special effects from the original Stsr Trek. I used to think it was just because they didn't have a lot of money for effects. Now I suspect Gene Roddenberry was actually an extraterrestrial come to earth to help advance our civilization. And to make it with hot earth chicks, of course.
[linuxho@faramir linuxho] $ telnet mail.relay.com 25
Trying 63.192.100.60...
Connected to mail.relay.com (63.192.100.60).
Escape character is '^]'.
220 CheckPoint FireWall-1 secure SMTP server
HELO mail.microsoft.com
250 Hello mail.microsoft.com, pleased to meet you
MAIL FROM: bill.gates@microsoft.com
250 2.1.0 bill.gates@microsoft.com... Sender OK
RCPT TO: bernard@shifmanconsulting.com
250 2.1.5 bernard@shifmanconsulting.com... Recipient OK
DATA
354 Enter mail, end with "." on a line by itself
Hi Bernard,
I suppose having your name posted on Slashdot and having practically everyone in the IT industry know your name must be pretty humiliating given the context it was published in.
I'm sure you've learned a lesson about when it is a good idea to back off and apologize, even when you feel you are in the right. This is probably the most expensive way I have ever seen anyone learn that lesson.
I am offering you a job at Microsoft, mostly out of pity. Please send your resume to HR@microsoft.com with a cover letter indicating your areas of expertise, and attach a copy of this e-mail to it.
This shows what a morally bankrupt, litigious society Americans live in. The underlying cause is the fact that they have no sense of history. And most of them are fat and obnoxious, too.
What? This is happening in Europe? Oh, oh, excusez moi.
Check out the LDAP module at CPAN. 'Course, if you don't already know Perl it will take you an hour or so to learn it, but I think you will find it to be the most flexible and powerful LDAP tool available.
Hmmm. It works great for us, course we only have about 2K users, but it's being heavily used for authentication of IMAP users, SAMBA authentication, RADIUS for dial-in users, plus sendmail routing, mail500 listserve lookups, and our mail clients are using it as a directory, of course.
Right, well, that's just it. The calendar/groupware functions are really what we're talking about. I put together a free mail server using Sendmail, OpenLDAP, Cyrus POP3/IMAP, IMP webmail, and I contributed to a web-based user management interface for Cyrus/OpenLDAP called Websieve, available on SourceForge.
The system as a whole does everything Exchange does, including user-controlled server-side mail filtering (Does Exchange do that?), everything except calendar/groupware.
Right now I'm hoping I can get some open-source groupware program to fill the gap, but I haven't been able to find anything yet that will do iCal and integrate with my users' Palm devices.
What a relief! I was concerned that my brothers and sisters in the Fuck Microsoft Consortium had kept me in the dark about an important new affiliate of our organization.
Take on a couple minor system administration tasks. It will not only be accepted, but expected when you adopt a surly attitude and eventually lock yourself in the server room. Nobody bothers me anymore, though it's kinda cold in here and I have to wear a parka. The aluminum pyramid hat helps keep them away when I have to leave the server room to eat, visit the restroom, or when I'm showing up or leaving. If they approach anyway, fake a seizure. That works great.
The explanation says 'instantly', but that's got to be an exaggeration.
No, seriously, the DB data is replicated INSTANTLY through a quantum non-locality much like the photon twin phenomenon. Those Sleepycat guys are really amazing.
If nothing more, than to grind one's teeth on the *art* of language design. Am I reading you wrong, or are you actually convinced that Python and Perl are the highest glory of formal systems?
Yes, you're reading me wrong - I'm not saying any of them are the holy grail, and you know it. If Ruby had made a single step past Python in the direction of "formal system glory", if Ruby actually offered anything I thought was new and interesting to the art of language design, I would be behind it 100%. Instead, I get the impression of random bits of Python and Perl cobbled together with bubble-gum and duct tape. If I choose to grind my own teeth on the art of language design at some point, I won't be choosing Ruby to grind them on.
You should become a project manager, as you have the proper terror for new ideas. I'll be here at work over the weekend, grinding out shit in Visual C++ that could have been done in no fucking time with Common Lisp. But hey, those LISPs are just fun and impractical.
Yow, my hair is smoking. Have you actually used this language you're defending so vigorously? Just because I don't like Ruby doesn't mean I don't like LISP, though you seem to have somehow made that connection. Perhaps you're projecting a little frustration at having to work over the weekend?
I'm not saying it couldn't be useful. Reinventing the wheel still gives you a very nice wheel that rolls around just fine. I'm just saying that creating it was a frivolous waste of time. It wasn't necessary. It doesn't fill a need. The effort would have been better spent improving python.
Really depends what job you want, I suppose. A CCNA is good enough to get them to look at your resume for a lot of admin-type jobs. Smart employers will put much more importance on job experience than industry certifications. The only other certification that will really be useful to you is your degree.
OTOH, if you don't already have any job experience, your time is best spent getting an entry level end-user support job, and working your way up from there. Without a degree it's pretty much the only way in. Based on what I have seen in most support call centers, the mindless nature of such jobs is best alleviated by eating lots of bananas, scratching yourself, and swinging on the office lighting fixtures. Get your degree soon.
I love Perl, wrote many a fine script in it, and a couple mostly unreadable messes. I started using Python, and am using it for most of my scripts now. I poked around Ruby's web page a while back and tried to find out what all the hoopla was about, but couldn't find anything really revolutionary. Bruce Eckel (of Thinking in C++/Java fame) doesn't seem to think much of Ruby.
Sure, maybe there's some cool new syntactic sugar. Sure, it's sexy to be able to say you're developing in/developing libraries for/developing a brand new computer language. But unless there's some significant additional benefit to this new design, why re-invent the wheel with Yet Another Language?
So, SOMEONE must be able to tell me what's so *great* about Ruby that we should start calling Python obsolete. Either that, or acknowledge that Ruby is just a fun, impractical project that truly is re-inventing the wheel.
So, 900 million out of a 1.1 billion settlement is actually just the retail value of a product that costs Microsoft next to nothing to produce. I never thought that the Justice department would accept Monopoly money for payment. And Microsoft will probably be able to write off the entire settlement in this year's tax statement.
I wonder if the IRS will accept Monopoly money for MY taxes next year.
Cartman: Seriously, you guys, I am, so, pissed off...
I've been boycotting Microsoft products for years. I don't see any reason to stop now. It amazes me to see the M$-bashing Slashdot crowd suddenly cooing all over the newest Microsoft baby.
I don't think Microsoft is inherently evil. Windows XP would be their first decent "for-home-machines" OS if it wasn't for all the crappy business practices such as tying it to Passport. Their business practices have been so damaging to the technology industry that I refuse to buy their products.
You all should think about that before you run out to buy their new toy. There are other toys on the market.
Anyone who read Richard Feynman's report on the Challenger explosion knows the Shuttle design process was flawed from the beginning. Exhaustive testing of material tolerances and other bottom-up procedures used in modern aircraft design were ignored in the Shuttle design process.
It costs so much for every flight because they basically have to rebuild the engine after every run. Parts that were not designed to wear fall apart or develop stress fractures in a single run.
I would support privatization 100% if they would give Boeing or Lockheed a contract to redesign the shuttle based on what we have learned from the current design and its flaws. NASA bureaucratic BS was responsible for allowing many of those flaws to exist. Feynman asked, "Do NASA managers even TALK to the engineers they're managing?" Privatization of maintaining the existing fleet wouldn't save nearly as much money as a new design would.
Does anyone know of an open-source calendar SERVER that supports iCal, and actually sorta works? It looks like ReefKnot has a ways to go, though it looks promising.
There's no way Exchange2K could handle 50K users on a single box.
Umm, where did you get 50K users from? The article was discussing 5K users, 500 per box. I still wouldn't try 5K users on a single Exchange box, but a single beefy sendmail+Cyrus imapd box could handle that many, since it's not doing any of the groupware stuff. Then another few servers for LDAP, calendaring and document management apps and you're set. If I had any expectation that my 5K users might become 10K users plus in five years or less, I might go with the mainframe, but otherwise I'd just get four or five beefy Intel boxes and run Linux on them.
Never rush a miracle man. You get rotten miracles. -Miracle Max, The Princess Bride
Today, some argue that the "right to choose your own software license" is the greatest software freedom. By contrast, I think that, like slavery, it is an inappropriate power, not a freedom. The two situations both cause harm, and they differ only in the degree of harm that each causes.
Proprietary software is an exercise of power, and it harms the users by denying their freedom.
This offends me. If I choose to spend time developing software that I could have spent playing with my kids, it is not MORALLY WRONG for me to demand compensation for my efforts in a way that does not comply with Free Software standards. I am a Free Software developer. I also write proprietary software.
If people's freedoms are limited by the fact that they do not have access to the source code of my proprietary software, they are in no way harmed. They are certainly no worse off than they were before I wrote it, are they? In fact, the only people whose lives were affected in any way by the fact that I released a proprietary software package are those who benefitted enough from using it that they were willing to pay for it.
In spending my own available time, energy, and resources to help other people by writing some proprietary software, yes it's true that I am taking some power over the people I help when I limit the way they use my creation. But that is not morally wrong in itself. Comparing proprietary software developers to slave owners is obviously just designed to dramatize the issue, but it's extremely offensive to many of us developers who write both Free and proprietary software. Apparently the FSF has decided that rational argument is not as effective as hyperbole. Well, hyperbole cuts both ways, guys. Here's a little bit of my own:
If I ran a halfway house for homeless teenagers, you're damn right I would exert power over them and limit their freedoms, in the interest of ensuring that I could continue to provide a service to help as many of them as possible. If I didn't limit their freedoms, the police would shut the place down and all the kids would be completely free again - but without a place to sleep. Is it morally wrong to run a halfway house?
Limiting other people's freedoms is not inherently wrong - that's what laws are for. Taking away someone's freedom to steal, rape, and kill is a very good idea. The FSF has made a golden calf of "preserving peoples freedoms" without looking any deeper than that. No wonder they are commonly viewed as extremists. They have turned a blind eye to common sense.
I applaud the FSF and all Free Software developers who have donated their time to the community and have worked to create the wonderful variety of Free software that is available today. But don't tell me that the way I feed my kids is morally wrong.
Shame on them for distributing products licensed under that evil GPL:
ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/developr/interix/gpl.txt I hope it doesn't eat up all their intellectual property. I guess their lawyers must have been sleeping under their desks.
They must be running ftp.microsoft.com on Windows 2000, because it has been up and down like James Brown for the past week at least. Their web site has more information about their GPL'd products, though:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/interix/featu res.asp
I can't give you brains, but I CAN give you a diploma!
If you want a description of EXACTLY what is banned under this license, you have to go read the damn license. Go to www.microsoft.com, search for the mobile internet toolkit, read the license. I did. It specifically says you can't distribute their toolkit along with code licensed with the GPL, MPL, or several other open-source licenses, or with code you developed using open-source tools (Except BSD-licensed tools, of course).
I can't give you brains, but I CAN give you a diploma!
That's correct, but not strictly enforced - look at any proprietary kernel module for an example. By the way, I'm not wrong - I never said you could link, I was just blasting your claim "GPL: Not going anywhere near commercial code", a very general statement that could include distribution or packaging. Very much not true: Microsoft is packaging a combination of GCC and some proprietary utilities into their Interix product, so it looks like GPL'd software CAN go "anywhere near commercial code". They're not violating the GPL - the source is available for download from ftp.microsoft.com/developr/interix.
Most linux libraries don't use the GPL anyway, they use the LGPL, which allows linking.
Basically, my response is this:
If you want to say "What bugs me about the GPL is that you can't link proprietary code with GPL'd code," then say that. I have no problem there - it's a fact. Don't spout generalized half-truths that sound like something out of Microsoft's PR campaign.
Slashdot Mirror
special effects from the original Stsr Trek. I used to think it was just because they didn't have a lot of money for effects. Now I suspect Gene Roddenberry was actually an extraterrestrial come to earth to help advance our civilization. And to make it with hot earth chicks, of course.
[linuxho@faramir linuxho] $ telnet mail.relay.com 25
Trying 63.192.100.60...
Connected to mail.relay.com (63.192.100.60).
Escape character is '^]'.
220 CheckPoint FireWall-1 secure SMTP server
HELO mail.microsoft.com
250 Hello mail.microsoft.com, pleased to meet you
MAIL FROM: bill.gates@microsoft.com
250 2.1.0 bill.gates@microsoft.com... Sender OK
RCPT TO: bernard@shifmanconsulting.com
250 2.1.5 bernard@shifmanconsulting.com... Recipient OK
DATA
354 Enter mail, end with "." on a line by itself
Hi Bernard,
I suppose having your name posted on Slashdot and having practically everyone in the IT industry know your name must be pretty humiliating given the context it was published in.
I'm sure you've learned a lesson about when it is a good idea to back off and apologize, even when you feel you are in the right. This is probably the most expensive way I have ever seen anyone learn that lesson.
I am offering you a job at Microsoft, mostly out of pity. Please send your resume to HR@microsoft.com with a cover letter indicating your areas of expertise, and attach a copy of this e-mail to it.
Bill Gates
Chief Visionary
Microsoft Corp.
^D
This shows what a morally bankrupt, litigious society Americans live in. The underlying cause is the fact that they have no sense of history. And most of them are fat and obnoxious, too.
What? This is happening in Europe? Oh, oh, excusez moi.
Check out the LDAP module at CPAN. 'Course, if you don't already know Perl it will take you an hour or so to learn it, but I think you will find it to be the most flexible and powerful LDAP tool available.
Hmmm. It works great for us, course we only have about 2K users, but it's being heavily used for authentication of IMAP users, SAMBA authentication, RADIUS for dial-in users, plus sendmail routing, mail500 listserve lookups, and our mail clients are using it as a directory, of course.
Right, well, that's just it. The calendar/groupware functions are really what we're talking about. I put together a free mail server using Sendmail, OpenLDAP, Cyrus POP3/IMAP, IMP webmail, and I contributed to a web-based user management interface for Cyrus/OpenLDAP called Websieve, available on SourceForge.
The system as a whole does everything Exchange does, including user-controlled server-side mail filtering (Does Exchange do that?), everything except calendar/groupware.
Right now I'm hoping I can get some open-source groupware program to fill the gap, but I haven't been able to find anything yet that will do iCal and integrate with my users' Palm devices.
What a relief! I was concerned that my brothers and sisters in the Fuck Microsoft Consortium had kept me in the dark about an important new affiliate of our organization.
Is NOISE associated with the FMC? (F* Microsoft Consortium). I'm a card-carrying member of the FMC, but I haven't heard of NOISE before.
Take on a couple minor system administration tasks. It will not only be accepted, but expected when you adopt a surly attitude and eventually lock yourself in the server room. Nobody bothers me anymore, though it's kinda cold in here and I have to wear a parka. The aluminum pyramid hat helps keep them away when I have to leave the server room to eat, visit the restroom, or when I'm showing up or leaving. If they approach anyway, fake a seizure. That works great.
I'm not saying it couldn't be useful. Reinventing the wheel still gives you a very nice wheel that rolls around just fine. I'm just saying that creating it was a frivolous waste of time. It wasn't necessary. It doesn't fill a need. The effort would have been better spent improving python.
Really depends what job you want, I suppose. A CCNA is good enough to get them to look at your resume for a lot of admin-type jobs. Smart employers will put much more importance on job experience than industry certifications. The only other certification that will really be useful to you is your degree.
OTOH, if you don't already have any job experience, your time is best spent getting an entry level end-user support job, and working your way up from there. Without a degree it's pretty much the only way in. Based on what I have seen in most support call centers, the mindless nature of such jobs is best alleviated by eating lots of bananas, scratching yourself, and swinging on the office lighting fixtures. Get your degree soon.
I love Perl, wrote many a fine script in it, and a couple mostly unreadable messes. I started using Python, and am using it for most of my scripts now. I poked around Ruby's web page a while back and tried to find out what all the hoopla was about, but couldn't find anything really revolutionary. Bruce Eckel (of Thinking in C++/Java fame) doesn't seem to think much of Ruby.
Sure, maybe there's some cool new syntactic sugar. Sure, it's sexy to be able to say you're developing in/developing libraries for/developing a brand new computer language. But unless there's some significant additional benefit to this new design, why re-invent the wheel with Yet Another Language?
So, SOMEONE must be able to tell me what's so *great* about Ruby that we should start calling Python obsolete. Either that, or acknowledge that Ruby is just a fun, impractical project that truly is re-inventing the wheel.
So, 900 million out of a 1.1 billion settlement is actually just the retail value of a product that costs Microsoft next to nothing to produce. I never thought that the Justice department would accept Monopoly money for payment. And Microsoft will probably be able to write off the entire settlement in this year's tax statement.
I wonder if the IRS will accept Monopoly money for MY taxes next year.
Cartman: Seriously, you guys, I am, so, pissed off...
I've been boycotting Microsoft products for years. I don't see any reason to stop now. It amazes me to see the M$-bashing Slashdot crowd suddenly cooing all over the newest Microsoft baby.
I don't think Microsoft is inherently evil. Windows XP would be their first decent "for-home-machines" OS if it wasn't for all the crappy business practices such as tying it to Passport. Their business practices have been so damaging to the technology industry that I refuse to buy their products.
You all should think about that before you run out to buy their new toy. There are other toys on the market.
Damn, the italics close tag was there in the preview screen.
Anyone who read Richard Feynman's report on the Challenger explosion knows the Shuttle design process was flawed from the beginning. Exhaustive testing of material tolerances and other bottom-up procedures used in modern aircraft design were ignored in the Shuttle design process.
It costs so much for every flight because they basically have to rebuild the engine after every run. Parts that were not designed to wear fall apart or develop stress fractures in a single run.
I would support privatization 100% if they would give Boeing or Lockheed a contract to redesign the shuttle based on what we have learned from the current design and its flaws. NASA bureaucratic BS was responsible for allowing many of those flaws to exist. Feynman asked, "Do NASA managers even TALK to the engineers they're managing?" Privatization of maintaining the existing fleet wouldn't save nearly as much money as a new design would.
RFC 2445, 2446, 2447
These documents describe the iCalendar protocol, supported by Outlook and Palm Desktop, if I remember correctly.
Open source servers:
ReefKnot - still pre-alpha, developing a Perl iCal library and server implementation, looks like it has promise for the future.
WorldPilot - a Zope product, looks like it mostly works well, I'm looking forward to playing around with it. Anyone know of any others?
Does anyone know of an open-source calendar SERVER that supports iCal, and actually sorta works? It looks like ReefKnot has a ways to go, though it looks promising.
There's no way Exchange2K could handle 50K users on a single box.
Umm, where did you get 50K users from? The article was discussing 5K users, 500 per box. I still wouldn't try 5K users on a single Exchange box, but a single beefy sendmail+Cyrus imapd box could handle that many, since it's not doing any of the groupware stuff. Then another few servers for LDAP, calendaring and document management apps and you're set. If I had any expectation that my 5K users might become 10K users plus in five years or less, I might go with the mainframe, but otherwise I'd just get four or five beefy Intel boxes and run Linux on them.
Never rush a miracle man. You get rotten miracles.
-Miracle Max, The Princess Bride
If people's freedoms are limited by the fact that they do not have access to the source code of my proprietary software, they are in no way harmed. They are certainly no worse off than they were before I wrote it, are they? In fact, the only people whose lives were affected in any way by the fact that I released a proprietary software package are those who benefitted enough from using it that they were willing to pay for it.
In spending my own available time, energy, and resources to help other people by writing some proprietary software, yes it's true that I am taking some power over the people I help when I limit the way they use my creation. But that is not morally wrong in itself. Comparing proprietary software developers to slave owners is obviously just designed to dramatize the issue, but it's extremely offensive to many of us developers who write both Free and proprietary software. Apparently the FSF has decided that rational argument is not as effective as hyperbole. Well, hyperbole cuts both ways, guys. Here's a little bit of my own:
If I ran a halfway house for homeless teenagers, you're damn right I would exert power over them and limit their freedoms, in the interest of ensuring that I could continue to provide a service to help as many of them as possible. If I didn't limit their freedoms, the police would shut the place down and all the kids would be completely free again - but without a place to sleep. Is it morally wrong to run a halfway house?
Limiting other people's freedoms is not inherently wrong - that's what laws are for. Taking away someone's freedom to steal, rape, and kill is a very good idea. The FSF has made a golden calf of "preserving peoples freedoms" without looking any deeper than that. No wonder they are commonly viewed as extremists. They have turned a blind eye to common sense.
I applaud the FSF and all Free Software developers who have donated their time to the community and have worked to create the wonderful variety of Free software that is available today. But don't tell me that the way I feed my kids is morally wrong.
Shame on them for distributing products licensed under that evil GPL: ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/developr/interix/gpl.txt
u res.asp
I hope it doesn't eat up all their intellectual property. I guess their lawyers must have been sleeping under their desks.
They must be running ftp.microsoft.com on Windows 2000, because it has been up and down like James Brown for the past week at least. Their web site has more information about their GPL'd products, though:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/interix/feat
I can't give you brains, but I CAN give you a diploma!
If you want a description of EXACTLY what is banned under this license, you have to go read the damn license. Go to www.microsoft.com, search for the mobile internet toolkit, read the license. I did. It specifically says you can't distribute their toolkit along with code licensed with the GPL, MPL, or several other open-source licenses, or with code you developed using open-source tools (Except BSD-licensed tools, of course).
I can't give you brains, but I CAN give you a diploma!
That's correct, but not strictly enforced - look at any proprietary kernel module for an example. By the way, I'm not wrong - I never said you could link, I was just blasting your claim "GPL: Not going anywhere near commercial code", a very general statement that could include distribution or packaging. Very much not true: Microsoft is packaging a combination of GCC and some proprietary utilities into their Interix product, so it looks like GPL'd software CAN go "anywhere near commercial code". They're not violating the GPL - the source is available for download from ftp.microsoft.com/developr/interix.
Most linux libraries don't use the GPL anyway, they use the LGPL, which allows linking.
Basically, my response is this:
If you want to say "What bugs me about the GPL is that you can't link proprietary code with GPL'd code," then say that. I have no problem there - it's a fact. Don't spout generalized half-truths that sound like something out of Microsoft's PR campaign.