Your X server is what controls your video card and mouse. That's all it does; X does not have menus, windows, or any of that stuff, because of the way it was designed. It's also a network protocol, which enables you to run remote applications and have them display on your local terminal. My ISP got pissed at me when I tried this from their BSDI box...
The windows and such are controlled by your window manager. Window managers are what give you your basic menus, your titlebars, window borders, etc. Enlightenment is a window manager, as are fvwm, twm, olvwm, afterstep, windowmaker, and dozens of others.
GNOME, KDE, CDE, and UDE are desktop environments (although I've not used UDE). They're basicly application suites. GNOME programs, for example, use the GNOME libraries, and are all similar as far as interface goes. They try to be consistant. KDE and CDE come with their own window managers (KWM for KDE and mwm for CDE), but GNOME does not; that's why you'll often see it paired with enlightenment or sawfish (or many others). I don't know about UDE, I've not tried it.
All these work together to give you your GUI experience. You can use a different X server, for example, and not have to change any settings for your window manager or desktop environment.
The best way to learn this is to try different window managers and see what they have to offer.
Er, I think the major complaint he has is about everything being integrated, the sound going out, and getting a weird error on boot.
I've never had linux give me a weird error on boot that wasn't either somewhat self-explanatory or easy to look up and fix. Methinks it's probably a POST error, although I could be wrong.
Either way, the other two have nothing to do with the drivers. I could write excellent drivers for trident cards, but would that make them not suck?
Er, this is not intended to be flamebait or anything, but if you hate compiling, why do you use slackware?
Don't get me wrong, I love slackware to death (I'm using it right now), but I also love compiling my own stuff (only thing on this system besides the base install + networking I compiled myself, including GNOME). Slackware's for the more do-it-yerselfer or I-want-something-like-BSD-but-I-dont-want-BSD type of user. If you like binary packages, but like a more slackwarish feel, you'd probably be happier with debian (or maybe stormix - never tried it myself).
Happily, we can in Win98 create a "Quicklaunch" bar, with icons for what we need. This has been obviously copied from Gnome and KDE.
Actually, CDE has a nice mixture of the two. If you don't have a commercial UNIX handy, there's a lookalike window manager out there (can't remember the name offhand) written in gtk+. You have 8 (I think) icons on your panel that can be launchers, and each has a submenu above it. That way, your most used editor goes over the "editors" menu, etc.
FVWM has, as someone else pointed out, the goodstuff launcher which has been out since '92. It's basicly a little window (no decorations or titlebar) that you can put launcher buttons in, and have icons and labels on them.
I would tend to think that microsoft either came up with this idea on its own (it's not that hard to think up) or got it from an older environment, since linux wasn't very well known when IE4 (IE actually puts the launcher there) came out.
There's nothing wrong with expecting a new distro to come out with up to date software. There is a problem expecting this of _all_ the distros. Debian works differently. They want to make sure something is _really_ stable before they actually call it that. For a home system, this probably isn't what you want - you want all the new goodies, right? - but for a server or other such system dedicated to a certain purpose, use redhat or mandrake. You might check out storm linux - they're based on debian... dunno if they're based on the unstable or not though. Redhat and mandrake can keep you up to date. Debian will almost guarantee you'll not have any problems with flaky software (other than a few packages that are marked as such). Personally, I use Slackware. Slackware keeps folks like me happy compiling all day without worrying about breaking package management (we _are_ the package management). Hell, I'd still be usin' 3.3 if it wasn't for the glibc switch... spauldo
The partition scheme on intel is really old, and wasn't designed with this in mind.
Granted, there's ways to do it, but no simple ways (from the computer's point of view... fips is easy to use). Resizing partitions is basicly a hack.
I've used the partition scheme on intel (haven't we all?) and also the one on sparc. Neither seem to have a way of resizing partitions and leaving the filesystem intact (slices, on sparc).
In linux, try this: create a 50mb partition. Create a filesystem on it. Copy some worthless files to it. Then go into fdisk and delete the partition, and create a 100mb partition starting in the same place. Then mount it. You can still access your files, but note that it only thinks there's 50mb on that partition. Now run fsck and watch the sparks fly... (don't reboot during this process BTW... fsck will force most distros into single user mode).
Making a partition bigger is a difficulty for the filesystem. Making a partition start somewhere else is difficult because of where the data is stored physicly on the disk (the data itself would have to be moved). That's why we rely on special programs designed for this purpose; there's no reason for linux to directly support this. It doesn't happen often enough to rethink the entire way we do disk storage.
Anyway, as the other posters in this thread have mentioned, there's free alternatives to partition magic. I've used fips, and it's never done me wrong, despite all the warnings they give you. Try for yourself; but do make sure you have backups.
Back when I worked tech support, I didn't know _anything_ about networking or security or anything. Hell, I had only used windoze 3.1 for a day when I was hired (although I was pretty swift with a C64 in my pre-teens). All our systems were set up with windoze 95 (which had just came out) and had all kinds of policies and whatnot installed to keep us from doing our jobs (that's not what the IT department said, but that's the reality - they were real bastards in there... hell, the air force is more lenient on users than them).
It didn't take long to figure out how to circumvent this. I borrowed a book on the windoze registry and wrote an.ini file to give me back all my priveledges, and eventually figured out how to get around all their network security to get the cool software the gw2k folks had.
Essentially, windoze 95 security is one of those "they have to figure it out" things. Security through obscurity at its worst.
We had some compaq reps out here on the island a couple months ago. I wasn't that fond of compaq myself, since a lot of folks on the base have them and I always have to fix the damn things, but the compaq servers some places on the base use don't seem to get any complaints.
According to the compaq reps, the server line and desktop line are seperate, and while the desktop line is extremely proprietary (business PC's are bad, home PC's are unusable to serious computing folk) their server line tries to adhere to standards as much as possible. The reckoning behind this is that supporting NT on intel, OpenVMS and Tru64 UNIX on alpha and VAX (do they still make VAXen?), industry standard hardware lowers development cost.
Now, I've not run one myself, but I've looked around at their products and the guys on base that run them don't complain, so I'd say this point is pretty much moot as far as their server line goes.
Perhaps someone else has more experience with compaq servers who would like to comment?
I got a sparcstation 10 on my desk at work. Being an NT shop (and I'm the only UNIX guy) I have to use NT all day on a P200, which isn't all that much faster (thanx to NT) than the sparc.
I've never used any alpha other than a multia, but that was enough to make me want a real alpha. After getting used to my sparc 10, alphas kinda seem to me like a middle ground between intel and sparc. Good starting point for those who've never used anything but intel systems... just not having a standard BIOS was a bit of a shock the first time (a few years ago).
I want to get another alpha eventually, but right now I'm saving up for a used Ultra II. Something in the 300-400mHz range. And then triple-boot linux, solaris, and BSD...
in fact, I'd go so far as to say perpetuating GNOME is pretty much down to American NIH syndrom
I wouldn't say that. The interface for GNOME is quite a bit different than that for KDE. It's nothing real big, really, but I found it much easier to move from raw fvwm to GNOME.
A lot of us use GNOME because we just like it better.
For instance, we use C-130 Hercules planes for just about anything besides milk delivery. Why? 'Cause the design of the planes is just as effective now as it was then. True, we won't use one for fast-cargo delivery (they're rather slow, being propeller driven, and they're small compared to other C-class planes) but they're easily adaptable into just about anything you want to do with them.
I dunno much about the b52's (never worked on a base that used 'em) but I'd imagine it's something similar. The B52 can hold more bombs than any other plane we've got (I've seen one once - it's freakin' HUGE) and they're relatively fast (not faster than a b1, I'd imagine, and surely not a b2, but still fast enough to get out of the way).
Why use UNIX when it's 30 years old? 'Cause it works. Our mechanics know how to fix 'em, our pilots know how to fly 'em, and just as important, our commanders know what to do with 'em.
Shouldn't be. MILNET allows access to me at home (I'm.jp). You just won't be able to access some parts of the webservers that are deemed ".mil only". We've got too many people overseas to limit non-US addresses.
...or am I the ONLY PERSON here that sees a problem with terms like "Space Superiority"?
Space superiority is just like air superiority, which the USAF has been striving for for years (and pretty much achieved, now that the USSR has been dissolved).
It's a simple concept. Air superiority means that our planes can keep the enemy planes out of the air. More or less, it's a way of saying "Our planes can kick your planes' asses".
Space superiority is the same thing. All it boils down to is being able to secure a region of space when needed. It don't mean we own it, we just control it for the duration of the contingency.
As far as "Stragetic Attack" being an outdated concept, it's been relavent for centuries, and is becoming more so. I'd be more afraid if it wasn't relavent - meaning that instead of stragetic attacks, we just use plain brute force (read: nuclear or biological weapons). That would be bad. The way it is now, we can attack military targets with a minimum of damage to civilian persons or property (yeah, it don't always happen that way, but's it's better than nuking everyone that the government gets pissed at).
As far as the human race starting to degenerate, hell, it's far better than it was in the past. We don't surround a city, wait for everyone to starve and surrender, than enslave the people whose heads don't end up on poles outside the city gates. Try living through an Assyrian attack sometime.
And am I the only person to notice that the section covering "Information Warfare" (a stupid concept anyway) is classified?
Of course it's classified. War isn't open source - the enemy won't just call you up and say, "hey, your right flank is weak, need to put some more C4 troops in there". It's all about surprise, and making the other side wonder about your capabilities. If the enemy knows what you're capable of, and what you're not, they've already won half the war. Information warfare is more than just hacking into other people's systems, it's using information to give you knowledge and advantage in battle that is crucial to keeping the service members alive. It's not a new concept, just a new buzzword.
Governments are like children, all fighting about stupid things that most individuals would consider silly. Corporations are the same way. Governments will always fight each other. Get used to it.
Uh, if memory serves, the 10Base2 is 185 meters with up to 30 NICs per segment, with a maximum of 5 segments connected with repeaters, but 2 of the segments can have no devices.
Ah, didn't know about the segmenting details there. I just knew it was under 200m. I've never had to deal with more than 10 or so nodes on a segment, or more than about 15m with thin ethernet (all this was home lan cabling). All my professional experience has been with 10/100baseT.
Of course, in the case of the user here, he's only wantin' to hook stuff up to his stereo, so the number or nodes shouldn't be a problem.
It's an IEEE standard. So's ethernet, come to think of it...
As far as relevance goes, it's techie=stuff, and could impact people who use fireware (mac users, linux-ppc users, etc.). Plus it has to do with networking, and proposes to be a replacement for ethernet. Gee, I work with ethernet all day, it's my job...
This is WAY more relevant to slashdot than something like, say, the movie review earlier today or some of the other things that have been posted.
Dunno about SCSI. Fibre I believe has up to a kilometer or two maximum distance, surely more than you'll need.
As far as ethernet, depends what kind. 10/100baseT goes about 87m, 10base2 goes up to a bit less than 200 meters, and 10base5 goes up to a bit less than 500 meters. Of course, I've never seen a working 10base5 installation, just remnants of cable left over from olden days gone by.
Dunno nothin' about TOSlink though. If it's fibre, it should be able to go quite a ways, I'd imagine.
Well, I can't say as for all they do, but I can verify that they do indeed handle commincations security (crypto, etc.) for the DOD. They're the people responsible for keeping our comminications secure.
Can't say I've ever dealt with them myself, but my career field in the military does - all of our crypto keys come from the NSA (handed down through a couple mid-level organizations). This is a HUGE job... there's WAY more encrypted systems than people realize, and they have to supply all of it to the military. So I'd guess that crypto systems is the major part of what they do.
'course, I'm just an E-2, and I learned all this from my training manuals and OJT, so there could be facets of the organization that I'm missing. But I would say that crypto is most likely their forte'.
Basicly, they've already done this very thing to OpenBSD - Sidewinder firewall. Lotsa military bases use it. It's based on OpenBSD.
I've used OpenBSD, and I have found linux much easier to use. While for a company, you would just hire some guy who already knows the system, here you have to train them on it (or contract a civilian, who can't be deployed during contengency). So you have to use systems you can train people on easily, because (in the air force at least) an airman is only on station for between one to three years, and may change jobs two or three times during that period. I'd rather train them linux than OpenBSD, just 'cause non-geek airmen will probably understand it better.
Many US military sites are going to be down (including ours). They're not down because of any technical problems (of course not, you think the US military would admit that they're scared that their solid Micro$oft investment isn't Y2K compliant?), but because of terrorism. People try to crack US military sites all the time. I recently helped one of our guys assess possible damage and/or insecurities after some lame kid tried to access a perl script on the server (the server didn't even run perl). We expect that people will try even harder to crack the sites around Y2K, so we shut down access. As far as technical stuff goes, we're not too worried. Just tryin' to keep the script kiddies away, that's all. I'm sure there's lots of other organizations doing the same thing.
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Your X server is what controls your video card and mouse. That's all it does; X does not have menus, windows, or any of that stuff, because of the way it was designed. It's also a network protocol, which enables you to run remote applications and have them display on your local terminal. My ISP got pissed at me when I tried this from their BSDI box...
The windows and such are controlled by your window manager. Window managers are what give you your basic menus, your titlebars, window borders, etc. Enlightenment is a window manager, as are fvwm, twm, olvwm, afterstep, windowmaker, and dozens of others.
GNOME, KDE, CDE, and UDE are desktop environments (although I've not used UDE). They're basicly application suites. GNOME programs, for example, use the GNOME libraries, and are all similar as far as interface goes. They try to be consistant. KDE and CDE come with their own window managers (KWM for KDE and mwm for CDE), but GNOME does not; that's why you'll often see it paired with enlightenment or sawfish (or many others). I don't know about UDE, I've not tried it.
All these work together to give you your GUI experience. You can use a different X server, for example, and not have to change any settings for your window manager or desktop environment.
The best way to learn this is to try different window managers and see what they have to offer.
Er, I think the major complaint he has is about everything being integrated, the sound going out, and getting a weird error on boot.
I've never had linux give me a weird error on boot that wasn't either somewhat self-explanatory or easy to look up and fix. Methinks it's probably a POST error, although I could be wrong.
Either way, the other two have nothing to do with the drivers. I could write excellent drivers for trident cards, but would that make them not suck?
Since when has that been a bad thing? :)
Just joking, folks...
Er, isn't that what ALT is for? I thought it was the intel version of META...
Er, this is not intended to be flamebait or anything, but if you hate compiling, why do you use slackware?
Don't get me wrong, I love slackware to death (I'm using it right now), but I also love compiling my own stuff (only thing on this system besides the base install + networking I compiled myself, including GNOME). Slackware's for the more do-it-yerselfer or I-want-something-like-BSD-but-I-dont-want-BSD type of user. If you like binary packages, but like a more slackwarish feel, you'd probably be happier with debian (or maybe stormix - never tried it myself).
spauldo
Actually, CDE has a nice mixture of the two. If you don't have a commercial UNIX handy, there's a lookalike window manager out there (can't remember the name offhand) written in gtk+. You have 8 (I think) icons on your panel that can be launchers, and each has a submenu above it. That way, your most used editor goes over the "editors" menu, etc.
FVWM has, as someone else pointed out, the goodstuff launcher which has been out since '92. It's basicly a little window (no decorations or titlebar) that you can put launcher buttons in, and have icons and labels on them.
I would tend to think that microsoft either came up with this idea on its own (it's not that hard to think up) or got it from an older environment, since linux wasn't very well known when IE4 (IE actually puts the launcher there) came out.
spauldo
There's nothing wrong with expecting a new distro to come out with up to date software. There is a problem expecting this of _all_ the distros. Debian works differently. They want to make sure something is _really_ stable before they actually call it that. For a home system, this probably isn't what you want - you want all the new goodies, right? - but for a server or other such system dedicated to a certain purpose, use redhat or mandrake. You might check out storm linux - they're based on debian... dunno if they're based on the unstable or not though. Redhat and mandrake can keep you up to date. Debian will almost guarantee you'll not have any problems with flaky software (other than a few packages that are marked as such). Personally, I use Slackware. Slackware keeps folks like me happy compiling all day without worrying about breaking package management (we _are_ the package management). Hell, I'd still be usin' 3.3 if it wasn't for the glibc switch... spauldo
Become a sysadmin or programmer for the military. You get 30 days a year.
The partition scheme on intel is really old, and wasn't designed with this in mind.
Granted, there's ways to do it, but no simple ways (from the computer's point of view... fips is easy to use). Resizing partitions is basicly a hack.
I've used the partition scheme on intel (haven't we all?) and also the one on sparc. Neither seem to have a way of resizing partitions and leaving the filesystem intact (slices, on sparc).
In linux, try this: create a 50mb partition. Create a filesystem on it. Copy some worthless files to it. Then go into fdisk and delete the partition, and create a 100mb partition starting in the same place. Then mount it. You can still access your files, but note that it only thinks there's 50mb on that partition. Now run fsck and watch the sparks fly... (don't reboot during this process BTW... fsck will force most distros into single user mode).
Making a partition bigger is a difficulty for the filesystem. Making a partition start somewhere else is difficult because of where the data is stored physicly on the disk (the data itself would have to be moved). That's why we rely on special programs designed for this purpose; there's no reason for linux to directly support this. It doesn't happen often enough to rethink the entire way we do disk storage.
Anyway, as the other posters in this thread have mentioned, there's free alternatives to partition magic. I've used fips, and it's never done me wrong, despite all the warnings they give you. Try for yourself; but do make sure you have backups.
spauldo
Heh... no kidding.
.ini file to give me back all my priveledges, and eventually figured out how to get around all their network security to get the cool software the gw2k folks had.
Back when I worked tech support, I didn't know _anything_ about networking or security or anything. Hell, I had only used windoze 3.1 for a day when I was hired (although I was pretty swift with a C64 in my pre-teens). All our systems were set up with windoze 95 (which had just came out) and had all kinds of policies and whatnot installed to keep us from doing our jobs (that's not what the IT department said, but that's the reality - they were real bastards in there... hell, the air force is more lenient on users than them).
It didn't take long to figure out how to circumvent this. I borrowed a book on the windoze registry and wrote an
Essentially, windoze 95 security is one of those "they have to figure it out" things. Security through obscurity at its worst.
Dunno from personal experience, but a lot of people say CODA rocks their world. You've probably seen it when compiling the kernel.
We had some compaq reps out here on the island a couple months ago. I wasn't that fond of compaq myself, since a lot of folks on the base have them and I always have to fix the damn things, but the compaq servers some places on the base use don't seem to get any complaints.
According to the compaq reps, the server line and desktop line are seperate, and while the desktop line is extremely proprietary (business PC's are bad, home PC's are unusable to serious computing folk) their server line tries to adhere to standards as much as possible. The reckoning behind this is that supporting NT on intel, OpenVMS and Tru64 UNIX on alpha and VAX (do they still make VAXen?), industry standard hardware lowers development cost.
Now, I've not run one myself, but I've looked around at their products and the guys on base that run them don't complain, so I'd say this point is pretty much moot as far as their server line goes.
Perhaps someone else has more experience with compaq servers who would like to comment?
I got a sparcstation 10 on my desk at work. Being an NT shop (and I'm the only UNIX guy) I have to use NT all day on a P200, which isn't all that much faster (thanx to NT) than the sparc.
I've never used any alpha other than a multia, but that was enough to make me want a real alpha. After getting used to my sparc 10, alphas kinda seem to me like a middle ground between intel and sparc. Good starting point for those who've never used anything but intel systems... just not having a standard BIOS was a bit of a shock the first time (a few years ago).
I want to get another alpha eventually, but right now I'm saving up for a used Ultra II. Something in the 300-400mHz range. And then triple-boot linux, solaris, and BSD...
I wouldn't say that. The interface for GNOME is quite a bit different than that for KDE. It's nothing real big, really, but I found it much easier to move from raw fvwm to GNOME.
A lot of us use GNOME because we just like it better.
The BSD section is red. Other sections have various other colors. Most just use the default green-and-white scheme though.
They work, and they work well. Why replace them?
For instance, we use C-130 Hercules planes for just about anything besides milk delivery. Why? 'Cause the design of the planes is just as effective now as it was then. True, we won't use one for fast-cargo delivery (they're rather slow, being propeller driven, and they're small compared to other C-class planes) but they're easily adaptable into just about anything you want to do with them.
I dunno much about the b52's (never worked on a base that used 'em) but I'd imagine it's something similar. The B52 can hold more bombs than any other plane we've got (I've seen one once - it's freakin' HUGE) and they're relatively fast (not faster than a b1, I'd imagine, and surely not a b2, but still fast enough to get out of the way).
Why use UNIX when it's 30 years old? 'Cause it works. Our mechanics know how to fix 'em, our pilots know how to fly 'em, and just as important, our commanders know what to do with 'em.
Shouldn't be. MILNET allows access to me at home (I'm .jp). You just won't be able to access some parts of the webservers that are deemed ".mil only". We've got too many people overseas to limit non-US addresses.
Space superiority is just like air superiority, which the USAF has been striving for for years (and pretty much achieved, now that the USSR has been dissolved).
It's a simple concept. Air superiority means that our planes can keep the enemy planes out of the air. More or less, it's a way of saying "Our planes can kick your planes' asses".
Space superiority is the same thing. All it boils down to is being able to secure a region of space when needed. It don't mean we own it, we just control it for the duration of the contingency.
As far as "Stragetic Attack" being an outdated concept, it's been relavent for centuries, and is becoming more so. I'd be more afraid if it wasn't relavent - meaning that instead of stragetic attacks, we just use plain brute force (read: nuclear or biological weapons). That would be bad. The way it is now, we can attack military targets with a minimum of damage to civilian persons or property (yeah, it don't always happen that way, but's it's better than nuking everyone that the government gets pissed at).
As far as the human race starting to degenerate, hell, it's far better than it was in the past. We don't surround a city, wait for everyone to starve and surrender, than enslave the people whose heads don't end up on poles outside the city gates. Try living through an Assyrian attack sometime.
And am I the only person to notice that the section covering "Information Warfare" (a stupid concept anyway) is classified?
Of course it's classified. War isn't open source - the enemy won't just call you up and say, "hey, your right flank is weak, need to put some more C4 troops in there". It's all about surprise, and making the other side wonder about your capabilities. If the enemy knows what you're capable of, and what you're not, they've already won half the war. Information warfare is more than just hacking into other people's systems, it's using information to give you knowledge and advantage in battle that is crucial to keeping the service members alive. It's not a new concept, just a new buzzword.
Governments are like children, all fighting about stupid things that most individuals would consider silly. Corporations are the same way. Governments will always fight each other. Get used to it.
Ah, didn't know about the segmenting details there. I just knew it was under 200m. I've never had to deal with more than 10 or so nodes on a segment, or more than about 15m with thin ethernet (all this was home lan cabling). All my professional experience has been with 10/100baseT.
Of course, in the case of the user here, he's only wantin' to hook stuff up to his stereo, so the number or nodes shouldn't be a problem.
It's an IEEE standard. So's ethernet, come to think of it...
As far as relevance goes, it's techie=stuff, and could impact people who use fireware (mac users, linux-ppc users, etc.). Plus it has to do with networking, and proposes to be a replacement for ethernet. Gee, I work with ethernet all day, it's my job...
This is WAY more relevant to slashdot than something like, say, the movie review earlier today or some of the other things that have been posted.
Dunno about SCSI. Fibre I believe has up to a kilometer or two maximum distance, surely more than you'll need.
As far as ethernet, depends what kind. 10/100baseT goes about 87m, 10base2 goes up to a bit less than 200 meters, and 10base5 goes up to a bit less than 500 meters. Of course, I've never seen a working 10base5 installation, just remnants of cable left over from olden days gone by.
Dunno nothin' about TOSlink though. If it's fibre, it should be able to go quite a ways, I'd imagine.
Unless you have a taste lookin' up someone's butt... yuck
Well, I can't say as for all they do, but I can verify that they do indeed handle commincations security (crypto, etc.) for the DOD. They're the people responsible for keeping our comminications secure.
Can't say I've ever dealt with them myself, but my career field in the military does - all of our crypto keys come from the NSA (handed down through a couple mid-level organizations). This is a HUGE job... there's WAY more encrypted systems than people realize, and they have to supply all of it to the military. So I'd guess that crypto systems is the major part of what they do.
'course, I'm just an E-2, and I learned all this from my training manuals and OJT, so there could be facets of the organization that I'm missing. But I would say that crypto is most likely their forte'.
Basicly, they've already done this very thing to OpenBSD - Sidewinder firewall. Lotsa military bases use it. It's based on OpenBSD.
I've used OpenBSD, and I have found linux much easier to use. While for a company, you would just hire some guy who already knows the system, here you have to train them on it (or contract a civilian, who can't be deployed during contengency). So you have to use systems you can train people on easily, because (in the air force at least) an airman is only on station for between one to three years, and may change jobs two or three times during that period. I'd rather train them linux than OpenBSD, just 'cause non-geek airmen will probably understand it better.
Many US military sites are going to be down (including ours). They're not down because of any technical problems (of course not, you think the US military would admit that they're scared that their solid Micro$oft investment isn't Y2K compliant?), but because of terrorism. People try to crack US military sites all the time. I recently helped one of our guys assess possible damage and/or insecurities after some lame kid tried to access a perl script on the server (the server didn't even run perl). We expect that people will try even harder to crack the sites around Y2K, so we shut down access. As far as technical stuff goes, we're not too worried. Just tryin' to keep the script kiddies away, that's all. I'm sure there's lots of other organizations doing the same thing.