And the reason at the top of the list is "Our $75,000 per year administrators are too stupid to learn something else, even when that something else is 99.97% identical."
I'm sure I misheard you saying:
And the reason at the top the list is "Out $75,000 per year administrators don't want to waste their time f*(^ing around making products only packaged for R'hat work on some other system rather than following processes we've already spent a lot of time validating and testing".
In a large enterprise setting, it makes a lot of sense to concentrate on one system - and that 0.03% difference is actually a lot more in some cases - in computer software it's more than enough for things to break in funny ways. To expose strange bugs in unexpected places.
$ ping Jorn PING 192.168.0.x (192.168.0.x) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from 192.168.0.x: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.066 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.0.x: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.071 ms
Or use a DNS server and CNAMES like $DIETY intended.
The Playstation here is categorized as excercise equipment, as long as the controllers are manipulated virorously for at least 20 minutes, 3 times a week.
If you get a date with the right girl, you can get your controller manipulated even more often than that. Mmmm...
[ob thingy] but then this is slashdot, so we'd know all about manipulating controllers[/ob]
Personally, I'd rather fend for myself and not have to pay taxes like citizens do. The world may be rough, but I'm skilled enough and have done enough camping that finding a new home poses no real difficulty - if I don't like what my tribe does, I'll find a new one.
It's bad enough that I've got the god doing what it thinks is best for me, I don't need a government doing the same.
I'd say that the biggest problem with unions is the petty beuraucracy and jealous territory grabbing that grows out of them.
Yep - sounds just like every other area of human endeavour unfortunately. Strangely enough, it sounds remarkably like middle management in a decent sized company, or politics in any other area. Welcome to humanity.
(of course it's often pretty bad in unions, but better than not having unions at all)
I read a very enlightening book a while back detailing (with documentation) what's happened with unions so that they've gotten out of control.
And I read a very enlightening book a while back detailing (with documentation) that not joining a union will make gremlins fly out of your nose, make your wife/girlfriend/right hand leave you for a football jock and besides the unions will give your name to the Mafia and you'll be lucky if they only break your kneecaps.
I swear that's exactly what it said - only I can't remember exactly which book it was. It certainly was enlightening though.
Back on topic: of course there's going to be bad eggs in unions and some of them probably have got out of control. Guess what - there's employers like that as well. I'd rather have those unions there and employers realising that they can't gouge me quite so hard because my co-workers are willing to back me up. Politics goes where there's power, and I for one am glad that unions have enough power to influence things (while hopefully not gaining so much power that the bad apples take over - I think that's what you're talking about. Surprise, it happens everywhere with power, including politics in general if you haven't been following along at home).
GCC, for example, requires bison to compile it. GCC ships with both the source grammer files and the compiled grammer file.
Which is fine. There's nothing wrong with shipping the output file so long as the original source is shipped as well. Of course it's still not strictly GPL compatible if you can't freely obtain the entire toolchain required to build it (and have that provided on request) but such is life.
Most people don't need to use the source, but if there's a bug you need to fix then that source needs to be available so you can fix it.
*However*, mainly only techies keep backups, and most musicians are not techies in the true sense of the word.
I don't think I know any muso, no matter what area (from classical right through to grunge) who doesn't have CDs (or tapes, not everyone is that young;) of every performance they've ever recorded. I know I have CDs of every choir performance I've ever sung in as _chorus_ that is recorded (not good enough to get those solos!) and everyone else I know who can afford it has them as well.
But as those other followups have said - sure it's not just about the music, it's about the collecting it in one place - and I understand that. I was going for a combination of funny while a bit serious about backups at the same time (and it was late, and I was tired - so sue me)
I mean, come on - one single writable CD can hold a hundred or so songs. How hard would it be for even the most prolific band to keep a copy of everything they submitted to MP3.com.
Ok, so I don't keep everything I post to usenet, or slashdot, but only because the work to recreate them is rarely worth the effort. If you've spent enough effort to get a decent quality recording, there's no way you'd even keep the MP3 as the master copy, but hey - more power to those who didn't care enough.
I'd definitely recommend Perforce as well, but it's not free. Of course, as a single user you can use the 2 users/2 workspaces design supported without a licence.
Believe me, you'll be happier than with the current crop of free stuff (though I'd be tempted by Subversion if it didn't depend on so many things just because they're the latest cool thing).
Perforce is nice on Linux too in that it's just a couple of statically compiled binaries that work everywhere. Pleasant change to dependency hell (like getting any recent piece of software onto Debian stable)
More likely Db, at which we'll realise that it's actually exactly the same C# near enough (unless you're playing an instrument that allows you to sharpen the Db a little more).
But, with more than a hundred formats for the best ID system we have, it's impossible for anybody to be an expert on what security measures to look for and be able to notice when they're absent.
In other words, there's a high rate of error in the identification system, so people are less likely to trust the identification as correct.
Now, imagine a system where you could just glance at the national ID and be 99.99% certain that you've ID'd the person correctly.... now, if I have a spam checking system that mis-identifies 1 in 10 messages, then I'll read through the SPAM folder as well, at least scanning subject lines, to make sure that I'm not deleting useful messages. If only 1 in 100,000 gets identified incorrectly, I'd be happy to just delete the contents of the spam folder without checking...
Back to terrorists - by definition, the "good" terrorists (where good is defined as good at what they do) will be the ones who know how to generate believable false ID. Gosh, what a surprise. Either that or they'll use real ID but not be in the all-knowing database yet.
Of course, with everyone trusting in the ID, they won't check anything else - and you have it actually easier for the terrorists and organised criminals, but harder for the petty ones. I don't like that tradeoff much, because the petty ones are the ones that don't do much damage.
Rather the method of storing short and long file names in the FAT file system.
I.e. they're patenting a work around for a stupid shortcoming, for which the only reason nobody else was doing it was that they designed their systems to be more flexible in the first place?
1) design inflexible system
2) patent bandaid
3) profit
I think I've discovered the underpants gnomes' secret business model - patent bandaids. Unfortunately the ubiquitous triple questionmark logo is prior art.
This only weakens the concept of intellectual property. Why invent if you're just going to have to fight legal battles for the length of your patent?
Um - because if it really is a novel invention worthy of patent protection then all the later judges are going to throw it out of court immediately based on the previous decision, and if you're a scum sucking pond scum who's standing on the shoulders of the giants before you and setting up a toll gate to stop those who really are innovating then you bloody well deserve what you get.
The concept of intellectual property was never designed to protect the sort of arsewipe who patents every piece of common knowledge they can slip under the noses of the patent office and makes a business out of milking their "valuable IP portfolio". If you're in the business of buying other people's ideas for the purpose of extorting money from people building the future on top of them, then I say good riddance to you - our current technology is built on the ideas of our predecessors, and who are we to stop our successors from learning from us?
I don't mean to play devil's advocate, but is it ok to challenge patents just because they become standards?
If they were standards before they were patented, then yeah - I would say that's grounds for challenging them.
If they were a stealth patent on an idea that was common knowledge at the time (and I'm thinking especially of things that just weren't practical due to lack of CPU power that are blindingly obvious as well) then yeah, definitely.
Anyway, all the devil's advocates are on loan to SCO at the moment, raking in megabucks from the warchest.
How about... shit, some really heavy once in a million chance (that would be 9 times out of 10 then) crap is going down which has taken out the GPS system, and here I am pointing my dinky little camera at a big tall building trying to find out where my meeting is in a foreign country rather than getting the fuck out of the open an into a bunker somewhere.
Yeah, I can see that this VALUABLE service is really going to have a LARGE NUMBER of people needing to use it EVERY DAY and hence will have the ECONOMIES OF SCALE to make it cheaper to use than hiring LOCAL INTERPRETER to spend the whole time with you, and give you a MASSAGE (*nudge* *nudge*, *wink* *wink*) as well.
why not allow some new technologies a chance at the throne?
Because GPS works perfectly well, and because there's fuck all chance that there will be enough demand for this service to make it cheap enough to be worth while, just maybe.
the 5500 is a pocket linux workstation. it will run most linux software, particularly the non-gui/server oriented stuff, just fine.
Pity it only has a battery life of an hour or so when playing MP3s according to the Unofficial Zaurus FAQ. I guess you might get another hour if logging strings, especially if your app is designed to do it without too much load on the system.
The other issue you'll want to look into is battery life. I was talking just today with someone from PalmOne about their models with an eye to finding something with a long enough battery life to be used for a week without charging in a 25% utilization scenario. They don't have such a beast. They spec them for about 10 hours of normal use, but heavy data logging isn't normal use - it's high memory bandwidth and that will cost you power. On the flip side, you don't actually need the screen running, so if you can turn that off it will help.
Given that WinCE based devices are generally known for shorter battery lives, I'm not so sure that your request is practical with current technology.
Now, what about an Ipod-style device? They have big hard disks, and they're designed to run for many hours. That's where I'd be looking - either that or those new-fangled 'wearable computer' things that have a hard disk and a bluetooth adaptor and can be thrown in your bag to allow you to access your personal storage at any computer.
Hmm.. let's just look at the mailing list again... maybe just a snip from a recent(ish) post (Mar 22 - there are 8 posts since this one, half of them spam):
| Don't post to a list without reading it also.
I read this list, what little of it I get.
| And don't complain about the state of open source | software, if you are not ready to test it's betas.
I am certainly ready to test the betas, just that the last time I tested Intermezzo or Lustre -- Lustre I couldn't even get patched, and Intermezzo I couldn't get a single share working without an immediate kernel oops -- and a fatal one, at least in that the filesystem never worked for me.
This is not just a user-friendliness issue. I have played with experimental software -- even had an entire machine on reiser4 for a month or two. And that was _much_ easier.
However, I promise to test Intermezzo again when I get more time.
-----------------------
Basically Intermezzo is not finished, and the developers don't actually have the resources to bring it to production level. I'd certainly not trust it with my data, and I've been watching it for years. I've never had the time to contribute unfortunately, and have always run out of time to test it in environments where I have enough boxen to actually do a realistic test (i.e. at work).
WE SHOULD AGREE ON A PRETTY GOOD TECHNOLOGICAL SOLUTION AND USE IT!
Come back when you've convinced everyone else (I'm especially thinking people who use something like UUCP here over links that don't even support TCP for going and popping to some random server) to switch at the same time so it doesn't create more headaches than it solves, and I will accept your modest proposal of a better technological solution.
One can certainly limit subjects in the initial notification to (for example) 50 characters, not enough to get a real message across
I've had SMS spams of 50 characters or so. It's certainly possible. The important bit is only http://tinyurl.com/abcd/ long anyway.
By keeping the notifications short (with fake server details) you even cut the data costs a bit.
In regards c, it is hard to run a POP server on a desktop PC.
Actually, it's remarkably easy. Especially in these days of Windows NT based boxes. You don't even need to know that it's there.
Sure this is one of the better solutions to the SPAM problem that I've heard, but it's by no means the safe reliable method that you're suggesting. Amongst other things, the authentication infrastructure is a completely different kettle of fish - you need to run a server which anyone can log in to - I can see denial of service possibilities here.
Oh, and for those of us who don't check their mail via POP (i.e hotmail users) or who use disconnected IMAP from multiple different machines? What about the people in large corporate environments running Lotus Notes or Exchange? This is a 'requires everyone to switch overnight' solution.
I can see having to run a web based service for the download of these messages...
Slashdot Mirror
And the reason at the top of the list is "Our $75,000 per year administrators are too stupid to learn something else, even when that something else is 99.97% identical."
I'm sure I misheard you saying:
And the reason at the top the list is "Out $75,000 per year administrators don't want to waste their time f*(^ing around making products only packaged for R'hat work on some other system rather than following processes we've already spent a lot of time validating and testing".
In a large enterprise setting, it makes a lot of sense to concentrate on one system - and that 0.03% difference is actually a lot more in some cases - in computer software it's more than enough for things to break in funny ways. To expose strange bugs in unexpected places.
$ ping Jormngandr
/etc/hosts
ping: unknown host Jormngandr
sudo vi
/Jorn<cr>A Jorn<esc>:wq<cr>
$ ping Jorn
PING 192.168.0.x (192.168.0.x) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 192.168.0.x: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.066 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.x: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.071 ms
Or use a DNS server and CNAMES like $DIETY intended.
The Playstation here is categorized as excercise equipment, as long as the controllers are manipulated virorously for at least 20 minutes, 3 times a week.
If you get a date with the right girl, you can get your controller manipulated even more often than that. Mmmm...
[ob thingy] but then this is slashdot, so we'd know all about manipulating controllers[/ob]
Personally, I'd rather fend for myself and not have to pay taxes like citizens do. The world may be rough, but I'm skilled enough and have done enough camping that finding a new home poses no real difficulty - if I don't like what my tribe does, I'll find a new one.
It's bad enough that I've got the god doing what it thinks is best for me, I don't need a government doing the same.
I'd say that the biggest problem with unions is the petty beuraucracy and jealous territory grabbing that grows out of them.
Yep - sounds just like every other area of human endeavour unfortunately. Strangely enough, it sounds remarkably like middle management in a decent sized company, or politics in any other area. Welcome to humanity.
(of course it's often pretty bad in unions, but better than not having unions at all)
I read a very enlightening book a while back detailing (with documentation) what's happened with unions so that they've gotten out of control.
And I read a very enlightening book a while back detailing (with documentation) that not joining a union will make gremlins fly out of your nose, make your wife/girlfriend/right hand leave you for a football jock and besides the unions will give your name to the Mafia and you'll be lucky if they only break your kneecaps.
I swear that's exactly what it said - only I can't remember exactly which book it was. It certainly was enlightening though.
Back on topic: of course there's going to be bad eggs in unions and some of them probably have got out of control. Guess what - there's employers like that as well. I'd rather have those unions there and employers realising that they can't gouge me quite so hard because my co-workers are willing to back me up. Politics goes where there's power, and I for one am glad that unions have enough power to influence things (while hopefully not gaining so much power that the bad apples take over - I think that's what you're talking about. Surprise, it happens everywhere with power, including politics in general if you haven't been following along at home).
GCC, for example, requires bison to compile it. GCC ships with both the source grammer files and the compiled grammer file.
Which is fine. There's nothing wrong with shipping the output file so long as the original source is shipped as well. Of course it's still not strictly GPL compatible if you can't freely obtain the entire toolchain required to build it (and have that provided on request) but such is life.
Most people don't need to use the source, but if there's a bug you need to fix then that source needs to be available so you can fix it.
So, how long until I can get a data-tooth?
And would it be blue?
*However*, mainly only techies keep backups, and most musicians are not techies in the true sense of the word.
;) of every performance they've ever recorded. I know I have CDs of every choir performance I've ever sung in as _chorus_ that is recorded (not good enough to get those solos!) and everyone else I know who can afford it has them as well.
I don't think I know any muso, no matter what area (from classical right through to grunge) who doesn't have CDs (or tapes, not everyone is that young
But as those other followups have said - sure it's not just about the music, it's about the collecting it in one place - and I understand that. I was going for a combination of funny while a bit serious about backups at the same time (and it was late, and I was tired - so sue me)
I mean, come on - one single writable CD can hold a hundred or so songs. How hard would it be for even the most prolific band to keep a copy of everything they submitted to MP3.com.
Ok, so I don't keep everything I post to usenet, or slashdot, but only because the work to recreate them is rarely worth the effort. If you've spent enough effort to get a decent quality recording, there's no way you'd even keep the MP3 as the master copy, but hey - more power to those who didn't care enough.
I'd definitely recommend Perforce as well, but it's not free. Of course, as a single user you can use the 2 users/2 workspaces design supported without a licence.
Believe me, you'll be happier than with the current crop of free stuff (though I'd be tempted by Subversion if it didn't depend on so many things just because they're the latest cool thing).
Perforce is nice on Linux too in that it's just a couple of statically compiled binaries that work everywhere. Pleasant change to dependency hell (like getting any recent piece of software onto Debian stable)
More likely Db, at which we'll realise that it's actually exactly the same C# near enough (unless you're playing an instrument that allows you to sharpen the Db a little more).
Woot.
But, with more than a hundred formats for the best ID system we have, it's impossible for anybody to be an expert on what security measures to look for and be able to notice when they're absent.
... now, if I have a spam checking system that mis-identifies 1 in 10 messages, then I'll read through the SPAM folder as well, at least scanning subject lines, to make sure that I'm not deleting useful messages. If only 1 in 100,000 gets identified incorrectly, I'd be happy to just delete the contents of the spam folder without checking ...
In other words, there's a high rate of error in the identification system, so people are less likely to trust the identification as correct.
Now, imagine a system where you could just glance at the national ID and be 99.99% certain that you've ID'd the person correctly.
Back to terrorists - by definition, the "good" terrorists (where good is defined as good at what they do) will be the ones who know how to generate believable false ID. Gosh, what a surprise. Either that or they'll use real ID but not be in the all-knowing database yet.
Of course, with everyone trusting in the ID, they won't check anything else - and you have it actually easier for the terrorists and organised criminals, but harder for the petty ones. I don't like that tradeoff much, because the petty ones are the ones that don't do much damage.
To be fair, there is also the lion school of legal practice...fierce, brave, tenacious. Unfortunately the rats, vultures and sharks tend to dominate.
Yeah, it's such a pity that the actions of 95% of lawyers make the other 5% look bad.
Rather the method of storing short and long file names in the FAT file system.
I.e. they're patenting a work around for a stupid shortcoming, for which the only reason nobody else was doing it was that they designed their systems to be more flexible in the first place?
1) design inflexible system
2) patent bandaid
3) profit
I think I've discovered the underpants gnomes' secret business model - patent bandaids. Unfortunately the ubiquitous triple questionmark logo is prior art.
*sigh*
This only weakens the concept of intellectual property. Why invent if you're just going to have to fight legal battles for the length of your patent?
Um - because if it really is a novel invention worthy of patent protection then all the later judges are going to throw it out of court immediately based on the previous decision, and if you're a scum sucking pond scum who's standing on the shoulders of the giants before you and setting up a toll gate to stop those who really are innovating then you bloody well deserve what you get.
The concept of intellectual property was never designed to protect the sort of arsewipe who patents every piece of common knowledge they can slip under the noses of the patent office and makes a business out of milking their "valuable IP portfolio". If you're in the business of buying other people's ideas for the purpose of extorting money from people building the future on top of them, then I say good riddance to you - our current technology is built on the ideas of our predecessors, and who are we to stop our successors from learning from us?
I don't mean to play devil's advocate, but is it ok to challenge patents just because they become standards?
If they were standards before they were patented, then yeah - I would say that's grounds for challenging them.
If they were a stealth patent on an idea that was common knowledge at the time (and I'm thinking especially of things that just weren't practical due to lack of CPU power that are blindingly obvious as well) then yeah, definitely.
Anyway, all the devil's advocates are on loan to SCO at the moment, raking in megabucks from the warchest.
16 watts driving a 35 kg load. Thats the equivelent of a couple of C cells driving a golfcart around.
;)
Which is entirely possible - what they don't say is how slow it goes
What would be impressive is getting that golfcart from 0 to 100 in 6 seconds.
How about... ad nauseum.
How about... shit, some really heavy once in a million chance (that would be 9 times out of 10 then) crap is going down which has taken out the GPS system, and here I am pointing my dinky little camera at a big tall building trying to find out where my meeting is in a foreign country rather than getting the fuck out of the open an into a bunker somewhere.
Yeah, I can see that this VALUABLE service is really going to have a LARGE NUMBER of people needing to use it EVERY DAY and hence will have the ECONOMIES OF SCALE to make it cheaper to use than hiring LOCAL INTERPRETER to spend the whole time with you, and give you a MASSAGE (*nudge* *nudge*, *wink* *wink*) as well.
why not allow some new technologies a chance at the throne?
Because GPS works perfectly well, and because there's fuck all chance that there will be enough demand for this service to make it cheap enough to be worth while, just maybe.
*sheesh*
the 5500 is a pocket linux workstation. it will run most linux software, particularly the non-gui/server oriented stuff, just fine.
Pity it only has a battery life of an hour or so when playing MP3s according to the Unofficial Zaurus FAQ. I guess you might get another hour if logging strings, especially if your app is designed to do it without too much load on the system.
The other issue you'll want to look into is battery life. I was talking just today with someone from PalmOne about their models with an eye to finding something with a long enough battery life to be used for a week without charging in a 25% utilization scenario. They don't have such a beast. They spec them for about 10 hours of normal use, but heavy data logging isn't normal use - it's high memory bandwidth and that will cost you power. On the flip side, you don't actually need the screen running, so if you can turn that off it will help.
Given that WinCE based devices are generally known for shorter battery lives, I'm not so sure that your request is practical with current technology.
Now, what about an Ipod-style device? They have big hard disks, and they're designed to run for many hours. That's where I'd be looking - either that or those new-fangled 'wearable computer' things that have a hard disk and a bluetooth adaptor and can be thrown in your bag to allow you to access your personal storage at any computer.
http://www.inter-mezzo.org/
you are looking for intermezzo
Hmm.. let's just look at the mailing list again... maybe just a snip from a recent(ish) post (Mar 22 - there are 8 posts since this one, half of them spam):
| Don't post to a list without reading it also.
I read this list, what little of it I get.
| And don't complain about the state of open source
| software, if you are not ready to test it's betas.
I am certainly ready to test the betas, just that the last time I tested
Intermezzo or Lustre -- Lustre I couldn't even get patched, and
Intermezzo I couldn't get a single share working without an immediate
kernel oops -- and a fatal one, at least in that the filesystem never
worked for me.
This is not just a user-friendliness issue. I have played with
experimental software -- even had an entire machine on reiser4 for a
month or two. And that was _much_ easier.
However, I promise to test Intermezzo again when I get more time.
-----------------------
Basically Intermezzo is not finished, and the developers don't actually have the resources to bring it to production level. I'd certainly not trust it with my data, and I've been watching it for years. I've never had the time to contribute unfortunately, and have always run out of time to test it in environments where I have enough boxen to actually do a realistic test (i.e. at work).
You need to pay more attention! Open season has been declared on Redhat since they killed their desktop distro. Deride away!
But then they sued SCO. It's so hard keeping track of who's on the blacklist this week.
WE SHOULD AGREE ON A PRETTY GOOD TECHNOLOGICAL SOLUTION AND USE IT!
Come back when you've convinced everyone else (I'm especially thinking people who use something like UUCP here over links that don't even support TCP for going and popping to some random server) to switch at the same time so it doesn't create more headaches than it solves, and I will accept your modest proposal of a better technological solution.
One can certainly limit subjects in the initial notification to (for example) 50 characters, not enough to get a real message across
I've had SMS spams of 50 characters or so. It's certainly possible. The important bit is only http://tinyurl.com/abcd/ long anyway.
By keeping the notifications short (with fake server details) you even cut the data costs a bit.
In regards c, it is hard to run a POP server on a desktop PC.
Actually, it's remarkably easy. Especially in these days of Windows NT based boxes. You don't even need to know that it's there.
Sure this is one of the better solutions to the SPAM problem that I've heard, but it's by no means the safe reliable method that you're suggesting. Amongst other things, the authentication infrastructure is a completely different kettle of fish - you need to run a server which anyone can log in to - I can see denial of service possibilities here.
Oh, and for those of us who don't check their mail via POP (i.e hotmail users) or who use disconnected IMAP from multiple different machines? What about the people in large corporate environments running Lotus Notes or Exchange? This is a 'requires everyone to switch overnight' solution.
I can see having to run a web based service for the download of these messages...