. It's like McDonald's (no a) selling burgers infected with MCD, and then blaming the humans for being vulnerable to it. Except that unlike humans in the real world (who are all susceptible to MCD), the humans in this crazy analogy universe have a choice between different bodies: one that's not only vulnerable to MCD, but every other disease out there, and has to be constantly immunized against them, and even then performs terribly, stops breathing and loses conscienceness occasionally, and is ugly to boot; and a few other bodies that are naturally immune to every known disease, are stronger and live much longer, don't need sleep, and are very attractive.
No. Bad analogy.
It's like McDonald's selling shakes that are cold and sweet, with lots of little crumbled up oreo cookies in there, with some mind-altering drug that changes your tastes and perceptions of the English language, so that we have to choose our lifestyle as one of two options: those who know how to write a coherent sentence and get the idea across in just a few, meaningful words with analogies that have some kind of logic to them, or those who write entire paragraphs, nay, I say, even full pages of meaningless drivel that don't seem to make any sense and go on and on while being immune to any form of logic or comprehension.
Or something like that.
So don't eat (drink?) McDonald's shakes - they might have mind-altering chemicals in them, such as those ingested by Parent Poster....
Flaming on!
on
Oracle Linux?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Why not BSD?
1) Lackluster commercial support - Linux tends to have better hardware support, drivers, etc.
2) SMP support on the *BSDs is still young and immature. Linux, in comparison, is quite mature, and does very well on an 8-way system. BSD *might* do it, but much beyond 4-way is a sail into uncharted waters. I'm already running a cluster of 4-way boxen, so 8-way or more is not very far off, given our company's annual 2x growth curve.
3) "It's different". Yeah, it's very similar, but if you're already used to the "Linux" way, having to rediscover how services get initialized (a la/etc/rc) is really a pain.
4) Linux is "good enough". It's obvious that whatever metric is needed to be able to be "enterprise ready", Linux has passed it. Granted, nobody agrees on what that standard is, but most people agree that Linux can do it.
Boy, that takes the cake. GIMP - easy to use? That's up there, among "GW Bush - America's smartest president" or "OJ Simpson Wife Protection Services".
GIMP is a Pain in the A-- to figure out. Gimp2 doubly so. I've been using it (part time) for years, and while I can generally figure out what I need from it eventually, it's like stealing from the local police station - not easy. I've used numerous software packages since Windows 3.0 days, and GIMP has the worst possible interface.
t's just that most people give up rather quickly because they make themselves too fusturated.
Really? So all these years, those OTHER software packages (like Cricket Paint, which on a 486 with Windows 3.1 was far more usable for me than GIMP today) are cases where I didn't make myself too frustrated? BTW: the only thing I don't like about that now ancient copy of Cricket Paint is the 8.3 filename limitation.
"Photoshop is better, it's not Photoshop!" I'm tired of hearing that. Especially from people who complain about having to learn to use Photoshop and the GIMP together, as if using one made them forget how to use the other.
I never mentioned Photoshop, because I've only used it a half-dozen times or so, on a Mac at the Kinkos copy center, renting the computer by the hour. What's interesting is that I always got what I wanted in the first hour with Photoshop on MacOS 7 (or so) much easier than I get what I want on GIMP/CentOS 4.x today on my home systems, after years of off/on familiarity.
I'm not saying that GIMP is a useless sack of crap - I use it regularly to doctor images and resize logos and the like. What I'm saying is that the UI for GIMP is the pits. It just sucks. Maybe GIMPShop is better - I haven't used it - but defending the GIMP UI as "easy to use" is like defending Madonna as "America's most chaste, Christian celebrity".
1) it was the "cool", "edgy" thing to do 2) it has tabbed browsing 3) it was faster than IE.
There's one more: the "Back Button".
Let's say you're typing some big-assed form with 37 textarea fields. You spend 20 minutes typing meaningful stuff into those 37 textarea fields, and press submit.
And let's say you did a stupid somewhere on the form, and the website rejected your form, and you decide to go back and fix it. So you press the back button.
Using IE: You get to type everything in, all over again. aughghgh!
Using Mozilla: everything you typed is restored, and you can fix the stupid in field #21.
It's this feature alone that I'm personally responsible for several hundred Firefox installs! Users of our web-based application are informed on login that they really should be using Firefox, and that due to the cross-platform nature of our application, we code to Firefox before checking in IE: GET FIREFOX.
I have almost 50% Mozilla in my logs, followed by IE and then Safari.
This is why I believe that hosted applications - software as a service - is the logical, commercial answer to OSS intrusion.
You don't want to hire a software firm, you don't want to have the source, particularly. You want/need feature NNN. And that's where hosted software shines. It all comes down to motivation.
If you BUY software, there's little incentive for the developers to fix bugs in it - there's no money in it. But a hosted application has a very different dynamic - if they fix the bugs that are troubling you, you'll continue using their software. It shifts power back towards the consumer, in a way that doesn't leave the consumer in charge of the codebase!
The guy has trouble being right. In addition to being continually proven wrong about the discovery of large new oil fields (which keep turning up -- not to mention old fields unexpectedly finding new life) and the rates at which existing fields will produce, every few years he pushes back his predicted peak.
Fossil Fuels are doomed. Nobody questions whether we'll eventually run out. It's commodity of a fixed amount. Unlike metals and/or many other materials, you can't even recycle it. And it's use is causing serious ecological damage. Even an organization with no interest in doing so like the Bush Administration has had to begrudgingly admit the truth of this.
The real question is: how fast can we advance technology to provide alternate, CLEAN sources of energy, and can we do it in time to save our silly necks?
What if an AI that was only moderately smart built up a social network of "experts" and well-placed non-experts, and found ways to essentially get people to do things for it by promising various inducements? The beauty is, an AI would be very adept at tirelessly managing such a network so that each contributor wasn't just contributing to the AI's primary goal, but also contributing to satisfying the promises made to other contributors.
Another poster mentioned middle management, but my first thought is that you've just described something called an "economy". People get smart and become experts, just so that they can get other experts to do stuff for them!
I spent years building up a career and business as a software engineer. Now, I have hired contractors busy building my home extension, painters painting it, landscapers doing my front lawn, heck I even have a regular maid service to clean my home!
Lots of good stuff comes out of MIT - but this one makes me scratch my head...
Look, corporations *never* operate benevolently. Those that do go out of business pretty quickly. They are always out to make a profit.
This fundraiser is not about being nice. It's a deal that they're making with you: They'll do this fundraiser to raise money for a good cause. They're doing it for publicity. You may or may not bite and send some money to Sudan. Who cares?!?!
It's all about profits, and that's not a bad thing - the profit motive is what creates incentive for XYZ corporation to pay attention to little, itty, bitty you. (en masse) So, appreciate the good cause! Send a little money if you approve! The sooner you do away with the "good corp - bad corp" routine, the sooner you can get on to seeing things as they really are.
Where does it say that e360insight is a spammer? I think that Spamhaus should have to present proof that e360insight is an illegitimate spamming business [spamhaus.org]. I think that's important. If e360insight is a spammer, I'm siding with Spamhaus. Since they have taken the roll of deciding who is spamming and who isn't, I think they could use more accountability [spamhaus.org] than what I find indicated on their website.
Except that Spamhaus is not spam filtering or blocking software. It's merely a DNS database of sources of spam. There are many things you can do with it - you could toggle the use of Spam Assassin or perform extended anti-virus checking against emails from these addresses. You could enable grey-listing only for emails from the spamhaus addresses.
There are lots of things you could do - spamhaus only provides the database.
It's up to the ISP administrator to decide to use spamhaus for blocking email messages.
If I took a list of phone numbers of "bad guys" that I don't like, and published it, is it my fault if somebody uses that with caller ID to make a "phone call blocker"?
Sorry, the judge is simply out in left field, and needs to be beaten about the head and shoulders with a clue stick.
Because he simply did what Windows defaults him to.
Any "non-technical" Windows user would have done (over time) exactly what he did. They'd go to sites, they'd click "yeah whatever" on popup windows, and install stuff they didn't mean to, without reading the warnings. Since Windows Vista(!) sets him up as an administrative user by default, then by default, a Windows install is insecure and prone to viruses, worms, trojans, and other forms of malware.
Try the same thing on a Macintosh, and you might get a very different story. Macs (and RHEL) by default set you up as a non-priviledged user. You don't click "OK", you specify a root password. Big difference, you ask?
Yes, it's a bigger difference than you might think.
The concept that computer technology will improve the lives of children if they only could get access to it strikes me as inane.
You think it's about the Technology??!?!?
OLPC isn't about exposing po' folks to kernels, compilers and binary code. It's about bringing the tremendous wealth of knowledge accessable on the Internet to everybody. In my household, (Myself, Wife, 5 children and usually a couple of their friends) the computers and Internet are a great combination of entertainment, news, and information resource.
"Some things are just not meant to be known. For everything else, there's Google!" is something I've said for years. Whether you're looking to buy a plane, learn Spanish, Latin, or Esperanto, or pick up a song on the guitar, the Internet is an invaluable resource.
Want to make a pump to get water out of the well so that you can water your crops? An Internet search can help you. Want to figure out how come your tomatoes aren't growing like they should? Literacy (and the Internet) can help you discover the proper PH of the soil, and what you could do about it.
Knowledge is power, and the Internet is the largest, most extensive, and most easily distributed form of knowledge mankind has yet invented. It's not a replacement for clean water or sanitation - it's an enabler for clean water, and a communicator of the value of good sanitation.
It's a political force, too. Never doubt the power that fax machines (cheap, rapidly communicated, written communication) had, for example, in the fall of the oppressive Soviet empire. Why else would the Chinese be so paranoid about its use and deployment?
But what gets me is that there are acronyms in EVERY field. In California Education you have acronyms like "CBEDS" (California Basic Educational Data Service) and "CSIS". (California Statewide Identifer System)
In automechanics you have acronyms like TDC (Top Dead Center) and MAFS (Mass Air Flow Sensor)
In Aviation you have acronyms like POH, (Pilot Operator's Handbook) VOR (Very high frequency Omidirectional Ranging) and Vne. (Velocity never to exceed)
In medicine, you have acronyms like ADD, (Attention Deficit Disorder) CPR, (Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation) and ARF. (Acute Renal Failure)
My point is that people are people. When confronted with a highly verbose, technical explanation of a situation, people will tend to condense that using acronyms or field-specific wording in order to save time.
You don't say "Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol" every time you want to say "DHCP", you say "DHCP" because those that are familiar with it need nothing more.
So people outside the industry are unfamiliar with these terms? Well DUH...
I don't expect to know what "California Framing" is in construction, because it's a term specific to contracting, and I'm not a contractor.
Software as a service? Perpetual payments? No thanks.
Unless you've bought the Linux model, or are pirating your O/S, you already are. Or, are you actually still running that ancient copy of Windows 3.1 on your peppy 80286/12?
I didn't think so.
Every few years, you upgrade your O/S. Whether you use the same hardware or buy new hardware is of no consequence. You still do the upgrade, and your $75 every 2-5 years gets sent in to Microsoft. How is that different than spending $19.95/year? That $19.95 gives you updates, follows you through hardware upgrades, etc.
We do something similar with our software. The client pays on a per-customer basis, and in exchange, we let them use the software on as many computers as they like. Backups are inherent in the system, and we "take all the worries" out. In many cases, there's nothing to install (parts of our software stack are web-based) and everybody always gets the updates! Not everybody we've approached has bought into the idea, but enough have that we've grown into a viable business providing a very comfortable income.
The cons far, far outweight the pros for the typical customer.
I think what you meant was
The cons far, far outweight the pros for the typical software pirate.
You personally may not like software sold thusly, but the fact is, it's really not much different than what you're already doing, and there are a number of advantages to doing things this way.
Realistically, how many people actually BACKUP THEIR DATA on a regular basis? How many people ACTUALLY APPLY SOFTWARE PATCHES on a regular basis, unless kicked in the head to do so? "Software as a service" allows many of these indiscretions to be solved by people competent to do so, while in most cases REDUCING the cost of software by leveraging the power of economies of scale. If we can eliminate 1 admin at a client site, we save them $50,000 to $75,000 per year. That goes a long, long, LONG way when negotiating license fees...
Don't like it? Don't buy it. Continue using your Windows 3.1 on your 80286 for as long as you like - remember your license to that is perpetual!
You still have missed something very, very basic. Are you literate?
and they say "no sorry, if we offered licenses for that situation people would just develop proprietary software with the open source Qt and then come to us for a commercial license when they wanted to distribute to their customers.. we wouldn't make money for the 3 years that the software was under development. GO AWAY."
But that's exactly what their business model is! They provide the stuff as GPL, you are free to develop your proprietary application with it, and when you're ready to sell it, you can buy your license(s) then.
This isn't just good business, it's great business! They're giving you everything you need to get started, and only when you are about to sell your completed, closed-source app do they ask for the money. You can heckle about the price all you want, but I suspect, having used GTK, that the money you'd save in dev time using QT would easily offset the expect.
(Quite bluntly, though it works well, GTK's API as of 1.3x is a mess, and I spent lots of time reading documentation in order to figure out the weirds for NNN widget)
It's quite possible to escape characters and be certain that they won't be bypassed.
but it is staggering how many choose not to do at lease strSQL.Replace(";","BLAHBLAH - SIMPLEINJECTDEFEAT"); before executing SQL. Nobody needs to allow ";" in any query.
Which is just retarded. There are many cases where the semi-colon ";" is perfectly legitimately used. For example, this comment contains a number of them. This comment will be saved to a database. Thus, the SQL statement contains semi-colons.
The example you gave proposes that parameterized sql (AKA "prepared statements") is not safe, and then gives an example using non-prepared statements, and even goes so far as to "solve" the problem using (gasp!) a parameterized statement! (Summary: parameterized statements are only safe when you use them?)
It's better to know of what you blather before you blather...
Their spin on licensing is that developers must pay a seat license to develop applications which use their library if the resulting product is going to be "commercial". They specifically say that you can't use the open source version of their product to develop commercial software. Then, in the same breath, they claim that their library is under the GPL, which, if you ask the authors of the GPL they will tell you, has no such restriction.
Uh, you missed something very basic, here.
Let's say I write software to manage the growth rate of grass on your front lawn. I use QT to do so, and I release it, say, as a SourceForge project.
The source is open, whatever. I can sell it for any price I can get, but because I wrote my app with QT, the source code must comply with the GPL. It's gotta be open source, and anybody I sell the app to can sell it, too.
Frequently, a commercial vendor will not want to disclose the source code, and sell just the compiled binaries. (I do this) In this case, if I want the right to sell only binaries, I must purchase the QT license. It's not that the "commercial use" idea is in the GPL, it's that the idea of not disclosing source (usually when software is sold as "commercial" or "closed source") is incompatible with the GPL.
My company is based on using AMD Opteron servers. Our primary web hosting is done on a dual proc Opteron - and it's done very, very well. It, and the Linux (CentOS) OS has performed very, very nicely for us, while our company's growth has mushroomed - more than 2x growth annual. Combine Opterons and SCSI 10k drives, and the performance is nothing to sneeze at.
However, we're about to begin clustering, since load average on the primary application server is approaching 35% (with our growth rate that gives us about 6 months before customers start complaining) and we need high availability!
So the question is: should we stick with Opterons because of binary compatibility (yes, Opterons and Core Duo are binary compatible - but there's less likely a problem between Opterons than between AMD/64 and IA/64)
So, should I seriously consider jumping ship, or should I stick with it, and go with a cluster of rack-mount quad-core Opterons?
So if i "save" a virutal snapshot, and reboot the host, can i bring back the same virtual snapshot?
Sure can.
Furthermore, could it apply to the HDD too, or only to RAM, etc when you restore?
HDD are snapshotted, RAM is suspended. (I don't know of a way to revert to a suspension instance, but that might be a nice feature)
If it could, then wouldn't this be ideal to create a mono-instanced virtual terminal which could always be cleaned of viruses with a "reboot to clean saved snapshot"?
Sure is, that's what it's for. I've used this feature heavily to test installers for my software. It also comes in handy if you want to use a Cr4CKzz keygen, not that I've ever done anything like that!;^)
A VM is just that: a virtual machine. It has its own BIOS. It acts like a full computer. It boots off a (virtual or real) disk. It has "hardware" - video card, sound card, network adapter, etc. all virtual representations of the real machine.
Think of it as a full computer within a window.
If you boot a copy of Windows, in a VM, it nevers "sees" the host system, it sees this virtual machine in such a way as it is indistinguishable from a real one. The only apparent connection between the virtual machine and the host (real) one from the perspective of the VM is that they can ping each other, over the network, same as any other two machines.
The host machine, however, can do a number of things. You can reset the VM, which is like hitting the reset button. You can save a snapshot - sort of like copying the entire HDD and saving a backup copy that you can revert to. You can suspend the VM, which is kind of like a pause button. The suspended VM can then be copied over to another computer, and the pause unset, so a single program can, without terminating or rebooting, be switched to another computer while still running!
This is the basis for using VMs for high availability.
And, it's pretty damned cool. I've had up to 4 virtual machines running on my Linux laptop, all within a virtual LAN. (they were networked, could ping each other, etc., each running applications, etc) It wasn't native speed, but it was quick enough to be useful.
To find out what the article is on about, you must file a Form 9923479821789123 (Freedom of information request) to the Government and wait upto 3 years for delivery of said document.
Actually, that form has been revised. Twice.
Revision history:
9923479821789123.b: Changes word "requires" in "Submission of this form requires a signature" to "necessitates", as is "Submission of this form necessitates a signature".
9923479821789123.c Changes word "a" to "your", as "Submission of this form necessitates a signature" to "Submission of this form necessitates your signature".
You'll need form 9923479821789123.c. Due to important wording changes, the older forms cannot be used. And don't confuse that with form 9923479821749123.c: "Freedom of information query", which is a whole 'nother ball of wax....
I appreciate your philosophy. I looked at this (very attractive but highly impractical) rack wiring, and thought: "whoever did this is far more concerned about looks than functionality". This means, to me, that they don't use this equipment to earn money. Appearances matter, functionality is a distant second.
It's very important to put the money on the stuff that matters! Having pretty wires leading to your servers is irrelevant if your customers never see said servers. Having RELIABLE wires that can be quickly and easily replaced if they go bad is VERY important to your customers when they actually use said servers! A few velcro straps zip-tied to the frames could make this days-long wiring job happen in a few hours, while keeping it quite neat and usable.
Then you have days more time to focus on stuff that matters - like what the servers actually DO...
AOL "splooge"d all over TW. Take a look at the stock price, sometime. Poor Ted Turner. It's not as though the warning signs haven't been all over the place
They'd do much better apart than together. Seriously, T/W cable is all over the freaking place - why isn't AOL involved?
Slashdot Mirror
. It's like McDonald's (no a) selling burgers infected with MCD, and then blaming the humans for being vulnerable to it. Except that unlike humans in the real world (who are all susceptible to MCD), the humans in this crazy analogy universe have a choice between different bodies: one that's not only vulnerable to MCD, but every other disease out there, and has to be constantly immunized against them, and even then performs terribly, stops breathing and loses conscienceness occasionally, and is ugly to boot; and a few other bodies that are naturally immune to every known disease, are stronger and live much longer, don't need sleep, and are very attractive.
No. Bad analogy.
It's like McDonald's selling shakes that are cold and sweet, with lots of little crumbled up oreo cookies in there, with some mind-altering drug that changes your tastes and perceptions of the English language, so that we have to choose our lifestyle as one of two options: those who know how to write a coherent sentence and get the idea across in just a few, meaningful words with analogies that have some kind of logic to them, or those who write entire paragraphs, nay, I say, even full pages of meaningless drivel that don't seem to make any sense and go on and on while being immune to any form of logic or comprehension.
Or something like that.
So don't eat (drink?) McDonald's shakes - they might have mind-altering chemicals in them, such as those ingested by Parent Poster....
Why not BSD?
/etc/rc) is really a pain.
1) Lackluster commercial support - Linux tends to have better hardware support, drivers, etc.
2) SMP support on the *BSDs is still young and immature. Linux, in comparison, is quite mature, and does very well on an 8-way system. BSD *might* do it, but much beyond 4-way is a sail into uncharted waters. I'm already running a cluster of 4-way boxen, so 8-way or more is not very far off, given our company's annual 2x growth curve.
3) "It's different". Yeah, it's very similar, but if you're already used to the "Linux" way, having to rediscover how services get initialized (a la
4) Linux is "good enough". It's obvious that whatever metric is needed to be able to be "enterprise ready", Linux has passed it. Granted, nobody agrees on what that standard is, but most people agree that Linux can do it.
The GIMP is very usable and easy to use.
Boy, that takes the cake. GIMP - easy to use? That's up there, among "GW Bush - America's smartest president" or "OJ Simpson Wife Protection Services".
GIMP is a Pain in the A-- to figure out. Gimp2 doubly so. I've been using it (part time) for years, and while I can generally figure out what I need from it eventually, it's like stealing from the local police station - not easy. I've used numerous software packages since Windows 3.0 days, and GIMP has the worst possible interface.
t's just that most people give up rather quickly because they make themselves too fusturated.
Really? So all these years, those OTHER software packages (like Cricket Paint, which on a 486 with Windows 3.1 was far more usable for me than GIMP today) are cases where I didn't make myself too frustrated? BTW: the only thing I don't like about that now ancient copy of Cricket Paint is the 8.3 filename limitation.
"Photoshop is better, it's not Photoshop!" I'm tired of hearing that. Especially from people who complain about having to learn to use Photoshop and the GIMP together, as if using one made them forget how to use the other.
I never mentioned Photoshop, because I've only used it a half-dozen times or so, on a Mac at the Kinkos copy center, renting the computer by the hour. What's interesting is that I always got what I wanted in the first hour with Photoshop on MacOS 7 (or so) much easier than I get what I want on GIMP/CentOS 4.x today on my home systems, after years of off/on familiarity.
I'm not saying that GIMP is a useless sack of crap - I use it regularly to doctor images and resize logos and the like. What I'm saying is that the UI for GIMP is the pits. It just sucks. Maybe GIMPShop is better - I haven't used it - but defending the GIMP UI as "easy to use" is like defending Madonna as "America's most chaste, Christian celebrity".
And I say this as a regular GIMP user.
As far as reasons to switch:
1) it was the "cool", "edgy" thing to do
2) it has tabbed browsing
3) it was faster than IE.
There's one more: the "Back Button".
Let's say you're typing some big-assed form with 37 textarea fields. You spend 20 minutes typing meaningful stuff into those 37 textarea fields, and press submit.
And let's say you did a stupid somewhere on the form, and the website rejected your form, and you decide to go back and fix it. So you press the back button.
Using IE: You get to type everything in, all over again. aughghgh!
Using Mozilla: everything you typed is restored, and you can fix the stupid in field #21.
It's this feature alone that I'm personally responsible for several hundred Firefox installs! Users of our web-based application are informed on login that they really should be using Firefox, and that due to the cross-platform nature of our application, we code to Firefox before checking in IE: GET FIREFOX.
I have almost 50% Mozilla in my logs, followed by IE and then Safari.
This is why I believe that hosted applications - software as a service - is the logical, commercial answer to OSS intrusion.
You don't want to hire a software firm, you don't want to have the source, particularly. You want/need feature NNN. And that's where hosted software shines. It all comes down to motivation.
If you BUY software, there's little incentive for the developers to fix bugs in it - there's no money in it. But a hosted application has a very different dynamic - if they fix the bugs that are troubling you, you'll continue using their software. It shifts power back towards the consumer, in a way that doesn't leave the consumer in charge of the codebase!
The guy has trouble being right. In addition to being continually proven wrong about the discovery of large new oil fields (which keep turning up -- not to mention old fields unexpectedly finding new life) and the rates at which existing fields will produce, every few years he pushes back his predicted peak.
Fossil Fuels are doomed. Nobody questions whether we'll eventually run out. It's commodity of a fixed amount. Unlike metals and/or many other materials, you can't even recycle it. And it's use is causing serious ecological damage. Even an organization with no interest in doing so like the Bush Administration has had to begrudgingly admit the truth of this.
The real question is: how fast can we advance technology to provide alternate, CLEAN sources of energy, and can we do it in time to save our silly necks?
What if an AI that was only moderately smart built up a social network of "experts" and well-placed non-experts, and found ways to essentially get people to do things for it by promising various inducements? The beauty is, an AI would be very adept at tirelessly managing such a network so that each contributor wasn't just contributing to the AI's primary goal, but also contributing to satisfying the promises made to other contributors.
Another poster mentioned middle management, but my first thought is that you've just described something called an "economy". People get smart and become experts, just so that they can get other experts to do stuff for them!
I spent years building up a career and business as a software engineer. Now, I have hired contractors busy building my home extension, painters painting it, landscapers doing my front lawn, heck I even have a regular maid service to clean my home!
Lots of good stuff comes out of MIT - but this one makes me scratch my head...
Don't forget the counterpart:
Linux Sucks.
Funny - they both return the same approximate number of results...
Look, corporations *never* operate benevolently. Those that do go out of business pretty quickly. They are always out to make a profit.
This fundraiser is not about being nice. It's a deal that they're making with you: They'll do this fundraiser to raise money for a good cause. They're doing it for publicity. You may or may not bite and send some money to Sudan. Who cares?!?!
It's all about profits, and that's not a bad thing - the profit motive is what creates incentive for XYZ corporation to pay attention to little, itty, bitty you. (en masse) So, appreciate the good cause! Send a little money if you approve! The sooner you do away with the "good corp - bad corp" routine, the sooner you can get on to seeing things as they really are.
Where does it say that e360insight is a spammer? I think that Spamhaus should have to present proof that e360insight is an illegitimate spamming business [spamhaus.org]. I think that's important. If e360insight is a spammer, I'm siding with Spamhaus. Since they have taken the roll of deciding who is spamming and who isn't, I think they could use more accountability [spamhaus.org] than what I find indicated on their website.
Except that Spamhaus is not spam filtering or blocking software. It's merely a DNS database of sources of spam. There are many things you can do with it - you could toggle the use of Spam Assassin or perform extended anti-virus checking against emails from these addresses. You could enable grey-listing only for emails from the spamhaus addresses.
There are lots of things you could do - spamhaus only provides the database.
It's up to the ISP administrator to decide to use spamhaus for blocking email messages.
If I took a list of phone numbers of "bad guys" that I don't like, and published it, is it my fault if somebody uses that with caller ID to make a "phone call blocker"?
Sorry, the judge is simply out in left field, and needs to be beaten about the head and shoulders with a clue stick.
Why is this news?
Because he simply did what Windows defaults him to.
Any "non-technical" Windows user would have done (over time) exactly what he did. They'd go to sites, they'd click "yeah whatever" on popup windows, and install stuff they didn't mean to, without reading the warnings. Since Windows Vista(!) sets him up as an administrative user by default, then by default, a Windows install is insecure and prone to viruses, worms, trojans, and other forms of malware.
Try the same thing on a Macintosh, and you might get a very different story. Macs (and RHEL) by default set you up as a non-priviledged user. You don't click "OK", you specify a root password. Big difference, you ask?
Yes, it's a bigger difference than you might think.
You think it's about the Technology??!?!?
OLPC isn't about exposing po' folks to kernels, compilers and binary code. It's about bringing the tremendous wealth of knowledge accessable on the Internet to everybody. In my household, (Myself, Wife, 5 children and usually a couple of their friends) the computers and Internet are a great combination of entertainment, news, and information resource.
"Some things are just not meant to be known. For everything else, there's Google!" is something I've said for years. Whether you're looking to buy a plane, learn Spanish, Latin, or Esperanto, or pick up a song on the guitar, the Internet is an invaluable resource.
Want to make a pump to get water out of the well so that you can water your crops? An Internet search can help you. Want to figure out how come your tomatoes aren't growing like they should? Literacy (and the Internet) can help you discover the proper PH of the soil, and what you could do about it.
Knowledge is power, and the Internet is the largest, most extensive, and most easily distributed form of knowledge mankind has yet invented. It's not a replacement for clean water or sanitation - it's an enabler for clean water, and a communicator of the value of good sanitation.
It's a political force, too. Never doubt the power that fax machines (cheap, rapidly communicated, written communication) had, for example, in the fall of the oppressive Soviet empire. Why else would the Chinese be so paranoid about its use and deployment?
Care to provide a URL?
I think VPNs are too painful to bother with.
But, for our mobile workforce, I use WebDAV on SSL for storage, and use IMAP/SSL for email, with SMTP-auth over SSL for sending email.
In short, the "roaming" systems are basically 100% encrypted - the only thing that isn't is HTTP traffic. (and all our stuff is HTTPS)
Yes, you CAN have a secure infrastructure WITHOUT VPNs. (BTW: the best way to do a VPN is OpenVPN - it "just works" once you get it worked out")
Funny.
But what gets me is that there are acronyms in EVERY field. In California Education you have acronyms like "CBEDS" (California Basic Educational Data Service) and "CSIS". (California Statewide Identifer System)
In automechanics you have acronyms like TDC (Top Dead Center) and MAFS (Mass Air Flow Sensor)
In Aviation you have acronyms like POH, (Pilot Operator's Handbook) VOR (Very high frequency Omidirectional Ranging) and Vne. (Velocity never to exceed)
In medicine, you have acronyms like ADD, (Attention Deficit Disorder) CPR, (Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation) and ARF. (Acute Renal Failure)
My point is that people are people. When confronted with a highly verbose, technical explanation of a situation, people will tend to condense that using acronyms or field-specific wording in order to save time.
You don't say "Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol" every time you want to say "DHCP", you say "DHCP" because those that are familiar with it need nothing more.
So people outside the industry are unfamiliar with these terms? Well DUH...
I don't expect to know what "California Framing" is in construction, because it's a term specific to contracting, and I'm not a contractor.
Software as a service? Perpetual payments? No thanks.
Unless you've bought the Linux model, or are pirating your O/S, you already are. Or, are you actually still running that ancient copy of Windows 3.1 on your peppy 80286/12?
I didn't think so.
Every few years, you upgrade your O/S. Whether you use the same hardware or buy new hardware is of no consequence. You still do the upgrade, and your $75 every 2-5 years gets sent in to Microsoft. How is that different than spending $19.95/year? That $19.95 gives you updates, follows you through hardware upgrades, etc.
We do something similar with our software. The client pays on a per-customer basis, and in exchange, we let them use the software on as many computers as they like. Backups are inherent in the system, and we "take all the worries" out. In many cases, there's nothing to install (parts of our software stack are web-based) and everybody always gets the updates! Not everybody we've approached has bought into the idea, but enough have that we've grown into a viable business providing a very comfortable income.
The cons far, far outweight the pros for the typical customer.
I think what you meant was
The cons far, far outweight the pros for the typical software pirate.
You personally may not like software sold thusly, but the fact is, it's really not much different than what you're already doing, and there are a number of advantages to doing things this way.
Realistically, how many people actually BACKUP THEIR DATA on a regular basis? How many people ACTUALLY APPLY SOFTWARE PATCHES on a regular basis, unless kicked in the head to do so? "Software as a service" allows many of these indiscretions to be solved by people competent to do so, while in most cases REDUCING the cost of software by leveraging the power of economies of scale. If we can eliminate 1 admin at a client site, we save them $50,000 to $75,000 per year. That goes a long, long, LONG way when negotiating license fees...
Don't like it? Don't buy it. Continue using your Windows 3.1 on your 80286 for as long as you like - remember your license to that is perpetual!
You still have missed something very, very basic. Are you literate?
and they say "no sorry, if we offered licenses for that situation people would just develop proprietary software with the open source Qt and then come to us for a commercial license when they wanted to distribute to their customers.. we wouldn't make money for the 3 years that the software was under development. GO AWAY."
But that's exactly what their business model is! They provide the stuff as GPL, you are free to develop your proprietary application with it, and when you're ready to sell it, you can buy your license(s) then.
This isn't just good business, it's great business! They're giving you everything you need to get started, and only when you are about to sell your completed, closed-source app do they ask for the money. You can heckle about the price all you want, but I suspect, having used GTK, that the money you'd save in dev time using QT would easily offset the expect.
(Quite bluntly, though it works well, GTK's API as of 1.3x is a mess, and I spent lots of time reading documentation in order to figure out the weirds for NNN widget)
Anything made can be unmade
It's quite possible to escape characters and be certain that they won't be bypassed.
but it is staggering how many choose not to do at lease strSQL.Replace(";","BLAHBLAH - SIMPLEINJECTDEFEAT"); before executing SQL. Nobody needs to allow ";" in any query.
Which is just retarded. There are many cases where the semi-colon ";" is perfectly legitimately used. For example, this comment contains a number of them. This comment will be saved to a database. Thus, the SQL statement contains semi-colons.
The example you gave proposes that parameterized sql (AKA "prepared statements") is not safe, and then gives an example using non-prepared statements, and even goes so far as to "solve" the problem using (gasp!) a parameterized statement! (Summary: parameterized statements are only safe when you use them?)
It's better to know of what you blather before you blather...
Their spin on licensing is that developers must pay a seat license to develop applications which use their library if the resulting product is going to be "commercial". They specifically say that you can't use the open source version of their product to develop commercial software. Then, in the same breath, they claim that their library is under the GPL, which, if you ask the authors of the GPL they will tell you, has no such restriction.
Uh, you missed something very basic, here.
Let's say I write software to manage the growth rate of grass on your front lawn. I use QT to do so, and I release it, say, as a SourceForge project.
The source is open, whatever. I can sell it for any price I can get, but because I wrote my app with QT, the source code must comply with the GPL. It's gotta be open source, and anybody I sell the app to can sell it, too.
Frequently, a commercial vendor will not want to disclose the source code, and sell just the compiled binaries. (I do this) In this case, if I want the right to sell only binaries, I must purchase the QT license. It's not that the "commercial use" idea is in the GPL, it's that the idea of not disclosing source (usually when software is sold as "commercial" or "closed source") is incompatible with the GPL.
So you buy the other license.
My company is based on using AMD Opteron servers. Our primary web hosting is done on a dual proc Opteron - and it's done very, very well. It, and the Linux (CentOS) OS has performed very, very nicely for us, while our company's growth has mushroomed - more than 2x growth annual. Combine Opterons and SCSI 10k drives, and the performance is nothing to sneeze at.
However, we're about to begin clustering, since load average on the primary application server is approaching 35% (with our growth rate that gives us about 6 months before customers start complaining) and we need high availability!
So the question is: should we stick with Opterons because of binary compatibility (yes, Opterons and Core Duo are binary compatible - but there's less likely a problem between Opterons than between AMD/64 and IA/64)
So, should I seriously consider jumping ship, or should I stick with it, and go with a cluster of rack-mount quad-core Opterons?
So if i "save" a virutal snapshot, and reboot the host, can i bring back the same virtual snapshot?
;^)
Sure can.
Furthermore, could it apply to the HDD too, or only to RAM, etc when you restore?
HDD are snapshotted, RAM is suspended. (I don't know of a way to revert to a suspension instance, but that might be a nice feature)
If it could, then wouldn't this be ideal to create a mono-instanced virtual terminal which could always be cleaned of viruses with a "reboot to clean saved snapshot"?
Sure is, that's what it's for. I've used this feature heavily to test installers for my software. It also comes in handy if you want to use a Cr4CKzz keygen, not that I've ever done anything like that!
A VM is just that: a virtual machine. It has its own BIOS. It acts like a full computer. It boots off a (virtual or real) disk. It has "hardware" - video card, sound card, network adapter, etc. all virtual representations of the real machine.
Think of it as a full computer within a window.
If you boot a copy of Windows, in a VM, it nevers "sees" the host system, it sees this virtual machine in such a way as it is indistinguishable from a real one. The only apparent connection between the virtual machine and the host (real) one from the perspective of the VM is that they can ping each other, over the network, same as any other two machines.
The host machine, however, can do a number of things. You can reset the VM, which is like hitting the reset button. You can save a snapshot - sort of like copying the entire HDD and saving a backup copy that you can revert to. You can suspend the VM, which is kind of like a pause button. The suspended VM can then be copied over to another computer, and the pause unset, so a single program can, without terminating or rebooting, be switched to another computer while still running!
This is the basis for using VMs for high availability.
And, it's pretty damned cool. I've had up to 4 virtual machines running on my Linux laptop, all within a virtual LAN. (they were networked, could ping each other, etc., each running applications, etc) It wasn't native speed, but it was quick enough to be useful.
To find out what the article is on about, you must file a Form 9923479821789123 (Freedom of information request) to the Government and wait upto 3 years for delivery of said document.
Actually, that form has been revised. Twice.
Revision history:
9923479821789123.b: Changes word "requires" in "Submission of this form requires a signature" to "necessitates", as is "Submission of this form necessitates a signature".
9923479821789123.c Changes word "a" to "your", as "Submission of this form necessitates a signature" to "Submission of this form necessitates your signature".
You'll need form 9923479821789123.c. Due to important wording changes, the older forms cannot be used. And don't confuse that with form 9923479821749123.c: "Freedom of information query", which is a whole 'nother ball of wax....
I appreciate your philosophy. I looked at this (very attractive but highly impractical) rack wiring, and thought: "whoever did this is far more concerned about looks than functionality". This means, to me, that they don't use this equipment to earn money. Appearances matter, functionality is a distant second.
It's very important to put the money on the stuff that matters! Having pretty wires leading to your servers is irrelevant if your customers never see said servers. Having RELIABLE wires that can be quickly and easily replaced if they go bad is VERY important to your customers when they actually use said servers! A few velcro straps zip-tied to the frames could make this days-long wiring job happen in a few hours, while keeping it quite neat and usable.
Then you have days more time to focus on stuff that matters - like what the servers actually DO...
AOL "splooge"d all over TW. Take a look at the stock price, sometime. Poor Ted Turner. It's not as though the warning signs haven't been all over the place
They'd do much better apart than together. Seriously, T/W cable is all over the freaking place - why isn't AOL involved?