Question: Can anyone recommend a good general primer for dynamic web design? There seems to be a fair selection out there for specific implementations (This book for JSP, a couple of PHP books, lots of Perl and Python stuff.), but I am looking for a more generic sort of "How can dynamic content make my life and my site better?" kinda thing. I admin for a universtiy department, and although I do not handle the web content myself, I feel like it could be improved by the proper application of server intelligence. I am just not quite sure how. If I could, by making backend changes, make the front end of the site prettier , more useable, easier to update, or any combination thereof, I'd be happy to put in the effort, but I am kind of at a loss as to where to start.
This has actually been talked about for a while, and IIRCC there will be a way t transfer the license between machines. You will just have to call MS and explain why you are doing so (basically they will be able to relicense the copy). Individual copies of Microsoft software are also license for install on up to two machines (one is supposed to be a laptop, but as of now ther is no way to check). It is a PITA, but not as horrible as it sounds. I will try to dig up the old story I read that gives all this info.
Any people who reject His most perfect and holy Laws, that is, the TEN COMMANDMENTS, do so to both their corporeal destruction and eternal damnation.
Just curious, what about the other several hundred laws in the Torah. Were they mistakes? I've always wondered why some people seem to accept the ten commandments as law, (and other specific laws of Torah, such as those condeming homosexuality and Witchcraft) but happilly ignore the rest of them. I bet you eat shrimp? Pork? Milk and meat at the same meal? Also please don't tell me about Jesus and the "New Covenant" I've heard that arguement before. It doesn't make any sense. Jesus doesn't say that there will be a new covenant, then sit down and elucidate which rules you have to follow now as opposed to before. He just says it's a new covenant. Either you belive that means that all of the old rules are null and void, or they are also a part of the new covenant. In that case you either need to follow ALL of them just like before, or you can safley ignore them, and follow the new rules ("Love thy neighbor", etc.). Yet alot of Christians (Especially of the "born again" variety) seems to want to have their cake and eat it too. "I don't like gay people, so rule number 157 about gay people applies, but I like cream of chicken soup so rule number 138 about meat and milk doesn't". (No, the rule numbers are not correct, I made them up, but you get the idea.) If you would care to enlighten me, please feel fre to reply. I suspect I will get modded down for being off topic, but I am interested to hear how you resolve this inconsistancy
A is objectively better than B. It's niftier, and you like it better. But everyone else is going with B so you do too.
It price to performance ratio. Object A is objectivly niftyer than Object B, but when you figure in the facts that:
A) Though the RISC has a better architecture design, it is not sufficently better for most tasks to overcome the difference in Mhz available (ie, a 1Ghz PPC CPU would be manifestly better than a 1Ghz x86 CPU, but the x86 CPU's are up around 1.2Ghz, and the PPC's are still at 500Mhz. The superior design is insufficent in most cases to overcome that greater than 2x speed difference.)
B) The price differnces are staggering. Comparing the cost of a technically superior, but practically equivliant (or even inferior depending on the app) PPC CPU to that of the x86 CPU will yeild differnces of nearly 2x.
C) I have to deal with Apple to get a PPC system. I mean come on, we are talking about a company that "punished" ATI for blabing about a product early by releaseing that product with an inferior video card. They could care less about their customers. At least with all the companies making x86 hardware they have to at least pretend to care what the customer think or they will be forced out by someone who does.
Let's play out your politcal analogy here. Let's say I have a friend named Bob,and Bob is running for Mayor. I like Bob and he agrees with me on all of the issues, so I should vote for him, right? But wait, let's look at this further: First, Bob has no political experience, and if elected will most likely not be able to accomplish as much as his opponent, whom I also agree with on most important issues, just not ALL the issues. Second, Bob is kinda broke, and needs me to help pay for his campaign or there is no chance he will be elected. Finally, there is the fact that if I vote for Bob and he gets into office, he will probably appoint Tim Chief of Police. Tim is a jerk, but Bob likes him, so If I want Bob I gotta accept that Tim is coming along for the ride. So I can choose to get someone I agree with completely (other than thte Tim thing), but who will be less effective, and cost me money (and strap me with someone else I dont like), or I can choose some one that I can usually agree with, but who is cheaper, more likely to actually accomplish the purpose I elected him for, and will not come with baggage I don't like. I'll normally take the opponent unless there is compelling reason to do otherwise.
There is not a single Winmodem on the 100 or machines that I manage, but this means nothing, because they are all bussiness machines that have no modem at all. I can't really boycott Winmodems, because I don't buy modems. I would tend to guess that the same is true for most people here that have purchasing power in a company. On the other hand, if I start boycotting a brand of hard drives, I could have some small effect to the manufacturer's bottom line, so could a lot of others. A sys admin boycott of modems is fairly ineffective, because most sys admins don't deal with many internal modems. A sys admin boycott of hard drives on the other hand... Especially if you add in the fact that Microsoft is opposed to this technology (According to the Register story it would break a lot of their software), and therefore a few NT admins may also join a boycott, It could make a difference.
from what I saw the site was more of a "we like the Mac, but hate apple" type thing. All their articles were about either cool Mac stuff, or screw ups by Apple (as a company, not so much related to the quality of the actual machine). This is somewhat understandable attitude. As an outsider looking in, it has always seemed to me that Apple delights in tormenting it's loyal users, who keep coming back because they like the product.
If you set a challenge to a bunch of 15 year olds, they will try to beat it. Duh! Kids want to compete and win at things (for that matter so do adults), if you set up a contest, soeone id going to try and win. I am mildly curious to hear the teacher's side though... They kind of brush over him.
At least they took some steps to prevent a broadband monopoly. Now let's hope that they give a fair deal to the other ISPs. My main concern is that this will totally squeeze the small ISP players out of the market. They could easilly set barriers to entry so high that only EarthLink and a few others can afford to play. Did anyone else notice that the second and third paragraphs repeat in the Washington Post article, or os my browser screwing up?
This kind of thing really pisses me off. It's bad enough to be a big corperate baddie, but it really sucks when a company sells itself as the alternative to big corperate baddies, but then acts like one and hopes no one notices. Small fan sites are one of the building blocks of the internet. It would be a real shame to loose them to a faceless corperation that claims to represent them.
You probably won't read this at this point, since the story is pretty old, but I thought I'd reply. Certainly there are (were) quite a few negative comments to this article, just as there are to nearly every article on this site. Many of them made unreasonable criticisms, but I think you will find that the same happens to articles on Linux. In a community where fanatics are almost as common as neutrals, every article is going to have a healthy population of people who disagree with any given statement just on principle.
My UID is well over 100K and I have been around for a couple years... There are probably close to 3 or 4 hundred thousand people wandering around this place, and at any time half of them are either trolls (who will disagree and denigrate any proposition just to be contrary), or fanatics of a platform other than the one being discussed. I can recall seeing upward of half the comments on a recent article on Linux security being to effect of "to secure Linux, format the hard drive and install OBSD". Finding negative and even unreasonably negative comments is par for the course in this place. Personally I generally try to ignore it and move on, except when a certain comment strikes me (Like yours did). To me, the purpose of this site is to present information that I will find either personally or profrssionally interesting. I think what keyed me off about your comment was your implication that the article was somehow wasted because the Slashdot community was somehow unable to really comprehend the wonderfulness of OBSD. Sure there were negative comments, there always are, but for each of those negative comments there were probably a thousand people who read the article and just filed the information, and a hundred people who (Like me) had their interest piqued and went and learned more.
I actually rather like man pages, but previous to this article I never had any great interest in finding info on OBSD. I stated in my original reply that the purpose of a general interest interview is to give people with no (or minimal) background enough information to decide if they'd like to learn more. This interview accomplished exactly that in my case, and probably in the cases of others as well. I don't see how I could be relying on false info, since the only info I had up to this point was the info from the interview, and that was from the horses mouth.
As for the whole "If you don't like it, don't read here" thing, you missed the point. I was basically trying to say that if you are so sensitive that the comments of fanatics and trolls upset you this badly, you might be happier not reading/. I base this on the fact that "we" infact "cannot change". "We" are infact over a hundred thousand people, only one of whom is me. Certainly I can change me to an extent, but somehow I don't think that either of us can change "cyber monkey". I agree that the purpose of the dicussion forum is (or should be) discussion, which is exactly why I feel that responding to an infamitory rant with another inflamitory rant (Which is what I felt you did) is counterproductive if you really want to change opinions.
YOu ignore a couple things in this though. First, I can't implement it myself, I am a medicore programer at best, and would not know where to begin. The poster was commentlin on the commercial viability of Open Source. Let's say my dad needs an OS for his bussiness, and somehow you mananged to dodge all the issues of actualy teaching him Unix, and getting him accept that that was some valid reason he should learn all this new stuff rather than just pointing and drooling through Windows. So dad here you go.. OpenBSD, the most secure OS in the world, course if you want to use on you dual CPU server, you are going to have to learn how to rewrite the Kernal for SMP support. Dad would laugh all the way to CompUSA. Commercial success is going to require more than "Just develop it yourself", if people were willing and able to do that, Windows would not have a 90 % marketshare.
OK, I agree that the original poster was blowing a debateable point out of proportion, but you are now doing something similar. First, you are taking taking one poster, and indicating that because this one guy misunderstood something (or even deliberatly blew it out of proportion), the whole interview is a wasted excersize, and possibly an indication of the lack of openmindedness and out right ignorance of the Linux community. This is Slashdot, people make comments that represent their opinions, not those of a communinty or of the site itself. What you are basically saying is "I don't think Slashdot should do interviews on subjects that are important to me, because someone will misunderstand something or disagree with me." If you don't want to find opinions that vary from yours, or want everyone to have your level of knowledge, don't read here. Similarly, Theo seem like a smart guy, he probably knows that his interview will have its share of trollish or ignorant comments and chose to do it anyway. He obviously thought it was worthwhile. As to your reaction to the questions, I think you are being a bit silly. This is an interview, sometimes in intereviews people get asked questions that they have already answered at some point in their lives. I personally do not spend large amounts of time puruseing the OBSD Usenet groups. I found the interview thought provoking and interesting. It put information into a digestable form and told me things that I would not have known otherwise. Obviously you know alot about Theo and OBSD... Good for you, perhaps you would not find a general information interview very interesting then. I doubt that personal friends or devoted fans of moviestars find interviews with them very interesting either, but the interviews are not aimed at personal friends and devoted fans. Most of what I learned in this interview, I would never have known otherwise, eihter I lacked the interest to research the topic or would not have thought of certain question. That is the purpose of an interview on a general interest website.
Speaking as another who has climbed out of the tech support jungle to be an admin, this is great advice. Let me add a few:
1. Get Microsoft certified. Is it a brainless exam for a brainless OS? Yes. Is it the most popular server OS in small to midsized businesses, and the single most popular desktop OS out there? Yes. Will people hire you being certified? Sometimes, but it will at least get you an interview.
2. If you haven't already, learn Unix. That is where the money is. There are enough legacy systems in small businesses, and high end systems in larger ones (Plus the growng population of Linux systems in small businesses) to allow a Unix newbie to luck into a job (Like I did) that will improve you skills. Once you've had one job where you did some Unix, you are marketable for the higher paying ones. I started in a call center only three years ago, and I was a complete novice. I am now a network admin for a large university. I did it by reading everything out there on Win NT, Linux, and TCP/IP. Once I had read up, I applied it. Installed both OS's on every machine I could get my hands on, bought cheap network equipment and put them together, wiped NT to put Linux on, then wiped Linux to put NT back on once it was woking, so I could set up a dual boot, then started over.
3. Look at small companies that need admins. I got my break from an architecture firm. They needed a WinNT admin who could administer their legacy Sun servers (like 5 years old), and play with their website on a Linux box on the side. My qualificaions were nothing like what would impress a large company with a tech staff, but they were enough to impress a small firm that couldn't afford much. Once you are in an admin position for a year or so though, bigger companies will start to look at you.
The trick is to make small steps at first, and keep learning.
Others have made the arguement that Katz is exagerating the importance of the generation gap in this article. That this has happened before (Prohibition, the Jazz age, Rock and Roll, the Hippie movement, etc), and is merely the latest incarnation of a continual cycle. I would argue that the same can be said for your comments. Our grandparents generation had th esame worries about our parents generation. There was serious concern in the heads of the World War II generation that these "Hippies" would one day inherit the riegns of power and have to run the country. Well, they did. The country doesn't seem to be much worse off than it was... When the Twenty somethings and teenagers of today take power we will be in the same boat as our parents are now.
IMHO, the only way to adequately refute the Turing Test as a measure of intelligence is to refute Turing's theory on what intelligence is. Turing defined intelligence recursivly, an intelligent thing is one which can convince another intelligent thing of it's intelligence. If yout take "human" as the benchmark of what is intelligent, then any computer that can convice a significant cross section of humanity of its intelligence is intelligent. The Turing Test is intimatley linked to Turing's theory on what intelligence is, and is the perfect test for what Turing defined as intelligent. To discredit the Turing test you first have to disprove his definition. The trick is that in order to really do that you have to have an alternative definition. So just come up with an encompassing definition of intelligence, then you can build a test for it. Of course to be accepted, your definition will have to be considered intelligent by those who study intelligence. So for all intents and purposes your new defintion of intelligence will have to pass a Turings Test for intelligence, in order to be accepted as intelligent... Which kinda argues in the guy's favor.
This Article has nothing to do with anyone taking anything away. It points out a techncal problem of using P2P apps on an increasingly NAT'ed Internet. NAT, in case you don't know, is technology that allows multiple machines to share the same IP address by connecting several machines on a fake, unconnected network, then connecting one of them to the Internet on a seperate interface. The machine connected to the net then takes traffic from all the other computers on the network, remarks it as coming from itself and send it out onto the net. When it recieves responses it remembers where the original request came from, remarks the packet as being from the local network and sends it the iniating machine. The problem with this is that there are three machine in the exchange and only two of them actually exist on the "Real Internet". There is no way for a machine on the Internet to initiate contact with any machine in a NAT network, other than the one that has the "real" address, and in many cases that machine is nothing but a dumb router. If both the machines trying to use a peer to peer system are on NAT networks, neither of them can be the "server" because neither of them can be reached unless they initate contact. Thus if a suffcient number of people use NAT (Which more and more people are doing because broad band ISPs only give out one "real" address) P2P system will simply cease to work, or will become to unreliable to count on. No one will "take away" Napster, it will just become so un reliable that no one wants to use it.
The solution to this problem is not trivial and as the article mentions would probably make a good graduate thesis.
Let me start by pointing out that your scheme for prventing French IP addresses from veiwing NAZI Auctions is totally unworkable. Have you heard the term "Proxy server". They allow people to effectivly make their IP address the same as that of the server. Their are public ones all over the world. You log onto the proxy server and ssuddly your computer is coming to Yahoo from the US or Japan or anywhere else that a public Proxy is available (Non public proxies are alos available. Basically any fool with a static IP and a little knowledge can set one up.) As to your rather degradational comments about the US, responding to a hot head by acting hot headed simply does not raise anyone's opinion of you. Are there contradictory laws in the US? Certainly. The drinking age is very silly, when compared with the age of majority. Censorship in some areas is worse here than in Europe. US policy's attitudes regaurding sex and nudity are very silly. I tend to argue just as strongly against the forms of cencorship practiced here as I do against those practiced elsewhere. The purpose of historic doccumation and relics is to remind us of the past. Both the good and bad aspects of it. It pisses you off to NAZI menorabilia and NAZI groups marching through the street? Good. That means you haven't forgotten. You will remember the next time someone tries to take similar power. Your family was hurt by the NAZI's and they (and you) reminded of that fact when you see some dick in a brown uniform marching around. Will they let that dick hurt them like the last one did? Hopefully not. All censorship accomplishes is to put the dick behinf closed doors where everybody forget about him. That is where he is really dangerous. As to the War in the Pacific being "Purely US interest based". I must assume that you have forgotten about the Dutch East Indies (Holland), Austrailia and India (England), South East Asia (Umm, well sorry, but your very own France), plus China (Self goverened but in the interests of most of Europe and the US). There is not a major country on Earth that has not caused incredibe amounts of suffering in the world at some point in history. France too fought her share of near genocidal colonial wars. What we should be working on is not censoring pieces of history, but making DAMN sure that EVERYBODY remembers the parts that suck the absolute most, so we can have a hope of avioding them in the future. As to beating the shit out of the first Klansman or NAZI you see, what have you proved? You now know without a shadow of a doubt that you are like them.
SEAD: Suppress Enemy Air Defense. It actually focuses more on ground based enemy AA. Tadio controled planes would be fairly good for that if you could make them accuratly target AA emplacents. Usually the biggest danger to the US during tacical air to groud attacks (Close air support or CAS) is enemy ground based AA. Artillery is often tasked with SEAD, but an accurate plane capable of detecting ground to air radar and acting as CAS to the CAS, would in some ways be more effective. Basically it would be like the Vietam era Wild Weasels, but without the insane risk to human life. I do not think these plane would be effective against other enemy planes. Humans are still better combat pilots than computers. Think about Quake, who's worse to play against a person or the comuter?
For going on 5 years now I've been saying that somebody should remake the old Electronic Arts game Mail Order Monsters using a Quake-like rendering engine during the monster battle scenes.
I LOVED that game. Played the magnetism off the 5 1/4 inch disk. I totally agree about the remake, but in the mean time, if anyone knows where an emmulated copy could be found, I'd be deeply appreciative. I had almost forgotten about that one
Evil isn't winning, it just isn't loosing. The balence is being maintained just as it always has. Bad things happen, good things happen, bad things just make better news stories. Taken on whole life is not a whole lot better or worse than it was one, two, or five hundred years ago. Some things are better: We don't die of black plague anymore, a lot fewer people starve to death (Yes, it does still happen, but it happens less). Soem things are worse: lIfe is more complicated, we have information overload. A hundred years ago people were fighting against evil robber barons who used their great wealth to trample on the rights of their employees and customers. five hundred years ago it was the powerful lords and nobles, today it is multinational corps. At least Microsoft doesn't burn down the headquarter of companies they take over, kill all the men and take all the women and children as slave. That was the tradition in early middle eastern civilzation was a city was conqurered. Quite frankly I am rather glad that there is Evil out there, I like to have something to fight against and bitch about.
Today is my last day as the sys admin for an achitecture firm. I've seen some of our work, it is nice, and makes the world a somewhat more tasteful (if not actually better) place. I am going to start as a sys admin for a university. They do a great deal of good and produce others who do even more. I do not claim that the world would be signifigantly darkened by my absence, but what I do is enjoyable, brings some small good into the world, and pays pretty well. These jobs are out there, you just have to find them.
I understand that most of Europe has similar vacation systems. We had an Austrian web developer at my last job who was utterly shocked that he only got a week of vacation in his first year (These guy were bastards about time off. I seem to remember that it took three years to build up to the "normal" two weeks of vacation.) The European company he used to work for apparently gave 6 weeks to everybody. Personally I am thrilled that my new job comes with two weeks vactcation (4 weeks after three years) and (Hold on to your hats) two weeks sick time per year. Yes friends I can actually get sick without using up all my vaction time.
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Question: Can anyone recommend a good general primer for dynamic web design? There seems to be a fair selection out there for specific implementations (This book for JSP, a couple of PHP books, lots of Perl and Python stuff.), but I am looking for a more generic sort of "How can dynamic content make my life and my site better?" kinda thing. I admin for a universtiy department, and although I do not handle the web content myself, I feel like it could be improved by the proper application of server intelligence. I am just not quite sure how. If I could, by making backend changes, make the front end of the site prettier , more useable, easier to update, or any combination thereof, I'd be happy to put in the effort, but I am kind of at a loss as to where to start.
This has actually been talked about for a while, and IIRCC there will be a way t transfer the license between machines. You will just have to call MS and explain why you are doing so (basically they will be able to relicense the copy). Individual copies of Microsoft software are also license for install on up to two machines (one is supposed to be a laptop, but as of now ther is no way to check). It is a PITA, but not as horrible as it sounds. I will try to dig up the old story I read that gives all this info.
Any people who reject His most perfect and holy Laws, that is, the TEN COMMANDMENTS, do so to both their corporeal destruction and eternal damnation.
Just curious, what about the other several hundred laws in the Torah. Were they mistakes? I've always wondered why some people seem to accept the ten commandments as law, (and other specific laws of Torah, such as those condeming homosexuality and Witchcraft) but happilly ignore the rest of them. I bet you eat shrimp? Pork? Milk and meat at the same meal? Also please don't tell me about Jesus and the "New Covenant" I've heard that arguement before. It doesn't make any sense. Jesus doesn't say that there will be a new covenant, then sit down and elucidate which rules you have to follow now as opposed to before. He just says it's a new covenant. Either you belive that means that all of the old rules are null and void, or they are also a part of the new covenant. In that case you either need to follow ALL of them just like before, or you can safley ignore them, and follow the new rules ("Love thy neighbor", etc.). Yet alot of Christians (Especially of the "born again" variety) seems to want to have their cake and eat it too. "I don't like gay people, so rule number 157 about gay people applies, but I like cream of chicken soup so rule number 138 about meat and milk doesn't". (No, the rule numbers are not correct, I made them up, but you get the idea.) If you would care to enlighten me, please feel fre to reply. I suspect I will get modded down for being off topic, but I am interested to hear how you resolve this inconsistancyA is objectively better than B. It's niftier, and you like it better. But everyone else is going with B so you do too.
It price to performance ratio. Object A is objectivly niftyer than Object B, but when you figure in the facts that:
A) Though the RISC has a better architecture design, it is not sufficently better for most tasks to overcome the difference in Mhz available (ie, a 1Ghz PPC CPU would be manifestly better than a 1Ghz x86 CPU, but the x86 CPU's are up around 1.2Ghz, and the PPC's are still at 500Mhz. The superior design is insufficent in most cases to overcome that greater than 2x speed difference.)
B) The price differnces are staggering. Comparing the cost of a technically superior, but practically equivliant (or even inferior depending on the app) PPC CPU to that of the x86 CPU will yeild differnces of nearly 2x.
C) I have to deal with Apple to get a PPC system. I mean come on, we are talking about a company that "punished" ATI for blabing about a product early by releaseing that product with an inferior video card. They could care less about their customers. At least with all the companies making x86 hardware they have to at least pretend to care what the customer think or they will be forced out by someone who does.
Let's play out your politcal analogy here. Let's say I have a friend named Bob,and Bob is running for Mayor. I like Bob and he agrees with me on all of the issues, so I should vote for him, right? But wait, let's look at this further: First, Bob has no political experience, and if elected will most likely not be able to accomplish as much as his opponent, whom I also agree with on most important issues, just not ALL the issues. Second, Bob is kinda broke, and needs me to help pay for his campaign or there is no chance he will be elected. Finally, there is the fact that if I vote for Bob and he gets into office, he will probably appoint Tim Chief of Police. Tim is a jerk, but Bob likes him, so If I want Bob I gotta accept that Tim is coming along for the ride. So I can choose to get someone I agree with completely (other than thte Tim thing), but who will be less effective, and cost me money (and strap me with someone else I dont like), or I can choose some one that I can usually agree with, but who is cheaper, more likely to actually accomplish the purpose I elected him for, and will not come with baggage I don't like. I'll normally take the opponent unless there is compelling reason to do otherwise.
Had to add Arron Brooks to the List... Sorry, I am kind of stoked about the Saints, and it adds to your point.
There is not a single Winmodem on the 100 or machines that I manage, but this means nothing, because they are all bussiness machines that have no modem at all. I can't really boycott Winmodems, because I don't buy modems. I would tend to guess that the same is true for most people here that have purchasing power in a company. On the other hand, if I start boycotting a brand of hard drives, I could have some small effect to the manufacturer's bottom line, so could a lot of others. A sys admin boycott of modems is fairly ineffective, because most sys admins don't deal with many internal modems. A sys admin boycott of hard drives on the other hand... Especially if you add in the fact that Microsoft is opposed to this technology (According to the Register story it would break a lot of their software), and therefore a few NT admins may also join a boycott, It could make a difference.
from what I saw the site was more of a "we like the Mac, but hate apple" type thing. All their articles were about either cool Mac stuff, or screw ups by Apple (as a company, not so much related to the quality of the actual machine). This is somewhat understandable attitude. As an outsider looking in, it has always seemed to me that Apple delights in tormenting it's loyal users, who keep coming back because they like the product.
If you set a challenge to a bunch of 15 year olds, they will try to beat it. Duh! Kids want to compete and win at things (for that matter so do adults), if you set up a contest, soeone id going to try and win. I am mildly curious to hear the teacher's side though... They kind of brush over him.
It seems like they are talking about microscopic sizes through the whole article. Maybe the 1-10mm bit was a typo?
At least they took some steps to prevent a broadband monopoly. Now let's hope that they give a fair deal to the other ISPs. My main concern is that this will totally squeeze the small ISP players out of the market. They could easilly set barriers to entry so high that only EarthLink and a few others can afford to play. Did anyone else notice that the second and third paragraphs repeat in the Washington Post article, or os my browser screwing up?
This kind of thing really pisses me off. It's bad enough to be a big corperate baddie, but it really sucks when a company sells itself as the alternative to big corperate baddies, but then acts like one and hopes no one notices. Small fan sites are one of the building blocks of the internet. It would be a real shame to loose them to a faceless corperation that claims to represent them.
You probably won't read this at this point, since the story is pretty old, but I thought I'd reply. Certainly there are (were) quite a few negative comments to this article, just as there are to nearly every article on this site. Many of them made unreasonable criticisms, but I think you will find that the same happens to articles on Linux. In a community where fanatics are almost as common as neutrals, every article is going to have a healthy population of people who disagree with any given statement just on principle.
/. I base this on the fact that "we" infact "cannot change". "We" are infact over a hundred thousand people, only one of whom is me. Certainly I can change me to an extent, but somehow I don't think that either of us can change "cyber monkey". I agree that the purpose of the dicussion forum is (or should be) discussion, which is exactly why I feel that responding to an infamitory rant with another inflamitory rant (Which is what I felt you did) is counterproductive if you really want to change opinions.
My UID is well over 100K and I have been around for a couple years... There are probably close to 3 or 4 hundred thousand people wandering around this place, and at any time half of them are either trolls (who will disagree and denigrate any proposition just to be contrary), or fanatics of a platform other than the one being discussed. I can recall seeing upward of half the comments on a recent article on Linux security being to effect of "to secure Linux, format the hard drive and install OBSD". Finding negative and even unreasonably negative comments is par for the course in this place. Personally I generally try to ignore it and move on, except when a certain comment strikes me (Like yours did). To me, the purpose of this site is to present information that I will find either personally or profrssionally interesting. I think what keyed me off about your comment was your implication that the article was somehow wasted because the Slashdot community was somehow unable to really comprehend the wonderfulness of OBSD. Sure there were negative comments, there always are, but for each of those negative comments there were probably a thousand people who read the article and just filed the information, and a hundred people who (Like me) had their interest piqued and went and learned more.
I actually rather like man pages, but previous to this article I never had any great interest in finding info on OBSD. I stated in my original reply that the purpose of a general interest interview is to give people with no (or minimal) background enough information to decide if they'd like to learn more. This interview accomplished exactly that in my case, and probably in the cases of others as well. I don't see how I could be relying on false info, since the only info I had up to this point was the info from the interview, and that was from the horses mouth.
As for the whole "If you don't like it, don't read here" thing, you missed the point. I was basically trying to say that if you are so sensitive that the comments of fanatics and trolls upset you this badly, you might be happier not reading
YOu ignore a couple things in this though. First, I can't implement it myself, I am a medicore programer at best, and would not know where to begin. The poster was commentlin on the commercial viability of Open Source. Let's say my dad needs an OS for his bussiness, and somehow you mananged to dodge all the issues of actualy teaching him Unix, and getting him accept that that was some valid reason he should learn all this new stuff rather than just pointing and drooling through Windows. So dad here you go.. OpenBSD, the most secure OS in the world, course if you want to use on you dual CPU server, you are going to have to learn how to rewrite the Kernal for SMP support. Dad would laugh all the way to CompUSA. Commercial success is going to require more than "Just develop it yourself", if people were willing and able to do that, Windows would not have a 90 % marketshare.
OK, I agree that the original poster was blowing a debateable point out of proportion, but you are now doing something similar. First, you are taking taking one poster, and indicating that because this one guy misunderstood something (or even deliberatly blew it out of proportion), the whole interview is a wasted excersize, and possibly an indication of the lack of openmindedness and out right ignorance of the Linux community. This is Slashdot, people make comments that represent their opinions, not those of a communinty or of the site itself. What you are basically saying is "I don't think Slashdot should do interviews on subjects that are important to me, because someone will misunderstand something or disagree with me." If you don't want to find opinions that vary from yours, or want everyone to have your level of knowledge, don't read here. Similarly, Theo seem like a smart guy, he probably knows that his interview will have its share of trollish or ignorant comments and chose to do it anyway. He obviously thought it was worthwhile. As to your reaction to the questions, I think you are being a bit silly. This is an interview, sometimes in intereviews people get asked questions that they have already answered at some point in their lives. I personally do not spend large amounts of time puruseing the OBSD Usenet groups. I found the interview thought provoking and interesting. It put information into a digestable form and told me things that I would not have known otherwise. Obviously you know alot about Theo and OBSD... Good for you, perhaps you would not find a general information interview very interesting then. I doubt that personal friends or devoted fans of moviestars find interviews with them very interesting either, but the interviews are not aimed at personal friends and devoted fans. Most of what I learned in this interview, I would never have known otherwise, eihter I lacked the interest to research the topic or would not have thought of certain question. That is the purpose of an interview on a general interest website.
Speaking as another who has climbed out of the tech support jungle to be an admin, this is great advice. Let me add a few:
1. Get Microsoft certified. Is it a brainless exam for a brainless OS? Yes. Is it the most popular server OS in small to midsized businesses, and the single most popular desktop OS out there? Yes. Will people hire you being certified? Sometimes, but it will at least get you an interview.
2. If you haven't already, learn Unix. That is where the money is. There are enough legacy systems in small businesses, and high end systems in larger ones (Plus the growng population of Linux systems in small businesses) to allow a Unix newbie to luck into a job (Like I did) that will improve you skills. Once you've had one job where you did some Unix, you are marketable for the higher paying ones. I started in a call center only three years ago, and I was a complete novice. I am now a network admin for a large university. I did it by reading everything out there on Win NT, Linux, and TCP/IP. Once I had read up, I applied it. Installed both OS's on every machine I could get my hands on, bought cheap network equipment and put them together, wiped NT to put Linux on, then wiped Linux to put NT back on once it was woking, so I could set up a dual boot, then started over.
3. Look at small companies that need admins. I got my break from an architecture firm. They needed a WinNT admin who could administer their legacy Sun servers (like 5 years old), and play with their website on a Linux box on the side. My qualificaions were nothing like what would impress a large company with a tech staff, but they were enough to impress a small firm that couldn't afford much. Once you are in an admin position for a year or so though, bigger companies will start to look at you.
The trick is to make small steps at first, and keep learning.
Others have made the arguement that Katz is exagerating the importance of the generation gap in this article. That this has happened before (Prohibition, the Jazz age, Rock and Roll, the Hippie movement, etc), and is merely the latest incarnation of a continual cycle. I would argue that the same can be said for your comments. Our grandparents generation had th esame worries about our parents generation. There was serious concern in the heads of the World War II generation that these "Hippies" would one day inherit the riegns of power and have to run the country. Well, they did. The country doesn't seem to be much worse off than it was... When the Twenty somethings and teenagers of today take power we will be in the same boat as our parents are now.
IMHO, the only way to adequately refute the Turing Test as a measure of intelligence is to refute Turing's theory on what intelligence is. Turing defined intelligence recursivly, an intelligent thing is one which can convince another intelligent thing of it's intelligence. If yout take "human" as the benchmark of what is intelligent, then any computer that can convice a significant cross section of humanity of its intelligence is intelligent. The Turing Test is intimatley linked to Turing's theory on what intelligence is, and is the perfect test for what Turing defined as intelligent. To discredit the Turing test you first have to disprove his definition. The trick is that in order to really do that you have to have an alternative definition. So just come up with an encompassing definition of intelligence, then you can build a test for it. Of course to be accepted, your definition will have to be considered intelligent by those who study intelligence. So for all intents and purposes your new defintion of intelligence will have to pass a Turings Test for intelligence, in order to be accepted as intelligent... Which kinda argues in the guy's favor.
This Article has nothing to do with anyone taking anything away. It points out a techncal problem of using P2P apps on an increasingly NAT'ed Internet. NAT, in case you don't know, is technology that allows multiple machines to share the same IP address by connecting several machines on a fake, unconnected network, then connecting one of them to the Internet on a seperate interface. The machine connected to the net then takes traffic from all the other computers on the network, remarks it as coming from itself and send it out onto the net. When it recieves responses it remembers where the original request came from, remarks the packet as being from the local network and sends it the iniating machine. The problem with this is that there are three machine in the exchange and only two of them actually exist on the "Real Internet". There is no way for a machine on the Internet to initiate contact with any machine in a NAT network, other than the one that has the "real" address, and in many cases that machine is nothing but a dumb router. If both the machines trying to use a peer to peer system are on NAT networks, neither of them can be the "server" because neither of them can be reached unless they initate contact. Thus if a suffcient number of people use NAT (Which more and more people are doing because broad band ISPs only give out one "real" address) P2P system will simply cease to work, or will become to unreliable to count on. No one will "take away" Napster, it will just become so un reliable that no one wants to use it.
The solution to this problem is not trivial and as the article mentions would probably make a good graduate thesis.
Let me start by pointing out that your scheme for prventing French IP addresses from veiwing NAZI Auctions is totally unworkable. Have you heard the term "Proxy server". They allow people to effectivly make their IP address the same as that of the server. Their are public ones all over the world. You log onto the proxy server and ssuddly your computer is coming to Yahoo from the US or Japan or anywhere else that a public Proxy is available (Non public proxies are alos available. Basically any fool with a static IP and a little knowledge can set one up.) As to your rather degradational comments about the US, responding to a hot head by acting hot headed simply does not raise anyone's opinion of you. Are there contradictory laws in the US? Certainly. The drinking age is very silly, when compared with the age of majority. Censorship in some areas is worse here than in Europe. US policy's attitudes regaurding sex and nudity are very silly. I tend to argue just as strongly against the forms of cencorship practiced here as I do against those practiced elsewhere. The purpose of historic doccumation and relics is to remind us of the past. Both the good and bad aspects of it. It pisses you off to NAZI menorabilia and NAZI groups marching through the street? Good. That means you haven't forgotten. You will remember the next time someone tries to take similar power. Your family was hurt by the NAZI's and they (and you) reminded of that fact when you see some dick in a brown uniform marching around. Will they let that dick hurt them like the last one did? Hopefully not. All censorship accomplishes is to put the dick behinf closed doors where everybody forget about him. That is where he is really dangerous. As to the War in the Pacific being "Purely US interest based". I must assume that you have forgotten about the Dutch East Indies (Holland), Austrailia and India (England), South East Asia (Umm, well sorry, but your very own France), plus China (Self goverened but in the interests of most of Europe and the US). There is not a major country on Earth that has not caused incredibe amounts of suffering in the world at some point in history. France too fought her share of near genocidal colonial wars. What we should be working on is not censoring pieces of history, but making DAMN sure that EVERYBODY remembers the parts that suck the absolute most, so we can have a hope of avioding them in the future. As to beating the shit out of the first Klansman or NAZI you see, what have you proved? You now know without a shadow of a doubt that you are like them.
SEAD: Suppress Enemy Air Defense. It actually focuses more on ground based enemy AA. Tadio controled planes would be fairly good for that if you could make them accuratly target AA emplacents. Usually the biggest danger to the US during tacical air to groud attacks (Close air support or CAS) is enemy ground based AA. Artillery is often tasked with SEAD, but an accurate plane capable of detecting ground to air radar and acting as CAS to the CAS, would in some ways be more effective. Basically it would be like the Vietam era Wild Weasels, but without the insane risk to human life. I do not think these plane would be effective against other enemy planes. Humans are still better combat pilots than computers. Think about Quake, who's worse to play against a person or the comuter?
For going on 5 years now I've been saying that somebody should remake the old Electronic Arts game Mail Order Monsters using a Quake-like rendering engine during the monster battle scenes.
I LOVED that game. Played the magnetism off the 5 1/4 inch disk. I totally agree about the remake, but in the mean time, if anyone knows where an emmulated copy could be found, I'd be deeply appreciative. I had almost forgotten about that one
Evil isn't winning, it just isn't loosing. The balence is being maintained just as it always has. Bad things happen, good things happen, bad things just make better news stories. Taken on whole life is not a whole lot better or worse than it was one, two, or five hundred years ago. Some things are better: We don't die of black plague anymore, a lot fewer people starve to death (Yes, it does still happen, but it happens less). Soem things are worse: lIfe is more complicated, we have information overload. A hundred years ago people were fighting against evil robber barons who used their great wealth to trample on the rights of their employees and customers. five hundred years ago it was the powerful lords and nobles, today it is multinational corps. At least Microsoft doesn't burn down the headquarter of companies they take over, kill all the men and take all the women and children as slave. That was the tradition in early middle eastern civilzation was a city was conqurered. Quite frankly I am rather glad that there is Evil out there, I like to have something to fight against and bitch about.
Today is my last day as the sys admin for an achitecture firm. I've seen some of our work, it is nice, and makes the world a somewhat more tasteful (if not actually better) place. I am going to start as a sys admin for a university. They do a great deal of good and produce others who do even more. I do not claim that the world would be signifigantly darkened by my absence, but what I do is enjoyable, brings some small good into the world, and pays pretty well. These jobs are out there, you just have to find them.
In college we once sealed the space between some poor guys door and door jam and filled it with balled up newspaper, but this is WAY better.
I understand that most of Europe has similar vacation systems. We had an Austrian web developer at my last job who was utterly shocked that he only got a week of vacation in his first year (These guy were bastards about time off. I seem to remember that it took three years to build up to the "normal" two weeks of vacation.) The European company he used to work for apparently gave 6 weeks to everybody. Personally I am thrilled that my new job comes with two weeks vactcation (4 weeks after three years) and (Hold on to your hats) two weeks sick time per year. Yes friends I can actually get sick without using up all my vaction time.