> Assuming that the experience of Chinese and > Indian immigrants is basically the same as that > of the descendants of the slave trade is, IMO a > lie every bit as horrible as Holocaust denial.
An incorrect assumption != a lie
(honestly, you would think that those of us in technical circles would be a little more careful with our definitions. The post you followed up to is perhaps guilty of "not getting" something, but the author is not in any way guilty of "lying.")
You are correct though, in saying that the previous poster's assumption is very inaccurate. 500 years of abuse and discrimination doesn't magically go away simply because the unjust laws are revised to become more just. Some pro-active, fair, and racially unbiased method needs to be developed to address all of the issues which this dark history has confronted us with, not just the unequal access to technology based on socio-economic (and thereby indirectly on racial) status, but access to education, the political establishment, the economic establishment (the "good 'ol boy" network is, alas, still alive and very much among us), and all of the other benefits of society that we "more priveleged" folks take for granted.
I don't see free handouts or Affirmative Action approaches as too effective, and they appear to have a nasty way of perpetuating the very racism the effects of which they are trying to counter, but clearly doing nothing and lamenting the resulting problems as "unavoidable" is not only not the answer, but a copout of our basic responsibilities as member of this society. Perhaps we need to step back and stop applying kludges, and rather address the underlying structural problems that prevent ANY disadvantaged group from having opportunities equal to those the more advantaged groups seem to have. How to do this would be an intersting (and long) discussion in and of itself.
I was once a very strong advocate of JAVA, and developed a number of programs at work using the JDK under Solaris and, later, Linux. All of these programs have since been rewritten in C++. JAVA may not be dead, but it is sorely wounded and has squandered its window of opportunity.
Sun made a serious error in not releasing the core JDK under a (L)GPL-like license. If they had:
* they could have very effectively prevented Microsoft from doing what they did, as the license would have required MS to release the source code to their incompatible hacks. Had Microsoft not done so, a lawsuit similar to the one now under way could have been filed.
* In fact, the GPL or a similar license would have prevented anyone from hijacking their work and turning it into a _proprietary_ competing product
* they could have harnessed the immense goodwill they enjoyed, and the product would have been improved much more rapidly. Even the date/time classes would probably have been fixed properly.:-) There was a brief time when JAVA really appeared to be the best hope against the Wintel hegemony and many flocked to its cause, a unique window of opportunity wherein if the core product had been open source, it would have been able to leverage a much stronger position as an industry standard, with or without MS and the ISO.
* the JDK would have been available much earlier on many more platforms, avoiding the disillusionment of the broken promise "write once, run everywhere"
* they could have still sold a value added GUI development front end, additional object libraries (such as swing enhancements or whatever) and made a tidy profit
* many more developers would have embraced JAVA, as it would have been perceived as a truly open product, whose very openness would have meant a much less ambiguous future.
Instead, it was an interesting fad that, while it probably won't die anytime soon, certainly will be marginalized and will almost certainly never live up to its potential, much less it promises. Suns ambivelence with respect to Linux shows that much of their uppoer management still doesn't really understand why the Open Source/Free Software paradigm works so well, or how they could leverage it to enhance their business. Alas, the learning curve appears to have been to steep for them, and JAVA just one casualty of their lack of vision. At some point Sun will need to let go of their old "embrace and extend" and "maintain proprietary control" strategies, if they are to prosper in an Open World.
If the interface is dumbed down to the lowest common denominator to the extent that it sacrifices flexibility and even effeciency in the name of ease, then yes, it often does mean the end user is an idiot. This is made worse when fundamental concepts such as networks and local storage are deliberately obfuscated in the effort to dumb things down. So often the user is forced into a position of ignorance through no fault of their own -- they would have been willing and able to learn, but have been discouraged from doing so or even worse, taught inaccurate or incorrect concepts by the very GUI that should have made things clearer.
Let's not be too eager to embrace this article in the interest of appearing self-depricating, open to constructive criticism, and so forth. I see no reason for Linux to depricate itself in any way, and I saw little in the article's criticism that was constructive, or even accurate as it applies to Linux or the Free Software movement in general.
A few short years ago the notion of free software was decried as an absurd fad at most, because "human nature" would always mean greed would win out and therefor no one would code free software in the long run.
They were wrong then, as Linux, FreeBSD, GNU, and countless other freeware projects have demonstrated, and they are wrong now.
"Clueless users will never be willing to switch to Linux until they have xxx", where xxx is some absurd feature (e.g. the paperclip). Wrong. I have a number of "clueless" friends who know next to nothing about computers and have embraced Linux when I've offered it to them, even though it has meant giving up some applications which simply haven't been ported (Quicken for example), and learning how to do other things differently. Without exception they are all so delighted at having a system that lets them work and accomplish things without constant problems and unexpected crashes to contend with, that they have become even more zealous advocates of Linux than I or any of my "geek" friends have ever been. Are there more apps and capabilities I'd like on the desktop? You bet! Is their lack proving to be a major obstacle for technically challenged users to adopt Linux. Not at all in my experience.
Finally, the argument that money will force the splintering of Linux has already been refuted time and time again, both here and elsewhere. Splintering Linux wouldn't make Red Hat, Caldera, Suse, or anyone else more profitable, it would simply shrink the entire Linux pie in favor of Windows, making everyone poorer. Red Hat et. al. know this -- they've seen the long, splintered history of UNIX and they understand the Open Source paradigm far better than the folks who wrote this article appear to. In addition, they appear to ignore the built in safeguards inherent in the GPL which help to prevent just this sort of thing.
Oh, by the way, has anyone actually ever seen a coherent definition of "human nature" that wasn't a tautology? Just curious.
With a warrent to search and seize, you are served with the warrant and can be present during the procedure. This law would allow a form of "secret warrants," akin to telephone tapping but much more invasive of your privacy and your property. Not a good thing, especially in a country with laws against nearly everything and a rapidly shrinking core of basic rights.
I probably shouldn't respond to something that is so obviously a troll, but on the off chance you are sincere and simply misguided, I suggest you check your history.
Microsoft has a habit of releasing software which is very late (nearly all versions of NT, Win95, Win97 which became Win98, and so on), which, despite the additional development time, have all been terribly buggy and unreliable, especially when first released. One of the reasons Microsoft doesn't do versioning is so that they can sneak updates into the OS via applications (overwriting system dlls with new versions without telling the installer). This not only allows them to behave in insidious ways such as breaking competitor's products (e.g. Netscape) with a dll update, but also lets them actually fix some of the more heinous bugs over time without ever having to acknowledge that there were any bugs to begin with. The version of Windows 98 you buy today isn't the same one you got last year, though you wouldn't know by looking at the version numbers.
In short, Microsoft has consistently released late, buggy, unstable code which their customers have then been forced, often at great expense, to debug for them. Why on earth should we be stupid enough to give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt at this late date?
First, before we all go screaming "Death to Intel" it would behoove us to confirm that Intel actually has done something wrong (which, at first blush, it sounds like they did). Independent confirmation (e.g. another manufacturer who was pressured in the same way coming forward) would be nice.
Second, if this is confirmed and Intel is playing dirty (which wouldn't surprise anyone I don't think), we as Linux users have alot of other excellent hardware alternatives, including (but not limited to) the Dec Alpha, Sparc, and Power PC platforms. If this really upsets you, use one of the non-intel alternatives to run your OS, and let Intel know exactly why you've done so. Money speaks much louder than whining -- if unethical behavior has a negative impact on a company's bottom line, you can be reasonably sure that the behavior will change.
On the other hand, Intel has (probably correctly) surmised that any outrage we may feel will be quickly buried beneath the euphoria and hype as we all run out to get our hands on the latest Merced, whenever it's released. In a society bent on rampent consumerism, political, ethical, and moral concerns vanish beneath the glitz of a new toy claiming our attention in the next 30 second spot.
No need to crash 'em. Simply robbing the probes of a proportion of their kinetic energy, slowing them into an orbit for collection or whatever, would suffice. Of course, if we're at war with someone, then crashing 'em might be of use. Kinda like that battle^H^H^H^H^H^H accident with Australia and Skylab. "We don't need nukes, we got derilect space probes and, when they run out, rocks.":-)
Red Hat's heart was clearly in the right place with respect to the IPO, and as a business, they should go about making as much money for their investors as they possibly can in good conscience, AS LONG as they do not compromize their support of Linux and the Free Software community in the process. (I do hope they gave Linus, Alan, and others a bunch of shares, though!:-))
However, I think it is very appropriate for people to whine about the IPO process. It wasn't just "botched," it was IMHO manipulated to exclude as many "geek" investors as possible in favor of e*trade's priveleged clientel. Those who were burned can and should whine, loudly, to the SEC. Everyone knows Red Hat isn't at fault here, rather e*trade is. However, those who were burned should not go letting e*trade off the hook for this debacle, simply because we like Red Hat.
DISCLAIMER: I made no effort to take part in the IPO and have not suffered any loss as a result of e*trade's behavior. My opinions are my own, based on conversations I've had with others who were burned, as well as messages and articles I have read here and elsewhere.
I take some exception to the definitions used in the article. Obfuscation of information has never to my knowledge been equated with "security through obfuscation." Equating the two makes makes both terms meaningless.
Security through obfuscation relies on a cracker's ignorance of a system vulnerability for protection, as opposed to disclosing the systems specs and subjecting them to rigorous peer review, allowing the vulnerability to be exposed, analyzed, and fixed.
Encryption is the protection of DATA (whether it is a password, data file, or filesystem) through obfuscation of the DATA. Obfuscating DATA is not the same as obfuscating a system architecture in the hopes no one figures it out. To define the two as the same is no different than defining apples and cucumbers to mean the same thing, and leads to the same meaningless results (an inability to differentiate between the two until new terms are invented to compensate for the obfuscated and undermined definitions of the old words). The desire to not disclose confidential data residing on a hard drive does not imply that one is relying on "security through obfuscation" rather than strong, publicly reviewed security approaches. The two concepts are in many ways completely orthogonal to one another.
About the only thing the article got right is the notion that, if the data need only be protected for a brief time, inherently less secure approaches may be used with some success. What is entirely glossed over, however, is that in using a less secure but perhaps more expedient approach one is still taking a terrible gamble, as there is a greater possibility the data will be compromized earlier than desired than if a more secure approach had been used. The probability may be small because of the limited time frame involved (making the risk "worth it" perhaps) but the possibility is nevertheless quite real. What I do not understand is WHY anyone would want to do something like that, when well documented, secure ways exist for protecting both transient and long term data and systems exist, making that sort of gamble unnecessary to begin with.
> Of course, by my suggestion, you *can* do both. > Memory is "32MB" while a Zip disk could be 100 > mB, to distinguish a "true" binary-based "mega" > from a decimal-based one.
What you are proposing is essentially reasonable, to have a different nomenclature for decimal vs. binary numbers. However, mB would be "millibytes", not decimal megabytes. Both M and m are legitimate prefixes (one standing for 10^6 and the other for 10^-3). More preferable to me, and more flexible for future innovations (trinary or whatever other godawful system comes into use for whatever reason) would be a subscript between the prefix and the unit of measure to denote base numbering system, something like:
k2B (where the two is subscripted like in H2O) meaning 2^10 Bytes, while kB would refer to 10^3 bytes. Whether or not you pronounce k2B "kilobytes", "keebiebytes", or whatever doesn't really matter.
Unfortunately we have a legacy that isn't very elegant in any form. Ideally the prefix k would mean power of three, so k2B really ought to mean 2^3 bytes, k3m would mean 3^3 meters, and so on. But (aside from usability issues) there is no way in hell anyone would go for that kind of interpretation, even though the whole schema would be much more flexible and consistent. k was never intended to be x^10, but rather y^3, where y happened to be 10 in our decimal system. "kilo" was used for 2^10 because AFAIK it yielded a value "close" to 10^3. *shrug* The whole nomenclature needs cleaning up, but if the IEEE people are serious, the least they could do would be to pick terminology that doesn't sound so damned silly.
I agree. Alas, much of the legislation that required truth in advertising was repealed back in the 1980s. It will be interesting to see what happens if this guy appeals, though.
I won't be there, but I am a Linux user so I'll respond anyway:-)
In college I brewed my own beer because, after living a couple of years in Germany, I couldn't stand the mass produced swill in this country, and I couldn't afford the imports. Now the US has rediscovered its beer brewing heritage and there is a plethora of Microbrews available (ranging from mediocre to delicious). Laziness and lack of time, coupled with a range of delicious choices to appear in the last ten years, mean I now buy, instead of brew, which makes me way less cool than I once was, but also much less thirsty .
I prefer homebrew, followed by Microbrew. I'd rather drink tap water than American Massbrew.
If the scientists are communist, that would mean they would be taking according to their needs (building upon the work of others) and giving according to their abilities (publishing the results).
The scientific comminity is, perhaps, no longer "communist", but rather is transforming itself into an elite club of money grubbing capitalist bourgeois.
If the price war ends in a monopoly, or an oligarchy of limited choices, that is bad for the consumer, as ultimately prices will go up and service will decrease.
You are right, though, as things stand now, this is merely competition, which is a good thing (even if the competitor is The Company We Love To Hate).
I also find the mergers and megamergers in the ISP world to be a concern. On the telecommunications side a few years ago we had a number of choices for leased lines (128k, T1, etc.). Not for connecting to the internet, but for connecting to the exchanges and other offices. After a number of large, well publicized mergers, our choices have diminished dramatically. As has the service. Lines that at one time took an hour to fix now take a day, and, alas, that particular company is still the best choice out of what has become a limited supply of bad choices. I fear the same thing may happen to our choices for internet connectivity, either through the 500 pound gorilla that is Microsoft, or through unrelated mergers and predatory pricing having little or nothing to do with Mr. Gates. These developments do bear close watching, regardless
Dude, you need to seriously work out some of that repressed hostility. If the smiley in the subject didn't clue you in that the entire post was a little toung-in-cheek, the spelling of viruses in the subject, the use of a possessive as a plural, and numerous other deliberate "breaks with grammatical tradition" (do I need a smiley here as well?) should have made it obvious. Been getting your prozac lately?
Everyone knows thought meme's are composed of multiple viri.
(ducking)
Seriously, "viri/virii" has been a slang term for at least 15 years. Everyone knows, or at least knew, it was technically false, but it was a fun play on all those silly latin endings. Languages change and mutate, especially where slang is involved. To those who get upset by such things, get over it already.
Please be advised that the official, correct pronounciation of Windows is "Blue Screen of Death". BSD may be used as an abbreviation, as we appreciate any appeals to name recognition, diserverd or not (recall our excellent leveraging of the X Window System's name recognition when releasing our, at the time, new product, ActiveX).
Stop Windows fragmentation. Use the Officially Sanctioned Pronounciation(tm) noted above.
Wince! (WinCE) Windoze Winblows Winslows
are slang names referring to subproducts of The One True Operating System. The Blue Screen of Death product line is not fragmented, it is diversified. Please do not give informed^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H disloyal critics any ammunition for accusing Blue Screen of Death products of fragmenting.
Thank You,
Microsoft Marketing Machine Blue Screen of Death Technical Support Center subgroup
Remember: It is spelled W-I-N-D-O-W-S, but it is pronounced Blue Screen of Death.
Subject says it all. After three weeks of struggle with this thing by tech support at DPT, Seagate, and myself, with all of us dispairing of figuring out what was wrong, I did something I should have done much earlier. I swapped out the PC with another which was earmarked for another task, and which had a different motherboard. The Fibre Channel controller is now recognizing the drives and their capacity properly. 1+0 RAID arrays are building as I type this.
In light of the recent, extensive help the folks at DPT have given me, as well as the folks at Seagate, I retract most of my negative comments about their service, and all of the doubts I raised with respect to their product. It seems I had the misfortune of getting one grouchy tech on the day the question was posted to/. The other techs have been more helpful, and Jackie Wolf's efforts have been nothing short of heroic. Ditto for our mutual contact at Seagate. This project, which I was dispairing of ever completing, is now back on track, albeit behind schedule.
In summary, the DPT Millenium Fibre Channel (dual port) controller is working fine with the Tyan DLUAN1836 Motherboard. It had problems with the ABIT BH6 Motherboard. Seagate disks work flawlessly, as long as they have the latest firmware (ST118202 v 0006 or later and ST318203 v 0002 or later).
Poorly written show with lots of cool special effects and "toys." I found I coudn't take some of the technical absurdities ("she was killed by that computer virus"), but those meter wide transparent flatscreens would sure be nice...
This is a very, very dangerous interpretation of the role of government. The will of the people can be very ugly (Nazi Germany, Austria during the Anschluss, Serbia, the United State's treatment of black and native Americans and the attempted extermination of the Mormons back in the 19th century are just a few of the more obvious examples). The purpose of the constitution was to precisely spell out, and thereby limit, the power of government, even a democraticly elected government. While I disagree with much of the libertarian vision (they place far too much faith in the free market IMHO), they are very correct in their argument that the constitution has been and is being violated by many convinient but fundamentally incorrect interpretations of the document designed to facilitate empowerment of the government to do things "we the poeple" feel, or felt, were expedient and necessary, however constitutionally questionable. The interstate commerce clause is the most common, but by no means unique, vehicle for this.
If you reinterpret the constitution to allow, or even require, the government to "do whatever the people want" you will be creating a terrible tyranny of the majority, in which potentially 51% of the poeple would exersize nearly absolute power of the 49% who voted the other way. No minority, however defined, would be able to feel at all safe in such an environment. Since by one definition or another each of us is in a minority of some kind, none of us would be able to go about our lives without constantly looking over our shoulder. Oops, maybe you have described the current reality, after all.
Um, I think the intent was to imply that overuse of links as a substitute for writing a coherent article isn't the best thing in the world, but that despite this flaw, the evenhanded presentation of both sides of the debate makes the article good anyway.
How is sticking one's head in the sand a sign of class? Knowing whether or not the hatch blew is useful from a technical perspective -- unless we plan on never again using spacecraft that might have a similar design (e.g. an orbit-to-orbit craft, or a surface to orbit craft for other terrestrial planets, or...). They should make every effort to know every detail about what happened to that capsule, the hatch, and any other relevant artifacts. That knowledge could save the lives of numerous future spacegoing people.
Engineers study each others failures as much as their successes, in order to not repeat design mistakes. Pilots study accident reports in order to (hopefully) not repeat the piloting mistakes of others (JFK Jr. could have undoubtably benefited from doing this, as the decisions he made were truly unforgivable, and have previously, for many other unfortunate pilots, had the same deadly results). This has nothing to do with disrespect for the dead, but rather an ernest and very responsible effort to prevent trajedies from being repeated.
Slashdot Mirror
> Assuming that the experience of Chinese and
> Indian immigrants is basically the same as that > of the descendants of the slave trade is, IMO a > lie every bit as horrible as Holocaust denial.
An incorrect assumption != a lie
(honestly, you would think that those of us in technical circles would be a little more careful with our definitions. The post you followed up to is perhaps guilty of "not getting" something, but the author is not in any way guilty of "lying.")
You are correct though, in saying that the previous poster's assumption is very inaccurate. 500 years of abuse and discrimination doesn't magically go away simply because the unjust laws are revised to become more just. Some pro-active, fair, and racially unbiased method needs to be developed to address all of the issues which this dark history has confronted us with, not just the unequal access to technology based on socio-economic (and thereby indirectly on racial) status, but access to education, the political establishment, the economic establishment (the "good 'ol boy" network is, alas, still alive and very much among us), and all of the other benefits of society that we "more priveleged" folks take for granted.
I don't see free handouts or Affirmative Action approaches as too effective, and they appear to have a nasty way of perpetuating the very racism the effects of which they are trying to counter, but clearly doing nothing and lamenting the resulting problems as "unavoidable" is not only not the answer, but a copout of our basic responsibilities as member of this society. Perhaps we need to step back and stop applying kludges, and rather address the underlying structural problems that prevent ANY disadvantaged group from having opportunities equal to those the more advantaged groups seem to have. How to do this would be an intersting (and long) discussion in and of itself.
I was once a very strong advocate of JAVA, and developed a number of programs at work using the JDK under Solaris and, later, Linux. All of these programs have since been rewritten in C++. JAVA may not be dead, but it is sorely wounded and has squandered its window of opportunity.
:-) There was a brief time when JAVA really appeared to be the best hope against the Wintel hegemony and many flocked to its cause, a unique window of opportunity wherein if the core product had been open source, it would have been able to leverage a much stronger position as an industry standard, with or without MS and the ISO.
Sun made a serious error in not releasing the core JDK under a (L)GPL-like license. If they had:
* they could have very effectively prevented Microsoft from doing what they did, as the license would have required MS to release the source code to their incompatible hacks. Had Microsoft not done so, a lawsuit similar to the one now under way could have been filed.
* In fact, the GPL or a similar license would have prevented anyone from hijacking their work and turning it into a _proprietary_ competing product
* they could have harnessed the immense goodwill they enjoyed, and the product would have been improved much more rapidly. Even the date/time classes would probably have been fixed properly.
* the JDK would have been available much earlier on many more platforms, avoiding the disillusionment of the broken promise "write once, run everywhere"
* they could have still sold a value added GUI development front end, additional object libraries (such as swing enhancements or whatever) and made a tidy profit
* many more developers would have embraced JAVA, as it would have been perceived as a truly open product, whose very openness would have meant a much less ambiguous future.
Instead, it was an interesting fad that, while it probably won't die anytime soon, certainly will be marginalized and will almost certainly never live up to its potential, much less it promises. Suns ambivelence with respect to Linux shows that much of their uppoer management still doesn't really understand why the Open Source/Free Software paradigm works so well, or how they could leverage it to enhance their business. Alas, the learning curve appears to have been to steep for them, and JAVA just one casualty of their lack of vision. At some point Sun will need to let go of their old "embrace and extend" and "maintain proprietary control" strategies, if they are to prosper in an Open World.
If the interface is dumbed down to the lowest common denominator to the extent that it sacrifices flexibility and even effeciency in the name of ease, then yes, it often does mean the end user is an idiot. This is made worse when fundamental concepts such as networks and local storage are deliberately obfuscated in the effort to dumb things down. So often the user is forced into a position of ignorance through no fault of their own -- they would have been willing and able to learn, but have been discouraged from doing so or even worse, taught inaccurate or incorrect concepts by the very GUI that should have made things clearer.
Let's not be too eager to embrace this article in the interest of appearing self-depricating, open to constructive criticism, and so forth. I see no reason for Linux to depricate itself in any way, and I saw little in the article's criticism that was constructive, or even accurate as it applies to Linux or the Free Software movement in general.
A few short years ago the notion of free software was decried as an absurd fad at most, because "human nature" would always mean greed would win out and therefor no one would code free software in the long run.
They were wrong then, as Linux, FreeBSD, GNU, and countless other freeware projects have demonstrated, and they are wrong now.
"Clueless users will never be willing to switch to Linux until they have xxx", where xxx is some absurd feature (e.g. the paperclip). Wrong. I have a number of "clueless" friends who know next to nothing about computers and have embraced Linux when I've offered it to them, even though it has meant giving up some applications which simply haven't been ported (Quicken for example), and learning how to do other things differently. Without exception they are all so delighted at having a system that lets them work and accomplish things without constant problems and unexpected crashes to contend with, that they have become even more zealous advocates of Linux than I or any of my "geek" friends have ever been. Are there more apps and capabilities I'd like on the desktop? You bet! Is their lack proving to be a major obstacle for technically challenged users to adopt Linux. Not at all in my experience.
Finally, the argument that money will force the splintering of Linux has already been refuted time and time again, both here and elsewhere. Splintering Linux wouldn't make Red Hat, Caldera, Suse, or anyone else more profitable, it would simply shrink the entire Linux pie in favor of Windows, making everyone poorer. Red Hat et. al. know this -- they've seen the long, splintered history of UNIX and they understand the Open Source paradigm far better than the folks who wrote this article appear to. In addition, they appear to ignore the built in safeguards inherent in the GPL which help to prevent just this sort of thing.
Oh, by the way, has anyone actually ever seen a coherent definition of "human nature" that wasn't a tautology? Just curious.
With a warrent to search and seize, you are served with the warrant and can be present during the procedure. This law would allow a form of "secret warrants," akin to telephone tapping but much more invasive of your privacy and your property. Not a good thing, especially in a country with laws against nearly everything and a rapidly shrinking core of basic rights.
I probably shouldn't respond to something that is so obviously a troll, but on the off chance you are sincere and simply misguided, I suggest you check your history.
Microsoft has a habit of releasing software which is very late (nearly all versions of NT, Win95, Win97 which became Win98, and so on), which, despite the additional development time, have all been terribly buggy and unreliable, especially when first released. One of the reasons Microsoft doesn't do versioning is so that they can sneak updates into the OS via applications (overwriting system dlls with new versions without telling the installer). This not only allows them to behave in insidious ways such as breaking competitor's products (e.g. Netscape) with a dll update, but also lets them actually fix some of the more heinous bugs over time without ever having to acknowledge that there were any bugs to begin with. The version of Windows 98 you buy today isn't the same one you got last year, though you wouldn't know by looking at the version numbers.
In short, Microsoft has consistently released late, buggy, unstable code which their customers have then been forced, often at great expense, to debug for them. Why on earth should we be stupid enough to give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt at this late date?
First, before we all go screaming "Death to Intel" it would behoove us to confirm that Intel actually has done something wrong (which, at first blush, it sounds like they did). Independent confirmation (e.g. another manufacturer who was pressured in the same way coming forward) would be nice.
Second, if this is confirmed and Intel is playing dirty (which wouldn't surprise anyone I don't think), we as Linux users have alot of other excellent hardware alternatives, including (but not limited to) the Dec Alpha, Sparc, and Power PC platforms. If this really upsets you, use one of the non-intel alternatives to run your OS, and let Intel know exactly why you've done so. Money speaks much louder than whining -- if unethical behavior has a negative impact on a company's bottom line, you can be reasonably sure that the behavior will change.
On the other hand, Intel has (probably correctly) surmised that any outrage we may feel will be quickly buried beneath the euphoria and hype as we all run out to get our hands on the latest Merced, whenever it's released. In a society bent on rampent consumerism, political, ethical, and moral concerns vanish beneath the glitz of a new toy claiming our attention in the next 30 second spot.
No need to crash 'em. Simply robbing the probes of a proportion of their kinetic energy, slowing them into an orbit for collection or whatever, would suffice. Of course, if we're at war with someone, then crashing 'em might be of use. Kinda like that battle^H^H^H^H^H^H accident with Australia and Skylab. "We don't need nukes, we got derilect space probes and, when they run out, rocks." :-)
Red Hat's heart was clearly in the right place with respect to the IPO, and as a business, they should go about making as much money for their investors as they possibly can in good conscience, AS LONG as they do not compromize their support of Linux and the Free Software community in the process. (I do hope they gave Linus, Alan, and others a bunch of shares, though! :-))
However, I think it is very appropriate for people to whine about the IPO process. It wasn't just "botched," it was IMHO manipulated to exclude as many "geek" investors as possible in favor of e*trade's priveleged clientel. Those who were burned can and should whine, loudly, to the SEC. Everyone knows Red Hat isn't at fault here, rather e*trade is. However, those who were burned should not go letting e*trade off the hook for this debacle, simply because we like Red Hat.
DISCLAIMER: I made no effort to take part in the IPO and have not suffered any loss as a result of e*trade's behavior. My opinions are my own, based on conversations I've had with others who were burned, as well as messages and articles I have read here and elsewhere.
I take some exception to the definitions used in the article. Obfuscation of information has never to my knowledge been equated with "security through obfuscation." Equating the two makes makes both terms meaningless.
Security through obfuscation relies on a cracker's ignorance of a system vulnerability for protection, as opposed to disclosing the systems specs and subjecting them to rigorous peer review, allowing the vulnerability to be exposed, analyzed, and fixed.
Encryption is the protection of DATA (whether it is a password, data file, or filesystem) through obfuscation of the DATA. Obfuscating DATA is not the same as obfuscating a system architecture in the hopes no one figures it out. To define the two as the same is no different than defining apples and cucumbers to mean the same thing, and leads to the same meaningless results (an inability to differentiate between the two until new terms are invented to compensate for the obfuscated and undermined definitions of the old words). The desire to not disclose confidential data residing on a hard drive does not imply that one is relying on "security through obfuscation" rather than strong, publicly reviewed security approaches. The two concepts are in many ways completely orthogonal to one another.
About the only thing the article got right is the notion that, if the data need only be protected for a brief time, inherently less secure approaches may be used with some success. What is entirely glossed over, however, is that in using a less secure but perhaps more expedient approach one is still taking a terrible gamble, as there is a greater possibility the data will be compromized earlier than desired than if a more secure approach had been used. The probability may be small because of the limited time frame involved (making the risk "worth it" perhaps) but the possibility is nevertheless quite real. What I do not understand is WHY anyone would want to do something like that, when well documented, secure ways exist for protecting both transient and long term data and systems exist, making that sort of gamble unnecessary to begin with.
> Of course, by my suggestion, you *can* do both.
> Memory is "32MB" while a Zip disk could be 100
> mB, to distinguish a "true" binary-based "mega"
> from a decimal-based one.
What you are proposing is essentially reasonable, to have a different nomenclature for decimal vs. binary numbers. However, mB would be "millibytes", not decimal megabytes. Both M and m are legitimate prefixes (one standing for 10^6 and the other for 10^-3). More preferable to me, and more flexible for future innovations (trinary or whatever other godawful system comes into use for whatever reason) would be a subscript between the prefix and the unit of measure to denote base numbering system, something like:
k2B (where the two is subscripted like in H2O) meaning 2^10 Bytes, while kB would refer to 10^3 bytes. Whether or not you pronounce k2B "kilobytes", "keebiebytes", or whatever doesn't really matter.
Unfortunately we have a legacy that isn't very elegant in any form. Ideally the prefix k would mean power of three, so k2B really ought to mean 2^3 bytes, k3m would mean 3^3 meters, and so on. But (aside from usability issues) there is no way in hell anyone would go for that kind of interpretation, even though the whole schema would be much more flexible and consistent. k was never intended to be x^10, but rather y^3, where y happened to be 10 in our decimal system. "kilo" was used for 2^10 because AFAIK it yielded a value "close" to 10^3. *shrug* The whole nomenclature needs cleaning up, but if the IEEE people are serious, the least they could do would be to pick terminology that doesn't sound so damned silly.
What the FBI, SS, NSA, etc. keep telling us:
Keep our bytes open (to their prying eyes).
I agree. Alas, much of the legislation that required truth in advertising was repealed back in the 1980s. It will be interesting to see what happens if this guy appeals, though.
I won't be there, but I am a Linux user so I'll respond anyway :-)
In college I brewed my own beer because, after living a couple of years in Germany, I couldn't stand the mass produced swill in this country, and I couldn't afford the imports. Now the US has rediscovered its beer brewing heritage and there is a plethora of Microbrews available (ranging from mediocre to delicious). Laziness and lack of time, coupled with a range of delicious choices to appear in the last ten years, mean I now buy, instead of brew, which makes me way less cool than I once was, but also much less thirsty .
I prefer homebrew, followed by Microbrew. I'd rather drink tap water than American Massbrew.
minor nit:
:-) :-)
If the scientists are communist, that would mean they would be taking according to their needs (building upon the work of others) and giving according to their abilities (publishing the results).
The scientific comminity is, perhaps, no longer "communist", but rather is transforming itself into an elite club of money grubbing capitalist bourgeois.
:-)
If the price war ends in a monopoly, or an oligarchy of limited choices, that is bad for the consumer, as ultimately prices will go up and service will decrease.
You are right, though, as things stand now, this is merely competition, which is a good thing (even if the competitor is The Company We Love To Hate).
I also find the mergers and megamergers in the ISP world to be a concern. On the telecommunications side a few years ago we had a number of choices for leased lines (128k, T1, etc.). Not for connecting to the internet, but for connecting to the exchanges and other offices. After a number of large, well publicized mergers, our choices have diminished dramatically. As has the service. Lines that at one time took an hour to fix now take a day, and, alas, that particular company is still the best choice out of what has become a limited supply of bad choices. I fear the same thing may happen to our choices for internet connectivity, either through the 500 pound gorilla that is Microsoft, or through unrelated mergers and predatory pricing having little or nothing to do with Mr. Gates. These developments do bear close watching, regardless
Dude, you need to seriously work out some of that repressed hostility. If the smiley in the subject didn't clue you in that the entire post was a little toung-in-cheek, the spelling of viruses in the subject, the use of a possessive as a plural, and numerous other deliberate "breaks with grammatical tradition" (do I need a smiley here as well?) should have made it obvious. Been getting your prozac lately?
no.
Everyone knows thought meme's are composed of multiple viri.
(ducking)
Seriously, "viri/virii" has been a slang term for at least 15 years. Everyone knows, or at least knew, it was technically false, but it was a fun play on all those silly latin endings. Languages change and mutate, especially where slang is involved. To those who get upset by such things, get over it already.
MICROSOFT MARKETING MACHINE
Serving you through Disinformation.
Please be advised that the official, correct pronounciation of Windows is "Blue Screen of Death". BSD may be used as an abbreviation, as we appreciate any appeals to name recognition, diserverd or not (recall our excellent leveraging of the X Window System's name recognition when releasing our, at the time, new product, ActiveX).
Stop Windows fragmentation. Use the Officially Sanctioned Pronounciation(tm) noted above.
Wince! (WinCE)
Windoze
Winblows
Winslows
are slang names referring to subproducts of The One True Operating System. The Blue Screen of Death product line is not fragmented, it is diversified. Please do not give informed^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H disloyal critics any ammunition for accusing Blue Screen of Death products of fragmenting.
Thank You,
Microsoft Marketing Machine
Blue Screen of Death Technical Support Center subgroup
Remember: It is spelled W-I-N-D-O-W-S, but it is pronounced Blue Screen of Death.
Subject says it all. After three weeks of struggle with this thing by tech support at DPT, Seagate, and myself, with all of us dispairing of figuring out what was wrong, I did something I should have done much earlier. I swapped out the PC with another which was earmarked for another task, and which had a different motherboard. The Fibre Channel controller is now recognizing the drives and their capacity properly. 1+0 RAID arrays are building as I type this.
/. The other techs have been more helpful, and Jackie Wolf's efforts have been nothing short of heroic. Ditto for our mutual contact at Seagate. This project, which I was dispairing of ever completing, is now back on track, albeit behind schedule.
In light of the recent, extensive help the folks at DPT have given me, as well as the folks at Seagate, I retract most of my negative comments about their service, and all of the doubts I raised with respect to their product. It seems I had the misfortune of getting one grouchy tech on the day the question was posted to
In summary, the DPT Millenium Fibre Channel (dual port) controller is working fine with the Tyan DLUAN1836 Motherboard. It had problems with the ABIT BH6 Motherboard. Seagate disks work flawlessly, as long as they have the latest firmware (ST118202 v 0006 or later and ST318203 v 0002 or later).
Long Before either of us were born.
Poorly written show with lots of cool special effects and "toys." I found I coudn't take some of the technical absurdities ("she was killed by that computer virus"), but those meter wide transparent flatscreens would sure be nice ...
This is a very, very dangerous interpretation of the role of government. The will of the people can be very ugly (Nazi Germany, Austria during the Anschluss, Serbia, the United State's treatment of black and native Americans and the attempted extermination of the Mormons back in the 19th century are just a few of the more obvious examples). The purpose of the constitution was to precisely spell out, and thereby limit, the power of government, even a democraticly elected government. While I disagree with much of the libertarian vision (they place far too much faith in the free market IMHO), they are very correct in their argument that the constitution has been and is being violated by many convinient but fundamentally incorrect interpretations of the document designed to facilitate empowerment of the government to do things "we the poeple" feel, or felt, were expedient and necessary, however constitutionally questionable. The interstate commerce clause is the most common, but by no means unique, vehicle for this.
If you reinterpret the constitution to allow, or even require, the government to "do whatever the people want" you will be creating a terrible tyranny of the majority, in which potentially 51% of the poeple would exersize nearly absolute power of the 49% who voted the other way. No minority, however defined, would be able to feel at all safe in such an environment. Since by one definition or another each of us is in a minority of some kind, none of us would be able to go about our lives without constantly looking over our shoulder. Oops, maybe you have described the current reality, after all.
Um, I think the intent was to imply that overuse of links as a substitute for writing a coherent article isn't the best thing in the world, but that despite this flaw, the evenhanded presentation of both sides of the debate makes the article good anyway.
How is sticking one's head in the sand a sign of class? Knowing whether or not the hatch blew is useful from a technical perspective -- unless we plan on never again using spacecraft that might have a similar design (e.g. an orbit-to-orbit craft, or a surface to orbit craft for other terrestrial planets, or ...). They should make every effort to know every detail about what happened to that capsule, the hatch, and any other relevant artifacts. That knowledge could save the lives of numerous future spacegoing people.
Engineers study each others failures as much as their successes, in order to not repeat design mistakes. Pilots study accident reports in order to (hopefully) not repeat the piloting mistakes of others (JFK Jr. could have undoubtably benefited from doing this, as the decisions he made were truly unforgivable, and have previously, for many other unfortunate pilots, had the same deadly results). This has nothing to do with disrespect for the dead, but rather an ernest and very responsible effort to prevent trajedies from being repeated.