So why don't we come up with something better? Shouldn't it be possible to come up with a way to DNS that doesn't have to be centralized? Or -- since such a thing wouldn't really be DNS any more -- something that would be backward compatible with DNS that wouldn't have to be centralized?
While the U5 was more expensive, I had one and let me attest that it sucked. The base config comes with IDE everything, 4GB hard drive, a slow processor (can't remember the exact numbers) and 128MB of RAM. All this for only twice what you could get an equivalent PC for. The video was limited to 256 colors at any reasonable resolution, etc. My Linux box (a dell pII-300) blew it out of the water on every benchmark and was cheaper.
Yeah, this thing is cheaper than the u5. But Sun workstations have not really been performance competitive with the PC world for five years now. Somehow, I suspect that this box isn't going to be any better.
Actually, for a site of the size and importance of Microsoft's stable, it is best to have a geographically diverse pool of servers doing DNS.
While it is theoretically possible to distribute a subnet that small geographically, in practice it doesn't work that way. Generally, anything smaller than a/24 netblock is tied to one network provider, and probably even to one area of their network.
So, the incompetence charge sticks. To you as well.
Heaven forbid that the government of Virginia should be allowed to decide what the computers they pay for are used to do. After all -- even if the computers were used for research, there is no law or constitutional principle requiring them to pay for such research.
If Virginia doesn't want to pay for that research -- or, more aptly, thinks that that research is not worth the price of allowing pornographic material on their computers -- that is our privilege. If you don't like it, vote.
Once upon a time, I received a "new employee orientation" from a black man. Basically, I followed him around like a puppy dog for about two weeks. I noticed something: he knew almost all the black people in the (very large) company. When he socialized with other employees, it was black employees. Further, he was able to move up from the mail room to a mid-level SA by exploiting this connection to black managers.
It was not that he was rude to white employees -- he just hung around with black employees. All the time.
Now, if a white person were to do the same, he would be labeled as racist. Especially, he would be culpable for exploiting his social relationships with white managers to gain standing. I don't claim to know how to fight this -- or even if it should be fought. I just observe the fact that black people do tend, as you pointed out, to socialize exclusively with other black people. And that they tend to exploit those social connections just as white people exploit theres.
Is this true for Mozilla 0.6? That's what I've primarily been using... I kind of assumed that at least on the milestones they were doing optimized compiles.
Long story, but I run Mozilla on both my Linux (Redhat 7) box and on Win32. It is really quite acceptable on Windows NT -- performs *adequately* (but not fantastically) and doesn't crash much.
On Linux is another story. It is just plain *slow*, buggy and crashes a lot. I would love to hear comments -- is this a result of using GTK? GTK doesn't exactly have a reputation for being blindingly fast. Or is it something else? Is it just that Netscape engineers have put more effort into tuning the Windows version?
Anyone who can comment I would be interested. I've been tempted to break out my profiler and see if I could speed things up a bit on Linux, but haven't been sure where the problem really was.
Okay, for what it's worth, I did not expect my "me too!" post to evoke this much response. But, I would like to respond to some of the criticism leveled.
First, I am not 17 years old. I'm now 28, and have ten solid years experience working on UNIX systems. I am able to command the salary I do because I have a reputation for fixing problems that no one else could, and fixing them quickly. This is more valuable to my employer (a major network-services-provider) than a BS ever will be. This ability comes from years of careful study of how computers work.
As for a lack of education: I am currently working on bachelors, in philosophy (although I'm trying to transfer to a school that offers classics) with an eye towards "cashing out" of the computer industry and going into ministry.
Now, those who say that the purpose of education is not to make money are, in general, correct. The point of education is to learn how to think and to have something to think with (i.e. information), ultimately applying that to the human condition. However, most technical programs are more like vocational training than education. So, when I decline to pursue a CS degree (even though I could get one by a couple of years of yawning with my background) I do so because that degree is worthless to me.
Frankly, at my current level (very senior in one of the biggest companies around) my education or lack thereof is irrelevant in the face of my experience and the things people have seen me do. After spending years in school being told how "drop outs don't succeed", I take a certain satisfaction in the fact that I have slags of people with BS's and even MS's in computer science coming to me for advice and even assistance.
Is this pride, and thereby a sin? I can't deny it. I should probably be working on that.
You complain that people have received "unsolicited religious, racial or sexual messages, a somewhat more serious matter."
And this is more serious than commercial email... why?
Why is a message urging you to moral uprightness within a particular system of mythology (using here the academic definition of mythology, which contains no implied truth value) more offensive than one trying to get you to buy crappy credit cards? The problem is that you've placed religion in a box that says "don't touch!" Well, guess what: not all religions are created equal. There are some serious and substantial differences in religions, and it is not wrong for me to try to show you what I think to be right.
Likewise, racial or sexual messages are a non-issue. I push delete on them just as quickly as the rest. I do, however, find it interesting that you are so warped as to lump religion in with pornography and racism (with no substantiating support.) You do, of course, realize that almost all religious people are extremely opposed to these "sexual and racial" messages you whine about?
What offends me is not religious, racial and sexual messages: it's the kind of misguided pluralism you espouse, where freedom of speech exists so long as it doesn't happen to offend your particular sensibilities.
That was about the time I realized how much I hated the school system. I dropped out of high-school about a year later (and I'm making more money now as a 17 year old Sysadmin than any of my teachers ever have or will).
hehe. Me too. 6 figure income without a high school diploma -- gotta love it. This really just underlines the utter unimportance of what education has become.
Once in a blue moon...
When Pigs Fly...
When the Lion Lays with the Lamb...
When Hell Freezes Over...
When there is a bonafide product with the Amiga name on it...
When Gore gets elected for dog-catcher...
When it snows in South Florida...
By your logic, the United Nations should start killing Iraqi men, women, and children until Sadam Hussein steps down. Hey, it would work. Once all the citizens are dead, Sadam will have no one to rule over, and will thus no longer have power.
Why Not? It worked to end World War II. Isn't peace worth a few cracked eggs?
(NOTE: this is called sarcasm. I am actually a philosophical pacifist, violently *ahem* opposed to violence.)
If a government library refuses to cary 'Hucklberry fin' because of it's content then that's censorship. However private organizations should not be forced to carry or not carry a given item. You cannot compel me to carry a slashdot bumper sticker on the back of my car claiming that if I refuse I am 'censoring' your right to free speech.
No... If a government refuses you the right, with your own resources, to purchase and read Huckleberry Finn, that's censorship.
Where on earth has everyone got the idea that, for the government to fail to actively support something is equivalent to the government prohibiting it?
I see others have covered the standard "support doesn't help" and "you can't sue anyway" responses.
However, let's think about the implied assumption for a minute. The implied assumption that you make is that the software is going to break in the first place. That well-tested, well-designed, well-implemented and well-integrated software is going to break after you deploy it to 90,000 cash registers. This assumption might not be valid. Yes, in general things tend to break. But, if Linux is the operating system, it probably won't be the cause of the breakage. Instead, the cause will be things like your POS code.
The same could hardly be said for Windows, with it's DLL Hell and inability to ever be the same twice after 1 week of users touching it. Further, Windows on a POS system will foster an illusion of competence which will encourage various attempts to break into the systems. You will have to spend gobs of money on software to lock the systems down to prevent "hax0rs", and even then it probably won't work (2600 delights in publishing exploits on POS systems and the like.)
So which is better: a system that doesn't break in the first place, or support to help you fix it after it does?
I just can't tell if you're a troll or an idiot (make that a fucking idiot, for consistancy's sake).
Oh you say the sweetest things. What precisely makes you think I'm an idiot? Is this an appeal to ridicule? Just curious.
It's not the word, it's the use..and frankly, it's become rather commonplace in the English language at this point, saying that use of profanity indicates ignorance is alot like saying that use of French or Latin indicates ignorance, as you're too "stupid" to know the appropriate English equivalent.
Okay -- how 'bout "bad taste" then? Some people are still offended by these words (believe it or not, I'm not one of them) even though the Supreme Court has been plastering them on the walls for 50 years. Isn't it a simple lack of courtesy to use them in most cases?
Don't dare try to tell me that DS is courteous.
Besides, I submit that, if the drill Sargeant is as talented as you claim, he could insult you just fine without using a single word from the "7 you must not say." Why pick the low hanging fruit? Remember: I specified an example where more "appropriate" language could not serve just as well.
Likewise, your appeal to cursing as a means to aculturation fails, since there are many other means of aculturation, and it is perfectly feasible to develop a distinctive vocabulary that would acculturate just as readily without having to be intentionally offensive.
As for the whole "french or latin" thing... Spare me. Those both require time and effort to learn. To simply say "fucking" this and "shit" that takes about ten seconds to learn, and I'm sure my 2-year-old could do it -- and I've heard two year olds cuss like sailors.
So let's see... You call me an idiot as you respond with irrelevant examples defending a behavior that accomplishes nothing and could be done by a 2-year-old.
If you don't see the disconnect, then I have to wonder whether you are an idiot or a troll.
I disagree. Profanity detracts from your position among those who take an absolutist view similar to your own; I'd
argue that for the vast majority of people, however, profanity is a part of their lexicon. As above, context and
audience are everything.
My point is vulnerable to proof by counterexample. I ask again: please name me one way to use offensive language that has redeeming social importance.
Profanity, when used with thoughtfully and with moderation, can be an amazingly powerful thing. It is true that the vast majority of profanity use is heavy-handed and ineffectual, and is spouted for the sake of sensationalism; to suggest, however, that the very utterance of a profane word reduces an individual to idiocy smacks of intellectual eletism. To infer that profanity exists only in the realm "potty and shock humor" is akin to thinking that anybody with a classic New England drawl owns a summer house in the Hamptons.
Name me a counter-example. Seriously: show me one case where the use of vulgarity (profanity is when you use the Lord's name in vain, not just ordinary cussin') serves to advance a cause that matters where the use of "respectable" language could not work better. There aren't any. All profanity will do, however artfully you use it, is detract from your position among those who still care about it.
As for your complaints against my elitism... My point was not my "elite" status. My point was that Slashdot has changed. Could it be perhaps that you interpreted it this way because you are insecure about your own status? (If I had wanted to portrary myself as somehow elite, I would have mentioned my 200+ karma.)
I think the "Your Rights Online" section has served to seriously weaken Slashdot's potential for social change. It has tended to present a host of "causes" which are simply not important. DeCSS -- sure, critical free speech issue. "Geeks Rights" in the aftermath of Columbine -- definitely. I think Slashdot really helped to raise the flag there, and probably saved a lot of kids a lot of suffering.
Using the "f word" in a domain name for an inside joke because someone is too lame to go to an alternative registrar? Oh spare me.
Every time you raise a ruckus over an issue, you use some "capital." If you raise a ruckus over an issue that doesn't matter, you may not have this "capital" when the issue does matter. This is why organizations like the NAACP and ACLU have lost much of their ability to affect social change. Slashdot is rapidly becoming a cry-baby website, and when the issue really does matter -- when there is another Columbine -- nobody will listen. And that is a shame.
Or, to put it terms that brains limited to four letters might understand:
NEVER CRY WOLF!
Oops... That's right, 'never' has five letters. Just proves you can't say anything useful in four.
This story make sme think of how, in our culture, the juvenile and idiotic has triumphed over intelligence, vocabulary, maturity and good taste.
Most people get over potty and shock humor by the time they're twenty. Most people know it's a waste of time, and that a compelling urge to say "fuck fuck fuck fuck" is really an indicator of a limited imagination. Similarly, most people realize some time shortly after they first begin to support their own addictions instead of going to mommy and daddy for it that our rights are not nearly so important as our responsibilities.
So you can't register "I want to fuck your body.com". WHO CARES? If you don't like it, start your own registrar. If anyone cared about enabling this kind of juvenile nonsense, they would add your tld's to their cache.
Guess what: nobody cares.
I've been on Slashdot since pretty close to the beginning (take a look at my user number -- 4 digits, not 6). But I rarely bother to read anything but headlines anymore, and almost never bother to post. This article is a perfect example of why. By perpetuating the whines of emotional and intellectual infants for rights that they don't have to do things that don't matter, Slashdot has itself become nothing more than a forum for the tendentiousness of teenagers.
Kind of sad, ain't it?
The first person to say that "a little bit of censorship is like a little bit pregnant" (or its moral equivalent) gets a sugar coated pacifier and that stinky diaper changed. I've heard it before, and I'm not whelmed.
The site that was posted a few days ago alleging a conspiracy to use closed-source software to rig elections mentioned that all the networks would have the same predictions, at the exact same time.
Well, watching the election carefully, they don't. While they depend on the same data, they have drawn their own conclusions, because they have all differed slightly through the night (I was watching.)
Slashdot Mirror
Don't buy it to read ... buy it because you collect neil stephenson.
--
So why don't we come up with something better? Shouldn't it be possible to come up with a way to DNS that doesn't have to be centralized? Or -- since such a thing wouldn't really be DNS any more -- something that would be backward compatible with DNS that wouldn't have to be centralized?
Maybe some kidn of lDAP/DNS gateway?
--
While the U5 was more expensive, I had one and let me attest that it sucked. The base config comes with IDE everything, 4GB hard drive, a slow processor (can't remember the exact numbers) and 128MB of RAM. All this for only twice what you could get an equivalent PC for. The video was limited to 256 colors at any reasonable resolution, etc. My Linux box (a dell pII-300) blew it out of the water on every benchmark and was cheaper.
Yeah, this thing is cheaper than the u5. But Sun workstations have not really been performance competitive with the PC world for five years now. Somehow, I suspect that this box isn't going to be any better.
--
While it is theoretically possible to distribute a subnet that small geographically, in practice it doesn't work that way. Generally, anything smaller than a /24 netblock is tied to one network provider, and probably even to one area of their network.
So, the incompetence charge sticks. To you as well.
--
If Virginia doesn't want to pay for that research -- or, more aptly, thinks that that research is not worth the price of allowing pornographic material on their computers -- that is our privilege. If you don't like it, vote.
--
It was not that he was rude to white employees -- he just hung around with black employees. All the time.
Now, if a white person were to do the same, he would be labeled as racist. Especially, he would be culpable for exploiting his social relationships with white managers to gain standing. I don't claim to know how to fight this -- or even if it should be fought. I just observe the fact that black people do tend, as you pointed out, to socialize exclusively with other black people. And that they tend to exploit those social connections just as white people exploit theres.
--
--
On Linux is another story. It is just plain *slow*, buggy and crashes a lot. I would love to hear comments -- is this a result of using GTK? GTK doesn't exactly have a reputation for being blindingly fast. Or is it something else? Is it just that Netscape engineers have put more effort into tuning the Windows version?
Anyone who can comment I would be interested. I've been tempted to break out my profiler and see if I could speed things up a bit on Linux, but haven't been sure where the problem really was.
--
First, I am not 17 years old. I'm now 28, and have ten solid years experience working on UNIX systems. I am able to command the salary I do because I have a reputation for fixing problems that no one else could, and fixing them quickly. This is more valuable to my employer (a major network-services-provider) than a BS ever will be. This ability comes from years of careful study of how computers work.
As for a lack of education: I am currently working on bachelors, in philosophy (although I'm trying to transfer to a school that offers classics) with an eye towards "cashing out" of the computer industry and going into ministry.
Now, those who say that the purpose of education is not to make money are, in general, correct. The point of education is to learn how to think and to have something to think with (i.e. information), ultimately applying that to the human condition. However, most technical programs are more like vocational training than education. So, when I decline to pursue a CS degree (even though I could get one by a couple of years of yawning with my background) I do so because that degree is worthless to me.
Frankly, at my current level (very senior in one of the biggest companies around) my education or lack thereof is irrelevant in the face of my experience and the things people have seen me do. After spending years in school being told how "drop outs don't succeed", I take a certain satisfaction in the fact that I have slags of people with BS's and even MS's in computer science coming to me for advice and even assistance.
Is this pride, and thereby a sin? I can't deny it. I should probably be working on that.
--
Duh.
--
And this is more serious than commercial email ... why?
Why is a message urging you to moral uprightness within a particular system of mythology (using here the academic definition of mythology, which contains no implied truth value) more offensive than one trying to get you to buy crappy credit cards? The problem is that you've placed religion in a box that says "don't touch!" Well, guess what: not all religions are created equal. There are some serious and substantial differences in religions, and it is not wrong for me to try to show you what I think to be right.
Likewise, racial or sexual messages are a non-issue. I push delete on them just as quickly as the rest. I do, however, find it interesting that you are so warped as to lump religion in with pornography and racism (with no substantiating support.) You do, of course, realize that almost all religious people are extremely opposed to these "sexual and racial" messages you whine about?
What offends me is not religious, racial and sexual messages: it's the kind of misguided pluralism you espouse, where freedom of speech exists so long as it doesn't happen to offend your particular sensibilities.
--
--
--
--
--
(NOTE: this is called sarcasm. I am actually a philosophical pacifist, violently *ahem* opposed to violence.)
--
Where on earth has everyone got the idea that, for the government to fail to actively support something is equivalent to the government prohibiting it?
--
However, let's think about the implied assumption for a minute. The implied assumption that you make is that the software is going to break in the first place. That well-tested, well-designed, well-implemented and well-integrated software is going to break after you deploy it to 90,000 cash registers. This assumption might not be valid. Yes, in general things tend to break. But, if Linux is the operating system, it probably won't be the cause of the breakage. Instead, the cause will be things like your POS code.
The same could hardly be said for Windows, with it's DLL Hell and inability to ever be the same twice after 1 week of users touching it. Further, Windows on a POS system will foster an illusion of competence which will encourage various attempts to break into the systems. You will have to spend gobs of money on software to lock the systems down to prevent "hax0rs", and even then it probably won't work (2600 delights in publishing exploits on POS systems and the like.)
So which is better: a system that doesn't break in the first place, or support to help you fix it after it does?
--
--
Don't dare try to tell me that DS is courteous.
Besides, I submit that, if the drill Sargeant is as talented as you claim, he could insult you just fine without using a single word from the "7 you must not say." Why pick the low hanging fruit? Remember: I specified an example where more "appropriate" language could not serve just as well.
Likewise, your appeal to cursing as a means to aculturation fails, since there are many other means of aculturation, and it is perfectly feasible to develop a distinctive vocabulary that would acculturate just as readily without having to be intentionally offensive.
As for the whole "french or latin" thing... Spare me. Those both require time and effort to learn. To simply say "fucking" this and "shit" that takes about ten seconds to learn, and I'm sure my 2-year-old could do it -- and I've heard two year olds cuss like sailors.
So let's see... You call me an idiot as you respond with irrelevant examples defending a behavior that accomplishes nothing and could be done by a 2-year-old.
If you don't see the disconnect, then I have to wonder whether you are an idiot or a troll.
--
Doubt you can.
--
As for your complaints against my elitism... My point was not my "elite" status. My point was that Slashdot has changed. Could it be perhaps that you interpreted it this way because you are insecure about your own status? (If I had wanted to portrary myself as somehow elite, I would have mentioned my 200+ karma.)
I think the "Your Rights Online" section has served to seriously weaken Slashdot's potential for social change. It has tended to present a host of "causes" which are simply not important. DeCSS -- sure, critical free speech issue. "Geeks Rights" in the aftermath of Columbine -- definitely. I think Slashdot really helped to raise the flag there, and probably saved a lot of kids a lot of suffering.
Using the "f word" in a domain name for an inside joke because someone is too lame to go to an alternative registrar? Oh spare me.
Every time you raise a ruckus over an issue, you use some "capital." If you raise a ruckus over an issue that doesn't matter, you may not have this "capital" when the issue does matter. This is why organizations like the NAACP and ACLU have lost much of their ability to affect social change. Slashdot is rapidly becoming a cry-baby website, and when the issue really does matter -- when there is another Columbine -- nobody will listen. And that is a shame.
Or, to put it terms that brains limited to four letters might understand:
Oops... That's right, 'never' has five letters. Just proves you can't say anything useful in four.--
Most people get over potty and shock humor by the time they're twenty. Most people know it's a waste of time, and that a compelling urge to say "fuck fuck fuck fuck" is really an indicator of a limited imagination. Similarly, most people realize some time shortly after they first begin to support their own addictions instead of going to mommy and daddy for it that our rights are not nearly so important as our responsibilities.
So you can't register "I want to fuck your body.com". WHO CARES? If you don't like it, start your own registrar. If anyone cared about enabling this kind of juvenile nonsense, they would add your tld's to their cache.
Guess what: nobody cares.
I've been on Slashdot since pretty close to the beginning (take a look at my user number -- 4 digits, not 6). But I rarely bother to read anything but headlines anymore, and almost never bother to post. This article is a perfect example of why. By perpetuating the whines of emotional and intellectual infants for rights that they don't have to do things that don't matter, Slashdot has itself become nothing more than a forum for the tendentiousness of teenagers.
Kind of sad, ain't it?
The first person to say that "a little bit of censorship is like a little bit pregnant" (or its moral equivalent) gets a sugar coated pacifier and that stinky diaper changed. I've heard it before, and I'm not whelmed.
--
Well, watching the election carefully, they don't. While they depend on the same data, they have drawn their own conclusions, because they have all differed slightly through the night (I was watching.)
So much for conspiracy theories.
--
Do you not see a problem with that?
My main point is that *none* of the candidates advocate a Christian position. They all suck -- so we should pick the one who sucks least.
--