You're looking for water in the desert. Allow me to quote briefly here...
if it can't be proved by experiment, it isn't science at all.
This is a statement that can only be made by someone without the first foggiest knowledge of what science is, much less how it relates to theology. Even the simple minded have a rudimentary understanding that science is not truth, but rather the search for it. Despite what Jon might otherwise lead you to believe...
Science has a lot to offer mankind
...his follow up post confirming my suspicions really brings the point home of what he is.
What kind of fool do you take me for? - just begging for a follow up snide remark not provided.
But what it does cover are the important things - the Creation and the Lord's teachings. Science can only verfiy these indisputable facts, and all of these pie in the sky theories will fail to show any different, and are thus a waste of time and effort.
Here is the first real clue to the true nature of this person, although it leaves us with one of two possibilities. He is either someone blindly parroting someone else's rant, attempting to present this as his own, or he is simply trying to egg folks on to reply to him. I suspect that our troll here is probably a healthy dose of both, not quite understanding what the heck this article is talking about, but using enough summarizing from it to try and denounce science as a humanist endeavor.
In short, I wouldn't hold your breath for an in depth response to your post. The moderators nailed this one perfectly (Score:-1, Troll).
same scientific level as evolution - a piece of pseudo-science that cannot be proven by experiment.
Do I smell a theology troll in our midst? Hmmm, for a moment I'll play along as though this isn't.
By your logic, if I may be so bold as to call it that, you would only have experiments performed on those theories which have already been proven. Just exactly how does one go about proving a theory without performing experiments? If something has already been proven, what is the point of experimenting with it any further?
Ahhh, but then I get down to this...
For those of us who have no need to find out the Truth, this kind of waste is deplorable.
Oh the subtlety in the giveaway on this. Only one who is of the theological mind set ever bothers to capitalize the "T" in truth. Ya see folks, the Bible didn't cover nuclear physics, therefore none of this stuff really exists. Furthermore, since the Bible already tells us everything we ever needed to know about how the Earth came about this experimenting is completely useless.
As I got around filling up a fair library of MP3's (mostly from my own CD collection due to low bw here) I found it more and more difficult to even listen to the broadcast radio choices here in the LA area. What I discovered about my own musical tastes is that I just don't fit in any of the boxes that are put together out there, nor would I even be able to put together a box of content for myself. My tastes in music are to varied for that.
For example, if you were to categorize the styles of music that I have in my own playlist it would include rock, blues, jazz, modern swing, 40's pop, modern pop, a couple of country tunes, some classical, comedy, a smattering of movie quote wav's, new wave, and a time range covering every decade since 1940 to present. How do you box that into some pre-packaged product for the masses?
The answer is you can't, nor should we allow them to take what amounts to a marketing scheme and apply it to the Internet. What this article is really about is the guideline for re-tunneling the flow of art through old style funnels. Prince hit the nail on the head when he compared a music consumer to those that love the art form. Old world media doesn't know how to deal with the latter, so here is a proposed blueprint for creating more of the former.
Is there any advantage in playing around with PHP?
There is one over all aspect to PHP that sets it apart from pretty much every other programming language used on the web. It's the only one (that I am aware of) that was actually written specifically for the web. To either appreciate this or hate it you'd have to work with it for a while.
Dates work just peachy in PHP, you just haven't taken the time to learn how to convert them. I would highly recommend NOT storing Unix timestamps into your db, as then you aren't able to utilize SQL statements that can break out months, days, or years effectively. The following is a quick function I keep around for doing MySQL to PHP date conversion.
// PHP and MySql store dates very differently. This routine converts
// a MySql date format into a Unix timestamp so PHP can use this to
// format in it's date functions
function GetUnixDate($XDate) {
$DateParts = explode("-", substr($XDate,0,10));
$TimeParts = explode(":", substr($XDate,11,18));
$UnixDate = mktime($TimeParts[0],$TimeParts[1],$TimeParts[2],$ DateParts[1],$DateParts[2],$DateParts[0] );
return($UnixDate);
}
Limits your dates to 1970-2032
Actually, the limit is 2038, and this is not a PHP related thing. Unix runs out of time on (I believe) Jan 18th, 2038.
Before I even get into replying to this post of yours... Love the Sig!:)
Moving on to the subject at hand, let's get into the notion of what a Linux distro is. I'd hardly think of it as a set of standardized or even default tools. Heck, even the command line is a 3rd party add on (prefer Bash myself). Linux as an OS is a collection of these tools brought together to form a sum greater than it's parts. I'm not arguing if this is a good or bad thing, just attempting to describe what it is.
The point I was trying to get at is that all to often folks look at a default, straight off the CD installation as a criteria for comparison when talking about NT or Windows in general. In truth, you can no more do this with Windows then you can with Linux.
Administering a UNIX system, and doing complex things with it that the designers never explicitly planned for is a viable option out of the box. I don't think the same could be said for Windows.
This line starts into opening the door to a debate over which is more effecient: a monolithic or micorkernel approach to OS design. Even still, keeping this within the realms of this conversation I believe that Windows has done quite well in supporting all kinds of solutions that may very well not have been part of the MS master plan. For example, going back to Win 3.1 we can see all kinds of 3rd party support for providing Internet access to these boxes long before MS ever even got around to thinking TCP/IP. In all fairness, perhaps the weakest aspect to MS products in this regard is the HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) for NT which didn't provide much growth room as we've seen.
The shareware and freeware community supporting the Windows platform is massive, and they are providing tons of really outstanding tools both for the desktops and the servers. Writing them off as trojan filled apps that you'd be insane to run is missing a far larger picture.
In comparison, the Unix community has a larger set of quality server side tools coming out of there. On the other hand, the desktop apps coming out of the shareware folks for Windows have been of much higher quality than what I've seen to date for the Unix boxes. Certainly the efforts going into KDE and Gnome development are looking to turn that tide. When or if that happens, I'll gladly change my views on this to fit what is going on, or at least my perception of it.
In the mean time, I'll continue to argue for fair and honest comparisons of OS merit. UI, kernel, networking, drivers, applications and tools should all be taken into account. If not, how else is Linux going to make a serious run at the desktop market?
My sarcasm was definitely getting in the way. I had considered using the 4sp6 to 4.6 analogy, but I got a little too carried away with my rant. I've got to come down my almost knee jerk reaction to statements such as...
No, It's not linus's fault that Microsoft makes shitty products and only releases them every few years
I see these kinds of blanket statements about any product I just smell troll spirit in the air. What's of major concern is how statements like this are for more favorable for MS in the long run.
And as a sysadmin you routinely download and run binaries from internet servers?
Eeeyup.
Can you say 'trojan'
Can you say "trusted sources"? Yeah, if I was trying to pull warez down from binary newsgroups, than yeah I'd be in for some nasties. As it is, I'm sure you'll be able to provide many examples of trojaned software found at Tucows, CW Stroud, Winfiles, or any of the other established shareware sites.
Point being, with.*n.x you can do those, and more, with the standard command-line utilities.
Care to explain to me just what exactly those "standard" command line utilities are for Unix? Standard, as in gif-jpg conversion? Isn't the very concept behind Unix to bring together a variety tools by 3rd party tools together under one roof?
For the record, in all the software I have ever downloaded for Windows (which I might add has been a LOT of stuff over the years) I have only ever encountered one piece of software that messed up my system. Of course, now that I know to NEVER let Internet Explorer freaking optimize a desktop even that app is finally under control. Eeeck!
a service pack isn't really the equivalent of a kernel update.
Come again? A series of fixes, upgrades, and patches to the underlying kernel of Linux is in someway different than the exact same thing for the kernel on NT?
In it's essence, a kernel upgrade is basically a new version of linux coming out.
Now the kernel IS the operating system? Umm, I don't tink so quiksdraw.
Being that you hear about it on slashdot whenever a new version of windows comes out - then this kernel release *does* qualify as news
Are you at all familiar with what a service pack for NT or Win2k is, what it includes, what it upgrades? Your post would already indicate an answer.
No, It's not linus's fault that Microsoft makes shitty products and only releases them every few years.
Ahh, so it's MS that's the bunch of dummies. Now I get it, thanks.
What are you doing with the system?
Do you have any applications that you can only get on NT?
Do you have the staff to support the os of your choose?
As a webmaster who handles both the graphics and programming of the sites I work on I run a mixed NT and FreeBSD environment for development. These are on two PC's, not dual booting. Additionally, the FreeBSD box is not serving live to the Internet. Here's the breakdown.
NT: (only listing my web critical stuff)
HomeSite
DreamWeaver
PhotoShop
ImageReady
Illustrator
FTP Voyager
WinAmp (yes it's critical damn it!)
FreeBSD:
Apache
Samba
MySQL
PHP
Each and every app on the platform they perfom best on. Not a one of them is improved in any way shape or form by Win2k. No upgrades planned here, and still waiting for NT 5.0.
Geesh, I thought the Slashcode automatically filtered subject lines like that.:) Since the moderators haven't gotten to ya yet... +2 Informative.
I do have one prob with one of your facts though.
people were running OS/2 as a server if that tells you the benchmark they had to beat
As I recall from that time frame, OS/2 was a non-entity. Novell were the folks to beat at the LAN and server markets. In addition, it's my understanding that NT and OS/2 came out of that joint project between MS and IBM that fell apart. Am I off on my facts?
I'd like to get USB and Direct X for NT... but I suspect Win2K is my only real choice.
And with that single sentence you have illustrated a point that I've been making to friends in the off-line world. The point being that Win2k is the best damn thing that could have happened to Linux. As someone who truely believes that MS really did a fine job with NT 4.0 for the desktop I didn't want Win2k, I freaking wanted NT 5.0. I wanted an upgraded HAL to support the new hardware out there, and wanted to see some work done to the network stack.
What MS decided to provide to folks like me instead was an 800meg minimum install that actually slowed down my existing apps, requires me to upgrade my hardware, and all for what? There isn't anything out for USB I need THAT badly. That, and the games that talk to OpenGL or Glide run noticeably faster than under DirectX.
Rant outta the way, let's swing this back around to some kinda point here. I'm just willing to bet there's a healthy market of folks out there not horribly unlike myself in how they feel about NT and Win2k. NT 4.0 may have another year or two worth of life left in it before hardware support is going to leave it entirely. MS has provided this wonderful gap in the market that Linux is nicely poised to fill in.
Mark my words, the death bell for Microsoft will not be rung by the Justice Department. When folks like Adobe and Macromedia starting porting their front line apps over to Linux you can just bet that the fat lady will be in the wings warming up.
In unix land, anything equivalent to that 'license key invalid' dialog would be trackable back to a particular line in an rc file
So what you're saying here is that you'd go and look in the various locations for where programs start up on boot. Fair enough. Why not do the same with that Windows install?
Places to look:
Legacy from DOS...
autoexec.bat
config.sys
Legacy from Win 3.1
win.ini
system.ini
Might be in the start menu
Programs-Startup
How about in the registry
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Cur rentVersion\Run
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Cu rrentVersion\Run
If this is NT, it might have gone in as a service, which is maintained from the Control Panel. On Win2k you get to it from the MMC.
Yes, I realize this doesn't help you any longer, but I wanted to get the point across here that things really can be tracked down under Windows. No, not all of these items are especially obvious without a healthy bit of prior knowledge. You could say the same for them rc scripts as well.
Try renaming 1000 files of the sort a001.blah to b001.blah,...
Oooo, fun stuff. I've got on my NT system now a wonderful little shareware app called ReNameIt that handles just the kind of thing you're talking about. All GUI start to finish.
...or converting 1000 GIFs to JPEGs, using point-and-click
Once again to the shareware bin, right off the net and still warm PicaView from the folks that make ACDSee. PicaView is a really cool little add-on extension to File Explorer that provides a quick thumbnail of an image when right clicked on. In addition, it also has some cool features like image conversion.
To get this to play I start out in Explorer (the file one, not in ANY freaking way "enhanced" to be a freaking web browser) and select the parent dir of interest. Right click on it and do a find all in that dir and subs with a *.gif extension. Never taking my hand off the mouse, I select Edit-Select All which goes and hi-lites all the results. At this point I can review which files are to be affected, no matter how long the list. Once satisfied with my selections I right click again to bring up PicaView and tweak it's GUI settings. Click OK and it be off and running.
This is fun, can we play some more how-to's?
The thing that seems to get lost on folks heavily focused on the Unix world is that there is a wonderful set of tools out there for Windows in the free and shareware lands. Folks blast Windows and the larger companies that support it as "bloatware" because they're easy visible targets. What gets missed is all the very specific tools that are also out there to deal with specialized problems, just like with Linux.
To compare and contrast, take a tour of the NT and 98 regions of some of the major shareware sites out there as opposed to a site like Freshmeat. How many 0.1 versions of stuff do you suppose you'll find in one or the other? I've lost count of the times I got interested in a description of a Unix app, only to find that the feature points haven't been implemented past making an empty window for version 0.0.3 over a year ago. You just don't see that kinda stuff when out and about looking for Windows tools.
Take this as a troll if you wish, but from an end users perspective the shareware tools out there are some powerful stuff that should not be discounted simply because MS doesn't directly provide them.
From what I've read about it I just might. As things are now, I've got two boxes here at home to work with. One of them runs NT, and until I see some serious HTML development tools (ie. Dreamweaver, Homesite) either get ported or something equivalent it'll stay an NT 4.0 box for a long time to come. My other box is intended to simulate a real world web server, and since the web host I utilize runs FreeBSD it seemed like a good choice for me.
Like I said, I'm still pretty new to Unix as a platform in general. As much as I like to take a tour of the various distributions of Linux, it's probably a lot wiser for me to hang tight with what I've got running and learn it well. I do intend to take a tour of the rest of the spectrum as time and money permits. One thing I have learned is that it can take months of mucking around before you can really appreciate, or dislike, the kinds of tweaks that go into an OS.
because they are all right there on the same server. Imagine using a program (we call it apt-get -- ahh, the sweetness in that name!) that automatically downloads and installs the newest (run "unstable" and it's the truth) versions of whatever software fits your fancy.
To more directly respond to your suggestion though, isn't Debian's system part of the over all problem? Not it's technical merits, but rather the fact that it's only for Debian and its child distros? Seems that this very kind of thing is what Open Package is trying to address for the BSD family of OS's. I would hope that the end game here is to eventually get to a point where a developer can issue a single file from their web site that can easily port itself to whatever platform is running. As cool as Debian is, I don't see it moving things in that direction.
The Ports just download the source, apply some patches that are specifc to the OS, compile, install, and log the installation.
That last bit is the clever one though. How do you "log" the installation properly on a platform that also expects a seperate db to be updated? RedHat, for instance, is utilizing a completely differnt database for logging installations from how any of the BSD's do it. This splinters further when you start getting into Debian and other managers.
It just occured to me a possible solution for this. Right now a FreeBSD port goes through and handles all the downloading, compiling, installing and registering. What if instead of going through the installation process, it went and created an RPM file from the source. At that point it could simply make a call to rpm to handle the last two stages, installation and registration in the package manager. Uninstalls and upgrades would continue to be handled with rpm, and fresh installs from a ports collection.
I've never built an rpm file, so I have no idea how automated this process can be made. In theory it sounds like it could be made to augment rather than replace existing package managers. Perhaps this Open Package project might want to consider a more ambitious goal? That, or I don't have a clue of what I speak of, which is most likely the case.
Having problems like this and learning what you did wrong is what makes you an experienced user. "Improved" package management systems, like rpm, offer zero contribution towards making the end user any better at understanding anything beyond the flags required to get their package manager to behave.
In one respect I agree with the sentiment of your post. Yes, when things go wrong this provides for a learning experience not available when all things go right.
On the other hand, as an end user I'm not the least bit interested in getting that involved with the mechanics of gettings applications on and off a system. My primary focus is on using and learning that application just installed.
For example, on my NT box when I run a Setup.exe I fully expect that thing to handle everything in the process of getting that app on my system, possibly upgrading an older version, and adding an entry into the Add/Remove database. The port system provides for similar functionality, but could use some streamlining from what I've seen. Mind you, I see the ports collection as a far more powerful tool than what NT does, but there is plenty of room for perfecting that system.
What would really kick butt is a GUI front end similary to GnoRPM to handle administration of ports and packages. A little something that could deal with putting together the proper CVSup files for port updating, front end the various pkg commands and such. Essentially give a pretty face to this wonderful infrastructure. That alone would save about 2 days worth of learning curve.
I'm going to go hide now, as I can see a rather angry mob of CLI folks starting to form.
But is it the very same ports tree for all 3 BSDs?
Nope. That's the reason for starting up the Open Packages project in the first place.
And what would it take to integrate Linux
Hopefully I don't screw up this description here. On FreeBSD there are two different methods for adding packages. The first is from the "ports" collection. These ports are a collection of fancy makefile scripts that have a series of expected locations of the source files, and some instructions on what to do with them, ie. configure, compile, install. These scripts also include a list of dependant packages which are used to either verify they exist, or go and install them.
The second method of installing an app is doing a pkg_add, which is a method for dealing with already compiled packages.
The only stumbling block I would think that a Linux distro would have in implementing this is the final stage of a port install: entering the package into the database. For instance, on RedHat it's expected that all apps will get an entry into the RPM database. FreeBSD sort of expects the same thing, only to it's package db instead. The concept of package management breaks down real quick like when more than one db is in use, since that is what is referred to for tracking dependencies and such.
The really sad part here is that even if this Open Packages project ends up making folks wonder what was so great about sliced bread anyway, it still won't get used on Linux. RedHat isn't showing any signs of giving up on rpm's, and the same can be said for Debian's.deb packages. Too large of an installed base for both to just change gears now, and there's also a point of pride that kicks in as well. If anything, I expect the various Linux distros will most likely just hunker down further in however they handle package management.
I started my journey into the world of Unix OS's with RH 6.0, then upgrading to 6.1. The first couple of rpm's I dealt with really impressed me with how it handled stuff. Then, as many have mentioned, I started running into the enevitable dependency problems. Especially true with Gnome based apps. As time wore on I also noticed that it was becoming increasingly difficult to locate the latest version of an app as an rpm. The GUI rpm tools that were supposed to go hunt down the latest stuff off the web consistantly pulled back far older versions, and often pointed to dead web and FTP resources. I always loved running into the RedHat FTP server in a 24/7 overloaded state. So here I was manually compiling and install stuff outside the rpm database. Completely defeating the purpose of having package management.
One hard drive crash later I decided I'd try out a different distro. After a couple of days mulling it over I decided instead to try out FreeBSD. After figuring out how to pull down the latest ports package I tried running a couple of them. I can't begin to express how impressed I was with this. It appears to consistantly have the very latest stuff, it deals with the compilation and installation for me, and enters the app into the package management system. That, and as I watched it poll a list of ftp sites looking for an active one, then also went about pulling in required libraries my jaw just dropped.
As impressed as I am with how FreeBSD handles apps, there is one aspect I fealt wasn't quite as strong as rpm. rpm's provide a fairly elegant method of udgrading applications that appears to deal with the issues of cleaning out the old app and getting the new one in there. FBSD on the other hand has you go with a process of deinstalling then reinstalling which seems to be prone to all kinds of nasties.
For example, when trying to deinstall a library that other apps depend on the system will stop ya in your tracks. Just trying to install over an older app puts both versions into the database. I'm still fighting a wrong turn I made when upgrading XFree86. I'm certain that a more experienced user would have danced right around the probs I had, but it seems evident that there is room for improvement here.
As it is, I'm far happier with the dealing with apps on FreeBSD than I ever was with RedHat. I genuinely hope that this new project can help better streamline this process. Furthermore, it seems that the various Linux distros could greatly benefit from something like this as well.
Folks like Wal-Mart would love to use their retail locations as a shipping outlet. B&N definitely wanted too, but in both cases you incur both shipping and local sales tax costs. While B&N were in their decision process they found the numbers worked out in favor of not utilizing thier retail stores due to the taxation.
The difference with AutoZone is that they aren't in a nasty market war with a heavily discounted competitor. You have to remember that B&N is competing with a company that figured on a multi-year loss rate to take the market over, namely Amazon. They had to do everything possible to keep the prices as low as possible, cutting into all kinds margins. AutoZone on the other hand has a little more flexibility with this in that if they have to charge sales tax that isn't going to throw the door wide open to a loss competitor like an Amazon.
You also have to figure to that in CA the lowest sales tax rate is 7.25%, going up to over 8%. Each hike in the rate had a wonderful reason attached. My favorite was the hike to pay for the San Fran earthquake. That nasty was paid for a LONG time ago, yet there that tax still remains.
In a perfect Metrol world, any tax rise must require an automatic expiration date, lasting for no more than 2 years. I'm sick to death of every tax these folks coming up with becoming a permanent part of our lives for the "community's" needs. All the while we've got school board members pulling in 6 figure paychecks and city board members travelling to Europe to study other cities.
As I recall from an article I read a long while ago, B&N spun off their web site as a seperate business operating from a single warehouse. They had wanted to set up a system where they could ship directly from their stores, but this would have kicked in the very kinds of taxes that are being proposed now. Since they are in a very tight price competition with other book sellers, most notably Amazon, they opted for the more difficult method of the spin off approach.
What I don't get is if B&N's web site is truly a seperate company operating outside of CA, just where in the hell do they get the right to tax that? Let's not forget what the state sales tax is actually for. It's to have businesses pay back to the state for the infrastructure (roads, police, etc) they benefit from. B&N's web site does not benefit from CA services in any way, thus should not be obligated to taxation. The brick and mortar stores do benefit from local infrastructure, so they do pay.
When it comes right down to it, B&N was playing by the rules all along. It's the state of CA that's looking to inject a loop hole into the mix so they can tax an operation outside the state boundaries. This is like Texas trying to collect taxes from a McDonalds in Oklahoma because McD has a presence in Texas.
When Gray "Never saw a tax I didn't like" Davis signs this garbage into law, you can bet there's going to be a load of cash paid out to trial lawyers that will eventually over turn an obvious constitutional infringement.
...and they even charged the tax on shipping cost too! Those jerks, that's not even legally collectable...
If they operate their shipping department as a profit and loss center then they do need to charge taxes for that as well. There's a number of pros and cons involved with deciding how best to handle the accounting aspects of a shipping department, and you obviously ran into one of the cons. I'm no accountant, but I've seen enough tax rules to make my head spin around a few times. It really is nuts.
Any webmaster who has put Word through it paces already fully understands this exploit. The notion of pulling in graphics dynamically from a remote site is old news. Also, since Office 95 all the apps in there stopped being what they were and became development platforms. That's five years ago folks, hardly late breaking news.
What I can't ever seem to get posted early in an article such as this is a warning about the wonders of the.reg files. Mark my words here, we'll be hearing a LOT more about.reg file links in E-Mail and on the web making systems unusable.
If you're a Windows user, go into Netscape right freaking now under Edit-Prefs-Navigator-Applications and take out that entry for.reg files. Through the use of a link or even a re-direct a nasty site can do some pretty damaging stuff with a far smaller file than ILOVEYOU was.
On the other hand if you're an IE user... ummm, I hope you remember that browser integration with the OS is a *cough* Good Thing(tm). Keep remembering that through the repair install.
Slashdot Mirror
You're looking for water in the desert. Allow me to quote briefly here...
if it can't be proved by experiment, it isn't science at all.
This is a statement that can only be made by someone without the first foggiest knowledge of what science is, much less how it relates to theology. Even the simple minded have a rudimentary understanding that science is not truth, but rather the search for it. Despite what Jon might otherwise lead you to believe...
Science has a lot to offer mankind
...his follow up post confirming my suspicions really brings the point home of what he is.
What kind of fool do you take me for? - just begging for a follow up snide remark not provided.
But what it does cover are the important things - the Creation and the Lord's teachings. Science can only verfiy these indisputable facts, and all of these pie in the sky theories will fail to show any different, and are thus a waste of time and effort.
Here is the first real clue to the true nature of this person, although it leaves us with one of two possibilities. He is either someone blindly parroting someone else's rant, attempting to present this as his own, or he is simply trying to egg folks on to reply to him. I suspect that our troll here is probably a healthy dose of both, not quite understanding what the heck this article is talking about, but using enough summarizing from it to try and denounce science as a humanist endeavor.
In short, I wouldn't hold your breath for an in depth response to your post. The moderators nailed this one perfectly (Score:-1, Troll).
same scientific level as evolution - a piece of pseudo-science that cannot be proven by experiment.
Do I smell a theology troll in our midst? Hmmm, for a moment I'll play along as though this isn't.
By your logic, if I may be so bold as to call it that, you would only have experiments performed on those theories which have already been proven. Just exactly how does one go about proving a theory without performing experiments? If something has already been proven, what is the point of experimenting with it any further?
Ahhh, but then I get down to this...
For those of us who have no need to find out the Truth, this kind of waste is deplorable.
Oh the subtlety in the giveaway on this. Only one who is of the theological mind set ever bothers to capitalize the "T" in truth. Ya see folks, the Bible didn't cover nuclear physics, therefore none of this stuff really exists. Furthermore, since the Bible already tells us everything we ever needed to know about how the Earth came about this experimenting is completely useless.
As I got around filling up a fair library of MP3's (mostly from my own CD collection due to low bw here) I found it more and more difficult to even listen to the broadcast radio choices here in the LA area. What I discovered about my own musical tastes is that I just don't fit in any of the boxes that are put together out there, nor would I even be able to put together a box of content for myself. My tastes in music are to varied for that.
For example, if you were to categorize the styles of music that I have in my own playlist it would include rock, blues, jazz, modern swing, 40's pop, modern pop, a couple of country tunes, some classical, comedy, a smattering of movie quote wav's, new wave, and a time range covering every decade since 1940 to present. How do you box that into some pre-packaged product for the masses?
The answer is you can't, nor should we allow them to take what amounts to a marketing scheme and apply it to the Internet. What this article is really about is the guideline for re-tunneling the flow of art through old style funnels. Prince hit the nail on the head when he compared a music consumer to those that love the art form. Old world media doesn't know how to deal with the latter, so here is a proposed blueprint for creating more of the former.
Is there any advantage in playing around with PHP?
There is one over all aspect to PHP that sets it apart from pretty much every other programming language used on the web. It's the only one (that I am aware of) that was actually written specifically for the web. To either appreciate this or hate it you'd have to work with it for a while.
date functions suck in PHP
$ DateParts[1],$DateParts[2],$DateParts[0] );
Dates work just peachy in PHP, you just haven't taken the time to learn how to convert them. I would highly recommend NOT storing Unix timestamps into your db, as then you aren't able to utilize SQL statements that can break out months, days, or years effectively. The following is a quick function I keep around for doing MySQL to PHP date conversion.
// PHP and MySql store dates very differently. This routine converts
// a MySql date format into a Unix timestamp so PHP can use this to
// format in it's date functions
function GetUnixDate($XDate) {
$DateParts = explode("-", substr($XDate,0,10));
$TimeParts = explode(":", substr($XDate,11,18));
$UnixDate = mktime($TimeParts[0],$TimeParts[1],$TimeParts[2],
return($UnixDate);
}
Limits your dates to 1970-2032
Actually, the limit is 2038, and this is not a PHP related thing. Unix runs out of time on (I believe) Jan 18th, 2038.
Before I even get into replying to this post of yours... Love the Sig! :)
Moving on to the subject at hand, let's get into the notion of what a Linux distro is. I'd hardly think of it as a set of standardized or even default tools. Heck, even the command line is a 3rd party add on (prefer Bash myself). Linux as an OS is a collection of these tools brought together to form a sum greater than it's parts. I'm not arguing if this is a good or bad thing, just attempting to describe what it is.
The point I was trying to get at is that all to often folks look at a default, straight off the CD installation as a criteria for comparison when talking about NT or Windows in general. In truth, you can no more do this with Windows then you can with Linux.
Administering a UNIX system, and doing complex things with it that the designers never explicitly planned for is a viable option out of the box. I don't think the same could be said for Windows.
This line starts into opening the door to a debate over which is more effecient: a monolithic or micorkernel approach to OS design. Even still, keeping this within the realms of this conversation I believe that Windows has done quite well in supporting all kinds of solutions that may very well not have been part of the MS master plan. For example, going back to Win 3.1 we can see all kinds of 3rd party support for providing Internet access to these boxes long before MS ever even got around to thinking TCP/IP. In all fairness, perhaps the weakest aspect to MS products in this regard is the HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) for NT which didn't provide much growth room as we've seen.
The shareware and freeware community supporting the Windows platform is massive, and they are providing tons of really outstanding tools both for the desktops and the servers. Writing them off as trojan filled apps that you'd be insane to run is missing a far larger picture.
In comparison, the Unix community has a larger set of quality server side tools coming out of there. On the other hand, the desktop apps coming out of the shareware folks for Windows have been of much higher quality than what I've seen to date for the Unix boxes. Certainly the efforts going into KDE and Gnome development are looking to turn that tide. When or if that happens, I'll gladly change my views on this to fit what is going on, or at least my perception of it.
In the mean time, I'll continue to argue for fair and honest comparisons of OS merit. UI, kernel, networking, drivers, applications and tools should all be taken into account. If not, how else is Linux going to make a serious run at the desktop market?
Joe,
My sarcasm was definitely getting in the way. I had considered using the 4sp6 to 4.6 analogy, but I got a little too carried away with my rant. I've got to come down my almost knee jerk reaction to statements such as...
No, It's not linus's fault that Microsoft makes shitty products and only releases them every few years
I see these kinds of blanket statements about any product I just smell troll spirit in the air. What's of major concern is how statements like this are for more favorable for MS in the long run.
Anyhow, thanks for the clarification to my post.
And as a sysadmin you routinely download and run binaries from internet servers?
.*n.x you can do those, and more, with the standard command-line utilities.
Eeeyup.
Can you say 'trojan'
Can you say "trusted sources"? Yeah, if I was trying to pull warez down from binary newsgroups, than yeah I'd be in for some nasties. As it is, I'm sure you'll be able to provide many examples of trojaned software found at Tucows, CW Stroud, Winfiles, or any of the other established shareware sites.
Point being, with
Care to explain to me just what exactly those "standard" command line utilities are for Unix? Standard, as in gif-jpg conversion? Isn't the very concept behind Unix to bring together a variety tools by 3rd party tools together under one roof?
For the record, in all the software I have ever downloaded for Windows (which I might add has been a LOT of stuff over the years) I have only ever encountered one piece of software that messed up my system. Of course, now that I know to NEVER let Internet Explorer freaking optimize a desktop even that app is finally under control. Eeeck!
a service pack isn't really the equivalent of a kernel update.
Come again? A series of fixes, upgrades, and patches to the underlying kernel of Linux is in someway different than the exact same thing for the kernel on NT?
In it's essence, a kernel upgrade is basically a new version of linux coming out.
Now the kernel IS the operating system? Umm, I don't tink so quiksdraw.
Being that you hear about it on slashdot whenever a new version of windows comes out - then this kernel release *does* qualify as news
Are you at all familiar with what a service pack for NT or Win2k is, what it includes, what it upgrades? Your post would already indicate an answer.
No, It's not linus's fault that Microsoft makes shitty products and only releases them every few years.
Ahh, so it's MS that's the bunch of dummies. Now I get it, thanks.
What are you doing with the system?
Do you have any applications that you can only get on NT?
Do you have the staff to support the os of your choose?
As a webmaster who handles both the graphics and programming of the sites I work on I run a mixed NT and FreeBSD environment for development. These are on two PC's, not dual booting. Additionally, the FreeBSD box is not serving live to the Internet. Here's the breakdown.
NT: (only listing my web critical stuff)
HomeSite
DreamWeaver
PhotoShop
ImageReady
Illustrator
FTP Voyager
WinAmp (yes it's critical damn it!)
FreeBSD:
Apache
Samba
MySQL
PHP
Each and every app on the platform they perfom best on. Not a one of them is improved in any way shape or form by Win2k. No upgrades planned here, and still waiting for NT 5.0.
Geesh, I thought the Slashcode automatically filtered subject lines like that. :) Since the moderators haven't gotten to ya yet... +2 Informative.
I do have one prob with one of your facts though.
people were running OS/2 as a server if that tells you the benchmark they had to beat
As I recall from that time frame, OS/2 was a non-entity. Novell were the folks to beat at the LAN and server markets. In addition, it's my understanding that NT and OS/2 came out of that joint project between MS and IBM that fell apart. Am I off on my facts?
I run a dual celeron box... and I've managed to crash both windows2000 pro and debian
Important Hardware Tip:
When the processor starts to glow you may want to add a wee bit more cooling.
I'd like to get USB and Direct X for NT... but I suspect Win2K is my only real choice.
And with that single sentence you have illustrated a point that I've been making to friends in the off-line world. The point being that Win2k is the best damn thing that could have happened to Linux. As someone who truely believes that MS really did a fine job with NT 4.0 for the desktop I didn't want Win2k, I freaking wanted NT 5.0. I wanted an upgraded HAL to support the new hardware out there, and wanted to see some work done to the network stack.
What MS decided to provide to folks like me instead was an 800meg minimum install that actually slowed down my existing apps, requires me to upgrade my hardware, and all for what? There isn't anything out for USB I need THAT badly. That, and the games that talk to OpenGL or Glide run noticeably faster than under DirectX.
Rant outta the way, let's swing this back around to some kinda point here. I'm just willing to bet there's a healthy market of folks out there not horribly unlike myself in how they feel about NT and Win2k. NT 4.0 may have another year or two worth of life left in it before hardware support is going to leave it entirely. MS has provided this wonderful gap in the market that Linux is nicely poised to fill in.
Mark my words, the death bell for Microsoft will not be rung by the Justice Department. When folks like Adobe and Macromedia starting porting their front line apps over to Linux you can just bet that the fat lady will be in the wings warming up.
In unix land, anything equivalent to that 'license key invalid' dialog would be trackable back to a particular line in an rc file
r rentVersion\Run
u rrentVersion\Run
So what you're saying here is that you'd go and look in the various locations for where programs start up on boot. Fair enough. Why not do the same with that Windows install?
Places to look:
Legacy from DOS...
autoexec.bat
config.sys
Legacy from Win 3.1
win.ini
system.ini
Might be in the start menu
Programs-Startup
How about in the registry
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Cu
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\C
If this is NT, it might have gone in as a service, which is maintained from the Control Panel. On Win2k you get to it from the MMC.
Yes, I realize this doesn't help you any longer, but I wanted to get the point across here that things really can be tracked down under Windows. No, not all of these items are especially obvious without a healthy bit of prior knowledge. You could say the same for them rc scripts as well.
Try renaming 1000 files of the sort a001.blah to b001.blah,...
...or converting 1000 GIFs to JPEGs, using point-and-click
Oooo, fun stuff. I've got on my NT system now a wonderful little shareware app called ReNameIt that handles just the kind of thing you're talking about. All GUI start to finish.
Once again to the shareware bin, right off the net and still warm PicaView from the folks that make ACDSee. PicaView is a really cool little add-on extension to File Explorer that provides a quick thumbnail of an image when right clicked on. In addition, it also has some cool features like image conversion.
To get this to play I start out in Explorer (the file one, not in ANY freaking way "enhanced" to be a freaking web browser) and select the parent dir of interest. Right click on it and do a find all in that dir and subs with a *.gif extension. Never taking my hand off the mouse, I select Edit-Select All which goes and hi-lites all the results. At this point I can review which files are to be affected, no matter how long the list. Once satisfied with my selections I right click again to bring up PicaView and tweak it's GUI settings. Click OK and it be off and running.
This is fun, can we play some more how-to's?
The thing that seems to get lost on folks heavily focused on the Unix world is that there is a wonderful set of tools out there for Windows in the free and shareware lands. Folks blast Windows and the larger companies that support it as "bloatware" because they're easy visible targets. What gets missed is all the very specific tools that are also out there to deal with specialized problems, just like with Linux.
To compare and contrast, take a tour of the NT and 98 regions of some of the major shareware sites out there as opposed to a site like Freshmeat. How many 0.1 versions of stuff do you suppose you'll find in one or the other? I've lost count of the times I got interested in a description of a Unix app, only to find that the feature points haven't been implemented past making an empty window for version 0.0.3 over a year ago. You just don't see that kinda stuff when out and about looking for Windows tools.
Take this as a troll if you wish, but from an end users perspective the shareware tools out there are some powerful stuff that should not be discounted simply because MS doesn't directly provide them.
You would love Debian.
From what I've read about it I just might. As things are now, I've got two boxes here at home to work with. One of them runs NT, and until I see some serious HTML development tools (ie. Dreamweaver, Homesite) either get ported or something equivalent it'll stay an NT 4.0 box for a long time to come. My other box is intended to simulate a real world web server, and since the web host I utilize runs FreeBSD it seemed like a good choice for me.
Like I said, I'm still pretty new to Unix as a platform in general. As much as I like to take a tour of the various distributions of Linux, it's probably a lot wiser for me to hang tight with what I've got running and learn it well. I do intend to take a tour of the rest of the spectrum as time and money permits. One thing I have learned is that it can take months of mucking around before you can really appreciate, or dislike, the kinds of tweaks that go into an OS.
because they are all right there on the same server. Imagine using a program (we call it apt-get -- ahh, the sweetness in that name!) that automatically downloads and installs the newest (run "unstable" and it's the truth) versions of whatever software fits your fancy.
To more directly respond to your suggestion though, isn't Debian's system part of the over all problem? Not it's technical merits, but rather the fact that it's only for Debian and its child distros? Seems that this very kind of thing is what Open Package is trying to address for the BSD family of OS's. I would hope that the end game here is to eventually get to a point where a developer can issue a single file from their web site that can easily port itself to whatever platform is running. As cool as Debian is, I don't see it moving things in that direction.
The Ports just download the source, apply some patches that are specifc to the OS, compile, install, and log the installation.
That last bit is the clever one though. How do you "log" the installation properly on a platform that also expects a seperate db to be updated? RedHat, for instance, is utilizing a completely differnt database for logging installations from how any of the BSD's do it. This splinters further when you start getting into Debian and other managers.
It just occured to me a possible solution for this. Right now a FreeBSD port goes through and handles all the downloading, compiling, installing and registering. What if instead of going through the installation process, it went and created an RPM file from the source. At that point it could simply make a call to rpm to handle the last two stages, installation and registration in the package manager. Uninstalls and upgrades would continue to be handled with rpm, and fresh installs from a ports collection.
I've never built an rpm file, so I have no idea how automated this process can be made. In theory it sounds like it could be made to augment rather than replace existing package managers. Perhaps this Open Package project might want to consider a more ambitious goal? That, or I don't have a clue of what I speak of, which is most likely the case.
Having problems like this and learning what you did wrong is what makes you an experienced user. "Improved" package management systems, like rpm, offer zero contribution towards making the end user any better at understanding anything beyond the flags required to get their package manager to behave.
In one respect I agree with the sentiment of your post. Yes, when things go wrong this provides for a learning experience not available when all things go right.
On the other hand, as an end user I'm not the least bit interested in getting that involved with the mechanics of gettings applications on and off a system. My primary focus is on using and learning that application just installed.
For example, on my NT box when I run a Setup.exe I fully expect that thing to handle everything in the process of getting that app on my system, possibly upgrading an older version, and adding an entry into the Add/Remove database. The port system provides for similar functionality, but could use some streamlining from what I've seen. Mind you, I see the ports collection as a far more powerful tool than what NT does, but there is plenty of room for perfecting that system.
What would really kick butt is a GUI front end similary to GnoRPM to handle administration of ports and packages. A little something that could deal with putting together the proper CVSup files for port updating, front end the various pkg commands and such. Essentially give a pretty face to this wonderful infrastructure. That alone would save about 2 days worth of learning curve.
I'm going to go hide now, as I can see a rather angry mob of CLI folks starting to form.
Me too!
But is it the very same ports tree for all 3 BSDs?
.deb packages. Too large of an installed base for both to just change gears now, and there's also a point of pride that kicks in as well. If anything, I expect the various Linux distros will most likely just hunker down further in however they handle package management.
Nope. That's the reason for starting up the Open Packages project in the first place.
And what would it take to integrate Linux
Hopefully I don't screw up this description here. On FreeBSD there are two different methods for adding packages. The first is from the "ports" collection. These ports are a collection of fancy makefile scripts that have a series of expected locations of the source files, and some instructions on what to do with them, ie. configure, compile, install. These scripts also include a list of dependant packages which are used to either verify they exist, or go and install them.
The second method of installing an app is doing a pkg_add, which is a method for dealing with already compiled packages.
The only stumbling block I would think that a Linux distro would have in implementing this is the final stage of a port install: entering the package into the database. For instance, on RedHat it's expected that all apps will get an entry into the RPM database. FreeBSD sort of expects the same thing, only to it's package db instead. The concept of package management breaks down real quick like when more than one db is in use, since that is what is referred to for tracking dependencies and such.
The really sad part here is that even if this Open Packages project ends up making folks wonder what was so great about sliced bread anyway, it still won't get used on Linux. RedHat isn't showing any signs of giving up on rpm's, and the same can be said for Debian's
I started my journey into the world of Unix OS's with RH 6.0, then upgrading to 6.1. The first couple of rpm's I dealt with really impressed me with how it handled stuff. Then, as many have mentioned, I started running into the enevitable dependency problems. Especially true with Gnome based apps. As time wore on I also noticed that it was becoming increasingly difficult to locate the latest version of an app as an rpm. The GUI rpm tools that were supposed to go hunt down the latest stuff off the web consistantly pulled back far older versions, and often pointed to dead web and FTP resources. I always loved running into the RedHat FTP server in a 24/7 overloaded state. So here I was manually compiling and install stuff outside the rpm database. Completely defeating the purpose of having package management.
One hard drive crash later I decided I'd try out a different distro. After a couple of days mulling it over I decided instead to try out FreeBSD. After figuring out how to pull down the latest ports package I tried running a couple of them. I can't begin to express how impressed I was with this. It appears to consistantly have the very latest stuff, it deals with the compilation and installation for me, and enters the app into the package management system. That, and as I watched it poll a list of ftp sites looking for an active one, then also went about pulling in required libraries my jaw just dropped.
As impressed as I am with how FreeBSD handles apps, there is one aspect I fealt wasn't quite as strong as rpm. rpm's provide a fairly elegant method of udgrading applications that appears to deal with the issues of cleaning out the old app and getting the new one in there. FBSD on the other hand has you go with a process of deinstalling then reinstalling which seems to be prone to all kinds of nasties.
For example, when trying to deinstall a library that other apps depend on the system will stop ya in your tracks. Just trying to install over an older app puts both versions into the database. I'm still fighting a wrong turn I made when upgrading XFree86. I'm certain that a more experienced user would have danced right around the probs I had, but it seems evident that there is room for improvement here.
As it is, I'm far happier with the dealing with apps on FreeBSD than I ever was with RedHat. I genuinely hope that this new project can help better streamline this process. Furthermore, it seems that the various Linux distros could greatly benefit from something like this as well.
Folks like Wal-Mart would love to use their retail locations as a shipping outlet. B&N definitely wanted too, but in both cases you incur both shipping and local sales tax costs. While B&N were in their decision process they found the numbers worked out in favor of not utilizing thier retail stores due to the taxation.
The difference with AutoZone is that they aren't in a nasty market war with a heavily discounted competitor. You have to remember that B&N is competing with a company that figured on a multi-year loss rate to take the market over, namely Amazon. They had to do everything possible to keep the prices as low as possible, cutting into all kinds margins. AutoZone on the other hand has a little more flexibility with this in that if they have to charge sales tax that isn't going to throw the door wide open to a loss competitor like an Amazon.
You also have to figure to that in CA the lowest sales tax rate is 7.25%, going up to over 8%. Each hike in the rate had a wonderful reason attached. My favorite was the hike to pay for the San Fran earthquake. That nasty was paid for a LONG time ago, yet there that tax still remains.
In a perfect Metrol world, any tax rise must require an automatic expiration date, lasting for no more than 2 years. I'm sick to death of every tax these folks coming up with becoming a permanent part of our lives for the "community's" needs. All the while we've got school board members pulling in 6 figure paychecks and city board members travelling to Europe to study other cities.
As I recall from an article I read a long while ago, B&N spun off their web site as a seperate business operating from a single warehouse. They had wanted to set up a system where they could ship directly from their stores, but this would have kicked in the very kinds of taxes that are being proposed now. Since they are in a very tight price competition with other book sellers, most notably Amazon, they opted for the more difficult method of the spin off approach.
What I don't get is if B&N's web site is truly a seperate company operating outside of CA, just where in the hell do they get the right to tax that? Let's not forget what the state sales tax is actually for. It's to have businesses pay back to the state for the infrastructure (roads, police, etc) they benefit from. B&N's web site does not benefit from CA services in any way, thus should not be obligated to taxation. The brick and mortar stores do benefit from local infrastructure, so they do pay.
When it comes right down to it, B&N was playing by the rules all along. It's the state of CA that's looking to inject a loop hole into the mix so they can tax an operation outside the state boundaries. This is like Texas trying to collect taxes from a McDonalds in Oklahoma because McD has a presence in Texas.
When Gray "Never saw a tax I didn't like" Davis signs this garbage into law, you can bet there's going to be a load of cash paid out to trial lawyers that will eventually over turn an obvious constitutional infringement.
...and they even charged the tax on shipping cost too! Those jerks, that's not even legally collectable...
If they operate their shipping department as a profit and loss center then they do need to charge taxes for that as well. There's a number of pros and cons involved with deciding how best to handle the accounting aspects of a shipping department, and you obviously ran into one of the cons. I'm no accountant, but I've seen enough tax rules to make my head spin around a few times. It really is nuts.
Any webmaster who has put Word through it paces already fully understands this exploit. The notion of pulling in graphics dynamically from a remote site is old news. Also, since Office 95 all the apps in there stopped being what they were and became development platforms. That's five years ago folks, hardly late breaking news.
.reg files. Mark my words here, we'll be hearing a LOT more about .reg file links in E-Mail and on the web making systems unusable.
.reg files. Through the use of a link or even a re-direct a nasty site can do some pretty damaging stuff with a far smaller file than ILOVEYOU was.
What I can't ever seem to get posted early in an article such as this is a warning about the wonders of the
If you're a Windows user, go into Netscape right freaking now under Edit-Prefs-Navigator-Applications and take out that entry for
On the other hand if you're an IE user... ummm, I hope you remember that browser integration with the OS is a *cough* Good Thing(tm). Keep remembering that through the repair install.