I do all my machine builds and initial updates with the box sitting behind a netgear router, fully NATted and with no port forwarding - i.e. the box is invisible to the net. I've merrily built and updated many machines in this way and have never been compromised (and my last step is to virus, spyware, and trojan scan with several of each type of tool).
If you just throw a cheap hardware router/NAT/firewall in front of your box when you build, this isn't really big deal I've found.
As I think it's only a matter of time before we're all paying by the byte for bandwidth in one fashion or another, I also believe that stuff like video blogs and other low value/size ratio internet artifacts will go away as well (like banner ads and other graphics that will be aggressively filtered out once you've got to pay for each one you look at...)
So, no, I don't think video blogs are the wave of the future...
Well, I'm still more tempted to believe that over the course of hundreds of millions of years and trillions of beetles that bombadier effect eventually evolved than to believe that there is, instead, a being who exists outside of time itself, created, is aware of, and in fact influences every single atom in the universe simultaneously, and decided to bother spending his/her time (in his/her own timeline/dimension) designing billions of different life forms, down to the smallest single-celled organism.
Why couldn't the beetle have started out by just squirting a drop of some chemical when it got upset? Maybe that was enough to give it an edge. Then, perhaps it evolved to squirt its drop of stuff at things, instead of in the general vicinity (like a skunk). Then, perhaps over time other chemicals got added to increase the nastiness of the squirt, including reactants, inhibitors, etc. Perhaps at first this was all much more simple, with just a pressure-sealed orifice that squirted out when the pressure built up enough inside, and the whole "trap door" thing came later as greater pressure wound up creating better squirts and enhanced survivability.
In my opinion, it's WAY easier to come up with a viable evolution story for this beetle than to go off the deep and and talk about some kind omnipotent, omniscient being that specifically and deliberately thinks to himself (Hmm, how about if I create a beetle that squirts super-hot exhaust out of its ass-end at attackers? That'd be good for a laugh..."). I mean, come on, like this omnipotent being wouldn't have something better to do? What about all the critters living down at the bottom of the ocean? Like those worms that feed off super-heated vents in the darkest depths? What the hell would they be designed for? Or the insects that live in your eyebrows? Intelligent design? It's amazing that people assert that the argument from design makes more sense than evolution - I think it makes absolutely no sense at all!
As a 30-something with a wife, 8-month old, and a well-paying but demanding job, I tend to have more money than time. I tried playing Everquest for a while in the evenings for 1/2 hour to an hour after the baby was in bed but before I turned in, but it soon became clear to me that at that rate I'd be wandering around fighting bats for literally months of real time before I'd get anywhere.
All these on-line games show off spectacular screen shots of high-level characters killing dragons and doing heroic things, but when you actually start you're mucking about in the weeds killing vermin.
Don't get me wrong - I get the value of reward for hard work. If I was in college or simply lacked a life and could spend 4-8 hours/day in the game cranking out the XPs I could put up with several weeks of toil before some kind of payoff. But months? Or Years? I guess I just don't have the patience (not to mention the money - it really started to irk me that I was PAYING for the priveledge of wandering around killing rats).
I've often mentioned to my friends that I'd give online games another shot if I could buy my way past the drudgery and actually have some fun right away. I'd pay real money for xps, weapons, equipment - you name it (assuming the prices were reasonable and reflected that fact that it was a game).
One way to control that spinning out of control would be to just have a subset of equipment/weapons available (perhaps just good quality, yet non-magic), and only allow a certain max number of xps to be bought, thus limiting the "buy-in" potential of new players. Then the uber-characters of 50+ level can still feel like they "put in their time" while we "casual gamers" (or is it "life-balanced gamers") could at least enjoy some aspect of the game besides killing bats and rats.
Anyway, the bottom line for me is I'll not play another online game until some sort of system like this exists in a game I care about. For instance, I'd love to try out Star Wars Galaxies when it comes out, but if I'm going to have to spend a year of real time wandering around killing insects and small rodents because I can't put in more than 1/2 hour a day towards the game then I'm out. Life's too short to screw with that kind of boring, arbitrary beginning play (and to pay for it as well!)
Re:may god forgive him for what he has unleashed
on
The First Smiley :-)
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· Score: 2
The parent post is an absolutely perfect demonstration of the use of an emoticon. There is a vast difference in how I reacted to the post above from how I would have reacted to the same post without the emoticon (I would have thought the writer was truly ripping into the prior poster). By using the emoticon this writer has defused his own post, making it clear he's joking. To achieve the same effect without such would have required some kind of (Just Kidding!) text afterwards - I find the emoticon far more efficient and elegant.
Sure, but the point of Gentoo is you don't have to think about individual packages. If you want to add system-wide support for a certain library or security framework or something, you simply add that option to your "USE" variable in your system's configuration, and every single package on your system that can make use of said library, etc, is automatically compiled with that feature turned on. You do have to set it prior to building your system for best results, however. Unfortunately, Gentoo still does not have the option of re-setting your USE variable, then issuing the equivalent of "recompile everything that is impacted by these changed configuration options". That would be very nice. On the other hand, you can issue an "emerge world" command before going to bed and have Gentoo recompile your entire system with your new options.
The reverse is true, of course, if you want to disable it system-wide.
Checking the man page, O3 does everything O2 does, but also adds inline functions, which means the compiler has the option, instead of encoding a call to a function (as normal), of actually just plopping the function's code down instead of the call, thereby eliminating the overhead of making the call in the first place. I'm not sure what drives the decision - back when I was using Borland C++ you could use the "inline" modifier on a function to tell the compiler to do that, for instance if you wrote a "write_pixel" function or something that gets called an insane amount and is extremely small.
I completely agree, by the way, that it's dangerous to play with -O3, and I've had to back off to -O2 on several packages that just fail when I've tried -O3. Since the box in question is not my server, I take greater risks...
Re:Talk about a gimmick
on
Is RPM Doomed?
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· Score: 5, Insightful
You're so wrong. I've switched to Gentoo and won't go back to binary distribution, ever. Compiling from source allows you to, for instance, automatically compile anything that can use LDAP, for instance, with that support (or not, if you don't want it). Similarly, support for SSL, Kerberos, postgresql, etc, and many, many other optional "features" can be universally turned on and off in everything you compile. I've found it extremely annoying in the past to install an RPM only to find that the rpm maintainer didn't select compilation options that I need, so I'd wind up having to recompile anyway. Now I know that every single package on my system is compiled with exactly the options and library support I want. Not to mention my entire system (glibc, KDE, kernel, etc) is compiled with -O3 -march=i686 (etc) which has noticably sped up my system.
I deny all connections to doubleclick.com and doubleclick.net (along with about 70 other urls) in my router, so none of this crap gets near the machines on my home LAN. it's scary how many dozens of blocks occur in just a few hours of normal surfing...
This review does point out a huge blind spot in OSS with regard to group collaboration: the lack of an OSS Exchange equivalent server. I was initially excited about the review, because I hoped that it might reveal such a holy grail, but alas, no. As soon as he started talking about group calendaring, it quickly devolved into "Pay $70 for this closed-source connector (per user) to connect to Exchange" which, of course, running on top of W2K server, would cost major bucks (I think a minimum 5-seat W2K Server is $800, then add Exchange, etc).
And, of course, cost aside, this also implies that a shop with microsoft-free aspirations currently has to buckle under and purchase at least one Windows server/exchange combo, plus hire or contract the skill to administer the beast. This is exactly what happened to my small company recently. We were going to go Linux (and in fact our Web site and time tracking server were Linux-based), but being a "virtual" company, with everyone working out of our homes, we required strong group collaboration. So, reluctantly, in came the W2K Server box running nothing but Exchange. If only there were a Linux-based option (even if it weren't OSS!). And yes, we looked at Notes, but I don't even want to go there... Of course there used to be OpenMail by HP (I think) but that's been sold off, is unavailable, and we can only wait and see where that goes (and, regardless, it won't be OSS).
Now that a polished, capable client exists, it would be fantastic to complete the offering with a server.
Re:I can't understand ECC - specifics
on
To ECC Or Not To ECC?
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Thank you for that explanation - I think I understand it better, though I'm confused a bit because the two times I've gotten a BSOD were with ECC enabled, which is why I turned it off to see if they would go away...
I've got a Tyan S2460 MB w/ 1Gig PC2100 ECC RAM & 2 1.4Mhz Athlon MPs. It uses PhoenixServer BIOS, and the BIOS gives me these options re: ECC
SERR Signal Condition: (ECC error conditions that SERR# be asserted [sic])
None
Single Bit
Multiple Bit
Both
ECC Config: (No ECC, Checking Only, Checking and Correction and Checking, Correction with Scrubbing)
Disabled
Checking Only
Checking and Correction
Checking, Correction w/ Scrubbing
So, my question would be: if this is basically a home machine with no mission-critical stuff running on it, but I'd like to get some benefits from my expensive ECC RAM without BSODing, what settings would be best in this scenario? Right now I've got everything turned off (Signal Condition: None, ECC Disabled). Oh, and what the heck is scrubbing?
And yes, I've attempted to RTFM but it's little more than a pamphlet and I can't find good, clear info about this.
I've got PC2100 ECC in my server at home, and I've turned ECC checking off in the BIOS. What I can't fathom is this: In the past several months I've gotten a couple of parity errors in my memory. However, instead of warning me in some way and allowing me to gracefully shut down, the error raises a non-maskable interrupt which halts the machine in its tracks, giving me a Blue Screen of Death and requiring a hard reset.
How is this helpful? The philosophy behind that seems to be rather than allow my programs to continue with a corrupt bit of data, it's better to halt all operation and LOSE ALL MY DATA and perhaps corrupt my hard drive. That's "help" I don't need.
Is this universal, or just my OS (W2K), BIOS, or hardware? Is there a way for ECC to simply and calmly report a problem without locking up my machine in the process?
Unfortunately, if you download this software you give them permission to use extra cycles and storage space on your computer. It's in the EULA. So, laws such as that (apparently) won't work for you. Pretty nasty stuff...
Is that what open source is coming to? Don't we have any respect anymore for the people that innovate? If open source development continues to be a race to see who can stab the other person in the back and take credit for his/her work it WILL NOT improve quality.
The people who say "that's how the GPL is designed to work" really don't have a clue in my book.
I think it's extremely sad you feel that way. I feel exactly the opposite - events like this are what breath life into OSS and stand as shining examples of the power and strength of the GPL. That an individual can stand on the shoulders of great achievers and reach even higher ground, fully supported both legally and morally in an environment of innovation and creativity is incredible and should serve as both a warning and an example to companies mired in the morass of IP lawsuits and closed source development.
This is darwinism at its finest - survival of the fittest ideas in operating system design and implementation. What we are witnessing here is pure evolution of thought and concept.
Consider if natural evolution had the "attitude" you seem to espouse - what if the first organism to "figure out" replicating DNA had a lock on it, with "Mother Nature" prohibiting other organisms from taking the idea and running with it because it would "stab the other [protozoa] in the back"? Or worse, because the original organism "closed sourced" it and retained IP rights to it:) We wouldn't be here arguing about it, anyway...
I say - Great Job Bill! This is what the GPL and OSS are all about. Let's see what he puts together and consider it valuable intellectual research and contribution into the world of OSS OSs. May the fittest concepts prevail in the end.
I disagree. Usenet certainly does replicate one key feature of these "group" sites (Yahoo, Lycos, etc), which is the messaging, but there are a few other features that make the group sites better for true group communications, such as:
1. Shared calendar - nice for keeping track of upcoming events and such 2. Images/Documents folders - very nice for storing static content that shouldn't "cycle off" a typical message list, or be lost in hundreds of messages. Having lasting-value documents mixed in with highly perishable messages is a pain in the neck I've found. 3. Private membership - or even just knowing who's a member: difficult to do with Usenet
Yahoo groups, anyway, also has shared links, group polls, and even a "database" function, whereby one can, I gather, create tables and populate data fields in the group context, though I've never used it.
So, certainly for some groups, Usenet would be fine if all they want is messaging. But for other groups these additional features are valuable and unavailable from Usenet (as far as I know).
I agree this came out too early on Slashdot - I'd think a new OS distro that makes its way to the front page of Slashdot really ought to have an iso image to try out, or at least some interesting kernel patches, etc.
However, all that said, I think the fact that he's going for it shows initiative and the kind of creative drive that keeps this entire community alive and created it in the first place. I think it's a neat idea and I'll fire up a VMWare machine to try the distro out when/if it's available, because some of his ideas seem interesting. It's certainly worth that much just to support folks who are willing to take on that kind of project for the love of it - without folks like this, trying out new ideas and seeing what flies, how can the *BSD/Linux world move ahead? It's all about individuals having the drive and the energy to take on these types of projects. And, frankly, the fact that he can go off and pursue a vision of his, building off of the BSD base, is just another great example of how cool Open Source is! Imagine if someone wanted to do a similar project with Windows - not gonna happen.
When someone actually makes good on the promise of Open Source and attempts to extend something in ways not tried before (or simply in ways unique to his own vision), I'd think the correct response would be "Way to go! Good luck!" - Not "You're full of shit - it'll never fly - the security sucks, etc". Man, what a bunch of wet blankets we have on Slashdot. It's a damn shame.
So, while it's probably a bit under-done for a premiere spot on Slashdot, his project should not be ridiculed in my opinion and I wish him the best of luck.
But again, I don't think you're envisioning the scenario completely. Think about it - I go into a conference room with a hammer (because it's unlikely I'm gonna find something like a hammer in a conference room). I then eject a pcmcia card which immediately sets off a very loud alarm and proceed to smash the card to pieces on the conference room table.
You're telling me this would be surreptitious way to sneak out with the laptop? That this would not attract undue attention?
Frankly, I'm pretty sure that simply letting the alarm go off (in an office that might have a couple of false alarms every few months) would be less noticable than somebody actually beginning to smash the card right in the middle of the conference room/cubicle land space. Consider also that for an office used to the sound of the alarm and it's de-activation (again, from testing and sporadic false alarms), a very abrubt, unnatural end to the alarm would raise some eyebrows.
Any of the options you talk about would attract a great deal of attention in any office building I've ever worked in (including somebody walking around with a blaring PCMCIA card looking for a locked door to stick it under). The way employees and well-dressed strangers wander off with others' laptops is by looking completely normal - totally blending in and thus remaining invisible. Any of the approaches you talk about above immediately point out the perpetrator as not following normal behavior patterns.
It was actually pretty easy. He let us lock it ourselves with our own motion passwords, and after I locked it with mine, it only took a couple of tries to unlock it again, even though none of the others in the room could duplicate my motions. I figured that with a few practice runs I would be able to reliably unlock it on the first try.
Oh, he had it - you could tell from the siren that went off after a few seconds of not getting the motions right... it was fairly obvious when you didn't duplicate his motions correctly.:)
One thing to keep in mind is that a very large proportion of laptop thefts occur inside office buildings. I've worked at a couple of companies that have laptops "wander off" each year. Locking them down is great, but isn't practical if your company is one in which folks are carrying around their machines to conference rooms and each others' offices to collaborate.
The scenario is this (based on several true stories): Somebody leaves their laptop in a conference room/another's office/their own cube, unlocked. A well-dressed stranger, perhaps present for a "meeting" wanders up, picks up the laptop, and proceeds to simply walk out, looking very proper and professional with the laptop under his arm. Don't forget, this could easily be an employee of the company stealing another employee's machine (which also happens quite a bit).
Caveo technology is great for this scenario. Clearly if the PC is emitting a piercing alarm (I've heard it, and it is truly loud), the fellow would attract attention if he were walking towards the door. Similarly, were he to eject and toss the card, it still screams, leading everyone to do a quick "Where's my laptop" check at a minimum, and alerts the receptionist/folks around the door to take note of who is leaving, etc.
I think this solution fits best into a corporate setting as a deterrent to inside-job theft, rather than a deterrant to somebody reaching into your car and grabbing your notebook (though, you'd have to think that many less savvy crooks would drop a notebook pretty quick if it started to wail and really did turn heads).
Actually, I've tried it and it's EXTREMELY hard to duplicate the motions - the accelerometer inside is incredibly sensitive. I sat across from the CEO of Caveo who, right in front of me, armed the mechanism with a couple of tilts - a very simple motion password. We watched him do it a couple of times. I, and my companion, tried to duplicate that motion for several minutes and completely failed. You really don't have any idea how hard it is to duplicate exactly the motions of another's arms until you try.
The sensitivity of the angles you tilt, for instance, is something like within 1 degree, and the acceleration parameters are also extremely precise (so, for instance, if you lift the laptop an inch or two while also tilting it, this counts).
Surprisingly, it's actually NOT that difficult to duplicate your own motions - muscle memory is far more precise than I ever thought.
But, really, until you try it you can't imagine how difficult it really it to duplicate even simple motion passwords.
Heck, any space alien in the universe should arrive at exactly the same beige if they do the computation from where they stand.
What about distance/age effects? As someone else pointed out, the light hitting us here is an amalgam representing many eras of the universe's past. The light hitting us from 10 billion years ago will be much bluer (since it's younger) than light hitting us from 5 million years ago, for instance (discounting redshift, as they did).
So, the "average" color they created would differ if the aliens were located elsewhere in the universe, unless the universe is truly so uniform (and "wraparound", such that there is no "edge") that no matter where you are, you always have statistically the same mix of galaxies at x distance away at y luminosity, etc, even if they're different galaxies for different locations, thus always causing the same "average" to appear regardless of where you are. But do we know this would happen? I'd think there would be some localization, which makes this, again, kind of Earth specific (or at least Milky Way specific). So, again, I'm not sure what this "de-redshifted" color represents, since while they've removed the effects of expansion, they've not removed the effects of age. I'm just saying it's kind of an abstract thing they're representing with this color.
They did correct for the relative velocity of the objects producing the light which may or may not have been a good idea.
But that's just it - my understanding of what they said was that they removed the redshift from the spectra. In other words, had they just gone up in space and pointed a spectrometer all over the place in Earth orbit (forgive my simplistic account) they would have come up with a much redder hue for the universe, since most of the incoming spectra would be significantly red-shifted, and that would have produced a very red average.
On the scientists' home page for this study, they talk about how they "de-redshifted" all the 200,000 colors before mixing them into the equation. I suppose this was to figure out what the color of each galaxy would be if you were parked nearby at zero relative velocity.
However, this isn't what you see from earth at all. Originally I thought they had simulated what would happen if you could "funnel" all the starlight on a dark night visible from Earth (or even outside our atmosphere) and created one beam from it. They've sort of done this, but in their model they've stopped the expansion of the universe and "corrected" the light to make it appear as if the universe is static and all those galaxies are not actually moving away from us.
So, I'm not sure what to make of this color - it's not one you'd ever actually see: it's not "real" in the sense you could measure it somewhere.
Re:Compromise or be ignored - it's the only option
on
SSSCA Hearing
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· Score: 2
When copy protection tromps on Fair Use rights and the concept that works must revert to the public after limited Times?
This does not logically follow at all. I agree, of course, that certain implementations of copy protections may do as you say, but you are implying that there is absolutely no form of copy protection conceivable that could possibly allow me to make my Fair Use copies and even time out after a time to allow reversion to the public - essentially, you are proposing that is metaphysically impossible, which you clearly cannot know. My original point, way up in the thread somewhere, is that the correct thing to do here is recognize the concerns of Big Media and attempt to reach a solution that allows for Fair Use yet also appeases those parties. I also state that while that very well may ultimately be impossible, but since no one can know that it's worth giving it a try.
Additionally, your technique of categorizing those who disagree with you as "whiners" does not say much for the strength of your arguments.
Of course, you're twisting my words by implying that I've stated that all who disagree with me are whiners, which I've clearly not done. Just because some who disagree with me are whiners doesn't mean I think all who disagree with me are. I define a whiner as someone who engages in ineffectual complaint rather than constructive argument. Whining is basically just bitching about how things are, how they should be, etc, without proposing any kind of solution. Not all who disagree with me are whiners. Some have proposed rational arguments for why my approach won't work, and they aren't whining.
Of course, the actual definition of "whine" implies a tone of voice, so it's admittedly hard to nail it down exactly when working strictly with written text, but when I envision talking to someone who says things like "But I want to be able to copy my music and give it to anyone I want. It's not fair that a big company can tell me not to. It's not fair that the government is gonna pass a law saying I can't do that. It's mine and I can do whatever I want and nobody can tell me not to!" I can't picture that in any way other than in a high-pitched, whiney tone, perhaps complete with foot stomping. I guess I shouldn't jump to that conclusion, but it's hard not to with the kind of postings I've seen on this board regarding this topic...
Slashdot Mirror
I do all my machine builds and initial updates with the box sitting behind a netgear router, fully NATted and with no port forwarding - i.e. the box is invisible to the net. I've merrily built and updated many machines in this way and have never been compromised (and my last step is to virus, spyware, and trojan scan with several of each type of tool).
If you just throw a cheap hardware router/NAT/firewall in front of your box when you build, this isn't really big deal I've found.
As I think it's only a matter of time before we're all paying by the byte for bandwidth in one fashion or another, I also believe that stuff like video blogs and other low value/size ratio internet artifacts will go away as well (like banner ads and other graphics that will be aggressively filtered out once you've got to pay for each one you look at...)
So, no, I don't think video blogs are the wave of the future...
Why couldn't the beetle have started out by just squirting a drop of some chemical when it got upset? Maybe that was enough to give it an edge. Then, perhaps it evolved to squirt its drop of stuff at things, instead of in the general vicinity (like a skunk). Then, perhaps over time other chemicals got added to increase the nastiness of the squirt, including reactants, inhibitors, etc. Perhaps at first this was all much more simple, with just a pressure-sealed orifice that squirted out when the pressure built up enough inside, and the whole "trap door" thing came later as greater pressure wound up creating better squirts and enhanced survivability.
In my opinion, it's WAY easier to come up with a viable evolution story for this beetle than to go off the deep and and talk about some kind omnipotent, omniscient being that specifically and deliberately thinks to himself (Hmm, how about if I create a beetle that squirts super-hot exhaust out of its ass-end at attackers? That'd be good for a laugh..."). I mean, come on, like this omnipotent being wouldn't have something better to do? What about all the critters living down at the bottom of the ocean? Like those worms that feed off super-heated vents in the darkest depths? What the hell would they be designed for? Or the insects that live in your eyebrows? Intelligent design? It's amazing that people assert that the argument from design makes more sense than evolution - I think it makes absolutely no sense at all!
All these on-line games show off spectacular screen shots of high-level characters killing dragons and doing heroic things, but when you actually start you're mucking about in the weeds killing vermin.
Don't get me wrong - I get the value of reward for hard work. If I was in college or simply lacked a life and could spend 4-8 hours/day in the game cranking out the XPs I could put up with several weeks of toil before some kind of payoff. But months? Or Years? I guess I just don't have the patience (not to mention the money - it really started to irk me that I was PAYING for the priveledge of wandering around killing rats).
I've often mentioned to my friends that I'd give online games another shot if I could buy my way past the drudgery and actually have some fun right away. I'd pay real money for xps, weapons, equipment - you name it (assuming the prices were reasonable and reflected that fact that it was a game).
One way to control that spinning out of control would be to just have a subset of equipment/weapons available (perhaps just good quality, yet non-magic), and only allow a certain max number of xps to be bought, thus limiting the "buy-in" potential of new players. Then the uber-characters of 50+ level can still feel like they "put in their time" while we "casual gamers" (or is it "life-balanced gamers") could at least enjoy some aspect of the game besides killing bats and rats.
Anyway, the bottom line for me is I'll not play another online game until some sort of system like this exists in a game I care about. For instance, I'd love to try out Star Wars Galaxies when it comes out, but if I'm going to have to spend a year of real time wandering around killing insects and small rodents because I can't put in more than 1/2 hour a day towards the game then I'm out. Life's too short to screw with that kind of boring, arbitrary beginning play (and to pay for it as well!)
The parent post is an absolutely perfect demonstration of the use of an emoticon. There is a vast difference in how I reacted to the post above from how I would have reacted to the same post without the emoticon (I would have thought the writer was truly ripping into the prior poster). By using the emoticon this writer has defused his own post, making it clear he's joking. To achieve the same effect without such would have required some kind of (Just Kidding!) text afterwards - I find the emoticon far more efficient and elegant.
The reverse is true, of course, if you want to disable it system-wide.
I completely agree, by the way, that it's dangerous to play with -O3, and I've had to back off to -O2 on several packages that just fail when I've tried -O3. Since the box in question is not my server, I take greater risks...
You're so wrong. I've switched to Gentoo and won't go back to binary distribution, ever. Compiling from source allows you to, for instance, automatically compile anything that can use LDAP, for instance, with that support (or not, if you don't want it). Similarly, support for SSL, Kerberos, postgresql, etc, and many, many other optional "features" can be universally turned on and off in everything you compile. I've found it extremely annoying in the past to install an RPM only to find that the rpm maintainer didn't select compilation options that I need, so I'd wind up having to recompile anyway. Now I know that every single package on my system is compiled with exactly the options and library support I want. Not to mention my entire system (glibc, KDE, kernel, etc) is compiled with -O3 -march=i686 (etc) which has noticably sped up my system.
I deny all connections to doubleclick.com and doubleclick.net (along with about 70 other urls) in my router, so none of this crap gets near the machines on my home LAN. it's scary how many dozens of blocks occur in just a few hours of normal surfing...
And, of course, cost aside, this also implies that a shop with microsoft-free aspirations currently has to buckle under and purchase at least one Windows server/exchange combo, plus hire or contract the skill to administer the beast. This is exactly what happened to my small company recently. We were going to go Linux (and in fact our Web site and time tracking server were Linux-based), but being a "virtual" company, with everyone working out of our homes, we required strong group collaboration. So, reluctantly, in came the W2K Server box running nothing but Exchange. If only there were a Linux-based option (even if it weren't OSS!). And yes, we looked at Notes, but I don't even want to go there... Of course there used to be OpenMail by HP (I think) but that's been sold off, is unavailable, and we can only wait and see where that goes (and, regardless, it won't be OSS).
Now that a polished, capable client exists, it would be fantastic to complete the offering with a server.
I've got a Tyan S2460 MB w/ 1Gig PC2100 ECC RAM & 2 1.4Mhz Athlon MPs. It uses PhoenixServer BIOS, and the BIOS gives me these options re: ECC
SERR Signal Condition: (ECC error conditions that SERR# be asserted [sic])
ECC Config: (No ECC, Checking Only, Checking and Correction and Checking, Correction with Scrubbing)
So, my question would be: if this is basically a home machine with no mission-critical stuff running on it, but I'd like to get some benefits from my expensive ECC RAM without BSODing, what settings would be best in this scenario? Right now I've got everything turned off (Signal Condition: None, ECC Disabled). Oh, and what the heck is scrubbing?
And yes, I've attempted to RTFM but it's little more than a pamphlet and I can't find good, clear info about this.
How is this helpful? The philosophy behind that seems to be rather than allow my programs to continue with a corrupt bit of data, it's better to halt all operation and LOSE ALL MY DATA and perhaps corrupt my hard drive. That's "help" I don't need.
Is this universal, or just my OS (W2K), BIOS, or hardware? Is there a way for ECC to simply and calmly report a problem without locking up my machine in the process?
Unfortunately, if you download this software you give them permission to use extra cycles and storage space on your computer. It's in the EULA. So, laws such as that (apparently) won't work for you. Pretty nasty stuff...
Is that what open source is coming to? Don't we have any respect anymore for the people that innovate? If open source development continues to be a race to see who can stab the other person in the back and take credit for his/her work it WILL NOT improve quality.
:) We wouldn't be here arguing about it, anyway...
The people who say "that's how the GPL is designed to work" really don't have a clue in my book.
I think it's extremely sad you feel that way. I feel exactly the opposite - events like this are what breath life into OSS and stand as shining examples of the power and strength of the GPL. That an individual can stand on the shoulders of great achievers and reach even higher ground, fully supported both legally and morally in an environment of innovation and creativity is incredible and should serve as both a warning and an example to companies mired in the morass of IP lawsuits and closed source development.
This is darwinism at its finest - survival of the fittest ideas in operating system design and implementation. What we are witnessing here is pure evolution of thought and concept.
Consider if natural evolution had the "attitude" you seem to espouse - what if the first organism to "figure out" replicating DNA had a lock on it, with "Mother Nature" prohibiting other organisms from taking the idea and running with it because it would "stab the other [protozoa] in the back"? Or worse, because the original organism "closed sourced" it and retained IP rights to it
I say - Great Job Bill! This is what the GPL and OSS are all about. Let's see what he puts together and consider it valuable intellectual research and contribution into the world of OSS OSs. May the fittest concepts prevail in the end.
I disagree. Usenet certainly does replicate one key feature of these "group" sites (Yahoo, Lycos, etc), which is the messaging, but there are a few other features that make the group sites better for true group communications, such as:
1. Shared calendar - nice for keeping track of upcoming events and such
2. Images/Documents folders - very nice for storing static content that shouldn't "cycle off" a typical message list, or be lost in hundreds of messages. Having lasting-value documents mixed in with highly perishable messages is a pain in the neck I've found.
3. Private membership - or even just knowing who's a member: difficult to do with Usenet
Yahoo groups, anyway, also has shared links, group polls, and even a "database" function, whereby one can, I gather, create tables and populate data fields in the group context, though I've never used it.
So, certainly for some groups, Usenet would be fine if all they want is messaging. But for other groups these additional features are valuable and unavailable from Usenet (as far as I know).
However, all that said, I think the fact that he's going for it shows initiative and the kind of creative drive that keeps this entire community alive and created it in the first place. I think it's a neat idea and I'll fire up a VMWare machine to try the distro out when/if it's available, because some of his ideas seem interesting. It's certainly worth that much just to support folks who are willing to take on that kind of project for the love of it - without folks like this, trying out new ideas and seeing what flies, how can the *BSD/Linux world move ahead? It's all about individuals having the drive and the energy to take on these types of projects. And, frankly, the fact that he can go off and pursue a vision of his, building off of the BSD base, is just another great example of how cool Open Source is! Imagine if someone wanted to do a similar project with Windows - not gonna happen.
When someone actually makes good on the promise of Open Source and attempts to extend something in ways not tried before (or simply in ways unique to his own vision), I'd think the correct response would be "Way to go! Good luck!" - Not "You're full of shit - it'll never fly - the security sucks, etc". Man, what a bunch of wet blankets we have on Slashdot. It's a damn shame.
So, while it's probably a bit under-done for a premiere spot on Slashdot, his project should not be ridiculed in my opinion and I wish him the best of luck.
You're telling me this would be surreptitious way to sneak out with the laptop? That this would not attract undue attention?
Frankly, I'm pretty sure that simply letting the alarm go off (in an office that might have a couple of false alarms every few months) would be less noticable than somebody actually beginning to smash the card right in the middle of the conference room/cubicle land space. Consider also that for an office used to the sound of the alarm and it's de-activation (again, from testing and sporadic false alarms), a very abrubt, unnatural end to the alarm would raise some eyebrows.
Any of the options you talk about would attract a great deal of attention in any office building I've ever worked in (including somebody walking around with a blaring PCMCIA card looking for a locked door to stick it under). The way employees and well-dressed strangers wander off with others' laptops is by looking completely normal - totally blending in and thus remaining invisible. Any of the approaches you talk about above immediately point out the perpetrator as not following normal behavior patterns.
It was actually pretty easy. He let us lock it ourselves with our own motion passwords, and after I locked it with mine, it only took a couple of tries to unlock it again, even though none of the others in the room could duplicate my motions. I figured that with a few practice runs I would be able to reliably unlock it on the first try.
Oh, he had it - you could tell from the siren that went off after a few seconds of not getting the motions right... it was fairly obvious when you didn't duplicate his motions correctly. :)
The scenario is this (based on several true stories): Somebody leaves their laptop in a conference room/another's office/their own cube, unlocked. A well-dressed stranger, perhaps present for a "meeting" wanders up, picks up the laptop, and proceeds to simply walk out, looking very proper and professional with the laptop under his arm. Don't forget, this could easily be an employee of the company stealing another employee's machine (which also happens quite a bit).
Caveo technology is great for this scenario. Clearly if the PC is emitting a piercing alarm (I've heard it, and it is truly loud), the fellow would attract attention if he were walking towards the door. Similarly, were he to eject and toss the card, it still screams, leading everyone to do a quick "Where's my laptop" check at a minimum, and alerts the receptionist/folks around the door to take note of who is leaving, etc.
I think this solution fits best into a corporate setting as a deterrent to inside-job theft, rather than a deterrant to somebody reaching into your car and grabbing your notebook (though, you'd have to think that many less savvy crooks would drop a notebook pretty quick if it started to wail and really did turn heads).
The sensitivity of the angles you tilt, for instance, is something like within 1 degree, and the acceleration parameters are also extremely precise (so, for instance, if you lift the laptop an inch or two while also tilting it, this counts).
Surprisingly, it's actually NOT that difficult to duplicate your own motions - muscle memory is far more precise than I ever thought.
But, really, until you try it you can't imagine how difficult it really it to duplicate even simple motion passwords.
What about distance/age effects? As someone else pointed out, the light hitting us here is an amalgam representing many eras of the universe's past. The light hitting us from 10 billion years ago will be much bluer (since it's younger) than light hitting us from 5 million years ago, for instance (discounting redshift, as they did).
So, the "average" color they created would differ if the aliens were located elsewhere in the universe, unless the universe is truly so uniform (and "wraparound", such that there is no "edge") that no matter where you are, you always have statistically the same mix of galaxies at x distance away at y luminosity, etc, even if they're different galaxies for different locations, thus always causing the same "average" to appear regardless of where you are. But do we know this would happen? I'd think there would be some localization, which makes this, again, kind of Earth specific (or at least Milky Way specific). So, again, I'm not sure what this "de-redshifted" color represents, since while they've removed the effects of expansion, they've not removed the effects of age. I'm just saying it's kind of an abstract thing they're representing with this color.
But that's just it - my understanding of what they said was that they removed the redshift from the spectra. In other words, had they just gone up in space and pointed a spectrometer all over the place in Earth orbit (forgive my simplistic account) they would have come up with a much redder hue for the universe, since most of the incoming spectra would be significantly red-shifted, and that would have produced a very red average.
However, this isn't what you see from earth at all. Originally I thought they had simulated what would happen if you could "funnel" all the starlight on a dark night visible from Earth (or even outside our atmosphere) and created one beam from it. They've sort of done this, but in their model they've stopped the expansion of the universe and "corrected" the light to make it appear as if the universe is static and all those galaxies are not actually moving away from us.
So, I'm not sure what to make of this color - it's not one you'd ever actually see: it's not "real" in the sense you could measure it somewhere.
This does not logically follow at all. I agree, of course, that certain implementations of copy protections may do as you say, but you are implying that there is absolutely no form of copy protection conceivable that could possibly allow me to make my Fair Use copies and even time out after a time to allow reversion to the public - essentially, you are proposing that is metaphysically impossible, which you clearly cannot know. My original point, way up in the thread somewhere, is that the correct thing to do here is recognize the concerns of Big Media and attempt to reach a solution that allows for Fair Use yet also appeases those parties. I also state that while that very well may ultimately be impossible, but since no one can know that it's worth giving it a try.
Additionally, your technique of categorizing those who disagree with you as "whiners" does not say much for the strength of your arguments.
Of course, you're twisting my words by implying that I've stated that all who disagree with me are whiners, which I've clearly not done. Just because some who disagree with me are whiners doesn't mean I think all who disagree with me are. I define a whiner as someone who engages in ineffectual complaint rather than constructive argument. Whining is basically just bitching about how things are, how they should be, etc, without proposing any kind of solution. Not all who disagree with me are whiners. Some have proposed rational arguments for why my approach won't work, and they aren't whining.
Of course, the actual definition of "whine" implies a tone of voice, so it's admittedly hard to nail it down exactly when working strictly with written text, but when I envision talking to someone who says things like "But I want to be able to copy my music and give it to anyone I want. It's not fair that a big company can tell me not to. It's not fair that the government is gonna pass a law saying I can't do that. It's mine and I can do whatever I want and nobody can tell me not to!" I can't picture that in any way other than in a high-pitched, whiney tone, perhaps complete with foot stomping. I guess I shouldn't jump to that conclusion, but it's hard not to with the kind of postings I've seen on this board regarding this topic...