That's like saying if a particular model of car is too complex, perhaps they ought not to be able to visit their friends on the other side of town, even though the car in question will actually heal the environment, makes happy beams and heals the sick, cures cancer, etc.
Linux as an environment can be a useful and good thing. It can be more stable, cheaper to operate, able to perform well on older hardware, and makes available a plethora of excellent software titles. But currently a lot of people shy away from it, either because they perceive it as too complex or because it truly is too complex for them to use.
But Linux is still just an environment, a means to an end, not an end itself. People don't run Windows just to run Windows. They don't just stare at the desktop (not without being fired in short order anyway). They try to perform a task, run software on it. It's the same with Linux. And if they could perform that task better on Linux, either due to direct improvements in the Linux version or because the environment doesn't interfere as much as the Windows environment does, then perhaps it might be a useful and good thing for the environment to be made less complex or made to seem less complex to those would otherwise be interested.
I'm not one who typically "comment-metamods", but a Troll rating? For the parent comment?
Folks, he has a point. If you had some problem, and it dawned on you that it was resolvable and then you fixed it, it is somewhat hypocritical to chastise others for the shortcoming you yourself suffered. The parent comment is simply saying, "Help a brother out" instead of "You idiot! What are you thinking?"
Companies have forgotten how much more valuable a properly-trained and experienced senior employee can be, and employees have forgotten the less tangible benefits of staying with a firm for an extended period of time.
Well written, but I would differ on this point. From the perspective of an employee, I and likely most others haven't actually forgotten or don't know about the benefits of staying with a firm for an extended period of time, it's just that those benefits have all but dried up. I hear of a few companies that treat their employees as a higher life form than cattle, but these are few and far between.
Most companies no longer offer any long term retention strategies, instead opting for compensation that has direct monetary equivalents. Some get a little creative, like memberships at a gym and so forth, but few are willing to extend over and above for their employees.
Likewise, I don't think companies have so much forgotten what value a long term experienced employee has, but rather have taken a decidedly short term view of merits and demerits and found that they can be more profitable (it's all about the shareholders) with the usual concept of employee-as-chattel.
I lament it, but it is also providing me with an opportunity to become self employed.
Of course, self employment is itself an illusion. The client becomes the employer and round and round it goes.
You know, I've seen this argument made by quite a number of people. Yet, though this seems to be used to justify the idea of using Kazaa and friends to download copies of songs, I never see in the news where suddenly musicians are receiving checks and money orders in the mail from random listeners who downloaded their music via P2P and decided to pay the $1 or so per song/album whatever.
Essentially, put up or shut up. You don't like the rules? Fine, shut up and deal. Don't buy the music. But don't listen to it either. Whether you or anyone else likes it or not, it is illegal to simply grab music en masse from the internet that you have not purchased and that was not given to you by the copyright holder (or legal representative).
And frankly, even if you did pay for the music by sending in this, thus far mythical, $1 check to your favorite artist, it still wouldn't constitute appropriate payment as that is not what has been authorized by, again, the copyright holder (again, or legal representative). If you *do* get that authorization, bully for you. You've scored a $1 album. Otherwise, too bad, thanks for playing.
Go ahead, write a novel. It's just information, right? You don't mind if I just download it and then distribute it to the whole world without requiring anyone to actually buy it from you, do you? Or perhaps I could just send you whatever I feel like sending you, regardless of any terms you may have set forth? Oh, it *is* fine for you? Great, but why then, when you disagree with how others have chosen to have their material distributed, are you suddenly right and they are wrong? It's their choice to make, not yours.
They are running OSX. From the VA Tech website concerning the cluster, you can find a PDF slideshow concerning the configuration. Slide 13 indicates they will be running OSX on the nodes.
Okay, I'll bite. How about Metrowerks? Allows you to cross compile to your choice of targets including OS X and Windows. Granted, their media libraries might not be cross platform, but then again, maybe they are? BioWare was able to use cross platform libraries for a Win/Lin/OSX (say it out loud and it sounds like a cheer) multi platform release.
memorable game were: Cannon Fodder Alien VERSUS Predator in a Flashback NBA Jam
Momentarily, my head was spinning with autoexploding acid drooling aliens going toe toe with Rastafarian space hunters in an old time NBA hoops match starring Moses Malone and basketball stars of yore. A match to be remembered for all time.
Yes, indeed, that would have been quite a memorable game.
That's true, and I considered an Insight, but the Insight is only a two seater and I have myself, a wife and a 2 year old, so it was pretty much a non starter for me. For others...well, guess it all depends on what you're going to be dragging around.
Regarding the Honda Civic Hybrid, which the Toyota Prius is typically compared with, one thing to keep in mind is the pollution rating. The Prius is rated as SULEV, one step worse than ZEV which stands for Zero Emissions. The Honday is a ULEV, which is the next step worse from SULEV. Though the mileage is similar in both vehicles, if you are considering the purchase on environmental concerns, reconsider the Prius.
As a note, the ratings go:
LEV - Low Emission Vehicle ULEV - Ultra Low Emission Vehicle SULEV - Super Ultra Low Emission Vehicle ZEV - Zero Emission Vehicle
Sound goofy, I know, but that's how it breaks down. Oh, and I bought a Prius earlier this year. Love it.
I agree the damage figures in Mitnick's case seem unreasonable.
Regardless of anything else, however, Lamo did not have authorization to access their system. To do so without that authorization is deemed illegal by the laws of the land. He is in violation of that law, or was when he committed the act. Will some good come out of it for NYT? You bet, once any security patches are completed. And when a burglar attempts to break into my house, exposing the weaknesses in my security system, but not actually stealing anything, he will be charged for breaking and entering and I will upgrade my security system. He still broke the law.
The repair costs? As others have pointed out, someone had to audit those systems, and unless their regular work load could be suspended, they are clocking overtime. That is additional money that is being expended that was not planned. So what if it would have been spent had the vulnerability been found internally. It was not a planned expenditure and the current expenses will affect the bottom line negatively.
LexisNexis is theft of service. Assuming he actually did use the service such that the charges involved ring up to $300k (which as another poster mentioned I too would want to verify by seeing the bill), it is charges that NYT is going to have to pay that they ordinarily would not have. Yes, he did really cost them that money.
I would be more likely to forgive the repair costs sans the LexisNexis issue, since technically the money would have been spent sooner or later and will definitely help the company. But no matter how you slice it, he has broken the law. Maybe the law should change, but he currently stands in breach of it.
When I learned to touch type, I was in 8th grade and doing computer work for our high school yearbook. The instructor in charge suggested that instead of using a computer to learn touch typing I should use a device he had. It was a simple keyboard with a little LCD display that would run through typing tutorials.
The thinking was that having a separate device avoids distractions, like wanting to check email or the web or play games. It worked for me. Just thought I would bring it up. I have no idea where you would get something like that now (I haven't checked the font of all knowledge...er, Google).
Well, the problem is that it costs time (and therefore money) to perform the audit in the first place, even if you are in 100% compliance. Even if I wanted to let them go through every one of my computers unsupervised (which I wouldn't), it would cause a disruption in my work flow which would result in lost productivity. Add in the efforts to supervise their audits to make sure my computers don't get hosed in the process and it costs quite a bit to prove my innocence.
Nope, unfortunately avoiding software piracy doesn't really help to avoid the BSA, especially given they can audit you at the request of a disgruntled employee (avoid gruntling your employees!:) ) and you really don't have much say in the matter at that point. From what I understand they actually involve marshalls to come in and require you to allow an audit.
Ugh...anyway, if my facts are wrong, let me know, but that is how I understand things to go.
For Joe User and for admins of relatively small business networks, 3 weeks is ample time to try out a service pack to make sure it doesn't break anything that you rely on and to roll things back if it does. For the admins of larger networks, where there may be an even larger number of applications that have to be compatibility tested, 3 weeks may not be enough. If previous MS supplied patches hadn't fscked up application stability in the past, this might not be an issue, but as they have, it is.
I've been eyeing iPods for awhile now and have been avoiding the purchase simply because of a lack of recording capabilities. Can you direct me to the rumor site (or Apple announcement if its official) regarding being able to record?
PW means Persistent World, where someone runs an NWN server with long uptimes and allowing relatively open access. Typically they also have portals linking to other PWs. The idea is to create a virtual community with some stamina.
If the PW server is upgraded to SoU, though, non-SoU users (i.e. Mac users in particular) will not be able to participate.
Not long ago, I inquired with Borland regarding any ports of their compiler technology to OS X. I was told there are not currently any such plans nor products. As a result, the toolset, since it was coded with C++ Builder, is not easily ported. In addition, C++ Builder was only recently available on Linux (Delphi having been available as Kylix for awhile longer), much later than would be useful for the NWN development cycle. Unfortunately, from what I gather, VCL libraries were used rather than CLX, again because CLX wasn't even available on C++ Builder at the time. As a result, VCL not being available on Linux, the toolset is not going to be made available "natively" on Linux either.
For those who don't know (and I can't imagine who you might be), the NWN:Mac will lack the Toolset. At minimum, this means you can't create new content. However, those who anticipate playing DM for canned content should consider that their only means of previewing the module will consist of running through it solo (presumably in "god" mode so as to be able to get through efficiently) and hoping you catch everything the players might catch.
Also, if you intended to make any modifications to creature stats or dialog, you will have to do that on the fly, in the case of dialog having to (I assume) possess the creatures.
In addition, it is unknown at this time whether the Shadows of Undrentide (SoU) content from the Windows CD will work on the Mac (it is known that it will work on the Linux version). The Mac will have the correct version of the binaries, but it remains to be seen whether MacSoft will request exclusion code to make Mac users ineligible for the Windows SoU material. Why would they do this? Because if MacSoft manages to get the SoU pack out within a few months, they may find the Mac market saturated with Windows SoU packs and so lose the revenue stream.
On top of this, any module so much as saved using a Toolset with SoU available will make the game unplayable to those without SoU, even if no SoU specific resources were added to the module.
This last point is why some folks are concerned about module availability and PW playability for Mac users. However, many PW admins have stated they will stay away from SoU for awhile to get Mac users into the fold, so to speak. And a plethora of good modules already exist and can be downloaded now before too many SoU versions crop up.
In addition, hak packs should work just fine when dropped into the Mac version, again, assuming nothing SoU specific is included or depended upon. In short, the Player client experience should be completely in synch with NWN:Windows users without SoU.
Nah, part of the attraction to things like Dilbert is the powerlessness of those who realize how bad things are to change them. If a "boss" knew there was a problem and it was with the underlings, he would presumably have the power to do something. If neither the boss nor the underlings knew there was a problem (or what it was anyway), then there might be a problem creating a character that readers would relate to.
Just my thoughts...seems there's a reason the current format does so well.
I hate to burst your bubble, but the Aurora Toolset is only available to those using the Windows platform. BioWare opted not to port the toolset to Linux when they discovered that Borland would not have a Linux capable C++ Builder version available in time for their major development push. Likewise for the Mac. In addition, MacSoft explored the possibility of farming out the toolset port to a third party Mac porting house (OmniGroup as I recall), but the time estimate was 1 year of development and thus the plan was scrapped.
The last I heard, BioWare still wasn't planning on porting the toolset even now with a C++ Builder Linux environment available from Borland, likely because it uses the CLX framework and the version BioWare used was likely only using VCL.
I'm sorry, what I meant was that you would pay a filing fee, and that's it. No issue fee, no maintenance fee. Issuance fees would provide a reason for USPTO to issue more patents as would maintenance fees. Yes, with less money, they will have a reduced budget, with fewer reviewers. As a result, fewer patents would be processed and with fewer (total) issued. Presumably, as well, the reviewers wouldn't be under as much pressure to actually issue a patent, so (hopefully) a more thorough research job would result in more fluff weeded out.
Slashdot Mirror
*sigh*
That's like saying if a particular model of car is too complex, perhaps they ought not to be able to visit their friends on the other side of town, even though the car in question will actually heal the environment, makes happy beams and heals the sick, cures cancer, etc.
Linux as an environment can be a useful and good thing. It can be more stable, cheaper to operate, able to perform well on older hardware, and makes available a plethora of excellent software titles. But currently a lot of people shy away from it, either because they perceive it as too complex or because it truly is too complex for them to use.
But Linux is still just an environment, a means to an end, not an end itself. People don't run Windows just to run Windows. They don't just stare at the desktop (not without being fired in short order anyway). They try to perform a task, run software on it. It's the same with Linux. And if they could perform that task better on Linux, either due to direct improvements in the Linux version or because the environment doesn't interfere as much as the Windows environment does, then perhaps it might be a useful and good thing for the environment to be made less complex or made to seem less complex to those would otherwise be interested.
I'm not one who typically "comment-metamods", but a Troll rating? For the parent comment?
Folks, he has a point. If you had some problem, and it dawned on you that it was resolvable and then you fixed it, it is somewhat hypocritical to chastise others for the shortcoming you yourself suffered. The parent comment is simply saying, "Help a brother out" instead of "You idiot! What are you thinking?"
Most companies no longer offer any long term retention strategies, instead opting for compensation that has direct monetary equivalents. Some get a little creative, like memberships at a gym and so forth, but few are willing to extend over and above for their employees.
Likewise, I don't think companies have so much forgotten what value a long term experienced employee has, but rather have taken a decidedly short term view of merits and demerits and found that they can be more profitable (it's all about the shareholders) with the usual concept of employee-as-chattel.
I lament it, but it is also providing me with an opportunity to become self employed.
Of course, self employment is itself an illusion. The client becomes the employer and round and round it goes.
You know, I've seen this argument made by quite a number of people. Yet, though this seems to be used to justify the idea of using Kazaa and friends to download copies of songs, I never see in the news where suddenly musicians are receiving checks and money orders in the mail from random listeners who downloaded their music via P2P and decided to pay the $1 or so per song/album whatever.
Essentially, put up or shut up. You don't like the rules? Fine, shut up and deal. Don't buy the music. But don't listen to it either. Whether you or anyone else likes it or not, it is illegal to simply grab music en masse from the internet that you have not purchased and that was not given to you by the copyright holder (or legal representative).
And frankly, even if you did pay for the music by sending in this, thus far mythical, $1 check to your favorite artist, it still wouldn't constitute appropriate payment as that is not what has been authorized by, again, the copyright holder (again, or legal representative). If you *do* get that authorization, bully for you. You've scored a $1 album. Otherwise, too bad, thanks for playing.
Go ahead, write a novel. It's just information, right? You don't mind if I just download it and then distribute it to the whole world without requiring anyone to actually buy it from you, do you? Or perhaps I could just send you whatever I feel like sending you, regardless of any terms you may have set forth? Oh, it *is* fine for you? Great, but why then, when you disagree with how others have chosen to have their material distributed, are you suddenly right and they are wrong? It's their choice to make, not yours.
They are running OSX. From the VA Tech website concerning the cluster, you can find a PDF slideshow concerning the configuration. Slide 13 indicates they will be running OSX on the nodes.
Here is the link:
VA Tech Cluster
Look for the "Slideshow Presentation" link in the bottom left.
Trollin', trollin', trollin'.
Keep them posters trollin'.
Trollin', trollin', trollin'!
Troll Hide!
Okay, I'll bite. How about Metrowerks? Allows you to cross compile to your choice of targets including OS X and Windows. Granted, their media libraries might not be cross platform, but then again, maybe they are? BioWare was able to use cross platform libraries for a Win/Lin/OSX (say it out loud and it sounds like a cheer) multi platform release.
Project Builder isn't the only option on OS X.
Momentarily, my head was spinning with autoexploding acid drooling aliens going toe toe with Rastafarian space hunters in an old time NBA hoops match starring Moses Malone and basketball stars of yore. A match to be remembered for all time.
Yes, indeed, that would have been quite a memorable game.
That's true, and I considered an Insight, but the Insight is only a two seater and I have myself, a wife and a 2 year old, so it was pretty much a non starter for me. For others...well, guess it all depends on what you're going to be dragging around.
Regarding the Honda Civic Hybrid, which the Toyota Prius is typically compared with, one thing to keep in mind is the pollution rating. The Prius is rated as SULEV, one step worse than ZEV which stands for Zero Emissions. The Honday is a ULEV, which is the next step worse from SULEV. Though the mileage is similar in both vehicles, if you are considering the purchase on environmental concerns, reconsider the Prius.
As a note, the ratings go:
LEV - Low Emission Vehicle
ULEV - Ultra Low Emission Vehicle
SULEV - Super Ultra Low Emission Vehicle
ZEV - Zero Emission Vehicle
Sound goofy, I know, but that's how it breaks down. Oh, and I bought a Prius earlier this year. Love it.
I agree the damage figures in Mitnick's case seem unreasonable.
Regardless of anything else, however, Lamo did not have authorization to access their system. To do so without that authorization is deemed illegal by the laws of the land. He is in violation of that law, or was when he committed the act. Will some good come out of it for NYT? You bet, once any security patches are completed. And when a burglar attempts to break into my house, exposing the weaknesses in my security system, but not actually stealing anything, he will be charged for breaking and entering and I will upgrade my security system. He still broke the law.
The repair costs? As others have pointed out, someone had to audit those systems, and unless their regular work load could be suspended, they are clocking overtime. That is additional money that is being expended that was not planned. So what if it would have been spent had the vulnerability been found internally. It was not a planned expenditure and the current expenses will affect the bottom line negatively.
LexisNexis is theft of service. Assuming he actually did use the service such that the charges involved ring up to $300k (which as another poster mentioned I too would want to verify by seeing the bill), it is charges that NYT is going to have to pay that they ordinarily would not have. Yes, he did really cost them that money.
I would be more likely to forgive the repair costs sans the LexisNexis issue, since technically the money would have been spent sooner or later and will definitely help the company. But no matter how you slice it, he has broken the law. Maybe the law should change, but he currently stands in breach of it.
When I learned to touch type, I was in 8th grade and doing computer work for our high school yearbook. The instructor in charge suggested that instead of using a computer to learn touch typing I should use a device he had. It was a simple keyboard with a little LCD display that would run through typing tutorials.
The thinking was that having a separate device avoids distractions, like wanting to check email or the web or play games. It worked for me. Just thought I would bring it up. I have no idea where you would get something like that now (I haven't checked the font of all knowledge...er, Google).
HTH.
Well, the problem is that it costs time (and therefore money) to perform the audit in the first place, even if you are in 100% compliance. Even if I wanted to let them go through every one of my computers unsupervised (which I wouldn't), it would cause a disruption in my work flow which would result in lost productivity. Add in the efforts to supervise their audits to make sure my computers don't get hosed in the process and it costs quite a bit to prove my innocence.
:) ) and you really don't have much say in the matter at that point. From what I understand they actually involve marshalls to come in and require you to allow an audit.
Nope, unfortunately avoiding software piracy doesn't really help to avoid the BSA, especially given they can audit you at the request of a disgruntled employee (avoid gruntling your employees!
Ugh...anyway, if my facts are wrong, let me know, but that is how I understand things to go.
For Joe User and for admins of relatively small business networks, 3 weeks is ample time to try out a service pack to make sure it doesn't break anything that you rely on and to roll things back if it does. For the admins of larger networks, where there may be an even larger number of applications that have to be compatibility tested, 3 weeks may not be enough. If previous MS supplied patches hadn't fscked up application stability in the past, this might not be an issue, but as they have, it is.
I've been eyeing iPods for awhile now and have been avoiding the purchase simply because of a lack of recording capabilities. Can you direct me to the rumor site (or Apple announcement if its official) regarding being able to record?
Thanks,
Lynn
PW means Persistent World, where someone runs an NWN server with long uptimes and allowing relatively open access. Typically they also have portals linking to other PWs. The idea is to create a virtual community with some stamina.
If the PW server is upgraded to SoU, though, non-SoU users (i.e. Mac users in particular) will not be able to participate.
Not long ago, I inquired with Borland regarding any ports of their compiler technology to OS X. I was told there are not currently any such plans nor products. As a result, the toolset, since it was coded with C++ Builder, is not easily ported. In addition, C++ Builder was only recently available on Linux (Delphi having been available as Kylix for awhile longer), much later than would be useful for the NWN development cycle. Unfortunately, from what I gather, VCL libraries were used rather than CLX, again because CLX wasn't even available on C++ Builder at the time. As a result, VCL not being available on Linux, the toolset is not going to be made available "natively" on Linux either.
For those who don't know (and I can't imagine who you might be), the NWN:Mac will lack the Toolset. At minimum, this means you can't create new content. However, those who anticipate playing DM for canned content should consider that their only means of previewing the module will consist of running through it solo (presumably in "god" mode so as to be able to get through efficiently) and hoping you catch everything the players might catch.
Also, if you intended to make any modifications to creature stats or dialog, you will have to do that on the fly, in the case of dialog having to (I assume) possess the creatures.
In addition, it is unknown at this time whether the Shadows of Undrentide (SoU) content from the Windows CD will work on the Mac (it is known that it will work on the Linux version). The Mac will have the correct version of the binaries, but it remains to be seen whether MacSoft will request exclusion code to make Mac users ineligible for the Windows SoU material. Why would they do this? Because if MacSoft manages to get the SoU pack out within a few months, they may find the Mac market saturated with Windows SoU packs and so lose the revenue stream.
On top of this, any module so much as saved using a Toolset with SoU available will make the game unplayable to those without SoU, even if no SoU specific resources were added to the module.
This last point is why some folks are concerned about module availability and PW playability for Mac users. However, many PW admins have stated they will stay away from SoU for awhile to get Mac users into the fold, so to speak. And a plethora of good modules already exist and can be downloaded now before too many SoU versions crop up.
In addition, hak packs should work just fine when dropped into the Mac version, again, assuming nothing SoU specific is included or depended upon. In short, the Player client experience should be completely in synch with NWN:Windows users without SoU.
Cheers...
Nah, part of the attraction to things like Dilbert is the powerlessness of those who realize how bad things are to change them. If a "boss" knew there was a problem and it was with the underlings, he would presumably have the power to do something. If neither the boss nor the underlings knew there was a problem (or what it was anyway), then there might be a problem creating a character that readers would relate to.
Just my thoughts...seems there's a reason the current format does so well.
I hate to burst your bubble, but the Aurora Toolset is only available to those using the Windows platform. BioWare opted not to port the toolset to Linux when they discovered that Borland would not have a Linux capable C++ Builder version available in time for their major development push. Likewise for the Mac. In addition, MacSoft explored the possibility of farming out the toolset port to a third party Mac porting house (OmniGroup as I recall), but the time estimate was 1 year of development and thus the plan was scrapped.
The last I heard, BioWare still wasn't planning on porting the toolset even now with a C++ Builder Linux environment available from Borland, likely because it uses the CLX framework and the version BioWare used was likely only using VCL.
FYI, BioWare did the Mac port themselves. MacSoft is only the publisher for the Mac version.
Hrm, well, I don't feel too productive trying to type up this memo using Keynote. Maybe I'm doing something wrong?
My take on it was more like:
"we *do* know about this problem...fixing it required a massive rewrite..."which is why we didn't do it
My thoughts anyway...hopefully, I'll be proven wrong.
I'm sorry, what I meant was that you would pay a filing fee, and that's it. No issue fee, no maintenance fee. Issuance fees would provide a reason for USPTO to issue more patents as would maintenance fees. Yes, with less money, they will have a reduced budget, with fewer reviewers. As a result, fewer patents would be processed and with fewer (total) issued. Presumably, as well, the reviewers wouldn't be under as much pressure to actually issue a patent, so (hopefully) a more thorough research job would result in more fluff weeded out.