Disclaimer: I have more b0xen running Linux and BSD than I have running Windows.
Because the situation (I won't call it a problem, but it is for some) is that Linux development, especially the areas of the Kernel and non-commercail distros, is about what the developers think is cool, rather than what makes a practical and stable (in terms of applications running from kernel version to kernel version) OS. In many ways this is fine for a hobbyist OS, and liveable as an enterprise OS if you have someone like SuSe or RedHat (I use both) to keep things somewhat managed.
However, and you can flame me / mod me down / whatever you want for saying this, Linux will never be a great Enterprise or Desktop OS for the masses until some stuff gets standardized. On he distro side, little things, like what goes in/usr/bin vs./usr/local/bin and stuff like that, libraries that one should expect to find, initialization commands for services, appearance and functionality of the desktop, etc. Remember, most users don't want a lot of choices - they want one standard one that works. On the Kernel side, they should slow down and make sure that stuff doesn't break during a stable Kernel series. Yes, all the new features and bugfixes between 2.6.x and 2.6.x+1 are nice (and now we have 2.6.x.y - great), but it's nearly impossible to run a stock kernel on a production server because you never know if something subtle or not-so-subtle will be broken (hello OpenS/WAN). It doesn't matter if the bug is in the Kernel or the Application, most of us just want stuff to work.
For those of us that don't have full-scale test labs mimicing our production environment, we can use SuSe or RedHat to have a decent OS that's far better than Windows. But it's frustrating because it's not nearly as good as it could be if things were more disciplined. Linux is probably OK on the desktop for many large organizations that have users doing specialized tasks that can be run without Windows (call centers, dispatchers, billing clerks, etc), however in order to get them using Linux the cost needs to come down - there needs to be a decently stable and standardized free distribution to help us admins crack that nut. The problem is that commercial desktop licenses are not sufficiently cheaper than Windows, and it's impossible to sell it (in most situations) to the beancounters on soft costs like stability, reliablity, ease of administration, and productivity because, let's face it - thoes guys got burned horribly five years ago on all kinds of bullshit promises (unrelated to FOSS) in projects relating to CRM, ERP, etc. They're still gun-shy, and from their perspective wisely so.
My $.02 - OSDL should make LSB testing free for most distros. If LSB needs to be loosened / tightened / whatever, then let's get it done. If Linux users really want to start making the OS mainstream, then standards within the community will be crucial. If they want it to be a cool alternative for people willing to learn a certain amount of expertise, then that's cool also - but they'll have to accept the marginzalization that will result. RedHat and SuSe can't do all the work here - everyone needs to get on the horse.
Hint: after Trillion, the next is Quadrillion, and then (hold you breath) Quintillion. Gosh it's, like, a pattern!
You didn't even go to sextillion! If the drier technical definition is hard to grasp, just think of a sextillion as being the amount of pr0n on the 'net.
As a Valentine's day gift I bought my now-ex girlfriend her name dot com and threw up a little vanity site for her. Anyway, now that we're not together, she wants me to transfer the domain to her. I'm not sure why, but I refused, and she said that if I don't give it to her, even though (I think) I am safely the legal owner of the domain despite its being her first and last name, she'd "sick my dad's lawyers on you anyway."
Give her the domain - it was a gift, dude; even if she was a bitch, you're still being a dick by not giving it to her. Anyway, give it to her, then post this sob story again and again on Slashdot, along with the URL. Watch her bandwidth bills skyrocket or her site get shut down for exceeding quota. Have a nice day.
Sir, can you explain that simple concept to my wife? I get in serious trouble every time I try:-)
The first 350 attempts for me are totally calm, compassionate, and loving, after that I have a tendency to mutter various sentences starting with 'WTF' under my breath.
That's the problem - you're asking "what the fuck?" around your wife. She (should be) the fuck. If she not the fuck, you have a much greater problem...
What the hell, I'm in a cranky mood so I'll bite on your troll.
The fact that you responded as "Anonymous coward" says it all. A bunch of anonymous fucking cowards. Hey, if they want to go back to living in caves and eating weeds, they can go on their merry way doing it. Just leave those of us who enjoy living in the year 2005 alone.
And I love that sophomoric "morally reprehensible" argument. Who determines what's moral? If every last one of us went by our own personal morals there would be complete anarchy, literally. Instead, we get together in this thing called "society" and hammer out something that most of us can live with (even if we have all kinds of wild disagreements). Everyone is expected to get with the program, and we all have to take one for the team on some issue or other.
Hey, there are small groups of people that think it's perfectly moral to rape children. There are small groups of people who thinks it's perfectly moral to randomly commit murder. And there are small groups that think the sky is falling and the solution is to set fire to a Hummer dealership because we can't all suddenly go live in some dream world based on technology that doesn't exist and won't for another few decades. It's not bad enough for these people that we look at people driving Hummers and giggle over what's being compensated for.
So please spare us your first-year-of-college know-it-all hippie bullship attempt at philosophy. Want to make the world a better place? Go blow what few brains you have out of your head, and make sure some feral animals get to eat your remains. After all, burying your worthless ass wastes critical space (you know, landfill), and cremation pollutes the atmosphere. So go feed the critters you claim to love so much and get the fuck out of our faces.
This is the least of PETA's problems. They've given money to known (convicted) ecoterrorists such as Rodney Coronado (link, first one I found via Google, there are plenty more), his family, the ELF, etc. This information was retrieved from their tax filings (as a tax-exempt organization, their filings are public record).
I'm all for treating animals humanely, but assaulting people, setting fires, and blowing stuff up just because you don't agree with someone's lawful activities or even their wardrobe puts them in the same asshat camp as violent anti-abortion extremists. PETA is an organization that tries to maintain a reasonable face, but as soon as you start doing even a little bit of digging, you find that they are a group whose leadership has some very extreme ideas, including the advocacy of illegal, violent, etc. activities. There are plenty of quotes (including video - pretty hard to call that heresay), tax filings etc. floating around on the Internet. I've seen two documentaries exposing these; if you want more information, Google is your friend.
Yes, there's a lot of rumor and heresay on the Internet, but PETA's reputation is pretty well known. I suggest you check things out for yourself.
1) I've been wearing rigid gas-permeable contact lenses for 22 years now (not the same set, and I take them out at night you smart-asses). I notice that when I wear these versus glasses, I can stare at most monitors for a long time without significant strain.
2) Use the best CRT monitor you can get your hands on. I've noticed that my eyestrain actually goes up working on my laptop versus my CRT (a 22" NEC MultiSync FP-series set to the highest possible resolution and very tiny fonts). It's one of those things you have to try for a few days before you realize how nice it is.
Hopefully he's not using one of those 40-bit Texas Instruments RFID modules that was cracked recently. Nothing like having some 5cr1pt k1dd13z pwn1ng your entire self...
Artistic creations (photographs, movies, etc) which cannot be replaced are now stored almost exclusively in digital form. Having media decay with time creates an ongoing job of having to continuously re-copy data. Should you miss any, it's gone forever. In my estimation, this is even more important for families that want to maintain an historical record of their lives for posterity. I've recently come across writings and records of my ancestors dating back several hundred years, and it's a wonderful and fascinating thing. I would like to make sure that my great-great-great-grandchildren have something similar available to them. Outside of that, there is interest in preserving artifacts of our culture for future generations as well. As we discover that modern film, prints, magnetic and optical media have a much shorter lifespan than good old-fashioned paper (and even modern paper tends to contain acids, etc., which shorten its lifespan) and carving stuff into rock, one must wonder if our present world will vanish into the mists of time - to be outlived, as it were, by some of the ancient civilizations that by historic and technological accident chose to use superior media.
...while we wait for the unobtanium reactor that only puts out clean energy and bunny farts is developed.
Great, then we'll have to listen to people bitch and whine about global warming caused by bunny farts and deal with the smell. In all seriousness, though, I agree 100%. We should be much, much more nuclear. Easy waste disposal problem: Just store it beneath the US Capitol building until a safe, effictive storgage facility is designed and constructed. You'd be AMAZED how quickly things can get done with the proper motivation.
I also just bought an internet-friendly cell phone (Treo 650), and I'm figuring out which sites want me to visit them while I'm on the run (Google and Southwest airlines, to name two off the top of my head) and those that don't (weather.com).
Either produce a mobile-friendly version of your site - which shouln't be the end of the world, considering that most major sites these days are run by content management systems, or let the viewers go to your competitors. Automatic browser detection would be nice, but I can handle typing "mobile" or whatever instead of "www".
Until you start supporting servers that have these or (better yet) these or these. Real remote access when you server is f0rked is rather pleasant (I understand that IBM has something similar; Dell's "equivalent" solution sucks).
So I think a better way to go about it is, what could we send to an advanced civilization that would be interesting to them? Not to us.
You're assuming they'd ever want to contact us. Hell, you're assuming we'd ever want them to contact us. Think about it. An advanced alien race finds us. They contact us. They meet us. They find out about our lawyers and intellectual property laws. They blast our planet to smithereens, strictly as a precautionary measure. Game over.
I think people should spend some time thinking this through, maybe we could consider chlorinating the gene pool a bit, straighten up the house so to speak before inviting some other folks over.
For crying out loud people, if everyone keeps bashing on the Scientologists, we may never get more doses of quality cinema like Battlefield Earth (IMDB Bottom 100 #36 as of right now)...
Slashdot Mirror
Disclaimer: I have more b0xen running Linux and BSD than I have running Windows.
/usr/bin vs. /usr/local/bin and stuff like that, libraries that one should expect to find, initialization commands for services, appearance and functionality of the desktop, etc. Remember, most users don't want a lot of choices - they want one standard one that works. On the Kernel side, they should slow down and make sure that stuff doesn't break during a stable Kernel series. Yes, all the new features and bugfixes between 2.6.x and 2.6.x+1 are nice (and now we have 2.6.x.y - great), but it's nearly impossible to run a stock kernel on a production server because you never know if something subtle or not-so-subtle will be broken (hello OpenS/WAN). It doesn't matter if the bug is in the Kernel or the Application, most of us just want stuff to work.
Because the situation (I won't call it a problem, but it is for some) is that Linux development, especially the areas of the Kernel and non-commercail distros, is about what the developers think is cool, rather than what makes a practical and stable (in terms of applications running from kernel version to kernel version) OS. In many ways this is fine for a hobbyist OS, and liveable as an enterprise OS if you have someone like SuSe or RedHat (I use both) to keep things somewhat managed.
However, and you can flame me / mod me down / whatever you want for saying this, Linux will never be a great Enterprise or Desktop OS for the masses until some stuff gets standardized. On he distro side, little things, like what goes in
For those of us that don't have full-scale test labs mimicing our production environment, we can use SuSe or RedHat to have a decent OS that's far better than Windows. But it's frustrating because it's not nearly as good as it could be if things were more disciplined. Linux is probably OK on the desktop for many large organizations that have users doing specialized tasks that can be run without Windows (call centers, dispatchers, billing clerks, etc), however in order to get them using Linux the cost needs to come down - there needs to be a decently stable and standardized free distribution to help us admins crack that nut. The problem is that commercial desktop licenses are not sufficiently cheaper than Windows, and it's impossible to sell it (in most situations) to the beancounters on soft costs like stability, reliablity, ease of administration, and productivity because, let's face it - thoes guys got burned horribly five years ago on all kinds of bullshit promises (unrelated to FOSS) in projects relating to CRM, ERP, etc. They're still gun-shy, and from their perspective wisely so.
My $.02 - OSDL should make LSB testing free for most distros. If LSB needs to be loosened / tightened / whatever, then let's get it done. If Linux users really want to start making the OS mainstream, then standards within the community will be crucial. If they want it to be a cool alternative for people willing to learn a certain amount of expertise, then that's cool also - but they'll have to accept the marginzalization that will result. RedHat and SuSe can't do all the work here - everyone needs to get on the horse.
(just a joke, Canadians are cool. Literally).
The signal to the pilot will be:
"Please fly what's left of your plane out of the restric... oh.... never mind."
What the hell, I'm in a cranky mood so I'll bite on your troll.
The fact that you responded as "Anonymous coward" says it all. A bunch of anonymous fucking cowards. Hey, if they want to go back to living in caves and eating weeds, they can go on their merry way doing it. Just leave those of us who enjoy living in the year 2005 alone.
And I love that sophomoric "morally reprehensible" argument. Who determines what's moral? If every last one of us went by our own personal morals there would be complete anarchy, literally. Instead, we get together in this thing called "society" and hammer out something that most of us can live with (even if we have all kinds of wild disagreements). Everyone is expected to get with the program, and we all have to take one for the team on some issue or other.
Hey, there are small groups of people that think it's perfectly moral to rape children. There are small groups of people who thinks it's perfectly moral to randomly commit murder. And there are small groups that think the sky is falling and the solution is to set fire to a Hummer dealership because we can't all suddenly go live in some dream world based on technology that doesn't exist and won't for another few decades. It's not bad enough for these people that we look at people driving Hummers and giggle over what's being compensated for.
So please spare us your first-year-of-college know-it-all hippie bullship attempt at philosophy. Want to make the world a better place? Go blow what few brains you have out of your head, and make sure some feral animals get to eat your remains. After all, burying your worthless ass wastes critical space (you know, landfill), and cremation pollutes the atmosphere. So go feed the critters you claim to love so much and get the fuck out of our faces.
This is the least of PETA's problems. They've given money to known (convicted) ecoterrorists such as Rodney Coronado (link, first one I found via Google, there are plenty more), his family, the ELF, etc. This information was retrieved from their tax filings (as a tax-exempt organization, their filings are public record).
I'm all for treating animals humanely, but assaulting people, setting fires, and blowing stuff up just because you don't agree with someone's lawful activities or even their wardrobe puts them in the same asshat camp as violent anti-abortion extremists. PETA is an organization that tries to maintain a reasonable face, but as soon as you start doing even a little bit of digging, you find that they are a group whose leadership has some very extreme ideas, including the advocacy of illegal, violent, etc. activities. There are plenty of quotes (including video - pretty hard to call that heresay), tax filings etc. floating around on the Internet. I've seen two documentaries exposing these; if you want more information, Google is your friend.
Yes, there's a lot of rumor and heresay on the Internet, but PETA's reputation is pretty well known. I suggest you check things out for yourself.
Now the world has gone to bed.
Darkness wont engulf my head.
I can see by infrared.
How I hate the night.
Now I lay me down to sleep.
Try to count electric sheep.
Sweet dream wishes you can keep.
How I hate the night.
- Marvin the Paranoid Android.
1) I've been wearing rigid gas-permeable contact lenses for 22 years now (not the same set, and I take them out at night you smart-asses). I notice that when I wear these versus glasses, I can stare at most monitors for a long time without significant strain.
2) Use the best CRT monitor you can get your hands on. I've noticed that my eyestrain actually goes up working on my laptop versus my CRT (a 22" NEC MultiSync FP-series set to the highest possible resolution and very tiny fonts). It's one of those things you have to try for a few days before you realize how nice it is.
Hopefully he's not using one of those 40-bit Texas Instruments RFID modules that was cracked recently. Nothing like having some 5cr1pt k1dd13z pwn1ng your entire self...
40+ Years:
Artistic creations (photographs, movies, etc) which cannot be replaced are now stored almost exclusively in digital form. Having media decay with time creates an ongoing job of having to continuously re-copy data. Should you miss any, it's gone forever. In my estimation, this is even more important for families that want to maintain an historical record of their lives for posterity. I've recently come across writings and records of my ancestors dating back several hundred years, and it's a wonderful and fascinating thing. I would like to make sure that my great-great-great-grandchildren have something similar available to them. Outside of that, there is interest in preserving artifacts of our culture for future generations as well. As we discover that modern film, prints, magnetic and optical media have a much shorter lifespan than good old-fashioned paper (and even modern paper tends to contain acids, etc., which shorten its lifespan) and carving stuff into rock, one must wonder if our present world will vanish into the mists of time - to be outlived, as it were, by some of the ancient civilizations that by historic and technological accident chose to use superior media.
Imagine a Beowolf cluster of ... ouch my brain just exploded.
I also just bought an internet-friendly cell phone (Treo 650), and I'm figuring out which sites want me to visit them while I'm on the run (Google and Southwest airlines, to name two off the top of my head) and those that don't (weather.com).
Either produce a mobile-friendly version of your site - which shouln't be the end of the world, considering that most major sites these days are run by content management systems, or let the viewers go to your competitors. Automatic browser detection would be nice, but I can handle typing "mobile" or whatever instead of "www".
I think people should spend some time thinking this through, maybe we could consider chlorinating the gene pool a bit, straighten up the house so to speak before inviting some other folks over.
OK, for those of you using hardware RAID on OpenBSD, which vendors do you think rock?
For crying out loud people, if everyone keeps bashing on the Scientologists, we may never get more doses of quality cinema like Battlefield Earth (IMDB Bottom 100 #36 as of right now)...
Microsoft's Operating System architecture?
(/me runs, ducks and hides)
And all of these pay homage to the old Rube Goldberg cartoons from the early 20th century.
I used to live in Texas... we saw things like this after every Chili cookoff!
Heck, dual-layer is pretty cheap now.
And if the recordable disk goes bad, you get the exact same feeling as when your new puppy craps on the carpet!