:"the grant was for a study into the detrimental effects of intelligent design on Canadian academics and leaders." Sounds like he had already arrived at his conclusion, i.e. that there were effects and that they were detrimental. Now all he has to do is "create" (pardon the pun) some evidence. Doesn't sound like science to me. Probably deserved to be turned down, though not for the reason stated.
There is an operation in Portland Oregon, that does exactly this. It is called I believe FreeGeek or something similar. I suggest you contact them about how they run their program. They don't 'give' the PC's away. The recipient earns them somehow, by typically spending X number of hours at the Free Geek warehouse, disassembling and reassembling the donated PC's. The benefit is that at the end the recipients have some sort of understanding of what they are dealing with.
FreeGeek is also pretty creative about recycling the metal in the PC's that they cannot get to run. I think they generate enough income to be able to pay the rent on the place, and one full time staff member.
IIRC they are Linux oriented; partly for cost reasons, and partly for support reasons - Lots of the software is old, and the latest WinXP wont run on it, but Linux and a nice app suite will do fine.
Remember most of these people just want to be USERS of software, so it does not matter which environment they learn at the beginning. So long as they can do email, webBrowsing, word processing and games they are OK. Linux or Windows will work equally well, but Linux is cheaper and the support is better.
Anyway, give them a call; they can probably tell you about their experience in more detail.
Quote: "Be sure to backup config files etc. that you may have put on the system partition." Aye there's the rub. Even if you have all of YOUR stuff in your home directory (on a separate partition), how about all the config stuff? As a newbie, how would you even know what config stuff there was? If you upgrade, and the upgrade installs a new version of shorewall say, will the upgraded shorewall be able to use your existing config? How about hosts.allow and hosts.deny - are ehy preserved? how about your xinetd tweaks? Not to mention any third party installs you have done that are not distro related, like say an MP3 player, or OpenOffice (say you have 2.0 and the distro ships with 1.x?) What about your custom KDE/Gnome menues?
The FC people don't seem to provide any guidance on any of the above. Not that I've found anyway. I avoid upgrades like a trip to the dentist; I only do it if I absolutely have to.
Symantec. Isn't that one of the anti virus companies that turned a blind eye to Sony's virus? Why would anyone trust them?
Where were Symantec, Microsoft, and McAfee ??
on
Bad Day To Be Sony
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
It's all very well for the biggies to hop on the 'We will remove it' bandwagon now, but why weren't they the ones to discover it in the first place? Groklaw has a nice essay on this, which reveals that these guys ALREADY KNEW what Sony was doing 8 months ago and turned a blind eye. In fact the maker of the rootkit (UK company) is on record as saying they consulted with Symantec to make sure that their rootkit would not be classified as a virus. The moral? The current PC/entertainment/gaming/recording industry is a scratch-my-back oligopoly. Go for FREE(as in dom) SOFTWARE while you still have a choice.
Short answer: Check Groklaw. If SCO said it, Groklaw will check it; and provide sources where possible. Then you can decide for yourself. As to SCO's numbers either a) they came from some 3rd party (so check the source - they were probably selectively used or unreliable to begin with) or b) SCO generated them themselves. SCO had to be told by IBM how to read docs on a CD, and how to boot an AIX box, so that gives you some idea of their level of technical expertise. At least when it comes to the executive side of the house.
No one can stop you from sending. So asking if it is "OK to Spam" is sort of a non-question. The CAN SPAM act as I understand it mostly relates to DECEPTION in emails (wrong subject, spoofed sender etc.) However just because you send, does not mean I have to receive. Even if you paid for it. If you send me junk (snail) mail, as in a flyer, I can throw it away unread, even if it is about govenment injustice. If you fax me I can use call display and refuse to answer the phone. If you telemarket me I can do likewise, or go on the DO NOT CALL list. However I think that if you pay the Post office to deliver your (junk) mail, they are obligated to deliver it even if I don't want to receive it. Similarly the spammer's ISP must probably allow the spammer to send. The receiver's ISP though is another matter.
This whole crime rate issue may be a red herring. Most (violent/thrill) crimes are committed by young men. The fewer young men, the lower the number of crimes. What would be interesting to see is the number of crimes committed per 1000 young men, not just the number of crimes committed per 1000 people (which would include aging boomers, and others who are not 'crime prone')
Remember too, that GPS to work must have a clear view of the sky. Even in moderate forest, the signal can be so degraded by foliage that the receiver cannot 'see' the satellites. If your village(s) are mostly in clearings you are prob OK, but if there is a lot of 'jungle' foliage covering the area, you could be in trouble.
Lets agree that the military can have 2 of these, and the other 3 can be demilitarized. Of course the two we give the military will be the two THAT ARE UNSTABLE so any equipment place there will tend to drift away......
What AMD should do is throw some major money and development effort at GCC and make it generate really good code for AMD chips. Code that would rival what Intel do for their chips. As Stallman says, when fighting monopolies we should all help each other....
Remember some years ago when MS was pushing a reader for e-BOOKS that used DRM, MS Passport, and other nasties? Now tell me that: a) Linux on the laptops will be an alternative. b) The e-Books/ material will be cheaper than the hard copy. (No evidence of that so far) c) There will not be DRM encumbered readers and the e-material will not be copyright encumbered. d) The teachers will not just buy one copy of the (copyrighted) e-Material and install it on 30 machines. Without a commitment to Free (as in Freedom) infrastructure here, I see way more downside than upside.
If the first example he gives is anything to go by, this effort is not well thought out. Just because HE trusts "X" and you trust HIM, does NOT mean you should trust X. Example: I trust you, you trust the president, therefore I trust ?... (see what I mean?) If his model doesn't even recognize that, what good is it?
Does anyone seriously doubt that they DO? Andy Grove (ex CEO of INTEL) described how MS prevented INTEL from including certain features in H/W. Andy's reaction was life is too short to spend it fighting MS. This was INTEL not some much smaller niche player.
We have been hearing about a labor shortage in just about every field for over 30 years, (tradesmen, engineers, programmers etc. etc.). Yet working conditions never improve and money never goes up. Violates basic economics. PR and hidden motives are behind so many 'news items' these days it pays to take nothing at face value.
Because if you value your reputation you cannot at this stage honestly recommend a Linux distro to your average user. This applies to RH, Mandrake, SUSE. Don't know about XANDROS since I havent had a chance to test my CD yet. Also there are few outlets where you can go to just buy a Linux computer.
1. Groklaw covers the SCO lawsuit from a legal perspective, and according to unbiased sources, better than anyone else. 2. The editor of Groklaw (PJ) is definitely pro-FOSS and anti-SCO and says so frequently on the site. This does not stop Groklaw from publishing the source documents on which their opinions are based so you can think and evaluate for yourself. There is a clear demarcation between editorial content and content that is presented as fact. 3. Groklaw has a 'corrections go here' link after every story.
Page 16 is a hoot. Notice they give them four lines of intructions on how to power on or reboot the box. I wonder who this is aimed at? SCO or judge Wells (who seems to be as clueless as they come when it comes to technical issues)?
Well once again we see the wisdom of RMS's position that you try for 100% non-proprietary software. Time and again, he has been proven correct, and others (like me) who are willing to compromise or cut corners proven wrong. MP3 -> ogg-vorbis KDE/QT -> Gnome BitKeeper -> ??? Others I prob don't know about.
In my experience there are two guilty parties to this. First are the Programmers who optimistically (or dishonestly) underestimate. Then there are the Managers who will not accept an honest estimate, or worse will not accept that an honest estimate is not possible. They insist on a 'date', then insist on a date that is sooner than that, then complain when 'their' date is not met, and blame the IT dept.
Sounds like Archimedes and the Greeks knew enough math to make piecewise parabolic mirrors that could focus on a point. Did they have the technology to make reasonably flat GLASS mirrors? IIRC glassblowing was not known then, and it was quite hard to make flat glass panels. Also the legend seems unclear as to whether they were using glass mirrors or shields. Bronze shields, whether flat or curved might have much poorer reflective properties than a mirror.
There are few women in OSS, fewer even than in the s/w business as a whole. Even if most coders and s/w engineers are male, OSS could benefit from women from fields such as document writing, Human i/f design, test case librarians etc. where women are not in such a minority. What could the OSS communitie(s) do to make themselves more appealing to women?
Slashdot Mirror
:"the grant was for a study into the detrimental effects of intelligent design on Canadian academics and leaders."
Sounds like he had already arrived at his conclusion, i.e. that there were effects and that they were detrimental. Now all he has to do is "create" (pardon the pun) some evidence.
Doesn't sound like science to me. Probably deserved to be turned down, though not for the reason stated.
There is an operation in Portland Oregon, that does exactly this.
It is called I believe FreeGeek or something similar.
I suggest you contact them about how they run their program.
They don't 'give' the PC's away. The recipient earns them somehow, by typically spending X number of hours at the Free Geek warehouse, disassembling and reassembling the donated PC's. The benefit is that at the end the recipients have some sort of understanding of what they are dealing with.
FreeGeek is also pretty creative about recycling the metal in the PC's that they cannot get to run. I think they generate enough income to be able to pay the rent on the place, and one full time staff member.
IIRC they are Linux oriented; partly for cost reasons, and partly for support reasons - Lots of the software is old, and the latest WinXP wont run on it, but Linux and a nice app suite will do fine.
Remember most of these people just want to be USERS of software, so it does not matter which environment they learn at the beginning. So long as they can do email, webBrowsing, word processing and games they are OK.
Linux or Windows will work equally well, but Linux is cheaper and the support is better.
Anyway, give them a call; they can probably tell you about their experience in more detail.
Quote: "Be sure to backup config files etc. that you may have put on the system partition."
Aye there's the rub. Even if you have all of YOUR stuff in your home directory (on a separate partition), how about all the config stuff? As a newbie, how would you even know what config stuff there was? If you upgrade, and the upgrade installs a new version of shorewall say, will the upgraded shorewall be able to use your existing config? How about hosts.allow and hosts.deny - are ehy preserved? how about your xinetd tweaks?
Not to mention any third party installs you have done that are not distro related, like say an MP3 player, or OpenOffice (say you have 2.0 and the distro ships with 1.x?) What about your custom KDE/Gnome menues?
The FC people don't seem to provide any guidance on any of the above. Not that I've found anyway.
I avoid upgrades like a trip to the dentist; I only do it if I absolutely have to.
Symantec. Isn't that one of the anti virus companies that turned a blind eye to Sony's virus?
Why would anyone trust them?
It's all very well for the biggies to hop on the 'We will remove it' bandwagon now, but why weren't they the ones to discover it in the first place?
Groklaw has a nice essay on this, which reveals that these guys ALREADY KNEW what Sony was doing 8 months ago and turned a blind eye.
In fact the maker of the rootkit (UK company) is on record as saying they consulted with Symantec to make sure that their rootkit would not be classified as a virus.
The moral? The current PC/entertainment/gaming/recording industry is a scratch-my-back oligopoly.
Go for FREE(as in dom) SOFTWARE while you still have a choice.
If SONY circumvents the security I have installed on MY machine with their rootkit are THEY in violation of the DMCA?
Short answer: Check Groklaw. If SCO said it, Groklaw will check it; and provide sources where possible. Then you can decide for yourself.
As to SCO's numbers either a) they came from some 3rd party (so check the source - they were probably selectively used or unreliable to begin with) or b) SCO generated them themselves.
SCO had to be told by IBM how to read docs on a CD, and how to boot an AIX box, so that gives you some idea of their level of technical expertise. At least when it comes to the executive side of the house.
No one can stop you from sending. So asking if it is "OK to Spam" is sort of a non-question.
The CAN SPAM act as I understand it mostly relates to DECEPTION in emails (wrong subject, spoofed sender etc.)
However just because you send, does not mean I have to receive. Even if you paid for it.
If you send me junk (snail) mail, as in a flyer, I can throw it away unread, even if it is about govenment injustice. If you fax me I can use call display and refuse to answer the phone. If you telemarket me I can do likewise, or go on the DO NOT CALL list.
However I think that if you pay the Post office to deliver your (junk) mail, they are obligated to deliver it even if I don't want to receive it.
Similarly the spammer's ISP must probably allow the spammer to send.
The receiver's ISP though is another matter.
This whole crime rate issue may be a red herring.
Most (violent/thrill) crimes are committed by young men.
The fewer young men, the lower the number of crimes.
What would be interesting to see is the number of crimes committed per 1000 young men, not just the number of crimes committed per 1000 people (which would include aging boomers, and others who are not 'crime prone')
Remember too, that GPS to work must have a clear view of the sky.
Even in moderate forest, the signal can be so degraded by foliage that the receiver cannot 'see' the satellites.
If your village(s) are mostly in clearings you are prob OK, but if there is a lot of 'jungle' foliage covering the area, you could be in trouble.
Lets agree that the military can have 2 of these, and the other 3 can be demilitarized. Of course the two we give the military will be the two THAT ARE UNSTABLE so any equipment place there will tend to drift away......
What AMD should do is throw some major money and development effort at GCC and make it generate really good code for AMD chips. Code that would rival what Intel do for their chips. As Stallman says, when fighting monopolies we should all help each other....
Check this link.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Remember some years ago when MS was pushing a reader for e-BOOKS that used DRM, MS Passport, and other nasties?
Now tell me that:
a) Linux on the laptops will be an alternative.
b) The e-Books/ material will be cheaper than the hard copy. (No evidence of that so far)
c) There will not be DRM encumbered readers and the e-material will not be copyright encumbered.
d) The teachers will not just buy one copy of the (copyrighted) e-Material and install it on 30 machines.
Without a commitment to Free (as in Freedom) infrastructure here, I see way more downside than upside.
If the first example he gives is anything to go by, this effort is not well thought out. ...
Just because HE trusts "X" and you trust HIM, does NOT mean you should trust X.
Example: I trust you, you trust the president, therefore I trust ?
(see what I mean?)
If his model doesn't even recognize that, what good is it?
Does anyone seriously doubt that they DO?
Andy Grove (ex CEO of INTEL) described how MS prevented INTEL from including certain features in H/W. Andy's reaction was life is too short to spend it fighting MS. This was INTEL not some much smaller niche player.
RIght on.
We have been hearing about a labor shortage in just about every field for over 30 years, (tradesmen, engineers, programmers etc. etc.). Yet working conditions never improve and money never goes up.
Violates basic economics.
PR and hidden motives are behind so many 'news items' these days it pays to take nothing at face value.
Because if you value your reputation you cannot at this stage honestly recommend a Linux distro to your average user. This applies to RH, Mandrake, SUSE. Don't know about XANDROS since I havent had a chance to test my CD yet. Also there are few outlets where you can go to just buy a Linux computer.
1. Groklaw covers the SCO lawsuit from a legal perspective, and according to unbiased sources, better than anyone else.
2. The editor of Groklaw (PJ) is definitely pro-FOSS and anti-SCO and says so frequently on the site. This does not stop Groklaw from publishing the source documents on which their opinions are based so you can think and evaluate for yourself. There is a clear demarcation between editorial content and content that is presented as fact.
3. Groklaw has a 'corrections go here' link after every story.
SO the biggest piece of spyware on my computer at the momment is Windows XP (read the EULA).
Will Norton allow me to prevent that from happening?
Page 16 is a hoot. Notice they give them four lines of intructions on how to power on or reboot the box.
I wonder who this is aimed at? SCO or judge Wells (who seems to be as clueless as they come when it comes to technical issues)?
Well once again we see the wisdom of RMS's position that you try for 100% non-proprietary software.
Time and again, he has been proven correct, and others (like me) who are willing to compromise or cut corners proven wrong.
MP3 -> ogg-vorbis
KDE/QT -> Gnome
BitKeeper -> ???
Others I prob don't know about.
In my experience there are two guilty parties to this. First are the Programmers who optimistically (or dishonestly) underestimate.
Then there are the Managers who will not accept an honest estimate, or worse will not accept that an honest estimate is not possible. They insist on a 'date', then insist on a date that is sooner than that, then complain when 'their' date is not met, and blame the IT dept.
Sounds like Archimedes and the Greeks knew enough math to make piecewise parabolic mirrors that could focus on a point.
Did they have the technology to make reasonably flat GLASS mirrors?
IIRC glassblowing was not known then, and it was quite hard to make flat glass panels.
Also the legend seems unclear as to whether they were using glass mirrors or shields. Bronze shields, whether flat or curved might have much poorer reflective properties than a mirror.
In addition to a good book, or even INSTEAD of a good book, download and use THE REGEX COACH
http://www.weitz.de/regex-coach/
It is a very very nice interactive pgm that lets you debug REGEXES on the fly visually, by feeding them sample text.
There are few women in OSS, fewer even than in the s/w business as a whole. Even if most coders and s/w engineers are male, OSS could benefit from women from fields such as document writing, Human i/f design, test case librarians etc. where women are not in such a minority.
What could the OSS communitie(s) do to make themselves more appealing to women?