This is a somewhat informative article, but it somewhat misses the point.
People think of the "X-Files" when they think of conspiracies... and from what I can tell, it doesn't work like that.
Another word for conspiracy might be "bias". Everybody's covering their own ass, to a degree, and everybody's conspiring, as well.
We/.'ers like to conspire against M$ because we are very critical of their actions, and we feel quite justified in doing so.
Is it really so hard to believe that Microsoft employees feel similarly?
They aren't "breaking any laws", (in their own eyes) and as a previous poster noted, they "always think they are right". Given their track record of crushing any/all competition, and their incredible stock growth, why wouldn't they?
They've won every major market battle they've ever fought! They are simply engaging open-source now, and they are well in hand in winning that one too!
(IE is up to what, 80% of the browser market?) Mozilla might end up being good, but so was DR DOS and Lotus Ami-Pro! Notice their ASP-centric announcements of recent.
To hell be damned with the DOJ and "open-source".. they are taking the Internet to the "next level" (incredible marketing!) and make the standards for which we've fought so hard for, and which empowered the Internet we know today as irrelevant as the Rich Text file format. Look at IE 5.5 for a first taste of more to come.
We'll either hear about this for years until it, in some form, is a reality, or it will disappear completely within a year. I think the former is the case.
In fact, while I use Linux on 2 of my 3 home computers, and work as a database programmer with Linux as my main development platform, I'm using IE right now on the Windows computer!
Is it a conspiracy when people "do the usual" and throw a favor or two to their own cause or their friends?
-Ben
PS: The DOJ will pass and have little/no effect long term - the DOJ is too busy tip-toeing around the egg-shells to have any real meaningful effect.
They split the company in the one way that it won't do *anything*! IE is the new devel platform, they should've had them separate IE and everything else, and force publication of *all* API calls for IE!
Fascinating article... and a clear description of what really *HAS* been happening - I bookmarked it!
I can hardly think of *anybody* who thinks we aren't in the middle of massive social change.
Unfortunately, the price of social change is often steep, and the spread of its payment is often uneven.
If what you say is true, if you *have* been discriminated against thanks to the publication of private information unrelated to your public performance, then you are paying a price the rest of us will ultimately benefit from.
But how many people will lose their jobs to personal matters before it becomes understood that it really doesn't matter?
I can't say... but I can say that as time passes, this type of thing is certain to change.
So you wank to pictures of cows? So what? Is it strange? Yes! Is it bizarre? Yes! Is it a crime?
No.
Me thinks that over time, stuff like this (cows, etc) will be increasingly ignored, as the "shock value" it holds will attenuate.
I mean, who *doesn't* know about Bill, Monica, and Cuban cigars?
In every proceeding I've ever seen, as soon as the assertion is made that the Judge is operating despite a conflict of interest, the case is postponed, another judge is called, and yet *another* judge reviews the matter of the *original* judge.
If the third judge thinks the first one is OK, then it *might* go back to the first judge, or any other judge.
"crime against a business" is not a crime against people? Every *dime* worth of bubble gum that gets shop-lifted out of your local 7-11 must be paid either by the owner of the establishment (and thus his wife and 3 kids) or by the consumer in the form of higher prices. Sometimes, I think this whole "us vs them" attitude towards businesses is really getting rediculous. A business is simply a legally structured organization of *people*, who get paid based on the profits of the group at large. A company does bad, gets robbed, etc, and GOOD PEOPLE LOSE JOBS. -Ben
.. sounded an awful lot like this thing - (at least, from listening to the MP3s on my satellite/sub speaker systems...
Why would somebody go to so much effort to make an instrument that sounds so much like a 1962 Dodge Van with a V-8 318 motor, weak lifters, a dirty carburetor, leaky exhaust, and ~400,000 miles?
I'll agree that Linux is NOT YET ready for the average Joe, but I'll also assert from experience that it's more ready than many give it... My biggest problem, as a (now ex-)system vendor is that with Windows, it's so !#!@#$!%!#$ easy for somebody who knows NOTHING about the computer to completely fsck the !@#$!@ thing up! When do warrantee issues and user error separate? General policy is that software is SEP. (Somebody else's problem) But, when the customer has had the computer a WEEK, that's pretty hard for customer to swallow. So you re-load their computer, for free. And, a month later, it happens again. So you re-load their computer, for free. And, two weeks later... So you try to charge this time, customer gets real mad, 'cause last time you did it for free! So you re-load their computer, for free... Get the idea? Set up Linux, deal with lots of questions for about two weeks... and it works. No crashes. No viruses. No "Blue-light special Internet crashed my computer!". It just works. For months and years. Is it ready for hard-core gamer freak who loves to install stuff he/she barely understands? No. Is it ready for Super-small business who has to run this !@#$ proprietary software? No. Is it ready for people who need a word-processor, a browser, play some MP3s, and modest gaming? Closer than you might think. -Ben
BITCH ALL YOU WANT TO about source forge, but from where I stand they're doing allright by me.
Source forge also runs (or at least has alot of involvement with) phpbuilder.com. (via Tim Perdue) phpbuilder is, for me, a budding php programmer, a godsend!
There are LOTS of source code snippets, lots of user feedback, a clear, well-organized API with lots of articles on howto this and that, and I have many times gone back and forth to sourceforge to get what I wanted.
It's possible that the stuff you all are complaining about is stuff that they aren't trying to do?
Look before you leap. Be careful not to bite the hand that feeds you, or you just might end up hungry.
I've tried Perl. It's ugly, hard to read, often looks like line noise, and often requires mucho effort - just to properly decode an input stream.
Flexible, almost to a fault, as there are 35+ ways to do the same thing - which way do you know, and does the next guy to read your code know your way?
Hard to maintain.
Recently, I've been picking up PHP, and THIS IS IT. Clear, elegant, straightforward, and embedded right into the HTML. (So, when writing a form, you are looking at both the original form and the code to decipher it - right in the same page!)
It looks an awful lot like C. It's almost impossible to write the "line noise" that often passes for the painfully terse Perl "power-coding".
It just does alot in a single bit. Submit a form, with data type {input name=blah type=text} and in the receiving php file, there's a variable called $blah with whatever was typed in the form! (Boom-Bam-Slam!) Complete with html tags, "'", """, and so on!
Since it runs along with apache, (rather than causing a process fork) it runs very quickly. Very very VERY scalable. Easy to maintain, as it's easy to read. Supports OOP, classes, functions, includes, the whole nine yards.
Did I mention that I was completely sold on PHP?
-Ben
Re:No such thing as a "DSL modem" or a "cable mode
on
WinDSL Coming?
·
· Score: 2
Sorry!
A DSL "modem" *is* a modem. DSL uses an analog AM frequency to broadcast its signal over telephone lines.
To use a DSL modem, you need an R/F seperator that splits the DC telephone signal from the AM radio frequency sent to the DSL modem.
It is also for this reason that DSL service gets slower the further you are from the central telephone office. (And they can't reasonably guarantee 384k download speeds over 18,000 feet, so they just don't service beyond that point)
Digital to Digital? Naw. Same thing all over again, just faster.
At least you don't get a busy signal when you are online!
-Ben
PS: it ROCKS! 1.5 Mb 24x7, static IP, 384k uploads. Downloaded NS 4.7 FULL RELEASE (18 MB) in under 5 minutes... my poor 6.4 GB HD just don't cut the mustard anymore...
Hmm... Well, I never used OS/2 - but for a firewall, RH 5.2 on a 250 MB 486 (8 or so ram) and a couple of cheezo ISA NICs does the job rather well... (forget cheap, how 'bout FREE!?)
I have a 486/25 I use as a modem server - it does rather well, now having about 6 months of 24x7 uptime... and showing no sign of letting up. I sold the monitor a while back since I didn't need it.
OS/2 might be cool, but Linux just takes the cake. (I once wrote a relational database in BASH, the command shell, for god's sakes!)
Dude, I mean, really! Linux is an outgrowth of Unix! It's clear that, as previously posted, you are a Linux nautzee. I wonder if you actually USE it at home? And, if you do, do you actually DO ANYTHING besides post at/.? Linux has its strengths, (great server platform!) but also its weaknesses. (games, anyone?) Over-enthusiasm is just as bad as apathy! -Ben
Slashdot Mirror
This is a somewhat informative article, but it somewhat misses the point.
/.'ers like to conspire against M$ because we are very critical of their actions, and we feel quite justified in doing so.
People think of the "X-Files" when they think of conspiracies... and from what I can tell, it doesn't work like that.
Another word for conspiracy might be "bias". Everybody's covering their own ass, to a degree,
and everybody's conspiring, as well.
We
Is it really so hard to believe that Microsoft employees feel similarly?
They aren't "breaking any laws", (in their own eyes) and as a previous poster noted, they "always think they are right". Given their track record of crushing any/all competition, and their incredible stock growth, why wouldn't they?
They've won every major market battle they've ever fought! They are simply engaging open-source now, and they are well in hand in winning that one too!
(IE is up to what, 80% of the browser market?) Mozilla might end up being good, but so was DR DOS and Lotus Ami-Pro! Notice their ASP-centric announcements of recent.
To hell be damned with the DOJ and "open-source".. they are taking the Internet to the "next level" (incredible marketing!) and make the standards for which we've fought so hard for, and which empowered the Internet we know today as irrelevant as the Rich Text file format. Look at IE 5.5 for a first taste of more to come.
We'll either hear about this for years until it, in some form, is a reality, or it will disappear completely within a year. I think the former is the case.
In fact, while I use Linux on 2 of my 3 home computers, and work as a database programmer with Linux as my main development platform, I'm using IE right now on the Windows computer!
Is it a conspiracy when people "do the usual" and throw a favor or two to their own cause or their friends?
-Ben
PS: The DOJ will pass and have little/no effect long term - the DOJ is too busy tip-toeing around the egg-shells to have any real meaningful effect.
They split the company in the one way that it won't do *anything*! IE is the new devel platform, they should've had them separate IE and everything else, and force publication of *all* API calls for IE!
Fascinating article... and a clear description of what really *HAS* been happening - I bookmarked it!
I can hardly think of *anybody* who thinks we aren't in the middle of massive social change.
Unfortunately, the price of social change is often steep, and the spread of its payment is often uneven.
If what you say is true, if you *have* been discriminated against thanks to the publication of private information unrelated to your public performance, then you are paying a price the rest of us will ultimately benefit from.
But how many people will lose their jobs to personal matters before it becomes understood that it really doesn't matter?
I can't say... but I can say that as time passes, this type of thing is certain to change.
So you wank to pictures of cows? So what? Is it strange? Yes! Is it bizarre? Yes! Is it a crime?
No.
Me thinks that over time, stuff like this (cows, etc) will be increasingly ignored, as the "shock value" it holds will attenuate.
I mean, who *doesn't* know about Bill, Monica, and Cuban cigars?
And, anymore, who cares?
My $0.02
In every proceeding I've ever seen, as soon as the assertion is made that the Judge is operating despite a conflict of interest, the case is postponed, another judge is called, and yet *another* judge reviews the matter of the *original* judge.
If the third judge thinks the first one is OK, then it *might* go back to the first judge, or any other judge.
This is in California.
-Ben
Yeah, pinhole thru your secured gateway to a lowly 486 or something in the back that does FTP ONLY.
Make sure it's on its own NIC too...
You're never paranoid about security until you've been hacked!
-Ben
"crime against a business" is not a crime against people? Every *dime* worth of bubble gum that gets shop-lifted out of your local 7-11 must be paid either by the owner of the establishment (and thus his wife and 3 kids) or by the consumer in the form of higher prices. Sometimes, I think this whole "us vs them" attitude towards businesses is really getting rediculous. A business is simply a legally structured organization of *people*, who get paid based on the profits of the group at large. A company does bad, gets robbed, etc, and GOOD PEOPLE LOSE JOBS. -Ben
.. sounded an awful lot like this thing - (at least, from listening to the MP3s on my satellite/sub speaker systems...
Why would somebody go to so much effort to make an instrument that sounds so much like a 1962 Dodge Van with a V-8 318 motor, weak lifters, a dirty carburetor, leaky exhaust, and ~400,000 miles?
Please read the "Halloween Papers" again!
This is "embrace and extend" -- applied to the whole internet!
"Next Generation Internet"... Sounds GREAT, eh?
Open-source is now being challenged.
-Ben
I'll agree that Linux is NOT YET ready for the average Joe, but I'll also assert from experience that it's more ready than many give it... My biggest problem, as a (now ex-)system vendor is that with Windows, it's so !#!@#$!%!#$ easy for somebody who knows NOTHING about the computer to completely fsck the !@#$!@ thing up! When do warrantee issues and user error separate? General policy is that software is SEP. (Somebody else's problem) But, when the customer has had the computer a WEEK, that's pretty hard for customer to swallow. So you re-load their computer, for free. And, a month later, it happens again. So you re-load their computer, for free. And, two weeks later... So you try to charge this time, customer gets real mad, 'cause last time you did it for free! So you re-load their computer, for free... Get the idea? Set up Linux, deal with lots of questions for about two weeks... and it works. No crashes. No viruses. No "Blue-light special Internet crashed my computer!". It just works. For months and years. Is it ready for hard-core gamer freak who loves to install stuff he/she barely understands? No. Is it ready for Super-small business who has to run this !@#$ proprietary software? No. Is it ready for people who need a word-processor, a browser, play some MP3s, and modest gaming? Closer than you might think. -Ben
As the (now former) owner of a Computer Shop, I can say I'm surprised by the number of people who buy a computer --- and the killer app is Solitaire!
Don't knock solitaire. My wife likes KDE soooo much more now that it includes "freecell"!
Of course, I've always been somewhat partial to minesweeper...
How much would either of you want for DOS 1.x in a box? (OK if box is opened) I'm quite serious. -Ben
BITCH ALL YOU WANT TO about source forge, but from where I stand they're doing allright by me.
Source forge also runs (or at least has alot of involvement with) phpbuilder.com. (via Tim Perdue) phpbuilder is, for me, a budding php programmer, a godsend!
There are LOTS of source code snippets, lots of user feedback, a clear, well-organized API with lots of articles on howto this and that, and I have many times gone back and forth to sourceforge to get what I wanted.
It's possible that the stuff you all are complaining about is stuff that they aren't trying to do?
Look before you leap. Be careful not to bite the hand that feeds you, or you just might end up hungry.
-Ben
I've tried Perl. It's ugly, hard to read, often looks like line noise, and often requires mucho effort - just to properly decode an input stream.
Flexible, almost to a fault, as there are 35+ ways to do the same thing - which way do you know, and does the next guy to read your code know your way?
Hard to maintain.
Recently, I've been picking up PHP, and THIS IS IT. Clear, elegant, straightforward, and embedded right into the HTML. (So, when writing a form, you are looking at both the original form and the code to decipher it - right in the same page!)
It looks an awful lot like C. It's almost impossible to write the "line noise" that often passes for the painfully terse Perl "power-coding".
It just does alot in a single bit. Submit a form, with data type
{input name=blah type=text}
and in the receiving php file, there's a variable called $blah with whatever was typed in the form! (Boom-Bam-Slam!) Complete with html tags, "'", """, and so on!
Since it runs along with apache, (rather than causing a process fork) it runs very quickly. Very very VERY scalable. Easy to maintain, as it's easy to read. Supports OOP, classes, functions, includes, the whole nine yards.
Did I mention that I was completely sold on PHP?
-Ben
Sorry!
A DSL "modem" *is* a modem. DSL uses an analog AM frequency to broadcast its signal over telephone lines.
To use a DSL modem, you need an R/F seperator that splits the DC telephone signal from the AM radio frequency sent to the DSL modem.
It is also for this reason that DSL service gets slower the further you are from the central telephone office. (And they can't reasonably guarantee 384k download speeds over 18,000 feet, so they just don't service beyond that point)
Digital to Digital? Naw. Same thing all over again, just faster.
At least you don't get a busy signal when you are online!
-Ben
PS: it ROCKS! 1.5 Mb 24x7, static IP, 384k uploads. Downloaded NS 4.7 FULL RELEASE (18 MB) in under 5 minutes... my poor 6.4 GB HD just don't cut the mustard anymore...
Hmm... Well, I never used OS/2 - but for a firewall, RH 5.2 on a 250 MB 486 (8 or so ram) and a couple of cheezo ISA NICs does the job rather well... (forget cheap, how 'bout FREE!?)
I have a 486/25 I use as a modem server - it does rather well, now having about 6 months of 24x7 uptime... and showing no sign of letting up. I sold the monitor a while back since I didn't need it.
OS/2 might be cool, but Linux just takes the cake. (I once wrote a relational database in BASH, the command shell, for god's sakes!)
Dude, I mean, really! Linux is an outgrowth of Unix! It's clear that, as previously posted, you are a Linux nautzee. I wonder if you actually USE it at home? And, if you do, do you actually DO ANYTHING besides post at /.? Linux has its strengths, (great server platform!) but also its weaknesses. (games, anyone?) Over-enthusiasm is just as bad as apathy! -Ben
Huh? Get off it, man!
I bought a Red Hat 6.0 CD from Cheap Bytes. I've set up now 7 systems with that CD, and also copied it and sold about 20-30! (at $12 each).
Quite a few, and it WON'T show on these "shipment" stats...
(Have you ever been to an install-fest?)
Open arse, remove head...