I agree that it would be a longshot that they'd be interested, but not totally impossible; they bought Nullsoft/Winamp, who, though the market leader in Windows MP3 players, seems to have a business plan of "Make great software and give it away for free forever."
But by buying them, they gained a bit of credibility - they did that by *not* branding it as an AOL property. Same for Netscape, though I think their aspirations on that end were too grand and a bit too late, though we *did* at least get a pretty good Mozilla somehow from the deal.
Their long-term wins do seem to be from leaving things alone - I hope they continue. For all of their bad reputation, they do seem to stay away from influencing their content, apart from keeping it a bit 'family friendly' in that it is unbiased, inoffensive and unracist. (Apart from the extensive Usenet groups that they carry, that is...)
If they *did* buy RedHat, they'd probably want to buy some credibility with the community as well - offer something back, in a way. Picking up Slashdot/OSDN just to be their "Silent Rich Uncle" could help them in that aim. They fully understand their image, I think. I worked there on a contract a while back and I know that their staff are good people doing a good job.
For a huge percentage of the US, AOL and the Internet are synonymous - in much the same way that for a lot of people, RedHat and Linux are synonymous - They understand that dynamic and in a way, cultivate that feeling. The *want* to be The Internet for their users and the just might want to be their operating system as well. To do that, it wouldn't hurt to have a few respected people say "well, they *do* host Slashdot on their servers..."
Personally, I'd like to see RedHat get picked up and anything that will help them survive would be a good thing.
Cheers -
Jim in Tokyo,
(formerly down the road from you in Cheverly...)
Wouldn't it be great to get stuff like the latest RPMs on those free AOL CDs?
What about free security updates for AOL members - goodbye CodeRed-style nuisances... (Something like Apt-get on connect...)
If they can discourage members from running as root, they'll virtually put an end to a lot of the nonsense that we've had to put up with from email trojans, and VB Script crap.
Yes, they'd probably not let people run a lot of services on the network - telnet, smtp, etc, but isn't that a Good Thing for end users as a group?
Plus, wouldn't it be nice to be able to SSH to your mom's/uncle's/friend's machine to fix something, rather than have them drag it out at Thanksgiving?
P.S. : Don't try and smuggle back CD's or VHS tapes like I did. I found out you risk imprisonment and fines that are outrageous.
Coming back from St. Petersburg to Tokyo once, I had my bag opened by customs - sitting on top was a couple of CDs that I bought at a kiosk - "Red Hat's greatest hits" and "CPAN Archive" or some such. Without a word, the customs inspector removed them, tossed them in the contraband bin and closed my suitcase. I considered trying to explain that they were perfectly legal, but didn't...
How soon before people figure out that they can buy a CD, take it home and simply *tape* it, (Yes, people still do this, believe it or not,) then return it saying that it wouldn't play in their 'computer'?
Me, I'd probably make a perfectly acceptable analog MP3 or Minidisc copy of it - I don't have a tape deck anymore.
This is pathetic and it will undoubtedly bite them on the tail...
Good luck to them...
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
Try webmin.
Even if you are quite adept at editing conf files by hand, webmin can be a real convenience.
It is a GUI administration tool for a lot more than just Apache. (mounts, samba, sendmail, packages, perl modules, firewalls, whatever...)
It reads from and writes to the same files that you would normally edit by hand, plus it does a better job than I normally do with vi.
It's web-based, has its own server and is written in perl. (Minimal resource usage and very good security.)
I can install it to all of my machines and administer them from anywhere, or just on my own network, if I like. (SSL is an option, too.)
It's sort of ugly to look at, but it works really well - It's one of the first things I install on any Linux box I set up.
No - I just don't understand why people do IT if they don't love it. OK, maybe I do, in an abstract sense - It's indoor work, no heavy lifting, but I mean, life is short - do what you love.
I could probably make money and support myself doing something like sales or accounting or marketing, but I'd probably rather make less money doing something I was fascinated with than spend each week counting the days until my next vacation.
I've worked with people who had gotten some training and learned enough IT skills to make themselves useful, but very often there was something *else* that they'd rather be doing - they didn't love their work, did only what they had to and lived their 'real' life on the weekends.
Personally, I'd burn out pretty quick if that was my situation.
I work as the only foreigner in a Japanese company and frequently have to work in either language. To switch languages on my Linux box, I simply log out and log back in, selecting the other language when I do. On the NT machine, I have to reboot.
If I want both English and Japanese on the NT box, that means I have to have two seperate licenses and two different installs on the same machine in two different partitions.
I had heard that Win2K lets you choose between languages and related that to a friend who was buying a PC here in Tokyo, but that simply isn't the case. (At least not for J/E.) MS apparently does make such a version, but it is only available to corporate customers, not via retail.
As for software, apps are being made in other languages and sometimes 'ported' to English. Sylpheed (http://sylpheed.good-day.net) is one such package, a really good mail client (MUA).
Other packages have been translated well enough that a non-English speaker may think it's a native program - Webmin comes to mind, as does Sourceforge's website.
There are probably others that are similar, but I haven't realized that I am not seeing it in the developer's native language. (I get a lot of my software from the Japanese Linux magizine CDs' monthly picks, so it's not always clear what the 'original' language of a package is.)
Funny thing is, I've never seen Mandrake in these distro magazines - I hear it's one of the most popular in the US, but have yet to run across a copy here. I've wondered if it's an i18n issue...
IMHO, multi-lingual envronments is one area (critical for me) that Linux outshines its closed-source alternatives. (Want Icelandic Linux? No problem. Windows? No can do.)
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
Sure, Chinese may very well be the native language of most Internet users in 10 years, due to the giant size of the Chinese population, but any claims that this will cause some great shift in how the world uses the web is pretty silly.
That pretty much nails it. Think about food: Some journalist may report that a huge percentage of the meals cooked in homes around the world are, guess what? You got it. Chinese food. Does that mean that you have to start learning to like Chinese food? No.
India produces more movies than any other country in the world. Have you (Indians please pardon me,) had to learn Hindi to enjoy the movies that you watch?
Same probably goes for books...
Here in my office, I am the only American - I am also the sysadmin, so I get to see what sites people visit. I know that if I see google.com logged, it was probably me who hit the site.
The people over here have their "own" internet in effect - one that in no way influences or limits an English speaker's ability to have an "All-English" experience.
Here's what I use - I got it here on slashdot, tweaked it and it has been working really well. Put the following into/etc/procmailrc - all of the junk messages get put into/var/virusdump/virus.
Be careful of accidentally wrapped lines.
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
---Cut Here---
VIRUSDUMP=/var/virusdump/virus
:0 # Use procmail match feature
* ^From:\/.*
{
HFR = "$MATCH"
}
:0 fhw
| (formail -r; \
echo -e "This is an auto-generated message\n\
\n\
The email referenced above, which was sent from your address, \n\
had an attachment of a type that this server does not allow.\n\
(Files that end in:.exe,.vbs,.pif,.scr , etc).\n\n\
This mail server no longer accepts mail with these attached file types,\n\
due to the risk of viruses.\n\n\
You email has not been delivered.\n\n\
If you didn't knowingly send an attachment, your computer\n\
may be infected with a virus. \n\n\
If you were attempting to send an attached file that you know \n\
is free from viruses, you may try resending the file \n\
in a compressed format such as ZIP. \n\n\
Error No: aybabtu. \n\n\
Contact your@company.email if you have any questions")\
| mail -s "Possible Virus Detected" "${HFR}" -b your@company.email
:0
${VIRUSDUMP}
}
}
Being really short on space, I had to move 3 of the servers into the laundry room - since there wasn't any real space there, I stacked them end to end and slid them between the washer/dryer and the wall. I was worried about heat initially, but it hasn't been a problem at all. (The webserver has an uptime of 115 days with no problems.)
I have a picture at http://mmdc.net/servers.jpg
The one on top is 'unagi', the web server and mp3 server. (Redhat 7.1) below that is the router (Freesco) and another test machine below that.
It keeps everything out of sight and quiet and uses the 10cm of space that would be otherwise wasted. I could add probably 3 more if I needed, too.
I use webmin and have VNC on each, so I don't need a keyboard or monitor, but I can put a flatpanel on the metro shelf facing it if the need arises.
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
If I'm not mistaken, that's a different kind of scripting. At least it was a few years ago.
I was using that about 6 years ago, well before Javascript and VB script has been introduced.
I also seem to remember that it fell apart when the email went outside the local network - it was a really Windows-only kind of thing.
That sort of thing, I agree, is appropriate in an enterprise setting.
Also, I think everyone here would agree that Outlook's usefulness is what keeps it alive - people live with all of the problems because of the luxuries it affords them. (Kind of reminds me of the people who didn't want to get off the Titanic just because it had hit an iceberg...)
Ok, that last comment is a bit of an overstatement...
Cheers,
Jim
I use Mozilla for browsing and Sylpheed (http://sylpheed.good-day.net) for mail, so I guess I've already voted, so I'll use my soapbox to do a little campaigning.
My office has a loose policy of letting users use any POP3 client that they choose. Most seem to be on Outlook Express, but others use Eudora and one called "Becky!" that I think is a mainly Japanese product.
I've noticed that the HR department gets the bulk of the viruses, given their unfiltered contact with the general public, so I'll soon be setting up a special box just for them to use:
Linux, Gnome (KDE if they like,) Mozilla, Sylpheed. (Yahoo Messenger and XMMS will be on it just for fun.)
It will also get the latest release of OpenOffice, so they can look at resumes and stuff without worry. It will also have all of their standard drives mounted through Samba. It should be a fairly easy transition - sylpheed is very similar in feel to Outlook Express. OpenOffice will take a very little bit of retraining.
I agree with your point - it was very well-said. Microsoft put the customer second and because of it, they are losing a customer. Not just for Outlook, but for at least one Windows license, hopefully an office-full soon. It would sure make *my* job a lot easier.
Until one of my users got an email with an attachment that would just execute itself from the preview pane, no matter what the security settings were.
I sat there and toyed with it (yanked the LAN cable first) and absolutely could not get it to *NOT* run automatically.
(Her Outlook Express probably had been upgraded a month before, I think, but downloading the latest version *did* take care of the problem.
The real question is, why does Outlook support *any* of these behaviors? Sure, occasionally it's nice to HTML-ify an email and stick in a picture, but do I really need DHTML, scripting, cookies and all of that other crap?
When was the last time somebody had a legitimate reason for sending an embedded script in an email?
Oh, sure, let me have my personal emails set a cookie when they get read. Sure, I'm really going to do that.
Why not just have a really scaled-back HTML renderer that ignores tags that you choose to ignore?
The card I have is a VG-2000 by DFI
with 512kB video ram, supposed to be able to do almost anything (well
1024x768 16 colours anyway). The problem is - it doesn't.
Hey, buddy, quit bitching and just use it in VGA mode, like everybody else.
If you don't like it, why don't you just go write your own drivers? While you're at it, why don't you go write your own Operating System??? (Heh heh... Sure told him a thing-or-two...)
Drat!
I was hoping to fool some people who hadn't seen the original!
Oh, wait... Lots of Russians *are* on the net these days...
Anyone remember hearing about how the US Customs Service used to fill the cases of USSR-bound Vaxen with concrete? (Shipping such powerful computers there was a no-no back then.)
Of course, now nobody thinks twice when they see a Russian address, but back then it was a big deal.
(To the younger readers: They were the bad guys back then, the "Evil Empire"...)
And now, let's open a flask of Vodka and have a drink on our entry on
this network. So:
How soon before I can set my cellphone to VOIP mode and wander around town making calls all over the world on my 'unlimited' ISP account?
Until then, my little vaio could get a wireless card and get tossed into my backpack for this purpose.
Of course, encryption and authorization schemes will have to be wildly more strict than the current systems to keep people from 'war driving' even more than they are now.
Plus, of course, this moves the access points out of the homes and offices and into the hands of the ISPs and providers. I don't know if that is a good or bad thing - I like the grassroots feel of the efforts going on now. (Sure, the two could exist side-by-side, but a lot of wireless equipment would be made redundant if the services are cheap enough.)
Bill Gates laid out that very same thought in "The Road Ahead" a few years back.
Interesting idea, but doubtful to work with the current system in any way. (You really want to have to declare all of those micropayments on your 1040?)
Personally, I think some kind of pre-authorization scheme is better than a pay system - remember, this has to work in third world countries, too.
Brad Templeton has a neat system in place that is not too difficult to use at all. If you send him an email, you get the following:
I apologize, but this address gets a lot of junk E-mail (spam). Since my
"secretary" (Viking) has not seen your address before, you need to send
a simple confirmation to get on my good-list.
Your message on:
[subject removed for slashdot]
is being held. If it is not a "spam" (see below), just send a reply,
any reply, to this message. Your held mail will be delivered to me
immediately and all future mail from you will go through directly.
OK - there goes 99% of your spam.
If spammers figure a way to reply, add a question and answer feature:
Your message on:
[subject removed for slashdot]
is being held. If it is not a "spam" (see below),
You must answer the following question:
What is the Airspeed Velocity of an Unladen Swallow?
You could make the questions progressively tougher,to filter out morons, too.;-)
Procmail could handle the rest of the mail, too, (if it weren't so damn hard to write recipes for. Yes, I know about the perl mail filters - I'm looking into them now.)
Imagine a procmail-type system that could strip attatchments and process them:
PDFs go through pdf2txt and summarized.
Word docs could get piped through msdoc2txt (If it only existed!).
Html mail goes through lynx -dump. (No need to complain to the less-clueful that you don't want their 'pretty' mails.)
Web bugs are dropped. Same for Javascript and iframes.
Images are relocated to your own server.
Viral attachments get logged and further mail refused, user slapped, whatever...
Bounce messages that you don't want.
Filter text to make it work-friendly: s/sh$t/poo-poo/g
Filter text from certain people to make it more interesting: s/Stop stalking me/I love you/g
Since I get a lot of mail in Japanese, I could choose to detect DBCS text and run it through babelfish before I read it.
Most of these things could be and are being done. I bet there would be a market for a prewritten package customizable through a web interface. I would buy it.
What you do with incoming mail is a very personal decision - some people *like* mails that you and I would consider spam. There are always exceptions to the rules:
What happens when your mail filter blindly drops a mail from your wife telling that the baby just ate the Copier Toner or your housemate writes to tell you that a group of Real Naked Coeds are waiting in your room - get home quick! OK, neither of those situations are likely to occur, but you get the idea...
Since any monetary damages would be, well, *your* money, taxpayer money, it's good to see the judge actually do something that makes them uncomfortable.
I've been a government contractor and I know how it is when some PHB (pointy-haired bureaucrat) demands that she be able to access a system without a password. These people need a good bitchslap.
I applaud this.
--
Now can somebody tell me why Native Americans are governed by the Dept. of the Interior as though they were deer or pine trees?
The first push to use those extra layers will be for licensing.
I doubt it will be for things that actually *improve* the end viewer's experience, but more for things that *limit* your allowed experience.
Why do I have this feeling? Before I moved from the US, I used to love wathing foreign films; I would watch Asian or European films with English Subtitles. (On VHS from any video store.) I naively figured that with DVD technology, I would be able to rent a French movie in Tokyo and be able to turn on English subtitles. I mean, your typical DVD movie is ~4GB- that leaves what, like 3GB for 'extras'? I guessed that multi-lingual subs would be a no-brainer.
Guess what? I over-estimated the no-brainer part...
With this bad taste already in my mouth, I have little hope that Quicktime will use these extra 'layers' in any way that I will find useful.
>>>but switching from vendor is just not an option.
>nope, it is always an option.
Rarely.
In many gov't shops, the Oracle sits on the one Sun box in the place and is only touched buy the ouside vendor-unix guys who stop in once-in-a-while to tweak it. (Those guys who never come to lunch with you.)
You may have in-house people who can fsck around with an in-house built Ms Sql Server or Oracle db, but that rarely has anything to do with that one lonely off-limts box in the corner.
Technically, "yes". All you have to do is email the vendor and get a data dictionary for the 'box-in-the-corner', but in reality, don't hold your breath. Either you will never get it, or worse, you will, then you realize that it is such crap that it will take two years before you could possibly get a system working in any other home-grown rdbms. They have the advantage: though the databases are total crap, design-wise, they've spent the last ten years polishing these turds into bombproof 'systems'.
(Ignore the little man behind the curtain... Ignore that box in the corner...)
I wish it weren't so...
Slashdot Mirror
I agree that it would be a longshot that they'd be interested, but not totally impossible; they bought Nullsoft/Winamp, who, though the market leader in Windows MP3 players, seems to have a business plan of "Make great software and give it away for free forever."
But by buying them, they gained a bit of credibility - they did that by *not* branding it as an AOL property. Same for Netscape, though I think their aspirations on that end were too grand and a bit too late, though we *did* at least get a pretty good Mozilla somehow from the deal.
Their long-term wins do seem to be from leaving things alone - I hope they continue. For all of their bad reputation, they do seem to stay away from influencing their content, apart from keeping it a bit 'family friendly' in that it is unbiased, inoffensive and unracist. (Apart from the extensive Usenet groups that they carry, that is...)
If they *did* buy RedHat, they'd probably want to buy some credibility with the community as well - offer something back, in a way. Picking up Slashdot/OSDN just to be their "Silent Rich Uncle" could help them in that aim. They fully understand their image, I think. I worked there on a contract a while back and I know that their staff are good people doing a good job.
For a huge percentage of the US, AOL and the Internet are synonymous - in much the same way that for a lot of people, RedHat and Linux are synonymous - They understand that dynamic and in a way, cultivate that feeling. The *want* to be The Internet for their users and the just might want to be their operating system as well. To do that, it wouldn't hurt to have a few respected people say "well, they *do* host Slashdot on their servers..."
Personally, I'd like to see RedHat get picked up and anything that will help them survive would be a good thing.
Cheers -
Jim in Tokyo,
(formerly down the road from you in Cheverly...)
Wouldn't it be great to get stuff like the latest RPMs on those free AOL CDs?
What about free security updates for AOL members - goodbye CodeRed-style nuisances... (Something like Apt-get on connect...)
If they can discourage members from running as root, they'll virtually put an end to a lot of the nonsense that we've had to put up with from email trojans, and VB Script crap.
Yes, they'd probably not let people run a lot of services on the network - telnet, smtp, etc, but isn't that a Good Thing for end users as a group?
Plus, wouldn't it be nice to be able to SSH to your mom's/uncle's/friend's machine to fix something, rather than have them drag it out at Thanksgiving?
Just some thoughts...
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
What if they decided to buy OSDN?
Heh heh...
P.S. : Don't try and smuggle back CD's or VHS tapes like I did. I found out you risk imprisonment and fines that are outrageous.
...
Coming back from St. Petersburg to Tokyo once, I had my bag opened by customs - sitting on top was a couple of CDs that I bought at a kiosk - "Red Hat's greatest hits" and "CPAN Archive" or some such. Without a word, the customs inspector removed them, tossed them in the contraband bin and closed my suitcase. I considered trying to explain that they were perfectly legal, but didn't
How soon before people figure out that they can buy a CD, take it home and simply *tape* it, (Yes, people still do this, believe it or not,) then return it saying that it wouldn't play in their 'computer'?
Me, I'd probably make a perfectly acceptable analog MP3 or Minidisc copy of it - I don't have a tape deck anymore.
This is pathetic and it will undoubtedly bite them on the tail...
Good luck to them...
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
So what is this special new 'MTV-specific' content?
It's called "Advertising".
Try webmin.
Even if you are quite adept at editing conf files by hand, webmin can be a real convenience.
It is a GUI administration tool for a lot more than just Apache. (mounts, samba, sendmail, packages, perl modules, firewalls, whatever...)
It reads from and writes to the same files that you would normally edit by hand, plus it does a better job than I normally do with vi.
It's web-based, has its own server and is written in perl. (Minimal resource usage and very good security.)
I can install it to all of my machines and administer them from anywhere, or just on my own network, if I like. (SSL is an option, too.)
It's sort of ugly to look at, but it works really well - It's one of the first things I install on any Linux box I set up.
No - I just don't understand why people do IT if they don't love it. OK, maybe I do, in an abstract sense - It's indoor work, no heavy lifting, but I mean, life is short - do what you love.
I could probably make money and support myself doing something like sales or accounting or marketing, but I'd probably rather make less money doing something I was fascinated with than spend each week counting the days until my next vacation.
I've worked with people who had gotten some training and learned enough IT skills to make themselves useful, but very often there was something *else* that they'd rather be doing - they didn't love their work, did only what they had to and lived their 'real' life on the weekends.
Personally, I'd burn out pretty quick if that was my situation.
I guess the thought of consultants 'doing IT' just so they can 'have a job' is something I cannot quite comprehend.
To me, that's like someone saying that they only 'do sex' to 'have children.'
I work as the only foreigner in a Japanese company and frequently have to work in either language. To switch languages on my Linux box, I simply log out and log back in, selecting the other language when I do. On the NT machine, I have to reboot.
If I want both English and Japanese on the NT box, that means I have to have two seperate licenses and two different installs on the same machine in two different partitions.
I had heard that Win2K lets you choose between languages and related that to a friend who was buying a PC here in Tokyo, but that simply isn't the case. (At least not for J/E.) MS apparently does make such a version, but it is only available to corporate customers, not via retail.
As for software, apps are being made in other languages and sometimes 'ported' to English. Sylpheed (http://sylpheed.good-day.net) is one such package, a really good mail client (MUA).
Other packages have been translated well enough that a non-English speaker may think it's a native program - Webmin comes to mind, as does Sourceforge's website.
There are probably others that are similar, but I haven't realized that I am not seeing it in the developer's native language. (I get a lot of my software from the Japanese Linux magizine CDs' monthly picks, so it's not always clear what the 'original' language of a package is.)
Funny thing is, I've never seen Mandrake in these distro magazines - I hear it's one of the most popular in the US, but have yet to run across a copy here. I've wondered if it's an i18n issue...
IMHO, multi-lingual envronments is one area (critical for me) that Linux outshines its closed-source alternatives. (Want Icelandic Linux? No problem. Windows? No can do.)
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
Sure, Chinese may very well be the native language of most Internet users in 10 years, due to the giant size of the Chinese population, but any claims that this will cause some great shift in how the world uses the web is pretty silly.
That pretty much nails it. Think about food: Some journalist may report that a huge percentage of the meals cooked in homes around the world are, guess what? You got it. Chinese food. Does that mean that you have to start learning to like Chinese food? No.
India produces more movies than any other country in the world. Have you (Indians please pardon me,) had to learn Hindi to enjoy the movies that you watch?
Same probably goes for books...
Here in my office, I am the only American - I am also the sysadmin, so I get to see what sites people visit. I know that if I see google.com logged, it was probably me who hit the site.
The people over here have their "own" internet in effect - one that in no way influences or limits an English speaker's ability to have an "All-English" experience.
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
Here's what I use - I got it here on slashdot, tweaked it and it has been working really well. Put the following into /etc/procmailrc - all of the junk messages get put into /var/virusdump/virus.
\
.exe, .vbs, .pif, .scr , etc).\n\n\
Be careful of accidentally wrapped lines.
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
---Cut Here---
VIRUSDUMP=/var/virusdump/virus
:0 # Use procmail match feature
* ^From:\/.*
{
HFR = "$MATCH"
}
:0
*^Content-type:.*
{
:0 HB
*name=".*\.(vbs|wsf|vbe|wsh|hta|scr|pif|com|exe
|bat|lnk|url|dll|hlp|shs|ocx|js|nws)"
{
:0 fhw
| (formail -r; \
echo -e "This is an auto-generated message\n\
\n\
The email referenced above, which was sent from your address, \n\
had an attachment of a type that this server does not allow.\n\
(Files that end in:
This mail server no longer accepts mail with these attached file types,\n\
due to the risk of viruses.\n\n\
You email has not been delivered.\n\n\
If you didn't knowingly send an attachment, your computer\n\
may be infected with a virus. \n\n\
If you were attempting to send an attached file that you know \n\
is free from viruses, you may try resending the file \n\
in a compressed format such as ZIP. \n\n\
Error No: aybabtu. \n\n\
Contact your@company.email if you have any questions")\
| mail -s "Possible Virus Detected" "${HFR}" -b your@company.email
:0
${VIRUSDUMP}
}
}
Being really short on space, I had to move 3 of the servers into the laundry room - since there wasn't any real space there, I stacked them end to end and slid them between the washer/dryer and the wall. I was worried about heat initially, but it hasn't been a problem at all. (The webserver has an uptime of 115 days with no problems.)
I have a picture at http://mmdc.net/servers.jpg
The one on top is 'unagi', the web server and mp3 server. (Redhat 7.1) below that is the router (Freesco) and another test machine below that.
It keeps everything out of sight and quiet and uses the 10cm of space that would be otherwise wasted. I could add probably 3 more if I needed, too.
I use webmin and have VNC on each, so I don't need a keyboard or monitor, but I can put a flatpanel on the metro shelf facing it if the need arises.
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
If I'm not mistaken, that's a different kind of scripting. At least it was a few years ago.
I was using that about 6 years ago, well before Javascript and VB script has been introduced.
I also seem to remember that it fell apart when the email went outside the local network - it was a really Windows-only kind of thing.
That sort of thing, I agree, is appropriate in an enterprise setting.
Also, I think everyone here would agree that Outlook's usefulness is what keeps it alive - people live with all of the problems because of the luxuries it affords them. (Kind of reminds me of the people who didn't want to get off the Titanic just because it had hit an iceberg...)
Ok, that last comment is a bit of an overstatement...
Cheers,
Jim
I use Mozilla for browsing and Sylpheed (http://sylpheed.good-day.net) for mail, so I guess I've already voted, so I'll use my soapbox to do a little campaigning.
My office has a loose policy of letting users use any POP3 client that they choose. Most seem to be on Outlook Express, but others use Eudora and one called "Becky!" that I think is a mainly Japanese product.
I've noticed that the HR department gets the bulk of the viruses, given their unfiltered contact with the general public, so I'll soon be setting up a special box just for them to use:
Linux, Gnome (KDE if they like,) Mozilla, Sylpheed. (Yahoo Messenger and XMMS will be on it just for fun.)
It will also get the latest release of OpenOffice, so they can look at resumes and stuff without worry. It will also have all of their standard drives mounted through Samba. It should be a fairly easy transition - sylpheed is very similar in feel to Outlook Express. OpenOffice will take a very little bit of retraining.
I agree with your point - it was very well-said. Microsoft put the customer second and because of it, they are losing a customer. Not just for Outlook, but for at least one Windows license, hopefully an office-full soon. It would sure make *my* job a lot easier.
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
Until one of my users got an email with an attachment that would just execute itself from the preview pane, no matter what the security settings were.
I sat there and toyed with it (yanked the LAN cable first) and absolutely could not get it to *NOT* run automatically.
(Her Outlook Express probably had been upgraded a month before, I think, but downloading the latest version *did* take care of the problem.
The real question is, why does Outlook support *any* of these behaviors? Sure, occasionally it's nice to HTML-ify an email and stick in a picture, but do I really need DHTML, scripting, cookies and all of that other crap?
When was the last time somebody had a legitimate reason for sending an embedded script in an email?
Oh, sure, let me have my personal emails set a cookie when they get read. Sure, I'm really going to do that.
Why not just have a really scaled-back HTML renderer that ignores tags that you choose to ignore?
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
The card I have is a VG-2000 by DFI
with 512kB video ram, supposed to be able to do almost anything (well
1024x768 16 colours anyway). The problem is - it doesn't.
Hey, buddy, quit bitching and just use it in VGA mode, like everybody else.
If you don't like it, why don't you just go write your own drivers? While you're at it, why don't you go write your own Operating System???
(Heh heh... Sure told him a thing-or-two...)
Drat!
I was hoping to fool some people who hadn't seen the original!
Oh, wait... Lots of Russians *are* on the net these days...
Anyone remember hearing about how the US Customs Service used to fill the cases of USSR-bound Vaxen with concrete? (Shipping such powerful computers there was a no-no back then.)
I'm surprised that nobody mentioned this one yet.
Still a favorite of mine:
USSR on Usenet
Of course, now nobody thinks twice when they see a Russian address, but back then it was a big deal.
(To the younger readers: They were the bad guys back then, the "Evil Empire"...)
And now, let's open a flask of Vodka and have a drink on our entry on
this network. So:
NA ZDAROVJE!
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
How soon before I can set my cellphone to VOIP mode and wander around town making calls all over the world on my 'unlimited' ISP account?
Until then, my little vaio could get a wireless card and get tossed into my backpack for this purpose.
Of course, encryption and authorization schemes will have to be wildly more strict than the current systems to keep people from 'war driving' even more than they are now.
Plus, of course, this moves the access points out of the homes and offices and into the hands of the ISPs and providers. I don't know if that is a good or bad thing - I like the grassroots feel of the efforts going on now. (Sure, the two could exist side-by-side, but a lot of wireless equipment would be made redundant if the services are cheap enough.)
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
Interesting idea, but doubtful to work with the current system in any way. (You really want to have to declare all of those micropayments on your 1040?)
Personally, I think some kind of pre-authorization scheme is better than a pay system - remember, this has to work in third world countries, too.
Brad Templeton has a neat system in place that is not too difficult to use at all. If you send him an email, you get the following:
OK - there goes 99% of your spam.
If spammers figure a way to reply, add a question and answer feature:
You could make the questions progressively tougher
Procmail could handle the rest of the mail, too, (if it weren't so damn hard to write recipes for. Yes, I know about the perl mail filters - I'm looking into them now.)
Imagine a procmail-type system that could strip attatchments and process them:
Since I get a lot of mail in Japanese, I could choose to detect DBCS text and run it through babelfish before I read it.
Most of these things could be and are being done. I bet there would be a market for a prewritten package customizable through a web interface. I would buy it.
What you do with incoming mail is a very personal decision - some people *like* mails that you and I would consider spam. There are always exceptions to the rules:
What happens when your mail filter blindly drops a mail from your wife telling that the baby just ate the Copier Toner or your housemate writes to tell you that a group of Real Naked Coeds are waiting in your room - get home quick! OK, neither of those situations are likely to occur, but you get the idea...
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
Since any monetary damages would be, well, *your* money, taxpayer money, it's good to see the judge actually do something that makes them uncomfortable.
I've been a government contractor and I know how it is when some PHB (pointy-haired bureaucrat) demands that she be able to access a system without a password. These people need a good bitchslap.
I applaud this.
--
Now can somebody tell me why Native Americans are governed by the Dept. of the Interior as though they were deer or pine trees?
The first push to use those extra layers will be for licensing.
I doubt it will be for things that actually *improve* the end viewer's experience, but more for things that *limit* your allowed experience.
Why do I have this feeling? Before I moved from the US, I used to love wathing foreign films; I would watch Asian or European films with English Subtitles. (On VHS from any video store.) I naively figured that with DVD technology, I would be able to rent a French movie in Tokyo and be able to turn on English subtitles. I mean, your typical DVD movie is ~4GB- that leaves what, like 3GB for 'extras'? I guessed that multi-lingual subs would be a no-brainer.
Guess what? I over-estimated the no-brainer part...
With this bad taste already in my mouth, I have little hope that Quicktime will use these extra 'layers' in any way that I will find useful.
>>>but switching from vendor is just not an option.
>nope, it is always an option.
Rarely.
In many gov't shops, the Oracle sits on the one Sun box in the place and is only touched buy the ouside vendor-unix guys who stop in once-in-a-while to tweak it. (Those guys who never come to lunch with you.)
You may have in-house people who can fsck around with an in-house built Ms Sql Server or Oracle db, but that rarely has anything to do with that one lonely off-limts box in the corner.
Technically, "yes". All you have to do is email the vendor and get a data dictionary for the 'box-in-the-corner', but in reality, don't hold your breath. Either you will never get it, or worse, you will, then you realize that it is such crap that it will take two years before you could possibly get a system working in any other home-grown rdbms. They have the advantage: though the databases are total crap, design-wise, they've spent the last ten years polishing these turds into bombproof 'systems'.
(Ignore the little man behind the curtain... Ignore that box in the corner...)
I wish it weren't so...
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
You'd get 'em.
Your post was the most useful I've seen on Slashdot in quite a while.
Now my boss can't tell me not to read Slashdot at work anymore.
Thanks -
Jim in Tokyo