This is excellent that there is all this itch scratching. It makes the community strong because we travel many roads and only decide to use them when they get somewhere interesting. And since its free for the most part, we don't lose much trying it out.
The writer also says there is a problem with the huge number of distros. That's honky. If you aim for the linux standards base target, you'll be fine. If you use an X Toolkit that works on gnome and KDE, you'll be fine. If you statically link in the libraries you use, or at least include dynamic versions of your library in your download/install CD that can be installed localally at configure time, you'll be fine. If you use automake, autoconf, and autotool, you'll be fine.
And there is PLENTY to gain from the huge number of distros. All of them do slightly different things. RedHat? Lots of doc, big company supporting you, pretty easy configuration. Mandrake? Readhatlike, more community supported, more graphical installers, etc. Knoppix? In and working in 5 minutes, with less than an hour to install. Debian? Quick to keep updated, powerful, and idealogically sound. Suse? Super internationalization support, great for that computer that's being used in Europe or India. Slackware? You want to get used to normal unix administration, as it was in the early nineties. Gentoo, up to date, and quick as the wind. So on and so forth.
2. Open Source developers love a good feud.
All developers love a good feud. Commercial software however is owned by someone, so they make a decision which side wins the argument, then its done that way, with the other way usually forced to be forsaken. This is what happens in almost any arena when there is no standard for entry (such as getting a PhD in academic communities) or authority (such as a boss in a commercial company)
3. Open Source developers often scratch the wrong itch.
He claims we don't code for the users. We actually code for power and customizability more than intutiveness and low-emmersion use. So? That's one of the things that makes many people LOVE this stuff. Then again, I think it would be an EXCELLENT contribution to almost any project to make quick and easy frontends to hairy processes, a la anaconda for installation of redhat. Then again, I don't really feel like it....
4. In the Open Source Community, you're either "with us or against us"
I think that often people forget that they can't abuse the programmers in free software world. They assume that if they request features and the like, they can get them, as a manager can "request" features in a company and will get them. Often, when you critisize a work in the OSS world, you're going to be badmouthing something that was partially constructed as an ego-fix. That's one of the prices you pay for software developed for free.
Then again, if you say how you love feature XY and Q, but it might be easier to do Z if steps 1,2, and 3 happened, you might inspire the original author or another author to make a tool/frontend/helpfile/change that will do 1,2 and 3 for you. OSS reverses the normal hirearchy of programmer to customer as far as power goes, take that into account, and you'll go far.
5. The Open Source Community has a huge chip on its shoulder...called Microsoft
Yup. Microsoft is a bitch. Some of their software does cool things, but they also do much "their own way" due to their highly insular culture, and as a result, they do things "the wrong way". This pisses off people who have an appreciation for software as art or just people who want to get work done. Then there are the counterculture posers. They don't like MS for the pleasure of hating the mainstream.
This is one of the writers least empty points. I'd point out to most people that there are MANY uses for PC's around the house, especially ones that cost less that $400 total.Most people think that will cost around $1000 to add a PC to do somethiing neat, countin
Buying several 4 socket UPS units and putting them on each real socket(2 per outlet), except for perhaps one you run a mini-fridge off of. Then, most of the power fuctuations you're going through are buffered by that capacitor+battery system, and in the off chance a breaker does blow, only the fridge will shut off. You also get hella good protection for your electronics as far as surge protection goes.
You can get 5-6 socket ones for $39 on pricewatch. Its well worth it. And when you do blow a breaker, all the UPS's will "sing" to you as my girlfriend calls it.
In any case, you should get renters insurance no matter HOW you use your electronics in your room. You neighbors aren't being that safe, and can destroy all your stuff in the blink of an eye.
And I have no clue if the power management this guy has works with linux servers. I don't set that up on any of my computers.
Oooh...There is the way to kill spam.
Make it legal to forward all spam to your representative/senators....I bet something effective would come accross really quickly.
You should tape the reciepts to another piece of (acid free) paper and then scan them. Keep the real copy too, but I've found my scans work just as well for most anything I've ever needed.
I've been into "the drawer" once in 3 years.
This is simple and works VERY VERY reliably (as long as hdb1 bigger than or equal to hda1. With creative mounting, its very simple to copy any os install to multiple disks and tomsrtbt.
This is correct.
I called up AAA trying to find out if I "had insurance that would allow my friend to borrow my car for a week" and they laughed, explaining that they haven't issued a "per person" insurance for over 30 years. All insurance is vehicle based, with rate determined by car type, major drivers, and type of common use.
Main Entry: decimate Pronunciation: 'de-s&-"mAt Function: transitive verb Inflected Form(s): -mated; -mating Etymology: Latin decimatus, past participle of decimare, from decimus tenth, from decem ten Date: 1660 1 : to select by lot and kill every tenth man of 2 : to exact a tax of 10 percent from 3 a : to reduce drastically especially in number b : to destroy a large part of - decimation/"de-s&-'mA-sh&n/ noun
#3 is by far what most people mean when they talk about decimation. Not some obscure latin derived term that only trolling slashdotizens know about.
There are fewer transistor interactions with simpler instructions. These interactions take power (and generate heat). When you don't flip the transistors, you don't get heat. When you do flip them, you do get heat.
Halt actually turns off most of the chip. A different thing entirely from just a instruction that doesn't happen to take much power.
Linux is very big in the robotics world. If you're going to make a toy for the consumer, putting windows on it would arguably be easier for them to do stuff on it. However if you want the robotics community to easily tie into it, linux is the way to go.
I disagree with you - I'm not a lawyer, but I think that if a citizen is afforded specific rights by the U.S. constituion, no contract in this country can take away any of those. It's like Microsoft's EULA for front page stating that you can't use front page to create pages containing negative comments about M$. It's retarded, and it would certainly not be illegal to use front page to trash M$. If M$ tried to sue somebody in court over it, they would lose. When you say Apple can "enforce" this contract if I reencode files, you're sort of right - they can void the contract and kick me off their service, that's it. They can't sue me or have legal charges brought against me. My fair use is protected in the U.S., and Apple can't change that, simple as that.
IANAL, however fair use comes from a copyright act, not the constitution. And you CAN sign away rights granted to you by the constitution. For instance, a Non-Disclosure agreement removes your free speech rights on that topic.
But the answer is not to put all of the code on a single, closed machine - that simply doesn't work in real life.
However, it could EASILY be put on a closed network that's phsyically disconnected from the internet. The US government does this all the time, as do its contractors who handle sensitive data. Then put a few internet accessble terminals in the office not attached to the lan, and you have quite a workable system, one that I've worked in time after time.
The software industry as a whole doesn't take IP security very seriously. This is another instance of that lax attiude. It is COMPLETELY realistic to say "the code should not have been net accessible!"
The government's job is not to interfere with the market by promoting one product over another. If you really want to advocate Linux, make it a better product so that the private sector adopts it. The government sector will follow.
If they wanted to do this, they would make ps,star office files, or something else open and speced the document format you have to use to communicate with the federal government. As it is now, the military standard is MS-Word docs, as are most administrative branches.
They invest it actually....
Most of BillG's wealth is in MS stock.
And at that point, you can invest in things because you want them to succeed, not because they seem like terriffically viable business propositions.
WindowsNT runs the system on these ships that shoots incoming aircraft and missles. Your son will be killed by these missiles and bombed by these aircraft.
a cereal company turns out a cereal based on sunflowers, and if a certain percentage of people in the US have severe sunflower allergies they aren't aware of, the number of lives at risk is significantly greater than seven. Seems like a silly example -- except it's real.
This is the most sailient point I have seen on slashdot in awhile. Mod it up.
Keep a webpage with one of these tables. In each quadrant, just keep an ordered list of tasks to be done, person who requested task, and date task must be completed by. I'd put a line at the top like "I exist to serve the business of the organization. Choose the place your request fits best. If uncertain, call people and negotiate until you are certain. You can figure out where it goes better than I".
Keep an org chart on a portion of the same page, and tell them that they can put their task anywhere in front of anyone at their level in the heirarchy or lower, or in front of their own boss. If they need to get past someone's request, all they have to do is go to someone high enough in the organization and convince them to send you an email.
Then spend 6 hours a day on urgent important things, 1/2 hour on urgent unimportant things, 2 hours on non-urgent, important things, and 1/2 hour on unimportant, urgent things, or some other mix you find appropriate.
You will slowly see that you are told the important things far in advance, because people find out they get done quite early and very reliably if they give you notice (because you always make time for important things). People also see they shouldn't ask you to do things that aren't important, and by keeping things public, they won't ask the silliest of things that you get now. You'll also see your users start to use the proper terms for things as the list is public and they will otherwise appear unintelligent. Rather then seeing "My computer is broke. u fix it" you'll see "Configure Eudora on My Desktop to Send Email"
As you complete a task, move them off into a permanent record of tasks completed.
And keep an extra computer by the door in your lab/office. If someone walks in with a request, just have them file it appropriately right at that terminal.
I've always seen 64 bit processors to be applicable for more scientific tasks than anything else.
I guess you do have a point about how useful they can be in a memory needy situation, but really, what use ARE the double sized words to most programmers?
Well its platform you have to look at. If you're choosing between Apple/PPC and Windows/I64, then you mark those. But if you're going to be running linux, then these benchmarks are incomplete.
Boston College and MIT challenged the RIAA's subpoenas on narrow technical grounds, arguing that the RIAA had filed its subpoenas in Washington, DC, instead of Massachusetts.
This in itself is a shaky comeback for MIT, and Boston College considering if some law was broken cross state lines, and mind you the DA's will look at the fact downloads occurred all over the world. Law is law anywhere in the US, I don't know when it stopped being so.
Its pretty common to fight something like this at EVERY step. Then hopefully, the other guy gives up before you have to. They will come back with other, more firm arguements when needed.
Slashdot Mirror
1. Too many developers "scratch the same itch."
This is excellent that there is all this itch scratching. It makes the community strong because we travel many roads and only decide to use them when they get somewhere interesting. And since its free for the most part, we don't lose much trying it out.
The writer also says there is a problem with the huge number of distros. That's honky. If you aim for the linux standards base target, you'll be fine. If you use an X Toolkit that works on gnome and KDE, you'll be fine. If you statically link in the libraries you use, or at least include dynamic versions of your library in your download/install CD that can be installed localally at configure time, you'll be fine. If you use automake, autoconf, and autotool, you'll be fine.
And there is PLENTY to gain from the huge number of distros. All of them do slightly different things. RedHat? Lots of doc, big company
supporting you, pretty easy configuration. Mandrake? Readhatlike, more community supported, more graphical installers, etc. Knoppix? In and working in 5 minutes, with less than an hour to
install. Debian? Quick to keep updated, powerful, and idealogically sound. Suse? Super internationalization support, great for that computer that's being used in Europe or India. Slackware? You want to get used to normal unix administration, as it was in the early nineties. Gentoo, up to date, and quick as the wind. So on and so forth.
2. Open Source developers love a good feud.
All developers love a good feud. Commercial software however is owned by someone, so they make a decision which side wins the argument, then its done that way, with the other way usually forced to be forsaken. This is what happens in almost any arena when there is no standard for entry (such as getting a PhD in academic communities) or authority (such as a boss in a commercial company)
3. Open Source developers often scratch the wrong itch.
He claims we don't code for the users. We actually code for power and customizability more than intutiveness and low-emmersion use. So? That's one of the things that makes many people LOVE this stuff. Then again, I think it would be an EXCELLENT contribution to almost any project to make quick and easy frontends to hairy processes, a la anaconda for installation of redhat. Then again, I don't really feel like it....
4. In the Open Source Community, you're either "with us or against us"
I think that often people forget that they can't abuse the programmers in free software world. They assume that if they request features and the like, they can get them, as a manager can "request" features in a company and will get them. Often, when you critisize a work in the OSS world, you're going to be badmouthing something that was partially constructed as an ego-fix. That's one of the prices you pay for software developed for free.
Then again, if you say how you love feature XY and Q, but it might be easier to do Z if steps 1,2, and 3 happened, you might inspire the original author or another author to make a tool/frontend/helpfile/change that will do 1,2 and 3 for you. OSS reverses the normal hirearchy of programmer to customer as far as power goes, take that into account, and you'll go far.
5. The Open Source Community has a huge chip on its shoulder...called Microsoft
Yup. Microsoft is a bitch. Some of their software does cool things, but they also do much "their own way" due to their highly insular culture, and as a result, they do things "the wrong way". This pisses off people who have an appreciation for software as art or just people who want to get work done. Then there are the counterculture posers. They don't like MS for the pleasure of hating the mainstream.
This is one of the writers least empty points. I'd point out to most people that there are MANY uses for PC's around the house, especially ones that cost less that $400 total.Most people think that will cost around $1000 to add a PC to do somethiing neat, countin
Buying several 4 socket UPS units and putting them on each real socket(2 per outlet), except for perhaps one you run a mini-fridge off of. Then, most of the power fuctuations you're going through are buffered by that capacitor+battery system, and in the off chance a breaker does blow, only the fridge will shut off. You also get hella good protection for your electronics as far as surge protection goes.
You can get 5-6 socket ones for $39 on pricewatch. Its well worth it. And when you do blow a breaker, all the UPS's will "sing" to you as my girlfriend calls it.
In any case, you should get renters insurance no matter HOW you use your electronics in your room. You neighbors aren't being that safe, and can destroy all your stuff in the blink of an eye.
And I have no clue if the power management this guy has works with linux servers. I don't set that up on any of my computers.
Oooh...There is the way to kill spam. Make it legal to forward all spam to your representative/senators....I bet something effective would come accross really quickly.
You should tape the reciepts to another piece of (acid free) paper and then scan them. Keep the real copy too, but I've found my scans work just as well for most anything I've ever needed. I've been into "the drawer" once in 3 years.
This is simple and works VERY VERY reliably (as long as hdb1 bigger than or equal to hda1. With creative mounting, its very simple to copy any os install to multiple disks and tomsrtbt.
Awesome!!!! Now if we can get this republican administration to prosecute them.... :)
This is correct. I called up AAA trying to find out if I "had insurance that would allow my friend to borrow my car for a week" and they laughed, explaining that they haven't issued a "per person" insurance for over 30 years. All insurance is vehicle based, with rate determined by car type, major drivers, and type of common use.
Main Entry: decimate /"de-s&-'mA-sh&n/ noun
Pronunciation: 'de-s&-"mAt
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): -mated; -mating
Etymology: Latin decimatus, past participle of decimare, from decimus tenth, from decem ten
Date: 1660
1 : to select by lot and kill every tenth man of
2 : to exact a tax of 10 percent from
3 a : to reduce drastically especially in number b : to destroy a large part of
- decimation
#3 is by far what most people mean when they talk about decimation. Not some obscure latin derived term that only trolling slashdotizens know about.
There are fewer transistor interactions with simpler instructions. These interactions take power (and generate heat). When you don't flip the transistors, you don't get heat. When you do flip them, you do get heat.
Halt actually turns off most of the chip. A different thing entirely from just a instruction that doesn't happen to take much power.
I think my S.O. would rather be decimated finaincially then dead. Come to think of it...so would I.
Linux is very big in the robotics world. If you're going to make a toy for the consumer, putting windows on it would arguably be easier for them to do stuff on it. However if you want the robotics community to easily tie into it, linux is the way to go.
I disagree with you - I'm not a lawyer, but I think that if a citizen is afforded specific rights by the U.S. constituion, no contract in this country can take away any of those. It's like Microsoft's EULA for front page stating that you can't use front page to create pages containing negative comments about M$. It's retarded, and it would certainly not be illegal to use front page to trash M$. If M$ tried to sue somebody in court over it, they would lose. When you say Apple can "enforce" this contract if I reencode files, you're sort of right - they can void the contract and kick me off their service, that's it. They can't sue me or have legal charges brought against me. My fair use is protected in the U.S., and Apple can't change that, simple as that.
IANAL, however fair use comes from a copyright act, not the constitution. And you CAN sign away rights granted to you by the constitution. For instance, a Non-Disclosure agreement removes your free speech rights on that topic.
But the answer is not to put all of the code on a single, closed machine - that simply doesn't work in real life.
However, it could EASILY be put on a closed network that's phsyically disconnected from the internet. The US government does this all the time, as do its contractors who handle sensitive data. Then put a few internet accessble terminals in the office not attached to the lan, and you have quite a workable system, one that I've worked in time after time.
The software industry as a whole doesn't take IP security very seriously. This is another instance of that lax attiude. It is COMPLETELY realistic to say "the code should not have been net accessible!"
--Michael
http://www.itworld.com/AppDev/1310/ITW0202nsa/
You are a beautiful man. I have lost SO much work due to that option.
The government's job is not to interfere with the market by promoting one product over another. If you really want to advocate Linux, make it a better product so that the private sector adopts it. The government sector will follow.
If they wanted to do this, they would make ps,star office files, or something else open and speced the document format you have to use to communicate with the federal government. As it is now, the military standard is MS-Word docs, as are most administrative branches.
They invest it actually.... Most of BillG's wealth is in MS stock. And at that point, you can invest in things because you want them to succeed, not because they seem like terriffically viable business propositions.
I thought that the NY water hill pumps were over 80% efficent at storage. Am I misremembering that?
WindowsNT runs the system on these ships that shoots incoming aircraft and missles. Your son will be killed by these missiles and bombed by these aircraft.
a cereal company turns out a cereal based on sunflowers, and if a certain percentage of people in the US have severe sunflower allergies they aren't aware of, the number of lives at risk is significantly greater than seven. Seems like a silly example -- except it's real.
This is the most sailient point I have seen on slashdot in awhile. Mod it up.
Bloody Not Coming off
Keep a webpage with one of these tables. In each quadrant, just keep an ordered list of tasks to be done, person who requested task, and date task must be completed by. I'd put a line at the top like "I exist to serve the business of the organization. Choose the place your request fits best. If uncertain, call people and negotiate until you are certain. You can figure out where it goes better than I".
Keep an org chart on a portion of the same page, and tell them that they can put their task anywhere in front of anyone at their level in the heirarchy or lower, or in front of their own boss. If they need to get past someone's request, all they have to do is go to someone high enough in the organization and convince them to send you an email.
Then spend 6 hours a day on urgent important things, 1/2 hour on urgent unimportant things, 2 hours on non-urgent, important things, and 1/2 hour on unimportant, urgent things, or some other mix you find appropriate.
You will slowly see that you are told the important things far in advance, because people find out they get done quite early and very reliably if they give you notice (because you always make time for important things). People also see they shouldn't ask you to do things that aren't important, and by keeping things public, they won't ask the silliest of things that you get now. You'll also see your users start to use the proper terms for things as the list is public and they will otherwise appear unintelligent. Rather then seeing "My computer is broke. u fix it" you'll see "Configure Eudora on My Desktop to Send Email"
As you complete a task, move them off into a permanent record of tasks completed.
And keep an extra computer by the door in your lab/office. If someone walks in with a request, just have them file it appropriately right at that terminal.
I've always seen 64 bit processors to be applicable for more scientific tasks than anything else.
I guess you do have a point about how useful they can be in a memory needy situation, but really, what use ARE the double sized words to most programmers?
Well its platform you have to look at. If you're choosing between Apple/PPC and Windows/I64, then you mark those. But if you're going to be running linux, then these benchmarks are incomplete.
Boston College and MIT challenged the RIAA's subpoenas on narrow technical grounds, arguing that the RIAA had filed its subpoenas in Washington, DC, instead of Massachusetts.
This in itself is a shaky comeback for MIT, and Boston College considering if some law was broken cross state lines, and mind you the DA's will look at the fact downloads occurred all over the world. Law is law anywhere in the US, I don't know when it stopped being so.
Its pretty common to fight something like this at EVERY step. Then hopefully, the other guy gives up before you have to. They will come back with other, more firm arguements when needed.
Nevada has neither and doesn't go bankrupt. Hahaha....foiled your analogy.