Dial-up's only real advantage is that it requires no additional equipment or infrastructure, but that won't last long as the equipment becomes more common.
But that's a bigger advantage than perhaps you realize.
Say, you are in a hotel, in a foreign city. Your cell/pager is giving you alerts every 15 minutes that something is very, very wrong with one of your servers.
Dialup will work!
One of the key advanges to dialup is that there is no fancy additional infrastructure - plug the phone into your lap/desk top system, enter phone #, login and password, and you are good to get.
I think a ruling stating that there is no difinitive evidence that there is offending code in linux and that all the code in Linux belongs in the public domain would not be unreasonable.
Except for one small, leetle teensie problem. Linux isn't in the public domain now. Never was.
Hopefully, it never will be.
See, there's this thing, called the GPL. It's a license. A license is a legal mechanism (usually based on contract or some other terms and conditions) that allows you to do something that's otherwise not permitted or is illegal.
For example, there's a driver's license. It's generally illegal to drive - unless you have a license.
Similarly, it's a violation of various statutes to use software developed by somebody else without their permission.
Software in the "public domain" is owned by everybody (and nobody) and you can do whatever you like with "public domain" software.
However, Linux is NOT in the public domain. Linux is a hopelessly tangled mess of software ownership that would be a train wreck if it weren't for the fact that it's licensed (there's that word again!) under the GPL.
Let's hope that Linux stays semi-free - as the real "free" is what killed Unix!
We seem to always use our most modern technology as an analogy for things that are still a little outside our grasp (such as the brain)
What *else* would you do? You cannot communicate a concept that's never before been communicated.
How can I tell you what a tnuctipin is without comparing it to something you've seen before. I might say "zob blogging zow browzner" but that means nothing either.
I have to compare it to something you've already experienced - "It's like a borg, but instead of being humanoid, it looks more like a dragon".
I still haven't really identified what a tnuctipin is, but at least you now have some idea what a tnuctipin looks like.
There is basically one issue with dual booting linux and windows, and that is where to put your data.
I ran into this one some time ago, when I started running Windows inside VMWare on RH Linux. (Which, BTW, is WONDERFUL!)
My solution was to run Samba on the Linux host, and save all files that needed to be exhanged in the home directory of a user name that I logged into from the Windows side as well as from the Linux side.
The files interchange peacefully this way - It's normal for a process (say, precompiling an application) to involve steps performed on both platforms - For example, I might compile the app at the Linux command line, but use a Windows-based installer to make the final software distribution file.
Concerns about usability and GUI design aside, the greatest barrier to wider acceptance I see in the Linux community I see is a sense of elitism to which some members of the community seem to be attached.
But there's a place for this!
As an administrator of servers that process email for many thousands of users, and millions of page views per month, my requirements for an operating system have very little to do with the icons on the desktop, or the exact text of an error message.
Instead, I want something very, very reliable. It'd better have a good security record. It'd better handle patches and upgrades fairly easily. And when things go wrong, I'd better be able to sit down and get down into the nuts and bolts of operation with a minimum of fuss to find the exact problem.
Years of experience using Red Hat Linux have given me all of these. I don't use a GUI of any kind on these servers, and these systems only have a monitor/keyboard via a KVM. On these systems, I'm fiercely territorial.
CLI is a godsend for these kinds of requirements - and these kinds of requirements suit operating systems like BSD or Linux very nicely. We are definitely NOT talking about a system Grandma is ever going to get even close to, except perhaps when pressing "Send/Receive" on her mail client!
Does that make me an "elitist", or does that make me well suited to the task at hand?
Given the enormous amount of power involved, large-scale desalinization really only makes sense with nuclear power.
Most nuclear plants work by boiling purified water, using the steam to turn a turbine.
What if, instead of running it as a closed loop, with the enormous cooling towers, we combined the two together, so that you have water desalinization and nuclear power in one?
This could be, in essence, "free" water!
The main consideration is dealing with the large amount of mineral deposits...
Who's to say that these energy mandates are even achievable, or desirable? Since they won't be affordable, all this does is create a new class of subsidized business, and executives to run the businesses, and higher taxes on (in the case of Scotland) an already under-performing economy.
A government by definition is designed to serve the interests of its constituents. Towards this end it must do things (such as construction zoning) that the people affected may find annoying, or even fight. It's a constant deliberation, considering what is, in fact, "the common good".
Developing alternative energy sources is an honorable, long-term goal, and one I sincerely wish our United States of America would persue with more vigor.
Nuclear energy doesn't have to be the messy, dangerous, unsightly compounds developed in the 1960's - we have micronuclear plants small enough to power a neighborhood, specifically engineered to fail gracefully. Wasn't there an article about this recently where a Japanese company offered to build one for an Alaskan city? (I can't find a link)
Having reviewed the design, I can say that I would *love it* if my community decided to go for one of these. Knowing that my energy use is fundamentally not polluting the environment would give me tremendous peace of mind!
Oh, and a coal-fired plant gives off more radiation than one of these micronuclear plants!
70% of the first 5 posts in a given story get modded to +4 or better if thy contain more than three sentences related to the topic on hand. 93% of all karma whores know that.
... and 82% of statistics are made up by the presenter.
Anybody announcing a "partnership" with Microsoft gets screwed, hard, in the end. This is really an admission by Sun that they're losing.
Badly.
Watch Sun continue to wither on the vine. Watch it slowly shrink, more each year. They might have a "we'll sell Linux to lusers at Walmart!" strategy, but that's simply absurd.
Selling $199 computers at Walmart is not the road ahead for Sun Microsystems!
IBM has grabbed the Linux ball and run like hell with it, and they've done very well. Sun has pussy footed, flip-flopping more often than a spatula at a pancake shop on Linux.
They have no clear strategy. They have no real, effective, business case for using Linux in their organization. And, unless they come with something, and damn quick, the train will have passed them by.
As a post note, Sun made theirs by grabbing a commodity operating system, putting good hardware underneath it, and selling it for a fair price. Why can't they do that anymore?
Real has sucked hard for years. I don't have it installed on my systems anymore, because it was just too loaded with negative crap to be useful. If a stream isn't available on QT or WiMP, I haven't bothered.
So why the sudden rash of Real Player articles? Is it because of some recent change, or is it just because some/. editor got their panties in a bunch?
Could it possibly be that Real actually *wants* marketshare, and has learned that pissing all over their user base is not the best way to do it?
They have *alot* of bad karma to overcome, at this point. I sincerely hope they do it!
If such a development happens, we could very well see software developers forced to buy "malpractice insurance" like doctors/medical professionals - that alone will be enough to kill opensource software, not to mention the plethora of lawsuits and ugly frivoulous lawsuits which've plagued the US medical system and escalated medical costs.
Except that it doesn't quite work like that. Liability is generally based on causality - if you make something happen, especially knowingly, you assume liability for the consequences of that action.
Open Source software puts all the causality on the end user. You have the source code, you are in control. You can do damn well whatever you like. If you run OSS, you are, in part, assuming liability for its use.
However, with closed-source solutions, you cannot change the behavior of the software, thus the author of the software is ultimately responsible for what it does.
Look at it like this: If I commercially manufacture a car and sell it to you, with known defects that cause you injury, I likely will hold some liability for your woes. However, if I make plans for a car, call it a "concept", and give you (for free) the plans for it, and you make a car that then injures you, how much liability would I assume?
But think about it. It's ALL THE SAME THING. Over and over again at different levels with slightly different purposes.
This could be applied to computing technology, or to biology. I mean, think about the redundancy in our bodies! Billions upon BILLIONS of cells, over and over again, at different levels, with slightly different purposes...
Redundancy creates reliability. Your computer crashes = no big deal to me. Same in reverse. This improves reliability in the whole.
Now, what we really need is to obviate the hardware. This is what has really been a challenge, and it may be answered partially by the technology google has developed.
There is lots of evidence to support the idea that our brains are wired much like this - thoughts occur throughout the brain, not just in one little piece.
The whole brain works together, as a sort of cloud, to think, pose and resolve problems, remember, etc. Some parts play more of a role in various aspects than others, but the loss of any single cell has a negligable effect on the whole.
Clustering is supposed to emulate this idea.
When will computing get like this? I shouldn't have to worry about what system does what - I should just connect to the cloud and be on with it!
a) FC1 updates RH9 fine b) FC is exactly what old RHL (7.x etc) was about.
Except that FC really *isn't* like 7. I've been finding all *kinds* of glitches, huccups, and burps in FC 1. For example, KMail crashes. Constantly. I unload and reload KDE, it works. One time. Then crashes. Constantly.
I've been using the same KMail files since RH 6.x, and I've never before had problems like this.
Here's another one: yum -y update frequently fails to find dependencies, and I haven't installed a single RPM except via yum.
Yuck. I'm not happy. RH has kinda screwed the pooch on this one - I was a happy RH network customer, with over a dozen machines.
Now, I'm left with a dozen headaches, and given the abrupt license changes, I feel very ill at ease with RH.
What's next?
From where I sit, RH is about to have their lunch eaten by Novell/Suse, which is kinda sad since they had so much community support!
One of the major points of Unix design is that small programs are more usefull then big ones. Ones that incorporate a menu-driven user interface are less usable then ones that can receive input and output.
Which only makes sense when you are a programmer. End users aren't going to learn the gritty on the "cat" command.
When you see "user friendly" read that as "gets done what the user needs done without too much fuss". Deliver that, and you'll get paid.
I can just see it now - you're dealing with a 55 year old carpet layer, and you want to teach him the value of "cat"?
How about "Click here to get a list of the customers for the day, and click the red button when you're done installing their carpets..."?
The latter is user-doable. The former is an exercise in futility and frustration.
From your web page, it seems that your business depends completely on products that run on Windows;
Which is interesting; my clients use everything from Mac OSX to a blackberry or Palm O/S cell phone, as well as Windows lap/desk tops. A simple `nmap -p80 -O effortlessis.com` would show how badly you muffed this.
"Highest levels of security" refers to the fact that we regularly use encryption for many of our products, and routinely perform process, package, and port scans on the servers, as well as apply patches regularly and backup nightly offsite.
How would you describe this to a PHB or mid-level executive?
This is a silly claim. In the past, M$ has tied code "improvement" to profit improvement.
Who else has the resources and hard cash on hand to develop it?
Microsoft spent many many billions on "Internet enabling" their stuff - who's to say that, to maintain relevance, they won't do it again?
MS has more cash on hand than many smaller countries gross in their annual economy! Combine that with a real, honest intention to get this right, and you'll have a clear and mighty powerful force.
Slashdot Mirror
You've got my interest. Care to provide an email address or Phone # I can contact you at? You can get an email address from my website. (See sig)
-Ben
While the Internet burns to the ground I can route packets back and forth with impunity between my 486 laptop and my Pentium II Server!! WooHoo!
It's not a 486 laptop - it's a PENTIUM-100 you insensitive clod!
I've heard about Mozilla's "RAD" capabilities, and I've heard all about "how flexible" it all is...
But - is there a single application that I'd consider using, written with Moz, other than Moz itself?
Anybody? One? Just one?
Dial-up's only real advantage is that it requires no additional equipment or infrastructure, but that won't last long as the equipment becomes more common.
But that's a bigger advantage than perhaps you realize.
Say, you are in a hotel, in a foreign city. Your cell/pager is giving you alerts every 15 minutes that something is very, very wrong with one of your servers.
Dialup will work!
One of the key advanges to dialup is that there is no fancy additional infrastructure - plug the phone into your lap/desk top system, enter phone #, login and password, and you are good to get.
I think a ruling stating that there is no difinitive evidence that there is offending code in linux and that all the code in Linux belongs in the public domain would not be unreasonable.
Except for one small, leetle teensie problem. Linux isn't in the public domain now. Never was.
Hopefully, it never will be.
See, there's this thing, called the GPL. It's a license. A license is a legal mechanism (usually based on contract or some other terms and conditions) that allows you to do something that's otherwise not permitted or is illegal.
For example, there's a driver's license. It's generally illegal to drive - unless you have a license.
Similarly, it's a violation of various statutes to use software developed by somebody else without their permission.
Software in the "public domain" is owned by everybody (and nobody) and you can do whatever you like with "public domain" software.
However, Linux is NOT in the public domain. Linux is a hopelessly tangled mess of software ownership that would be a train wreck if it weren't for the fact that it's licensed (there's that word again!) under the GPL.
Let's hope that Linux stays semi-free - as the real "free" is what killed Unix!
We seem to always use our most modern technology as an analogy for things that are still a little outside our grasp (such as the brain)
What *else* would you do? You cannot communicate a concept that's never before been communicated.
How can I tell you what a tnuctipin is without comparing it to something you've seen before. I might say "zob blogging zow browzner" but that means nothing either.
I have to compare it to something you've already experienced - "It's like a borg, but instead of being humanoid, it looks more like a dragon".
I still haven't really identified what a tnuctipin is, but at least you now have some idea what a tnuctipin looks like.
There is basically one issue with dual booting linux and windows, and that is where to put your data.
I ran into this one some time ago, when I started running Windows inside VMWare on RH Linux. (Which, BTW, is WONDERFUL!)
My solution was to run Samba on the Linux host, and save all files that needed to be exhanged in the home directory of a user name that I logged into from the Windows side as well as from the Linux side.
The files interchange peacefully this way - It's normal for a process (say, precompiling an application) to involve steps performed on both platforms - For example, I might compile the app at the Linux command line, but use a Windows-based installer to make the final software distribution file.
Concerns about usability and GUI design aside, the greatest barrier to wider acceptance I see in the Linux community I see is a sense of elitism to which some members of the community seem to be attached.
But there's a place for this!
As an administrator of servers that process email for many thousands of users, and millions of page views per month, my requirements for an operating system have very little to do with the icons on the desktop, or the exact text of an error message.
Instead, I want something very, very reliable. It'd better have a good security record. It'd better handle patches and upgrades fairly easily. And when things go wrong, I'd better be able to sit down and get down into the nuts and bolts of operation with a minimum of fuss to find the exact problem.
Years of experience using Red Hat Linux have given me all of these. I don't use a GUI of any kind on these servers, and these systems only have a monitor/keyboard via a KVM. On these systems, I'm fiercely territorial.
CLI is a godsend for these kinds of requirements - and these kinds of requirements suit operating systems like BSD or Linux very nicely. We are definitely NOT talking about a system Grandma is ever going to get even close to, except perhaps when pressing "Send/Receive" on her mail client!
Does that make me an "elitist", or does that make me well suited to the task at hand?
I think playing computer games is 'cool' and I am very well aware that when I'm fragging a few people online I'm not bettering the human race.
Yeah, but do you have fun when you're fragging?
Fun between you and a few others improves the quality of life for you and those few others - and that's bettering the human race, too.
Given the enormous amount of power involved, large-scale desalinization really only makes sense with nuclear power.
Most nuclear plants work by boiling purified water, using the steam to turn a turbine.
What if, instead of running it as a closed loop, with the enormous cooling towers, we combined the two together, so that you have water desalinization and nuclear power in one?
This could be, in essence, "free" water!
The main consideration is dealing with the large amount of mineral deposits...
Who's to say that these energy mandates are even achievable, or desirable? Since they won't be affordable, all this does is create a new class of subsidized business, and executives to run the businesses, and higher taxes on (in the case of Scotland) an already under-performing economy.
A government by definition is designed to serve the interests of its constituents. Towards this end it must do things (such as construction zoning) that the people affected may find annoying, or even fight. It's a constant deliberation, considering what is, in fact, "the common good".
Developing alternative energy sources is an honorable, long-term goal, and one I sincerely wish our United States of America would persue with more vigor.
Nuclear energy doesn't have to be the messy, dangerous, unsightly compounds developed in the 1960's - we have micronuclear plants small enough to power a neighborhood, specifically engineered to fail gracefully. Wasn't there an article about this recently where a Japanese company offered to build one for an Alaskan city? (I can't find a link)
Having reviewed the design, I can say that I would *love it* if my community decided to go for one of these. Knowing that my energy use is fundamentally not polluting the environment would give me tremendous peace of mind!
Oh, and a coal-fired plant gives off more radiation than one of these micronuclear plants!
I'm still using 1.5 Mb ArcNet, you insensitive clod!
70% of the first 5 posts in a given story get modded to +4 or better if thy contain more than three sentences related to the topic on hand. 93% of all karma whores know that.
... and 82% of statistics are made up by the presenter.
Anybody announcing a "partnership" with Microsoft gets screwed, hard, in the end. This is really an admission by Sun that they're losing.
Badly.
Watch Sun continue to wither on the vine. Watch it slowly shrink, more each year. They might have a "we'll sell Linux to lusers at Walmart!" strategy, but that's simply absurd.
Selling $199 computers at Walmart is not the road ahead for Sun Microsystems!
IBM has grabbed the Linux ball and run like hell with it, and they've done very well. Sun has pussy footed, flip-flopping more often than a spatula at a pancake shop on Linux.
They have no clear strategy. They have no real, effective, business case for using Linux in their organization. And, unless they come with something, and damn quick, the train will have passed them by.
As a post note, Sun made theirs by grabbing a commodity operating system, putting good hardware underneath it, and selling it for a fair price. Why can't they do that anymore?
You actually think you wouldn't get sued by at least one person that tried to build the car? ... from plans they obtained for free?
I think not.
Real has sucked hard for years. I don't have it installed on my systems anymore, because it was just too loaded with negative crap to be useful. If a stream isn't available on QT or WiMP, I haven't bothered.
/. editor got their panties in a bunch?
So why the sudden rash of Real Player articles? Is it because of some recent change, or is it just because some
Could it possibly be that Real actually *wants* marketshare, and has learned that pissing all over their user base is not the best way to do it?
They have *alot* of bad karma to overcome, at this point. I sincerely hope they do it!
If such a development happens, we could very well see software developers forced to buy "malpractice insurance" like doctors/medical professionals - that alone will be enough to kill opensource software, not to mention the plethora of lawsuits and ugly frivoulous lawsuits which've plagued the US medical system and escalated medical costs.
Except that it doesn't quite work like that. Liability is generally based on causality - if you make something happen, especially knowingly, you assume liability for the consequences of that action.
Open Source software puts all the causality on the end user. You have the source code, you are in control. You can do damn well whatever you like. If you run OSS, you are, in part, assuming liability for its use.
However, with closed-source solutions, you cannot change the behavior of the software, thus the author of the software is ultimately responsible for what it does.
Look at it like this: If I commercially manufacture a car and sell it to you, with known defects that cause you injury, I likely will hold some liability for your woes. However, if I make plans for a car, call it a "concept", and give you (for free) the plans for it, and you make a car that then injures you, how much liability would I assume?
Very little. (IHMO, IANAL, etc)
But think about it. It's ALL THE SAME THING. Over and over again at different levels with slightly different purposes.
This could be applied to computing technology, or to biology. I mean, think about the redundancy in our bodies! Billions upon BILLIONS of cells, over and over again, at different levels, with slightly different purposes...
Redundancy creates reliability. Your computer crashes = no big deal to me. Same in reverse. This improves reliability in the whole.
Now, what we really need is to obviate the hardware. This is what has really been a challenge, and it may be answered partially by the technology google has developed.
There is lots of evidence to support the idea that our brains are wired much like this - thoughts occur throughout the brain, not just in one little piece.
The whole brain works together, as a sort of cloud, to think, pose and resolve problems, remember, etc. Some parts play more of a role in various aspects than others, but the loss of any single cell has a negligable effect on the whole.
Clustering is supposed to emulate this idea.
When will computing get like this? I shouldn't have to worry about what system does what - I should just connect to the cloud and be on with it!
a) FC1 updates RH9 fine
b) FC is exactly what old RHL (7.x etc) was about.
Except that FC really *isn't* like 7. I've been finding all *kinds* of glitches, huccups, and burps in FC 1. For example, KMail crashes. Constantly. I unload and reload KDE, it works. One time. Then crashes. Constantly.
I've been using the same KMail files since RH 6.x, and I've never before had problems like this.
Here's another one: yum -y update frequently fails to find dependencies, and I haven't installed a single RPM except via yum.
Yuck. I'm not happy. RH has kinda screwed the pooch on this one - I was a happy RH network customer, with over a dozen machines.
Now, I'm left with a dozen headaches, and given the abrupt license changes, I feel very ill at ease with RH.
What's next?
From where I sit, RH is about to have their lunch eaten by Novell/Suse, which is kinda sad since they had so much community support!
I *told* you not to put the helmets in the dryer!
Amazing, eh? I use such a script similar called "make_cd.php" (yes, a PHP script)
Run with no parameters, it makes a CD of the CWD. Give it a parameter of an iso file and it makes a CD from that.
Very, VERY handy, and done just the way I'd like it!
One of the major points of Unix design is that small programs are more usefull then big ones. Ones that incorporate a menu-driven user interface are less usable then ones that can receive input and output.
Which only makes sense when you are a programmer. End users aren't going to learn the gritty on the "cat" command.
When you see "user friendly" read that as "gets done what the user needs done without too much fuss". Deliver that, and you'll get paid.
I can just see it now - you're dealing with a 55 year old carpet layer, and you want to teach him the value of "cat"?
How about "Click here to get a list of the customers for the day, and click the red button when you're done installing their carpets..."?
The latter is user-doable. The former is an exercise in futility and frustration.
$ du -sh Mail
1.6G Mail
Hmmm. That's just for about 5 years worth of email. Do you think they'd have a pay-for "power user" option?
From your web page, it seems that your business depends completely on products that run on Windows;
Which is interesting; my clients use everything from Mac OSX to a blackberry or Palm O/S cell phone, as well as Windows lap/desk tops. A simple `nmap -p80 -O effortlessis.com` would show how badly you muffed this.
"Highest levels of security" refers to the fact that we regularly use encryption for many of our products, and routinely perform process, package, and port scans on the servers, as well as apply patches regularly and backup nightly offsite.
How would you describe this to a PHB or mid-level executive?
This is a silly claim. In the past, M$ has tied code "improvement" to profit improvement.
Who else has the resources and hard cash on hand to develop it?
Microsoft spent many many billions on "Internet enabling" their stuff - who's to say that, to maintain relevance, they won't do it again?
MS has more cash on hand than many smaller countries gross in their annual economy! Combine that with a real, honest intention to get this right, and you'll have a clear and mighty powerful force.