I grew up in similar circumstances, where the population of the *entire county* was under 2k people, with over 2600 square miles of land. Arid farmland with nary a tree in sight; people working said farmland making $35k/year on a good crop year in near-poverty levels, and crumbling telecom infrastructure 50-60 years old. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCone_County,_Montana)
"Move to the city" is fine and all, until you actually think of the ramifications -- 90% of the population were either farming wheat or raising cattle. Corn didn't grow well there, so no subsidies for that. If those folks move to the city, we've just lost hundreds of square miles of domestic wheat production, and who knows how many 10's of thousands of cattle. The county is already bleeding people (it's steadily been shrinking since the 1920s) because of the lack of opportunities there. Give them some actual telecommuting capability and suddenly the entire equation changes. Right now you're lucky to get a modem to link at higher than 24kbps with all the line noise out there. If you're in "town" (800 people), you can get 256k DSL riding on one of the town's 3 T1s... nope, no oversubscription there!
I have a friend who sounds almost identical in his needs... he was traveling (3 months in Japan) and wanted something he could throw in his backpack and work from (web, ssh) if needed, without having to lug around a laptop. He got the ASUS Transformer with keyboard, and loves it -- he still uses it every day, and this is almost a year after buying it. Plus the doubled battery life the keyboard provides is really nice.
I'm just surprised the thing could make it past sixty what with the requisite naked woman silhouette mudflaps and beer keg in the back...
I love it... keep spreading those hick-stereotype memes, maybe it'll slow down the flood of California and Washington refugees that keep choosing to move to Boise. For the record, the last time I saw the silhouette mudflaps was in eastern Oregon farm country, about four years ago. But since we're on stereotypes: Last time I saw a slammed Chrysler 300 with 21" chrome rims and limo tint? Yesterday. I'd take the person with the mudflaps any day. So please -- carry on with anything you can do to convince the refugees to look elsewhere.
It's a broadly-known concept that one cannot correct a societal problem with a technological solution. The societal problem must be corrected first. In this case, it's personal responsibility, or rather lack thereof when it comes to dangerous/stupid driving behavior. No amount of technical gadgetry is going to help people take personal responsibility to drive better. This is all just attacking the symptoms, but not addressing the root of the problem.
Driving is not viewed as a privilege that is prestigious and/or highly valued, therefore people treat it as a low-valued commodity and have little incentive to take personal responsibility to retain their privileges. However, if you can make driving privileges more difficult to obtain, people will automatically assign more value to them, and consequently treat them as valued privileges instead of a commodity.
Some ideas to do this could include: * Much more stringent and frequent driving tests before licenses are issued/renewed * Massively-increased licens testing fees * Mandatory driver-training courses for all drivers * Limited number of licenses issued per year (like H1B visas, hunting licenses, etc already are)
All of these make the driver's license a valued item, not just a commodity that can be had for a $50 fee and a few minutes' wait at the DMV.
Well, this is what happens when the U.S. military starts to *not* act as the world's police force. What did people expect? Happy joy bubbles to break out between the various Iraqi factions?
I read the Guardian's overview article... they focused quite a bit on the so-called "murders" as reported in the documents: cases where the Iraqi army or police tortured and killed prisoners. Apparently, the official military policy on this, according to the Guardian, is for the military to take any report and feed it back to the Iraqui army or police for investigation. The military will formally investigate if one of their soliders is reported as abusing a prisoner, but they push it back to the Iraqis if it's one of their soliders/police doing the abusing. Again, this is my summary of the Guardian's reporting.
I'm surprised so many people are so upset that the US (and UK) are turning a blind eye to this. I mean, really -- the meme that's been repeated incessantly these last nine years is "The U.S. shouldn't be the world's police" and "The U.S. should get their nose out of other people's business". So here we have documented evidence of the U.S. doing exactly that -- having the Iraqis police themselves and getting their nose out of the Iraqi's internal issues -- and people are now complaining because the U.S. is not doing enough? WTF people, make up your minds -- either you want the U.S. to be the world's police or you don't!
This is how the Iraqis police themselves, apparently. The interesting thing in this case is that there's a 3rd party on hand (the U.S. military) to document the abuse/butchering the Iraqis are inflicting on themselves. Is the U.S. innocent? No - and the U.S. military still hasn't pulled out completely. But everyone who said the U.S. should stop being the world's police should be applauding them now.
This guy was a juror and heard all the evidence, you did not. What makes you think you are more informed than he is? Please explain to me and everyone on Slashdot what makes you think your limited information gleaned from summarizations by uninformed people allows you to make a better decision in this case than someone who was provided all the facts and is trained in the subjects concerned in this case.
Your arrogance is amazing and you need to STFU.
Yes I did, and I qualified it. Control your knee-jerk "OMG STFU!!11" reaction and finish reading my comment.
Specifically, where I said:
...if you truly felt what you state in your comments, then you failed miserably as a juror in this case.
...and the entire paragraph where that quote came from. Then, read up on the Juror's Handbook http://www.fija.org/docs/JG_Jurors_Handbook.pdf or any other document describing the rights and responsibilities of juries in the USA, paying attention to the portions about "voting your conscience"; or just google the phrase "jury vote your conscience" yourself. Hopefully this requires no further explanation.
I too really wish the case had been dismissed, but I think the city let this story get too large and didn't want to lose face by dropping all the charges. However, as a juror I cannot allow myself to make decisions based on why I think the city did what it did or whether I think that was right or wrong.
I'm sorry, but this is where you failed in your role as a juror. The whole point of a trial by jury is that you, the juror, is the last line of defense against injustice in all its various forms. You are supposed to use not only your intelligence, but also your common sense and personal sense of morality to render a truly just verdict.
The jury is a speed bump, a safety device, to prevent runaway application of the "just the facts" letter-of-the-law approach, and put the human element back into the justice machine. That's how the system was designed.
In your comments, you state that you wish the case had been dismissed, that the city was really crucifying Childs just so they could save face, etc. Obviously, you felt that finding Childs guilty was not just -- but you found him guilty anyway. I'm sorry, but if you truly felt what you state in your comments, then you failed miserably as a juror in this case.
Re:Movies at only 24/25 FPS are horrible
on
Framerates Matter
·
· Score: 1
I personally didn't notice it -- I was more bothered by the left/right coloration artifacts from the Dolby3D setup.:) This surprised me, as Dolby3D is generally thought to provide a better picture than its main competitor, RealD, at least from the conversations I've seen.
Most likely you watched Avatar 3D in either Dolby3D or RealD, both of which alternate images between the left and right eyes. This occurs at a rate of 144 FPS (so each eye sees 72 FPS) for both systems. It has been said that the 24- or 48-fps input signal can cause stuttering during fast horizontal pans, which may be what you were seeing.
This is a dangerous position to be in, since **** rolls downhill when someone calls the BSA. First thing to do at this point is get some documentation. Email the CEO with your same concerns, maybe add in some of your research, and get his response via email, then print it out & save it! Then, when the audit happens and he points the finger at you, you can defend yourself. Otherwise, your conversation with the CEO (and his response) is irrelevant. Remember: if it isn't written down, it never happened -- the CEO could say you were installing unlicensed software without his knowledge, and then its your neck on the line.
And as far as calling an audit goes, think VERY carefully before calling the BSA in. It's going to be pretty obvious to the CEO who called the BSA, especially after you've been coming to him with these concerns. They may not know 100% for sure, but that's not going to stop them from finding some way to get rid of you. More importantly, if your CEO is networked well within your local business community, he may be able to blackball you from getting another job. Based on the information you've given, I would personally go for a paper trail where the CEO tells you NOT to fix the licensing issues, save that, and look for employment elsewhere. If you're going to call the BSA, wait until ~6 months after you're happily employed elsewhere before burning those bridges by calling an audit.
I guess there could be two approaches here: (1) The network-nazi approach -- if you're doing "serious academic work", then you've probably been given a lab, or you have access to the library or something. Move it to those networks. (2) CIR for each network port, with aggregate burst traffic caps.
I think (1) is valid in some situations, but not all (or even most). So it's an option, but not a good one.
(2) might be interesting to think about more, but I don't know that it would really solve the initial problem. If every active port in the dorm was given an 1/X of the pipe (say CIR of 100kbps per port, to pull some numbers from the air), and any leftover traffic was used to "burst", then legitimate low-bandwidth/bursty traffic should still work -- web browsing, telnet/ssh/VPN/VNC/RDP etc. Even streaming media and VoIP would be okay, as long as it fit under the CIR for that port. The p2p clients that suck all available bandwidth would use their share, and if everyone in the dorm fired up their p2p at the same time, then all ports would get ~100kbps, even the one guy doing "research".
Actually, this approach has some potential - it gives you a baseline for bandwidth, and if the student researcher needs more than the minimum CIR, they have justification for getting a lab, or getting their dorm port moved to a different research subnet/VLAN (with associated tighter terms of service). Meanwhile, all their neighbors keep sucking down the internet pipe, but they are now an isolated research enclave, within their dorm room. If they abuse it, they lose their "special" status.
There is still a way to deal with this cleanly and neatly, and without inspecting the traffic content.
See, you've even mentioned part of the solution in your post. You don't shape traffic campus-wide based on whether it "looks like p2p" (is encrypted) or not. Instead, you segregate users by use (e.g. the dorms from your comment, versus the business offices) into separate subnets.
Got a problem with the dorm and computer lab subnets sucking down 100% of the traffic? No problem - core routers implement a rule to guarantee that the business subnets will always have priority over traffic from the dorms subnet. Or that the dorms will never get more than ~75% of the full pipe. Or whatever.
The point is, you're no longer spending your time fruitlessly inspecting *every TCP session* to determine what type of traffic it is, and trying to apply blanked traffic shaping rules across the backbone. You just ensure that your user groups are segregated appropriately, and the "business critical" stuff is on subnets with guaranteed minimum bandwidth. If your business users are doing p2p on that subnet, then you deal with it through regular channels -- e.g. it's a business productivity issue, move it off this subnet. Etc.
In the end it's cheaper (you don't have to spend big $$$ on packet-inspection software & hardware that has the ability to monitor the backbone), AND it won't leave the encrypted-traffic users feeling slighted, AND it'll guarantee your business needs (e.g. minimum bandwidth to operate) are met.
This doesn't seems to preclude the option of doing business with a third party. For instance, just because Microsoft is disqualified, doesn't mean the government can't turn around and purchase M$ products from a qualified reseller (say, SoftChoice).
Nowhere in the docs do I see a clause saying "thou shalt not buy products produced by a 'criminal' company". All it says is "thou shalt not enter into a contract with a 'criminal' company/individual, its affiliates or subsidiaries".
So, this may prevent gov't from doing business *directly* with Microsoft, or with a Microsoft partner (affiliate), but it doesn't stop them from doing business with somebody else, who is an M$ reseller. Same end result (more M$ products in gov't), but it just costs more and adds one more layer of bureaucracy. Hmm. Sounds familiar...
This was posted -- what, two or three weeks ago? Come on guys!
The old story even had a poster who mentioned that he'd used the lighting technology Cringley mentioned, and it's nowhere NEAR primetime, so it won't be causing probs for several years, if ever.
It wasn't even Linus' April Fools joke. This comes from a later post to LKML:
Message: 50 Date: Mon, 1 Apr 2002 00:19:44 -0800 From: William Lee Irwin III To: Linus Torvalds Cc: Kernel Mailing List Subject: Re: Linux needs new leadership. Organization: The Domain of Holomorphy
On Mon, Apr 01, 2002 at 12:00:00AM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote: [BS about Linux needing new leadership snipped]
No he didn't.
>From the forged headers:
Received: from pkdt.proxel.ru ([194.190.195.189]:21594 "HELO pkdt.proxel.ru")
by vger.kernel.org with SMTP id ;
Mon, 1 Apr 2002 03:07:05 -0500
I can see it now... complete with pop-up Pepsi and Coke adds between candidate screens. And someone marketing drone would just *have* to use it. "Do you prefer Ivory, Dawn, or Cascade for your dishwashing needs? Please select your preference before continuing." "Thank you. Your next choice of candidates are..."
according to the author's description of the bazaar model, would be various Gnutella clients.
The author says that after the initial "plausible promise" release has been made, the original authors merely step back to become a part of the development community, and not a leader of it (just like Nullsoft did with Gnutella). Also, he states that from that point on, development would fork several ways, with the user community ultimately deciding (by usage) which of the forked paths is the most popular, and focusing their attention on that one. Again, this is pretty much exactly what has happened to Gnutella.
Pretty much, by reading down through his checklist of a "true bazaar" project, I was able to say "Gnutella... Gnutella... Gnutella" for almost every point.
The reason new features are being added to the stable series is largely to keep the 2.2.x kernels able to support recently improved features (new and updated hardware drivers, tuned algorithms, etc). If it weren't for this, then we'd be stuck with a kernel that required massive patching to support any newer hardware or improved features. Additionally, since the changes are relatively not very intrusive, and are pretty thoroughly tested in the -dev tree, the people running production boxes on 2.2.x kernels can be confident that the kernel is still solid, even with the new features.
The reason 2.x.x *appears* to be incrementing more rapidly than 2.4.x in some areas is because all the cool new stuff (RAID code, USB, PCMCIA, etc ad infinitum...) has been in development (2.3.x) for a long time, and has been pretty thoroughly wrung out. In other words, all the initial "hard work" has largely been done. It's finally been deemed stable in the 2.4 series, and is now being backported for the benefit of those less adventurous souls (like me) who prefer a well-used, known-good kernel (2.2.x) on production systems, but want the benefit of some new features. The same thing happened with backports of 2.2 features into the 2.0.37+ kernels, even after 2.2 was released. Instead of a massive overhaul, with an entirely new kernel architecture to deal with, you get the shiny new stuff (new hardware support, bugfixes, and tuneups) and still get to stay with the tried-and-true kernel you're used to using.
That's likely why RedHat is developing their next distro to 2.2.x, *not* 2.4. After all, 2.4 is still considered a moving target at this point, and is extremely difficult to develop to (Alan Cox mentioned this in a recent diary entry). If you've got an entire distro to worry about, best to keep it with the currently stable and well-known 2.2 kernel, instead of a constantly-changing 2.4-test kernel.
Besides, if you really want to be cutting edge, go get slackware or rabbid squirrel and build your own distro with whatever software versions you want. This is Free software, after all -- if you've got an itch, scratch it!;)
Slashdot Mirror
...and be surveilled on CCTV while they walk to/from the park on public sidewalks, and be surveilled yet again by cameras installed at the park.
Ed's point stands.
This.
I grew up in similar circumstances, where the population of the *entire county* was under 2k people, with over 2600 square miles of land. Arid farmland with nary a tree in sight; people working said farmland making $35k/year on a good crop year in near-poverty levels, and crumbling telecom infrastructure 50-60 years old. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCone_County,_Montana)
"Move to the city" is fine and all, until you actually think of the ramifications -- 90% of the population were either farming wheat or raising cattle. Corn didn't grow well there, so no subsidies for that. If those folks move to the city, we've just lost hundreds of square miles of domestic wheat production, and who knows how many 10's of thousands of cattle. The county is already bleeding people (it's steadily been shrinking since the 1920s) because of the lack of opportunities there. Give them some actual telecommuting capability and suddenly the entire equation changes. Right now you're lucky to get a modem to link at higher than 24kbps with all the line noise out there. If you're in "town" (800 people), you can get 256k DSL riding on one of the town's 3 T1s ... nope, no oversubscription there!
I have a friend who sounds almost identical in his needs ... he was traveling (3 months in Japan) and wanted something he could throw in his backpack and work from (web, ssh) if needed, without having to lug around a laptop. He got the ASUS Transformer with keyboard, and loves it -- he still uses it every day, and this is almost a year after buying it. Plus the doubled battery life the keyboard provides is really nice.
This is Boise, Idaho we're talking about.
I'm just surprised the thing could make it past sixty what with the requisite naked woman silhouette mudflaps and beer keg in the back...
I love it ... keep spreading those hick-stereotype memes, maybe it'll slow down the flood of California and Washington refugees that keep choosing to move to Boise. For the record, the last time I saw the silhouette mudflaps was in eastern Oregon farm country, about four years ago.
But since we're on stereotypes: Last time I saw a slammed Chrysler 300 with 21" chrome rims and limo tint? Yesterday. I'd take the person with the mudflaps any day.
So please -- carry on with anything you can do to convince the refugees to look elsewhere.
It's a broadly-known concept that one cannot correct a societal problem with a technological solution. The societal problem must be corrected first. In this case, it's personal responsibility, or rather lack thereof when it comes to dangerous/stupid driving behavior. No amount of technical gadgetry is going to help people take personal responsibility to drive better. This is all just attacking the symptoms, but not addressing the root of the problem.
Driving is not viewed as a privilege that is prestigious and/or highly valued, therefore people treat it as a low-valued commodity and have little incentive to take personal responsibility to retain their privileges. However, if you can make driving privileges more difficult to obtain, people will automatically assign more value to them, and consequently treat them as valued privileges instead of a commodity.
Some ideas to do this could include:
* Much more stringent and frequent driving tests before licenses are issued/renewed
* Massively-increased licens testing fees
* Mandatory driver-training courses for all drivers
* Limited number of licenses issued per year (like H1B visas, hunting licenses, etc already are)
All of these make the driver's license a valued item, not just a commodity that can be had for a $50 fee and a few minutes' wait at the DMV.
Well, this is what happens when the U.S. military starts to *not* act as the world's police force. What did people expect? Happy joy bubbles to break out between the various Iraqi factions?
I read the Guardian's overview article ... they focused quite a bit on the so-called "murders" as reported in the documents: cases where the Iraqi army or police tortured and killed prisoners. Apparently, the official military policy on this, according to the Guardian, is for the military to take any report and feed it back to the Iraqui army or police for investigation. The military will formally investigate if one of their soliders is reported as abusing a prisoner, but they push it back to the Iraqis if it's one of their soliders/police doing the abusing. Again, this is my summary of the Guardian's reporting.
I'm surprised so many people are so upset that the US (and UK) are turning a blind eye to this. I mean, really -- the meme that's been repeated incessantly these last nine years is "The U.S. shouldn't be the world's police" and "The U.S. should get their nose out of other people's business". So here we have documented evidence of the U.S. doing exactly that -- having the Iraqis police themselves and getting their nose out of the Iraqi's internal issues -- and people are now complaining because the U.S. is not doing enough? WTF people, make up your minds -- either you want the U.S. to be the world's police or you don't!
This is how the Iraqis police themselves, apparently. The interesting thing in this case is that there's a 3rd party on hand (the U.S. military) to document the abuse/butchering the Iraqis are inflicting on themselves. Is the U.S. innocent? No - and the U.S. military still hasn't pulled out completely. But everyone who said the U.S. should stop being the world's police should be applauding them now.
Excuse me, but did you say this guy failed?
This guy was a juror and heard all the evidence, you did not. What makes you think you are more informed than he is? Please explain to me and everyone on Slashdot what makes you think your limited information gleaned from summarizations by uninformed people allows you to make a better decision in this case than someone who was provided all the facts and is trained in the subjects concerned in this case.
Your arrogance is amazing and you need to STFU.
Yes I did, and I qualified it. Control your knee-jerk "OMG STFU!!11" reaction and finish reading my comment. Specifically, where I said:
...if you truly felt what you state in your comments, then you failed miserably as a juror in this case.
I too really wish the case had been dismissed, but I think the city let this story get too large and didn't want to lose face by dropping all the charges. However, as a juror I cannot allow myself to make decisions based on why I think the city did what it did or whether I think that was right or wrong.
I'm sorry, but this is where you failed in your role as a juror. The whole point of a trial by jury is that you, the juror, is the last line of defense against injustice in all its various forms. You are supposed to use not only your intelligence, but also your common sense and personal sense of morality to render a truly just verdict.
The jury is a speed bump, a safety device, to prevent runaway application of the "just the facts" letter-of-the-law approach, and put the human element back into the justice machine. That's how the system was designed.
In your comments, you state that you wish the case had been dismissed, that the city was really crucifying Childs just so they could save face, etc. Obviously, you felt that finding Childs guilty was not just -- but you found him guilty anyway. I'm sorry, but if you truly felt what you state in your comments, then you failed miserably as a juror in this case.
I personally didn't notice it -- I was more bothered by the left/right coloration artifacts from the Dolby3D setup. :) This surprised me, as Dolby3D is generally thought to provide a better picture than its main competitor, RealD, at least from the conversations I've seen.
Most likely you watched Avatar 3D in either Dolby3D or RealD, both of which alternate images between the left and right eyes. This occurs at a rate of 144 FPS (so each eye sees 72 FPS) for both systems. It has been said that the 24- or 48-fps input signal can cause stuttering during fast horizontal pans, which may be what you were seeing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RealD_Cinema
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolby_3D
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1085037
This is a dangerous position to be in, since **** rolls downhill when someone calls the BSA. First thing to do at this point is get some documentation. Email the CEO with your same concerns, maybe add in some of your research, and get his response via email, then print it out & save it! Then, when the audit happens and he points the finger at you, you can defend yourself. Otherwise, your conversation with the CEO (and his response) is irrelevant. Remember: if it isn't written down, it never happened -- the CEO could say you were installing unlicensed software without his knowledge, and then its your neck on the line.
And as far as calling an audit goes, think VERY carefully before calling the BSA in. It's going to be pretty obvious to the CEO who called the BSA, especially after you've been coming to him with these concerns. They may not know 100% for sure, but that's not going to stop them from finding some way to get rid of you. More importantly, if your CEO is networked well within your local business community, he may be able to blackball you from getting another job. Based on the information you've given, I would personally go for a paper trail where the CEO tells you NOT to fix the licensing issues, save that, and look for employment elsewhere. If you're going to call the BSA, wait until ~6 months after you're happily employed elsewhere before burning those bridges by calling an audit.
I guess there could be two approaches here:
(1) The network-nazi approach -- if you're doing "serious academic work", then you've probably been given a lab, or you have access to the library or something. Move it to those networks.
(2) CIR for each network port, with aggregate burst traffic caps.
I think (1) is valid in some situations, but not all (or even most). So it's an option, but not a good one.
(2) might be interesting to think about more, but I don't know that it would really solve the initial problem. If every active port in the dorm was given an 1/X of the pipe (say CIR of 100kbps per port, to pull some numbers from the air), and any leftover traffic was used to "burst", then legitimate low-bandwidth/bursty traffic should still work -- web browsing, telnet/ssh/VPN/VNC/RDP etc. Even streaming media and VoIP would be okay, as long as it fit under the CIR for that port. The p2p clients that suck all available bandwidth would use their share, and if everyone in the dorm fired up their p2p at the same time, then all ports would get ~100kbps, even the one guy doing "research".
Actually, this approach has some potential - it gives you a baseline for bandwidth, and if the student researcher needs more than the minimum CIR, they have justification for getting a lab, or getting their dorm port moved to a different research subnet/VLAN (with associated tighter terms of service). Meanwhile, all their neighbors keep sucking down the internet pipe, but they are now an isolated research enclave, within their dorm room. If they abuse it, they lose their "special" status.
There is still a way to deal with this cleanly and neatly, and without inspecting the traffic content.
See, you've even mentioned part of the solution in your post. You don't shape traffic campus-wide based on whether it "looks like p2p" (is encrypted) or not. Instead, you segregate users by use (e.g. the dorms from your comment, versus the business offices) into separate subnets.
Got a problem with the dorm and computer lab subnets sucking down 100% of the traffic? No problem - core routers implement a rule to guarantee that the business subnets will always have priority over traffic from the dorms subnet. Or that the dorms will never get more than ~75% of the full pipe. Or whatever.
The point is, you're no longer spending your time fruitlessly inspecting *every TCP session* to determine what type of traffic it is, and trying to apply blanked traffic shaping rules across the backbone. You just ensure that your user groups are segregated appropriately, and the "business critical" stuff is on subnets with guaranteed minimum bandwidth. If your business users are doing p2p on that subnet, then you deal with it through regular channels -- e.g. it's a business productivity issue, move it off this subnet. Etc.
In the end it's cheaper (you don't have to spend big $$$ on packet-inspection software & hardware that has the ability to monitor the backbone), AND it won't leave the encrypted-traffic users feeling slighted, AND it'll guarantee your business needs (e.g. minimum bandwidth to operate) are met.
1 TB per day? I wonder what DB software packages they're using to manage all that data.
:)
Anybody know?
<SARCASM>
Wait, wait! It's MS SQL Server, of *course*!
</SARCASM>
This doesn't seems to preclude the option of doing business with a third party. For instance, just because Microsoft is disqualified, doesn't mean the government can't turn around and purchase M$ products from a qualified reseller (say, SoftChoice).
Nowhere in the docs do I see a clause saying "thou shalt not buy products produced by a 'criminal' company". All it says is "thou shalt not enter into a contract with a 'criminal' company/individual, its affiliates or subsidiaries".
So, this may prevent gov't from doing business *directly* with Microsoft, or with a Microsoft partner (affiliate), but it doesn't stop them from doing business with somebody else, who is an M$ reseller. Same end result (more M$ products in gov't), but it just costs more and adds one more layer of bureaucracy. Hmm. Sounds familiar...
This was posted -- what, two or three weeks ago? Come on guys!
The old story even had a poster who mentioned that he'd used the lighting technology Cringley mentioned, and it's nowhere NEAR primetime, so it won't be causing probs for several years, if ever.
You guys crack me up!
:-P
I mean, I knew about this work at *least* a week ago! sheesh.
It wasn't even Linus' April Fools joke. This comes from a later post to LKML:
Message: 50
Date: Mon, 1 Apr 2002 00:19:44 -0800
From: William Lee Irwin III
To: Linus Torvalds
Cc: Kernel Mailing List
Subject: Re: Linux needs new leadership.
Organization: The Domain of Holomorphy
On Mon, Apr 01, 2002 at 12:00:00AM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
[BS about Linux needing new leadership snipped]
No he didn't.
>From the forged headers:
Received: from pkdt.proxel.ru ([194.190.195.189]:21594 "HELO pkdt.proxel.ru")
by vger.kernel.org with SMTP id ;
Mon, 1 Apr 2002 03:07:05 -0500
Cheers,
Bill
I can see it now ... complete with pop-up Pepsi and Coke adds between candidate screens. And someone marketing drone would just *have* to use it. "Do you prefer Ivory, Dawn, or Cascade for your dishwashing needs? Please select your preference before continuing." "Thank you. Your next choice of candidates are..."
Yeah. Great.
according to the author's description of the bazaar model, would be various Gnutella clients.
The author says that after the initial "plausible promise" release has been made, the original authors merely step back to become a part of the development community, and not a leader of it (just like Nullsoft did with Gnutella). Also, he states that from that point on, development would fork several ways, with the user community ultimately deciding (by usage) which of the forked paths is the most popular, and focusing their attention on that one. Again, this is pretty much exactly what has happened to Gnutella.
Pretty much, by reading down through his checklist of a "true bazaar" project, I was able to say "Gnutella... Gnutella... Gnutella" for almost every point.
The reason new features are being added to the stable series is largely to keep the 2.2.x kernels able to support recently improved features (new and updated hardware drivers, tuned algorithms, etc). If it weren't for this, then we'd be stuck with a kernel that required massive patching to support any newer hardware or improved features. Additionally, since the changes are relatively not very intrusive, and are pretty thoroughly tested in the -dev tree, the people running production boxes on 2.2.x kernels can be confident that the kernel is still solid, even with the new features.
;)
The reason 2.x.x *appears* to be incrementing more rapidly than 2.4.x in some areas is because all the cool new stuff (RAID code, USB, PCMCIA, etc ad infinitum...) has been in development (2.3.x) for a long time, and has been pretty thoroughly wrung out. In other words, all the initial "hard work" has largely been done. It's finally been deemed stable in the 2.4 series, and is now being backported for the benefit of those less adventurous souls (like me) who prefer a well-used, known-good kernel (2.2.x) on production systems, but want the benefit of some new features. The same thing happened with backports of 2.2 features into the 2.0.37+ kernels, even after 2.2 was released. Instead of a massive overhaul, with an entirely new kernel architecture to deal with, you get the shiny new stuff (new hardware support, bugfixes, and tuneups) and still get to stay with the tried-and-true kernel you're used to using.
That's likely why RedHat is developing their next distro to 2.2.x, *not* 2.4. After all, 2.4 is still considered a moving target at this point, and is extremely difficult to develop to (Alan Cox mentioned this in a recent diary entry). If you've got an entire distro to worry about, best to keep it with the currently stable and well-known 2.2 kernel, instead of a constantly-changing 2.4-test kernel.
Besides, if you really want to be cutting edge, go get slackware or rabbid squirrel and build your own distro with whatever software versions you want. This is Free software, after all -- if you've got an itch, scratch it!