Ah! I posted too soon. b_pretender, I owe you an apology. It was not clear to me that your post was a quote from the letter. When I posted, I hadn't read the letter because the server was already down. However, somebody posted it in full in another message, so now I realize my mistake.
Note: I don't know how accurate your summary is, because the letter was already slashdotted. Because you sound reasonable, I'm assuming you made a good faith effort at accurate summation.
>-the law does not forbid the production of > proprietary software
Fine. The law should not have anything to say about how you or a company chooses to produce software. We share our code by choice -- the instant the government says "Share your code or you're going to prison," that government has become a dictatorship. Suggesting that proprietary software should be outlawed is precisely the same as suggesting that *Open Source* software be outlawed.
> -the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary > software providing that the source code is > included with the purchase
This is another thing the law should not address. In fact, I'm actually rather surprised about the source code provision, which basically makes it impossible to sell proprietary programs, because some coder might well take the code, alter it, and release the alteration under the GPL. So, the law actually is producing conditions in which proprietary code is *effectively* banned even if it isn't explicitly banned.
> -the law does not specifiy which concrete > software to use
Nor should it. Imagine you're an IT admin working for the Peruvian government, and they send you a memo saying "As per law X, you must use Red Hat Linux, Apache, and MySQL." But the department you work for doesn't has no need for Apache or MySQL, so they wind up with some useless programs cluttering up their drives. The IT admin of each department should be free to choose the appropriate tools for their department's objectives.
If you mean that the government should create a list of "kosher" software that's approved for use, fine; but that list should NOT be encoded in the law itself. Laws are hard to change, but licensing arrangements change all the time. So, you create a law saying "Software has to meet the following requirements . .." and then later you make a list of software that meets those requirements. The list can be changed a heck of a lot more easily than the law.
> -the law does not dictate the supplier from whom > software will be bought
Man, this is getting repetitive. Do you really want management (or government, in this case) telling you the details of how to do your job? It sure sounds like it.
> -the law does not limit the terms under which a > software product can be licensed, providing that > the entire source code is included with the > product.
This sounds an awful lot like your first point. And again, forcing a company into a particular licensing scheme -- dictating their choice of license -- is not the action of a democratic government.
I wholeheartedly approve of the Peruvian government's move to embrace open software -- the article I *was* able to get to on O'Reilly made it pretty clear that "free as in speech" is every bit as important to the creation of this law as "free as in beer." More power to them!
. . . a drop in replacement for something that is proprietary to begin with and comes bundled with all windows version sounds kind of ridiculous, doesn't it.;)
Heh.
Tell that to the Mozilla team, or anybody who's worked on a win32 web browser in the last few years. Internet Explorer is proprietary, comes bundled with all windows versions . . . and it's got a big, red bulls-eye in the middle that all the other browsers are aiming for.
Thanks for the info on the Cygwin Samba client. I actually did do a couple of Google searches before posting, but evidently I didn't pick the magic words.
I know this sounds like a strange question, but consider: Microsoft's SMB-based file sharing system is buggy and insecure. Could Samba be used as a drop-in replacement for regular Windows file sharing?
E.G.: you don't like Windows file sharing. So, you turn it off and install Samba instead. It works the same -- you wind up with shared folders that appear on the network -- but the sharing is being handled by Samba instead of the vanilla Win32 file sharing.
Is that possible? Maybe I'm suffering from hallucinations induced by too much Mountain Dew . . .
I don't understand what world people work in when they make statements like above. Certainly not in the area of the U.S. I work at. Minimal foothold in the development world. I've worked at 4 programming jobs. All were microsoft based. This last one is the only one that even HAD a unix box as part of the network (an oracle/solaris box).
Go back and read the post again. I'm not talking about the "development" world, as in programming, I'm talking about the "devloping" world, as in 3rd world countries. For example, think Uganda -- In a country where 55% of the population lives in poverty, few people will have computers at all. The ones who DO have computers are NOT going to be happy about paying Microsoft's license fees, which are a non-trivial factor in the cost of a new system. Ergo, the comparative cost between Linux (free) and Windows ($$$) becomes much more important. I speak particularly of 3rd world governments, schools, and businesses. If Linux is the standard of the government of Q, the people of the Republic of Q are likely to adopt it as their standard OS when computers start becoming more prevalent.
There are thousands, if not millions of people all over the world who are entirely 100% Microsoft free. How much MS software do you think RMS uses on a daily basis (other than to create a replacement for)?
You're right. I stand corrected. The developing world is one arena in which Windows has only a minimal foothold. It is this market which Linux should pursue most aggressively. Linux is free of charge, and free of source -- meaning not only do they NOT have to pay for it, language support for any language can be added without depending on the graces of a huge imperialist corporation like MS.
There is also the fact that Linux cannot be controlled by any one nation. If you are a government that the US government does not like, how can you know whether your OS has spy code included at the behest of the US government? With Windows, there's no easy way to tell. With Linux, you can have your programmer minions vet the source code.
. . . maybe we need to disband Microsoft, take the source code and OSS it. Not so much from a consumer standpoint, but if this the official MS line, then maybe MS shouldn't exist.
Great idea! But how are you going to do it? The US Government, under whose jurisdiction Microsoft falls, has been unable to break up the company, or even impose penalties of any severity for their proven monopolistic crimes.
So, maybe we turn to the users? Get real. Approx 95% of the computer-using populace uses Windows for their operating system, and approximately 99% of those users have no idea what it is that Microsoft has done wrong. They don't care, either.
That about eliminates the possible attacks against Microsoft, unless you want to turn to illegal methods. Attacking the company on a physical level (instead of legal) is an EXCELLENT way to get yourself hunted down, arrested, charged with terrorism, and executed.
Face it, no matter how much you dislike MS, they are basically unassailable. They have the US government in one pocket, and a boatload of high-class lawyers in the other.
So there it is. We're stuck with them until 1) they do something so unnuterably ludicrous that the common man on the street sits up and pays attention or 2) they implode due to internal politics. Nothing lasts forever . . . but it sure looks like Microsoft is going to outlast *me*, and I'm only 22.
Actually, the Tattered Cover is quite well-heeled. I live in Denver, and the place is a Mecca for book lovers. It's the largest bookstore for a thousand miles in any direction. They have a second branch in LoDo (Lower-Downtown) which is smaller but still of quite a respectable size.
The main branch in downtown Denver has four stories of books (plus a basement). The fifth floor is a well-reviewd restaurant that serves fantastic garlic potatoes (among other things). Oh, and they have a coffee bar which serves the best cappucino in Denver.
The decor is tasteful and friendly; a big selling point in the Tattered Cover is that they provide lots of big, over-stuffed chairs and let you sit down and read before you buy. In some ways, it feels more like a library than a book store. Their selection of books is phenomenal; There's only one book I've been unable to obtain from them, and that was "On the Erythraean Sea" by Agatharchides of Cnidus. (Contains the only contemporary account of gold-mining techniques in Ptolemaic Egypt; hardly New York Times Best Seller List material.)
From what I've heard, they have a yearly revenue of a couple million. So, chances are that their web server is more likely to be a dual-cpu RAM-out-the-wazoo behemoth than a PII 450.
Re:We should be encouraging these people
on
Time Travel
·
· Score: 2
I agree. We need people like this to help advance science. Sure, most of 'em are crackpots -- but occasionally, a crackpot turns out to be a genius. And even failed experiments can provide useful data that might suggest new courses of research.
Too often, in the world of science, "legitimate" research means "conventional" research; conventional research is safe, and not likely to a) make you a laughingstock, or b) cost you your job. We need wild-eyed speculators out there on the edge to keep everybody else busy debunking.
Also, they make great mad scientists. I bet there's a limited-enrollment course at most universities, "Maniacal Cackling 101," professorial nomination prerequisite. BWA HA HA!
As an active user of Sorcerer GNU/Linux, I would like to point out that no one went out of their way to antagonize Kyle Sallee, the original creator of Sorcerer. Following the two Slashdot articles about Sorcerer, interest in the distro skyrocketed, and suddenly Kyle found that there was far more work than he could handle alone. Several people offered to help him manage the project, notably Ryan (whose last name I don't know) who later founded sorcerylinux.org.
Kyle refused help, and eventually (for reasons that are unclear) dropped the project. He announced it was all over, pointed sorcerer.wox.org to a fork called lunar-penguin which had already been established, and disclaimed any further interest. Later, he added a link to the
sorcerylinux.org project. Then, inexplicably, those were taken down and replaced with a long diatribe (
mirrored here) dissing both projects, followed a few days later by an apparent attempt to revoke the GPL license Sorcerer was released under. (That article is still up at sorcerer.wox.org, as reported in the parent comment, at the time of this writing.)
(Please note that the authorship of the last two documents mentioned above is not 100% certain. The consenus on the Sorcerer mailing lists, however, is that Kyle did in fact write them.)
The whole mess is puzzling, but one thing is clear: this was NOT a hostile takeover of the Sorcerer project. This was a group of people
just trying to save a cool project after its
creator dumped it and tried his best to kill it.
1) Nobody forced Kyle to drop it.
2) Nobody forced him to link to the two "child" projects, Sorcerylinux.org and lunar-penguin.org
3) Nobody forced him to put up the article attacking both projects, or to try and
remove the GPL.
If Kyle has become alienated from the Sorcerer
community, it is no one's fault but his own.
>In a nutshell, the Linux community must develop both >a quality GUI system for configuring hardware and a >standardized system for installing and removing >software. Developers must be persuaded to provide >Linux drivers, especially for "Winmodems," and to >port their software products to Linux.
Agreed on the need for a GUI "system properties" type hardware configurator. KDE's hardware configuration leaves something to be desired. (Specifically, it doesn't offer much in the way of actual configuration options. If you want to do any non-trivial fiddling with your hardware, you might as well go straight to a console, 'cause you're going to need it anyway.)
As for installing and removing software, it would be good to have a more-or-less universal software management system. The two current contenders are RPM and Debian's apt-get, of course. Both have advantages and disadvantages -- for example, it's more common to find fresh builds of programs in.rpm format; but apt-get handles dependencies more gracefully. Perhaps what we need is a synthesis of the two, which would use the.rpm file format and apt-get's syntax. Instead of having a centralized package depot like apt, or many randomly distributed files like rpm, you strike a balance: maintain a server that lists current URLs for packages, which would be hosted on the project's page instead of centrally. Typing "rpm-get install Snicklefritz1.3" would check the central database for current URLs of the RPM and its dependency BruberMIPS0.9.5, download them from two different sites and install them. (Note: the "spell" system in Sorcery GNU/Linux works kind of like this, only it downloads source and auto-compiles instead of downloading pre-built packages.)
In addition to persuading companies to release Linux drivers for their hardware, we also need to convince them to open-source the drivers. I seem to recall ATI already did this. There is even less reason than usual to make your driver proprietary; after all, the driver is useless without the hardware to match. People would still have to buy the product in order to get use out of the driver, and in the meantime students could study the driver code to learn about low-level hardware interaction. And stuff. (nVidia, are you listening?)
"One lawyer is quoted as saying, 'It's basically going to do away with linking or framing without permission.'"
Just like making marijuana illegal has done away with pot smoking? I suppose now we'll have police officers performing undercover operations to root out illicit linkers and framers.
And don't tell me the law will be enforced by the server owners! Sure, maybe some web-site owners will take offendors to small-claims court. They may even WIN a few cases. But that will *not* stop people from continuing to do it. This is unenforceable in any meaningful way, and will be:
1) broken by people who've never heard of the ruling;
2) broken by people who aren't American;
and 3) ignored by people who've heard about it and are American but figure they'll probably never get called on it.
I'm not saying that the ruling is a bad thing; on the contrary, it makes formal what has long been considered polite. But even so, I predict that there will basically zero change in people's design habits as a result of this.
This could be very useful in a large networked environment, for monitoring system status on your servers remotely. It wouldn't even require modification of the system, if your server has "statu page" accessible by web browser. Alternatively, you could use VNC
and get the added benefit of not only monitoring your server remotely, but being able to
perform system maintenance remotely.
I suppose the VNC scenario would depend on a couple
of things:
Input problems. Can that stylus/on-screen keyboard be used quickly enough once you get used to them? Having to carry around a USB keyboard all the time would put a serious dent in its usefulness for remote administration.
Using the VNC server's built-in web server,
which has permission to serve up one single page
containing a Java applet that hooks into VNC to allow web-based control, might be a problem. Looks like the review had a hard time getting Java to work properly in Mozilla.
Using VNC like this might open up some security concerns, particularly if you're a large company. Under ordinary circumstances, you can tunnel VNC through SSH to increase its security, but I don't think that would work in this case without modifying the aquapad in such a way that Mozilla could understand SSH. Still, if you have the know-how that can be done -- ain't open-source great?
If you're a bit more daring, I bet you could modify this in such a way as to make it a nice, portable media outlet. It's got an MP3 player already. It'd take some doing, but you could make it capable of streaming movies over the network also. 802.11b's 11-megabit pipe is fine for DivX-encoded movies. (Note: the thing's OS is flash-based. If you try making modifications and screw it up . . . it wasn't my idea! Unless you are a Linux Guru, capable of causing device drivers to rewrite themselves by sheer force of will, it's probably best to leave well enough alone.)
One hopes that future versions might include 1) a hard drive, for example an IBM microdrive, which would make fiddling with the OS's guts a lot simpler and safer. Note that the article says the Windows CE version already uses a microdrive -- so maybe you could get a windows version, wipe it, and install Linux? 2) USB 2.0 instead of 1.1. 3) *Integrated* 802.11b, so you could use that PCMCIA slot for something else.
Finally -- that green-haired chick that serves as
Midori's
emblem is cool. I wonder what she's looking at. Perhaps she is looking down at Tux, and wondering how it is that she came to be co-starring with a penguin.
Evolutionary forces will continue to act on the human population. If the human population does not have to change in order to meet those challenges, that simply means we are already well enough adapted to continue in an unchanged form. The process continues, it simply doesn't change anything. So no, evolution is not "over."
"Stagnation" isn't necessarily a bad thing. Look at the shark. The basic template hasn't changed in thousands of eons -- lot 'o sharp teeth at one end, tail at the other. Cockroaches haven't changed all that much recently either. Why? Because they've hit on something that works, and has kept on working. Humans are similar in that respect. (On an aside, there are some that might argue that we humans incorporate the worst features of both sharks and roaches -- but I digress.)
Furthermore, this conclusion that evolution is "over" and we are "stagnating" is based on the prevailing conditions in western society. Evolution works in terms of millions and billions of years. I don't think I agree that our society is so stable that it will endure long enough to have a measurable effect in terms of the biological makeup of the species as a whole.
There are any number of ways we could be reintroduced to evolutionary change. Hitherto unknown diseases could sweep through the population, rendering large numbers of people dead or sterile. We could get hit by an asteroid and go the way of the dinosaurs. Well-meaning aliens might "adopt" us and alter us beyond recognizeability. Heck, WE might alter OURSELVES beyond recognizeability. The bunny rabbits of the world might get tired of their pacifist reputation and rise up against us in innumerable hordes!
To conclude that evolution is at an end and that we are immune to nature simply because we've had about 150 years of a stable society in which everybody can reproduce is shortsighted and arrogant.
All it would take to permanently disable this sort of thing would be to format the hard drive and reinstall the OS. And that would be very likely to happen on a Linux box. I mean seriously, how many thieves are going to be willing to sit and work at a Linux box till they come up with a valid Username/Password combo?
With a Windows box, on the other hand, you could easily write a program to verify the computer's IP address at boot time, and if it doesn't match, send an email to you reporting the unusual IP address and any other useful info you can think of. At each boot thereafter (common with Windows, of course) it checks a particular file on a particular server for instructions on what else to do, such as activating auto-destruct. That way you never auto-destruct your own computer by accident, since it requires permission first.
If you were particularly ambitious, you could have it activate a keystroke logger and email the recorded info to you each time it boots.
"Microsoft will patch a flaw in its Web browser that could allow an attacker to silently download and execute malicious programs on the computers of users who view a specially constructed Web page or e-mail message." (emphasis added)
From the article's intro:
"Microsoft has known about it since November 19; they refuse to provide any information about when a patch might be made available, if ever."
Also: "And keep in mind that Microsoft is in no hurry to do anything about it . .."
Full marks for a more thorough description of the exploit and how it came about -- but did the poster actually read the article before posting? Looks to me like he hit the
original report but not the article, which says that MS did initially plan to let it go, but did an about-face after a while.
Nasty flaw nonetheless -- glad I switched to Mozilla.
Thanks for a great response to my question! I've read many of the comments already, and liked a lot of the suggestions.
The reading list is not likely to include Neuromancer. Why? Because I read that one this term in a different course, with the same professor. We've already decided not to allow any overlap on the reading lists between the two courses. We are likely to be reading some early Heinlein, possibly Waldo Inc. Many people have suggested reading Jules Verne, and that is certainly a possibility; I was hoping to do more twentieth century stuff, but we'll certainly consider starting with some older material.
Tonight (or possibly tomorrow night) I will read each and every post which has been submitted (even the -1 posts). I may contact some of you via email for further discussion on some of the more interesting points raised.
Well, obviously not EVERY piece of new technology derives from an example in SF. And you are right, pinning down precisely whether a given piece of equipment was inspired by a specific story will be hard.
On the other hand, there are sure to be SOME verifiable examples. To find such things, one must look. Hence my question to Ask Slashdot, a group of people likely to provide interesting leads which can be followed up and checked out later.
Even when there is no direct connection, the fact that a piece of fiction toyed with an idea for technology that later appeared in real life can reveal some interesting things about the development of our technological society over the last few decades. First you look at the machines that appeared in the stories, and what effect they had on their societies. Then you turn around and look at our society, and compare notes. What machines have been discussed in fiction that now exist in fact? Are the devices being used in the ways the various authors envisioned? Why or why not? How accurate or inaccurate is the author's vision of the effect of Technology-Foobar on people's habits of thought and action?
Regardless of whether I "prove" anything or not, the research will be interesting.:-)
From the Article:
The Army reviewed and approved the game... with the underlying theme being a battle against insurgents in the Middle East.
Remember
this story in the Onion from back in the days of Clinton? Looks like the Mideast won those Enemy Tryouts.
<sarcasm>
Looks like we can now relax in the firm and comfortable knowledge that America has an ENEMY again. How we ever got by for over a decade without a looming nemesis, I'll never be able to understand!
</sarcasm>
. . . who has been playing with Linux for two months, I like Mandrake. I have tried Debian, Red Hat, Progeny Debian, and Mandrake.
Progeny Debian was my first test case. I like the principles behind Debian, but was intimidated by accounts I'd heard of the horrible installer. So when Progeny said "We're like Debian, but with a better installer and auto-magic hardware detection," I said "Great!"
That didn't work. For some bizarre reason, it couldn't see my PS/2 ports in XFree86. I could use my keyboard fine at the command line, and my USB mouse worked quite nicely. But.
if ($NoKeyboardinX){
delete($Progeny);
}
So next I went straight on to plain old
Debian (2.2r3). And the installer was not as bad as I heard. It got the job done well enough. So it's not pretty -- so what?
The apt-get command makes maintenance really easy.
When I'm in Debian, my sound card only works if I'm logged in as root, which probably has something to do with device permissions. It's a good distro, but not for the faint of heart. I spent four days trying to install accelerated drivers for my nVidia TNT2 M64. It involved recompiling my kernel 6 times and STILL not getting it right (unresolved symbols in my modules). Eventually, all the mistakes I made rendered my system inoperable. I had to format the hd, buy a new one, and give Windoze and Linux separate living quarters.
Red Hat installed fine. I liked the option to do a "partitionless install" although I didn't use it. That might be a powerful recommendation to a total newbie who wants to play with Linux without a) giving up Windoze, or b) repartitioning. On the other hand, Red Hat uses Gnome by default. It's okay, but KDE is so much more polished.
The Mandrake installer was really cool. Not only that, it detected my TV card and had drivers for it, something which none of the other distros did. It uses KDE, and the selection of games that comes with it rocks. Pingus rules! Furthermore, it gave me the option to use an accelerated driver for my graphics card right there in the installer -- no mucking about with kernel recompilation in this distro!
Based on these experiences, I would recommend Mandrake. One caveat: when selecting partitions to format, the yellow star means that the partition is selected. There was no indication which color meant selected and which not -- choices were purple and yellow. I guessed wrong and formatted the Windoze HD by mistake. No data loss (backups are key!) but reinstalling and configuring is a pain. I mean, a checkbox would have done as well. Or perhaps the stars could have been green or red.
Anyway, I currently have Debian, Red Hat, and Mandrake on my second hard drive. I'm still evaluating them -- I haven't picked my favorite yet. But just based on the experiences, I'd say try Mandrake first. Oh, and if you have multiple distros on one disk, a boot partition for your kernels and loader helps a lost!
Oh, I almost forgot. Several months ago, I briefly flirted with DragonLinux
, a customized version of Slackware which lives
inside a giant file on a regular Windows partition. Avoid it. I couldn't even get X to
run in that thing, never mind anything else.
Selanit
Military applications. . .
on
Chip Chiller
·
· Score: 1
And when the military uses this cooling tech in the direct neural interfaces for their
exoskeletons, this will give a whole new meaning to the phrase, "Stay frosty!"
There are those who say that the Roman empire collapsed partly because it went from a society of participators--athletes, intellectuals, etc.--to a society of spectators--the Coliseum, theatre, etc.
Could it be that video games are turning our society, the global empire, into another society of spectators?
1) The Roman Empire collapsed for many reasons, but "lack of participation" is hardly one of them. Some of the leaders made poor choices; internal corruption was rampant, and defense of the Empire depended increasingly on foreign conscripts who had no compelling reason to do a good job.
2) "Could it be that video games are turning our society, the global empire, into another society of spectators?"
Video games are interactive by their very nature. A player is necessarily a participant in the game.
Of course, substitute "televison" for "video games" and you just might have something there.
. . . . what NASA doesn't realize is that the aliens have now intercepted the probe and are using it as a coffee table. Any data returned are the result of spilled coffee, or alien equivalent thereof.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Well then, we both learned a valuable lesson: we ought to read the articles in full before opening our fool mouths!
Ah! I posted too soon. b_pretender, I owe you an apology. It was not clear to me that your post was a quote from the letter. When I posted, I hadn't read the letter because the server was already down. However, somebody posted it in full in another message, so now I realize my mistake.
Sorry!
I don't see why this is uncool.
." and then later you make a list of software that meets those requirements. The list can be changed a heck of a lot more easily than the law.
Note: I don't know how accurate your summary is, because the letter was already slashdotted. Because you sound reasonable, I'm assuming you made a good faith effort at accurate summation.
>-the law does not forbid the production of
> proprietary software
Fine. The law should not have anything to say about how you or a company chooses to produce software. We share our code by choice -- the instant the government says "Share your code or you're going to prison," that government has become a dictatorship. Suggesting that proprietary software should be outlawed is precisely the same as suggesting that *Open Source* software be outlawed.
> -the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary
> software providing that the source code is
> included with the purchase
This is another thing the law should not address. In fact, I'm actually rather surprised about the source code provision, which basically makes it impossible to sell proprietary programs, because some coder might well take the code, alter it, and release the alteration under the GPL. So, the law actually is producing conditions in which proprietary code is *effectively* banned even if it isn't explicitly banned.
> -the law does not specifiy which concrete
> software to use
Nor should it. Imagine you're an IT admin working for the Peruvian government, and they send you a memo saying "As per law X, you must use Red Hat Linux, Apache, and MySQL." But the department you work for doesn't has no need for Apache or MySQL, so they wind up with some useless programs cluttering up their drives. The IT admin of each department should be free to choose the appropriate tools for their department's objectives.
If you mean that the government should create a list of "kosher" software that's approved for use, fine; but that list should NOT be encoded in the law itself. Laws are hard to change, but licensing arrangements change all the time. So, you create a law saying "Software has to meet the following requirements . .
> -the law does not dictate the supplier from whom
> software will be bought
Man, this is getting repetitive. Do you really want management (or government, in this case) telling you the details of how to do your job? It sure sounds like it.
> -the law does not limit the terms under which a
> software product can be licensed, providing that
> the entire source code is included with the
> product.
This sounds an awful lot like your first point. And again, forcing a company into a particular licensing scheme -- dictating their choice of license -- is not the action of a democratic government.
I wholeheartedly approve of the Peruvian government's move to embrace open software -- the article I *was* able to get to on O'Reilly made it pretty clear that "free as in speech" is every bit as important to the creation of this law as "free as in beer." More power to them!
Blockquoth the responder:
Heh.
Tell that to the Mozilla team, or anybody who's worked on a win32 web browser in the last few years. Internet Explorer is proprietary, comes bundled with all windows versions . . . and it's got a big, red bulls-eye in the middle that all the other browsers are aiming for.
Thanks for the info on the Cygwin Samba client. I actually did do a couple of Google searches before posting, but evidently I didn't pick the magic words.
Is Samba available for Win32 platforms?
I know this sounds like a strange question, but consider: Microsoft's SMB-based file sharing system is buggy and insecure. Could Samba be used as a drop-in replacement for regular Windows file sharing?
E.G.: you don't like Windows file sharing. So, you turn it off and install Samba instead. It works the same -- you wind up with shared folders that appear on the network -- but the sharing is being handled by Samba instead of the vanilla Win32 file sharing.
Is that possible? Maybe I'm suffering from hallucinations induced by too much Mountain Dew . . .
Blockquoth the responder:
Go back and read the post again. I'm not talking about the "development" world, as in programming, I'm talking about the "devloping" world, as in 3rd world countries. For example, think Uganda -- In a country where 55% of the population lives in poverty, few people will have computers at all. The ones who DO have computers are NOT going to be happy about paying Microsoft's license fees, which are a non-trivial factor in the cost of a new system. Ergo, the comparative cost between Linux (free) and Windows ($$$) becomes much more important. I speak particularly of 3rd world governments, schools, and businesses. If Linux is the standard of the government of Q, the people of the Republic of Q are likely to adopt it as their standard OS when computers start becoming more prevalent.
Blockquoth the responder:
You're right. I stand corrected. The developing world is one arena in which Windows has only a minimal foothold. It is this market which Linux should pursue most aggressively. Linux is free of charge, and free of source -- meaning not only do they NOT have to pay for it, language support for any language can be added without depending on the graces of a huge imperialist corporation like MS.
There is also the fact that Linux cannot be controlled by any one nation. If you are a government that the US government does not like, how can you know whether your OS has spy code included at the behest of the US government? With Windows, there's no easy way to tell. With Linux, you can have your programmer minions vet the source code.
Blockquoth the poster:
Great idea! But how are you going to do it? The US Government, under whose jurisdiction Microsoft falls, has been unable to break up the company, or even impose penalties of any severity for their proven monopolistic crimes.
So, maybe we turn to the users? Get real. Approx 95% of the computer-using populace uses Windows for their operating system, and approximately 99% of those users have no idea what it is that Microsoft has done wrong. They don't care, either.
That about eliminates the possible attacks against Microsoft, unless you want to turn to illegal methods. Attacking the company on a physical level (instead of legal) is an EXCELLENT way to get yourself hunted down, arrested, charged with terrorism, and executed.
Face it, no matter how much you dislike MS, they are basically unassailable. They have the US government in one pocket, and a boatload of high-class lawyers in the other.
So there it is. We're stuck with them until 1) they do something so unnuterably ludicrous that the common man on the street sits up and pays attention or 2) they implode due to internal politics. Nothing lasts forever . . . but it sure looks like Microsoft is going to outlast *me*, and I'm only 22.
Actually, the Tattered Cover is quite well-heeled. I live in Denver, and the place is a Mecca for book lovers. It's the largest bookstore for a thousand miles in any direction. They have a second branch in LoDo (Lower-Downtown) which is smaller but still of quite a respectable size.
The main branch in downtown Denver has four stories of books (plus a basement). The fifth floor is a well-reviewd restaurant that serves fantastic garlic potatoes (among other things). Oh, and they have a coffee bar which serves the best cappucino in Denver.
The decor is tasteful and friendly; a big selling point in the Tattered Cover is that they provide lots of big, over-stuffed chairs and let you sit down and read before you buy. In some ways, it feels more like a library than a book store. Their selection of books is phenomenal; There's only one book I've been unable to obtain from them, and that was "On the Erythraean Sea" by Agatharchides of Cnidus. (Contains the only contemporary account of gold-mining techniques in Ptolemaic Egypt; hardly New York Times Best Seller List material.)
From what I've heard, they have a yearly revenue of a couple million. So, chances are that their web server is more likely to be a dual-cpu RAM-out-the-wazoo behemoth than a PII 450.
I agree. We need people like this to help advance science. Sure, most of 'em are crackpots -- but occasionally, a crackpot turns out to be a genius. And even failed experiments can provide useful data that might suggest new courses of research.
Too often, in the world of science, "legitimate" research means "conventional" research; conventional research is safe, and not likely to a) make you a laughingstock, or b) cost you your job. We need wild-eyed speculators out there on the edge to keep everybody else busy debunking.
Also, they make great mad scientists. I bet there's a limited-enrollment course at most universities, "Maniacal Cackling 101," professorial nomination prerequisite. BWA HA HA!
Well, in some circles PHP stands for "Push Harder, Please!"
As an active user of Sorcerer GNU/Linux, I would like to point out that no one went out of their way to antagonize Kyle Sallee, the original creator of Sorcerer. Following the two Slashdot articles about Sorcerer, interest in the distro skyrocketed, and suddenly Kyle found that there was far more work than he could handle alone. Several people offered to help him manage the project, notably Ryan (whose last name I don't know) who later founded sorcerylinux.org.
Kyle refused help, and eventually (for reasons that are unclear) dropped the project. He announced it was all over, pointed sorcerer.wox.org to a fork called lunar-penguin which had already been established, and disclaimed any further interest. Later, he added a link to the sorcerylinux.org project. Then, inexplicably, those were taken down and replaced with a long diatribe ( mirrored here) dissing both projects, followed a few days later by an apparent attempt to revoke the GPL license Sorcerer was released under. (That article is still up at sorcerer.wox.org, as reported in the parent comment, at the time of this writing.)
(Please note that the authorship of the last two documents mentioned above is not 100% certain. The consenus on the Sorcerer mailing lists, however, is that Kyle did in fact write them.)
The leader pro tem of rhe current Sorcerer project wrote a rebuttal of the first article and when the new one came out another one.
The whole mess is puzzling, but one thing is clear: this was NOT a hostile takeover of the Sorcerer project. This was a group of people just trying to save a cool project after its creator dumped it and tried his best to kill it.
1) Nobody forced Kyle to drop it.
2) Nobody forced him to link to the two "child" projects, Sorcerylinux.org and lunar-penguin.org
3) Nobody forced him to put up the article attacking both projects, or to try and remove the GPL.
If Kyle has become alienated from the Sorcerer community, it is no one's fault but his own.
>In a nutshell, the Linux community must develop both
.rpm format; but apt-get handles dependencies more gracefully. Perhaps what we need is a synthesis of the two, which would use the .rpm file format and apt-get's syntax. Instead of having a centralized package depot like apt, or many randomly distributed files like rpm, you strike a balance: maintain a server that lists current URLs for packages, which would be hosted on the project's page instead of centrally. Typing "rpm-get install Snicklefritz1.3" would check the central database for current URLs of the RPM and its dependency BruberMIPS0.9.5, download them from two different sites and install them. (Note: the "spell" system in Sorcery GNU/Linux works kind of like this, only it downloads source and auto-compiles instead of downloading pre-built packages.)
>a quality GUI system for configuring hardware and a
>standardized system for installing and removing
>software. Developers must be persuaded to provide
>Linux drivers, especially for "Winmodems," and to
>port their software products to Linux.
Agreed on the need for a GUI "system properties" type hardware configurator. KDE's hardware configuration leaves something to be desired. (Specifically, it doesn't offer much in the way of actual configuration options. If you want to do any non-trivial fiddling with your hardware, you might as well go straight to a console, 'cause you're going to need it anyway.)
As for installing and removing software, it would be good to have a more-or-less universal software management system. The two current contenders are RPM and Debian's apt-get, of course. Both have advantages and disadvantages -- for example, it's more common to find fresh builds of programs in
In addition to persuading companies to release Linux drivers for their hardware, we also need to convince them to open-source the drivers. I seem to recall ATI already did this. There is even less reason than usual to make your driver proprietary; after all, the driver is useless without the hardware to match. People would still have to buy the product in order to get use out of the driver, and in the meantime students could study the driver code to learn about low-level hardware interaction. And stuff. (nVidia, are you listening?)
"One lawyer is quoted as saying, 'It's basically going to do away with linking or framing without permission.'"
Just like making marijuana illegal has done away with pot smoking? I suppose now we'll have police officers performing undercover operations to root out illicit linkers and framers.
And don't tell me the law will be enforced by the server owners! Sure, maybe some web-site owners will take offendors to small-claims court. They may even WIN a few cases. But that will *not* stop people from continuing to do it. This is unenforceable in any meaningful way, and will be:
1) broken by people who've never heard of the ruling;
2) broken by people who aren't American;
and 3) ignored by people who've heard about it and are American but figure they'll probably never get called on it.
I'm not saying that the ruling is a bad thing; on the contrary, it makes formal what has long been considered polite. But even so, I predict that there will basically zero change in people's design habits as a result of this.
This could be very useful in a large networked environment, for monitoring system status on your servers remotely. It wouldn't even require modification of the system, if your server has "statu page" accessible by web browser. Alternatively, you could use VNC and get the added benefit of not only monitoring your server remotely, but being able to perform system maintenance remotely.
I suppose the VNC scenario would depend on a couple of things:
If you're a bit more daring, I bet you could modify this in such a way as to make it a nice, portable media outlet. It's got an MP3 player already. It'd take some doing, but you could make it capable of streaming movies over the network also. 802.11b's 11-megabit pipe is fine for DivX-encoded movies. (Note: the thing's OS is flash-based. If you try making modifications and screw it up . . . it wasn't my idea! Unless you are a Linux Guru, capable of causing device drivers to rewrite themselves by sheer force of will, it's probably best to leave well enough alone.)
One hopes that future versions might include 1) a hard drive, for example an IBM microdrive, which would make fiddling with the OS's guts a lot simpler and safer. Note that the article says the Windows CE version already uses a microdrive -- so maybe you could get a windows version, wipe it, and install Linux? 2) USB 2.0 instead of 1.1. 3) *Integrated* 802.11b, so you could use that PCMCIA slot for something else.
Finally -- that green-haired chick that serves as Midori's emblem is cool. I wonder what she's looking at. Perhaps she is looking down at Tux, and wondering how it is that she came to be co-starring with a penguin.
Evolutionary forces will continue to act on the human population. If the human population does not have to change in order to meet those challenges, that simply means we are already well enough adapted to continue in an unchanged form. The process continues, it simply doesn't change anything. So no, evolution is not "over."
"Stagnation" isn't necessarily a bad thing. Look at the shark. The basic template hasn't changed in thousands of eons -- lot 'o sharp teeth at one end, tail at the other. Cockroaches haven't changed all that much recently either. Why? Because they've hit on something that works, and has kept on working. Humans are similar in that respect. (On an aside, there are some that might argue that we humans incorporate the worst features of both sharks and roaches -- but I digress.)
Furthermore, this conclusion that evolution is "over" and we are "stagnating" is based on the prevailing conditions in western society. Evolution works in terms of millions and billions of years. I don't think I agree that our society is so stable that it will endure long enough to have a measurable effect in terms of the biological makeup of the species as a whole.
There are any number of ways we could be reintroduced to evolutionary change. Hitherto unknown diseases could sweep through the population, rendering large numbers of people dead or sterile. We could get hit by an asteroid and go the way of the dinosaurs. Well-meaning aliens might "adopt" us and alter us beyond recognizeability. Heck, WE might alter OURSELVES beyond recognizeability. The bunny rabbits of the world might get tired of their pacifist reputation and rise up against us in innumerable hordes!
To conclude that evolution is at an end and that we are immune to nature simply because we've had about 150 years of a stable society in which everybody can reproduce is shortsighted and arrogant.
All it would take to permanently disable this sort of thing would be to format the hard drive and reinstall the OS. And that would be very likely to happen on a Linux box. I mean seriously, how many thieves are going to be willing to sit and work at a Linux box till they come up with a valid Username/Password combo?
With a Windows box, on the other hand, you could easily write a program to verify the computer's IP address at boot time, and if it doesn't match, send an email to you reporting the unusual IP address and any other useful info you can think of. At each boot thereafter (common with Windows, of course) it checks a particular file on a particular server for instructions on what else to do, such as activating auto-destruct. That way you never auto-destruct your own computer by accident, since it requires permission first.
If you were particularly ambitious, you could have it activate a keystroke logger and email the recorded info to you each time it boots.
"Microsoft will patch a flaw in its Web browser that could allow an attacker to silently download and execute malicious programs on the computers of users who view a specially constructed Web page or e-mail message." (emphasis added)
From the article's intro:
"Microsoft has known about it since November 19; they refuse to provide any information about when a patch might be made available, if ever."
Also: "And keep in mind that Microsoft is in no hurry to do anything about it . . ."
Full marks for a more thorough description of the exploit and how it came about -- but did the poster actually read the article before posting? Looks to me like he hit the original report but not the article, which says that MS did initially plan to let it go, but did an about-face after a while.
Nasty flaw nonetheless -- glad I switched to Mozilla.
Thanks for a great response to my question! I've read many of the comments already, and liked a lot of the suggestions.
The reading list is not likely to include Neuromancer. Why? Because I read that one this term in a different course, with the same professor. We've already decided not to allow any overlap on the reading lists between the two courses. We are likely to be reading some early Heinlein, possibly Waldo Inc. Many people have suggested reading Jules Verne, and that is certainly a possibility; I was hoping to do more twentieth century stuff, but we'll certainly consider starting with some older material.
Tonight (or possibly tomorrow night) I will read each and every post which has been submitted (even the -1 posts). I may contact some of you via email for further discussion on some of the more interesting points raised.
Thanks again for all the terrific comments!
Well, obviously not EVERY piece of new technology derives from an example in SF. And you are right, pinning down precisely whether a given piece of equipment was inspired by a specific story will be hard.
:-)
On the other hand, there are sure to be SOME verifiable examples. To find such things, one must look. Hence my question to Ask Slashdot, a group of people likely to provide interesting leads which can be followed up and checked out later.
Even when there is no direct connection, the fact that a piece of fiction toyed with an idea for technology that later appeared in real life can reveal some interesting things about the development of our technological society over the last few decades. First you look at the machines that appeared in the stories, and what effect they had on their societies. Then you turn around and look at our society, and compare notes. What machines have been discussed in fiction that now exist in fact? Are the devices being used in the ways the various authors envisioned? Why or why not? How accurate or inaccurate is the author's vision of the effect of Technology-Foobar on people's habits of thought and action?
Regardless of whether I "prove" anything or not, the research will be interesting.
From the Article: ... with the underlying theme being a battle against insurgents in the Middle East.
The Army reviewed and approved the game
Remember this story in the Onion from back in the days of Clinton? Looks like the Mideast won those Enemy Tryouts.
<sarcasm> Looks like we can now relax in the firm and comfortable knowledge that America has an ENEMY again. How we ever got by for over a decade without a looming nemesis, I'll never be able to understand! </sarcasm>
. . . who has been playing with Linux for two months, I like Mandrake. I have tried Debian, Red Hat, Progeny Debian, and Mandrake.
Progeny Debian was my first test case. I like the principles behind Debian, but was intimidated by accounts I'd heard of the horrible installer. So when Progeny said "We're like Debian, but with a better installer and auto-magic hardware detection," I said "Great!"
That didn't work. For some bizarre reason, it couldn't see my PS/2 ports in XFree86. I could use my keyboard fine at the command line, and my USB mouse worked quite nicely. But.
if ($NoKeyboardinX){ delete($Progeny); }So next I went straight on to plain old Debian (2.2r3). And the installer was not as bad as I heard. It got the job done well enough. So it's not pretty -- so what?
The apt-get command makes maintenance really easy. When I'm in Debian, my sound card only works if I'm logged in as root, which probably has something to do with device permissions. It's a good distro, but not for the faint of heart. I spent four days trying to install accelerated drivers for my nVidia TNT2 M64. It involved recompiling my kernel 6 times and STILL not getting it right (unresolved symbols in my modules). Eventually, all the mistakes I made rendered my system inoperable. I had to format the hd, buy a new one, and give Windoze and Linux separate living quarters.
Red Hat installed fine. I liked the option to do a "partitionless install" although I didn't use it. That might be a powerful recommendation to a total newbie who wants to play with Linux without a) giving up Windoze, or b) repartitioning. On the other hand, Red Hat uses Gnome by default. It's okay, but KDE is so much more polished.
The Mandrake installer was really cool. Not only that, it detected my TV card and had drivers for it, something which none of the other distros did. It uses KDE, and the selection of games that comes with it rocks. Pingus rules! Furthermore, it gave me the option to use an accelerated driver for my graphics card right there in the installer -- no mucking about with kernel recompilation in this distro!
Based on these experiences, I would recommend Mandrake. One caveat: when selecting partitions to format, the yellow star means that the partition is selected. There was no indication which color meant selected and which not -- choices were purple and yellow. I guessed wrong and formatted the Windoze HD by mistake. No data loss (backups are key!) but reinstalling and configuring is a pain. I mean, a checkbox would have done as well. Or perhaps the stars could have been green or red.
Anyway, I currently have Debian, Red Hat, and Mandrake on my second hard drive. I'm still evaluating them -- I haven't picked my favorite yet. But just based on the experiences, I'd say try Mandrake first. Oh, and if you have multiple distros on one disk, a boot partition for your kernels and loader helps a lost!
Oh, I almost forgot. Several months ago, I briefly flirted with DragonLinux , a customized version of Slackware which lives inside a giant file on a regular Windows partition. Avoid it. I couldn't even get X to run in that thing, never mind anything else.
Selanit
And when the military uses this cooling tech in the direct neural interfaces for their exoskeletons, this will give a whole new meaning to the phrase, "Stay frosty!"
Could it be that video games are turning our society, the global empire, into another society of spectators?
1) The Roman Empire collapsed for many reasons, but "lack of participation" is hardly one of them. Some of the leaders made poor choices; internal corruption was rampant, and defense of the Empire depended increasingly on foreign conscripts who had no compelling reason to do a good job.
2) "Could it be that video games are turning our society, the global empire, into another society of spectators?"
Video games are interactive by their very nature. A player is necessarily a participant in the game.
Of course, substitute "televison" for "video games" and you just might have something there.
Selanit
. . . . what NASA doesn't realize is that the aliens have now intercepted the probe and are using it as a coffee table. Any data returned are the result of spilled coffee, or alien equivalent thereof. :-)