Until my boss gets a message saying that I made a "bad page", because , , , and all the other tags I've been using for 5 years are depricated in HTML 4.0. And in another 5 years the page wont render because
and have been depricated to support IE's new
tags.
The biggest user agent problem I see is resultant from plugins. (and *cking Java applets) Most plugins only work with IE, and then after you download and install them to view the page, you are forced to reboot, then come back and re-find the page. And for all of that, you get a 3d rendered penguin in Metastream.
And Java applets... Talk about "Is my computer locked up??" kinda days.... Egad...
This is nothing new, many people who are Junior's wind up getting their father's credit inoformation in their reports etc. This has been a long standing problem.
More offensive is that we can send a message in nano-seconds, but to correct credit information still takes 30-90 days.
Remember though, if you challenge information in a Credit report, the bureau has the problem of either proving it or striking it. Know your credit report and fight it often.
There was a recent story about how most companies end up buying more than one Windows license per computer. What happens when the audit reveals that they have 1,000 Windows licenses that they're not even using, and Microsoft still wants them to pay for the 20 copies of Office that they cannot find the documentation for.
Tactics like this could be very bad for Microsoft. When companies do these inventories, they end up with a much better understanding of how much Microsoft is costing them. Add this to the fact that the company is already feeling a bit put out, and you have a recipe for disaster.
As a Virginian, I am most curious about how this might affect state policies and the policies of other companies in our state. I am secretly hoping that this turns out to be a PR nightmare for Microsoft. (And then maybe they'll stop tyring to force Front Page 2000 down my throat.)
Choice is the very definition of freedom. To quote Webster's: "a) exemption or liberation from the control of some other person or arbitrary power." If noone else is controlling you and making decisions for you, I believe you have choice.
In a truly Free society, you are indeed allowed to own slaves, but the slaves are also allowed to sneak into your bedroom at night and axe you.
RMS is a zealot. That's his job. Jesus did not politely ask the money changers if they would mind leaving the temple, did not say "Maybe do unto others...", or "I think I'm the son of God."
The greater goal of Free Software must be at the very least clear to it's current guardian or it has no hope. (Look at what our obscured view of democracy hath wrought.)
I'm sure if the above bash artists did not actually type their slander on a machine powered by free software, they have programs on that machine that are heavily influenced by it.
I learned to program picking that software apart, much like I learned guitar from songbooks and tabs. Now imagine if noone ever published the "source code" for music. We always stand atop the shoulders of giants, and without free software non-institutionally trained programmers would have no prior art to learn from. (And who really gets a degree in programming nowadays?? OOh! I can learn fortran.... Instead of making $80,000 a year.)
Anyone who has ever held strong convictions on a subject must surely understand the position RMS must take. Looks like many Slashdot users cannot come up with more of a conviction than "Bill Gates sux." (And even then they think their rebels for using Netscape on Winblows....)
And on a final note, RMS never said don't do it, he simply said a) I would not do it, and b) It's not free software. From the author's comments it looked as though he knew both of these to be true and was looking for some approval from RMS to quiet his concience (Or at least "feel better" about it.). And with all of the links RMS was tossing out I'm suprised that he didn't resort to the old RTFM defense.
Personally, if I decided to bug RMS without reading his foundation's philosophy, history, and license, I'd feel dumber than a bean pole at Weight Watchers.
As far as starting Open Source, many deserve credit, and the zero hour is impossible to pinpoint. Who started the Open Source 'Revolution' is another question.
Red Hat and their ilk brought Open Source to the forefront of the world's frontal lobe. Sad but true, the boss who kept asking me to move my Linux webserver to NT is now bragging to his boss about how long we've had Linux. (Since kernel 0.91)
I am now looking at an item that has lingered on my desk far too long... "Prime Time Freeware for UNIX"... it proudly boasts containing X11R6 and BSD 4.4 (altough X11 is still in beta). The 'gcc' version is 1.42, the 'perl' version is 4.036. Plan 9 weighs in at 1536 KB and is only the erly drafts. Amiga Mach and Condor OS'es are also included. Linux is not mentioned. (For a reason....)
The point is this, Open Source was around long before Linux... did you notice??
I think large scale corporate interest in Linux began the revolution, and this did not begin with Red Hat. Red Hat was a by product of other efforts like Ydgrassil Linux, Elf Linux, etc... Red Hat, the company, came into the game late in the first quarter, but did start.
~Hammy
"I don't know who started the revolution, but I'd sure recognize the bastard that cut off my head if I saw him again." -King Louis XVI
I've got a great old SOLO 2100 with a p200MMX, running Caldera Technology Preview (Need to buy OSS to get sound) that I'd be willing to let go for sub $1K....
2GB HD and 96 MB of RAM! 12.1 TFT screen.
Actually, My work computer is a P166 (OC'ed to 233) with 64MB of ram.... I'd let you have that really cheap!
~Hammy
"I never met a VC I didn't like, for a while."
Check IE preferences. Make sure that the "Automagically check for Updates" (or something like that....) is not turned on. This setting will make it so that your browser doesn't call home before going to your start page. That is most likely what your experiencing.
And as far as the other response, "Local means Local Computer"... No, local means local network. I'm sure you knew that, but....
Hand-waving about the crisis the PC will face when all of these AOL users get a 32 bit OS is irrelevant. The fact is that the average user WILL get a 32 bit OS, and we should darn well give it to them before Apple or IBM. We can't predict the impact of all new economic or technological changes without some hard cover book sales @ the speed of thought.
I say, roll out the pretty blue boxes and let the support calls roll in. Sure, our downstream partners may be bogged down in the short term, but at least they'll be calling the vendor instead of us. Then they'd pay to get everything fixed and we can start the cycle again. That's the way technology rollouts work. Release, charge, patch, charge, charge.....
Sure, it's irresponsible to use your customers to do QA (which is what would happen if we rolled it out tomorrow), but it wouldn't be the end of the world, and it's not going to happen tomorrow. It's going to happen gradually, and gradually, technology will rise to meet the demand.
William Setag
CEO Microsift Corp.
Internal memo on the release of Bimbos'95
Being a musician is about turning feeling into music, being a professional musician is performing the alchemy of turning music into money. Just be a musician.
The fact that Linus has not been too authoritarian in the development of the kernel has lent the aspect that all projects are in a "will of the people" manner constructed. But who didn't understand that enlightenment was Rasteman's baby. Most of these projects are carefully controlled by a few individuals. Once some of these apps begin to mature, to catch up with some of their Windows counterparts, we will see some truly phenominal work. How old are some of these projects started by single individuals?? Kde is maybe 3 years old and is coming close to getting the desktop to the mark set by Microsoft in 7.
Produced on a budget that would make Microsoft shudder, patched by home users and sysadmins, refined in the afterprocess, and freely available. When we have truly caught Microsoft and KDE4 is on a 3 year program schedule, not a 1 year one, we're going to see some really revolutionary ideas come out of open source projects.
For these companies, they can see that Linux will soon be on more equal footing with Microsoft. Would XFree benefit form this dandy testing lab?? You bet. Wanna write drivers for our hardware?? Here, try it. Let's face it, Linux is no longer the towel boy, it is now officially a contender.
My boss was braggin' to his boss today that we run our company intranet on Linux when all he used to do is beg me to move it to NT. I was one of those guys who always craved a *nix box when I has back in the 8086 days. Our generation grew up with computers and has learned to expect more from them.
Most of these companies have already announced that Linux is going to play a major role in the future of their companies, this effort is their way of heling Linux spring into prime time. We still have alot of gaps to fill before we can go toe to toe with the champ.
A hearty huzzah(!) to all the folks involved. Now I'm craving an SGI box with Linux.... Blender... And a big mehonchin' Raid box for my MP3's and porn.
Windows does have some incredibly cool stuff written for it. But why does my winamp stutter if I'm downloading mail?? Sigh, stuck in a world where I can only play shockwave games in Windows and only play Dannivision with sound.
~Hammy
P.S. Don't watch Dannivision with winamp on. There's all kinda higgledy-piggedly...
Hollywood is full of liberals?? True in a moral sense, maybe.
Hollywood people, the big money people, are conservative to the bone. They tolerate most liberals because their $7.50 plus popcorn is as good as anyone else's. Directors are liberal, producers are liberal, actors are liberal, backers and distributors are conservative as hell.
Unstable: Has some glaring configuration errors, is the copy I'm currently working on and is in no way guaranteed to compile.
Release: Not all features implemented, but the glaring bugs have been fixed. Will compile, has an updated readme and gets it's very own release number.
Stable: 1.0 or better. No new features added since the 1.0 release, just some minor bugfixes implemented due to other people's configurations or updated libs.
I know that these are not necessarily everyone's definitions, but they work for me.
~Hammy
"You fargin' bastiches..."
Re:Definitions and Motivations
on
Is UNIX An OS?
·
· Score: 3
But to make a better point...
Many people did and do find a kernel and a shell productive witout the bundled utilities that make the OS more user friendly. That is what the various GUI's do, they abstract the OS to make the OS appealing to those who do not understand the underpinnings of the technology.
Perhaps OS could be defined as the "bare minimum" requirements for making a computer usable. This would support the author's ideology of OS, and still makes Unix an OS. To say that an OS isn't an OS without (God, now I'm laughing...) "Control Panels and Extensions" (tee hee, silly Mac boy) is simply lunacy. These abstractions simplify the user experience, but do not add a thing to the usability of a computer. (the OS, but not the computer itself) Indeed, monkeying around with the various "Control Panels" in the various OSes is an abstraction that can be quite dicey. These abstractions spare us the pain of handwriting Xconfigs, manually editing registrys to add hardware, etc..., but in no way do they benefit the computer itself. They are really nothing more that glorified text processors with very narrow usage abilities. The "Add New Hardware Wizard" is nothing more than an abstraction to regedit.
The purpose of an OS lies in storage and retrieval, input and output. Libraries add in math functions on a human readable level etc..., but the kernel is well capable of math before the libraries are included. The user is simply not capable of expressing that in computer terms.
The entire Idea of OS X is a Mac look and feel abstraction to *nix. As is XF86Setup, as is any installation program. The OS does not truly benefit from these abstractions, only the user does. Much as a web browser is a glorified "rcp" and a www.netscape.com is an abstraction of 207.200.83.93. (even that is an abstraction of a bunch of "0"'s and "1"'s.) (wich is an abstraction of... you get the point...) From a strictly OS point of view, all these abstractions do is waste precious (and copious) memory and clock cycles.
These abstractions can be layered on top of an OS much like voice recognition is an abstraction of keyboard input. Get voice input, translate to text, feed to shell. Our poor author cannot see the OS for the abstractions.
If he truly wanted to market OS X, he could simply say "The power of Unix with the ease of use of a Mac."
make xconfig ; #Now there's an OS! (Why won't it compile??)
MP3 is a proprietary format. They buy the rights to the MP3 format, and charge any site that distributes MP3's a "license fee" similar to the one that Unisys tried to levy against websites that use GIF's. Remember, this is the company that threw mad cash at ZZ Top just so that their label would appear "more American" a couple of years back. (I think it was 10 mil or so...)
The truth is that the music industry will protect its buisness. If someone kept breaking into your house, you'd get a burgular alarm, and the record companies see themselves in that same situation right now. (Whether they are or not is another question entirely and beyond the scope of what I am trying to present.)
Furthermore, they could change the format of the music they sell, making piracy (can't really think of a better word) more difficult at least or impossible at best. (Impossible is not possible. The music will eventually be converted to an analog signal where it could be converted to something digital.) If we were still using LP's, I'm sure that the MP3 thing would not have taken off. Most people out there can't figure out how to get AOL working, I can't see them figuring out how to hook up analog inputs to their sound card and record an MP3. By reducing the number of people that can produce digital copies they create better targets for the law to go after.
Remember, Napster's defense is that they do not pirate the music themselves, they only provide a service for sharing the files. In scenario #2, the actual producers of digital copies can be made liable.
So long as Napster and related services remain (in their eyes) a threat to their revenue, the industry will do whatever it takes to stop them. This is called survival. If the record companies think they're going to lose a billion dollars because of this, they will spend a billion to stop it. "Welcome to the jungle, it gets worse here every day..."
~Hammy
"You're listening to American Bandstand and who gives a shi*" ~Casey Kasem
This has got to be the biggest piece of horse hockey my brain has ever played with. The authors of this article have obviously not been paying attention to trends in computing.
Most of the technologies that they mention are in the theoretical stage at this point, and as we all know, most theoretical technologies are press fluff. 5 years ago I remember hearing about "Ion Drives" that would be able to write a GB of data to a square inch by changing the electrical signal of individual molecules. It was an optical technology etc........ Where is it?? Still in my May '95 copy of Wired apparently.
It is a well known fact that Academia has a cute tendency to announce technologies that will be available "in a few years" knowing full well that they will never materialize. Hell, we're still waiting for Rambus and Sapphire chips aren't we??
Also, the computer market is moving more toward embedded computing and small "appliances" like wireless web-pads. Not the monolithic beastie presented here.
And the idea that the "Biometric horah-doodah" will make my computer infinitely secure?? Yeah, when the Slashdot community has been lobotomized...
And I can't see my employer shelling out for the future desk they write about either. The f***er won't even get me a separate phone line for Bhudda's sake.
This might be the computer of 2525, better yet, the computer of 2050, but even then I doubt it. Most likely this is just the unfortunate side effect of an acid flashback.
(Besides, I have this scary vision of everybody in my office talking in C code at once and me screaming across the room, "Shut up! You're screwing with my syntax!") But in ten years apparently programming will be something you do in plain English. (Ha, ha, ha.... They said that in 1980 about 1990...)
At least a cow leaves behind something solid, powerful, and nutritious for geese. Forbes has simply contributed to landfill... But hey, mental mastrubation is almost as fun and doesn't leave your arm all tired...
~Hammy
"The 486 processor is so powerful it is doubtful that it will ever be used in anything other than high end servers." -Byte Magazine, October 1991
Well, the "Add new hardware" wizard sometimes does not work at all, and you have no other real recourse when it doesn't. I used to make a killing installing modems because of the "Virtual Com Ports" and other such rot.
As for the rest of it, many devices just get picked up by the kernel, or have distro vendor tools for installation. "Yast -> System Administration -> Integrate Hardware" is no more difficult than "Control Panel -> etc...".
The truth of it is that people start off using Microsoft products, it's what they "know", and hence they think it's easier.
/opt/oss/soundconf -> Autodetect for sound cards is not much different than the MS method, and so on... Yes, Linux can improve on many things in this area, but does not need to in the strict Win9x emulation that so many people seem to desire.
As far as double clicking on a file to install, there are RPM frontends out there that allow for just that.
Options are confusing to many, but are the ethos of Linux. If people did not want options and control we would never have bothered to start, and we'd all be happy using Windows. (Which probably would have been in a worse state without the competition of Linux to light a fire under it.)
Also, Linux does not suffer from deterioration with use as does Windows. Although not as bad as MAC OS, Windows has a tendency to either fall apart or become unbearably slowww after a year of use. I even see this on our companies workstations that do not get extra software installed on them. On our graphics stations a manual clean-up of the win.ini and a reg clean is needed every month, and FAT corruption causes them to be rebuilt once a year.
Define "GUI that doesn't suck"... Would that be the MS GUI?? Check out KDE2. Even in beta it's more stable than MS.
Enlightenment + Gnome doesn't suck either. FVWM95 does suck.
Have you tried Caldera OpenLinux?? Their installation is ridiculously simple, and you can play Majongg while files get copied. Also the need to reboot 5-100 times is removed.
Also, Win98 vs. Linux comparisons are misleading. Our true competition is WinNT and 2000. Most any linux distro is easier to install than NT4 and does not have later installation issues with service packs, etc. Heck, most people won't even install Win2000 SP1 yet for fear of what it will do.
What most people find so "difficult" about linux installs are issues with unsupported hardware (same as 2000) and package selection. If MS offered half of the apps that most distros do they would have the same problems. (Latest SUSE update: 3228 packages.)
About the Win98 users in China, half of all bicycles are still sold with training wheels, then you upgrade to a car. Most of those people have not had a chance to use a computer before, does their choice to use MS validate the value of Windows?? Tell me what they're using in 2-3 years. Considering the economic conditions in China I'd guess at least a few of them will be using Linux. Comparing US prices for Win98 comes out to 2,000 Hong Kong Dollars per copy, but I'm sure that MS is using drug dealer techniques to get you all hooked. (Fist hit is free, second one costs a bit more...) In comparison, I haven't paid for Linux in years, and even a full price copy of SUSE would run 300 HKD based on the same comparison. (The exchange rate was 10 to 1 when I was over there a few months ago...)
Looks like the British brought opium and the Americans are bringing Windows...
~Hammy
"In a country where chicken's feet are a delicasy, you can be sure that someone else keeps stealing the rest of the chicken." ~Cohen
We recently migrated to Outlook due to corporate, and I made the comment: I never thought anything would make me pine for CC Mail again....
I work in a Unix shop where we all have to share one Winblows box for e-mail and I must say that Outlook is a major PIA. (Pain in the Artichokes)
But at least the web access works with Netscape. (At least until the next Exchange patch...)
And more to the point made by Kabloona, MS cannot port anything to Linux without losing much of the mindshare they currently enjoy. Our desktops are getting slicker, (Check out KDE2) our uptime is still better, and our reputation is better.
But heck, I just applied for a job as a Solaris admin and got: "Could you send me your resume in DOC format??" I sent it as a perl app instead.
We purchased clustering software from a third party vendor that used SQL server extensively. (Name omitted for obvious reasons) The way their system was set up the "sa" passwd could not be changed. Other programs were hard coded to use this default passwd.
I asked the vendor two very important questions:
1) Why am I allowing all of these other machines to connect as the sysadmin anyway??
2) When will this be fixed?
The answer to both? "Um..."
I know many of you will say that this is a case that won't happen often, but I beg to differ:
One of our Sun based systems has a "default" root password. Changing your root passwd has the unfortunate side effect of none of the users being able to log in. The company that sold us the software has no idea why this is, and we were the first site to report this vulnerability. (?backdoor?) This is a vendor that has been in business for 20 years, and our systems are 5-6 years old. Of course this does mean that I could wreck the publishing industry some day...
Of course, an attach to an NT workstation on port 139 and a "net users" can yield up a domains worth of unames, and trying each with a blank password is almost guaranteed to get you into most corporate domains. Extract the SAM DB and get a copy of L0phtcrack...
Some days this stuff is just too easy...
Outlaw blank passwords!!!!!
Always change and default passwords while the vendor is still in the building!!! If you veer recieve a machine that is vulnerable in the way mentioned above, refuse delivery. Tell the vendor that you will not sign off on the install until these are fixed, and also that they will not get paid....
You are already ahead of 80% of admins out there.
~Hammy
"Good, Bad, I'm the guy with the root access." ~AOD
DHCP is really an easy enough protocol for most any device. There are already quite a few "Broadband switches" that act as a DHCP client and server as well as a firewall. (As a bad firewall)
With the advent of ethernet available appliances we will most likely see the next version of ethernet/internet access support much of this in the providers interface. (Not the monkey boy cable modems of today, but the internet pipe to your futurehome.) The technologies are still in their infancies. Over the next 20 years we will see the PC as we know it become obsolete in favor of appliances. As this trend begins the market leaders will be those that bring this to someone other than the geeks and the freaks.
All you need is 172.16 class addresses beyond the firewall anyway. DHCP will do a fine job of this. The last thing we need is a new protocol to muck things up. (Although for the rest of the world a new protocol will need to come and soon...)
The only reason to go with another protocol would be that it would work better on a chip level, hence would integrate better in smaller appliances. The one that shall rule them all is the one that is the easiest to use and the most difficult to hack. *SIGH*
~Hammy
"I did not have sex with that woman..." B.C.
For instance, compare supporting a Samba server running off a Linux box serving 1,000 users to a Windows 2000 solution doing the same thing.
Actually this message is being typed on a box that does just that, as well as serving the same directories to MAC users via atalk. For completeness sake, Pharlap here serves about 60 gigs of data daily.
Slashdot Mirror
and
have been depricated to support IE's new tags.
The biggest user agent problem I see is resultant from plugins. (and *cking Java applets) Most plugins only work with IE, and then after you download and install them to view the page, you are forced to reboot, then come back and re-find the page. And for all of that, you get a 3d rendered penguin in Metastream.
And Java applets... Talk about "Is my computer locked up??" kinda days.... Egad...
It was people long before it was technology...
This is nothing new, many people who are Junior's wind up getting their father's credit inoformation in their reports etc. This has been a long standing problem.
More offensive is that we can send a message in nano-seconds, but to correct credit information still takes 30-90 days.
Remember though, if you challenge information in a Credit report, the bureau has the problem of either proving it or striking it. Know your credit report and fight it often.
Hammy
My uncle Freddie invented the Ice cube tray, and he did not patent it. He also died over the holidays.
He invented the tray when he was 17, and it got him his job at Frigidaire.
Just thought you'd like to know.
Hammy
www.freakingeeks.com
As a musician myself I must ask my role models this burning question:
Digital or Analog?
Indeed I know there lurks a purist analog soul in TMBG, but who better to get the most out of digital mixing??
Also, if the boys could reccommend a good portable 4-Track I'd be much obliged.
Jason Maggard
"I might be giant, too."
There was a recent story about how most companies end up buying more than one Windows license per computer. What happens when the audit reveals that they have 1,000 Windows licenses that they're not even using, and Microsoft still wants them to pay for the 20 copies of Office that they cannot find the documentation for.
Tactics like this could be very bad for Microsoft. When companies do these inventories, they end up with a much better understanding of how much Microsoft is costing them. Add this to the fact that the company is already feeling a bit put out, and you have a recipe for disaster.
As a Virginian, I am most curious about how this might affect state policies and the policies of other companies in our state. I am secretly hoping that this turns out to be a PR nightmare for Microsoft. (And then maybe they'll stop tyring to force Front Page 2000 down my throat.)
~Hammy
Choice is the very definition of freedom. To quote Webster's: "a) exemption or liberation from the control of some other person or arbitrary power." If noone else is controlling you and making decisions for you, I believe you have choice.
In a truly Free society, you are indeed allowed to own slaves, but the slaves are also allowed to sneak into your bedroom at night and axe you.
RMS is a zealot. That's his job. Jesus did not politely ask the money changers if they would mind leaving the temple, did not say "Maybe do unto others...", or "I think I'm the son of God."
The greater goal of Free Software must be at the very least clear to it's current guardian or it has no hope. (Look at what our obscured view of democracy hath wrought.)
I'm sure if the above bash artists did not actually type their slander on a machine powered by free software, they have programs on that machine that are heavily influenced by it.
I learned to program picking that software apart, much like I learned guitar from songbooks and tabs. Now imagine if noone ever published the "source code" for music. We always stand atop the shoulders of giants, and without free software non-institutionally trained programmers would have no prior art to learn from. (And who really gets a degree in programming nowadays?? OOh! I can learn fortran.... Instead of making $80,000 a year.)
Anyone who has ever held strong convictions on a subject must surely understand the position RMS must take. Looks like many Slashdot users cannot come up with more of a conviction than "Bill Gates sux." (And even then they think their rebels for using Netscape on Winblows....)
And on a final note, RMS never said don't do it, he simply said a) I would not do it, and b) It's not free software. From the author's comments it looked as though he knew both of these to be true and was looking for some approval from RMS to quiet his concience (Or at least "feel better" about it.). And with all of the links RMS was tossing out I'm suprised that he didn't resort to the old RTFM defense.
Personally, if I decided to bug RMS without reading his foundation's philosophy, history, and license, I'd feel dumber than a bean pole at Weight Watchers.
As far as starting Open Source, many deserve credit, and the zero hour is impossible to pinpoint. Who started the Open Source 'Revolution' is another question.
Red Hat and their ilk brought Open Source to the forefront of the world's frontal lobe. Sad but true, the boss who kept asking me to move my Linux webserver to NT is now bragging to his boss about how long we've had Linux. (Since kernel 0.91)
I am now looking at an item that has lingered on my desk far too long... "Prime Time Freeware for UNIX"... it proudly boasts containing X11R6 and BSD 4.4 (altough X11 is still in beta). The 'gcc' version is 1.42, the 'perl' version is 4.036. Plan 9 weighs in at 1536 KB and is only the erly drafts. Amiga Mach and Condor OS'es are also included. Linux is not mentioned. (For a reason....)
The point is this, Open Source was around long before Linux... did you notice??
I think large scale corporate interest in Linux began the revolution, and this did not begin with Red Hat. Red Hat was a by product of other efforts like Ydgrassil Linux, Elf Linux, etc... Red Hat, the company, came into the game late in the first quarter, but did start.
~Hammy
"I don't know who started the revolution, but I'd sure recognize the bastard that cut off my head if I saw him again." -King Louis XVI
I've got a great old SOLO 2100 with a p200MMX, running Caldera Technology Preview (Need to buy OSS to get sound) that I'd be willing to let go for sub $1K....
2GB HD and 96 MB of RAM! 12.1 TFT screen.
Actually, My work computer is a P166 (OC'ed to 233) with 64MB of ram.... I'd let you have that really cheap!
~Hammy
"I never met a VC I didn't like, for a while."
Check IE preferences. Make sure that the "Automagically check for Updates" (or something like that....) is not turned on. This setting will make it so that your browser doesn't call home before going to your start page. That is most likely what your experiencing.
And as far as the other response, "Local means Local Computer"... No, local means local network. I'm sure you knew that, but....
~Hammy
That Win95 Jump & Jive!
Hand-waving about the crisis the PC will face when all of these AOL users get a 32 bit OS is irrelevant. The fact is that the average user WILL get a 32 bit OS, and we should darn well give it to them before Apple or IBM. We can't predict the impact of all new economic or technological changes without some hard cover book sales @ the speed of thought.
I say, roll out the pretty blue boxes and let the support calls roll in. Sure, our downstream partners may be bogged down in the short term, but at least they'll be calling the vendor instead of us. Then they'd pay to get everything fixed and we can start the cycle again. That's the way technology rollouts work. Release, charge, patch, charge, charge.....
Sure, it's irresponsible to use your customers to do QA (which is what would happen if we rolled it out tomorrow), but it wouldn't be the end of the world, and it's not going to happen tomorrow. It's going to happen gradually, and gradually, technology will rise to meet the demand.
William Setag
CEO Microsift Corp.
Internal memo on the release of Bimbos'95
Being a musician is about turning feeling into music, being a professional musician is performing the alchemy of turning music into money. Just be a musician.
Brought to you by Discipline
The fact that Linus has not been too authoritarian in the development of the kernel has lent the aspect that all projects are in a "will of the people" manner constructed. But who didn't understand that enlightenment was Rasteman's baby. Most of these projects are carefully controlled by a few individuals. Once some of these apps begin to mature, to catch up with some of their Windows counterparts, we will see some truly phenominal work. How old are some of these projects started by single individuals?? Kde is maybe 3 years old and is coming close to getting the desktop to the mark set by Microsoft in 7.
Produced on a budget that would make Microsoft shudder, patched by home users and sysadmins, refined in the afterprocess, and freely available. When we have truly caught Microsoft and KDE4 is on a 3 year program schedule, not a 1 year one, we're going to see some really revolutionary ideas come out of open source projects.
For these companies, they can see that Linux will soon be on more equal footing with Microsoft. Would XFree benefit form this dandy testing lab?? You bet. Wanna write drivers for our hardware?? Here, try it. Let's face it, Linux is no longer the towel boy, it is now officially a contender.
My boss was braggin' to his boss today that we run our company intranet on Linux when all he used to do is beg me to move it to NT. I was one of those guys who always craved a *nix box when I has back in the 8086 days. Our generation grew up with computers and has learned to expect more from them.
Most of these companies have already announced that Linux is going to play a major role in the future of their companies, this effort is their way of heling Linux spring into prime time. We still have alot of gaps to fill before we can go toe to toe with the champ.
A hearty huzzah(!) to all the folks involved. Now I'm craving an SGI box with Linux.... Blender... And a big mehonchin' Raid box for my MP3's and porn.
Thank you and goodnight.
~Hammy
Windows does have some incredibly cool stuff written for it. But why does my winamp stutter if I'm downloading mail?? Sigh, stuck in a world where I can only play shockwave games in Windows and only play Dannivision with sound.
~Hammy
P.S. Don't watch Dannivision with winamp on. There's all kinda higgledy-piggedly...
Hollywood is full of liberals?? True in a moral sense, maybe.
Hollywood people, the big money people, are conservative to the bone. They tolerate most liberals because their $7.50 plus popcorn is as good as anyone else's. Directors are liberal, producers are liberal, actors are liberal, backers and distributors are conservative as hell.
~Jason
Unstable: Has some glaring configuration errors, is the copy I'm currently working on and is in no way guaranteed to compile.
Release: Not all features implemented, but the glaring bugs have been fixed. Will compile, has an updated readme and gets it's very own release number.
Stable: 1.0 or better. No new features added since the 1.0 release, just some minor bugfixes implemented due to other people's configurations or updated libs.
I know that these are not necessarily everyone's definitions, but they work for me.
~Hammy
"You fargin' bastiches..."
But to make a better point...
Many people did and do find a kernel and a shell productive witout the bundled utilities that make the OS more user friendly. That is what the various GUI's do, they abstract the OS to make the OS appealing to those who do not understand the underpinnings of the technology.
Perhaps OS could be defined as the "bare minimum" requirements for making a computer usable. This would support the author's ideology of OS, and still makes Unix an OS. To say that an OS isn't an OS without (God, now I'm laughing...) "Control Panels and Extensions" (tee hee, silly Mac boy) is simply lunacy. These abstractions simplify the user experience, but do not add a thing to the usability of a computer. (the OS, but not the computer itself) Indeed, monkeying around with the various "Control Panels" in the various OSes is an abstraction that can be quite dicey. These abstractions spare us the pain of handwriting Xconfigs, manually editing registrys to add hardware, etc..., but in no way do they benefit the computer itself. They are really nothing more that glorified text processors with very narrow usage abilities. The "Add New Hardware Wizard" is nothing more than an abstraction to regedit.
The purpose of an OS lies in storage and retrieval, input and output. Libraries add in math functions on a human readable level etc..., but the kernel is well capable of math before the libraries are included. The user is simply not capable of expressing that in computer terms.
The entire Idea of OS X is a Mac look and feel abstraction to *nix. As is XF86Setup, as is any installation program. The OS does not truly benefit from these abstractions, only the user does. Much as a web browser is a glorified "rcp" and a www.netscape.com is an abstraction of 207.200.83.93. (even that is an abstraction of a bunch of "0"'s and "1"'s.) (wich is an abstraction of... you get the point...) From a strictly OS point of view, all these abstractions do is waste precious (and copious) memory and clock cycles.
These abstractions can be layered on top of an OS much like voice recognition is an abstraction of keyboard input. Get voice input, translate to text, feed to shell. Our poor author cannot see the OS for the abstractions.
If he truly wanted to market OS X, he could simply say "The power of Unix with the ease of use of a Mac."
make xconfig ; #Now there's an OS! (Why won't it compile??)
~Hammy
"Doctor, wait, their corporate prospectus, It's a cookbook!" (evil music as the door closes...)
~Hammy (Outer limits rules!)
MP3 is a proprietary format. They buy the rights to the MP3 format, and charge any site that distributes MP3's a "license fee" similar to the one that Unisys tried to levy against websites that use GIF's. Remember, this is the company that threw mad cash at ZZ Top just so that their label would appear "more American" a couple of years back. (I think it was 10 mil or so...)
The truth is that the music industry will protect its buisness. If someone kept breaking into your house, you'd get a burgular alarm, and the record companies see themselves in that same situation right now. (Whether they are or not is another question entirely and beyond the scope of what I am trying to present.)
Furthermore, they could change the format of the music they sell, making piracy (can't really think of a better word) more difficult at least or impossible at best. (Impossible is not possible. The music will eventually be converted to an analog signal where it could be converted to something digital.) If we were still using LP's, I'm sure that the MP3 thing would not have taken off. Most people out there can't figure out how to get AOL working, I can't see them figuring out how to hook up analog inputs to their sound card and record an MP3. By reducing the number of people that can produce digital copies they create better targets for the law to go after.
Remember, Napster's defense is that they do not pirate the music themselves, they only provide a service for sharing the files. In scenario #2, the actual producers of digital copies can be made liable.
So long as Napster and related services remain (in their eyes) a threat to their revenue, the industry will do whatever it takes to stop them. This is called survival. If the record companies think they're going to lose a billion dollars because of this, they will spend a billion to stop it. "Welcome to the jungle, it gets worse here every day..."
~Hammy
"You're listening to American Bandstand and who gives a shi*" ~Casey Kasem
This has got to be the biggest piece of horse hockey my brain has ever played with. The authors of this article have obviously not been paying attention to trends in computing.
Most of the technologies that they mention are in the theoretical stage at this point, and as we all know, most theoretical technologies are press fluff. 5 years ago I remember hearing about "Ion Drives" that would be able to write a GB of data to a square inch by changing the electrical signal of individual molecules. It was an optical technology etc........ Where is it?? Still in my May '95 copy of Wired apparently.
It is a well known fact that Academia has a cute tendency to announce technologies that will be available "in a few years" knowing full well that they will never materialize. Hell, we're still waiting for Rambus and Sapphire chips aren't we??
Also, the computer market is moving more toward embedded computing and small "appliances" like wireless web-pads. Not the monolithic beastie presented here.
And the idea that the "Biometric horah-doodah" will make my computer infinitely secure?? Yeah, when the Slashdot community has been lobotomized...
And I can't see my employer shelling out for the future desk they write about either. The f***er won't even get me a separate phone line for Bhudda's sake.
This might be the computer of 2525, better yet, the computer of 2050, but even then I doubt it. Most likely this is just the unfortunate side effect of an acid flashback.
(Besides, I have this scary vision of everybody in my office talking in C code at once and me screaming across the room, "Shut up! You're screwing with my syntax!") But in ten years apparently programming will be something you do in plain English. (Ha, ha, ha.... They said that in 1980 about 1990...)
At least a cow leaves behind something solid, powerful, and nutritious for geese. Forbes has simply contributed to landfill... But hey, mental mastrubation is almost as fun and doesn't leave your arm all tired...
~Hammy
"The 486 processor is so powerful it is doubtful that it will ever be used in anything other than high end servers." -Byte Magazine, October 1991
Well, the "Add new hardware" wizard sometimes does not work at all, and you have no other real recourse when it doesn't. I used to make a killing installing modems because of the "Virtual Com Ports" and other such rot.
As for the rest of it, many devices just get picked up by the kernel, or have distro vendor tools for installation. "Yast -> System Administration -> Integrate Hardware" is no more difficult than "Control Panel -> etc...".
The truth of it is that people start off using Microsoft products, it's what they "know", and hence they think it's easier.
/opt/oss/soundconf -> Autodetect for sound cards is not much different than the MS method, and so on... Yes, Linux can improve on many things in this area, but does not need to in the strict Win9x emulation that so many people seem to desire.
As far as double clicking on a file to install, there are RPM frontends out there that allow for just that.
Options are confusing to many, but are the ethos of Linux. If people did not want options and control we would never have bothered to start, and we'd all be happy using Windows. (Which probably would have been in a worse state without the competition of Linux to light a fire under it.)
Also, Linux does not suffer from deterioration with use as does Windows. Although not as bad as MAC OS, Windows has a tendency to either fall apart or become unbearably slowww after a year of use. I even see this on our companies workstations that do not get extra software installed on them. On our graphics stations a manual clean-up of the win.ini and a reg clean is needed every month, and FAT corruption causes them to be rebuilt once a year.
That doesn't strike me as easy...
~Hammy
Define "GUI that doesn't suck"... Would that be the MS GUI?? Check out KDE2. Even in beta it's more stable than MS.
Enlightenment + Gnome doesn't suck either. FVWM95 does suck.
Have you tried Caldera OpenLinux?? Their installation is ridiculously simple, and you can play Majongg while files get copied. Also the need to reboot 5-100 times is removed.
Also, Win98 vs. Linux comparisons are misleading. Our true competition is WinNT and 2000. Most any linux distro is easier to install than NT4 and does not have later installation issues with service packs, etc. Heck, most people won't even install Win2000 SP1 yet for fear of what it will do.
What most people find so "difficult" about linux installs are issues with unsupported hardware (same as 2000) and package selection. If MS offered half of the apps that most distros do they would have the same problems. (Latest SUSE update: 3228 packages.)
About the Win98 users in China, half of all bicycles are still sold with training wheels, then you upgrade to a car. Most of those people have not had a chance to use a computer before, does their choice to use MS validate the value of Windows?? Tell me what they're using in 2-3 years. Considering the economic conditions in China I'd guess at least a few of them will be using Linux. Comparing US prices for Win98 comes out to 2,000 Hong Kong Dollars per copy, but I'm sure that MS is using drug dealer techniques to get you all hooked. (Fist hit is free, second one costs a bit more...) In comparison, I haven't paid for Linux in years, and even a full price copy of SUSE would run 300 HKD based on the same comparison. (The exchange rate was 10 to 1 when I was over there a few months ago...)
Looks like the British brought opium and the Americans are bringing Windows...
~Hammy
"In a country where chicken's feet are a delicasy, you can be sure that someone else keeps stealing the rest of the chicken." ~Cohen
We recently migrated to Outlook due to corporate, and I made the comment: I never thought anything would make me pine for CC Mail again....
I work in a Unix shop where we all have to share one Winblows box for e-mail and I must say that Outlook is a major PIA. (Pain in the Artichokes)
But at least the web access works with Netscape. (At least until the next Exchange patch...)
And more to the point made by Kabloona, MS cannot port anything to Linux without losing much of the mindshare they currently enjoy. Our desktops are getting slicker, (Check out KDE2) our uptime is still better, and our reputation is better.
But heck, I just applied for a job as a Solaris admin and got: "Could you send me your resume in DOC format??" I sent it as a perl app instead.
~Hammy
"We're all Devo!" ~Boogie Boy
We purchased clustering software from a third party vendor that used SQL server extensively. (Name omitted for obvious reasons) The way their system was set up the "sa" passwd could not be changed. Other programs were hard coded to use this default passwd.
I asked the vendor two very important questions:
1) Why am I allowing all of these other machines to connect as the sysadmin anyway??
2) When will this be fixed?
The answer to both? "Um..."
I know many of you will say that this is a case that won't happen often, but I beg to differ:
One of our Sun based systems has a "default" root password. Changing your root passwd has the unfortunate side effect of none of the users being able to log in. The company that sold us the software has no idea why this is, and we were the first site to report this vulnerability. (?backdoor?) This is a vendor that has been in business for 20 years, and our systems are 5-6 years old. Of course this does mean that I could wreck the publishing industry some day...
Of course, an attach to an NT workstation on port 139 and a "net users" can yield up a domains worth of unames, and trying each with a blank password is almost guaranteed to get you into most corporate domains. Extract the SAM DB and get a copy of L0phtcrack...
Some days this stuff is just too easy...
Outlaw blank passwords!!!!!
Always change and default passwords while the vendor is still in the building!!! If you veer recieve a machine that is vulnerable in the way mentioned above, refuse delivery. Tell the vendor that you will not sign off on the install until these are fixed, and also that they will not get paid....
You are already ahead of 80% of admins out there.
~Hammy
"Good, Bad, I'm the guy with the root access." ~AOD
DHCP is really an easy enough protocol for most any device. There are already quite a few "Broadband switches" that act as a DHCP client and server as well as a firewall. (As a bad firewall)
With the advent of ethernet available appliances we will most likely see the next version of ethernet/internet access support much of this in the providers interface. (Not the monkey boy cable modems of today, but the internet pipe to your futurehome.) The technologies are still in their infancies. Over the next 20 years we will see the PC as we know it become obsolete in favor of appliances. As this trend begins the market leaders will be those that bring this to someone other than the geeks and the freaks.
All you need is 172.16 class addresses beyond the firewall anyway. DHCP will do a fine job of this. The last thing we need is a new protocol to muck things up. (Although for the rest of the world a new protocol will need to come and soon...)
The only reason to go with another protocol would be that it would work better on a chip level, hence would integrate better in smaller appliances. The one that shall rule them all is the one that is the easiest to use and the most difficult to hack. *SIGH*
~Hammy
"I did not have sex with that woman..." B.C.
For instance, compare supporting a Samba server running off a Linux box serving 1,000 users to a Windows 2000 solution doing the same thing.
Actually this message is being typed on a box that does just that, as well as serving the same directories to MAC users via atalk. For completeness sake, Pharlap here serves about 60 gigs of data daily.