Oh please! The single mouse button question comes up in every Mac flame. PC people just don't understand... The Macintosh GUIs have been advanced enough to not need two mouse buttons since 1984. You can use multi-button mice and mice with scroll wheels on the Macintosh if you so desire. Give it a rest already!
Simplicity is simply one of the many things that makes the Mac beautiful. I personally believe that is why Macs come with a one-button mouse by default.
I live in New Mexico. I don't drink beverages that contain alcohol. If HB126 passes, I'll be punished for a crime I can't possibly commit.
What if I have asthma?
What if I can't to use it because I know that putting unwashed items in my mouth is harmful to my health?
What if the device malfunctions alerting everyone on the road to call 911 on their cell phones to report a drunk driver? Can I sue the state for defamation of character? Can I sue the other drivers who crash into me because they're too busy calling 911 to pay attention to the other drivers around them?
What if I have a medical emergency? Many parts of NM are too remote for ambulance service to respond quickly.
What if I'm being persued? I was the target of a random gang-related shooting in the past and was glad I could get away.
I'm a big supporter of getting drunks off the road. The real solution is to charge them with the crime they really commit: Attempted murder. As long as New Mexico has 24-hour jail sentences for DUI offenses, we'll never make any progress. It's not uncommon for repeat offenders to have over 10 DUI's on their record and still drive. The solution to the problem should not punish all of New Mexico. Most of us, believe it or not, don't drink and drive.
Now that I think about it, I'm sure these devices are pretty easy to bypass. The hack^H^H^H^Hfix may be as easy as rewiring the ignition or attaching a hair dryer to the mouthpiece.
A very good point. Nobody really defined what was meant by "enterprise operating system" here. Most often the term is used to describe a server (as opposed to workstation) designed to run large applications to accessed by hundreds of people (or more) at a time.
For example... You work at a bank - a big bank. You have one S/390 mainframe. It runs a huge database with all of the customer account data. Batch jobs run hourly to update account balances based on the interest rate of the hour. All day long, the system processes thousands of transactions updating account information from tellers, loan officers, internet terminals, and ATMs. Every night, thousands of bills, account balance sheets, check registers, etc. are all printed and sent to inserters based on the contents of the database. Failed print batches are automatically queued on alternate print spoolers - maybe in a different city or state. Everything bank-related happens there (I can't be more specific as I don't work in a bank). The next LPAR has the same exact software, but the developers compile and debug on it without hurting the production data or applications. Finally, in the next LPAR, the business management software processes payroll, accounting, HR, etc.
To give a little credit to Linux, maybe there's another LPAR running Linux in an internet DMZ holding up the online banking services. The particular Linux instance can reboot when it needs to every few months, or when new (daily) security fixes become available. It doesn't matter because internet users are used to websites that are down because of Linux and Windows problems.
Anyway, I'm not talking about a couple of PC's running QuickBooks here. I'm talking about hundreds of gigs of accounting data passed over every couple of minutes. If the system goes down, the bank may go out of business. It's been running for maybe 10 years since its last major upgrade. Hardware is replaced without reboots. CPU upgrades and replacements, memory enhancements, additional peripherals, etc. are all replaced hot without rebooting.
All of that happens on a single machine that doesn't really even really have fast processors - just a bunch of I/O bandwidth. Never going down, upgrading without restarting, managing heavy workloads, having built-in fault tolerance, and having system people who know what the heck they're doing are all part of enterprise computing. z/OS, OpenVMS, and certain high-end Unices are the operating systems that run in these kinds of environments - not Linux or Windows. The operator isn't some MSCE or RHCE who knows a lot about PC's that can plug drives into a RAID-5 pointing out their reduntant features. The operator is a system programmer re-writing the OS while it runs, without interupting operations.
When I think of enterprise operating systems and enterprise computing, I don't think of the thousands of PC's, Macs, and Sun Blade 150's on everyone's desks. I think of the big computer in the back that does all the real work. An enterprise OS is definately not named after it's GUI (Windows - which I don't believe is even capable of running without it's GUI). An enterprise OS is definately not a college programming assignment written over a few beers in the dorm room late at night. While Linux and Windows may be starting to see features like redundant power supplies and RAID, enterprise systems have been enjoying the capabilities described above for 20 or 30 years.
Um... Neither Windows nor Linux are enterprise operating systems. PC hardware is just that: hardware good enough to run on your personal computer. Yes, I've heard all about how Linux runs on just about every computer invented. But let's stop and think about that. Linux lacks so many features found in the commercial operating systems. Why someone would want to run Linux on a GS1280, Superdome, E10k, or S/390 is completely beyond me. If you can afford the big hardware, you can afford the OS licensing. Why would someone choose Linux over Solaris, AIX, HP/UX, or Tru64? Easy: Ignorance. Either that or they think that the developers don't deserve to get paid for making a superior product. The Linux toy cannot seriously be compared to a commercial, enterprise grade UNIX or non-UNIX operating system.
Anyway, I'd like to see a comparison for the major players of the real enterprise OS market: z/OS, OpenVMS, Solaris, AIX, Tru64, and HP/UX.
They must have lousy bandwidth then. I can't get the page to ever finish loading. Just getting the initial HTML into my browser seems to take forever. I'm not impressed at all with their Java web server. I can serve pages faster with my NeXT Cube (M68040 CPU).
I have an old NeXT Cube made back in '88. I have all of the original hardware including NeXT-branded SCSI and power cables, Dimension board, greyscale and color MegaPixel monitors, and 400dpi NeXT laser printer. Now for the best part... Serial number 666. No joke.
I still use this machine every day and have no plans to stop any time soon. Too bad NeXT stopped making hardware.
So my thoughts are... Well... Solaris is a great UNIX! It's much more complete (esp. Trusted Solaris) than OpenBSD. Why not just stick to the software that's supposed to run on Sun hardware? Running OpenBSD on Sun hardware is about as silly as running Linux with Afterstep on NeXT hardware. I have no idea why people would remove the good product from their good hardware to replace it with something inferior.
No, smartass. I've run it on RedHat 7.[12] x86 boxen. I had terrible luck with it. The stupid thing kept crashing on me every time I'd open certain Word files. No errors about not being able to read the files, no "format not supported yet" popups. The application would just go away without warning.
Even if it comes out for the Mac, I really don't care about Star Office. That fact is, I use ed/ex for everything. If I really need to constantly see everything, vi is the answer (nothing wrong with emacs of course!). When the boss insists on sending a word document, I run strings on it to get the vital info. If I really need the formatting, AppleWorks is the best solution, IMHO.
I'm not trying to say Star Office is crap. It really seemed like it was good software. It just crashed a lot for me. I call that a bug. In my experience, Star Office has been buggy. AppleWorks is much easier to install than Star Office. AppleWorks is snappy even on my soon to be out of date Pismo hardware. The cost is a lot better than MS Office which runs slow on modern hardware.
No. The internet is all about porn. Although I think the story is great, it is important that the true nature of the internet is not obscured by it. Before the web... Before people connected their pee-cee's to the internet... Before there was Linux... Way before all of that, there was porn. Better porn. No-spam porn. Reading a.b.p.e. didn't involve sorting through spam and the damned AOL me-too'ers.
The official responce from the old "Know Your System Administrator" field guide (look on google):
SITUATION: Balky mail.
TECHNICAL THUG: Rewrites sendmail.cf from scratch. Rewrites sendmail in SNOBOL. Hacks kernel to implement file locking. Hacks kernel to implement "better" semaphores. Rewrites sendmail in assembly. Hacks kernel to . . .
ADMINISTRATIVE FASCIST: Puts mail use policy in motd. Locks accounts that go over mail use quota. Keeps quota low enough that people go back to interoffice mail, thus solving problem.
MANIAC:
# kill -9 `ps -augxww | grep sendmail | awk '{print $2}'`
# rm -f/usr/spool/mail/*
# wall
Mail is down. Please use interoffice mail until we have it back up.
^D
# write max
I've got my boots and backpack. Ready to leave for Mount Tam?
^D
IDIOT: # echo "HELP!" | mail tech_support.AT.vendor.com%kremvax%bitnet!BIFF!!!
Both "administrative fascist" and "maniac" seem to have the right idea about how we should handle users receiving too much mail.
I use OmniWeb under MacOS X. It doesn't display banner ads. It also prevents all those pesky pop-up banner sites (Geocities, Tripod, etc.) from cluttering up my desktop with new windows. Click setting here, click setting there... No more ads! While most surfers have to see commercials on every web page they visit, I surf commercial free.
If all browsers provided anti-ad features, the banner/popup ad industry would die a much needed death. Ads suck ass!
Ah! You are right in saying that it may not be considered speech by the legal system. We would need a court to say for sure. Unfortunately, the DeCSS case doesn't give my theory much ground to stand on. In my opinion, code is speech because it is a creation of my mind typed up in a language a compiler (and other programmers) can understand.
If I author a program and send the code to people, it's speech. If I don't send the code to anyone, it's still speech. If I run destructive programs or trick people/programs/operating systems into running destructive programs, I stop speaking and begin willfully destroying property. The fact is that Americans have freedom of press and speech. Whether or not we ever get published or listened to is irrelevant.
My previous post assumes that I assume all Slashdot readers have American rights. I just noticed that. How silly of me to overlook so many people...
If the author spreads the worm, then we should hold them accountable. However, I feel that the people who simply author worms/virii/etc should be allowed to. I say it's free speech!
Slashdot Mirror
I saw no mention of OpenVMS in the article. I'd say OpenVMS is certainly safer than MacOS X, *BSD, Linux, or Windows.
No, OpenVMS is not dead. Yes, people still use it in environments where security and uptime are critical.
Oh please! The single mouse button question comes up in every Mac flame. PC people just don't understand... The Macintosh GUIs have been advanced enough to not need two mouse buttons since 1984. You can use multi-button mice and mice with scroll wheels on the Macintosh if you so desire. Give it a rest already!
Simplicity is simply one of the many things that makes the Mac beautiful. I personally believe that is why Macs come with a one-button mouse by default.
I'm a big supporter of getting drunks off the road. The real solution is to charge them with the crime they really commit: Attempted murder. As long as New Mexico has 24-hour jail sentences for DUI offenses, we'll never make any progress. It's not uncommon for repeat offenders to have over 10 DUI's on their record and still drive. The solution to the problem should not punish all of New Mexico. Most of us, believe it or not, don't drink and drive.
Now that I think about it, I'm sure these devices are pretty easy to bypass. The hack^H^H^H^Hfix may be as easy as rewiring the ignition or attaching a hair dryer to the mouthpiece.
For example... You work at a bank - a big bank. You have one S/390 mainframe. It runs a huge database with all of the customer account data. Batch jobs run hourly to update account balances based on the interest rate of the hour. All day long, the system processes thousands of transactions updating account information from tellers, loan officers, internet terminals, and ATMs. Every night, thousands of bills, account balance sheets, check registers, etc. are all printed and sent to inserters based on the contents of the database. Failed print batches are automatically queued on alternate print spoolers - maybe in a different city or state. Everything bank-related happens there (I can't be more specific as I don't work in a bank). The next LPAR has the same exact software, but the developers compile and debug on it without hurting the production data or applications. Finally, in the next LPAR, the business management software processes payroll, accounting, HR, etc.
To give a little credit to Linux, maybe there's another LPAR running Linux in an internet DMZ holding up the online banking services. The particular Linux instance can reboot when it needs to every few months, or when new (daily) security fixes become available. It doesn't matter because internet users are used to websites that are down because of Linux and Windows problems.
Anyway, I'm not talking about a couple of PC's running QuickBooks here. I'm talking about hundreds of gigs of accounting data passed over every couple of minutes. If the system goes down, the bank may go out of business. It's been running for maybe 10 years since its last major upgrade. Hardware is replaced without reboots. CPU upgrades and replacements, memory enhancements, additional peripherals, etc. are all replaced hot without rebooting.
All of that happens on a single machine that doesn't really even really have fast processors - just a bunch of I/O bandwidth. Never going down, upgrading without restarting, managing heavy workloads, having built-in fault tolerance, and having system people who know what the heck they're doing are all part of enterprise computing. z/OS, OpenVMS, and certain high-end Unices are the operating systems that run in these kinds of environments - not Linux or Windows. The operator isn't some MSCE or RHCE who knows a lot about PC's that can plug drives into a RAID-5 pointing out their reduntant features. The operator is a system programmer re-writing the OS while it runs, without interupting operations.
When I think of enterprise operating systems and enterprise computing, I don't think of the thousands of PC's, Macs, and Sun Blade 150's on everyone's desks. I think of the big computer in the back that does all the real work. An enterprise OS is definately not named after it's GUI (Windows - which I don't believe is even capable of running without it's GUI). An enterprise OS is definately not a college programming assignment written over a few beers in the dorm room late at night. While Linux and Windows may be starting to see features like redundant power supplies and RAID, enterprise systems have been enjoying the capabilities described above for 20 or 30 years.
Anyway, I'd like to see a comparison for the major players of the real enterprise OS market: z/OS, OpenVMS, Solaris, AIX, Tru64, and HP/UX.
They must have lousy bandwidth then. I can't get the page to ever finish loading. Just getting the initial HTML into my browser seems to take forever. I'm not impressed at all with their Java web server. I can serve pages faster with my NeXT Cube (M68040 CPU).
I have an old NeXT Cube made back in '88. I have all of the original hardware including NeXT-branded SCSI and power cables, Dimension board, greyscale and color MegaPixel monitors, and 400dpi NeXT laser printer. Now for the best part... Serial number 666. No joke.
I still use this machine every day and have no plans to stop any time soon. Too bad NeXT stopped making hardware.
So my thoughts are... Well... Solaris is a great UNIX! It's much more complete (esp. Trusted Solaris) than OpenBSD. Why not just stick to the software that's supposed to run on Sun hardware? Running OpenBSD on Sun hardware is about as silly as running Linux with Afterstep on NeXT hardware. I have no idea why people would remove the good product from their good hardware to replace it with something inferior.
No, smartass. I've run it on RedHat 7.[12] x86 boxen. I had terrible luck with it. The stupid thing kept crashing on me every time I'd open certain Word files. No errors about not being able to read the files, no "format not supported yet" popups. The application would just go away without warning.
Even if it comes out for the Mac, I really don't care about Star Office. That fact is, I use ed/ex for everything. If I really need to constantly see everything, vi is the answer (nothing wrong with emacs of course!). When the boss insists on sending a word document, I run strings on it to get the vital info. If I really need the formatting, AppleWorks is the best solution, IMHO.
I'm not trying to say Star Office is crap. It really seemed like it was good software. It just crashed a lot for me. I call that a bug. In my experience, Star Office has been buggy. AppleWorks is much easier to install than Star Office. AppleWorks is snappy even on my soon to be out of date Pismo hardware. The cost is a lot better than MS Office which runs slow on modern hardware.
Appleworks is a good alternative! Appleworks has everything I need in an office suite. Plus, it's not buggy like Star Ofice or slow like MS Office X.
No. The internet is all about porn. Although I think the story is great, it is important that the true nature of the internet is not obscured by it. Before the web... Before people connected their pee-cee's to the internet... Before there was Linux... Way before all of that, there was porn. Better porn. No-spam porn. Reading a.b.p.e. didn't involve sorting through spam and the damned AOL me-too'ers.
Man, I miss the old internet.
Think back to the recent /bin/login CERT advisory. Telnet and the R-services use /bin/login. Telnet was, therefore, exploitable on many boxes.
I use OmniWeb under MacOS X. It doesn't display banner ads. It also prevents all those pesky pop-up banner sites (Geocities, Tripod, etc.) from cluttering up my desktop with new windows. Click setting here, click setting there... No more ads! While most surfers have to see commercials on every web page they visit, I surf commercial free.
If all browsers provided anti-ad features, the banner/popup ad industry would die a much needed death. Ads suck ass!
Ah! You are right in saying that it may not be considered speech by the legal system. We would need a court to say for sure. Unfortunately, the DeCSS case doesn't give my theory much ground to stand on. In my opinion, code is speech because it is a creation of my mind typed up in a language a compiler (and other programmers) can understand.
Hrm. I didn't know it was illegal to do such things. Surely those laws go against the first ammendment.
My previous post assumes that I assume all Slashdot readers have American rights. I just noticed that. How silly of me to overlook so many people...
If the author spreads the worm, then we should hold them accountable. However, I feel that the people who simply author worms/virii/etc should be allowed to. I say it's free speech!
Maybe we need some open source worms...
Who cares, anyway? This would actually be a problem if:
1. MS could author an OS that did what it claimed it could.
2. Real geeks used MS OS'es.
*Installs asbestos, prepares for flames*