Actually I find it odd that this is the first application that occurred to the poster.
What's really funny is that, bad math aside, the idea simply seems to be putting the magnets around the edge of a case fan rather than in the middle. It's funny because, if I'm not mistaken, this has already been done.
Regarding the Howard Stern thing, I have to wonder whether his speech qualifies as "commercial speech", which is not entirely protected under the First Amendment.
I mean honestly, irregardless of what exactly Mr. Stern says "on the air", he is saying it in order to create a salable product (I daresay that the sex and vulgarity are very parts of the product which make it salable -- without them, he's just another guy commenting on the latest scandals, last night's TV shows, and local politics). Isn't his show really just a product?
If so, the Howard Stern show should be treated just like any other product. Saying that Clear Channel doesn't have the right to drop his show is like saying that Vons can't choose not to carry some particular brand of potato chips. They can resell whatever products they want. Likewise, saying that the FCC doesn't have the right to do something (e.g. fine him) if his show violates their rules is like saying that Playboy should be available to five-year olds (e.g. with no restrictions on what content is available to whom). The law being as it is, the FCC should be allowed to regulate the thing that it exists to regulate in the way that it's allowed to. If you disagree with that, then it's the laws which need to be changed -- I'm pretty sure the FCC is doing what they're supposed to!
6 minutes to transfer a 4GB CD (after adding overhead) seems just fine to me.
But wouldn't 2 minutes be better?
On a related note, why do 40x CD-burners exist when 12x would be fine?
If you're really expecting to get better than that, you'll need RAID on both ends of the pipe.
Bull. 100Mbit maxes out at about 9MB of data per second at best (and that assumes no extra overhead, like encryption). Even reading from a standard hard drive you can transfer (both read and write) in at least the low 20MBs range over gigabit. That's more than double the speed. And yes, I say this from experience, having set up NFS mounted home directories using both 100Mbit and 1000Mbit networks.
Whether a home user needs that much speed is hard to say, but I for one found gigabit much more pleasant to work with when getting files from remote systems. Hard drives are already the speed bottleneck for most users. If you're going to access hard drives over a network, why slow yourself down even more?
I don't mean to diss the Mac crowd here, but how much of this shortage is due to the fact that the minis have 4GB microdrives in them, which by themselves cost more than $250 ?
Remember, Creative's Muvo2 4.0Gb model uses the same drive and is $50 cheaper. Admittedly, it's also sold out everywhere...
Besides, if we're talking about a product with 100,000 pre-orders alone... can that many people possibly have high-end digital cameras? If not, what else can use those microdrives? They can't all just be planning to sell them on eBay, there aren't that many people to sell them to. I suppose this wouldn't stop everyone, though.:)
Was it just the words "iPod Killer" that prompted the strong opinions, or was it the underlying concept of a multi-purpose device?
How about the fact that the aforementioned "iPod killer" make by Creative (only the software came from MS) was 8" long, 7" wide, and cost at least $700, combined with the fact that we're not morons?
I mean, talk about comparing apples and pineapples...
The Archos player seems to be a much smaller size (there's a picture of one in a guy's hand in the article) and thus actually seems appropriate for comparison to the iPod. A device which is "twice the length and thrice the thickness" of an iPod does not compare. It's a different product.
the consensus among posters appeared to be that the product was too big
A LOT Of bands these days have music samples, and videos on their websites, they let you sample the music on the CD's all you want, without violating their copyright and downloading the entire CD.
A lot of bands don't exist anymore, though their music still does.
These bands are a really interesting case, BTW. If the band broke up years ago, then touring revenues, merchandise sales and so on are right out (with a few exceptions for very very big bands, e.g. KISS). All of their income comes from whatever albums they still manage to sell. So one could argue that P2P eliminates older acts' only remaining source of compensation for their work, work which those P2P users are still taking advantage of.
However... the flip side of that is that older music gets less radio airplay than newer music. You may have to wait forever to hear an 80's alternative song on a "modern rock" station, or a particular oldie on an oldies station. So in another sense, P2P could be a good source of advertisement for these artists. One could also argue that when someone hears about some great older band, with P2P they can actually go hear some of that band's music. Then perhaps they'll actually buy some albums (if they liked what they heard).
For those of us not on the FreeBSD mailing list, it is.
Incorrect. RedHat had a patch two days ago, Mandrake at least a day ago. I use both. I'm not on the FreeBSD mailing list and I knew about this.:)
My point, and I think the grandparent post's point, being that the news is already "out there". It's three days old at this point. Okay, so maybe it's still news to some people, but saying that it's old news is also accurate.
It's easy to look down on uninformed people who want to learn how to use the Internet, and complain that they are the ones ruining it for all of us. You could instead take the opportunity to teach these newbies how to protect themselves online.
Considering that there seem to be hundreds or even thousands of uninformed people or every one informed one, perhaps some sort of mass-mailing would be in order?
Just send everyone an e-mail or two with a subject line like "Latest Microsoft Security Patches". Attach the latest Microsoft patches and include instructions to install them. That'll straighten everyone out!
Oh, and tell your everyone to send those e-mails to their friends, just in case.
You do as they say w/o too many questions. If you don't like the working conditions you find another place that is more towards your liking.
India?:)
Seriously, though, the whole "like it or lump it" attitude always bugs me. How in the world do employers manage to brainwash people into thinking that they're gods? Who says that I have to do what my employer says? If their policy is really that bad and the situation is really that serious, go over their heads, make some sort of formal complaint and encourage others to do the same, talk to your union (if you have one), illustrate the consequences of that bad decision (as an earlier poster suggested, "The server's down, who knew?"), and/or threaten to quit (as a next-to-last resort). There are alternatives to quitting if you're clever enough to use them and if the situation justifies using them.
If all that doesn't work, _then_ you quit, but even then only if it's worth it. Remember the perks of your job, the friends you've made at work who you won't see as much anymore, the extra effort which you'll have to put into finding a new job and making a new routine for yourself, and so on.
When you don't think of it in terms of people uploading movie files, and think in terms of companies using the technology to ease load on their web servers, now you're looking at BT the way the author intended!
Besides, my Internet connection has a much faster download speed (3Mbit) than upload speed (384Kbit). I suspect that this is true of most other BitTorrent users as well (Downloading big files is probably more popular among broadband users, and all but a few very pricy broadband services give you faster downloads than uploads). I'm willing to bet that the author of BitTorrent was aware of this as well.
While "doing more downloading than uploading" may sound bad, another perfectly accurate way to put it is that both my upstream and downstream connections are being utilized approximately the same amount. If I get a good connection both ways, I'm probably using nearly 100% of both my upstream and downstream. That's all one can really ask of a user: to contribute what they can.
Re:Strong enough for a man, but meant for a woman
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Epson's Female Printer
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Avoiding all the usual stereotypes, humor and marketing concepts, try as I might, I can't objectively think of a reason why a printer for a woman should be any different than a printer for a man.
This is the one thing that worries me about this discussion. Sure none of us can come up with a good reason, and that translated article did say that the printer was supposed to be "easy" for a woman to use which suggests that it's just a dumbed-down printer. But I have to wonder, is it not possible that this research team, having spent much more time on the problem than we did, might have actually come up with something?
For example, I notice that some printers have buttons which stick out a bit, while others have buttons which are recessed (e.g. they go into the casing when you press them). Do you suppose that the latter type of button might cause a problem for someone with long fingernails? Likewise with touch screens now that I think about it. I assume, of course, that it is mostly women who have long fingernails, though I suppose some of you SlashDot geeks might not have cut your nails in a few months.;)
Perhaps there are other features which are not so much vital to women as more strongly preferred by women. Men might not mind having to get into an awkward position to plug in the cables, but perhaps women mind more? Put the plugs on the side in an obvious place and that problem is solved. Perhaps they did something to make jammed sheets easier and less messy to pull out, like some sort of quick-release button? Maybe the average woman places more value on that sort of thing than the average man. Who knows?
Sorry man, but the name "Ceres" didn't sound familiar. I know who Demeter is (I took a class in Greek Myths in college), but I had no idea that "Ceres" was the Roman name for Demeter.
Everybody knows "Jupiter" (in part because it is the name of a planet), most people have probably heard of "Minerva", but I'm pretty sure that "Ceres" is obscure enough that most people won't know who that is.
P.S. Note the use of quotes. The name may be obscure even if the thing being named is not.
So, I propose that in protest to such a blatant attempt at PC Multiculturalism
I'm guessing that you're joking. Still, for those people (including some of the moderators, apparently) who are taking this seriously, lighten up!
I mean seriously, wasn't it Steven Hawking who joked about how astrophysicists are "no longer limiting themselves to Greek"?
Besides, lots of objects in the solar system have names, for example the larger asteroids (e.g. Ceres, which is an obscure Roman name). Are you sure that all the Roman names haven't been used up for asteroids and comets already?
If, after these arguments, you all are still "outraged", then at least take comfort in the fact that the article called "Sedna" a "provisional" (read: temporary) name.
And you know what, there's a reason for it. Others where I work got copies as well, and they are already pushing for us to get an Exchange server. There are many features in the new "Office System" that require server support
Exactly. See this eWeek article. These Office 2003 discs are a trojan horse, but it's not about getting people to upgrade to maintain file format compatibility. It's about getting them to upgrade their OSes, especially their server OSes.
Lots of remote but "trivial" exploits are discovered, and sysadmins like to write those off as unimportant if they don't involve priv escalation...
Uh, no, that's not true. In fact, quite to the contrary, with so many systems' security being based almost entirely on not allowing access (e.g. a firewall and not much else) I daresay that most sysadmins would consider unauthorized access of any kind to be a major problem!
2. You can choose to be insulted and become a P.C. weenie, bitching and moaning and berating people who have nothing but good intentions.
Based on your post, it seems that the same can be said of Un-P.C. weenies. Do you really think that the grandparent post had such bad intentions?
You know, this whole concept of "P.C." has really run its course. All we have now are two sides. Both of them complain that the other side is putting them down for no reason, both insist on the right to speak their mind, and both probably have good intentions most of the time.
What's the f*#$ing difference between them anymore?
I mean it. Consider that any of these insults could apply to either side equally well:
Nobody is insulted unless they choose to be insulted, in which case the problem lies with them.
This applies just as well to both gears5665 and ryanwrights' posts
As you yourself said, his heart is in the right place, so your response is unnecessary.
Likewise.
I already commented about that "#2" from the parent post. Here's my favorite part:
Maybe the blind people you know are very capable who don't want any help, but there are others who aren't as capable and actually appreciate the assistance.
The irony is that the granndparent post said exactly the same thing. The grandparent post replied to a post which claimed that blind and disabled people might need help by stating that the some blind people (the ones "he knows") wouldn't. Both of you are saying that some blind people might need help, but that many don't. What bothered the grandparent post was the implication that _all_ blind and/or disabled people needed help.
The grandparent poster may have read too much into the great-grandparent post. Maybe. But that's about it.
Why don't you want to see MS software improve? My guess is that you think of your OS choice as a religion or a political statement, which makes you just as bad as pro-MS zealots.
I don't think that this conclusion follows from not wanting to see MS software improve.
If MS code gets stronger and less buggy, everyone benefits. Remember how many worms have caused major Internet congestion problems? How many spammers now use trojan's/worms to create relays for themselves?
Here's the problem. If people switch to using better code then everyone benefits from that as well. See, convincing people to move away from MS code might well improve the quality of _the code which people are using_, thus cutting down on problems like those you mention. Certainly it would cut down on some of the current desktop software monocultures (OSes, web browsers, maybe e-mail clients), and that couldn't hurt. The security effects of this code leak could help to convince people to try using other, more secure code. Thus both approaches to this source code leak (helping MS and not helping MS) could plausibly benefit us all in the manner which you described.
This is why your conclusion about how people are treating "OS choice as a religion or political statement" doesn't follow. This available choices are "fix it" and "replace it". Choosing one of those over the other is hardly at the level of religious or political fervor. People may well choose the "replace it" option for more practical reasons, such as the software monoculture argument I mentioned before. Personally, I would love it if more people were using web browsers which supported pop-up blocking. Maybe those %$@&* things would go away...
Sane creation of a network topology, email subsystem, proactive network monitoring, and general patch management is NECESSARY to operate a large internet connected environment, reguardless of the Operating System of Choice.
You realize, of course, that the average computer user wouldn't even _understand_ this sentence, much less be able (or willing?) to implement your suggestions.
You may be right in theory, but for unskilled (read: average, normal) users in the real world, Macs are currently the safe choice. There are just fewer exploited vulnerabilities in Mac OS X than in Windows XP. So for now, "Get a Mac" isn't such bad advice, if only for practical reasons.
Re:How stupid do you have to be?
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SCO Offline
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· Score: 1
SCO had plenty of time to prepare for this. They were well aware it was coming. I personally believe it's a publicity stunt. (which probably wouldn't surprise anybody around here).
Actually, taking their website offline makes sense. They don't seem to need their website very badly (as many people have already pointed out). More importantly, keeping it online would cost them money in the form of bandwidth charges, technicians working overtime (to make sure the server stays up) or even just the cost of the electricity. Why pay money to keep a server up when nobody will be able to access it?
Can we trust them to be fair and unbiased in their "research"?
Does it matter?
In any legal situation (a trial, contract dispute, or whatever) both sides try to find evidence which supports their case. Neither side is "fair" or "unbiased". Yet legal disputes get resolved all the time. What's the magical secret? The judge and jury get to see all of the evidence, then they make up their minds based on all of the evidence which they have seen.
Groklaw may well be biased against SCO, but all they're doing is presenting more evidence. That's exactly what both sides are supposed to do (and what SCO has been criticized for not doing).
See, you seem to want us to ignore "biased" sources of evidence. "Groklaw is biased, so they can't be trusted" is a decent summary of what you wrote. You've got to think about this on a higher level. Very few unbiased groups will ever get involved in a legal dispute. That's the nature of legal disputes, or even disputes in general -- if you don't care, you don't get involved! So the trick is to focus on evidence and solid, logical arguments rather than rhetoric. Focus on what each side can prove rather than merely what they say. That's the way to deal with situations in which interested parties are involves (which includes almost all legal disputes, and many other situations as well). Simply ignoring any biased opinion (is there any other kind of opinion?) will leave you ignorant.
I think that's the problem. I've certainly never seen any BIOS option where you can set your boot device to be USB.
Well, it exists. I've seen it. Googling for proof, I found this page right away:
http://www.addonics.com/support/faqs/usb_trouble sh ooting_resources.asp
Here's part of the second answer in this FAQ:
Booting from USB Port
Addonics USB DVD, CD-ROM, CDRW and hard drives have been tested to boot successfully from the latest version of Phoenix BIOS version 4 release 6. Latest Award BIOS shares similar boot code from Phoenix BIOS and should support the boot function for Addonics USB device.
So there you go. Award and Phoenix BIOSes have this feature. I personally have seen it in Award BIOSes, and my laptop has this feature as well (BIOS may be Phoenix, but I don't recall)
I had an old PPro 200 running Win98 that I brought back from the dead with Linux.
Pentium Pros are definitely far from obsolete. Remember, they ran 32-bit code significantly better than 16-bit (some sort of design tradeoff), so they'll seem much faster and more useable with any newer 32-bit OS.
I installed Mandrake Linux (version unknown, but it used KDE 2.2) and Windows 2000 on one a couple of years ago. The system had one PPro 200 with 256k cache, 128MB EDO RAM, and a 4Gb Fast SCSI hard drive. Both OSes and most applications took a while to start, so I changed the hard drive to a 13Gb IDE drive, one with (at the time) modern specs (8.5ms seek, 2Mb cache, about 20Mb/s continuous read speed). I tell ya', putting in a fast hard drive made all the difference. Wait times for starting apps went from ridiculous to reasonable, and once everything was in memory, apps were quite responsive -- much better than I thought they'd be. So stick a fast hard drive in one of those, make sure it has enough RAM, and it'll run just fine. Even moreso for dual PPro systems or one with one of those 333MHz/512k cache overdrive processors.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually I find it odd that this is the first application that occurred to the poster.
What's really funny is that, bad math aside, the idea simply seems to be putting the magnets around the edge of a case fan rather than in the middle. It's funny because, if I'm not mistaken, this has already been done.
Regarding the Howard Stern thing, I have to wonder whether his speech qualifies as "commercial speech", which is not entirely protected under the First Amendment.
I mean honestly, irregardless of what exactly Mr. Stern says "on the air", he is saying it in order to create a salable product (I daresay that the sex and vulgarity are very parts of the product which make it salable -- without them, he's just another guy commenting on the latest scandals, last night's TV shows, and local politics). Isn't his show really just a product?
If so, the Howard Stern show should be treated just like any other product. Saying that Clear Channel doesn't have the right to drop his show is like saying that Vons can't choose not to carry some particular brand of potato chips. They can resell whatever products they want. Likewise, saying that the FCC doesn't have the right to do something (e.g. fine him) if his show violates their rules is like saying that Playboy should be available to five-year olds (e.g. with no restrictions on what content is available to whom). The law being as it is, the FCC should be allowed to regulate the thing that it exists to regulate in the way that it's allowed to. If you disagree with that, then it's the laws which need to be changed -- I'm pretty sure the FCC is doing what they're supposed to!
6 minutes to transfer a 4GB CD (after adding overhead) seems just fine to me.
But wouldn't 2 minutes be better?
On a related note, why do 40x CD-burners exist when 12x would be fine?
If you're really expecting to get better than that, you'll need RAID on both ends of the pipe.
Bull. 100Mbit maxes out at about 9MB of data per second at best (and that assumes no extra overhead, like encryption). Even reading from a standard hard drive you can transfer (both read and write) in at least the low 20MBs range over gigabit. That's more than double the speed. And yes, I say this from experience, having set up NFS mounted home directories using both 100Mbit and 1000Mbit networks.
Whether a home user needs that much speed is hard to say, but I for one found gigabit much more pleasant to work with when getting files from remote systems. Hard drives are already the speed bottleneck for most users. If you're going to access hard drives over a network, why slow yourself down even more?
Note that the Bricks on the Brain site is down at the moment
Is it just me, or should this disclaimer be a part of every story posted on SlashDot?
I don't mean to diss the Mac crowd here, but how much of this shortage is due to the fact that the minis have 4GB microdrives in them, which by themselves cost more than $250 ?
:)
Remember, Creative's Muvo2 4.0Gb model uses the same drive and is $50 cheaper. Admittedly, it's also sold out everywhere...
Besides, if we're talking about a product with 100,000 pre-orders alone... can that many people possibly have high-end digital cameras? If not, what else can use those microdrives? They can't all just be planning to sell them on eBay, there aren't that many people to sell them to. I suppose this wouldn't stop everyone, though.
Was it just the words "iPod Killer" that prompted the strong opinions, or was it the underlying concept of a multi-purpose device?
How about the fact that the aforementioned "iPod killer" make by Creative (only the software came from MS) was 8" long, 7" wide, and cost at least $700, combined with the fact that we're not morons?
I mean, talk about comparing apples and pineapples...
The Archos player seems to be a much smaller size (there's a picture of one in a guy's hand in the article) and thus actually seems appropriate for comparison to the iPod. A device which is "twice the length and thrice the thickness" of an iPod does not compare. It's a different product.
the consensus among posters appeared to be that the product was too big
Yes, that's it! Stop right there!
So become part of the growing Linux community, install linux today, because this is where the cool windows programmers have gone!
[snip]
We now return you to your regular slashdot reading.
Honestly, that sounds _exactly_ like my regular SlashDot reading...
A LOT Of bands these days have music samples, and videos on their websites, they let you sample the music on the CD's all you want, without violating their copyright and downloading the entire CD.
A lot of bands don't exist anymore, though their music still does.
These bands are a really interesting case, BTW. If the band broke up years ago, then touring revenues, merchandise sales and so on are right out (with a few exceptions for very very big bands, e.g. KISS). All of their income comes from whatever albums they still manage to sell. So one could argue that P2P eliminates older acts' only remaining source of compensation for their work, work which those P2P users are still taking advantage of.
However... the flip side of that is that older music gets less radio airplay than newer music. You may have to wait forever to hear an 80's alternative song on a "modern rock" station, or a particular oldie on an oldies station. So in another sense, P2P could be a good source of advertisement for these artists. One could also argue that when someone hears about some great older band, with P2P they can actually go hear some of that band's music. Then perhaps they'll actually buy some albums (if they liked what they heard).
For those of us not on the FreeBSD mailing list, it is.
:)
Incorrect. RedHat had a patch two days ago, Mandrake at least a day ago. I use both. I'm not on the FreeBSD mailing list and I knew about this.
My point, and I think the grandparent post's point, being that the news is already "out there". It's three days old at this point. Okay, so maybe it's still news to some people, but saying that it's old news is also accurate.
It's easy to look down on uninformed people who want to learn how to use the Internet, and complain that they are the ones ruining it for all of us. You could instead take the opportunity to teach these newbies how to protect themselves online.
Considering that there seem to be hundreds or even thousands of uninformed people or every one informed one, perhaps some sort of mass-mailing would be in order?
Just send everyone an e-mail or two with a subject line like "Latest Microsoft Security Patches". Attach the latest Microsoft patches and include instructions to install them. That'll straighten everyone out!
Oh, and tell your everyone to send those e-mails to their friends, just in case.
You do as they say w/o too many questions. If you don't like the working conditions you find another place that is more towards your liking.
:)
India?
Seriously, though, the whole "like it or lump it" attitude always bugs me. How in the world do employers manage to brainwash people into thinking that they're gods? Who says that I have to do what my employer says? If their policy is really that bad and the situation is really that serious, go over their heads, make some sort of formal complaint and encourage others to do the same, talk to your union (if you have one), illustrate the consequences of that bad decision (as an earlier poster suggested, "The server's down, who knew?"), and/or threaten to quit (as a next-to-last resort). There are alternatives to quitting if you're clever enough to use them and if the situation justifies using them.
If all that doesn't work, _then_ you quit, but even then only if it's worth it. Remember the perks of your job, the friends you've made at work who you won't see as much anymore, the extra effort which you'll have to put into finding a new job and making a new routine for yourself, and so on.
When you don't think of it in terms of people uploading movie files, and think in terms of companies using the technology to ease load on their web servers, now you're looking at BT the way the author intended!
Besides, my Internet connection has a much faster download speed (3Mbit) than upload speed (384Kbit). I suspect that this is true of most other BitTorrent users as well (Downloading big files is probably more popular among broadband users, and all but a few very pricy broadband services give you faster downloads than uploads). I'm willing to bet that the author of BitTorrent was aware of this as well.
While "doing more downloading than uploading" may sound bad, another perfectly accurate way to put it is that both my upstream and downstream connections are being utilized approximately the same amount. If I get a good connection both ways, I'm probably using nearly 100% of both my upstream and downstream. That's all one can really ask of a user: to contribute what they can.
Avoiding all the usual stereotypes, humor and marketing concepts, try as I might, I can't objectively think of a reason why a printer for a woman should be any different than a printer for a man.
;)
This is the one thing that worries me about this discussion. Sure none of us can come up with a good reason, and that translated article did say that the printer was supposed to be "easy" for a woman to use which suggests that it's just a dumbed-down printer. But I have to wonder, is it not possible that this research team, having spent much more time on the problem than we did, might have actually come up with something?
For example, I notice that some printers have buttons which stick out a bit, while others have buttons which are recessed (e.g. they go into the casing when you press them). Do you suppose that the latter type of button might cause a problem for someone with long fingernails? Likewise with touch screens now that I think about it. I assume, of course, that it is mostly women who have long fingernails, though I suppose some of you SlashDot geeks might not have cut your nails in a few months.
Perhaps there are other features which are not so much vital to women as more strongly preferred by women. Men might not mind having to get into an awkward position to plug in the cables, but perhaps women mind more? Put the plugs on the side in an obvious place and that problem is solved. Perhaps they did something to make jammed sheets easier and less messy to pull out, like some sort of quick-release button? Maybe the average woman places more value on that sort of thing than the average man. Who knows?
An obscure Roman name?
Sorry man, but the name "Ceres" didn't sound familiar. I know who Demeter is (I took a class in Greek Myths in college), but I had no idea that "Ceres" was the Roman name for Demeter.
Everybody knows "Jupiter" (in part because it is the name of a planet), most people have probably heard of "Minerva", but I'm pretty sure that "Ceres" is obscure enough that most people won't know who that is.
P.S. Note the use of quotes. The name may be obscure even if the thing being named is not.
So, I propose that in protest to such a blatant attempt at PC Multiculturalism
I'm guessing that you're joking. Still, for those people (including some of the moderators, apparently) who are taking this seriously, lighten up!
I mean seriously, wasn't it Steven Hawking who joked about how astrophysicists are "no longer limiting themselves to Greek"?
Besides, lots of objects in the solar system have names, for example the larger asteroids (e.g. Ceres, which is an obscure Roman name). Are you sure that all the Roman names haven't been used up for asteroids and comets already?
If, after these arguments, you all are still "outraged", then at least take comfort in the fact that the article called "Sedna" a "provisional" (read: temporary) name.
And you know what, there's a reason for it. Others where I work got copies as well, and they are already pushing for us to get an Exchange server. There are many features in the new "Office System" that require server support
Exactly. See this eWeek article. These Office 2003 discs are a trojan horse, but it's not about getting people to upgrade to maintain file format compatibility. It's about getting them to upgrade their OSes, especially their server OSes.
Lots of remote but "trivial" exploits are discovered, and sysadmins like to write those off as unimportant if they don't involve priv escalation...
Uh, no, that's not true. In fact, quite to the contrary, with so many systems' security being based almost entirely on not allowing access (e.g. a firewall and not much else) I daresay that most sysadmins would consider unauthorized access of any kind to be a major problem!
2. You can choose to be insulted and become a P.C. weenie, bitching and moaning and berating people who have nothing but good intentions.
Based on your post, it seems that the same can be said of Un-P.C. weenies. Do you really think that the grandparent post had such bad intentions?
You know, this whole concept of "P.C." has really run its course. All we have now are two sides. Both of them complain that the other side is putting them down for no reason, both insist on the right to speak their mind, and both probably have good intentions most of the time.
What's the f*#$ing difference between them anymore?
I mean it. Consider that any of these insults could apply to either side equally well:
Nobody is insulted unless they choose to be insulted, in which case the problem lies with them.
This applies just as well to both gears5665 and ryanwrights' posts
As you yourself said, his heart is in the right place, so your response is unnecessary.
Likewise.
I already commented about that "#2" from the parent post. Here's my favorite part:
Maybe the blind people you know are very capable who don't want any help, but there are others who aren't as capable and actually appreciate the assistance.
The irony is that the granndparent post said exactly the same thing. The grandparent post replied to a post which claimed that blind and disabled people might need help by stating that the some blind people (the ones "he knows") wouldn't. Both of you are saying that some blind people might need help, but that many don't. What bothered the grandparent post was the implication that _all_ blind and/or disabled people needed help.
The grandparent poster may have read too much into the great-grandparent post. Maybe. But that's about it.
Good old rock. Nothing beats rock.
The reason being, of course, that when the argument devolves into fisticuffs, rock has a split-second advantage...
Why don't you want to see MS software improve? My guess is that you think of your OS choice as a religion or a political statement, which makes you just as bad as pro-MS zealots.
I don't think that this conclusion follows from not wanting to see MS software improve.
If MS code gets stronger and less buggy, everyone benefits. Remember how many worms have caused major Internet congestion problems? How many spammers now use trojan's/worms to create relays for themselves?
Here's the problem. If people switch to using better code then everyone benefits from that as well. See, convincing people to move away from MS code might well improve the quality of _the code which people are using_, thus cutting down on problems like those you mention. Certainly it would cut down on some of the current desktop software monocultures (OSes, web browsers, maybe e-mail clients), and that couldn't hurt. The security effects of this code leak could help to convince people to try using other, more secure code. Thus both approaches to this source code leak (helping MS and not helping MS) could plausibly benefit us all in the manner which you described.
This is why your conclusion about how people are treating "OS choice as a religion or political statement" doesn't follow. This available choices are "fix it" and "replace it". Choosing one of those over the other is hardly at the level of religious or political fervor. People may well choose the "replace it" option for more practical reasons, such as the software monoculture argument I mentioned before. Personally, I would love it if more people were using web browsers which supported pop-up blocking. Maybe those %$@&* things would go away...
Sane creation of a network topology, email subsystem, proactive network monitoring, and general patch management is NECESSARY to operate a large internet connected environment, reguardless of the Operating System of Choice.
You realize, of course, that the average computer user wouldn't even _understand_ this sentence, much less be able (or willing?) to implement your suggestions.
You may be right in theory, but for unskilled (read: average, normal) users in the real world, Macs are currently the safe choice. There are just fewer exploited vulnerabilities in Mac OS X than in Windows XP. So for now, "Get a Mac" isn't such bad advice, if only for practical reasons.
SCO had plenty of time to prepare for this. They were well aware it was coming. I personally believe it's a publicity stunt. (which probably wouldn't surprise anybody around here).
Actually, taking their website offline makes sense. They don't seem to need their website very badly (as many people have already pointed out). More importantly, keeping it online would cost them money in the form of bandwidth charges, technicians working overtime (to make sure the server stays up) or even just the cost of the electricity. Why pay money to keep a server up when nobody will be able to access it?
Can we trust them to be fair and unbiased in their "research"?
Does it matter?
In any legal situation (a trial, contract dispute, or whatever) both sides try to find evidence which supports their case. Neither side is "fair" or "unbiased". Yet legal disputes get resolved all the time. What's the magical secret? The judge and jury get to see all of the evidence, then they make up their minds based on all of the evidence which they have seen.
Groklaw may well be biased against SCO, but all they're doing is presenting more evidence. That's exactly what both sides are supposed to do (and what SCO has been criticized for not doing).
See, you seem to want us to ignore "biased" sources of evidence. "Groklaw is biased, so they can't be trusted" is a decent summary of what you wrote. You've got to think about this on a higher level. Very few unbiased groups will ever get involved in a legal dispute. That's the nature of legal disputes, or even disputes in general -- if you don't care, you don't get involved! So the trick is to focus on evidence and solid, logical arguments rather than rhetoric. Focus on what each side can prove rather than merely what they say. That's the way to deal with situations in which interested parties are involves (which includes almost all legal disputes, and many other situations as well). Simply ignoring any biased opinion (is there any other kind of opinion?) will leave you ignorant.
I think that's the problem. I've certainly never seen any BIOS option where you can set your boot device to be USB.
e sh ooting_resources.asp
Well, it exists. I've seen it. Googling for proof, I found this page right away:
http://www.addonics.com/support/faqs/usb_troubl
Here's part of the second answer in this FAQ:
Booting from USB Port
Addonics USB DVD, CD-ROM, CDRW and hard drives have been tested to boot successfully from the latest version of Phoenix BIOS version 4 release 6. Latest Award BIOS shares similar boot code from Phoenix BIOS and should support the boot function for Addonics USB device.
So there you go. Award and Phoenix BIOSes have this feature. I personally have seen it in Award BIOSes, and my laptop has this feature as well (BIOS may be Phoenix, but I don't recall)
I had an old PPro 200 running Win98 that I brought back from the dead with Linux.
Pentium Pros are definitely far from obsolete. Remember, they ran 32-bit code significantly better than 16-bit (some sort of design tradeoff), so they'll seem much faster and more useable with any newer 32-bit OS.
I installed Mandrake Linux (version unknown, but it used KDE 2.2) and Windows 2000 on one a couple of years ago. The system had one PPro 200 with 256k cache, 128MB EDO RAM, and a 4Gb Fast SCSI hard drive. Both OSes and most applications took a while to start, so I changed the hard drive to a 13Gb IDE drive, one with (at the time) modern specs (8.5ms seek, 2Mb cache, about 20Mb/s continuous read speed). I tell ya', putting in a fast hard drive made all the difference. Wait times for starting apps went from ridiculous to reasonable, and once everything was in memory, apps were quite responsive -- much better than I thought they'd be. So stick a fast hard drive in one of those, make sure it has enough RAM, and it'll run just fine. Even moreso for dual PPro systems or one with one of those 333MHz/512k cache overdrive processors.