My understanding of what happened is that originally Jon was doing TPJ out of the back of his appartment. The quality was superb, both in articles and subscriber service. Then he transferred the subscriber services to Earthweb and retained editorial control. Subscriptions were supposed to be Earthweb's business, they were supposed to know what they were doing. The content continued to be superb, but the subscriber service was bad. Then Earthweb tanked, and after a long hiatus, Jon was able to get SysAdmin (CMP) to include TPJ as a supplement (once) and then they turned it into a section. I may have lost some subscription money in there, but I already subscribed to SysAdmin, so I'm satisfied to the extent I never missed an issue. The content was thin, but I attribute that to the monthly instead of quarterly issues. So my experience can be summarized as: when Jon Orwant is doing it, it rocks. When someone else does it (i.e., for money, not love), it sucks.
So the obvious question for me is: what role is Jon Orwant playing in the current incarnation?
Re:Part of a pattern with this administration.
on
Politicizing Science
·
· Score: 1
I guess we can only hope that Bush + Cheney are infected with one of the diseases that gov't stem cell research was working on. Ah...
I do not wish that on them, for a number of reasons. First, for all their heinous sins, they retain their inalienable human dignity and right to life. Second, I've no doubt that they'd just skip to a country where, at the cost of thousands of babies, the research had been pursued. This administration has no regard for life or truth, but only for greed and vengeance, as witnessed by their environmental policy, drug policy, foreign policy and civil liberties policy.
The previous posts gloss over the usual situation with viruses, that in addition to the core RNA or DNA, they usually have a complex chemical "shell" that keeps them intact outside the host cell. Naked RNA or DNA would self-destruct.
You've apparently missed the entire concept of evolutionary adaptation. There is no "intelligence", as when human beings form a mental model of a situation, and use that model to choose a "solution". Evolutionary adaptation arises from errors in the chemical duplication of the RNA/DNA. The vast, vast majority of such errors is fatal to the new copy. Many, many such errors just don't matter - most DNA/RNA is full of sequences that just don't matter, so when they get mis-copied to a similarly inert sequence, it just doesn't make a difference. The "adaptation" comes from those enormously unlikely errors that actually improve the survivability (and thus reproductive capacity) of the resulting organism.
Say you have a population of bacteria. Some have an inert sequence of DNA that does nothing, some have an erroneous copy that happens to allow them to cope with substance P in the environment. However, substance P never occurs in the environment so there's no reproductive difference between the two strains. So say the ratio of the two strains is about 100,000 to 1. Then, one day, substance P shows up, big time. The original strain survives only by accident, but the new strain doesn't have any problem. So suddenly the ratio of old strain to new strain is 1:10. But the population is so attenuated that it dies out anyway. But let's say P shows up in the environment, but then goes away again, and leaves a 1:1 ratio of old to new strain, with just enough population to build up again. Suddenly the new population gets big, and P shows up again. Now only half the population gets wiped out by P, leaving an almost pure population that doesn't have any problem surviving with P. That population gets bigger, P shows up again but has no effect. The bacteria have "learned" to live with P!
Those in the know have already figured out that P might be Penicillin, with the first scenario of population attenuated to its demise being the administration of a full course of the antibiotic, and the second scenario being the one where the patient started feeling better and didn't bother to finish the course of medicine. Then they got sick again, and, oh, dear, the Penicillin isn't working! It doesn't work on their sick spouse, either!
The clause you've been debating interacts with this other clause, which says that if I don't accept everything Microsoft wants me to take (or give!) then my only recourse is to stop using their software. Microsoft is very close to making auto-update a condition of running their software. They haven't gone entirely to ``leasing agreements only'' but they're very close.
From the mouth of Microsoft:
Replacement, Modification and Upgrade of the Software: Microsoft reserves the right to replace, modify or upgrade the SOFTWARE at any time by offering you a replacement or modified version of the SOFTWARE or such upgrade and to charge for such replacement, modification or upgrade. Any such replacement or modified software code or upgrade to the SOFTWARE offered to you by Microsoft shall be considered part of the SOFTWARE and subject to the terms of this EULA (unless this EULA is superceded by a further EULA accompanying such replacement or modified version of or upgrade to the SOFTWARE). In the event that Microsoft offers a replacement or modified version of or any upgrade to the SOFTWARE, (a) your continued use of the SOFTWARE is conditioned on your acceptance of such replacement or modified version of or upgrade to the SOFTWARE and any accompanying superceding EULA and (b) in the case of the replacement or modified SOFTWARE, your use of all prior versions of the SOFTWARE is terminated.
Mac OS X runs its GUIs via the X window system. Yes, it adds things, especially to support OS 9 applications. The whole point to the X design was to provide mechanism, not policy. Desktop environments - Gnome, KDE, (Aqua for Mac OS X, unless I'm mistaken) - provide policy.
Yes! Functional names, not brand names.
on
KDE Gets The Hat
·
· Score: 1
Mod the parent up! Not geek-recognition-only-brand names, but functional names are crucial to letting new users succeed. And at this point, 90% are still new users! Only when 90% of everybody knows your brand name, can you start using it instead of the functional name.
Re:damn... did anyone else mis-read this?
on
Linux 2.4.19 Released
·
· Score: 4, Funny
A car returns the first element of a list. A cdr returns the remaining elements.
Ah yes; I remember getting A's in Chem 101 and 102, with the exception of the labs, where I got low C's, maybe even D's, after putting in too too many hours to count. In hindsight, I can't distinguish very well between titration and hazing rituals. That and physics labs taught me that the universe is well ordered -- but only for those with the most expensive, automated equipment.
When I think serious strategy, I always think of
Diplomacy, and, to a lesser extent, the other Avolon
Hill games. I continue to be mystified as to why
they don't develop computer-assisted versions of
these games: identical rules, but more fun because
the computer is taking care of the tedious paperwork.
Is that the sense in which you believe politics has ended? That there's no place for anything but billionaires (individual or corporate) to participate? The only other way to end politics is to have surpassed the need for coercion, and, last I checked, that hasn't happened for any but the most ignorant of the privileged.
I put cable trays and cat 5 in the attic of this 30 year old house this spring, pulling it down to the studio and the office along the wall in raceways, since I'm not the right guy to drill holes in studs hiding behind sheetrock. The cable connection goes to a linux-based firewall. All I need to do is add a couple more geeks. My wife practices piano too much (or do music geeks count?), but the kids -- well, with any luck at all:-).
Deep within the farthest hours of night,
Deep within the occult essence tearing,
Deep within the runes of cold blue light,
I forge the edge of mind and matter's sharing.
Powerful the ways of my familiar,
Powerful the discipline of symbol,
Powerful the cast of each peculiar,
Into structures intricate and nimble.
Pulse of knowledge, flow through silver tracing,
Pulse of thought, leap from spark and sand,
Pulse of mind, this mind-built flesh embracing,
Thrive in reason, speak and understand!
Mind, if I do reach that potent prize,
Kobold, child, or angel: What will rise?
There's another missing feature that one expects from a real database: stored procedures. Yes, postgreSQL has user-defined functions, but those are intended only to return a single value. Yes, they can return an ``aggregate'', so you can effectively return a single row, but if you need to return a table, forget it.
There are two edges to the stored procedure sword: no two databases appear to implement them in the same way, so if you contemplate changing databases, it is more ``portable'' and ``modular'' to package such processing in your portable and object-oriented application language libraries, thus obviating the need for stored procedures. On the other hand, if you're more likely to change your language than your database, then putting your logic into your database makes a lot of sense.
The fundamental problem is that, as a standard, SQL isn't. A real standard would cover the whole system, including protocol for connection, C and/or language independent API, authentication, authorization, mechanisms for extensions (e.g., stored procedures), mandatory data types, and more. Put it in a series of RFC's, and then we'd have a real competition. There is no motivation for the big commercial database companies to do any of this; once the open source market begins to dominate, however, there may be some progress. Look for real standards for databases in about 2020.
My contract with Roadrunner doesn't have this restriction; furthermore, since I use vpnd they
aren't going to see any IPSEC traffic from me.
Even if they were super energetic and collected profiles of all VPN software out there, what's to stop someone from implementing a VPN using an SSL connection to port 443? They're going to ban secure web transactions? They're going to demand an arbitrary inspection of the contents of your PC? I can see it now: ``Mr. Smith, we have no problem with your 4986 images of 70 year old women having intercourse with beagles, but this spreadsheet looks job related, and will not be tolerated.''
I'd be stunned to find Federal Canada more friendly to abuse of monopoly than the U.S.
Regardless, Microsoft has already been found in violation of U.S. antitrust law; any attempt to evade the penaltiies would allow further penalties. M$ would have to buy^H^H^Hconvince Canadian representatives on international trade bodies to try to get the U.S. penalties revoked. Oh, and the EU would have to go along. The whole idea seems like a non-starter to me.
Exactly right. Companies must learn that security only happens when you *design* for security. Part of such design is separating different components and limiting the resources to which they have access. Content filters need to be compartmentalized away from the other components: best, running on a separate box and restricted to a simple ``Good content/Bad content'' protocol communicating with the firewall; at worst, running with a documented API, restricted privileges and constrained by all the policies of the firewall.
The folks at abisource are doing a heroic job of trying to deal with the Word97 format. I initially wondered why they would read Word97, but wouldn't write it, but now I'm convinced it was an important strategic move.
I'm sorry to say that, at the moment, they're not yet production quality. 80% of the Word97 documents I've gotten have been legible or better, but one or two have not, and one blew up the Gnome session manager -- logged me out, and I had to kill off X several times (as root from a character cell console) before I could log back in. That last can't be blamed on abisource: Gnome should be impervious to such nonsense regardless of app misbehavior. If any software maintainer would care to contact me, I'll be happy to explain the details of the environment in which this happened (and send the nasty file).
{Begin sarcasm} Ruthlessness has delivered such fantastically superior monoculture to our computing environment that I'm sure we'd all love to apply the same model to our biological infrastructure. Look at what a horrific and extinction-destined mess that altruistic open-source movement had as its computing environment! {End sarcasm}
The overman lives, then dies.
The community thrives because of an infrastructure of compassion and good will. Evolution occurs within such a population. As an individual, I hope that I contribute to that biological, mental, *and* spiritual evolution, but it is a terrible mistake to usurp judgement of an individual's capacity to contribute. E.g., you might have discarded the design for one Stephen Hawking.
There are other models for the survival of a species, but they aren't to my taste. The cockroach, for instance.
Slashdot Mirror
My understanding of what happened is that originally Jon was doing TPJ out of the back of his appartment. The quality was superb, both in articles and subscriber service. Then he transferred the subscriber services to Earthweb and retained editorial control. Subscriptions were supposed to be Earthweb's business, they were supposed to know what they were doing. The content continued to be superb, but the subscriber service was bad. Then Earthweb tanked, and after a long hiatus, Jon was able to get SysAdmin (CMP) to include TPJ as a supplement (once) and then they turned it into a section. I may have lost some subscription money in there, but I already subscribed to SysAdmin, so I'm satisfied to the extent I never missed an issue. The content was thin, but I attribute that to the monthly instead of quarterly issues. So my experience can be summarized as: when Jon Orwant is doing it, it rocks. When someone else does it (i.e., for money, not love), it sucks.
So the obvious question for me is: what role is Jon Orwant playing in the current incarnation?
I guess we can only hope that Bush + Cheney are infected with one of the diseases that gov't stem cell research was working on. Ah...
I do not wish that on them, for a number of reasons. First, for all their heinous sins, they retain their inalienable human dignity and right to life. Second, I've no doubt that they'd just skip to a country where, at the cost of thousands of babies, the research had been pursued. This administration has no regard for life or truth, but only for greed and vengeance, as witnessed by their environmental policy, drug policy, foreign policy and civil liberties policy.
Oops. In 3D, it all comes out the same. No isomers.
The previous posts gloss over the usual situation with viruses, that in addition to the core RNA or DNA, they usually have a complex chemical "shell" that keeps them intact outside the host cell. Naked RNA or DNA would self-destruct.
You've apparently missed the entire concept of evolutionary adaptation. There is no "intelligence", as when human beings form a mental model of a situation, and use that model to choose a "solution". Evolutionary adaptation arises from errors in the chemical duplication of the RNA/DNA. The vast, vast majority of such errors is fatal to the new copy. Many, many such errors just don't matter - most DNA/RNA is full of sequences that just don't matter, so when they get mis-copied to a similarly inert sequence, it just doesn't make a difference. The "adaptation" comes from those enormously unlikely errors that actually improve the survivability (and thus reproductive capacity) of the resulting organism.
Say you have a population of bacteria. Some have an inert sequence of DNA that does nothing, some have an erroneous copy that happens to allow them to cope with substance P in the environment. However, substance P never occurs in the environment so there's no reproductive difference between the two strains. So say the ratio of the two strains is about 100,000 to 1. Then, one day, substance P shows up, big time. The original strain survives only by accident, but the new strain doesn't have any problem. So suddenly the ratio of old strain to new strain is 1:10. But the population is so attenuated that it dies out anyway. But let's say P shows up in the environment, but then goes away again, and leaves a 1:1 ratio of old to new strain, with just enough population to build up again. Suddenly the new population gets big, and P shows up again. Now only half the population gets wiped out by P, leaving an almost pure population that doesn't have any problem surviving with P. That population gets bigger, P shows up again but has no effect. The bacteria have "learned" to live with P!
Those in the know have already figured out that P might be Penicillin, with the first scenario of population attenuated to its demise being the administration of a full course of the antibiotic, and the second scenario being the one where the patient started feeling better and didn't bother to finish the course of medicine. Then they got sick again, and, oh, dear, the Penicillin isn't working! It doesn't work on their sick spouse, either!
The clause you've been debating interacts with this other clause, which says that if I don't accept everything Microsoft wants me to take (or give!) then my only recourse is to stop using their software. Microsoft is very close to making auto-update a condition of running their software. They haven't gone entirely to ``leasing agreements only'' but they're very close.
From the mouth of Microsoft:
Replacement, Modification and Upgrade of the Software: Microsoft reserves the right to replace, modify or upgrade the SOFTWARE at any time by offering you a replacement or modified version of the SOFTWARE or such upgrade and to charge for such replacement, modification or upgrade. Any such replacement or modified software code or upgrade to the SOFTWARE offered to you by Microsoft shall be considered part of the SOFTWARE and subject to the terms of this EULA (unless this EULA is superceded by a further EULA accompanying such replacement or modified version of or upgrade to the SOFTWARE). In the event that Microsoft offers a replacement or modified version of or any upgrade to the SOFTWARE, (a) your continued use of the SOFTWARE is conditioned on your acceptance of such replacement or modified version of or upgrade to the SOFTWARE and any accompanying superceding EULA and (b) in the case of the replacement or modified SOFTWARE, your use of all prior versions of the SOFTWARE is terminated.
Mac OS X runs its GUIs via the X window system. Yes, it adds things, especially to support OS 9 applications. The whole point to the X design was to provide mechanism, not policy. Desktop environments - Gnome, KDE, (Aqua for Mac OS X, unless I'm mistaken) - provide policy.
Mod the parent up! Not geek-recognition-only-brand names, but functional names are crucial to letting new users succeed. And at this point, 90% are still new users! Only when 90% of everybody knows your brand name, can you start using it instead of the functional name.
A car returns the first element of a list. A cdr returns the remaining elements.
Ah yes; I remember getting A's in Chem 101 and 102, with the exception of the labs, where I got low C's, maybe even D's, after putting in too too many hours to count. In hindsight, I can't distinguish very well between titration and hazing rituals. That and physics labs taught me that the universe is well ordered -- but only for those with the most expensive, automated equipment.
Amen. I haven't found any way on Google to do
exact phrase matches, whereas on altavista it's
just
"my search phrase"
When I think serious strategy, I always think of
Diplomacy, and, to a lesser extent, the other Avolon
Hill games. I continue to be mystified as to why
they don't develop computer-assisted versions of
these games: identical rules, but more fun because
the computer is taking care of the tedious paperwork.
**Accepts Outlook 2000 as a client on Windows**
I'm a Linux fanatic, but the above is the *only*
way anything new sneak into my company. The
exchange web interface could use a lot of improvement.
Check out the IKE/ISAKAMP critique in ;login:
2 /0219.html
IKE/ISAKM P considered harmful
You are a member of Usenix, aren't you? If not, the article is quoted in full here:
http://www.tryc.on.ca/archives/obsd/tech/1999_1
(Thankyou, Google)
Billionaires for Bush (or Gore)
Is that the sense in which you believe politics has ended? That there's no place for anything but billionaires (individual or corporate) to participate? The only other way to end politics is to have surpassed the need for coercion, and, last I checked, that hasn't happened for any but the most ignorant of the privileged.
You actually had to search Freshmeat? I went there and the second headline, on the front page, no scrolling required, was some CueCat software. ROTFL.
I put cable trays and cat 5 in the attic of this 30 year old house this spring, pulling it down to the studio and the office along the wall in raceways, since I'm not the right guy to drill holes in studs hiding behind sheetrock. The cable connection goes to a linux-based firewall. All I need to do is add a couple more geeks. My wife practices piano too much (or do music geeks count?), but the kids -- well, with any luck at all :-).
Deep within the farthest hours of night,
Deep within the occult essence tearing,
Deep within the runes of cold blue light,
I forge the edge of mind and matter's sharing.
Powerful the ways of my familiar,
Powerful the discipline of symbol,
Powerful the cast of each peculiar,
Into structures intricate and nimble.
Pulse of knowledge, flow through silver tracing,
Pulse of thought, leap from spark and sand,
Pulse of mind, this mind-built flesh embracing,
Thrive in reason, speak and understand!
Mind, if I do reach that potent prize,
Kobold, child, or angel: What will rise?
There's another missing feature that one expects from a real database: stored procedures. Yes, postgreSQL has user-defined functions, but those are intended only to return a single value. Yes, they can return an ``aggregate'', so you can effectively return a single row, but if you need to return a table, forget it.
There are two edges to the stored procedure sword: no two databases appear to implement them in the same way, so if you contemplate changing databases, it is more ``portable'' and ``modular'' to package such processing in your portable and object-oriented application language libraries, thus obviating the need for stored procedures. On the other hand, if you're more likely to change your language than your database, then putting your logic into your database makes a lot of sense.
The fundamental problem is that, as a standard, SQL isn't. A real standard would cover the whole system, including protocol for connection, C and/or language independent API, authentication, authorization, mechanisms for extensions (e.g., stored procedures), mandatory data types, and more. Put it in a series of RFC's, and then we'd have a real competition. There is no motivation for the big commercial database companies to do any of this; once the open source market begins to dominate, however, there may be some progress. Look for real standards for databases in about 2020.
My contract with Roadrunner doesn't have this restriction; furthermore, since I use vpnd they
aren't going to see any IPSEC traffic from me.
Even if they were super energetic and collected profiles of all VPN software out there, what's to stop someone from implementing a VPN using an SSL connection to port 443? They're going to ban secure web transactions? They're going to demand an arbitrary inspection of the contents of your PC? I can see it now: ``Mr. Smith, we have no problem with your 4986 images of 70 year old women having intercourse with beagles, but this spreadsheet looks job related, and will not be tolerated.''
I'd be stunned to find Federal Canada more friendly to abuse of monopoly than the U.S.
Regardless, Microsoft has already been found in violation of U.S. antitrust law; any attempt to evade the penaltiies would allow further penalties. M$ would have to buy^H^H^Hconvince Canadian representatives on international trade bodies to try to get the U.S. penalties revoked. Oh, and the EU would have to go along. The whole idea seems like a non-starter to me.
Exactly right. Companies must learn that security only happens when you *design* for security. Part of such design is separating different components and limiting the resources to which they have access. Content filters need to be compartmentalized away from the other components: best, running on a separate box and restricted to a simple ``Good content/Bad content'' protocol communicating with the firewall; at worst, running with a documented API, restricted privileges and constrained by all the policies of the firewall.
The folks at abisource are doing a heroic job of trying to deal with the Word97 format. I initially wondered why they would read Word97, but wouldn't write it, but now I'm convinced it was an important strategic move.
I'm sorry to say that, at the moment, they're not yet production quality. 80% of the Word97 documents I've gotten have been legible or better, but one or two have not, and one blew up the Gnome session manager -- logged me out, and I had to kill off X several times (as root from a character cell console) before I could log back in. That last can't be blamed on abisource: Gnome should be impervious to such nonsense regardless of app misbehavior. If any software maintainer would care to contact me, I'll be happy to explain the details of the environment in which this happened (and send the nasty file).
{Begin sarcasm}
Ruthlessness has delivered such fantastically
superior monoculture to our computing environment
that I'm sure we'd all love to apply the same
model to our biological infrastructure. Look at
what a horrific and extinction-destined mess that
altruistic open-source movement had as its
computing environment!
{End sarcasm}
The overman lives, then dies.
The community thrives because of an infrastructure
of compassion and good will. Evolution occurs
within such a population. As an individual, I
hope that I contribute to that biological, mental,
*and* spiritual evolution, but it is a terrible
mistake to usurp judgement of an individual's
capacity to contribute. E.g., you might have
discarded the design for one Stephen Hawking.
There are other models for the survival of a
species, but they aren't to my taste. The
cockroach, for instance.