The mysteries behind OPN/freenode donations
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#debian & IRC Politics
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· Score: 5, Insightful
What really bothers me is WHY they're taking donations for this, and for this much ($25k in 6 months!)... To explain, here's a breakdown of the major costs of IRC networks:
1) Colocation and bandwidth
.. Well, that's it really. So how does this affect OPN (I don't think 'freenode' is a fitting name for an irc network that solicits donations)? It doesn't. OPN's servers are donated. When you sponsor a server for OPN, you let them run the ircd on your server and use the bandwidth required. You do NOT get an O:line with that. (For those that don't know, the O:line is Oper privileges; it's how you administer an irc server. OPN is the only network I've ever heard of that doesn't let you have an O: on your own machine.)
OPN is a relatively small network, with only 7000 or so clients connected at once. The Major IRC networks, such as quakenet, ircnet, undernet, efnet, etc, do NOT solicit or accept donations, and they have 80,000-100,000+ clients at once.
IRC is also a very low-traffic service. A two-server network on t1+ lines could EASILY handle the entire load of opn users.
So, why does OPN/freenet need the donations? I don't know. The numbers just don't add up to me. The servers are all donated, so they pay no network/bandwidth costs. And 7000 users isn't that much to admin over. (Talking to a quakenet admin earlier today, he mentioned somewhere around 90k users on in over 9000 channels), And it's certainly not something that should warrant full-time effort.
There are plenty of alternatives to OPN out there; there's the new oftc, and there's quite a few smaller ones, like irc.gimp.org, etc. Almost all IRC networks offer free nick/channel registration (certainly all that I can think of), so there's not really that much that OPN does that other networks can't do for your opensource project.
And I can't think of a SINGLE irc network out there that solicits or accepts donations, besides the one with 'free' in it's new name. Most IRC networks are adminned by volunteers who keep the servers up because they like IRC and are dedicated to helping the network.
You could argue that having a lot of projects having channels on the same network is helpful, but that seems really moot to me. I can't think of a single modern irc client that doesn't offer multi-server support, and for most clients it's well-documented and trivial to set up.
I don't like to pass judgement, but It really seems to me like all the flames about lilo only doing this to get out of having to have a real job at least have some SOME truth to them. I just can't think of any other explanation as to why they'd need that much money.
Except for those of us that bought the game on release day in good faith, and we believed them when they said that the client would be released very soon. There's quite a few of those, and really, as far as their marketing division is concerned, we're already windows sales.
Really, they're fucking it up the same way all other linux games have been fucked up- Release the linux client MONTHS after everyone's already bought the windows version, get minimal sales afterwards, the higherups say "You sure wasted us an ass-load of money. the linux version didn't make us any sales."
Oh well. Let's hope that some day a game company will get it. I thought bioware had; they'd promised a linux version in the box. I bought the game to support that. Now, here I am, two months later, feeling like i've been ripped off, with no even estimated completion date for the linux client.
Why not try Anyway? Make this deal to the public- You get us the $2m, we acquire BeOS source Code and give it to OpenBeOS. If we don't hit the $2m mark, We give the money directly to the OpenBeOS developers; Either way, it goes to fund an open source beos.
I for one would gladly shell out some money for that.
These people aren't coders with the instinct to check and read doc, and most doc isn't well written. Also, most newbies aren't the greatest computer people in general.
Well, actually, that's not my complaint; Especially in the case of fluxbox, where the documentation is extremely well-written and well organized, plus mentioned every time they join the irc channel in the topic, There's no need for them to be offended when someone tells them to check out the documentation.
And how about we all try a new accronym, PCTM (Please Check The Manual). Its more polite.
And actually, when someone asks a question for which the answer is well-documented, rather than saying 'rtfm', I actually point them to the url of the document in question, and tell them where to scroll in the page. It's when they get upset at THAT point, that it bothers me... Since I've already answered their question in great detail and I'm just telling them where to look, rather than giving them a half-assed answer, that should be taken well.
I have no problem with giving people help on IRC-- It's giving people help who refuse to read the documentation that gets on my nerves.
The greatest point he makes is that, although there are plenty of gurus willing to help newbies with simple questions, there are even more elitests that will either flame your question or give you a "RTFM!"
Actually, when I read this part, I was disgusted- He acts like there's something horribly wrong with actually reading the documentation.. As the documentation manager for the Fluxbox window manager, I can definitely tell you that It's frustrating as hell when someone hops on IRC and asks a question that's answered three times in the documentation, one of which is one of the first three questions in the FAQ, none of which the person in question has bothered to try reading, although the documentation and the faq are pointed to in the irc channel's topic.
What newbies don't realize is that the reason people say RTFM is that The Fucking Manual exists for the sole purpose of being Read. It's there TO HELP YOU. It's NOT there so people can shrug you off; It's there so that you can get a good, solid answer to your question rather than a question another user half-remembers and may even be wrong, but they still answer because they're trying to help. RTFM doesn't mean "Go away, I don't want to answer your question, loser.", it means "There's documentation out there that can answer the question better than I can.".. People put a lot of time into making good, helpful documentation (I know this first-hand), for the benefit of other people, and when those people completely bypass that, it's frustrating.
But maybe I just don't understand it... When I was learning linux 5 or so years ago, I didn't hop on irc channels to ask when I got stuck.. I taught myself most of it with man and apropos, falling back to other forms of documentation. I installed every package my distribution offered so it would all be there when I ran apropos. I also bought a few books.
But nonetheless, nothing will make the people who write the documentation more frustrated with what they do than people ignoring it, or getting upset when they're told the answer is in the FAQ and has an entire page devoted to it. There's a lot of great documentation out there, And the reason it's great is because people put hard work into it so that others can read it.
When was the last time you changed a setting and your distro changed it back.
Never saw that behavior with Red Hat. Is there a case of this happening with other distros, or are you making things up?
Suse used to do this, and a lot. You'd edit/etc/resolv.conf, and then the next time yast ran, it would change the file back, then tell you you were a naughty child who needed a spanking for editing things he shouldn't, and that next time you should have Mommy YAST do it.
My solution to the problem: I married a geek chick.;) Of course, this still leads to other problems- Whose computer gets the next upgrade we can afford, How to fit all of our stuff into the apartment, And what to do with the boxes of odd hardware I just can't come to throw away, but she wants out, etc.
The bottom line is, in any relationship, you have to work things out. What makes it possible to survive is the ability of both parties to compromise. I mean, come on. a link in the bathroom? Do you REALLY need to check slashdot while on the can?
Do yourself a big favor: Don't step on her toes. Think about what you really NEED. If there's something that you're not doing for any practical value-- where it's only value is the l33tness factor, then chances are, she won't like it, and it'll probably make her uncomfortable. In my bedroom, There's only two computers visible without going into the closet-- My main machine and her main machine. The others, a spare server which runs things like nameservice and squid, and a gateway, stay safely tucked away in the closet.
If that doesn't work, You can try things like a dedicated computer room, or put a computer in a room with something she enjoys doing-- Spend your time on your machines with her AND don't forget to take time off from your machines to spend time alone with her. Even a geek woman needs that. If you can't provide it, you'll botch the relationship.
f you can't handle turning off every single computer in the house, even only for a day, and spending time with her, Forget it. Let her find someone who can now, before you make it harder for her in the end.
There's no reason CVS can't be improved, or alternative efforts such as subversion put on the fast track. By choosing bitkeeper over these alternatives, Linux kernel development is missing an important opportunity to focus talent into these free tools. Some would argue that this is socially irresponsible, and I agree.
This comes up a lot on the kernel mailing list, and it boils down to this- If anyone else were to create a viable alternative to bitkeeper, They'll try it. But that's not quite as easy as it sounds.. Here's a quote from a larger posting by Larry McVoy, bitkeeper's author:
To underscore Rik's point: it took 4 years of at least 6 day/week efforts
by a team that varied in size from 3-8 engineers to get BitKeeper where
it is today. Pavel is welcome to try and do better, but he sure as
hell isn't going to do it in his spare time. Nobody is, it's a much
harder problem than it looks like. I really wish people would try it
and find out. Maybe I'm wrong, in which case we can all get on to doing
something more fun.
And RMS isn't discluded- If he really cares so much about a proprietary tool being USED to enhance the development of a Free project, then he's very welcome to organize development of a suitable replacement.
This does bring up a bad side effect, though: If microsoft modularizes windows, what's to keep them from charging $20 a pop for each of the additional modules?
I need gaming and multimedia support, so I need to go pick up a couple of $19.99 modules?
That is, unless my OEM ordered the FULL OEM which holds all 20 modules for only $30.
Microsoft is going to try to milk their punishment to their advantage, in any case.
Eh, even if you forgot it's tax day, you can at least file for an extension which will buy you some more time. So all is not lost.
And a lot of people don't know that the april 15th deadline is only important if YOU'RE paying THEM. If you're getting a nice sum back on your return, It works even up to a year late, and if you don't file, oh well, they keep your money.
That 1/1000 is a good enough target for these Apart frobusinesses
That may sound strange to you, But I've worked directly with email marketing people before- 1/1000 is a LOT more efficient than telephone or regular mail marketing... Junk mail actually yields about a 1/10000, according to one of the ones I talked to.
Apart from that? I prefer Spam over Junk Mail. It takes a lot less effort for me to reach a finger to type 'D' than it takes to walk to the garbage can with X pieces of junk mail...
Well, i get it from gnutella- But that's the UK only. Futurama won't be released on DVD here in the US for ages.
But, until it does, i'll continue grabbing it from the net.
Re:Television networks have a way to fight it...
on
The Napsterization of TV
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· Score: 2, Insightful
The main damage the television networks suffer from the 'Napsterization of TV' is the commercial time.
Doubt it. The reason i see it happening is that with TV shows, there is no way for me to go out and purchase a DVD with Futurama or Invader Zim or whatever on it. Futurama MAY be released on DVD years down the road, but there's not a high likelyhood- And Zim, nickelodeon wants to throw away; they don't see it as a moneymaker at all- Yet there's no way in hell there will be a DVD release of it.
That's the problem these media moguls need to think about. Many People/WANT/ their teevee shows available for purchase. I sure as hell do.
But again, the big difference out there is AOL/TW has a LOT more competitors that the general publics know about than microsoft does.
To my parents, there's An Intel/MS machine, or there's an Apple machine.
Switch to magazines. Go out to your magazine rack, and look at all of the magazines. Sure, a lot of them are TW ownings, but there are plenty of non-TW mags out there, and you could/very/ easily avoid all TW ownings, and/NOT/ be missing out on much news.
Switch to microsoft. I'll Start with Browsers. Sure, you can USE netscape, or Opera, (and that's just in windows's domain), but there are/MANY/ sites out there with "ONLY WORKS WITH INTERNET EXPLORER" logos on them.
And sure you can use WordPerfect over Word, but the next version of office, people will upgrade, and you won't be able to view attachments; Same goes with all parts of office. They make everything incompatible so that it's "use ms or be left behind."
The time-warner way, in their products, is "Use us, we're better."... And if they win that way, that's a fair win.
Personally, AOL-TW scares me more than Microsoft; they've got that whole scary media empire thing going in addition to a large army of idiot users, whereas Microsoft only has a much smaller number of MCSEs (aka, professional dummies) to answer back with.
Not me. Microsoft and AOL-TW have one fundamental difference- AOLTW isn't afraid to play fair. Remember that there is nothing/REALLY/ wrong with having a monopoly- Only abusing the power that having one gives you.
AOLTW has their hands dipped in just about everything. Music, TV, Movies, Magzines, Internet, All kinds of entertainment... But there's not a single market in which they hold a 90% dominance. They Play fair, and the battles that their products win, they win based on the customer view of superiority. Microsoft plays off it's 90% dominance, and tries to destroy all competition.
Re:Xfree is sufferring from poor PR
on
Xfree86 4.2.0 Out
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· Score: 1
Compiling and installing Xfree needs to be easier.
Alright, come on. I agree with almost everything you say except for this. On a linux system:
make World && make install && make install.man
That's it./MUCH/ easier than compiling and installing a kernel.
The biggest problem i see with X installation is that almost every distribution changes the default X installation. All setup files are in/usr/X11R6/lib/X11 by default; yet most distributions put them elsewhere to their liking... debian uses/etc/X11 and puts everything in/usr/X11R6/lib/X11 as a symlink to the/etc/X11 directory... slackware uses/var/X11R6/lib or something like that..
I'm not. i'm posfing from my dreamcast now-- my cablemodem is not working right now, and all i can get out of AT&T is a recording promising that it'll work within a week and that i'll get a whopping *2 day* credit on my bill.
right now i'd feel happier if i could kick any single @home exec or shareholder squarely in the not normally a violent person.
Oh well; i guess i get to stay offline for a while.
p.s. the 'no dns' thing is a step before what my connection is doing now- i'm SOL.
How about making the main site HTTP instead of FTP. Then check the referrer tag. If it's Slashdot.org, or fark.com, or K5, whatever, redirect the user to the mirrors page.
They should ALSO be hosting the mirrors page on other linux-friendly sites. I'm sure that both linux.org and linux.com would be more than willing to host a copy of the mirrors page- so that even if the server goes to hell, we can still HIT the mirrors page in the first place...
What I personally use is the qmail + ezmlm combo- this has quite a few benefits over sendmail + xxx...
One point is that Qmail's author issued a
Cash Reward for the first person to find a security hole in qmail- That was in march 1997 and it still has not been claimed.
compare this to sendmail, where there's a security hole fix in EVERY release.
Qmail is also AWESOME at handling high amounts of email sanely, is absolutely simple to configure, has a large and very supportive user base, and again, it was designed with security in mind.
Apart from that, ezmlm is EASY to configure, and if you get the "qmailadmin" program, you also have an easy web-based configuration interface, if you prefer that. (though, I myself prefer the commandline tools.)
The one thing you'll have to get used to is the 'Maildir' format, which applies to anyone using a shell on the qmail server to check / receive email- mutt has builtin maildir support, there's a patch available for pine.
Pardon me, but that is totally incorrect. Almost 80% of Slashdot web traffic comes from IE varieties.
I am so sick of hearing this argument. Look, those numbers are a little ill-faced. A big factor here is that MANY MANY readers browse from work, And a lot of people have no choice of the OS that their work uses, or that they are forced to browse from. There are other factors, too, but i'd say that's the biggest one.
about things like digital rights. The CNN piece clearly states in the first paragraph:
The system promises fewer computer crashes and will allow users to delete data from their hard drive.
Wowee. I can't believe nobody thought of this before. Anyone have any idea when they will code this feature into Linux? I hope it's soon, so I can clear up some much needed space on my hard drive.
:)
Re:ah, that explains a lot...thanks.
on
Slashdot Updates
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· Score: 1
Think about it: a -2 for being/trying to be funny?
Dang, but why not just say "try to crack a joke and we will censor you".
This is extremely unfair. It's not like he's suggesting something mandatory- The -2 penalty to comments would be a USER PREFERENCE... a more proper comment on it would be to say "Try to crack a joke and we will allow users to filter your comment out of their view!"
This kind of flexibility allows the reader to control which/. posts they are reading- if this is unfair, why don't we just abolish moderation altogether?
Slashdot Mirror
What really bothers me is WHY they're taking donations for this, and for this much ($25k in 6 months!)... To explain, here's a breakdown of the major costs of IRC networks:
.. Well, that's it really. So how does this affect OPN (I don't think 'freenode' is a fitting name for an irc network that solicits donations)? It doesn't. OPN's servers are donated. When you sponsor a server for OPN, you let them run the ircd on your server and use the bandwidth required. You do NOT get an O:line with that. (For those that don't know, the O:line is Oper privileges; it's how you administer an irc server. OPN is the only network I've ever heard of that doesn't let you have an O: on your own machine.)
1) Colocation and bandwidth
OPN is a relatively small network, with only 7000 or so clients connected at once. The Major IRC networks, such as quakenet, ircnet, undernet, efnet, etc, do NOT solicit or accept donations, and they have 80,000-100,000+ clients at once.
IRC is also a very low-traffic service. A two-server network on t1+ lines could EASILY handle the entire load of opn users.
So, why does OPN/freenet need the donations? I don't know. The numbers just don't add up to me. The servers are all donated, so they pay no network/bandwidth costs. And 7000 users isn't that much to admin over. (Talking to a quakenet admin earlier today, he mentioned somewhere around 90k users on in over 9000 channels), And it's certainly not something that should warrant full-time effort.
There are plenty of alternatives to OPN out there; there's the new oftc, and there's quite a few smaller ones, like irc.gimp.org, etc. Almost all IRC networks offer free nick/channel registration (certainly all that I can think of), so there's not really that much that OPN does that other networks can't do for your opensource project.
And I can't think of a SINGLE irc network out there that solicits or accepts donations, besides the one with 'free' in it's new name. Most IRC networks are adminned by volunteers who keep the servers up because they like IRC and are dedicated to helping the network.
You could argue that having a lot of projects having channels on the same network is helpful, but that seems really moot to me. I can't think of a single modern irc client that doesn't offer multi-server support, and for most clients it's well-documented and trivial to set up.
I don't like to pass judgement, but It really seems to me like all the flames about lilo only doing this to get out of having to have a real job at least have some SOME truth to them. I just can't think of any other explanation as to why they'd need that much money.
Debianplanet took that article down about an hour ago. I'm not sure why.
Except for those of us that bought the game on release day in good faith, and we believed them when they said that the client would be released very soon. There's quite a few of those, and really, as far as their marketing division is concerned, we're already windows sales.
Really, they're fucking it up the same way all other linux games have been fucked up- Release the linux client MONTHS after everyone's already bought the windows version, get minimal sales afterwards, the higherups say "You sure wasted us an ass-load of money. the linux version didn't make us any sales."
Oh well. Let's hope that some day a game company will get it. I thought bioware had; they'd promised a linux version in the box. I bought the game to support that. Now, here I am, two months later, feeling like i've been ripped off, with no even estimated completion date for the linux client.
Why not try Anyway? Make this deal to the public- You get us the $2m, we acquire BeOS source Code and give it to OpenBeOS. If we don't hit the $2m mark, We give the money directly to the OpenBeOS developers; Either way, it goes to fund an open source beos.
I for one would gladly shell out some money for that.
A long time ago I wrote a program which can, Among other things, re-tag mp3s based on the filename. This isn't exactly CDDB, but it's a start.
It's a perl program, so it Should run on OS X without modification, so long as you've got it's perl module requirements taken care of.
The program is called The MP3 Butler, and you can get it from http://babblica.net/mp3butler.
Well, actually, that's not my complaint; Especially in the case of fluxbox, where the documentation is extremely well-written and well organized, plus mentioned every time they join the irc channel in the topic, There's no need for them to be offended when someone tells them to check out the documentation.
And how about we all try a new accronym, PCTM (Please Check The Manual). Its more polite.
And actually, when someone asks a question for which the answer is well-documented, rather than saying 'rtfm', I actually point them to the url of the document in question, and tell them where to scroll in the page. It's when they get upset at THAT point, that it bothers me... Since I've already answered their question in great detail and I'm just telling them where to look, rather than giving them a half-assed answer, that should be taken well.
I have no problem with giving people help on IRC-- It's giving people help who refuse to read the documentation that gets on my nerves.
Actually, when I read this part, I was disgusted- He acts like there's something horribly wrong with actually reading the documentation.. As the documentation manager for the Fluxbox window manager, I can definitely tell you that It's frustrating as hell when someone hops on IRC and asks a question that's answered three times in the documentation, one of which is one of the first three questions in the FAQ, none of which the person in question has bothered to try reading, although the documentation and the faq are pointed to in the irc channel's topic.
What newbies don't realize is that the reason people say RTFM is that The Fucking Manual exists for the sole purpose of being Read. It's there TO HELP YOU. It's NOT there so people can shrug you off; It's there so that you can get a good, solid answer to your question rather than a question another user half-remembers and may even be wrong, but they still answer because they're trying to help. RTFM doesn't mean "Go away, I don't want to answer your question, loser.", it means "There's documentation out there that can answer the question better than I can.".. People put a lot of time into making good, helpful documentation (I know this first-hand), for the benefit of other people, and when those people completely bypass that, it's frustrating.
But maybe I just don't understand it... When I was learning linux 5 or so years ago, I didn't hop on irc channels to ask when I got stuck.. I taught myself most of it with man and apropos, falling back to other forms of documentation. I installed every package my distribution offered so it would all be there when I ran apropos. I also bought a few books.
But nonetheless, nothing will make the people who write the documentation more frustrated with what they do than people ignoring it, or getting upset when they're told the answer is in the FAQ and has an entire page devoted to it. There's a lot of great documentation out there, And the reason it's great is because people put hard work into it so that others can read it.
Never saw that behavior with Red Hat. Is there a case of this happening with other distros, or are you making things up?
Suse used to do this, and a lot. You'd edit /etc/resolv.conf, and then the next time yast ran, it would change the file back, then tell you you were a naughty child who needed a spanking for editing things he shouldn't, and that next time you should have Mommy YAST do it.
My solution to the problem: I married a geek chick. ;) Of course, this still leads to other problems- Whose computer gets the next upgrade we can afford, How to fit all of our stuff into the apartment, And what to do with the boxes of odd hardware I just can't come to throw away, but she wants out, etc.
The bottom line is, in any relationship, you have to work things out. What makes it possible to survive is the ability of both parties to compromise. I mean, come on. a link in the bathroom? Do you REALLY need to check slashdot while on the can?
Do yourself a big favor: Don't step on her toes. Think about what you really NEED. If there's something that you're not doing for any practical value-- where it's only value is the l33tness factor, then chances are, she won't like it, and it'll probably make her uncomfortable. In my bedroom, There's only two computers visible without going into the closet-- My main machine and her main machine. The others, a spare server which runs things like nameservice and squid, and a gateway, stay safely tucked away in the closet.
If that doesn't work, You can try things like a dedicated computer room, or put a computer in a room with something she enjoys doing-- Spend your time on your machines with her AND don't forget to take time off from your machines to spend time alone with her. Even a geek woman needs that. If you can't provide it, you'll botch the relationship.
f you can't handle turning off every single computer in the house, even only for a day, and spending time with her, Forget it. Let her find someone who can now, before you make it harder for her in the end.
This comes up a lot on the kernel mailing list, and it boils down to this- If anyone else were to create a viable alternative to bitkeeper, They'll try it. But that's not quite as easy as it sounds.. Here's a quote from a larger posting by Larry McVoy, bitkeeper's author:
To underscore Rik's point: it took 4 years of at least 6 day/week efforts by a team that varied in size from 3-8 engineers to get BitKeeper where it is today. Pavel is welcome to try and do better, but he sure as hell isn't going to do it in his spare time. Nobody is, it's a much harder problem than it looks like. I really wish people would try it and find out. Maybe I'm wrong, in which case we can all get on to doing something more fun.
And RMS isn't discluded- If he really cares so much about a proprietary tool being USED to enhance the development of a Free project, then he's very welcome to organize development of a suitable replacement.
I would *NEVER*. They'd get all sticky.
I need gaming and multimedia support, so I need to go pick up a couple of $19.99 modules?
That is, unless my OEM ordered the FULL OEM which holds all 20 modules for only $30.
Microsoft is going to try to milk their punishment to their advantage, in any case.
And a lot of people don't know that the april 15th deadline is only important if YOU'RE paying THEM. If you're getting a nice sum back on your return, It works even up to a year late, and if you don't file, oh well, they keep your money.
That may sound strange to you, But I've worked directly with email marketing people before- 1/1000 is a LOT more efficient than telephone or regular mail marketing... Junk mail actually yields about a 1/10000, according to one of the ones I talked to.
Apart from that? I prefer Spam over Junk Mail. It takes a lot less effort for me to reach a finger to type 'D' than it takes to walk to the garbage can with X pieces of junk mail...
But, until it does, i'll continue grabbing it from the net.
Doubt it. The reason i see it happening is that with TV shows, there is no way for me to go out and purchase a DVD with Futurama or Invader Zim or whatever on it. Futurama MAY be released on DVD years down the road, but there's not a high likelyhood- And Zim, nickelodeon wants to throw away; they don't see it as a moneymaker at all- Yet there's no way in hell there will be a DVD release of it.
That's the problem these media moguls need to think about. Many People /WANT/ their teevee shows available for purchase. I sure as hell do.
To my parents, there's An Intel/MS machine, or there's an Apple machine.
Switch to magazines. Go out to your magazine rack, and look at all of the magazines. Sure, a lot of them are TW ownings, but there are plenty of non-TW mags out there, and you could /very/ easily avoid all TW ownings, and /NOT/ be missing out on much news.
Switch to microsoft. I'll Start with Browsers. Sure, you can USE netscape, or Opera, (and that's just in windows's domain), but there are /MANY/ sites out there with "ONLY WORKS WITH INTERNET EXPLORER" logos on them.
And sure you can use WordPerfect over Word, but the next version of office, people will upgrade, and you won't be able to view attachments; Same goes with all parts of office. They make everything incompatible so that it's "use ms or be left behind."
The time-warner way, in their products, is "Use us, we're better."... And if they win that way, that's a fair win.
Not me. Microsoft and AOL-TW have one fundamental difference- AOLTW isn't afraid to play fair. Remember that there is nothing
AOLTW has their hands dipped in just about everything. Music, TV, Movies, Magzines, Internet, All kinds of entertainment... But there's not a single market in which they hold a 90% dominance. They Play fair, and the battles that their products win, they win based on the customer view of superiority. Microsoft plays off it's 90% dominance, and tries to destroy all competition.
Alright, come on. I agree with almost everything you say except for this. On a linux system:
make World && make install && make install.man
That's it. /MUCH/ easier than compiling and installing a kernel.
The biggest problem i see with X installation is that almost every distribution changes the default X installation. All setup files are in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11 by default; yet most distributions put them elsewhere to their liking... debian uses /etc/X11 and puts everything in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11 as a symlink to the /etc/X11 directory... slackware uses /var/X11R6/lib or something like that..
It's insane.
right now i'd feel happier if i could kick any single @home exec or shareholder squarely in the not normally a violent person.
Oh well; i guess i get to stay offline for a while.
p.s. the 'no dns' thing is a step before what my connection is doing now- i'm SOL.
They should ALSO be hosting the mirrors page on other linux-friendly sites. I'm sure that both linux.org and linux.com would be more than willing to host a copy of the mirrors page- so that even if the server goes to hell, we can still HIT the mirrors page in the first place...
One point is that Qmail's author issued a Cash Reward for the first person to find a security hole in qmail- That was in march 1997 and it still has not been claimed.
compare this to sendmail, where there's a security hole fix in EVERY release.
Qmail is also AWESOME at handling high amounts of email sanely, is absolutely simple to configure, has a large and very supportive user base, and again, it was designed with security in mind.
Apart from that, ezmlm is EASY to configure, and if you get the "qmailadmin" program, you also have an easy web-based configuration interface, if you prefer that. (though, I myself prefer the commandline tools.)
The one thing you'll have to get used to is the 'Maildir' format, which applies to anyone using a shell on the qmail server to check / receive email- mutt has builtin maildir support, there's a patch available for pine.
qmail's home location is http://cr.yp.to/qmail.html and it's supporting community is at http://www.qmail.org
I am so sick of hearing this argument. Look, those numbers are a little ill-faced. A big factor here is that MANY MANY readers browse from work, And a lot of people have no choice of the OS that their work uses, or that they are forced to browse from. There are other factors, too, but i'd say that's the biggest one.
The numbers are bunk.
Wowee. I can't believe nobody thought of this before. Anyone have any idea when they will code this feature into Linux? I hope it's soon, so I can clear up some much needed space on my hard drive.
Dang, but why not just say "try to crack a joke and we will censor you".
This is extremely unfair. It's not like he's suggesting something mandatory- The -2 penalty to comments would be a USER PREFERENCE... a more proper comment on it would be to say "Try to crack a joke and we will allow users to filter your comment out of their view!"
This kind of flexibility allows the reader to control which