Yes, very OT but let the moderators deside that:-).
First, I too smoke a cigar or a pipe every once in a while (although it's been a good 2 months since I have). The problem with enjoying tobacco is that when you go out with friends who smoke at a restaraunt or bar the establishment normally doesn't allow cigars or pipes because of the [good!] smell. So, I found one of the originall cigarette makers, Nat Sherman, who actually makes real cigarette's (eg: just a small cigar, but filtered).
The problem, of course, is that it is a very addictive substance.
As a substance, nicotine is mildly addictive (less so than caffine by some counts). The problem is, many cigarette's contain carefully engineered chemical combinations to enhance the addictive quality of nicotine. This, to me, is outragous - I have never once touched a Phillip Morris cigarette... I think I'd be safer trying marijuana.
Now, combine a person who has an addictive personality with this chemically enhanced drug, and you have a very damaging product.
Reread my post - I addressed how getting into an R-rated movie at the theatre is different. Kid's can't bypass their parents because there's no harm in buying the game. It's _playing_ the game, and that's done at home, where the parent intervenes.
you think the kids are going to plainly show their parents everything?
No, but when I see my kid playing GTA3 I'll, *gasp*, know that my kid bought it. It's just like drugs. Of course my kid isn't going to tell me that he has weed in his pocket. As a parent you have to be involved enough to know these things. It's not easy, but that's the job you signed up for, and enforced ratings isn't going to make that job any easier, because just like illegal drugs, the kid will easily get GTA if he wants to.
Every single person who smokes tobacco, no matter how much, will damage their lungs to some degree. This is a fact.
Actually it's not. It's excessive smoking that causes damage to your lungs. Your body rebuilds whenever it inccurrs any level of damage and it can purify many foreign substance in certain quantities. It's when people smoke regularly that the body, over time, can't keep up with the pollution and poison and therefore starts to deteriorate.
Tobacco (espcially natural tabacco without the Phillip Morros additives) used occasionally will have no adverse affects on your lungs. The same goes for sitting by a camp fire. If you sat by a camp fire every night for 30+ years, inhaling all that smoke, I guaruntee that you'd get cancer and/or have reduced lung capacity as well.
I'm personally not a smoker but I just had to critique your analogy as it really doesn't work.
I don't care if they rate games, but I don't want to get carded when I go out to buy Doom3. It's rediculous. Video games have to be played somewhere. It's not like a movie theatre where you go and see the movie on the business's premise, you have to bring the game HOME in order to play it. At home, there is this concept called parenting. This parenting process involves censoring your child of whatever you see fit. Ratings are a great tool that a parent may choose to use in the interest of censorship. And that's all they should be: a tool for parents.
I as a member from the general public would "profit" greatly from, say, not having to worry about category 5 hurricanes bearing down on my ass and flooding me out of my home
Either build a house that can withstand the wheather of your region or move. I've never been in a hurricane, tornado, or a flood. It's much easier to move to a more inhabitable place then to screw with the weather when we will probably never understand the ramifications of it.
Most sites do not need a globally distributed architecture, but if it does both Cisco and F5 have respective products that add the functionality of geographic specific caching or traffic management. Check out the 3-DNS from F5. I'm obviously an F5 fan, but maybe that's just because I live 6 minutes from their corporate office:-). I believe that Cisco has left the LocalDirector to smaller installations, and has moved on to some Content Distribution somethingrather.
I still stand by my assertion that a hardware based load balancer is the way to go. I also disagree about your contention regarding the quality of sysadmins. Although the quality of a sysadmin is definitely a factor, a poor architecture that can't handle the load will fail no matter the quality of the sysadmin(s), and visa versa.
It's not quite that trivial. Consider languages that have textbox's that go from right to left, or the label on the right side instead of the left side of an item. There are multiple issues regarding translation that go far beyond text. Microsoft dub's this the "globalization" of the app, and they've done a pretty good job with the globalization options for.NET.
DNS round-robin to multiple web caches is an excellent idea
No, it's a cheap idea, but not excellent. A hardware loadbalancer is always the way to go if the funds are available. Round Robin's will blindly direct a user to A) an over burdened server (eg: each server has 5 users but server A's users utilizing much more resources), or B) a downed server.
And I definitely wouldn't use/. as an example - of all the sites that I visit daily, this site definitely has the worst uptime by a long shot.
Who are these "many FSF leaders"? Where have they said this?
I'm talking about guys like RMS, Torvalds, etc.
You make it sound like the availability of other means of profit mutually excludes selling the software. It does not...I would argue that there are already many companies out there embracing the demand for business built around free software, but I'd just get flamed and pointed out that none of them are as successful as Microsoft.
You are missing the entire point. We are talking about general public perception. You can sit here and argue with me how OSS can be profitable without selling software, but the bottom line is most people won't sit down and listen to your arguments. Sure, IBM has done some things with Linux, but DB2 is still closed. Sure Apple has an OS'd Unix core, but their bread-and-butter OS is not OS'd. The guy in the article isn't confused at all, he simply doesn't see the profit. Now, whether or not we think that profit is possible is a totally different discussion - one that's been made in countless threads on/. before. I can link you to many sites that show profit models for OSS. But what really matters is if the big companies are truelly profiting off of OSS without selling software (they aren't, yet anyway), or if companies are profiting off of supporting OSS (they aren't, RH's recent profit was only for a single quarter - they are still tens of millions in the hole).
Again, I don't want to argue about how we think OSS could profit, or how it's working well in certain situations like OS X, or IBM's Linux Servers, because in both cases propietary software is being sold.
I think the very idea that someone in the mainstream has gotten the idea that we are anti-business/anti-profit is very BAD, as it constitutes a fundamental misunderstanding of the movement behind free software and the open source development model.
I dissagree that there is a fundamental understanding. First, there are many FSF leaders who seem to have a semi-communisitic or more accurately a utopian philosophy which precludes the need for profiting or much profit. Second, those who are part of the FSF and OSS movements generally believe that profiting is possible through means other than selling software. However, this has yet to be proven (arguably), and therefore even those who think they believe in profiting practically don't because they are supporting an (again, arguably) not-for-profit movement.
All of these features that you mentioned are DISABLED BY DEFAULT (at least on WMP9) and you are prompted during install with a VERY CLEAR explanation of what each feature is, and how it relates to information being sent back to MS, and the privacy issues that surround it.
That's not the point. The point is that these flaws are not necessarily practical to exploit, or can't be because of a firewall/NAT.
This doesn't mean that Windows' security doesn't need a LOT of work - it does. It's just that practically speaking many exploits are not "the end of the world" as many news sites (*cough*) would like to make it seem.
It's like having a baseball card that was worth $100, but because it's a bad economy you're willing to sell it for $25, even though you know that in a year (or even months) when things turn around it will easily sell for $90+.
In multiple industries it is stressed that you should never undersell yourself. Yes, IT Java Drones getting paid $120K a year with having only 2 years experience is rediculous. However, if you are a good employee and have good skills, never undersell yourself. It's better to pass up a lowball offer and wait for the right job to come along. A company that completely lowballs is a company that is willing to exploit you in bad times. You are also lowering your personal value by accepting a low salary because you are desperate.
I'm very involved with the usergroups in this area and many people know that I am a program lead, and therefore have a strong voice for recommending developers in my company. I've had countless IT professionals tell me that they'd work for cheap or even nothing for "experience" (even though they already had 3-4 years of experience). I will not hire someone until we have the budget for a reasonable salary simply because once the economy get's better this person may jump ship.
A) I am a full time IT developer (mainly C# now). B) I exclusively use Windows.
I will agree that Mandrake looks to be very attractive for a Linux distro. I just recommended to my "MS Only Boss" (who started on Irix, mind you) Mandrake for a few of super cheap machines that he was donating to a school. He has absolutely no insentive to buy the product - he just finished downloading the three ISO's and burning them yesterday.
Personally, I plan to buy the PowerPak and give it a try - I like to keep an open mind about technology (I gave up on Linux on the Desktop about 3 years ago and I'm going to give it another shot). It looks like a package worth buying. But the reality is, in many cases, people won't buy it if they can get it for free. I agree with the grandparent post - Mandrakesoft is NOT a charity, they are a business. If you want to support them, buy their product. If that doesn't keep them afloat, then they go down.
You're just proving to everybody (including the RIAA, MPAA) that you just want a free lunch.
The only thing being proven is that giving software away for free in hopes for people buying CD's, Manuals, and Support is NOT a viable business option. Even if RH, the most successful distro, keeps up it's measly profit it will be DECADES before they earn back enough to break even since the inception of the business.
I'm sorry MR. Grammar and Spelling Natzi... I'll agree that I have better things to do with my life then double check my work, as well as the fact that i'm not the best speller in the world. And yes, I'm aware that rouge is red and can refer to a goldish color such as a Goldfish or Poisson Rouge. Je parles Francais un pus.
Well, first you have to understand what memory is. Then you have to understand that byte's in memory get executed. Continue this path and you find that MP3's load it's byte's into memory, including bit's that describe itself (not just audio). Putting it all together you realize that it's possible (and non-trival to prevent in lower level languages like C++ or ASM) to have rouge byte's execute malicious code.
First, a similar bug was reported to XMMS. Second, we are talking about millions of lines of code that has historically been managed by people who care much more about features than security. Sure, last year MS initiated a major focus on security, but it will probably take a year just to get the mindshare of the managers, let alone get the programmers to rewrite a lot of code.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, very OT but let the moderators deside that :-).
First, I too smoke a cigar or a pipe every once in a while (although it's been a good 2 months since I have). The problem with enjoying tobacco is that when you go out with friends who smoke at a restaraunt or bar the establishment normally doesn't allow cigars or pipes because of the [good!] smell. So, I found one of the originall cigarette makers, Nat Sherman, who actually makes real cigarette's (eg: just a small cigar, but filtered).
The problem, of course, is that it is a very addictive substance.
As a substance, nicotine is mildly addictive (less so than caffine by some counts). The problem is, many cigarette's contain carefully engineered chemical combinations to enhance the addictive quality of nicotine. This, to me, is outragous - I have never once touched a Phillip Morris cigarette... I think I'd be safer trying marijuana.
Now, combine a person who has an addictive personality with this chemically enhanced drug, and you have a very damaging product.
Reread my post - I addressed how getting into an R-rated movie at the theatre is different. Kid's can't bypass their parents because there's no harm in buying the game. It's _playing_ the game, and that's done at home, where the parent intervenes.
you think the kids are going to plainly show their parents everything?
No, but when I see my kid playing GTA3 I'll, *gasp*, know that my kid bought it. It's just like drugs. Of course my kid isn't going to tell me that he has weed in his pocket. As a parent you have to be involved enough to know these things. It's not easy, but that's the job you signed up for, and enforced ratings isn't going to make that job any easier, because just like illegal drugs, the kid will easily get GTA if he wants to.
Great sig BTW!
Every single person who smokes tobacco, no matter how much, will damage their lungs to some degree. This is a fact.
Actually it's not. It's excessive smoking that causes damage to your lungs. Your body rebuilds whenever it inccurrs any level of damage and it can purify many foreign substance in certain quantities. It's when people smoke regularly that the body, over time, can't keep up with the pollution and poison and therefore starts to deteriorate.
Tobacco (espcially natural tabacco without the Phillip Morros additives) used occasionally will have no adverse affects on your lungs. The same goes for sitting by a camp fire. If you sat by a camp fire every night for 30+ years, inhaling all that smoke, I guaruntee that you'd get cancer and/or have reduced lung capacity as well.
I'm personally not a smoker but I just had to critique your analogy as it really doesn't work.
I don't care if they rate games, but I don't want to get carded when I go out to buy Doom3. It's rediculous. Video games have to be played somewhere. It's not like a movie theatre where you go and see the movie on the business's premise, you have to bring the game HOME in order to play it. At home, there is this concept called parenting. This parenting process involves censoring your child of whatever you see fit. Ratings are a great tool that a parent may choose to use in the interest of censorship. And that's all they should be: a tool for parents.
(i.e. HOW long has Mozilla had tabbed browsing and ad-suppression? *When* might IE?)
Or, Opera which had this even sooner.
I as a member from the general public would "profit" greatly from, say, not having to worry about category 5 hurricanes bearing down on my ass and flooding me out of my home
Either build a house that can withstand the wheather of your region or move. I've never been in a hurricane, tornado, or a flood. It's much easier to move to a more inhabitable place then to screw with the weather when we will probably never understand the ramifications of it.
Most sites do not need a globally distributed architecture, but if it does both Cisco and F5 have respective products that add the functionality of geographic specific caching or traffic management. Check out the 3-DNS from F5. I'm obviously an F5 fan, but maybe that's just because I live 6 minutes from their corporate office :-). I believe that Cisco has left the LocalDirector to smaller installations, and has moved on to some Content Distribution somethingrather.
I still stand by my assertion that a hardware based load balancer is the way to go. I also disagree about your contention regarding the quality of sysadmins. Although the quality of a sysadmin is definitely a factor, a poor architecture that can't handle the load will fail no matter the quality of the sysadmin(s), and visa versa.
It's not quite that trivial. Consider languages that have textbox's that go from right to left, or the label on the right side instead of the left side of an item. There are multiple issues regarding translation that go far beyond text. Microsoft dub's this the "globalization" of the app, and they've done a pretty good job with the globalization options for .NET.
DNS round-robin to multiple web caches is an excellent idea
/. as an example - of all the sites that I visit daily, this site definitely has the worst uptime by a long shot.
No, it's a cheap idea, but not excellent. A hardware loadbalancer is always the way to go if the funds are available. Round Robin's will blindly direct a user to A) an over burdened server (eg: each server has 5 users but server A's users utilizing much more resources), or B) a downed server.
And I definitely wouldn't use
Ya, but I don't need a backpack with the iPod. You are paying a premium for the small size, the elegant UI, and the exceptional sound quality.
Who are these "many FSF leaders"? Where have they said this?
/. before. I can link you to many sites that show profit models for OSS. But what really matters is if the big companies are truelly profiting off of OSS without selling software (they aren't, yet anyway), or if companies are profiting off of supporting OSS (they aren't, RH's recent profit was only for a single quarter - they are still tens of millions in the hole).
I'm talking about guys like RMS, Torvalds, etc.
You make it sound like the availability of other means of profit mutually excludes selling the software. It does not...I would argue that there are already many companies out there embracing the demand for business built around free software, but I'd just get flamed and pointed out that none of them are as successful as Microsoft.
You are missing the entire point. We are talking about general public perception. You can sit here and argue with me how OSS can be profitable without selling software, but the bottom line is most people won't sit down and listen to your arguments. Sure, IBM has done some things with Linux, but DB2 is still closed. Sure Apple has an OS'd Unix core, but their bread-and-butter OS is not OS'd. The guy in the article isn't confused at all, he simply doesn't see the profit. Now, whether or not we think that profit is possible is a totally different discussion - one that's been made in countless threads on
Again, I don't want to argue about how we think OSS could profit, or how it's working well in certain situations like OS X, or IBM's Linux Servers, because in both cases propietary software is being sold.
I think the very idea that someone in the mainstream has gotten the idea that we are anti-business/anti-profit is very BAD, as it constitutes a fundamental misunderstanding of the movement behind free software and the open source development model.
I dissagree that there is a fundamental understanding. First, there are many FSF leaders who seem to have a semi-communisitic or more accurately a utopian philosophy which precludes the need for profiting or much profit. Second, those who are part of the FSF and OSS movements generally believe that profiting is possible through means other than selling software. However, this has yet to be proven (arguably), and therefore even those who think they believe in profiting practically don't because they are supporting an (again, arguably) not-for-profit movement.
All of these features that you mentioned are DISABLED BY DEFAULT (at least on WMP9) and you are prompted during install with a VERY CLEAR explanation of what each feature is, and how it relates to information being sent back to MS, and the privacy issues that surround it.
Microsoft lobbies. Welcome to the united states of america.
Or better yet, "Don't blame the player, blame the game".
That's not the point. The point is that these flaws are not necessarily practical to exploit, or can't be because of a firewall/NAT.
This doesn't mean that Windows' security doesn't need a LOT of work - it does. It's just that practically speaking many exploits are not "the end of the world" as many news sites (*cough*) would like to make it seem.
It's like having a baseball card that was worth $100, but because it's a bad economy you're willing to sell it for $25, even though you know that in a year (or even months) when things turn around it will easily sell for $90+.
In multiple industries it is stressed that you should never undersell yourself. Yes, IT Java Drones getting paid $120K a year with having only 2 years experience is rediculous. However, if you are a good employee and have good skills, never undersell yourself. It's better to pass up a lowball offer and wait for the right job to come along. A company that completely lowballs is a company that is willing to exploit you in bad times. You are also lowering your personal value by accepting a low salary because you are desperate.
I'm very involved with the usergroups in this area and many people know that I am a program lead, and therefore have a strong voice for recommending developers in my company. I've had countless IT professionals tell me that they'd work for cheap or even nothing for "experience" (even though they already had 3-4 years of experience). I will not hire someone until we have the budget for a reasonable salary simply because once the economy get's better this person may jump ship.
For the record:
A) I am a full time IT developer (mainly C# now).
B) I exclusively use Windows.
I will agree that Mandrake looks to be very attractive for a Linux distro. I just recommended to my "MS Only Boss" (who started on Irix, mind you) Mandrake for a few of super cheap machines that he was donating to a school. He has absolutely no insentive to buy the product - he just finished downloading the three ISO's and burning them yesterday.
Personally, I plan to buy the PowerPak and give it a try - I like to keep an open mind about technology (I gave up on Linux on the Desktop about 3 years ago and I'm going to give it another shot). It looks like a package worth buying. But the reality is, in many cases, people won't buy it if they can get it for free. I agree with the grandparent post - Mandrakesoft is NOT a charity, they are a business. If you want to support them, buy their product. If that doesn't keep them afloat, then they go down.
You're just proving to everybody (including the RIAA, MPAA) that you just want a free lunch.
The only thing being proven is that giving software away for free in hopes for people buying CD's, Manuals, and Support is NOT a viable business option. Even if RH, the most successful distro, keeps up it's measly profit it will be DECADES before they earn back enough to break even since the inception of the business.
In summary, privacy and free speech go hand in hand. Many people in America seem to be forgetting this simple but crucial fact.
Run Opera instead of Phoenix. It's extremely lightweight especially considering how many features it has.
My mom is still running on a 450 Cellery with 96MB. Many people at home don't have the money to upgrade every 3 years.
I'm sorry MR. Grammar and Spelling Natzi... I'll agree that I have better things to do with my life then double check my work, as well as the fact that i'm not the best speller in the world. And yes, I'm aware that rouge is red and can refer to a goldish color such as a Goldfish or Poisson Rouge. Je parles Francais un pus.
Most businesses do not build game machines.
In an era of practicallity most offices are still running on 500mhz boxes with 128MB of RAM and 5400rpm HD's.
Well, first you have to understand what memory is. Then you have to understand that byte's in memory get executed. Continue this path and you find that MP3's load it's byte's into memory, including bit's that describe itself (not just audio). Putting it all together you realize that it's possible (and non-trival to prevent in lower level languages like C++ or ASM) to have rouge byte's execute malicious code.
First, a similar bug was reported to XMMS. Second, we are talking about millions of lines of code that has historically been managed by people who care much more about features than security. Sure, last year MS initiated a major focus on security, but it will probably take a year just to get the mindshare of the managers, let alone get the programmers to rewrite a lot of code.