(I KNOW, COMPLETELY OFFTOPIC, but just sumthing i felt like saying)
i used to think like that, untill i installed my first firewall. The log showed more than 20 intrusion attempts in the first 5 minutes of the firewall starting up. Also, when u cant trust your own OS (or "your" software) to not phone home (only a problem on windows), u better have your firewall up and running before ANY network activity.
Its not as if someones waiting...there are just too many scripts, scans, worms out there...and the primary purpose of these is not to hose ur data..they cudnt care less...what they want is, in nearly all cases, ur net bandwidth, to:
1) run IRC bouncers 2) host warez (ur diskspace is also the target here) 3) launch DDOS attacks 4) any kind of "proxy" that may help in anonymizing any later "serious" cracking activity
and depending upon how "responsible" you are, u may not have problems with 1/2/3 but 4 could end up getting u into very serious trouble. I personally dont want to be a part of the next attempt to bring down EBay.
also, in my case, being at a UNI, and having my machines on 10Mbps, AND with the huge UNI net pipe , my machine is definitely a lucrative target.
Even otherwise, i just dont **LIKE** anyone access one of *my* machines in ways i did not intend...you maybe different.
I think people lacking the will to properly secure their boxes should not be allowed on broadband. Dialup is ok...i think dialup users only waste any crackers time:P
Seriously, my suggestion is for you to give a software firewall a shot. The first half an hour should be enough to convince you of the need. (and no, the built in forewall in XP doesnt count.)
I have myself since graduated to a hardware firewall for real security, with a software firewall only required to prevent your own "untrusted" programs from calling home.
When i am doing a fresh install of WIN2K and REDHAT on my comps (a once-in-6-months exercise) i make sure the machine is not even physically hooked up to the net untill i have a software firewall configured, up and running. I keep the firewall packages on CDs, along with config files, and ONLY AFTER these are setup, i go online to install other things, update drivers, etc (usually, only for win2k, not for redhat, which is trivial to bring back to my customized setup)...
having TCP/IP built into the bios, with no firewalling support, and no possibility of frequent/safe upating, no easy way to check for "being" owned is a very bad idea. Also, Phoenix being a popular bios manufacturer, there will be a lot of worms targetting this bios tcp/ip stack.
I dont see a single genuine advantage of having all this crap in the BIOS anyway. I mean, if u hose ur drive, and need to go online for some critical information/software before u can bring ur comp back up, just keep a KNOPPIX cd handy. I personally think BIOS shud be thinning down even further, given none of the modern OSes really use most of the services, and the BIOS mostly just gets in their way. All the bios shud be capable of, is to bring up the OS, and then let the OS configure everything. It wud be so neat to have the OS kernel setup all the hardware, the powersaving policies, everything when it starts up. Of course, the best is to just have the OS kernel as the bios!! just throw this anachronism completely out. (yeah for ppl whos fav os is not linux, sumthing else might need to be worked out;)...
Doesnt Flash memory have a really low number of rewrites, like 10,000 after which the chip goes bad? To me, this means tht one just cant use a flash chip as primary storage with regular consumer operating systems...think/tmp and/var/log and their equivalents under win32. Or look at yesterdays story about the sector which holds the FAT, which is written/rewritten every time a file on the filesystem is modified. 10,000 total modifications, and ur FAT sector (and probably the physical chip its located on? i am not sure...) craps out. Heck...that means, a new device might not even last through the installation of a linux distro.
or is this a different kind of flash from an alternate universe that i dont know about. I noticed on the webpage, they mention a very high MTBF, which is logical, but dont say anything about the number of rewrite cycles...
Ghoul2
*please* read the f**king memo before posting
on
Even Sun Can't Use Java
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
The memo says that the JRE implementation on Solaris (not the implementation of SOLARIS itself)is a cause of many java problems, including
1) Large memory usage (cites an example of a "hello world" program using up 9MB)
and
2) Long startup times
the memo blames these problems in the SOLARIS implementation of java VM on the "fact" that that project doesnt seem to have prority. The memo states in passing that the win32 vm doesnt seem to suffer from these problems as much. So the memo specifically restricts itself to the solaris jvm.
It also talks about how the java vm doesnt confirm to the sun SDF, and thus the versioning is incomaptible with it. There is no support for patching an installed java vm, thus requiring an entire new install of the latest version of the jvm if a bug is discovered. This means either having multiple jvm installed and running if different java applications on a system need different java releases, or breaking a whole set of applications, which may not run with the latest release. Again, cites examples of these.
The memo makes a case for:
1)introducing a patch system for java vm, so there need not a a new install everytime a bug is discovered.
2) stict backward compatibility, so that an application written for the older version of JVM works with all later minor revisions
3) consideration of a new mechenism for "bsoleting" and interface replacing/in addition to deprecation.
4) priority for solaris jvm development, with claims (by comparing it with python!!) that the memory footprint of the java resident set (the code bloat added by the garbage collector and co to each running java program) maybe reducible to a fifth of its current size.
read the memo. its a very intelligently argued writeup, and has been completely misrepresented in the slashdot post.
what xserver/version are you using with your laptop for your regular linux boot? If no linux distro gives u a good X display, u might be out of luck here, as far as using MoviX goes...does the Framebuffer driver also not work? how fast is your laptop?
If all you want to use this for is playing all sorts of movies, Movix is what you want. I tried it out a few weeks back, and now am actively "movixing" all my unburnt DivXs.
Checkout the home page. In short, its a small (~5MB) linux distribution designed to be booted from a CD, with autodetection of video and audio, and automatically plays all the media files placed in the root directory of the CD. It uses Mplayer to play the movies, so all formats supported by mplayer (pratically everything!!) are supported by movix. All u do is put your "movixed" cd in ur drive, reboot, and watch the movie...all the software for playing it is right there on the disk.
I have a laptop with a 250MHz processor, and Movix is the only way i can play Divx on it without dropping frames or loosing audio sync.
The license seems refreshingly simple and short, esp. for microsoft. They do seem serious abt trying to make CLI a common standard...
the only "funny" part of the license is "you may not distribute modifications of the Software under terms that purport to require the Software or derivative works to be sublicensed to others", a very straight, and extremely amusing ("purport"??) attack on the GPL. M$ maynot be a lot of good things, but they certainly ARE FOCUSSED!;)
also, can someone please explain to me the impliations of
"You may use any information in intangible form that you remember after accessing the Software. However, this right does not grant you a license to any of Microsoft's copyrights or patents for anything you might create using such information".: does it mean i can use techniques learnt from this code in my own code, as long as i dont copy the code verbatim (i understand abaout patent violation, am confused abt the copyright part)
"That if you sue anyone over patents that you think may apply to the Software or anyone's use of the Software, your license to the Software ends automatically.": What does this really mean? what are the practical implications? why do they need to have it in there?
6 years back i wrote a 96 BYTE machine code program under DOS, using nothing but "debug" (machine code, as in i hand assembled my assembly), which calculated factorials of numbers upto abt 32000...i still give it a go when i am bored, under bochs:)
on the contrary, the *only* available drivers seem to be for linux. From the article:
"A simple Linux device driver was developed which allows user mode programs to access the Pilchard hardware. Although this driver was tested only with Linux Kernel 2.2.17, ports to other operating systems and Linux versions should be trivial."
I have always found that for research oriented stuff like this, linux is the primary development platform.
I tried the exact same thing, got the same error and the blank screen. I also noticed that the emulator was using up all my CPU...it seems its gone into some infy-loop.
It's painfull to see so much BS on the front page of slashdot.
GSLV == Geosynchronous Space Launch Vehicle.
used to launch upto two-tonne(metric) satellites in an orbit 36,000KM from the earths center, where their revolution around earth is at the same angular velocity as the rotation of earth around its own axis. This is usefull for COMMUNICATIONS satellites. The distance is too large for this to be put to any military use except military communications.
India has been building its own satellites of all classes since almost two decades now. This is the next step in their LAUCH capability.Till now they used to have their geosynchronous satellites lauched thru the European Arienne Space. They have already succefully launched satellites in the polar (north-sorth) orbit, which is very usefull for remote sensing, weather prediction, and of course, spying).
While it is true that the GSLV scheduled to be lauched tomorrow is designed and built in india, it incorporates a critical component which is not of indian manufacture: The Cryogenic Engine, and engine which works with liquid hydrogen to provide the high thrust, but thus requires to do a lot of its functioning at a very low (below Hydrogen boiling point) temperature. Under a cold-war-era deal, the USSR agreed to supply seven cryogenic engines to india for its initial use, while simultaneously tranferring the technological knowhow to ISRO ( NASA for INDIA) so they could manufacture their own later. This later part of the deal, the tech transfer was later cancelled, under intense US pressure, as the US was worried about the ICBM-related uses of cryogenic technology.
So although this still is a big deal for a third world country to achieve, it is not true to claim that the GSLV is totally indigenous. To the credit of ISRO, they assert they will be ready with a completely indigenous cryogenic stage in the next 3-4 years. Thus the US-mandated ban could be a blessing in disguise for domestic indian R&D, repeating the success story of the Indian Supercomputer, PARAM, built from scratch indigenously, after the US refused the Indian Institute of Sciences, Bangalore, permission to import a CRAY-YMP from the US.
well, considering the kind of thing you mention is right down my alley, and that i am a poor grad student trying to stay alive while i finish my thesis, all u need to do is offer me a respectable looking monthly bribe, and not be based in UTAH.
I think the idea of subscription-ware is a blessing in disguise.
This is how:
i can't believe companies which can't get their software to run well locally, would do a better job on net-based once, with all the additional hassle that goes with them. This will increase the user frustration level from commercial crap even more than what it is now.
with subscription-ware, piracy would be pretty much eliminated, and piracy, i believe is one largest single enemy of open-source. With no piracy, no home user would be able to afford all the software he/she generally needs. The option: free-software. Till there is piracy, there is no tangible benefit to a regular luser to shift from one illegal-free software to legally-free software.
I don't think you get it. You may dirtribute it, you, may copy it as often as you like. It isn't you M$ is targeting. But when teams like the Samba guys try to create free implementations of their "extensions" of the protocol, M$ would have a decent case against them, decent enough to not be immediately thrown out of court. M$ need not win on such a case, only strech it out long enough to break the vistims.
I have been trying to use the pr1 for a few hours now, and am totally stumped: whenever i try to access the password manager, it asks me for a master password, which i don't have. What is the default password?
I agree with you. In the last few months i have found myself spending less and less time at slashdot. I remember during my first year at slashdot i read everypost, every link, and EVERY comment on slashdot. Now most of the posts don't seem worth the effort. Also, as even a less-than-earth-shaking posts generate 200+ comments(most of them pointless), i no longer feel like spending time reading comments. I also do not feel the moderation agrees with my views and so i keep my threshold negative, so that doesn't help either. I do not mind slashdot being owned by andover(rob and co. deserve whatever money they can get), so i won't say that/. has sold its soul. I just think,/. is losing its soul.
Maybe now that linux is fairly out into mainstream, this niche site has become redundant(i do not really believe that. Ok: i don't *want* to believe that.
Is it just me, or have others also noticed a couple other articles on this topic? It seems to me, all of these are just a preamble of a hype-storm for the Microsoft solution to this problem. go take a look at this Hotmail is already using this, but i don't know of any others yet. i am thinkink this could really become big, and could really give MS a monopoly on website user authentication. How about moving quickly, and developing an open source standard similar to this?
I think ESR is really trying to deny the fact that THE ONLY REAL difference between Gnu/Linux(and other GPL stuff), and M$ crap, are the RMS principles. Companies have and do turn out excellent quality material, and have even given away source code, but under NON-GPL terms. Doing this does not make them part of the Free-Source movement. A belief in the spirit of the GPL is the one, and ONLY qualification. And for me, 'RMS Free Source' is the only true movement. Everything else is just an attempt to cash in on its success. Also, to all those people who hate RMS's rhetoric, please remember that he is, actually the philosophical father of all the values we here at slashdot believe in. Even if u don't like his style of advocacy, take a few minutes to realize that 'freedom' in its most basic form, is that of speech, and he has a right to any way he chooses to express it. Don't like it? well, do it ur way, but don't be such a thankless jerk.
What do they mean by a "low power drain of 1 ma/hr" is that 1 milli ampere/hr? 'cause that unit makes absolutely no sense an ampere is a unit of current, not power. mutiply current(amperes) with the voltage at which it works (lets say 5 volts), and we get the power consumtion of the device in "WATTS" so they could say the power consumtion is x watts, or x milliwatts, or x mw. but that "/hr" bit is ridiculous, proves that the pages been written by someone who doesn't know 2 bits of basic EE.
A lot of posts here seem to suggest that linux didn't run faster than NT 'cause the hardware was and unrealistic one, and a lower end config would have resulted in a better score by linux. what we need to realize is that although uptil now linux has been designed for lower end machines(mainly cause the main developers and users till now could only afford cheap hardware), we ARE trying to move in to the enterprise, and there, the price of hardware, or for that matter, the software, hardly matters. even the regular upgrade cycle that M$ forces on them corporates is of no concern to them(after all the IT dept need to justify its annual budget!). So if linux has to make any inroads at all in the Corporate world, we need:
A lot better SMP support, AND good optimizing algorithms for using those multiple processors.
Ability to utilize large amounts of ram, without any arbitrary upper limits. RAM is real cheap, and if we can show that increasing RAM increases linux performance, that's a big plus. As of now, beyond a GB(am not sure about the number), linux doesn't really scale well.
A faster Apache. I a practical sense, yes, being able to saturate a T1 on a low-end machine is really a limit, but what about intranets? These are really important in an enterprise situation. Also, T1 is not really big in an corporate setting.
a better understanding of where linux IS already better than NT, and, more importantly, where it still lags behind.
After all(and PLEASE, no flames, for once we should be ready to aceept the truth):
As a desktop, linux is still way behind Windoze. In a home setting, to most people, 100days+ uptime is hardly a consideration. The inability to play most games is a big negative, on the otherhand.
An occasional BSOD also hardly matters. u just reboot and continue.
MS office! The biggest reason for people not moving to linux.
Linux is not dumb-user ready. Most of the poeple who make M$ what it is, are in this category).
we do have the advantage of being free, but i think that is also the reason why Linux will most probably always exist on the second partition, with default boot of Windoze.
As a server, these results show(well,even if we do not accept these results,PHBs surely will) that linux is significantly behind everything M$ has to offer.
and as it is, as a server, it is hard to displace something as good as solaris. Plus, our goal is not really to destroy our other other unix brothers, is it?
So what market are we aiming for? I think, THAT question really brings out THE central problem with the whole of linux. It is great for the folks who know what they r doing, and what they want (us!), and so it also targets us. But get out of the slashdot community, and the reasons for using Linux just start fizzling out. Th only real reasons u can tell to a non geek are that its free, and it performs better than windoze. Of course, RedHat Linux is not free(and to a geek, the option of downloading linux and installing it doesn't really appeal. frankly, even i, with my 4y+ experience with linux won't really try that), and these tests(which i am sure M$ is really going to tout al around) would show that its performace isn't really that great. Why should (s)he change, and give up most o' his/her favorite apps in the bargain? As of today, linux does not even have a stable browser, which can do java well. I hate Windoze, but i have to go to a Windoze machine(i don;t have any microsloth thing within 100 meters of my office) if i want to check out a java-loaded page. Want to quickly develop a GUI Application? A person who does not care about the OS, is definitely gonna chose VisualBasic over EMACS/GCC/Qt. All OSes have specific aims: BE: Multimedia...does great at it. no body even compares Windoze to Be in this area. WinXX: ease of use, integration. integration, to what ever levels M$ carries it, does have a problem, but most people would take a frequent reboot, rather than give up the tight integration. Solaris: Server, computing IRIX: graphics, scientific computing Linux: ????? Where Is Linux? Where is it Going? These are important questions, ANY movement must ask itself. If we find we cannot answer these, we would just turn out be Rebels without a cause. and linux would just end up being a note in OS history. Don't get me wrong...i work(about 8 hours a day at work, and another 4-8 hours/day at home) exclusively on IRIX and Linux, and have not even touched a WinXX machine in more than six months, i have been really thinking about the future of linux, and to me, at present, it doesn't look very bright. I would continue to use it, no matter what, but linux developers really need to do some kind of serious thinking about what they want from linux.
Slashdot Mirror
(I KNOW, COMPLETELY OFFTOPIC, but just sumthing i felt like saying)
:P
i used to think like that, untill i installed my first firewall. The log showed more than 20 intrusion attempts in the first 5 minutes of the firewall starting up. Also, when u cant trust your own OS (or "your" software) to not phone home (only a problem on windows), u better have your firewall up and running before ANY network activity.
Its not as if someones waiting...there are just too many scripts, scans, worms out there...and the primary purpose of these is not to hose ur data..they cudnt care less...what they want is, in nearly all cases, ur net bandwidth, to:
1) run IRC bouncers
2) host warez (ur diskspace is also the target here)
3) launch DDOS attacks
4) any kind of "proxy" that may help in anonymizing any later "serious" cracking activity
and depending upon how "responsible" you are, u may not have problems with 1/2/3 but 4 could end up getting u into very serious trouble. I personally dont want to be a part of the next attempt to bring down EBay.
also, in my case, being at a UNI, and having my machines on 10Mbps, AND with the huge UNI net pipe , my machine is definitely a lucrative target.
Even otherwise, i just dont **LIKE** anyone access one of *my* machines in ways i did not intend...you maybe different.
I think people lacking the will to properly secure their boxes should not be allowed on broadband. Dialup is ok...i think dialup users only waste any crackers time
Seriously, my suggestion is for you to give a software firewall a shot. The first half an hour should be enough to convince you of the need. (and no, the built in forewall in XP doesnt count.)
I have myself since graduated to a hardware firewall for real security, with a software firewall only required to prevent your own "untrusted" programs from calling home.
Ghoul2
When i am doing a fresh install of WIN2K and REDHAT on my comps (a once-in-6-months exercise) i make sure the machine is not even physically hooked up to the net untill i have a software firewall configured, up and running. I keep the firewall packages on CDs, along with config files, and ONLY AFTER these are setup, i go online to install other things, update drivers, etc (usually, only for win2k, not for redhat, which is trivial to bring back to my customized setup)...
;) ...
having TCP/IP built into the bios, with no firewalling support, and no possibility of frequent/safe upating, no easy way to check for "being" owned is a very bad idea. Also, Phoenix being a popular bios manufacturer, there will be a lot of worms targetting this bios tcp/ip stack.
I dont see a single genuine advantage of having all this crap in the BIOS anyway. I mean, if u hose ur drive, and need to go online for some critical information/software before u can bring ur comp back up, just keep a KNOPPIX cd handy. I personally think BIOS shud be thinning down even further, given none of the modern OSes really use most of the services, and the BIOS mostly just gets in their way. All the bios shud be capable of, is to bring up the OS, and then let the OS configure everything. It wud be so neat to have the OS kernel setup all the hardware, the powersaving policies, everything when it starts up. Of course, the best is to just have the OS kernel as the bios!! just throw this anachronism completely out. (yeah for ppl whos fav os is not linux, sumthing else might need to be worked out
Ghoul
hilarious :D
...oh, wait :P
i knew there was a point to this whole soviet russia madness...really neat...
i just moderated you up!!!
Doesnt Flash memory have a really low number of rewrites, like 10,000 after which the chip goes bad? To me, this means tht one just cant use a flash chip as primary storage with regular consumer operating systems...think /tmp and /var/log and their equivalents under win32. Or look at yesterdays story about the sector which holds the FAT, which is written/rewritten every time a file on the filesystem is modified. 10,000 total modifications, and ur FAT sector (and probably the physical chip its located on? i am not sure...) craps out. Heck...that means, a new device might not even last through the installation of a linux distro.
or is this a different kind of flash from an alternate universe that i dont know about. I noticed on the webpage, they mention a very high MTBF, which is logical, but dont say anything about the number of rewrite cycles...
Ghoul2
The memo says that the JRE implementation on Solaris (not the implementation of SOLARIS itself)is a cause of many java problems, including
1) Large memory usage (cites an example of a "hello world" program using up 9MB)
and
2) Long startup times
the memo blames these problems in the SOLARIS implementation of java VM on the "fact" that that project doesnt seem to have prority. The memo states in passing that the win32 vm doesnt seem to suffer from these problems as much. So the memo specifically restricts itself to the solaris jvm.
It also talks about how the java vm doesnt confirm to the sun SDF, and thus the versioning is incomaptible with it. There is no support for patching an installed java vm, thus requiring an entire new install of the latest version of the jvm if a bug is discovered. This means either having multiple jvm installed and running if different java applications on a system need different java releases, or breaking a whole set of applications, which may not run with the latest release. Again, cites examples of these.
The memo makes a case for:
1)introducing a patch system for java vm, so there need not a a new install everytime a bug is discovered.
2) stict backward compatibility, so that an application written for the older version of JVM works with all later minor revisions
3) consideration of a new mechenism for "bsoleting" and interface replacing/in addition to deprecation.
4) priority for solaris jvm development, with claims (by comparing it with python!!) that the memory footprint of the java resident set (the code bloat added by the garbage collector and co to each running java program) maybe reducible to a fifth of its current size.
read the memo. its a very intelligently argued writeup, and has been completely misrepresented in the slashdot post.
very interesting read.
Ghoul2
you mean "free as in free speech, not as in free beer"? ;)
Ghoul
what xserver/version are you using with your laptop for your regular linux boot? If no linux distro gives u a good X display, u might be out of luck here, as far as using MoviX goes...does the Framebuffer driver also not work? how fast is your laptop?
hope this helps,
Ghoul
Checkout the home page. In short, its a small (~5MB) linux distribution designed to be booted from a CD, with autodetection of video and audio, and automatically plays all the media files placed in the root directory of the CD. It uses Mplayer to play the movies, so all formats supported by mplayer (pratically everything!!) are supported by movix. All u do is put your "movixed" cd in ur drive, reboot, and watch the movie...all the software for playing it is right there on the disk.
I have a laptop with a 250MHz processor, and Movix is the only way i can play Divx on it without dropping frames or loosing audio sync.
LinuxGhoul
the only "funny" part of the license is "you may not distribute modifications of the Software under terms that purport to require the Software or derivative works to be sublicensed to others", a very straight, and extremely amusing ("purport"??) attack on the GPL. M$ maynot be a lot of good things, but they certainly ARE FOCUSSED! ;)
also, can someone please explain to me the impliations of
Can someone please enlighten me?
LinuxGhoul
6 years back i wrote a 96 BYTE machine code program under DOS, using nothing but "debug" (machine code, as in i hand assembled my assembly), which calculated factorials of numbers upto abt 32000...i still give it a go when i am bored, under bochs :)
i count tht as the most beautifull of my code
ghoul2
Its the SiPix Stylecam
on the contrary, the *only* available drivers seem to be for linux. From the article:
"A simple Linux device driver was developed which allows user mode programs to access the Pilchard hardware. Although this driver was tested only with Linux Kernel 2.2.17, ports to other operating systems and Linux versions should be trivial."
I have always found that for research oriented stuff like this, linux is the primary development platform.
I tried the exact same thing, got the same error and the blank screen. I also noticed that the emulator was using up all my CPU...it seems its gone into some infy-loop.
anyone else try this?
Ghoul
It's painfull to see so much BS on the front page of slashdot.
GSLV == Geosynchronous Space Launch Vehicle.
used to launch upto two-tonne(metric) satellites in an orbit 36,000KM from the earths center, where their revolution around earth is at the same angular velocity as the rotation of earth around its own axis. This is usefull for COMMUNICATIONS satellites. The distance is too large for this to be put to any military use except military communications.
India has been building its own satellites of all classes since almost two decades now. This is the next step in their LAUCH capability.Till now they used to have their geosynchronous satellites lauched thru the European Arienne Space. They have already succefully launched satellites in the polar (north-sorth) orbit, which is very usefull for remote sensing, weather prediction, and of course, spying).
While it is true that the GSLV scheduled to be lauched tomorrow is designed and built in india, it incorporates a critical component which is not of indian manufacture: The Cryogenic Engine, and engine which works with liquid hydrogen to provide the high thrust, but thus requires to do a lot of its functioning at a very low (below Hydrogen boiling point) temperature. Under a cold-war-era deal, the USSR agreed to supply seven cryogenic engines to india for its initial use, while simultaneously tranferring the technological knowhow to ISRO ( NASA for INDIA) so they could manufacture their own later. This later part of the deal, the tech transfer was later cancelled, under intense US pressure, as the US was worried about the ICBM-related uses of cryogenic technology.
So although this still is a big deal for a third world country to achieve, it is not true to claim that the GSLV is totally indigenous. To the credit of ISRO, they assert they will be ready with a completely indigenous cryogenic stage in the next 3-4 years. Thus the US-mandated ban could be a blessing in disguise for domestic indian R&D, repeating the success story of the Indian Supercomputer, PARAM, built from scratch indigenously, after the US refused the Indian Institute of Sciences, Bangalore, permission to import a CRAY-YMP from the US.
well, considering the kind of thing you mention is right down my alley, and that i am a poor grad student trying to stay alive while i finish my thesis, all u need to do is offer me a respectable looking monthly bribe, and not be based in UTAH.
:)
This is how:
LG
I don't think you get it. You may dirtribute it,
you, may copy it as often as you like. It isn't you M$ is targeting. But when teams like the Samba guys try to create free implementations of their "extensions" of the protocol, M$ would have a decent case against them, decent enough to not be immediately thrown out of court. M$ need not win on such a case, only strech it out long enough to break the vistims.
I have been trying to use the pr1 for a few hours now, and am totally stumped: whenever i try to access the password manager, it asks me for a master password, which i don't have. What is the default password?
I agree with you. In the last few months i have found myself spending less and less time at slashdot. I remember during my first year at slashdot i read everypost, every link, and EVERY comment on slashdot. Now most of the posts don't seem worth the effort. Also, as even a less-than-earth-shaking posts generate 200+ comments(most of them pointless), i no longer feel like spending time reading comments. I also do not feel the moderation agrees with my views and so i keep my threshold negative, so that doesn't help either. I do not mind slashdot being owned by andover(rob and co. deserve whatever money they can get), so i won't say that /. has sold its soul. I just think, /. is losing its soul.
Maybe now that linux is fairly out into mainstream, this niche site has become redundant(i do not really believe that. Ok: i don't *want* to believe that.
Linuxghoul
Is it just me, or have others also noticed a couple
other articles on this topic? It seems to me, all of these
are just a preamble of a hype-storm for the Microsoft
solution to this problem. go take a look at this
Hotmail is already using this, but i don't know of any others yet.
i am thinkink this could really become big, and could really give MS
a monopoly on website user authentication. How about moving quickly, and developing an open source standard similar to this?
Linuxghoul
How 'bout having a slashdot poll on the matter?
;)
I think ESR is really trying to deny the fact that THE ONLY REAL difference between Gnu/Linux(and other GPL stuff), and M$ crap, are the RMS principles. Companies have and do turn out excellent quality material, and have even given away source code, but under NON-GPL terms. Doing this does not make them part of the Free-Source movement. A belief in the spirit of the GPL is the one, and ONLY qualification. And for me, 'RMS Free Source' is the only true movement. Everything else is just an attempt to cash in on its success.
Also, to all those people who hate RMS's rhetoric, please remember that he is, actually the philosophical father of all the values we here at slashdot believe in. Even if u don't like his style of advocacy, take a few minutes to realize that 'freedom' in its most basic form, is that of speech, and he has a right to any way he chooses to express it. Don't like it? well, do it ur way, but don't be such a thankless jerk.
LinuxGhoul
What do they mean by a "low power drain of 1 ma/hr"
is that 1 milli ampere/hr? 'cause that unit makes absolutely no sense
an ampere is a unit of current, not power.
mutiply current(amperes) with the voltage at which it works
(lets say 5 volts), and we get the power consumtion of the device
in "WATTS" so they could say the power consumtion
is x watts, or x milliwatts, or x mw. but that "/hr" bit is
ridiculous, proves that the pages been written by
someone who doesn't know 2 bits of basic EE.
what we need to realize is that although uptil now linux has been designed for lower end machines(mainly cause the main developers and users till now could only afford cheap hardware), we ARE trying to move in to the enterprise, and there, the price of hardware, or for that matter, the software, hardly matters. even the regular upgrade cycle that M$ forces on them corporates is of no concern to them(after all the IT dept need to justify its annual budget!). So if linux has to make any inroads at all in the Corporate world, we need:
After all(and PLEASE, no flames, for once we should be ready to aceept the truth):
So what market are we aiming for? I think, THAT question really brings out THE central problem with the whole of linux. It is great for the folks who know what they r doing, and what they want (us!), and so it also targets us. But get out of the slashdot community, and the reasons for using Linux just start fizzling out. Th only real reasons u can tell to a non geek are that its free, and it performs better than windoze. Of course, RedHat Linux is not free(and to a geek, the option of downloading linux and installing it doesn't really appeal. frankly, even i, with my 4y+ experience with linux won't really try that), and these tests(which i am sure M$ is really going to tout al around) would show that its performace isn't really that great. Why should (s)he change, and give up most o' his/her favorite apps in the bargain? As of today, linux does not even have a stable browser, which can do java well. I hate Windoze, but i have to go to a Windoze machine(i don;t have any microsloth thing within 100 meters of my office) if i want to check out a java-loaded page. Want to quickly develop a GUI Application? A person who does not care about the OS, is definitely gonna chose VisualBasic over EMACS/GCC/Qt.
All OSes have specific aims:
BE: Multimedia...does great at it. no body even compares Windoze to Be in this area.
WinXX: ease of use, integration. integration, to what ever levels M$ carries it, does have a problem, but most people would take a frequent reboot, rather than give up the tight integration.
Solaris: Server, computing
IRIX: graphics, scientific computing
Linux: ?????
Where Is Linux? Where is it Going?
These are important questions, ANY movement must ask itself. If we find we cannot answer these, we would just turn out be Rebels without a cause. and linux would just end up being a note in OS history. Don't get me wrong...i work(about 8 hours a day at work, and another 4-8 hours/day at home) exclusively on IRIX and Linux, and have not even touched a WinXX machine in more than six months, i have been really thinking about the future of linux, and to me, at present, it doesn't look very bright. I would continue to use it, no matter what, but linux developers really need to do some kind of serious thinking about what they want from linux.
LinuxGhoul