Whilst doing the World Solar Challenge last year I set-up my 2m satellite dish every night and caught up with stuff that matters. Some articles and photos can be found in a variety of places. (Unfortunately, linmagau.org is no longer, but the article is still available.)
I had to read to the very bottom of the page to get to someone who wrote something that echoed my thoughts on the matter, but fortunately it was there to be read at all.
I suspect that a lot of the angst associated with the comments here is related to the incorrect understanding of freedom.
I've read comments here that suggest that Svasoft is restricting distribution. My take is that what is happening is that you are buying access to the next version of the software. That access is revoked if you distribute your current (pre-release) binary and or source.
Seeing that you don't actually have the binary of the next version, you cannot request access to it or the source for it without Svasoft selling it to you. Once you'd paid for the next version, you'd again be free to re-distribute it under the GPL, but your access to the next version would again be revoked. In other words, if you have my application, you are free to distribute it, but I'm not required to give it to you if I don't want to.
The challenge in understanding seems to be the misunderstanding that GPL means free. I see nothing in this that suggests that Svasoft is stopping your rights anywhere, all they're doing is choosing not to sell you the next version of the software.
I'm in the process of getting my own application to the point of ready for release using the GPL and this series of comments has given me hope for my future as a developer. Of course, in my case, at present there is no sense of source and binary, since it is all source (PHP), but who knows, one day I might have a community around my software who is willing to contribute and help pay my rent as well.
This is not a troll and I'm not trying to offend you, but this makes no sense to me at all. While you think you might want to know how many visitors, eg. humans, you had visiting you, it really is quite meaningless because as others have pointed out, some people read ads and others don't.
A more meaningful statistic, is how many times was an ad served, because at the other end of the served ad were some eyesballs. You could filter out spiders, who's behaviour is pretty simple to detect and you'd have a number that actually meant something.
The article shows as an example a person viewing the same site from two places, at work and at home. They want to count that person as one. This makes no sense. The person is exposed to the content twice. Advertising is about repeating the message.
TV advertising is stabbing in the dark and tallying up imaginary numbers. Marketers make money from that imagination. The web is different. You can actually count the number of eyeballs that visited...
Your Apache Logs - I'm assuming you actually use a real server:-) - will give you the number of hits. All you need to do is filter out the spiders - though I can make an argument that leaves them in also - seeing as they are representative of eyeballs viewing the gathered data - like a google search.
As some of you know, I hit the road over a year ago, but my wife couldn't bear to leave her favorite recipes behind, so we set our digital camera up on a tripod, with some rulers stuck to the table to stop sheets from mis-aligning and just photographed the lot. It works a treat!
I don't use PHP "oop(s)", because it never made sense to me to have a scripting language - interpreted at that - do that level of complexity. While I'm coming across arguments that are beginning to persuade me to start using object models, at this stage I'm a strictly procedural programmer - don't get me wrong, I abstract everything I write - sometimes to the level where colleagues shake their head - but it also means that my code works, is fast, has few bugs and is simple to add functionality to.
While I'm no kernel developer (yet:-), I do know what I like.
I will grant you that you can write some really hideous code in PHP, that same is true for any other language - some more than others. I find myself looking at other people's code and spending an hour or so making their formatting consistent, just so I can understand what I'm looking at. That alone may convince me to look more closely at Python, but there needs to be more argument than that. I've got a code library with 300 functions that I would need to port, which I can't say I'd be looking forward to.
When I chose PHP to do back-end and middle-ware projects, the choice was based on the premise that PERL was evil, C was very evil, JAVA was slow and PHP was palatable. (You'll note that I didn't even consider using VB, because it made me want to throw-up when I started looking at how it "integrated" with other technologies.) I'm sure that I missed some other language, but I also needed a support base - documentation, web-forums and an active user base. At the time, phpBuilder was very active, Zend was just starting, the manual was very comprehensive and had source-code examples. Admittedly the simplicity of PHP also attracted web-designers who wanted to be programmers, but you get that. (In fact it has meant more work for me, because I get to fix their challenges:-)
I know, I removed the space as soon as I pasted the URL, hit Enter, got an error. Do you really think that a person who's been a programmer for 24 years is that dense?
I've just spent the past hour reading about Python - since that seems to be the recommended path to enlightenment when using Plone, but I just don't get it.
I've been writing software for 24 or so years, I've forgotten more languages than I can recall and I don't see any particular benefit in introducing myself to Python.
You may mark this off-topic, but I strongly suspect that the moment I want to do something that Plone cannot, I am required to use Python (and/or Zope).
Most of my development these days is in PHP - the language seems elegant, it talks to any database I care to use, has anything I can think of bolted in and for me it works.
Now I'm all for learning new skills, but as I said, I just don't get it. What is so special about Python and why should I care?
Does any one else get annoyed when real stories get rejected but blatent advertising gets accepted to the front-page?
I thought this was supposed to be "stuff that matters" - since when does another little gadget that will be overtaken in two months at best qualify as "stuff that matters"
The FTA has some Intellectual Property provisions that have a severe impact on Australia. The Australian Senate has a Committee looking into it and the dead-line for submissions is: April 30.
From what I've read so-far, this is not a virus or a trojan horse at all. It's a concept of social engineering. The idea is that you can make an attachment look like one thing and be another.
A virus spreads without your intervention - AFAIK this doesn't.
A trojan horse pretends to do one thing while doing another - AFAIK this doesn't.
I know, right now some of you are jumping up and down and getting ready - or have already - hit the reply button and have all manner of argument.
Let me point this out:
A trojan horse pretends to *do* one thing while *doing* another. This doesn't pretend to be an MP3 file - it just looks like one - nor from what I read is it actually playable in iTunes - so it's not an MP3 - it's an application.
Also it doesn't spread by itself - though it conceivably mails copies of itself to others if you launched it, so it's not a virus.
Back to my original statement:
"This is social engineering"
So.
Hope you've stopped being huffy, and got to this part - what do you do about it? For starters, don't launch things you get from people you don't know or don't expect.
Second, don't launch things you get from people you don't know or don't expect.
From my perspective this is just an attempt to create a marketing need for anti-virus software for the Macintosh.
Here endeth the lesson....
(PS. I've you've got something to rebuke the above, I'm all ears - I don't profess to know everything about everything, but I'll confess I know a lot about a great many things to do with computing - hint: I've been doing this for a few years:-)
(Second hint: My first computer was a Commodore Vic-20)
I'd just been reading Spaceflight Now, switched back to/., read the posting, thought to myself: "Hmm, that's not what I just read.", hovered my mouse over the last link - even clicked it - saw CNN, read the caption thought, "Yup, that's just what I read, but the posting is wrong.", bashed in my response, even hit Preview, then hit Submit, then looked again, then noticed that my link was the same as the one in the post, thought - "Hmm, ahh well, so much for that contribution.", then noticed that people were moderating it up....
The rover status has been updated from critical to serious. Peter Theisinger stated:
"We made good progress overnight and the rover has been upgraded from critical to serious. We have a working hypothesis we are pursuing that is consistent with many of the observables and consistent with operations that we performed on the vehicle last night. It involves the flash memory on the vehicle and the software used to communicate with that memory."
You can read all about it at: Spaceflight Now - where you can continue to follow the status of both spirit and opportunity (which currently is hours away from landing).
Yesterday I received a message that appeared similar in nature to that described by the article. After many phone calls I managed to speak to the fraud section at the Commonwealth Bank (biggest bank in Oz), where the message appeared to come from.
Their solution (after getting some of the bank staff to pull their head from the sand) was to redirect all requests to a specific URL to the Bank's home-page.
Now I for one, think that the only way that they could do that, was with cooperation from ALL ISP's in this country.
The scam and the banks initial response pissed me off, but the redirect scares the *shit* out of me.
Anyone else share my concerns, or should I just crawl back into my box and live with the idea that the Internet has just died...
Creating a distribution for IBM is of course always a possiblilty, but if you have their corporate support, you have access to their hardware, their technicians and their expertise. Supporting one kernel is one thing, supporting Debian is an entirely different proposition. Thus my request for Debian support from IBM.
they have been using the same piece of shit installer since 1996
This is in my opinion ignorance speaking. While the Debian installer may not look as sexy as the graphical installers you either use or are familiar with, the installer used in Debian can be used on many platforms that don't need to ever run a GUI. Furthermore, the installer can be run over a serial cable - try that with a GUI.
I must point out that while the complexity associated with the Debian installer appears to pose problems for some users, I came upon it after trying many other distributions, and I can generally install a Debian box in around 15 minutes. I have full control over the process, and it suits me just fine.
Your assertion that the installer has not changed since 1996 is ignorant, because in the time that I've moved from Sid to Potato and Woody - now Testing, the installer has changed and evolved. I will concede that the first time I saw the installer, I thought myself back to the 1980's but the software soon showed it was not from that era - despite the lack of fancy graphics. Perhaps it would behoove you to comment wisely before shooting from the hip.
As a lone voice in the wildernis, I'd like to ask IBM to put their support behind Debian also. While RH and SuSE are fine organisations, Debian is particularly special IMHO, enough to receive the support from all major vendors.
(Secretly dreaming of Debian *everywhere* - hey, I can dream, it's on my Sparc, my i386 and my Mac, one day I'll make my Clie boot it too!)
I have been the MC for numerous trade-shows and I can tell you that I know what you are asking about.
The answer is surprisingly simple. Wear two pairs of socks. I generally go for a thin sock with a thicker one over the top. What it does is cushions your feet and allows you to enjoy the show...
Find a way to describe your skillset in a manner that apeals to those who don't understand. A good way of doing this is to list all your skills and find a way of applying them to hardware development. For example, design, problem solving, time management, applicable project work, references that can back you up.
I'm not suggesting it will be simple, but there is a job out there for you...
IANAL, but IMNSHO, TLAs and other MIAs should not be banned. After I RTFA, I was ROFLMAO at the proposition that these quips have no place in the lexicon... YMMV, of course, and of course YAETYOO...
I am not a Lawyer, but in my not so humble opinion, three letter acronyms and other missing in actions should not be banned. After I read the fucking article, I was rolling on the floor laughing my arse off at the proposition that these quips have no place in the lexicon... Your mileage may vary, of course, and of course {untranslatable - even STFW}...
Anyone still working at SCO, knowing what is widely known now, isn't someone with the kind of ethical or moral foundation I would want within my ranks.
You leave no room for the concept that a current employee has a job, gets up in the morning, goes to work, does their work, goes home, goes to bed just so they can get money to pay the rent.
Sorry, SCO denizens. There's no work for you here, at any price.
If I worked at SCO, I don't think I'd want to work for you...
Slashdot Mirror
Modula-3 exists between 1985 and 1990, 9th down.
Today I'm here: S2752'30" - E15116'25"
I had to read to the very bottom of the page to get to someone who wrote something that echoed my thoughts on the matter, but fortunately it was there to be read at all.
I suspect that a lot of the angst associated with the comments here is related to the incorrect understanding of freedom.
I've read comments here that suggest that Svasoft is restricting distribution. My take is that what is happening is that you are buying access to the next version of the software. That access is revoked if you distribute your current (pre-release) binary and or source.
Seeing that you don't actually have the binary of the next version, you cannot request access to it or the source for it without Svasoft selling it to you. Once you'd paid for the next version, you'd again be free to re-distribute it under the GPL, but your access to the next version would again be revoked. In other words, if you have my application, you are free to distribute it, but I'm not required to give it to you if I don't want to.
The challenge in understanding seems to be the misunderstanding that GPL means free. I see nothing in this that suggests that Svasoft is stopping your rights anywhere, all they're doing is choosing not to sell you the next version of the software.
I'm in the process of getting my own application to the point of ready for release using the GPL and this series of comments has given me hope for my future as a developer. Of course, in my case, at present there is no sense of source and binary, since it is all source (PHP), but who knows, one day I might have a community around my software who is willing to contribute and help pay my rent as well.
This is not a troll and I'm not trying to offend you, but this makes no sense to me at all. While you think you might want to know how many visitors, eg. humans, you had visiting you, it really is quite meaningless because as others have pointed out, some people read ads and others don't.
:-) - will give you the number of hits. All you need to do is filter out the spiders - though I can make an argument that leaves them in also - seeing as they are representative of eyeballs viewing the gathered data - like a google search.
A more meaningful statistic, is how many times was an ad served, because at the other end of the served ad were some eyesballs. You could filter out spiders, who's behaviour is pretty simple to detect and you'd have a number that actually meant something.
The article shows as an example a person viewing the same site from two places, at work and at home. They want to count that person as one. This makes no sense. The person is exposed to the content twice. Advertising is about repeating the message.
TV advertising is stabbing in the dark and tallying up imaginary numbers. Marketers make money from that imagination. The web is different. You can actually count the number of eyeballs that visited...
Your Apache Logs - I'm assuming you actually use a real server
Anyway. Hope this cleared up some things...
As some of you know, I hit the road over a year ago, but my wife couldn't bear to leave her favorite recipes behind, so we set our digital camera up on a tripod, with some rulers stuck to the table to stop sheets from mis-aligning and just photographed the lot. It works a treat!
Now I've seen it all, a moderator that marks a question as Troll...
:-)
I suppose that "Don't feed the Trolls" also applies to moderators
Hmmm, 'suppose you're talking about me :-)
:-)
I don't use PHP "oop(s)", because it never made sense to me to have a scripting language - interpreted at that - do that level of complexity. While I'm coming across arguments that are beginning to persuade me to start using object models, at this stage I'm a strictly procedural programmer - don't get me wrong, I abstract everything I write - sometimes to the level where colleagues shake their head - but it also means that my code works, is fast, has few bugs and is simple to add functionality to.
While I'm no kernel developer (yet:-), I do know what I like.
I will grant you that you can write some really hideous code in PHP, that same is true for any other language - some more than others. I find myself looking at other people's code and spending an hour or so making their formatting consistent, just so I can understand what I'm looking at. That alone may convince me to look more closely at Python, but there needs to be more argument than that. I've got a code library with 300 functions that I would need to port, which I can't say I'd be looking forward to.
When I chose PHP to do back-end and middle-ware projects, the choice was based on the premise that PERL was evil, C was very evil, JAVA was slow and PHP was palatable. (You'll note that I didn't even consider using VB, because it made me want to throw-up when I started looking at how it "integrated" with other technologies.)
I'm sure that I missed some other language, but I also needed a support base - documentation, web-forums and an active user base. At the time, phpBuilder was very active, Zend was just starting, the manual was very comprehensive and had source-code examples. Admittedly the simplicity of PHP also attracted web-designers who wanted to be programmers, but you get that. (In fact it has meant more work for me, because I get to fix their challenges
Shrug.
I read the second article (by ESR), but the first URL gave me an Internal Server Error 500.
I've been writing software for 24 or so years, I've forgotten more languages than I can recall and I don't see any particular benefit in introducing myself to Python.
You may mark this off-topic, but I strongly suspect that the moment I want to do something that Plone cannot, I am required to use Python (and/or Zope).
Most of my development these days is in PHP - the language seems elegant, it talks to any database I care to use, has anything I can think of bolted in and for me it works.
Now I'm all for learning new skills, but as I said, I just don't get it. What is so special about Python and why should I care?
I thought this was supposed to be "stuff that matters" - since when does another little gadget that will be overtaken in two months at best qualify as "stuff that matters"
Here's something that matters: (albeit to me)
Linux Australia has written a draft position paper(or a PDF) on therecently negotiated Free Trade Agreement between the US and Australia,and is looking for feedback.
The FTA has some Intellectual Property provisions that have a severe impact on Australia. The Australian Senate has a Committee looking into it and the dead-line for submissions is: April 30.
What can you do? Sign the petition, Comment on thedraft position paper and send feedback to the JointCommittee on Treaties.
From what I've read so-far, this is not a virus or a trojan horse at all. It's a concept of social engineering. The idea is that you can make an attachment look like one thing and be another.
A virus spreads without your intervention - AFAIK this doesn't.
A trojan horse pretends to do one thing while doing another - AFAIK this doesn't.
I know, right now some of you are jumping up and down and getting ready - or have already - hit the reply button and have all manner of argument.
Let me point this out:
A trojan horse pretends to *do* one thing while *doing* another. This doesn't pretend to be an MP3 file - it just looks like one - nor from what I read is it actually playable in iTunes - so it's not an MP3 - it's an application.
Also it doesn't spread by itself - though it conceivably mails copies of itself to others if you launched it, so it's not a virus.
Back to my original statement:
So.Hope you've stopped being huffy, and got to this part - what do you do about it? For starters, don't launch things you get from people you don't know or don't expect.
Second, don't launch things you get from people you don't know or don't expect.
From my perspective this is just an attempt to create a marketing need for anti-virus software for the Macintosh.
Here endeth the lesson....
(PS. I've you've got something to rebuke the above, I'm all ears - I don't profess to know everything about everything, but I'll confess I know a lot about a great many things to do with computing - hint: I've been doing this for a few years :-)
(Second hint: My first computer was a Commodore Vic-20)
Just make sure that you spark it first onto a tap because if someone accidentally connects the network to a power point - you're a goner...
How this reply came to be:
/., read the posting, thought to myself: "Hmm, that's not what I just read.", hovered my mouse over the last link - even clicked it - saw CNN, read the caption thought, "Yup, that's just what I read, but the posting is wrong.", bashed in my response, even hit Preview, then hit Submit, then looked again, then noticed that my link was the same as the one in the post, thought - "Hmm, ahh well, so much for that contribution.", then noticed that people were moderating it up....
I'd just been reading Spaceflight Now, switched back to
Thanks anyway...
You can read all about it at: Spaceflight Now - where you can continue to follow the status of both spirit and opportunity (which currently is hours away from landing).
Yesterday I received a message that appeared similar in nature to that described by the article. After many phone calls I managed to speak to the fraud section at the Commonwealth Bank (biggest bank in Oz), where the message appeared to come from.
Their solution (after getting some of the bank staff to pull their head from the sand) was to redirect all requests to a specific URL to the Bank's home-page.
Now I for one, think that the only way that they could do that, was with cooperation from ALL ISP's in this country.
The scam and the banks initial response pissed me off, but the redirect scares the *shit* out of me.
Anyone else share my concerns, or should I just crawl back into my box and live with the idea that the Internet has just died...
Creating a distribution for IBM is of course always a possiblilty, but if you have their corporate support, you have access to their hardware, their technicians and their expertise. Supporting one kernel is one thing, supporting Debian is an entirely different proposition. Thus my request for Debian support from IBM.
I must point out that while the complexity associated with the Debian installer appears to pose problems for some users, I came upon it after trying many other distributions, and I can generally install a Debian box in around 15 minutes. I have full control over the process, and it suits me just fine.
Your assertion that the installer has not changed since 1996 is ignorant, because in the time that I've moved from Sid to Potato and Woody - now Testing, the installer has changed and evolved. I will concede that the first time I saw the installer, I thought myself back to the 1980's but the software soon showed it was not from that era - despite the lack of fancy graphics.
Perhaps it would behoove you to comment wisely before shooting from the hip.
As a lone voice in the wildernis, I'd like to ask IBM to put their support behind Debian also. While RH and SuSE are fine organisations, Debian is particularly special IMHO, enough to receive the support from all major vendors.
(Secretly dreaming of Debian *everywhere* - hey, I can dream, it's on my Sparc, my i386 and my Mac, one day I'll make my Clie boot it too!)
I have been the MC for numerous trade-shows and I can tell you that I know what you are asking about.
The answer is surprisingly simple. Wear two pairs of socks. I generally go for a thin sock with a thicker one over the top. What it does is cushions your feet and allows you to enjoy the show...
Find a way to describe your skillset in a manner that apeals to those who don't understand. A good way of doing this is to list all your skills and find a way of applying them to hardware development. For example, design, problem solving, time management, applicable project work, references that can back you up.
I'm not suggesting it will be simple, but there is a job out there for you...
I am not a Lawyer, but in my not so humble opinion, three letter acronyms and other missing in actions should not be banned. After I read the fucking article, I was rolling on the floor laughing my arse off at the proposition that these quips have no place in the lexicon... Your mileage may vary, of course, and of course {untranslatable - even STFW}...
You leave no room for the concept that a current employee has a job, gets up in the morning, goes to work, does their work, goes home, goes to bed just so they can get money to pay the rent.
If I worked at SCO, I don't think I'd want to work for you...