This seems like old news to me. Prehaps some other orginization demoted Pluto some 10 odd years ago. All I really remember is that there are asteroids in the asteroid belt that are bigger than Pluto.
Everything you know is wrong. Black is white and up is down.
That was actually a pretty good shot as some MSCEs. I know a few like that. Problem is, even if you use the IP address for the webserver, the website developers can't make up their minds betwee absoulte and relitive links. So even though you can technically get to and use their site, more than half of the front page is nonfuctional due to broken links in the code (including asp, cgi, etc code.) Maybe somebody will go down and smack their webdev team.
"Hey, Internet access is kinda limited right now, so why don't you go clean up those absoulte links."
Not really. The 777 can easily gooefy a flock of frozen chickens traviling at 250mph. It will also keep on going while pulverizing 2" sheets of ice, small rocks, a flash flood being pumped directly into the engine, and even seperation of one of the titanium blades. (That last one is simpley amazing to watch in slow motion. The rest are just interesting.) The 747 has similir engine design. It's rather unlikely that a flock of birds will be able to take down a 747.
Caldera, Corel, Storm, and possible others all have something of a boot splash. Corels is pretty darn blinky. You get a spinning disk and minimal messages. Caldera is a mostly a purdly looking window that displays the same boot text in a framed window. Storm had a rather nice one. The boot messages are in a smaller (1/4 screen size) window. Everything else is general blinkiness.
This project looks nice. But yes, sometimes you do need to see what services started, failed, etc on boot. Beyond that, dmesg will cover you once your system is booted.
The Linux port of Neverwinter Nights is old news. That announcement has been around since the game was announced. The BeOS port is news to me. Seeems that after the Infinity engine (The engine that powered Baldurs Gate, Planescape, Baldurs Gate II, Icewind Dale) Bioware has learned how to make portable code. (I've heard rumors that the Infinity code is a mess from a portabily standpoint)
There is a good reason to release a Linux version. Without a Linux version there would be a lack of player run servers. Take a look at just about any game that uses player run servers. Most of the servers are UNIX based. I'm sure BioWare is also aware that Linux gamers are hungry for a RPG that isn't nethack.
So far Neverwinter Nights looks great. Just check out this 19 part preview (Got your mpeg player ready?) from Neverwinter Stratics.
I'll be thankful for the Mac version as well as I see myself getting a new Mac (Perhaps a G4 cube with that nice studio display...) as soon as OSX is released.
As for Be, well, there's definite potential there, but I'll leave commenting further to someone who knows more about Be than I.
Check out the preview, you'll be drooling in anticipation in no time.
HOWTOs are generally written because someone out there got tired of hearing "How do I do this?" from new users. While some sort if intoduction to GNOME/KDE/KDE2/etc should brobally be included, don't expect to see introductions to things like WINE for some time as it is still pre-release software. I still haven't figured out why WINE keeps kicking me out of my xsession so don't fell too bad.:)
Installing Linux and Linux applications is quite a different model indeed than installing Windows and Windows Software. When you get right down to it, the writer of this article has a different point of view than more seasoned Linux users.
He/She is probally used to installing Windows from it's CD. After shuffling in a few driver cd's they have a working windows install and can surf the net with a semi recent version of Internet Explorer. They then insert the Office 2000 media and get a cup of coffee while it installes. Maybe if they've grasped the concept of multitasking they're visiting Windows Update at the same time. After office, there's still Photoshop, HTML editors, Netscape, Mozilla, that neat screensaver program they found on the web, etc, etc, etc. Each with it's own seperate installer on it's own media.
Whith linux, packages are distributed as biniary packages (rpm, deb, etc) are installed in a consistant (if cryptic) method, and can be obtained from the same installation media as your operating system or on large online repositories (freshmeat, rpmfind, debian and red hat ftps...)
The writes obvious problem is that he doesn't know the difference between a Linux kernel, a Linux operating system, and a Linux distribution. For the sake of rebuttal, lets say that the Linux kernel is just that. The kernel. The entire source code is what? 14 mb compressed? Now here's where we get fuzzy. The Linux OS would be the Kernel plus what you need to create and navigate file systems, and install other software. The distribution is the Linux OS bundled with software, software, and more software. A polite message explaining the methodolgy of a distribution might enlighten the author...
It's not exactly Open Source, but Avifile does a wonderful job of playing DivX;-) encoded movies using the windows dlls. The latest version (0.51) fixed one of the playeres biggest bugs, crashing when seeking.
As stated earlier, XMPS also plays mpeg4. There's even an xmms plugin (uses libiaries from avifile and SDL)
I'm far from being a hardcore programmer type (I'm really not that good at it...) but if you use GNU tools like make and autoconfigure, it shouldn't be all that difficult for even a casual user to figure out how to compile something. (./configure --prefix=/usr/local/stow/packagename-version && make && make install && stow/usr/local/stow/packagename-version )
The advantage to this is that the end user has do more than untar the biniaries. This is good because some packages may contain newer versions of libiaries than the user has installed. Usually, the result won't be more than something wanting to be updated or recompiled, but you can break your system fairly easily.
Also with source you have a bit more flexiblity in what libiaries the user has installed. (You need version 1.4.5 or above rather than the version this binary was compiled agnist) You'll probally get less flame style e-mail whining about "Why doesn't this work on my l33t system?"
With software that isn't release quality, source only distribution is acceptable, and IMHO, the best option. Keep the riff raff away until it's closer to release quality.
Screenshots, well, you always have to have screen shots. I often just look at screen shots and say "not quite ready, probally not worth my time, yet. But gee, it sure looks cool..."
How could they forget the bubble gum test? Seems like the perfect mouse for a public terminal, but they didn't subject it to bubble gum? Geez...huge oversight.
You try and run on as many platforms as Linux does and work 100% of the time. Distributions tend to support hardware that has saturated the market rather well. I wouldn't be too upset if ANY distribution didn't support the P4 out of the box, as long as the information on how to fix this was readily available.
Sude, distributors probally could have been a bit more proactive about getting the information, but think people. The latest distributions we're released before the P4, and older distributions released long before P4 based test systems were even available.
Keep in mind, programming is like sex. One mistake and you have to support it for the rest of your life. Why don't you try supporting every platform Linux runs on and ensure that Linux boots 100% of the time even on the wackiest of hardware configurations. If you're complaining about the situation your definitly lack insight.
Let's see, the web/mail server at work is
XXX.XX.XX.XXX
My co-lo server is
XXX.XX.XX.XXX or XXX.XX.XX.XXX. (Even though you just have to do a whois on my domain, I'm not going to make it that easy.)
Nope, no problem remembering 10 to 12 digits here. Retire IPV4 and use the scheme for phone numbers, and get alot of confused geeks running around trying to ping telephone numbers...
Yeah, the media really needs something better to do. They're basically slashdot for TV now days. "We're not going to do any orginal reporting. We'll just rephrase someone else's story." Granted they do get some original programming, but it's pretty limited to human interest stories.
Re:But this doesn't solve any of the real problems
on
An RPM Port Of APT
·
· Score: 1
Ummm...ever poked in Debian? gaim, gaim-gnome, sawfish, sawfish-gnome, and the list goes on. For most of the packages you mentioned, they at least tried.
First thing to consider is your users are allready using a mixture of clients, and probally like it that way. If you went to exchange, it's Outlook or nothing. (You can set up Exchange to serve IMAP/POP to non Outlook clients, it's not the default though.)
Also consider that until Exchange 2000, Exchange was a seperate enity from your NT Domain. In Exchange 2000 I belive it is intigrated into NTDS (or Active Directory if you want to be MS Buzzterm Complient, even the WinNT5 developers aren't MS Buzzterm Complient, all the icons may be labled Active Directory and Windows 2000, but underneath it's NT5 and NTDS)
If you are going to go down the exchange route, set up a extremely powerful server. All this server should be doing is Exchange. Put a firewall in front of this box, if you know what you're doing, you won't need to give this box a public IP. NT will never be stable when it's overloaded, and sometime pointing that out to managment will sway the opinion in your favor. "Yeah, we can run Exchange for 1000 users, but we need at least two quad processor systems with Windows 2000 Advanced Server and 4+ GB of RAM." Always over spec NT servers.
Take into consideration you authintaction scheme. If you're allready up and running on NTDS thats one less hurdle in the way for Exchange. If you're on NT4 domains, Netware, or NIS, that a big strike agnist.
Take a looke at HP Open Mail over Exchange. Not only can you use HP's client, HP has Outlook Services to make the Open Mail server look like an Excnage server to Outlook 2000. The advantage of HP Open Mail over Exchange is that you still get the shared contacts/calendering, but the server runs on various UNIX platforms INCLUDING Linux.
If the situation gets to deploy Exchange or we'll hire someone else who will, consider finding an ASP to manage Exchange for you. Then it's somebody elses problem if the server breaks. Exchange server will be the cause for stress, stress, and more stress. Let somebody else deal with it.
For 1000+ users, give the project at least 6 months research time. If you're going to do it, do it right the first time. With those 6 months, find all the advantages and disadcvnatages, and all possible soultions includeing alternatives like HP Open Mail and Application Service Providers. If they keep saying they want it now damnit, ask them how they would function if the system wan't implemented correctly and they couldn't get their e-mail reliably.
This is not a something that you want to deploy ASAP, espically when you allready have a mail system like you've allready described. I personally admin a mail server that has been up for 140 days without any issues. It's doing simalar stuff to what you described. (automatic archiving, web mail + pop + imap) I wouldn't give it up for the world, but if I had to, I'd consider HP Open Mail over Exchange. I've heard good things about Open Mail from those who've tried it. (HP has and evaluation license) From those who evaluated it and ended up with Exchange, they wish managment had gone the Open Mail route. Most are happy they went the ASP route instead of in house. Hope that helps!
Or you could run 6.0 and submit bug report after bug report after bug report with their included bug report tool. By the time 6.1 is released, they'll either remove this tool or completely ignore everything you send in.
The article states that they will be releasing the code to the GNOME Foundation. They will also be joining the GNOME Foundation. This is a completely different than releasing the code to the general public, under a Free license like the GPL.
So members of the GNOME Foundation can now all to easily build GNOME and it's applications agnist libiaries that are not under the LGPL.. Yeah, sounds like a great idea.
Really, it sounds like Borland/Inprise trying to get some press attention before/durring the show. See? Look we're good. We're releasing the source [to the chosen few who we deem worthy] so that applications can be rapidly developed [and we can get you to pay licensing fees in a market where there were none]. Yup, those marketing people sure know what they're doing, but they're happy to let you think of them as mindless drones.
Universities too. There were a few professors who told their classes "I really shouldn't tell you this, but our sales rep for [insert expensive proportary soultion here] said that it's ok for students to copy the software to their compters as long as they are students." The reasoning behind this is that if the students learn the software, that's what they'll request when they're out of school and in the field.
Being audited this past week would have make migrating to windows 2000 even more painful for me. There is only one good way to upgrade a NT4 domain to Windows 2000 NTDS, and that's by upgrading your Primiary PDC. For smaller shops who only have one domain controller to start with, that could create problems.
Our goal here is to retire our NTPDC, so we purchased a new server with Windows 2000 preinstalled. To upgrade the domain to NTDS, I (in direct violation of our license agreement!) installed WindowsNT4 as a BDC on a workstation, promoted that workstation to a PDC, and upgraded the workstation to Windows 2000.
In the end, it worked as well as could be expected and its time I uninstalled Windows 2000 from that workstation.
In the end, I'm thanful MS isn't as anal with their licensing as say, Citrix. At least with a MS system you can bump the number of CALs without actually having them, and the OS doesn't really check its cd-key agnist other windows 2000 servers on the network. (This is good because I have only one copy of Windows 2000, but 3 server licenses under an eOpen license.) MS licensing is complicated and annoying, but at least it's not in the way to the point that you can't get the job done.
You know, that does sound appealing, and I have considered tipping someone off to a company I used to work for. The boss/owner liked temper tantrums and refused to buy more than one copy of Windows 98 or NT, or more than one copy of MS Office. Nor did he fell like purchasing a site licene for a decent terminal emulator, a critical piece of software for what most of the staff was doing.
As of yet I haven't...but this guy is on the deserving end of the spectrum...
Issues? I didn't have much for issues. I was very impressed. The only thing that all out broke was Netscape. The package I was using depended on libxpm. apt-get install netscape fixed that.
The dextor configuration utility works incredibly well. I wish it was smart enough to add ZAxisMapping instead of Emulate3Buttons though.:)
After getting the new X up an running, I had my TNT2 working with nVidias drivers in no time. All in all, it took me about 1.5 hours to go from the old X to playing Quake 3 under Linux.
Nah, I love the.org. Great TLD for anti-spam e-mail addrsses, just add a y.
First domain we registered was ringworld.org, somewhere along the way ringworld.net opend up, then came g33ks.net, and lastly itouthouse.com. But in the end, there's nothing quite like posting to a newsgroup as zibby@ringworld.orgy.
The best way is not to do filters in the first place. Some people may not get it, but is it really appropiate to be searching for porn in a public place? What about hate speach? Well, you do have a right to free speach, but you generally need to obtain a permit to hold a public protest. So by that reasoning the governemant should be allowed to block that stuff from government funded public terminals. Some belieifs are motivated through religion, and thus the government should just not get involved. For government the whole issue is a no win situation. The filtering software isn't good enough, and any soultion is outragously expensive to maintain. squidGaurd and squidBlock have potential, as the community at large can update the blocked and unblocked site lists. I belive they only filter the URL, not the actual page content.
If you're going to implement a filtering system, here's my gereral suggestion: train the libiary staff on how to add sites to the allow list. (Make a nice web interface for squid or something.) Whenever the users hits a site that was blocked, a page explaining the procedure will be displayed. They will then either fill out the request form or go to the libiary staff. The libiary staff will review the site and use their own judgment on the spot.
At the end of a given time period, the modifications to the list will be reviewed by a board of voulenteers. Sites can again be added or removed. After the meeting, the results will be posted for public review. At any time a voting user can go to the public libiary and request access to every site on the list, and give their vote on any listed site. These public votes will again be reviewd.
And so the process continues, each filtering site shares it's list and every voter has a a say. In time you have a system that has a large database of blocked sites. If the centeral government wants to maintain the centeral database, fine as long as long as the end user can override that instantly.
This is by no means a complete system, just me musing on what the heck I would implement a public filtering system. I should write my congressman. Maybe I can get a grant or something!
Slashdot Mirror
This seems like old news to me. Prehaps some other orginization demoted Pluto some 10 odd years ago. All I really remember is that there are asteroids in the asteroid belt that are bigger than Pluto.
Everything you know is wrong. Black is white and up is down.
That was actually a pretty good shot as some MSCEs. I know a few like that. Problem is, even if you use the IP address for the webserver, the website developers can't make up their minds betwee absoulte and relitive links. So even though you can technically get to and use their site, more than half of the front page is nonfuctional due to broken links in the code (including asp, cgi, etc code.) Maybe somebody will go down and smack their webdev team. "Hey, Internet access is kinda limited right now, so why don't you go clean up those absoulte links."
Not really. The 777 can easily gooefy a flock of frozen chickens traviling at 250mph. It will also keep on going while pulverizing 2" sheets of ice, small rocks, a flash flood being pumped directly into the engine, and even seperation of one of the titanium blades. (That last one is simpley amazing to watch in slow motion. The rest are just interesting.) The 747 has similir engine design. It's rather unlikely that a flock of birds will be able to take down a 747.
Caldera, Corel, Storm, and possible others all have something of a boot splash. Corels is pretty darn blinky. You get a spinning disk and minimal messages. Caldera is a mostly a purdly looking window that displays the same boot text in a framed window. Storm had a rather nice one. The boot messages are in a smaller (1/4 screen size) window. Everything else is general blinkiness.
This project looks nice. But yes, sometimes you do need to see what services started, failed, etc on boot. Beyond that, dmesg will cover you once your system is booted.
The Linux port of Neverwinter Nights is old news. That announcement has been around since the game was announced. The BeOS port is news to me. Seeems that after the Infinity engine (The engine that powered Baldurs Gate, Planescape, Baldurs Gate II, Icewind Dale) Bioware has learned how to make portable code. (I've heard rumors that the Infinity code is a mess from a portabily standpoint)
There is a good reason to release a Linux version. Without a Linux version there would be a lack of player run servers. Take a look at just about any game that uses player run servers. Most of the servers are UNIX based. I'm sure BioWare is also aware that Linux gamers are hungry for a RPG that isn't nethack.
So far Neverwinter Nights looks great. Just check out this 19 part preview (Got your mpeg player ready?) from Neverwinter Stratics.
I'll be thankful for the Mac version as well as I see myself getting a new Mac (Perhaps a G4 cube with that nice studio display...) as soon as OSX is released.
As for Be, well, there's definite potential there, but I'll leave commenting further to someone who knows more about Be than I.
Check out the preview, you'll be drooling in anticipation in no time.
HOWTOs are generally written because someone out there got tired of hearing "How do I do this?" from new users. While some sort if intoduction to GNOME/KDE/KDE2/etc should brobally be included, don't expect to see introductions to things like WINE for some time as it is still pre-release software. I still haven't figured out why WINE keeps kicking me out of my xsession so don't fell too bad. :)
Installing Linux and Linux applications is quite a different model indeed than installing Windows and Windows Software. When you get right down to it, the writer of this article has a different point of view than more seasoned Linux users.
He/She is probally used to installing Windows from it's CD. After shuffling in a few driver cd's they have a working windows install and can surf the net with a semi recent version of Internet Explorer. They then insert the Office 2000 media and get a cup of coffee while it installes. Maybe if they've grasped the concept of multitasking they're visiting Windows Update at the same time. After office, there's still Photoshop, HTML editors, Netscape, Mozilla, that neat screensaver program they found on the web, etc, etc, etc. Each with it's own seperate installer on it's own media.
Whith linux, packages are distributed as biniary packages (rpm, deb, etc) are installed in a consistant (if cryptic) method, and can be obtained from the same installation media as your operating system or on large online repositories (freshmeat, rpmfind, debian and red hat ftps...)
The writes obvious problem is that he doesn't know the difference between a Linux kernel, a Linux operating system, and a Linux distribution. For the sake of rebuttal, lets say that the Linux kernel is just that. The kernel. The entire source code is what? 14 mb compressed? Now here's where we get fuzzy. The Linux OS would be the Kernel plus what you need to create and navigate file systems, and install other software. The distribution is the Linux OS bundled with software, software, and more software. A polite message explaining the methodolgy of a distribution might enlighten the author...
It's not exactly Open Source, but Avifile does a wonderful job of playing DivX ;-) encoded movies using the windows dlls. The latest version (0.51) fixed one of the playeres biggest bugs, crashing when seeking.
As stated earlier, XMPS also plays mpeg4. There's even an xmms plugin (uses libiaries from avifile and SDL)
I'm far from being a hardcore programmer type (I'm really not that good at it...) but if you use GNU tools like make and autoconfigure, it shouldn't be all that difficult for even a casual user to figure out how to compile something. (./configure --prefix=/usr/local/stow/packagename-version && make && make install && stow /usr/local/stow/packagename-version )
(Sidenote, stow is your friend! GNU Stow
The advantage to this is that the end user has do more than untar the biniaries. This is good because some packages may contain newer versions of libiaries than the user has installed. Usually, the result won't be more than something wanting to be updated or recompiled, but you can break your system fairly easily.
Also with source you have a bit more flexiblity in what libiaries the user has installed. (You need version 1.4.5 or above rather than the version this binary was compiled agnist) You'll probally get less flame style e-mail whining about "Why doesn't this work on my l33t system?"
With software that isn't release quality, source only distribution is acceptable, and IMHO, the best option. Keep the riff raff away until it's closer to release quality.
Screenshots, well, you always have to have screen shots. I often just look at screen shots and say "not quite ready, probally not worth my time, yet. But gee, it sure looks cool..."
You forgot comments from the viewers.
ie: Goku grunting roughly translates to "I'm constipated. Get me a laxitive."
How could they forget the bubble gum test? Seems like the perfect mouse for a public terminal, but they didn't subject it to bubble gum? Geez...huge oversight.
You try and run on as many platforms as Linux does and work 100% of the time. Distributions tend to support hardware that has saturated the market rather well. I wouldn't be too upset if ANY distribution didn't support the P4 out of the box, as long as the information on how to fix this was readily available.
Sude, distributors probally could have been a bit more proactive about getting the information, but think people. The latest distributions we're released before the P4, and older distributions released long before P4 based test systems were even available.
Keep in mind, programming is like sex. One mistake and you have to support it for the rest of your life. Why don't you try supporting every platform Linux runs on and ensure that Linux boots 100% of the time even on the wackiest of hardware configurations. If you're complaining about the situation your definitly lack insight.
Let's see, the web/mail server at work is XXX.XX.XX.XXX My co-lo server is XXX.XX.XX.XXX or XXX.XX.XX.XXX. (Even though you just have to do a whois on my domain, I'm not going to make it that easy.)
Nope, no problem remembering 10 to 12 digits here. Retire IPV4 and use the scheme for phone numbers, and get alot of confused geeks running around trying to ping telephone numbers...
Yeah, the media really needs something better to do. They're basically slashdot for TV now days. "We're not going to do any orginal reporting. We'll just rephrase someone else's story." Granted they do get some original programming, but it's pretty limited to human interest stories.
Ummm...ever poked in Debian? gaim, gaim-gnome, sawfish, sawfish-gnome, and the list goes on. For most of the packages you mentioned, they at least tried.
First thing to consider is your users are allready using a mixture of clients, and probally like it that way. If you went to exchange, it's Outlook or nothing. (You can set up Exchange to serve IMAP/POP to non Outlook clients, it's not the default though.)
Also consider that until Exchange 2000, Exchange was a seperate enity from your NT Domain. In Exchange 2000 I belive it is intigrated into NTDS (or Active Directory if you want to be MS Buzzterm Complient, even the WinNT5 developers aren't MS Buzzterm Complient, all the icons may be labled Active Directory and Windows 2000, but underneath it's NT5 and NTDS)
If you are going to go down the exchange route, set up a extremely powerful server. All this server should be doing is Exchange. Put a firewall in front of this box, if you know what you're doing, you won't need to give this box a public IP. NT will never be stable when it's overloaded, and sometime pointing that out to managment will sway the opinion in your favor. "Yeah, we can run Exchange for 1000 users, but we need at least two quad processor systems with Windows 2000 Advanced Server and 4+ GB of RAM." Always over spec NT servers.
Take into consideration you authintaction scheme. If you're allready up and running on NTDS thats one less hurdle in the way for Exchange. If you're on NT4 domains, Netware, or NIS, that a big strike agnist.
Take a looke at HP Open Mail over Exchange. Not only can you use HP's client, HP has Outlook Services to make the Open Mail server look like an Excnage server to Outlook 2000. The advantage of HP Open Mail over Exchange is that you still get the shared contacts/calendering, but the server runs on various UNIX platforms INCLUDING Linux.
If the situation gets to deploy Exchange or we'll hire someone else who will, consider finding an ASP to manage Exchange for you. Then it's somebody elses problem if the server breaks. Exchange server will be the cause for stress, stress, and more stress. Let somebody else deal with it.
For 1000+ users, give the project at least 6 months research time. If you're going to do it, do it right the first time. With those 6 months, find all the advantages and disadcvnatages, and all possible soultions includeing alternatives like HP Open Mail and Application Service Providers. If they keep saying they want it now damnit, ask them how they would function if the system wan't implemented correctly and they couldn't get their e-mail reliably. This is not a something that you want to deploy ASAP, espically when you allready have a mail system like you've allready described. I personally admin a mail server that has been up for 140 days without any issues. It's doing simalar stuff to what you described. (automatic archiving, web mail + pop + imap) I wouldn't give it up for the world, but if I had to, I'd consider HP Open Mail over Exchange. I've heard good things about Open Mail from those who've tried it. (HP has and evaluation license) From those who evaluated it and ended up with Exchange, they wish managment had gone the Open Mail route. Most are happy they went the ASP route instead of in house. Hope that helps!
And if you're running potato, stick this in /etc/apt/sources.list:
deb http://kde.tdyc.com potato kde2
Happy now? It's all packaged nice and pretty, ready for apt-get. The KDE folks haven't figured that out yet I guess....
Or you could run 6.0 and submit bug report after bug report after bug report with their included bug report tool. By the time 6.1 is released, they'll either remove this tool or completely ignore everything you send in.
The article states that they will be releasing the code to the GNOME Foundation. They will also be joining the GNOME Foundation. This is a completely different than releasing the code to the general public, under a Free license like the GPL.
So members of the GNOME Foundation can now all to easily build GNOME and it's applications agnist libiaries that are not under the LGPL.. Yeah, sounds like a great idea.
Really, it sounds like Borland/Inprise trying to get some press attention before/durring the show. See? Look we're good. We're releasing the source [to the chosen few who we deem worthy] so that applications can be rapidly developed [and we can get you to pay licensing fees in a market where there were none]. Yup, those marketing people sure know what they're doing, but they're happy to let you think of them as mindless drones.
Universities too. There were a few professors who told their classes "I really shouldn't tell you this, but our sales rep for [insert expensive proportary soultion here] said that it's ok for students to copy the software to their compters as long as they are students." The reasoning behind this is that if the students learn the software, that's what they'll request when they're out of school and in the field.
Makes sence to me...
Being audited this past week would have make migrating to windows 2000 even more painful for me. There is only one good way to upgrade a NT4 domain to Windows 2000 NTDS, and that's by upgrading your Primiary PDC. For smaller shops who only have one domain controller to start with, that could create problems.
Our goal here is to retire our NTPDC, so we purchased a new server with Windows 2000 preinstalled. To upgrade the domain to NTDS, I (in direct violation of our license agreement!) installed WindowsNT4 as a BDC on a workstation, promoted that workstation to a PDC, and upgraded the workstation to Windows 2000.
In the end, it worked as well as could be expected and its time I uninstalled Windows 2000 from that workstation.
In the end, I'm thanful MS isn't as anal with their licensing as say, Citrix. At least with a MS system you can bump the number of CALs without actually having them, and the OS doesn't really check its cd-key agnist other windows 2000 servers on the network. (This is good because I have only one copy of Windows 2000, but 3 server licenses under an eOpen license.) MS licensing is complicated and annoying, but at least it's not in the way to the point that you can't get the job done.
You know, that does sound appealing, and I have considered tipping someone off to a company I used to work for. The boss/owner liked temper tantrums and refused to buy more than one copy of Windows 98 or NT, or more than one copy of MS Office. Nor did he fell like purchasing a site licene for a decent terminal emulator, a critical piece of software for what most of the staff was doing.
As of yet I haven't...but this guy is on the deserving end of the spectrum...
There are still a ton of issues with it.
:)
Issues? I didn't have much for issues. I was very impressed. The only thing that all out broke was Netscape. The package I was using depended on libxpm. apt-get install netscape fixed that.
The dextor configuration utility works incredibly well. I wish it was smart enough to add ZAxisMapping instead of Emulate3Buttons though.
After getting the new X up an running, I had my TNT2 working with nVidias drivers in no time. All in all, it took me about 1.5 hours to go from the old X to playing Quake 3 under Linux.
Debian, keep up the excellent work!
Nah, I love the .org. Great TLD for anti-spam e-mail addrsses, just add a y.
First domain we registered was ringworld.org, somewhere along the way ringworld.net opend up, then came g33ks.net, and lastly itouthouse.com. But in the end, there's nothing quite like posting to a newsgroup as zibby@ringworld.orgy.
The best way is not to do filters in the first place. Some people may not get it, but is it really appropiate to be searching for porn in a public place? What about hate speach? Well, you do have a right to free speach, but you generally need to obtain a permit to hold a public protest. So by that reasoning the governemant should be allowed to block that stuff from government funded public terminals. Some belieifs are motivated through religion, and thus the government should just not get involved. For government the whole issue is a no win situation. The filtering software isn't good enough, and any soultion is outragously expensive to maintain. squidGaurd and squidBlock have potential, as the community at large can update the blocked and unblocked site lists. I belive they only filter the URL, not the actual page content.
If you're going to implement a filtering system, here's my gereral suggestion: train the libiary staff on how to add sites to the allow list. (Make a nice web interface for squid or something.) Whenever the users hits a site that was blocked, a page explaining the procedure will be displayed. They will then either fill out the request form or go to the libiary staff. The libiary staff will review the site and use their own judgment on the spot.
At the end of a given time period, the modifications to the list will be reviewed by a board of voulenteers. Sites can again be added or removed. After the meeting, the results will be posted for public review. At any time a voting user can go to the public libiary and request access to every site on the list, and give their vote on any listed site. These public votes will again be reviewd.
And so the process continues, each filtering site shares it's list and every voter has a a say. In time you have a system that has a large database of blocked sites. If the centeral government wants to maintain the centeral database, fine as long as long as the end user can override that instantly.
This is by no means a complete system, just me musing on what the heck I would implement a public filtering system. I should write my congressman. Maybe I can get a grant or something!