So the laws should stay the same for everyone, the majority of which have reasonable cars, because your crappy car can't handle anything better? I can't make that make sense to me.
I don't drive a new car; never have. I started with a 1971 Plymouth Valiant and now drive a 1988 Pontiac 6000. But my car is safe to drive, and it's safe to drive it at 75 too (assuming a competent driver).
I say that driving on the road is a privelege, not a right. So does the MVA, though I don't think they go far enough, and I hold current road behavior as a clear example. You have to personally have what it takes to be a responsible driver, and you have to have a vehicle that's up to a reasonable standard. I don't think their standards are high enough, at least not for a driver's license. After the current test that they do, they should have someone ride along with you while you drive in normal traffic. After all, with the current system, they were about to send you out into normal traffic after their test anyway.
The other side of this issue is that in many places in the U.S., our public transportation system is not good enough for many people, though I think more could use it than currently are. So a need exists to drive, and therefore pressure to have lower barriers to doing so.
Isaac Asimov eventually stopped writing Foundation novels because he said he got tired of having to reread all of the books to avoid creating any discrepancies. Of course, Lucas is no Asimov, but there were far fewer movies with far less twists than the Foundation series. I think that if he's spending gazillions of dollars to make Episodes I-III, he could at least pay someone else to think about this stuff for him. Or just pay someone to collate all the Usenet postings.
As an aside, I would love it if Star Wars were "something like BladeRunner", though I don't think I mean that in the way you did:)
Frodo turns at the last moment and wields the Ring, and Gollum bites off that finger to get it (falling into the burning pit moments later). Bit of lamenting by Sam about how he wishes he had known so that it could have been his finger instead.
Where I work, we have building automation software which is only available for NT variants. Same deal with the software that controls our central plant, and the software that controls paint mixes for the paint shop. We're looking into facilities management software, and the one that does what we want, Maximus, will require 3 Windows servers (though we can use what we want for the client).
People not working in a traditional office WILL have that one weird piece of software that only runs on Windows. Half the time it's expensive and sucks, but you have no choice because no one is working on an alternative. OSS programmers don't tend to also be steamfitters.
Sure, I want to change this as much as possible, but it's a tall order. At least open source GIS stuff is being tackled.
A computer? For games?
on
PC Annoyances
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· Score: 1
I play video games. Right now, a huge amount of my life is being sucked away by a great game called Disgaea. If you like games like Final Fantasy Tactics or Shining Force, you should immediatly buy this game.
But wait, it's not for the PC, it's for the Playstation 2. A piece of hardware which is smaller than and costs less than any PC, even the incredibly crappy ones. It doesn't need to be upgraded, runs basically silently, and has a MASSIVE library of great games. No crashing, no driver incompatibilities.
I love games, and I run Linux on the desktop. For me, it's a case of the right tool for the right job.
There are places that are all-ages, and they have various ID schemes (bracelets, etc.) so that the guy at the door can check your age and that's it.
Some of these places charge more for people under 21; sometimes this is on a per-show basis (show price varies widely anyway).
Some bars keep microwave pizza in the freezer and sell it for $4/slice so that they "serve food" and can admit people under 21 (might have to be 18 though, I forget, but that lets in most college students).
The music scene here (in Baltimore) isn't great compared to some cities, but we certainly get by. If there's nothing like this, or what the parent poster was describing in your city, sorry to hear that. But you can still get music by listening to online college stations (though not all college stations do independent music, most do).
Some of their stuff isn't available outside of the US (these are clearly marked). If the stuff on emusic isn't what you've been into, try adjusting your preferences:) [IOW, maybe you should support artists that aren't distributed under such onerus termns]. They have 30-second previews of every song without having to fill out a thing, and I doubt that most people won't be able to find something they like. Also, their service is available on Windows, Mac OS, and Linux. The songs are cheaper too.
As I am not above shameless self-promotion, I'll also point out that many of the songs available on emusic can be heard via online college radio stations, and I happen to know of one (wmbc.umbc.edu for those with sigs disabled).
You can also try allmusic.com to see if any emusic-distributed artists are recommended for fans of artists you currently like.
So why not support current bands with similar styles? Check out a band like Of Montreal and see if they're your thing. Of course, very few bands will try to duplicate the EXACT sound of the 60s and 70s, but I see that as progress. They take what's happened since then and bring it together.
On the other hand, I would give large amounts of money to see Moxy Fruvous put out another album and tour together again. AFAIK, they haven't formally dissolved, but they've been going their own ways for a few years now.
Perhaps that's true for PC-hardware-based servers, but Sun machines (at least 4 years ago) could easily boot from an external CD-ROM. I took care of a few machines that had nothing but power, SCSI, ethernet, and serial (for a terminal) interfaces.
As for PC desktops, anyone using floppies for data transfer or worse, storage, has to be insane or desparate. Floppies are made far more cheaply than they used to be, and so a medium which was already slow and unreliable is now even worse.
My desktop PC (Linux) doesn't even have a floppy drive. Obviously, Macs haven't had them for years. I just hope that people are using the network (and CDs/DVDs/tapes for backups) instead of something like a ZIP drive, which is just a band-aid in the form of an inflated floppy drive.
With a free toolkit, assuming no _commercial_ support is certainly safe, but I wouldn't say that equates to no support. I prefer community support to commercial support for the software I've used, but experiences and preferences will of course vary.
Documentation is a sticky subject. There are certainly poorly documented commercial products, as well as well-documented Free products (Apache, PHP, ipf). True, Free documentation is often not in the style of official technical writing, but then the same could be said of many commercial docs.
So what if they didn't? Sure, they "traditionally" pay for proprietary operating systems and commercial toolkits, but assuming that a completely Free solution works well enough for them that the cost benefit isn't offset by a loss in productivity, why SHOULD they pay?
If one way to solve the problem involves me paying someone, and another just as workable way involves me paying no one, then the provider of the first way had better be adding some value.
You're a programmer, right? Really good mechanics are at least as few and far between as really good programmers. They too have classes, exams, certifications (such as ASE), etc. And as with programmers, it's often the person that makes the difference, not the certifications. And surprise surprise, today's cars with their many computerized systems are so complicated that mechanics use a series of electronic "debugging" tools to narrow down the problem, but the operator of these tools still has to have a vast amount of knowledge. And the field is indeed wide; a Honda mechanic may well not have a clue what to do with your transit bus.
I'm also not sure where you get the idea that people who program for a living don't do it at home in their spare time as well. Many people are completely absorbed in computer-land; they would rather do nothing else. What do you expect them to do at home? Knit?
I'm a sysadmin at work, and shock! I also do it for free in my spare time, even though I have several non-computer interests. It's something that I enjoy, and it's a way I can help people out who are doing something that I feel is important, but aren't as computer-savvy as me (and shouldn't have to spend their time on such things when they have important work that they CAN do well).
Additionally, I find your assertation that copying Unix is the reason for Linux's success to be unprovable. And why has emacs succeeded, while BeOS failed?
You can re-order tabs and move them between windows via drag-and-drop with these extensions. That's exactly what I've been wanting. I actually still use multiple browser windows, and use tabs as "subcategories". For instance, I'll have one window for Slashdot, with tabs for stories, and open more tabs for comments I want to read (I browse threaded with comments at 3 and above displayed in full). Sometimes, I'd really like to rearrange the tabs to move the stories around, as it's most convenient to have the story I'm reading be the right-most tab.
I'm also intrigued by the ability to set certain states (such as a refresh interval), and the fact that this is saved with the bookmark to the page. Very nice.
I realize that this is a troll, mainly because all of your logic is flawed, but I'll respond to part of it.
There are plenty of auto repair shops that do shoddy work and charge you a ton of money. I'm lucky in that my father is a mechanic and knows plenty of reputable places.
On the other hand, a co-worker of mine fixed up an old bike of mine so that I could ride to work instead of drive. He did it because he loves working on bikes, and wouldn't take money. Of course he did a good job, because he enjoyed doing it.
People can be rewarded for their work in many ways. Sometimes those involve money directly, or indirectly ("help me move, there will be pizza and beer.") Sometimes you trade your area of expertise for theirs by exchanging work, and sometimes they are rewarded by the love of what they are doing.
If your package management system is broken, don't blame the authors of unrelated software. Debian (and from what I hear FreeBSD and Gentoo) get it right. People bitch and complain about tons of dependencies, while all I did was type "apt-get install gnucash". And yes, that was in "unstable". Anti-aliased fonts in Mozilla? A nice ncurses prompt set it all up for me.
Alternatives are one of the greatest strengths of Open Source software. Instead of complaining about the ones that don't work, use the ones that do.
1) You have to install software correctly anyway. Microsoft's appearance of "easy installation" is a myth, because you still have to have the knowledge to set things up so that you don't get owned, and then you also have to go out and get 3rd party products to fix their design mistakes (such as anti-virus software, remote desktop, etc.). The most recent one I'm trying is this one:
http://www.pivx.com/qwikfix/
2) I actually think that this is almost offtopic, because the article was talking about Open Source software, and any problems in propagating new versions or configuration changes that I can image would only come from using commercial software on Linux. For software that stores its files in/etc, rsync-over-SSH certainly isn't "a hell", nor are private package repositories. If products are making your life hell, it's not the fault of Linux that you chose those commercial products over the many other available ones.
3) All I can tell you is that reading the documentation which came with a Netscreen sucked a whole lot more than the docs for iptables and ipf. Documentation is hard, of course, and many Open Source/Free projects lag behind here, but the large ones are often well documented. Just look at the user-annotated online docs for PHP as an example. As for commercial software on Linux, see #2.
4) Again, the article was talking about the use of Open Source software. If you're using proprietary software on Linux, you're going to run into the same old support problems. I'm sure commercial support is very good if you have a service contract with IBM for your IBM hardware, but I've found getting help with Open Source software (LUG mailing list, HOWTOs) to be easier than "official" commercial support.
I didn't get flamed when I went into #debian and asked a bunch of questions. Neither did anyone else that came in while I was there, and I sat on the channel for several days.
Perhaps the problem has more to do with your question. The Debian server compromise has been "all over the news", which I believe is why the package servers haven't been updated. It's reasonable to assume that people in #debian might have assumed you knew about the compromise, and they might have been a bit sensitive about it.
Also, you didn't mention/msg'ing the "apt" bot for news before asking your question, as (IIRC) the welcome message to the server asks you to do. Did you do this? And did the channel topic say something about the break-in, but you were unable to connect it to the servers not being updated?
Now, I happen to think that Eric Raymond is a jerk, and wrong about a great many things, but he and Rick Moen wrote an essay on how to ask questions that should be required reading for pretty much anyone, and can easily be applied to fields other than computers. My father is a mechanic, and his job and mine have amazing parallels.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.ht ml
Our LUG has a mailing list, and I've been on it for about 6 years now. I've rarely seen anyone flamed, even for asking really basic questions. One person in particular did ask several basic questions in a row, and was eventually pointed to the above document by several list members. Sadly, he decided to be an ass about it, and some flames were exchanged, but that's the only problem I can remember.
Even though he might not have been able to adequately explain it to you, the fact remains that good software needs to be designed, like a bridge. With proper design procedures beforehand, you can write great code in very little time that's easy to maintain and expand, and will still be easy to maintain in 2 years after you've forgotten how everything worked.
Sure, you can get away with "just writing it", but that is how buggy software is born. Mistakes will be made, code will be messy above a certain level of size/complexity. And yes, many companies do this, but that doesn't make it the right thing to do.
I had a software design teacher that was able to explain this to me quite satisfactorily, and always used real-world examples to back up his points. Sorry that your teacher seems to have been a bit too airy. I'll never understand not doing proper design first.
Most of the "commercial" music (music which is played on for-profit radio stations), at least in the US, is pretty bland. It's had the rough edges sanded off in order to make it "unoffensive" to a larger audience, which helps to sell more CDs, concert tickets, and radio advertisements. But this doesn't necessarily make it very good.
Artists which are part of smaller labels are not under pressure to produce music with these qualities. They're doing it because they love music. That's not to say that the major-label bands are all shallow wraiths who don't love music, but they've been influenced by labels, money (spent on them, not belonging to them), popularity, etc., and this has altered their music, sometimes in the form of specific requests from the studio, and sometimes in the form of the music that the artist in this position tends to write.
Personally, I happen to feel that much "independent" music is of higher quality than mainstream music. Of course, there is plenty of junk too, and a vast majority that's just average, but you get that in any creative field.
You might also take note that many works of art which were considered great were not done for the church; artists will continue to do art whether it pays or not, because there are things being generated inside of them that simply have to be released.
> I think it has less to do with the right-ward > slant and more to do with it being more > entertaining to watch.
Perhaps that's why more people get their news from The Daily Show than the Fox News network. At least they make the line between news and fiction clear, and they're certainly the most entertaining. Anyone who sees it as just a comedy show probably doesn't understand South Park either. Oh sure, Savage is funny for about 15 minutes, but then an overwhelming sense of "AAAARRRGGH!" kicks in.
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml%3Fi=20030505& s= douglas
Thanks for the suggestion. The licensing is actually for the entire University of Maryland system, not just us, so I'm not sure if we have any "Licensing Binders", but I'll ask around. I was under the impression that our deal was sort of a special one.
I've been trying to look through things like technet and other online Microsoft documentation, but I guess I'm not used to looking at this style of information, because it seems like this vast galaxy of stuff with no obvious starting points.
But the Windows 2000 CDs we have as part of our licensing program are different than the kind ordinary mortals obtain. They don't require product activation codes, serial numbers, etc. (or any product activation at all, actually). Windows XP is the same way, as are Office 2000 and XP.
I don't know whether that affects drive imaging software or not. I've used g4u to create and use images of Win2k and WinXP machines without problems (well, none that seemed specific to imaging), and I had never heard of "sysprep" (reading up on it now).
I would really like to have an "Ask Slashdot" where all of the people who say "You just don't know how to administer a Windows network; if you did, it would be perfect" get the chance to tell us where to go to learn this fabulous information. I'm used to working with Linux and prefer it heavily, but right now my job is to maintain/upgrade a Windows+Novell network, and I still want to do a good job. I am gradually discovering things like SMS, but in many ways still feel lost. If there really are ways to make all this crap behave, I'd sure like to know about them.
Do keep in mind that I work for a financially troubled state institution. Sitewide MS licensing is already paid for as far as Windows and Office, but suggesting $$$ on software or training is not helpful. I don't mind reading, though.
Microsoft will be counting holes in their core operating system, which also comes with a Web browser, email client, and music player. From what the article says, they're not even including Office, certainly not IIS or any of their other products.
Red Hat has many, many more applications, with varying levels of complexity, development, and use. Almost no one will have all of these security advisories apply to them. So Red Hat, which ships well over four times the amount of software packages, has four times the bugs? GASP! And how many of these were remotely exploitable holes which caused machines to reboot almost continuously?
If you want to be fair, MS can count security fixes for the Linux kernel, Mozilla + Mozilla Mail, XFree86, Mplayer (hey, there was one), and whichever windowing system has the most bugs (hey, let's give them a little help, they'll need it). They have to pick one windowing system, because you won't be using multiple windowing systems at the same time.
I could go for the extra point and complain that Microsoft foists a Web browser and windowing system on anyone who wants to run a simple Web server, increasing the number of applicable security holes, but they're far enough behind already.
Slashdot Mirror
So the laws should stay the same for everyone, the majority of which have reasonable cars, because your crappy car can't handle anything better? I can't make that make sense to me.
I don't drive a new car; never have. I started with a 1971 Plymouth Valiant and now drive a 1988 Pontiac 6000. But my car is safe to drive, and it's safe to drive it at 75 too (assuming a competent driver).
I say that driving on the road is a privelege, not a right. So does the MVA, though I don't think they go far enough, and I hold current road behavior as a clear example. You have to personally have what it takes to be a responsible driver, and you have to have a vehicle that's up to a reasonable standard. I don't think their standards are high enough, at least not for a driver's license. After the current test that they do, they should have someone ride along with you while you drive in normal traffic. After all, with the current system, they were about to send you out into normal traffic after their test anyway.
The other side of this issue is that in many places in the U.S., our public transportation system is not good enough for many people, though I think more could use it than currently are. So a need exists to drive, and therefore pressure to have lower barriers to doing so.
Isaac Asimov eventually stopped writing Foundation novels because he said he got tired of having to reread all of the books to avoid creating any discrepancies. Of course, Lucas is no Asimov, but there were far fewer movies with far less twists than the Foundation series. I think that if he's spending gazillions of dollars to make Episodes I-III, he could at least pay someone else to think about this stuff for him. Or just pay someone to collate all the Usenet postings.
:)
As an aside, I would love it if Star Wars were "something like BladeRunner", though I don't think I mean that in the way you did
Frodo turns at the last moment and wields the Ring, and Gollum bites off that finger to get it (falling into the burning pit moments later). Bit of lamenting by Sam about how he wishes he had known so that it could have been his finger instead.
Where I work, we have building automation software which is only available for NT variants. Same deal with the software that controls our central plant, and the software that controls paint mixes for the paint shop. We're looking into facilities management software, and the one that does what we want, Maximus, will require 3 Windows servers (though we can use what we want for the client).
People not working in a traditional office WILL have that one weird piece of software that only runs on Windows. Half the time it's expensive and sucks, but you have no choice because no one is working on an alternative. OSS programmers don't tend to also be steamfitters.
Sure, I want to change this as much as possible, but it's a tall order. At least open source GIS stuff is being tackled.
I play video games. Right now, a huge amount of my life is being sucked away by a great game called Disgaea. If you like games like Final Fantasy Tactics or Shining Force, you should immediatly buy this game.
But wait, it's not for the PC, it's for the Playstation 2. A piece of hardware which is smaller than and costs less than any PC, even the incredibly crappy ones. It doesn't need to be upgraded, runs basically silently, and has a MASSIVE library of great games. No crashing, no driver incompatibilities.
I love games, and I run Linux on the desktop. For me, it's a case of the right tool for the right job.
There are places that are all-ages, and they have various ID schemes (bracelets, etc.) so that the guy at the door can check your age and that's it.
Some of these places charge more for people under 21; sometimes this is on a per-show basis (show price varies widely anyway).
Some bars keep microwave pizza in the freezer and sell it for $4/slice so that they "serve food" and can admit people under 21 (might have to be 18 though, I forget, but that lets in most college students).
The music scene here (in Baltimore) isn't great compared to some cities, but we certainly get by. If there's nothing like this, or what the parent poster was describing in your city, sorry to hear that. But you can still get music by listening to online college stations (though not all college stations do independent music, most do).
Some of their stuff isn't available outside of the US (these are clearly marked). If the stuff on emusic isn't what you've been into, try adjusting your preferences :) [IOW, maybe you should support artists that aren't distributed under such onerus termns]. They have 30-second previews of every song without having to fill out a thing, and I doubt that most people won't be able to find something they like. Also, their service is available on Windows, Mac OS, and Linux. The songs are cheaper too.
As I am not above shameless self-promotion, I'll also point out that many of the songs available on emusic can be heard via online college radio stations, and I happen to know of one (wmbc.umbc.edu for those with sigs disabled).
You can also try allmusic.com to see if any emusic-distributed artists are recommended for fans of artists you currently like.
So why not support current bands with similar styles? Check out a band like Of Montreal and see if they're your thing. Of course, very few bands will try to duplicate the EXACT sound of the 60s and 70s, but I see that as progress. They take what's happened since then and bring it together.
On the other hand, I would give large amounts of money to see Moxy Fruvous put out another album and tour together again. AFAIK, they haven't formally dissolved, but they've been going their own ways for a few years now.
http://www.linuxant.com/company/
For some people, these (admittedly low-cost) drivers are the only way to get their modem working in Linux. This is not a hardware company.
Perhaps that's true for PC-hardware-based servers, but Sun machines (at least 4 years ago) could easily boot from an external CD-ROM. I took care of a few machines that had nothing but power, SCSI, ethernet, and serial (for a terminal) interfaces.
As for PC desktops, anyone using floppies for data transfer or worse, storage, has to be insane or desparate. Floppies are made far more cheaply than they used to be, and so a medium which was already slow and unreliable is now even worse.
My desktop PC (Linux) doesn't even have a floppy drive. Obviously, Macs haven't had them for years. I just hope that people are using the network (and CDs/DVDs/tapes for backups) instead of something like a ZIP drive, which is just a band-aid in the form of an inflated floppy drive.
With a free toolkit, assuming no _commercial_ support is certainly safe, but I wouldn't say that equates to no support. I prefer community support to commercial support for the software I've used, but experiences and preferences will of course vary.
Documentation is a sticky subject. There are certainly poorly documented commercial products, as well as well-documented Free products (Apache, PHP, ipf). True, Free documentation is often not in the style of official technical writing, but then the same could be said of many commercial docs.
So what if they didn't? Sure, they "traditionally" pay for proprietary operating systems and commercial toolkits, but assuming that a completely Free solution works well enough for them that the cost benefit isn't offset by a loss in productivity, why SHOULD they pay?
If one way to solve the problem involves me paying someone, and another just as workable way involves me paying no one, then the provider of the first way had better be adding some value.
You're a programmer, right? Really good mechanics are at least as few and far between as really good programmers. They too have classes, exams, certifications (such as ASE), etc. And as with programmers, it's often the person that makes the difference, not the certifications. And surprise surprise, today's cars with their many computerized systems are so complicated that mechanics use a series of electronic "debugging" tools to narrow down the problem, but the operator of these tools still has to have a vast amount of knowledge. And the field is indeed wide; a Honda mechanic may well not have a clue what to do with your transit bus.
I'm also not sure where you get the idea that people who program for a living don't do it at home in their spare time as well. Many people are completely absorbed in computer-land; they would rather do nothing else. What do you expect them to do at home? Knit?
I'm a sysadmin at work, and shock! I also do it for free in my spare time, even though I have several non-computer interests. It's something that I enjoy, and it's a way I can help people out who are doing something that I feel is important, but aren't as computer-savvy as me (and shouldn't have to spend their time on such things when they have important work that they CAN do well).
Additionally, I find your assertation that copying Unix is the reason for Linux's success to be unprovable. And why has emacs succeeded, while BeOS failed?
You can re-order tabs and move them between windows via drag-and-drop with these extensions. That's exactly what I've been wanting. I actually still use multiple browser windows, and use tabs as "subcategories". For instance, I'll have one window for Slashdot, with tabs for stories, and open more tabs for comments I want to read (I browse threaded with comments at 3 and above displayed in full). Sometimes, I'd really like to rearrange the tabs to move the stories around, as it's most convenient to have the story I'm reading be the right-most tab.
I'm also intrigued by the ability to set certain states (such as a refresh interval), and the fact that this is saved with the bookmark to the page. Very nice.
I realize that this is a troll, mainly because all of your logic is flawed, but I'll respond to part of it.
There are plenty of auto repair shops that do shoddy work and charge you a ton of money. I'm lucky in that my father is a mechanic and knows plenty of reputable places.
On the other hand, a co-worker of mine fixed up an old bike of mine so that I could ride to work instead of drive. He did it because he loves working on bikes, and wouldn't take money. Of course he did a good job, because he enjoyed doing it.
People can be rewarded for their work in many ways. Sometimes those involve money directly, or indirectly ("help me move, there will be pizza and beer.") Sometimes you trade your area of expertise for theirs by exchanging work, and sometimes they are rewarded by the love of what they are doing.
If your package management system is broken, don't blame the authors of unrelated software. Debian (and from what I hear FreeBSD and Gentoo) get it right. People bitch and complain about tons of dependencies, while all I did was type "apt-get install gnucash". And yes, that was in "unstable". Anti-aliased fonts in Mozilla? A nice ncurses prompt set it all up for me.
Alternatives are one of the greatest strengths of Open Source software. Instead of complaining about the ones that don't work, use the ones that do.
1) You have to install software correctly anyway. Microsoft's appearance of "easy installation" is a myth, because you still have to have the knowledge to set things up so that you don't get owned, and then you also have to go out and get 3rd party products to fix their design mistakes (such as anti-virus software, remote desktop, etc.). The most recent one I'm trying is this one:
/etc, rsync-over-SSH certainly isn't "a hell", nor are private package repositories. If products are making your life hell, it's not the fault of Linux that you chose those commercial products over the many other available ones.
http://www.pivx.com/qwikfix/
2) I actually think that this is almost offtopic, because the article was talking about Open Source software, and any problems in propagating new versions or configuration changes that I can image would only come from using commercial software on Linux. For software that stores its files in
3) All I can tell you is that reading the documentation which came with a Netscreen sucked a whole lot more than the docs for iptables and ipf. Documentation is hard, of course, and many Open Source/Free projects lag behind here, but the large ones are often well documented. Just look at the user-annotated online docs for PHP as an example. As for commercial software on Linux, see #2.
4) Again, the article was talking about the use of Open Source software. If you're using proprietary software on Linux, you're going to run into the same old support problems. I'm sure commercial support is very good if you have a service contract with IBM for your IBM hardware, but I've found getting help with Open Source software (LUG mailing list, HOWTOs) to be easier than "official" commercial support.
I didn't get flamed when I went into #debian and asked a bunch of questions. Neither did anyone else that came in while I was there, and I sat on the channel for several days.
/msg'ing the "apt" bot for news before asking your question, as (IIRC) the welcome message to the server asks you to do. Did you do this? And did the channel topic say something about the break-in, but you were unable to connect it to the servers not being updated?
t ml
Perhaps the problem has more to do with your question. The Debian server compromise has been "all over the news", which I believe is why the package servers haven't been updated. It's reasonable to assume that people in #debian might have assumed you knew about the compromise, and they might have been a bit sensitive about it.
Also, you didn't mention
Now, I happen to think that Eric Raymond is a jerk, and wrong about a great many things, but he and Rick Moen wrote an essay on how to ask questions that should be required reading for pretty much anyone, and can easily be applied to fields other than computers. My father is a mechanic, and his job and mine have amazing parallels.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.h
Our LUG has a mailing list, and I've been on it for about 6 years now. I've rarely seen anyone flamed, even for asking really basic questions. One person in particular did ask several basic questions in a row, and was eventually pointed to the above document by several list members. Sadly, he decided to be an ass about it, and some flames were exchanged, but that's the only problem I can remember.
Even though he might not have been able to adequately explain it to you, the fact remains that good software needs to be designed, like a bridge. With proper design procedures beforehand, you can write great code in very little time that's easy to maintain and expand, and will still be easy to maintain in 2 years after you've forgotten how everything worked.
Sure, you can get away with "just writing it", but that is how buggy software is born. Mistakes will be made, code will be messy above a certain level of size/complexity. And yes, many companies do this, but that doesn't make it the right thing to do.
I had a software design teacher that was able to explain this to me quite satisfactorily, and always used real-world examples to back up his points. Sorry that your teacher seems to have been a bit too airy. I'll never understand not doing proper design first.
Most of the "commercial" music (music which is played on for-profit radio stations), at least in the US, is pretty bland. It's had the rough edges sanded off in order to make it "unoffensive" to a larger audience, which helps to sell more CDs, concert tickets, and radio advertisements. But this doesn't necessarily make it very good.
Artists which are part of smaller labels are not under pressure to produce music with these qualities. They're doing it because they love music. That's not to say that the major-label bands are all shallow wraiths who don't love music, but they've been influenced by labels, money (spent on them, not belonging to them), popularity, etc., and this has altered their music, sometimes in the form of specific requests from the studio, and sometimes in the form of the music that the artist in this position tends to write.
Personally, I happen to feel that much "independent" music is of higher quality than mainstream music. Of course, there is plenty of junk too, and a vast majority that's just average, but you get that in any creative field.
You might also take note that many works of art which were considered great were not done for the church; artists will continue to do art whether it pays or not, because there are things being generated inside of them that simply have to be released.
> I think it has less to do with the right-ward
> slant and more to do with it being more
> entertaining to watch.
Perhaps that's why more people get their news from The Daily Show than the Fox News network. At least they make the line between news and fiction clear, and they're certainly the most entertaining. Anyone who sees it as just a comedy show probably doesn't understand South Park either. Oh sure, Savage is funny for about 15 minutes, but then an overwhelming sense of "AAAARRRGGH!" kicks in.
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml%3Fi=20030505
Thanks for the suggestion. The licensing is actually for the entire University of Maryland system, not just us, so I'm not sure if we have any "Licensing Binders", but I'll ask around. I was under the impression that our deal was sort of a special one.
I've been trying to look through things like technet and other online Microsoft documentation, but I guess I'm not used to looking at this style of information, because it seems like this vast galaxy of stuff with no obvious starting points.
I meant SUS, not SMS, as SMS costs money that we don't have.
But the Windows 2000 CDs we have as part of our licensing program are different than the kind ordinary mortals obtain. They don't require product activation codes, serial numbers, etc. (or any product activation at all, actually). Windows XP is the same way, as are Office 2000 and XP.
I don't know whether that affects drive imaging software or not. I've used g4u to create and use images of Win2k and WinXP machines without problems (well, none that seemed specific to imaging), and I had never heard of "sysprep" (reading up on it now).
I would really like to have an "Ask Slashdot" where all of the people who say "You just don't know how to administer a Windows network; if you did, it would be perfect" get the chance to tell us where to go to learn this fabulous information. I'm used to working with Linux and prefer it heavily, but right now my job is to maintain/upgrade a Windows+Novell network, and I still want to do a good job. I am gradually discovering things like SMS, but in many ways still feel lost. If there really are ways to make all this crap behave, I'd sure like to know about them.
Do keep in mind that I work for a financially troubled state institution. Sitewide MS licensing is already paid for as far as Windows and Office, but suggesting $$$ on software or training is not helpful. I don't mind reading, though.
Microsoft will be counting holes in their core operating system, which also comes with a Web browser, email client, and music player. From what the article says, they're not even including Office, certainly not IIS or any of their other products.
Red Hat has many, many more applications, with varying levels of complexity, development, and use. Almost no one will have all of these security advisories apply to them. So Red Hat, which ships well over four times the amount of software packages, has four times the bugs? GASP! And how many of these were remotely exploitable holes which caused machines to reboot almost continuously?
If you want to be fair, MS can count security fixes for the Linux kernel, Mozilla + Mozilla Mail, XFree86, Mplayer (hey, there was one), and whichever windowing system has the most bugs (hey, let's give them a little help, they'll need it). They have to pick one windowing system, because you won't be using multiple windowing systems at the same time.
I could go for the extra point and complain that Microsoft foists a Web browser and windowing system on anyone who wants to run a simple Web server, increasing the number of applicable security holes, but they're far enough behind already.