"If you want to oppose this law (and I think that would be a good idea), the argument needs to be based on economics"
Exactly, that's a very good thought indeed. Why should the 4 billion dollar entertainment industry be allowed to cripple the 40 billion dollar tech industry? Which is more important to our GNP and our economy. It does not make economical sense whatsoever. If anything, the tech industry should be lobbying harder and telling the weaker entertainment industry where they can shove it. If you include this point, when you write your congress critters, then you may get somewhere. If you talk fair use or constitutional rights then you are wasting your time.
Wow... someone who likes persian poetry? Which poet do you like best - Hafez, Rumi, Omar Khayam? I personally like Hafez and Rumi. Some of my Persian friends have introduced me to some of the more avant-garde/modern stuff as well. Pretty deep poetry, IMHO.
Well, I went 2 weeks until they finally got their network operational (at least in my area). Anyhow, I had to install their stupid software on a windoze box so that I could "walk through" their troubleshooting nonsense even though I knew it would do no good.
I was not aware that spyware would be installed, not that I didn't suspect it, but since I wasn't going to be using that box for any other reason than walking the tech through...uhh.. I mean the tech walking me through the routine, I didn't really care.
I do agree, the charter MSN crap is very annoying and knowing now that they intended to install spyware is hugely disconcerting. This is even more reason to run a linux/bsd firewall and stick to the manual configuration of your boxen. Charter has no business inside any of my PCs.
Oh, and now that they decide to disable reverse DNS, I don't know who the hell is scanning my box on port 80 and port 137 on a daily basis at regular intervals. I suspect that it's charter due to it's regularity, scanning for web servers and open shares. Maybe just maybe, someone who is smart enough to run a web server wouldn't run it on a standard port. Do they even think about this? I feel like I'm dealing with cretin pipeline internet service.
Ok, now for a little praise. Since their service came back up, it's been running flawlessly. My speeds seem a bit slower, but I still won't complain. Their NNTP server is dog slow and I suspect that it's leased from supernews anyway. All in all, I have little to complain about now that I have it under control. No spyware, firewall is up, and I don't run any servers whatsoever so they have no reason to complain about me.
heh, I agree. I used to use coyote linux for my firewall as well. Before that, I manually did the ipchains thing with redhat 6.0. Anyway, coyote worked so well, that I set it up for 3 friends of mine using old 486DX 33 boxen. They are happier that pigs in shit. However, I now run smoothwall since I put a 400MB hard drive in that puppy. www.smoothwall.org
smoothwall works great, has web logs, and is pretty tight. Give it a look if you have an old small hard drive. You can download their 0.9.9 version ISO for free. Plus, they've released a few updates that are quite painless to to apply. This is truly the first linux based "appliance firewall OS" that I've seen that's so easy a monkey could figure it out.
You are right though, smoothwall is great on an old box with no hard drives. Aint linux great?
First off, this is one of the best comments I've read on/. in a while. I'm not autistic nor do I have asperger's syndrome, but everything you just wrote makes way too much sense. Especially this line - "Normal people pursue happiness, they don't experience it." You are definately leaning towards Zen Buddhism here. I know that another poster pointed this out, but I think you should look into Zen. There are different schools of Buddhism and Zen is not really a relgion so to speak. One could be a Jew and still be a practioner of Zen. Anyhow, I recommend reading anything by Thich Nhat Hanh. I think you would particularly enjoy "The Present Moment." There is plenty of his stuff on Amazon.
Anyhow, I got carried away there and just to let you know, I'm not a Buddhist nor a practitioner of Zen. But a Zen practitioner would not persue they would just be.. (doh, there I go again). O.K, lets move on.
Going back to where I started, this post really hits home with me in many ways. My friends and I have often discussed the very things you wrote about. First, that there is a segment of society that is considered "normal" or rather mundane so to speak. Instead of using a bell curve, which works if that's what floats your boat, we use an upright diamond. If you notice, the bulk of society fits nicely into a circle in the middle of that diamond.
What I'm talking about here is not intelligence, but rather mindfulness and interests. The edges of that diamond are filled with those who are mindful and the mindless bulk of society fits in the center. I'm not implying that all of society is mindless, but as a general rule and in your own words "Normal people pursue happiness, they don't experience it."
The average jane watches soaps because she wishes to live her life through the fantasy of TV actors and actresses. The average joe is spoonfed entertainment via the tube and and cheers when inflated pig skin crosses a certain line. Very few of these people could enjoy the things you write about. Society has basically told these people what to enjoy, what to think, what to watch, how to live, etc. They basically, have ceased to be mindful.
I truly find it fascinating that peoples moods for the entire day/week are determined by the outcome of a soap opera or a football game. Here in TX, you'd think there was a funeral the day after a game where the Cowboys lose. People actually come to work depressed. The mood of the entire office is different.
Some would say that football, baseball, basketball, hockey, cable TV, Satellite TV, soaps, sitcoms, talk shows, national enquirer, and many other venues of spoonfed entertainment is what's keeping the masses occupied,(fat, dumb, and happy)and this is what keeps the country stable. Who cares about what's really going on in the world, what the govt really does, how many people are starving, etc... as long as there is beer, football, and Jerry Springer. Well, this portion in itself could be another topic of discussion so I'll wrap it up here.
Rogerborg, I hope to see some more of your posts. You and I have much in common. I'd write more, but it's lunchtime and I'm getting very hungry. Check out Thich Nhat Hanh, or Zen in general. It would probably make a hell of a lot of sense to you.
I also have charter@home, however, I never received the CD which you mentioned. What type of software is on the CD? Also, how different are the settings for the servers and whatnot? My charter@home domain is ftwrth1.tx.home.com. If you have any info could you please post it? TIA!
"As much as the Linux zealots would like to deny it, Win2K/XP have eliminated virtualy all of the old arguments for using Linux over windows."
If you are talking desktop use, then you may have a good point. If you are talking server use, then it's still linux all the way. I have no problems with windows on the desktop, but I hate it as a server OS. Many have said linux is a server OS posing as a desktop OS. Well, the inverse could also be true - Windows is a desktop OS trying to pose as a server OS.
Personally, I find Mac OSX to be the holy grail of "desktop" operating systems. A consistant GUI coupled with BSD unix. Let me tell you, it's heaven.
Anyhow, I am straying from my point. There is still one thing that win2k/XP lack and that is a good CLI. When I need/want to use the command line, DOS just doesnt cut the mustard. Bash, CSH, or TCSH do. If you could overlay the windows GUI on top of UNIX and have access to the shell, then I'd be a happy camper.
I've heard cygwin allows one to compile unix apps for windows, but I have no experience with it. If this is indeed the case, I'll give it a shot. But, again, for server usage, nothing will beat a *nix box. Use the right tool for the right job.
I agree. Bin Laden wants us out of the middle east. I say we give him his wish. Let's pull out and take our money with us and invest it in a renewable energy source. Hell, even if we could buy oil from someone else, we at least won't have to deal with the fanaticism.
We are going to start a serious war that IMHO will have very little effect on stopping future terrorism from happening again on American soil. Take out Bin Laden and who is left? Tons more...
I read an article by Tamim Ansary where he stated "I do believe that suffering and poverty are the soil in which terrorism grows. Bin Laden and his cohorts want to bait us into creating more such soil, so they and their kind can flourish."
I encourage everyone to read this essay in order to gain some perspective. We need to implement some sort of "marshall plan" to make sure we rebuild Afghanistan and replace the Taliban with a just government, much like we did with Japan in WW2. The Northern Alliance comes to mind as they have been fighting the Taliban for quite some time now. If we don't do this, we are going to create an environment where new terrorists will inevitably grow.
We cannot and should not look at this as a short term solution. We have to work with countries that may not be in our best interests financially. Kuwait made sense financially, but Afghanistan does not, however, we are now seeing the effect of such an environment. If the US government is wise, it will be working out a plan while the conflict is ensuing. We must follow through and rebuild, educate, finance, and empower the Afghan people to be more than drug dealers or victims of the Taliban oppression.
the Shiites (sp?), in power in Saudi Arabia and the most predominent sect throughout the world believe it was all right the way things went down
Wrong... The Saudis are Sunni NOT Shiite. Iran is the only Shiite Muslim state of its kind in the region. The Taliban, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Palestinians, UAE, etc are Sunni. Btw, Sunni Islam is the most predominant Islam in the Middle East. You are correct that the no-fly zone area of Iraq is inhabited by Shiites. It is for this reason that the USA did not take out Saddam Hossein - we wanted to maintain a power balance. We wanted to keep the Southern Iraqi's from aligning with Iran and increasing Iran's power base.
"if you think there are problems now with digital copy protection laws, you ain't seen nuthin yet!"
Star trek like replicators, Oh my! I can see it now... download your billz here. Seriously though, this would extend IP laws to physical objects since they would also be an arrangement of "numbers" of some kind... hell, they already are. This would open up a serious can of worms and with laws like the DMCA, the chilling effect would be horrible. Granted, I highly doubt a replication device would fall into the hands of consumers without serious copy protections built in. I highly doubt consumers would even be able to buy such devices but lets speculate for a moment.
Now for the funny part - Imagine downloading warez like:
happy_meal.img
vaio_laptop.img
notebook_paper.img
Now, the above examples could be forseen by the industries as bad bad bad. Imagine MacDonalds with a lawsuit against burger pirates. Imagine Sony going bonkers because people are copying their laptop and not buying the hardware. Notebook paper replication will at least save trees. Now, if intricate machines like laptops can be replicated, you'd better believe that such replicators would only be used in the industry to cut manufacturing costs. Create one perfect laptop and clone the hell out of it.
The first example, a happy meal image, is quite interesting to ponder. If such an abundant supply of food could exist, how long before lawsuits fly around when poorer nations use this technology to feed the hungry. Will MacDonalds, Pizza Hut, or even the local grocery store chains throw a fit? I bet they would! It will be like Drug companies going after the third world for cloning their pills, only much worse.
Anyhow, my final thought to throw out to all of you would concern the free software philosophy as it applies to physical objects. Would RMS create an open source hardware equivalent of GNU for the benefit of humanity despite the loss of "potential" revenue for the evil, greedy corporations? Would someone create a good steak and image it for free? Would you check the source first... Anti-virus could have a new meaning in this realm you know. As far as hardware goes, what would stop someone from creating a perfect looking/working laptop that would explode after 5 minutes of use? The world is certainly going to be an interesting place if nanotech has this potential.
Very well written and accurate portrayal of Microsoft and their vision of computing. While Cringly's idea of TCP/MS may seem far-fetched, you are right on the money regarding their desire for such a protocol. If Microsoft could embrace and extend the internet, it would in a heartbeat. If that ever did happen, it would be the end of the free internet as we know it.
Unfortunately, only the free-thinkers would see it that way. The mindless herd of end users that follows Microsoft would know no different. They would continue to surf and enjoy their digital playground and carry with them the same illusion of freedom they have about the rest of America. These same people never knowing about the DMCA, Sklyarov, DeCSS, or fair-use, (because the media practices awareness control over the public) would just assume that's the way it's always been. The movie, "The Matrix," at least metaphorically speaking, is not far from the truth. In the future, I see a day when people are too "attached" to a system to let go. In this future, I see people who can't define their own reality or even define freedom because of the constraints that are placed upon them since birth. In other words, they will have lost the ability to step outside the box and question the facade they call "reality".
Maybe I've read "Brave New World" one too many times, but the parent post and Cringly's article make for a great introduction to a new 1984esque type of novel. Ok, so I got a little carried away there. LOL.. Anyhow, what I meant convey was that the average user would probably not care since they use windows anyway. They would see all the neat new services that passport provides and consider it a "feature." As scary as this may sound to you, the average joe user knows no better. However, with IPv6 right around the corner, I don't see Microsoft embracing TCP/IP. But have no doubt, if Microsoft could change the very protocol of the internet in yet another attempt capture even more marketshare, I have no doubt that they would at least try. That is what scares me about this company - the complete and total disregard for the open standards that allowed them to become so big in the first place.
A friend of mine acquired a siren/alarm thing that's used in either Finland or Sweden. This siren is used when families are very snowed in up in the hills in their cabins allowing them to be located. These sirens can be heard for five miles or so in the open. Let's just say he rigged a motion type device in his case so that when the case was tilted too far off balance the alarm would come on. Needless to say, this would cause any burgler to shit his pants and probably be deafened to the point of bleeding from his ears. It was a great proof of concept, but he liked to tinker with his box a lot and having accidently set it off a couple of times he removed it.
The site www.teoma.com is running Apache/1.3.12 (Unix) on Solaris 8. This link should give you all that nice info. Makes me wonder if this will turn into a Solaris vs Linux search engine shootout. Either way, Teoma will have to work pretty hard to dethrone Google as my search engine of choice.
Re:Low latency is good
on
DeMuDi Linux
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· Score: 1
I have actually been very interested in these low-latency patches of which you speak. I've heard of patches by Ingo Molnar and one by Andrew Morton. Which one do you have?
Also, how much faster is the performance? It would seem that if this improves desktop performance it should be included in distro's like Mandrake. Also, how responsive is video playback with these patches installed? I'm interested in playing divx, avi, mpeg, etc and it appears that windows is still better at this sort of thing. I'd rather use Linux for all my desktop usage!
Finally, which low-latency patch did you use as I have heard of a few. If you could post the link I'd greatly appreciate it.
Ok... who copied who? I went to the netcaptor link you gave and I was surprised to see this --> "This screenshot demonstrates NetCaptor's patent-pending browser tab interface."
you can see this right at http://www.netcaptor.com/tour.php
Patent? I believe this patent nonesense is going way too far. Besides, didn't Galeon have this first ?
hmmm... ok troll I'll bite. First, I have a very hard time believing that you really and truly think this way. The first thought in my head when I read this was "This guy has to be kidding right?" So now, let's go through some of your complaints.
"I am very uncomfortable with *BSD's connection to Satanism and demonic figures."
Exactly how is BSD connected with Satanism? I don't know any Satanists who use *BSD nor are any of the original developers satanists. The demonic figure of which you speak is a daemon, not a demon. The symbol is meant to be satirical. Daemons are processes that run in the background and keep the system running clean or offer services. Examples would be syslogd, inetd, httpd, etc.. The pitchfork he's holding represents the fork() function which is how processes are executed in the first place.
"It is morally wrong to associate a piece of software with such an image, and I sure as hell do not want my children coming into contact with it."
hmmm... this image? Have you ever seen a demon to know exactly what one looks like? Can you even prove that such a creature even exists? Oh I forgot, your religious and cultural background lead you to believe such nonesense. I guess unicorns, dragons, trolls, gnomes, elfs, leprechauns, vampires, zombies, and boogie monsters exist too. After all, by this logic they should exists since they are part of somebody's popular culture. I guess the Taliban was justified in destroying the Buddhist statues in the Bamiyan valley of Afghanistan because graven images are unislamic.
"Witches are to be burned, not honored, and I don't think that most God-fearing Christians out there want their children corrupted by such "gateway" groups."
Yes, typical Christian bigot attitude. I bet you read Arthur Millers "The Crucible" with pride don't you. The Spanish Inquisition which killed more non-Christians and Jews than Hitler probably pleases you. After all, these other people don't deserve to exist do they. The early white Christian settlers killed the native Indian populations because they were heathens and unchristian. Christianity has been responsible for more cruelty and barbaric acts than any other force in history. But, I'm sure this is a source of pride for you. Witches being burned, the Spanish Inquisition, The Crusades, The Holocaust, The destruction of Native American culture, and the enslavement of millions of African Americans are all examples of how Christian bible verses were used to justify the horrible things.
Finally, your statement "I don't think that most God-fearing Christians out there want their children corrupted by such "gateway" groups".
Well, I'm sure most God-fearing Christians don't share your extremist viewpoints. I consider your group, whatever that group is, a "gateway" group. I'll be sure to not allow my children to grow up being close-minded bigots such as yourself and I'll make sure they know all the cruel barbaric acts that your group has committed in the name of God.
"it may make a lot of difference - everyone is gonna be after the same 600M binary, so wouldn't you rather pay the transit for it once, rather than for every user who grabs a copy?"
This is a good argument and it is very valid, however and I believe that @home will shoot itself in the foot with this one. I have a couple of friends who subscribe to premium usenet service through third party providers because @home does not carry the groups they usually download from. Instead of caching the GB's of info locally like you said, the same info will come in from the outside several times over and surely drive up the cost.
@home needs to consider the types of people who use usenet. The average Joe does not use usenet. Most people I mention usenet to don't even know that it exists. Die hard usenetters are going to get their binaries whether it's from inside the @home network or from outside. It would be in @home's best interest financially to keep the groups. @home would have more internal traffic, but they will not have to deal with TB's of premium service usenet data flowing in from the outside and eating up their bandwidth quota's and driving up costs. Then again, a big lawsuit from the MPAA would not be good financially either.
Final thought - could @home not just open up another data channel? It should be possible then to gain another 30mps by opening another 6 MHz channel for data. I mean, they probably still have unused channels. This would definately increase the bandwidth and provide a form of segmentation. If anyone knows more about this, I'd appreciate the input.
"both the GPL and proprietry license prevent code re-use."
you can re-use GPL code in your private company and as long as you don't distribute your program you don't have to open the source to it. Only when you distribute your code do you have to GPL any derived works. Most in house software stays "in house" so this should not even be a concern.
In the Movie, "True Identity", Lenny Henry(A British Actor) pulls off the best American accent I've ever heard. Originally, I thought he was American until I saw "The Chef" series on PBS. My god was I surprised. So yes, the impossible has been accomplished by a Brit, and a very talented one at that!
...it appears that the interviewer seemed very clueless about the "open source movement" so to speak. It seemed to me that she didn't grasp some of the concepts, particularly that Torvalds did this for the love of programming and nothing more. She even asked Torvalds if he was some how regretful that he didn't try to "sell" his OS rather than giving it away. Her pronunciation of "Linux" as "Linox" was quite disconcerting as well.
She also didn't grasp, at least at first, that you can sell free software. Overall, I liked the interview, but I wish the interviewer had done her homework or did she not know where to look for such information. She could have taken the discussion more in depth if she knew more. I do feel that it is good exposure for Linux nonetheless. At the end, it appeared that she was starting to understand the concept of free software. This may mean that the Linux community could do some more PR work in this area.
I brought up that last point because many people, even IT people don't really seem to grasp or understand the concepts behind free software, open source, and that the value of Linux can't be measured by a price tag on a shrink wrapped box. Microsoft won't go away any time soon and neither will Linux much to Microsofts dismay. Linux is free and far too useful to just throw by the wayside. There are many online docs and how-to's, but we can't insure that people will learn linux effectively. On the other hand, we can work to educate people to understand the processes, ideals, and workings behind the movement. This is perhaps just as important as any how-to document because the community is ultimately what drives Linux and understanding that community is part of the overall learning process.
Slashdot Mirror
"If you want to oppose this law (and I think that would be a good idea), the argument needs to be based on economics"
Exactly, that's a very good thought indeed. Why should the 4 billion dollar entertainment industry be allowed to cripple the 40 billion dollar tech industry? Which is more important to our GNP and our economy. It does not make economical sense whatsoever. If anything, the tech industry should be lobbying harder and telling the weaker entertainment industry where they can shove it. If you include this point, when you write your congress critters, then you may get somewhere. If you talk fair use or constitutional rights then you are wasting your time.
Wow... someone who likes persian poetry? Which poet do you like best - Hafez, Rumi, Omar Khayam? I personally like Hafez and Rumi. Some of my Persian friends have introduced me to some of the more avant-garde/modern stuff as well. Pretty deep poetry, IMHO.
Cheers
Well, I went 2 weeks until they finally got their network operational (at least in my area). Anyhow, I had to install their stupid software on a windoze box so that I could "walk through" their troubleshooting nonsense even though I knew it would do no good.
I was not aware that spyware would be installed, not that I didn't suspect it, but since I wasn't going to be using that box for any other reason than walking the tech through...uhh.. I mean the tech walking me through the routine, I didn't really care.
I do agree, the charter MSN crap is very annoying and knowing now that they intended to install spyware is hugely disconcerting. This is even more reason to run a linux/bsd firewall and stick to the manual configuration of your boxen. Charter has no business inside any of my PCs.
Oh, and now that they decide to disable reverse DNS, I don't know who the hell is scanning my box on port 80 and port 137 on a daily basis at regular intervals. I suspect that it's charter due to it's regularity, scanning for web servers and open shares. Maybe just maybe, someone who is smart enough to run a web server wouldn't run it on a standard port. Do they even think about this? I feel like I'm dealing with cretin pipeline internet service.
Ok, now for a little praise. Since their service came back up, it's been running flawlessly. My speeds seem a bit slower, but I still won't complain. Their NNTP server is dog slow and I suspect that it's leased from supernews anyway. All in all, I have little to complain about now that I have it under control. No spyware, firewall is up, and I don't run any servers whatsoever so they have no reason to complain about me.
heh, I agree. I used to use coyote linux for my firewall as well. Before that, I manually did the ipchains thing with redhat 6.0. Anyway, coyote worked so well, that I set it up for 3 friends of mine using old 486DX 33 boxen. They are happier that pigs in shit. However, I now run smoothwall since I put a 400MB hard drive in that puppy. www.smoothwall.org
smoothwall works great, has web logs, and is pretty tight. Give it a look if you have an old small hard drive. You can download their 0.9.9 version ISO for free. Plus, they've released a few updates that are quite painless to to apply. This is truly the first linux based "appliance firewall OS" that I've seen that's so easy a monkey could figure it out.
You are right though, smoothwall is great on an old box with no hard drives. Aint linux great?
First off, this is one of the best comments I've read on /. in a while. I'm not autistic nor do I have asperger's syndrome, but everything you just wrote makes way too much sense. Especially this line - "Normal people pursue happiness, they don't experience it." You are definately leaning towards Zen Buddhism here. I know that another poster pointed this out, but I think you should look into Zen. There are different schools of Buddhism and Zen is not really a relgion so to speak. One could be a Jew and still be a practioner of Zen. Anyhow, I recommend reading anything by Thich Nhat Hanh. I think you would particularly enjoy "The Present Moment." There is plenty of his stuff on Amazon.
Anyhow, I got carried away there and just to let you know, I'm not a Buddhist nor a practitioner of Zen. But a Zen practitioner would not persue they would just be.. (doh, there I go again). O.K, lets move on.
Going back to where I started, this post really hits home with me in many ways. My friends and I have often discussed the very things you wrote about. First, that there is a segment of society that is considered "normal" or rather mundane so to speak. Instead of using a bell curve, which works if that's what floats your boat, we use an upright diamond. If you notice, the bulk of society fits nicely into a circle in the middle of that diamond.
What I'm talking about here is not intelligence, but rather mindfulness and interests. The edges of that diamond are filled with those who are mindful and the mindless bulk of society fits in the center. I'm not implying that all of society is mindless, but as a general rule and in your own words "Normal people pursue happiness, they don't experience it."
The average jane watches soaps because she wishes to live her life through the fantasy of TV actors and actresses. The average joe is spoonfed entertainment via the tube and and cheers when inflated pig skin crosses a certain line. Very few of these people could enjoy the things you write about. Society has basically told these people what to enjoy, what to think, what to watch, how to live, etc. They basically, have ceased to be mindful.
I truly find it fascinating that peoples moods for the entire day/week are determined by the outcome of a soap opera or a football game. Here in TX, you'd think there was a funeral the day after a game where the Cowboys lose. People actually come to work depressed. The mood of the entire office is different.
Some would say that football, baseball, basketball, hockey, cable TV, Satellite TV, soaps, sitcoms, talk shows, national enquirer, and many other venues of spoonfed entertainment is what's keeping the masses occupied,(fat, dumb, and happy)and this is what keeps the country stable. Who cares about what's really going on in the world, what the govt really does, how many people are starving, etc... as long as there is beer, football, and Jerry Springer. Well, this portion in itself could be another topic of discussion so I'll wrap it up here.
Rogerborg, I hope to see some more of your posts. You and I have much in common. I'd write more, but it's lunchtime and I'm getting very hungry. Check out Thich Nhat Hanh, or Zen in general. It would probably make a hell of a lot of sense to you.
I also have charter@home, however, I never received the CD which you mentioned. What type of software is on the CD? Also, how different are the settings for the servers and whatnot? My charter@home domain is ftwrth1.tx.home.com. If you have any info could you please post it? TIA!
"As much as the Linux zealots would like to deny it, Win2K/XP have eliminated virtualy all of the old arguments for using Linux over windows."
If you are talking desktop use, then you may have a good point. If you are talking server use, then it's still linux all the way. I have no problems with windows on the desktop, but I hate it as a server OS. Many have said linux is a server OS posing as a desktop OS. Well, the inverse could also be true - Windows is a desktop OS trying to pose as a server OS.
Personally, I find Mac OSX to be the holy grail of "desktop" operating systems. A consistant GUI coupled with BSD unix. Let me tell you, it's heaven.
Anyhow, I am straying from my point. There is still one thing that win2k/XP lack and that is a good CLI. When I need/want to use the command line, DOS just doesnt cut the mustard. Bash, CSH, or TCSH do. If you could overlay the windows GUI on top of UNIX and have access to the shell, then I'd be a happy camper.
I've heard cygwin allows one to compile unix apps for windows, but I have no experience with it. If this is indeed the case, I'll give it a shot. But, again, for server usage, nothing will beat a *nix box. Use the right tool for the right job.
I agree. Bin Laden wants us out of the middle east. I say we give him his wish. Let's pull out and take our money with us and invest it in a renewable energy source. Hell, even if we could buy oil from someone else, we at least won't have to deal with the fanaticism.
That episode is called "Sabra Price is Right." You can find it on http://snl.jt.org
cheers
"All I want now is a Quartz/Carbon based Emacs :) oh yeah, that and a Titanium powerbook so I can trash that fscking Tecra :-)"
well, go on down to
http://emacs-on-aqua.sourceforge.net/
It looks promising.
We are going to start a serious war that IMHO will have very little effect on stopping future terrorism from happening again on American soil. Take out Bin Laden and who is left? Tons more...
I read an article by Tamim Ansary where he stated "I do believe that suffering and poverty are the soil in which terrorism grows. Bin Laden and his cohorts want to bait us into creating more such soil, so they and their kind can flourish."
I encourage everyone to read this essay in order to gain some perspective. We need to implement some sort of "marshall plan" to make sure we rebuild Afghanistan and replace the Taliban with a just government, much like we did with Japan in WW2. The Northern Alliance comes to mind as they have been fighting the Taliban for quite some time now. If we don't do this, we are going to create an environment where new terrorists will inevitably grow.
We cannot and should not look at this as a short term solution. We have to work with countries that may not be in our best interests financially. Kuwait made sense financially, but Afghanistan does not, however, we are now seeing the effect of such an environment. If the US government is wise, it will be working out a plan while the conflict is ensuing. We must follow through and rebuild, educate, finance, and empower the Afghan people to be more than drug dealers or victims of the Taliban oppression.
the Shiites (sp?), in power in Saudi Arabia and the most predominent sect throughout the world believe it was all right the way things went down
Wrong... The Saudis are Sunni NOT Shiite. Iran is the only Shiite Muslim state of its kind in the region. The Taliban, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Palestinians, UAE, etc are Sunni. Btw, Sunni Islam is the most predominant Islam in the Middle East. You are correct that the no-fly zone area of Iraq is inhabited by Shiites. It is for this reason that the USA did not take out Saddam Hossein - we wanted to maintain a power balance. We wanted to keep the Southern Iraqi's from aligning with Iran and increasing Iran's power base.
"if you think there are problems now with digital copy protection laws, you ain't seen nuthin yet!"
Star trek like replicators, Oh my! I can see it now... download your billz here. Seriously though, this would extend IP laws to physical objects since they would also be an arrangement of "numbers" of some kind... hell, they already are. This would open up a serious can of worms and with laws like the DMCA, the chilling effect would be horrible. Granted, I highly doubt a replication device would fall into the hands of consumers without serious copy protections built in. I highly doubt consumers would even be able to buy such devices but lets speculate for a moment.
Now for the funny part - Imagine downloading warez like:
happy_meal.img
vaio_laptop.img
notebook_paper.img
Now, the above examples could be forseen by the industries as bad bad bad. Imagine MacDonalds with a lawsuit against burger pirates. Imagine Sony going bonkers because people are copying their laptop and not buying the hardware. Notebook paper replication will at least save trees. Now, if intricate machines like laptops can be replicated, you'd better believe that such replicators would only be used in the industry to cut manufacturing costs. Create one perfect laptop and clone the hell out of it.
The first example, a happy meal image, is quite interesting to ponder. If such an abundant supply of food could exist, how long before lawsuits fly around when poorer nations use this technology to feed the hungry. Will MacDonalds, Pizza Hut, or even the local grocery store chains throw a fit? I bet they would! It will be like Drug companies going after the third world for cloning their pills, only much worse.
Anyhow, my final thought to throw out to all of you would concern the free software philosophy as it applies to physical objects. Would RMS create an open source hardware equivalent of GNU for the benefit of humanity despite the loss of "potential" revenue for the evil, greedy corporations? Would someone create a good steak and image it for free? Would you check the source first... Anti-virus could have a new meaning in this realm you know. As far as hardware goes, what would stop someone from creating a perfect looking/working laptop that would explode after 5 minutes of use? The world is certainly going to be an interesting place if nanotech has this potential.
Your sig:
Leftist: Force the world into slavery. Liberal: Vote the world into slavery. Libertarian: Let us alone!
You left out one ---> Right/Republican = Sell the world into slavery.
This is scary.
Very well written and accurate portrayal of Microsoft and their vision of computing. While Cringly's idea of TCP/MS may seem far-fetched, you are right on the money regarding their desire for such a protocol. If Microsoft could embrace and extend the internet, it would in a heartbeat. If that ever did happen, it would be the end of the free internet as we know it.
Unfortunately, only the free-thinkers would see it that way. The mindless herd of end users that follows Microsoft would know no different. They would continue to surf and enjoy their digital playground and carry with them the same illusion of freedom they have about the rest of America. These same people never knowing about the DMCA, Sklyarov, DeCSS, or fair-use, (because the media practices awareness control over the public) would just assume that's the way it's always been. The movie, "The Matrix," at least metaphorically speaking, is not far from the truth. In the future, I see a day when people are too "attached" to a system to let go. In this future, I see people who can't define their own reality or even define freedom because of the constraints that are placed upon them since birth. In other words, they will have lost the ability to step outside the box and question the facade they call "reality".
Maybe I've read "Brave New World" one too many times, but the parent post and Cringly's article make for a great introduction to a new 1984esque type of novel. Ok, so I got a little carried away there. LOL.. Anyhow, what I meant convey was that the average user would probably not care since they use windows anyway. They would see all the neat new services that passport provides and consider it a "feature." As scary as this may sound to you, the average joe user knows no better. However, with IPv6 right around the corner, I don't see Microsoft embracing TCP/IP. But have no doubt, if Microsoft could change the very protocol of the internet in yet another attempt capture even more marketshare, I have no doubt that they would at least try. That is what scares me about this company - the complete and total disregard for the open standards that allowed them to become so big in the first place.
A friend of mine acquired a siren/alarm thing that's used in either Finland or Sweden. This siren is used when families are very snowed in up in the hills in their cabins allowing them to be located. These sirens can be heard for five miles or so in the open. Let's just say he rigged a motion type device in his case so that when the case was tilted too far off balance the alarm would come on. Needless to say, this would cause any burgler to shit his pants and probably be deafened to the point of bleeding from his ears. It was a great proof of concept, but he liked to tinker with his box a lot and having accidently set it off a couple of times he removed it.
The site www.teoma.com is running Apache/1.3.12 (Unix) on Solaris 8. This link should give you all that nice info. Makes me wonder if this will turn into a Solaris vs Linux search engine shootout. Either way, Teoma will have to work pretty hard to dethrone Google as my search engine of choice.
I have actually been very interested in these low-latency patches of which you speak. I've heard of patches by Ingo Molnar and one by Andrew Morton. Which one do you have?
Also, how much faster is the performance? It would seem that if this improves desktop performance it should be included in distro's like Mandrake. Also, how responsive is video playback with these patches installed? I'm interested in playing divx, avi, mpeg, etc and it appears that windows is still better at this sort of thing. I'd rather use Linux for all my desktop usage!
Finally, which low-latency patch did you use as I have heard of a few. If you could post the link I'd greatly appreciate it.
Cheers
Ok... who copied who? I went to the netcaptor link you gave and I was surprised to see this --> "This screenshot demonstrates NetCaptor's patent-pending browser tab interface."
you can see this right at http://www.netcaptor.com/tour.php
Patent? I believe this patent nonesense is going way too far. Besides, didn't Galeon have this first ?
hmmm... ok troll I'll bite. First, I have a very hard time believing that you really and truly think this way. The first thought in my head when I read this was "This guy has to be kidding right?" So now, let's go through some of your complaints.
"I am very uncomfortable with *BSD's connection to Satanism and demonic figures."
Exactly how is BSD connected with Satanism? I don't know any Satanists who use *BSD nor are any of the original developers satanists. The demonic figure of which you speak is a daemon, not a demon. The symbol is meant to be satirical. Daemons are processes that run in the background and keep the system running clean or offer services. Examples would be syslogd, inetd, httpd, etc.. The pitchfork he's holding represents the fork() function which is how processes are executed in the first place.
"It is morally wrong to associate a piece of software with such an image, and I sure as hell do not want my children coming into contact with it."
hmmm... this image? Have you ever seen a demon to know exactly what one looks like? Can you even prove that such a creature even exists? Oh I forgot, your religious and cultural background lead you to believe such nonesense. I guess unicorns, dragons, trolls, gnomes, elfs, leprechauns, vampires, zombies, and boogie monsters exist too. After all, by this logic they should exists since they are part of somebody's popular culture. I guess the Taliban was justified in destroying the Buddhist statues in the Bamiyan valley of Afghanistan because graven images are unislamic.
"Witches are to be burned, not honored, and I don't think that most God-fearing Christians out there want their children corrupted by such "gateway" groups."
Yes, typical Christian bigot attitude. I bet you read Arthur Millers "The Crucible" with pride don't you. The Spanish Inquisition which killed more non-Christians and Jews than Hitler probably pleases you. After all, these other people don't deserve to exist do they. The early white Christian settlers killed the native Indian populations because they were heathens and unchristian. Christianity has been responsible for more cruelty and barbaric acts than any other force in history. But, I'm sure this is a source of pride for you. Witches being burned, the Spanish Inquisition, The Crusades, The Holocaust, The destruction of Native American culture, and the enslavement of millions of African Americans are all examples of how Christian bible verses were used to justify the horrible things.
Finally, your statement "I don't think that most God-fearing Christians out there want their children corrupted by such "gateway" groups".
Well, I'm sure most God-fearing Christians don't share your extremist viewpoints. I consider your group, whatever that group is, a "gateway" group. I'll be sure to not allow my children to grow up being close-minded bigots such as yourself and I'll make sure they know all the cruel barbaric acts that your group has committed in the name of God.
"it may make a lot of difference - everyone is gonna be after the same 600M binary, so wouldn't you rather pay the transit for it once, rather than for every user who grabs a copy?"
This is a good argument and it is very valid, however and I believe that @home will shoot itself in the foot with this one. I have a couple of friends who subscribe to premium usenet service through third party providers because @home does not carry the groups they usually download from. Instead of caching the GB's of info locally like you said, the same info will come in from the outside several times over and surely drive up the cost.
@home needs to consider the types of people who use usenet. The average Joe does not use usenet. Most people I mention usenet to don't even know that it exists. Die hard usenetters are going to get their binaries whether it's from inside the @home network or from outside. It would be in @home's best interest financially to keep the groups. @home would have more internal traffic, but they will not have to deal with TB's of premium service usenet data flowing in from the outside and eating up their bandwidth quota's and driving up costs. Then again, a big lawsuit from the MPAA would not be good financially either.
Final thought - could @home not just open up another data channel? It should be possible then to gain another 30mps by opening another 6 MHz channel for data. I mean, they probably still have unused channels. This would definately increase the bandwidth and provide a form of segmentation. If anyone knows more about this, I'd appreciate the input.
Cheers
"both the GPL and proprietry license prevent code re-use."
you can re-use GPL code in your private company and as long as you don't distribute your program you don't have to open the source to it. Only when you distribute your code do you have to GPL any derived works. Most in house software stays "in house" so this should not even be a concern.
In the Movie, "True Identity", Lenny Henry(A British Actor) pulls off the best American accent I've ever heard. Originally, I thought he was American until I saw "The Chef" series on PBS. My god was I surprised. So yes, the impossible has been accomplished by a Brit, and a very talented one at that!
...it appears that the interviewer seemed very clueless about the "open source movement" so to speak. It seemed to me that she didn't grasp some of the concepts, particularly that Torvalds did this for the love of programming and nothing more. She even asked Torvalds if he was some how regretful that he didn't try to "sell" his OS rather than giving it away. Her pronunciation of "Linux" as "Linox" was quite disconcerting as well.
She also didn't grasp, at least at first, that you can sell free software. Overall, I liked the interview, but I wish the interviewer had done her homework or did she not know where to look for such information. She could have taken the discussion more in depth if she knew more. I do feel that it is good exposure for Linux nonetheless. At the end, it appeared that she was starting to understand the concept of free software. This may mean that the Linux community could do some more PR work in this area.
I brought up that last point because many people, even IT people don't really seem to grasp or understand the concepts behind free software, open source, and that the value of Linux can't be measured by a price tag on a shrink wrapped box. Microsoft won't go away any time soon and neither will Linux much to Microsofts dismay. Linux is free and far too useful to just throw by the wayside. There are many online docs and how-to's, but we can't insure that people will learn linux effectively. On the other hand, we can work to educate people to understand the processes, ideals, and workings behind the movement. This is perhaps just as important as any how-to document because the community is ultimately what drives Linux and understanding that community is part of the overall learning process.