So nVidia's drivers are optimized specifically to run 3DMark2003... and that's not a cheat.
Editorial comments like this are wonderful. They make the best shine out in all of us to which we can feel profoundly enlightened. Michael I thank you for taking the time to summarize two press releases by stating the complete obvious, if not for you I might just have been forced to click those god-awful annoying hyper-links.
Since you've obviously missed the "concern" over this whole issue let me help you out in also stating the obvious. Creating a chipset that can run the futuremark settings profoundly instead of processing them like a benchmark is supposed to is a way of, get this, testing out the performance of a piece of hardware. Basically what futuremark has made abundantly clear here is that they are to be viewed not as a benchmark, but as an industry whore who was previously considered a graphics card benchmarking standard that is now seen as a useless tool as it doesn't do what it claims to do.
Benchmarks don't need "helpers" and "shortcuts" they need to test out all the parts of the testing subject to show what it is that subject is truly capable of. So futuremark is in bed with graphics card manufacturers, this is no real surprise, it's just they've sealed their fate as being a worthless benchmark and nothing more than eye candy from now on.
Perhaps you should use the "comment" link like the rest of us common folk and try to acknowledge that you are actually older than 4. Writing your name up on the front of the board for everyone to see really loses its nostalgia around age 6, I hope.
Yes, they interrupt you at inconvenient times, but that doesn't give you the right to harass them.... Annoying or not, people still have to make a living.
You can't go down to McDonalds and start harassing the cashiers there, so why should telemarketers be any different.
How is it different? Because I have to GO to Mc Donalds, somewhere that I don't hold sacred as my own, and something I would do as my own choice. These people call MY house, they aren't doing it because they are "making a living", they're doing it because they're no talent ass clowns who have nothing more to offer society than sitting on their ass trying to peddle shit wares.
They want to invade my home then they will feel my wrath, they are an unwanted intruder into my comfort zone and I will treat them accordingly. Since I also take pleasure in tormenting their little souls to the point that they want to reach out and cry, I want them to call. It's a double edge sword, I don't want to be bothered by them, but if I'm bored I will certainly take the time to just mess with their heads every chance I get.
Obviously you are or know someone who is a telemarketer. Let me get you in on a little secret, once you work telemarketing you are no longer human, you are the scum of the earth and deserve nothing more than a strong kick upside the head and to be placed in the middle of a desert to slowly rot in the sun of dehydration and heat exhuation. Deserving for worthless pond scum as those who work telemarketing.
And does it make sense to buy a book about a GPLed piece of software?
Of course not, god knows that reading a man page or a how-to is much easier than an illustrated bound guide.
What the hell kind of question is this? Of course it makes sense, especially if you don't know much or anything about the software. What do you think that everyone is some kind of "programmer" that will just take the source and read it to find out what it does? Of course not, cups is fairly easy to setup especially with all the gui's to configure it, but that doesn't mean that it wouldn't hurt to read a book on the subject to make it a little easier.
This might shock ya, but it also "makes sense" to click that little "Donate" button on GPL'd software websites. It's not as common on some would let on. Supporting open source is more than just saying "I use open source".
IBM "big blue" has recently checked its books and made note that it has in fact been hording all the money from the code that they stole from SCO and then gave to the massive company called Linux (tm). Linux is an "open source" project that has been under the guise of a "free community" for over 10 years now and recently was discovered that it was nothing more than big brother himself.
"We're in the business of taking other peoples code and giving it away to third parties in lew of violating contracs." Said Bill Lumberg CEO of IBM, "If it wasn't for us we wouldn't be able to screw over the little guys around every turn."
IBM is expected to filter the money in $4,999 transactions to off shore accounts in the carribean to offset what seems to be an "error" in the books. "We apologize we didn't see this earlier and we're going to catch the people who didn't cover this up correctly," said Lumberg.
Okay, is this going to be like every other governmental agency that comes up with a great idea that will have a three year backlog on complaints. And even if it's not, is there a set definition of "solicitced" phone call.
If you want to get really technical about it, unless you request someone call you, every phone call is unsolicited. I understand the argument about how if you give someone your phone number then you are granting them basic permissions to call you, but unless you unlist your phone number it has to be assumed that your number is not only public, but an invitation for you to be called.
For every policy/law/order/decree there is a loophole or a way to get around it. Just a matter or time before this becomes nullified.
I am not going to be adding myself to this list for the main reason that I love telemarketers. I actually had a gentleman call me last week.
Telemarketer: Yes may I please speak to Doug.
ME: May I ask who's calling please?
TM: This is bob calling about an offer Doug just can't refuse
ME: I don't think he can, Doug killed himself yesterday , it was so sad he had gone to college and then dropped out to be a professional rollerblader and then after a horrible drunk driving accident he broke his left leg, needless to say his skating career was over. He needed money to pay off all the medical bills so he got a job as a telemarketer selling the stupidest things over the phone and trying his best to make his quota for the night so that he could make it home to shoot up and stop the pain. Day after day he would go to work and realize how low he had sunk and truly began to question his worthiness to society as a whole. I guess he finally realized he was worthless and ate a 12 gauge shotgun shell. Messy as hell, but effective, we're still actually trying to figure out how to clean it all up. And all that just because he had a lousy job as a telemarketer.
*click*
Don't know how effective it is, but think of it like as an invited prank phone call where you can fuck with them all day long. Tell them you want to buy all there stuff and give the credit card number of 8888-8888-8888-8888, which you know is your number because you ordered one off of the TV and that's the number that was on it. Or just really play with their heads, tell them you want them to seduce you into buying their product or role play with them, have them call you mr moneybags or something. Ask them out on a date or something, have some real fun, these people abosultely hate their job, trust me, and you can only make it worse for them.
10. Kevin (you know... Free Kevin)
9. Trinity & Crash Override(fictional, but hot)
8. Attrition Group
7. L0pth/@Stake (I think they're corperate now)
6. cDc (Cult of the Dead Cow)
5. eEye (should see some of the things they do)
4. Publishers of Bug Traq
3. OpenBSD
2. The guy no one knows because he's that good
1. Go to DefCon and find out for yourself.
I know some of these are a bit "old skool" but when I think security, this is what I think.
I mean isn't SCO winning here? They were a crap company in dire straits and now they're constant frontpage geek news for the same group that gave up on them when caldera stopped cutting it. By giving them the attention they don't deserve we're helping them by letting them be the talk of the town.
When there is some more pysical material presented lets hear about it. But I really don't think we need to hear about how "Joe Schmo SCO" wants to talk about their bogus case. Until they present something material, fuck um, quit letting them have all the free press.
People if you run a system that can run these programs then run them. They pose no risk to you and only benifit the user. If you run a linux/unix/not windows server then install these programs and run them and actually pay attention to them.
Personal computer security is laughable these days. Run snort, use snort, and tell others to run snort, and other free security software packages out there.
Hell buy a copy of this book and lend it to fellow admins, it can only help, let me repeat it can only help.
Not trying to be a troll, but remember not everyone is "Slashdot Savvy" and "in tune" with the hipster software. This is a tried and true program that is so uber documented they're writing books about it, you can't go wrong, seriously.
Imagine a beowulf cluster... erm... imagine a cluster at least of these. You could easily setup a massive centrally located system and have some real fun with a wireless system. With this and AirSnort, you're bound to be able to just about do anything anywhere with a 802.11b access point laying around.
I can see where this would definantelly help out a site admin having a birds eye view of the system itself, but boy was the article right with the comparison that a power tool can be very useful and can also cut your fingers off.
Good analogy if you ask me, nice article for sure.
Yeah I'm pulling 300k/s+ off of them... perhaps this should be mentioned to the debian mailing list, God knows I'd hate for their bandwidth to be used up.
How does gator work?
on
Gator Examined
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· Score: 4, Informative
Simple, I install adaware (lavasoft) and it doesn't anymore.
I'd really like to know how effectual advertising via annoying popups really can be. I mean I thought it was proven that internet advertising doesn't work. Right now I'm reading slashdot with ads all over it, unless I'm looking right at them I'll never even think twice about them.
I'm tired of all these F'ing languages. Why can't we just stick to the standards? I mean Bill already designed BASIC for MS, wasn't that more than anyone would ever need for programming? I mean come on people, programming is for the F'ing birds.
And what is a "Working Release" exactly? That's almost like a finish product, but not close enough to PR's release date so it's not a "final" version that can always "be hotfixed later"???
In closing...
F Sharp? F YOU, This F'ing F thinks that he can just F me all day long and tell me how to F'ing program, this F'ing guy.
Pay attention you say??? Ahh yes so the truth comes out, I did pay attention and I actually got an A in all the cobol classes (yes there are more than one...) and now I'm done. I learned basically a little portion of everything COBOL can do (it is actually quite a limited language). And the sadest part of it all... I know exactly what you are talking about when you say everything is stored in VSAM on a 390 system. I even know that my instructor would have your ass for calling 85-cobol COBOL II, even though they're the same damned thing.
I never said I couldn't maintain a COBOL based mainframe system with enough training in the company's systems and procedures for coding, I said I would rather work at McDonalds. As you already know there is absolutely nothing sexy about COBOL programming. It is basically the completed stereotype of what a computer job is. Constantly looking through a green on black screen of text (unless you were cool enough to change the colors and make all the other geeks jealous).
I've even seen COBOL in a production enviroment enough to see that it is not anything near what I want to do with my future. The systems are sound, I'll grant you that, but they are antiquated and stupid end user is becoming more and more afraid of the old keyboard everyday. GUI frontends to mainframes are nothing more than half ass hacks. The cost of maintaining the mainframes will be their ultimate demise.
If you haven't become an associate member of the FSF yet, now would be a good time!
Why? Because the ultimate evil is infinging on the GPL and there is a massive need for the Free Software Foundation to have some money?
Now lets get into the article itself. This is another example of a company that is willing to cooperate, but has had a few snags in their plans. They've said they're going to post the code online (which they don't have to do) so lets see if they do. Personally I think the whole idea of treating users of open source as "the bad guys" is really getting old. They were called on a mistake they made and they're doing their best to resolve it.
Everyone says to encourage the use of open software because you're not limited to propritary license agreements then jumps right down the back of anyone who even looks like they might be in violation of an untested license. Quite frankly I'd like this to go to court and see how it all pans out. Then maybe there would be more behind the FSF than Stallman constantly running his preverbial mouth through emails and essays.
Either way this is not "Good Press" for open software by anymeans.
And yeah I keep saying open software because I also hate the argument of free software doesn't mean open software crap.
At my school for the undergrad degree plan of "Computer Science Business" you _HAVE_ to learn COBOL. I hated every minute of it because it's a pain in the ass and antiquated and outdated. We have an entire department dedicated to the maintenance of IBM MVS 390 systems that basically run the entire school. Everything from registration to classes to payroll is handled through a slew of cobol programs and frontends all designed almost 20 years ago.
Basically the "Computer Science Business" degree plan is designed to make cobol monkeys for either the school, statefarm, kraft, or caterpillar who still rely heavily on cobol for day-to-day operations. What's the catch? In less than 10 years all the formentioned companies will be converted to either a.NET or Java platform to control all their operations. COBOL's last major reworking was done 18 years ago, it's time to switch to something new.
I hate cobol and I always will, if I ever see an VSAM or coding paragraph again I'll probably freak. I'd rather work at McDonalds than be a COBOL monkey. I don't think I'm alone with my views either, as this article proves. These systems are old, prone to crashes, and not supported by level one support anywhere. They have heavy maitenance price tags and it's for this reason that it is more economical for these companies to completely rewrite their systems. IBM Running on Linux will NOT save COBOL, it's a dead language, just some people still speak it.
As well as Linux, the A760 has onboard a camera, diary, e-mail program, MP3 player, speakerphone and colour touchscreen.
In all the excitement of releasing this new modern wonder to the world the motorola engineers have announced that there is no "phone call making capability".
A motorola spokeperson was quoted as saying "Well we were so happy to see useless features in a phone, we forgot to add the basic features of the phone, jokingly we're going to change our slogan from 'Hello Moto' to 'HELLO?? MOTO?? CAN YOU HEAR ME AT ALL??'. Seeing as Verizon Wireless is one of our largest purchasers we feel they'll get the joke too."
When asked whether or not the phone would be able to make and receive telephone calls the spokesperson replied, "What, you have email and linux, what more do you need in a phone, this is the phone of tommorrow, today."
In similiar news: Nokia has announced that they will be making the "Microwave Phone" that will combine cellphone technology with burrito cooking power. Sure to be a hit for everyone who thinks their cellphone should do more than just be a phone.
And in not so similiar news: 1337 h4x0r5 from around the world have announced that they are happy to see that they'll be able to run their scripts from a cell phone and be able to '0wn j00' when they're out on a date. One 1337 dud3 was quoted as follows; "Like if I ever get out of the house and like see a girl and like go on a date with her and like she doesn't hit me or nothing I can like 0wn a box tellin the world how I loves her and stuff it will be like the best thing in the world for getting me like laid because like I don't think like I will ever get laid."
So Everyone seems to love this new modern 'Swiss Army Knife' of the telecommunication tool belt!
FYI: The phone does make calls, that was meant to be a joke...
Why is the US military paying ideology-driven foreign hackers?
In a nutshell, not everyone in the "government" is a complete idiot... *gasp*... and sometimes... just sometimes these "agencies" come up with supporting something that is actually useful to them and what they're trying to do.
OpenBSD is designed with security in mind. The article goes into great lengths about OpenBSD and what they've managed to acheive.
Anyone who has read my comments knows that I'm pretty much a BSD cheerleader because when I start to work with servers I will always pick a BSD solution wherever possible.
For many reasons there is a level of obscurity (try explaining to a "1337 h4x0r" what a "wheel" is...) which also goes along with that there is some differences in the file structure as well (slackware doesn't count).
Plus theres the stability, I know linunx is stable, but the BSD stability is tested for stability and there isn't any "new exciting" features plugged in and not tested (okay at least in OpenBSD... NetBSD does NOT count for this argument *grin*)
And my absolute favorite NO MORE THAN YOU NEED is installed!!! Something that I have also been arguing over in the SuSE disucssion...
So what do we have, Simple, Stable, and Secure... KISSS!!
Go DARPA, I've got tuition to pay so I can't buy an OpenBSD CD Set this semester:-(, but I did pay income taxes (so I guess I did kinda fund OpenBSD!!!)
... for those who "Switched", but didn't quite realize what they were getting into...
Personally Virtual PC isn't all that bad, but it is funny to see all the anti-MS mac zealots with a copy of Virtual PC on their computers.
In true honesty I don't really see a need any longer for virtual PC except for Mac users that are used to a PC that want to keep using windows. With OS X I really can't think of anything in particular that I would need Virtual PC for. I would almost keep a *gasp* windows machine around if it were that important to me, OR, I would quit being lazy and learn something new.
Anyways, I remember the "rumors" of a MS Windows Release for PPC and I also remember "rumors" of Mac OS for x86. Kinda makes you wonder what behind closed doors meeting took place to kill these projects. Innovation has been stifled by the almighty dollar on many an occassion, hence why free software is so appealing to so many.
I mean lets face it, it's a computer who on earth would ever need couple gigs of media to store or read from. And lets get down to the hard facts here, computers are boring machines for business and scientists, they're not made for these "games" and "multimedia" mumbo-jumbo.
Then there's the whole "Windows" what a fad, a buggy GUI that you can click stuff with, WOW, show me what windows can do that I can't do just as well with my CLI on BDSi.
In all seriousness I see a brave new innovation that will bring less anonyminity (sp?) to the internet. Where your broadband connection has your families name in the reverse DNS and what not. Or something where there is a global or local based interaction, kinda like going to a pub, but less social.
Finally will be the phasing out of appliances. The personal computer will cease to just be a "web browser" but will become a media staple in the home. There will be no more seperate box for videos music and television, they will be combined into a nice very low profile box that sits on the wall and makes everyone laugh at the days of home entertainment "centers".
So no there won't be a whole lot of change because society is slow to change, but we will be looking back and wondering "huh? what?" and my favorite when looking at something "old" now-a-days "I remember when that was the coolest thing ever".
After taking all that trouble to hack your own install of RedHat and then an install of Apt-RPM... haven't you taken all the steps you could have easily avoided by using Debian?
If it's the hardware detection that you want, use knoppix to install debian, hardware detection is done with redhat's hardware detector.
I'm not trying to dis a distro, I know for a fact that anyone seasoned enough with linux can get ANYTHING from one distro to work in another. I'm just saying that RH wasn't designed to do what you're doing, but of course it is possible. It's also possible to default install SuSE and MDK and manually remove all the uneccessary packages. But like I said above, if you want a base install and you want customization and you want apt... possibly debian is a better solution for you?
Slashdot Mirror
Editorial comments like this are wonderful. They make the best shine out in all of us to which we can feel profoundly enlightened. Michael I thank you for taking the time to summarize two press releases by stating the complete obvious, if not for you I might just have been forced to click those god-awful annoying hyper-links.
Since you've obviously missed the "concern" over this whole issue let me help you out in also stating the obvious. Creating a chipset that can run the futuremark settings profoundly instead of processing them like a benchmark is supposed to is a way of, get this, testing out the performance of a piece of hardware. Basically what futuremark has made abundantly clear here is that they are to be viewed not as a benchmark, but as an industry whore who was previously considered a graphics card benchmarking standard that is now seen as a useless tool as it doesn't do what it claims to do.
Benchmarks don't need "helpers" and "shortcuts" they need to test out all the parts of the testing subject to show what it is that subject is truly capable of. So futuremark is in bed with graphics card manufacturers, this is no real surprise, it's just they've sealed their fate as being a worthless benchmark and nothing more than eye candy from now on.
Perhaps you should use the "comment" link like the rest of us common folk and try to acknowledge that you are actually older than 4. Writing your name up on the front of the board for everyone to see really loses its nostalgia around age 6, I hope.
If this post is true, lets hope that you're not a "unix admin at work".
Demistifying printing in Unix? Since when is RedHat Unix, are you working for SCO?!
You can't go down to McDonalds and start harassing the cashiers there, so why should telemarketers be any different.
How is it different? Because I have to GO to Mc Donalds, somewhere that I don't hold sacred as my own, and something I would do as my own choice. These people call MY house, they aren't doing it because they are "making a living", they're doing it because they're no talent ass clowns who have nothing more to offer society than sitting on their ass trying to peddle shit wares.
They want to invade my home then they will feel my wrath, they are an unwanted intruder into my comfort zone and I will treat them accordingly. Since I also take pleasure in tormenting their little souls to the point that they want to reach out and cry, I want them to call. It's a double edge sword, I don't want to be bothered by them, but if I'm bored I will certainly take the time to just mess with their heads every chance I get.
Obviously you are or know someone who is a telemarketer. Let me get you in on a little secret, once you work telemarketing you are no longer human, you are the scum of the earth and deserve nothing more than a strong kick upside the head and to be placed in the middle of a desert to slowly rot in the sun of dehydration and heat exhuation. Deserving for worthless pond scum as those who work telemarketing.
Of course not, god knows that reading a man page or a how-to is much easier than an illustrated bound guide.
What the hell kind of question is this? Of course it makes sense, especially if you don't know much or anything about the software. What do you think that everyone is some kind of "programmer" that will just take the source and read it to find out what it does? Of course not, cups is fairly easy to setup especially with all the gui's to configure it, but that doesn't mean that it wouldn't hurt to read a book on the subject to make it a little easier.
This might shock ya, but it also "makes sense" to click that little "Donate" button on GPL'd software websites. It's not as common on some would let on. Supporting open source is more than just saying "I use open source".
IBM "big blue" has recently checked its books and made note that it has in fact been hording all the money from the code that they stole from SCO and then gave to the massive company called Linux (tm). Linux is an "open source" project that has been under the guise of a "free community" for over 10 years now and recently was discovered that it was nothing more than big brother himself.
"We're in the business of taking other peoples code and giving it away to third parties in lew of violating contracs." Said Bill Lumberg CEO of IBM, "If it wasn't for us we wouldn't be able to screw over the little guys around every turn."
IBM is expected to filter the money in $4,999 transactions to off shore accounts in the carribean to offset what seems to be an "error" in the books. "We apologize we didn't see this earlier and we're going to catch the people who didn't cover this up correctly," said Lumberg.
SD
If you want to get really technical about it, unless you request someone call you, every phone call is unsolicited. I understand the argument about how if you give someone your phone number then you are granting them basic permissions to call you, but unless you unlist your phone number it has to be assumed that your number is not only public, but an invitation for you to be called.
For every policy/law/order/decree there is a loophole or a way to get around it. Just a matter or time before this becomes nullified.
I am not going to be adding myself to this list for the main reason that I love telemarketers. I actually had a gentleman call me last week.
Telemarketer: Yes may I please speak to Doug.
ME: May I ask who's calling please?
TM: This is bob calling about an offer Doug just can't refuse
ME: I don't think he can, Doug killed himself yesterday , it was so sad he had gone to college and then dropped out to be a professional rollerblader and then after a horrible drunk driving accident he broke his left leg, needless to say his skating career was over. He needed money to pay off all the medical bills so he got a job as a telemarketer selling the stupidest things over the phone and trying his best to make his quota for the night so that he could make it home to shoot up and stop the pain. Day after day he would go to work and realize how low he had sunk and truly began to question his worthiness to society as a whole. I guess he finally realized he was worthless and ate a 12 gauge shotgun shell. Messy as hell, but effective, we're still actually trying to figure out how to clean it all up. And all that just because he had a lousy job as a telemarketer.
*click*
Don't know how effective it is, but think of it like as an invited prank phone call where you can fuck with them all day long. Tell them you want to buy all there stuff and give the credit card number of 8888-8888-8888-8888, which you know is your number because you ordered one off of the TV and that's the number that was on it. Or just really play with their heads, tell them you want them to seduce you into buying their product or role play with them, have them call you mr moneybags or something. Ask them out on a date or something, have some real fun, these people abosultely hate their job, trust me, and you can only make it worse for them.
Don't feel guilty, they called you ... remember?
10. Kevin (you know ... Free Kevin)
9. Trinity & Crash Override(fictional, but hot)
8. Attrition Group
7. L0pth/@Stake (I think they're corperate now)
6. cDc (Cult of the Dead Cow)
5. eEye (should see some of the things they do)
4. Publishers of Bug Traq
3. OpenBSD
2. The guy no one knows because he's that good
1. Go to DefCon and find out for yourself.
I know some of these are a bit "old skool" but when I think security, this is what I think.
When there is some more pysical material presented lets hear about it. But I really don't think we need to hear about how "Joe Schmo SCO" wants to talk about their bogus case. Until they present something material, fuck um, quit letting them have all the free press.
Personal computer security is laughable these days. Run snort, use snort, and tell others to run snort, and other free security software packages out there.
Hell buy a copy of this book and lend it to fellow admins, it can only help, let me repeat it can only help.
Not trying to be a troll, but remember not everyone is "Slashdot Savvy" and "in tune" with the hipster software. This is a tried and true program that is so uber documented they're writing books about it, you can't go wrong, seriously.
Imagine a beowulf cluster ... erm ... imagine a cluster at least of these. You could easily setup a massive centrally located system and have some real fun with a wireless system. With this and AirSnort, you're bound to be able to just about do anything anywhere with a 802.11b access point laying around.
I can see where this would definantelly help out a site admin having a birds eye view of the system itself, but boy was the article right with the comparison that a power tool can be very useful and can also cut your fingers off.
Good analogy if you ask me, nice article for sure.
Now all I have to do is put an RFID reader next to someone's wallet/purse and see if it's worth it for me to mug them.
Clickable link, my bad.
Yeah I'm pulling 300k/s+ off of them ... perhaps this should be mentioned to the debian mailing list, God knows I'd hate for their bandwidth to be used up.
http://gator.com/debian/dists/
looks like it works just fine to me ...
I'd really like to know how effectual advertising via annoying popups really can be. I mean I thought it was proven that internet advertising doesn't work. Right now I'm reading slashdot with ads all over it, unless I'm looking right at them I'll never even think twice about them.
And what is a "Working Release" exactly? That's almost like a finish product, but not close enough to PR's release date so it's not a "final" version that can always "be hotfixed later"???
In closing ...
F Sharp? F YOU, This F'ing F thinks that he can just F me all day long and tell me how to F'ing program, this F'ing guy.
I never said I couldn't maintain a COBOL based mainframe system with enough training in the company's systems and procedures for coding, I said I would rather work at McDonalds. As you already know there is absolutely nothing sexy about COBOL programming. It is basically the completed stereotype of what a computer job is. Constantly looking through a green on black screen of text (unless you were cool enough to change the colors and make all the other geeks jealous).
I've even seen COBOL in a production enviroment enough to see that it is not anything near what I want to do with my future. The systems are sound, I'll grant you that, but they are antiquated and stupid end user is becoming more and more afraid of the old keyboard everyday. GUI frontends to mainframes are nothing more than half ass hacks. The cost of maintaining the mainframes will be their ultimate demise.
I do feel your pain though, really I do ...
If you haven't become an associate member of the FSF yet, now would be a good time!
Why? Because the ultimate evil is infinging on the GPL and there is a massive need for the Free Software Foundation to have some money?
Now lets get into the article itself. This is another example of a company that is willing to cooperate, but has had a few snags in their plans. They've said they're going to post the code online (which they don't have to do) so lets see if they do. Personally I think the whole idea of treating users of open source as "the bad guys" is really getting old. They were called on a mistake they made and they're doing their best to resolve it.
Everyone says to encourage the use of open software because you're not limited to propritary license agreements then jumps right down the back of anyone who even looks like they might be in violation of an untested license. Quite frankly I'd like this to go to court and see how it all pans out. Then maybe there would be more behind the FSF than Stallman constantly running his preverbial mouth through emails and essays.
Either way this is not "Good Press" for open software by anymeans.
And yeah I keep saying open software because I also hate the argument of free software doesn't mean open software crap.
Basically the "Computer Science Business" degree plan is designed to make cobol monkeys for either the school, statefarm, kraft, or caterpillar who still rely heavily on cobol for day-to-day operations. What's the catch? In less than 10 years all the formentioned companies will be converted to either a .NET or Java platform to control all their operations. COBOL's last major reworking was done 18 years ago, it's time to switch to something new.
I hate cobol and I always will, if I ever see an VSAM or coding paragraph again I'll probably freak. I'd rather work at McDonalds than be a COBOL monkey. I don't think I'm alone with my views either, as this article proves. These systems are old, prone to crashes, and not supported by level one support anywhere. They have heavy maitenance price tags and it's for this reason that it is more economical for these companies to completely rewrite their systems. IBM Running on Linux will NOT save COBOL, it's a dead language, just some people still speak it.
Death to cobol you worthless language.
*smile*
Does EVERYONE read slashdot instead of working?
hehehehe double reference jokes are funny.
In all the excitement of releasing this new modern wonder to the world the motorola engineers have announced that there is no "phone call making capability".
A motorola spokeperson was quoted as saying "Well we were so happy to see useless features in a phone, we forgot to add the basic features of the phone, jokingly we're going to change our slogan from 'Hello Moto' to 'HELLO?? MOTO?? CAN YOU HEAR ME AT ALL??'. Seeing as Verizon Wireless is one of our largest purchasers we feel they'll get the joke too."
When asked whether or not the phone would be able to make and receive telephone calls the spokesperson replied, "What, you have email and linux, what more do you need in a phone, this is the phone of tommorrow, today."
In similiar news: Nokia has announced that they will be making the "Microwave Phone" that will combine cellphone technology with burrito cooking power. Sure to be a hit for everyone who thinks their cellphone should do more than just be a phone.
And in not so similiar news: 1337 h4x0r5 from around the world have announced that they are happy to see that they'll be able to run their scripts from a cell phone and be able to '0wn j00' when they're out on a date. One 1337 dud3 was quoted as follows; "Like if I ever get out of the house and like see a girl and like go on a date with her and like she doesn't hit me or nothing I can like 0wn a box tellin the world how I loves her and stuff it will be like the best thing in the world for getting me like laid because like I don't think like I will ever get laid."
So Everyone seems to love this new modern 'Swiss Army Knife' of the telecommunication tool belt!
FYI: The phone does make calls, that was meant to be a joke ...
In a nutshell, not everyone in the "government" is a complete idiot ... *gasp* ... and sometimes ... just sometimes these "agencies" come up with supporting something that is actually useful to them and what they're trying to do.
OpenBSD is designed with security in mind. The article goes into great lengths about OpenBSD and what they've managed to acheive.
Anyone who has read my comments knows that I'm pretty much a BSD cheerleader because when I start to work with servers I will always pick a BSD solution wherever possible.
For many reasons there is a level of obscurity (try explaining to a "1337 h4x0r" what a "wheel" is ...) which also goes along with that there is some differences in the file structure as well (slackware doesn't count).
Plus theres the stability, I know linunx is stable, but the BSD stability is tested for stability and there isn't any "new exciting" features plugged in and not tested (okay at least in OpenBSD ... NetBSD does NOT count for this argument *grin*)
And my absolute favorite NO MORE THAN YOU NEED is installed!!! Something that I have also been arguing over in the SuSE disucssion ...
So what do we have, Simple, Stable, and Secure ... KISSS!!
Go DARPA, I've got tuition to pay so I can't buy an OpenBSD CD Set this semester :-(, but I did pay income taxes (so I guess I did kinda fund OpenBSD!!!)
Personally Virtual PC isn't all that bad, but it is funny to see all the anti-MS mac zealots with a copy of Virtual PC on their computers.
In true honesty I don't really see a need any longer for virtual PC except for Mac users that are used to a PC that want to keep using windows. With OS X I really can't think of anything in particular that I would need Virtual PC for. I would almost keep a *gasp* windows machine around if it were that important to me, OR, I would quit being lazy and learn something new.
Anyways, I remember the "rumors" of a MS Windows Release for PPC and I also remember "rumors" of Mac OS for x86. Kinda makes you wonder what behind closed doors meeting took place to kill these projects. Innovation has been stifled by the almighty dollar on many an occassion, hence why free software is so appealing to so many.
I mean lets face it, it's a computer who on earth would ever need couple gigs of media to store or read from. And lets get down to the hard facts here, computers are boring machines for business and scientists, they're not made for these "games" and "multimedia" mumbo-jumbo.
Then there's the whole "Windows" what a fad, a buggy GUI that you can click stuff with, WOW, show me what windows can do that I can't do just as well with my CLI on BDSi.
In all seriousness I see a brave new innovation that will bring less anonyminity (sp?) to the internet. Where your broadband connection has your families name in the reverse DNS and what not. Or something where there is a global or local based interaction, kinda like going to a pub, but less social.
Finally will be the phasing out of appliances. The personal computer will cease to just be a "web browser" but will become a media staple in the home. There will be no more seperate box for videos music and television, they will be combined into a nice very low profile box that sits on the wall and makes everyone laugh at the days of home entertainment "centers".
So no there won't be a whole lot of change because society is slow to change, but we will be looking back and wondering "huh? what?" and my favorite when looking at something "old" now-a-days "I remember when that was the coolest thing ever".
If it's the hardware detection that you want, use knoppix to install debian, hardware detection is done with redhat's hardware detector.
I'm not trying to dis a distro, I know for a fact that anyone seasoned enough with linux can get ANYTHING from one distro to work in another. I'm just saying that RH wasn't designed to do what you're doing, but of course it is possible. It's also possible to default install SuSE and MDK and manually remove all the uneccessary packages. But like I said above, if you want a base install and you want customization and you want apt ... possibly debian is a better solution for you?