If you've played MUDs (or MMOGs) before, you've probably noticed they're mainly the same: Kill monsters in order to get 'phat lewt' that lets you kill bigger monsters that lets you get more loot that lets you kill yet bigger monsters. Seems a little repetitive and pointless doesn't it? We thought so too, so unlike other online RPGs you might be familiar with, you'll find that the traditional emphasis on bashing monsters is downplayed.
Mainly, Achaea is about the other players. Its gameplay is heavily oriented on player vs. player whether in combat, politics, or economics. Some barely participate in these larger struggles, while some rise to the top and exert great influence on world affairs. Yes, unlike most MUDs and MMOGs, we actually have world affairs. Things happen. The world changes. Development and improvement is constant.
What you're supposed to do is use a From: address indicating where you actually are, and a Reply-To: address that indicates where you would like replies to go.
"Supposed"? I don't see this in any of the relevant RFCs. Is this some arbitrary rule you've established yourself?
Even putting that aside, maybe you don't want to give out that particular address. When I'm sending mail to someone at work from home, I don't want them to get my personal email address. It's none of their business. More than that, sending mail from my work address with a reply-to to my home address is not sufficient to seperate that email from my employer in the minds of the average user. Hell, most email users (particularly outlook users) don't even see the reply-to header.
Yup. Unfortunately, this is part of where the problem comes in. All these 2-bit training groups out there who advertise that "you too can make scads of money as a microsoft admin and give up your day job as a cab driver" and then teach you for 2 weeks and pronounce you qualified to admin a network. They go out and work for peanuts, which is still twice what they're worth and the salary surveys reflect it. So when people like you or I go in who are actually really qualified to do the job they balk at the cost, say it's outside the salary curve, etc.
"Our network works fine with the admins we have that we're paying half that much" Of course, they only think it works fine because they've never had it run better. They don't realize not having backups for months on end isn't normal. Or that having restores take all day is unusual. They think it's normal to have a network that performs worse than a sneakernet, and to have availablility numbers in the low 50s.
So, instead, developers have to deal with those morons and then they write us all off together. After dealing with more than my fair share of developers in the same boat as the aforementioned admins (2 weeks learning vb and they're a developer) one could easily gain the same perception. However, I know better. They're lucky in that there's a hoard of publicly visible deelopers that DO have a clue (mostly in the OSS community) to stave off that image.
Administrators don't have a PR machine like that, (though sage is trying to fill that void) so our image is badly tarnished by these morons.
And if you don't like it, well, too bad. I *DON'T* ask you why you're using C instead of Java. That's not my business.
Unfortunately, while this is generally true, it also leads to a certain arrogance when dealing with people. I've seen it in admins before, and I'm generally thanked for my lack of it when I replace them.
I'm not saying this isn't true of you specifically, just noting where things start to go wrong even with admins that have a clue. (The percentage of which within our industry is steadily decreasing.)
I don't really do all that much different than them, I just don't take an attitude and tell them 'because I said so' when I'm asked why. When I have to tell them no, I actually take the time to explain why.
I also am willing to listen (within limits) to their reasons why they think I should make an exception. I will probably still say no, but listening to their reasons might help me suggest an alternative for them, and that seems to make all the difference.
51Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed-- 52in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.
However, I do agree with you that Eschatology is a questionable area of theology. Revelation gives us a basic idea of what's going to happen, and interpreting it at a detailed level is just an excercise in futility. Even a rudimentary study of prophecy in Old Testament history will quickly demonstrate that prophecies don't always mean what they appear to mean...even to those who give them.
And actually, Christ said the most important thing was "Love your neighbor as yourself". (And, as an aside, I'm not replying to your pope issue as I'm not catholic and discussion of their issues is a well I don't feel like jumping in right now.)
A very interesting interpretation, however flawed. The leaps at the end to it being connected to his faithfulness in prayer or contributing to the hat are particularly amusing. Jobs reward came from his faith, not his prayers.
God also was not the one to do those things to Satan. Satan requested God's leave to torment job, to prove he was only faithful because GOd gave him nice things. Satan failed to do that, even though he completely ruined jobs life.
And yes, part of the lesson is that yes, life sucks. We live in a fallen world and the reality is that stuff happens. Then comes the second part of that lesson, God knows more than us. His ways are higher than our ways, and he understands things on a level we can't even imagine, so we have no place to question His methods.
I don't really think that it's "tricking" that bothers most of these individuals, but that eventually, if implanted tags were to become popular, that it would eventually become the only method of buying and selling. The bible does mention that the mark of the beast would be necessary to buy or sell.
Yeah, but for a long time, cash was the only way to buy and sell and nobody decried it as the mark of the beast.
The mark is more likely to be akin to a drivers license. Something that identifies that you've sworn allegience, and no-one is allowed to do business with you unless you've taken it.
Perhaps you should try practicing the critical thinking skills you actually accuse others of not having (nice touch of elitism, there, by the way.)
Care to share where you feel I failed to do that? It's not apparent from your post. In fact, I don't see anything other than this line in your post that necessarily disagrees with what I said.
And I'm so tired of being accused of elitism over this. I'm not elite. I don't have anything special that these people don't have. I just made different choices. It's not elitism to say that I know more about computer systems than other people I know, they could know what I do, if they had made different choices.
And in fact, as I mentioned it's not even a simple thing. I don't blame them for their choices. Schools don't even TEACH critical reasoning anymore. If they did, we wouldn't have people voting for the morons we have in office now.
Lets face it - everyone runs X, and nobody has a serial console, so most people won't see the oopses.
Er, the majority of my linux boxes not only don't run X, they don't even have it installed. And my desktop/does/ have a serial console, (as do my servers) I know I'm not alone in the first, and I really doubt I'm in that rare of company on the second.
Why is it that religion really brings out the nutcases.
I really don't think that's the case. I mean, think about it, religous or not the "masses" are poorly educated, and we boggle at the conclusions they come to on a regular basis. I mean, look how many continue to support Bush's war. Look at the support for the drug war. The number of people who buy products from spam.
The problem isn't religion. It's that the majority of the population seems to lack critical thinking skills in sufficient measure. Anyone with real time and study invested in what they believe would know better than to claim this is the mark of the beast. Being able to buy an sell goods is *not* sufficient. Neither is it being implanted. The point of the mark is to signifiy your allegience to the "beast". The means he will employ to get you to do so is to ban you from buying and selling goods unless you have it.
Given all of biblical history, why would anyone with decent critical thinking skills believe that God would suddenly, at the end of history, change his (unchangeable) personality and try to trick people into accepting the mark?
Meanwhile, there are perfectly good and valid reasons to NOT take this chip, that they should be focusing on, along with the rest of the population. Like the issue of the potential for the government to track you regardless of whether you're purchasing anything or not. Or heck, for that matter, for/anyone/ to track you. Granted, it's short range, but anyone with a decent receiver and antenna could at least tail you easily.
Aside from that, you have the issues of security. If it's implanted, that means all administration, and transactions work wirelessly. So that means anyone with the skills to hack it can also do them w/out having to be in physical contact with the device. Scary.
So I don't think it's "religion" that brings out the nuts. I think people without the ability to manage critical thinking are generally out there, just that different issues bring out different groups of them. Every group has them, and as large a group as "Christians" is will have a lot of them. Heck, we see it here on this board within our *own* group. It's just a reality of the level of education our public schools provide. Some people are able ot rise above that and educate themselves sufficiently to reason effectively, but many people are not, or at least they don't choose to.
Smart people can get into jury duty, just as easily as they can get out of it. I do my best to make sure I get selected for jury duty every time I'm summoned. It's not a fun experience by any means, but our judicial system depends on people with a clue doing their civic duty. Hell, if people with a clue sat in on more drug cases and the amount of jury nullification would quickly bring an end to the at least the more common abuses of the drug war, if not the entire thing itself.
Argh. I forgot to jump to the end before adding this paragraph. So if you're having trouble following the post, read that paragraph last instead of in the order it's written.
This is not guaranteed. Lawyers have rules as to why they can strike people, and I think they might even have limitations on the number of people they can strike.
If you go as a juror, the best way to get on the jury panel is just to keep your mouth shut. Obviously, you are compelled to be honest, and answer the questions you're asked honestly. (Otherwise you could be a post-case liability if they find out you lied.)
Smart people can get into jury duty, just as easily as they can get out of it. I do my best to make sure I get selected for jury duty every time I'm summoned. It's not a fun experience by any means, but our judicial system depends on people with a clue doing their civic duty. Hell, if people with a clue sat in on more drug cases and the amount of jury nullification would quickly bring an end to the at least the more common abuses of the drug war, if not the entire thing itself.
But don't volunteer information. If they ask you if you've used a computer before, don't say "yes, for 20 years, and I'm an avid linux user AND YOU SUCK!". Make sure when you go in that you can honestly convey that you're willing to give everyone a fair hearing.
Also, if they ask a question that only might be tangentially relevant to you don't raise your hand and spell it out and ask if it applies. LIke, "Is anyone in your family a police officer?" Don't raise your hand and say "My third cousin's daughter's boyfriend's dad is a cop." Hell, even if it was your third cousin's dad that was a cop I wouldn't raise my hand unless you're actually really close with family that extended. Understand the point of the question being asked and don't advertise your presence unnecessarily. The less they notice you, the less likely you are to get struck.
I agree it's a potential issues, but FFS this is 90% (again) a problem with the system admins, not Microsoft.
We need less dickheads running IT.
Would this be the same microsoft that certifies those "dickheads" as qualified Systems admins? The same microsoft that trumpets the fact that any moron can run windows?
You don't get it. This is not about whether or not updates are still available, it's about the way they're made available.
Most distributions just provide the upgraded software. That means you get any new features that came with the upgrade, along with the bugs that come with it.
Redhat's benefit in the Enterprise area comes from the fact that it backports patches where needed so that doesn't happen. You get the security fixes, without the new bugs.
It has little to do with the isolated aspect of it being a commercial/for a fee application.
Borland marketed this application specifically to people looking to port delphi applications to linux. There aren't that many out there. The only one I can think of off the top of my head is zMud. (Side rant: He put in a faq for awhile that he would port it to linux but couldn't because delphi didn't have a linux port. Then they came out with a linux port, and now he's made more excuses. Not that linux is any poorer for it. His applications are bloated inefficient monstrosities.)
I find it hard to perceive a way that with a small target market to begin with (windows delph developers, porting to linux) that they expected to sell tons of this.
Of course, you/could/ use it to develop applications for linux from scratch, but now you're trying to compete with what, a 90% installed base of C or C++ applications on linux?
A quick look at freshmeat reveals over 8,000 projects written in C or C++, and less than 100 written in pascal and delphi combined. Linux developers looking to do quick development are probably far more likely to go perl/python/java than delphi, particularly if they want their application to run on more than just linux and windows.
And then of course there's the pricing model. And the way they split out the features. Yeesh. Talk about trying to kill a product's success. IIRC, you don't even get database objects with the free developers version. Borland makes great products, but they suck at marketing them.
No, it's actually a real title. The global corp I work for has one too. The dept they head is usually responsible for determining the future direction of the enterprise (as the title would suggest). Somewhat similar to R&D, except you don't need any really technical people this way, cause you can just believe the consultants and salespeople, trademags, whatever and call it done.
Anyway, it's just frustrating. I agree with most of your points, except those regarding assumptions about customers. Customers, in my general expierence, don't see value, they only see bottom line. $349/12 comes out to $30 extra a month, and on a server that's $119, that's quite an increase (~20%?). Not to mention that we have to front the cash up front.
I'll preface this by saying I'm not familiar with your model, nor am I familiar with your customers. So, obviously, this isn't advice, just general commentary. I'm not trying to imply I have the answers for your business w/out even seeing it
or anything.
I think this is true of some customers. In particular, when passing on a cost in this way, with a steep jump in price, yes, that's a challenge. However, I would make a couple points.
First, if you haven't been presenting redhat advanced server as an option to your customers in the past, I think you made a mistake. (Just my opinion). Customers need to have a choice, and they need to be able to see those other options. You need those other options for situations just like this one. If they'd seen those numbers all along they wouldn't be so foreign to them.
Second, nothing says they have to have redhat. As you noted, there are plenty of alternative options available. Also, considering fedora's role, I think you'd be safe in still calling it redhat...unless redhat has specifically said its trademark is not to be associated with it.
Lets say they have though. You have a bigger challenge, but it's not/that/ big of a deal, at least in my experience. You just have to communicate that there are other options for linux at a cheaper cost. Give them the quote for redhat, and give them the quote for the other. If they want redhat, they have to pay the extra for it. That's just the way it works.
It's not like redhat is just only selling to certain companies that way now. So they can't just go to another hosting company and get free redhat. So it's not crippling you within your market. Everyone is affected the same way. And as I think someone else mentioned, you might even be able to work in a partnership/reseller agreement with redhat and get a slightly lower cost.
As far as why redhat doesn't offer that, lets be honest, that doesn't make good business sense for them. It's not going to do you any favors if they go out of business. It's not like they sprung this on anyone. They've been talking about it openly for some time. That was the time to prepare your customers for the change.
Again, just my.02. I understand your frustration, I really do. I don't like pushing upgrades on my customers. However, those that go wtih ES won't ever have to worry about that again. (unless they go under of course.)
Same reason I've been bitching about for months on slashdot
Yeah. I've seen it. And I've been ignoring it. But not this time.
So, now we say that we can get them redhat, but it's cheaper to run windows2003 web edition. By a good margin.
What? I'm guessing you must be looking only at the initial up-front cost, and then comparing apples to oranges. You can't take the top of the line RH EL release with all the support options and compare it to a basic windows2003 option. That's just absurd. To get all the add-ons to make that equal would cost you a fortune under windows.
And that doesn't count the forced (paid) upgrades from MS, verses getting free upgrades from redhat. Yes, you pay a yearly fee for your support and updates, but it's nothing compared to the cost of "subscribing" to windows OS releases. AND you're guaranteed an updated, and an update that actually has real changes in it, whereas with MS you can't even be sure you'll see a new release, let alone one worth upgrading to.
More than that, at any time you can stop paying, leave your server installed as is, and continue to upgrade and maintain your server for free, it just takes more work from you. You'd still be able to build and run the applications you want to run and everything. Lets see you do that with MS.
"Cost" involves a lot more than just a sticker on a box.
Oh, and we now have to tell people running redhat 8.0 (which came out in, what, feb?) that the next time that they have a security problem with their 10 month old linux distro, they're SOL, because it's past it's end of line date.
No you don't. I have a few customers who opted for this release. Mostly small offices. For them, I have offer a choice. Once your release is end of lifed, I can continue to maintain it for you as is, and you can pay me the hourly rate for doing any required security updates/etc, or you can upgrade. Your customers will see the value in an upgrade. And if you quit whining long enough to actually think about how to make this a positive selling point for your business, you'll see ways to sell it as a value-add for your customers and make them happy about it. And if you can't, you probably shouldn't be running your own company anyway.
I want it for free, or next to free. I don't want support. I want it for $49.99, or $99.99, not goddamn $1249.99.
I assume here you're talking about redhat AS standard edition. I quote from the website:
# 24/7 Web Support
# North American Phone Support: 9-9 ET M-F
# Global Phone Support: 9-5 GMT/CET M-F
# Web Response Time/SLA: 2 business days
# Phone Response Time/SLA: 4 hours
Looks like support to me. However, you don't need support. And frankly, I highly doubt you need redhat AS either. I think you're just grabbing the big one so you can whine more about the price. Are you using redhat on an OS/390? Are you running some form of ERP system? No, your post would suggest you're running webhosting services. So instead of whining about the 1500$ redhat AS release, why don't you recommend redhat ES basic edition, which gets no "support" but provides full access to the redhat network and updates and such for 349$. Now W2003 isn't even in the same ballpark. Hell, they're on another continent.
This "free" tirade is crap. Not only is readhat providing you value with the updates and tools they provide, they're providing you a name. A name which you yourself have found has value to your customers. You providing that name has value to you. Guess what, you're going to have to pay for it. It's worth it. Get over it.
Bottom line: RedHat has gotten popular enough that they're tired of being a good corporation, and, while they think they're spreading the good name of linux, what they're really doing is fucking the small business who relie
Most of the reasons have already been mentioned, but I'll add this. Just because each machine has its own address doesn't mean you can't still get the benefits of nat. You just do it with one-to-one static nat instead of masquerading.
Does anyone know of any good alternatives for acrobat? Like others on this thread I've noticed that acrobat is only getting bigger and more bloated. Many of my clients have to be able to generate pdf documents now, and acrobat is practically unusable for them.
Can anyone recommend alternative software that runs under windows, can create pdf's from scanner input, and can create pdf documents through a 'pdf printer' style interface? Easy enough on linux, but there's quite a few alternatives on the Windows side, with no real clues as to which if any are any good.
If anyone's used one of these and is happy with it, this is probably a good place to post such information.
I'm not saying Gentoo doesn't have it's blemishes. It's certainly not perfect. Nor am I saying it's crazy to say you have problems with it. I just take issue with his hyperbole.
When I say learn portage better, I don't mean read the code necessarily. I mean read the man page. My reading of the article leads me to believe the author really didn't take the time to learn what he was doing with Gentoo, and thus had problems with using it.
Off topic a bit, I'm not sure why you think a broken gentoo kernel means you have to re-install from scratch. That seems like pretty drastic overkill to me. Unless you got a REALLY bad kernel that completely hosed your disk partitions or something.
NOTHING should be unstable for any reasonable purpose. It's ridiculous that your standards have been lowered so much that you don't consider a non-functional package system to be an issue.
I didn't say it was unstable. I said it was unusable. If you operate a system where you install stuff all the time you're going to run into problems on RPM. The dependencies get complicated, and if you install things from source they get worse. I just don't think it's a good fit for certain kinds of users.
However, if you're running say...a webserver in a production environment it's not so bad. You can build it, and update it with new rpms as they come out in the base system and just run apache from source. (or from RPM if you don't need to be more current.)
Everything doesn't have to be a perfect fit for everyone. THAT is ridiculous.
No, BSD considers itself to be stable, whereas Linux is for those that don't really need stability and functionality, but are willing to screw around with the system for hours upon hours to get something basic, working again. If elite means that the BSDs don't integrate crappy patches from 12year-olds that don't really work, then I'm proud to use elite BSD
Please don't misinterpret my words. And don't hurt your own argument by throwing around arguments that can't be substantiated. Linux is a stable platform. I run systems on all kinds of different hardware, including really crappy thrown together hardware, that runs w/out problems for years on end.
That's not to say BSD isn't, I just take issue with your assessment of linux. In addition, I think your exaggerating just a tiny bit on the 12-yo broken patch front. What I mean by 'elitist' is not in regards to the quality of work done but in regards to more superficial qualities of who they are and are not willing to accept. BSD seemed more like a clique to me than linux did. Worse, a clique with a lot of clueless hangers-on who want to be part of the fun. Course, now, years later, linux has taken at least its fair share of those itself.
Telling you that something sucks in Linux, and that it doesn't suck in BSD, IS exactly what you want, but it's what you are so unhappy that he's doing in the first place.
Sorry, if the only way you can say you're great is by talking about how bad someone else sucks, then you aren't great. Greatness stands on its own.
The reason why this is a three-step process is to make the updating procedure more reliable and easier to fix. Having survived the nightmare of Gentoo Linux's always fatally broken and never easily fixed portage system, I can tell you that "ease of use" means "difficult to fix" because it doesn't allow the user to control the process.
Ok...I can agree with the underlying concept (ease of use can mean difficult to fix). I don't see this in the portage tree however. Hell, it's all just text files. And "always fatally broken"? Huh? I've been using Gentoo since the early releases and I have not experienced the portage system being "always fatally broken". Hell, you wouldn't even be able to install gentoo if that was true.
How about a little less hyperbole and a little more specific and accurate facts? I've only known of a couple of instances where things got really messed up, and that was because of screwups in releases. And unless you were one of those people who felt the need to update everything all the time every time a new release came out you didn't even get bit by it.
I've seen APT and Portage choke on dependancies with no obvious way to fix them,
Again, huh? If you're having troubles with dependancies within portage not working then you need to get a better understanding of how portage works. You can't blame your ignorance on the tool.
and anyone who has ever tried to use a third-party RPM knows what a disaster that can be.
yes. Emphasis on/can/ be. RPM isn't unusable, but it is unusable for some purposes. And the workstation of any linux user who installs something other than what their distro releases is not it.;-) And even then, a workstation install can be unpleasant. However, if you're running a typical internet server system redhat's setup can serve just fine. Not only do you not need the latest cutting edge releases, you don't really even want them. Works fine then as long as you stay within the lines.
FreeBSD is, if nothing else, a nice respite from the various GNU/Linux package management systems.
You know. I have nothing against BSD. I'm not an avid lover/user of BSD, but I have installed it on several occaisions and played with it. It's a nice OS. I prefer linux cause I like the faster pace and the more...gritty...(for lack of a better term) feel to it. People are/doing/ things in linux. People from all walks and of all levels of skill. BSD doesn't (imo) seem to lend itself to that. It's always seemed to me that BSD considered itself destined for the elite, while linux was an OS for the great unwashed as well.
My impression could very well be inaccurate, as it's based mostly on things I read in mailing lists and from people I've met who/are/ avid BSD fans/users. (Few, if any, of which actually meet the "Elite" definition, but they sure felt and acted like they did. Which imo is why BSD tends to attract people like that. But I digress.)
Bottom line, both are great OSes. Why is it that this has to be us/or/ them. Why can't it be both? Is there some unwritten rule that one OS has to be cool and vibrant and the other has to be lame and dying?
I think the writer does BSD a disservice. The article makes it look like BSD defines itself by the shortcomings of some linux distributions (ignoring the fact that most of those "shortcomings" are hot air). BSD has enough positive things in and of itself that I highly doubt it needs to poke holes in linux or try to make linux look bad as a means of promoting itself.
Don't rag on linux and tell me linux sucks so I should use BSD. Tell me what's great about BSD. I already know windows and linux's shortcomings. Tell me what's great about BSD and I'll make my own comparisons, thank you very much.
So why is it ok for the FSF to protect their copyrights and not ok for the RIAA and MPAA?
Lessee....
They don't (I don't think) hold the copyright in the first place. The artists do. And if they don't, they should.
I don't have a problem with them enforcing their copyrights. The reason their copyright gets violated is that they've lost the respect of a large portion of their customer base. People see the RIAA as the people they're hurting, not artists, and people know that the RIAA doesn't give a fig about the artists at all. Artists in general don't get squat regardless of whether the RIAA gets their cut or not. Hard to make people feel guilty for it under those circumstances. Once they lost that level of respect, copyright law wasn't going to stop people. It was time to adapt, and they refused, making the problem worse.
The FSF isn't looking to send people to the gulag for misappropriating code.
They aren't trying to get supoena's for the source and developer names of every piece of closed source software out there.
They don't try to break into the servers of commercial software companies and try to see if their software is being used.
They aren't trying to say that all commercial software is in violation out of some misguided assumption that they are the only people who make software.
They aren't trying to pass laws which would require computers to check whether they're running GPL software that isn't following the license and blow up if it finds any.
And the list goes on.
There are some vast differences to the approach and intent between these two organizations. Add to that the fact that the FSF copyright issues are about giving MORE rights to people than copyright allows, and the RIAA is about taking AWAY rights that copyright gives.
I recently figured out a win-win, though. I transferred out of Register.com. Instead of $35/yr., I'm paying $8.95 at Godaddy. I used a piece of the savings (another 9 bucks/yr. worth) to create a Domains By Proxy account.
Yeah, too bad they have an onerous usage agreement.
Slashdot Mirror
From the site:
"Supposed"? I don't see this in any of the relevant RFCs. Is this some arbitrary rule you've established yourself?
Even putting that aside, maybe you don't want to give out that particular address. When I'm sending mail to someone at work from home, I don't want them to get my personal email address. It's none of their business. More than that, sending mail from my work address with a reply-to to my home address is not sufficient to seperate that email from my employer in the minds of the average user. Hell, most email users (particularly outlook users) don't even see the reply-to header.
Yup. Unfortunately, this is part of where the problem comes in. All these 2-bit training groups out there who advertise that "you too can make scads of money as a microsoft admin and give up your day job as a cab driver" and then teach you for 2 weeks and pronounce you qualified to admin a network. They go out and work for peanuts, which is still twice what they're worth and the salary surveys reflect it. So when people like you or I go in who are actually really qualified to do the job they balk at the cost, say it's outside the salary curve, etc.
"Our network works fine with the admins we have that we're paying half that much" Of course, they only think it works fine because they've never had it run better. They don't realize not having backups for months on end isn't normal. Or that having restores take all day is unusual. They think it's normal to have a network that performs worse than a sneakernet, and to have availablility numbers in the low 50s.
So, instead, developers have to deal with those morons and then they write us all off together. After dealing with more than my fair share of developers in the same boat as the aforementioned admins (2 weeks learning vb and they're a developer) one could easily gain the same perception. However, I know better. They're lucky in that there's a hoard of publicly visible deelopers that DO have a clue (mostly in the OSS community) to stave off that image.
Administrators don't have a PR machine like that, (though sage is trying to fill that void) so our image is badly tarnished by these morons.
Unfortunately, while this is generally true, it also leads to a certain arrogance when dealing with people. I've seen it in admins before, and I'm generally thanked for my lack of it when I replace them.
I'm not saying this isn't true of you specifically, just noting where things start to go wrong even with admins that have a clue. (The percentage of which within our industry is steadily decreasing.)
I don't really do all that much different than them, I just don't take an attitude and tell them 'because I said so' when I'm asked why. When I have to tell them no, I actually take the time to explain why.
I also am willing to listen (within limits) to their reasons why they think I should make an exception. I will probably still say no, but listening to their reasons might help me suggest an alternative for them, and that seems to make all the difference.
However, I do agree with you that Eschatology is a questionable area of theology. Revelation gives us a basic idea of what's going to happen, and interpreting it at a detailed level is just an excercise in futility. Even a rudimentary study of prophecy in Old Testament history will quickly demonstrate that prophecies don't always mean what they appear to mean...even to those who give them.
And actually, Christ said the most important thing was "Love your neighbor as yourself". (And, as an aside, I'm not replying to your pope issue as I'm not catholic and discussion of their issues is a well I don't feel like jumping in right now.)
God also was not the one to do those things to Satan. Satan requested God's leave to torment job, to prove he was only faithful because GOd gave him nice things. Satan failed to do that, even though he completely ruined jobs life.
And yes, part of the lesson is that yes, life sucks. We live in a fallen world and the reality is that stuff happens. Then comes the second part of that lesson, God knows more than us. His ways are higher than our ways, and he understands things on a level we can't even imagine, so we have no place to question His methods.
The mark is more likely to be akin to a drivers license. Something that identifies that you've sworn allegience, and no-one is allowed to do business with you unless you've taken it.
Care to share where you feel I failed to do that? It's not apparent from your post. In fact, I don't see anything other than this line in your post that necessarily disagrees with what I said.
And I'm so tired of being accused of elitism over this. I'm not elite. I don't have anything special that these people don't have. I just made different choices. It's not elitism to say that I know more about computer systems than other people I know, they could know what I do, if they had made different choices.
And in fact, as I mentioned it's not even a simple thing. I don't blame them for their choices. Schools don't even TEACH critical reasoning anymore. If they did, we wouldn't have people voting for the morons we have in office now.
Er, the majority of my linux boxes not only don't run X, they don't even have it installed. And my desktop /does/ have a serial console, (as do my servers) I know I'm not alone in the first, and I really doubt I'm in that rare of company on the second.
I really don't think that's the case. I mean, think about it, religous or not the "masses" are poorly educated, and we boggle at the conclusions they come to on a regular basis. I mean, look how many continue to support Bush's war. Look at the support for the drug war. The number of people who buy products from spam.
The problem isn't religion. It's that the majority of the population seems to lack critical thinking skills in sufficient measure. Anyone with real time and study invested in what they believe would know better than to claim this is the mark of the beast. Being able to buy an sell goods is *not* sufficient. Neither is it being implanted. The point of the mark is to signifiy your allegience to the "beast". The means he will employ to get you to do so is to ban you from buying and selling goods unless you have it.
Given all of biblical history, why would anyone with decent critical thinking skills believe that God would suddenly, at the end of history, change his (unchangeable) personality and try to trick people into accepting the mark?
Meanwhile, there are perfectly good and valid reasons to NOT take this chip, that they should be focusing on, along with the rest of the population. Like the issue of the potential for the government to track you regardless of whether you're purchasing anything or not. Or heck, for that matter, for /anyone/ to track you. Granted, it's short range, but anyone with a decent receiver and antenna could at least tail you easily.
Aside from that, you have the issues of security. If it's implanted, that means all administration, and transactions work wirelessly. So that means anyone with the skills to hack it can also do them w/out having to be in physical contact with the device. Scary.
So I don't think it's "religion" that brings out the nuts. I think people without the ability to manage critical thinking are generally out there, just that different issues bring out different groups of them. Every group has them, and as large a group as "Christians" is will have a lot of them. Heck, we see it here on this board within our *own* group. It's just a reality of the level of education our public schools provide. Some people are able ot rise above that and educate themselves sufficiently to reason effectively, but many people are not, or at least they don't choose to.
Argh. I forgot to jump to the end before adding this paragraph. So if you're having trouble following the post, read that paragraph last instead of in the order it's written.
If you go as a juror, the best way to get on the jury panel is just to keep your mouth shut. Obviously, you are compelled to be honest, and answer the questions you're asked honestly. (Otherwise you could be a post-case liability if they find out you lied.)
Smart people can get into jury duty, just as easily as they can get out of it. I do my best to make sure I get selected for jury duty every time I'm summoned. It's not a fun experience by any means, but our judicial system depends on people with a clue doing their civic duty. Hell, if people with a clue sat in on more drug cases and the amount of jury nullification would quickly bring an end to the at least the more common abuses of the drug war, if not the entire thing itself.
But don't volunteer information. If they ask you if you've used a computer before, don't say "yes, for 20 years, and I'm an avid linux user AND YOU SUCK!". Make sure when you go in that you can honestly convey that you're willing to give everyone a fair hearing.
Also, if they ask a question that only might be tangentially relevant to you don't raise your hand and spell it out and ask if it applies. LIke, "Is anyone in your family a police officer?" Don't raise your hand and say "My third cousin's daughter's boyfriend's dad is a cop." Hell, even if it was your third cousin's dad that was a cop I wouldn't raise my hand unless you're actually really close with family that extended. Understand the point of the question being asked and don't advertise your presence unnecessarily. The less they notice you, the less likely you are to get struck.
We need less dickheads running IT.
Would this be the same microsoft that certifies those "dickheads" as qualified Systems admins? The same microsoft that trumpets the fact that any moron can run windows?
Most distributions just provide the upgraded software. That means you get any new features that came with the upgrade, along with the bugs that come with it.
Redhat's benefit in the Enterprise area comes from the fact that it backports patches where needed so that doesn't happen. You get the security fixes, without the new bugs.
Borland marketed this application specifically to people looking to port delphi applications to linux. There aren't that many out there. The only one I can think of off the top of my head is zMud. (Side rant: He put in a faq for awhile that he would port it to linux but couldn't because delphi didn't have a linux port. Then they came out with a linux port, and now he's made more excuses. Not that linux is any poorer for it. His applications are bloated inefficient monstrosities.) I find it hard to perceive a way that with a small target market to begin with (windows delph developers, porting to linux) that they expected to sell tons of this.
Of course, you /could/ use it to develop applications for linux from scratch, but now you're trying to compete with what, a 90% installed base of C or C++ applications on linux?
A quick look at freshmeat reveals over 8,000 projects written in C or C++, and less than 100 written in pascal and delphi combined. Linux developers looking to do quick development are probably far more likely to go perl/python/java than delphi, particularly if they want their application to run on more than just linux and windows.
And then of course there's the pricing model. And the way they split out the features. Yeesh. Talk about trying to kill a product's success. IIRC, you don't even get database objects with the free developers version. Borland makes great products, but they suck at marketing them.
No, it's actually a real title. The global corp I work for has one too. The dept they head is usually responsible for determining the future direction of the enterprise (as the title would suggest). Somewhat similar to R&D, except you don't need any really technical people this way, cause you can just believe the consultants and salespeople, trademags, whatever and call it done.
I'll preface this by saying I'm not familiar with your model, nor am I familiar with your customers. So, obviously, this isn't advice, just general commentary. I'm not trying to imply I have the answers for your business w/out even seeing it or anything.
I think this is true of some customers. In particular, when passing on a cost in this way, with a steep jump in price, yes, that's a challenge. However, I would make a couple points.
First, if you haven't been presenting redhat advanced server as an option to your customers in the past, I think you made a mistake. (Just my opinion). Customers need to have a choice, and they need to be able to see those other options. You need those other options for situations just like this one. If they'd seen those numbers all along they wouldn't be so foreign to them.
Second, nothing says they have to have redhat. As you noted, there are plenty of alternative options available. Also, considering fedora's role, I think you'd be safe in still calling it redhat...unless redhat has specifically said its trademark is not to be associated with it.
Lets say they have though. You have a bigger challenge, but it's not /that/ big of a deal, at least in my experience. You just have to communicate that there are other options for linux at a cheaper cost. Give them the quote for redhat, and give them the quote for the other. If they want redhat, they have to pay the extra for it. That's just the way it works.
It's not like redhat is just only selling to certain companies that way now. So they can't just go to another hosting company and get free redhat. So it's not crippling you within your market. Everyone is affected the same way. And as I think someone else mentioned, you might even be able to work in a partnership/reseller agreement with redhat and get a slightly lower cost.
As far as why redhat doesn't offer that, lets be honest, that doesn't make good business sense for them. It's not going to do you any favors if they go out of business. It's not like they sprung this on anyone. They've been talking about it openly for some time. That was the time to prepare your customers for the change.
Again, just my .02. I understand your frustration, I really do. I don't like pushing upgrades on my customers. However, those that go wtih ES won't ever have to worry about that again. (unless they go under of course.)
Yeah. I've seen it. And I've been ignoring it. But not this time.
So, now we say that we can get them redhat, but it's cheaper to run windows2003 web edition. By a good margin.
What? I'm guessing you must be looking only at the initial up-front cost, and then comparing apples to oranges. You can't take the top of the line RH EL release with all the support options and compare it to a basic windows2003 option. That's just absurd. To get all the add-ons to make that equal would cost you a fortune under windows.
And that doesn't count the forced (paid) upgrades from MS, verses getting free upgrades from redhat. Yes, you pay a yearly fee for your support and updates, but it's nothing compared to the cost of "subscribing" to windows OS releases. AND you're guaranteed an updated, and an update that actually has real changes in it, whereas with MS you can't even be sure you'll see a new release, let alone one worth upgrading to.
More than that, at any time you can stop paying, leave your server installed as is, and continue to upgrade and maintain your server for free, it just takes more work from you. You'd still be able to build and run the applications you want to run and everything. Lets see you do that with MS.
"Cost" involves a lot more than just a sticker on a box.
Oh, and we now have to tell people running redhat 8.0 (which came out in, what, feb?) that the next time that they have a security problem with their 10 month old linux distro, they're SOL, because it's past it's end of line date.
No you don't. I have a few customers who opted for this release. Mostly small offices. For them, I have offer a choice. Once your release is end of lifed, I can continue to maintain it for you as is, and you can pay me the hourly rate for doing any required security updates/etc, or you can upgrade. Your customers will see the value in an upgrade. And if you quit whining long enough to actually think about how to make this a positive selling point for your business, you'll see ways to sell it as a value-add for your customers and make them happy about it. And if you can't, you probably shouldn't be running your own company anyway.
I want it for free, or next to free. I don't want support. I want it for $49.99, or $99.99, not goddamn $1249.99.
I assume here you're talking about redhat AS standard edition. I quote from the website:
Looks like support to me. However, you don't need support. And frankly, I highly doubt you need redhat AS either. I think you're just grabbing the big one so you can whine more about the price. Are you using redhat on an OS/390? Are you running some form of ERP system? No, your post would suggest you're running webhosting services. So instead of whining about the 1500$ redhat AS release, why don't you recommend redhat ES basic edition, which gets no "support" but provides full access to the redhat network and updates and such for 349$. Now W2003 isn't even in the same ballpark. Hell, they're on another continent.
This "free" tirade is crap. Not only is readhat providing you value with the updates and tools they provide, they're providing you a name. A name which you yourself have found has value to your customers. You providing that name has value to you. Guess what, you're going to have to pay for it. It's worth it. Get over it.
Bottom line: RedHat has gotten popular enough that they're tired of being a good corporation, and, while they think they're spreading the good name of linux, what they're really doing is fucking the small business who relie
Most of the reasons have already been mentioned, but I'll add this. Just because each machine has its own address doesn't mean you can't still get the benefits of nat. You just do it with one-to-one static nat instead of masquerading.
Can anyone recommend alternative software that runs under windows, can create pdf's from scanner input, and can create pdf documents through a 'pdf printer' style interface? Easy enough on linux, but there's quite a few alternatives on the Windows side, with no real clues as to which if any are any good.
If anyone's used one of these and is happy with it, this is probably a good place to post such information.
I'm not saying Gentoo doesn't have it's blemishes. It's certainly not perfect. Nor am I saying it's crazy to say you have problems with it. I just take issue with his hyperbole.
When I say learn portage better, I don't mean read the code necessarily. I mean read the man page. My reading of the article leads me to believe the author really didn't take the time to learn what he was doing with Gentoo, and thus had problems with using it.
Off topic a bit, I'm not sure why you think a broken gentoo kernel means you have to re-install from scratch. That seems like pretty drastic overkill to me. Unless you got a REALLY bad kernel that completely hosed your disk partitions or something.
NOTHING should be unstable for any reasonable purpose. It's ridiculous that your standards have been lowered so much that you don't consider a non-functional package system to be an issue.
I didn't say it was unstable. I said it was unusable. If you operate a system where you install stuff all the time you're going to run into problems on RPM. The dependencies get complicated, and if you install things from source they get worse. I just don't think it's a good fit for certain kinds of users.
However, if you're running say...a webserver in a production environment it's not so bad. You can build it, and update it with new rpms as they come out in the base system and just run apache from source. (or from RPM if you don't need to be more current.)
Everything doesn't have to be a perfect fit for everyone. THAT is ridiculous.
No, BSD considers itself to be stable, whereas Linux is for those that don't really need stability and functionality, but are willing to screw around with the system for hours upon hours to get something basic, working again. If elite means that the BSDs don't integrate crappy patches from 12year-olds that don't really work, then I'm proud to use elite BSD
Please don't misinterpret my words. And don't hurt your own argument by throwing around arguments that can't be substantiated. Linux is a stable platform. I run systems on all kinds of different hardware, including really crappy thrown together hardware, that runs w/out problems for years on end.
That's not to say BSD isn't, I just take issue with your assessment of linux. In addition, I think your exaggerating just a tiny bit on the 12-yo broken patch front. What I mean by 'elitist' is not in regards to the quality of work done but in regards to more superficial qualities of who they are and are not willing to accept. BSD seemed more like a clique to me than linux did. Worse, a clique with a lot of clueless hangers-on who want to be part of the fun. Course, now, years later, linux has taken at least its fair share of those itself.
Telling you that something sucks in Linux, and that it doesn't suck in BSD, IS exactly what you want, but it's what you are so unhappy that he's doing in the first place.
Sorry, if the only way you can say you're great is by talking about how bad someone else sucks, then you aren't great. Greatness stands on its own.
I'm sure He does. However, somehow I doubt He cares any more than I do.
Ok...I can agree with the underlying concept (ease of use can mean difficult to fix). I don't see this in the portage tree however. Hell, it's all just text files. And "always fatally broken"? Huh? I've been using Gentoo since the early releases and I have not experienced the portage system being "always fatally broken". Hell, you wouldn't even be able to install gentoo if that was true.
How about a little less hyperbole and a little more specific and accurate facts? I've only known of a couple of instances where things got really messed up, and that was because of screwups in releases. And unless you were one of those people who felt the need to update everything all the time every time a new release came out you didn't even get bit by it.
I've seen APT and Portage choke on dependancies with no obvious way to fix them,
Again, huh? If you're having troubles with dependancies within portage not working then you need to get a better understanding of how portage works. You can't blame your ignorance on the tool.
and anyone who has ever tried to use a third-party RPM knows what a disaster that can be.
yes. Emphasis on /can/ be. RPM isn't unusable, but it is unusable for some purposes. And the workstation of any linux user who installs something other than what their distro releases is not it. ;-) And even then, a workstation install can be unpleasant. However, if you're running a typical internet server system redhat's setup can serve just fine. Not only do you not need the latest cutting edge releases, you don't really even want them. Works fine then as long as you stay within the lines.
FreeBSD is, if nothing else, a nice respite from the various GNU/Linux package management systems.
You know. I have nothing against BSD. I'm not an avid lover/user of BSD, but I have installed it on several occaisions and played with it. It's a nice OS. I prefer linux cause I like the faster pace and the more ...gritty...(for lack of a better term) feel to it. People are /doing/ things in linux. People from all walks and of all levels of skill. BSD doesn't (imo) seem to lend itself to that. It's always seemed to me that BSD considered itself destined for the elite, while linux was an OS for the great unwashed as well.
My impression could very well be inaccurate, as it's based mostly on things I read in mailing lists and from people I've met who /are/ avid BSD fans/users. (Few, if any, of which actually meet the "Elite" definition, but they sure felt and acted like they did. Which imo is why BSD tends to attract people like that. But I digress.)
Bottom line, both are great OSes. Why is it that this has to be us /or/ them. Why can't it be both? Is there some unwritten rule that one OS has to be cool and vibrant and the other has to be lame and dying?
I think the writer does BSD a disservice. The article makes it look like BSD defines itself by the shortcomings of some linux distributions (ignoring the fact that most of those "shortcomings" are hot air). BSD has enough positive things in and of itself that I highly doubt it needs to poke holes in linux or try to make linux look bad as a means of promoting itself.
Don't rag on linux and tell me linux sucks so I should use BSD. Tell me what's great about BSD. I already know windows and linux's shortcomings. Tell me what's great about BSD and I'll make my own comparisons, thank you very much.
</soap box>
Lessee....
And the list goes on.
There are some vast differences to the approach and intent between these two organizations. Add to that the fact that the FSF copyright issues are about giving MORE rights to people than copyright allows, and the RIAA is about taking AWAY rights that copyright gives.
Yeah, too bad they have an onerous usage agreement.