inbox... Just a personal preference.
Okay, use this software to move spam to a folder rather than deleting it. Difference solved.
Yup, that was mostly my point, except that this technique seems more geared towards eliminating (or minimizing) false positives at the expense of letting some spams slip through. Spamassassin can be configured either way (well mostly, it's not 100% perfect but it's close).
In the current mozilla nightlies and in the upcomming 1.1 release, there is a preference called "Do not load third party images in HTML e-mail" (or something similar) which addresses 90% of the problems mentioned above. Plus mozilla has the ability to disable java/javascript in e-mail so that probably covers the other 9.99%.
Just because your e-mail client is braindead doesn't mean everyone has to be afraid of HTML e-mail. Unfortunately as part of my job I have no choice but to receive HTML e-mail from 60% or more of the people I regularly correspond with. I could be indignant and refuse it, or simply use a client which allows me to render it on my terms.
As an alternative, if you use spamassassin, there's an option called "Defang mime" which changes the mime-type on any e-mail it has identified as spam to text/plain. Of course the downside is when viewing the e-mail all you see is a ton of nearly-unreadable HTML/CSS code.
I'd rather have a software package that has 50% filtering and 0 false positives then 100% filtering and 1 false positive. I _never_ want to miss an actual email directed at me.
I have to respectfully disagree here. First, you should NEVER trust an automated mechanism to delete e-mail before you open it (I'm not say you are, just saying it should never be done). When e-mail comes in to my inbox generally it's a user problem or network down situation.. Mozilla beeps at me, and I drop what I'm doing to see what e-mail has just arrived. If it's spam, I've wasted the effort in loosing my train of thought on whatever I was working on, plus whatever amount of time it takes me to refile it in my spam folder and adjust my filters so it doesn't happen again.
Using spamassassin, I filter all e-mails marked as spam off into a "spam" folder which I browse through about once a day at the end of the day just to be sure no legit e-mail has been filed over there. Takes only a second, and generally if the e-mail is "spammish" enough for spamassassin to file it over there it's not an important e-mail, but maybe a package ship notice from UPS, or an order update from amazon.com (though with effective whitelisting you can reduce how often this happens).
Not trying to change your opinion, just wanted to offer an alternate viewpoint. IMHO this is one of the things that makes spamassassin so good is that you can alter your threshold, so that if you can live with some false-positives but hate spam, you can use a lower threshold. If you can live with some spam and never want to miss "legitimate" e-mail, you can use a higher threshold.
What good is that? Well, you've got a ready-made list of messages to filter *out* of your other mail boxes!
WOW, what a *great* idea! What if you could make it so that it knew not only about spam sent to your spam trap, but spam sent to thousands of spam traps and real users? Oh wait, that exists already. Look at Vipul's Razor and DCC.
But, one thing I was hoping it would touch on is completely absent: how to organize the kitchen. I'm not talking about food prep. or cooking, but just where the "tools-of-the-trade" go. I do not have a lot of cookware or dining-ware, but what I do have is very disorganized. Any thoughts?
Obviously I'm not Alton, but I just wanted to mention that Food 911 did an episode on exactly this. A woman had just moved into a new house and had boxes of kitchenware to unpack and organize, and Tyler did a good job of organizing and explaining as he went. You may want to see if you can catch a rerun or find a transcript of the episode.
Along these same lines, do you have any guaranteed hangover cures, for those mornings after you've had WAAY too much to drink and have to be able to function at work or school that day?
Imagine those lips on an IMAX screen! Plus the amusement factor of trying to watch a theater full of folks attempting the "timewarp" dance on a ledge about 6 inches wide would provide for great entertainment.
But then, the idea of meatloaf in a garter belt on a screen the size of a small city just scares the living hell out of me. Maybe some things were just not meant for IMAX.
Face it, most everyone that does one of these online journals is just not interesting. I even hate the stupid word 'blog' that people use to describe them. Its just a buzz word that stupid people use to sound important, like 'proactive' and 'paradigm.'
SAT Question time: 1) 'blogs' are to the 2000's as websites were to: a) the 1860's b) 1975 c) the late 90's d) CoyboyNeal
Remember the Mad Website Rush of the late 90's? Little Timmy gets his own site. Here's a picture of my dog. Here's a picture of my sister. Look at this animated ninja I swiped off my dork friend Johnny's site. Who the fuck cares?
Like it or not, blogs are now in vogue. Anyone who's anyone has one (guess I'm not anyone - I haven't updated my slashdot journal since march). It's just another way to make unimportant people feel important.. Not to mention feel like a part of the 'in' crowd.
The only one I have ever read with any regularity is Alan Cox's diary, and that's only cause it was a non-time consuming way to keep up with some of the bleeding-edge kernel stuff without having to get tangled up in the mess that is the linux-kernel list. Even then, it annoys me to read about taking his In laws out for Thai food, for example. Why the hell should I care about his love of Thai food? Yeah, I know "if it annoys you don't read it". Well, I don't any more.
Slashdot Mirror
There aren't hundreds of posts bashing TiVo for profiling. Oh wait, that's because people can't even pretend to read the article because it requires a SUBSCRIPTION! heh.
Thing is, we're dealing with two separate issues here.. The "profiling" Tivo does is periodically it phones in stats on everything you recorded and/or watched, which Tivo (the company) compiles and sells as anonymous viewer data to the networks (i.e. 5,000 of our subscribers recorded Dawson's creek this week, of those 4,000 watched it within 48 hours, and 1,000 deleted it after watching the first 10 minutes").
The second issue is Tivo's suggestions.. *As far as I know* (and I could totally be wrong here), your Tivo computes suggestions on the box itself, not by consulting with some master Tivo database somewhere. It's really quite braindead... All shows are assigned categories, so Tivo computes a "probability" of whether you may or may not like a given category based on your thumb-data. For example, if you thumb up the Simpsons (category Animation, Comedy), you're likely to see stuff like Futurama, and lots of stuff on the cartoon network which fit those categories. Some lines are a little blurry, I thumbed-up Politically Incorrect (when it was on the air) which was categorized as News, Talk, and got crap like the O'Reilley factor, CNN's crossfire, etc. Some things are a lot easier, I thumbed up a couple of motorcycle races, and from then on it would catch motorcycle races I didn't even realize were being broadcast.
Contrary to the anecdotal evidence in the article, in my experience approving one category will NOT lower your "approval" of another. I think only thumbs-down will do that (i.e. thumbing up Emeril Live - Howto, Cooking - shouldn't dimish its afinity for Movies, Horror if you have thumbed up Texas Chainsaw Massacre).
My theory I have after owning a couple of Tivos is at first when you haven't rated much it tries to throw a wide variety of EVERYTHING at you to get you to rate stuff and get it pointed in the right direction. During the first three months I got some strange suggestions (my Tivo thought I was a kid for a while, and recorded just about everything on HBO Family, presumably because of my favorable ratings for simpsons, futurama, king of the hill, and family guy. But I have to say after three months it got REALLY good and finding stuff I'd want to see.
There has been talk that in future releases some of the suggestion tweaking will be done on the in-house Tivo servers and pushed out to the boxes (i.e. people who record MST3K on commedy central also record Monty Python on BBCA most of the time). But to my knowledge right now all of your suggestions happen in the Tivo box itself based on input from you, and are not neccessarily shared back to Tivo corporate or influenced from the suggestions of other subscribers.
Shayne
Why do you ask a linux guru to map network drives on a windows machine?
Well, to be pedantic, *I* wasn't involved in any of this, I was a lowly telephone tech support guy at the time. He was the sole network admin for the company. The boss says "Bob (not his real name), we need a file server". Bob being a linux and open-source kind of guy immediately downloads, compiles, and configures samba. Part of getting the samba installation up and running is testing it from the win PCs and helping the users map drives to it. He finally did manage this, but it took him a long time to do it.
Yes, probably one of us in tech support could have stopped answering calls for a while and helped him out.. But basically we would have stopped doing our jobs to help him do his.
Shayne
Whereas this dude who`s accustomed to unix systems finds windows to be a very alien and difficult interface
/me bangs head against wall
That wasn't the point at all.. While I'll conceede that windows may indeed by an alien interface for those used to "the unix way", my point was his lack of windows knowledge was a liability, in that it hampered his ability to do a lot of the things he was asked to do. I don't think expecting your local linux guru to know how to map drives, setup network printers, and get around in word and excel is asking too much.
I consider myself a linux guru and I'm also Win2k MCSE certified. Yeah, flame away, MCSE's suck, MCSE's are clueless, etc, etc. As I've said in my earlier posts, a good part of my job as a network admin is making linux and windows products play nice together. It takes a good knowledge of BOTH to accomplish this. For example, without a decent understanding of Microsoft's Active Directory services, how do you expect to be able to setup samba's implementation of it if/when they get there?
Shayne
And you know how you become a super Linux guru knowing little about Windows? It's because you focus your efforts. It's better to do one thing well than do a shitty job knowing a little bit of everything.
I guess it depends on you job and your interests... If you are a kernel hacker, or get paid to write linux-based software, then sure, I'd agree with you that it's better to know everything there is to know about linux at the expense of other OSes. Me, I'm a network administrator at a stuffy corporate real estate company.. Fortunately, I'm lucky enough to be able to use Linux as servers, but at the same time, I have to make them interoperate with Windows products *every day*. I have to be able to feed excel spreadsheets from MySQL and/or PostgreSQL tables, I have to be able to provide (and support) full file server access (via samba) to windows clients, etc, etc. I have to be able to exchange our internal data with partners and affiliates which are brainwashed by microsoft and only use microsoft products. My whole point with my original post is some of us don't have the luxury of ignoring microsoft.. Unless you're one of the lucky few who are not forced to come into contact with microsoft products daily, it's (IMHO) a silly approach to take to say "I don't know a damn thing about microsoft products and I'm proud of it".
but is it really my fault because I don't know every single problem with Windows? You tell me. I really don't think so.
Not at all.. Knowing your way AROUND windows is a whole different animal that knowing every single problem with Windows (like anyone does?).
user: something about not enough memory. ... ... hmm... I donno
me:
user: But I just want to save the file but it won't let me. I don't even have anything else open.
me:
This would be me:
me: have you tried rebooting?
user: yes
me: hang on, let me check your file permissions
(/me checks user's file permissions and/or group settings in linux on samba server, 99% of the time this solves the problem)
me: reboot and try it again, if it doesn't work try windowsupdate.microsoft.com.
Maybe that does or doesn't solve the problem, but I at least went a step further than "I dunno dude, I only get paid $60,000 a year to manage apache under linux, not answer silly excel questions".
Shayne
Imagine I'm a Linux and BSD poweruser/sysadmin and the problem is related to Windoze or Mac. I honestly don't know that much about those systems (nor do I care to learn) so there's no 'pretend'.
I used to work with a guy who had this same attitude.. The guy was a super genius and could to anything with linux you'd ever want done, but had some secret hatred of microsoft and refused to go near their products. Problem is, in the Real World you can't just ignore them. Case in point, said co-worker was asked to setup a samba server on linux. He had no problems setting up the server, but even *mapping a drive* from windows to test the server took him hours since he knew so little about windows. Like it or not, Microsoft has a MAJOR foothold in the PC and server world (to say the least), and simply ignoring them will do much more harm to you than to them.
In many cases it's best just to ignore M$ quietly, and focus on doing your things with the best tools.
That's YOUR decision if you choose to ignore Microsoft just because they're microsoft - and I certainly won't bash you for it - but sometimes a microsoft product IS the best tool for the job.. Throwing it away just because it is made my microsoft seems a little short sighted.. To me, "best tools" should include ANY tool that helps me accomplish what I need to accomplish with my PC.
Think of it this way: M$ is the neighbourhood bully who gets his satisfaction from pissing you off. He will be powerless if you just ignore him.
Ugh, slashdot analogies are always horrible.. And since we've established that, let me make an equally horrible one... Think of Microsoft as your corner crack dealer. You may not approve of what he does, and yes, if you ignore him he probably won't try to sell you crack.. But hey, if you need some crack, he's the only place you're gonna find it.
(Sheesh, did I just stick up for microsoft AND refer to them as a crack dealer in the same post? I need to leave the beer alone).
Shayne
Then why am I charged closer to 100 for it?
Several reasons... First because you'll PAY $100 for it (not meaning you specifically, but you in the general public sense).. Businesses with 1,000 or 10,000 users simple cannot afford (or at least, will not pay) $100 per seat for an OS.. Same with OEM's. Businesses and OEM's don't need boxes or even media for each PC.. All they need is one or two "masters" and licensing for each install. Also, I'm assuming part of the OEM licensing stipulates that the OEM is responsible for all support, media replacement, etc.. Whereas in the end user version Microsoft is responsible for all of this. Long story short, OEMs act as wholesalers and get wholesale pricing, whereas the version you go to CompUsa and buy is a retail version, subject to retail pricing.
Not my concern if your manufacturing methods are not optimal. Seems to me the last step in manufacturing a computer is to copy the software on. If it costs you more to not put software on a computer, there is something wrong with your company!
Think of it this way (warning, bad car analogy ahead), let's say you want to buy a new Honda Accord, but without seats. You scream and yell at the dealer that because you want the car without seats it should be CHEAPER, after all, Honda doesn't have to pay for the seats to go in your car. What the original poster was trying to say (applied to my cheesy car analogy) is for Honda to sell a car without seats, it has to alter its assembly line, or have someone come in a remove the seats AFTER they were installed on the assembly line. If 99.99% of car buyers want seats in their car, why does that mean there's something wrong with the company if they are setup to include them in every car?
That said, it's *possible* that the smaller mom-and-pop PC stores that build their own PCs will pass the $15 - $30 savings on to you if you want your custom built PC with no OS, but as the earlier poster pointed out, the large PC farms are simply not setup to do this at this point because there is little to no demand for it.
Keep in mind everything above refers to desktop PCs and laptops.. Last I checked Dell offered RedHat Linux and No OS as software options for their PowerEdge servers.. Maybe now you'll get your $15 discount you guys have been screaming about. Wow, $15 off $4,0000, what a deal.
Shayne
I was wondering if I was the only pervert having visions of drunk sensors converging on new orleans every february and exposing their "naughty bits" for cheap plastic beads after reading that headline.. Ah, Sensors Gone Wild Volume 9: Infrared Exposed.. Can't wait.
Shayne
Next Up: Slow-motion adds with subtitles that play at normal speed while fast-forwarding.
Heh, they're going to have to get REALLY good to figure out how to grab my attention during the 1 1/2 seconds of each commercial I see when hitting my 30-second-skip button to fly by a 2-minute commercial break.
/me cackles madly
Seriously though, I think you'll see more paid-for product placement (like the heavy tie-ins with SprintPCS and Toyota for Push, Nevada), and "Show-X brought to you by Brand-Y", as is the case with most things on PBS, and the fox season premier of 24 presented commercial-free by Ford.
Shayne
Reminds me of when I got my Handspring Visor (the old black one - still use it).
I go through the same thing when my (non-technical) friends come over and see me pause the TV.. They're like "How did you do that?", and I just answer, "Oh, I've got Tivo", even though I actually have a Microsoft ultimate TV receiver[1].. It's both easier to SAY Tivo, and there's less chance I'll have to explain what it is.
I even use it as a verb.. Friend asks: "Did you see South Park last night?", I respond: "No, I tivo'd it but haven't watched it yet". It's easier than saying "I had my Microsoft Ultimate TV PVR record it".
Shayne
[1] Before anyone starts a rant about how "d000d, t1v0 1s m0r3 l33t", or "why do you have a microsoft receiver? microsoft's evil!", let me just say that I've owned both, after my tivo-integrated directv receiver died, no one had them in stock and if I wanted a PVR enabled directv receiver, microsoft UTV was my only option. When the series II directivo's (as they're unofficially known - officially they'll be the Hughes DirecTV Receiver with Tivo Service) come out, I'll be switching back to tivo.
Shayne
These technologies are interesting, but the problem of spam should be solved at the source.
And how do you propose we solve the problem at its source? Make it illegal? They'll just find loopholes in the law and/or move to a country where it is legal. Hunt them down and murder their wife and kids in front of them then hang them from a tree? Satisfying though it may be, last I checked murder was illegal.
Techniques like this CAN eventually solve the problem.. As others have pointed out, for someone to buy something from a spammer they have to READ the spam. If they send out 1 million spams and 500,000 read them and 20 of them buy something, they'll keep doing it. If they send out 1 million and only 500 people read it and 1 person buys something, they'll loose their source of income and have to find a new line of work.
Also, for each obstacle we put in their way (checksum databases, open relay databases, filters, etc) it costs them more time, effort and therefore, money to send their crap - all for less income.
Shayne
Is there an application to this theory with SpamAssassin?
Yup, they've been working on getting this added to the tests they're already doing, so you get the benefits of bayes filtering PLUS all of the other tests SA does. I'm not attached to the project, but I follow the sa-devel list.. From what I've seen, most of the code is in CVS so you can get it by downloading one of the nightly test builds.. I imagine if it goes well it will be included in the next release.
Shayne
Shayne
Do we have protection in the case that MS does purchase VA?
Uhhh, "protection"? Prudential offers Microsoft-Assimilation Insurance? Dude, we gotta get some of that.
What would happen if MS bought VA and "shut down" source-forge and slashdot? Has anyone given this serious thought?
What do you mean, what would happen? They would be shut down. No more slashdot. No more sourceforge. The earth would still rotate. Taxes would still be due on April 15th. Alanis Morissette would still suck. Life would go on. No one would look back in 20 years and say "where were you on the day the Microsoft buyout of VA Linux was announced?".
As another poster mentioned, other sites would pop up, people would move on. Anyone hosting a project on sourceforge with ANY sense has off-site backups.. There would be chaos for a while while everyone scrambled to reorganize, but it would happen. A couple of years ago people said the same thing about napster: "what would we do if they shut napster down?". Well they did, and I still have access to just as much free^H^H^H^Heasily-evaluated-before-purchasing music as I ever did.
Shayne
Unfortunately that idea wouldn't work with their current setup. SETI@home isn't a real distributed system its a multiple node application - it can only run the single program and to adapt it to aything else would require users to download a new application.
On their Future Directions page, they mention that sometime soon they'll be releasing their "BOINC" product which will be a flexible framework for distributed applications.. I would assume they would look at hosting and distributing some commercial applications, and possibly make a few bucks to support themselves. Seems logical to me.
Shayne
It's a pity somebody didn't build a Perl with -w, use strict and limiting the scope of $_ *switched on as default*. This would get rid of most the frustration.
While I see your point here, I think making 'use strict' and -w the default would push a lot of newbies choosing between Perl and PHP over to PHP. Not that this is a competition for programmers or anything, but Perl was the first language I learned primarily because you could pick it up and write (admittedly) bad code that would actually DO something. Over time as I because familiar with Perl and programming in general, I was able to improve my habits and now I use -w and 'use strict' in everything I write. Yeah, you can argue that forcing good programming practice makes better code and better programmers, but at the expense of how many would-be Perl programmers?
To me, Perl 6 in "strict mode" is basically going to be Java with a better regex engine. Java's lack of a relaxed mode (and its commercial nature) kept me away from it when I was picking a "primary" language for my programming arsenal. Of course, now that I have some much time invested in Perl I'll eventually make the leap to Perl 6 - and maybe I'll be a better programmer for it - but I think picking up Perl 6 is going to be hard enough for the newbie programmer.. I certainly would hate to force 'use strict' and -w on them.
Shayne
A spamfilter which had no false positives would be 100% beneficial, even if it had false negatives, because it wouldn't lose any important data; you could _always_ run it to reduce the amount of noise, and then if you wanted to reduce false positives using your method you could run another filter which was meaner.
Yeah, I see what you're saying here.. We're just looking at it from two different angles. In your scenario the spamfilter removes much of the noise but doesn't harm the signal. In my case I'd rather remove as much of the noise as humanly possible and look for any signal that may have gotten nabbed too at my convenience. As you said it probably depends a lot on how much signal-hunting you have to do and your other e-mail habits as to which of these camps you fall. In any case I think we can consider this horse dead and beaten. :)
Shayne
I don't see how you're disagreeing -- he's saying that he wants to see less spam but ALL of his real email, and you're saying that you don't want to automatically delete any email.
Well, he was saying he'd rather see spam than false positives, I'm saying I'd much rather see false positives (as long as they're still available in another folder) than spam in my inbox... Just a personal preference.
Okay, use this software to move spam to a folder rather than deleting it. Difference solved.
Yup, that was mostly my point, except that this technique seems more geared towards eliminating (or minimizing) false positives at the expense of letting some spams slip through. Spamassassin can be configured either way (well mostly, it's not 100% perfect but it's close).
Shayne
In the current mozilla nightlies and in the upcomming 1.1 release, there is a preference called "Do not load third party images in HTML e-mail" (or something similar) which addresses 90% of the problems mentioned above. Plus mozilla has the ability to disable java/javascript in e-mail so that probably covers the other 9.99%.
Just because your e-mail client is braindead doesn't mean everyone has to be afraid of HTML e-mail. Unfortunately as part of my job I have no choice but to receive HTML e-mail from 60% or more of the people I regularly correspond with. I could be indignant and refuse it, or simply use a client which allows me to render it on my terms.
As an alternative, if you use spamassassin, there's an option called "Defang mime" which changes the mime-type on any e-mail it has identified as spam to text/plain. Of course the downside is when viewing the e-mail all you see is a ton of nearly-unreadable HTML/CSS code.
Shayne
I'd rather have a software package that has 50% filtering and 0 false positives then 100% filtering and 1 false positive. I _never_ want to miss an actual email directed at me.
I have to respectfully disagree here. First, you should NEVER trust an automated mechanism to delete e-mail before you open it (I'm not say you are, just saying it should never be done). When e-mail comes in to my inbox generally it's a user problem or network down situation.. Mozilla beeps at me, and I drop what I'm doing to see what e-mail has just arrived. If it's spam, I've wasted the effort in loosing my train of thought on whatever I was working on, plus whatever amount of time it takes me to refile it in my spam folder and adjust my filters so it doesn't happen again.
Using spamassassin, I filter all e-mails marked as spam off into a "spam" folder which I browse through about once a day at the end of the day just to be sure no legit e-mail has been filed over there. Takes only a second, and generally if the e-mail is "spammish" enough for spamassassin to file it over there it's not an important e-mail, but maybe a package ship notice from UPS, or an order update from amazon.com (though with effective whitelisting you can reduce how often this happens).
Not trying to change your opinion, just wanted to offer an alternate viewpoint. IMHO this is one of the things that makes spamassassin so good is that you can alter your threshold, so that if you can live with some false-positives but hate spam, you can use a lower threshold. If you can live with some spam and never want to miss "legitimate" e-mail, you can use a higher threshold.
Shayne
What good is that? Well, you've got a ready-made list of messages to filter *out* of your other mail boxes!
WOW, what a *great* idea! What if you could make it so that it knew not only about spam sent to your spam trap, but spam sent to thousands of spam traps and real users? Oh wait, that exists already. Look at Vipul's Razor and DCC.
Shayne
But, one thing I was hoping it would touch on is completely absent: how to organize the kitchen. I'm not talking about food prep. or cooking, but just where the "tools-of-the-trade" go. I do not have a lot of cookware or dining-ware, but what I do have is very disorganized. Any thoughts?
Obviously I'm not Alton, but I just wanted to mention that Food 911 did an episode on exactly this. A woman had just moved into a new house and had boxes of kitchenware to unpack and organize, and Tyler did a good job of organizing and explaining as he went. You may want to see if you can catch a rerun or find a transcript of the episode.
Shayne
Shayne
But then, the idea of meatloaf in a garter belt on a screen the size of a small city just scares the living hell out of me. Maybe some things were just not meant for IMAX.
Shayne
Face it, most everyone that does one of these online journals is just not interesting. I even hate the stupid word 'blog' that people use to describe them. Its just a buzz word that stupid people use to sound important, like 'proactive' and 'paradigm.'
SAT Question time:
1) 'blogs' are to the 2000's as websites were to:
a) the 1860's
b) 1975
c) the late 90's
d) CoyboyNeal
Remember the Mad Website Rush of the late 90's? Little Timmy gets his own site. Here's a picture of my dog. Here's a picture of my sister. Look at this animated ninja I swiped off my dork friend Johnny's site. Who the fuck cares?
Like it or not, blogs are now in vogue. Anyone who's anyone has one (guess I'm not anyone - I haven't updated my slashdot journal since march). It's just another way to make unimportant people feel important.. Not to mention feel like a part of the 'in' crowd.
The only one I have ever read with any regularity is Alan Cox's diary, and that's only cause it was a non-time consuming way to keep up with some of the bleeding-edge kernel stuff without having to get tangled up in the mess that is the linux-kernel list. Even then, it annoys me to read about taking his In laws out for Thai food, for example. Why the hell should I care about his love of Thai food? Yeah, I know "if it annoys you don't read it". Well, I don't any more.
Shayne