I, for one, am not that keen on RedHat's proposal. While a lot of people here would like to think that Linux is a nice useable soultion for schoolchildren and teachers, I'm not sure this is true.
I fear that the schools would get their hands on the hardware, basically say something along this lines of 'Omg, this is crap, I can't use this' (or the equivalent in schoolteacher / schoolkid language), and go and shell out the money for the equivalent Windows licences. Thus Microsoft not only gets to extend it's monopoly, but potentially millions of $ of school budget could be wasted (and at that: put into Microsoft's hands)
I know, this is slightly OT, but I feel I had to say it as many people were mentioning the Redhat proposal here.
I'm reading farenheit 451 right now, and those hounds are fucking scary. along with a lot of things in that book. bloody hell ray bradbury knows how to stop me sleeping after reading that book.
Do you ever see a BSOD on a cashpoint - I haven't?
Not quite, but I have seen one on a train ticket machine. For the rest of you in the UK, it was one of those computerised ones they have on the Thameslink lines. I was so upset because I didnt have a camera with me.
In fact come to think of it, it wansn't quite a BSOD, but an 'Error in kernel32.dll'.
This is exactly why im giving uni a miss for a few years until i can figure out something i will enjoy. I foresaw a uni CS course completely ruining my enthusiasm for the subject and ending up exactly how you feel.
I really dont want to ruin computing for myself, its the only break i can get from work:)
...plus i would have got really bored during the first year with the other students being at the 'what's this "commanding line" thing i keep hearing about?' stage. (call me a snob:).
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You never know, this may benefit the free software movement. Just think about it. Competent engineers sitting around at home for a couple of months with nothing better to do, and no regular income.
There MUST be optimisations for the G3/G4 around, because the compiler that comes with MacOS X, the same compiler apple uses commercially AFAIK, is egcs. An open source compiler. So either Apple is not using an optimised compiler (which would be crazy) or the optimisations must have been made public.
Yes, but youve got to remember that they used to do this with old Cyrix's.
If you take a look, they were always careful to call it a `Cyrix 200' rather than a `200Mhz Cyrix'. This is because a Cyrix 200 ran at 166Mhz (and still didnt compare to a 166 pentium MMX incidentally).
This kinda thing has already been going on in the London (UK) area for a couple of years. It's not exactly the same, but the principle is very similar.
It's here, and speaking of which I wonder how its getting on: I havent had a look for a couple of months.
Heres the article, because i cant stand those bloody reg sites. (yeah yeah karma whore)
Invoking a national security law normally used in highly publicized espionage cases, the Justice Department told a federal judge on Thursday that it would not publicly reveal the details of the "key logger" system used to gather evidence in the gambling and loansharking trial of Nicodemo S. Scarfo Jr.
The technology behind the key logger, which was developed by the F.B.I. but is similar to readily available commercial products, has become a central issue in the case against Mr. Scarfo. But, privacy experts say, the technology is also a new disturbance to the delicate balance between the privacy rights of citizens and the growing power of technology to help government invade privacy.
In the Scarfo case, F.B.I. agents installed the monitoring technology, which records keystrokes, on Mr. Scarfo's personal computer under a court-authorized search warrant. Mr. Scarfo's lawyers have argued that the technology resembles a wiretap, and that using the logger without going through the relatively stringent requirements of a full wiretap order may have violated Mr. Scarfo's constitutional rights. But they say that they cannot know for sure unless they know how the logger works.
Judge Nicholas H. Politan of the United States District Court in Newark agreed with Mr. Scarfo's lawyers and on Aug. 7 ordered the government to produce further information about the technology by Aug. 31. The judge also ruled that the government could file a memorandum before then as to why it could not comply. It was that memorandum that was filed on Thursday.
Lawyers directly involved in both sides of the case are under an order not to discuss it, and could not comment.
The government has previously argued that the technology is classified, but until the new filings, it had not officially invoked the Classified Information Procedure Act, which is normally used to prevent criminal defendants like Robert P. Hanssen, the accused spy, from revealing government secrets in open court.
Ronald D. Wigler, an assistant United States attorney, said in court filings on Thursday that the government was seeking to invoke the act in the Scarfo case. The government said it had not withheld any information from Mr. Scarfo that might be helpful in his attempts to get the evidence gathered by the key-logger system rejected.
Revealing the inner workings of the technology, Mr. Wigler has argued, would render it useless in future investigations. He offered instead to provide an "unclassified summary statement" that could be reviewed by Mr. Scarfo's lawyers and "a more complete description" of the technology for the judge's eyes only.
Mr. Scarfo is the son of the imprisoned mob boss Nicodemo S. (Little Nicky) Scarfo Sr. The key logger captured the password that the younger Mr. Scarfo is accused of having used with a popular encryption program to scramble and unscramble records of gambling and loansharking operations.
Mark Rasch, a former Justice Department lawyer who was involved in several cases using the Classified Information Procedures Act, said that the government's use of the law was surprising.
"This is using an elephant gun to swat a fly," he said.
He also said the government's action raised more questions than it answered. Under the law, for example, the government is required to show that it classified the technology in question properly, and did so before it was used in the investigation. "Simply saying `it's classified' is not enough," he said. The government has not yet publicly offered the proof that Mr. Rasch described.
Mr. Rasch, who has consulted with civil liberties groups that are following the case, said that absent such proof, it could be argued that the government had invoked the law as a legal maneuver. If the government classified the technology after the fact, he said: "That would be disingenuous. That would be unconscionable."
David Sobel, the general counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a policy and advocacy group in Washington, said, "The government elected to use this technique, and should not now attempt to hide its details under the guise of national security."
He added: "It raises very basic questions of accountability. The suggestion that the use of high-tech law enforcement investigative techniques should result in a departure from our tradition of open judicial proceedings is very troubling."
They are following the procedures of relicensing allowed from the GPL, so everything is legal
Are you sure about this? If I had contributed code to Tux Racer I would be pretty miffed if I found out that I didn't have any rights to stop them selling my code as their commercial product...
Yes, but people know about cars (relatively). They seem to understand them.
Whereas with the internet people who dont know anything about it are scared of it and often fail to apply basic real-world logic to it. So the conclusion they come up with are frequently completely irrational.
this is the last thing people need. This means the whole issue is going to blow over and be diffused, so that we dont get down to the real issues that are at stake (the DMCA).
This way the whole thing will be forgotten. This was a chance for the community to alert the whole world to this illegal law.
Nevermind the fact that Blair seems too worried of the NAFTA to make any complaint about Bush's policies on the Kyoto Agreement
Nevermind the fact that Blair's 'Ethical Foreign Policy' has gone the way of millions of tons of water and millions of displaced turks.
Nevermind all the companies that have their hands firmly in the back pocket of Uncle Tony.
Nevermind that Blair doesnt seem to have fulfilled a single promise on his 'promise card', and is most definitely being elected for a second term.
Nevermind the fact that the UK public tend to think anyone in Politics that is actually employing their brain, rather than knee-jerks, to something is indecisive.
Nevermind the fact that this is probably the most important time for these things in History, yet most newspapers are more interested in what celebrities were seen drunk last weekend.
Coz it'll all be taken care of. honest.
after all, its above our heads.
I used to get this with redhat.
The first time i started using linux was with something like redhat 6.x. i think. I HATED the bastard, admittedly i didnt know what the fvck i was doing, but i found that NOTHING would compile and it was all messed up. it felt like the thing was falling apart all the time, and it was horrible and bloated, coz i didnt really know what packages i should (or more importantly not) be installing. Anyway i found this with 7 too and i was getting really pissed off.
Then i started looking at BSDs and ended up finding an old copy of redhat 5, installing it really minimalistically, and doing things properly, and not just fvcking around with things like linuxconf all the time.
This made me REALLY love linux, and i quite soon mastered it. So to get an up to date distro i got slack 7.1, which i found to eally stable reliable slim and great. i mean, things actually compile properly. I havent found one thing which doesnt yet.
I would really recomment this approach to the newbie.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you mean WMV or WMA, WMF is the Windows MetaFile, you know, that old crappy vector image format.
Not many teachers are going to settle for a system that the kids can use but they find puzzling, when they know there's an 'easier' alternative.
I fear that the schools would get their hands on the hardware, basically say something along this lines of 'Omg, this is crap, I can't use this' (or the equivalent in schoolteacher / schoolkid language), and go and shell out the money for the equivalent Windows licences. Thus Microsoft not only gets to extend it's monopoly, but potentially millions of $ of school budget could be wasted (and at that: put into Microsoft's hands)
I know, this is slightly OT, but I feel I had to say it as many people were mentioning the Redhat proposal here.
I'm reading farenheit 451 right now, and those hounds are fucking scary. along with a lot of things in that book. bloody hell ray bradbury knows how to stop me sleeping after reading that book.
Not quite, but I have seen one on a train ticket machine. For the rest of you in the UK, it was one of those computerised ones they have on the Thameslink lines. I was so upset because I didnt have a camera with me.
In fact come to think of it, it wansn't quite a BSOD, but an 'Error in kernel32.dll'.
Lifetime membership to a naturist club?
I really dont want to ruin computing for myself, its the only break i can get from work :)
...plus i would have got really bored during the first year with the other students being at the 'what's this "commanding line" thing i keep hearing about?' stage. (call me a snob :).
You never know, this may benefit the free software movement. Just think about it. Competent engineers sitting around at home for a couple of months with nothing better to do, and no regular income.
There MUST be optimisations for the G3/G4 around, because the compiler that comes with MacOS X, the same compiler apple uses commercially AFAIK, is egcs. An open source compiler. So either Apple is not using an optimised compiler (which would be crazy) or the optimisations must have been made public.
With 96 Xeons in it?
...and they're lazy enough to just go and run RedHat on it?
When this fucks up its not going to look good for the linux community.
And yes this post is probably going to get me the most troll ratings I've ever had, but I had to say it.
How can they be naive enough to have such a poerful machine and run a _desktop_ targeted distribution on it?
No matter what altitude it is at, this is _always_ true. Thats how orbits work.
If you take a look, they were always careful to call it a `Cyrix 200' rather than a `200Mhz Cyrix'. This is because a Cyrix 200 ran at 166Mhz (and still didnt compare to a 166 pentium MMX incidentally).
It's here, and speaking of which I wonder how its getting on: I havent had a look for a couple of months.
it still amazes me that msnbc, a microsoft affiliated site, can put up this somewhat anti-corporate and sometimes anti-microsoft content.
Invoking a national security law normally used in highly publicized espionage cases, the Justice Department told a federal judge on Thursday that it would not publicly reveal the details of the "key logger" system used to gather evidence in the gambling and loansharking trial of Nicodemo S. Scarfo Jr.
The technology behind the key logger, which was developed by the F.B.I. but is similar to readily available commercial products, has become a central issue in the case against Mr. Scarfo. But, privacy experts say, the technology is also a new disturbance to the delicate balance between the privacy rights of citizens and the growing power of technology to help government invade privacy.
In the Scarfo case, F.B.I. agents installed the monitoring technology, which records keystrokes, on Mr. Scarfo's personal computer under a court-authorized search warrant. Mr. Scarfo's lawyers have argued that the technology resembles a wiretap, and that using the logger without going through the relatively stringent requirements of a full wiretap order may have violated Mr. Scarfo's constitutional rights. But they say that they cannot know for sure unless they know how the logger works.
Judge Nicholas H. Politan of the United States District Court in Newark agreed with Mr. Scarfo's lawyers and on Aug. 7 ordered the government to produce further information about the technology by Aug. 31. The judge also ruled that the government could file a memorandum before then as to why it could not comply. It was that memorandum that was filed on Thursday.
Lawyers directly involved in both sides of the case are under an order not to discuss it, and could not comment.
The government has previously argued that the technology is classified, but until the new filings, it had not officially invoked the Classified Information Procedure Act, which is normally used to prevent criminal defendants like Robert P. Hanssen, the accused spy, from revealing government secrets in open court.
Ronald D. Wigler, an assistant United States attorney, said in court filings on Thursday that the government was seeking to invoke the act in the Scarfo case. The government said it had not withheld any information from Mr. Scarfo that might be helpful in his attempts to get the evidence gathered by the key-logger system rejected.
Revealing the inner workings of the technology, Mr. Wigler has argued, would render it useless in future investigations. He offered instead to provide an "unclassified summary statement" that could be reviewed by Mr. Scarfo's lawyers and "a more complete description" of the technology for the judge's eyes only.
Mr. Scarfo is the son of the imprisoned mob boss Nicodemo S. (Little Nicky) Scarfo Sr. The key logger captured the password that the younger Mr. Scarfo is accused of having used with a popular encryption program to scramble and unscramble records of gambling and loansharking operations.
Mark Rasch, a former Justice Department lawyer who was involved in several cases using the Classified Information Procedures Act, said that the government's use of the law was surprising.
"This is using an elephant gun to swat a fly," he said.
He also said the government's action raised more questions than it answered. Under the law, for example, the government is required to show that it classified the technology in question properly, and did so before it was used in the investigation. "Simply saying `it's classified' is not enough," he said. The government has not yet publicly offered the proof that Mr. Rasch described.
Mr. Rasch, who has consulted with civil liberties groups that are following the case, said that absent such proof, it could be argued that the government had invoked the law as a legal maneuver. If the government classified the technology after the fact, he said: "That would be disingenuous. That would be unconscionable."
David Sobel, the general counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a policy and advocacy group in Washington, said, "The government elected to use this technique, and should not now attempt to hide its details under the guise of national security."
He added: "It raises very basic questions of accountability. The suggestion that the use of high-tech law enforcement investigative techniques should result in a departure from our tradition of open judicial proceedings is very troubling."
For a while there I thought I was turning into some crazy sort of amnesiac
Er... Have you ever heard of Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Server Edition?
Are you sure about this? If I had contributed code to Tux Racer I would be pretty miffed if I found out that I didn't have any rights to stop them selling my code as their commercial product...
Whereas with the internet people who dont know anything about it are scared of it and often fail to apply basic real-world logic to it. So the conclusion they come up with are frequently completely irrational.
This way the whole thing will be forgotten. This was a chance for the community to alert the whole world to this illegal law.
Nevermind the fact that Blair seems too worried of the NAFTA to make any complaint about Bush's policies on the Kyoto Agreement
Nevermind the fact that Blair's 'Ethical Foreign Policy' has gone the way of millions of tons of water and millions of displaced turks.
Nevermind all the companies that have their hands firmly in the back pocket of Uncle Tony.
Nevermind that Blair doesnt seem to have fulfilled a single promise on his 'promise card', and is most definitely being elected for a second term.
Nevermind the fact that the UK public tend to think anyone in Politics that is actually employing their brain, rather than knee-jerks, to something is indecisive.
Nevermind the fact that this is probably the most important time for these things in History, yet most newspapers are more interested in what celebrities were seen drunk last weekend.
Coz it'll all be taken care of. honest.
after all, its above our heads.
If you _really_ want to slashdot this webserver, i suggest everyone trying a copy of siege (http://www.joedog.org/) on it.
*cough*
*aprilthefirst*
*cough*
who would have guessed it? how long did that last?
Then i started looking at BSDs and ended up finding an old copy of redhat 5, installing it really minimalistically, and doing things properly, and not just fvcking around with things like linuxconf all the time.
This made me REALLY love linux, and i quite soon mastered it. So to get an up to date distro i got slack 7.1, which i found to eally stable reliable slim and great. i mean, things actually compile properly. I havent found one thing which doesnt yet.
I would really recomment this approach to the newbie.