I was looking forward to a piece that cleared up myths about FreeBSD. I've had extensive experience and know better than to buy into most of the false statements directed at the OS.
While the author does a good job of outlining what those myths are, he does a terrible job of debunking them. If you want people to stop thinking false things, you don't go and try to convince them by telling them a bunch of other false things.
It's also not very smart to write an article aimed at misguided Linux users and spend about as much time trying to clear up some misconceptions about FreeBSD as you do exposing your own cluelessness about Linux.
eg: "FreeBSD is not a Linux clone" - This is quite true.
"Linux is a FreeBSD clone" - Please. Not even a little bit.
Neither OS is a clone of the other, but both operating systems have strived to become better, sometimes with enhancements inspired by the other OS. This happens every bit as regularly in BOTH camps.
I wans't trying to absolve the cracker. He is responsible for his own actions and he ought to suffer the consequences. what he did was wrong. That is so obvious I didn't think I had to point it out.
My point was simply that I think it's about time we ALSO started looking how software makers are being negligent. They do not respond to vulnerabilities in a timely fashion and there doesn't seem to be very much will to release a quality product. Software seems to be the only industry where this is not only tolerated but expected.
Ummm.. I think you need to read the article again. It seems pretty clear to me that by "CPU" they meant the CPU case. They stated specifically that all that was left were monitors, keyboards and cables.
Here's what I don't understand. If your car stereo gets stolen, and there are no signs of forced entry, you can forget about the insurance company paying you one red cent for damages. This is because if you were dumb enough to leave your car unlocked, the insurance company sure as hell isn't gonna pay you money.
If your whole car is stolen and you can't produce the keys, they aren't gonna buy you a new car. You shouldn't have left your keys in the ignition.
The macro vulnerabilities have been around for EVER. Why, then, are companies allowed to continue whining when they are exploited? Why isn't there more pressure to plug this up? How many times can you listen to a guy moan about his car stereo before you yell "LOCK YER FRIGGIN DOORS, MORON!"
Further consider.. what kind of crap would a car company get if they shipped a car with doors that just plain don't lock?
I dunno. It just seems like software companies can get away with persistent bugs than never go away while the rest of the world is expected to provide a GOOD product.
I think the author's point about the tide of cash that is washing over the Linux community altering the community's dynamics is valid. I don't necessarily agree that it spells doom.
The big corporations may be paying us some lip service with all their Open Source posturing and grand philanthropic contributions to the under-dog movement, but I still don't think it spells doom.
All these changes will cause (Actually, ALREADY have caused) some changes. Like what? Well, the obvious one is a change in our userbase. We are used to dealing with newbies. We are not used to dealing with non-technical newbies. That's going to have to change.
But the idea that money will kill Linux, although plausible, is far from a certainty. The author implies that money kills quality and committment to creating the best product. That's hogwash. It may be true in the supermegahuge multinational corporation area of things, but there are many sucessful companies in the business of offering quality products.
Perhaps the Microsofts and AT&Ts and AOLs are more concerned with market-share, but that's a whole category of business the Linux community isn't even close to.
Take Sun, for example. Here we have a very successful, public company whose products do not suck.
Most of the commercial UNIX variants do not suck. So Linux becomes a commercial UNIX variant. Why should it, unlike all its cousins, start sucking? That doesn't make sense.
SCO sucks because they have lost touch with what else is out there, and have lost touch with their own userbase. Does the author REALLY think that Linux faces this danger?
The Linux stocks may very well eventually crash and burn into oblivion, but Linux will emerge from the fire and keep right on chugging so long as there are geeks.
The Linux box is under pretty heavy DoS. It is dropping about 25% of my pings but it is STILL up, no reboots and STILL serving web pages.
There is almost no packet loss on the Windows end of things, indicating that no one is saturating their network, though it is probably suffering DoS attacks of its own. The machine is pingable but the web service is D-E-A-D.
Just thought I'd post this since M$ seems to edit the boo-boos out of its "Status Log" every few hours.
I am just curious. What's a BFD? Do you have more info on what was actually done to the guestbook? All I know is that it was compromised. (Seems to me that at this point, if they had a prise to give they should have given it. but they don't, so that point is moot)
Alot of what the author said was false. Alot of it was FUD. BUT.. I think everyone is missing the point. The point here is that it IS true that if a software vendor designs a program SPECIFICALLY for, say, Win95, there's a fairly good chance that it will NOT work on ALL versions of Windows.
Sure, with a little effort, you could probably solve the problem. Sure, a clueful developer would not design software that way. THAT DOESN'T MATTER.
M$ and the Linux FUD-meisters are going on and on about Linux fragmentation, yet the issues Linux faces if the distributions become much more different are IDENTICAL to the ones the various Windows distributions (NT, CE, 98, 3.x) face TODAY. ie: MINOR issues that a smart software developer can work around and/or suggest user-implemented fixes for.
So let's keep it apples to apples (no pun intended). EITHER Linux is in no danger of fragmenting OR Windows is fragmented already. You can't have it both ways and this article, in my opinion, is merely an attempt to attack Windows using the same logic and language used to attack Linux.
Or at least that's what ZD would like you to believe.:)
"Ooooo!! Ahhhh! Sun and Netscape back away from Linux! Don't spend money on it! It's dead! Be afraid, be very afraid.. be uncertain.. be very uncertain.. be very doubtful!"
Oh ye of little faith. The "no demand from corporate customers" excuse was used by Oracle. They ended up changing their minds. So will these guys. And even if they don't, how hard can it be to make an application server?;)
But having a non-GPL license is most definately not why Mozilla has had a hard time recruiting developers. That is only true in a Linux-centric view. You neglect the tons and tons of Windows, Mac and non-GPL UNIX coders out there. Many of them believe in open source software, and many of them get sick at the mention of the GPL.
The reason Mozilla has had trouble recruiting is because of the choices Netscape made about just what they were going to release to the public. They released a huge mass of code that didnt even compile. That's not very attractive to developers. Developers like to either start something new from the ground up, or enhance something that works. They're not too keen on being handed a bowl of data-spaghetti and asked to clean it up and make it work. It's a daunting task. I, for instance, probably know enough about programming that I could have contributed, in however small a way, to the effort. I did not contribute because I don't have the skills to understand what's already there. I'd get lost in the code trying to find the one piece I am good enough to work on.
GPL had nothing to do with it. The Linux community may have been put off by that, but the developer community as a whole couldn't give a rat's ass if it's GPL, Artisitic, BSD.. or MPL.
> There are also a lot more people who call English > their _second_ language than there are who speak > French...:P
That's probably true. And you can most likely add a large segment of the population in France to that headcount.:)
> And what is this supposed to P.R.O.V.E.?
I was poking fun at the original poster's apparent concept of the world which is, it seems, limited to a very narrow view consisting of "US" and "THEM". (ie: that's probably how he'd fill in a map if the names of the countries were left blank)
Hello?? The USA is an old British colony. So is Australia, so is most of Canada, so is New Zealand, so are MOST of the countries, other than England where English is spoken! Strictly speaking, if you excluse colonies, you still come out even.
Translation: there are idiots, and there are IDIOTS. There are more human beings on the planet who call French their native language than there are English. I suppose that by your definition, that's dead.
Just because the "United States" is abbreviated U.S. doesn't mean every other country is T.H.E.M. Get a clue, or an education. Which ever comes first.
From what I have read, it's not so much Linux's SMP that failed (although there are some performance issues there too). It is the fact that Linux doesn't really like using multiple network adapters in parallel. That seems to tinker in very low-level threading and SMP stuff which Linux has not yet perfected. Ironically, Linux probably would have kept up with Nt alot longer if they had removed 3 network cards and just let it do its thing with one. I think that getting SMP working well under Linux is a priority.. but how much energy do we really want our beloved kernel coders to spend on getting 4 100Mbps ethernet cards to push data in parallel? Seems like a pretty bullsh*t scenario to me.
There's an interesting article I read off LinuxToday which analyses the results of this benchmark. NT smoked us.. but unless bandwidth gets a whole lot cheaper REAL fast, no one will care!
check it out: http://cs.alfred.edu/~lansdoct/mstest.html
I'm a GPL partisan myself, but I think that when someone sets out to write an article, they should decide whether they are going to examine both sides of the argument or just advocate one side.
This article is GPL advocacy, not a genuine look at "both sides".
Though it's true that the BSD license allows code written freely to become proprietary, history has shown that companies that do take advantage of the BSD license have a tendency to give back to the community even though it is not compulsory.
The BSDites argue that the GPL's giant "no-no" clause regarding proprietary rights scares companies off. You know what? They are right. Although we've seen alot of free software emerge lately from the corporate world, almost all of the contributors have opted OUT of the GPL.
I think that both licenses have their place, and ultimately I think you'll find GPL'ed software running somewhere below BSD'ed software as a common support infrastructure. The spiffy "add-ons" and extras may be open sourced, but I don't think the corporate world is ready to accept relinquishing the rights to their intellectual property.
Hi there, I am having trouble with your statements. If you actually are a Linux user, then why would you say that the command line ignores innovation? I mean, I understand that the graphical interface has improved things for many people, but why would an operating system have to prevent users from accessing its command line in order to be "innovative" ? As a Mac user, I am sure you use Quick Keys alot more than the mouse-click, am I right? The GUI becomes less of a functional tool and more a presentation tool. It may not be the case for you, but can you conceive of the fact that for a great number of people the command line is a more powerful and efficient way to get things done? I am a GUI-lover. I LOVE my GUI. But if I want to do something, I pop open an xterm. Just like the Quick-keys, once you learn the commands, it's alot faster than clicking away. And as far as Linux's graphical interface is concerned, I have never heard of NeWS or Berlin, so I cannot comment on that. But can you explain to me what about X is technologically inferior to say.. the Mac interface? I love the Mac interface. In my opinion, MS could take a lesson from Apple about how to do it right. But why do you think X is not capable of achieving this? There hasn't been any significant development for X until about a year ago. And look how far we have come in a year? How far will we have evolved a year from now? I don't think X's drawbacks are technological. In fact, I think that the client/server model of X is something other GUIs, include Apple's should seriously consider. Yes, X is still kinda clunky to use. But I think we're starting to see some significant changes. And when it's all said and done, and all the apps we want are available, and the desktop environments have stabilized.. Linux users will still be able to display applications on each others' monitors and the rest won't.
Hi there, I am having trouble with your statements. If you actually are a Linux user, then why would you say that the command line ignores innovation? I mean, I understand that the graphical interface has improved things for many people, but why would an operating system have to prevent users from accessing its command line in order to be "innovative" ? As a Mac user, I am sure you use Quick Keys alots more than the mouse-click, am I right? It may not be the case for you, but can you conceive of the fact that for a great number of people the command line is a more powerful and efficient way to get things done? I am a GUI-lover. I LOVE my GUI. But if I want to do something, I pop open an xterm. Just like the Quick-keys, once you learn the commands, it's alot faster than clicking away. And as far as Linux's graphical interface is concerned, I have never heard of NeWS or Berlin, so I cannot comment on that. But can you explain to me what about X is technologically inferior to say.. the Mac interface? I love the Mac interface. In my opinion, MS could take a lesson from Apple about how to do it right. But why do you think X is not capable of achieving this? There hasn't been any significant development for X until about a year ago. And look how far we have come in a year? How far will we have evolved a year from now? I don't think X's drawbacks are technological. In fact, I think that the client/server model of X is something other GUIs, include Apple's should seriously consider.
Rather than disable the feature, you should just get into the habbit of using the -f switch to rm when you don't want to be asked about confirmation.
rm -f filename.
I've disabled confirmation for my user account, but I have left it active on my root account, eventhough it is a pain. Better safe than sorry.
One thing i have learned in my years as a UNIX admin.. the only admins who feel confident that they will never mess up an rm command are the ones who will.
Don't run as root. Use su. Don't disable confirmation on rm, use -f when you want to skip it.
The link is to a page that outputs the results of a "finger bwh@idsoftware.com".
I fingered the account manually just because I've barely used finger since everyone disabled their finger daemons pursuant to the whole big "Flash" scare in '94. Call me a geek but I got a kick out of it.
Remember when you could get the Neilson ratings by fingering some account @ halcyon?
Now there's an idea! How much would YOU pay for the chance to do your work on the Air Force's "Vomit Commet" ? (That zero-G airplane that nosedives for 30 seconds at a time)
It looks very comfortable, but this thing is totally impractical. There doesn't seem to be any place to put your tower, no cable management, and the reclining position means you'd have to use a trackball or touchpad since most mice would roll right off. There also doesn't seem to be a very straight-forward and quick way to get in and out of this contraption. So they've managed to combine computers and a visit to the dentist.
Slashdot Mirror
I was looking forward to a piece that cleared up myths about FreeBSD. I've had extensive experience and know better than to buy into most of the false statements directed at the OS.
While the author does a good job of outlining what those myths are, he does a terrible job of debunking them. If you want people to stop thinking false things, you don't go and try to convince them by telling them a bunch of other false things.
It's also not very smart to write an article aimed at misguided Linux users and spend about as much time trying to clear up some misconceptions about FreeBSD as you do exposing your own cluelessness about Linux.
eg: "FreeBSD is not a Linux clone" - This is quite true.
"Linux is a FreeBSD clone" - Please. Not even a little bit.
Neither OS is a clone of the other, but both operating systems have strived to become better, sometimes with enhancements inspired by the other OS. This happens every bit as regularly in BOTH camps.
Anyway...
My point was simply that I think it's about time we ALSO started looking how software makers are being negligent. They do not respond to vulnerabilities in a timely fashion and there doesn't seem to be very much will to release a quality product. Software seems to be the only industry where this is not only tolerated but expected.
Ummm.. I think you need to read the article again. It seems pretty clear to me that by "CPU" they meant the CPU case. They stated specifically that all that was left were monitors, keyboards and cables.
If your whole car is stolen and you can't produce the keys, they aren't gonna buy you a new car. You shouldn't have left your keys in the ignition.
The macro vulnerabilities have been around for EVER. Why, then, are companies allowed to continue whining when they are exploited? Why isn't there more pressure to plug this up? How many times can you listen to a guy moan about his car stereo before you yell "LOCK YER FRIGGIN DOORS, MORON!"
Further consider.. what kind of crap would a car company get if they shipped a car with doors that just plain don't lock?
I dunno. It just seems like software companies can get away with persistent bugs than never go away while the rest of the world is expected to provide a GOOD product.
I think the author's point about the tide of cash that is washing over the Linux community altering the community's dynamics is valid. I don't necessarily agree that it spells doom.
The big corporations may be paying us some lip service with all their Open Source posturing and grand philanthropic contributions to the under-dog movement, but I still don't think it spells doom.
All these changes will cause (Actually, ALREADY have caused) some changes. Like what? Well, the obvious one is a change in our userbase. We are used to dealing with newbies. We are not used to dealing with non-technical newbies. That's going to have to change.
But the idea that money will kill Linux, although plausible, is far from a certainty. The author implies that money kills quality and committment to creating the best product. That's hogwash. It may be true in the supermegahuge multinational corporation area of things, but there are many sucessful companies in the business of offering quality products.
Perhaps the Microsofts and AT&Ts and AOLs are more concerned with market-share, but that's a whole category of business the Linux community isn't even close to.
Take Sun, for example. Here we have a very successful, public company whose products do not suck.
Most of the commercial UNIX variants do not suck. So Linux becomes a commercial UNIX variant. Why should it, unlike all its cousins, start sucking? That doesn't make sense.
SCO sucks because they have lost touch with what else is out there, and have lost touch with their own userbase. Does the author REALLY think that Linux faces this danger?
The Linux stocks may very well eventually crash and burn into oblivion, but Linux will emerge from the fire and keep right on chugging so long as there are geeks.
JMHO
3:54 CST
The Linux box is under pretty heavy DoS. It is dropping about 25% of my pings but it is STILL up, no reboots and STILL serving web pages.
There is almost no packet loss on the Windows end of things, indicating that no one is saturating their network, though it is probably suffering DoS attacks of its own. The machine is pingable but the web service is D-E-A-D.
Just thought I'd post this since M$ seems to edit the boo-boos out of its "Status Log" every few hours.
I am just curious. What's a BFD? Do you have more info on what was actually done to the guestbook? All I know is that it was compromised. (Seems to me that at this point, if they had a prise to give they should have given it. but they don't, so that point is moot)
Calm down, calm down.
Alot of what the author said was false. Alot of it was FUD. BUT.. I think everyone is missing the point. The point here is that it IS true that if a software vendor designs a program SPECIFICALLY for, say, Win95, there's a fairly good chance that it will NOT work on ALL versions of Windows.
Sure, with a little effort, you could probably solve the problem. Sure, a clueful developer would not design software that way. THAT DOESN'T MATTER.
M$ and the Linux FUD-meisters are going on and on about Linux fragmentation, yet the issues Linux faces if the distributions become much more different are IDENTICAL to the ones the various Windows distributions (NT, CE, 98, 3.x) face TODAY. ie: MINOR issues that a smart software developer can work around and/or suggest user-implemented fixes for.
So let's keep it apples to apples (no pun intended). EITHER Linux is in no danger of fragmenting OR Windows is fragmented already. You can't have it both ways and this article, in my opinion, is merely an attempt to attack Windows using the same logic and language used to attack Linux.
I don't know what their excuse is this time, but the server is down. NOT the router:
--- 207.46.171.196 ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 0 packets received, 100% packet loss
Another box on the same subnet (assuming 207.46.171.0 is not further subnetted)
--- 207.46.171.10 ping statistics ---
2 packets transmitted, 2 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 75.8/78.0/80.2 ms
The router is NOT dead as evidenced by the fact that
...
13 207.46.175.250 73.138 ms 79.384 ms 91.985 ms
14 207.46.171.10 76.675 ms 77.239 ms 74.358 ms
Or at least that's what ZD would like you to believe.
"Ooooo!! Ahhhh! Sun and Netscape back away from Linux! Don't spend money on it! It's dead! Be afraid, be very afraid.. be uncertain.. be very uncertain.. be very doubtful!"
Oh ye of little faith. The "no demand from corporate customers" excuse was used by Oracle. They ended up changing their minds. So will these guys. And even if they don't, how hard can it be to make an application server?
Sun just wants first crack at this new software.
GPL is a Good Thing (tm).
But having a non-GPL license is most definately not why Mozilla has had a hard time recruiting developers. That is only true in a Linux-centric view. You neglect the tons and tons of Windows, Mac and non-GPL UNIX coders out there. Many of them believe in open source software, and many of them get sick at the mention of the GPL.
The reason Mozilla has had trouble recruiting is because of the choices Netscape made about just what they were going to release to the public. They released a huge mass of code that didnt even compile. That's not very attractive to developers. Developers like to either start something new from the ground up, or enhance something that works. They're not too keen on being handed a bowl of data-spaghetti and asked to clean it up and make it work. It's a daunting task.
I, for instance, probably know enough about programming that I could have contributed, in however small a way, to the effort. I did not contribute because I don't have the skills to understand what's already there. I'd get lost in the code trying to find the one piece I am good enough to work on.
GPL had nothing to do with it. The Linux community may have been put off by that, but the developer community as a whole couldn't give a rat's ass if it's GPL, Artisitic, BSD.. or MPL.
> There are also a lot more people who call English :P
:)
> their _second_ language than there are who speak
> French...
That's probably true. And you can most likely add a large segment of the population in France to that headcount.
> And what is this supposed to P.R.O.V.E.?
I was poking fun at the original poster's apparent concept of the world which is, it seems, limited to a very narrow view consisting of "US" and "THEM". (ie: that's probably how he'd fill in a map if the names of the countries were left blank)
France is not the only country where French is the primary language. Not by any means.
Hello?? The USA is an old British colony. So is Australia, so is most of Canada, so is New Zealand, so are MOST of the countries, other than England where English is spoken!
Strictly speaking, if you excluse colonies, you still come out even.
Translation: there are idiots, and there are IDIOTS.
There are more human beings on the planet who call French their native language than there are English. I suppose that by your definition, that's dead.
Just because the "United States" is abbreviated U.S. doesn't mean every other country is T.H.E.M.
Get a clue, or an education. Which ever comes first.
From what I have read, it's not so much Linux's SMP that failed (although there are some performance issues there too). It is the fact that Linux doesn't really like using multiple network adapters in parallel.
That seems to tinker in very low-level threading and SMP stuff which Linux has not yet perfected. Ironically, Linux probably would have kept up with Nt alot longer if they had removed 3 network cards and just let it do its thing with one.
I think that getting SMP working well under Linux is a priority.. but how much energy do we really want our beloved kernel coders to spend on getting 4 100Mbps ethernet cards to push data in parallel? Seems like a pretty bullsh*t scenario to me.
There's an interesting article I read off LinuxToday which analyses the results of this benchmark.
NT smoked us.. but unless bandwidth gets a whole lot cheaper REAL fast, no one will care!
check it out:
http://cs.alfred.edu/~lansdoct/mstest.html
I'm a GPL partisan myself, but I think that when someone sets out to write an article, they should decide whether they are going to examine both sides of the argument or just advocate one side.
This article is GPL advocacy, not a genuine look at "both sides".
Though it's true that the BSD license allows code written freely to become proprietary, history has shown that companies that do take advantage of the BSD license have a tendency to give back to the community even though it is not compulsory.
The BSDites argue that the GPL's giant "no-no" clause regarding proprietary rights scares companies off. You know what? They are right. Although we've seen alot of free software emerge lately from the corporate world, almost all of the contributors have opted OUT of the GPL.
I think that both licenses have their place, and ultimately I think you'll find GPL'ed software running somewhere below BSD'ed software as a common support infrastructure. The spiffy "add-ons" and extras may be open sourced, but I don't think the corporate world is ready to accept relinquishing the rights to their intellectual property.
Hi there,
I am having trouble with your statements. If you actually are a Linux user, then why would you say that the command line ignores innovation? I mean, I understand that the graphical interface has improved things for many people, but why would an operating system have to prevent users from accessing its command line in order to be "innovative" ?
As a Mac user, I am sure you use Quick Keys alot more than the mouse-click, am I right? The GUI becomes less of a functional tool and more a presentation tool. It may not be the case for you, but can you conceive of the fact that for a great number of people the command line is a more powerful and efficient way to get things done?
I am a GUI-lover. I LOVE my GUI. But if I want to do something, I pop open an xterm. Just like the Quick-keys, once you learn the commands, it's alot faster than clicking away.
And as far as Linux's graphical interface is concerned, I have never heard of NeWS or Berlin, so I cannot comment on that. But can you explain to me what about X is technologically inferior to say.. the Mac interface?
I love the Mac interface. In my opinion, MS could take a lesson from Apple about how to do it right. But why do you think X is not capable of achieving this? There hasn't been any significant development for X until about a year ago. And look how far we have come in a year? How far will we have evolved a year from now? I don't think X's drawbacks are technological. In fact, I think that the client/server model of X is something other GUIs, include Apple's should seriously consider.
Yes, X is still kinda clunky to use. But I think we're starting to see some significant changes. And when it's all said and done, and all the apps we want are available, and the desktop environments have stabilized.. Linux users will still be able to display applications on each others' monitors and the rest won't.
Your thoughts/comments are welcome.
Hi there,
I am having trouble with your statements. If you actually are a Linux user, then why would you say that the command line ignores innovation? I mean, I understand that the graphical interface has improved things for many people, but why would an operating system have to prevent users from accessing its command line in order to be "innovative" ?
As a Mac user, I am sure you use Quick Keys alots more than the mouse-click, am I right? It may not be the case for you, but can you conceive of the fact that for a great number of people the command line is a more powerful and efficient way to get things done?
I am a GUI-lover. I LOVE my GUI. But if I want to do something, I pop open an xterm. Just like the Quick-keys, once you learn the commands, it's alot faster than clicking away.
And as far as Linux's graphical interface is concerned, I have never heard of NeWS or Berlin, so I cannot comment on that. But can you explain to me what about X is technologically inferior to say.. the Mac interface?
I love the Mac interface. In my opinion, MS could take a lesson from Apple about how to do it right. But why do you think X is not capable of achieving this? There hasn't been any significant development for X until about a year ago. And look how far we have come in a year? How far will we have evolved a year from now? I don't think X's drawbacks are technological. In fact, I think that the client/server model of X is something other GUIs, include Apple's should seriously consider.
2.2.10 is a stable release, not a development release.
And you are right, you do sound like a snob.
Rather than disable the feature, you should just get into the habbit of using the -f switch to rm when you don't want to be asked about confirmation.
rm -f filename.
I've disabled confirmation for my user account, but I have left it active on my root account, eventhough it is a pain. Better safe than sorry.
One thing i have learned in my years as a UNIX admin.. the only admins who feel confident that they will never mess up an rm command are the ones who will.
Don't run as root. Use su.
Don't disable confirmation on rm, use -f when you want to skip it.
The link is to a page that outputs the results of a "finger bwh@idsoftware.com".
I fingered the account manually just because I've barely used finger since everyone disabled their finger daemons pursuant to the whole big "Flash" scare in '94. Call me a geek but I got a kick out of it.
Remember when you could get the Neilson ratings by fingering some account @ halcyon?
Now there's an idea! How much would YOU pay for the chance to do your work on the Air Force's "Vomit Commet" ? (That zero-G airplane that nosedives for 30 seconds at a time)
It looks very comfortable, but this thing is totally impractical. There doesn't seem to be any place to put your tower, no cable management, and the reclining position means you'd have to use a trackball or touchpad since most mice would roll right off.
There also doesn't seem to be a very straight-forward and quick way to get in and out of this contraption. So they've managed to combine computers and a visit to the dentist.