It really bugs me that/. editors treat dupes as a sort of charming fact of life, as if dupes are among those imperfections that make life worth living. Dupes suck, if for no other reason, because they fork discussion, confuse the archive and make searches less precise.
If you watch television, you'll notice after a while that shows frequently show several times during the week so that people with differing schedules get a chance to watch the show.
It's a "dupe", and really only gets annoying when you have a Tivo recording every Star Trek episode. Why is it so horrible to dupe every so often, and give everybody a chance to consider the minutae?
It's not as though media needs to be a normalized database, people...
1) Position your hands 1 key to the right, that your left hand's pointer finger is on "g" and the right hand is on "k".
2) Type something stupid, eg "computer" or "trouble"
3) Note that it now says "vp,[iyrt" or "ytpin;r".
This works best if you don't watch the screen while you type. Try other variations - move the hands one key towards the top, so that "slashdot" becomes "woqwye9", or more the right hand right, and the left hand up.... "slashdot" becomes "w;qwkept".
I always thought that Windows made it because Windows was a logical extension of MS-DOS, and people started to "upgrade" to Windows 3.0 and 3.1 when Windows became palatable enough for users to use..... Perhaps I missed something or overlooked something.
You're right about MS-DOS. Being on the IBM platform, and since the platform was opened by litigation for exploitation by 3rd parties, DOS was on the most open computing platform.
Windows was a rather different story. Some of the intertia driving windows was the logical progression by Microsoft, but there were at least two other contenders for the PC/GUI space - GEOS and OS/2. (I'm ignoring Desqview, which was a textual multitasking tool that rocked in its day)
GEOS wasn't multi-tasking, and there really was no 3rd party software for it, so it wasn't considered very open, though it seemed to me that it was the easiest to use.
OS/2 was being brought by IBM right about the time they tried to commandeer the PC industry with their PS/2 hardware line. It was easy to confuse the two, and in any event, OS/2 wasn't multi-vendor. (as a hardware vendor, would YOU intentionally load software that allows your largest competitor to profit more, if there was another alternative?)
So the big makers (Dell, Gateway, Compaq, etc) steered clear of OS/2, leaving the winner (by default) of Microsoft Windows.
I think the problem is the developer culture that built up around Windows, coupled with its changing ideas of how to separate code and data.
Man, I hear you! I've written software using the %HOMEDIR% variable, as you suggest, but the software I wrote is multi-user capable. Meaning, that multiple people might use it, and each user has their own set of data.
This works well in the Win98 world, but on XP, if several people share a computer, and somebody logs off the O/S and logs back in as another user, all their data is "gone" since %HOMEDIR% has changed.
We can't require the user accounts, since many of our customers are still using 98/ME.
So now what?
I haven't had the chance to investigate thoroughly, but I've heard that even when things are "locked down" on an XP box, you can still create directories off the root directory!
If we kept the files there, in a subdir, it just might make everything work without the above problems. Anybody else care to comment?
The Trek TV series has a HUGE following. They are blowing a HUGE opportunity, here.
What if they had a blog for the show, slashdot style? Complete with potential plots for shows that people could comment on and moderate?
Can you imagine the positive feedback loop that could be created here? Rather than spend insane amounts of money keeping track of the history of the Star Trek universe, they could do a dual-benefit of off-loading much of the fact-checking to the community, and also provide a sense of ownership by the community!
How many good plots could be written by people, and you know people would cook them up for FREE....
I dunno. But it seems to me an amazing opportunity, and they're pissing off their community by not listening.
A man in the middle attack can get it and doesn't even involve compromising the CD. Any router between the customer and the bank could be compromised and reroute all packets to a different destination. The most vulnerable will be the customer's router in thier home.
Boy howdy... you weren't awake in class that day that the teacher presented SSL, were you?
And you consider yourself worthy to post in the haven of geeks?
SSL consists of two parts:
1) Certificate exchange - based on a set of trusted certificates, and using dual-key cryptography, the web server you're talking to is validated as being the server you intended to talk to. This process is 100% encrypted and highly resistant to man-in-the-middle attacks.
2) General communication - once the dual-key encryption and certificate exchange, a symmetric key is agreed upon by the two hosts, which is used for the duration of the communications transfer. Symmetric keys perform much better than dual-key cryptography, which is computationally expensive.
During an SSL session, NOTHING IS SENT UNENCRYPTED, and the entire session is HIGHLY RESISTANT TO MAN-IN-THE-MIDDLE ATTACKS.
Presumably, the bank would have a browser with a certificate preloaded on the disk that would accept their website's certificate!
Good move Google but what happens if every news organization sues or threatens to sue? Where shall we get our news from?
Google apparently misunderstood the problem. It's not about AFP, it's about news agencies generally. After AFP, what's next?
A news agency really outta have the option (however stupid) of removing their works from google news, and it should be fairly simple, straightforward, and easy.
What I don't understand is why Google hasn't already done this?
You're asking for trouble if you update without installing. I ended up with both 1.0 and 1.0.1 in my Add/Remove Programs (win98), and removing the former broke the latter (and broke its uninstall function). The only way to get rid of 1.0.1 was to reinstall it to restore the uninstaller, then try again.
With this, our office will have "extensions" in various cities and states, all with the same incoming and outgoing, local CA phone numbers. The PBX will be connected to standard, hard-wired telephone lines, and will operate and act as normal telephone extensions.
If you picked up one of these phones and dialed "9", you'd get a dial tone in CA, wherever you happened to be. This is a big feature, since our business does business remotely all the time, and having people in different offices in different cities on the same "internal" PBX is a BIG DEAL.
The phone may be in Phx, AZ. The dialtone comes from a switch box in Northern CA. So, what should happen when I dial 911? What happens when I dial 911 from San Diego, and get an operator near Truckee, 600 miles away? My own home/office is not much closer, at 591 miles.
This 911 locality problem is one that's only really beginning to surface, and will get alot worse before it gets better...
science is, instead, a process by which we attempt to attain and refine knowledge.
This is perhaps the shortest, most succinct expression of an idea I've espoused for years. Well done!
When I hear "but it's only a theory..." as though that proved that Yahweh did it, I've learned to respond by having the person explain what a theory is.
And, once I get a definition, something like "a shadowy, unproven idea", I re-iterate, and make sure that the definition they have is very, very clear.
Then, I ask them about the theory of gravity, and if, because it's just a 'theory', would they be willing to jump off a bridge?
Well, it's a theory isn't it?!?! What about the theory of electro-magnetism? Would you turn on your radio, trusting that this theory upon which almost all of modern society is based on, is true? Why?
Why would you trust these theories any more than evolution?
That's when I discuss what science is, that it's not a bunch of facts, but instead a process for discovering the truth about how the world works.
Sad, but in today's world, you have to have a prepared plan for dealing with bigoted, dogmatic idiots, and the best way to do that is to give them enough rope to hang themselves before you say much of anything at all.
Meaning, he buys hardware from a distributor, and with a $4 screwdriver, assembles said hardware and pitches it a customer.
I've been there, and done that. Trying to make one that's WINDOWS compatable is a royal pain in the arse, let alone OSS.
When I ran a store, we had a few lines of hardware that seemed to be more or less compatable with each other. We had to continually buy hardware of all kinds and test them to see how they did together.
It was always shocking to me how much of the hardware just didn't pass our testing. Our testing was pretty extensive, and consequently, the hardware lines we stocked were fairly limited.
Also, it was commonplace to have hardware revisions that would change without any notice whatsoever, ruining compatability.
At the time (ending Spring of 2000) one of the *WORST* offenders was Asus. On the other hand, a few relatively unknown brands (DFI and A-trend) scored rather well in our testing, and were cheaper to boot!
My best advice would be to simply test some hardware before you sell it, and see how compatable it is with your favorite distro.
I get asked to see my ID about 2/3 of the time. If I don't get asked, I complain. If I'm spending over $100, and don't get asked, I frequently complain to a manager, too.
See, when push comes to shove, your security is really your own problem, and if you don't take simple steps like above, you deserve what you get. (EG: NADA)
If even 5% of everybody did what I suggest, this wouldn't be a problem...
Whether or not you think it was foolish of Company A to keep that same app for 7 years - as I did - it was and remains a usable app, if not for forced incompatibilities by your favorite fucking company.)
Ok, try this on for size: How many apps written in Perl 4 remain? Huh?
Or, PHP 3? How well supported is PHP 3?
WHATTAYA MEAN? Perl 4 isn't supported any more, and contains numerous serious security holes? PHP3 isn't supported any more and contains serious security holes? Yeah, you can GET it, but how many KNOWN SECURITY HOLES exist in something that hasn't been updated since 2000?
I though OSS was immune to this kind of thing?
OSS is nice. I'm part of the OSS crowd, and sleep very well at night as a result. But it's not a panacea.
I've spent years writing huge applications in PHP/Postgres. I feel the pain of PHP5 breathing down my neck, and I know I have, at most, another 2 years before I have to make the switch, however painful.
Adding to my pain is the fact that PHP5 is bound to GTK2, meaning my PHP-GTK applications will have to be rebuilt, as well.
Any programmer who complains of being stranded because his old language has died or fallen out of favor and he's unwilling to learn the new language needs to get the hell out of my industry.
Except that isn't the core issue.
The issue is that many of these organizations have *huge* investments in VB6-based software. Like it, hate it, it's there, working, and solving *REAL* needs.
There are people who are paid full-time to work on these softwares - and they are justifiably upset. Wouldn't YOU be? If you ran a business, and had invested $500,000 into specialized software, to now find that your software will be no longer supported - aren't you going to be just a little teensy bit pissed off?
Just because the music industry has changed the copyright rules to their advantage, doesn't mean downloaders are thieves. Unless I am copying the material and selling it for a profit, or claiming I am the artist, they have no leg to stand on!
Really? Tell that to the judges and lawyers... If you'd said "I don't think they have..." first, I might have bought it. But, they definitely have a leg to stand on...
Open Source Developer Labs chief executive Stuart Cohen said the lawsuits [SCO suing everyone in sight over supposed issues with Linux] were "the best thing that ever happened to Linux"
Gee. Wouldn't "the best thing that ever happened" be, eh, it getting developed in the first place???
I bought a hard drive from Computer3g aka ViewMicro and had one DOA. They refused to honor their 7-day DOA warrantee, and I found out that the drives weren't even supported by the manufacturer!
It's (to me) a case of fraud, and it goes on from there, if you're interested.
WinFS will actually be a layer of abstraction above whatever underlying filesystem (FAT32/NTFS) the system is running on. It won't be a new filesystem at all. It holds metadata about each file and makes it easier and faster to find things.
That said, slocate has a few clear deficiencies...
1) It *ONLY* indexes the name! Why not grab the modify time, etc and allow for neat searches, like "all files called foo updated between feb 11 and feb 19th". Yes, you can use find. But find can take hours or days. (see point #2) Now, what you have to do is use locate, then pipe through ls, and then grep out from there - messy and cumbersome at best.
2) On a system with lots and lots of files, the updatedb command can take hours or days! Why isn't there an API that can be hooked to, so that writing files to disk also updates the slocate database? Would it be possible to write something that reads the journal on an ext3 system for recent changes, avoiding the expensive, time-consuming poll of every single file on the system?
Yes, I know I haven't fixed it already, but despite having the itch, I haven't the skills to hack together fixes to these issues. How long after WinFS before somebody suddenly gets similar ideas with the slocate codebase?
Can the slocate people beat Microsoft to the punch? Stay tuned, ladies, gentlemen, and Unix...
But, this is SLASHDOT...
on
Sim Epidemic
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
To understand what a social network really is and how it can be used for epidemiology, imagine the daily activities and contacts of a single hypothetical adult, Ann....
Of course, this is slashdot. If Ann was a slashdotter, her epidemiology would consist only of contact between Ann and her parents, at the dinner table, during the approximately 45 minutes per day that Ann leaves the cellar.
Perhaps it should read something like:
To understand what a social network really is and how it can be used for epidemiology, one must not be a slashdotter. Imagine the daily activities and contacts of a single hypothetical adult, Ann....
Since it is a corporate machine unfortunately I do have to accept some of the security upgrades. When I am told to reboot I phone my 'helpdesk', and remind them that I am doing this at their behest, and that their lives will be a misery if it falls over. Suddenly the number of compulsory upgrades drops.
So, what I'm hearing is... you run an insecure, un-patched server with numerous known vulnerabilities and have been lucky enough to not be hacked in such a way as anybody's noticed yet - and you're willing to bet "the balls" of your corporation on it, anyway. (Either that, or the server is inconsequential to the organization)
I patch all my dozen or so RH Linux servers monthly - and have NEVER borked a server with a security update. Sorry, but I don't see an equivalency, here.
It's the machine that earns me money, WTF would I mess with it?
Because... you're paid to? Or, do they pay you to not "mess with" anything? If you aren't confident enough in what you do to even apply security updates, I'd suggest that you are an incompetent admin, and don't deserve whatever paycheck you are getting.
I find my OS relatively removed from my productivity, after certain settling-in pains.
I will agree, to a point - that point being when the O/S resettles itself. Drivers get screwy, system slows down, registry gets loaded with crap, a virus comes along...
But, I've been using the exact same filesystem for over 5 years on my personal system (now a laptop) with no trouble. I upgrade O/S, all my data stays. Bookmarks, documents, preferences, etc. Nice, sweet, simple.
I've never had to reload Linux to fix a problem, but I can't name how many times I've had to do the same to fix various Windows issues. (can't comment on OSX - I *almost* bought that OMFG-sexy Mac cube a few years ago, but I held off and stuck w/Linux, a decision I haven't regretted)
I guess if you mean "productive TODAY" I'd agree - the O/S is largely irrelevant. But what about tomorrow?
Software has a very high cost to make. It requires highly skilled laborers, and lots of time to make. Making high-quality software is difficult, and by the nature of things it's difficult for a programmer to make software that's easy to use.
Notice I never argued against open licenses. Also, I never argued that software costs little to reproduce. It costs about $0.50 to make a CD-R, if you don't mind a vanilla, paper case.
I argued (and still argue) that software piracy reduces the actual saleability of soft wares. It essentially makes a vendor compete against himself, and therefore should legitimitely be called "theft", because doing so takes value away from the goods that highly qualified personnel spent lots of time to create.
If you want to gouge people, then you can hardly blame them for using it and not paying you.
Don't like the price? Don't buy it. Think it's wrong? Write your own open-licensed product and give it away. There's certainly plentyofpeoplewhoare.
Why do you feel the need to justify theft? Your arguments cast a pall from those of us who are dedicated to using and supporting truly open, free licenses on software!
But if you're one of those people who thinks that Diebold, a multi-thousand person corporation that prides itself on reliable customer interface systems, is literally conspiring to rig US elections on the basis of offhanded campaign quotes in the context of GOP fundraising by Diebold's CEO, however inappropriate they were, then I suppose none of what I just said will matter to you.
You are clearly missing the point.
If I have to wonder if my vote has been tampered with, there's a problem. A system without checks and balances, and no way to provide a public disclosure of a failure is certain to be abused by somebody, somewhere.
Why not require a system that provides some insurance against hackers, crackers, and malicious actions?
I remember districts that recorded more votes than there were registered members. I remember "lost" votes. I remember machines that crashed, losing data on them. And we'll never really know if it had, in fact, been hacked.
In light of the terrible identity theft disclosures of recent, the worst of which was only disclosed because of a California law requiring such disclosure, can you honestly say that you "trust the machine"?
You require a receipt for your banking transactions, but not for voting purposes? How much does your right to vote mean to you, anyway?
If it's ok that I demand open source on my servers, why not in my voting system? And, what's wrong with a law that requires a paper trail?
We could've had mechanical voting machines a hundred years ago, which, if you think about it, electronic voting is essentially the same thing. I feel now as they did back then - paper was better.
Give me an audit trail! Our right to vote is too important to throw away for the sake of convenience!
Slashdot Mirror
It really bugs me that /. editors treat dupes as a sort of charming fact of life, as if dupes are among those imperfections that make life worth living. Dupes suck, if for no other reason, because they fork discussion, confuse the archive and make searches less precise.
If you watch television, you'll notice after a while that shows frequently show several times during the week so that people with differing schedules get a chance to watch the show.
It's a "dupe", and really only gets annoying when you have a Tivo recording every Star Trek episode. Why is it so horrible to dupe every so often, and give everybody a chance to consider the minutae?
It's not as though media needs to be a normalized database, people...
Or how about this other trick:
1) Position your hands 1 key to the right, that your left hand's pointer finger is on "g" and the right hand is on "k".
2) Type something stupid, eg "computer" or "trouble"
3) Note that it now says "vp,[iyrt" or "ytpin;r".
This works best if you don't watch the screen while you type. Try other variations - move the hands one key towards the top, so that "slashdot" becomes "woqwye9", or more the right hand right, and the left hand up.... "slashdot" becomes "w;qwkept".
I always thought that Windows made it because Windows was a logical extension of MS-DOS, and people started to "upgrade" to Windows 3.0 and 3.1 when Windows became palatable enough for users to use..... Perhaps I missed something or overlooked something.
You're right about MS-DOS. Being on the IBM platform, and since the platform was opened by litigation for exploitation by 3rd parties, DOS was on the most open computing platform.
Windows was a rather different story. Some of the intertia driving windows was the logical progression by Microsoft, but there were at least two other contenders for the PC/GUI space - GEOS and OS/2. (I'm ignoring Desqview, which was a textual multitasking tool that rocked in its day)
GEOS wasn't multi-tasking, and there really was no 3rd party software for it, so it wasn't considered very open, though it seemed to me that it was the easiest to use.
OS/2 was being brought by IBM right about the time they tried to commandeer the PC industry with their PS/2 hardware line. It was easy to confuse the two, and in any event, OS/2 wasn't multi-vendor. (as a hardware vendor, would YOU intentionally load software that allows your largest competitor to profit more, if there was another alternative?)
So the big makers (Dell, Gateway, Compaq, etc) steered clear of OS/2, leaving the winner (by default) of Microsoft Windows.
Ergo, Windows was the most open.
I think the problem is the developer culture that built up around Windows, coupled with its changing ideas of how to separate code and data.
Man, I hear you! I've written software using the %HOMEDIR% variable, as you suggest, but the software I wrote is multi-user capable. Meaning, that multiple people might use it, and each user has their own set of data.
This works well in the Win98 world, but on XP, if several people share a computer, and somebody logs off the O/S and logs back in as another user, all their data is "gone" since %HOMEDIR% has changed.
We can't require the user accounts, since many of our customers are still using 98/ME.
So now what?
I haven't had the chance to investigate thoroughly, but I've heard that even when things are "locked down" on an XP box, you can still create directories off the root directory!
If we kept the files there, in a subdir, it just might make everything work without the above problems. Anybody else care to comment?
The Trek TV series has a HUGE following. They are blowing a HUGE opportunity, here.
What if they had a blog for the show, slashdot style? Complete with potential plots for shows that people could comment on and moderate?
Can you imagine the positive feedback loop that could be created here? Rather than spend insane amounts of money keeping track of the history of the Star Trek universe, they could do a dual-benefit of off-loading much of the fact-checking to the community, and also provide a sense of ownership by the community!
How many good plots could be written by people, and you know people would cook them up for FREE....
I dunno. But it seems to me an amazing opportunity, and they're pissing off their community by not listening.
A man in the middle attack can get it and doesn't even involve compromising the CD. Any router between the customer and the bank could be compromised and reroute all packets to a different destination. The most vulnerable will be the customer's router in thier home.
Boy howdy... you weren't awake in class that day that the teacher presented SSL, were you?
And you consider yourself worthy to post in the haven of geeks?
SSL consists of two parts:
1) Certificate exchange - based on a set of trusted certificates, and using dual-key cryptography, the web server you're talking to is validated as being the server you intended to talk to. This process is 100% encrypted and highly resistant to man-in-the-middle attacks.
2) General communication - once the dual-key encryption and certificate exchange, a symmetric key is agreed upon by the two hosts, which is used for the duration of the communications transfer. Symmetric keys perform much better than dual-key cryptography, which is computationally expensive.
During an SSL session, NOTHING IS SENT UNENCRYPTED, and the entire session is HIGHLY RESISTANT TO MAN-IN-THE-MIDDLE ATTACKS.
Presumably, the bank would have a browser with a certificate preloaded on the disk that would accept their website's certificate!
Good move Google but what happens if every news organization sues or threatens to sue? Where shall we get our news from?
Google apparently misunderstood the problem. It's not about AFP, it's about news agencies generally. After AFP, what's next?
A news agency really outta have the option (however stupid) of removing their works from google news, and it should be fairly simple, straightforward, and easy.
What I don't understand is why Google hasn't already done this?
You're asking for trouble if you update without installing. I ended up with both 1.0 and 1.0.1 in my Add/Remove Programs (win98), and removing the former broke the latter (and broke its uninstall function). The only way to get rid of 1.0.1 was to reinstall it to restore the uninstaller, then try again.
Dontcha love a well-designed operating system?
My company is considering a purchase which includes a PBX based on Asterisk.
With this, our office will have "extensions" in various cities and states, all with the same incoming and outgoing, local CA phone numbers. The PBX will be connected to standard, hard-wired telephone lines, and will operate and act as normal telephone extensions.
If you picked up one of these phones and dialed "9", you'd get a dial tone in CA, wherever you happened to be. This is a big feature, since our business does business remotely all the time, and having people in different offices in different cities on the same "internal" PBX is a BIG DEAL.
The phone may be in Phx, AZ. The dialtone comes from a switch box in Northern CA. So, what should happen when I dial 911? What happens when I dial 911 from San Diego, and get an operator near Truckee, 600 miles away? My own home/office is not much closer, at 591 miles.
This 911 locality problem is one that's only really beginning to surface, and will get alot worse before it gets better...
Mod or reply, mod or reply... GRRRR... REPLY!
science is, instead, a process by which we attempt to attain and refine knowledge.
This is perhaps the shortest, most succinct expression of an idea I've espoused for years. Well done!
When I hear "but it's only a theory..." as though that proved that Yahweh did it, I've learned to respond by having the person explain what a theory is.
And, once I get a definition, something like "a shadowy, unproven idea", I re-iterate, and make sure that the definition they have is very, very clear.
Then, I ask them about the theory of gravity, and if, because it's just a 'theory', would they be willing to jump off a bridge?
Well, it's a theory isn't it?!?! What about the theory of electro-magnetism? Would you turn on your radio, trusting that this theory upon which almost all of modern society is based on, is true? Why?
Why would you trust these theories any more than evolution?
That's when I discuss what science is, that it's not a bunch of facts, but instead a process for discovering the truth about how the world works.
Sad, but in today's world, you have to have a prepared plan for dealing with bigoted, dogmatic idiots, and the best way to do that is to give them enough rope to hang themselves before you say much of anything at all.
This guy is "in the hardware business".
Meaning, he buys hardware from a distributor, and with a $4 screwdriver, assembles said hardware and pitches it a customer.
I've been there, and done that. Trying to make one that's WINDOWS compatable is a royal pain in the arse, let alone OSS.
When I ran a store, we had a few lines of hardware that seemed to be more or less compatable with each other. We had to continually buy hardware of all kinds and test them to see how they did together.
It was always shocking to me how much of the hardware just didn't pass our testing. Our testing was pretty extensive, and consequently, the hardware lines we stocked were fairly limited.
Also, it was commonplace to have hardware revisions that would change without any notice whatsoever, ruining compatability.
At the time (ending Spring of 2000) one of the *WORST* offenders was Asus. On the other hand, a few relatively unknown brands (DFI and A-trend) scored rather well in our testing, and were cheaper to boot!
My best advice would be to simply test some hardware before you sell it, and see how compatable it is with your favorite distro.
Good luck.
I wrote the above on my Credit Card.
I get asked to see my ID about 2/3 of the time. If I don't get asked, I complain. If I'm spending over $100, and don't get asked, I frequently complain to a manager, too.
See, when push comes to shove, your security is really your own problem, and if you don't take simple steps like above, you deserve what you get. (EG: NADA)
If even 5% of everybody did what I suggest, this wouldn't be a problem...
Whether or not you think it was foolish of Company A to keep that same app for 7 years - as I did - it was and remains a usable app, if not for forced incompatibilities by your favorite fucking company.)
Ok, try this on for size: How many apps written in Perl 4 remain? Huh?
Or, PHP 3? How well supported is PHP 3?
WHATTAYA MEAN? Perl 4 isn't supported any more, and contains numerous serious security holes? PHP3 isn't supported any more and contains serious security holes? Yeah, you can GET it, but how many KNOWN SECURITY HOLES exist in something that hasn't been updated since 2000?
I though OSS was immune to this kind of thing?
OSS is nice. I'm part of the OSS crowd, and sleep very well at night as a result. But it's not a panacea.
I've spent years writing huge applications in PHP/Postgres. I feel the pain of PHP5 breathing down my neck, and I know I have, at most, another 2 years before I have to make the switch, however painful.
Adding to my pain is the fact that PHP5 is bound to GTK2, meaning my PHP-GTK applications will have to be rebuilt, as well.
UGH. Is it really any different?
Any programmer who complains of being stranded because his old language has died or fallen out of favor and he's unwilling to learn the new language needs to get the hell out of my industry.
Except that isn't the core issue.
The issue is that many of these organizations have *huge* investments in VB6-based software. Like it, hate it, it's there, working, and solving *REAL* needs.
There are people who are paid full-time to work on these softwares - and they are justifiably upset. Wouldn't YOU be? If you ran a business, and had invested $500,000 into specialized software, to now find that your software will be no longer supported - aren't you going to be just a little teensy bit pissed off?
Just because the music industry has changed the copyright rules to their advantage, doesn't mean downloaders are thieves. Unless I am copying the material and selling it for a profit, or claiming I am the artist, they have no leg to stand on!
Really? Tell that to the judges and lawyers... If you'd said "I don't think they have..." first, I might have bought it. But, they definitely have a leg to stand on...
Open Source Developer Labs chief executive Stuart Cohen said the lawsuits [SCO suing everyone in sight over supposed issues with Linux] were "the best thing that ever happened to Linux"
Gee. Wouldn't "the best thing that ever happened" be, eh, it getting developed in the first place???
(sits and thinks...)
Well, sorta my own.
I'm currently battling with computer3g and have been documenting their mis-steps, one after another.
I bought a hard drive from Computer3g aka ViewMicro and had one DOA. They refused to honor their 7-day DOA warrantee, and I found out that the drives weren't even supported by the manufacturer!
It's (to me) a case of fraud, and it goes on from there, if you're interested.
Ohh and then, umm 12% of sales form iPods? Holy shit thats a lot of fricking money...
And that's why they'll lose. It's rediculous, and with those kinds of demands, they'll get their Ass3s handed back to them on a platter.
Now, if they'd asked for 0.05%, then Apple just might've paid it...
WinFS will actually be a layer of abstraction above whatever underlying filesystem (FAT32/NTFS) the system is running on. It won't be a new filesystem at all. It holds metadata about each file and makes it easier and faster to find things.
Gee... sounds an awful lot like slocate, long available on Unix. A nice tool to have, mesays.
That said, slocate has a few clear deficiencies...
1) It *ONLY* indexes the name! Why not grab the modify time, etc and allow for neat searches, like "all files called foo updated between feb 11 and feb 19th". Yes, you can use find. But find can take hours or days. (see point #2) Now, what you have to do is use locate, then pipe through ls, and then grep out from there - messy and cumbersome at best.
2) On a system with lots and lots of files, the updatedb command can take hours or days! Why isn't there an API that can be hooked to, so that writing files to disk also updates the slocate database? Would it be possible to write something that reads the journal on an ext3 system for recent changes, avoiding the expensive, time-consuming poll of every single file on the system?
Yes, I know I haven't fixed it already, but despite having the itch, I haven't the skills to hack together fixes to these issues. How long after WinFS before somebody suddenly gets similar ideas with the slocate codebase?
Can the slocate people beat Microsoft to the punch? Stay tuned, ladies, gentlemen, and Unix...
To understand what a social network really is and how it can be used for epidemiology, imagine the daily activities and contacts of a single hypothetical adult, Ann....
Of course, this is slashdot. If Ann was a slashdotter, her epidemiology would consist only of contact between Ann and her parents, at the dinner table, during the approximately 45 minutes per day that Ann leaves the cellar.
Perhaps it should read something like:
To understand what a social network really is and how it can be used for epidemiology, one must not be a slashdotter. Imagine the daily activities and contacts of a single hypothetical adult, Ann....
Since it is a corporate machine unfortunately I do have to accept some of the security upgrades. When I am told to reboot I phone my 'helpdesk', and remind them that I am doing this at their behest, and that their lives will be a misery if it falls over. Suddenly the number of compulsory upgrades drops.
So, what I'm hearing is... you run an insecure, un-patched server with numerous known vulnerabilities and have been lucky enough to not be hacked in such a way as anybody's noticed yet - and you're willing to bet "the balls" of your corporation on it, anyway. (Either that, or the server is inconsequential to the organization)
I patch all my dozen or so RH Linux servers monthly - and have NEVER borked a server with a security update. Sorry, but I don't see an equivalency, here.
It's the machine that earns me money, WTF would I mess with it?
Because... you're paid to? Or, do they pay you to not "mess with" anything? If you aren't confident enough in what you do to even apply security updates, I'd suggest that you are an incompetent admin, and don't deserve whatever paycheck you are getting.
It's funny, but what you suggest
really happened with a Novell server over a 4-year period at the University of North Carolina...
Is there some other reference to your apartment I'm missing?
I find my OS relatively removed from my productivity, after certain settling-in pains.
I will agree, to a point - that point being when the O/S resettles itself. Drivers get screwy, system slows down, registry gets loaded with crap, a virus comes along...
But, I've been using the exact same filesystem for over 5 years on my personal system (now a laptop) with no trouble. I upgrade O/S, all my data stays. Bookmarks, documents, preferences, etc. Nice, sweet, simple.
I've never had to reload Linux to fix a problem, but I can't name how many times I've had to do the same to fix various Windows issues. (can't comment on OSX - I *almost* bought that OMFG-sexy Mac cube a few years ago, but I held off and stuck w/Linux, a decision I haven't regretted)
I guess if you mean "productive TODAY" I'd agree - the O/S is largely irrelevant. But what about tomorrow?
Remember, because it costs almost nothing to make
Oops. Typo? Freudian slip?
Software has a very high cost to make. It requires highly skilled laborers, and lots of time to make. Making high-quality software is difficult, and by the nature of things it's difficult for a programmer to make software that's easy to use.
Notice I never argued against open licenses. Also, I never argued that software costs little to reproduce. It costs about $0.50 to make a CD-R, if you don't mind a vanilla, paper case.
I argued (and still argue) that software piracy reduces the actual saleability of soft wares. It essentially makes a vendor compete against himself, and therefore should legitimitely be called "theft", because doing so takes value away from the goods that highly qualified personnel spent lots of time to create.
If you want to gouge people, then you can hardly blame them for using it and not paying you.
Don't like the price? Don't buy it. Think it's wrong? Write your own open-licensed product and give it away. There's certainly plenty of people who are.
The ONLY time your arguments might have weight is in the case of a monopoly, and in these United States, we have protections for that, too.
Why do you feel the need to justify theft? Your arguments cast a pall from those of us who are dedicated to using and supporting truly open, free licenses on software!
But if you're one of those people who thinks that Diebold, a multi-thousand person corporation that prides itself on reliable customer interface systems, is literally conspiring to rig US elections on the basis of offhanded campaign quotes in the context of GOP fundraising by Diebold's CEO, however inappropriate they were, then I suppose none of what I just said will matter to you.
You are clearly missing the point.
If I have to wonder if my vote has been tampered with, there's a problem. A system without checks and balances, and no way to provide a public disclosure of a failure is certain to be abused by somebody, somewhere.
Why not require a system that provides some insurance against hackers, crackers, and malicious actions?
I remember districts that recorded more votes than there were registered members. I remember "lost" votes. I remember machines that crashed, losing data on them. And we'll never really know if it had, in fact, been hacked.
In light of the terrible identity theft disclosures of recent, the worst of which was only disclosed because of a California law requiring such disclosure, can you honestly say that you "trust the machine"?
You require a receipt for your banking transactions, but not for voting purposes? How much does your right to vote mean to you, anyway?
If it's ok that I demand open source on my servers, why not in my voting system? And, what's wrong with a law that requires a paper trail?
We could've had mechanical voting machines a hundred years ago, which, if you think about it, electronic voting is essentially the same thing. I feel now as they did back then - paper was better.
Give me an audit trail! Our right to vote is too important to throw away for the sake of convenience!