> Linux has a very inconsistent UI, so that tech > support for "Linux" is very difficult. For > example, somebody can't "get online". Are you > running Lindows? Mandrake? Red Hat? Suse? > Slackware? Gentoo? KDE? Gnome? IceWM? Which > version of each? What kernel build do you have > installed? > > Try walking somebody through setting up email > over the phone sometime. And, sorry, if you > disagree with me on this point, it's probably > because you haven't done it with a Linux setup > you didn't install yourself in the first place
Why bother walking them through anything over the phone?
Get their IP address (thankfully, http://whatismyip.com makes that easy for even the least technically savvy), a username/password, and a description of the problem. Hang up. ssh in. Fix the problem. Call them back.
Yes, it's my observation that radical innovation goes away with the first public offering. The board of directors is ultimately responsible to the stockholders. Voting stockholders tend to prefer conservative business practices.
I'll be interested to see if Google still maintains it's reputation as a peerless place to work 2 years after their IPO.
> I would have to agree with the DMA. In no other > part of marketing is such a strict standard as > confirmed opt-in required. It would be silly to > require such for email. > > For instance, if you sign up to receive a > magazine, should they have to send you a second > letter verifying your mailing address that you > fill out and return before actually sending you a > magazine? What about flyers? Personal contacts?
You're missing a key difference here: The magazine company, the snail mail spammer, and the personal contacts ALL PAY FOR END TO END DELIVERY OF THE MAIL THEY SEND.
You, the spammer, do not. You are only paying for your own bandwidth and infrastructure costs (presuming that you are a "legitimate" spammer who isn't exploiting some open relay or a zombied windows box) and are using your recipients bandwidth WITHOUT COMPENSATING THEM.
I used to have the same expectations of Open-source users as yourself, and largely for the same reasons. Until recently, people I knew in the OSS community even paid for their OSS, given the chance. Of course, most of them never ran a Microsoft OS, either.
Upon moving to my current job, I suffered a rude awakening. The company I currenly work for is largely a Linux house, with the majority of the technical people solidly rooted in various Unices. Piracy is rampant. I was shocked at how many people were shocked that I purchase box sets of my distros (even those I'm "just trying out"). This behavior isn't limited to the Unix people, of course. The windows monkeys are just as shameless in their piracy, but I've come to expect that of the Windows world - it was disturbing to see this from Unix people, particularly after the setbacks we suffered when companies like Loki couldn't stay profitable.
I tend to be optimistic, so I haven't been quite as shaken by this as some of my older friends who have had similar experiences. I don't subscribe to the sentiment that OSS is wasted on people, but I am afraid that much of our community has a lot of maturing to do before we can honestly say that the philosophy behind Open Source is internally consistant. "I only pirate Microsoft Software" just doesn't cut it.
That's one of my little complaints about Lindows - I like the concept of a trouble free desktop (I have enough real work to do that wasting my time on desktop tweaks seems futile), so their whole click and run concept is great. I just wish they'd take a hint from Transgaming and give you an option to pay for votes on where their testing/development goes
1. In regards to wanting something for nothing, I have to second your opinion. When I first got started using Unixes, I had a friend who was working as a solution developer for one of the big distros. I remember repeated situations in which I would ask him for "help" on a solution that I knew was probably pretty easy to implement but that would take some time to get right. I always figured, he's already done the foot work so why should I replicate all that effort when I can get the precise information I need by asking someone whose done it before?
It was always frustrating as hell when he would answer with a vague "Google for thus and thus keywords - you'll find all the information you need." Now that I've had to do the footwork myself (often thanks to his stubborn insistance that I do so) I understand why he took the stance he did. More often than not knowing how to find the answer is all that really stands between an "expert" and the rest of the world. If he had handed every nugget to me that I asked for all nicely tied up in a pretty bow, I'd still be wandering around asking everyone around me how to tie my shoes instead of having the experience to find the answer to my own questions. After all, contrary to popular beleif, good documentation is actually what makes open source software such a joy to work with - learning how to find and use that documentation is one of the most critical lessons a new user can pick up.
Please understand, I'm not advocating bitter cries of RTFM anytime someone asks how to accomplish a task - sometimes they have read the manual and didn't grasp what they read. That can get frustrating, so a gentle nudge in the right direction is helpful - but doing someones work for them isn't doing them any favors.
As to the second point: 2 - It's disappointing to me that everyone in this forum have simply run with the idea that this DDoS was perpetrated by "Linux Enthusiasts." From reading the article, I get the impression that the SCO spokespeople are the ones that brought Linux into the discussion (it's obvious why they would - keeping the spectre of their lawsuit in the public eye can't hurt their stock prices), the journalist bought the line, and now even the/.ers are operating under the assumption that it's true (which may say more about Linux enthusiast's opinions of themselves than anything else).
Let's be honest here, this DDoS was just as likely launched by some l33t d00d2 who just know that Linux r0x and SCO sux cause they heard it on an IRC channel somewhere. Crazy how powerful suggestion can really be.
In other news, a Wyoming couple was arrested on charges of "Playing God" when prosecutors discovered their rampant procreation. Vowing to crush the unauthorized creation of life, the DA has stated he will be asking for the maximum penalty.....
> Never work for a corporate entity free of > consideration.
>
>I reccomend that consideration be cold hard cash.
This is particularly true since you are taking on legal liability for your actions, whether you are paid or not. While you probably wouldn't be called in to do a task if the person calling didn't have some confidence in you, I wouldn't put it past a manager who behaves in the manner described to lay the blame for some later mishap on your shoulders. Always charge for your time (unless you are getting some other benefit that overwhelms financial compensation) and always have signed documentation providing permission to do the work and defining the nature of the work to be done.
Can't? I don't know about ATI, but you absolutely can use 32 bit with an NVidia card. It takes some effort to configure and is (sadly) slow as hell, but it can be done.
> if I don't put locks on my doors, when someone > walks into my house > it must be that I > *want* people to do this? I respectully disagree
I disagree as well; but you've missed a key point. If that same trespasser knocks on the unlocked door and you (or someone in your household) lets them in, no crime is commited.
In order for a passerby to access the internet through one of these AP's their laptop must send a DHCP request (DHCP request = knock at door). The DHCP server then must allocate an IP address and inform the laptop of available name servers (DHCP server = someone in household, allocating IP/DNS = LETTING YOU IN). Seems straight forward to me. Of course, I doubt that many judges know enough about DHCP traffic to see the connection.
> The company concluded that one problem came >from networking products that are too difficult >to use
What's so difficult about networking products? Plug in the card, depmod, then insmod (or run your OS/distro of choice's little auto configurator) then ifconfig. A good card by a good vendor "just works."
Hell, I purchased a Xircom Access Point the other day - plugged it into my hub and it worked. Period. Absolutely no work involved (I know, I know - you have to do some configuration to activate WEP + Cisco's little proprietary WEP extensions, and the random DHCP requests it sends out when it's not configured are minorly irritating; but really - how many of MS's target market are going to get those configs correctly even with a wizard to help?)
Hear Hear! Mod parent up, please - these points are too often ignored.
Another point often ignored is that NO OS is "ready for the desktop". "Ready for the desktop" is a moving target that keeps getting dumber and dumber. These machine's aren't toasters for crying out loud.
Look at it this way - car's have the world's most intuitive interface, and you still have to pass a governmentally mandated training class before your allowed to use one.
Funny that it's always the most blatant trolls who get the most repsonce. Heh heh - and here I am feeding the monkey. Next thing you kow I'll be answering surveys.
My experience on this is mixed. On the one hand, I have an Adtronics case with an ECS mlb. The channel for the floppy is fairly low on the mlb and the fdd bay is at the very top of the case. I installed the fdd, but my cable was way too short to reach. I just left in unplugged. My only complaint so far is that my bios insists on spending a few extra seconds searching for a boot record from floppy on those rare occasions I have to boot the machine.
On the other hand, I know a fellow who contracts to various local companies. He had a customer who needed a DDR setup, but had little in the way of spare hardware. They did have a spare 486 that was, mainly, functional. Minus an hdd. My friend put together a floppy image of a Coyote Linux install and copied it to a disk. Now the customer has a low cost DDR that works fine. The machine has virtually no downtime, which means few bootups - so the chance of the disk failing are slim. Even if it does, the image is cached on a local server - just dd it to another disk and pop in the disk. Presto! Instant DDR. Very cool.
You want a good driver from a vendor? Don't hold your breath. At least nVidia provides Linux drivers. Only reason I pick them over anyone else (that and the fact that, so long as Lord Carmack's backing them you know the important games'll always have a bias in favor of nVidia).
What we need is a company that releases some open source drivers. Good luck on THAT happening.
The US needs Microsoft? Pardon me, we need a company that hoards enough cash to buy the airline industry twice over? I remember the articles (I think it was the cover of Fortune, but I don't recall for certain), I think the pundits were using words like "criminal" and "irresponsible". Yeah. Thats what our economy needs.
Slashdot Mirror
> Are they defending human rights, or simply trying
> to impose their own beliefs on people from other
> cultures?
Both. BTW - to Impose or to Persuade and convince? See Fallacy of Prejudicial Language
> Linux has a very inconsistent UI, so that tech
> support for "Linux" is very difficult. For
> example, somebody can't "get online". Are you
> running Lindows? Mandrake? Red Hat? Suse?
> Slackware? Gentoo? KDE? Gnome? IceWM? Which
> version of each? What kernel build do you have
> installed?
>
> Try walking somebody through setting up email
> over the phone sometime. And, sorry, if you
> disagree with me on this point, it's probably
> because you haven't done it with a Linux setup
> you didn't install yourself in the first place
Why bother walking them through anything over the phone?
Get their IP address (thankfully, http://whatismyip.com makes that easy for even the least technically savvy), a username/password, and a description of the problem. Hang up. ssh in. Fix the problem. Call them back.
Yes, it's my observation that radical innovation goes away with the first public offering. The board of directors is ultimately responsible to the stockholders. Voting stockholders tend to prefer conservative business practices.
I'll be interested to see if Google still maintains it's reputation as a peerless place to work 2 years after their IPO.
> I would have to agree with the DMA. In no other
> part of marketing is such a strict standard as
> confirmed opt-in required. It would be silly to
> require such for email.
>
> For instance, if you sign up to receive a
> magazine, should they have to send you a second
> letter verifying your mailing address that you
> fill out and return before actually sending you a
> magazine? What about flyers? Personal contacts?
You're missing a key difference here: The magazine company, the snail mail spammer, and the personal contacts ALL PAY FOR END TO END DELIVERY OF THE MAIL THEY SEND.
You, the spammer, do not. You are only paying for your own bandwidth and infrastructure costs (presuming that you are a "legitimate" spammer who isn't exploiting some open relay or a zombied windows box) and are using your recipients bandwidth WITHOUT COMPENSATING THEM.
That is theft of service, plain and simple.
Ramadog,
I used to have the same expectations of Open-source users as yourself, and largely for the same reasons. Until recently, people I knew in the OSS community even paid for their OSS, given the chance. Of course, most of them never ran a Microsoft OS, either.
Upon moving to my current job, I suffered a rude awakening. The company I currenly work for is largely a Linux house, with the majority of the technical people solidly rooted in various Unices. Piracy is rampant. I was shocked at how many people were shocked that I purchase box sets of my distros (even those I'm "just trying out"). This behavior isn't limited to the Unix people, of course. The windows monkeys are just as shameless in their piracy, but I've come to expect that of the Windows world - it was disturbing to see this from Unix people, particularly after the setbacks we suffered when companies like Loki couldn't stay profitable.
I tend to be optimistic, so I haven't been quite as shaken by this as some of my older friends who have had similar experiences. I don't subscribe to the sentiment that OSS is wasted on people, but I am afraid that much of our community has a lot of maturing to do before we can honestly say that the philosophy behind Open Source is internally consistant. "I only pirate Microsoft Software" just doesn't cut it.
That's one of my little complaints about Lindows - I like the concept of a trouble free desktop (I have enough real work to do that wasting my time on desktop tweaks seems futile), so their whole click and run concept is great. I just wish they'd take a hint from Transgaming and give you an option to pay for votes on where their testing/development goes
Mozilla
I'd like two address to matters here:
/.ers are operating under the assumption that it's true (which may say more about Linux enthusiast's opinions of themselves than anything else).
1. In regards to wanting something for nothing, I have to second your opinion. When I first got started using Unixes, I had a friend who was working as a solution developer for one of the big distros. I remember repeated situations in which I would ask him for "help" on a solution that I knew was probably pretty easy to implement but that would take some time to get right. I always figured, he's already done the foot work so why should I replicate all that effort when I can get the precise information I need by asking someone whose done it before?
It was always frustrating as hell when he would answer with a vague "Google for thus and thus keywords - you'll find all the information you need." Now that I've had to do the footwork myself (often thanks to his stubborn insistance that I do so) I understand why he took the stance he did. More often than not knowing how to find the answer is all that really stands between an "expert" and the rest of the world. If he had handed every nugget to me that I asked for all nicely tied up in a pretty bow, I'd still be wandering around asking everyone around me how to tie my shoes instead of having the experience to find the answer to my own questions. After all, contrary to popular beleif, good documentation is actually what makes open source software such a joy to work with - learning how to find and use that documentation is one of the most critical lessons a new user can pick up.
Please understand, I'm not advocating bitter cries of RTFM anytime someone asks how to accomplish a task - sometimes they have read the manual and didn't grasp what they read. That can get frustrating, so a gentle nudge in the right direction is helpful - but doing someones work for them isn't doing them any favors.
As to the second point:
2 - It's disappointing to me that everyone in this forum have simply run with the idea that this DDoS was perpetrated by "Linux Enthusiasts." From reading the article, I get the impression that the SCO spokespeople are the ones that brought Linux into the discussion (it's obvious why they would - keeping the spectre of their lawsuit in the public eye can't hurt their stock prices), the journalist bought the line, and now even the
Let's be honest here, this DDoS was just as likely launched by some l33t d00d2 who just know that Linux r0x and SCO sux cause they heard it on an IRC channel somewhere. Crazy how powerful suggestion can really be.
In other news, a Wyoming couple was arrested on charges of "Playing God" when prosecutors discovered their rampant procreation. Vowing to crush the unauthorized creation of life, the DA has stated he will be asking for the maximum penalty.....
Don't you mean 10?
Yeah, but SPEWS are a bunch of fascists - it's almost impossible to get removed from their lists.
> Never work for a corporate entity free of
> consideration.
>
>I reccomend that consideration be cold hard cash.
This is particularly true since you are taking on legal liability for your actions, whether you are paid or not. While you probably wouldn't be called in to do a task if the person calling didn't have some confidence in you, I wouldn't put it past a manager who behaves in the manner described to lay the blame for some later mishap on your shoulders. Always charge for your time (unless you are getting some other benefit that overwhelms financial compensation) and always have signed documentation providing permission to do the work and defining the nature of the work to be done.
Mismanaged companies LOVE to sue.
Can't? I don't know about ATI, but you absolutely can use 32 bit with an NVidia card. It takes some effort to configure and is (sadly) slow as hell, but it can be done.
Ahem. Can we say "Transgaming"?
Hmmm. One big downside - you only have two thumbs. If someone compromises your encryption twice, your SOL as far as creating new keys goes.
> if I don't put locks on my doors, when someone
> walks into my house > it must be that I
> *want* people to do this? I respectully disagree
I disagree as well; but you've missed a key point. If that same trespasser knocks on the unlocked door and you (or someone in your household) lets them in, no crime is commited.
In order for a passerby to access the internet through one of these AP's their laptop must send a DHCP request (DHCP request = knock at door). The DHCP server then must allocate an IP address and inform the laptop of available name servers (DHCP server = someone in household, allocating IP/DNS = LETTING YOU IN). Seems straight forward to me. Of course, I doubt that many judges know enough about DHCP traffic to see the connection.
> The company concluded that one problem came >from networking products that are too difficult >to use
What's so difficult about networking products? Plug in the card, depmod, then insmod (or run your OS/distro of choice's little auto configurator) then ifconfig. A good card by a good vendor "just works."
Hell, I purchased a Xircom Access Point the other day - plugged it into my hub and it worked. Period. Absolutely no work involved (I know, I know - you have to do some configuration to activate WEP + Cisco's little proprietary WEP extensions, and the random DHCP requests it sends out when it's not configured are minorly irritating; but really - how many of MS's target market are going to get those configs correctly even with a wizard to help?)
Er, correction "car's" == "cars'" (damned typos!)
Hear Hear!
Mod parent up, please - these points are too often ignored.
Another point often ignored is that NO OS is "ready for the desktop". "Ready for the desktop" is a moving target that keeps getting dumber and dumber. These machine's aren't toasters for crying out loud.
Look at it this way - car's have the world's most intuitive interface, and you still have to pass a governmentally mandated training class before your allowed to use one.
> UML obviously is a version of Linux and can
> only run Linux apps, not OSs.
Correction - UML runs Linux OSes (distros, if you will), which, in turn, run Linux apps. A fine point, but critical.
Funny that it's always the most blatant trolls who get the most repsonce. Heh heh - and here I am feeding the monkey. Next thing you kow I'll be answering surveys.
Anyone else find fact that this article is copyrighted to be at all funny?
My experience on this is mixed. On the one hand, I have an Adtronics case with an ECS mlb. The channel for the floppy is fairly low on the mlb and the fdd bay is at the very top of the case. I installed the fdd, but my cable was way too short to reach. I just left in unplugged. My only complaint so far is that my bios insists on spending a few extra seconds searching for a boot record from floppy on those rare occasions I have to boot the machine.
On the other hand, I know a fellow who contracts to various local companies. He had a customer who needed a DDR setup, but had little in the way of spare hardware. They did have a spare 486 that was, mainly, functional. Minus an hdd. My friend put together a floppy image of a Coyote Linux install and copied it to a disk. Now the customer has a low cost DDR that works fine. The machine has virtually no downtime, which means few bootups - so the chance of the disk failing are slim. Even if it does, the image is cached on a local server - just dd it to another disk and pop in the disk. Presto! Instant DDR. Very cool.
You want a good driver from a vendor? Don't hold your breath. At least nVidia provides Linux drivers. Only reason I pick them over anyone else (that and the fact that, so long as Lord Carmack's backing them you know the important games'll always have a bias in favor of nVidia).
What we need is a company that releases some open source drivers. Good luck on THAT happening.
The US needs Microsoft? Pardon me, we need a company that hoards enough cash to buy the airline industry twice over? I remember the articles (I think it was the cover of Fortune, but I don't recall for certain), I think the pundits were using words like "criminal" and "irresponsible". Yeah. Thats what our economy needs.