Good post. What you did not mention however was the fact that Half-Life was based on the Quake 2 codebase, which DID indeed have a Linux client. Since Half-Life was just new maps, models, QC game source and a few changes on top of the Quake 2 engine - Valve could have easily made a Linux and BSD port. Why? I don't know.
I could only speculate that Valve saw enough support issues on the Windows side, or realized they did not have enough resources in house to support and improve upon a UNIX version. In light with all the recently discovered cheats and bugs with the CounterStrike retail release, I'm sure it is a good thing! Too bad it's one of my favorite games.
Of the three methods listed in the LA Times news article, 2 of them are wildly ineffective and easily broke and the last one has been broke by the SDMI crackers. More specifically, EMusic looks for specific titles and file sizes and Copyright.net looks for a general CRC/MD5 checksum. So simply renaming a detectable file and adding another byte to trash the CRC would probably work good.
Audible Magic Corp's software actually looks for various audio anomalies in each song. This was addressed in the SDMI crack by injecting unhearable noise that will break the anomalies that the scanner software looks for.
Here is the slashdot article: http://slashdot.org/articles/01/01/24/1322248_F. sh tml
Here is the SDMI crack web site:
http://www.julienstern.org/sdmi/index.php3
This device has a lot of potential and can be used for various applications. Seeing as it supports a standard laptop hard drive and can use 1 standard DIMM, some of the things that spring to my mind are:
Nice box for the hotel - Hook it up to your TV
Portable Storage - Carry files around
PowerPoint Loaner - Use it for presentations
Development Machine
High Security PC - Encrypt your files and take it with you.
Although it does have a lot of potential, there are a set of pretty glaring issues that I think should be dealt with. The cost is really nice however, and I'd pick up one of these in a second.
I know this is slightly offtopic but it is a cool link nonetheless, geek.com has PDA horror stories. People smash, drown, blow up, run over and do otherwise nasty and unadulerated things to their Palm's.
It was quite addicting, I spent most of my day at work reading the stories. Which reminds me I need to pick up a good case!
The link is http://www.geek.com/pdageek/pdahorror/.
-Pat
I see a lot of talk about handhelds and OS's on Slashdot but Psion/Symbian never seems to get a mention. I just recently switched from my Palm III to a Revo Plus and I'll never go back!
The OS on my Revo comes complete with a multiple destination, multiple device TCP/IP stack that supports infrared, serial cables and modems. Out of the box it supports syncing with any IR capable phone and sending SMS messages and it can print via IR too! My Revo comes with it built into ROM! Oh yeah, and it comes with a multiaccount POP client, a WAP browser and Opera 3. For nothing extra. With a Palm, you'd need about $100 worth of add-on software to do all that. The software is much higher quality too!
Psion's PDAs have a built-in compilable programming language called OPL that really rocks. It reminds me of TCL/TK because it is so easy to build an interface and get your application working. Check out www.symbiandevnet.com to see more.
You coders should pick up a Psion 5MX or Revo.. I could use a nice IRC application and a Weather checker.
According to the site, it will be equipped with a CompactFlash expansion slot for easy network connectivity. (802.11, CDPD, Ethernet)
It will also synchronize with Linux via a built-in USB port and has infrared capabilities. It has a nice low-resolution screen too that looks like it can support up to 65k colors. Hopefully it's equipped with good battery life and a rechargable NiMH.
This will let you dial out on your GSM mobile and print to IR capable printers. A quite connected device. With an MP3 player and an MPEG viewer, I'd be all set!
As a trainer, I would build and incorporate your experiences, technique and advocacy into a usable structured lesson plan. This will help you maximize your time and ensure that you can bring your learnings and experience to your class.
You should first go into a conceptual background on UNIX for those that don't know about it and how it can benefit them, then give a brief primer on using UNIX.
For the second part of your primer, I would recommend talking about BSD's strengths and weaknesses specifically and be honest. Take your experiences and apply them to this part of your lesson. Encourage open advocacy from other users that may have other experiences - this will ensure that more experienced users will stay interested and contribute.
Last, make yourself available for questions outside of your class. Maybe even have some burned CDs available to encourage others to use it. Being a valuable BSD resource will help the community as a whole. Hope this helps!
I think that your company's policy is realistic as they are taking a burden and a gamble by allowing you to spend their money on training, certification, exams, and study materials. You can then take your learnings from your training and apply it towards a new career on their dime, and with them knowing that do you think that they would so willingly give you money to screw them?
I am a network consultant and the company that employs me uses the same measures, and their bonus programs are also the same way. They give bonuses after achieving a certification at your 1 month, 6 month and 1 year mark after receiving the certification. This way, they reimburse you for being more marketable and ensure that you remain a consultant.
I think this is realistic and ethical - imagine smaller businesses making an effort to hire qualified people and putting them in the same boat of losing people once they've been certified and realize they can make more money elsewhere.
There are devices already on the market that can do this and are quite cheap. Dallas Semiconductor makes pin sized ROMs that can contain serial numbers or product IDs used for warranty tracking, product tracking, authentication, whatever.
You can get more information and SDKs on how to program them at http://www.ibutton.com/ibuttons/memory.html.
While I think the radio element does leave an element of traceability, I can see them having a use for service records, warranty and inventory tracking for businesses, say renting out handheld radios to field staff or phones or whatever.
I've been in a situation like this, and the solution will work well until your Project Manager or Contractors decide to replace core components, not notify staff and then reboot your server during peak hours.
In times like that you need a remote administration SNMP-manageable handgun.
Windows 2000 has a built-in remote access feature using Terminal Services. It's on the same CD as Server and you just need to use Add/Remove Programs to install it. It will prompt you whether you want multi-user capability or remote administration mode. Select remote administration mode and you can use the Microsoft RDP Terminal Services client to connect and manage your applications and services.
As far as supporting applications go on individual machines there are many infrastructure components you can use. You have Microsoft SMS, Tivoli, Novell ZEN, Intel LanDesk and more. These packages can inventory, track, deploy software and allow you to remote control/reboot/debug most issues.
Unfortunately - this can be blamed on your service providers lack of quality NNTP service, not Usenet in general. Carrier class providers with a decent news infrastructure (say GlobalCenter or Supernews) have excellent article retention.
Articles posted have an age associated with them until they are expired and no longer exist on your providers server. It is possible that you made an attempt to grab files that had an older age and were already expired.
Anyhow, when it comes to binaries, music and multimedia you want a news service that has high retention. (which equals lots of storage for binaries groups)
I was surprised to see that no one mentioned Usenet! Usenet is meant to be a distributed news system but easily accommodates many binary, multimedia and music groups. Usenet is easily scalable with the right infrastructure in place and can handle many clients (readers) across the Internet.
Tools like NewsShark and NewsGrabber make it easy to post or obtain binary formatted files such as multimedia and there is plenty of it available. No waiting for downloads, no acne-faced punk kids aborting them, and you can batch and resume at your convenience.
Usenet isn't that hard to use and there is a lot of music that can be found from your ISP's news server. Grab a client and check it out!
I would highly recommend Best Internet's shell services. At one point in time they had a massive SGI box but now they've broken it down into individual FreeBSD services. Best Internet has very good policies, as well as a local EFnet IRC server and a fast pipe. They are located in Silicon Valley I believe.
I also used Primenet's shell services which are BSD/OS based. Their network is very solid and they have a lot of custom written software for locating and managing your account, terminal server login time usage, etc. Primenet also has an awesome newsfeed as they are a West Coast hub for a lot of the Usenet traffic. They also have one or two local EFnet IRC servers.
GSM will run up a real pretty bill and probably be the real budget killer in terms of airtime and equipment. WLAN's are the way to go - you said industrial so they will be within a warehouse type environment, correct? Just slap a few Access Points up in the roof, coverage will be fairly easy to maintain in a flat warehouse environment as well. No need to charge a GSM set or modem or have to deal with the extra power draw.
Take a look at Lucent's Orinoco products, and Cisco's Aironet products as well. They will do what you want and go up to 11Mb too. Most CE based or Windows Powered handhelds should have support for them.
Somewhere in all this standards-battling, testing and platform shaking processes should be a good framework for synchronizing to other devices. I know my Palm supports vCards, and my Nokia 8290 supports vCards. I'd love to be able to click-click-click onto my Intranet, grab my mail and contacts and in one click have the latest updates blown to my cell phone so I can take them with me.
Are there any projects besides gsmlib and gnokii which are just a communication layer that actually allow getting usable content onto GSM phones or other devices?
Thanks for a good post, DCLGuy. I am a user and supporter of the phpGroupWare software, which I think is kindly understated as one of the UNIX killer-apps. To those that haven't used this software, it's a multi-user themeable web based mail client, address book, contact manager and task manager. It is functionally comparable to Microsoft's Outlook web product.
They have made a lot of changes in their framework to make it extensible for other applications. It's a great tool for intranets! They even have a plug-in Napster and FTP client if you need to log in, get your meeting notes, conference call schedule and some Van Halen. Anyways I just thought I'd throw that out for the people that haven't seen it. Good software and good project.
While I think there is some truth to your statement about NDS - I think that Active Directory is being built and hyped as a capable successor. Active Directory also relies on LDAP which is as time-tested, although NDS had a few years running. Active Directory can scale just as well. One of NDS's cool features is the schema plug-ins to accommodate other server software's objects. Like how Novell BorderManager, GroupWise integrate into NDS.
So you think that Google/Deja should go and censor every posting that a user makes because it could be deemed objectionable? And at who's expense?
I understand the importance of obliterating questionable and illegal material. But please be realistic. You think that it is Google/Deja's fault for being an outlet to finding this type of information? The problem is at the root.
If someone tells me that a kid on the corner is selling crack, and I buy crack - is it someones fault for telling me he noticed the kid on the corner?
-Pat
Re:Ipv6.. will that allow proxyless ICS?
on
Quake on IPv6
·
· Score: 1
There is a IPv6 feature called Site Local Addressing, where devices on an Ethernet take part of their MAC address and build their own IPv6 address so that you can communicate among your local network with no configuration necessary.
There will be so much IPv6 address space available that is not uncommon to think that large organizations and ISPs will be allocated/64 blocks. 6to4 and tunneling technologies are currently in place to help ease the transition to IPv6.
This has got to be the deepest and most intense thread I have ever read on Slashdot. It is interesting to absorb and analyze everyone's angles, thoughts and feelings on this subject.
Wow. I've never seen people post so crazily and feverishly! Good job Slashdot!
The TechNet Developer Preview stack includes IE5.5 IPv6 support of both URLs and DNS AAAA addresses, as well as a telnet client/server and FTP client. It also includes connection diagnostic tools (ip6.exe, tracert6.exe, ping6.exe, etc.)
No dreaming needed. They even have an open source web server (Fnord) available from their research web site, as well as audio conferencing and other tools.
-Pat
IPv6 should be supported natively in Whistler/Windows XP. Apparently, the word is that their stack will be dual v4/v6 and has the capability to translate (not 6to4) IPv4 socket calls to IPv6.
Their stack is pretty sweet, it supports IPv6 forwarding as a router, tunneling, 6to4.. regardless of whether you are running Professional or Server. They also have rudimentary MobileIP support and a beta web based tunnel broker that interfaces with Cisco routers.
I can delegate/64's to your home or office network if you are looking to get connected to the 6Bone on your Linux/BSD/Windows boxes.
I have dual redundant tunnels to cisco and Sprintlink via a fractional 10Mb ATM DS-3.
Feel free to drop me an e-mail if you are interested. I'd be more then happy to help
you get connected. (- the spam-me)
I am an Enterprise Consultant and have been consulting for local small, large
and Fortune 500 businesses since the late 1990s. I think I've seen it all as
far as unethical behavior from other firms are concerned. Here in Fresno, CA (south of Silicon Valley) our technical market is starting
to bud. We have a few technical schools kicking out unexperienced MCSE's and
almost 20 local consulting firms.
I have found that working for both small and large firms alike that most likely
the small firms will be the ones that perform unethically. Things such
as selling pirated software to a customer, misquoting job installation times
and treating and paying their employees poorly are very common here.
I have also seen local companies strike up partnerships with other ISPs, NSPs,
repair shops in an effort to steal their customers. During interviews with
employees, they have contributed other companies customer lists and pursued
customers right after leaving a competitor. Now, you made reference to slimy salesmen as part of your article. Unfortunately
you will continue to have to deal with them in larger consulting organizations.
It is common for salesmen to sell solutions that have no actual bearing to
what the customer wants.
I agree fully in that there should be some type of spoken or written ethics for
consultants to follow. Are there any firms that have a set and adhere to them?
Slashdot Mirror
I could only speculate that Valve saw enough support issues on the Windows side, or realized they did not have enough resources in house to support and improve upon a UNIX version. In light with all the recently discovered cheats and bugs with the CounterStrike retail release, I'm sure it is a good thing! Too bad it's one of my favorite games.
-Pat
Audible Magic Corp's software actually looks for various audio anomalies in each song. This was addressed in the SDMI crack by injecting unhearable noise that will break the anomalies that the scanner software looks for.
Here is the slashdot article:. sh tml
http://slashdot.org/articles/01/01/24/1322248_F
Here is the SDMI crack web site:
http://www.julienstern.org/sdmi/index.php3
-Pat
- Nice box for the hotel - Hook it up to your TV
- Portable Storage - Carry files around
- PowerPoint Loaner - Use it for presentations
- Development Machine
- High Security PC - Encrypt your files and take it with you.
Although it does have a lot of potential, there are a set of pretty glaring issues that I think should be dealt with. The cost is really nice however, and I'd pick up one of these in a second.- No Ethernet - needed for use as an IA
- No Infrared - no sync'ing with PDAs
- No Modem - lack of connectivity out in the field
- No Battery Support
-PatI know this is slightly offtopic but it is a cool link nonetheless, geek.com has PDA horror stories. People smash, drown, blow up, run over and do otherwise nasty and unadulerated things to their Palm's. It was quite addicting, I spent most of my day at work reading the stories. Which reminds me I need to pick up a good case! The link is http://www.geek.com/pdageek/pdahorror/. -Pat
The OS on my Revo comes complete with a multiple destination, multiple device TCP/IP stack that supports infrared, serial cables and modems. Out of the box it supports syncing with any IR capable phone and sending SMS messages and it can print via IR too! My Revo comes with it built into ROM! Oh yeah, and it comes with a multiaccount POP client, a WAP browser and Opera 3. For nothing extra. With a Palm, you'd need about $100 worth of add-on software to do all that. The software is much higher quality too!
Psion's PDAs have a built-in compilable programming language called OPL that really rocks. It reminds me of TCL/TK because it is so easy to build an interface and get your application working. Check out www.symbiandevnet.com to see more.
You coders should pick up a Psion 5MX or Revo .. I could use a nice IRC application and a Weather checker.
-Pat
This will let you dial out on your GSM mobile and print to IR capable printers. A quite connected device. With an MP3 player and an MPEG viewer, I'd be all set!
-Pat
You should first go into a conceptual background on UNIX for those that don't know about it and how it can benefit them, then give a brief primer on using UNIX.
For the second part of your primer, I would recommend talking about BSD's strengths and weaknesses specifically and be honest. Take your experiences and apply them to this part of your lesson. Encourage open advocacy from other users that may have other experiences - this will ensure that more experienced users will stay interested and contribute.
Last, make yourself available for questions outside of your class. Maybe even have some burned CDs available to encourage others to use it. Being a valuable BSD resource will help the community as a whole. Hope this helps!
-Pat
I am a network consultant and the company that employs me uses the same measures, and their bonus programs are also the same way. They give bonuses after achieving a certification at your 1 month, 6 month and 1 year mark after receiving the certification. This way, they reimburse you for being more marketable and ensure that you remain a consultant.
I think this is realistic and ethical - imagine smaller businesses making an effort to hire qualified people and putting them in the same boat of losing people once they've been certified and realize they can make more money elsewhere.
-Pat
You can get more information and SDKs on how to program them at http://www.ibutton.com/ibuttons/memory.html.
While I think the radio element does leave an element of traceability, I can see them having a use for service records, warranty and inventory tracking for businesses, say renting out handheld radios to field staff or phones or whatever.
-Pat
In times like that you need a remote administration SNMP-manageable handgun.
-Pat
As far as supporting applications go on individual machines there are many infrastructure components you can use. You have Microsoft SMS, Tivoli, Novell ZEN, Intel LanDesk and more. These packages can inventory, track, deploy software and allow you to remote control/reboot/debug most issues.
-Pat
Articles posted have an age associated with them until they are expired and no longer exist on your providers server. It is possible that you made an attempt to grab files that had an older age and were already expired.
Anyhow, when it comes to binaries, music and multimedia you want a news service that has high retention. (which equals lots of storage for binaries groups)
-Pat
Tools like NewsShark and NewsGrabber make it easy to post or obtain binary formatted files such as multimedia and there is plenty of it available. No waiting for downloads, no acne-faced punk kids aborting them, and you can batch and resume at your convenience.
Usenet isn't that hard to use and there is a lot of music that can be found from your ISP's news server. Grab a client and check it out!
-Pat
I also used Primenet's shell services which are BSD/OS based. Their network is very solid and they have a lot of custom written software for locating and managing your account, terminal server login time usage, etc. Primenet also has an awesome newsfeed as they are a West Coast hub for a lot of the Usenet traffic. They also have one or two local EFnet IRC servers.
Hope that helps!
-Pat
Take a look at Lucent's Orinoco products, and Cisco's Aironet products as well. They will do what you want and go up to 11Mb too. Most CE based or Windows Powered handhelds should have support for them.
-Pat
Are there any projects besides gsmlib and gnokii which are just a communication layer that actually allow getting usable content onto GSM phones or other devices?
-Pat
They have made a lot of changes in their framework to make it extensible for other applications. It's a great tool for intranets! They even have a plug-in Napster and FTP client if you need to log in, get your meeting notes, conference call schedule and some Van Halen. Anyways I just thought I'd throw that out for the people that haven't seen it. Good software and good project.
-Pat
-Pat
I understand the importance of obliterating questionable and illegal material. But please be realistic. You think that it is Google/Deja's fault for being an outlet to finding this type of information? The problem is at the root.
If someone tells me that a kid on the corner is selling crack, and I buy crack - is it someones fault for telling me he noticed the kid on the corner?
-Pat
There will be so much IPv6 address space available that is not uncommon to think that large organizations and ISPs will be allocated /64 blocks. 6to4 and tunneling technologies are currently in place to help ease the transition to IPv6.
-Pat
Wow. I've never seen people post so crazily and feverishly! Good job Slashdot!
-Pat
The TechNet Developer Preview stack includes IE5.5 IPv6 support of both URLs and DNS AAAA addresses, as well as a telnet client/server and FTP client. It also includes connection diagnostic tools (ip6.exe, tracert6.exe, ping6.exe, etc.) No dreaming needed. They even have an open source web server (Fnord) available from their research web site, as well as audio conferencing and other tools. -Pat
If you want IPv6 support in Windows 2000, you can download the TechNet Developer Preview from http://technet.microsoft.com. Microsoft Research also makes a bleeding edge stack that Microsoft uses to integrate into their Windows codebase. You can snag that at http://www.research.microsoft.com/msripv6.
Their stack is pretty sweet, it supports IPv6 forwarding as a router, tunneling, 6to4 .. regardless of whether you are running Professional or Server. They also have rudimentary MobileIP support and a beta web based tunnel broker that interfaces with Cisco routers.
-Pat
I have dual redundant tunnels to cisco and Sprintlink via a fractional 10Mb ATM DS-3. Feel free to drop me an e-mail if you are interested. I'd be more then happy to help you get connected. (- the spam-me)
-Pat
I have found that working for both small and large firms alike that most likely the small firms will be the ones that perform unethically. Things such as selling pirated software to a customer, misquoting job installation times and treating and paying their employees poorly are very common here.
I have also seen local companies strike up partnerships with other ISPs, NSPs, repair shops in an effort to steal their customers. During interviews with employees, they have contributed other companies customer lists and pursued customers right after leaving a competitor. Now, you made reference to slimy salesmen as part of your article. Unfortunately you will continue to have to deal with them in larger consulting organizations. It is common for salesmen to sell solutions that have no actual bearing to what the customer wants.
I agree fully in that there should be some type of spoken or written ethics for consultants to follow. Are there any firms that have a set and adhere to them?
-Pat