And what's up with testing on a ridiculously outdated machine?
You, and unfortunately so many others like you, are, not to put too find a point on it, an a$$hole. You seem to expect everyone to go out every 3 to 6 months and get a top-of-the-line system just so they can have a reasonably quick computer when using modern software. Why is this? You complain about MS products being so incredibly slow, and yet you continue to follow the same bloatware path, just a few steps behind, where every new version of application X and OS Y becomes slower and slower on old hardware. I have an old 486DX/33 with 8MB of non-EDO RAM and a 1GB drive. I thought surely I could get some good use out of this old machine by loading some kind of Linux distro or *BSD on it. Tried some Linux distros, they crashed during the installation process. Impressive. Tried FreeBSD. It ran, but attempting to run a GUI using XFree86 was a joke with 8MB of RAM. I gave up on that when it couldn't even finish loading the X server after 10 minutes. After that, I found an old Win95 CD and installed that.
I was amazed by the results.
Not only did Win95 take up less room on the drive, but it booted in something like 2 minutes (compared to at least 5 for every other OS I tried). Win95 is a GUI, of course, and runs just fine with 8MB of memory. It boots faster on a 486DX/33 than Win98 does on a Pentium 233MMX. Don't even get me started on how slow every Linux distro I've tried is on the same P233MMX.
The long and short of it is that people like you (and there are too many of you out there) are hypocritical, elitist a$$holes. If you really wanted to make the world a better place, you'd design an OS that booted faster, and was more stable and usable than Win95, on a 486DX/33 with 8MB of RAM and a 1GB HD. Don't give me any crap about how it takes massive hardware to have a quick OS, because I've seen Win95 kicking your ass on a 486. That's ridiculous. You show me an OS that works that well on a 486/8MB system, and I'll show you an OS that will blow people's minds on an Athlon 600 with 64MB. Until the open source world manages to do that, I will not be impressed.
Oh, and if there is anyone out there who actually thinks a usable, relatively quick Linux/*BSD system can be set up (with a GUI!) on the 486 machine I have described, please, enlighten me!!
I hate to say this, but going to another country and getting arrested for violating an insane law is not something the US just invented. There are a great number of governments still in power in various parts of the world today who have arrested foreigners not only on the merits of some insane law, but often even using a totally bogus reason, just because it suits their purposes. In many cases those governments have proceeded to torture and/or kill said foreigners, including some US citizens. At the very least, Sklyarov can hopefully expect to receive humane treatment from our government while he is interned here. No beatings, no starvation, no sleeping in a 3-foot-square box in 120-degree weather going 3 days at a time without water, and certainly no summary execution.
The law is no less lame, but we need a bit of perspective on how bad this is compared to how bad it could be. Should the DMCA be tolerated? Hell no, and Sklyarov's arrest was/is deplorable. But is it as bad as some of the things that have happened to foreigners in other countries? Not hardly. Sklyarov will survive this and can even expect to be in good health when it's over.
The pop-ups will get worse, until they are tuned out completely, like your little sister.
Are you saying there are still ads on the Internet? Where are they? I've been on the net for like 6 years now , so I saw a few back when they tried it the first time, but I thought they gave that up... because after a while I just... didn't see... uh...
For performance and REDUNDANCY (I can't imagine that nothing in your 128GB dataset is not valuable), you need to go multi-spindle, i.e. RAID. Case in point:
Local screwdriver shop has 40GB deskstars for $120. They have a 75 GB for $240. The obvious solution = buy 2x40 and stripe them. Same $$, more capacity, and 2x the speed.(emphasis added)
To save people needless grief from following this advice, I feel that something should be explained.
There is a very good reason why striping is called RAID Level 0 (that's a zero), which is because it's not redundant! By utilizing RAID-0, you double the probability that one of the two hard drives will fail, and since 50% of all the data is on the other drive, even the drive that doesn't fail is basically unrecoverable! Sure, it doubles read speed, but even hardware implementations will have slightly slower write speed unless both drives are absolutely identical in geometry, access speed and spindle speed. RAID-0 is essentially useless for anything where reliability is concerned. There are numerous RAID tutorials that explain the differences. Just check Google, or see this quick explanation of RAID levels.
(Moderators, I'm expecting at least one mod point for this short but informative post which includes a link to an informative web page. If I do not get at least one mod point, I will go postal and kill my boss. Urm, I'm self-employed, nevermind.)
...Because as a great and wise man once said, "No one will ever need more than 640K of RAM," and boy, look how right *he* was!
=============================================
To extend this a bit further, what if means were included to "revoke" privledges to record broadcasts after the fact, and disable existing copies? Then we'd be getting into an Orwellian nightmare.
The most frightening thing about this little snippet is how easily it could become a reality, if we take current government trends as an example. This kind of retroactive change is already happening in the war the feds are waging on lawful gun owners. People who bought a perfectly legal firearm as long as 30 years ago are becoming criminals overnight as California repeatedly changes it's firearm laws. As part of a presentation I was watching last night on cable (good thing I didn't record it, whew!) there was even a police officer who was in danger of losing his career because suddenly a legal personal handgun he owned became illegal (yes, retroactively!) under California's latest firearms regulations. Another example was an Olympic-hopeful sharpshooter who's target pistol was reclassified overnight as some sort of assault weapon because of it's specialized design.
It's total insanity, and it's happening. Right now. Today. In your backyard. The really scary thing is that I really can't blow the situation out of proportion, it has already become so bad.
I'm sorry I don't have any direct links to any information on this stuff, but if you go to the National Rifle Association website, or even better, the NRA/ILA (Institute for Legislative Action) website, they will probably tell you all about it. I believe these two situations are pretty much directly related. So if you think the quote above is way off base and could never happen, better think again.
It's really kind of rank how everyone who considers him/herself a *n?x geek blames everyone's security problems on stupidity. So because I didn't spend a year or two reading Linux manuals and experimenting before hooking up to the Internet, *I* am to be blamed for the fact that 90% of the default *n?x installs are full of gaping holes? That's like a car manufacturer blaming the consumer for not knowing his car leaked gasoline, thus fixing it before he drove it anywhere. "What do you mean you didn't know it was leaking, stupid? It's not our problem it blew up! Everyone knows that cars leak gas and have to be fixed before use! Sheesh. Idiot."
Knowledge should be used responsibly. When you hand out an insecure product to a mass of people that you *know* aren't going to understand how to secure it, that's just inexcusably irresponsible. The more you say, "Those stupid users, it's all their fault!!" the more you blind yourself to the fact that the real problem is at the source, and security problems like this will just continue. Until the people who hand out the software decide to take responsibility and secure their products *before* they get to the user, things will only get worse. Expecting each user to not only become a *n?x expert, but to be one before receiving the software, is simply unfeasible.
Or, to put it another way, it's just plain stupid.
MSFT burned its way into the history books with operating systems so full of holes that today they have to be protected from approximately 47,000 different viruses (at least that's what Norton Antivirus tells me, I take it with a grain of salt). Why the free software community seems to be bent on replacing them as the newest totally insecure product, is beyond me. They seem to be doing a damn good job of it though. If they followed an OpenBSD-like philosophy, we'd have a lot fewer problems.
I realize that is a silly example but it helps to illustrate the possible trend towards money being the sole motivator and compensator for everything.
Looked around lately? Despite what most of us (meaning people who spend a lot of time on the net reading free press like/. and believe in ideals like free software, communication and cooperation) like to think, money is pretty much the sole motivator and compensator for everything, and has been since it was invented. Most of our lives are spent trying to get and keep enough of it that we can sustain ourselves and perhaps do some of the things we really want to do. If we're lucky, we get to do something we like to do and get paid for it. Yet, at most any time we are also free to do something and not get compensated for it.
I remember reading an article a while back about sites like Epinions and "expert" sites. They explored why people would devote large amounts of time to writing reviews and answering questions for complete strangers. The short answer was "egoboo" or ego boosts that came from being positively rated as a reviewer.
Yep, some people actually like to be helpful, or get a boost out of getting a good rating. Others may do it explicitly to get their presence out in the tech world so they can have something to point to when a potential employer or client asks about their expertise. It's not the site, it's the intent of the individual who posts that makes the difference.
"Hey, nice shoes!"
"Thanks, here's a $1 micropayment!"
Pfft. Give me a break. When was the last time someone whipped out a doller (or even a penny, there's a micropayment for you) and gave it to you for offering them a compliment? I guess people are going to be more apt to throw money around now that they have to whip out a computer and log on to a payment service?
I pull off and help someone change their flat tire or return a lost wallet to contribute good to the world, not b/c I'm hoping for compensation.
Yeah, well Joe Blow down the street might want an actual reward for bringing your wallet back. A lot of people aren't eating high enough on the hog to bother with chivalry. Do you really think micropayments are going to change the nature of individuals? Some people go through life demanding payment for everything they do, some walk around handing out money for no particular reason, some do things for the hell of it and get paid anyway, some try their darndest to make a living and can't seem to make it no matter how hard they try.
The main point here being that it's always been up to you (the individual), and you alone, to decide how you're going to deal with the people around you and how important you think money is in life. Someone else might, nay, will, have a whole different outlook.
The funniest part of all this is that we're all acting like the Internet is a brand new idea, totally different than everything that has come before, when it's just a new take on things that have been with us as long as civilization has been around. We are all going to change, or stay the same, to whatever extent we want to, or are allowed to, or are forced to by circumstances. Welcome to life. It's whatever you want it to be.
Slashdot Mirror
You, and unfortunately so many others like you, are, not to put too find a point on it, an a$$hole. You seem to expect everyone to go out every 3 to 6 months and get a top-of-the-line system just so they can have a reasonably quick computer when using modern software. Why is this? You complain about MS products being so incredibly slow, and yet you continue to follow the same bloatware path, just a few steps behind, where every new version of application X and OS Y becomes slower and slower on old hardware. I have an old 486DX/33 with 8MB of non-EDO RAM and a 1GB drive. I thought surely I could get some good use out of this old machine by loading some kind of Linux distro or *BSD on it. Tried some Linux distros, they crashed during the installation process. Impressive. Tried FreeBSD. It ran, but attempting to run a GUI using XFree86 was a joke with 8MB of RAM. I gave up on that when it couldn't even finish loading the X server after 10 minutes. After that, I found an old Win95 CD and installed that.
I was amazed by the results.
Not only did Win95 take up less room on the drive, but it booted in something like 2 minutes (compared to at least 5 for every other OS I tried). Win95 is a GUI, of course, and runs just fine with 8MB of memory. It boots faster on a 486DX/33 than Win98 does on a Pentium 233MMX. Don't even get me started on how slow every Linux distro I've tried is on the same P233MMX.
The long and short of it is that people like you (and there are too many of you out there) are hypocritical, elitist a$$holes. If you really wanted to make the world a better place, you'd design an OS that booted faster, and was more stable and usable than Win95, on a 486DX/33 with 8MB of RAM and a 1GB HD. Don't give me any crap about how it takes massive hardware to have a quick OS, because I've seen Win95 kicking your ass on a 486. That's ridiculous. You show me an OS that works that well on a 486/8MB system, and I'll show you an OS that will blow people's minds on an Athlon 600 with 64MB. Until the open source world manages to do that, I will not be impressed.
Oh, and if there is anyone out there who actually thinks a usable, relatively quick Linux/*BSD system can be set up (with a GUI!) on the 486 machine I have described, please, enlighten me!!
I hate to say this, but going to another country and getting arrested for violating an insane law is not something the US just invented. There are a great number of governments still in power in various parts of the world today who have arrested foreigners not only on the merits of some insane law, but often even using a totally bogus reason, just because it suits their purposes. In many cases those governments have proceeded to torture and/or kill said foreigners, including some US citizens. At the very least, Sklyarov can hopefully expect to receive humane treatment from our government while he is interned here. No beatings, no starvation, no sleeping in a 3-foot-square box in 120-degree weather going 3 days at a time without water, and certainly no summary execution.
The law is no less lame, but we need a bit of perspective on how bad this is compared to how bad it could be. Should the DMCA be tolerated? Hell no, and Sklyarov's arrest was/is deplorable. But is it as bad as some of the things that have happened to foreigners in other countries? Not hardly. Sklyarov will survive this and can even expect to be in good health when it's over.
oh.
This is UNHEARD OF!!
Mmm, I love the smell of sarcasm in the morning...
=============================================
For performance and REDUNDANCY (I can't imagine that nothing in your 128GB dataset is not valuable), you need to go multi-spindle, i.e. RAID. Case in point: Local screwdriver shop has 40GB deskstars for $120. They have a 75 GB for $240. The obvious solution = buy 2x40 and stripe them. Same $$, more capacity, and 2x the speed.(emphasis added)
To save people needless grief from following this advice, I feel that something should be explained.
There is a very good reason why striping is called RAID Level 0 (that's a zero), which is because it's not redundant! By utilizing RAID-0, you double the probability that one of the two hard drives will fail, and since 50% of all the data is on the other drive, even the drive that doesn't fail is basically unrecoverable! Sure, it doubles read speed, but even hardware implementations will have slightly slower write speed unless both drives are absolutely identical in geometry, access speed and spindle speed. RAID-0 is essentially useless for anything where reliability is concerned. There are numerous RAID tutorials that explain the differences. Just check Google, or see this quick explanation of RAID levels.
(Moderators, I'm expecting at least one mod point for this short but informative post which includes a link to an informative web page. If I do not get at least one mod point, I will go postal and kill my boss. Urm, I'm self-employed, nevermind.)
--RedBear
=============================================
...Because as a great and wise man once said, "No one will ever need more than 640K of RAM," and boy, look how right *he* was!
=============================================
Don't they give out meddles for medalling in our affairs? Umm, wait...= ====
========================================
The most frightening thing about this little snippet is how easily it could become a reality, if we take current government trends as an example. This kind of retroactive change is already happening in the war the feds are waging on lawful gun owners. People who bought a perfectly legal firearm as long as 30 years ago are becoming criminals overnight as California repeatedly changes it's firearm laws. As part of a presentation I was watching last night on cable (good thing I didn't record it, whew!) there was even a police officer who was in danger of losing his career because suddenly a legal personal handgun he owned became illegal (yes, retroactively!) under California's latest firearms regulations. Another example was an Olympic-hopeful sharpshooter who's target pistol was reclassified overnight as some sort of assault weapon because of it's specialized design.
It's total insanity, and it's happening. Right now. Today. In your backyard. The really scary thing is that I really can't blow the situation out of proportion, it has already become so bad.
I'm sorry I don't have any direct links to any information on this stuff, but if you go to the National Rifle Association website, or even better, the NRA/ILA (Institute for Legislative Action) website, they will probably tell you all about it. I believe these two situations are pretty much directly related. So if you think the quote above is way off base and could never happen, better think again.
Cheers,
--Kris Finkenbinder
=============================================
instead of fixing the problem.
It's really kind of rank how everyone who considers him/herself a *n?x geek blames everyone's security problems on stupidity. So because I didn't spend a year or two reading Linux manuals and experimenting before hooking up to the Internet, *I* am to be blamed for the fact that 90% of the default *n?x installs are full of gaping holes? That's like a car manufacturer blaming the consumer for not knowing his car leaked gasoline, thus fixing it before he drove it anywhere. "What do you mean you didn't know it was leaking, stupid? It's not our problem it blew up! Everyone knows that cars leak gas and have to be fixed before use! Sheesh. Idiot."
Knowledge should be used responsibly. When you hand out an insecure product to a mass of people that you *know* aren't going to understand how to secure it, that's just inexcusably irresponsible. The more you say, "Those stupid users, it's all their fault!!" the more you blind yourself to the fact that the real problem is at the source, and security problems like this will just continue. Until the people who hand out the software decide to take responsibility and secure their products *before* they get to the user, things will only get worse. Expecting each user to not only become a *n?x expert, but to be one before receiving the software , is simply unfeasible.
Or, to put it another way, it's just plain stupid.
MSFT burned its way into the history books with operating systems so full of holes that today they have to be protected from approximately 47,000 different viruses (at least that's what Norton Antivirus tells me, I take it with a grain of salt). Why the free software community seems to be bent on replacing them as the newest totally insecure product, is beyond me. They seem to be doing a damn good job of it though. If they followed an OpenBSD-like philosophy, we'd have a lot fewer problems.
=============================================
============================
Please wait, calculating