Actually, I don't drink coffee. (Yeah, it confuses everyone around me too, but they're a bunch of coffee snobs, so I doubt I could take it up and fit in.;-) I do lurk on the SCOSUG mailing list, though I haven't ever made it to a meeting or event as yet.:)
J.D., I presume? R.L.:) Traffic my side wasn't too bad, but given the likely massive server failure, I left *right* after my workstation came back up around 4:20.
Middletown, CT (south of Hartford by one major town) had a flicker just long enough to knock all the PC's and workstations offline. (*Just* long enough.) Personally, I lost the last bit of progress on a hairy makefile that finally started working, but it could've been worse. (Ironically, I was halfway through the emacs save sequence when it happened, too. Ctrl-X, Ctrl- *poof*). Blah.
I'm convinced that most regular users do not "get" what Windows Update is for
I just got back from visiting "the relatives" all of last week. Heartland area of the US. Farm-type folks that grow food many of you eat. Anyway, the parent poster's statement is correct. These people have a few PC's as a matter of modern necessity. One of these (win98) runs a payroll app, is connected via dialup to the internet, is connected via ethernet to two other "critical" systems running WFW3.11, and was running a *completely* unpatched version of IE4.0 / Outlook Express. Oddly, they didn't have near the problems one might expect for all this (impressively, ad-aware came up clean aside from cookies) but when I mentioned "Windows Update", which sits right there on the Start Menu plain as day, to my relative who runs the '98 box, all I got was "what's that?".
My early-teen cousin was running his family's 98 box similarly. Unpatched. Ad-aware found all manner of crap that might just have, with luck, woken him up. Still, I had to explain all this nonsense, including *what* windows update was, *how* to run it (click here, click here, look the list over, click this, wait. reboot. repeat until the list is empty), how spy-ware/ad-ware differs from virii/worms, etc.
These aren't stupid people. Ignorant of the complexity of things that we all here take for granted. (In fact, I'd wager we give "joe sixpack" too much credit, not that I'm calling dumb on the world or anything.) It is just that their priorities are differently aligned than the hobbyist/admin types here (or that of people who try to design software with these people in mind, even). It was an eye-opening experience.
Now, to the credit of my linux geek membership, I might be able to upgrade the WFW systems to hardware made inside this decade and run the critical software in dosemu or the like, put the dialup on a firewall, and other things before they get convinved to shell out $20,000 on software and hardware upgrades this time next year.
Since it looks like someone else in a sibling post already started the ball rolling on faulty compilers, I would contribute my own somewhat limited experience from my workplace. We've been mainly sun/solaris workstation boxes on the desktop and are an engineering company. Hence, Fortran. The solaris F77 compiler has been notorious at letting bad code slide through and compile/run without warning, and for some things we don't seem to have compiler switches to control things. Our top local guru is quoted as saying this particular compiler will successfully compile your e-mail. The F90 compiler does seem to be a bit better in some respect (if code is written in f90 fashion at least), but I'm running into problems later compiling the same code where a win2000 compaq visual fortran compiler (yes, we have apparently sold out to Evil;) is catching and warning or error'ing on. One recent example: the solaris f77/f90 compilers don't seem to have a problem compiling a call to a subroutine with a mismatched argument list length; the code will run like a champ until it hits the call, then its anyone's guess what happens (zero's for the missing args? seg-fault on bad memory access?)
At work, I use netscape as a default browser. Why? B/c IE doesn't seem to work under solaris. Sure... we have a windows 2000 terminal server we can log into (not a quick operation either) to connect to ie and other office apps, but it is painful in the extreme since the graphics resolution is lower in comparison, and IE under the terminal server has this absolutely horrid flicker when you do anything (move mouse over the window, scroll, move window) that makes it a nerve-racking proposition (opinions on IE itself aside). There are some intranet sites we need to use (time chargine for one) that we can set cron-jobs up under unix but cannot do anything equivalent under terminal server. Granted, the company is slowly replacing all desktop sun boxen with true NT boxen (since the hardware/CPUs are faster and we run high-speed high-parallel jobs on the desktop machines, and hence need the 3x speed up the new boxes give), but that process has been dragging on for quite some time, so we still have multi-thousands of people on unix workstations needing a viable web browser.
I got your translation right here: "Anata wa mijuku na desu."
meta on topic: Good lord, if just one person found what I added interesting or useful, moderation or no, it was worth my time to post it. How much quality did you contribute?
Quick note for those who haven't any knowlege of Japanese alphabet/pronunciation: they don't have an "l" sound (in fact their "r" is somewhere inbetween) nor an "x" sound. The alphabet, when written in a romanized form, consists of consonant-vowel combo sounds (ri, ni, ku, su), and pronunciation of the "u" sound generally drops off to nothing between, say, a k and s, and at the end of the word. so the parent's romanized spelling would be pronounced similarly to "rinux".
Of course, everyone is entitled to their opinion and size preference, but the dimensions listed by the parent are actually *smaller* than my Palm III in the little leather case I tote it around in (because, well, gravity happens). About the only pocket I wouldn't be able to put this smaller form factor into would be my jean pockets, but then I'm not going to put a PDA in my jean pockets either (because sitting happens). If I'm slumming, the side pocket of some cargo pants fit the bill... if I'm business-y, then sport coat or shirt pocket would be just large enough. Just a contrasting opinion. YMMV.
They are supposed to be releasing a phone number to call in after a week (or few). I plan to make use of that myself, as the CT do not call list has served me and my wife quite well. (We only get called once a year from a local sheriff's office asking for money.) The online version no doubt alleviates a flood of call volume from people who aren't so worried about the e-mail address thing, so more power to them.
A fair question... personally, being a five year slashdotter and Linux user (and a long time computer user in general), I've never heard of Pyrex or Jython, and if I have to download another huge wad of libraries to run some "oddball language I've never heard of" in addition to already having Java, C/C++/STL, mono, fortran, perl, python, gtk, gnome, qt, X11, etc. -- most of which overlap somewhat, and none of which seem to have provided the holy grail as yet -- then I'll probably say "no thanks". Whether that'd be reason enough for you is really up to you. *shrug*
... except it seems to be a case that it wasn't just a "sole individual who had his box cracked", but rather the ISP itself, such that the black-hat systems that the bogus DNS pointed to could potentially collect username/password/credit card info for every customer going to more than just one "company like E-bay". The difference to me sounds quite less than in your version (FBI resources notwithstanding).
Absolutely... but then to my dismay, the online research about resource FOO invariably turns up this useful tidbit of knowledge: "if you need to configure access to resource FOO, contact your network administrator". WTF? I am the network administrator. (Sorta brings to mind a variation of an old koan... which comes first: the newbie, or the book to help him?)
3 hours probably includes the commercials. The breakdown of actual content is likely to be: storyline: 20min; laser gun fights: 15min; shuttle craft chases 5min; love interest angle: 2min; rebels using voice reverberators to "pass" for aliens: 3min; gratuitous shots of really big motherships hovering over the city: 10min. That of course doesn't leave a *lot* of time for character development, but it didn't seem to hurt us the first time around.;-)
It is an interesting question. About the only pure-conjecture reason I can come up with is that the viral writers need the boxes to be *more or less* available... which may indicate that many virii (viruses, whatever) are written by a *very* small number of people (who do multiple virii), or that said writers run in a group with an understood rule of "don't destroy the box completely" to prevent resource contention. Certainly, if these latest crops can pull the sheer number of gimmicks they are pulling, simple file deletion seems like it should be cake. *shrug* Random thoughts on the matter.
Meanwhile, my submission on University of Idaho's cloning of a donkey is rejected.
It is really simple, actually. Your rejected story only involved one ass. This story, concerning MS and AOL, involves two. You can clearly see how you can't win, right?;-)
I understand your serious (if funny) question to the grandparent poster, but I also identify with his opinion. There is a bit of a difference between needing to learn WTF "/dev/hda0" means when installing, say, RedHat for the first time (much less why "/dev/hda" is different, aside from one less character) and needing to pour through any google link you can find to understand why your particular sub-configuration doesn't seem to work in spite of your best attempt to read the howto / man page / limited docs available (and where the answer then seems to always involve: have version X of lib foo, change the utility makefile on line Y, compile it and maybe your kernel from scratch, cross fingers and try again).
I run Linux (these days) mainly since a windows box (IE, outlook, p2p app foo, etc.) cannot be trusted with a 'net connection... and since I'm too much of a cheap-ass to buy a mac or two (as my wife generally needs a separate box). I used to tweak all manner of things initially, but it gets to eventually be a no-win situation unless you have nothing but free time to devote to it 24/7 (and I sure don't). I've been trying to stick to a purely RedHat-up2date-based system with no otherwise "3rd party" or self-compiled software/lib/hacks; it does help the system generally work more smoothly IMO, but there are still things that, from time to time, don't "just work". I accept that this is just the way it is, but that's why I can echo the grandparent poster's sentiment of "if I don't know it'll work with minimal fuss, I won't buy it".
The idea that this should be on slashdot is stupid because it pretty fucking obviously only interests a tiny percentage of slashdot users.
Obviously, about 150 have commented on it, yourself included. Counting people that probably didn't comment, that has to be more than a "tiny percentage". And anyway, even if it is, this isn't your pet site; nobody is making you surf over here, and nobody is making you read any particular article. Don't like it? Leave... immature attitudes around here are in sufficient abundance that one less is not likely to be missed.
I personally and a lot of others have unsuccessfully submitted many many articles which hold much more interest for a lot more people than this fucking article does.
*cough*sour grapes*cough* Sorry that a site with a third of a million [unique] people can't cater to posting articles *you* find interesting. Sheesh.
Holy smokes... add some brevity, lose the caps (use bold instead) and, for the love of all the is holy, use some paragraph breaks. I can't make it past the second or third line.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I don't drink coffee. (Yeah, it confuses everyone around me too, but they're a bunch of coffee snobs, so I doubt I could take it up and fit in. ;-) I do lurk on the SCOSUG mailing list, though I haven't ever made it to a meeting or event as yet. :)
J.D., I presume? R.L. :)
Traffic my side wasn't too bad, but given the likely massive server failure, I left *right* after my workstation came back up around 4:20.
Middletown, CT (south of Hartford by one major town) had a flicker just long enough to knock all the PC's and workstations offline. (*Just* long enough.) Personally, I lost the last bit of progress on a hairy makefile that finally started working, but it could've been worse. (Ironically, I was halfway through the emacs save sequence when it happened, too. Ctrl-X, Ctrl- *poof*). Blah.
I just got back from visiting "the relatives" all of last week. Heartland area of the US. Farm-type folks that grow food many of you eat. Anyway, the parent poster's statement is correct. These people have a few PC's as a matter of modern necessity. One of these (win98) runs a payroll app, is connected via dialup to the internet, is connected via ethernet to two other "critical" systems running WFW3.11, and was running a *completely* unpatched version of IE4.0 / Outlook Express. Oddly, they didn't have near the problems one might expect for all this (impressively, ad-aware came up clean aside from cookies) but when I mentioned "Windows Update", which sits right there on the Start Menu plain as day, to my relative who runs the '98 box, all I got was "what's that?".
My early-teen cousin was running his family's 98 box similarly. Unpatched. Ad-aware found all manner of crap that might just have, with luck, woken him up. Still, I had to explain all this nonsense, including *what* windows update was, *how* to run it (click here, click here, look the list over, click this, wait. reboot. repeat until the list is empty), how spy-ware/ad-ware differs from virii/worms, etc.
These aren't stupid people. Ignorant of the complexity of things that we all here take for granted. (In fact, I'd wager we give "joe sixpack" too much credit, not that I'm calling dumb on the world or anything.) It is just that their priorities are differently aligned than the hobbyist/admin types here (or that of people who try to design software with these people in mind, even). It was an eye-opening experience.
Now, to the credit of my linux geek membership, I might be able to upgrade the WFW systems to hardware made inside this decade and run the critical software in dosemu or the like, put the dialup on a firewall, and other things before they get convinved to shell out $20,000 on software and hardware upgrades this time next year.
... is better with the butterfly. Who knew? ;)
Since it looks like someone else in a sibling post already started the ball rolling on faulty compilers, I would contribute my own somewhat limited experience from my workplace. We've been mainly sun/solaris workstation boxes on the desktop and are an engineering company. Hence, Fortran. The solaris F77 compiler has been notorious at letting bad code slide through and compile/run without warning, and for some things we don't seem to have compiler switches to control things. Our top local guru is quoted as saying this particular compiler will successfully compile your e-mail. The F90 compiler does seem to be a bit better in some respect (if code is written in f90 fashion at least), but I'm running into problems later compiling the same code where a win2000 compaq visual fortran compiler (yes, we have apparently sold out to Evil ;) is catching and warning or error'ing on. One recent example: the solaris f77/f90 compilers don't seem to have a problem compiling a call to a subroutine with a mismatched argument list length; the code will run like a champ until it hits the call, then its anyone's guess what happens (zero's for the missing args? seg-fault on bad memory access?)
At work, I use netscape as a default browser. Why? B/c IE doesn't seem to work under solaris. Sure... we have a windows 2000 terminal server we can log into (not a quick operation either) to connect to ie and other office apps, but it is painful in the extreme since the graphics resolution is lower in comparison, and IE under the terminal server has this absolutely horrid flicker when you do anything (move mouse over the window, scroll, move window) that makes it a nerve-racking proposition (opinions on IE itself aside). There are some intranet sites we need to use (time chargine for one) that we can set cron-jobs up under unix but cannot do anything equivalent under terminal server. Granted, the company is slowly replacing all desktop sun boxen with true NT boxen (since the hardware/CPUs are faster and we run high-speed high-parallel jobs on the desktop machines, and hence need the 3x speed up the new boxes give), but that process has been dragging on for quite some time, so we still have multi-thousands of people on unix workstations needing a viable web browser.
"cuh-plus-plu-sox"
I got your translation right here: "Anata wa mijuku na desu."
meta on topic: Good lord, if just one person found what I added interesting or useful, moderation or no, it was worth my time to post it. How much quality did you contribute?
Of course, everyone is entitled to their opinion and size preference, but the dimensions listed by the parent are actually *smaller* than my Palm III in the little leather case I tote it around in (because, well, gravity happens). About the only pocket I wouldn't be able to put this smaller form factor into would be my jean pockets, but then I'm not going to put a PDA in my jean pockets either (because sitting happens). If I'm slumming, the side pocket of some cargo pants fit the bill... if I'm business-y, then sport coat or shirt pocket would be just large enough. Just a contrasting opinion. YMMV.
That damn bus is dangerous - always seems to wipe out the one guy who can resolve a sticky situation. How come it never hits the PHB's?
;-)
Who exactly do you think drives the bus?
which eventually get you to some guy named Fred
;-)
Hey, BTW, do you have Fred's direct dial number?
They are supposed to be releasing a phone number to call in after a week (or few). I plan to make use of that myself, as the CT do not call list has served me and my wife quite well. (We only get called once a year from a local sheriff's office asking for money.) The online version no doubt alleviates a flood of call volume from people who aren't so worried about the e-mail address thing, so more power to them.
A fair question... personally, being a five year slashdotter and Linux user (and a long time computer user in general), I've never heard of Pyrex or Jython, and if I have to download another huge wad of libraries to run some "oddball language I've never heard of" in addition to already having Java, C/C++/STL, mono, fortran, perl, python, gtk, gnome, qt, X11, etc. -- most of which overlap somewhat, and none of which seem to have provided the holy grail as yet -- then I'll probably say "no thanks". Whether that'd be reason enough for you is really up to you. *shrug*
... except it seems to be a case that it wasn't just a "sole individual who had his box cracked", but rather the ISP itself, such that the black-hat systems that the bogus DNS pointed to could potentially collect username/password/credit card info for every customer going to more than just one "company like E-bay". The difference to me sounds quite less than in your version (FBI resources notwithstanding).
Absolutely... but then to my dismay, the online research about resource FOO invariably turns up this useful tidbit of knowledge: "if you need to configure access to resource FOO, contact your network administrator". WTF? I am the network administrator. (Sorta brings to mind a variation of an old koan... which comes first: the newbie, or the book to help him?)
3 hours probably includes the commercials. The breakdown of actual content is likely to be: storyline: 20min; laser gun fights: 15min; shuttle craft chases 5min; love interest angle: 2min; rebels using voice reverberators to "pass" for aliens: 3min; gratuitous shots of really big motherships hovering over the city: 10min. That of course doesn't leave a *lot* of time for character development, but it didn't seem to hurt us the first time around. ;-)
It is an interesting question. About the only pure-conjecture reason I can come up with is that the viral writers need the boxes to be *more or less* available... which may indicate that many virii (viruses, whatever) are written by a *very* small number of people (who do multiple virii), or that said writers run in a group with an understood rule of "don't destroy the box completely" to prevent resource contention. Certainly, if these latest crops can pull the sheer number of gimmicks they are pulling, simple file deletion seems like it should be cake. *shrug* Random thoughts on the matter.
Lemme guess... calling it 3DLark03 or 3DFark03? ;-)
It is really simple, actually. Your rejected story only involved one ass. This story, concerning MS and AOL, involves two. You can clearly see how you can't win, right?
I understand your serious (if funny) question to the grandparent poster, but I also identify with his opinion. There is a bit of a difference between needing to learn WTF "/dev/hda0" means when installing, say, RedHat for the first time (much less why "/dev/hda" is different, aside from one less character) and needing to pour through any google link you can find to understand why your particular sub-configuration doesn't seem to work in spite of your best attempt to read the howto / man page / limited docs available (and where the answer then seems to always involve: have version X of lib foo, change the utility makefile on line Y, compile it and maybe your kernel from scratch, cross fingers and try again).
I run Linux (these days) mainly since a windows box (IE, outlook, p2p app foo, etc.) cannot be trusted with a 'net connection... and since I'm too much of a cheap-ass to buy a mac or two (as my wife generally needs a separate box). I used to tweak all manner of things initially, but it gets to eventually be a no-win situation unless you have nothing but free time to devote to it 24/7 (and I sure don't). I've been trying to stick to a purely RedHat-up2date-based system with no otherwise "3rd party" or self-compiled software/lib/hacks; it does help the system generally work more smoothly IMO, but there are still things that, from time to time, don't "just work". I accept that this is just the way it is, but that's why I can echo the grandparent poster's sentiment of "if I don't know it'll work with minimal fuss, I won't buy it".
*cough*sour grapes*cough* Sorry that a site with a third of a million [unique] people can't cater to posting articles *you* find interesting. Sheesh.
Holy smokes... add some brevity, lose the caps (use bold instead) and, for the love of all the is holy, use some paragraph breaks. I can't make it past the second or third line.
Maybe they'll get more honest results renaming the benchmark executable to "3DLark03" or something. After all, something like this worked once. ;-)