I happen to be doing most of my web stuff in C (and the rest in PHP). If I needed arbitrarily recursive macro substitution, I wouldn't be using C. Guess what: I don't need that. That's not to say that someone else won't, and if they do, they should have access to good language choices.
Part of what goes into language choice is the way you think about problems and how their solutions are implemented. I happen to think strongly procedural. Don't try to justify why I should think some other way, because it won't happen... I'm referring to my human nature. We're all different in one way or another. If you've chosen Scheme for your programming language, or for a particular project, and you have experience and information to back that up, then I'm sure the choice is the correct one, especially for you. And not everyone does, or can, tackle every kind of problem, either. Again, thats most likely part of our own styles of thinking (that we're mostly born with, or acquire in the early phases of life).
What language was Scheme implemented in? I promise not to use that against Scheme. BTW, I'm not against most languages (exceptions include Algol, COBOL, Pascal), but I do think people need to make choices with good, and unbiased, information.
I've found that C programmers who come from a heavy assembler background tend to know how to handle pointers a lot better than those for whom C was their first language. So I certainly agree with you about the "first programming language" syndrome. There being no one language that uses all technologies (intentionally), a programmer who knows only one is essentially inexperienced in computers, no matter how many years they've been doing it (for the most part... surely there are a few exceptions, though most would have picked up another language within a few years).
Then write a better article that covers ASP along with the others. And while you're at it, toss in some more languages. I'd really like to see a solid, well written, point by point comparison, from someone as experienced as yourself, about all these language choices (although I have made my own choice already). Such an article would surely find hosting space almost anywhere, but if not, contact me.
PHP is faster than Perl or Java, but there are other choices out there which are even faster than PHP. I'd bet that speed is not your only reason for choosing a language to develop web applications in, but rather, you're just pointing out this reason because it is aligned with what your choice is. In reality, emotion often plays a big part in the choices we make, and we feel better when we see some non-emotional justification for our choices.
You've got to consider the source. IBM simply has no vested interest in ASP. I'm sure you can even find a lot of ASP in use within IBM. But as long as Microsoft plays corporate bully (not that IBM doesn't) and doesn't want to let someone else share in the benefits of ASP, then you can't expect someone else to sing the praises of ASP. For them to do that, they have to have some interest in it. Individuals can when their benefit is a job and income, and they know and like ASP, or any other language.
Probably the biggest reason for ASP not being there is the fact that it isn't (as) portable. IBM has vested interests in non-Microsoft operating systems for which these languages are more readily available and marketed.
Also, Java is currently heavily pushed in academia (which also tends to care less about issues important to business).
Why don't I see C, or C++, or Pike, or Scheme, or any of a number of other languages in here? There's a combination of reasons, varying from ignorance to disinterest. But probably the biggest one is because the authors do have a vested interest in showing off a subset (for which they have an interest) against a subset (for which they have no interest and see as a threat to their interests). The languages I just mentioned have little threat to their interest because few people use them (reasons vary, and not always technical). But if they did, I'd bet you would see them mentioned.
I think I'll write a user web hosting panel. So tell me what you think it should have, but without referencing any existing panel or service... i.e. just decribe it directly. But if you think there's already one out there that fits your needs exactly, then why would you reply here.
They probably don't. But people do, so the mechanism should be there. Unfortunately, it would also be easy for spammers to abuse, or if not, the for governments to abuse (e.g. find out who sent the mail because the anonymous relayer has a record of it).
One of the more difficult things I continue to think over is the notion of spamming vs. free speech. I definitely want to protect the latter and make sure it is never at risk. And I consider anonymous email to be one aspect of protecting it (as long as there are people wanting to suppress ideas they dislike by threatening people or worse, then anonimity is essential).
Reconciling this with the digusting muck of the internet is still difficult to do. To me, the content is not what should be relevant. You should be able to say whatever you want to say. Still, I should be free from having to pay for what you want to say, even if you want to say it to me.
Ideally, a web page is the best way to go for saying what you have to say. But you still have to let people know it's there, somehow.
I'm designing my own forum site right now, not unlike/. although with a different theme. And I am contemplating the issues of free speech vs spamming and trolling and all that kind of nonsense. The conclusion I have so far (and still subject to change... and of course people telling me what they think about it) is that the appropriate thing to do is to allow anyone to say what they want to say, but provide a means to categorize what is said. The Usenet analogy would be instead of cancelling articles, to just change the group they are associated with to whatever the article relates to (alt.ads.penis.lengthening or whatever). And it would have to be an advisory addition, not a substitution of what group the original poster posted in. People can then select articles to read based on original, or advised, groups.
Despite my hatred of spam, I do NOT support any legislation I have seen so far that is against spam. I'd sooner have legislation against backbone ISPs allowing the routing of IP packets arriving on interfaces with sources addresses which if routed as destination addresses would not go to that interface (if any at all). But I wonder if even an IP packet needs to be protected as free speech, including with anonymity.
OTOH, we shouldn't have any right to expect others to pay for our free speech any more than we should expect others to pay for our beer, as wonderful as that might be (depending on the choice of beer).
Lots of people do have various means they have implemented for themselves to block spam. I do. And I have to do it carefully because I actually get some email announcements from various companies I do business with, and I'm glad to get them, such as the place I've ordered CDs from.
Some of the strongest methods to block spam is to block relayers. Legitimate mass-mailers don't use relaying. I subscribe to MAPS and my spam load went down quite a lot. New relayers are popping up fast (mostly with pirated obsolete copies of Exchange Server), so I have supplemented MAPS by blocking ALL of China (including Hong Kong) and Korea, and am considering the same for Taiwan and maybe even Japan (will have to make exception for a little bit of legit mail I get from there) as the level of relaying there is rising.
Now what if every laboratory that hired students in the whole Uni did this. Then the mailboxes really would get clogged up.
One problem aspect to spam is that it does not scale up. If only 1 million people sent everyone just 1 piece of spam each year, that would still be nearly 2 pieces of spam coming into your mailbox every minute, on average. And don't expect it to be arriving spread out over time like that. This is not something that can ever be universally adopted. Even now it's only a handful of people doing it.
Open Source creates as much wealth as proprietary products do. The difference is that there is not a huge chunk of that wealth siphoned off to a vendor in the process. Now that in and of itself isn't as bad as it first sounds, because what goes around, comes around. However, when you have to fund the vendor through this mechanism, and if the vendor has a say in how the product behaves, then they will end up putting forth a lot of effort to make the product do certain things strictly to enhance that siphoning. Software vendors like Microsoft have to ensure that customers pay for the products and services and not steal them. The problem is that so much effort is expended to ensure that revenue stream as opposed to other innovations that actually benefit everyone. In the past we have not seen a great deal of this because as the computer market grew, Microsoft's corporate value grew along with it. Now that there is saturation (virtually every office and most homes now have a computer, and the vast majority of them run Microsoft OS products), Microsoft has to find other means to not just ensure a revenue stream, but to also make it grow.
One big difference between Microsoft Windows and Open Source systems like BSD and Linux (the distributions) is what and who the designers are focusing on. I can assure you that for whatever goals Microsoft has in terms of value growth and value siphoning, they are indeed focusing on making software for others. The BSD and Linux community still come across as making something more for themselves than for others. However, that may not be as bad as it sounds. Read on.
With the technology of software becoming ever more complex, it still takes people with intense technical backgrounds to deal with the issues. I'm often quoting Bruce Schneier when he says "Security is not a thing, it is a process" and I keep wondering if that shouldn't also apply to virtually everything else in computers and technology, as well.
Business is shifting more and more to a service strategy. Microsoft clearly knows this and are working to position themselves to provide these services. Others will do so as well. It will happen over a broad scale from the largest (Microsoft, IBM, Sun, Oracle, etc) to the smallest (your local contractor). Many new business ideas will come not as products, but as services. The technical community will be the source of a lot of that, if not most of it.
Where Open Source and free software comes into this, and where BSD and Linux have their advantage, is that they are oriented more to the technical person who is deploying these services. They will then be the embedded components not of a product, but of a service, where the particulars matter only to the service provider, not the customer. When businesses stop buying computer systems as products, and start subscribing to them as services, they will be less and less involved in the roles of administering them. The service provider will be doing that, and the focus on making the administrative interfaces easy for the technically inept will become less and less important.
Why should someone, even a sales guy in an ISP, be administering a system? They shouldn't. It will be done for them as part of the service when they shift from buying a product to subscribing to a service. Services are where it's at, and those who do have the tools handy (your collection of free software) are in the some of the best positions to create and offer those services.
...at least for servers. FreeBSD still doesn't have the kind of text mode console support I use heavily on Linux. One reason I tend to like *BSD for a server is that it simplifies much of the system administration. That comes down to SysV style vs BSD style init stuff, and how some distributions like Redhat have thorough corrupted SysV. If everything I wanted to do was on one menu that would be great. It isn't even close, so I have to sysadmin via my favorite editor (guess which one). That's when BSD init style makes life a lot easier than SysV. That's probably why Slackware is my favorite Linux distribution.
Linux still seems to be best for the home desktop due to lots more applications (FreeBSD on its heels) and lots more device support (FreeBSD is getting better, too). FreeBSD seems to be best for the server on a high speed net. OpenBSD seems to be best for the firewall. But the thing is, any one of them can do all three functions quite well. If you know one better than the others, just use it. If you want to learn, start with all of them.
I read the article on both the MSNBC web site and the INSIDE.COM web site. The MSNBC version really sucks bad. The text appears to be there, but it was harder to read and very poorly layed out. Notice how it is formatted into a little narrow column on MSNBC while INSIDE.COM has it filling out the whole screen, even though they do have menus and ads along the sides. This does show the case that big corporations are really goofing up bad. And they are wondering why the net isn't turning huge profits for them?.
Slashdot needs to start making a better choice about which sites they give primary links to and start encouraging better web sites, instead of brown nosing big corporations that can only make screwed up web sites.
Re:Another warning against Linux certification
on
Linuxgruven Deorbits
·
· Score: 2
I've been doing Linux at home since 1992 and at work since 1994. I've set up hundreds of Linux machines, and dozens of BSD and Solaris machines, and networked them together with Cisco routers I've set up. So my basic reaction is....
fuck certification!
I've had maybe a couple times where recruiters have asked me if I had any certification. My response has been "why would I need that?". Their counter-reponse has been "well, with your experience, I guess you don't".
Unfortunately, people trying to enter into the job market aren't in a position to bargain with experience. And nearly all recruiters and a large number of managers have no ability to figure out how smart (and thus how quickly they can learn on the job) a candidate is. Certification is just a cheap way to evaluate someone.
Consider the MCSE. For someone with zero experience, it's virtually worthless, anyway. For someone with 5 or more years experience it's virtually worthless, anyway. For people in between, where experience might not mean they have done everything enough, yet, it might mean something, but you can be sure management will not pay extra for it. If you have some experience and get an MCSE or other certification, about the best you can hope to get is more recruiters calling you, and potentially a better job offer from somewhere else.
I've had a chance to actually talk with a couple recruiters openly about this, and even they agree that certification generally affects salary only for people around 1 to 4 years experience, and they end up getting about what someone with 1 more year experience would get, and then only in fewer than half the jobs.
Clearly, rsh needs to not only be disabled, it should even be included anymore. If someone needs it desperately enough, they either run an old system or download the source and do you know what with it.
THE biggest source of insecure systems its the numbskullery of the system vendors that make things this way. And most of that is NOT from the rank-and-file techies at the bottom of the rung that know better. It's on the part of the management who think as long as they hide the source code, know one will know that they haven't allowed any real upgrades for security, all because it might inconvenience some customer who would have to reconfigure something to operate in a more secure environment.
Perhaps what we need is a list of the poor implementations. I doubt FreeBSD, Linux, and OpenBSD will be in there. But which ones will? And are there any E-commerce sites worth 0wning running on them?
It's not the content they are selling, it's the bandwidth delivery mechanism, which someone has to pay for, else their ISP (apparently globix.net being at least one) would pull the plug for non-payment.
So make your own free *DB service. I'm sure everyone will appreciate it. I'm sure the submissions will be flowing in hot and heavy and in a few months you'll have more than Gracenut has.
In a previous job, a co-worker was having problems installing Corel Linux on her machine. It was failing to correctly recognize the video card and network card. It used the wrong drivers and the machine would get all hosed. She came to me for help and after I was unable to convince it to do the right thing, I tried Mandrake (because it was handy at the moment). It died in the install because it didn't know what the hardware was. So I went and got my personal Slackware disk and installed that. It worked like a charm (but of course I had to manually tweak it).
Corel and Mandrake and others might be nice when everything is just perfect. But reality just isn't that way. That's not to say these aren't good distributions (I do recommend Corel Linux to a lot of people). I'm just saying a LOT more work STILL needs to be done without anyone making excuses for not doing what needs to be done.
And too many bad managers. They just don't design it right (if they even did a real design at all) and of course it trusts everything the browser sends back. Shame shame shame!
Slashdot Mirror
I happen to be doing most of my web stuff in C (and the rest in PHP). If I needed arbitrarily recursive macro substitution, I wouldn't be using C. Guess what: I don't need that. That's not to say that someone else won't, and if they do, they should have access to good language choices.
Part of what goes into language choice is the way you think about problems and how their solutions are implemented. I happen to think strongly procedural. Don't try to justify why I should think some other way, because it won't happen ... I'm referring to my human nature. We're all different in one way or another. If you've chosen Scheme for your programming language, or for a particular project, and you have experience and information to back that up, then I'm sure the choice is the correct one, especially for you. And not everyone does, or can, tackle every kind of problem, either. Again, thats most likely part of our own styles of thinking (that we're mostly born with, or acquire in the early phases of life).
What language was Scheme implemented in? I promise not to use that against Scheme. BTW, I'm not against most languages (exceptions include Algol, COBOL, Pascal), but I do think people need to make choices with good, and unbiased, information.
I've found that C programmers who come from a heavy assembler background tend to know how to handle pointers a lot better than those for whom C was their first language. So I certainly agree with you about the "first programming language" syndrome. There being no one language that uses all technologies (intentionally), a programmer who knows only one is essentially inexperienced in computers, no matter how many years they've been doing it (for the most part ... surely there are a few exceptions, though most would have picked up another language within a few years).
Then write a better article that covers ASP along with the others. And while you're at it, toss in some more languages. I'd really like to see a solid, well written, point by point comparison, from someone as experienced as yourself, about all these language choices (although I have made my own choice already). Such an article would surely find hosting space almost anywhere, but if not, contact me.
PHP is faster than Perl or Java, but there are other choices out there which are even faster than PHP. I'd bet that speed is not your only reason for choosing a language to develop web applications in, but rather, you're just pointing out this reason because it is aligned with what your choice is. In reality, emotion often plays a big part in the choices we make, and we feel better when we see some non-emotional justification for our choices.
You've got to consider the source. IBM simply has no vested interest in ASP. I'm sure you can even find a lot of ASP in use within IBM. But as long as Microsoft plays corporate bully (not that IBM doesn't) and doesn't want to let someone else share in the benefits of ASP, then you can't expect someone else to sing the praises of ASP. For them to do that, they have to have some interest in it. Individuals can when their benefit is a job and income, and they know and like ASP, or any other language.
Probably the biggest reason for ASP not being there is the fact that it isn't (as) portable. IBM has vested interests in non-Microsoft operating systems for which these languages are more readily available and marketed.
Also, Java is currently heavily pushed in academia (which also tends to care less about issues important to business).
Why don't I see C, or C++, or Pike, or Scheme, or any of a number of other languages in here? There's a combination of reasons, varying from ignorance to disinterest. But probably the biggest one is because the authors do have a vested interest in showing off a subset (for which they have an interest) against a subset (for which they have no interest and see as a threat to their interests). The languages I just mentioned have little threat to their interest because few people use them (reasons vary, and not always technical). But if they did, I'd bet you would see them mentioned.
I think I'll write a user web hosting panel. So tell me what you think it should have, but without referencing any existing panel or service ... i.e. just decribe it directly. But if you think there's already one out there that fits your needs exactly, then why would you reply here.
Whoa... I didn't think about that. That's totally cool. That's a great idea. Thanks. Now I'll have to go do that.
They probably don't. But people do, so the mechanism should be there. Unfortunately, it would also be easy for spammers to abuse, or if not, the for governments to abuse (e.g. find out who sent the mail because the anonymous relayer has a record of it).
One of the more difficult things I continue to think over is the notion of spamming vs. free speech. I definitely want to protect the latter and make sure it is never at risk. And I consider anonymous email to be one aspect of protecting it (as long as there are people wanting to suppress ideas they dislike by threatening people or worse, then anonimity is essential).
Reconciling this with the digusting muck of the internet is still difficult to do. To me, the content is not what should be relevant. You should be able to say whatever you want to say. Still, I should be free from having to pay for what you want to say, even if you want to say it to me.
Ideally, a web page is the best way to go for saying what you have to say. But you still have to let people know it's there, somehow.
I'm designing my own forum site right now, not unlike /. although with a different theme. And I am contemplating the issues of free speech vs spamming and trolling and all that kind of nonsense. The conclusion I have so far (and still subject to change ... and of course people telling me what they think about it) is that the appropriate thing to do is to allow anyone to say what they want to say, but provide a means to categorize what is said. The Usenet analogy would be instead of cancelling articles, to just change the group they are associated with to whatever the article relates to (alt.ads.penis.lengthening or whatever). And it would have to be an advisory addition, not a substitution of what group the original poster posted in. People can then select articles to read based on original, or advised, groups.
Despite my hatred of spam, I do NOT support any legislation I have seen so far that is against spam. I'd sooner have legislation against backbone ISPs allowing the routing of IP packets arriving on interfaces with sources addresses which if routed as destination addresses would not go to that interface (if any at all). But I wonder if even an IP packet needs to be protected as free speech, including with anonymity.
OTOH, we shouldn't have any right to expect others to pay for our free speech any more than we should expect others to pay for our beer, as wonderful as that might be (depending on the choice of beer).
Lots of people do have various means they have implemented for themselves to block spam. I do. And I have to do it carefully because I actually get some email announcements from various companies I do business with, and I'm glad to get them, such as the place I've ordered CDs from.
Some of the strongest methods to block spam is to block relayers. Legitimate mass-mailers don't use relaying. I subscribe to MAPS and my spam load went down quite a lot. New relayers are popping up fast (mostly with pirated obsolete copies of Exchange Server), so I have supplemented MAPS by blocking ALL of China (including Hong Kong) and Korea, and am considering the same for Taiwan and maybe even Japan (will have to make exception for a little bit of legit mail I get from there) as the level of relaying there is rising.
If Usenet is so dead, why is your company still running Usenet servers?
Now what if every laboratory that hired students in the whole Uni did this. Then the mailboxes really would get clogged up.
One problem aspect to spam is that it does not scale up. If only 1 million people sent everyone just 1 piece of spam each year, that would still be nearly 2 pieces of spam coming into your mailbox every minute, on average. And don't expect it to be arriving spread out over time like that. This is not something that can ever be universally adopted. Even now it's only a handful of people doing it.
Open Source creates as much wealth as proprietary products do. The difference is that there is not a huge chunk of that wealth siphoned off to a vendor in the process. Now that in and of itself isn't as bad as it first sounds, because what goes around, comes around. However, when you have to fund the vendor through this mechanism, and if the vendor has a say in how the product behaves, then they will end up putting forth a lot of effort to make the product do certain things strictly to enhance that siphoning. Software vendors like Microsoft have to ensure that customers pay for the products and services and not steal them. The problem is that so much effort is expended to ensure that revenue stream as opposed to other innovations that actually benefit everyone. In the past we have not seen a great deal of this because as the computer market grew, Microsoft's corporate value grew along with it. Now that there is saturation (virtually every office and most homes now have a computer, and the vast majority of them run Microsoft OS products), Microsoft has to find other means to not just ensure a revenue stream, but to also make it grow.
One big difference between Microsoft Windows and Open Source systems like BSD and Linux (the distributions) is what and who the designers are focusing on. I can assure you that for whatever goals Microsoft has in terms of value growth and value siphoning, they are indeed focusing on making software for others. The BSD and Linux community still come across as making something more for themselves than for others. However, that may not be as bad as it sounds. Read on.
With the technology of software becoming ever more complex, it still takes people with intense technical backgrounds to deal with the issues. I'm often quoting Bruce Schneier when he says "Security is not a thing, it is a process" and I keep wondering if that shouldn't also apply to virtually everything else in computers and technology, as well.
Business is shifting more and more to a service strategy. Microsoft clearly knows this and are working to position themselves to provide these services. Others will do so as well. It will happen over a broad scale from the largest (Microsoft, IBM, Sun, Oracle, etc) to the smallest (your local contractor). Many new business ideas will come not as products, but as services. The technical community will be the source of a lot of that, if not most of it.
Where Open Source and free software comes into this, and where BSD and Linux have their advantage, is that they are oriented more to the technical person who is deploying these services. They will then be the embedded components not of a product, but of a service, where the particulars matter only to the service provider, not the customer. When businesses stop buying computer systems as products, and start subscribing to them as services, they will be less and less involved in the roles of administering them. The service provider will be doing that, and the focus on making the administrative interfaces easy for the technically inept will become less and less important.
Why should someone, even a sales guy in an ISP, be administering a system? They shouldn't. It will be done for them as part of the service when they shift from buying a product to subscribing to a service. Services are where it's at, and those who do have the tools handy (your collection of free software) are in the some of the best positions to create and offer those services.
Are you trying to tell me that my stuff isn't safe from Microsoft anymore?
So why can't CPUC just order PacBell to hook up the NP customers who sign up for the service in 5 days instead of 7 weeks.
Can pigs fly? Only if CPUC orders them to.
...at least for servers. FreeBSD still doesn't have the kind of text mode console support I use heavily on Linux. One reason I tend to like *BSD for a server is that it simplifies much of the system administration. That comes down to SysV style vs BSD style init stuff, and how some distributions like Redhat have thorough corrupted SysV. If everything I wanted to do was on one menu that would be great. It isn't even close, so I have to sysadmin via my favorite editor (guess which one). That's when BSD init style makes life a lot easier than SysV. That's probably why Slackware is my favorite Linux distribution.
Linux still seems to be best for the home desktop due to lots more applications (FreeBSD on its heels) and lots more device support (FreeBSD is getting better, too). FreeBSD seems to be best for the server on a high speed net. OpenBSD seems to be best for the firewall. But the thing is, any one of them can do all three functions quite well. If you know one better than the others, just use it. If you want to learn, start with all of them.
I read the article on both the MSNBC web site and the INSIDE.COM web site. The MSNBC version really sucks bad. The text appears to be there, but it was harder to read and very poorly layed out. Notice how it is formatted into a little narrow column on MSNBC while INSIDE.COM has it filling out the whole screen, even though they do have menus and ads along the sides. This does show the case that big corporations are really goofing up bad. And they are wondering why the net isn't turning huge profits for them?.
Slashdot needs to start making a better choice about which sites they give primary links to and start encouraging better web sites, instead of brown nosing big corporations that can only make screwed up web sites.
I've been doing Linux at home since 1992 and at work since 1994. I've set up hundreds of Linux machines, and dozens of BSD and Solaris machines, and networked them together with Cisco routers I've set up. So my basic reaction is....
fuck certification!
I've had maybe a couple times where recruiters have asked me if I had any certification. My response has been "why would I need that?". Their counter-reponse has been "well, with your experience, I guess you don't".
Unfortunately, people trying to enter into the job market aren't in a position to bargain with experience. And nearly all recruiters and a large number of managers have no ability to figure out how smart (and thus how quickly they can learn on the job) a candidate is. Certification is just a cheap way to evaluate someone.
Consider the MCSE. For someone with zero experience, it's virtually worthless, anyway. For someone with 5 or more years experience it's virtually worthless, anyway. For people in between, where experience might not mean they have done everything enough, yet, it might mean something, but you can be sure management will not pay extra for it. If you have some experience and get an MCSE or other certification, about the best you can hope to get is more recruiters calling you, and potentially a better job offer from somewhere else.
I've had a chance to actually talk with a couple recruiters openly about this, and even they agree that certification generally affects salary only for people around 1 to 4 years experience, and they end up getting about what someone with 1 more year experience would get, and then only in fewer than half the jobs.
Goto paragraph 2.
Clearly, rsh needs to not only be disabled, it should even be included anymore. If someone needs it desperately enough, they either run an old system or download the source and do you know what with it.
THE biggest source of insecure systems its the numbskullery of the system vendors that make things this way. And most of that is NOT from the rank-and-file techies at the bottom of the rung that know better. It's on the part of the management who think as long as they hide the source code, know one will know that they haven't allowed any real upgrades for security, all because it might inconvenience some customer who would have to reconfigure something to operate in a more secure environment.
Perhaps what we need is a list of the poor implementations. I doubt FreeBSD, Linux, and OpenBSD will be in there. But which ones will? And are there any E-commerce sites worth 0wning running on them?
Vending machine. Slip in 100 quarters. Get 1 back.
It's not the content they are selling, it's the bandwidth delivery mechanism, which someone has to pay for, else their ISP (apparently globix.net being at least one) would pull the plug for non-payment.
So make your own free *DB service. I'm sure everyone will appreciate it. I'm sure the submissions will be flowing in hot and heavy and in a few months you'll have more than Gracenut has.
In a previous job, a co-worker was having problems installing Corel Linux on her machine. It was failing to correctly recognize the video card and network card. It used the wrong drivers and the machine would get all hosed. She came to me for help and after I was unable to convince it to do the right thing, I tried Mandrake (because it was handy at the moment). It died in the install because it didn't know what the hardware was. So I went and got my personal Slackware disk and installed that. It worked like a charm (but of course I had to manually tweak it).
Corel and Mandrake and others might be nice when everything is just perfect. But reality just isn't that way. That's not to say these aren't good distributions (I do recommend Corel Linux to a lot of people). I'm just saying a LOT more work STILL needs to be done without anyone making excuses for not doing what needs to be done.
And too many bad managers. They just don't design it right (if they even did a real design at all) and of course it trusts everything the browser sends back. Shame shame shame!