djb first started talking up "IM2000" in, if memory serves, late 1999.
It's now early-mid 2003, and there are exactly zero IM2000 clients, servers, libraries or other working software available to the general public.
IM2000 appears to be yet another one of Dr. Bernstein's interesting 4am ideas that he found amusing enough to start a mailing list about, but not interesting enough to devote any real effort to implementing or promoting. (See also: "slashpackage")
Mail administrators are facing a real problem in the here and now. Handwaving about unimplemented pie-in-the-sky ideas is not helpful to anyone. When there's a working IM2000 server that I can install, call me. Until then, let's stop flogging this horse every time someone brings up the spam subject.
Winamp3 is an attempt at completely rewriting Winamp so it's cross-platform (there is a linux version).
Ahem. There was a "Linux Alpha" version of winamp3 released almost two years ago now, which was completely and totally unusable, as was the alleged MacOS version. There has not been a linux release since, and it is not even currently obvious how to download the linux version. (Understandable, since it was not in any way useful.)
I don't think Apple is primarily targeting the XServe at 24/7 ecommerce or whatever operations. Sure, they'd love to make some inroads into that market if they could, but they're not gonna lose any sleep over it.
Pretty much all of the rumors sites agree on this point: the XServe was designed on spec for Pixar, and as such is aimed like a laser at the movie, CG, music and press industries. (Which are, shock, Apple's core market.) All of those markets already have a substantial investment in (or, just as importantly, familiarity with and openness to) Apple's products, have been limping along for years with Apple's previous "server-esque" solutions, and often have a substantial investment in cobbled-together UNIX backend solutions that their employees hate working with.
In other words, it's not Compaq that needs to worry about the XServe, it's what left of SGI.
As far as your actual question goes: I don't trust any vendor (especially HemDeq, gack) to keep my job safe with a single product. There is no substitute for knowing the strengths and weaknesses of all of your hardware, and designing systems to leverage the former and minimize the latter. If the sudden vaporization of any one server brings your enterprise to a screaming halt, you failed long before you signed the P.O.
They'll react the way they always react: take your money, complain about those damn pirates, lobby their Senators to have you put in jail, and then take your money again. Share and enjoy!
(Not sure how much this would involve the RIAA anyway: live performance royalties are more of an ASCAP/BMI thing.)
More flamebait than troll, really, but otherwise about right.
(Yeah, I know, it's gauche to comment on your own posts' moderations, but people spend so much time bitching about unfair moderation that I think we should occasionally take time to point out good moderations.)
What goes around comes around. Remember all of those insane signing bonuses and perks that useless rockstar programmers and IT staff were getting 2-3 years ago during the boom? Well, now we get to see management and HR getting their chance to get some of their own back.
It's best to look at this as an exercise in schadenfreude: all of those wanna-be technolibertarians who spent most of the 90s shuddering and twitching at the mere mention of unions, collective bargaining or any other manifestation of labor rights now get to find out the hard way what life is like when management holds all of the cards.
That cold, unwelcome sensation invading your rectum? That's the invisible hand you professed to adore so much last year. Enjoy!
I wasn't certain if this was a troll or not...
on
Gnome 2.2 Released
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· Score: 1
...but then I got towards the end and read this:
you know the good old way having your settings defined with.xdefaults and all nice default configurations are going into/etc/x11/app-defaults/ and so on.
...which quickly settled the question: the poster is either a troll or on copious amounts of illegal and dangerous pharmeceuticals. The the X Windows Disaster has a few redeeming qualities, but nobody in their right minds would pine for a return of the.xdefaults/app-defaults/xdrp clusterfuck.
On the off chance that the poster was serious: nobody is stopping you from running MIT X11R6 and twm. Sounds like you'd be a lot happier that way.
It's not true in the slightest. There are many complaints you can legitimately make about NT's security model, but a lack of options and flexibility with regard to locking down boxes is not and has never been one of them.
Frankly, complaints like this about NT/2000 seem to largely come from 2-bit linux "admins" who freak out at the notion that they can't administer a modern server OS by running vi on a text file (the HORROR!) and don't bother to RTFM before spouting off about how "insecure" Windows 2000 is.
Speaking as someone who has had to lock down both 2000 Advanced Server and many assorted flavors of Unix professionally, I'd say that the difficulty of securing them is about the same, and no unix admin should ever cast stones at Exchange so long as sendmail remains the default MTA for just about every major unix flavor out there.
You just tried to dis "Gun with Occasional Music" by for unoriginality by comparing two of its plot devices with works that (a) came out years after the book, and (b) in the case of "Kangaroo Jack" you have almost certainly not seen, since it hasn't been released yet. You're either trolling in a manner too subtle for me to comprehend, or you're overreaching.
(Yes, I know that Minority Report was based on a PKD short story, but I believe that the bit about freezing prisoners was an invention of the movie script.)
Anyway, I just don't know what to say to anyone who doesn't find Lethem's writing to be breathtakingly beautiful. Maybe you should try his "Motherless Brooklyn", which is not sci-fi at all, and seems to fit his stylings a bit better as a result. You like James Morrow, so it's not like there's no hope for you.:)
Hm. The funny thing is, I don't think I'd necessarily disagree with any of your criticisms of White Light. It's very much a piece of its time period (1970s drug-enhanced "new wave" sci fi), and certainly reflects an uncomfortable amount of Rucker's then-current neuroses.
I still think it's worth reading, even if only as a failed attempt at creating a "Flatland" for set theory. (Whether this is in any way a worthwhile goal is certainly up for debate.)
Pretty much all of Stephenson's novels are, to a greater or lesser extent, a million and a half Neat Ideas all strung together and desperately searching for a plot. The Diamond Age and Snow Crash mostly got away with it by virtue of being briskly paced and having some fairly vividly drawn secondary characters. (Stephenson's narrator/heroes are almost always complete cyphers, which I guess could be considered irony if it weren't so obviously artistic laziness.)
Cryptonomicon, in contrast, was an ugly, sprawling mess with thinly-drawn comic book heroes passing for characters that mainly stands as a testament to Stephenson finally hitting that rare peak of financial success where no editor dares touch your work. Somewhere, buried deep inside, was a nice, tight, 300-page novel, trying desperatly to get out...
Although I have read and mostly enjoyed all of his books, to my mind, Zodiac is the only one that actually succeeds as a novel -- Sangamon Taylor was based on a real person that Stephenson knew and admired, and the extra effort put into fleshing out the character and story a bit shows.
I'll read the next one when it comes out, but I won't ever make the mistake of paying hardcover prices again -- Cryptonomicon cured me of that.
(The two semi-pseudonymous "Stephen Bury" novels are witless attempts at combining sci-fi with Clancy-esque espionage thrillers, and neatly manage to encapsulate the worst of both worlds. Avoid at all costs.)
Which part of US politics, specifically, was being critqued when the main character had sex with his 13-year-old adopted daughter?
No fair saying Bill Clinton; "Statesman" was published in the early 80s.
Seriously, I enjoyed a lot of Anthony's stuff when I was 14 years old, but in retrospect I look back at it and have to repress shudders. If Pete Townsend is under arrest, Piers Anthony should be rotting away in solitary.
At the risk of spoiling the joke: literal-minded dolts like you are exactly the fish that our joker here was attempting to catch with this troll. Congratulations on being so utterly predictable.
In honor of Martin Luther King Jr's birthday, I would like to state that I, too, have a dream. I dream of a day when it will be possible to have a discussion (serious or not) on the merits and demerits of science fiction as a genre without automatically summoning the dreaded Droning Heinlein Quoting Brigade.
Free clue for the day: We've heard it already. (We've also seen the goddamn bumper sticker and "cute" calligraphic button.) Go away, grow the hell up, and don't come back until you've read something else.
The mark of a truly excellent troll is that it contains just enough elements of truth to hook the casually unwary. I tip my hat to you, sir or madam as the case may be.
I couldn't tell you who the top ten "new" science fiction authors are, but I can tell you one thing: you've been cheating yourself by consuming a lot of churned-out-by-committee crap, one identical "novel" after the other.
Instead of looking for the next endless, pandering "series" a la Weis & Hickman or (shudder) Piers Anthony, why not investigate some of the actual artists in the field? As about a dozen people above have already pointed out, we have these things called the Hugo and Nebula awards -- we give 'em out every year, and it's usually a safe bet that at least a few of the winners are worth your time to read.
A few authors and books you owe it to yourself to check out if you actually think you like this genre:
"A Fire Upon the Deep" by Vernor Vinge "White Light" by Rudy Rucker "Gun, with Occasional Music" by Johnathan Lethem "The Book of the New Sun" by Gene Wolfe (this one's actually part of a "series", but Wolfe is a strong enough writer to make me forgive that) "The Shockwave Rider" by John Brunner "Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" by Haruki Murikami Any of Harlan Ellison's mid-to-late 1970s short story collections. "Shatterday" is probably the strongest. Anything by Thomas Disch (start with "Camp Concentration") Everything by Alfred Bester.
And, god forbid, you could consider reading something other than SF&F occasionally. Non-genre "literature" needn't be a soul-crushing Lit 101 experience: grab a copy of "Love in the Time of Cholera" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez or "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" by Hunter Thompson and go to town...
No advancment on the ghz front. I just said that it doesn't matter _as_much_, but it's still dissapointing that Apple continues to lag here.
Uh, this may come as a surprise to you, but Apple doesn't make the CPUs in the PowerMacs. They're made by Motorola and (sometimes) IBM, both of whom have been quite public about their roadmaps for newer and faster CPUs over the next two years. If the lack of news there came as a surprise to you, I can guarantee that you were pretty much the only person surprised.
(If you think for a second that Apple would launch a "surprise" announcement of x86 or hammer-based macs, I have a bridge in New York City that I'd like to sell you: Apple pre-announced the 68k to PowerPC move by over a year, and still almost lost half of their developers. They will never do such a thing without plenty of advance notice.)
Expect PPC970-based powermacs late in 2003. Don't hold your breath for anything better than a minor speedbump in the interim. That's the hand Apple has to play, and they're making the best of it.
Note that this only appears to be working in the PowerPC port. Apple has been, so far, pretty laid back about the MacOnLinux project, which emulates classic MacOS on top of LinuxPPC boxes -- after all, you have to buy their hardware either way.
We'll see if they start "Thinking Differently" about that approach now that it's OSX involved instead of Classic, but I'd be at least slightly optimistic: they haven't tried to shut down the GnuStep projet recently, and that's much more of a danger to them than this.
Is it just me, or were the first several pages of this "article" written by cutting and pasting directly from Seagate's own product description and SATA white papers?
That they then split the article out over a zillion "pages" to pump up their ad impression numbers is insult on top of injury.
Re:A Sympathy for the Doctor?
on
Complications
·
· Score: 2
Interestingly, Gawande devotes an entire chapter specifically to the subject of hernia repairs. You might find it fascinating (if, in light of your experience, infuriating) reading: borrow it from the library if you can't afford it right now? I'd be curious to hear your thoughts.
Well yeah, I know that it wouldn't look anything like the real TF2; that's sorta the point -- I'm curious about it in a "what might have been" sort of way.
Slashdot Mirror
djb first started talking up "IM2000" in, if memory serves, late 1999.
It's now early-mid 2003, and there are exactly zero IM2000 clients, servers, libraries or other working software available to the general public.
IM2000 appears to be yet another one of Dr. Bernstein's interesting 4am ideas that he found amusing enough to start a mailing list about, but not interesting enough to devote any real effort to implementing or promoting. (See also: "slashpackage")
Mail administrators are facing a real problem in the here and now. Handwaving about unimplemented pie-in-the-sky ideas is not helpful to anyone. When there's a working IM2000 server that I can install, call me. Until then, let's stop flogging this horse every time someone brings up the spam subject.
Winamp3 is an attempt at completely rewriting Winamp so it's cross-platform (there is a linux version).
Ahem. There was a "Linux Alpha" version of winamp3 released almost two years ago now, which was completely and totally unusable, as was the alleged MacOS version. There has not been a linux release since, and it is not even currently obvious how to download the linux version. (Understandable, since it was not in any way useful.)
I don't think Apple is primarily targeting the XServe at 24/7 ecommerce or whatever operations. Sure, they'd love to make some inroads into that market if they could, but they're not gonna lose any sleep over it.
Pretty much all of the rumors sites agree on this point: the XServe was designed on spec for Pixar, and as such is aimed like a laser at the movie, CG, music and press industries. (Which are, shock, Apple's core market.) All of those markets already have a substantial investment in (or, just as importantly, familiarity with and openness to) Apple's products, have been limping along for years with Apple's previous "server-esque" solutions, and often have a substantial investment in cobbled-together UNIX backend solutions that their employees hate working with.
In other words, it's not Compaq that needs to worry about the XServe, it's what left of SGI.
As far as your actual question goes: I don't trust any vendor (especially HemDeq, gack) to keep my job safe with a single product. There is no substitute for knowing the strengths and weaknesses of all of your hardware, and designing systems to leverage the former and minimize the latter. If the sudden vaporization of any one server brings your enterprise to a screaming halt, you failed long before you signed the P.O.
You are my new hero.
They'll react the way they always react: take your money, complain about those damn pirates, lobby their Senators to have you put in jail, and then take your money again. Share and enjoy!
(Not sure how much this would involve the RIAA anyway: live performance royalties are more of an ASCAP/BMI thing.)
More flamebait than troll, really, but otherwise about right.
(Yeah, I know, it's gauche to comment on your own posts' moderations, but people spend so much time bitching about unfair moderation that I think we should occasionally take time to point out good moderations.)
What goes around comes around. Remember all of those insane signing bonuses and perks that useless rockstar programmers and IT staff were getting 2-3 years ago during the boom? Well, now we get to see management and HR getting their chance to get some of their own back.
It's best to look at this as an exercise in schadenfreude: all of those wanna-be technolibertarians who spent most of the 90s shuddering and twitching at the mere mention of unions, collective bargaining or any other manifestation of labor rights now get to find out the hard way what life is like when management holds all of the cards.
That cold, unwelcome sensation invading your rectum? That's the invisible hand you professed to adore so much last year. Enjoy!
On the off chance that the poster was serious: nobody is stopping you from running MIT X11R6 and twm. Sounds like you'd be a lot happier that way.
It's not true in the slightest. There are many complaints you can legitimately make about NT's security model, but a lack of options and flexibility with regard to locking down boxes is not and has never been one of them.
Frankly, complaints like this about NT/2000 seem to largely come from 2-bit linux "admins" who freak out at the notion that they can't administer a modern server OS by running vi on a text file (the HORROR!) and don't bother to RTFM before spouting off about how "insecure" Windows 2000 is.
Speaking as someone who has had to lock down both 2000 Advanced Server and many assorted flavors of Unix professionally, I'd say that the difficulty of securing them is about the same, and no unix admin should ever cast stones at Exchange so long as sendmail remains the default MTA for just about every major unix flavor out there.
You just tried to dis "Gun with Occasional Music" by for unoriginality by comparing two of its plot devices with works that (a) came out years after the book, and (b) in the case of "Kangaroo Jack" you have almost certainly not seen, since it hasn't been released yet. You're either trolling in a manner too subtle for me to comprehend, or you're overreaching.
:)
(Yes, I know that Minority Report was based on a PKD short story, but I believe that the bit about freezing prisoners was an invention of the movie script.)
Anyway, I just don't know what to say to anyone who doesn't find Lethem's writing to be breathtakingly beautiful. Maybe you should try his "Motherless Brooklyn", which is not sci-fi at all, and seems to fit his stylings a bit better as a result. You like James Morrow, so it's not like there's no hope for you.
Hm. The funny thing is, I don't think I'd necessarily disagree with any of your criticisms of White Light. It's very much a piece of its time period (1970s drug-enhanced "new wave" sci fi), and certainly reflects an uncomfortable amount of Rucker's then-current neuroses.
I still think it's worth reading, even if only as a failed attempt at creating a "Flatland" for set theory. (Whether this is in any way a worthwhile goal is certainly up for debate.)
Pretty much all of Stephenson's novels are, to a greater or lesser extent, a million and a half Neat Ideas all strung together and desperately searching for a plot. The Diamond Age and Snow Crash mostly got away with it by virtue of being briskly paced and having some fairly vividly drawn secondary characters. (Stephenson's narrator/heroes are almost always complete cyphers, which I guess could be considered irony if it weren't so obviously artistic laziness.)
Cryptonomicon, in contrast, was an ugly, sprawling mess with thinly-drawn comic book heroes passing for characters that mainly stands as a testament to Stephenson finally hitting that rare peak of financial success where no editor dares touch your work. Somewhere, buried deep inside, was a nice, tight, 300-page novel, trying desperatly to get out...
Although I have read and mostly enjoyed all of his books, to my mind, Zodiac is the only one that actually succeeds as a novel -- Sangamon Taylor was based on a real person that Stephenson knew and admired, and the extra effort put into fleshing out the character and story a bit shows.
I'll read the next one when it comes out, but I won't ever make the mistake of paying hardcover prices again -- Cryptonomicon cured me of that.
(The two semi-pseudonymous "Stephen Bury" novels are witless attempts at combining sci-fi with Clancy-esque espionage thrillers, and neatly manage to encapsulate the worst of both worlds. Avoid at all costs.)
Which part of US politics, specifically, was being critqued when the main character had sex with his 13-year-old adopted daughter?
No fair saying Bill Clinton; "Statesman" was published in the early 80s.
Seriously, I enjoyed a lot of Anthony's stuff when I was 14 years old, but in retrospect I look back at it and have to repress shudders. If Pete Townsend is under arrest, Piers Anthony should be rotting away in solitary.
I have nothing to add. What he said. Ibid. Op cit. Ditto. Right fucking on. You go.
Man, if you think "Vineland" was a slog, just wait until you get your hands on "Gravity's Rainbow". :)
But do do do do read Gravity's Rainbow. It's worth the effort and thensome.
At the risk of spoiling the joke: literal-minded dolts like you are exactly the fish that our joker here was attempting to catch with this troll. Congratulations on being so utterly predictable.
In honor of Martin Luther King Jr's birthday, I would like to state that I, too, have a dream. I dream of a day when it will be possible to have a discussion (serious or not) on the merits and demerits of science fiction as a genre without automatically summoning the dreaded Droning Heinlein Quoting Brigade.
Free clue for the day: We've heard it already. (We've also seen the goddamn bumper sticker and "cute" calligraphic button.) Go away, grow the hell up, and don't come back until you've read something else.
The mark of a truly excellent troll is that it contains just enough elements of truth to hook the casually unwary. I tip my hat to you, sir or madam as the case may be.
I couldn't tell you who the top ten "new" science fiction authors are, but I can tell you one thing: you've been cheating yourself by consuming a lot of churned-out-by-committee crap, one identical "novel" after the other.
Instead of looking for the next endless, pandering "series" a la Weis & Hickman or (shudder) Piers Anthony, why not investigate some of the actual artists in the field? As about a dozen people above have already pointed out, we have these things called the Hugo and Nebula awards -- we give 'em out every year, and it's usually a safe bet that at least a few of the winners are worth your time to read.
A few authors and books you owe it to yourself to check out if you actually think you like this genre:
"A Fire Upon the Deep" by Vernor Vinge
"White Light" by Rudy Rucker
"Gun, with Occasional Music" by Johnathan Lethem
"The Book of the New Sun" by Gene Wolfe (this one's actually part of a "series", but Wolfe is a strong enough writer to make me forgive that)
"The Shockwave Rider" by John Brunner
"Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" by Haruki Murikami
Any of Harlan Ellison's mid-to-late 1970s short story collections. "Shatterday" is probably the strongest.
Anything by Thomas Disch (start with "Camp Concentration")
Everything by Alfred Bester.
And, god forbid, you could consider reading something other than SF&F occasionally. Non-genre "literature" needn't be a soul-crushing Lit 101 experience: grab a copy of "Love in the Time of Cholera" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez or "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" by Hunter Thompson and go to town...
Most likely, he's full of shit. But there will be an easy way to determine it:
:)
If in two weeks he's facing down the mother of all legal summons for violating his consulting NDA with Apple, he was telling the truth.
No advancment on the ghz front. I just said that it doesn't matter _as_much_, but it's still dissapointing that Apple continues to lag here.
Uh, this may come as a surprise to you, but Apple doesn't make the CPUs in the PowerMacs. They're made by Motorola and (sometimes) IBM, both of whom have been quite public about their roadmaps for newer and faster CPUs over the next two years. If the lack of news there came as a surprise to you, I can guarantee that you were pretty much the only person surprised.
(If you think for a second that Apple would launch a "surprise" announcement of x86 or hammer-based macs, I have a bridge in New York City that I'd like to sell you: Apple pre-announced the 68k to PowerPC move by over a year, and still almost lost half of their developers. They will never do such a thing without plenty of advance notice.)
Expect PPC970-based powermacs late in 2003. Don't hold your breath for anything better than a minor speedbump in the interim. That's the hand Apple has to play, and they're making the best of it.
Note that this only appears to be working in the PowerPC port. Apple has been, so far, pretty laid back about the MacOnLinux project, which emulates classic MacOS on top of LinuxPPC boxes -- after all, you have to buy their hardware either way.
We'll see if they start "Thinking Differently" about that approach now that it's OSX involved instead of Classic, but I'd be at least slightly optimistic: they haven't tried to shut down the GnuStep projet recently, and that's much more of a danger to them than this.
Two words: white-out.
Is it just me, or were the first several pages of this "article" written by cutting and pasting directly from Seagate's own product description and SATA white papers?
That they then split the article out over a zillion "pages" to pump up their ad impression numbers is insult on top of injury.
Interestingly, Gawande devotes an entire chapter specifically to the subject of hernia repairs. You might find it fascinating (if, in light of your experience, infuriating) reading: borrow it from the library if you can't afford it right now? I'd be curious to hear your thoughts.
Well yeah, I know that it wouldn't look anything like the real TF2; that's sorta the point -- I'm curious about it in a "what might have been" sort of way.