OK, so the sites that advertised having Liv Tyler nude actually didn't. What's the big deal? Anyway, it's not like Google's search engine can look at the images to discern whether they're Liv Tyler or Natalie Portman or a Beowulf cluster. ---
I was recently faced with that same choice, to join an open source project or start my own from scratch. I decided to
join the project rather than start my own.
I really do like the idea of having total control of "my" source, knowing every byte of the code inside and out. But in the end, I realized it was just going to be too much work. It would have been really fun, sure, but what really made the decision not to start my own project was time. I didn't have the time to devote to coding for hours a day for weeks or months on end to get somewhere close to where the project I joined already was.
Before I did join them, though, I spent quite some time talking to the other developers as well as looking through the source. They all went out of their way to make me feel welcome, and since I've submitted code, they treat me as their peer in the project, complete with write access to CVS...
It's actually been exciting working with other developers, all of whom live in different states or even different countries. Apparently the author of this article had a very different experience with some project or another, or perhaps he's just talking out of his ass.
I don't know if my experience with joining an open source project is typical or not. Being an optimist, I'd certainly like to think that's how a project should run.
---
BBSs are alive and well, still. The Iowa Student Computer Association at the University of Iowa has been running one for ten years now. (I'm running a test site for new BBS software for it.)
Another great example of a virtual community is UNCENSORED! BBS which has been dialup since 1988 and both dialup and Internet based for years, up to this day.
A simple Google search will turn up many, many other BBS systems, and the successful ones can claim to have a virtual community right there. ---
Even the dumbest criminal is going to realize that it is implanted right below the surface of your skin, and get somebody to cut it out with a scalpel. It would take maybe a minute, could be done in a moving car, and the device tossed out the window right about the same time the people doing the tracking figured out what was going on.
Hence, the criminal disappears.
Now as for other applications, like tracking livestock, lost pets, missing children, medical monitoring, yes, these have some potential societal benefits. ---
However, in situations like this, there is something to be said for an "open" media area where control of the stories posted is only done by the users, with minor content checking by moderators (so that we don't get fake news stories, etc).
Sheesh. Next they'll be saying slashdot is turning down stories because they're owned by VA Linux...
Oh, wait. Nevermind.
Anyway, this looks like a simple case of a company deciding not to promote a competing service. Seems perfectly reasonable to me. After all, if I were making widgets, would I really announce it on my web site when some competitor comes along and starts making widgets?
Now if I've missed something here, please let me know... ---
Note that I don't speak for McLeodUSA. They don't pay me enough for that job.
Now, as to my personal experiences with U S WORST: The first time I tried to get a line from them, it took over two months! They claimed for most of that time that my address didn't exist. Even though I was very obviously living there and there was a network interface right in back. They missed the first install date, and after insisting on the phone with them for weeks that my address really did exist, they finally dispatched a truck and I got a phone line.
Of course, the line quality was for shit. I had to call for repair not a day afterward because of noise and static on the line. Turns out the installer had just strung the line out across the ground down to the street, and well, you can imagine what happened.
These days I am completely free of U S WORST (even though I live smack in the middle of their territory!) and loving it. My present employer, from whom I also get phone, cable TV and cable Internet service, installed everything on time. Everything works exactly like it's supposed to. And anytime I have a problem, I know exactly who to call and what their phone number is. And NEVER have to wait on hold, or deal with pressing 1 for aggravation or 2 for frustration. (That's right, we have no voice menu system! And never will, either!)
And no, they don't pay me to speak for them. My opinions are my own. (Though most everyone else in this company can't stand U S WORST either.) ---
To see how Neal really feels about Linux, Apple, BeOs, Windows, Unix, check out In the Beginning Was the Command Line, an essay that he wrote after Cryptonomicon.
The pain text version of this posted there is plainful. Go read the full HTML/CSS version here. ---
Virtual consoles, one of the delights of many a Linux user, don't exist for DOS,
Oh yes, they did. Doesn't anyone remember DESQview? Not only did you have virtual consoles, but it multitasked! ---
How to do this (Was Re:Done this with PDA)
on
X11 Serial Killer?
·
· Score: 1
Add line to/etc/inittab (assuming SysVinit based system, e.g. RedHat, Mandrake, SuSE):
s1:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty ttyS1
Substitute your favorite getty program if mingetty doesn't get it for you. Note that mingetty is very minimal; it won't set the baud rate, for instance, so it would already have to be set, e.g. with setserial, elsewhere in the init scripts. Or use another getty which does support setting the baud rate. (I don't need serial terminals on this computer, so I don't have any other getty programs installed right now...) ---
Go ahead and publish. It doesn't look like you're going to hurt the bus system; it would cost more to buy a year's worth of passes (for most people) than to try to put together an encoder to forge them. Besides, it might just provoke them into securing the system.
Looks like you're getting plenty of practice in reverse engineering. This is good. I have a feeling we will need people like you in the very near future... ---
Just install LILO to the boot sector of the partition, rather than to the MBR. (Most people should do this anyway.) LILO will boot NT just like it will boot Windos 9x. An example/etc/lilo.conf entry might be:
The reason I believe one does not need to get SCSI, though, is that most users do not use their system in a way that would actually justify the SCSI bus.
This is true. Most people don't multitask, or don't do it very well. Then again, most people are running Windows, which doesn't multitask, or doesn't do it very well.
While the nature of the bus is faster, it takes certain situations to actually need it.
Like burning CDs on a 486 while listening to MP3s and browsing with Netscape? (Done it.) Or a fairly extreme example I gave to someone else today: take my all-SCSI computer, with its CD-ROM and CD-R drives, add a DVD-ROM and a DVD-RAM drive, and I can burn a CD-R, burn a DVD-RAM, rip an audio CD and watch a DVD movie all at the same time. Try that with IDE; you'll get buffer underruns, your movie will skip, and so will your MP3s.
Then we have the games issue, which few people think about when choosing IDE or SCSI. Does your favorite game access the hard drive while you're playing? Think about that for a second...
So who needs SCSI? Anybody who does more than one thing at a time with their computers. ---
What, and let Kuro5hin get the story out first? There is also a thing in journalism called "the scoop."
In any case the couple of hours this story probably sat in the queue is more than enough to get a couple of gigs out to a few mirror sites. (It seems Mandrake only has two mirror sites; this one and this one). ---
Where I work, most of our systems absolutely positively HAVE to be up. The big one, of course, being the monster DMS-100 switch. Though there are also many hundreds of modems, dozens of servers, two AS/400 systems, a cable TV headend, and various other assorted hardware.
We didn't even bother with UPS and went straight to generators. Even individual users' workstations are powered by the generators, as I understand it. (And I recall a tanker truck parked near the building around last New Year's Eve...)
Of course, we also have a pretty good connection into the power grid. While I get brownouts and interruptions at home all the time, at work nothing of the sort (that I know of) happens.
Of course, we have to use generators. If OUR power goes out, many many thousands of people will lose part or all of their telephone service. ---
However, compared to Silicon Valley, even Brentwood (which is *the* place right now) is cheap.
Is that Brentwood, California, or Brentwood, Tennessee? If Nashville has become *the* place right now, I'd move back in a second without even sending my resumé ahead of me... ---
The copy-protection mess is so bad that the new generation of cable set-top boxes won't talk properly to digital TV monitors.
I just picked up my new digital cable box yesterday (Scientific Atlanta Explorer 2000) and it has not one, but two Firewire ports. But they're both covered up with metal tabs. Now I guess I know why.
And it has a USB port, too. That one I haven't figured out. And apparently later models have an Ethernet port. What on earth for...? ---
Um, before you put up an MP3 of the interview, shouldn't you ask Lars first? Because, you know, it is his creative work, he spent a lot of time and creative energy to produce that interview, and it isn't right if you use it in ways he didn't intend without his permission.
While you're at it ask him if I can put it up on Napster. ---
What you learn by advocacy is not that 'linux r00lz' but rather that the person advocating it for roll-out across a 1000-strong company as a desktop OS is an idiot.
That's funny. I once did a short analysis of some of the factors involved in converting everyone in a 7,000 person company from NT to Linux. A few of the major points were:
Heavy usage of Office with no drop-in replacement for Linux available
Business critical apps deployed on Lotus Notes; migration to another platform expensive and time consuming; Notes client not available for Linux
One really bizarre business critical app from some vendor I've never heard of that is sure to never port to Linux
Obviously some of those are internal to the company, and some of those are gaps that the open source community is hard at work filling in.
It's interesting to note that everyone I spoke to who had ever heard of Linux was very interested in it, and in the last year or so, I think nearly all of them have, and many have switched over on a regular basis. A few have dumped Windows altogether. Those who hadn't heard of Linux took longer to convert, though... ---
You can still run Linux on a 386 from 1987, though unless you're putting together an embedded system based on a 386, you probably shouldn't.
Mac OS 9 isn't going to run on the Macintosh II which had just come out in 1987... Mac OS X sure as hell isn't (though I suppose Darwin could be ported!). ---
..that wasn't James Hetfield saying "Grabasses Bad," it was Linus himself.
"Piracy is bad," says Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux, when asked about the matter. "Of course you should be able to sue over copyrights. The one good lawsuit in the whole Napster case is by Metallica: a suit by the actual authors. While it's probably motivated mostly by money, I can still at least hope that there is a strong feeling of morals there, too."
This isn't what your average/. reader wants to hear. They're looking for the "Oh, it's okay, go ahead and steal all the music you want!" Still think it isn't theft? Listen to Larry Wall:
"Open Source should be about giving things away voluntarily," [Wall] says. "When you force someone to give you something, it's no longer giving, it's stealing. Persons of leisurely moral growth often confuse giving with taking."
In other words, if Metallica doesn't want you to have free MP3s of their work, they don't have to let you. Sure, they may be shooting themselves in the foot by alienating their fans, but it's their right to do so!
If artists are going to jump on the MP3 bandwagon, what they don't need is for people to go downloading their music without permission. They need to be educated as to why MP3 is in their best interest, i.e. how it can make them money, and how they can use it to escape the RIAA's iron grip.
Personally I think Linus hit the nail right on the head when he said, "And then [the RIAA] have the gall to use the holy word 'copyright' to try to protect their shipping control. That, I consider to be immoral. Go, Metallica. Die, RIAA." ---
Slashdot Mirror
OK, so the sites that advertised having Liv Tyler nude actually didn't. What's the big deal? Anyway, it's not like Google's search engine can look at the images to discern whether they're Liv Tyler or Natalie Portman or a Beowulf cluster.
---
Microsoft® Bob® wasn't really a fiasco. It was more like a really sick joke.
---
I really do like the idea of having total control of "my" source, knowing every byte of the code inside and out. But in the end, I realized it was just going to be too much work. It would have been really fun, sure, but what really made the decision not to start my own project was time. I didn't have the time to devote to coding for hours a day for weeks or months on end to get somewhere close to where the project I joined already was.
Before I did join them, though, I spent quite some time talking to the other developers as well as looking through the source. They all went out of their way to make me feel welcome, and since I've submitted code, they treat me as their peer in the project, complete with write access to CVS...
It's actually been exciting working with other developers, all of whom live in different states or even different countries. Apparently the author of this article had a very different experience with some project or another, or perhaps he's just talking out of his ass.
I don't know if my experience with joining an open source project is typical or not. Being an optimist, I'd certainly like to think that's how a project should run.
---
Another great example of a virtual community is UNCENSORED! BBS which has been dialup since 1988 and both dialup and Internet based for years, up to this day.
A simple Google search will turn up many, many other BBS systems, and the successful ones can claim to have a virtual community right there.
---
Hence, the criminal disappears.
Now as for other applications, like tracking livestock, lost pets, missing children, medical monitoring, yes, these have some potential societal benefits.
---
You're talking about kuro5hin.
---
Oh, wait. Nevermind.
Anyway, this looks like a simple case of a company deciding not to promote a competing service. Seems perfectly reasonable to me. After all, if I were making widgets, would I really announce it on my web site when some competitor comes along and starts making widgets?
Now if I've missed something here, please let me know...
---
Anyway, that wasn't the first thing we had to say about U S WEST. Here's a sampling:
- 10/1/1999 McLeodUSA Asks FCC to Protect Consumers and Ensure Competition in US West - Qwest Merger
- 12/3/1999 McLeodUSA Documents US West 'Bad Faith' and Vigorously Opposes Approval For Long-Distance Service
- 03/14/2000 McLeodUSA Files Formal Complaint With Colorado PUC Regarding 'Discriminatory Practices' by US West
- 04/26/2000 McLeodUSA Resolves Key Business Points with U S WEST
Note that I don't speak for McLeodUSA. They don't pay me enough for that job.Now, as to my personal experiences with U S WORST: The first time I tried to get a line from them, it took over two months! They claimed for most of that time that my address didn't exist. Even though I was very obviously living there and there was a network interface right in back. They missed the first install date, and after insisting on the phone with them for weeks that my address really did exist, they finally dispatched a truck and I got a phone line.
Of course, the line quality was for shit. I had to call for repair not a day afterward because of noise and static on the line. Turns out the installer had just strung the line out across the ground down to the street, and well, you can imagine what happened.
These days I am completely free of U S WORST (even though I live smack in the middle of their territory!) and loving it. My present employer, from whom I also get phone, cable TV and cable Internet service, installed everything on time. Everything works exactly like it's supposed to. And anytime I have a problem, I know exactly who to call and what their phone number is. And NEVER have to wait on hold, or deal with pressing 1 for aggravation or 2 for frustration. (That's right, we have no voice menu system! And never will, either!)
And no, they don't pay me to speak for them. My opinions are my own. (Though most everyone else in this company can't stand U S WORST either.)
---
The pain text version of this posted there is plainful. Go read the full HTML/CSS version here.
---
VMware PANIC: NOT_IMPLEMENTED F(562):1654
So much for running this thing in a sandbox....
---
Oh yes, they did. Doesn't anyone remember DESQview? Not only did you have virtual consoles, but it multitasked!
---
s1:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty ttyS1
Substitute your favorite getty program if mingetty doesn't get it for you. Note that mingetty is very minimal; it won't set the baud rate, for instance, so it would already have to be set, e.g. with setserial, elsewhere in the init scripts. Or use another getty which does support setting the baud rate. (I don't need serial terminals on this computer, so I don't have any other getty programs installed right now...)
---
Looks like you're getting plenty of practice in reverse engineering. This is good. I have a feeling we will need people like you in the very near future...
---
other=/dev/hda1
label=windoze
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label=Linux
read-only
root=/dev/hda6
Works beautifully. I have been using this to dual boot Red Hat and Windows 2000 for some time now.
ALSO: You can install LILO to the MBR with Windows 2000. I've also been doing this for some time now.
---
This is true. Most people don't multitask, or don't do it very well. Then again, most people are running Windows, which doesn't multitask, or doesn't do it very well.
While the nature of the bus is faster, it takes certain situations to actually need it.
Like burning CDs on a 486 while listening to MP3s and browsing with Netscape? (Done it.) Or a fairly extreme example I gave to someone else today: take my all-SCSI computer, with its CD-ROM and CD-R drives, add a DVD-ROM and a DVD-RAM drive, and I can burn a CD-R, burn a DVD-RAM, rip an audio CD and watch a DVD movie all at the same time. Try that with IDE; you'll get buffer underruns, your movie will skip, and so will your MP3s.
Then we have the games issue, which few people think about when choosing IDE or SCSI. Does your favorite game access the hard drive while you're playing? Think about that for a second...
So who needs SCSI? Anybody who does more than one thing at a time with their computers.
---
Oops, my mistake. Those are the sites mirrors are supposed to mirror from. The official list of mirror sites is here.
---
In any case the couple of hours this story probably sat in the queue is more than enough to get a couple of gigs out to a few mirror sites. (It seems Mandrake only has two mirror sites; this one and this one).
---
We didn't even bother with UPS and went straight to generators. Even individual users' workstations are powered by the generators, as I understand it. (And I recall a tanker truck parked near the building around last New Year's Eve...)
Of course, we also have a pretty good connection into the power grid. While I get brownouts and interruptions at home all the time, at work nothing of the sort (that I know of) happens.
Of course, we have to use generators. If OUR power goes out, many many thousands of people will lose part or all of their telephone service.
---
Is that Brentwood, California, or Brentwood, Tennessee? If Nashville has become *the* place right now, I'd move back in a second without even sending my resumé ahead of me...
---
I just picked up my new digital cable box yesterday (Scientific Atlanta Explorer 2000) and it has not one, but two Firewire ports. But they're both covered up with metal tabs. Now I guess I know why.
And it has a USB port, too. That one I haven't figured out. And apparently later models have an Ethernet port. What on earth for...?
---
While you're at it ask him if I can put it up on Napster.
---
That's funny. I once did a short analysis of some of the factors involved in converting everyone in a 7,000 person company from NT to Linux. A few of the major points were:
- Heavy usage of Office with no drop-in replacement for Linux available
- Business critical apps deployed on Lotus Notes; migration to another platform expensive and time consuming; Notes client not available for Linux
- One really bizarre business critical app from some vendor I've never heard of that is sure to never port to Linux
Obviously some of those are internal to the company, and some of those are gaps that the open source community is hard at work filling in.It's interesting to note that everyone I spoke to who had ever heard of Linux was very interested in it, and in the last year or so, I think nearly all of them have, and many have switched over on a regular basis. A few have dumped Windows altogether. Those who hadn't heard of Linux took longer to convert, though...
---
Mac OS 9 isn't going to run on the Macintosh II which had just come out in 1987... Mac OS X sure as hell isn't (though I suppose Darwin could be ported!).
---
Oops, this story did make it to the front page.
---
"Piracy is bad," says Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux, when asked about the matter. "Of course you should be able to sue over copyrights. The one good lawsuit in the whole Napster case is by Metallica: a suit by the actual authors. While it's probably motivated mostly by money, I can still at least hope that there is a strong feeling of morals there, too."
This isn't what your average /. reader wants to hear. They're looking for the "Oh, it's okay, go ahead and steal all the music you want!" Still think it isn't theft? Listen to Larry Wall:
"Open Source should be about giving things away voluntarily," [Wall] says. "When you force someone to give you something, it's no longer giving, it's stealing. Persons of leisurely moral growth often confuse giving with taking."
In other words, if Metallica doesn't want you to have free MP3s of their work, they don't have to let you. Sure, they may be shooting themselves in the foot by alienating their fans, but it's their right to do so!
If artists are going to jump on the MP3 bandwagon, what they don't need is for people to go downloading their music without permission. They need to be educated as to why MP3 is in their best interest, i.e. how it can make them money, and how they can use it to escape the RIAA's iron grip.
Personally I think Linus hit the nail right on the head when he said, "And then [the RIAA] have the gall to use the holy word 'copyright' to try to protect their shipping control. That, I consider to be immoral. Go, Metallica. Die, RIAA."
---