Corel is going to have to fix this -- and soon -- if they are more serious about the Linux market than they were about the java market. The problem is not one of legal procedure. The breach would be cured long before this ever got to court. The question of whether this is, in fact, an internal distribution is irrelevant.
The problem is one of publicity. If Corel gets a reputation as a "borg" in the Linux community, they will lose most of their support from that community. The consequences could be dire. For example, a developer could do a license something like this:
This software is licensed under the terms of the GPL for everyone but Corel Computer Corporation. Corel must contact me for an outrageously expensive commercial license.
That is actually a perfectly conceivable license. For examples of selective licenses like this, see QPL or (kind of) the Perl license.
To summarize: if Corel wants to continue in the Linux market, they need to fix this license in internet time -- that is, today. Not next week, or next month. Today. Otherwise, they will be regarded as nothing but a bunch of hagers-on by the Linux community and their foray into Linux will be over.
Something I've observed is that some of the "big time networking guru's" that Dvorak alludes to have been around too long! That is, they've been around so long that the first time they tried Linux is WAS a buggy system that couldn't stand up under high loads.
Many of them promptly went to *BSD for the market segment that Linux is targeted at. Also, I've got to say that BSD does seem to be preferred for MUD's, which are from a programming perspective very similar to IRC.
However, this doesn't really validate Dvorak's conclusion that Linux will not be able to compete in the server market. (I've been reading his stuff for ten years and still haven't seen him be right). IRC is a very specialized application that you don't see much of in the "real world".
I do think that Dvorak is right about Linux's big area of growth being the client -- there are just more of them out there. However, I think he's missing the boat calling for the low end client: until something is done about netscape and staroffice being pigs Linux doesn't run as well on low power machines as does windows '95.
The real need I see for Linux is more tightly focused distributions. I don't think every distro should try to be both a client and a server. This would result in much cleaner installs for both servers and much faster, more robust clients.
I find it absolutely amazing that so few otherwise intelligent people completely fail to get the point of thin-client computing.
READ MY LIPS: THIS IS NOT FOR YOUR HOME PC!!!!
I am consulting at a company right now that has over 1000 UNIX boxes on people's desk. They also have about that many NT boxes. And they have a dozen people to keep them running probably making an average of $50K/yr.
What do I (and most of the other people with this equipment) use it for?
Netscape. Rlogin to a server where we do our development. Maybe Applix or StarOffice. And we don't have root access or access to anything but our NFS mounted home directories. Why not? We don't need it.
I don't need a full, independent workstation to do what I do here. I certainly don't need a $3000 Ultra 5. Thin clients are wonderful in this kind of environment.
The last place I worked (a large health-care organization) had literally hundreds, possibly thousands of users who used their PC's for two things: netscape to access the intranet (no Internet access for the masses) and Rumba to emulate an IBM 3270 terminal. We started to use Winterms because of the maintenance situation and they worked pretty well -- it looks to me like the Sun ray is an order of magnitude better than a winterm as well as being cheaper.
I see people whining about games on thin clients... HELLO!??!! How on earth is that relevant in the environment that these things are actually aimed at? It's not.
Finally, let me come back to the home PC. My wife uses a PC for three things: email, netscape, and quicken. That's it! No games, no office, no nothing. Why does she need a full PC running Linux or anything else?
The biggest problem with thin clients to date has been that they have not been cheaper, just easier to maintain. The Sun Ray looks to be changing that, and I wish them luck.
As for Star-Portal: Star Portal seems like a wonderful idea to me for occasional users of office applications (like me) -- Emacs is all the WP I need most of the time. When it's not, pull up one of the corporate licenses for star-portal. Don't forget that you don't have to install the software on every desktop as you do with conventional office apps like Star Office or MS-Office.
I guess the bottom line to this post is this: if you can only think of the home market and are reading slashdot, you don't need thin clients. But realize that most of the computers in the world are not aimed at the home market!!!
I see us, as a society, heading for a situation where every facet of our lives will be dominated by intellectual property law. Want to think about "physics"? Sorry ma'am, we own that word. You'll have to pay us $5 every time you use it.
The problem our society is facing is that information has gotten radically easier to reproduce. It use to be that if you wanted to reproduce a "database" (then usually in book form) you would have to go to great effort and expense to typeset it, then print it, then distribute it.
None of these could be done casually, and it simply wasn't possible to easily undercut the original publishers. The problem is that computer technology has changed that. I can duplicate your whole database, world-wide, in a matter of minutes.
So what is the solution? Not more laws!!! I think that, ultimately, we are going to have to accept that IP is an obsolete concept -- indefensible in an electronic world. Everything is going to have to become open source. Emergency rooms need a database of antidotes? Great. Then they can pay someone to compile one on a contract basis.
You didn't contribute to the list this year? Sorry, you don't get access to it. I seriously doubt that, if the emergency rooms had to directly subsidze the creation of the list, they would be very eager to give it out to their stingy colleagues (especially in an industry as competitive as medicine). In the end, social pressures would encourage payment.
Let's not forget classical research either!!! The publication of open source databases is something that the Universities could do very effectively and would fit well with their classical role.
Bottom line... We don't need laws. We need a more enlightened attitude. Maybe it's time to campaign for the total abolition of IP law, worldwide. Otherwise, we will soon find that we have given soulless corporations the most basic of freedoms: freedom of information.
But, since I'm a Christian, I don't believe in Karma anyway, so go ahead... Moderate it down:)
Why all the flamage over the "pray for the victims remark"? Would we have equal flamge if the slashdot editors suggested a purely secular approach as some have suggested? Of course not.
Why is it assumed that geeks must necessarily be atheist or agnostic? I know that I am not, and I also know that many of my friends are quite geeky and quite deeply religious.
It comes down to epistemology -- how do we KNOW anything? One method is mathematical proof. That is, you attempt to derive observable facts that will consitently, unambiguously, and in a mechanistic fashion explain the world. This is fine for certain realms of endeavour -- if you are designing a rocket I have to ride in or a drug I have to take, that's how I want you to operate.
However, it simply does not work for explaining spiritual (and to a lesser extent emotional) matters. This is because we simply cannot gain objectivity in these areas. We cannot be objective when WE are the subject, any more than an otherwise skilled doctor can treat himself. We need a far more intuitive approach. We have to know things by the same sloppy, organic methods we use to know (hopefully) simple, everyday things. Love, hate (these aren't emotions, but motives -- there is a huge philosophical difference) are known this way. As is "how to get to the seven eleven".
The efficacy of prayer is proved to me by this kind of sloppy, casual knowledge. When I pray for something, I see the direct results of the intercession of a loving God. Sometimes, the result is to give me peace in something that would otherwise be intolerable -- but is nevertheless necessary. C.S. Lewis said "Prayer doesn't change God, it changes me". It always changes/me/. Paul said "All things work together for the Good" (Romans 8:28a, NIV). Sometimes, apparently bad things have to happen for the Good. Prayer gives me peace to trust in God.
And sometimes, the result is direct divine intervention. I cannot count the number of times I have seen prayer result in an/extremely/ unlikely chain of events that resolved the problem actually happening. I have even seen things which I (frankly) cannot help but describe as miraculous. Is this scientific proof? No -- not in the reductionist sense that most people want to use. But I can say that it does work!!!
C.S. Lewis wrote (in/Screwtape Letters/ -- highly recommended) "The undeniable and the irrefutable are the two tools that he [God] cannot use. Because he wants humans to freely worship him, he cannot ravish, he can only woo". (I think I mangled that quote, I don't have the book in front of me). God doesn't want us to have proof -- he wants us to trust in him. And all I can say is THAT IT WORKS.
For all those out there objecting to a little call to prayer: have you ever tried it? And can you say that, in the ultimate sense, it was not answered? You cannot reduce prayer to something it is not and then blame it for not working in the way you expect. Too many people think that prayer should be some kind of "cosmic vending machine". So, when they do their "please give me this God!" and don't get it, blame prayer.
Does it matter? you (effectively) no longer have a right to keep and bear arms either. If you don't believe me, read the Senat bill passed following columbine.
Get ready for the revolution guys -- as much as I detest most of milita people, they are pretty much RIGHT.
Hmm... I don't know if I (as a fairly serious student of the Bible) would label Asimov as the Century's best Bible scholar.
Bluntly, even if you accept the scholarship of "higher critics" like Asimov (which I have a major problem with -- they don't study the Bible they revise it) he is hardly the best or best known.
I own and have read his Bible commentary -- I found most of his conclusions to be banal. He is really a popularizer of a specific school of Bible study; that is, one that concentrates more on the text than on the meaning of the text. That doesn't make him a Bible scholar any more than his books on physics make him a great physicist. (Yes, I know his Dr. was in Chemistry -- that still doesn't make him a great physicist.)
I think that there are many geek women -- their area of geeky interest is just usually not computers and they are usually a bit more practical than we are. For example, This article from Alan Cox's wife was published in LJ a few years back.
Having the good fortune to be married to a girl-geek, I can tell you that they are a most interesting and entertaining tribe.
It is especially disconcerting when you fire off a stream of techno-babble and she ripostes smoothly. For example:
Me: Honey, I really need to get another 256MB of RAM. Leisa: Why? Me: Because it will make my computer faster and I need to do some software development... for work. yeah. Leisa: You already have 128MB of memory... What kind of software needs more? And isn't that a game??? Me: Well.. you see it's a new C compiler and... Leisa: A new C compiler? Whaddaya think I'm stupid? Me: Uh... Please? Leisa: You don't need more memory. When are you going to get me a CDR?
Having said that, the she-geek is a wonderful creature. Because, ultimately, she understands the technology lust that drives the true geek (I'm going to make her read this post:)) Even better, all my friends are jealous that my wife actually understands what I say.
Of course, the biggest downside of female geeks are that they are hard to find. You just gotta hang in there guys.
Take a look at this little tidbit at the bottom of their email:
If you do not wish to receive e-mail from Network Solutions, click on this e-mail address and type "remove" in the subject line. PLEASE NOTE: by opting to be removed from this list we will not be able to communicate to you, in real-time, on issues regarding your account.
As I read this, it means that if I choose not to get their spam, then they will not email me anything at all! Like "Your domain is being shut down". Now maybe that isn't really what they mean -- but if not they are deliberately making it sound like that's what they mean.
I really, really, really resent this. Guys -- it is clear that Network Solutions and the domain name system in general is completely, totally out of control. I have been waiting 5 years for some reasonable new TLD's. Waiting, with no luck. All because of network solutions. I want these jerks out of business, and I think I know how.
I think it's time to start our own DNS, a la alternic. If we could get participation from slashdot participants, we would probably cover 50% of the net. If we really agressively pushed it, we could probably get 90% coverage.
*sigh* It would probably never work, but internic makes me mad.
I am seeing a lot of posts here to the effect "Corel Linux is designed for newbies, and so Beta Testers should be newbies." While I can see the angle these people are coming from (and i suspect Corel agrees with them) may I beg to differ?
I think that Corel Linux should have a large number of Wizard level Beta testers. Certainly a lot of newbies need to test it to, but I think at least half of the users should be experienced Linux users.
Why? First, because It is not impossible for an experienced user to construct a simple interface. If it is, we are all doomed. Bluntly, an experienced user who is bothering to consider user interface issues will come up with BETTER suggestions than a non-experienced user, simply because of his wider experience.
Second, Experienced users might actually fix the bugs!. An novice user is unlikely to fix a bug, even if it's just a missing entries on the start menu! Certainly, any non-transparent bug will not be diagnosed in a meaningful way.
Third, An experienced user will do a better job of reporting the bug. C'mon -- how many of us have gotten help desk calls to the effect of "It doesn't work right".
Finally, a non-experienced user will accept bugs that an experienced linux user would not. People who've never run Linux before are used to rebooting their computers three times a day!!! They will accept bugs that I would report (and likely fix).
For the reading impaired: I am not saying corel needs no novice users -- I'm just saying that's not ALL they need.
If Corel Linux is going to be a success in the market they are aiming for, it needs to be much better than windows. Making it better from a novice users point of view is going to be an uphill battle -- the things novice users care most about (pretty pictures) are already reasonably well done in Windows. Corel need all the help they can get if they are going to compete.
Re:Is this suitable reading for children/teenagers
on
Ender's Shadow
·
· Score: 1
I'll give that a qualified yes. You should let him read it but you should make sure he talks to you about it.
In my NSHO the most important thing for kids that are isolated is to realize that they are not alone, not unique.
A number of people have commented that this is no better than using software based encryption and is possible worse because of the relatively short key length.
This really is not true. Every software based encryption technology of which I am aware still allows the hypothetical spies to see WHERE you go. Since, they can see where you go, they can theoretically narrow down the amount of traffic the want to try to crack.
It's like this: if you were using https, and they wanted to know what the content of your corporate intranet was, they wouldn't have to waste their time trying to crack all the times you pulled down pages from slashdot.
On the other hand, if the encryption is done at layer 2... They have to decrpyt every single packet you send looking for gold, including all those pesky netbios broadcasts. It would take subnstantially longer and they would not be able to ascertain any information from _who_ you were talking to.
Oh yeah -- this scenario really only applies if you're concerned about hacks into your local ethernet.
*For the record, this is a hoax and not an actual article*
YDNet, Raleigh NC. - Many analysts expressed continued concerns today over the reliability of the Linux operating system. This operating system has recently made in-roads into the server market with support from major companies such as IBM.
However, it appears that, along with it's lack of multi-processor support and poor performance serving static web pages, the operating system lacks another feature required for the enterprise market: the ability to withstand a category 4 hurricane.
This problem came to light today as Redhat software prepared for Hurricane Floy by shutting down all computers at the Redhat site. This stand in sharp contrast to Microsoft's Windows 2000 operating system, which is currently being modified to better withstand large storms (see www.windows2000test.com). Analysts agree that Microsoft has more experience experience in recovering from this type of failure than any other enterprise operating system vendor.
Fred Foolish, an MCSE in the Raleigh area, was heard to say "Yeah... Maybe Linux is enough for a small company, but for companies that need to withstand more than a light sprinkle, enterprise class reliability is needed".
Fred Mud at Microsoft agreed. "One of the best features of our high-value proposition product, Microsoft Windows 2000,software is its ability to quickly recover from storms. Microsoft has a lot of experience in the area of post-storm recover " Mud also dismissed the announcement that most redhat.com services would continue, noting that it is generally agreed by enterprise analysts that Linux still needs to work on Enterprise Class features like clustering, saying "It's just impossible I tell you!"
Redhat software was not reached for comment at their Bahamas office in time for this story.
Hmm... Y'know, I am 27 years old, happily married with a 2 year old son (who already loves computers), active in my church with more friends than I can possibly make time for, making an obscene amount of money... NOW.
But that does not change the fact that I spent the first 18 years of my life being deliberately tormented and isolated. It cannot remove the instinctive "curl-up and hide" reflex that I have whenever I'm faced with a large group of people in a social environment. It can't change that whenever I go to a party I feel nervous and out-of-control because the first party I went to I got my ass kicked.
If my life were a failure, then that would be a whine, an excuse. My life has NOT been a failure -- so it is not whining to acknowledge the pain that I experienced.
In fact, it's probably healthy to acknowledge it. Oh yeah -- I've never been much into games, and one of my major pastimes in high school was long-distance backpacking. Hardly the stereo-typical "pasty geek" that you allude to.
I guess this means it's official: Linux is now a hardware platform that (most) vendors are expected to support.
This is great news -- I remember, about five years ago, spending 2 days going through hardware compatibility lists to find hardware that was supported by Linux.
What's especially good about this is that 3com is releasing the source code, unlike some other companies who only release a binary module. Let's encourage them by buying their cards!
The SCSL requires that you get a license from Sun in order to do a commercial redistribution of the product in question. For software, this is kind of okay because software can be redistributed for free pretty easily. It costs just about nothing to put up an FTP server somewhere.
On the other hand, to redistribute hardware you have to setup an assembly line and distribution chain at considerable expense. I don't see how this can possibly work under the SCSL. As soon as you want to recover the cost of manufacturing your modified hardware, WHAM! you have to pay sun a (hefty) license fee. Think of this as a "open source" license which is open until you compile the program, because that's exactly what it is.
It remains to be seen whether even GENUINELY open sourced hardware will work -- I can't see any way that this will work.
Ultimately, any kind of scoring system used here is purely arbitrary. That is, there is not really any special significance to the number "5" -- "-1" is significant only in that you have defined it as the arbitrary minimum.
When I read comments, it does not matter to me so much what the score of a comment is as how it compares to other comments. That is, I sort by score because I know that generally speaking the items which score 5 are going to be better than the ones which score -1 because most slashdot readers are mostly in agreement with me about what is a good comment. The absolute values are meaningless, only the relative score matters.
The other problem is that comments posted as little as an hour after the story first hits are often not moderated up. The moderators have gone on to other stories. Sometimes these comments are the best: they are posted by people who have something to do all day besides read/.
I think that many of the moderation problems could be fixed by:
Radically increasing the number of moderator points given. Say 100 per shot.
Let a moderator specify how many points he wants to give a given comment. So a really good comment might get 50 points from me.
Removing an upper limit on the scores of stories.
That way, if I thought that a given comment was crucially important and it was posted late in the game, I could moderate it up to where people sorting by scores would still see it.
The downside is that there is a higher potential for abuse. However, I think that other moderators would quickly moderate down a story that was too highly rated -- because they could without wasting all their points. In other words, let a bad moderator try to abuse it. It doesn't matter because he will be immediately brought down by the other moderators.
In short, this is a change in philsosophy: instead of trying to limit the power of the individual moderator, give lots of power and trust in averages to make it work.
Your best defense against bad moderation is the random selection of moderators just as you currently have it. Remember, a bad moderator is a temporary problem.
In order to support these assertions, you have alluded to the trial of Galileo and the Constitution: alluded to without actually citing.
In short, you are the logical end reult of a lifetime steeped in violence. You cannot reason, and when faced with reason resort to name calling.
Notice that I don't ask that ANYTHING be suppressed -- you seem to deeply desire that I be suppressed.
Oh... and something that mindlessly violates all social norms is not necessarily evil: just stupid and a waste of time. It is knee-jerk revolutionarism, not legitimate social commentary.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is one of publicity. If Corel gets a reputation as a "borg" in the Linux community, they will lose most of their support from that community. The consequences could be dire. For example, a developer could do a license something like this:
That is actually a perfectly conceivable license. For examples of selective licenses like this, see QPL or (kind of) the Perl license.
To summarize: if Corel wants to continue in the Linux market, they need to fix this license in internet time -- that is, today. Not next week, or next month. Today. Otherwise, they will be regarded as nothing but a bunch of hagers-on by the Linux community and their foray into Linux will be over.
Something I've observed is that some of the "big time networking guru's" that Dvorak alludes to have been around too long! That is, they've been around so long that the first time they tried Linux is WAS a buggy system that couldn't stand up under high loads.
Many of them promptly went to *BSD for the market segment that Linux is targeted at. Also, I've got to say that BSD does seem to be preferred for MUD's, which are from a programming perspective very similar to IRC.
However, this doesn't really validate Dvorak's conclusion that Linux will not be able to compete in the server market. (I've been reading his stuff for ten years and still haven't seen him be right). IRC is a very specialized application that you don't see much of in the "real world".
I do think that Dvorak is right about Linux's big area of growth being the client -- there are just more of them out there. However, I think he's missing the boat calling for the low end client: until something is done about netscape and staroffice being pigs Linux doesn't run as well on low power machines as does windows '95.
The real need I see for Linux is more tightly focused distributions. I don't think every distro should try to be both a client and a server. This would result in much cleaner installs for both servers and much faster, more robust clients.
"Fully supported samba", where samba is a dance. So, ballroom dance trousers looked tight = support clothing. Get it?
I apologize for my uncultured compatriots who simply don't understand.
I find it absolutely amazing that so few otherwise intelligent people completely fail to get the point of thin-client computing.
READ MY LIPS: THIS IS NOT FOR YOUR HOME PC!!!!
I am consulting at a company right now that has over 1000 UNIX boxes on people's desk. They also have about that many NT boxes. And they have a dozen people to keep them running probably making an average of $50K/yr.
What do I (and most of the other people with this equipment) use it for?
Netscape. Rlogin to a server where we do our development. Maybe Applix or StarOffice. And we don't have root access or access to anything but our NFS mounted home directories. Why not? We don't need it.
I don't need a full, independent workstation to do what I do here. I certainly don't need a $3000 Ultra 5. Thin clients are wonderful in this kind of environment.
The last place I worked (a large health-care organization) had literally hundreds, possibly thousands of users who used their PC's for two things: netscape to access the intranet (no Internet access for the masses) and Rumba to emulate an IBM 3270 terminal. We started to use Winterms because of the maintenance situation and they worked pretty well -- it looks to me like the Sun ray is an order of magnitude better than a winterm as well as being cheaper.
I see people whining about games on thin clients... HELLO!??!! How on earth is that relevant in the environment that these things are actually aimed at? It's not.
Finally, let me come back to the home PC. My wife uses a PC for three things: email, netscape, and quicken. That's it! No games, no office, no nothing. Why does she need a full PC running Linux or anything else?
The biggest problem with thin clients to date has been that they have not been cheaper, just easier to maintain. The Sun Ray looks to be changing that, and I wish them luck.
As for Star-Portal: Star Portal seems like a wonderful idea to me for occasional users of office applications (like me) -- Emacs is all the WP I need most of the time. When it's not, pull up one of the corporate licenses for star-portal. Don't forget that you don't have to install the software on every desktop as you do with conventional office apps like Star Office or MS-Office.
I guess the bottom line to this post is this: if you can only think of the home market and are reading slashdot, you don't need thin clients. But realize that most of the computers in the world are not aimed at the home market!!!
I see us, as a society, heading for a situation where every facet of our lives will be dominated by intellectual property law. Want to think about "physics"? Sorry ma'am, we own that word. You'll have to pay us $5 every time you use it.
The problem our society is facing is that information has gotten radically easier to reproduce. It use to be that if you wanted to reproduce a "database" (then usually in book form) you would have to go to great effort and expense to typeset it, then print it, then distribute it.
None of these could be done casually, and it simply wasn't possible to easily undercut the original publishers. The problem is that computer technology has changed that. I can duplicate your whole database, world-wide, in a matter of minutes.
So what is the solution? Not more laws!!! I think that, ultimately, we are going to have to accept that IP is an obsolete concept -- indefensible in an electronic world. Everything is going to have to become open source. Emergency rooms need a database of antidotes? Great. Then they can pay someone to compile one on a contract basis.
You didn't contribute to the list this year? Sorry, you don't get access to it. I seriously doubt that, if the emergency rooms had to directly subsidze the creation of the list, they would be very eager to give it out to their stingy colleagues (especially in an industry as competitive as medicine). In the end, social pressures would encourage payment.
Let's not forget classical research either!!! The publication of open source databases is something that the Universities could do very effectively and would fit well with their classical role.
Bottom line... We don't need laws. We need a more enlightened attitude. Maybe it's time to campaign for the total abolition of IP law, worldwide. Otherwise, we will soon find that we have given soulless corporations the most basic of freedoms: freedom of information.
But, since I'm a Christian, I don't believe in Karma anyway, so go ahead... Moderate it down :)
/me/. Paul said "All things work together for the Good" (Romans 8:28a, NIV). Sometimes, apparently bad things have to happen for the Good. Prayer gives me peace to trust in God.
/extremely/ unlikely chain of events that resolved the problem actually happening. I have even seen things which I (frankly) cannot help but describe as miraculous. Is this scientific proof? No -- not in the reductionist sense that most people want to use. But I can say that it does work!!!
/Screwtape Letters/ -- highly recommended) "The undeniable and the irrefutable are the two tools that he [God] cannot use. Because he wants humans to freely worship him, he cannot ravish, he can only woo". (I think I mangled that quote, I don't have the book in front of me). God doesn't want us to have proof -- he wants us to trust in him. And all I can say is THAT IT WORKS.
Why all the flamage over the "pray for the victims remark"? Would we have equal flamge if the slashdot editors suggested a purely secular approach as some have suggested? Of course not.
Why is it assumed that geeks must necessarily be atheist or agnostic? I know that I am not, and I also know that many of my friends are quite geeky and quite deeply religious.
It comes down to epistemology -- how do we KNOW anything? One method is mathematical proof. That is, you attempt to derive observable facts that will consitently, unambiguously, and in a mechanistic fashion explain the world. This is fine for certain realms of endeavour -- if you are designing a rocket I have to ride in or a drug I have to take, that's how I want you to operate.
However, it simply does not work for explaining spiritual (and to a lesser extent emotional) matters. This is because we simply cannot gain objectivity in these areas. We cannot be objective when WE are the subject, any more than an otherwise skilled doctor can treat himself. We need a far more intuitive approach. We have to know things by the same sloppy, organic methods we use to know (hopefully) simple, everyday things. Love, hate (these aren't emotions, but motives -- there is a huge philosophical difference) are known this way. As is "how to get to the seven eleven".
The efficacy of prayer is proved to me by this kind of sloppy, casual knowledge. When I pray for something, I see the direct results of the intercession of a loving God. Sometimes, the result is to give me peace in something that would otherwise be intolerable -- but is nevertheless necessary. C.S. Lewis said "Prayer doesn't change God, it changes me". It always changes
And sometimes, the result is direct divine intervention. I cannot count the number of times I have seen prayer result in an
C.S. Lewis wrote (in
For all those out there objecting to a little call to prayer: have you ever tried it? And can you say that, in the ultimate sense, it was not answered? You cannot reduce prayer to something it is not and then blame it for not working in the way you expect. Too many people think that prayer should be some kind of "cosmic vending machine". So, when they do their "please give me this God!" and don't get it, blame prayer.
Don't blame prayer, blame your definition.
Does it matter? you (effectively) no longer have a right to keep and bear arms either. If you don't believe me, read the Senat bill passed following columbine.
Get ready for the revolution guys -- as much as I detest most of milita people, they are pretty much RIGHT.
It's an action.
Hmm... I don't know if I (as a fairly serious student of the Bible) would label Asimov as the Century's best Bible scholar.
Bluntly, even if you accept the scholarship of "higher critics" like Asimov (which I have a major problem with -- they don't study the Bible they revise it) he is hardly the best or best known.
I own and have read his Bible commentary -- I found most of his conclusions to be banal. He is really a popularizer of a specific school of Bible study; that is, one that concentrates more on the text than on the meaning of the text. That doesn't make him a Bible scholar any more than his books on physics make him a great physicist. (Yes, I know his Dr. was in Chemistry -- that still doesn't make him a great physicist.)
Yeap... fsckyounsi is my password :) Of course I'll now have to change it again
Yeap... fsckyounsi is my password :)
I think that there are many geek women -- their area of geeky interest is just usually not computers and they are usually a bit more practical than we are. For example, This article from Alan Cox's wife was published in LJ a few years back.
Just thought you guys would find it interesting.
Having the good fortune to be married to a girl-geek, I can tell you that they are a most interesting and entertaining tribe.
:)) Even better, all my friends are jealous that my wife actually understands what I say.
It is especially disconcerting when you fire off a stream of techno-babble and she ripostes smoothly. For example:
Me: Honey, I really need to get another 256MB of RAM.
Leisa: Why?
Me: Because it will make my computer faster and I need to do some software development... for work. yeah.
Leisa: You already have 128MB of memory... What kind of software needs more? And isn't that a game???
Me: Well.. you see it's a new C compiler and...
Leisa: A new C compiler? Whaddaya think I'm stupid?
Me: Uh... Please?
Leisa: You don't need more memory. When are you going to get me a CDR?
Having said that, the she-geek is a wonderful creature. Because, ultimately, she understands the technology lust that drives the true geek (I'm going to make her read this post
Of course, the biggest downside of female geeks are that they are hard to find. You just gotta hang in there guys.
As I read this, it means that if I choose not to get their spam, then they will not email me anything at all! Like "Your domain is being shut down". Now maybe that isn't really what they mean -- but if not they are deliberately making it sound like that's what they mean.
I really, really, really resent this. Guys -- it is clear that Network Solutions and the domain name system in general is completely, totally out of control. I have been waiting 5 years for some reasonable new TLD's. Waiting, with no luck. All because of network solutions. I want these jerks out of business, and I think I know how.
I think it's time to start our own DNS, a la alternic. If we could get participation from slashdot participants, we would probably cover 50% of the net. If we really agressively pushed it, we could probably get 90% coverage.
*sigh* It would probably never work, but internic makes me mad.
(whether they know it or not).
I am seeing a lot of posts here to the effect "Corel Linux is designed for newbies, and so Beta Testers should be newbies." While I can see the angle these people are coming from (and i suspect Corel agrees with them) may I beg to differ?
I think that Corel Linux should have a large number of Wizard level Beta testers. Certainly a lot of newbies need to test it to, but I think at least half of the users should be experienced Linux users.
Why? First, because It is not impossible for an experienced user to construct a simple interface. If it is, we are all doomed. Bluntly, an experienced user who is bothering to consider user interface issues will come up with BETTER suggestions than a non-experienced user, simply because of his wider experience.
Second, Experienced users might actually fix the bugs!. An novice user is unlikely to fix a bug, even if it's just a missing entries on the start menu! Certainly, any non-transparent bug will not be diagnosed in a meaningful way.
Third, An experienced user will do a better job of reporting the bug. C'mon -- how many of us have gotten help desk calls to the effect of "It doesn't work right".
Finally, a non-experienced user will accept bugs that an experienced linux user would not. People who've never run Linux before are used to rebooting their computers three times a day!!! They will accept bugs that I would report (and likely fix).
For the reading impaired: I am not saying corel needs no novice users -- I'm just saying that's not ALL they need.
If Corel Linux is going to be a success in the market they are aiming for, it needs to be much better than windows. Making it better from a novice users point of view is going to be an uphill battle -- the things novice users care most about (pretty pictures) are already reasonably well done in Windows. Corel need all the help they can get if they are going to compete.
I'll give that a qualified yes. You should let him read it but you should make sure he talks to you about it.
In my NSHO the most important thing for kids that are isolated is to realize that they are not alone, not unique.
Ack! They've got me doing it to! Hacks = cracks.
*sigh*
A number of people have commented that this is no better than using software based encryption and is possible worse because of the relatively short key length.
This really is not true. Every software based encryption technology of which I am aware still allows the hypothetical spies to see WHERE you go. Since, they can see where you go, they can theoretically narrow down the amount of traffic the want to try to crack.
It's like this: if you were using https, and they wanted to know what the content of your corporate intranet was, they wouldn't have to waste their time trying to crack all the times you pulled down pages from slashdot.
On the other hand, if the encryption is done at layer 2... They have to decrpyt every single packet you send looking for gold, including all those pesky netbios broadcasts. It would take subnstantially longer and they would not be able to ascertain any information from _who_ you were talking to.
Oh yeah -- this scenario really only applies if you're concerned about hacks into your local ethernet.
*For the record, this is a hoax and not an actual article*
YDNet, Raleigh NC. - Many analysts expressed continued concerns today over the reliability of the Linux operating system. This operating system has recently made in-roads into the server market with support from major companies such as IBM.
However, it appears that, along with it's lack of multi-processor support and poor performance serving static web pages, the operating system lacks another feature required for the enterprise market: the ability to withstand a category 4 hurricane.
This problem came to light today as Redhat software prepared for Hurricane Floy by shutting down all computers at the Redhat site. This stand in sharp contrast to Microsoft's Windows 2000 operating system, which is currently being modified to better withstand large storms (see www.windows2000test.com). Analysts agree that Microsoft has more experience experience in recovering from this type of failure than any other enterprise operating system vendor.
Fred Foolish, an MCSE in the Raleigh area, was heard to say "Yeah... Maybe Linux is enough for a small company, but for companies that need to withstand more than a light sprinkle, enterprise class reliability is needed".
Fred Mud at Microsoft agreed. "One of the best features of our high-value proposition product, Microsoft Windows 2000,software is its ability to quickly recover from storms. Microsoft has a lot of experience in the area of post-storm recover " Mud also dismissed the announcement that most redhat.com services would continue, noting that it is generally agreed by enterprise analysts that Linux still needs to work on Enterprise Class features like clustering, saying "It's just impossible I tell you!"
Redhat software was not reached for comment at their Bahamas office in time for this story.
Hmm... Y'know, I am 27 years old, happily married with a 2 year old son (who already loves computers), active in my church with more friends than I can possibly make time for, making an obscene amount of money ... NOW.
But that does not change the fact that I spent the first 18 years of my life being deliberately tormented and isolated. It cannot remove the instinctive "curl-up and hide" reflex that I have whenever I'm faced with a large group of people in a social environment. It can't change that whenever I go to a party I feel nervous and out-of-control because the first party I went to I got my ass kicked.
If my life were a failure, then that would be a whine, an excuse. My life has NOT been a failure -- so it is not whining to acknowledge the pain that I experienced.
In fact, it's probably healthy to acknowledge it. Oh yeah -- I've never been much into games, and one of my major pastimes in high school was long-distance backpacking. Hardly the stereo-typical "pasty geek" that you allude to.
In other words, stop the stereo-type.
Sell short Republicans!
Sell short Democrats!
Sell short Reformed!
Kill the lawyers! Maoist revolution!
Oops... That was five.
I guess this means it's official: Linux is now a hardware platform that (most) vendors are expected to support.
This is great news -- I remember, about five years ago, spending 2 days going through hardware compatibility lists to find hardware that was supported by Linux.
What's especially good about this is that 3com is releasing the source code, unlike some other companies who only release a binary module. Let's encourage them by buying their cards!
The SCSL requires that you get a license from Sun in order to do a commercial redistribution of the product in question. For software, this is kind of okay because software can be redistributed for free pretty easily. It costs just about nothing to put up an FTP server somewhere.
On the other hand, to redistribute hardware you have to setup an assembly line and distribution chain at considerable expense. I don't see how this can possibly work under the SCSL. As soon as you want to recover the cost of manufacturing your modified hardware, WHAM! you have to pay sun a (hefty) license fee. Think of this as a "open source" license which is open until you compile the program, because that's exactly what it is.
It remains to be seen whether even GENUINELY open sourced hardware will work -- I can't see any way that this will work.
Amphigory
When I read comments, it does not matter to me so much what the score of a comment is as how it compares to other comments. That is, I sort by score because I know that generally speaking the items which score 5 are going to be better than the ones which score -1 because most slashdot readers are mostly in agreement with me about what is a good comment. The absolute values are meaningless, only the relative score matters.
The other problem is that comments posted as little as an hour after the story first hits are often not moderated up. The moderators have gone on to other stories. Sometimes these comments are the best: they are posted by people who have something to do all day besides read
I think that many of the moderation problems could be fixed by:
That way, if I thought that a given comment was crucially important and it was posted late in the game, I could moderate it up to where people sorting by scores would still see it.
The downside is that there is a higher potential for abuse. However, I think that other moderators would quickly moderate down a story that was too highly rated -- because they could without wasting all their points. In other words, let a bad moderator try to abuse it. It doesn't matter because he will be immediately brought down by the other moderators.
In short, this is a change in philsosophy: instead of trying to limit the power of the individual moderator, give lots of power and trust in averages to make it work.
Your best defense against bad moderation is the random selection of moderators just as you currently have it. Remember, a bad moderator is a temporary problem.
My Opinion
Hmm... Let's see...
You've called me:
A fascist.
An idiot.
In order to support these assertions, you have alluded to the trial of Galileo and the Constitution: alluded to without actually citing.
In short, you are the logical end reult of a lifetime steeped in violence. You cannot reason, and when faced with reason resort to name calling.
Notice that I don't ask that ANYTHING be suppressed -- you seem to deeply desire that I be suppressed.
Oh... and something that mindlessly violates all social norms is not necessarily evil: just stupid and a waste of time. It is knee-jerk revolutionarism, not legitimate social commentary.