It sounds like this guy is talking about end-user applications that would be used by "normal people".
How many open source success stories are there, where the open-source solution is so clearly superior that it's used by everyone? Uh, zero.
Well, how about open source application that are good enough to compete with proprietary software? Uh, one. Mozilla, perhaps.
Would someone please explain to me why "normal people" couldn't just use the programs which come with KDE (or GNOME?) such as KMail or KWord? It seems that when I hear talk about "normal people", the speaker always start by talking about how "normal people" need desktop applications, but then goes on to argue that "normal people" act like power users who absolutely require all sorts of obscure features.
For example, I've heard people say that no Open-Source e-mail client competes with Outlook because they don't have groupware features, or they don't have PIM features nicely integrated. I say: "So What?" What small fraction of users actually need those features? "Normal people" sure don't. So KWord isn't Word compatible? You can still write a report with it. Do "normal people" really swap documents all the time? No, normal people swap e-mails, not.doc files (businesses are an exception, of course, but see parenthetical comments below). And what exactly can IE do that Konqueror can't? What exactly can proprietary IM clients do that open source ones can't? Do "normal people" need Photoshop/The GIMP (image editors) at all, or do they need something more like IfranView/KView (image viewers)? And please don't tell me that "normal people" need movie editing tools or the like. I don't know any normal folks who edit videos on their computer.
(Of course, if you really need stuff like groupware features, Word compatibility, or a fancier web browser, then Evolution, OpenOffice (or MS Word on WINE?) and Mozilla are available. For "normal people", these are not just sufficient, they're overkill! For those who really need those extra features -- mostly businesses I'd guess -- these open source tools are far too good to easily dismiss.)
Open source tools are superior in many areas which normal folks never get involved with, such as running servers, but are not as strong on the desktop. I think everyone agrees on that. But let's not forget that "normal people" aren't that demanding. Even "middle-of-the-line" open source tools are more than enough for most people. And of course, there's always the price issue! If your word processor is a bit out of date, and you have a choice of upgrading to Word XP for hundreds of dollars, or OpenOffice for free, isn't the open source alternative awfully tempting?
That's why this "normal person" argument doesn't hold water. It's a bait and switch -- it starts talking about what "normal people" need, but finishes by stating that open source tools must actually be superior (read: "more featureful", as compared to "less buggy" or "faster" or "cheaper") to measure up. Reality check, people: Desktop Linux is more than good enough for "normal people" already. When my brother (a Windows user) comes over to my place, he has no problem playing video games or browsing the web on my Linux system:)
On a related note, my brother couldn't configure his Windows e-mail client by himself. I had to do that. After I did that, he was able to figure out how to use it just fine. With this in mind, let us also remember that "normal people" need help from pros sometimes, even on Windows. So seeing as how I'm in the middle of a rant anyway... no complaining about how most "normal people" wouldn't know how to install/maintain an open source system or open source software. Real "normal people" need help with software installation/maintenence all the time with all sorts of apps on all OSes. Do you think that "normal people" realize when their start page has been hijacked by some malware? Do you think they know how to deal with it? My brother didn't...
Computers were designed to play games? Maybe someone should have clued Babbage, Turing and the rest into this a while ago. We could have some kick ass gaming machines now, though they probably couldn't run notepad.
The irony is that computing the flight path of a rocket predates using computers for word processing. Computing ballistic trajectories was one of the calculations which ENIAC, was programmed to do, for example. So you could say that the technology behind Quake III dates back to 1945...
He newer say that linux is worse, just that linux has an achilles heal.
On the contrary, you stated that there was a reason why serious Linux users needed the 2.5 kernel. But if Linux and XP perform the same overall, why do serious Linux users need the 2.5 kernel? They don't.
I'm not saying that this particular article doesn't make certain conclusions about asynchronous I/O. It's a simple fact that it does. But you made a conclusion based on those conclusions, and your conclusion is what disagreed with.
I also pointed out that presenting a single image without understanding the full context of the article is silly. The tests in the article you quoted were run on laptop computers. What kind of "serious Linux users" with great need for asynchronous I/O use a laptop for that purpose? The image I quoted showed performance in a more typical laptop use pattern (according to the article's author). For that matter, would they use ReiserFS, or would they use XFS, JFS, or another filesystem?
I believe his point was it's easier to install a Windows game on a Windows machine than have to mess around trying to get it to install and work properly on WineX.
You think that's hard, try installing a Linux game on Windows!;)
Seriously, though, Windows and Linux games are probably of roughly equal difficulty to install on the platform that they're designed for. Installing a Windows game on Linux should be harder for obvious reasons. Having said that, there are programs like the WineX Game Installer which are supposed to make the process a lot easier. I have no idea if they're any good, though.
CHEAPER in terms of time too. [That] says it all. Who wants to spend hours trying to get shit to work when you could just intall and play under windows.
I have to wonder, though, whether arguments like this really boil down to "lack of experience with Linux".
Now I'm not trying to say anything about you personally. This isn't intended as an insult. For all I know you may know more about Linux than I do. I just wonder if Linux is harder for most people simply because they were brought up on Windows, not because of the complexity of Linux (or of Linux distros?) itself, and if this then causes them to say that it's harder to do things on Linux. After all, people who have used Linux more would say exactly the opposite.
I suspect that this is true. I'm pretty knowledgeable about Linux - I've used it for about 4 years at home, and quite a bit at work too. Recently, I installed W2K Pro on a spare system to mess around with. Guess what? I ran into plenty of problems of the "not knowing how to do things" type. For example, since this system was hooked up to my DSL line, I tried to set up the built-in firewall. I seem to remember trying for a long time to figure out where it would let you make rules for outgoing packets. I also seem to remember having problems selecting multiple ports for one rule (Okay, it was a year ago, and my memory's a bit fuzzy). Of course, I knew that there were better firewall products out there, but to figure out which one would work best for me (would run well on a near-minimum specs system, would have all the features I wanted, etc.) I was going to have to "piss away a lot of time" doing research. Note that I can set up an iptables firewall from scratch fairly quickly.
My point is, of course, that what people are really saying when they complain about the difficulty of Linux is actually the old "mindshare" problem. Much like most users were probably baffled by the difference between "User" and "Administrator" accounts in newer Windows versions, almost everyone is baffled by Linux at first.
This is still a real problem for Linux. I'm not suggesting that it isn't. Instead, I'm trying to say that the whole "having endless hours to piss away trying to make things work" complaint might not be about Linux itself. Linux is relatively easy for people who are used to it. Rather, it's a familiarity issue. Most people are used to Windows, not Linux or Unix, and even with all the hand-holding which newer Linux distros do (esp. Mandrake and SUSE), it's still foreign to most folks. Perhaps that's what makes it hard, not Linux itself.
Nice strawman. Comparing playing a game to building one. Wow. Building is harder. Thanks for the update, I never would have figured that one out on my own.
Not to mention, of course, that I have hundreds of games on my Linux box, so a direct playing-to-playing comparison doesn't work either...
OpenGL does not provide any other of DirectX's functionality...
Sure, but that why there's OpenAL, not to mention OpenNL (now called HawkNL) and its extensions, and OpenIL (now called DevIL). Wasn't there an open input layer too? They've gotten hard to find now that so many of them changed their names (due to pressure from SGI? See the OpenIL site!)
Anyway, there's also SDL, and for that matter OpenML. Both are far more functional than OpenGL alone.
In summary, if you want a cross-platform DirectX alternative, there are options. You just have to know about them or search them out.
33Mhz, 32Mb and a 250mb HD for my debian web server.
I recently installed Debian on a similar but lower-memory system (8MB) as a web server (yes, I am going to add more memory soon). Aside from a memory-intensive stage where apt-get was merging some package data, it went smoothly but slowly.
The reason I mention this is that I've seen posts where people say they installed a small linux system on a computer with 4mb of memory "a while ago", and posts where someone has recently installed a small linux system on a computer with 16mb of memory or so, but no mention of really low-memory systems. So I figure that I should mention that a reasonably up-to-date distro (Debian) does install on 8mb, though it'll get ugly at one point if you don't have more like 16mb. Also, perhaps the 4mb Laptop How-To is worth mentioning at this point.
Debian is already lightweight. Install the base system and whatever drivers you need. Don't select anything in dselect, and you're done; installs in under 10 megs.
I'm not sure I buy that. I just installed Potato on a small machine (486-33, 8M RAM, 200MB HD) and the smallest install I could get was about 50MB. Perhaps I could have removed perl as well for a few more MB (even though it strongly warns you not to), but leaving in all the "required" stuff, and a few obvious tools (like some kind of text editor!) must take up at least 40MB.
10MB would just barely fit the kernel (including the various modules) and the basic set of utilities. It's enough to build on maybe, but it's not a very useful system by itself.
For example, I make the assertion that "all priests have a blue corpse in their backyard". Using your logic, you can't disprove that, because you can't examine every possible corpse in a given priest's backyard for blueness.
Not quite.
What he's saying is that any given instance of "priest" implies "no corpse in backyard" (or in your version, "does have corpse in backyard"), just like every instance of "action" implies "equal and opposite reaction". The only way to truly prove the priest/corpse thing is to check all priests' backyards for blue corpses, not to check all blue corpses. When you find a priest's backyard which doesn't meet the criteria, then you've disproved the theory. This would take a long time. Checking all actions for equal and opposite reactions is impossible.
Of course, science isn't about proving random logical combinations of conditions. Science not only says "all actions have equal and opposite reactions", but explains _why_. That's the real difference between science and logic.
1: In proportional representation, there are more likely to be minority parties with elected officials who have extreme/radical viewpoints that are dissimilar to the viewpoints of the "average" voter. Because of the US' election system, no candidate can choose to isolate a significant portion of the population with his views and yet still be elected, to a large "smoothing out" extremist policy. While many feel that this is a bad thing, almost all extremist policy is not realistic to implement, and partial or full implementation of this policy can cause a good bit of damage.
2: In proportional representation, the government is generally unitary in nature, meaning that the entire government is controlled by one party. Although there are more parties beyond the controlling party and another party represented, they still have a HUGE capability to control government policy. If the party in charge changes (and they often change), the entire government policy may change as well. Imagine if a country implemented social security, and then cancelled it 12 years later because the Socialists were replaced by Libertarians!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't your points #1 and #2 contradictory? In point #1, you suggest that with "other" forms of election, more minority candidates are likely to be elected, but in point #2, you state that with "other" forms of election the government is likely to be controlled by a single party. How will the government end up being controlled by a single party when there's a tendancy towards a variety of parties being elected?
Second question: how is that worse than a system which encourages exactly two parties, meaning that one or the other is almost by definition going to dominate depending on the way the wind is blowing at election time?:)
As a side note, while I think that point #1 is the more correct of the two, I don't see why you think that candidates whose viewpoints are greatly different than "average" voters are such a bad thing. The odds of an "extremist" candidate being elected to a singular office, such as President, are unlikely. The large number of people voting in such elections leads to a trend towards the mean (more voters from more parts of the country means that the extremes average out). More likely such extremist candidates would be elected to more local offices. Perhaps you could get a Green Party Congressman from San Francisco, for example, or a Libertarian from somewhere in Texas. This seems like a good thing to me. The distribution of political power would be more similar to the actual distribution of political opinion. You might get 2% extreme left- or right-wing Congressional Representatives, which seems reasonable given that some small percent of the population is extreme left- and right- wing. What's wrong with that?
The "world" of Warhol certainly was a source of inspiration for the VU, and even moreso for Lou Reed's solo work. Still, remember that they recorded Venus in Furs in an early version before meeting Warhol (see disc 1 of the Peel Slowly and See box set). So S&M specifically probably wasn't one of Warhol's contributions.
But - when was the last time you saw ANYONE even talk about farting? You've never had anyone on the Late Show who's just written a book about how to fart, who to fart at, how to feel after you farted and who you should fart at next.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Howard Stern's entire career based on talking about farting?
Look, plenty of you have chastised me with your excellent experience in how to do something that I'm sure, for someone who uses Linux all the time, it's simple. The fact is, I don't use Linux every day. I set it up as my gateway not because it was easy but because I trust it more than I trust Windows as a gateway.
What happened to those "23 years of computer programming experience"?
Saying stuff like that is why you're getting so thoroughly flamed. Lots of people within the Linux community support simpler ways to configure programs and dislike RPM. But here you are running a server and claiming to be highly knowledgeable because of your years of programming experience, yet you're having trouble with fairly simple tasks (upgrading an RPM package, stopping and restarting a program).
Basically, you shouldn't claim to be an expert when you're not. You did exacly that, and now you're being flamed for it. In reality, you're a Linux newbie trying to do something moderately hard (admin web/proxy servers). Okay, so there's nothing wrong with being a newbie. Everybody has to start somewhere. But instead of admitting it, you've pretended that you're so knowledgeable that any problems you have are Linux's fault. You don't know Linux, and you apparently refuse to learn it, so you're going to have problems. Tough. If I tried to admin a Windows 2000 FTP server and refused to learn Windows 2000 I'm sure I'd have the same problems. To use a new OS, or even a new application as complex as a proxy server, _you have to do some learning_.
I don't have time to learn how to be a Linux system admin, and frankly, I shouldn't have to to upgrade a single software package.
As a side note, if you don't know why you sometimes have to upgrade packages (i.e. to fix security bugs!), and you don't want to learn to be a Linux system admin, then please don't be one. FTP servers are particularly likely to get broken into, both because the protocol is entirely plain-text, and because some of them (like WU-FTP) have lousy security records. If you're going to put a server on the internet, but you don't have this knowledge, then please don't do it. Your server will soon be yet another cracked box being used to attack my system. If you don't want to be a system admin, or an FTP admin, then I'm certain that your FTP server will get cracked.
Let me give you a little perspective. My brother has had a Windows 98 system since 1998, and I still have to explain some pretty basic stuff to him. He couldn't find a way to install separate e-mail programs for himself and my mother, for example. Changing the installation directory is apparently beyond him. And he knows _way_ more about computers than my mother. She can't even install programs. With that in mind, I'd like to point out that running servers isn't a "Mom and Pop" sort of thing by any stretch of the imagination. It is an advanced skill, if only because of the need for security. Trust me, running an FTP server/SSH server/Squid proxy is way beyond that.
Given your problems with Linux, and your unwillingness to learn Linux, my first response would be "use the OS you know - use Windows." But frankly, I'm not sure that will help. You want to run servers on your gateway system. Why not run them behind your gateway? If you want one for remote administration, why not just run ssh (and not WU-FTP)? Do you understand that you'll need to install patches (aka "upgrading programs") when security bugs are found? (OpenSSH has had a lousy security record as of late). Frankly, you sound like you know nothing about security. Even if you used an OS you're more familiar with, I bet your gateway would get cracked. There's no such thing as a "set it up and leave it" server, not on any OS.
My advice: Learn about security first, then run your servers on whatever OS works best for you. Please, please take my advice. After hearing so many disparaging things from so many Linux users, it's easy to say "Another case of the hostile, newbie-unfriendly Linux community" and just ignore this advice. But it's good advice, and it's coming from someone who obviously knows more about this topic than you do. So please, take it!
New computer-monitoring software designed to second-guess the intentions of individual system users could be close to perfect at preventing security breaches
Slashdot Mirror
It sounds like this guy is talking about end-user applications that would be used by "normal people".
.doc files (businesses are an exception, of course, but see parenthetical comments below). And what exactly can IE do that Konqueror can't? What exactly can proprietary IM clients do that open source ones can't? Do "normal people" need Photoshop/The GIMP (image editors) at all, or do they need something more like IfranView/KView (image viewers)? And please don't tell me that "normal people" need movie editing tools or the like. I don't know any normal folks who edit videos on their computer.
:)
How many open source success stories are there, where the open-source solution is so clearly superior that it's used by everyone? Uh, zero.
Well, how about open source application that are good enough to compete with proprietary software? Uh, one. Mozilla, perhaps.
Would someone please explain to me why "normal people" couldn't just use the programs which come with KDE (or GNOME?) such as KMail or KWord? It seems that when I hear talk about "normal people", the speaker always start by talking about how "normal people" need desktop applications, but then goes on to argue that "normal people" act like power users who absolutely require all sorts of obscure features.
For example, I've heard people say that no Open-Source e-mail client competes with Outlook because they don't have groupware features, or they don't have PIM features nicely integrated. I say: "So What?" What small fraction of users actually need those features? "Normal people" sure don't. So KWord isn't Word compatible? You can still write a report with it. Do "normal people" really swap documents all the time? No, normal people swap e-mails, not
(Of course, if you really need stuff like groupware features, Word compatibility, or a fancier web browser, then Evolution, OpenOffice (or MS Word on WINE?) and Mozilla are available. For "normal people", these are not just sufficient, they're overkill! For those who really need those extra features -- mostly businesses I'd guess -- these open source tools are far too good to easily dismiss.)
Open source tools are superior in many areas which normal folks never get involved with, such as running servers, but are not as strong on the desktop. I think everyone agrees on that. But let's not forget that "normal people" aren't that demanding. Even "middle-of-the-line" open source tools are more than enough for most people. And of course, there's always the price issue! If your word processor is a bit out of date, and you have a choice of upgrading to Word XP for hundreds of dollars, or OpenOffice for free, isn't the open source alternative awfully tempting?
That's why this "normal person" argument doesn't hold water. It's a bait and switch -- it starts talking about what "normal people" need, but finishes by stating that open source tools must actually be superior (read: "more featureful", as compared to "less buggy" or "faster" or "cheaper") to measure up. Reality check, people: Desktop Linux is more than good enough for "normal people" already. When my brother (a Windows user) comes over to my place, he has no problem playing video games or browsing the web on my Linux system
On a related note, my brother couldn't configure his Windows e-mail client by himself. I had to do that. After I did that, he was able to figure out how to use it just fine. With this in mind, let us also remember that "normal people" need help from pros sometimes, even on Windows. So seeing as how I'm in the middle of a rant anyway... no complaining about how most "normal people" wouldn't know how to install/maintain an open source system or open source software. Real "normal people" need help with software installation/maintenence all the time with all sorts of apps on all OSes. Do you think that "normal people" realize when their start page has been hijacked by some malware? Do you think they know how to deal with it? My brother didn't...
Computers were designed to play games? Maybe someone should have clued Babbage, Turing and the rest into this a while ago. We could have some kick ass gaming machines now, though they probably couldn't run notepad.
The irony is that computing the flight path of a rocket predates using computers for word processing. Computing ballistic trajectories was one of the calculations which ENIAC, was programmed to do, for example. So you could say that the technology behind Quake III dates back to 1945...
and where does it end?
:)
bluevisa.com, redvisa.com...
Here's where it will start: cervisa, a website belonging to the Development Director of the EFF.
The reason I like e-mail is that it is asynchronous. If I want synchronous communication, I use the telephone.
And on a related note, e-mail is replacing the answering machine in some businesses (such as the one I work at).
Mr Shatner,
What is the scariest experience you have ever had with one of your adoring fans?
Not counting some of these questions...
He newer say that linux is worse, just that linux has an achilles heal.
On the contrary, you stated that there was a reason why serious Linux users needed the 2.5 kernel. But if Linux and XP perform the same overall, why do serious Linux users need the 2.5 kernel? They don't.
I'm not saying that this particular article doesn't make certain conclusions about asynchronous I/O. It's a simple fact that it does. But you made a conclusion based on those conclusions, and your conclusion is what disagreed with.
I also pointed out that presenting a single image without understanding the full context of the article is silly. The tests in the article you quoted were run on laptop computers. What kind of "serious Linux users" with great need for asynchronous I/O use a laptop for that purpose? The image I quoted showed performance in a more typical laptop use pattern (according to the article's author). For that matter, would they use ReiserFS, or would they use XFS, JFS, or another filesystem?
How about this image, from the same article. Note how green, which is SUSE Linux, is winning :)
Needless to say, context is everything.
I believe his point was it's easier to install a Windows game on a Windows machine than have to mess around trying to get it to install and work properly on WineX.
;)
You think that's hard, try installing a Linux game on Windows!
Seriously, though, Windows and Linux games are probably of roughly equal difficulty to install on the platform that they're designed for. Installing a Windows game on Linux should be harder for obvious reasons. Having said that, there are programs like the WineX Game Installer which are supposed to make the process a lot easier. I have no idea if they're any good, though.
CHEAPER in terms of time too. [That] says it all. Who wants to spend hours trying to get shit to work when you could just intall and play under windows.
I have to wonder, though, whether arguments like this really boil down to "lack of experience with Linux".
Now I'm not trying to say anything about you personally. This isn't intended as an insult. For all I know you may know more about Linux than I do. I just wonder if Linux is harder for most people simply because they were brought up on Windows, not because of the complexity of Linux (or of Linux distros?) itself, and if this then causes them to say that it's harder to do things on Linux. After all, people who have used Linux more would say exactly the opposite.
I suspect that this is true. I'm pretty knowledgeable about Linux - I've used it for about 4 years at home, and quite a bit at work too. Recently, I installed W2K Pro on a spare system to mess around with. Guess what? I ran into plenty of problems of the "not knowing how to do things" type. For example, since this system was hooked up to my DSL line, I tried to set up the built-in firewall. I seem to remember trying for a long time to figure out where it would let you make rules for outgoing packets. I also seem to remember having problems selecting multiple ports for one rule (Okay, it was a year ago, and my memory's a bit fuzzy). Of course, I knew that there were better firewall products out there, but to figure out which one would work best for me (would run well on a near-minimum specs system, would have all the features I wanted, etc.) I was going to have to "piss away a lot of time" doing research. Note that I can set up an iptables firewall from scratch fairly quickly.
My point is, of course, that what people are really saying when they complain about the difficulty of Linux is actually the old "mindshare" problem. Much like most users were probably baffled by the difference between "User" and "Administrator" accounts in newer Windows versions, almost everyone is baffled by Linux at first.
This is still a real problem for Linux. I'm not suggesting that it isn't. Instead, I'm trying to say that the whole "having endless hours to piss away trying to make things work" complaint might not be about Linux itself. Linux is relatively easy for people who are used to it. Rather, it's a familiarity issue. Most people are used to Windows, not Linux or Unix, and even with all the hand-holding which newer Linux distros do (esp. Mandrake and SUSE), it's still foreign to most folks. Perhaps that's what makes it hard, not Linux itself.
Nice strawman. Comparing playing a game to building one. Wow. Building is harder. Thanks for the update, I never would have figured that one out on my own.
Not to mention, of course, that I have hundreds of games on my Linux box, so a direct playing-to-playing comparison doesn't work either...
OpenGL does not provide any other of DirectX's functionality...
Sure, but that why there's OpenAL, not to mention OpenNL (now called HawkNL) and its extensions, and OpenIL (now called DevIL). Wasn't there an open input layer too? They've gotten hard to find now that so many of them changed their names (due to pressure from SGI? See the OpenIL site!)
Anyway, there's also SDL, and for that matter OpenML. Both are far more functional than OpenGL alone.
In summary, if you want a cross-platform DirectX alternative, there are options. You just have to know about them or search them out.
33Mhz, 32Mb and a 250mb HD for my debian web server.
I recently installed Debian on a similar but lower-memory system (8MB) as a web server (yes, I am going to add more memory soon). Aside from a memory-intensive stage where apt-get was merging some package data, it went smoothly but slowly.
The reason I mention this is that I've seen posts where people say they installed a small linux system on a computer with 4mb of memory "a while ago", and posts where someone has recently installed a small linux system on a computer with 16mb of memory or so, but no mention of really low-memory systems. So I figure that I should mention that a reasonably up-to-date distro (Debian) does install on 8mb, though it'll get ugly at one point if you don't have more like 16mb. Also, perhaps the 4mb Laptop How-To is worth mentioning at this point.
Debian is already lightweight. Install the base system and whatever drivers you need. Don't select anything in dselect, and you're done; installs in under 10 megs.
I'm not sure I buy that. I just installed Potato on a small machine (486-33, 8M RAM, 200MB HD) and the smallest install I could get was about 50MB. Perhaps I could have removed perl as well for a few more MB (even though it strongly warns you not to), but leaving in all the "required" stuff, and a few obvious tools (like some kind of text editor!) must take up at least 40MB.
10MB would just barely fit the kernel (including the various modules) and the basic set of utilities. It's enough to build on maybe, but it's not a very useful system by itself.
For example, I make the assertion that "all priests have a blue corpse in their backyard". Using your logic, you can't disprove that, because you can't examine every possible corpse in a given priest's backyard for blueness.
Not quite.
What he's saying is that any given instance of "priest" implies "no corpse in backyard" (or in your version, "does have corpse in backyard"), just like every instance of "action" implies "equal and opposite reaction". The only way to truly prove the priest/corpse thing is to check all priests' backyards for blue corpses, not to check all blue corpses. When you find a priest's backyard which doesn't meet the criteria, then you've disproved the theory. This would take a long time. Checking all actions for equal and opposite reactions is impossible.
Of course, science isn't about proving random logical combinations of conditions. Science not only says "all actions have equal and opposite reactions", but explains _why_. That's the real difference between science and logic.
... why?
For $20 you can go to a pawnshop and pick up a used Sega Dreamcast machine. You can then go to DC Emulation [dcemulation.com] and download... [snip]
Buddy, if the instructions for your method are longer than one line, then you've answered your own question. Buying the joystick is just easier.
Hell, I've had files larger than 1GB (and not porn! go figure).
Hint: "man logrotate"
You do aerobics/punch training/skating laps? Ewwww.
All at once, no less. _And_ he wears headphones while he's doing it. He's the most dangerous thing on ice since Tanya Harding.
1: In proportional representation, there are more likely to be minority parties with elected officials who have extreme/radical viewpoints that are dissimilar to the viewpoints of the "average" voter. Because of the US' election system, no candidate can choose to isolate a significant portion of the population with his views and yet still be elected, to a large "smoothing out" extremist policy. While many feel that this is a bad thing, almost all extremist policy is not realistic to implement, and partial or full implementation of this policy can cause a good bit of damage. 2: In proportional representation, the government is generally unitary in nature, meaning that the entire government is controlled by one party. Although there are more parties beyond the controlling party and another party represented, they still have a HUGE capability to control government policy. If the party in charge changes (and they often change), the entire government policy may change as well. Imagine if a country implemented social security, and then cancelled it 12 years later because the Socialists were replaced by Libertarians! Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't your points #1 and #2 contradictory? In point #1, you suggest that with "other" forms of election, more minority candidates are likely to be elected, but in point #2, you state that with "other" forms of election the government is likely to be controlled by a single party. How will the government end up being controlled by a single party when there's a tendancy towards a variety of parties being elected? Second question: how is that worse than a system which encourages exactly two parties, meaning that one or the other is almost by definition going to dominate depending on the way the wind is blowing at election time? :)
As a side note, while I think that point #1 is the more correct of the two, I don't see why you think that candidates whose viewpoints are greatly different than "average" voters are such a bad thing. The odds of an "extremist" candidate being elected to a singular office, such as President, are unlikely. The large number of people voting in such elections leads to a trend towards the mean (more voters from more parts of the country means that the extremes average out). More likely such extremist candidates would be elected to more local offices. Perhaps you could get a Green Party Congressman from San Francisco, for example, or a Libertarian from somewhere in Texas. This seems like a good thing to me. The distribution of political power would be more similar to the actual distribution of political opinion. You might get 2% extreme left- or right-wing Congressional Representatives, which seems reasonable given that some small percent of the population is extreme left- and right- wing. What's wrong with that?
Where Warhol gave VU the topic of S&M
The "world" of Warhol certainly was a source of inspiration for the VU, and even moreso for Lou Reed's solo work. Still, remember that they recorded Venus in Furs in an early version before meeting Warhol (see disc 1 of the Peel Slowly and See box set). So S&M specifically probably wasn't one of Warhol's contributions.
Who would win if Superman and Goku fought one another?
(just kidding!)
But - when was the last time you saw ANYONE even talk about farting? You've never had anyone on the Late Show who's just written a book about how to fart, who to fart at, how to feel after you farted and who you should fart at next.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Howard Stern's entire career based on talking about farting?
(okay, okay, he talks about fucking too...)
Look, plenty of you have chastised me with your excellent experience in how to do something that I'm sure, for someone who uses Linux all the time, it's simple. The fact is, I don't use Linux every day. I set it up as my gateway not because it was easy but because I trust it more than I trust Windows as a gateway.
What happened to those "23 years of computer programming experience"?
Saying stuff like that is why you're getting so thoroughly flamed. Lots of people within the Linux community support simpler ways to configure programs and dislike RPM. But here you are running a server and claiming to be highly knowledgeable because of your years of programming experience, yet you're having trouble with fairly simple tasks (upgrading an RPM package, stopping and restarting a program).
Basically, you shouldn't claim to be an expert when you're not. You did exacly that, and now you're being flamed for it. In reality, you're a Linux newbie trying to do something moderately hard (admin web/proxy servers). Okay, so there's nothing wrong with being a newbie. Everybody has to start somewhere. But instead of admitting it, you've pretended that you're so knowledgeable that any problems you have are Linux's fault. You don't know Linux, and you apparently refuse to learn it, so you're going to have problems. Tough. If I tried to admin a Windows 2000 FTP server and refused to learn Windows 2000 I'm sure I'd have the same problems. To use a new OS, or even a new application as complex as a proxy server, _you have to do some learning_.
I don't have time to learn how to be a Linux system admin, and frankly, I shouldn't have to to upgrade a single software package.
As a side note, if you don't know why you sometimes have to upgrade packages (i.e. to fix security bugs!), and you don't want to learn to be a Linux system admin, then please don't be one. FTP servers are particularly likely to get broken into, both because the protocol is entirely plain-text, and because some of them (like WU-FTP) have lousy security records. If you're going to put a server on the internet, but you don't have this knowledge, then please don't do it. Your server will soon be yet another cracked box being used to attack my system. If you don't want to be a system admin, or an FTP admin, then I'm certain that your FTP server will get cracked.
Let me give you a little perspective. My brother has had a Windows 98 system since 1998, and I still have to explain some pretty basic stuff to him. He couldn't find a way to install separate e-mail programs for himself and my mother, for example. Changing the installation directory is apparently beyond him. And he knows _way_ more about computers than my mother. She can't even install programs. With that in mind, I'd like to point out that running servers isn't a "Mom and Pop" sort of thing by any stretch of the imagination. It is an advanced skill, if only because of the need for security. Trust me, running an FTP server/SSH server/Squid proxy is way beyond that.
Given your problems with Linux, and your unwillingness to learn Linux, my first response would be "use the OS you know - use Windows." But frankly, I'm not sure that will help. You want to run servers on your gateway system. Why not run them behind your gateway? If you want one for remote administration, why not just run ssh (and not WU-FTP)? Do you understand that you'll need to install patches (aka "upgrading programs") when security bugs are found? (OpenSSH has had a lousy security record as of late). Frankly, you sound like you know nothing about security. Even if you used an OS you're more familiar with, I bet your gateway would get cracked. There's no such thing as a "set it up and leave it" server, not on any OS.
My advice: Learn about security first, then run your servers on whatever OS works best for you. Please, please take my advice. After hearing so many disparaging things from so many Linux users, it's easy to say "Another case of the hostile, newbie-unfriendly Linux community" and just ignore this advice. But it's good advice, and it's coming from someone who obviously knows more about this topic than you do. So please, take it!
if only they would release one that didn't look like a desklamp, or a giant pastel egg, i'd be tempted to use one.
;)
Try leaving the computer in the box.
If that's still too gaudy for you, turn the box inside-out, so the plain cardboard side is showing.
New computer-monitoring software designed to second-guess the intentions of individual system users could be close to perfect at preventing security breaches
:)
Prediction: Users cause security breaches.
Near-perfect solution: Eliminate all users.
-- Skynet, 09-29-1997, 02:14 hours
YOU obviously haven't been around here very long!
Kind of like that record he's talking about... it's now up to six +3 replies in a row!