I must be missing something, if a secret key gets compromised isn't any verification/secret maintained by that key fubar? I guess I understand your point, I'm just not so sure I see how any of the alternatives are any better.
That's exactly what I was thinking. On the other hand, as someone writing a program designed to disable attacks on infected machines, there's no way in hell I want to assume liability for any damages my program causes to infected systems. Even if another company wrote the thing, I'd still be worried about the liability of simply executing it against attackers.
You make it sounds as if using printf isn't as good as using a debugger
Well, for a lot of stuff, it really isn't nearly as good as a debugger. Compiling takes a long time. You can't explore a complex data structure in an interactive environment. Can you even use printfs when there is only a gui and half the application is setup so it can run on a remote machine via com+?
I find that method is usually faster than trying to use a debugger.
How could it possibly be? With a good debugger you can move to any section of code and instantly check the value of any variable or complex object. With printf, you have to recompile every time you want to add or remove a printf. I suppose you could macro in your debugging code and that way you could automatically generate traces of information... but every time a new problem came up you'd have to set up new debugging code to solve it. And all that compiling.... Am I missing something?
[RANT] It really bothers me when people ignore good development tools because they think their way is faster. For example, with Interdev and IIS you can debug ASP applications, but you have to do a little work to make sure the debugger will work. The place I work at now doesn't use Option Explicit in vbscript or use strict in perl. They write perl scripts in notepad for gods sake. It's like being asked to run a marathon in flip flops. [/RANT]
In a typical file sharing P2P network, everyone is acting as a server. A client sends a request to your machine for a file, your machine serves it up. How could this not be construed as a server?
This isn't exactly a universal solution, but one could theoretically outsource all administrative tasks to another insured company. This third party would have their own set of protocols to follow consisting of backups, rollout procedures, etc.
It would be damned annoying at times, no doubt changes would be slow to roll out, but as long as this company was in business you'd have certain guarantees about your infrastructure. The company would have to have some kind of contract insurance. If one of their employees gets fired and triggers a bomb, their insurance should cover damages. If one of your employees uploads a bomb/change, the third party has control over backups and their methods have not been compromised, so they can still restore.
Of course, you might not be able to do everything that way, and the insurance would probably have some really high premiums.
The only thing I received from my employer for christmas were instructions to work harder to finish a project by the end of this year so various department heads would get a bonus.
The thing I don't understand about these things is, isn't this a choice? What makes it an addiction? I mean a game doesn't exert a magical control over you, does it? It shouldn't have any power to direct your will.
It's an addiciton! If it was a matter of caring more about one or another it would be called a passion.
Speaking of psychological addictions, what is the difference between an addiction and a passion? I'm something of a control freak. When I do something, it is because I chose to do it. The notion of a game or other activity asserting willpower over my own is, well, completely foreign to me. I mean, if I chose to do something for hours a day for a duration, it is either because I am paid for it, because I have a passion for it.
I don't have a lot of first hand experience, but I imagine that these people need to honestly understand their problem as much if not more than they need compassion. For instance, quoting the parent post:
in which Jeffrey Stark talks about how a video game ruined his young life
The game ruined his life. The phrasing here indicates a classic denial of responsibility which I see often whenever someone claims to be addicted to something. A game didn't ruin this person's life, he did. The way to take control of your life is to accept full responsibility for your own actions. When you paint yourself as an addict, you are blaming something else for your problems. I'm addicted, it's not something I can control.
When you ask someone what he likes to do, he'll often say read, go hiking, swimming, or any number of things. Then if you ask him when the last time he did any of these things was, he'll say he read a short novel 2 months ago and went hiking a little last summer. So does the person really like doing these activities? Or are they spending all their time playing Everquest? The key to happiness is to find out what you like and who you want to be, then be that.
When did addictions become so trendy? I mean, a decade ago, people were only addicted to stuff like drugs, alcohol, or cigarettes. These days, I hear people saying they are addicted to video games, movies, shopping, sitcoms, pop, and big macs.
Maybe I'm just an insensitive clod, no wait, hold the maybe.
I don't think you can toss all the blame on management. At my last 4 jobs, (1 IT, 2 Maintenance Programming, 1 Software Development), I have seen all sorts of horrible things done by the staff.
Uncontrolled use of randomly name globals in huge projects.
Massive VB and Perl Applications without option explicit or use strict.
3000+ line functions with the same code pasted over and over again.
Developers starting off with the intention of not documenting anything, deliberately not writing any comments while generating obscure code.
IT guys using ftp/telnet to log in as root accross multiple very important data centres when ssh was available. (for that matter why the hell did we even have telnet/ftp)
In most cases, the problems I see are because people either don't know any better or they just don't care. Sometimes you can argue that a developer was rushed or pushed into a less than elegant solution, but when someone starts off not using strict/option explicit.... On the other side of things, I've had to deal with some pretty attrocious managerial decisions as well.
Not doing unpleasant chores for your family, like Windows support - I mean, they are your family ferchrissakes.
They are your family, your extended family, your friends, your pseudo-friends you haven't talked to in 2 months, friends of friends, that guy from across the hall, etc.
there shouldn't be many problems most of your family could have that you could not assist with.
Given enough time, I can assist with just about any problem that has ever confronted mankind, but in my experience people who ask for help don't want assitance, they want you to solve their problem for them. People sometimes come to me with a problem in Excel or some other application I never use. Somehow they think my degree in Computer Science makes me an expert in every feature of every program, hardware, and software configuration ever made. In reality, these people can usually find the answer on their own in anywhere from half to 3 times the amount of time it will take me to figure it out. So many people out there won't even try to figure it out before asking for help. When enough of your extended family and associates start doing this, it becomes downright abusive.
I'm a pretty nice guy. Back in college, I installed lots of software and hardware, cleaned viruses off machines, caught and helped people sharing more than they wanted to on the network, wired a friend's apartment, fixed lots of configuration problems, built machines for friends, etc, etc... all for free, often without thanks, and occassionally receiving malice for my efforts. Those years taught me the only way to avoid Mr fixit abuse was to play dumb or delegate to a budding Mr Fixit.
Now I've got no problem helping my immediate family out, or even a little extended family. They are usually pretty good about genuinely trying to solve their own problems, and when they ask for help they usually actually mean help. But some days it feels like having a cs degree is equivalent to walking around with a "free tech support" shirt on with a "kick me" sign strapped to my back.
Re:Wow. How disgusting.
on
ALICE vs. ALICE
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
SlashChick: we're constantly stared at, heckled, and treated as sex objects even though those of us who dare to go usually have quite valid opinions.
You have a valid point, but you chose an odd screen name with which to express it.
Absolute hogwash......Change is what people are seeking (not avoiding), because they know M$ sux.
Allow me to rephrase then, it is not change itself that people do not like, it is the large amount of relearning of everything from basic to advanced tasks which they don't like. People dislike it when change requires vast amounts of effort, especially when the alternative is a functional known method.
if Linux improved on the Desktop
I have no doubt that many folks out there greatly prefer *Nix desktops. From what little exposure I've had to the desktop, I can see many ways in which it is superior to its Windows counterpart.
was a little easier to configure If you know how to configure Linux, it can be much easier to configure than Windows. Many things in Linux are extremely easy to do IF you know how to do them. I guess this distinguishment really only makes sense when you are thinking about maintaining lots of machines.
1) 1) Users are pure evil. We don't know if there could be sources of evil outside of Users.
2) Civilization is made up of users. We don't know that Civilization is made up solely of users.
3) Computer professionals are responsible for the collapse of civilization. That we are responsible for the collapse of civilization does not mean that we destroyed all users.
4) Computer professionals will therefore destroy all evil The assumption is made that Evil is a non transferable entity. For example, a user could corrupt a system administrator via constant abuse. The sa then gets the evil idea of deleting all home directories. Even if Users contained all Evil in #1, the switch to future tense in #4 invalidates #1 as a given. Users are pure evil means that NOW users are evil. It doesn't say anything about whether or not they will be pure evil in the future.
Many posters seem to be saying that particular applications or lack of linux desktop support keep them tied to windows, but I think it is something more fundamental than either.People in general don't like massive change. Once you know how to do something a certain way, it is often very difficult to willingly adjust to something new.
For instance there are a couple prototype cars out there that have a joystick instead of a stearing wheel. Most people would see that and say, "WTF?!?!?!!" Maybe a joystick interface is easier to control, they would certainly be safer where airbags are concerned... but people aren't going to run out an embrace the joystick as an auto steering mechanism.
Another example would be those "ergonomic" split keyboards. I took a chance on one and I absolutely love it. Yet, most people I know still use the old kind. Why? Because they are used to it. Because learning to use the new one well takes too much time.
A more softwarey example... Today I found I needed to get a list of all Groups in a domain and their members. After fiddling with Active Directory for about 5 minutes, I was like, wtf, I'll just do it in perl. I spend about 20 minutes trying to get Win32::AdminMisc through the proxy using ppm, give up, download it manually, spend about 20 minutes looking for a version 5xx build of perl or a 6xx compatible version of AdminMisc, give up, spend another half hour figuring out how Win32::NetAdmin works, realize that's actually what I used when I did this stuff two years ago, then write the script, most of it anyway. The point is, there was probably some easy way to get the information I needed from within the User interface, but I didn't know how, and I wasn't willing to learn when I had a known option available to me.
It's pretty obvious how this behavior pattern ties in to Linux. People everywhere have grown up using Windows. They know how to browse the web in IE, to create documents in Office, to install software, to install drivers, etc. In Linux, everything is different. Switching to even a user friendly distro like RedHat is like coming home one day to find some dude has moved all your stuff around. Your furniture is upside down, the walls are painted green, all your food has been replaced with organic variants, your universal remote control no longer works with anything, and for some reason your monitor is stapled to the ceiling. You have to relearn where everything is and spend days getting it back into a state in which you can work effectively. To make matters worse, you now have 3-10 very different versions of everything. While I like having choices, I only like making informed decisions.
So what's my point? Hell, I forget. Oh yeah, the question is what is keeping me on windows? The answer is, ease of use. I know where everything is. Of course if you asked me what was keeping me on Linux, I'd give you the same damn answer. Ever try to find free anti-spam support for Exchange (shudder)?
I use Windows on the "Main" PC, run RedHat and Debian on my two servers, and use Deb on my thick thin client laptop. I stick with Windows on the desktop because the amount of time it would take me to reach my current level of desktop mastery on linux is well worth the price of XP and probably the next Windows as well. Right now there's room for both in my world. After using linux as a server for near 2 years, I'm getting a little better learning my way around, and while I'm sure the Linux desktop is ready for me, I'm not yet ready for it.
You are talking desktops, the parent was talking servers. My Windows desktops (2K/XP)occassionally crash. The 2K servers I have worked with virtually never do. In a desktop environment, people are always installing new software and constantly asking the machine to run different apps. Most servers typically only have a few key jobs. Outside of these tasks, they never get used and they don't have extra software installed. As a result, they cna be very stable.
Even with taking the time to do a little research, I often find that I don't want to vote for any of the candidates. The more you read, the slimier they get. In the end, I usually don't vote for most offices.
My friends will always give me some lecture about how I need to vote, even if I'm just choosing the lesser of two evils, but I don't see it that way. By voting for someone, you're giving your approval to that candidate, you're saying, this is the guy I chose. If my choices were Hitler and Stalin, should I vote for Hitler because he produced a couple less corpses. No.
It seems like every ad I see is a negative mud slinging commercial completely devoid of any substance. These ads aren't trying to promote a candidate, they're not really trying to steal voters from someone else. They are trying to make the other candidate's voters not show up on election day. Our leaders are trying to get us not to vote. The sad thing is that it's working.
[rant] I want to see an entirely different political atmosphere. Continuous debate in public mediums on tv, on radio, in newspapers, and perhaps more importantly in newsgroups and other online forums. During a campaign, there should be weekly debates between all the candidates. There should be some kind of limits on the amount of money a candidate can spend on a campaign and the amount of tv/radio airtime they can obtain relative to their competitors. It should be less about exposure and more about content. There should be rules on the amount of campaign donations allowed from different classes of organizations possibly based on the number of members. Candidates should back out of the whole two monolithic party approach. Politicians should stand by their own values and plans, not the vague and vacuous party lines. Being a politician of the Republican/Democrat party should be like being a member of the EFF or any other organization. We all have large existences outside of an organizational affiliations we may possess. We don't call ourselves EFF-ians. Our politicians identify themselves almost solely on their political party. I am Democrat. I am a Republican. It's like some kind of generic mask they put on which only conveys the vaguest notions of policy. And yet the public goes out and droves and votes either for the Republican or the Democrat for no other reason other than their long time party affiliations. Our elections aren't so close because there is rampant debate on heated issues, they are close because between 2 random choices the vote averages out 50/50. [/rant]
Read this first: http://www.opensource.apple.com/projects/d arwin/6. 0/install.x86.txt
Supported Hardware ------------------
IDE:
Only the PIIX4 IDE controllers have been found to work.
Attached devices must be UDMA/33 compatible or better. Ethernet:
Intel 8255x 10/100 ethernet controllers are supported. Video:
You must have a VESA 2.0 compliant video card. Almost all
modern graphics cards are VESA 2.0 compliant. However, emulators
such as vmware do not have VESA 2.0 compliant emulated video cards. Successfully tested hardware:
All 440BX motherboards tested have worked with their internal
IDE controllers.
IBM ThinkPad A21m (with onboard Intel ethernet) Known to not be supported:
All AMD and VIA based systems.
From what I understand, Roadrunner isn't doing that (charging for multiple PCs) yet.
I had RR in Columbus off and on for two years back in 99/2000. While they appear to have changed their practices, they originally did not permit splitting a conenction. Instead they tried to sell you additional IP addresses at $10 a pop. Later, if you wanted to do NAT, they sold home networking kits that were enormously over priced and charged you some kind of generic extra computers premium.
At one point, they even started sending out threatening emails. They claimed that NAT users were stealing the bandwidth of honest users. They also made a few threats about being able to detect the use of NAT, termination of service, unlimitted rice pudding and so on.
I think they've mellowed out a little now. These days so many people have more than one computer that it is more difficult to get away with lies about stealing bandwidth and such. Of course, even back then, we never had a single problem with our unauthorized NAT.
Slashdot Mirror
I must be missing something, if a secret key gets compromised isn't any verification/secret maintained by that key fubar? I guess I understand your point, I'm just not so sure I see how any of the alternatives are any better.
That's exactly what I was thinking. On the other hand, as someone writing a program designed to disable attacks on infected machines, there's no way in hell I want to assume liability for any damages my program causes to infected systems. Even if another company wrote the thing, I'd still be worried about the liability of simply executing it against attackers.
How many of these people know their systems have been compromised? How many of the people in charge of these systems are even sys admins?
You make it sounds as if using printf isn't as good as using a debugger
Well, for a lot of stuff, it really isn't nearly as good as a debugger. Compiling takes a long time. You can't explore a complex data structure in an interactive environment. Can you even use printfs when there is only a gui and half the application is setup so it can run on a remote machine via com+?
I find that method is usually faster than trying to use a debugger.
How could it possibly be? With a good debugger you can move to any section of code and instantly check the value of any variable or complex object. With printf, you have to recompile every time you want to add or remove a printf. I suppose you could macro in your debugging code and that way you could automatically generate traces of information... but every time a new problem came up you'd have to set up new debugging code to solve it. And all that compiling.... Am I missing something?
[RANT] It really bothers me when people ignore good development tools because they think their way is faster. For example, with Interdev and IIS you can debug ASP applications, but you have to do a little work to make sure the debugger will work. The place I work at now doesn't use Option Explicit in vbscript or use strict in perl. They write perl scripts in notepad for gods sake. It's like being asked to run a marathon in flip flops. [/RANT]
In a typical file sharing P2P network, everyone is acting as a server. A client sends a request to your machine for a file, your machine serves it up. How could this not be construed as a server?
This isn't exactly a universal solution, but one could theoretically outsource all administrative tasks to another insured company. This third party would have their own set of protocols to follow consisting of backups, rollout procedures, etc.
It would be damned annoying at times, no doubt changes would be slow to roll out, but as long as this company was in business you'd have certain guarantees about your infrastructure. The company would have to have some kind of contract insurance. If one of their employees gets fired and triggers a bomb, their insurance should cover damages. If one of your employees uploads a bomb/change, the third party has control over backups and their methods have not been compromised, so they can still restore.
Of course, you might not be able to do everything that way, and the insurance would probably have some really high premiums.
I was told to work harder so another department's manager would get a bonus. How's that for insentive?
The only thing I received from my employer for christmas were instructions to work harder to finish a project by the end of this year so various department heads would get a bonus.
I'm also a recovering Everquest addict
The thing I don't understand about these things is, isn't this a choice? What makes it an addiction? I mean a game doesn't exert a magical control over you, does it? It shouldn't have any power to direct your will.
It's an addiciton! If it was a matter of caring more about one or another it would be called a passion.
Speaking of psychological addictions, what is the difference between an addiction and a passion? I'm something of a control freak. When I do something, it is because I chose to do it. The notion of a game or other activity asserting willpower over my own is, well, completely foreign to me. I mean, if I chose to do something for hours a day for a duration, it is either because I am paid for it, because I have a passion for it.
I don't have a lot of first hand experience, but I imagine that these people need to honestly understand their problem as much if not more than they need compassion. For instance, quoting the parent post:
in which Jeffrey Stark talks about how a video game ruined his young life
The game ruined his life. The phrasing here indicates a classic denial of responsibility which I see often whenever someone claims to be addicted to something. A game didn't ruin this person's life, he did. The way to take control of your life is to accept full responsibility for your own actions. When you paint yourself as an addict, you are blaming something else for your problems. I'm addicted, it's not something I can control.
When you ask someone what he likes to do, he'll often say read, go hiking, swimming, or any number of things. Then if you ask him when the last time he did any of these things was, he'll say he read a short novel 2 months ago and went hiking a little last summer. So does the person really like doing these activities? Or are they spending all their time playing Everquest? The key to happiness is to find out what you like and who you want to be, then be that.
When did addictions become so trendy? I mean, a decade ago, people were only addicted to stuff like drugs, alcohol, or cigarettes. These days, I hear people saying they are addicted to video games, movies, shopping, sitcoms, pop, and big macs.
Maybe I'm just an insensitive clod, no wait, hold the maybe.
I suffered for years from video game and technology (i.e. Slashdot-esque geek) addiction... etc... etc....
Maybe this is a stupid question, but why?
I don't think you can toss all the blame on management. At my last 4 jobs, (1 IT, 2 Maintenance Programming, 1 Software Development), I have seen all sorts of horrible things done by the staff.
Uncontrolled use of randomly name globals in huge projects.
Massive VB and Perl Applications without option explicit or use strict.
3000+ line functions with the same code pasted over and over again.
Developers starting off with the intention of not documenting anything, deliberately not writing any comments while generating obscure code.
IT guys using ftp/telnet to log in as root accross multiple very important data centres when ssh was available. (for that matter why the hell did we even have telnet/ftp)
In most cases, the problems I see are because people either don't know any better or they just don't care. Sometimes you can argue that a developer was rushed or pushed into a less than elegant solution, but when someone starts off not using strict/option explicit.... On the other side of things, I've had to deal with some pretty attrocious managerial decisions as well.
Not doing unpleasant chores for your family, like Windows support - I mean, they are your family ferchrissakes.
They are your family, your extended family, your friends, your pseudo-friends you haven't talked to in 2 months, friends of friends, that guy from across the hall, etc.
there shouldn't be many problems most of your family could have that you could not assist with.
Given enough time, I can assist with just about any problem that has ever confronted mankind, but in my experience people who ask for help don't want assitance, they want you to solve their problem for them. People sometimes come to me with a problem in Excel or some other application I never use. Somehow they think my degree in Computer Science makes me an expert in every feature of every program, hardware, and software configuration ever made. In reality, these people can usually find the answer on their own in anywhere from half to 3 times the amount of time it will take me to figure it out. So many people out there won't even try to figure it out before asking for help. When enough of your extended family and associates start doing this, it becomes downright abusive.
I'm a pretty nice guy. Back in college, I installed lots of software and hardware, cleaned viruses off machines, caught and helped people sharing more than they wanted to on the network, wired a friend's apartment, fixed lots of configuration problems, built machines for friends, etc, etc... all for free, often without thanks, and occassionally receiving malice for my efforts. Those years taught me the only way to avoid Mr fixit abuse was to play dumb or delegate to a budding Mr Fixit.
Now I've got no problem helping my immediate family out, or even a little extended family. They are usually pretty good about genuinely trying to solve their own problems, and when they ask for help they usually actually mean help. But some days it feels like having a cs degree is equivalent to walking around with a "free tech support" shirt on with a "kick me" sign strapped to my back.
SlashChick: we're constantly stared at, heckled, and treated as sex objects even though those of us who dare to go usually have quite valid opinions.
You have a valid point, but you chose an odd screen name with which to express it.
Absolute hogwash... ...Change is what people are seeking (not avoiding), because they know M$ sux.
Allow me to rephrase then, it is not change itself that people do not like, it is the large amount of relearning of everything from basic to advanced tasks which they don't like. People dislike it when change requires vast amounts of effort, especially when the alternative is a functional known method.
if Linux improved on the Desktop
I have no doubt that many folks out there greatly prefer *Nix desktops. From what little exposure I've had to the desktop, I can see many ways in which it is superior to its Windows counterpart.
was a little easier to configure
If you know how to configure Linux, it can be much easier to configure than Windows. Many things in Linux are extremely easy to do IF you know how to do them. I guess this distinguishment really only makes sense when you are thinking about maintaining lots of machines.
1) 1) Users are pure evil.
We don't know if there could be sources of evil outside of Users.
2) Civilization is made up of users.
We don't know that Civilization is made up solely of users.
3) Computer professionals are responsible for the collapse of civilization.
That we are responsible for the collapse of civilization does not mean that we destroyed all users.
4) Computer professionals will therefore destroy all evil
The assumption is made that Evil is a non transferable entity. For example, a user could corrupt a system administrator via constant abuse. The sa then gets the evil idea of deleting all home directories. Even if Users contained all Evil in #1, the switch to future tense in #4 invalidates #1 as a given. Users are pure evil means that NOW users are evil. It doesn't say anything about whether or not they will be pure evil in the future.
Many posters seem to be saying that particular applications or lack of linux desktop support keep them tied to windows, but I think it is something more fundamental than either.People in general don't like massive change. Once you know how to do something a certain way, it is often very difficult to willingly adjust to something new.
For instance there are a couple prototype cars out there that have a joystick instead of a stearing wheel. Most people would see that and say, "WTF?!?!?!!" Maybe a joystick interface is easier to control, they would certainly be safer where airbags are concerned... but people aren't going to run out an embrace the joystick as an auto steering mechanism.
Another example would be those "ergonomic" split keyboards. I took a chance on one and I absolutely love it. Yet, most people I know still use the old kind. Why? Because they are used to it. Because learning to use the new one well takes too much time.
A more softwarey example... Today I found I needed to get a list of all Groups in a domain and their members. After fiddling with Active Directory for about 5 minutes, I was like, wtf, I'll just do it in perl. I spend about 20 minutes trying to get Win32::AdminMisc through the proxy using ppm, give up, download it manually, spend about 20 minutes looking for a version 5xx build of perl or a 6xx compatible version of AdminMisc, give up, spend another half hour figuring out how Win32::NetAdmin works, realize that's actually what I used when I did this stuff two years ago, then write the script, most of it anyway. The point is, there was probably some easy way to get the information I needed from within the User interface, but I didn't know how, and I wasn't willing to learn when I had a known option available to me.
It's pretty obvious how this behavior pattern ties in to Linux. People everywhere have grown up using Windows. They know how to browse the web in IE, to create documents in Office, to install software, to install drivers, etc. In Linux, everything is different. Switching to even a user friendly distro like RedHat is like coming home one day to find some dude has moved all your stuff around. Your furniture is upside down, the walls are painted green, all your food has been replaced with organic variants, your universal remote control no longer works with anything, and for some reason your monitor is stapled to the ceiling. You have to relearn where everything is and spend days getting it back into a state in which you can work effectively. To make matters worse, you now have 3-10 very different versions of everything. While I like having choices, I only like making informed decisions.
So what's my point? Hell, I forget. Oh yeah, the question is what is keeping me on windows? The answer is, ease of use. I know where everything is. Of course if you asked me what was keeping me on Linux, I'd give you the same damn answer. Ever try to find free anti-spam support for Exchange (shudder)?
I use Windows on the "Main" PC, run RedHat and Debian on my two servers, and use Deb on my thick thin client laptop. I stick with Windows on the desktop because the amount of time it would take me to reach my current level of desktop mastery on linux is well worth the price of XP and probably the next Windows as well. Right now there's room for both in my world. After using linux as a server for near 2 years, I'm getting a little better learning my way around, and while I'm sure the Linux desktop is ready for me, I'm not yet ready for it.
You are talking desktops, the parent was talking servers. My Windows desktops (2K/XP)occassionally crash. The 2K servers I have worked with virtually never do. In a desktop environment, people are always installing new software and constantly asking the machine to run different apps. Most servers typically only have a few key jobs. Outside of these tasks, they never get used and they don't have extra software installed. As a result, they cna be very stable.
Even with taking the time to do a little research, I often find that I don't want to vote for any of the candidates. The more you read, the slimier they get. In the end, I usually don't vote for most offices.
My friends will always give me some lecture about how I need to vote, even if I'm just choosing the lesser of two evils, but I don't see it that way. By voting for someone, you're giving your approval to that candidate, you're saying, this is the guy I chose. If my choices were Hitler and Stalin, should I vote for Hitler because he produced a couple less corpses. No.
It seems like every ad I see is a negative mud slinging commercial completely devoid of any substance. These ads aren't trying to promote a candidate, they're not really trying to steal voters from someone else. They are trying to make the other candidate's voters not show up on election day. Our leaders are trying to get us not to vote. The sad thing is that it's working.
[rant]
I want to see an entirely different political atmosphere. Continuous debate in public mediums on tv, on radio, in newspapers, and perhaps more importantly in newsgroups and other online forums. During a campaign, there should be weekly debates between all the candidates. There should be some kind of limits on the amount of money a candidate can spend on a campaign and the amount of tv/radio airtime they can obtain relative to their competitors. It should be less about exposure and more about content. There should be rules on the amount of campaign donations allowed from different classes of organizations possibly based on the number of members. Candidates should back out of the whole two monolithic party approach. Politicians should stand by their own values and plans, not the vague and vacuous party lines. Being a politician of the Republican/Democrat party should be like being a member of the EFF or any other organization. We all have large existences outside of an organizational affiliations we may possess. We don't call ourselves EFF-ians. Our politicians identify themselves almost solely on their political party. I am Democrat. I am a Republican. It's like some kind of generic mask they put on which only conveys the vaguest notions of policy. And yet the public goes out and droves and votes either for the Republican or the Democrat for no other reason other than their long time party affiliations. Our elections aren't so close because there is rampant debate on heated issues, they are close because between 2 random choices the vote averages out 50/50.
[/rant]
Don't then. Just use Open Office.
I hate it when I have to buy a $400 program to view .doc file..:-)
Don't then. Download Open Office, buy Sun's Version, or use something like wordpad.
Read this first:d arwin/6. 0/install.x86.txt
http://www.opensource.apple.com/projects/
Supported Hardware
------------------
IDE:
Only the PIIX4 IDE controllers have been found to work.
Attached devices must be UDMA/33 compatible or better.
Ethernet:
Intel 8255x 10/100 ethernet controllers are supported.
Video:
You must have a VESA 2.0 compliant video card. Almost all
modern graphics cards are VESA 2.0 compliant. However, emulators
such as vmware do not have VESA 2.0 compliant emulated video cards.
Successfully tested hardware:
All 440BX motherboards tested have worked with their internal
IDE controllers.
IBM ThinkPad A21m (with onboard Intel ethernet)
Known to not be supported:
All AMD and VIA based systems.
From what I understand, Roadrunner isn't doing that (charging for multiple PCs) yet.
I had RR in Columbus off and on for two years back in 99/2000. While they appear to have changed their practices, they originally did not permit splitting a conenction. Instead they tried to sell you additional IP addresses at $10 a pop. Later, if you wanted to do NAT, they sold home networking kits that were enormously over priced and charged you some kind of generic extra computers premium.
At one point, they even started sending out threatening emails. They claimed that NAT users were stealing the bandwidth of honest users. They also made a few threats about being able to detect the use of NAT, termination of service, unlimitted rice pudding and so on.
I think they've mellowed out a little now. These days so many people have more than one computer that it is more difficult to get away with lies about stealing bandwidth and such. Of course, even back then, we never had a single problem with our unauthorized NAT.