My stats aren't completely meaningless, they do show that:
1. ***AT LEAST*** 1.6% of the hits against my site were from Linux desktops (ie. more than 0.8%) 2. In the middle of 2007 there was a five-fold increase in the historically-steady number of desktop clients that identified themselves as Linux, and that this number has steadied since then.
I would just like to know, what could the FBI do to make it's spy ware different from anything else out there in the wild? It would seem to me they would limited to the same techniques anyone can use on a computer, so really wouldn't it be just one more obnoxious program out there?
Well, they could "lean on" anti-spyware vendors and "request" that they not publish signatures that identify their CIPAV. Who's to know that they haven't done this ?
Or maybe Microsoft might provide them with some useful information that isn't readily available.
Well, I maintain a website that is non-technical in nature, and receives a fairly wide range of hits from countries around the world. In January 2008, it recorded over 2 million hits. So, I reckon that for estimating the proportion of Linux (and other) OS's in the world, this website is a reasonable gauge, at least for getting an idea of trends.
For years, hits from Linux desktops have sat around 0.2 - 0.4%.
From April through July, there was a steady increase to around 1.6 - 1.8%, and it seems to have plateaued there.
Here are the raw numbers for the past year (logs passed through a Perl script I use to generate stats, and grep'd for "Linux"):
Hmmm, maybe I should move to Canada. Here in Australia, I'm currently paying $50/month for 1.5Mb/256kb/s DSL with a 5Gb/month quota. Excess usage drops me down to 64kb/s for the rest of the month, although the Voip service provided by my ISP isn't affected.
I can pay to buy more Gb's to see me through to the rest of the month at my normal bandwidth, I think it's something like $5-10/Gb. I can check my bandwidth usage on a per-day basis up to within an hour or so on my ISP's website.
This is fairly typical of plans in Australia, and nearly all ISP's here have well-defined caps on their plans, with bandwidth meters. Some plans have excess-usage fees, some reduce your bandwidth. Everyone knows where they stand, no surprises (unless you don't check your usage meter, in which case that's your own fault).
As trainman says, there shouldn't be a problem, ISP's around the world solved this a long time ago.
I've heard that iRiver sells devices in North America with MTP-based firmware. In most of the rest of the world, their firmware is UMS-based. I don't believe iRiver put out firmware that supports both. You can flash from one firmware type to the other, but you void your warranty.
I live in Australia, OGGs play fine on my UMS-based E10. I have had problems running some AVI's (although most work ok).
I bought my E10 mainly because it was about the most Linux-friendly device I could find that had the features I wanted at a reasonable price and reputation for quality. PMPlib allows you to rebuild the device's media index, iriverter (a gui front-end for Mencoder) produces the appropriate video format for the device. Being UMS-based, it doubles as a USB drive for copying files around. I even store scripts on it that I run to rsync files to it, call PMPlib/Mencoder, etc. I'm very happy with my little E10.
Rockbox doesn't support the E10, so that's not an option for me (yet).
Disclaimer: I have no links whatsoever with iRiver, other than being a satisfied customer.
...develop an ethical code for human/animal relations. (Before I get flamed for "cultural insensitivity" or some such, I'm not pointing to the Korean custom of eating pets, but to the way they are often treated before/as they are slaughtered.)
According to the article, Netscape paid someone for an article that ended up causing huge embarressment to AOL, and forced the resignation of AOL's CIO:
This is my list of utilities that I find that I'm most likely to want to use, that aren't already available on the system I'm working on:
- rsync: keep files up-to-date over low bandwidths. great for to-disk backups with dirvish. - netcat: open up an ad-hoc communication path between 2 machines. - strace: I think this process is doing X, but is it really ? - tcpdump: who is my computer talking to, and what are they saying ? - wget: rather than downloading files with a browser, I often find it more efficient to "right-click/copy-link-location", then, in a console, cd to the directory where I want the file to go (I'm usually there already) and "wget -nd ". also useful for looking at http headers. - xd: hex dump - much easier to read than the standard od. can also use it to modify binaries, if you're brave:-). - knoppix: my system won't boot, and I need an OS right **NOW**. - openvpn: just starting to use this a bit lately, to bypass pesky firewalls:-). - sar: what's the load on the machine throughout the day ? - dhcpstatus: thought I'd mention this 'coz I wrote it;-).
Why must calendar apps be merged with mail apps? Seriously?
In big organisations, lots of people (especially those higher up the food chain) live, work and breath by their electronic calendars. Communication between calendars, via vCalendar/iCalendar or whatever, can theoretically be done using any number of transport protocols, but the only one that is universally implemented is by SMTP.
Hence, if you want to set meetings with someone through your electronic calendar, you need one that is integrated with a mail application.
And, since the people who want this functionality are generally senior people in large organisations, there is a big demand for it, and the dollars to pay for it. And where there is demand and $$$, there is usually good supply.
That's why.
I work in an organisation of about 1000 people, where nearly everyone uses Lotus Notes. About 10 of us run Linux desktops. The other Linux users use Thunderbird, but I spend half my working life going to meetings, so I use Evolution - sadly, I couldn't survive with just Thunderbird. I've been waiting for Mozilla's calendar integration to mature so that I can at least consider switching to Thunderbird.
To jadavis: I've re-read your post in the context of the article and I realise now that I mis-understood the point that you were trying to make. I humbley apologise. Your point was quite correct, and I took it out of context. I thought you were talking about websites, not DNS.
In any other country, the internet would basically be useless without seeing U.S. sites.
What complete and utter bullshit. Obviously, this comment was written by some kind of ignorant, arrogant American who thinks that the whole world revolves around his/her country. I can't remember when I last read a sentence that was so... so... what's the word ? Arrogant ? Stupid ? Narrow-minded ? Ignorant ? Stereotypically-American ?
Right now I'm browsing this US website called slashdot.org. A few minutes ago, I was looking at a couple of sites here in Australia for a birthday present for my wife. In a little while, I'll probably browse over to the BBC website to check out the news, then maybe send emails to friends in South America and central Europe.
Internet useless without US sites ? Well, it would be a shame to see all US sites disappear, I'd miss some of them. But I wouldn't miss them any more than if, say, all the sites in the UK were to disappear, or Germany, or whatever.
Americans may spend 99.99% of the time they are on the Internet visiting American websites, but - I hope this doesn't come as too much of a blow to your pride - people in the rest of the world (you know, us 95% of the earth's population who live outside your country) probably don't spend more than 10-20% of the time we are on the web viewing sites in the US.
If all Americans think the same way as this one (who I see was modded "5 - Insightful"), then its pretty obvious why they can't figure out why 95% of the world doesn't want a global resource to be controlled by 5%.
(BTW, I'm not anti-American, some of my best friends are Americans, but gee I wish you guys could widen your horizons realise that there is a world beyond your borders, full of people who are pretty much the same as you.)
Sound travels tremendous distances underwater, and whales and dolphins have very sensitive accoustic receptors. This allows some whales to communicate over distances of hundreds of miles, I've heard that humpbacks can even communicate with each other thousands of miles away.
If navies start using these toys, then it wrecks the sea creatures' hearing, making survival (hunting, avoiding predators) impossible. In the worst case, the damage done can kill them outright. And not just in the immediate area, but for hundreds of miles around. Never mind Japanese whalers, the US navy could wipe out whole speices of whales overnight with this stuff if they decided to us it on a big scale.
This problem has been around for some time now: 12345.
My question, though, is - WHY does the US need this shit ? I mean, how much does the US really rely on its navy these days for national security. Its not like Al Quaeda or even the Iranians/Syrians/North Koreans/[insert-this-weeks-axis-of-evil-member-her e] could do any conceivable damage to a US warship (unless maybe a suicide bomber managed to sneak onboard). Maybe the Chinese or Russians, but really, does the US really NEED this new level of naval capability with the technological lead it already has ?
Marconi (a European) developed the first practical radio communication system. Would the US prefer that regulation of radio spectrum be managed by the EU, or by an independent international body ?
The Russians were the first to put satellites in space. Would the US prefer that regulation of space-related issues be managed by Russia, or by an independent international body ?
So it was up to the UN to enforce it. The UN went against its own resolution and refused to enforce it. So the US was the one who got to do the actual "enforcing"... And once it was complete and Saddam was out of power, the world turned on us for going AGAINST the UN (despite the fact that it was simply enforcing the UNs own resolution).
The UN was following the correct process to determine whether Iraq still had WMD's. Hans Blix, the guy who was leading the investigation, wanted more time to find out one way ot the other. Until Blix was in a position to report his findings, the US had no mandate from the UN to enforce anything.
The US was trying to get the UN to sanction the war, but they realised that when it was put to the vote in the Security Council, they were going to get an unambiguous "No". Rather than risk that, they pulled the plug on the approval idea, ignored the UN, and in they went.
You can argue that the US was in a hurry because they had intelligence that Iraq was on the verge of using its WMD's, but the evidence has shown that that intelligence was wrong. If they had waited until Blix had made his final report, and if it had been adverse against Iraq, then they would have gotten the UN on-side. They didn't.
The prevailing world opinion on the real reason that Bush was in such a hurry is that either it was a personal revenge thing, or maybe that it was because Iraq was about to start selling its oil for Euros rather than Dollars, which would have a severe impact on the US economy if other oil-producing countries followed suit. Neither of these is a valid moral reason for starting a war.
Wouldn't it make more sense to give her say a Debian box and set up automated security updates on it ? Same sort of philosophy re. regular updates, plus the benefit of better baseline security.
Slashdot Mirror
Unlike people who really are dead, who no longer face any problems.
No, the name is Bjork, and she's Icelandic...
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Actually, they're Norwegian nerds.
My stats aren't completely meaningless, they do show that:
1. ***AT LEAST*** 1.6% of the hits against my site were from Linux desktops (ie. more than 0.8%)
2. In the middle of 2007 there was a five-fold increase in the historically-steady number of desktop clients that identified themselves as Linux, and that this number has steadied since then.
Well, they could "lean on" anti-spyware vendors and "request" that they not publish signatures that identify their CIPAV. Who's to know that they haven't done this ?
Or maybe Microsoft might provide them with some useful information that isn't readily available.
Well, I maintain a website that is non-technical in nature, and receives a fairly wide range of hits from countries around the world. In January 2008, it recorded over 2 million hits. So, I reckon that for estimating the proportion of Linux (and other) OS's in the world, this website is a reasonable gauge, at least for getting an idea of trends.
For years, hits from Linux desktops have sat around 0.2 - 0.4%.
From April through July, there was a steady increase to around 1.6 - 1.8%, and it seems to have plateaued there.
Here are the raw numbers for the past year (logs passed through a Perl script I use to generate stats, and grep'd for "Linux"):
access_log.07-01.gz Linux: 7913 (0.39%)
access_log.07-02.gz Linux: 8088 (0.38%)
access_log.07-03.gz Linux: 7477 (0.29%)
access_log.07-04.gz Linux: 25977 (0.96%)
access_log.07-05.gz Linux: 34574 (1.14%)
access_log.07-06.gz Linux: 30211 (1.39%)
access_log.07-07.gz Linux: 38062 (1.88%)
access_log.07-08.gz Linux: 39405 (1.75%)
access_log.07-09.gz Linux: 39334 (1.80%)
access_log.07-10.gz Linux: 48338 (1.75%)
access_log.07-11.gz Linux: 38527 (1.61%)
access_log.07-12.gz Linux: 27439 (1.64%)
access_log.08-01.gz Linux: 34587 (1.73%)
Hmmm, maybe I should move to Canada. Here in Australia, I'm currently paying $50/month for 1.5Mb/256kb/s DSL with a 5Gb/month quota. Excess usage drops me down to 64kb/s for the rest of the month, although the Voip service provided by my ISP isn't affected.
I can pay to buy more Gb's to see me through to the rest of the month at my normal bandwidth, I think it's something like $5-10/Gb. I can check my bandwidth usage on a per-day basis up to within an hour or so on my ISP's website.
This is fairly typical of plans in Australia, and nearly all ISP's here have well-defined caps on their plans, with bandwidth meters. Some plans have excess-usage fees, some reduce your bandwidth. Everyone knows where they stand, no surprises (unless you don't check your usage meter, in which case that's your own fault).
As trainman says, there shouldn't be a problem, ISP's around the world solved this a long time ago.
does that make the farmer a Luddite ?
I live in Australia, OGGs play fine on my UMS-based E10. I have had problems running some AVI's (although most work ok).
I bought my E10 mainly because it was about the most Linux-friendly device I could find that had the features I wanted at a reasonable price and reputation for quality. PMPlib allows you to rebuild the device's media index, iriverter (a gui front-end for Mencoder) produces the appropriate video format for the device. Being UMS-based, it doubles as a USB drive for copying files around. I even store scripts on it that I run to rsync files to it, call PMPlib/Mencoder, etc. I'm very happy with my little E10.
Rockbox doesn't support the E10, so that's not an option for me (yet).
Disclaimer: I have no links whatsoever with iRiver, other than being a satisfied customer.
...develop an ethical code for human/animal relations. (Before I get flamed for "cultural insensitivity" or some such, I'm not pointing to the Korean custom of eating pets, but to the way they are often treated before/as they are slaughtered.)
... Microsoft has informed the SEC of its intentions to change its name to the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation.
According to the article, Netscape paid someone for an article that ended up causing huge embarressment to AOL, and forced the resignation of AOL's CIO:
1 72033 7226
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/21/2
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/22/1
Isn't Netscape a subsidiary of AOL ?
Or is this a different story ?
This is my list of utilities that I find that I'm most likely to want to use, that aren't already available on the system I'm working on:
:-). :-). ;-).
- rsync: keep files up-to-date over low bandwidths. great for to-disk backups with dirvish.
- netcat: open up an ad-hoc communication path between 2 machines.
- strace: I think this process is doing X, but is it really ?
- tcpdump: who is my computer talking to, and what are they saying ?
- wget: rather than downloading files with a browser, I often find it more efficient to "right-click/copy-link-location", then, in a console, cd to the directory where I want the file to go (I'm usually there already) and "wget -nd ". also useful for looking at http headers.
- xd: hex dump - much easier to read than the standard od. can also use it to modify binaries, if you're brave
- knoppix: my system won't boot, and I need an OS right **NOW**.
- openvpn: just starting to use this a bit lately, to bypass pesky firewalls
- sar: what's the load on the machine throughout the day ?
- dhcpstatus: thought I'd mention this 'coz I wrote it
In big organisations, lots of people (especially those higher up the food chain) live, work and breath by their electronic calendars. Communication between calendars, via vCalendar/iCalendar or whatever, can theoretically be done using any number of transport protocols, but the only one that is universally implemented is by SMTP.
Hence, if you want to set meetings with someone through your electronic calendar, you need one that is integrated with a mail application.
And, since the people who want this functionality are generally senior people in large organisations, there is a big demand for it, and the dollars to pay for it. And where there is demand and $$$, there is usually good supply.
That's why.
I work in an organisation of about 1000 people, where nearly everyone uses Lotus Notes. About 10 of us run Linux desktops. The other Linux users use Thunderbird, but I spend half my working life going to meetings, so I use Evolution - sadly, I couldn't survive with just Thunderbird. I've been waiting for Mozilla's calendar integration to mature so that I can at least consider switching to Thunderbird.
"I hated it so much, I bought the company. And fired the bastards."
How about rsync ? Microsoft are now playing catch-up with their Distributed File System Replication.
I guess it depends on how much you trust your government.
BTW, I wonder if its based on any GPL'd code.
To jadavis: I've re-read your post in the context of the article and I realise now that I mis-understood the point that you were trying to make. I humbley apologise. Your point was quite correct, and I took it out of context. I thought you were talking about websites, not DNS.
What complete and utter bullshit. Obviously, this comment was written by some kind of ignorant, arrogant American who thinks that the whole world revolves around his/her country. I can't remember when I last read a sentence that was so ... so ... what's the word ? Arrogant ? Stupid ? Narrow-minded ? Ignorant ? Stereotypically-American ?
Right now I'm browsing this US website called slashdot.org. A few minutes ago, I was looking at a couple of sites here in Australia for a birthday present for my wife. In a little while, I'll probably browse over to the BBC website to check out the news, then maybe send emails to friends in South America and central Europe.
Internet useless without US sites ? Well, it would be a shame to see all US sites disappear, I'd miss some of them. But I wouldn't miss them any more than if, say, all the sites in the UK were to disappear, or Germany, or whatever.
Americans may spend 99.99% of the time they are on the Internet visiting American websites, but - I hope this doesn't come as too much of a blow to your pride - people in the rest of the world (you know, us 95% of the earth's population who live outside your country) probably don't spend more than 10-20% of the time we are on the web viewing sites in the US.
If all Americans think the same way as this one (who I see was modded "5 - Insightful"), then its pretty obvious why they can't figure out why 95% of the world doesn't want a global resource to be controlled by 5%.
(BTW, I'm not anti-American, some of my best friends are Americans, but gee I wish you guys could widen your horizons realise that there is a world beyond your borders, full of people who are pretty much the same as you.)
Since Bush got re-elected, that implies that the majority of Americans are either corrupt or stupid.
And that's pretty much how the rest of the world views America.
If navies start using these toys, then it wrecks the sea creatures' hearing, making survival (hunting, avoiding predators) impossible. In the worst case, the damage done can kill them outright. And not just in the immediate area, but for hundreds of miles around. Never mind Japanese whalers, the US navy could wipe out whole speices of whales overnight with this stuff if they decided to us it on a big scale.
This problem has been around for some time now: 1 2 3 4 5.
My question, though, is - WHY does the US need this shit ? I mean, how much does the US really rely on its navy these days for national security. Its not like Al Quaeda or even the Iranians/Syrians/North Koreans/[insert-this-weeks-axis-of-evil-member-her e] could do any conceivable damage to a US warship (unless maybe a suicide bomber managed to sneak onboard). Maybe the Chinese or Russians, but really, does the US really NEED this new level of naval capability with the technological lead it already has ?
The Russians were the first to put satellites in space. Would the US prefer that regulation of space-related issues be managed by Russia, or by an independent international body ?
The UN was following the correct process to determine whether Iraq still had WMD's. Hans Blix, the guy who was leading the investigation, wanted more time to find out one way ot the other. Until Blix was in a position to report his findings, the US had no mandate from the UN to enforce anything.
The US was trying to get the UN to sanction the war, but they realised that when it was put to the vote in the Security Council, they were going to get an unambiguous "No". Rather than risk that, they pulled the plug on the approval idea, ignored the UN, and in they went.
You can argue that the US was in a hurry because they had intelligence that Iraq was on the verge of using its WMD's, but the evidence has shown that that intelligence was wrong. If they had waited until Blix had made his final report, and if it had been adverse against Iraq, then they would have gotten the UN on-side. They didn't.
The prevailing world opinion on the real reason that Bush was in such a hurry is that either it was a personal revenge thing, or maybe that it was because Iraq was about to start selling its oil for Euros rather than Dollars, which would have a severe impact on the US economy if other oil-producing countries followed suit. Neither of these is a valid moral reason for starting a war.
That's why the world turned against you.
I agree. Poor creature, I hope its not in too much pain and can survive and regenerate its tentacle. Bastard arsehole scientists.
Wouldn't it make more sense to give her say a Debian box and set up automated security updates on it ? Same sort of philosophy re. regular updates, plus the benefit of better baseline security.