Nobody will ride it. Well, not nobody. But very few people. Tourists, not residents.
I've got to disagree with you. As a Florida resident who loves to travel around the state, I'd be extremely interested in a service where I didn't have to worry about bringing my car, especially, if it could get me there much faster than I could drive myself. If the train beats the drive by an order of magnitude (e.g. it's twice as fast) then it will have users.
The problem isn't getting between Tampa and Orlando. The problem is getting from the rail station to where you need to go. Mass transit in Florida is nearly worthless to anyone except the poor or the martyrs. I can drive to work in 15 minutes, but to take a bus I have to walk/bike 3 miles, switch buses twice, then walk another mile. It's 2 hours each way.
Well obviously you need a local transportation network as well. But I think you're being naive to assume that the current situation will be the permanent situation. If a bullet train arrives, it will be a major catalyst for corporations and entreprenuers to set up better city transit. I think if they get this going, when I pull into Tampa I will have no problem hailing a cab by the train station. None whatsoever. Once there are a critical mas of people in the city without cars, it will foster better in-city transit like buses.
I mean, did you think that New York or London built mass transit overnight one day?
Actually on a serious note, it's a good idea to put this in ~/.bashrc, especially/root/.bashrc:
TMOUT=1800
It makes bash logout after half an hour (1800 secs) idle at the prompt. This is good if you _forget_ to lock the door when you leave the computer room. I usually have several remote terminals open on my desktop. If I step away for a few minutes to attend to something else, they start closing automatically.
Configuration files were made to be edited by hand! This is why Linux is so popular, flexibility.....
This is exactly why Linux is NOT popular. I would hardly say that most people want to sit and jack around with config files.....
You know, I hate to say it but I think you're both right. The existing popularity of Linux is due to its stability, and much of that stability comes from traits it picks up from Unix brethren. That includes smaller separated programs and data transparency (both in input/output and configuration). Transparent configuration means, almost by definition, text file configuration. I happen to love it.
But Pengo is taking the word "popularity" as a measure of abolute popularity, and he's correct, the "masses" can't handle text file configuration.
I don't really see any need for change though. If Linux is an OS run by text file configuration, for which you can access a smart GUI wizard _if you want to_, then IMHO we will create the greatest OS in all time. And that seems to be the way we're going. I'll tell you right now how I would treat that - I would have a handful of configurations that are very important to me, like httpd.conf, smb.conf, named.conf, etc. that I will insist on hand-editing and make it my business to know all the commands for, and then I'll just use whatever's convenient for all the rest. For maintaining my web servers at work I need to know exactly what's in the config's, but when I come home and configure my home X server for casual use, I sure as hell don't need to edit the file, I'm happy to use a wizard.
The difference is in the importance of that app to me. Note that, for example, to other users Apache will be a side item and so they will not open httpd.conf but use a GUI for that.
Ahh. Freedom from registry bullshit but with the convenience of clickety-click when I choose it. Let's all join hands and sing Kumbaya...
If you corrupt your box with this Ximian Gnome, you will not be able to upgrade Red Hat without uninstalling Ximian beforehand, or manually replacing all Gnome RPMs after the upgrade
If you use rpm -qa along with the --queryformat option and grep for vendor "Ximian" you can build a list of Ximian rpm's post-install and then ask up2date to avoid updating those packages. This is what I did, and it works beautifully. up2date keeps my base system humming and Ximian Red Carpet just updates the desktop components.
What would be even better is an up2date configuration command called skipVendor (or something similar) so the user doesn't have to make this list.
Why don't I just use Red Carpet for everything? Simple. They made a GUI and I can't cron red-carpet. (For these types of programs you really need a CLI first, then a GUI.) If a security patch for sshd comes out, my automatic up2date will grab it that night and install it. I'll never use Red Carpet for system stuff because I shouldn't have to babysit those type of updates.
My previous comments notwithstanding, I think Ximian is an excellent company and they make an excellent desktop, and I hope they do very well.
That article is a waste of time. - They fail to define an "attack". - They fail to scale figures for deployed boxes (i.e. twice as many OSS web servers should get twice as many attacks). - They deride OSS admins for slowly applying patches without looking at the closed-source admins. - The article has a popup window ad. Death to them!
I was drinking last night so don't expect it to be bug-free although it seems to work. It is left as an exercise to the reader to create the "goneforever" script that decides what to do in the event of your sudden demise (or inability to login to your computer for 15 days). Cron as appropriate. There is no special action, just login.
#!/bin/bash # Dead man script. Warning, do not take this seriously or use for anything important! deadman="$HOME/bin/goneforever" dontw orry="$HOME/.gonefishing" ranonce="$deadman.ran" period='15 days ago' lastlogin=`last -1 $USER | cut -c40-55` if [ `date -d "$lastlogin" +%s` -lt `date -d "$period" +%s` \
-a ! -f $dontworry -a ! -f $ranonce ]; then
$deadman
touch $ranonce
exit 0 fi exit 1 # exits "false" normally, so you can read val, e.g../deadman && echo DEAD!
For Pete's sake, leave mail alone. If I can't fix it in less than 20 minutes with grep and perl, I don't want to know about it.
Divide mail into 20-30 logical "folders" (files), use procmail to help sort/scan/unspam, do IMAP to get to it from Win machines, archive mail out of your working files once it gets a year old, and you're all set. Strive to keep your inbox empty (you need a proper "action" orientation with your mail folders to accommodate this). No big deal.
A couple hundred posts from other wise Slashdotters will tell you why to go to college to better your career. It will make you more attractive to employers, yada yada yada.
My advice - go to college. But for these reasons:
1. Beer parties
2. Doing stupid shit with people you barely know
3. Road trips
4. Sororities (no, not being in them)
5. Girls exploring their female assertiveness
6. An excuse for lousy clothes (I'm a student)
7. Student discounts for another 4+ years
8. Awesome buddies that will be different from those you made in high school
9. A happier mom
Just let the market sort it out. I'm sure multibillion dollar corporations can figure out some sort of copy protection. I'm even sure that several of them can band together and agree on a DRM system if need be.
The fact that this has not happened yet speaks volumes as to their expectations of how the market would react to such restrictions. They don't appear intelligent enough to realize that what would be unpopular in the market and get no sales will be unpopular in law and get repealed or overturned.
Seriously, these kinds of cross-industry mergers are often appallingly inefficient for the first few years while all of the organizational kinks get worked out.
Someone can pay me $50B to work out some organizational kinks any day.
In two years, when you see tightly branded Time Warner content (i.e. Bugs Bunny!) "Available Only On AOL!",...
Oh, yah. Bugs Bunny on AOL will save them.
Re:Nothing compared to mother nature
on
XFree86 10 Years Old
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Hell, the last time I tried to ping my wife she gave me a protocol mismatch error!
Maybe shes's getting a DOS attack from another source.:-P
You need to back up and do something more fundamental before you start showing them filesystems and daemons. You need to compare the two competing philosophies that drive Windows and Unix cultures.
Windows is a goal-orientated, large application model that strives to make normal tasks very easy. Broadly speaking, Windows admins generally respect order, simplicity, and navigability. Everything gives feedback, to a fault. Everything is an object you can click on. Data is encapsulated and handled by expert applications. Application designers make lots of decisions. All problems are handled by rebooting or reinstallnig.
Unix is a tool-oriented, small programs working together model that strives to make all tasks doable. Broadly speaking, Unix admins generally respect extensibility, configurability, and stability. No news is good news, to a fault. Everything is a file. Data is transparent. End-users and admins make lots of decisions. All problems are handled by reading logs, diagnosing, and making small changes.
After this balancing act, then you can begin to lead them down your path of showing them practical items. At each point you can refer back to these fundamentals. For example, when it/etc, you can explain why Unix admins think text file configuration is inherently more stable and powerful than registry keys, because without such an explanation the Windows admins will typically see it as quaint and backward. Again, when you get to/dev, you can show the inherent debugging power of being able to do things like "tail/dev/midi00" to debug a connector on the computer, even if that data is not useful immediately. You can show how grep, awk, and perl can be chained together to do advanced data processing (on text) that would not be possible on Windows without a specific feature to make it happen. The key is to refer back to a specific philosophy for each exercise, so they can see the big picture.
None of them will watch a hands-on lecture and run out screaming "I've got to convert to this immediately! He broke out this thing called grep and it was.... it was.... AMAZING!":-) Rather, you want to give them a clear understading of our culture, and just like how a high school senior goes to a college campus and says, "Yeah, I can see myself here" you might kindle an interest in some of them to find out more about how we *nix people think.... and that would be the first step to bringing them over.
There is one aspect that I don't fully understand.
If I have a program that is gpl'd but not released to the public and it is somehow stolen from me is it legal for other people to distribute it. Gpl does grant me the right to distribute but as I understand it doesn't allow other people to claim as their birthright..
IANAL, but AFAIK, the GPL is a contract and like any contract there must be a "meeting of the minds". If someone stole code from you, then the necessary formation of a contract did not occur, and they are breaking federal copyright law whenever they give it to someone.
Unfortunately, the ability to prove it was stolen would be important should this ever go to court.
Just use a BSD license and pretend in your head its GPL instead.
Yeah... Then Microsoft's first Service Pack will just replace their code with the open source community's BSD code, instantly improving the stability and features of Windows, at no cost to Microsoft!
The USPS hasn't heard of the largest antitrust action in recent years??
They have never promoted non-mail 3rd party products before - Someone in USPS Legal didn't have to approve the new MS signs? They didn't say, hey is this a dumb idea or what?
This is a simple, blatant, disgusting case of "Money Talks".
Sorry, but I'm saddened at such things from my government.
Slashdot Mirror
I've got to disagree with you. As a Florida resident who loves to travel around the state, I'd be extremely interested in a service where I didn't have to worry about bringing my car, especially, if it could get me there much faster than I could drive myself. If the train beats the drive by an order of magnitude (e.g. it's twice as fast) then it will have users.
Well obviously you need a local transportation network as well. But I think you're being naive to assume that the current situation will be the permanent situation. If a bullet train arrives, it will be a major catalyst for corporations and entreprenuers to set up better city transit. I think if they get this going, when I pull into Tampa I will have no problem hailing a cab by the train station. None whatsoever. Once there are a critical mas of people in the city without cars, it will foster better in-city transit like buses.
I mean, did you think that New York or London built mass transit overnight one day?
Anyone had any success running QuickBooks or Peachtree on Crossover?
I already use Gnucash at home... what I'd love is to switch the accounting at work to a Linux box.
See if you can get some ideas by looking at section 3.7.1 in this doc:
c r- HOWTO/variables2.html
http://www.signaltonoise.net/library/Adv-Bash-S
I think you have a statement in your setup that you might need to alter.
Actually on a serious note, it's a good idea to put this in ~/.bashrc, especially /root/.bashrc:
TMOUT=1800
It makes bash logout after half an hour (1800 secs) idle at the prompt. This is good if you _forget_ to lock the door when you leave the computer room. I usually have several remote terminals open on my desktop. If I step away for a few minutes to attend to something else, they start closing automatically.
You know, I hate to say it but I think you're both right. The existing popularity of Linux is due to its stability, and much of that stability comes from traits it picks up from Unix brethren. That includes smaller separated programs and data transparency (both in input/output and configuration). Transparent configuration means, almost by definition, text file configuration. I happen to love it.
But Pengo is taking the word "popularity" as a measure of abolute popularity, and he's correct, the "masses" can't handle text file configuration.
I don't really see any need for change though. If Linux is an OS run by text file configuration, for which you can access a smart GUI wizard _if you want to_, then IMHO we will create the greatest OS in all time. And that seems to be the way we're going. I'll tell you right now how I would treat that - I would have a handful of configurations that are very important to me, like httpd.conf, smb.conf, named.conf, etc. that I will insist on hand-editing and make it my business to know all the commands for, and then I'll just use whatever's convenient for all the rest. For maintaining my web servers at work I need to know exactly what's in the config's, but when I come home and configure my home X server for casual use, I sure as hell don't need to edit the file, I'm happy to use a wizard.
The difference is in the importance of that app to me. Note that, for example, to other users Apache will be a side item and so they will not open httpd.conf but use a GUI for that.
Ahh. Freedom from registry bullshit but with the convenience of clickety-click when I choose it. Let's all join hands and sing Kumbaya...
If you use rpm -qa along with the --queryformat option and grep for vendor "Ximian" you can build a list of Ximian rpm's post-install and then ask up2date to avoid updating those packages. This is what I did, and it works beautifully. up2date keeps my base system humming and Ximian Red Carpet just updates the desktop components.
Try something like this to get you started:
rpm -qa --queryformat "%{NAME}\t%{VENDOR}\n" | awk '$2 ~This is what my actual list looks like right now, although it may have a couple non-Ximian additions.
pkgSkipList=kernel*;ORBit-devel;perl-PDL;libvorbiWhat would be even better is an up2date configuration command called skipVendor (or something similar) so the user doesn't have to make this list.
Why don't I just use Red Carpet for everything? Simple. They made a GUI and I can't cron red-carpet. (For these types of programs you really need a CLI first, then a GUI.) If a security patch for sshd comes out, my automatic up2date will grab it that night and install it. I'll never use Red Carpet for system stuff because I shouldn't have to babysit those type of updates.
My previous comments notwithstanding, I think Ximian is an excellent company and they make an excellent desktop, and I hope they do very well.
That article is a waste of time.
- They fail to define an "attack".
- They fail to scale figures for deployed boxes (i.e. twice as many OSS web servers should get twice as many attacks).
- They deride OSS admins for slowly applying patches without looking at the closed-source admins.
- The article has a popup window ad. Death to them!
I was drinking last night so don't expect it to be bug-free although it seems to work. It is left as an exercise to the reader to create the "goneforever" script that decides what to do in the event of your sudden demise (or inability to login to your computer for 15 days). Cron as appropriate. There is no special action, just login.
w orry="$HOME/.gonefishing" ./deadman && echo DEAD!
#!/bin/bash
# Dead man script. Warning, do not take this seriously or use for anything important!
deadman="$HOME/bin/goneforever"
dont
ranonce="$deadman.ran"
period='15 days ago'
lastlogin=`last -1 $USER | cut -c40-55`
if [ `date -d "$lastlogin" +%s` -lt `date -d "$period" +%s` \
-a ! -f $dontworry -a ! -f $ranonce ]; then
$deadman
touch $ranonce
exit 0
fi
exit 1
# exits "false" normally, so you can read val, e.g.
Cheers,
Martin
Beer Party. We hit the big time. Our own virus!
The concept of intellectual property is a (useful if done right) legal fiction
Agreed. In fact to some extent the concept of personal property is a (also useful) legal fiction.
For Pete's sake, leave mail alone. If I can't fix it in less than 20 minutes with grep and perl, I don't want to know about it.
Divide mail into 20-30 logical "folders" (files), use procmail to help sort/scan/unspam, do IMAP to get to it from Win machines, archive mail out of your working files once it gets a year old, and you're all set. Strive to keep your inbox empty (you need a proper "action" orientation with your mail folders to accommodate this). No big deal.
First time I read it I thought it said "RIAA sues the galaxy". Funny thing is, I didn't think it was strange.
A couple hundred posts from other wise Slashdotters will tell you why to go to college to better your career. It will make you more attractive to employers, yada yada yada.
My advice - go to college. But for these reasons:
1. Beer parties
2. Doing stupid shit with people you barely know
3. Road trips
4. Sororities (no, not being in them)
5. Girls exploring their female assertiveness
6. An excuse for lousy clothes (I'm a student)
7. Student discounts for another 4+ years
8. Awesome buddies that will be different from those you made in high school
9. A happier mom
There's something to be said, however, for respect of the original coder's wishes, in the open source community.
People coming off Windows need a good 12-step program, not a rebate.
Just let the market sort it out. I'm sure multibillion dollar corporations can figure out some sort of copy protection. I'm even sure that several of them can band together and agree on a DRM system if need be.
The fact that this has not happened yet speaks volumes as to their expectations of how the market would react to such restrictions. They don't appear intelligent enough to realize that what would be unpopular in the market and get no sales will be unpopular in law and get repealed or overturned.
Seriously, these kinds of cross-industry mergers are often appallingly inefficient for the first few years while all of the organizational kinks get worked out.
Someone can pay me $50B to work out some organizational kinks any day.
In two years, when you see tightly branded Time Warner content (i.e. Bugs Bunny!) "Available Only On AOL!", ...
Oh, yah. Bugs Bunny on AOL will save them.
Hell, the last time I tried to ping my wife she gave me a protocol mismatch error!
Maybe shes's getting a DOS attack from another source. :-P
You need to back up and do something more fundamental before you start showing them filesystems and daemons. You need to compare the two competing philosophies that drive Windows and Unix cultures.
After this balancing act, then you can begin to lead them down your path of showing them practical items. At each point you can refer back to these fundamentals. For example, when it /etc, you can explain why Unix admins think text file configuration is inherently more stable and powerful than registry keys, because without such an explanation the Windows admins will typically see it as quaint and backward. Again, when you get to /dev, you can show the inherent debugging power of being able to do things like "tail /dev/midi00" to debug a connector on the computer, even if that data is not useful immediately. You can show how grep, awk, and perl can be chained together to do advanced data processing (on text) that would not be possible on Windows without a specific feature to make it happen. The key is to refer back to a specific philosophy for each exercise, so they can see the big picture.
None of them will watch a hands-on lecture and run out screaming "I've got to convert to this immediately! He broke out this thing called grep and it was.... it was.... AMAZING!" :-) Rather, you want to give them a clear understading of our culture, and just like how a high school senior goes to a college campus and says, "Yeah, I can see myself here" you might kindle an interest in some of them to find out more about how we *nix people think.... and that would be the first step to bringing them over.
There is one aspect that I don't fully understand.
If I have a program that is gpl'd but not released to the public and it is somehow stolen from me is it legal for other people to distribute it. Gpl does grant me the right to distribute but as I understand it doesn't allow other people to claim as their birthright..
IANAL, but AFAIK, the GPL is a contract and like any contract there must be a "meeting of the minds". If someone stole code from you, then the necessary formation of a contract did not occur, and they are breaking federal copyright law whenever they give it to someone.
Unfortunately, the ability to prove it was stolen would be important should this ever go to court.
Just use a BSD license and pretend in your head its GPL instead.
Yeah... Then Microsoft's first Service Pack will just replace their code with the open source community's BSD code, instantly improving the stability and features of Windows, at no cost to Microsoft!
My 2 cents:
/var/log/oldage
(warnings only, software continues to run)
Wow! That's all it takes? A post on /.?
Michelle Pfeiffer, I love you, will you....
Er, what? He _knew_ this Kathleen chick?
Aw, crap.
Give me a BREAK!
The USPS hasn't heard of the largest antitrust action in recent years??
They have never promoted non-mail 3rd party products before - Someone in USPS Legal didn't have to approve the new MS signs? They didn't say, hey is this a dumb idea or what?
This is a simple, blatant, disgusting case of "Money Talks".
Sorry, but I'm saddened at such things from my government.