My experience with school administrators and bullying was, basically, that a teacher dragged my attacker and me to the principals office, I said he attacked me, he said we were just fooling around, and because I said it was actually a fight, we -both- got suspended. (I was, apparently, not supposed to defend myself in any physical way when attacked).
I have no reason to believe that this has changed, nor did I have enough 'evidence' of my being assaulted to possible succeeded in a lawsuit against the school, even if a minor could bring such a suit.
(OTOH, I don't think I was ever really particularly singled out. My impression was that -every- male in that school got into at least two or three fights a year, whether they wanted to or not.)
Of course, since the stakes have changed, I suppose there's an argument to be made that being suspended or expelled is better than being imprisoned.
First of all, I use, and very much like, KDE. However, 1.x at least, is rife with windowsisms, including many that made it into the 'user interface hall of shame' and then were duplicated in KDE. I'm talking mostly about the little utility-apps here, like the file-finder and such. That's background, now for the question.:)
Is this a temporary situation, or a deliberate KDE 'design goal' to be like-windows? If some developer out there were to find some time outside of work to redo some of them with a new and non-'shame'ful interface, would that be accepted into the codebase, or is it considered that the group already did it 'right' and you only want other kinds of improvements? Is there room for a set of alternate-KDE utility apps, or do you want one true KDE look? (UI design -is- largely a matter of opinion, so, if you think KDE's utility apps are already just great, that's fine, but I get the impression that it was just easiest to emulate the windows way on a lot of things.)
MS has been doing a lot of posturing and spin-control, but the whole purpose of Jackson's releasing the findings-of-fact ahead of time was to announce to MS 'settle or be hit with a sledgehammer.' Jackson's been pushing the parties to settle all along, but nothing's come of it.
Of course, MS might -not- settle. They're continuing to reap profits from their monopoly position as they draw out the court case. (They have cooled off a -little- but they're still pretty aggressive.) Well. I'm all in favour of MS not settling. I'd be perfectly happy to see them broken into smithreens and strangled with restraints. If that happened, Linux is poised to 'take over' and whether it's linux or not, a world of posix-compliant target machines is what I want to code for.;) Okay, I've tangented into fantasy. If MS knows what's good for them, they'll settle, and Windows will have a long lifespan yet.
Oh, I realize the economic disadvantages. I'm just not all that concerned about them. The cost of living is lower as well, I think, though I'll have to watch the regional-variance. But, basically - Canada's a nice country, it's right next door (I already live in New England), and I have net-friends in various parts of Canada that I might or might not be near if I moved there. But, basically, I'm more interested in having employment that I like than having employment that pays well, and I see no reason to cut myself off from opportunity in Canada, and I think I might well enjoy living there, at least for a while.
Microsoft is hurting every other OS and middleware vendor. Netscape is -not- the only company mentioned in a victim role.
Intel with NSP. Sun with Java. IBM with OS/2.
Microsoft didn't hurt only their competitors, but their allies.
HP, Dell, and Compaq were all put out with the restrictions Microsoft put on the desktop. HP complained about the money they were losing since being forced to have a 'conforming' (and hence, less user-friendly) desktop. HP got compensated for their loss.
Worried about the 'little' company? What about all the OEMs around the country that -could- make more money by offering a larger variety of machines - except they'd immediately lose it to Microsoft penalties. Or who lost their investment into customizing the boot process and desktop, and being less important than HP -didn't- get compensated for their losses by MS.
All of this is apparent if you read the findings of fact.
I think, actually, that project gutenberg ought to store their files in a simple semi-formatted way. Like, lines beginning with \ are escapes with codes for 'title' 'author' 'chapter' 'paragraph' and 'footnote' Like, \title The Slashdot Effect \author Rob Malda \chapter Chapter One: What is The Web etc. (apologies if there's a real book by that title) Most of it'd just be plain text. With -just- enough formatting that a perl-script (or future-language script) can transform it into the pretty-format of the day with a bit of analysis, but not so much as to make it unreadable.
The internet is -constantly- under attack. Or, the other way of looking at it, is that the internet is a great big training-grounds for cyberwarfare. We have our defense specialists (sysadmins, netadmins, and the OpenBSD project...:)) constantly engaging in 'wargames' with our 'black ops' teams (the (cr|h)acker 'community').
When black 'hits' they (usually) only mark their 'kill' with a label.
Now, given that at least a good quarter-to-a-third of the (cr|h)ackers (and usually the better ones, at that) are politically motivated, I think it's a pretty good bet that they'd lash out hard against any nation that began waging cyberwarfare against civilians. (The response would be more mixed for military-target-only, of course, and both sides might gain unofficial 'cyberwarriors' in many situations.)
Final notes - Any refinery, factory, etc, that has their real world device controls accessible to the internet should be immediately be dissolved on the basis of congenital idiocy and criminal negligence leading to the endangerment of lots of lives.
'Cyberwar' is a really stupid term. Some one come up with a better one, -please-. 'Information war' sounds more like propaganda-warfare. 'Internet war' probably won't catch on. Don't even -think- 'e-war' or 'iWar'...
Okay, I have to ask (since I'm thinking of changing jobs soon, and you seem likely to know, if you'll take a minute to answer) - What's the general attitude towards Bachelors/Masters/PhD levels in Canada? In the U.S., I think, a bachelors gets you plenty of job opportunity; a Masters gets you a few more job opportunities and a higher pay-scale. A PhD is a sort of an odd thing that means you either get really high-up jobs or are overqualified (aka, 'we don't want to pay PhD-level salary for a simple coder')
And, if you know, how hard is it for an USA resident-native to get a Canadian residency-permit & work-visa?
--Parity
Restrictions on copying devices.
on
Copyright!
·
· Score: 2
I really don't understand why everyone is so caught up in the twenty-year extension. It's frustrating, it's creating an insidious and pervasive feeling that all words and images are owned by someone, yes, it's bad. However, the restrictions applied are pretty much the same as ever. The more compelling threat to civil rights, in my opinion, is the addition of restrictions against devices intended to copy. In the words of the Digital Millenium Copyright act summary linked above,
Section 1201 proscribes devices or services that fall within any of the three following categories: - They are primarily designed or produced to circumvent. - They have only limited commercially significant use other than to circumvent; or - They are marketed for use in circumventing.
Am I the only one who notes the striking similarity to the British law that allowed this bullying incident so recently discussed on slashdot? Am I the only one that thought they couldn't do that to us in America?
Please note the -or- clause, and consider that only one has to be shown. If you can show that far more people will use the device to break the law than will use it legitimately, the device (like, say, the DeCSS program) will become illegal.
Libraries, non-profit organizations and educational institutions are protected from criminal, but not civil, liability in these cases, but individuals have no such protection. If I'm putting the pieces of the summary together correctly, a successful lawsuit means you could be put in prison for up to five years for contributing to the DeCSS project. Hopefully, the developers would win, but I don't think (though IANAL) that they could get the case dismissed out of hand; it would go to trial, and cost lots of money to someone.
Please remember my conditional 'if it comes preinstalled.'
It's trivial to block the ports by default with tcp_wrappers in the install script, so only localhost can access them and disable the services that aren't needed even locally. This can be done at the shop before Aunt Helga even sees the box.
Besides, even if it's not done, who's going to set up a 'p0rn and warez' server on a dialup box that's only connected thirty minutes a day? Let's be serious, Aunt Helga doesn't have DSL.
Because the 'real' Unices have them, and now Linux does too, with ReiserFS, and it'll have another when xfs (from sgi) gets out of beta.
Right now, NT competes because it's a heckuva lot cheaper than a 'real' Unix and comparable in features to Linux & *BSD.; if NT doesn't keep up, Linux and *BSD will wipe it out. It can only hold market share as long as it's comparable. Right now, Linux and NT are, despite all hype, reasonably comparable. I expect Linux and NT to remain reasonably comparable with the advent of Win2K and Kernel 2.4. I hope Linux will pull dramatically ahead, and I think we have a big lead in stability, but we'll have to see. Anyway, if the feature-discrepancy becomes too large, the less-featured system will lose.
In other words, the playing-field isn't stable. People want more out of their systems as time goes on. Holding still isn't good enough in an evolving technology.
I should've been a little clearer. When I say 'advanced stuff' I don't necessarilly mean 'advanced computer hacking and networking things'... I mean, things like, designing your own animation; photo editing/seperating ; um... I'm stalling out here, I know there are more examples.
There are people out there who use computers as a means-to-an-end. They don't want or need to know how to do advanced computer stuff to do advanced audio/video/image/science/whatever stuff.
At least, they -shouldn't- need to know. The computer should facilitate, not inhibit. If people cannot accomplish advanced tasks with a computer without also being computer experts, then computers aren't doing there task correctly.
Or, to extend your analogy, if an expert driver also needs to be an expert mechanic to do a bootlegger reverse, then there's something wrong with the car.
I don't really think that you meant to say that, though, I think I wasn't clear enough in what -I- meant. I have to admit 'advanced stuff' is a pretty vague category.;)
There are a few things that can be meant by a journaling filesystem. What NTFS has is -not- what xfs or reiserfs have.
What people mean by a journaling filesystem in this context is a filesystem that has a scheme whereby changes are written to the journal, then, in idle moments, marked 'in progress' in the journal, written to the filesystem, and then marked 'done' in the journal.
With this scheme, if you go down in mid-write, you simply scan the journal for the 'in progress' notation and re-do the right. Ta-da, stable filesystem. You -can- lose data, if a write doesn't get into the journal, of course, but you won't get filesystem damage. As a result there is virtually no fsck time on reboot.
Take an SGI/xfs machine, and a Windows NTFS machine. Start them doing some stuff, and then pull the plugs. Now reboot. NTFS needs to scandisk, because NT is not a true journaling FS. SGI checks its journal, and is up and running in no time.
I expect true journaling in NTFS-2K. If it isn't there, well... then MS will lose the server market completely in no time.
An advantage of Linux is that if the customer is on the 'net, you can (if they give the authority) telnet/ssh into their box and, and start a remote X session that shows on -your- desktop. If you're logged into their user account, you'll see exactly the desktop they have.
I know that -I- wouldn't want to let tech support log into -my- account or root on my box... but, I'm a techie and perfectly capable of fixing my own box. I think the ordinary user would, in most cases anyway, be willing to compromise their privacy in exchange for tech support being able to just go in and -fix- it instead of those tedious phone conversations. "Click Control Panel... Click Gizmo-Driver... Select the 'Advanced Settings' Panel. Please read me the values from top to bottom... "
Anyway, my entire point being that customizable does not necessarilly mean less supportable.
But Linux simply isn't ready for on-computer-geeks to be using all the time. It's propbably okay for smart non-computer-geeks, as long as they have a bit of support once in a while. But it's still not ready for Aunt Helga who wants to check her email once in a while and run a word processor.
Actually, I think that's -exactly- who it's ready for, if she can get it preinstalled. If Aunt Helga has a preinstalled Netscape and WordPerfect and either has KPPP set up or has step-by-step instructions like are handed out by ISPs for setting up windows... she's all set. The system won't crash, won't get viruses, won't re-mail worms to her friends via outlook... Okay, okay, I'm spreading FUD against MS now, I'm bad.
I think who it's -not- ready for is non-geeks who want to do a lot of advanced stuff. It's when you start doing Advanced Stuff(TM) that you start needing the command line. It's also true that Linux -doesn't- have all of the software that Windows does, and the more esoteric the application the more likely that Linux doesn't have it. (Though, we have some pretty esoteric stuff.) The print-seperations advantage of Photoshop over The Gimp comes to mind, and I don't think we have a professional CAD program yet. But a friendly word procesing/web/e-mail environment? Sure. No prob.
The compatability library that the Solaris IE is based on, from Mainsoft, hasn't yet been ported to Linux yet. It has been annouced, but not completed.
I have serious doubts that MS ported it to WINE or any other win32-on-unix system. You might ask your 'informants' just what this port was based on.
Once Mainsoft has completed the Linux version of their product, then we might see Internet Explorer for Linux. At least, at that point, it's no more than a recompile, so they have no good technical reason -not- to release a Linux version. The decision they make, to or not to, will be purely strategic (undermine Linux as a viable platform by withholding MS products vs. hold the browser market and control of the de-facto web APIs... tough call... )
The problem with drug testing is that a lot of companies test for legal and prescription drugs, too. Anti-depressants. High blood pressure medications. And so on.
Hrmmm. I didn't know that. Any references would be appreciated, even to the information-grubbing NY Times. Unfortunately, since the ADA only applies to un-corrected disabilites, and anyone on medication presumably has his or her problem 'corrected' that probably means that the companies are in the legal (though not the ethical, imo) right to do this, and to fire those employees they consider unacceptable.
Oh, well. I still won't work for companies that drug-test. And I'm arrogant enough to think that that -is- a loss for them.:)
1. It does bother me, that's why I'm a member of the EFF.
2. I don't, and won't, work for any company that requires drug testing, and oppose the war on drugs.
3. I'm American.
4. Whereas, 1, 2, and 3 at least some Americans are responsive to these things.;)
The problem with drug-testing, is that, basically, companies have wide discretion in what they can require of their employees. The options of response are to work on drug legalization, or work to pass a law that specifically takes away a companies right to make you take a drug test as a condition of employment.
Erm. And I think our cops just bust down the door. Well, -usually- they knock first, wait five seconds, and -then- bust down the door (at least as seen on the real-cop shows, I've never been in an 'actual' bust of any kind.)
Anyway, on the issue at hand... as long as this is only low-level protocols, screw it, I'll just encrypt my data. Secure encryption schemes -assume- a 'man-in-the-middle' (wiretap) attack to start with, so we know how to deal with this. Encrypt and ignore.:)
I'd rather there were no 'wire-tap protocols' to start with, though. Damage to router security isn't something that makes me sleep well at night.
Uhm, oops. My bad. I did a 'find in page' but I guess I did it wrong, case sensitively or something. Good to know that CVS 1.10 is fixed. I kinda figured CVS would get prioritized by someone anyway.:)
To reply to myself, I also think that any Y2K problems will be resolved within a week or two. It may cost some expensive consulting hours, but it'll get done.
I think that the GNU Y2K readiness list is a bit disturbing. CVS-1.8 and 1.9 are not ready, and no newer version is listed as having been tested. Groff is not ready... ouch...
I also fully expect that there will be major and expensive breakdowns of computer systems. There is far too much stupid code out there being relied on. I had the same reflex as nearly every programmer... 'Ahh, it won't matter except for silly things like sorting your checkbook by date.' I still don't really know -why- it matters, but when people have done readiness-testing (setting the date to Dec. 31, 1999 and watching it rollover) computer equipment has done things like stop a power plant from working. Why? Probably some linkage between database functions and power functions. Or a failure in a cron-like system. Who knows.
As programmers we think it's 'obvious' that it isn't 'really' a problem. But it is a problem. It's just like when it's 'obvious' that it can't be -your- code that introduced the bug... until you step through it with a debugger and realize that it is. You can argue until you're blue in the face about why it shouldn't be a problem, but the empirical evidence disagrees.
Well, Lawyers, Liars and Perl gives a better explanation of why there are Y2K issues even in modern code better than I can do.
Obviously, this would have to be only the first step; outlawing implementations w/o the trapdoor would have to follow or we'd all just ignore it. Outlawing all other forms of encryption would be necessary too. I don't -think- that there's a chance in hell we'd let it get that far, but I'm not taking any chances. Between the DVD-blowup and this nonsense and the censorship issues, I just went and signed up to be a member of the EFF. Lots of us are tech professionals. I, at least, can put off a memory upgrade on my linux box for a few more weeks for a little piece of mind.
Pournelle's argument is, basically, 'MS competitors made mistakes, so MS isn't a monopoly, they lost through their own stupidity.' Along with claims the MS has always forseen the market better, basically. Does not address threatened revokations of licenses, does not address the loss of NSP technology, makes the assumption that we get IE 'free' when, clearly, MS revenues paid for the development of IE, revenues mostly from Windows and Office. Very one-sided argument, mildly interesting points about the early history of OS/2.
The Drudge Report: Sensationalism at it's worst. 'DoJ demands breakup of MS'
NY Times: More complete version of the DR story. DoJ demands breakup -or- restrictions preventing MS from exercising monopoly power. Well, no kidding, what else would they demand, jail time for Bill Gates? This isn't a criminal court.
Yahoo/Wave of Lawsuits: One (1) class action suit filed in NY state. Bit premature, I would think, but okay, it was expected. No details.
Arguments under this story: Pro-MS arguments from people who clearly haven't read the FoF through; anti-MS flames from people who clearly haven't read the FoF through. If you're going to troll me on this article, address the issues, don't give me an unsubstantiated anti-gov't rant.
Slashdot Mirror
My experience with school administrators and bullying was, basically, that a teacher dragged my attacker and me to the principals office, I said he attacked me, he said we were just fooling around, and because I said it was actually a fight, we -both- got suspended. (I was, apparently, not supposed to defend myself in any physical way when attacked).
I have no reason to believe that this has changed, nor did I have enough 'evidence' of my being assaulted to possible succeeded in a lawsuit against the school, even if a minor could bring such a suit.
(OTOH, I don't think I was ever really particularly singled out. My impression was that -every- male in that school got into at least two or three fights a year, whether they wanted to or not.)
Of course, since the stakes have changed, I suppose there's an argument to be made that being suspended or expelled is better than being imprisoned.
--Parity
First of all, I use, and very much like, KDE. However, 1.x at least, is rife with windowsisms, including many that made it into the 'user interface hall of shame' and then were duplicated in KDE. I'm talking mostly about the little utility-apps here, like the file-finder :)
and such. That's background, now for the question.
Is this a temporary situation, or a deliberate KDE 'design goal' to be like-windows? If some developer out there were to find some time outside of work to redo some of them with a new and non-'shame'ful interface, would that be accepted into the codebase, or is it considered that the group already did it 'right' and you only want other kinds of improvements? Is there room for a set of alternate-KDE utility apps, or do you want one true KDE look?
(UI design -is- largely a matter of opinion, so,
if you think KDE's utility apps are already just great, that's fine, but I get the impression that it was just easiest to emulate the windows way on a lot of things.)
--Parity
MS has been doing a lot of posturing and spin-control, but the whole purpose of Jackson's releasing the findings-of-fact ahead of time was to announce to MS 'settle or be hit with a sledgehammer.' Jackson's been pushing the parties to settle all along, but nothing's come of it.
;) Okay, I've tangented into fantasy. If MS knows what's good for them, they'll settle, and Windows will have a long lifespan yet.
Of course, MS might -not- settle. They're continuing to reap profits from their monopoly position as they draw out the court case. (They have cooled off a -little- but they're still pretty aggressive.) Well. I'm all in favour of MS not settling. I'd be perfectly happy to see them broken into smithreens and strangled with restraints. If that happened, Linux is poised to 'take over' and whether it's linux or not, a world of posix-compliant target machines is what I want to code for.
--Parity
Oh, I realize the economic disadvantages. I'm just not all that concerned about them. The cost of living is lower as well, I think, though I'll have to watch the regional-variance.
But, basically - Canada's a nice country, it's right next door (I already live in New England), and I have net-friends in various parts of Canada that I might or might not be near if I moved there.
But, basically, I'm more interested in having employment that I like than having employment that pays well, and I see no reason to cut myself off from opportunity in Canada, and I think I might well enjoy living there, at least for a while.
--Parity
Microsoft is hurting every other OS and middleware vendor. Netscape is -not- the only company mentioned in a victim role.
Intel with NSP. Sun with Java. IBM with OS/2.
Microsoft didn't hurt only their competitors, but their allies.
HP, Dell, and Compaq were all put out with the restrictions Microsoft put on the desktop. HP complained about the money they were losing since being forced to have a 'conforming' (and hence, less user-friendly) desktop. HP got compensated for their loss.
Worried about the 'little' company? What about all the OEMs around the country that -could- make more money by offering a larger variety of machines - except they'd immediately lose it to Microsoft penalties. Or who lost their investment into customizing the boot process and desktop, and being less important than HP -didn't- get compensated for their losses by MS.
All of this is apparent if you read the findings of fact.
--Parity
I think, actually, that project gutenberg ought to store their files in a simple semi-formatted way.
Like, lines beginning with \ are escapes with codes for 'title' 'author' 'chapter' 'paragraph' and 'footnote' Like,
\title The Slashdot Effect
\author Rob Malda
\chapter Chapter One: What is The Web
etc.
(apologies if there's a real book by that title)
Most of it'd just be plain text. With -just- enough formatting that a perl-script (or future-language script) can transform it into the pretty-format of the day with a bit of analysis,
but not so much as to make it unreadable.
Just a thought.
--Parity
The internet is -constantly- under attack. Or, the other way of looking at it, is that the internet is a great big training-grounds for cyberwarfare. We have our defense specialists (sysadmins, netadmins, and the OpenBSD project... :)) constantly engaging in 'wargames' with our 'black ops' teams (the (cr|h)acker 'community').
...
When black 'hits' they (usually) only mark their 'kill' with a label.
Now, given that at least a good quarter-to-a-third of the (cr|h)ackers (and usually the better ones, at that) are politically motivated, I think it's a pretty good bet that they'd lash out hard against any nation that began waging cyberwarfare against civilians. (The response would be more mixed for military-target-only, of course, and both sides might gain unofficial 'cyberwarriors' in many situations.)
Final notes -
Any refinery, factory, etc, that has their real
world device controls accessible to the internet should be immediately be dissolved on the basis of congenital idiocy and criminal negligence leading to the endangerment of lots of lives.
'Cyberwar' is a really stupid term. Some one come up with a better one, -please-. 'Information war' sounds more like propaganda-warfare. 'Internet war' probably won't catch on. Don't even -think- 'e-war' or 'iWar'
--Parity
Okay, I have to ask (since I'm thinking of changing jobs soon, and you seem likely to know, if you'll take a minute to answer) -
What's the general attitude towards Bachelors/Masters/PhD levels in Canada? In the U.S., I think, a bachelors gets you plenty of job opportunity; a Masters gets you a few more job opportunities and a higher pay-scale. A PhD is a sort of an odd thing that means you either get really high-up jobs or are overqualified (aka, 'we don't want to pay PhD-level salary for a simple coder')
And, if you know, how hard is it for an USA resident-native to get a Canadian residency-permit & work-visa?
--Parity
I really don't understand why everyone is so caught up in the twenty-year extension. It's frustrating, it's creating an insidious and pervasive feeling that all words and images are owned by someone, yes, it's bad. However, the restrictions applied are pretty much the same as ever. The more compelling threat to civil rights, in my opinion, is the addition of restrictions against devices intended to copy.
In the words of the Digital Millenium Copyright act summary linked above,
Section 1201 proscribes devices or services that fall within any of the three following categories:
- They are primarily designed or produced to circumvent.
- They have only limited commercially significant use other than to circumvent; or
- They are marketed for use in circumventing.
Am I the only one who notes the striking similarity to the British law that allowed this bullying incident so recently discussed on slashdot? Am I the only one that thought they couldn't do that to us in America?
Please note the -or- clause, and consider that only one has to be shown. If you can show that far more people will use the device to break the law than will use it legitimately, the device (like, say, the DeCSS program) will become illegal.
Libraries, non-profit organizations and educational institutions are protected from criminal, but not civil, liability in these cases, but individuals have no such protection. If I'm putting the pieces of the summary together correctly, a successful lawsuit means you could be put in prison for up to five years for contributing to the DeCSS project. Hopefully, the developers would win, but I don't think (though IANAL) that they could get the case dismissed out of hand; it would go to trial, and cost lots of money to someone.
--Parity
Please remember my conditional 'if it comes
preinstalled.'
It's trivial to block the ports by default with tcp_wrappers in the install script, so only localhost can access them and disable the services that aren't needed even locally. This can be done at the shop before Aunt Helga even sees the box.
Besides, even if it's not done, who's going to set up a 'p0rn and warez' server on a dialup box that's only connected thirty minutes a day? Let's be serious, Aunt Helga doesn't have DSL.
--Parity
Because the 'real' Unices have them, and now Linux does too, with ReiserFS, and it'll have another when xfs (from sgi) gets out of beta.
Right now, NT competes because it's a heckuva lot cheaper than a 'real' Unix and comparable in features to Linux & *BSD.; if NT doesn't keep up, Linux and *BSD will wipe it out. It can only hold market share as long as it's comparable. Right now, Linux and NT are, despite all hype, reasonably comparable. I expect Linux and NT to remain reasonably comparable with the advent of Win2K and Kernel 2.4. I hope Linux will pull dramatically ahead, and I think we have a big lead in stability, but we'll have to see. Anyway, if the feature-discrepancy becomes too large, the less-featured system will lose.
In other words, the playing-field isn't stable. People want more out of their systems as time goes on. Holding still isn't good enough in an evolving technology.
--Parity
I should've been a little clearer. When I say 'advanced stuff' I don't necessarilly mean 'advanced computer hacking and networking things'... I mean, things like, designing your own animation; photo editing/seperating ; um...
;)
I'm stalling out here, I know there are more examples.
There are people out there who use computers as a means-to-an-end. They don't want or need to know how to do advanced computer stuff to do advanced audio/video/image/science/whatever stuff.
At least, they -shouldn't- need to know. The computer should facilitate, not inhibit. If people cannot accomplish advanced tasks with a computer without also being computer experts, then computers aren't doing there task correctly.
Or, to extend your analogy, if an expert driver also needs to be an expert mechanic to do a bootlegger reverse, then there's something wrong with the car.
I don't really think that you meant to say that, though, I think I wasn't clear enough in what -I- meant. I have to admit 'advanced stuff' is a pretty vague category.
--Parity
There are a few things that can be meant by a journaling filesystem. What NTFS has is -not- what xfs or reiserfs have.
What people mean by a journaling filesystem in this context is a filesystem that has a scheme whereby changes are written to the journal, then, in idle moments, marked 'in progress' in the journal, written to the filesystem, and then marked 'done' in the journal.
With this scheme, if you go down in mid-write, you simply scan the journal for the 'in progress' notation and re-do the right. Ta-da, stable filesystem. You -can- lose data, if a write doesn't get into the journal, of course, but you won't get filesystem damage. As a result there is virtually no fsck time on reboot.
Take an SGI/xfs machine, and a Windows NTFS machine. Start them doing some stuff, and then pull the plugs. Now reboot. NTFS needs to scandisk, because NT is not a true journaling FS. SGI checks its journal, and is up and running in no time.
I expect true journaling in NTFS-2K. If it isn't there, well... then MS will lose the server market completely in no time.
--Parity
An advantage of Linux is that if the customer is on the 'net, you can (if they give the authority) telnet/ssh into their box and, and start a remote X session that shows on -your- desktop. If you're logged into their user account, you'll see exactly the desktop they have.
I know that -I- wouldn't want to let tech support log into -my- account or root on my box... but, I'm a techie and perfectly capable of fixing my own box. I think the ordinary user would, in most cases anyway, be willing to compromise their privacy in exchange for tech support being able to just go in and -fix- it instead of those tedious phone conversations. "Click Control Panel... Click Gizmo-Driver... Select the 'Advanced Settings' Panel. Please read me the values from top to bottom... "
Anyway, my entire point being that customizable does not necessarilly mean less supportable.
--Parity
But Linux simply isn't ready for on-computer-geeks to be using all the time. It's propbably okay for
smart non-computer-geeks, as long as they have a bit of support once in a while. But it's still not ready for Aunt Helga who wants to check her email once in a while and run a word processor.
Actually, I think that's -exactly- who it's ready for, if she can get it preinstalled. If Aunt Helga has a preinstalled Netscape and WordPerfect and either has KPPP set up or has step-by-step instructions like are handed out by ISPs for setting up windows... she's all set. The system won't crash, won't get viruses, won't re-mail worms to her friends via outlook... Okay, okay, I'm spreading FUD against MS now, I'm bad.
I think who it's -not- ready for is non-geeks who want to do a lot of advanced stuff. It's when you start doing Advanced Stuff(TM) that you start needing the command line. It's also true that Linux -doesn't- have all of the software that Windows does, and the more esoteric the application the more likely that Linux doesn't have it. (Though, we have some pretty esoteric stuff.) The print-seperations advantage of Photoshop over The Gimp comes to mind, and I don't think we have a professional CAD program yet.
But a friendly word procesing/web/e-mail environment? Sure. No prob.
--Parity
Please. This doesn't make any sense.
The compatability library that the Solaris IE
is based on, from Mainsoft, hasn't yet been ported to Linux yet. It has been
annouced, but not completed.
I have serious doubts that MS ported it to WINE
or any other win32-on-unix system. You might ask your 'informants' just what this port was based on.
Once Mainsoft has completed the Linux version of their product, then we might see Internet Explorer for Linux. At least, at that point, it's no more than a recompile, so they have no good technical reason -not- to release a Linux version. The decision they make, to or not to, will be purely strategic (undermine Linux as a viable platform by withholding MS products vs. hold the browser market and control of the de-facto web APIs... tough call... )
--Parity
The problem with drug testing is that a lot of companies test for legal and prescription drugs, too. Anti-depressants. High blood pressure medications. And so on.
Hrmmm. I didn't know that. Any references would be appreciated, even to the information-grubbing NY Times. Unfortunately, since the ADA only applies to un-corrected disabilites, and anyone on medication presumably has his or her problem 'corrected' that probably means that the companies are in the legal (though not the ethical, imo) right to do this, and to fire those employees they consider unacceptable.
Oh, well. I still won't work for companies that drug-test. And I'm arrogant enough to think that that -is- a loss for them.
--Parity
So support you local Mom&Pop ISP!
My local Mom&Pop ISP got bought out by RCN...
--Parity
1. It does bother me, that's why I'm a member of the EFF.
;)
:)
2. I don't, and won't, work for any company that requires drug testing, and oppose the war on drugs.
3. I'm American.
4. Whereas, 1, 2, and 3 at least some Americans are responsive to these things.
The problem with drug-testing, is that, basically, companies have wide discretion in what they can require of their employees. The options of response are to work on drug legalization, or work to pass a law that specifically takes away a companies right to make you take a drug test as a condition of employment.
Erm. And I think our cops just bust down the door. Well, -usually- they knock first, wait five seconds, and -then- bust down the door (at least as seen on the real-cop shows, I've never been in an 'actual' bust of any kind.)
Anyway, on the issue at hand... as long as this is only low-level protocols, screw it, I'll just encrypt my data. Secure encryption schemes -assume- a 'man-in-the-middle' (wiretap) attack to start with, so we know how to deal with this. Encrypt and ignore.
I'd rather there were no 'wire-tap protocols' to start with, though. Damage to router security isn't something that makes me sleep well at night.
--Parity
Uhm, oops. My bad. I did a 'find in page' but I guess I did it wrong, case sensitively or something. Good to know that CVS 1.10 is fixed. I kinda figured CVS would get prioritized by someone anyway. :)
--Parity
To reply to myself, I also think that any Y2K
problems will be resolved within a week or two.
It may cost some expensive consulting hours, but
it'll get done.
--Parity
I think that the GNU Y2K readiness list is a bit disturbing. CVS-1.8 and 1.9 are not ready, and no newer version is listed as having been tested. Groff is not ready... ouch...
I also fully expect that there will be major and expensive breakdowns of computer systems. There is far too much stupid code out there being relied on. I had the same reflex as nearly every programmer... 'Ahh, it won't matter except for silly things like sorting your checkbook by date.' I still don't really know -why- it matters, but when people have done readiness-testing (setting the date to Dec. 31, 1999 and watching it rollover) computer equipment has done things like stop a power plant from working. Why? Probably some linkage between database functions and power functions. Or a failure in a cron-like system. Who knows.
As programmers we think it's 'obvious' that it isn't 'really' a problem. But it is a problem. It's just like when it's 'obvious' that it can't be -your- code that introduced the bug... until you step through it with a debugger and realize that it is. You can argue until you're blue in the face about why it shouldn't be a problem, but the empirical evidence disagrees.
Well, Lawyers, Liars and Perl gives a better explanation of why there are Y2K issues even in modern code better than I can do.
--Parity
Obviously, this would have to be only the first step; outlawing implementations w/o the trapdoor would have to follow or we'd all just ignore it. Outlawing all other forms of encryption would be necessary too. I don't -think- that there's a chance in hell we'd let it get that far, but I'm not taking any chances. Between the DVD-blowup and this nonsense and the censorship issues, I just went and signed up to be a member of the EFF. Lots of us are tech professionals. I, at least, can put off a memory upgrade on my linux box for a few more weeks for a little piece of mind.
--Parity
Pournelle's argument is, basically, 'MS competitors made mistakes, so MS isn't a monopoly, they lost through their own stupidity.' Along
with claims the MS has always forseen the market better, basically. Does not address threatened revokations of licenses, does not address the loss of NSP technology, makes the assumption that we get IE 'free' when, clearly, MS revenues paid for the development of IE, revenues mostly from Windows and Office. Very one-sided argument, mildly interesting points about the early history of OS/2.
The Drudge Report: Sensationalism at it's worst. 'DoJ demands breakup of MS'
NY Times: More complete version of the DR story. DoJ demands breakup -or- restrictions preventing MS from exercising monopoly power. Well, no kidding, what else would they demand, jail time for Bill Gates? This isn't a criminal court.
Yahoo/Wave of Lawsuits: One (1) class action suit filed in NY state. Bit premature, I would think, but okay, it was expected. No details.
Arguments under this story: Pro-MS arguments from people who clearly haven't read the FoF through; anti-MS flames from people who clearly haven't read the FoF through. If you're going to troll me on this article, address the issues, don't give me an unsubstantiated anti-gov't rant.
--Parity
40 bit encryption 56 bit encryption is not a munition by the laws as I understand them, but IANAL.
--Parity