If I want to upgrade something on my system, I download the source, compile it and install (I hate RPM's). Why wait several months to install all the fixes in one go, when you could have fixed them many weeks before?
Because not everyone is running a single-user system with the time to waste in the "search, download, tweak, compile, repeat" process. Those of us who use Linux as a tool (not a toy) enjoy the idea of being able to drop in a CD and have a relatively up-to-date system without the hassle of having to do it by hand. In a university environment, where good help is almost impossible to find, CD distros and RPMS are a life-saver:
It's a lot easier for me to say to a student assistant: "Upgrade the gcc RPMs on the Computer Science cluster" rather than "Download the GCC tarball, and compile it? What's that? Configure options? Here...do this. Hmm--dependecy problems. Ok, you fix it this way... Another question? Ok, here, I'll just have to do it myself, since we needed this done last week."
Also, RPMs are great for ansering the "what the heck is that file doing there?" question.
When I only had my home Linux box to play with, I used to be a "source tarball, compile your own is the only way!" guy. Then I started using Linux at work. There's a big difference when you have to manage multiple machines and users. Suddenly, RPMs don't seem so bad at all...
Unfortunatly, most systems running linux are not for high-performance environments...
Please define "high-performance." Standing alone, this comment may appear at first glance to be flamebait.
"Wouldn't the time be better spent bring a real _server_ OS up to IA-64 spec?"
To what end? So that high-end hardware becomes useable only by "high-end" (READ: rediculously expensive) OS users? Umm...or would the time perhaps be better spent bringing high-performance features to Linux? As a sysadmin who has worked with both Linux and some of those other "real _server_ OS"'s you speak of, I'd much rather see Linux brought up to the level of Solaris and some of the other enterprise-level, high-performance OS's out there.
I'd just rather deal with Linux on a daily basis. I've learned it's a much more pleasant experience than wrangling with some of the commercial UNIX offerings.
I'm glad to see more development of this nature. Congrats to Adaptec for taking this first, small step in the right direction. Next step: Open-source drivers, open hardware and development specs.
"The "threatening legal letter" from the Hotmail account appears to be an amateurish fake. I would be very surprised if it turned out to have been sent by a real lawyer. Notice also that when you send threatening letters through e-mail, you don't need real legal letterhead to print them on."
It would surprise me as well to see an attorney for a "technology" firm using a hotmail account to send offcial correspondence. Some things that raised the red flag for me in this "lawyer's" E-Mail:
"Derek- I am the lawyer for LinuxOne, Inc." Hmm. Most of the legal correspondence I've seen is certianly more formal than this, even when delivered via E-Mail. For example, Instead of "Derek-" the greeting would be "Derek:" or "Mr. Simkowiak:". Also, most lawyers refer to themselves as "attorneys," not lawyers.
"I have read with disgust the lies..." This certianly seems to be an inflammatory statement, not something a good attorney would open a letter with. Again, it just seems too informal.
"This constitutes written demand for you to retract your false and malicious statements within 3 days, failing which, you, and your company, will be subject to civil prosecution for your actions. Your immediate action would seem most prudent.: Something just plain smells fishy about this statement as well. Don't attorneys usually cite some legal code or at least make it sound more formal when they insinuate that there has been some sort of wrong committed against a client?
"Michael J. Morrison, Esq." Attorneys usually close with the name of their firm. I would hope the LinuxOne isn't using a single, independent attorney instead of a larger firm to conduct their business.
Overall, this whole message just seems too informal. Most legal communication follows a strict style, including snail mail addresses, formal greetings, closings, and well-defined paragraphs and sentence structure. My guess is that this is someone "playing lawyer." Or maybe they got one of those "Sally Struthers You CAN Learn to be a Lawyer at Home!" kits?
"...this gay ass university (miami university in oxford, oh) requires frosh to live in the dorms. I dunno maybe it's some political agenda to promote diversity..."
Such policies (requiring 1st, 2nd-year students to live in the dorms) are usually promoted as a method to "promote diversity" on campus. If you dig around however, it doesn't take long to figure out the real motivation: money. Several campuses in the University of Wisconsin system built extravagant high-rise dorms during the college attendance booms of the late 1960s. Now many of them sit empty or are being used as "conference centers" (read: cheap state-sponsored hotels).
I had a economics class (Government and Business/Industrial Organizations) where we did research into the "residence life" departments of several UW-system schools. Guess what? The Universities are still paying off the huge loans they took out in the 60's to build these giant high-rise dorms. They need residents, and the housing fees they pay, to keep their budgets in line. How do you get residents? Force them to live there. Until the high-speed Internet access became a dorm-room realilty, no one wanted to live in a 10x10 dorm room complete with an annoying pseudo-parent who was constantly checking up to see if you were sneaking beer into your room. Now, however, I have seen people choosing to stay in the dorms beyond the mandatory 2 years here so they could keep the high-speed Internet access. Several previously unused floors in one of the high-rises were recently opened to handle the increased demand for university housing (er...I mean, net access.)
It will be interesting to see how this shift in demand for dorm housing affects off-campus housing in the next few years--or perhaps even more interesting: What will happen to the dorms when residential, high-speed net access becomes available (and affordable)? Intersting times, indeed...
Using phrases like "rip it" make you think of copyright violation via copying.
That fact that phrases like "rip it" immediately conjure up images of "copyright violation via copying" shows just how effectively the RIAA propaganda machine has been doing its job. I regularly rip my legally purchased audio CDs in order to make my own audio CD music mixes for the car, etc. This is perfectly legal--but I'm sure the RIAA will try to find a way to make it appear illegal or, at least, immoral.
Of course it discusses Windows client configs!
on
Using Samba
·
· Score: 5
"The chapter on configuring Windows clients seemed a little out of place, given that this book promotes Samba as a replacement or alternative to a Windows server. That's pretty straightforward, and probably not why you'd buy a book about Samba."
I hope that I'm just reading this passage incorrectly, but as written, it makes no sense to me at all. Information on how to configure Windows clients is exactly why I'd consider purchasing a book on Samba. Samba is intended as a "a replacement or alternative to a Windows server", so of course there will be Windows clients connecting to it. Also, it is very likely that a Samba server will be dropped into a MS (NT, Win95, whatever) network environment, and will have to "play nice" with the exsisting network machines. Therefore, it is highly appropriate to have a section devoted to the configuration of Windows clients in the book. As someone who has not regularly used a MS-Windows OS in many years, I would surely appreciate having the reference on Windows clients to fall back on.
Do you have a link to more info about this setup? Or can you tell me what issue of QST it was in? It sounds really interesting...I wonder if I could cobble something together before tonight yet...
"USB support? It's still part of the experimental kernel and is not supported by any of the major distributions yet. Corporate desktops can not use unsupported software from kernel.org. They need the tech support facilities provided by a major Linux distributor."
How many corporate desktops would be worried about USB anyway? Most corporate operations most likely have a LAN, with printers, etc. shared by the LAN, not attached locally via USB/parallel/whatever.
It seems to me that USB is really geared more toward the home user, who is more likely to have a lot more peripheral devices attached locally to a single machine. "But, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong..." --Dennis Miller
Why did they revoke access for running Linux? Sounds really dumb to me.
Fear and ignorance. Imagine this: "Linux is a hacker (should be "cracker" I know) OS, and therefore can only be used for serving illegal warez and running IRC servers and cracking into the university systems. If you allow Linux to be installed, the end of the world as we know it is nigh upon us...blah, blah, panic, etc..."
Of course, no one actually thinks: "Hmm...lots of Computer Science/MIS students might use Linux for class work, and actually, come to think of it, lots more students in general are using Linux just because they're sick of performing "Illegal Operations" and having to reboot three times a day."
A Linux ban almost came to be here, but it was killed quickly, thanks to the fact that those in the position to make the decisions had already seen the advantages of Linux, and were able to see the anti-Linux FUD for what it was.
I think we ought to keep in mind that things you say here are taken to represent a community of linux users.
Slashdot is more than just Linux users. Here's a better way to say it:
I think we ought to keep in mind that things you say here are taken to represent a community of technically-minded users.
Don't get me wrong, there is no doubt that Slashdot is very much slanted toward Linux fans, but let's not forget the others who are part of our little community here who may not be Linux users or advocates.
BTW: Before it even starts: Linux is my personal OS of choice, so put the flame-throwers away, kiddies.
Stig Hackvan is the author of the upcoming O'Reiley and Associates title Open Source Licensing : Building Business and Cooperation With Open Source. I'll be interested to see what he has to say about the "GPL virus" in his book.
I'm sure RMS will have a response to the book eventually. If nothing else, it certianly makes for an interesting debate to follow.
Regarding signatures, personally, I couldn't tell you if a signature was made by me or not, because my signature never really looks the same twice. I suspect I'm not alone on this one.
At least digital signatures give you some assurance that the person that signed something really was the person you think it was. Tell me how I'm supposed to know that the little ink scribble at the bottom of a document was made by the proper person?
Disclaimer: I'm not really familiar with the Turbo Linux Clustering Technology. That being said, I wonder how useful the changes to the Linux kernel will be if the other tools to manage/configure/use the clustering technology are not available to the masses. An Analogy: A CD without a drive is just a shiny coaster.
Good question. I wonder what it would take to get the SSL "standard" (Is that the correct term?) changed to use a non-proprietary encryption scheme? Is SSL (secure HTTP, whatever the right term is) subject to the RFC process?
autorpm can be set up to poll a RPM repository for updates and then notify the sysadmin via E-mail when there are updates that need to be applied.
Default, "out-of-the-box" behavior for autorpm is to install nothing automatically, or without human intervention. You have to explicitly change the default configuration in order to allow automatic, unattended installation of RPM updates.
I think what Michael's trying to say is that you may have forgotten to build some necessary modules during the config (menuconfig, xconfig, etc.) stage. Go back and make sure you haven't forgotten something important like the kernel-level module loader...
It's a real easy thing to do, happens to me all the time.
This will seriously piss some people off, but here goes: NEWSFLASH: Most teenagers in the US are sexually active WAY before the age of 18. I sometimes question the reason behind the US "age of consent" laws. I remember sweating and stressing when I was in high school and I turned 18, but my girlfriend for the last year was still 16. The way these laws are enforced today, I could have been considered a "child sex offender" and forced to register for the next 20 years or whatever. Creepy stuff. Amazing how we in the US are willing to surrender our liberties in the name of doing what's "best for the children."
In the past, I've worked with youth groups that have very strict controls and rules for working with children, including a complete FBI background check. Unfortunatly, the developments over the past years have casued many otherwise good people and mentors to leave the organization for fear of some kid making up a story about abuse and ruining a life.
Not that I support the truly sick pedophiles out there that prey on children, but I can't help but wonder what this modern-day witch-hunt has done to discourage good people with a lot to offer youth groups and their members from participating. Sure, we "may protect the children" from the occaisional bad apple, but at what price? There is no way to measure what kids may be missing from never having the opportunity to meet a potentially great teacher or mentor who is now scared of interacting with kids.
The same woman I mention in a post above (her husband has a biometric time and attendance system) told me a some interesting stories about the problems her husband encountered in the southern bible-belt states. It seems that some of his client's employees were willing to quit, some actually became physically ill out of sheer terror--they truly believed they were about to recieve the mark of the beast. Apparrently, when they are calibrating these hand scanner systems and taking someone's initial measurements, the scanner displays numbers on a screen. One woman, who was already scared of this whole process, fainted when the numbers "666" came up while her hand was being scanned.
Good point. I'm actually surprised that biometrics hasn't caught on more than it has. I have a woman in one of my classes whose husband's company specializes in installing biometric time and attendance systems based on hand scanners. Seems like the the technology is there, now we just need to implement it.
Just ask any holocaust survivor how dehumanized it made them feel to have an ID number tatooed on their arms. This is scary stuff, if you think about it that way...
Go talk to your ham radio neighbor. If he's a typical ham, he'll assist you in eliminating the interference.
Indeed, a true HAM radio operator would be eager to take steps to ensure he wasn't causing you any interference. On the other hand, if you're dealing with a CB'er running some ungodly amount of power through an illegal amplifier, you're more likely to be told to screw off...CB and HAM radio are completely different services, with completely different philosophies, kind of like the difference between Linux/BSD/Open Source Whatever OS and MS/Proprietary whatever OS...
Slashdot Mirror
If I want to upgrade something on my system, I download the source, compile it and install (I hate RPM's). Why wait several months to install all the fixes in one go, when you could have fixed them many weeks before?
Because not everyone is running a single-user system with the time to waste in the "search, download, tweak, compile, repeat" process. Those of us who use Linux as a tool (not a toy) enjoy the idea of being able to drop in a CD and have a relatively up-to-date system without the hassle of having to do it by hand. In a university environment, where good help is almost impossible to find, CD distros and RPMS are a life-saver:
It's a lot easier for me to say to a student assistant: "Upgrade the gcc RPMs on the Computer Science cluster" rather than "Download the GCC tarball, and compile it? What's that? Configure options? Here...do this. Hmm--dependecy problems. Ok, you fix it this way... Another question? Ok, here, I'll just have to do it myself, since we needed this done last week."
Also, RPMs are great for ansering the "what the heck is that file doing there?" question.
When I only had my home Linux box to play with, I used to be a "source tarball, compile your own is the only way!" guy. Then I started using Linux at work. There's a big difference when you have to manage multiple machines and users. Suddenly, RPMs don't seem so bad at all...
Unfortunatly, most systems running linux are not for high-performance environments...
Please define "high-performance." Standing alone, this comment may appear at first glance to be flamebait.
"Wouldn't the time be better spent bring a real _server_ OS up to IA-64 spec?"
To what end? So that high-end hardware becomes useable only by "high-end" (READ: rediculously expensive) OS users? Umm...or would the time perhaps be better spent bringing high-performance features to Linux? As a sysadmin who has worked with both Linux and some of those other "real _server_ OS"'s you speak of, I'd much rather see Linux brought up to the level of Solaris and some of the other enterprise-level, high-performance OS's out there.
I'd just rather deal with Linux on a daily basis. I've learned it's a much more pleasant experience than wrangling with some of the commercial UNIX offerings.
I'm glad to see more development of this nature. Congrats to Adaptec for taking this first, small step in the right direction. Next step: Open-source drivers, open hardware and development specs.
"The "threatening legal letter" from the Hotmail account appears to be an amateurish fake. I would be very surprised if it turned out to have been sent by a real lawyer. Notice also that when you send threatening letters through e-mail, you don't need real legal letterhead to print them on."
It would surprise me as well to see an attorney for a "technology" firm using a hotmail account to send offcial correspondence. Some things that raised the red flag for me in this "lawyer's" E-Mail:
Overall, this whole message just seems too informal. Most legal communication follows a strict style, including snail mail addresses, formal greetings, closings, and well-defined paragraphs and sentence structure. My guess is that this is someone "playing lawyer." Or maybe they got one of those "Sally Struthers You CAN Learn to be a Lawyer at Home!" kits?
"...this gay ass university (miami university in oxford, oh) requires frosh to live in the dorms. I dunno maybe it's some political agenda to promote diversity..."
Such policies (requiring 1st, 2nd-year students to live in the dorms) are usually promoted as a method to "promote diversity" on campus. If you dig around however, it doesn't take long to figure out the real motivation: money. Several campuses in the University of Wisconsin system built extravagant high-rise dorms during the college attendance booms of the late 1960s. Now many of them sit empty or are being used as "conference centers" (read: cheap state-sponsored hotels).
I had a economics class (Government and Business/Industrial Organizations) where we did research into the "residence life" departments of several UW-system schools. Guess what? The Universities are still paying off the huge loans they took out in the 60's to build these giant high-rise dorms. They need residents, and the housing fees they pay, to keep their budgets in line. How do you get residents? Force them to live there. Until the high-speed Internet access became a dorm-room realilty, no one wanted to live in a 10x10 dorm room complete with an annoying pseudo-parent who was constantly checking up to see if you were sneaking beer into your room. Now, however, I have seen people choosing to stay in the dorms beyond the mandatory 2 years here so they could keep the high-speed Internet access. Several previously unused floors in one of the high-rises were recently opened to handle the increased demand for university housing (er...I mean, net access.)
It will be interesting to see how this shift in demand for dorm housing affects off-campus housing in the next few years--or perhaps even more interesting: What will happen to the dorms when residential, high-speed net access becomes available (and affordable)? Intersting times, indeed...
Using phrases like "rip it" make you think of copyright violation via copying.
That fact that phrases like "rip it" immediately conjure up images of "copyright violation via copying" shows just how effectively the RIAA propaganda machine has been doing its job. I regularly rip my legally purchased audio CDs in order to make my own audio CD music mixes for the car, etc. This is perfectly legal--but I'm sure the RIAA will try to find a way to make it appear illegal or, at least, immoral.
"The chapter on configuring Windows clients seemed a little out of place, given that this book promotes Samba as a replacement or alternative to a Windows server. That's pretty straightforward, and probably not why you'd buy a book about Samba."
I hope that I'm just reading this passage incorrectly, but as written, it makes no sense to me at all. Information on how to configure Windows clients is exactly why I'd consider purchasing a book on Samba. Samba is intended as a "a replacement or alternative to a Windows server", so of course there will be Windows clients connecting to it. Also, it is very likely that a Samba server will be dropped into a MS (NT, Win95, whatever) network environment, and will have to "play nice" with the exsisting network machines. Therefore, it is highly appropriate to have a section devoted to the configuration of Windows clients in the book. As someone who has not regularly used a MS-Windows OS in many years, I would surely appreciate having the reference on Windows clients to fall back on.
I'm using the KPC 9612 setup described in QST...
Do you have a link to more info about this setup? Or can you tell me what issue of QST it was in? It sounds really interesting...I wonder if I could cobble something together before tonight yet...
Going to try for some meteor scatter, eh? Should be fun. I wish I had the right gear to play with the scatter modes...73 de KF9FR...
"USB support? It's still part of the experimental kernel and is not supported by any of the major distributions yet. Corporate desktops can not use unsupported software from kernel.org. They need the tech support facilities provided by a major Linux distributor."
How many corporate desktops would be worried about USB anyway? Most corporate operations most likely have a LAN, with printers, etc. shared by the LAN, not attached locally via USB/parallel/whatever.
It seems to me that USB is really geared more toward the home user, who is more likely to have a lot more peripheral devices attached locally to a single machine. "But, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong..." --Dennis Miller
Why did they revoke access for running Linux? Sounds really dumb to me.
Fear and ignorance. Imagine this: "Linux is a hacker (should be "cracker" I know) OS, and therefore can only be used for serving illegal warez and running IRC servers and cracking into the university systems. If you allow Linux to be installed, the end of the world as we know it is nigh upon us...blah, blah, panic, etc..."
Of course, no one actually thinks: "Hmm...lots of Computer Science/MIS students might use Linux for class work, and actually, come to think of it, lots more students in general are using Linux just because they're sick of performing "Illegal Operations" and having to reboot three times a day."
A Linux ban almost came to be here, but it was killed quickly, thanks to the fact that those in the position to make the decisions had already seen the advantages of Linux, and were able to see the anti-Linux FUD for what it was.
I think we ought to keep in mind that things you say here are taken to represent a community of linux users.
Slashdot is more than just Linux users. Here's a better way to say it:
I think we ought to keep in mind that things you say here are taken to represent a community of technically-minded users.
Don't get me wrong, there is no doubt that Slashdot is very much slanted toward Linux fans, but let's not forget the others who are part of our little community here who may not be Linux users or advocates.
BTW: Before it even starts: Linux is my personal OS of choice, so put the flame-throwers away, kiddies.
Stig Hackvan is the author of the upcoming O'Reiley and Associates title Open Source Licensing : Building Business and Cooperation With Open Source. I'll be interested to see what he has to say about the "GPL virus" in his book.
I'm sure RMS will have a response to the book eventually. If nothing else, it certianly makes for an interesting debate to follow.
Regarding signatures, personally, I couldn't tell you if a signature was made by me or not, because my signature never really looks the same twice. I suspect I'm not alone on this one.
At least digital signatures give you some assurance that the person that signed something really was the person you think it was. Tell me how I'm supposed to know that the little ink scribble at the bottom of a document was made by the proper person?
Disclaimer: I'm not really familiar with the Turbo Linux Clustering Technology.
That being said, I wonder how useful the changes to the Linux kernel will be if the other tools to manage/configure/use the clustering technology are not available to the masses. An Analogy: A CD without a drive is just a shiny coaster.
Good question. I wonder what it would take to get the SSL "standard" (Is that the correct term?) changed to use a non-proprietary encryption scheme? Is SSL (secure HTTP, whatever the right term is) subject to the RFC process?
autorpm can be set up to poll a RPM repository for updates and then notify the sysadmin via E-mail when there are updates that need to be applied.
Default, "out-of-the-box" behavior for autorpm is to install nothing automatically, or without human intervention. You have to explicitly change the default configuration in order to allow automatic, unattended installation of RPM updates.
I think what Michael's trying to say is that you may have forgotten to build some necessary modules during the config (menuconfig, xconfig, etc.) stage. Go back and make sure you haven't forgotten something important like the kernel-level module loader...
It's a real easy thing to do, happens to me all the time.
This will seriously piss some people off, but here goes: NEWSFLASH: Most teenagers in the US are sexually active WAY before the age of 18. I sometimes question the reason behind the US "age of consent" laws. I remember sweating and stressing when I was in high school and I turned 18, but my girlfriend for the last year was still 16. The way these laws are enforced today, I could have been considered a "child sex offender" and forced to register for the next 20 years or whatever. Creepy stuff. Amazing how we in the US are willing to surrender our liberties in the name of doing what's "best for the children."
In the past, I've worked with youth groups that have very strict controls and rules for working with children, including a complete FBI background check. Unfortunatly, the developments over the past years have casued many otherwise good people and mentors to leave the organization for fear of some kid making up a story about abuse and ruining a life.
Not that I support the truly sick pedophiles out there that prey on children, but I can't help but wonder what this modern-day witch-hunt has done to discourage good people with a lot to offer youth groups and their members from participating. Sure, we "may protect the children" from the occaisional bad apple, but at what price? There is no way to measure what kids may be missing from never having the opportunity to meet a potentially great teacher or mentor who is now scared of interacting with kids.
Ok everyone, here's your chance to talk about that bitchin' Beowulf cluster...
The same woman I mention in a post above (her husband has a biometric time and attendance system) told me a some interesting stories about the problems her husband encountered in the southern bible-belt states. It seems that some of his client's employees were willing to quit, some actually became physically ill out of sheer terror--they truly believed they were about to recieve the mark of the beast. Apparrently, when they are calibrating these hand scanner systems and taking someone's initial measurements, the scanner displays numbers on a screen. One woman, who was already scared of this whole process, fainted when the numbers "666" came up while her hand was being scanned.
Good point. I'm actually surprised that biometrics hasn't caught on more than it has. I have a woman in one of my classes whose husband's company specializes in installing biometric time and attendance systems based on hand scanners. Seems like the the technology is there, now we just need to implement it.
Just ask any holocaust survivor how dehumanized it made them feel to have an ID number tatooed on their arms. This is scary stuff, if you think about it that way...
Oh my god! A school actually teaching Systems and Internet administration? Where do I sign up? What school is this?
Go talk to your ham radio neighbor. If he's a typical ham, he'll assist you in eliminating the interference.
Indeed, a true HAM radio operator would be eager to take steps to ensure he wasn't causing you any interference. On the other hand, if you're dealing with a CB'er running some ungodly amount of power through an illegal amplifier, you're more likely to be told to screw off...CB and HAM radio are completely different services, with completely different philosophies, kind of like the difference between Linux/BSD/Open Source Whatever OS and MS/Proprietary whatever OS...
Chuck Milam - KF9FRYou're thinking of Peter Cushing, who played Grand Moff Tarkin.